And now for something completely different . . .

How about a little stream-of-consciousness fiction I've been playing with?

INTRODUCTION
It Starts . . .

First let me introduce myself. My name is Pisces. Pisces Kerouac Kowalski. Yeah, yeah, I know. Heard it all before. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. “Stella! Stella!” OK. That’s out of the way . . .
Oh, you were questioning the Pisces Kerouac? What do you expect when your parents were a couple of Beatniks? My mother was really into astrology, Tarot cards, Ouija boards and Beat Lit, particularly an aspiring young writer named Peter Kowalski. All I can say is: Thank God I wasn’t born between June 21st and July 22nd ! Cancer Kerouac Kowalski. But to her credit, my mother swore to me that if I had been born a cancer (and I ache for all you cancers out there), she would have gone with something like the birth flower or gem of those months. Oh. Gee. I could have been Rose or Pearl or even Ruby, if I had been born four months or so later, but lucky me, I got the striking and unforgettable name of Pisces. Not Violet. Not Amethyst. Pisces.
And the Kerouac. It could have been worse. I could have been Brautigan or Ginsberg. Although I have to admit, Burroughs doesn’t sound too bad. And I loved Naked Lunch. But I’m used to Kerouac and I’ve always felt a special tie to him . . . but, of course, this is all beside the point. Who am I kidding, really? It was like growing up on Dante’s fourth level of Hades with the name Pisces (and I stuck with that because it was a hell of a lot easier to pronounce on sight than Kerouac—although I prefer the latter).
I guess when I turned 18 I could have changed it. But when I was 18, I was too busy wondering if I was going to be a virgin the rest of my life; if I was ever going to meet that so-called “White Knight,” to worry about a silly little thing like being named Pisces.
So the whole name thing . . . yeah, I often longed for something succinct and Biblical like Sarah or Rachel or Mary or Rebecca. But I was Pisces. I AM Pisces. At 45, I imagine I will be Pisces until the day I die.
So, now going back to the Dante analogy, you know the first level of hell I had to endure. The name. And if that wasn’t hard enough, I was an only child (although, secretly, I often said a special prayer that a sibling of mine didn’t have to bear an equally obnoxious name. I mean, my parents kind of slid from Beatnik into Hippie and if they’d stayed together long enough, they would have done the whole Disco thing and then the 80’s self-indulgence and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, they barely made it into the Disco era. And no more children although that was the fault of a sudden case of the mumps (my father’s, my mother and I had the shot) and not desire. So long to brother Moonbeam or sister Sunshine Daydream.