You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Jay Garmiman,

the author most recently of a novel,

Shea Chance, published by Pantheon.

He is the author as well of a book of short stories

called We Find Ourselves in Moontown.

Now, I'm very fond of the work of Jay Gummerman and most fond because I don't know exactly how to describe it. So I wanted

to start by asking if you'll do me a favor. If you were to describe the story we find ourselves in

Moontown, how would you do it? What would you say in synopsis of it?

Well, I've had a few years to think about this one now, so that helps me with this answer.

A friend of mine actually taught the story, and I thought his take on it really struck a chord with me,

which was it's sort of the innocence of the disenfranchised, that there's a kind of guilt that the characters are feeling throughout until at the end when things sort of are out of the bag, they realize, and I mean, and the character of Keep News declares,

Sailor Boy first says, I'm a virgin and Keep News declares, so am I. And it's kind of an absurd moment because clearly there's something not innocent about what they're doing in a literal sense,

but I think in a deeper way they are innocence.

But what's interesting to me about this story is the two characters meet in an airport.

They seem to be either approaching each other for a drug deal, perhaps something sexual, perhaps something others, a new kind of malfeasance, not yet named.

And because they neither of them know how to put a name to whatever vice they want to practice,

they begin talking a kind of invented jive, each of them hoping that the other will reveal himself.

...