Here’s the sixth story from my collection Middle of Nowhere. In “What I’ve Learned from What I’ve Learned,” Tex is a misanthrope who falls in love with a wacky girl named Ginny who is his complete opposite.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED

I’LL TELL YOU FROM THE START THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO GET MARRIED. Didn’t want none of it. At least not the way it happened. Never pictured myself in a cowboy hat and fringes getting married by the oldest lesbian ministers in the West. Meet a girl, fall in love, and spend the rest of our lives together, except somehow it all happened backwards. Well, sort of. I mean, I met her, and she was nice, and pretty, too. I wouldn’t have done her at my cousin’s wedding in the coat closet if she didn’t have a good face. But to be honest, I had also sucked down about a half dozen Cape Codders that night.

Her name was Virginia, which bothered me already. I once dated this girl Alabama, who was a loon, and had sworn off other girls named after states. Alabama stole utensils. All the time. I caught her slipping forks into her pocketbook when I came back from the bathroom at the fancy restaurant I took her to for our two-month anniversary. She wasn’t even embarrassed.

I convinced myself, though, that I could live with a name like Virginia because it was a state I’d been to and had a very good time. Alabama was a state that I had never been, nor planned on going. When I told Virginia that, she said I was funny, and after mentioning that her hair smelled like peaches and summer, I was on top on her with a fur coat on top of me.