Ask the Author: Stace Budzko

Stace Budzko’s Beautiful Retards is a fine inclusion in the July issue. Stace talks with us about safety equipment, swimming style, and language choices.

1. Do you use the word “retard” when describing mentally handicapped people in real life?

Man, I could go far with this set up. Let’s just say I subscribe to the Larry David philosophy that: “It’s the things I’m thinking but not saying.” Say when you’re reading a newspaper on the subway in Boston and here’s some politician speaking gobbledygook about “freedom” and “guns” as you recall Nicholas Fomby-Davis, age 14, who was riding a motor scooter when two assailants jumped him a stop from where you are now. While one held the boy down, the other fired three times with .25-caliber handgun into his chest. Otherwise, in my writing, I try to explore language in a way that appreciates how the right words have an ability to rub up against one another to make just the right something, and go there.

2. What is your safety equipment of choice?

Steel Toe Boots. If you have ever broken your baby toe you understand.

3. What is your preferred method of swimming?

Freestyle, with arm floats.

4. Which is scarier to drown in: Jello or unrealized dreams?

I only know the latter. Let me get back to you on the first.

5. What would you call a mentally handicapped unicorn?

Far more deserving of love than any of us.