When I was 20 years old, I sat at a bar in Prague with a large glass of absinthe in my hand and wept. All around me soul chicks were shaking their asses while Czech men's jaws dropped to the dance floor. Four years earlier I had promised myself that I would have published my first collection of poems before I turned 20. 

Lukas Moodysson published his first collection of poems when he was 16.
Orson Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 24. 

My friends at the writers program tried to console me with how William S. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch just after he turned 40. Between sobs I told them that Burroughs was a fucking junkie and that he shot his wife in the head. I took a sip of the green poison and awaited Kylie Minogue to appear as a hallucination. But no Kylie. No calls from Bonniers, or W & W. Just a looming heartburn from absinthe and a tomorrow where I would have to set new goals. 

When I woke up in my bed at the hostel near Namesti Republica, I decided not to bring the others, I just went out into the warm spring morning with a big bottle of water and my sunglasses. I sat on a tram without knowing what line it was. Then I went out into the suburbs, where apartment buildings were like concrete shepherds with long arms made of washing lines and satellite dishes sat like zits on their foreheads.