Lifting up, up, up off of the crinkly papered bed, she floated aboard the majestic, wooden air ship, where she slow-danced with Prince Charming’s handsome son, wearing a flowing ball gown that sparkled like diamonds in the melting lip-gloss gold sunset that the circus animal crew – elephants and zebras wearing colorful hats and silly shirts – was working to sail into, paddling their oars rhythmically against tufts of cumulonimbus clouds as if silently marking the beat of her dance. This was her favorite place to go whenever Mommy and the doctor started talking about her cancer.
Message to a Jealous Wife
You still think I am coming to satisfy a hunger, but you are wrong: if I come into someone’s house and compliment their selection of art, it doesn’t mean I’ll stuff a statue under my overcoat on the way out. I am well-acquainted with your best possessions and I am uninterested in the inventory or in how you protect them.
Them
He lied, she lied, he cried, she died. Years later, in a dusty attic box, he found, a post it note she had written; he cried again.
Straight
Sometimes, she wished her girlfriends were men. She thought she could be happy dating them, but she had zero lesbian impulse.
The Junkie
He really did love her. It did not stop him from shooting up.
Piracy of the Mind
A Focus on the Family official recently warned parents not to let children dress as pirates, as the legendary figures conjure up nothing but “images of sweaty, half-naked men sleeping two sometimes three to a cot.” Then the official, Hugh Troy, closed his eyes and thought of the rigging, the peg legs, the drinking of grog, the “ol’ heigh-ho,” and soon he was hoisting his own main sail and drifting in his own Tropic of Capricorn where the decks always need swabbing and the booty is endless.
Stink
While they were on tour, the band mates had an unusual on-going competition to see who could go the longest without showering. Stage lights make people sweat a lot.
Surprise
Of the three friends, he was the most deeply disturbed and misogynistic. He was also the first to get married.
What I’d Be
I would be whatever and whoever you wanted me to be – anybody, anything.
And that’s why I can’t let myself love you.
What’s in a Name?
If her parents really didn’t want her to be promiscuous, then why did they name her Lolita? You might as well name your kid Walter and expect him not to be an accountant.
Words of Wisdom Not Forgotten
No, no; don’t worry – this wasn’t going against that thing her parents had taught her when she was a little girl. Admiring from afar; sending the buttons flying as she used her eyes to rip the shirt off his chest; and imagining in graphic detail the sweat trapped between their bodies during a steamy encounter in the nearest motel: even though she had never met the guy, she was sure none of these things qualified as “talking to strangers.”
Life Imitates Art
She plays a hooker in her next film. She got 30M and didn’t have time to play Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler on Broadway.
Post coital
I crush the plush raspberry to the roof of my mouth with my tongue. The sensuality of this most shameless of fruits makes me swoon.
Origins
The boy’s mother was insane, and everyone wondered what would become of him as a result. He could have followed in her footsteps, but instead he pushed himself harder than anyone else and became more successful than his classmates and friends with a happier provenance.
Down, said the witch
The cool wind stirring through his hair and filling his nostrils, he opened his mouth to take in a deep breath of this sweet, new life, for he had finally made it to the top of the top; the summit of the mountain we call success. It felt good, really good there at the top, except for an acute, tugging pain in his abdomen that seemed to be nagging sadistically, cackling at him like an old witch, “There’s only one direction you can go now, buddy – hee-hee hee!”
Jealousy
You are a rough, country girl torn out of the hills near a town where I used to live and I have been lost in more countries than you could probably name. And still, he chose you.
Priorities
Her father worked multiple jobs to keep her in a particular house, at a particular school, and routinely participating in the correct extracurricular activities. If anyone had ever asked her, she would’ve said she preferred he work fewer hours, make less money, and spend more time with her doing nothing in particular.
Useless
When it came to love, Schopenhauer did not speak to him. The philosopher’s theories about romance and the will to life shed no light on why one gay man would be attracted to another.
Drunk Answering
He had a crush on my friend Sarah, though she couldn’t stand to be around him. He phoned one night when I was drunk and immediately accepted my completely insincere invitation to visit—meaning I spent the better part of a good weekend kicking myself whilst trying to distract him from the fact that he was being brutally rebuffed.
Don’t Jump! …(yet)…
“Wait – don’t jump!” Carly Ann yelled at her big brother who was ready and poised to plummet to (what he thought would be) his death from the window of his second-story bedroom. “Just give me a minute to get up there and I’ll push you off myself!”