Guilty Beauty

Oh this is exhausting, she said. Everywhere we go the air is clean and it is beautiful all around me. I can’t think about work, and then I only begin to resent you for dragging me here and showing me what I’ve been missing. Even when they later make love by the fire, and went swimming off the dock naked and felt it all around them, and looked up at the Milky Way on their back, she said, – No, this is ridiculous. The next day he took her out in a boat and they climbed up a shelf of rock and saw an elk in the bushes and then a startled garter snake slithered and then a bald eagle soared by, and she said, – You’ve got to be kidding me. I want to go home. This is just distracting and depressing. – Give me one more night, he told her. And that night he went out and bought a twelve pack of Lucky Lager and he went over to his friend’s house and bought a gram of cocaine and a quarter ounce of pot. It rained that night and they stayed in and played gin rummy with a deck missing a card and drank five Luckies each. He made rocks of crack from the cocaine by heating it up with baking soda and they smoked those and lots of pot and then went out for a walk in the rain. Her head felt light and buzzing and everything seemed terrifying and dangerous, and they ate pizzas from the oven and laughed talked about popular movies and watched a classic porn film called Sensations and fucked twice. – So this is what you do, she said, and he nodded. He knew she meant that this is what a person does in Canada to make that guilty beauty go away. – But you don’t want to stay here more than a few weeks.

That girl

I remember that girl. I used to call her and try to get her to come out. I knew when she was out and if she smoked enough pot she would be happy and as long as I said the right thing she would sleep with me. And sometimes she would even look over at me and say my name like she was happy to be with me. I think I really loved that girl. When I hear her voice now I can’t take it: I still love that girl.

Ask Nice

– Everyone is here, her mom tells her. Your uncle John is back from Portland. Your aunt Amy and your uncle Derek and your cousin Sarah from Seattle are here. Even the puppy is ready. Come into the living room. We’re trying to take a group picture. – No, she says. I am playing Lego. – It really is unfair, her mom says. – It’s OK, her father says. – No, she says. I am just fed up. She acts like a brat whenever the whole family is around. – It’s really OK, her dad says. But he knows she’s had a bit of white wine, and she’s exhausted, and she is worried that the whole family is comparing the way she raises her daughter to the way aunt Amy raises her daughter. – I’ll talk to her, her dad says. – Oh relax mommy, she says. I was only trying to get you to ask nice.

The heater

She stands by the heater. She turns it on. – I want to stand here, mommy. – You can, her mom says. I know you’re cold. – I’m cold. – Yes. But you have to brush your teeth. She doesn’t want to brush her teeth. She wants to go to bed. She says nothing. But then, after a moment, she turns the heater off. And then she gets up off the warm pillow and walks to the cold bathroom, where there is an electric toothbrush, which she can feel spin on her gums.

Cologne

His father called him at the office. He was not used to hearing his father’s voice, especially at the office. – Dad. I only have a few minutes. What is it? – Your mother is sick, his father said. – I know she’s sick, he said. I know that. What do you mean? – Well I wanted you to know, his father said. – What is it? I know mom is sick. I really have just a few minutes. I can call you back. – No, you can’t call me back, his father said. Do you remember how you told me once that I was a weak father? – Oh God, his son said. I said a lot of things back then. I was angry. Do we have to do this now? – Do you think I’m a weak father? – Weak how? His son said. Of course not. I don’t think you’re weak. I said it a long time ago. I really can’t talk now. – Just tell me, his father said. I can’t talk later either. – What do you mean? Why? – I’m going on a trip. It doesn’t matter. – Where? – Just tell me. – You tell me. – You said you couldn’t talk now. – Tell me where. – I’m going to Cologne. – Cologne? In France? – No. It’s in Germany. – Why? His son barked, almost exasperated. There was a secretary making motions to him through a glass door. – I’ve always wanted to see Cologne. – There’s nothing to see in Cologne, his son snapped. He was surprised that he had an opinion about Cologne. Why are you calling me now, at the worst time, and telling me about mom, and asking me things, and taking a trip? – There’s no better time to take a trip, his father responded. We’ll talk later. Go to your meeting. I love you. And then his father was gone.

Liquid End

The river dries up, Coke is drunk up, and true love dies.

Authority and Urine

– To be a man is a very complex thing, their boss said. – I’ll show you. He took out his penis, began to wag it back and forth at everyone in the conference room. – Women can’t do that! he said. – That’s your fist lesson. He began to urinate on the desk. – Women urinate behind them. It leaks all over the place! Many of the fellows in the firm jumped up, aware of their boss’s eccentricities. This was just one of his games, they told themselves, which had nothing to do with sex at all. But the clerks did nothing. The urine made its way toward them; it leaked onto their papers and into their laps.

Bank Horse

You should never look a gift horse in the mouth. But if a bank gives you a horse, you should cut out its liver and look for spots. (The Romans did this to verify that a sacrifice was not polluted.)

Mode de vie

There are many oppressive things about living in wealthy European countries than can only be recognized by leaving them.

Starbucks

Starbucks recently created a goat cheese blend of coffee. Goat cheese is added to the beans as they are being roasted. Now we can have a cup of coffee that tastes like goat cheese.

The second house

My wife told me one day after what I thought was a lovely vacation that she was feeling “confused” and speaking to her “inner self” and used a whole pile of confusing words learned from self-help books and popular songs and a meditation cult she had recently joined. I became upset, and told her that she was just confused, and that she needed to see a psychiatrist. She refused. I told her that if she wouldn’t see a psychiatrist I would construct a second house for her, one that would look just like this one, and have all the same things inside, but it would be for her alone. She asked me why I didn’t just go away for a while. I told her that I always wanted to try the experiment anyway. She said that it was an idiotic idea, but that she would try it for a week. She went on a meditation retreat to the Bahamas while I constructed the house. She came to her home and tried it for a week. When the week was up, she rang the doorbell to my house. She said that she was just sitting there (pointing to my kitchen table) thinking about how stupid this idea of mine was to build a second house. After one week, she had also realized that it was the things in our life rather than me that had made her want to end the relationship. I was ecstatic, and told her that she should come back home and we would build a new house. But she said that being without me in the new house had made her feel like I was also the problem. She had tried so many times to speak to me and I just refused to respond. Se concluded by saying that she was just dropping by to collect some of her things, and then abruptly left my house.

Lines spoken by Dolph Lundgren

Well your team sucks. You will lose. Hell sucked! We are back! If he dies, he dies. If you’re guilty, you’re dead. I must break you. All men are killers; he just made me a good one. To the end. Just out of bullets. He is no human; he is a piece of iron. Does your mouth have an off switch? I turned away from Jesus.

Double Penetration

Somewhere today in the free world there is a woman asserting her right to be paid the same wages as a man at the workplace and demanding that more women be hired into positions like hers. Somewhere else there is a woman demanding paid maternity leave for a whole year. And still, somewhere else there is a woman doing both at the same time, which is known, at least to some feminists, as a “double penetration.”

Private Joke

A novelist once took up a creative writing post at a small but revered American college after sales of his second book did much more poorly than the first, though a handful of critics declared it to be a more accomplished work of art. Sometimes during class, he would single out one student, take up his or her story and read the first two paragraphs aloud, then stop abruptly and declare, “This may well be a work of genius, but I never trust myself. I’ll take it to my second reader and she what she thinks.” That night, at home, he would put the story before the face of his one-year-old daughter, who would look absently at the sheets of paper, perhaps even clutch them, then abandon them and get back to something more interesting, like pressing the buttons on the cordless telephone. The next day in class the author would announce that his second reader had rejected the story, and that because she knew more about this kind of writing than he did, he would defer to her opinion. A few months later, in an interview published online alongside the first few chapters of his new work in progress, the author related this little joke that he said served to expel “the myth of genius.” Some of his former students read the interview and complained to the dean, who then called the author into his office and dismissed him. As the dean later explained it, he knew full well that the author thought that the “teaching” of writing was impossible, and expected him to teach in a way that reflected that. But he found fault in the fact that the author chose to keep his joke private, and hence had not taught anything at all.