10.22

He grabbed the back of Angela's neck and pulled her in. The hot breath of the standing bus blew across the lover's ankles as Anglela was worked over like a well-written manuscript. He knew what he was doing, or so her friends said. He was a really good kisser. He knew what to do with his lips. Angela had no basis for comparison.

Shea walked by. Dan and Ted hooted. Marguerite pressed her nose against the glass. He looked really intent and then Angela remembered to close her eyes.
In the annals of history, it wasn't the worst first, but it was hers.

10.17

The most beautiful sight he's ever seen is his new wife walking back from the bathroom wearing his shirt, and he can vaguely make out the umbra of her waist eclipsing the lamp in the hall. Her celestial body moves slowly into a syzygous alignment between his eyes and the only light in the room, and as her shadow falls across his trembling stillness, he takes a shuddering breath.

10.15

I'm tired of always doing things that make sense. I think it's time to do something nonsensical just because it's the right thing to do.
--speaking of--
Have you ever kissed a man with a beard?

10.13

He put on a burst of speed and caught up to his quarry. Trip? Tackle? Shove? Grab? Drag?

Ask?

In that split second, he reached out his hands and tossed her fragile form to the ground. He took three steps to slow and turn: large, heavy steps crushing into the ground as his mass decelerates. He looks again at the girl he has just humiliated--for that is what she is, a girl-- and he sees her choke back her vehemence or humiliation. He slowly picks her up from the ground and she hangs in his large hands like a broken stalk, the beautiful petals scattering on the ground. She doesn't fight. She knows this moment has been coming ever since she started running.

(the slow crushing step of inevitability)

10.11

This morning at 8:09, 10/11/12, I felt no particular chill. Nothing special happened. No fanfare rang out.

10.10

Tintinnabula hang in a curtain across your doorway. It's impossible to get through silently, so every time someone enters your home, you know it. Visitors are announced with a tinkling chime. Friends are greeted with a cacophonous crush. Lovers are pulled through by their tie, bells muted and lovely by the blood rushing through your ears. But the sweetest sound of all is there for me alone to hear: the wind brushing the conical perfection of a hundred tiny bells together as I wait for you to come back and choose me.

10.9

I catch myself moving in her eyes. She blinks. The man who stared back out at me shocked me. I look deeper and deeper into the distorted reflection to see myself as she does. I'm hateful. I'm hateful because I don't value what she thinks.

It's not worth it.

10.8

Men constantly cry out about the terrible problem in gender relations: all women just like bad boys. When you look at things with a keen eye, there is some element of truth to the tale, though I'm sure I don't know why. And again, I'm just saying what I've seen. My ex-wife left me for a guy who had been in prison twice for possession, so maybe I've got a twisted view of it or maybe I'm dead on.
-
Oh, bologna. Simmons, what you have is not perspective. It's sado-masochism. Don't give me that eye. You know what I'm talking about.
-
What, her?
-
Yes. You're denying yourself happiness because you don't think you're worth the effort. You hide--let me finish--you hide behind this façade of "good guy/bad guy" impossibility in order to explain why you're denying yourself the pleasure of a good, hard
-
Don't be vulgar, Dan. Even you don't have to stoop to vulgarity. All I'm trying to do, and you know it, so shut up, is prove that men complain needlessly about women liking "bad boys." I merely used my own situation as a sort of postulate ergo quorum of some kind, though if it annoys you, I can dismiss the compelling evidence to deter your tenebrous accusations.
-
Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I just. . . forget it.
-
Can I get on with my point? I had something profound to say. I'll just be short about it. No poofery. Here's the thing: men complain that women like jerks, but women still haven't picked up on the secret male desire.
-
A great rack?
-
I said secret.
-
Oh. You mean--
-
I do mean. And either women don't care, which I find unlikely, or they don't know. And the worst of it is that even the men haven't figured it out. At least not why we look for it so explicitly.
-
Maybe it's seductive? Part of the appeal?
-
Preposterous, Simmons. Simply preposterous.
-
In any case, you can't use that as an excuse. She practically defines it. If they had a mould to cast, they would synthesize her an pour her into it to make sirens or succubi or Victoria's Secret models. You can't have any complaints there. She's just exactly as intoxicating as you like. Despite the hangover afterwards.
-
Yes, well. There's still the fact that I'm not a--
-
Vulgarity.

10.7b

I dont doodle, really. When I do, I must decide to do so ahead of time. What I do more often is compose things that never make it to print. Things like "His pendulous life was swinging surely towards something, but be it up or down, he knew not. His only sensation was of speed: massive and unmeasurable, barely tolerable, yet uncontrollably consistent."

10.7

Oh my gosh! It's Sunday!? Oh my gosh, it's Sunday. Thank you, week, for this unexpected reprieve.

10.6b

His fingers advance over the edge of the rock face and his eyes follow like obedient slaves. Just that--nothing else is visible. He blinks twice and disappears.

Gollum.

10.6

The creature in front of you was monstrous: limbs that were too long for its body, skin the color of a puss-filled boil, smooth like a worn stone, and naked from head to toe. The thing glistened faintly in the light, as if it were wet with some one else's sweat. It stood in a grotesque position, crammed into the corner of your room.
But.
The thing you noticed most and first and last about it were the eyes: too large for a human but intelligent and angry. The twitches in the corners tell you just how real it is. The eyes are black but for a single reflective hole in the center that glows iridescent red with the pulse of the thing's heartbeat in its retinal depths. The heartbeat increases one beat twobeats three until a single moment has passed and the thing--for it is not any man you've ever seen--scrabbles and screams and crushes the heels of its too-long hands into its too-large eyes and shrieks so loudly you dropped the match
which,
tumbling,
winks


out.

And in the instantaneous silence of the match hitting the floor, you thought you saw the last shadows swirling like creatures under command to the corner to clothe the thing in a concealing grimace of victory.

10.3

[If challenged to write a "how to" make a sandwich that is unassailable from any angle or loophole, I suggest the following as a final caveat:]
If all else fails, combine all ingredients in a bag, box, or other large, solid, impermeable container. Close. Shake. If evolutionists are to be believed, a proto-sandwichoid will appear within several billion years. Consume at your own risk. Enjoy!

10.2

She writes vertically, like a chinaman, to make her letters slant the right way. Every line returns her to the pinnacle. Every sentence slumps toward oblivion.

Left handed.

9.30

[The day doesn't turn over until I'm asleep. I wake up in two hours.]

Lonely, the monk trudges up snow-slammed ridges to come to his mountain home. Ascetic. Neophyte. Solitary. Dedicated. The poor monk, always a man. Never a woman. What woman chooses solitude for her spiritual and emotional healing, unless she's hiding in a crowd?