I went in every Manhattan bookstore looking for The Cows by Lydia Davis.

'Let's all go down to the river' I said...

Lippens, like most writers and artists in general, occupies this space slightly distanced from the commotion of the world.

I can’t read in Farsi but I taught him how to say kiss, my flower, small, my heart and now the florists know

We had a shared Google Doc titled ‘Ground rules for this relationship’.

my first hospitalization was at 13 after swallowing a bottle of Tylenol.

I wanted to feel like a domestic woman, like the kind of woman who made salmon and vegetables before going out. Then I was that woman because I’d tried to be her.

I have the feeling that, if she wished, Tiff could control me entirely through simple elbow voodoo; just a loose jet-lagged tilt and I would fall to the floor, start foaming at the mouth.

Fought so hard to be this self— this man in front of you. I’m free to wear pink and piss in the urinal.

8: Perhaps we’ve misheard. Perhaps our facility with language will lead to our downfall. Perhaps the public lauding of our own personas is parasitic and causes continuous displacement.

The idea that mental illness can be effectively managed with drugs is a relatively new one

She said she was mad because I portrayed her as a vaguely inconvenient antagonist side character.

Nina got drunk every Thursday.

Because I am toxic and codependent

Because I am not good for Bruce.

[The names of certain parties have been changed. Other names were never known and are now lost in time.]

I get maudlin and nostalgic over the Christmas holidays, mostly for a past version of

It was day three of the Democratic National Convention and day 19 of my short tenure as a Chicago resident. I had the day off work, and nothing to do but get on my Hunter S. Thompson shit and poke my nose around the old DNC to do some gonzo journalism.

I wash the semen off of my hands in the pool.

You will never truly know Valerie, because you will never find my son, nor hopefully want to after his trite art project that is endangering us all is laid to rest by what follows.

When I told one of my professors that in my lunch hour, I’d met with a writer named Elizabeth Wurtzel, the old man rolled his eyes:

“That book was such garbage. She tried to write a second book, and a third, but they flopped.”

Imagine what happens inside gated communities behind closed doors, even in homes owned by a retired cop and special education teacher! I had nothing but my body and when I used it, I was called a devious animal.

It is a widely known fact that Arledge created Monday Night Football in conjunction with the American Suicide Watch as a way to stymie a flood of Monday night suicides.

I hook up with a nineteen year old at my big age. Driving over, I tell myself: act doting, let him initiate everything, he’s topping anyways, he has the power, you could pass for being two years

The only clothing I wore was an adult diaper to which almost every older male crew member made a comment.

“When the president says your name in anger, the shit has hit the fan.”
—Ice-T

How I angled myself. How I smoke inside. How things leave impressions.

this an excerpt from a longer story...