The Anti-Vegas Vegas Blues
John Yohe
I
am the only man to come to Las Vegas w/an ex-gf and not fuck her—arriving two nights early on my own to hike up in
I
am the only man to come to Las Vegas w/an ex-gf and not fuck her—arriving two nights early on my own to hike up in
The summer she was without anyone
and I had just left the other girl
in Jersey City,
Molly and I kissed at her house. We were adults
who lived with our parents. She seemed like
He was too poor to erect an everlasting monument in her likeness, all he could afford were words.
I’m trying to do this story to get Kim’s feelings out there, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy and rumors about her death as if people are ashamed of how she died instead of why she died…
That was my youth: I developed a sickness, a ruinous crush on the man at the filling station
We chased the tail laid before us. Scratching and sniffing our way to pain. We took turns leaving consciousness for a few seconds.
I was stationed in Osh, a forty minute flight south of the capital. I had
a decent sized apartment
1. A bottle of orange wine – half a packet of cigarettes.
2. You caught at the bar the space so crowded that people were practically caught under your armpits – grinning nervously, two pina coladas in hand.
3. A kitchen dance – or two.
4. Luther Vandross.
Gone, like T9 texting, is the once exciting novelty of being important, popular, scandalous
One night—which was, as it turned out, my last night camming
I knew the talk about a baby was another red flag, but the more uncontrollable Amelie became, the deeper I got hooked. I couldn’t go back to what my life was before. I think it had been drowned the
I am not sorry about most things I’ve done; I really do try my best to be good.
My opponent was curly-haired and perpetually smirking. Everything around him – his fancy collared shirt, shoes, wristbands, tennis bag – was emblazoned with an Adidas logo
But her coup de grace was when she started bringing a white boyfriend to our parties. He was a real champion. His name was John.
I try to imagine the various people the specks of bubble gum had belonged to. Try to give them faces and purposes.
gen x girls grew too cool to touch and millennials gayed the world the rest of the way limp in their piteous attempts to save it.
The hangover was ruining the romance. Last night I woke up a friend and made her drink wine—Chateau 2016. I had to deal with my nerves somehow.
We started as open, NOT poly. This was a very important distinction to us, despite not having a working definition of either types of relationships. It was, we both agreed, substantially less cringe
By March of 2016, my cousin Josh and I were practically flat broke. We’d been having an incestuous and adulterous affair, one that elevated his title to “cuzband” (he hated that term). Four years
Sometimes I think I won’t understand what it is that I’ve lost until I write a book about it.
One night I was so drunk, I couldn’t feel my face.
I was drinking bitters and soda with lemon, my new signature drink. It has .03% alcohol, less than a bottle of kombucha.
I couldn't look in the mirror because I didn't recognize myself and I was terrified. Not a metaphor for becoming a new mom - I actually could not recognize myself because I had a brand new rare and severe psychiatric condition called depersonalization derealization disorder where recognizing yourself in the mirror is no longer an option.
You have to keep in mind this is a true story, and the events I’m about to describe took place before 2006 in a desert land which I’ve never been able to find again on any map. And years later, when I
"It captures all the doubts, giddiness, confessional streaks, blabbiness, self-alarms, rationalizations, feigned equipoise, and instantly breakable resolves of a person freshly infatuated and likely in love." -anonymous writer friend
“Transgressive and immediate: you feel these stories shoot through and wrap around you.”
- Kyle F. Williams, Full Stop Magazine
“Lutz’s work is a marvel of the possibilities of language. Each of her sentences is an intricately crafted thing, deeply complex yet crystalline in its clarity . . . her command of each and every word remains supreme.”
--Mira Braneck, The Paris Review Daily
Garielle Lutz is the author of The Complete Gary Lutz, among other books.