and by the way, I wear jeans too, and I’ll fuck that white girl, absolutely, from the commercial, the camera trails her on the beach, she’s smiling, now she’s hiding behind her hands . . .
They put her flyer on their mailboxes and look at me like she’s dead.
My boy on the boulevard bubbling.
Triple wick rip tide in my mind.
Seeing a picture of my tits online didn’t bother me as much as it should have.
With snot running down my chin, weeping, I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that this key situation would go on forever.
I have to believe that what I am writing — what I am living through — means something.
Bliss can flip into alienation and back into elation, adding to the teasing uncertainty of identity.
When you peed in the cup, Herman was behind you, watching.
‘Did you talk about capes,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Mary said.
But I don’t even know what a collective is. And I can’t remember if he had tattoos.
One weird Halloween everybody dressed up as Elliott Smith.
like HFCA is kind of artless manipulation
it’s not subtle
People keep saying that they can’t say anything but everyone is saying everything all the time.
Finally, Mr. Mackey, the chair of the school’s English Department, delivered a rambling panegyric about the school’s depth of talented writers. I left my seat in the bleachers to fetch a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine.
Like many who quit drinking, my mother became a proselytizer for sobriety.
The other half was the memories of the end. The time Teddy had threatened to burn the only copy of my novel.
He struggles to come up with actions that give him a sense of joy or purpose when she is not around.
He says he feels like all his problems would be solved if he stopped going to that bar.
