So I was lending this book to K the other night. It’s a book about Jackie O. Cultural studies. She and her mother saw the dresses at a museum once and she’s all about it. I met the author once right after I was of age. We were both drinking at a party in his honor. I spent the rest of the night in the corner, planning my escape route. When I gave her the book I briefly flipped through the pages an realized I had stowed photos in between the pages. I think they are photos that you saw once: Amanda in bra and panties, Robert with more hair, Amanda’s prom picture etc. I think you tried to show my mother the more interesting of the photos once. I took your picture once while you had on less clothes than that, and I believe you were un-encumbered with the whole thing. You don’t look happy, but not sad either. I don’t know. Those pictures are gone, but not in my mind. I can conjure with ease. But tonight I first got weepy, like I can do at times, about Amanda again. It wasn’t the half naked pictures. It really was that prom photo. The one of her before I knew her, but the one that looks like her about the time I met her. I guess I am getting so old. I really knew her shortly after a prom photo? When did I come to know you? Seems like ages ago now. The bra and panties was taken while on the Outer Banks. I used to take trips...
There’s too many dudes that feel the way I do about you. Are you worth all these songs? It would be easier if what Chris says is true. She thinks you love me. I ain’t that man, or am I? I know I deserve you as much as you deserve me. And that’s flipping this whole thing on its head. Take me to your friends and let’s be married. Let’s be married and be happy. And when we’re happy there’s nothing beyond us. I miss you when I sleep. Especially these...
You, see I awake, but not really. This is a dream. I have marshmallows in my ears and I am trying to roast them, but I keep singeing my sideburns. There’s a topless mermaid trying to put on a sweater, and two kids bouncing on an abandoned box spring. A dude, 6’3″ and blonde, tosses a racquetball at my head, and I violently shift and avoid being hit, only to lose the marshmallow which falls into the fire, and promptly melts. I can hear whippoorwills in the trees some half mile off. I am taking a walk in the woods with a gray figure. I climb a poplar tree, or what I believe to be a poplar tree, a 100 foot sapling. I lose my grip and start to fall again. I awake and it’s the back of your head I am looking at. Then I awake and it’s that damn down pillow...
A man walks into a bar; this not a joke. He first asks the bartender for a glass of water, at which point, the bartender explains that if you ain’t paying, you ain’t drinking. The man bursts into tears. The bartender asks why the long face. Really, this is not a joke. It seems that the old guy’s wife had run off with another guy, leaving early this very same morning while he was still in bed. If that wasn’t enough, the Camaro-driving sonofabitch ran over his what-would-be-best hunting dog, if only he ever hunted. The dog could climb a tree and throw the raccoon to its death, or say he said. So his old lady is gone, and his favorite dog is dead, and all he can think to order is a glass of water, because she took the money in the Maxwell House can in the kitchen that they had been saving for a trip this summer to Panama City Beach, and she took the bank card from his wallet on the dresser, and the checkbook which was also on the dresser, and the credit card was long overdrawn, and to top it off, it’s Veteran’s Day, a fucking bank holiday, and the old guy fought in the first Gulf War, and through much VA therapy had just learned to manage his PTSD, but he couldn’t get any cash out to buy a drink after his woman ran off with another man, who ran over his favorite dog, as they made their getaway. Lord knows how he’s going to afford the colonoscopy and all, especially after being...
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