Giving In

"When did you know?"
The girl looked up from the sofa through her tears, searching for answers only time could offer.

The reply came with a sweet smile of sadness and amusement.
"Oh, honey," her voice cracked with sorrow and gentle laughter,
"It just smacked me upside the head."
She lowered herself into the cushions and pulled her daughter to her chest.
"When your daddy walked through that door, I think I just gave in. Some long fought battle just stopped raging and opened me up to somethin' more."

The girl sighed the deep sigh of young love,
"I want that."

She kissed the top of those dark blonde curls and smiled into the space around them.
"I know, baby girl.
I know."

Annoyances

I have a pet peeve that is beginning to turn into irrational anger.

When I go through a checkout, I want to get through as quickly as possible. I'm ready with my cards, have my bag open, and I put groceries in as they're scanned...all very efficient. I open my wallet to put my cash in and I'm ready to close it up and go every time.

But then...

Then the cash comes out, and instead of handing it to me, the clerk waits until the receipt prints, puts the receipt with the cash, and then hands me the mismatched bundle. The receipts are too big to go in my wallet, so I now have to separate the receipt before putting my cash in my wallet. The clerk COULD have given me my cash, let me put my wallet away while the receipt was printing, and then handed it to me and I'd be out of the next person's way. But no, they have to make it take longer b/c now I have to separate the receipt so I can put my money away and then walk away. It makes the whole process take 5 or 10 more seconds, which between thousands of customers each day, adds up to quite a bit. This is NOT efficient.

Seriously. Walgreens does this every single time. Every time. ARGH. Cala does it, too. I actually sometimes have to calm myself down before it happens so I don't get upset.

Ridiculous, I know. But true. God help me.

Whuh whuh whuh whuh whuh

I have a new favorite song. It's featured in this video made by someone whose job I need to have.



Favorite lyrics?
"Teach me tiger
how to tease you
whuh whuh whuh whuuhh whuh"

Thank you, Cute Overload. I am thrilled to have this song in my head.
oh yeah.

Book Report: How the World Makes Love

Very good, fast-paced piece of travel/relationship writing. I highly recommend it.

Some favorite parts:

A married Nicaraguan woman explains success

Physical appearance is irrelevant, though it is important to be good in bed.

The author has a realization

Love is the only belief on which the world agrees. Meters or feet, coffee or tea, Buddha or Allah, futbol or football, cars on the left or right--our planet cannot come to a consensus on anything. Except love.

The world believes deeply in love. Deeply. Ardently. With a shy smile and an instant nod, people around the globe say it exists in all of us. It can thrive. Sure, they have a hard time describing it, let alone capturing it, but it's there. They know it. From closed societies or Western worlds, in bodies wrinkled or smooth, with preferences for the apposite sex or the same, with pockets well stocked or barren, the world sings the same love song. The practices vary, but the passions remain identical.

A young Nicaraguan woman talking about love

Nica men think love is an empty space you need to fill. For me, love is if I am happy and you are happy, we can share. But if you are not happy, you can share nothing.

When I had sex with the fireman, it was not love. Just I needed a hug. But love doesn't leave in the morning.

Go read it for yourself: How the World Makes Love, Franz Wisner

Receiving

In this holiday time of thinking about giving, I want to focus on receiving.

Well, it's not so much that I want to, but that the world seems to be telling me that I should. It started a month or so back and sped up a couple of weeks ago with a series of events that have just kept going.

1. I had been looking for a table to fit into my teensy apartment for awhile, but I didn't want to pay more than necessary. A friend just happened to be getting rid of a table that matched perfectly, and now I have a gorgeous table and 2 beautiful chairs that actually work in my place!

2. My sister sent me an incredibly beautiful gift of fall leaves from home just to make me smile.

And then, all in one night:
3. I went out to dinner with a friend. We both were thinking about ordering the goat cheese fondue app, but were refraining. Our server comes to take our order and lets us know that we'll be receiving a free fondue because of the wait (we hadn't really waited that long, we hadn't complained, and we definitely hadn't mentioned the app).

4. We get to our movie, and someone has left an extra ticket at the window. The ticket lady decides I should have it. :)

5. At a bar later that night, a man steps on my foot. I jokingly say "ow" loudly, and he offers to buy me a drink. Despite my protests and his obvious lack of attraction to women, he buys me an uber expensive whiskey martini.

The next morning:
6. I wake up starving but not wanting to leave the house just yet. I was surprised by a yummy mission burrito in my fridge. Best feeling ever when you've forgotten that you brought home food the night before.

7. Found a $20 on the sidewalk.

8. I'm trying to name a business, and just as I was getting really frustrated, one of my classes had a naming expert as a guest speaker. The professor actually arranged for me to spend some time talking with him during class. Incredible.

So now, I'm just trying be open to receiving the things the world wants to throw my way. I think maybe that's something we don't do very often - especially those of us who tend to be giving and/or tend to take action to get what we want. I just don't want to miss out on something because I was so focused on working to get something else.

Bad Sex in Fiction Awards

oh. my.

The Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Awards are out, and they are certainly worth reading.

This year's winner is Jonathan Littell, for The Kindly Ones.

The winning passage:

Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: 'What are you doing, what are you doing?' and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything.

2005's Winner was pretty good, too. Winkler by Giles Coren:

And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

And a Runner Up from this year, A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux:

'Baby.' She took my head in both hands and guided it downward, between her fragrant thighs. 'Yoni puja - pray, pray at my portal.'
She was holding my head, murmuring 'Pray,' and I did so, beseeching her with my mouth and tongue, my licking a primitive form of language in a simple prayer. It had always worked before, a language she had taught me herself, the warm muffled tongue.

I don't know that I could write anything quite that amusing with any area of seriousness.