Slow Dancing

Going through old papers buried in my mom's house today. Found this quote:

"What if more of life could be like that? Like the last slow dance, where, to echo T.S. Eliot, a lifetime burns in every moment."
~Alice Steinbach

Marriage Baggage

A quote from Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow:

After almost twenty years of sleeping with Barbara, I no longer went to bed with only her. I lay down with five thousand other fucks; with the recollection of younger bodies; with the worries for the million things that supported and surrounded our life: the corroding rain gutters, Nat's unwillingness to study mathematics, the way Raymond, over the years, had come to greet my work with an eye its defects rather than successes, the particular arrogant glint that came into my mother-in-law's eye when she discussed any person outside her immediate family, including me. In our bed, I reached for Barbara through the spectral intervention of all these visitors, all that time.

A Book About Memories: Year of Fog

Just finished another Michelle Richmond book, The Year of Fog. It talks a lot about memory, both very technical aspects and some of the softer sides. Some quotes I liked:

"That's the great thing about kids. I mean, when was the last time you were so excited about something you actually wet your pants?"

~~~

Requoted from Walker Percy's Moviegoer:
"To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

Stuff from Books: No One You Know

Just finished reading Michelle Richmond's No One You Know. Quick read, suspenseful and moving, and filled with a few great quotes. Here are some I like:

A requote from Graham Greene's The End of the Affair:  A story has no beginning or end, arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

~~~

Every story is an invention, subject to the whims of the author. For the audience on the other side of the page, the words march forward with a certain inevitability--as if the story could exist one way only, the way in which it is written. But there is never just one way to tell a story. Someone has chosen who will emerge as the hero or heroine, and who will play the villain. Each choice is made at the expense of an infinite number of variations. Who is to say which version of the story is true?

~~~

Sunrise had a way of putting an end to intimacy; the vulnerabilities men displayed in the middle of the night seemed to disappear with the moon and stars.

~~~

The seed of every relationship's demise is always apparent, even from the very first moment. If you look closely at the beginning, you will always be able to see the end.

~~~

It's just a story. You can take it or leave it. Stories aren't set in stone.

~~~

There is no such thing as a perfect ending, no such thing as an infallible narrative map. Arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. Every story is flawed, every story is subject to change. Even after it is set down in print, between the covers a book, a story is not immune to alteration. People can go on telling it in their own way, remembering it the way they want. And in each telling the ending may change, or even the beginning. Inevitably, in some cases it will be worse, and in others it just might be better. A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.

Feeling the Pam Houston Tonight

Just needed to get lost in my favorite female author for awhile. Thought I'd share some of the quotes that spoke to me. (I've posted some of these long ago here.)

"I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined are the best opportunity we get to live fully, to be our strongest, our most compassionate, our most graceful selves. "

"Life gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing."

"The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up."

"The Universe has a plan to make sure we don't ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts."

"She's felt so bad for so long she don't know good when it's bubbling right out of her. And even when she catches up to it, she's waiting for whatever bad thing is about to happen next."

"If I had a daughter, I would tell her what a funny thing love is, how it never looks the way you think it's going to, how no matter how old you get, it is love that keeps surprising you. How in the songs sometimes it involves beaches and champagne and chocolate-covered roses, but in real life it is just a prematurely balding man standing in a drought-dried field telling you that he loves you, and that you should do whatever on earth you want."

"She wasted so much time trying to act perfectly, trying to guard against the loss, always fearful of making the mistake that would lead to it."

"I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing."

"In every assumption is contained the possibility of its opposite."

"You wonder why there's no word for the opposite of lonely. You wonder if there's a difference between whatever might be truth and a performance that isn't a lie. In your life right now, you can't find one."

Pioneer Woman's Love Story

I'm still not a hundred percent sure how I came across her website, but Ree, better known as Pioneer Woman, has a collection of blog posts that are stealing all of my time.

Ree was a midwestern girl who moved to LA for college and loved it. She stayed a few years after, knowing that she needed the big city, and happy in a long relationship.

As that relationship progressed, though, Ree realized that she needed some time alone to figure things out. She didn't know exactly what she wanted to do or where she wanted to be, so she went home.

Then she met the cowboy.

Seriously, this woman lived my effing fantasy. Except for the whole, move away from the ocean AND the city thing. Not sure I could handle that one.

Her writing is worthy of any romance section, but ladies beware - you'll be pulled in faster than you think.

On this one, though, I'm gonna say it's worth it.

Read Ree's Story.
(read from the bottom up)

Weirdly, I prefer reading it in those installments. Once you get far enough in, however, you'll find Ree's link to the entire story all in one place. Try that if it makes you happier.

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

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. 

A Real Love Story

I've never been as affected by a description of real love as I was by this passage from Marian Keyes' Anybody Out There? Such a moving moment, and I can only hope that someday I, and those I love, can experience something this beautiful.

I used to be a right hypochondriac. Not that I faked being sick, but when it happened, I was very interested in and tried to involved Aidan in the drama. If I had, say, a toothache, I'd give him regular bulletins on my symptoms. "It's a different kind of pain now," I'd say. "Remember when I said it was a kind of hummy ache--well, it's changed. More darty." Aidan was was used to me and my drama, and he's day, "Darty, hey? That's new."

I'd even broken a bone about a year and a half ago; I'd been rummaging through cupboards looking for something and I turned around too quickly, cracked my finger against a drawer, and started bellyaching, "Ooh, Christ, oh God. Oh, my finger, that's awful."

"Sit down," Aidan said. "Show me. Which one?"

He took my finger and--I know this sounds a little weird--he held it in his mouth. His mom used to do it for him and Kevin when they were little and now he did it for me whenever I injured a body part. "I seemed to have a very accident-prone crotch.) I shut my eyes and waited for the heat of his mouth to effect the merciful ebbing away of pain.

"Better?"

"Actually, no." Surprising--it usually worked.

"That's bad, it'll have to come off." Before our eyes, my finger swelled and fattened, like a speeded-up video of bread rising. At the same time the color changed from red to gray to almost black.

"Christ," Aidan said, "that is bad, maybe it will have to come off. Better get you to the ER." We jumped in a taxi, my hand laid across our laps, like a sick little rabbit. AT the hospital they took me off for an X-ray and I was thrilled--yes, I admit it, thrilled--when the doc clipped an X-ray to a light box and said, "Yep, there we are, hairline fracture across the second knuckle."

Even though I didn't get put in proper plaster, just a splinty-type thing, it felt nice not to be dismissed as a malingerer. I had "a Fracture." Not just a bruise, not even a strain (or sprain, I'm never sure if they're the same thing, and if they're not, which is more impressive) but a Fracture.
In the following days, when everyone looked at my splint and asked, "What happened?" Aidan always answered on my behalf. "Downhill skiing slalom, she clipped one of the poles." Or "Mountaineering, small rockfall, hit her hand."

"Well," as he said to me, "it's got to be better than saying 'looking for my blue shoes.'"

The hospital had given me two X-rays to bring home, and hypochondriac that I am, I used to study them; I held them up against the light and marveled at how long and slender my fingers really were beneath all that pesky muscle and skin and stuff, while Aidan watched indulgently.

"See that tiny line on my knuckle," I said, holding an X-ray right up close to my face. "It just looks like a hair, but it causes so much pain."

Suddenly anxious, I said, "Don't tell anyone I do this."

A few days later, he was home from work before me--an unusual occurrence--and there was an air of suppressed excitement about him. "Notice anything?" he asked.

"You combed your hair?"

Then I saw it. Them. My X-rays. Hanging on the wall. In frames. Beautiful distressed-gold frames, like they were holding old masters instead of ghostly black-and-whites of my spindly fingers.

My arms wrapped themselves across my stomach and I sank onto the couch. I hadn't even the strength to stand. It was so funny that for ages I couldn't even laugh. Finally the noise fought its way up through my convulsed stomach and heaving chest and emerged as a ceiling-ward shriek. I looked at Aidan, who was clutching the wall; tears of laughter were leaking form the sides of his eyes.

"You mad bastard," I finally managed.

"But there's more," he gasped. "Anna, Anna, there's more. Watch; no, wait, watch."

He doubled over again with hilarity, then straightened up, wiped his face and said, "Look!"

He pressed a switch and suddenly my two X-rays lit up, blazing into glory, just like they were on a hospital light box.

"I got lights," Aidan sobbed. "The guy in the frame place said I could get lights, so...so...so...I got lights."

He turned them off, then on again. "See? Lights."

"Stop," I begged, wondering if it was possible to actually die from laughing. "Oh, please, stop."

When I was able, I said, "Do the lights again."

He flicked them on and off several times, while further waves of mirth seized me, and when we were eventually exhausted from laughing, and curled up on the couch, Aidan asked, "You like?"

"I love. It's the best present I ever got."

ohmygoodness. I. want. that. love.

Book Report: Secret Diary of a Call Girl

A friend mentioned this to me, and then another happened to have it on her shelf. Just read it during a trip to Vegas.

Very graphic, very sexy, very funny book. Not for the prude. I enjoyed it immensely.

A few tidbits of incredible insight:

Dictionary Entry: in love - a momentary instance of being almost as interested in someone else as in oneself

"You know the feeling where all the pent-up energy goes straight to your legs, and you just want to run and run until you jump off a cliff? ... I'd fallen hard and had to see the man."

"My eyes followed Dr. C's lithe form around the room--eyeing the table, setting up a shot, the confident swing of the arm below the elbow on the follow-through. Competence so turns me on."

"Sexiness is not a square-yards-of-cloth to exposed-skin ratio. Sexy is not the inevitable result of being blonde, tan, and thin. Sexy is the result of being pulled together and comfortable in your skin. Holding your stomach in when your clothes are off is not fuckable. Slapping your ample behind and inviting him to ride the wobble is."

Buy the book.

A Question For Maupin

Q: What else is going on?
A: I'm really excited about the "Tales of the City" musical slated for Broadway. It's in the hands of very talented people. Jake Shears and John Garden of Scissor Sisters are composing the music and lyrics. I've been listening to the songs and offering comments on the script. There's a raunchy whorehouse number, "Ride 'em Hard and Put 'em Down Wet," a tune called "You May Be the Last Good Lay He'll Ever Get" and some gospel-singing A-gays (as in A-list). Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony for "Avenue Q," is writing the libretto. It's brilliant. He managed to be faithful to the story and make it work for the stage.
AHHHHH!!!! - I can't wait!!!

These Are Not Anxious People

I'm currently reading a hauntingly beautiful, but extremely depressing novel about a likeable but messed-up woman dealing with her past and facing her future.

Exposure, by Kathryn Harrison, is incredible, and a couple of quotes have really struck me thus far.

On discussing the past:

She'll talk later, but for now, whatever she remembers threatens to recede, evaporate, when she contemplates articulating it for someone else. Even as she tried just now to tell Carl about posing for her father's camer, it was as if she were trying to recount a dream: what she remembered seemed absurd, and parts of what she had thought was a coherent story were suddenly missing. Her mouth open to speak, she was left with nothing more than the idea of herself at the grade school science fair. Chosen from the audience of children to come stand on the stage, putting her hands over her head at the hypnotist's command.

On searching through other people's medicine cabinets:

These people aren't anxious or depressed. They have sinus infections and athlete's foot. They don't spend the minutes between waking and showering reciting reasons not to kill themselves.

I suspect that people from unhappy families are always searching the cupboards and drawers of happy people. Sliding a hand between the neat stacks of towels in the linen closet, slipping a finger under the hinged lid of a jewel box, flipping furtively through the pages of a book. They are looking everywhere. As if, perhaps, out might fall a list, an outline, the formula for how they do it.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I'm reading Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the first time. I've been completely enraptured by this book, and it's been a very long time since this has happened. There's no suspense, no mystery, no greaat big plot to finish. So why can't I put it down?

Betty Smith writes so beautifully about characters that you can't help but identify with them. But still, I'm constantly urged to move forward in the book...why?

The beautiful storytelling offers a world of horrible poverty, but with a small dose of hope. I read it so voraciously because I am taking in that hope. The hope is certainly better than the actually obtaining of anything...and I'm enjoying every second of it.

I STRONGLY recommend the read.

One of my favorite passages so far:
A mother speaks to her daughter, who has just given birth. The daughter is concerned about how she will bring up good children. The mother tells her daughter to teach them of God, and Jesus, and Santa Claus. The daughter asks why she should lie to her children about Santa Claus, when she knows he does not exist.

"Because, " [the mother explained], "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination..."
"The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I have lied. She will be disappointed."
"That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character."

Today

Is a sad sad day.

Kurt Vonnegut passed away early this morning.

If this doesn't make affect you, go pick up a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and read it right away.

At the very least, take a moment to learn why this incredible man was so important to literature and the world at large.

My favorite Vonnegut quote:

***God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.***

Happy V-Day

I'm not really that into Valentine's Day, but really, any day that gets my man out of bed to make me breakfast is invaluable. So happy Valentine's Day from a full-tummied Me.

More, importantly, February 14th is also V-Day.



Started by Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, "V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery."


Although it operates all year, many of the events cluster around Feb 14. Find an event (such as a performance of The Vagina Monologues) near you.

Life of Pi

I don't like castaway novels. (Ironic coming from someone who LOVES Lost.) I hated Robinson Crusoe. I have yet to read Moby Dick and no intentions of doing so. I never liked that Sole Survivor book. I'm just not a fan of reading about someone lost at sea and trying to make it back to civilization. Somehow, I find it boring.

Life of Pi is a castaway novel. The main character spends most of the book on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Life of Pi is different, though. Life of Pi is an amazing tribute to the beauty of life--stretching across science, religion, and art. This is an incredible story, not only of the will to survive, but of the minutae that represent the very basics of life.

I, as the avid reader who hates these kinds of books, LOVE this book. I couldn't put it down. No dullness, no waiting, no terrible desparation. This novel, full of suspense, operates under a veil of hope that shines through every page.

Please read this book.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams."

"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive."

"...the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims..."

"Which is the better story?"

Still a Bibiliophile

My favorite quote from Candy Freak:

Every now and again, I'll run into someone who claims not to liek chocolate or other sweets, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I don't trust these people, that I think something is wrong with them, and that they're probably--this must be said--total duds in bed.

This book also taught me that yankees don't know about Valomilks, Goo Goo Clusters, or Cherry Mash. How sad for you.

Now I'm on a mission to find Five Star candy bars, because we sure as heck don't have those in southern Missouri.

I Love Books

I've read a lot of great books recently. I really should dedicate an entire blog to each one, but it's just not going to happen. Devil in the White City was a suspenseful account of the rise of Chicago with the World's Fair (which included the invention of the ferris wheel), and one of the most prolific serial killers in the world. Them was a fascinating look into extreme groups from Ruby Ridge militia men to Ku Klux Klan members to radical muslims. Candy Freak was a yummy read about the candy bars that are being pushed out by Hersheys and Mars. You'll notice a trend here in that I haven't been reading fiction lately. I've been a bit bored by the novels I've begun, and decided to stick to more educational pieces. One book, though, recently changed my mind.

Kite Runner is by far one of the best novels I've ever read. It is the story of an Afghan boy/man and his values juxtapositioned against American values and those of the fundamentalists around him in his home country. READ IT! This book should be required reading for our time.

One of the smaller themes of the book, but one I found particularly beautiful, is summed up by something the father of the boy tells him early in the story:

Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

There is no act more wrteched than stealing. A man who takes what's not his to take, be it a life or a loaf of bread...I spit on such a man.

If there's a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.

One of the larger themes is forgiveness, especially that of one's self:

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

And I'm not the only one who thinks this is the best book I've read in a long while:

Amazon says:

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

...Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg

Publishers Weekly offers the following review:

Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland.... The price Amir must pay...is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut.... Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium.

READ THIS BOOK!

A glimpse into my life

Provided thoughtfully by author and psychic Leslie Schnur.


'She leaned against him, her shoulder against his arm. He turned to her, and he took her hand in his.

A few minutes later, he broke the silence.
"I haven't done this in a very long time." I can't tell her the truth, is what he was thinking.
"Me neither," she said. And I don't know if I can go through this again.
"I'm not sure I can." Besides, she thinks I'm someone I'm not.
"Me neither," she said again, wanting to smack herself. Though it was true.
"Maybe we should forget it." God, I want to kiss you, to...
"You're dropping me before we've even gotten started?" She made him laugh. Her stomach hurt. She pulled her hand from his.
"Somebody, in every new relationship, has to drive the train, to run the machine," he said. The last time, look what happened.
"Well, I don't drive. I'm a city girl," she said. Please don't do this.
He laughed. "Someone has to pursue the other. Or else you can't get to the next stop." Fight with me!
"Well, I'm not going to do it." Fuck him.
"Me neither." Screw you!
"So this will be the first love affair with no people," she said, looking down at her feet.
"A lot simpler than if it were populated." He turned to look at her. She's only here because thinks I'm someone else.
"It could last years." Kiss me, please.
"Or it'll go nowhere. It's not as if a new relationship can propel itself. It can simply putter out and stall on the side of the road," he said, now sounding anxious. "One could get hurt."
She challenged him. "Well, why aren't you brave? It's not important enough to you?" Fuck you!
"Me? Why not you? Who said that the man has to do it? What are you, a sexist pig?" Don't you see? I'm not who you really want.
"Yeah. SO I'd like to be pursued. So shoot me." Kiss me!
"I don't have to shoot you. Shoot yourself. I'm sick of having to be the one to drive the car! You know what it's like to drive the Expressway? Awful! That's what it's like. Trucks, old ladies with blue hair who can't see over the wheel, terrible drivers--"
"Drivers with a sense of entitlement . Feel they can cut you off, run you over simply because they're driving a Jag or a Hummer." she said.
"Hummers should be illegal. What, eight, nine miles to the gallon?"
"I totally agree!" She smiled. He's wonderful. She slipped her hand back into his.
"It's really a shame," to put it mildly, he said, squeezing her hand. "And all because we're wimps." And because you want me to be someone I'm not.
"Just fearful." Why is this so hard?
"I know." Show me it's me you really like and not a guy you're imagining.
"Well, this was fun." Yeah, right. She pulled her hand away and crossed her arms around her waist.
"I just need some time. I know that sounds...but can I call you?" When I get the balls?
"Why?" Oh God, yes.
"If I learn to drive?" To show you who I really am?
"God, yes. The minute one of us is willing or able to drive, we have to promise to call the other." I won't do it.
"I promise." And you'll be disappointed.
"Me, too." Please.
And they stood there for a few more minutes, in silence, leaning against each other, before heading back uptown.'



*sigh* Doesn't anyone wanna take the keys?

Poetry Excerpts

From "A Woman's Question" by Lena Lathrop

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life--
And a woman's wonderful love.

...

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.