The people I hung out with in my early twenties were middle-class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We’d all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it.
And he always has a fantastic body, shown at its best on the cross, which – face it – was practically designed to make a man’s stomach and shoulders look good.
Back off, world. It’s time for me to be good to me.
Other people’s pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.
A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. ‘My bad,’ for example, and ‘I’ve got your back’ and ‘You go, girlfriend.’ They’re the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.
September 12, 2001 Paris Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center.
One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, “What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever made love?” He was likely expecting “The kitchen” or “On a tennis court at night,” but one woman didn’t quite understand the question and answered, “In the butt.
Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently.
The approach of Christmas signifies three things: bad movies, unforgivable television, and even worse theater. I’m talking bone-crushing theater, the type our ancient ancestors used to oppress their enemies before the invention of the stretching rack.
This town is the Greek Baltimore.
We’re not pessimists, exactly, but in late middle age, when you envision your life ten years down the line, you’re more likely to see a bedpan than a Tony Award.
I once considered suing Farrah Fawcett for invasion of privacy. Hardly a day passed when I didn’t see her on a magazine cover, an ad, a poster. She was destroying my life, but now she’s OK.
It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.
The word love was replaced by a heart shape I’m guessing they’ll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.
It really is torture to sit around the house and write all day. I’m thinking it might motivate me to finish the book faster, the thought that after it’s finished I can return to housecleaning. The.
After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn’t afford. Unless, of course, social injustice is you thing, in which case- knock yourself out. The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can’t. Won’t people turn away if they know the real me? you wonder.
I wonder whose job it was to assign these sexes in the first place. Did he do his work right there in the sanitarium, or did they rent him a little office where he could get away from all the noise?
Then I met a woman named Janine who was bitten and had to spend a week in the hospital. “It was completely my own fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been wearing sandals.” “It didn’t have to strike you,” I reminded her. “It could have just slid away.” Janine was the type who’d likely blame herself for getting mugged. “It’s what I get for having anything worth taking!” she’d probably say.
He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you’re truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own.
My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.