We’re mourning and celebrating at the same time, so drink.
The day Travis met Lu he was in his best suit – dark blue, pinstripes, a necktie. Women his age would see right through his sweat and pretense. Any woman his age, she’d say, “What, you work at Men’s Warehouse now?” Yeah, a woman would know a cheap suit was like an easy costume, but the girls didn’t catch on.
She didn’t call. That was good. If she called, she’d have a chance to cancel.
Playing Frisbee gave Sean permission to look at Lu, across a short distance. He didn’t have to feel stupid for staring.
What I feel in that kitchen is the way humans are so flawed and so perfect, and I want to share bodies. You know your old dog? That’s how I feel – I want to climb on people, breathe their breath, lick the inside of stranger’s mouths. I don’t know these two, but who do we ever know, really, past the skin? How do we get there?
The Arboretum’s overgrown grass rustled. The branches of an apple tree shook as though an animal had jumped from one to the next. A wind slid up my thighs, in the night, under my short nightgown. Crickets and cicadas made a sound like distant laughing children, the laugh track to a sitcom that didn’t end. It was like the grass was full of tiny giggling babies. So beautiful, and creepy.
My head was so light. Wind sang through the field grass. The same wind brushed hair off my face, soft as my mother’s hand, and when the falling snow started to clump into flakes, each thick flake came down with the love of a frozen kiss, like somebody was saving up, freezing their warm love for later.
I, American in body and spirit, healthy, debauched and dedicated to travel, had no date. I felt a simmering discontent. What good was freedom when I wasn’t free to hand it over, what use was the currency of my body if I couldn’t spend it?
He said, “Only you.” I was alone and he was alone and we had nothing in common short of being human at night.
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,” “Gentlemen-Rankers,” Barrack Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling.
A good officer can get away with being wrong, but he can’t be indecisive.
As my Uncle Theodosius always said: never chase women who are a lot smarter than you. You won’t catch them, or, what’s worse, you might.
At that point I made all of them shut up while I explained that a friend is someone who will give you a drink from his canteen and watch while you sleep.
Life’s a forge, boy, and the purest metal comes from the hottest fire. When you’ve been under the hammer a few times, you’ll find you’ve been beaten down to the real, no lies, no excuses. There’ll.
I don’t have any problem with what other people believe, so long as they don’t expect their beliefs to affect my behavior.
Come on, Sunshine, if you think you’re hard enough.
Logic wasn’t the governing factor here. It rarely is in human affairs.
If that meant Adele was lying to a politician, it was merely a pleasant reversal of roles.
People like to think that their convenience is important. Daniel had found that as a general rule the universe didn’t agree, and that other human beings tended to be a subset of ‘the universe’ in this regard.
I’ve decided that it’s better to be alive until it’s time to be buried.