Bloodsucking Fiends

"Jody thought, They don't get it, that cuddling afterward has nothing to do with the warm, fuzzy feelings; it's just the most intelligent way to ride the wave of post-coital depression."

First time for everything

Four hours of tutoring? $280.00. Five minutes of driving 85 in a 55 m.p.h. zone? $294.00. I really, really thought I was doing 75 in a 65, but, huh, guess not.

When condolences aren't enough

I wasn't a supporter of the death penalty until I read the front page this morning. He was my mom's, her partner's and my sister's doctor. His parents employed my cousins when they were teenagers. He and his family touched so many lives in the most important ways-caring for others, and not just through medicine. The loss of his wife and girls in such a horrific fashion is unfathomable, and as C put it, no words do justice to the loss. Prayers and tears.

Slipping by

He could have been reading the newspaper; I could have been changing the station on the radio. Instead, I glanced to my left while paused at a stoplight to catch him staring out the bus window. We saw each other at the same moment.

Does time stop? Yes, regularly, for seconds, sometimes years. It stops for individuals. The world continues by them, oblivious to the pause in a life. Time scoops you up, drags you back then hurls you forward. In the time it takes for a light to change, I was in his arms in the woods at sunset, by a hospital bed holding his hand, curled in his lap in the blue glow of a television, drunk, prostrate on his kitchen floor, handing my savings to a bail bondsman... then swirling in a vortex of water, choking, without air, until the passenger in the car was shaking me. "What happened? What happened?"

You know that love. It's time messing with you. You become encased in a bubble, it's just the two of you, nobody else understands what you have. You are each other. Nothing, nothing else matters. You become poisoned in that bubble, breathing each others' toxins, until one day, if you're lucky, you're expelled, thrown to the curb, bruised, battered and wondering where three years went.

I gasped, sucking oxygen in short shallow spurts, and with a lurch and a burst of exhaust, he was gone.

What kind of f*ckery is this?

State representative to school children:

"...and boys and girls, we're all here because we want you to read good."

May I eat your eyeballs?

Heard often: "Oh my God-your skin is so soft. What do you do?"
Emerging from my pod every morning is a natural exfoliant.

Inequality

There's just something so wrong about making $70 an hour tutoring a child who lives by the shore in CT when, a few hours previously, children the same age were being served moldy apple juice and Cocoa Puffs for breakfast in an "inner-city" summer school program in the same state.

Hot time in the ole town

Vaginal Spermicidal Inserts $3.99
Cell Phone Bill $55.63

Answering the phone to discover it's your mother as you're withdrawing your finger from your vagina...

NOT FUCKING PRICELESS AT ALL!

When the Easter Bunny is still magical

Tutoring...after an hour session in which the child has truly worked hard, he looks up at me, makes real eye contact for the first time, and blushes just a bit....

"Do you know Zach and Cody?"
"Yes, I know who they are."
"That's 'cause you're their mom."
"Oh, sweetie, no, I thought you meant...it's the hair, honey. I'm just a teacher."

He looks at me a minute, then smiles as if to say, "OK, I'll play along, but I know who you are."

Trippin'

Making $70 an hour tutoring don't mean shit if the ho ain't cut you a check. Where my cash money?!?

Talk to my pimp

"Seven easy meals for the week"

Hah, that's what dating is for.

Like ghosts and Morgan Freeman

Walking around Yale's campus to see the store fronts and cars set up for the filming of the new Indiana Jones film was way cool.

It was topped only by the oral sex that followed a few hours later.