When his sexless marriage ended in divorce, New Man started gathering up every last bit of himself that his body shed. Weekly, he scraped up the soapy fuzz balls that collected in the shower drain. He swept up all the medium-length hairs that carpeted his apartment and signaled the onset of male-pattern baldness that ruined his grandfather. He
When the Company installed me, it was with a single utility function. The Circus is a place of joy. And as Ringmaster, it is up to me to facilitate that joy. System error Joy outside acceptable parameters Reloading Ringmaster model I held my top hat in one hand and fussed over my processing unit. There
The envelope flutters onto the welcome mat. She restrains herself from polite applause as she appraises it: red on the soft side of scarlet, dusted with glitter (bronze, not gold –not gaudy), perfumed with the peppery scent of geraniums and sealed with a solitary X. Lifting the billet-doux gently, between manicured finger and thumb (a
Don’t shag your boss. It seems obvious but it isn’t when the only time he pays you attention is if you wear your fitted pencil skirt and stockings with seams snaking up the back of your calves. He certainly notices you then. But don’t fall for it – remember what happened at the last place
Shovel-handed and taciturn, Joe suits life on ship. It disappoints his parents though – an awareness of which he dully carries with him from deck-sloshing to mainsail. His father, a petite man, taut of body and thought, is a Cordon Bleu chef with his own restaurant. A restaurant he has made clear since childhood should
Something’s different, I think to myself as I put my waffles into the oven. I stroll over to my collection of records, take one from the shelf and gently remove it from the sleeve. Holding it up to my nose, I inhale deeply. Vinyl produced to resemble vinyl produced before the ‘70s has a different
She told me she loved me. She whispered it. She breathed in my ear. She brushed my lips and breathed into my mouth. We hugged and she pressed against me. I could feel her body against mine. She kissed me and I found myself responding, my lips against hers. Briefly her tongue flickered and pushed
The day before yesterday, my son said something wonderful. It was one of those things children say that delight and charm adults, like when his sister called a church ‘an astronaut’s castle’, or when he asked a beekeeper if you can get dragonfly honey. He took some humdrum adult concept, invested it with poetry and
It was a family tradition, to greet each new calamity with a party. It might seem strange, but it was actually rather joyous; the absurdity of cheering and clinking glasses when something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. My earliest memory was of celebrating some failure of my father’s with canapes and champagne. So when the
A fly landed on the bottom of the saucepan that was resting on the drainer. Which was allowed. Because it was on the bottom of the saucepan, not inside it, unlike the fly that had greeted Cora when she’d opened the butter dish on Tuesday morning. It had been dead on its back, right in
