Relationships
November 20, 2009
- I have been thinking about deception quite a bit recently. As children, we grew up in the smoke-and-mirrors world of international espionage thanks to my father’s career in the government. In that world, deception was the norm: people were never who they said they were; information was always suspect, to be double and treble checked with multiple sources before it could be believed; potential ...
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November 17, 2009
- “Pain is our greatest teacher,” he said. I wanted to slap him. But it’s not a good idea to slap a holy man, so I just sat there, face hot, throat tight. I think he could tell. I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings. We were meditating on compassion. “Pain teaches us compassion,” he said. Fuck that, I thought. Give me a knife that can cut this pain out of my ...
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November 16, 2009
- We don't like what's real, at least initially. The house goes on the market and we take off the screens, expecting no one to notice, expecting prospective buyers to believe that no bugs fly thisaway. The house is pristine, a wall of glass looking out to the horizon unperturbed, a single eye from which to view the future.When we put an ad on Match.com, we don't write, "I'm slightly ...
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November 14, 2009
- “So how’s it feel having sex with a dead man?”“Good,” I gasp. “Very good.”We laugh at the gallows’s humor. We can make jokes while having sex. We’re at that point with one another.Soon the laughing makes way to sighs and moans. A tear runs down my face but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying being very naked with my ex-boyfriend this one last time.God, can I really call him an ...
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November 10, 2009
- A Meditation On Marriage, Part I [POSTED ON OUR SIX MONTH ANNIVERSARY]A Meditation on Marriage The repetition and awkwardness of the question evoked irritation, something like the metal scrape of a dentist's pick as it moves along the gum line. When’s the wedding?I know it’s a fair question, a somewhat fair assumption. When two people are in a long-term relationship, the discussion of ...
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November 10, 2009
- I'm going to make ravioli a metaphor, a task I have never attempted. Maybe spaghetti or fettuccine, but not ravioli, and certainly not a roasted butternut squash ravioli. When Michael and I started dating, within the first month, he invited some friends over for dinner, but the purpose of the meal, really, was to have us all meet. Michael was intent on us cooking together, so we planned a ...
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November 1, 2009
- The recent societal bent towards navel-gazing has apparently reached its zenith with "Eat Pray Love," Elizabeth Gilbert's pseudo-memoir of self-discovery and seeking enlightenment. Or perhaps it was a shallow grope for the best-seller lists and Oprah's couch. Either way, it worked; her book has been on the best-seller lists for over two years now. But reading about this book ...
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November 1, 2009
- Don’t put all eggs in one basket, they say. It means you need to be emotionally promiscuous, keep your options open. I hate the idea. There is enough to explore with just one egg.The egg. Boiled so hard that it knocks its own shell off. Then there is the kind that jiggles ever-so-slightly like a debutante at a ball...left for a little less time, the jiggling is more pronounced and the yolk ...
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October 22, 2009
- Added a new story to RedRoom, in my view the best bit of prose I've composed this year. It's called "The Future" and you'll find it in the Articles and Stories section, in the column to the right of this posting.A bittersweet offering, with a coming-of-age angle. It's part of a short story cycle that's posted on my main blog, Beautiful Desolation, which is the exclusive venue for my ...
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October 21, 2009
- We would meet by the brick wall in front of my house on sweaty summer nights, hop on our Schwinns, and ride around the block looking for dead things to poke with sticks, stray cats to pet and name, evidence of a life only found in our untamed imaginations. We wouldn’t speak much. We wouldn’t have to. Our mutual escape into a world of monsters, swords, and adventure would say more than ...
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