In a real-world-I-bleed sort of way, I’ve always tried to be that hero... I want to be a good person and viewed myself as that for a long time. That changed last year when I had an affair.
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News moves, literally, at the speed of light. Last week the man on the television said that X happened. This week Y happened and X is no longer as important to the world as it once was.
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That night, John possessed all the charisma of a sleepy clam. Standing quietly against a wall in the busy club he filtered fed off the air like a mollusk—breathing in oxygen and exhaling waste product that mixed with the heavy air of the large, strobe light lit room. Though he swayed with the music, John still managed to keep his feet fixed to the floor as he looked into the crowd at every guy dancing with a/their/some girl.
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This is what the writing prompt from Writer’s Digest said: “Your family has always been a little off when it comes to holiday traditions. You eat tacos on the Fourth of July and hamburgers on Cinco de Mayo. How did this whacky tradition get started?”
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Maybe I should've gotten that Redbull. I debated the moot point for a moment. What I correctly guessed as the last twenty-four hour convenience store on my trip down the I-95 was thirty minutes behind me. I had missed my opportunity to get a caffeine pick-me-up, but my mind continued to wrestle with the past. I slipped deeper into drowsiness.
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It was robbing season where I worked. Although I didn't know why, it seemed to me an observable fact that the warmth of summer somehow thawed the laziness in low-level criminals. Cops patrolled more often, ramdom beatings became more frequent, and stick-up men looked for anything that shined with a focus that would be inspiring if it was directed at a book.
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The newborn looked like a mutant raisin. That was all Kathy could think about as she stared her niece in the face. The pale thing lay on her sister-in-law’s chest and looked back at Kathy with black dots that couldn’t see more than a foot away. She was wrinkled, with facial features that Kathy couldn’t describe other than to say that they were there. Her nose was there; her ears were there; her mouth was there. They were all there, but they were as shapeless as a dream.
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Peter never imagined that bare-knuckles alone could cause so much ruin to the human face. He had seen an average amount of violent TV shows and action movies, but expertly applied liquid blood to the lip of a trained actor had only given him the faintest idea of the ugliness that a strong punch created in the real world.
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You wake up, but you’re still asleep.
Your dreams remain with you. Winning lottery tickets fly around in your head, alongside fantasies of childhood parental approval. Instead of saying “no” that time, you see the possibilities of a “yes.” You think of your ex-whoever and relive the moment when you realized it wouldn’t last.
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I leaned against a display of computer towers and computer printed price tags, while on my fifth day in a row at that place that I didn’t want to be in. A bank was holding me hostage. If I left they would kill me; they would starve me; they would let disease consume me; they would have me freeze under a bridge; they would turn me into food for vultures with bad habits.
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Took the subway this Thursday instead of driving. Wanted to avoid the traffic and nasty weather outside (the day’s snowstorm would’ve blinded me on the road). Got there, and I saw this obnoxiously loud group on my uptown ride on the E train. They got on at Continental Avenue, and were talking in that language/code that I could never decipher.
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A few weeks after arriving in Korea I met someone. We fucked the first night we met, and it was pretty good. Neither of us were looking for anything serious. What it boiled down to was that everyone has needs, and it’s hard to get those needs met in a foreign country where men strive to look like boy-band members and women want to get married before they’re twenty-four.
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It was a totally new building with glass walls and a wonderful view of the woodsy campus behind the main school building. I sat inside this new cafeteria with six other teachers who, because of the new lunch schedule that accompanied the new building, weren't used to eating with me – the foreigner. I ate kimchi and occasionally sniffed the queer smelling chemical scents given off by the building materials.
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Me and a co-worker of mine started taking Muay Thai classes in April. His name is Mr. 김 (Kim) and since I arrived last December for my second year in Korea he's taken to the idea of being my older brother – my 형님. He knows I didn't work at a public school before, and he knows this is my first time living in Seoul, so he wants to give me advice and expose me to Korea. He reminds me that kimchi is a very popular is a traditional Korean food. "Oh okay" is all I say after living here for a year.
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"Sex is Not Love" She wanted it to last. Forever would have been nice. She wanted to be loved. To know she wasn't alone. Eventually he came, then left.
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The Bronx was on fire and I was watching it burn from my ninth floor window—that’s where it started, since you asked. There were two buildings on the horizon—in Mott Haven probably—that were lighting up the dark sky and otherwise bleak landscape of broken, demolished apartments and abandoned lots.
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The class topic for today was Travel. I gave my students vocabulary like “Sightseeing,” and “Backpacking.” They learned the phrase, “The food here is exotic.” After this I asked several of them to tell me what country they would like to go to and why. This is the exchange between me and a Mr. 백. With both of us smiling pleasantly I began.
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At thirteen years old I had my first date… I can’t tell you the exact age when the mechanical genius of the penis and vagina clicked in my mind, but I would guess it to be around nine. By nine I had an eye for the penthouse my cousin kept under his mattress; I was fast forwarding R rated movies to the sex scenes; I leered at all women, homely and beautiful, and imagined them naked and lying on top of me. A Playboy got me a call to my parents in the fourth grade.
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Dear Person I Don’t Know, As a kid I tried my best to stay away from mirrors.
My reflection stared back at me one day, and I realized that I was not very attractive: pimples, an overbite, twenty extra pounds. Made uncomfortable in my own skin, I smile when I remember my first attempt at love with a skinny brown girl I cared for, but didn’t know very well.
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What can I say about Alex Clermont that everybody here doesn't already know. He was 5 feet 7 inches. He was brown. He loved comic books, shrimp, and any joke that could convincingly fit the word penetration into it.
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