Nice brushes. I used to use those. In fifth grade. Oh, you want your palette back? Are you gonna cry? Right, yeah. Still lifes are the best. If that sculpture is supposed to be roadkill that somebody took a dump on, I’d say you nailed it. If you keep working hard, maybe you can be [...]
So, okay. Maybe when I was younger I did. I was lonely, going through a rough patch—low self-esteem, chemical dependency issues, unable to break the cycle of abusive, give-give relationships—people would call me and I would drop everything and show up. But that was a long time ago. Like maybe the late eighteen hundreds. If [...]
When I told my mother I wanted to quit the spelling team—I was ten at the time—she related to me how Mike Tyson never really recovered from getting KO’ed by Buster Douglas. The point, she said, was never to stay down. Spell “indomitable” she said. I did. She nodded like it meant something. I won’t [...]
It wasn’t the sex. You were great in the sack. Even if it was a little weird—a little grandfatherly, maybe—when you folded your pants before getting into bed. And I didn’t even mind too much when you did that thing where you’d say wait, how old were you when Reagan got shot? although the exaggerated [...]
You think you’re ready for the show? You’re not. Not even a little. Sure, if it was all wide-eyed coeds lined up to get you to sign your book, or maybe even your peers, it’d be cake. A retarded kid could do it. I know that retarded isn’t cool to say anymore. That’s why I [...]
Things I Know About Peanut Butter, by Rachel Millecker: Peanut butter was discovered by George Washington Carver, an African-American scientist, but he didn’t get rich from it. Peanut butter does not contain butter, only peanuts. Peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth. Peanut butter tastes very good with jelly. Peanut butter does not [...]
1. No running 2. No Spit Tag 3. No consecutive check-outs 4. No Alice Munro books published after 1994 5. No dogs 6. No saying “cockblocker” 7. No wincing 8. We don’t have Our Bodies, Ourselves anymore (the masturbators took it!) 9. No bookmarks 10. No juice boxes 11. No Southern accents–not even in jest [...]
You said I was escaping. I said I left you to see Hartford. You said I was just making excuses. I said well, you’ve never been to Hartford, have you? You said Hartford isn’t going anywhere. I said neither are you, and that should have been the end of it, but you said something else, [...]
I’ve always made the best of things. Broke my ankle, improved my balance. Allergic to cheese, vacationed in Nicaragua. So, when I got thrown into a trunk by my loan shark’s henchmen–and there was already someone inside–I decided to introduce myself and see if I couldn’t strike up a friendship. He was unconscious at the [...]
