two guys

to the two guys with a bulldog and too much cologne, why are you so happy; why am i alone? walking and touching and talking on the phone. high fiving, thriving. more than just surviving; why am i alone? smiling, eating, sucking the marrow from the bone; i will die alone.

hail bus

he drives along the bus route and picks people up. he takes them where they want to go and he doesn't rape them. he offers them chocolate. it is cheap chocolate but most people enjoy it all the same. he engages the riders in conversation. sometimes they don't want to talk so he switches the radio on. he gestures at the radio and offers to switch the station. he lends people umbrellas when it is raining. i sit at the bus stop and watch other people get into his car. they tell me how nice he is. they encourage me to accept the ride. i wait for the bus.

she is

she is (something)
without me

she is not (anything)
with me

i am selfish. also she wears tube socks and short shorts even when she is not rollerskating. i'm not giving that shit up.

her dad

she shows me a polaroid photograph from when she was a girl. it's cracked and her dad is in it. she does not look happy. her mum is in the background. unintentionally a part of it. holding a spoon and looking off to the side. why did you show me this, i ask. there's something i need to tell you, she says.

a metaphor for breastfeeding/breastfeeding as a metaphor

he dates anorexic girls. not because they're skinny, but because they don't get their periods anymore. they don't bleed on his penis. they don't taste like rusty coat hangers. these girls, the ones who do not get their periods anymore, are sometimes cunts. not bleeding cunts, just cunts. being hungry all the time makes them mean. and some of them pass out at inconvenient times. "in the middle of it" or at the movies. people worry about these anorexic girls. he tells the people that it is okay. the girls are just sleeping. he tunes out when they are being very cunty or he calls them fat and they go away. he likes the peach fuzz that covers their bodies and their faces. he smooths it down.

his friend does not date anorexic girls. he likes tall girls or short girls. his opening line is "do you want to give me a haircut?" a lot of girls do want to give him a haircut. he is nice to the girls who give him a haircut.

these two boys, they have a friend who is a girl. she is the perfect girl. they don't want to fuck her. they like her. the three of them are friends. the girl, she likes boys who play music. she likes boys who play the violin. she wears a t-shirt that says "i like the way you fiddle." at the university she studies the mathemathical method known as Free Induction Decay Deconvolution for Lineshape Enhancement in nmr data processing because she likes the acronym.

something happens and the group go their separate ways. down the line somewhere they all meet in a coffee shop and catchup.

the boy who dated anorexic girls is fat now. he is married to a nurse and he is happy. he has kids. one of his kids is a girl and he worries about her.

the boy who had hair, the boy who offered his hair to the girls, that boy is a lawyer now. he is divorced but his ex-wife still cuts his hair. he is dating again. he still likes short girls or tall girls. he bought a kindle.

the girl, the perfect girl, she taught herself how to play guitar. she has a job but the two boys don't really understand it. it has something to do with mathematics and she likes it. she is married to a guy with a moustache. he does not play the violin and the three of them laugh about it.

she liked something

she liked something and he wondered how she could like it. he didn't like it. he didn't like that she liked it. how could she like it? it bothered him. he didn't like being bothered. he didn't like being bothered by her. he asked her about it. she said that she likes to like things and that was it. she was flippant about it. he didn't like that she was flippant about it. he told her that he didn't like that she was flippant about it. she told him to fuck off. she doesn't like him any more. he doesn't like that she doesn't like him any more. he tried to tell her that he doesn't like it that she doesn't like him any more but she would not answer his calls.

she likes french guys

they were talking in bed and he said something about tennis skirts and she said she always wanted to do it with a french guy. the next time they made love he shouted out "i'm french, i'm french" when he came. she thought it was funny but it did not turn her on.

Parlez-vous français? (Do you play guitar?)

there were two french girls and they were sisters and they were ugly all over the outside of their bodies. sideways faces, upside down knees, inverted nipples. busted nose. hammer toes. but inside in their brains and in their hearts and in their whole la façon d'est they were wicked fucking sexy.


i didn't know them. i saw a poster on campus and it said "parlez-vous français?" and it was stapled half on top of another poster but i didn't realize it was two separate posters and the other poster had a picture of a guy playing guitar and i always wanted to play guitar and i was with melvin so i said hey melvin what does "parlez-vous français?" mean and he said "do you play guitar?" and i said no. not yet.


the poster had a meeting room and a time on it so i figured what the hell and i bought a guitar off some kid in my dorm and i showed up at the time and the place and there they were. etienne and philippine. they were very ugly. a bunch of other folkers were there too. mingling around and eating cheese and speaking french and i didn't speak french and so obviously i was in the wrong place. but then etienne pointed at me and said something in french and everybody stopped what they were doing and made some kind of weird "yay" sound and then they all started clapping like i was somebody who was about to do something that they were expecting to enjoy.


so i walked up to the front of the room and stood there with my guitar around my neck and i sang enter sandman by metallica. it sounded kind of weird because i didn't play the guitar at all but they thought it was great. afterwards phillipine came up to me and i remember thinking how ugly she was and she said oh i thought you were going to play some french songs and i said well i only know frère jacques and she said oh ok and gave me twenty bucks. then another guy came in with a guitar and i ran away.


next time i saw etienne and philippine they were playing ultimate frisbee on the quad and i was drinking a coke and etienne stopped me and asked if she could have some and i usually don't like to share too much and especially don't like it when the person looks like they will probably leave their drippy spit all over everything and she definitely looked like that type on account of how ugly and drooly her mouth was. but there's something about etienne, no matter how ugly she is all over the outside of her body, she's the type of girl that you want to do things for. and to. oh god that probably sounds disgusting because she's so ugly but i'm telling you, i've never wanted to crawl all up inside a girl's vagina as badly as i wanted to crawl all up inside etienne's vagina. except maybe philippine's.


i never did though. neither/nor. but somehow i wound up in their circle of friends. they started teaching me french and in the summer a group of us went to paris for study abroad. it was fucking insensé in the membrensé. they took me to parties and i met a girl and we did it in the bathroom of the musée du louvre okay it wasn't the louvre and we didn't actually do it but we kissed in a museum and it was nice. and the girl, her name is natalie, she was a singer but not just a singer because she had a record deal and she taught me how to play guitar and she wrote a song about me and i married her.


then just this past week, natalie and i were back in paris because we live in the states but we spend a month in paris every year in the summer time, and we were eating crepes and then we saw etienne and philippine strolling right down the street in front of us. just as ugly as ever. we said hello and they remembered us and we all got drunk and they came up to our room and i sang enter sandman for them and this time i played the guitar parts, too. it was the best night of my life.