Dr. M made a drunken beeline to the bar, though she never touched a drop herself, to find Paris turned to her at just such an angle that his desire to knock over innumerable patrons to run over to her was invisible, save for a slightly larger-than-usual smile he tried to restrain ( Read more... )

A man 10 years my senior effortlesly kept her attention with a prefab but living dissertation about the benefits of Omega 3s on the human organism while his fiance and I locked eyes and smiles every few minutes, conspiring innocently to keep up the appearances that we were all in this conversation together. And yet the woman across from me was, ( Read more... )

There's a French pop song, translated as "Last dance," that I first heard a couple of weeks ago. I have taken exactly 0 French classes and my knowledge of the language is severely limited to the DuoLingo app, which has taught me such useful phrases as "the boy is eating the dolphin" and "your wife is pretty" (okay, that one is actually pretty good ( Read more... )

I have no idea where I wanted to go with this:

She did effortlessly what it took him weeks to create -- a simulacrum of the kind of language that inspired emotions like he felt when she declared she too loved pureed plums

We used to get ice cream in the cold, especially when it snowed. I think he even said aloud how it made no sense but the Russians around us did it, and therefore we must to. He really wanted it, though, developing a taste inspired by the strange surroundings. So we had ice cream in the snow.

32 years ago on this date he was born, a thousand plus ( Read more... )

It wasn’t the night at the strip club, that much I remember. The night at the strip club was fun, with nice music and special effects where wind would blow on the dancers when they were done on stage and exaggerated cheers would accompany each one’s exit. You couldn’t do much more than simply keep Austin topless, though, because if you sold alcohol ( Read more... )

Vulnerability, either in the self or in others, is wonderful for saying things that can be easily forgotten, dismissed, unsaid.

There are things you want to say just to say them, either for the sensations of sound and vibration or for the release of some troublesome feeling into the world.

When I was 17 or so I walked out into a summer day with a ( Read more... )

At the first sight of blood loss Jenny asked what I thought about the nurse who took it. "Is that how they take blood in America?" She asked me. "I suppose they are a bit...gentler," I answered her. She nodded, commenting on how the Russian medical tradition is quite brusque, lacking in bedside manner. This was in marked contrast, of course, to the ( Read more... )

Without Jenny I could figure out most of the directions and questions the Russian staff asked me, but after about three days, a doctor with some English proficiency visited me. She wore a surgical mask, but I could tell from her voice and eyes that she was a very intelligent and lovely person already, especially as she genuinely tried to ( Read more... )

Jenny covered her eyes as I disrobed for more tests, but she would grow accustomed to my partial nudity as the days went on. The doctor gave me a pill to lower my temperature but it was of little use. As she and Jenny conferred about treatment options, I pulled myself back to the examining table. I couldn't sit upright any longer. We decided to ( Read more... )