All Suffering Soon to End
My boss called in the early afternoon while I was still in bed. I’d been working with a hotel housekeeping staff, cleaning guest rooms and getting paid under the table because I couldn’t be hired anywhere that required a background check. “What do you want?” I groaned. “Can you tell me — after the horrible morning I just had — why you didn’t show up for work?” “I didn’t feel like it,” I said miserably. “You didn’t feel like it?” “I guess not.” “You can go to hell,” she said before she hung up. I rolled out of bed, stepping carefully around the garbage...
Read MoreTranslucent Fire
You are with Savage at a ramen stall amongst a dozen other foodcarts that dot the river on both sides, the pink and lavender lights of the love hotels and soapy brothels of the red light district smear across impossibly radioactive waters, the Hamanomachi district, known for the densest foot traffic in the city, thousands of wandering husbands off for a night with Russian strippers, hostesses who charge sixty-five an hour to pour them cheap whiskey, straighten their ties for them and hold false conversations with their fake eyelashes, they come back week after week bestowing bracelets and...
Read MoreVerde
Oh the joys of foreign blunders, you once witnessed an Australian English teacher attempt a deep, respectful bow to the President of the ESL company, he began his greeting not facing him but looking over his shoulder from the side, so by the time he was fully bowing, his ass was more or less directed to the President’s face, the deviousness of his action so brightly hued, the green silence of envy perseveres.
Read MoreAirport
When you first land at Tokyo’s Narita airport, you grab a coffee, there are two girls in short skirts sitting with their suitcases, Is that David Beckham? says one of them, motioning with chin in your direction, that’s when you know you’re going to have a good time in Tokyo.
Read MoreDon’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful
A proposal for an art installation Materials * 100 mirrors of various sizes * Vinyl lettering spelling out the phrase “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” on each mirror’s surface Ideally installed in as small a space as possible that nonetheless allows viewers to be completely engulfed by images of themselves. Inspired by a story in notoriously misogynist publication The Daily Mail, where a conventionally attractive woman claimed that other women hated her for her beauty, and even more so by the vitriolic backlash against her piece,...
Read MoreRising Expectations
Marta was vacuuming the living room rug, sucking up dog hair, when her heels left the floor, four or five inches. The sensation took her breath away. She could have easily laughed the moment off as mere fantasy, but Skippy, the family terrier, was prancing wildly, snapping at her elevated soles. “Down, boy,” Marta said. Head cocked, the dog assumed a sitting position. Strange. Skippy was routinely obstinate, rarely following commands. The moment was over as quickly as it began. Marta’s heels returned to the Berber carpet, and Skippy barked and ran in...
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