Win Some, Lose Some

Sensations

We were necking in the kitchen at a drunken party. She was tall, dark, slim, and married. Later we sat on a couch in the den opposite the fireplace, and I asked her how her sister was doing. “Fine,” she said. I couldn't take my eyes off her blouse. It was a see-through white, and she was wearing a black bra. One day some weeks later I took her to lunch. When we ordered, she asked for avocado and grapefruit salad. Afterward, at the motel, I asked her why she liked sex so much, and she said she liked the taste.

 

Remember the Maine

Over the weekend, the remnants of a Pacific typhoon rolled into the coastal area where Gus and his wife made their home. It rained Friday and off and on again Saturday and Sunday. Sunday Jimmy called. He said that when he told his mother he had quit drinking, she changed the subject. “When are you going to stop smoking?” she asked. Gus thought about the old days when he and his friend were kids growing up in Minnesota. He remembered waking up on those lazy summer days hearing the sad song of mourning doves. He remembered the day the fat man died. They went out to the farm to see what they could see, and when they got there, a couple of Sheriff's deputies were banging a hole in the side of the house with sledgehammers. They heard later that the fat man weighed over six hundred pounds; he was so big they couldn't get his body through the door.

 

Universal Man

The artist chuckles as he tells me about the skinny man stepping into his boxer shorts. The whimsical figure, crafted in clay, then cast in bronze, makes me laugh. When I tell him this, he is pleased. The sculptor is a gentle, unpretentious man. His rich sense of humor is as frail and unassuming as this little comic figure, universal man, caught of a morning in an awkward pose, undignified, insignificant, almost sad.

 

Watching Porn

The girl who was mean to her dog lived on the third floor of the apartment building. She was a nurse. She was very self conscious about her tiny breasts. I told her not to worry; the size of a woman's breasts wasn't important. One weekend she went skiing and took a tumble, and when she got back, she called and canceled our dinner date for that night. Later that week I visited her in her apartment. We sat on her couch and kissed. She wouldn't let me fuck her. I suggested something else she could do, and she did.