We walk to the Narrows from the boutique, fortified by talk of men and fashion. The Narrows is a blues bar known for outbreaks of small violence. I am wearing the winter white swing coat I bought for the wedding and the gold and turquoise beads.

I counted telephone poles and the seconds between them. The old highway cut straight through the sand and it seemed the road would never end. No curves. No hills. Just poles.

When thinking of the commotion surrounding Wall Street, the serious writer gets very upset.

I know he's an accident waiting to happen.

Mr. Dorn finishes the song and stands holding his penis, looking amazed, as if penises had just been invented and he'd been asked to try this one out for size.

Before I published anything in a literary magazine, I was rejected by literary magazines, dozens of them, and these rejections gave birth to one of my more strange and long-lived art projects.

Because she is waiting, seated on my hotel bed, making comments about my sonic white toothbrush being a vibrator, telling me she's bi, gorgeous with her poly-amorous discussion and long brown curling hair, with her fawn-like face and delicate breasts, wit

“Should I go over?” Ma asked, wishing she could freshen her lipstick while finger-combing her frosted hair. “Sarah, fagodsake, let the man eat in peace. No one wants to have his picture made with food in their mouth,” said Pa.

Amish-like, between the sheets.

I didn't tell her how deeply a terrible weakness for ginger haired people ran in our family, how fortunes had been lost only because of a red beard, a freckled shoulder of exquisite paleness, or a pink nipple.

My date with Satan commenced at the Sanrio store by Union Square where we went to browse through two stories of miniature Japanese school supplies and grooming accessories.

"Oh, abracadabra," she muttered.

Let me tell you a story, child, of how your father became your father...

Thornapples will make you dream things that never were.

That evening I sat and watched the sunset. The color of the water changed from blue to black. The sky turned from pink to star-spangled ebony. There was no moon.