A pre-war building, did you say? Oh really?
Who gives a shit.

A gorgeous, muscular walks in. You know the drill. You look only for a second and then attempt go to back to what you were doing, which is never as interesting as what he has  presented.

It’s worse when you are jogging and this happens in the park because jogging is the least fun thing for me and so when you see him, jogging past or on the sidelines, stretching and doing these odd exercises, you find a way, so easily, of stopping. And just standing there,wishing for a thick tree trunk or a bush so that you can savor the specimen. Too many aspects, hill and dale of muscle, the pits, the p-spots, the jawline, the sweat.

And there’s nothing wrong with the appreciation of beauty. God, if it were only that. But it’s so much more. It’s a chip on your shoulder that suddenly presents its full weight.It’s you and your reminders of where you lack on your person and how much you’ve lacked there and how It Will Never Be beause of the way you look.

So the appreciation bubbles up, the bubble bursts and you are left with the awful truths.  And by that time, he’s gone, he’s stopped stretching, started running. Or you just move on, because you have to, because staring at him is never good.

And it lingers all day, like a bad hangover (are there ever any good ones?)

.. as opposed to someone you betrayed. Inanimate toiletries get used up, properly, if you follow the labels. With humans–well humans–already there is something inanimate-sounding about that, isn it? I mean, best friends, aunts, uncle, cousins, lovers, ingredients as common as nitrates and pectin and artificial flavors.

You are saccharin. One of the oldest tried and true ingredients. You promised things or at least made people think you did–and you didn’t keep those problems. Inanimate objects were thrown at you, for your lies and betrayal.

The last things someone threw at you, right after some hot rollers from a woman’s hair, was a small bottle of aloe vera gel. I kind gel. Soothing. Not make-believe.Truthful bottle of aloe vera. You open the bottle sniff, you squeeze it just a bit, the dollop forms upended you squeeze more and more until its viscocity and opposing gravity and other forces topple its perfect sphere. It flattens out, disappoints. Unless you rub it on you.

That’s it: that’s the rub.

There’s to0 much written, in the beginning, before the story begins. Preface and introduction and Foreworad–What’s up with all this warm up? The farting around?
Well, I’m going to fart up a storm.By getting annoyed because Eggers puts all this stuff in and James Frey leaves it out and Franzen doesn’t.

And Anne Tyler (I have to put her full name because there are so many Anne’s.) doesn’t. (So many Daves and James’ and Jonathan’s too no can just go by “Tyler”.

Tyler who? people ask.

Tyler I love her, I say.

I said hi to a hirsute fella on the train. I was taking a chance. I’m small and scrawny, bespectacled, dressed in anything but H&M and such. The urge for salutation raged within me. It had been for quite some time, these early mornings. I wanted connection? Maybe. I think I just wanted to stand close enough to someone I didn’t know and discover something significant about them. Something that resonated.
He just nodded and looked away. I had to look away too. To persist would have ended up badly, or so I thought.
I can of course get connection or something like with people I already know. Co-workers, my boyfriend, etc. But they are so already onto me. They know my agenda.

Or at least they think they do.  The stranger has no idea. And as stranger is right back at that them, I am looking for that moment. Call it the moment when the Pop Tart springs up from the toaster, beautifully and warm. Or the moment you’ve run a race and realize you’ve won, after finding out it was a race only at the very last minute.

Strangers are ripe with possibility. Especially the hairy ones.

Like offering help and shit?
Yeah, be useful.
I’m already useful at work. I do things. Complete tasks, smile at people, assist, assist,assist, so much that my elbows hurt.
Elbows, that’s the least of it.
Well, no. When elbows hurt that’s the most of it. And I am being so useful (You aren’t).  Seems to me your spending way too much time tellng me to be useful.
Shut up.
You shut up.
Be useful!
That is my useful, “Shut up!”

the title
the women
the money
everything

It started off as a joke. Bind a book, give it a title. Maybe even a foreward but blank pages follow. The audacity!

“I dont’ get it,” said friends. You don’t either. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Were you drunk?” They asked. “Bored?”

“Nope. Nope.”

“Then what then?” They press. “You know, you’re always pulling this shit and you really need to stop.

You laugh nervously.

“Seriously,” They add.

Bagels clap back.

The donuts raised a ruckus. It wasn’t so bad, this feud of foods (Ha, “foods,” as this reporter quotes in the milieu of it all)

Sweets on social media have caused problems recently as a result of the new findings on junk food now being banned across Britain. The U.S. is now feeling the ripples. Kids are on high alert for cakes and cookies. Dancing sugar plums, this season at least, are being replaced by twerking pastries. This may be the first time when a child is not permitted sugar for an indefinite period of time. What will they do?

Some kids say, “I won’t stand for it and will likely drop to the floor kicking and screaming.”

Toddlers are hoarding the sweets they already have in their posession–knowing the preservatives in them will usurp the value of the the home-baked goods. At least on the Black Market. .

Other more serious children are looking at long-term, crafting robots through a series of underground networks, machines that will usurp yeast fermentation, leavening of flour, various caramelizations.

Stay tuned as this is story is just now breaking…

…bread

I came to know that lifting weights would provide spurts of diversion meant to exhaust me just enough to convince me I’d made progress.
Pushing, straining, sweating–hoarding pain, anguish, means something. Or it should, shouldn’t it?
I’m paying my dues daily. My dumbells have attained my attention. I believe in them.  They want to be promoted.
To want me to be adorned prestige and lust.
Isn’t that what the muscles on my body are? Applause, at least. Nods of approval?