Bars Baby Quotes

Leah: "That is easily the freakin’ grossest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Yuck. If there was anything in my stomach, it would be coming back." Seth: "They are vampires, I guess. I mean, it makes sense, and if it helps Bella, it’s a good thing, right?" Leah and Jake stare at Seth. Seth: "What?" Leah: "Mom dropped him a lot when he was a baby." Jake: "On his head apparently." Leah: "He used to gnaw on the crib bars, too." Jake: "Lead paint?" Leah: "Looks like it." Seth: "Funny. Why don’t you two shut up and sleep?

Once upon a time, there was Candy and Dan. Things were very hot that year. All the wax was melting in the trees. He would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her, oh Danny boy. Thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair. Everything was gold. One night the bed caught fire. He was handsome and a very good criminal. We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars. It was the afternoon of extravagant delight. Danny the daredevil. Candy went missing. The days last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks. I want to try it your way this time. You came into my life really fast and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet-thighed with surrender. Then there was a gap in things and the whole earth tilted. This is the business. This, is what we're after. With you inside me comes the hatch of death. And perhaps I'll simply never sleep again. The monster in the pool. We are a proper family now with cats and chickens and runner beans. Everywhere I looked. And sometimes I hate you. Friday -- I didn't mean that, mother of the blueness. Angel of the storm. Remember me in my opaqueness. You pointed at the sky, that one called Sirius or dog star, but on here on earth. Fly away sun. Ha ha fucking ha you are so funny Dan. A vase of flowers by the bed. My bare blue knees at dawn. These ruffled sheets and you are gone and I am going to. I broke your head on the back of the bed but the baby he died in the morning. I gave him a name. His name was Thomas. Poor little god. His heart pounds like a voodoo drum.

For Jenn At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts. I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke. I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free. I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist. I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs remember the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremble like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone… just take me just take me Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess and hope she knows you can hit a baseball further than any boy in the whole third grade and I've been running for home through the windpipe of a man who sings while his hands playing washboard with a spoon on a street corner in New Orleans where every boarded up window is still painted with the words We're Coming Back like a promise to the ocean that we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun. I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun. I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December cold who can't tell if the breath rising from the board is their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun with strip malls and traffic and vendors and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.

Shepley walked out of his bedroom pulling a T-shirt over his head. His eyebrows pushed together. “Did they just leave?” “Yeah,” I said absently, rinsing my cereal bowl and dumping Abby’s leftover oatmeal in the sink. She’d barely touched it. “Well, what the hell? Mare didn’t even say goodbye.” “You knew she was going to class. Quit being a cry baby.” Shepley pointed to his chest. “I’m the cry baby? Do you remember last night?” “Shut up.” “That’s what I thought.” He sat on the couch and slipped on his sneakers. “Did you ask Abby about her birthday?” “She didn’t say much, except that she’s not into birthdays.” “So what are we doing?” “Throwing her a party.” Shepley nodded, waiting for me to explain. “I thought we’d surprise her. Invite some of our friends over and have America take her out for a while.” Shepley put on his white ball cap, pulling it down so low over his brows I couldn’t see his eyes. “She can manage that. Anything else?” “How do you feel about a puppy?” Shepley laughed once. “It’s not my birthday, bro.” I walked around the breakfast bar and leaned my hip against the stool. “I know, but she lives in the dorms. She can’t have a puppy.” “Keep it here? Seriously? What are we going to do with a dog?” “I found a Cairn Terrier online. It’s perfect.” “A what?” “Pidge is from Kansas. It’s the same kind of dog Dorothy had in the Wizard of Oz.” Shepley’s face was blank. “The Wizard of Oz.” “What? I liked the scarecrow when I was a little kid, shut the fuck up.” “It’s going to crap every where, Travis. It’ll bark and whine and … I don’t know.” “So does America … minus the crapping.” Shepley wasn’t amused. “I’ll take it out and clean up after it. I’ll keep it in my room. You won’t even know it’s here.” “You can’t keep it from barking.” “Think about it. You gotta admit it’ll win her over.” Shepley smiled. “Is that what this is all about? You’re trying to win over Abby?” My brows pulled together. “Quit it.” His smile widened. “You can get the damn dog…” I grinned with victory. “…if you admit you have feelings for Abby.” I frowned in defeat. “C’mon, man!” “Admit it,” Shepley said, crossing his arms. What a tool. He was actually going to make me say it. I looked to the floor, and everywhere else except Shepley’s smug ass smile. I fought it for a while, but the puppy was fucking brilliant. Abby would flip out (in a good way for once), and I could keep it at the apartment. She’d want to be there every day. “I like her,” I said through my teeth. Shepley held his hand to his ear. “What? I couldn’t quite hear you.” “You’re an asshole! Did you hear that?” Shepley crossed his arms. “Say it.” “I like her, okay?” “Not good enough.” “I have feelings for her. I care about her. A lot. I can’t stand it when she’s not around. Happy?” “For now,” he said, grabbing his backpack off the floor.

Jaime," I said softly, "are you happy about it? About the baby?" Outlawed in Scotland, barred from his own home, and with only vague prospects in France, he could pardonably have been less than enthused about acquiring an additional obligation. He was silent for a moment, only hugging me harder, then sighed briefly before answering. "Aye, Sassenach," His hand stayed downward, gently rubbing my belly. "I'm happy. And proud as a stallion. But I am most awfully afraid too." "About the birth? I'll be all right." I could hardly blame him for apprehension; his own mother had died in childbirth, and birth and its complications were the leading cause of death for women in these times. Still, I knew a thing or two myself, and I had no intention whatever of exposing myself to what passed for medical care here. "Aye, that--and everything," he said softly. "I want to protect ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi' my body." His voice was soft and husky, with a slight catch in it. "I would do anything for ye...and yet...there's nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go...nor even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them...aye, I'm afraid, Sassenach. "And yet"--he turned me toward him, hand closing gently over one breast--"yet when I think of you wi' my child at your breast...then I feel as though I've gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.

I'm your personal jock-blocker, baby." Tori reached into her jeans pocket and handed over a half-eaten Snickers bar. "Happy Douche Liberation Day.

I KNEW IT WAS OVER when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring when you used to make the sun rise when trees used to throw themselves in front of you to be paper for love letters that was how i knew i had to do it swaddle the kids we never had against january's cold slice bundle them in winter clothes they never needed so i could drop them off at my mom's even though she lives on the other side of the country and at this late west coast hour is assuredly east coast sleeping peacefully her house was lit like a candle the way homes should be warm and golden and home and the kids ran in and jumped at the bichon frise named lucky that she never had they hugged the dog it wriggled and the kids were happy yours and mine the ones we never had and my mom was grand maternal, which is to say, with style that only comes when you've seen enough to know grace like when to pretend it's christmas or a birthday so she lit her voice with tiny lights and pretended she didn't see me crying as i drove away to the hotel connected to the bar where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had just because it shares your first name because they don't make a whisky called baby and i only thought what i got was what i ordered i toasted the hangover inevitable as sun that used to rise in your name i toasted the carnivals we never went to and the things you never won for me the ferris wheels we never kissed on and all the dreams between us that sat there like balloons on a carney's board waiting to explode with passion but slowly deflated hung slave under the pin- prick of a tack hung heads down like lovers when it doesn't work, like me at last call after too many cheap too many sweet too much whisky makes me sick, like the smell of cheap, like the smell of the dead like the cheap, dead flowers you never sent that i never threw out of the window of a car i never really owned

It's a good thing you don't bring Lily in to the bar. If they see what a beautiful baby you made, we'll have to double our napkin orders." He propped his elbows on the bar so his face was very close to hers. "I can't make magic like Lily with any woman but you.

To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid. Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge. Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD's in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year--people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year? It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to. Now that part, more than ever. It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88's until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year. It's wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who--like clockwork, year after year--denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one. Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.

Hunter scored a total beauty in the third,” Hollis says from his stool. “I almost came in my pants.” “Don’t be crude in front of the baby,” I say immediately. “Bro, you brought a baby to a bar. Go throw glass stones in your own house.” When everyone snickers, Hollis is visibly confused. “What?” “That’s not the phrase,” Hannah says helpfully. “Sure it is.” “It’s really not.” Hollis waves a hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow.

Live or die, but don't poison everything... Well, death's been here for a long time -- it has a hell of a lot to do with hell and suspicion of the eye and the religious objects and how I mourned them when they were made obscene by my dwarf-heart's doodle. The chief ingredient is mutilation. And mud, day after day, mud like a ritual, and the baby on the platter, cooked but still human, cooked also with little maggots, sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother, the damn bitch! Even so, I kept right on going on, a sort of human statement, lugging myself as if I were a sawed-off body in the trunk, the steamer trunk. This became perjury of the soul. It became an outright lie and even though I dressed the body it was still naked, still killed. It was caught in the first place at birth, like a fish. But I play it, dressed it up, dressed it up like somebody's doll. Is life something you play? And all the time wanting to get rid of it? And further, everyone yelling at you to shut up. And no wonder! People don't like to be told that you're sick and then be forced to watch you come down with the hammer. Today life opened inside me like an egg and there inside after considerable digging I found the answer. What a bargain! There was the sun, her yolk moving feverishly, tumbling her prize -- and you realize she does this daily! I'd known she was a purifier but I hadn't thought she was solid, hadn't known she was an answer. God! It's a dream, lovers sprouting in the yard like celery stalks and better, a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchings, picking roses off my hackles. If I'm on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. And if I'm ice they simply skate on me in little ballet costumes. Here, all along, thinking I was a killer, anointing myself daily with my little poisons. But no. I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar. Even with the witches' gymnastics they trust my incalculable city, my corruptible bed. O dearest three, I make a soft reply. The witch comes on and you paint her pink. I come with kisses in my hood and the sun, the smart one, rolling in my arms. So I say Live and turn my shadow three times round to feed our puppies as they come, the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown, despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy! Despite the pails of water that waited, to drown them, to pull them down like stones, they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue and fumbling for the tiny tits. Just last week, eight Dalmatians, 3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood each like a birch tree. I promise to love more if they come, because in spite of cruelty and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens, I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann. The poison just didn't take. So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.

A society without the authentic and vibrant influence of women is a society that is not fully alive. A culture lacking the vital creativity of women is disadvantaged. Without the bearing of women on world affairs, humanity's already tenuous grip on peace is made even less sure. When women are barred, whether by law, cultural prejudice, or political ideology, from developing their full potential and offering their unique gifts, it is an injustice to women themselves and to humanity as a whole.

Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn’t a real woodsman.

Mama reminds me of a Dilly Bar from the Dairy Queen, like there's only a thin shell covering what's melting inside." - thought by Grace when her mother suffers from the "baby blues

But I loved you. Never as a friend. Always as something more. From the moment you walked into the bar, you owned the word and what it meant for me. I prayed and I dreamed that one day I would get to tell you myself. That no matter how you felt, I would tell you that I loved you and nothing could change that. That it was mine to give to you.” He inhales deeply and says, “And so, I love you, baby blue. I am in love with you. You are love to me. And I’m honored I’m finally able to tell you.

The truth was that upsilamba was one of Nabokovs fascinating creations, possibly a word he invented. I said I associate Upsilamba with the impossible joy of a suspended leap. Yassi, who seemed excited for no particular reason, cried out that she always thought it could be a name of a dance- you know, "C'mon, baby, do the Upsilamba with me". Manna suggested that the word upsilamba evoked the image of small silver fish leaping in and out of a moonlit lake. Nima added in parentheses, Just so you won't forget me, although you have barred me from your class: an upsilamba to you too! For Azin it was a sound, a melody. Mahashid described an image of three girls jumping rope and shouting" Upsilamba" with each leap. For Sanaz, the word was a small African boy's secret magical name. Mitra wasn't sure why the word reminded her of the paradox of a blissful sigh. And for Nassrin it was a magic code that opened the door to a secret cave filled with treasures.

If you can pick the baby up without him squirting our of your hands like a bar of soap in the shower, he's not oiled up enough.

You gotta keep it down, baby,” he says while thrusting into me unapologetically, “or our parents will know what a needy little slut you are for my cock.

Reese spent a lifetime observing cis women conform their genders through male violence. Watch any movie on the Lifetime channel. Go to any schoolyard. Or just watch your local heterosexuals drinking in a bar. Hear women define themselves through pain, or rage against the assumption that they do, which still places pain front and center. Hear the strange sense of satisfaction when they talk about the men who have hurt them—the unspoken subtext of it being because I am a woman. The quiet dignity of saying ow anytime a man gets a little rough—asserting that you are a woman, and thus delicate and capable of sustaining harm.

I know I get crazy when it comes to you, but God knows I’m tryin’, Pidge. I don’t wanna screw this up.” “Then don’t.” “This is hard for me, ya know. I feel like any second you’re going to figure out what a piece of shit I am and leave me. When you were dancing last night, I saw a dozen different guys watching you. You go to the bar, and I see you thank that guy for your drink. Then that douchebag on the dance floor grabs you.” “You don’t see me throwing punches every time a girl talks to you. I can’t stay locked up in the apartment all the time. You’re going to have to get a handle on your temper.” “I will. I’ve never wanted a girlfriend before, Pigeon. I’m not used to feeling this way about someone…about anyone. If you’ll be patient with me, I swear I’ll get it figured out.” “Let’s get something straight; you’re not a piece of shit, you’re amazing. It doesn’t matter who buys me drinks, or who asks me to dance, or who flirts with me. I’m going home with you. You’ve asked me to trust you, and you don’t seem to trust me.” He frowned. “That’s not true.” “If you think I’m going to leave you for the next guy that comes along, then you don’t have much faith in me.” He tightened his grip. “I’m not good enough for you, Pidge. That doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, I’m just bracing for the inevitable.” “Don’t say that. When we’re alone, you’re perfect. We’re perfect. But then you let everyone else ruin it. I don’t expect a one-eighty, but you have to pick your battles. You can’t come out swinging every time someone looks at me.” He nodded. “I’ll do anything you want. Just…tell me you love me.” “You know I do.” “I need to hear you say it,” he said, his brows pulling together. “I love you,” I said, touching my lips to his. “Now quit being such a baby.” He laughed, crawling into the bed with me. We spent the next hour in the same spot under the covers, giggling and kissing, barely noticing when Kara returned from the shower.

The raven flew up and away. Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn’t a real woodsman.

At nineteen they can card you in the bars and tell you to get the fuck out, put your sorry act (and sorrier ass) back on the street, but they can’t card you when you sit down to paint a picture, write a poem, or tell a story, by God, and if you reading this happen to be very young, don’t let your elders and supposed betters tell you any different. Sure, you’ve never been to Paris. No, you never ran with the bulls at Pamplona. Yes, you’re a pissant who had no hair in your armpits until three years ago—but so what? If you don’t start out too big for your britches, how are you gonna fill ’em when you grow up? Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that’s my idea; sit down and smoke that baby.

Toto sits up, holding tight to the bar and staring out at the world. He drops a new toy that came with the pram and starts crying. Jimmy picks it up and crouches, looking into his caramel eyes. ‘I’m Jimmy,’ he whispers, ‘and you’re the first thing I’ve ever sort of owned and I don’t want to get this wrong.

My best friend came to visit from far away. She took two planes and a train to get to Brooklyn. We met at a bar near my apartment and drank in a hurry as the babysitter's meter ticked. In the past, we'd talked about books and other people, but now we talked only of our respective babies, hers sweet-faced and docile, mine at war with the world. We applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. That all are born radiating light but that this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not). The most charismatic people—the poets, the mystics, the explorers—were that way because they had somehow managed to keep a bit of this light that was meant to have dimmed. But the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish. It hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and then almost always the eyes went dark.

It was an eight-hour drive from New York to Bar Harbor, Maine. Sleet and snow pounded the highway. Annabeth, Thalia, and I hadn't seen each other in months, but between the blizzard and the thought of what we were about to do, we were too nervous to talk much. Except for my mom. She talks more when she's nervous. By the time we finally got to Westover Hall, it was getting dark, and she'd told Annabeth and Thalia every embarrassing baby story there was to tell about me.

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice’s friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this—a day spent floating from one thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood. People with siblings usually had a leg up, but not always.

charged me two hundred fucking dollars an hour to sit in the bar and flirt while Adam retrieved the stolen corporate data. I could have hired a prostitute for less and she would have blown the dude. The point is, I need Knight because he won’t ever get married, and therefore I can throw him out there when I need someone to charm the ladies.” Charlotte stared at her husband for a moment and then a brilliant smile crossed her face. “You should be so glad I love you.” “I am, baby. You’re the only one who gets my charm.

What is this Sweet Home Alabama? You have a baby. In a bar.

How about you?” I ask. “Want to hang with a baby, the Kid, an alligator attack victim, and a romance novelist? We’re thinking about walking into a bar later, seeing what happens.

I’m yours, baby. I was yours the moment you turned around on that bar stool.

She sat there admiring the beauty of the light amber fluid in the clear bottle, the way the condensation on the Miller bottle ran down the black and gold label, like it was a fine piece of art. That was the problem with alcohol. It was so beautiful to look at, how could you resist it? And what kind of place could be more inviting and seductive than a truly elegant cocktail bar?

If you’re offended by crass, tasteless, scatological humor, scrawled on a Chardonnay-soaked cocktail napkin, then bite me, you oversensitive prude. If not, step up to the bar, baby! You’ve got my number.

The Nestlé Até Você a Bordo (‘Nestlé Takes You Onboard’) boat is described on Nestlé’s website as a ‘floating supermarket’. Its mission is to sail up the Amazon stopping at remote villages and encampments, reaching a potential 800,000 low-income tribal people. The crew of the Nestlé ship hand out free ‘starter packs’ of ice cream, baby milk, milkshakes and chocolate bars to people who have never seen or eaten processed food before.

On September 16, in defiance of the cease-fire, Ariel Sharon’s army circled the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where Fatima and Falasteen slept defenselessly without Yousef. Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints, barring the exit of refugees, and allowed their Lebanese Phalange allies into the camp. Israeli soldiers, perched on rooftops, watched through their binoculars during the day and at night lit the sky with flares to guide the path of the Phalange, who went from shelter to shelter in the refugee camps. Two days later, the first western journalists entered the camp and bore witness. Robert Fisk wrote of it in Pity the Nation: They were everywhere, in the road, the laneways, in the back yards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of garbage tips. When we had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting. Down every alleyway, there were corpses—women, young men, babies and grandparents—lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death. Each corridor through the rubble produced more bodies. The patients at the Palestinian hospital had disappeared after gunmen ordered the doctors to leave. Everywhere, we found signs of hastily dug mass graves. Even while we were there, amid the evidence of such savagery, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the top of the tower block to the west, we could see them staring at us through field-glasses, scanning back and forth across the streets of corpses, the lenses of the binoculars sometimes flashing in the sun as their gaze ranged through the camp. Loren Jenkins [of the Washington Post] cursed a lot. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defense minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. “Sharon!” he shouted. “That fucker [Ariel] Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.

I’m not sure how the ponies happened, though I have an inkling: “Can I get you anything?” I’ll say, getting up from a dinner table, “Coffee, tea, a pony?” People rarely laugh at this, especially if they’ve heard it before. “This party’s ‘sposed to be fun,” a friend will say. “Really? Will there be pony rides?” It’s a nervous tic and a cheap joke, cheapened further by the frequency with which I use it. For that same reason, it’s hard to weed it out of my speech – most of the time I don’t even realize I’m saying it. There are little elements in a person’s life, minor fibers that become unintentionally tangled with your personality. Sometimes it’s a patent phrase, sometimes it’s a perfume, sometimes it’s a wristwatch. For me, it is the constant referencing of ponies. I don’t even like ponies. If I made one of my throwaway equine requests and someone produced an actual pony, Juan-Valdez-style, I would run very fast in the other direction. During a few summers at camp, I rode a chronically dehydrated pony named Brandy who would jolt down without notice to lick the grass outside the corral and I would careen forward, my helmet tipping to cover my eyes. I do, however, like ponies on the abstract. Who doesn’t? It’s like those movies with the animated insects. Sure, the baby cockroach seems cute with CGI eyelashes, but how would you feel about fifty of her real-life counterparts living in your oven? And that’s precisely the manner in which the ponies clomped their way into my regular speech: abstractly. “I have something for you,” a guy will say on our first date. “Is it a pony?” No. It’s usually a movie ticket or his cell phone number. But on our second date, if I ask again, I’m pretty sure I’m getting a pony. And thus the Pony drawer came to be. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but almost every guy I have ever dated has unwittingly made a contribution to the stable. The retro pony from the ‘50s was from the most thoughtful guy I have ever known. The one with the glitter horseshoes was from a boy who would later turn out to be straight somehow, not gay. The one with the rainbow haunches was from a librarian, whom I broke up with because I felt the chemistry just wasn’t right, and the one with the price tag stuck on the back was given to me by a narcissist who was so impressed with his gift he forgot to remover the sticker. Each one of them marks the beginning of a new relationship. I don’t mean to hint. It’s not a hint, actually, it’s a flat out demand: I. Want. A. Pony. I think what happens is that young relationships are eager to build up a romantic repertoire of private jokes, especially in the city where there’s not always a great “how we met” story behind every great love affair. People meet at bars, through mutual friends, on dating sites, or because they work in the same industry. Just once a coworker of mine, asked me out between two stops on the N train. We were holding the same pole and he said, “I know this sounds completely insane, bean sprout, but would you like to go to a very public place with me and have a drink or something...?” I looked into his seemingly non-psycho-killing, rent-paying, Sunday Times-subscribing eyes and said, “Sure, why the hell not?” He never bought me a pony. But he didn’t have to, if you know what I mean.

Ten minutes later she’d swore that she was never going to eat another Butterfinger candy bar as long as she lived and that if Danny Jenkins tried to show her his baby maker that she was going to hit him in the head with a stick. Thankfully

She hadn’t come for any of that. She came for him. Twenty feet in front of her, leaning back against the waist-high bar, stood the man she’d spent all day tracking down—the infamous Dillon James. The man who would soon have the power to take away everything she held dear.

The raven flew up and away. Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn’t a real woodsman.

Not that parents are alone in their extreme behavior. That have more than enough company among school boards and high-ranking politicians who think if you "fix the schools, they'll fix the kids." So, in Gadsden, Alabama, school officials eliminated kindergarten nap time in 2003 so the children would have more test-prep time. Two hours away in Atlanta, school officials figured that if you eliminated recess, the kids will study more. And just in case those shifty teachers try to sneak it in, Atlanta started building schools without playgrounds. "We are intent on improving academic performance," said the superintendent. "You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars." Meanwhile, Georgia's governor wanted the state to give Mozart CDs to newborns because research showed Mozart improved babies' IQs (which later proved to be mythical research). Right behind him is Lincoln, Rhode Island, where they canceled the district spelling bee because only one child would win, leaving all others behind, thus violating the intent of No Child Left Behind--or, as they might say in Lincoln, no child gets ahead.

Give me a moment, baby. I just need to roll those words over in my head a couple of times. ‘It’s really hard to climb a stripper pole when you’re wearing an ankle monitor.’ It’s like slutty poetry. I never dared dream that a child of mine would ever utter such a beautiful sentence.

Now, I am the younger brother of an older brother who often measured the worth of a guy by his ability to not scream under pressure, and insisted, in fact, that if any screamlike sounds ever reached Ma and/or Pa, this younger brother, me, would receive a pasting such as I had never known, including severe and painful Indian burns to the bone — a threat my older brother, Judges, may he rest in peace, backed up with great enthusiasm through most of my boyhood. So, first I closed the back door, made sure it was solidly latched, then I glanced through the doorway into the front of the bar, which was still dark, and only then did I scream. Not the scream of a startled little girl, mind you, but a manly scream: the scream of a fellow who has caught his enormous dong in a revolving door while charging in to save a baby that was on fire or something.

The houses reminded me of hopeful homely girls on a Friday night, hopping bars in spangly tops, packs of them where you assumed at least one might be pretty, but none were, and never would be. And here was Magda’s house, the ugliest girl with the most accessories, frantically piled on. The front yard was spiked with lawn ornaments: gnomes bouncing on wire legs, flamingos on springs, and ducks with plastic wings that circled when the wind blew. A forgotten cardboard Christmas reindeer sat soggy in the front garden, which was mostly mud, baby-fuzz patches of grass poking through intermittently.

We know of ESB's potential for mind control largely through the work of Jose Delgado. One signal provoked a cat to lick its fur, then continue compulsively licking the floor and bars of its cage. A signal designed to stimulate a portion of a monkey's thalamus, a major midbrain center for integrating muscle movements, triggered a complex action: The monkey walked to one side of the cage, then the other, then climbed to the rear ceiling, then back down. The animal performed this same activity as many times as it was stimulated with the signal, up to sixty times an hour, but not blindly— the creature still was able to avoid obstacles and threats from the dominant male while carrying out the electrical imperative. Another type of signal has made monkeys turn their heads, or smile, no matter what else they were doing, up to twenty thousand times in two weeks. As Delgado concluded, "The animals looked like electronic toys." 
Even instincts and emotions can be changed: In one test a mother giving continuous care to her baby suddenly pushed the infant away whenever the signal was given. Approach-avoidance conditioning can be achieved for any action simply by stimulating the pleasure and pain centers in an animal's or person's limbic system. 
Eventual monitoring of evoked potentials from the EEG, combined with radio-frequency and microwave broadcasts designed to produce specific thoughts or moods, such as compliance and complacency, promises a method of mind control that poses immense danger to all societies —tyranny without terror.

Get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, home¬spun blankets and mother’s milk on your happy ragged mat floor like this one. Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in a while, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don’t give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white machinery in the kitchen.

A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the patients been forbidden the ball the might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse de Berri with l’Enfant du Miracle, and the other as Madame de Montespan and the Duc du Maine. The two husbands, the ghost of the Duc de Berri, a dagger sticking out of his evening dress, and Louis XIV, were rather embarrassed really by the horrible screams of their so very young heirs, and hurried to the bar together. The noise was indeed terrific, and Albertine said crossly that had she been consulted she would, in this case, have permitted and even encouraged the substitution of dolls. The infants were then dumped down to cry themselves to sleep among the coats on her bed, whence they were presently collected by their mothers’ monthly nannies. Nobody thereafter could feel quite sure that the noble families of Bregendir and Belestat were not hopelessly and for ever interchanged. As their initials and coronets were, unfortunately, the same, and their baby linen came from the same shop, it was impossible to identify the children for certain. The mothers were sent for, but the pleasures of society rediscovered having greatly befogged their maternal instincts, they were obliged to admit they had no idea which was which. With a tremendous amount of guilty giggling they spun a coin for the prettier of the two babies and left it at that.

No girl I knew, in other words, had babies, but more than a few had had abortions. I'd attended two abortions before my own. I'd been invited along to do the driving, and hold the hands, and sit afterward in the bars and fetch the drinks. The boyfriends, though informed of our activities, were never present. Abortions are women's work, I guess.

Miss Abbott, don’t worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I’m one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia’s marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an ‘honourable failure.’ I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.

Don’t forget – you’ll have to pretend to like me.” “Huh,” I say, scratching my chin. “So, like, I shouldn’t ogle other women? Or pick up some chick at the bar, and take her back to my room?” “Of coursenot.” A look of pure horror crosses Alex’s face. “But baby,” I complain. “Maybe your new boyfriend is a swinger. How do you feel about threesomes?” “Eric!” Her eyes bug out.

Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the 1950s an unwed white girl who became pregnant could go to a maternity home before her pregnancy showed, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, and return home to her community with no one the wiser. (White parents concocted stories of their daughters being given the opportunity to study for a semester with relatives.) She could then resume the role of the "nice" girl. Unwed pregnant black girls, on the other hand, were barred from maternity homes; they were threatened with jail or termination of welfare; and they were accused of using their sexuality in order to be eligible for larger welfare checks. Politicians regarded unwed pregnant black girls as a societal problem, declaring--as they continue to declare today--that they did not want taxpayers to support black illegitimate babies, and sought to control black female sexuality through sterilization legislation.

The thigh pressing his legs apart rubbed side to side, massaging the growing bulge in his jeans. James groaned and bit down on one corner of his lower lip to hold back a startled yelp when the pressure increased to the point of near pain. "Does that feel good to you, baby? Like that? Like it slow and gentle?" He lessened the pressure and slipped a hand between them, thumbing open the buttons of James’ jeans as he talked. Finding nothing under them except heated flesh, he shoved his hand inside and grabbed James’ cock, dragging calluses and fingernails lightly over the sensitive organ. James squirmed and made a strangled, animal sound in the back of his throat. "No, you wouldn’t be on this side of town, in this bar, if gentle was what you were looking for. Maybe you want it a little rougher." He shoved his fingers down farther and captured the tight sac beneath. "A little harder." He massaged James, grinning at the increased squirming and guttural whimpers his heavy caress produced. "A little deeper." Kicking James’ legs farther apart, he slid two fingers behind the sac, tracing the thin ridge of sensitive flesh that led up to his opening. Without hesitation, he shoved both fingers into James’ body, twisting and stroking the hot, slippery walls of muscle within. A guttural gasp rewarded his efforts. He chuckled low and throaty, nudging James’ cheek with his nose, silently commanding him to look up until their eyes met. "You got yourself all ready for me, baby. All nice," the long agile fingers twisted roughly, "and slick," plunged deeper, "and tight.

He had done it all, from barnstorming to crop dusting, and had even flown a Davis Waco with the Baby Ruth Flying Circus. It was an advertising blitz unlike anything the country had ever seen. Billy would fly over county and state fairs, racetracks, and crowded beaches in his red and white plane, dropping hundreds of tiny rice paper parachutes—each one bearing a small Baby Ruth candy bar—on the crowds below.

I hadn't told him the news yet, but in that same preternatural way he was always aware of what I was feeling or thinking, he could smell my lies a mile away. He was just giving me time to come to him. To tell him I'd be baking his bun for the next seven and a half months. ''I'm okay." Dex's chuckle filled my ears as he wrapped his arms around my chest from behind, his chin resting on the top of my head. "Just okay?" He was taunting me, I knew it. This man never did anything without a reason. And this reason had him resembling a mama bear. A really aggressive, possessive mama bear. Which said something because Dex was normally that way. I couldn't even sit around Mayhem without him or Sonny within ten feet. I leaned my head back against his chest and laughed. "Yeah, just okay." He made a humming noise deep in his throat. "Ritz," he drawled in that low voice that reached the darkest parts of my organs. "You're killin' me, honey." Oh boy. Did I want to officially break the news on the side of the road with chunks of puke possibly still on my face? Nah. So I went with the truth. "I have it all planned out in my head. I already ordered the cutest little toy motorcycle to tell you, so don't ruin it." A loud laugh burst out of his chest, so strong it rocked my body alongside his. I friggin' loved this guy. Every single time he laughed, I swear it multiplied. At this rate, I loved him more than my own life cubed, and then cubed again. "All right," he murmured between these low chuckles once he'd calmed down a bit. His fingers trailed over the skin of the back of my hand until he stopped at my ring finger and squeezed the slender bone. "I can be patient." That earned him a laugh from me. Patience? Dex? Even after more than three years, that would still never be a term I'd use to describe him. And it probably never would. He'd started to lose his shit during our layover when Trip had called for instructions on how to set the alarm at the new bar. "Dex, Ris, and Baby Locke, you done?" Sonny yelled, peeping out from over the top of the car door. "Are you friggin' kidding me?" I yelled back. Did everyone know? That slow, seductive smile crawled over his features. Brilliant and more affectionate than it was possible for me to handle, it sucked the breath out of me. When he palmed my cheeks and kissed each of my cheeks and nose and forehead, slowly like he was savoring the pecks and the contact, I ate it all up. Like always, and just like I always would. And he answered the way I knew he would every single time I asked him from them on, the way that told me he would never let me down. That he was an immovable object. That he'd always be there for me to battle the demons we could see and the invisible ones we couldn't. "Fuckin' love you, Iris," he breathed against my ear, an arm slinking around my lower back to press us together. "More than anything.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant. This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby… Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy… I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?… I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight… I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back… If I could get a garage I would take it.” When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them.

I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!

Mel arrived, carrying Emma and holding David’s pudgy little hand as he toddled in the door. He spied Jack and said, “Da!” When Jack saw her, his eyes grew warm. It hadn’t changed for him since the first day she’d walked into his bar. She was so damn beautiful, so sexy, even with a baby on her shoulder and a toddler in hand. And though she was still complaining about her figure since Emma was born, the jeans she was wearing sure didn’t look any larger to him—those jeans just set him on fire. He was pretty sure that when she was old and gray, he still wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her. He walked around the bar and crouched for David. He put out his hands. “Come on, cowboy. Come to Dad.” Mel let go of the hand and watched as Davie literally flew into his father’s arms. She laughed at his eagerness, his clumsiness, and her eyes glowed as he fell into his father’s arms.

I’m about as political as a Bengal tiger. . . . I have a feeling that a nation is more than just government, laws and rules. It’s an attitude. It’s the people’s outlook. Dean Martin once asked me what I wanted for my baby daughter, and I realize now that my answer was kind of an attitude toward my country. Well, he asked me this on election day and the bars were closed anyway, so he had a lot of time to listen and I told him. . . . I told him that I wanted for my daughter Marisa what most parents want for their children. I wanted to stick around long enough to see that she got a good start and I would like her to know some of the values that we knew as kids, some of the values that an articulate few now are saying are old-fashioned. But most of all I want her to be grateful, as I am grateful for every day of my life that I spend in the United States of America. . . . I don’t care whether she ever memorizes the Gettysburg Address or not, but I want her to understand it, and since very few little girls are asked to defend their country, she will probably never have to raise her hand to that oath, but I want her to respect all who do. I guess that is what I want for my girl. That is what I want for my country, and that’s what I want for the men that you people are going to pick from here to go shape our destinies.

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said. "A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead.

You are wonderful!" he said gravely. "Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again. "I wish you didn't. You appreciate us all—see good in all of us. And all the time you are dead—dead—dead. Look, why aren't you angry?" She came up to him, and then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands. "You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted. I can't bear—she has not been good to you—your mother." "Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia's marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die—I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which—thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you—is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Reese spent a lifetime observing cis women confirm their genders through male violence. Watch any movie on the Lifetime channel. Go to any schoolyard. Or just watch your local heterosexuals drinking in a bar. Hear women define themselves through pain, or rage against the assumption that they do, which still places pain front and. center. Hear the strange sense of satisfaction when they talk about the men who have hurt them - the unspoken subtext of it being 'because I am a woman'.

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another....

One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a – this hurt my feelings – “real” game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. ‘In the second overtime,’ Joel told me, ‘when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportunity to shoot from the line for the game, they looked mighty smug as they took their positions along the key. Oh, Pop-A-Shot guy, I could hear them thinking to their smug selves. He’ll never make a foul shot. He plays baby games. Wa-wa-wa, little Pop-A-Shot baby, would you like a zwieback biscuit? But you know what? I made those shots, and those songs of bitches had to wipe their smug grins off their smug faces and go home thinking that maybe Pop-A-Shot wasn’t such a baby game after all.” I think Pop-A-Shot’s a baby game. That’s why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or margaritas or munches cupcakes. Unless one is playing the Super Shot version at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, in which case, one orders the greatest appetizer ever invented on this continent – a plate of cheeseburgers.

He leaned on the bar. "I'm Tony. And you owe me." Okay, here we go, Liza thought, and leaned on the bar, too, mirroring him. "I owe you?" "Yes." He grinned at her. "Because of chaos theory." Liza shook her head. "Chaos theory." He moved closer to her. "Chaos theory says that complex dynamical systems become unstable because of disturbances in their environments after which a strange attractor draws the trajectory of the stress." Liza looked at him, incredulous. "This is your line?" "I am a complex dynamical system," Tony said. "Not that complex," Liza said. "And I was stable until you caused a disturbance in my environment." "Not that stable," Liza said. Tony grinned. "And since you're the strangest attractor in the room, I followed the trajectory of my stress right to you." "That's not what you followed to me." Liza turned so that her back was against the bar, her shoulder blocking him. "Give me something better than that, or I'll find somebody else to amuse myself with." From the corner of her eye, she saw the other guy, the vacant-looking blond, lean down to Bonnie. "Is she always like this?" he said to Bonnie, and Liza turned to size him up. Big. Husky. Boring. "Well, your friend isn't exactly Prince Charming," Bonnie said, giving him her best fluttery smile. He beamed back down at her. "Neither am I. Is that okay?" Oh, come on, Liza thought, and caught Tony-the-bullethead's eye. "He means it," Tony said. "Roger has no line." "After the chaos theory debacle, that's a plus," Liza said. "Poor baby," Bonnie was saying as she put her hand on Roger's sleeve. "Of course, that's okay. I'm Bonnie." Roger looked down at her with naked adoration. "I'm Roger, and you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life." Bonnie's smile widened, and she moved closer to him. "Which doesn't mean he's bad with women," Tony said, sounding bemused.

Preacher was pacing. “What took you so long?” he asked. Jack looked at his watch. “We’re right on time, Preach.” Paige stood up from the table. “Jack, I’d like you to pour John a shot.” “No, baby. I want to be alert.” “John, you’re way beyond alert. And I don’t think I can take another minute. Do as I say!” Jack went behind the bar. “My man, when a woman is having a baby, you do everything she says, and you do it fast.” He brought down a bottle. “Just a little something to take the edge off.” “I don’t know,” Preacher said. “Preach, you’re six-four and weigh at least two-fifty. A shot isn’t going to do nearly enough good. Mel should probably have you on Xanax.

NOTHING was as discouraging as seeing the buff guy in the kilt coming toward me along the top of that hotel bar. His skin was spray-tanned to a shade of orange that matched the leather of his sporran. He’d leapt onto the bar like it was nothing, and strode the full length in a cloud of baby oil scent so thick it even cut through the smell of beer in the air. He wore nothing but a tiny kilt that I’m quite sure no self-respecting Scotsman would blow his nose into, and a plaid tam atop a vivid orange wig. I think my heart broke a little at the sight of that wig. The stripper pranced down the bar, jig-stepping over glasses to the sound of an electro-bagpipe drone.

said. “I’m fine. I have a granola bar,” Ifemelu said. She had some baby carrots in a Ziploc, too, although all she had snacked on so far was her melted chocolate. “What bar?” Aisha asked. Ifemelu showed her the bar, organic, one hundred percent whole grain with real fruit. “That not food!” Halima scoffed, looking away from the television. “She here fifteen years, Halima,” Aisha said, as if the length of years in America explained Ifemelu’s eating of a granola bar. “Fifteen? Long time,” Halima said. Aisha waited until Mariama left before pulling out her cell phone from her pocket. “Sorry, I make quick call,” she said, and stepped outside. Her face had brightened when

I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe. “Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.

Diana can read power levels,” Astrid said. “Did she ever…” Sam nodded. “She said the baby is a three bar. As a fetus. Who knows what it will be when it’s born. Or as it grows. Diana’s only, like, four or five months along. I should know exactly, but I forget. When she would talk about it I would kind of, you know.” He made a shivering move, like it all gave him the creeps. Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Really. That’s the part of all this that makes you squirm: pregnancy.” “She made me touch her, you know, stomach. And she talked about her, um, her things.” He pointed at his chest and whispered, “Nipples.” “Yeah,” Astrid said dryly. “I could see where that would be devastating.

Quiet, you.” Ash turned to address Rosa. “So because he’s gay, he can get all up in your boobs and that’s okay? What is it with gay guys and boobs? You don’t even enjoy them!” “Not true,” Dex said, snuggling against Rosa. “They’re very comfortable.” Rosa rolled her eyes, her attention returning to Dex. “Aw, poor baby. What’s the matter?” Dex threw a hand toward the bar. “My life is ruined.” “Is that your ex talking to Sloane?” “Yep.” “They’re laughing together.” “Yep.” Rosa cringed. “Ooh, your ex is spilling the beans, isn’t he?” “Apparently, in exchange for being my friend, Lou gets to tell Sloane whatever he wants to know. Sloane knows about the Waking Dead, Rosa! The Waking Dead!” “I…

Oh God, no. Piper.” He ducked his head to make eye contact, his dark brows pulled together. “First of all, you don’t have to be tough. Not all the time. I don’t know who decided my perfect, kind, sweet, incredible girlfriend needed to fit some goddamn mold, but you don’t. You just be Piper, okay? She’s who I’m in love with. She’s the only woman who was made for me. Cry if you want to cry. Dance if you want to dance. Hell, scream at me, if you need to. No one gets to tell you how to act or feel when I leave. No one. And, baby …” He puffed a laugh. “When I got to the bar, it was packed. Everyone loves it. People just move at a different pace in Westport. They’re not all on a strict schedule like me.

The two of them went on from many faculty parties, hitting the bars until they closed, then stopping at some mom 'n' pot) store for a case of beer they would drink parked at the end of some back road. There were mornings when Jack would stumble into their leased house with dawn seeping into the sky and find Wendy and the baby asleep on the couch, Danny always on the inside, a tiny fist curled under the shelf of Wendy's jaw. He would look at them and the self-loathing would back up his throat in a bitter wave, even stronger than the taste of beer and cigarettes and martinis-martians, as Al called them. Those were the times that his mind would turn thoughtfully and sanely to the gun or the rope or the razor blade.

Dresses you might wear for special occasions she wore every day. In this way she and Joseph were alike. They dressed to be seen, which is how it came to be that they built up a reputation for floor showing, as Uncle Joe calls it. “Yeah, we knew we looked good.” They danced wherever there was a floor—a bar or a ball. The sidewalk, sometimes. “We used to go in clubs and start dancing from the door. For a poor man I used to dress my can off,” he says. “That’s what used to get me in so much trouble and thing with the ladies.” He and his baby sister, Ivory, would swing it out, jitterbugging and carrying on. Ivory was always fun and always light on her feet. She was especially gifted at being led and men generally loved this quality in her.

It is true. I did fall asleep at the wheel. We nearly went right off a cliff down into a gorge. But there were extenuating circumstances.” Ian snickered. “Are you going to pull out the cry-baby card? He had a little bitty wound he forgot to tell us about, that’s how small it was. Ever since he fell asleep he’s been trying to make us believe that contributed.” “It wasn’t little. I have a scar. A knife fight.” Sam was righteous about it. “He barely nicked you,” Ian sneered. “A tiny little slice that looked like a paper cut.” Sam extended his arm to Azami so she could see the evidence of the two-inch line of white marring his darker skin. “I bled profusely. I was weak and we hadn’t slept in days.” “Profusely?” Ian echoed. “Ha! Two drops of blood is not profuse bleeding, Knight. We hadn’t slept in days, that much is true, but the rest . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Azami. Azami examined the barely there scar. The knife hadn’t inflicted much damage, and Sam knew she’d seen evidence of much worse wounds. “Had you been drinking?” she asked, her eyes wide with innocence. Those long lashes fanned her cheeks as she gaze at him until his heart tripped all over itself. Sam groaned. “Don’t listen to him. I wasn’t drinking, but once we were pretty much in the middle of a hurricane in the South Pacific on a rescue mission and Ian here decides he has to go into this bar . . .” “Oh, no.” Ian burst out laughing. “You’re not telling her that story.” “You did, man. He made us all go in there, with the dirtbag we’d rescued, by the way,” Sam told Azami. “We had to climb out the windows and get on the roof at one point when the place flooded. I swear ther was a crocodile as big as a house coming right at us. We were running for our lives, laughing and trying to keep that idiot Frenchman alive.” “You said to throw him to the crocs,” Ian reminded. “What was in the bar that you had to go in?” Azami asked, clearly puzzled. “Crocodiles,” Sam and Ian said simultaneously. They both burst out laughing. Azami shook her head. “You two could be crazy. Are you making these stories up?” “Ryland wishes we made them up,” Sam said. “Seriously, we’re sneaking past this bar right in the middle of an enemy-occupied village and there’s this sign on the bar that says swim with the crocs and if you survive, free drinks forever. The wind is howling and trees are bent almost double and we’re carrying the sack of shit . . . er . . . our prize because the dirtbag refuses to run even to save his own life—” “The man is seriously heavy,” Ian interrupted. “He was kidnapped and held for ransom for two years. I guess he decided to cook for his captors so they wouldn’t treat him bad. He tried to hide in the closet when we came for him. He didn’t want to go out in the rain.” “He was the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine,” Sam continued, laughing at the memory. “He squealed every time we slipped in the mud and went down.” “The river had flooded the village,” Sam added. “We were walking through a couple of feet of water. We’re all muddy and he’s wiggling and squeaking in a high-pitched voice and Ian spots this sign hanging on the bar.

Despite how progressive America claimed to be, there was still a sexist double standard quietly underpinning everything. She and Jeff were proof of it, like in those scientific studies where they treated twin babies the same except for one key variable, then tracked how it affected them. The variable here was that Jeff was a boy and Sam was a girl, and even when they did the exact same thing, people reacted to them differently. If the paparazzi caught Jeff on an expensive shopping spree, he was splurging for a special occasion, while Samantha was spoiled. If pictures surfaced of Jeff visibly drunk and stumbling out of a bar, he was blowing off some much-needed steam. Samantha was a wild party girl. If Jeff talked back to the paparazzi, he was simply being firm, protecting his privacy. Samantha was a ruthless bitch.

Given the country’s low birth rate, more Germans will have to follow Mr Gerloff’s example if companies are to avoid crippling shortages of skilled labour in the coming years. At 21 per cent, Germany already has a higher share of its population over the age of 65 than any other country, bar Japan. Despite a large increase in immigration last year, there are already skills shortages in some sectors, particularly in machine building and healthcare and at small and medium-sized companies in rural areas. But this is only a harbinger of the difficulties to come when German baby boomers begin retiring over the next 15 to 20 years. Between 2010 and 2030 the stock of economically active people is set to decline by almost 10 per cent to 39.1m, according to a 2012 report by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Settlement (Ephraim Margolin, San Francisco) Such news of an amicable settlement having made this court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one-legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped naked off of a twelve foot step ladder into a five gallon bucket of porcupines than have presided over a two week trial of the herein dispute, a trial which, no doubt, would have made the jury more confused than a hungry baby in a topless bar and made the parties and their attorneys madder than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory. The clerk shall engage the services of a structural engineer to ascertain if the return of this file to the Clerk’s office will exceed the maximum structural load of the floor of said office. Judge Wins Reelection While Pleading Insanity [Huffington Post, Chicago, Nov.

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice’s friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this—a day spent floating from one thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant.3 This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby….Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy….I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?…I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight….I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back….If I could get a garage I would take it.”4 When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development required tenants with no children to put down a $150 security deposit but charged families with children a $450 deposit plus a monthly surcharge of $50 per child.5 In 1980, HUD commissioned a nationwide study to assess the magnitude of the problem and found that only 1 in 4 rental units was available to families without restrictions.6 Eight years later, Congress finally outlawed housing discrimination against children and families, but as Pam found out, the practice remained widespread.7 Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.8

(It’s a doozy! I could listen to it all day long.) Nikki Lane—“Gone, Gone, Gone,” “Coming Home to You” Patterson Hood—“Belvedere,” “Back of a Bible” Ryan Bingham—“Guess Who’s Knocking” American Aquarium—“Casualties” Devil Doll—“The Things You Make Me Do” American Aquarium—“I’m Not Going to the Bar” Hank Williams Jr.—“Family Tradition” David Allan Coe—“Mama Tried” John Paul Keith—“She’ll Dance to Anything” Carl Perkins—“Honey, Don’t” Scott H. Biram—“Lost Case of Being Found” The Cramps—“The Way I Walk” The Reverend Horton Heat—“Jimbo Song” Justin Townes Earle—“Baby’s Got a Bad Idea” Old Crow Medicine Show—“Wagon Wheel,” “Hard to Love” Dirty River Boys—“My Son” JD McPherson—“Wolf Teeth” Empress of Fur—“Mad Mad Bad Bad Mama” Dwight Yoakam—“Little Sister” The Meteors—“Psycho for Your Love” Hayes Carll—“Love Don’t Let Me Down” HorrorPops—“Dotted with Hearts” Buddy Holly—“Because I Love You” Chris Isaak—“Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” Jason Isbell—“The Devil Is My Running Mate” Lindi Ortega—“When All the Stars Align” Three Bad Jacks—“Scars” Kasey Anderson and the Honkies—“My Blues, My Love

For me, the most disturbing realization has been that, if you happen to be a female farmed animal, your quality of life drops to near zero. A sow will not know one ounce of human kindness during her entire life. In my experience, these are the most abused of all farmed animals. At breeding operations they are treated as 'bacon-makers.' They live in crates, row upon row, as far as their eyes can see, throughout their adult lives. They cannot even turn around between these bars. They live in filth, with rats (who sometimes eat the bodies of their dead piglets). Their world is one of such complete, unending hell; deprived of all comforts and stimulation, that they are driven mad. These intelligent, sensitive farmed animals return what they sense from us; even the boars--intact males--have been gentle with me. Their babies, the ones who are slightly too small or slightly too weak, are 'PACed'--an industry term meaning 'Pounded Against Concrete.' These piglets are swung by their rear legs, smashing their heads into a wall or concrete floor in order to kill them--all in front of their helpless mothers.

Outside," Regulus replies. "They're making mud-pies, so prepare for the mess." "Mm, nothing we can't handle," James assures him. "We've certainly had worse." "Yes, that's true, but if either of those brats track mud into the kitchen, I'm shipping them off to Sirius and Remus without looking back," Regulus warns, eyes narrowing playfully. James snorts. "You'd miss them and go get them back after three hours, don't even try it." "At least four," Regulus counters, sliding his arms around James' shoulders, eyes sparkling with amusement. "I can entertain myself for four hours, surely." "Oh?" James raises his eyebrows. "Don't you mean I could entertain you for four hours?" Regulus' lips twitch. "No, because I'm shipping you off with them. I've earned the break. I'm done with you Potters." "You're a Potter," James reminds him, amused. "Baby, I'll always be a Black," Regulus tells him, reaching up to card his fingers through James' hair. He leans in and starts mouthing along James' jaw, which James is very pleased about, actually. "No matter my name, that doesn't change." "Dad! Dad, look, we found a frog!" comes the abrupt shriek from outside, along with more delighted screams. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Regulus groans, letting his head thunk down on James' shoulder. "Really, can't we just send them back from whence they came?" "And where is that?" "Hell." James laughs, turning his head to smack a kiss to Regulus' cheek, then down the side of his face, then the scar on the side of his neck. "It's a bit pointless to do that. You'd go through hell just to get them back, and you know it." "Dad, it peed on me!" "Shit, shit, shit," Regulus chants, jolting away from James to rush towards the door. "Put it down, you little demons! Step away from the frog right now!" He's still grumbling as he slips out the door. "Just like your father. Literal spawns of Satan himself. What did I say about staying out of tr…" James sighs softly and leans back against the bar, grabbing his cane again, eyes drifting shut as he listens to the sounds of his family, lips curled up. Then, from his pocket, there's a sudden cry that makes his eyes snap open. Ah, yes, the joys of parenthood. Frogs and squalling infants. James wouldn't change a damn thing.

Elderly people are not always craggy, wrinkled, stooped over, forgetful, or wise. Teenagers are not necessarily rebellious, querulous, or pimple-faced. Babies aren’t always angelic, or even cute. Drunks don’t always slur their words. Characters aren’t types. When creating a character, it’s essential to avoid the predictable. Just as in language we must beware of clichés. When it comes to character, we are looking for what is true, what is not always so, what makes a character unique, nuanced, indelible. This specificity applies, obviously, to our main characters, but it is equally important when creating our minor characters: the man at the end of the bar, the receptionist in the doctor’s office, the woman with the shopping bag on the street. They don’t exist simply to advance our protagonist from point A to point B. They are not filler—you know, simply there to supply some local color. There is no such thing as filler or local color in life, nor can there be on the page. Ask of yourself: How does this character walk? How does she smell? What is she wearing? What underwear is she wearing? What are the traces of her accent? Is she hungry? Thirsty? Horny? What’s the last book she read? What did she have for dinner last night? Is she a good dancer? Does she do the crossword puzzle in pen? Did she have a childhood pet? Is she a dog person or a cat person?

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

Chip had been in there for a few very long hours. I had all kinds of awful thoughts about what might have happened to him in there. What if he’d been roughed up? Strip-searched? Who knows what awful things could have happened in a place like that? I saw scary-looking characters come and go as I sat in that cold, concrete lobby, trying to make myself invisible. Finally, out came Chip. “Hi, baby. Thanks for bailing me out,” he said. He sounded almost chipper. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, yeah! You’ll never guess who I saw in there. Alfonzo! Remember the lawn guy who used to work for me? We had a good time catching up.” Only Chip could go to prison and come out talking about all the friends he’d run into there. I came out and I was like, “Whoa! That was awesome. Jo, I met this guy. He did this thing. You know this old guy that I used to tell you about--he and I used to work together? He’s doing great. Well, he’s in jail, but things are really good otherwise.” Two of the policemen were also buddies of mine. These guys were literally standing on the other side of these bars going, “Why are you here? What’s the deal?” We had this endearing conversation right there, while I was in a jail cell. I used to live out in the boonies when I was in college, and I had mowed this one guy’s grass. So I told him what I was in for. “Long story short, I got these dogs running around.” And he was like, “Oh, dude, you’ll be fine. I’m sure they’ll get you right out of here.” It was just another day in my new life with Chip Gaines.

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice’s friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this—a day spent floating from one thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood. People with siblings usually had a leg up, but not always. There were two boys from Belvedere, best friends since kindergarten, who had grown up and married a pair of sisters, and now all four of their children went to Belvedere, driven by one mom or the other in a little cousin carpool. That was next-level friendship—locking someone in through marriage. It seemed positively medieval, like when you realized that all the royal families in the world were more or less cousins. Even just the concept of cousins felt like bragging—Look at all these people who belong to me. Alice had never felt like she belonged to anyone—or like anyone belonged to her—except for Leonard.

A figure held his daughter in the rocker. In the dim light he couldn’t make out the features, but the sight of anyone he didn’t know sitting in Wendy’s rocker with their daughter was enough to scare the shit out of him. Judging by the shuddering movements of his daughter’s body it had frightened her too, had caused her to mewl. He wanted to charge forward and reclaim his daughter, but he didn’t know what would happen if he acted so quickly. What would he do if it hurt her? What would he do if it killed her? “What-what do you want? I’ll do anything just don’t take my daughter. She’s…all I have left.” The figure stopped rocking and slowly eased its way to its feet. There’s not much light in the room but as it moved closer to the bed and it settled the baby in her crib, he saw just enough of her face in the moonlight. “Wendy?” His voice is as full of horror as it is with awe. He can’t help but be horrified at the sight of her now, the way that death has changed her, making her a terrible figure indeed. Her eyes are strange; some depth, some dark and terrible nothing has swallowed up all of her light, and in this first moment he swears he can feel the awful cold of that operating room coming off of her flesh. She is so small and so hard to look at, as if his mind can’t quite focus on her form. Through the bars of the crib he can see her anger and hear the terrible, alien sound of her hiss. “What do you want?” She doesn’t answer him, staring cold and blank through those stark white bars, and then she was scrambling toward him across the floor, making him press flat against the wall to get away from her skittering shape.

Our streets have days, and even hours. Where I was born, and where my baby will be born, you look down the street and you can almost see what's happening in the house: like, say, Saturday, at three in the afternoon, is a very bad hour. The kids are home from school. The men are home from work. You'd think that this might be a very happy get together, but it isn't. The kids see the men. The men see the kids. And this drives the women, who are cooking and cleaning and straightening hair and who see what men won't see, almost crazy. You can see it in the streets, you can hear it in the way the women yell for their children. You can see it in the way they come down out of the house - in a rush, like a storm - and slap the children and drag them upstairs, you can hear it in the child, you can see it in the way the men, ignoring all this, stand together in front of a railing, sit together in the barbershop, pass a bottle between them, walk to the corner to the bar, tease the girl behind the bar, fight with each other, and get very busy, later, with their vines. Saturday afternoon is like a cloud hanging over, it's like waiting for a storm to break. But, on Sunday mornings the clouds have lifted, the storm has done its damage and gone. No matter what the damage was, everybody's clean now. The women have somehow managed to get it all together, to hold everything together. So, here everybody is, cleaned, scrubbed, brushed, and greased. Later, they're going to eat ham hocks or chitterlings or fried or roasted chicken, with yams and rice and greens or combread or biscuits. They're going to come home and fall out and be friendly: and some men wash their cars, on Sundays, more carefully than they wash their fo­reskins.

The menu is spectacular. Passed hors d'oeuvres include caramelized shallot tartlets topped with Gorgonzola, cubes of crispy pork belly skewered with fresh fig, espresso cups of chilled corn soup topped with spicy popcorn, mini arepas filled with rare skirt steak and chimichurri and pickle onions, and prawn dumplings with a mango serrano salsa. There is a raw bar set up with three kinds of oysters, and a raclette station where we have a whole wheel of the nutty cheese being melted to order, with baby potatoes, chunks of garlic sausage, spears of fresh fennel, lightly pickled Brussels sprouts, and hunks of sourdough bread to pour it over. When we head up for dinner, we will start with a classic Dover sole amandine with a featherlight spinach flan, followed by a choice of seared veal chops or duck breast, both served with creamy polenta, roasted mushrooms, and lacinato kale. Next is a light salad of butter lettuce with a sharp lemon Dijon vinaigrette, then a cheese course with each table receiving a platter of five cheeses with dried fruits and nuts and three kinds of bread, followed by the panna cottas. Then the cake, and coffee and sweets. And at midnight, chorizo tamales served with scrambled eggs, waffle sticks with chicken fingers and spicy maple butter, candied bacon strips, sausage biscuit sandwiches, and vanilla Greek yogurt parfaits with granola and berries on the "breakfast" buffet, plus cheeseburger sliders, mini Chicago hot dogs, little Chinese take-out containers of pork fried rice and spicy sesame noodles, a macaroni-and-cheese bar, and little stuffed pizzas on the "snack food" buffet. There will also be tiny four-ounce milk bottles filled with either vanilla malted milk shakes, root beer floats made with hard root beer, Bloody Marys, or mimosas.

Inside McClintic Sphere was swinging his ass off. His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache. He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4 ½ reed and the sound was like nothing any of them had heard before. The usual divisions prevailed: collegians did not dig, and left after an average of 1 ½ sets. Personnel from other groups, either with a night off or taking a long break from somewhere crosstown or uptown, listened hard, trying to dig. 'I am still thinking,’ they would say if you asked. People at the bar all looked as if they did dig in the sense of understand, approve of, empathize with: but this was probably only because people who prefer to stand at the bar have, universally, an inscrutable look… …The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn’t seem to be listening. Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was like a knife fight or tug of war: the sound was consonant but as if cross-purposes were in the air. The solos of McClintic Sphere were something else. There were people around, mostly those who wrote for Downbeat magazine or the liners of LP records, who seemed to feel he played disregarding chord changes completely. They talked a great deal about soul and the anti-intellectual and the rising rhythms of African nationalism. It was a new conception, they said, and some of them said: Bird Lives. Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year before, a great deal of nonsense had been spoken and written about him. Much more was to come, some is still being written today. He was the greatest alto on the postwar scene and when he left it some curious negative will–a reluctance and refusal to believe in the final, cold fact–possessed the lunatic fringe to scrawl in every subway station, on sidewalks, in pissoirs, the denial: Bird Lives. So that among the people in the V-Note that night were, at a conservative estimate, a dreamy 10 per cent who had not got the word, and saw in McClintic Sphere a kind of reincarnation.

I've got the kids in my room," she explained, while Jubal strove to keep up with her, "so that Honey Bun can watch them." Jubal was mildly startled to see, a moment later, what Patricia meant by that. The boa was arranged on one of twin double beds in squared-off loops that formed a nest - a twin nest, as one bight of the snake had been pulled across to bisect the square, making two crib-sized pockets, each padded with a baby blanket and each containing a baby. The ophidian nursemaid raised her head inquiringly as they came in. Patty stroked it and said, "It's all right, dear. Father Jubal wants to see them. Pet her a little, and let her grok you, so that she will know you next time." First Jubal coochey-cooed at his favorite girl friend when she gurgled at him and kicked, then petted the snake. He decided that it was the handsomest specimen of Bojdae he had ever seen, as well as the biggest - longer, he estimated, than any other boa constrictor in captivity. Its cross bars were sharply marked and the brighter colors of the tail quite showy. He envied Patty her blue-ribbon pet and regretted that he would not have more time in which to get friendly with it. The snake rubbed her head against his hand like a cat. Patty picked up Abby and said, "Just as I thought. Honey Bun, why didn't you tell me?"- then explained, as she started to change diapers, "She tells me at once if one of them gets tangled up, or needs help, or anything, since she can't do much for them herself - no hands - except nudge them back if they try to crawl out and might fall. But she just can't seem to grok that a wet baby ought to be changed - Honey Bun doesn't see anything wrong about that. And neither does Abby." "I know. We call her 'Old Faithful.' Who's the other cutie pie?" "Huh? That's Fatima Michele, I thought you knew." "Are they here? I thought they were in Beirut!" "Why, I believe they did come from some one of those foreign parts. I don't know just where. Maybe Maryam told me but it wouldn't mean anything to me; I've never been anywhere. Not that it matters; I grok all places are alike - just people. There, do you want to hold Abigail Zenobia while I check Fatima?" Jubal did so and assured her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, then shortly thereafter assured Fatima of the same thing. He was completely sincere each time and the girls believed him - Jubal had said the same thing on countless occasions starting in the Harding administration, had always meant it and had always been believed. It was a Higher Truth, not bound by mundane logic. Regretfully he left them, after again petting Honey Bun and telling her the same thing, and just as sincerely.

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

Jake,” I murmur. He opens his eyes. “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want? The baby, I mean.” “I’m sure.” His gaze drops to my stomach. “This baby will be made of everything I have loved my whole life.” “I’m gonna get fat,” I mumble. “No, you’re going to get even sexier.” Coming close again, he wraps his arms around me tightly, rubbing the tip of his nose against mine. “How could I not want something made up of Trudy Wethers’s DNA?” “Still Bennett.” I grin. “You haven’t made an honest woman of me yet.” “You ready to hop that plane to Vegas now?” “A shotgun wedding. My folks would be so proud.” I laugh. “What do you want to do about the wedding?” he asks. “Move it forward?” “That would give me a matter of weeks to plan it. Why don’t we just wait until after the baby is born?” I see him quickly do the math in his head. “We wouldn’t be able to get married July twenty-first. You okay with that?” “I’m going to have a mini-Jake soon. Of course I’m okay with that.” “Or a mini-Tru,” he says. Then his expression suddenly changes. “Fuck, a girl. We might have to lock her up, Tru.” I scrunch up my face. “Why?” “Because, if she looks anything like you, I’m one day going to be fighting off horny teenage boys left, right, and centre. I’ll probably end up in jail for beating one to death if I find him with his hands on my baby girl.” He shudders comically. I let out a laugh. “Let’s hope if we have a boy, he’s doesn’t grow up to be one of those horny teenagers…or God forbid, as horny as you are. Otherwise we’ll have some girl’s dad round here kicking his ass.” “Then I’ll end up in jail for beating the shit out of the dad—fuck, this is a no-win, sweetheart,” he groans, dropping his head back against the rest. “I’m doomed to a future behind bars.” Laughing softly, I say, “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll figure a way to keep you out of prison.” I kiss the tip of his nose, then open the door, ready to get out of the car and into the house to bed.

His SUV was nice, but I couldn’t care less about what a man drives, especially if they look anything like Malachi. He could be on a BMX bike talking about, “get on the handle bars,” and I would hop on. With skin the color of caramel that looked as smooth as a baby’s bottom, he could be on a damned skateboard for all I cared. I’d hop right on his back and ride like that shit was normal.

Brittany Gomez, only six months old, was left blind and retarded after being brutally shaken by her baby-sitter, who drew only probation and ninety days in a halfway house after pleading to felony child abuse. Then Brittany died, the case was ruled a homicide, and murder charges were filed. The baby-sitter again pled guilty in exchange for no prison time. She killed a child and never spent a day behind bars.

And Burpee, the Canadian? His English wife about to have a baby. His father who kept a large store in Ottawa. He was not coming back because they had got him, too. They had got him somewhere between Hamm and the target. Burpee, slow of speech and slow of movement, but a good pilot. He was Terry’s countryman, and so were his crew. I like their ways and manners, their free-and-easy outlook, their openness. I was going to miss them a lot

Why would a parent want to put her child in a box with bars in a dark room all by herself?

If you already hate tofu, the term "tofu skin" is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you have to soak, grind, squeeze, and simmer dried soybeans. The result is a thick milk entirely unlike the soy milk you get in a box at Whole Foods in the same way Parmigiano-Reggiano is unlike Velveeta. Then, to make tofu skins (yuba in Japanese), you simmer the soy milk gently over low heat until a skin forms on the surface, then pluck it off with your fingers and drape it over a chopstick to dry. It is exactly like the skin that forms on top of pudding, the one George Costanza wanted to market as Pudding Skin Singles. Yuba doesn't look like much- like a pile of discarded raw chicken skin, honestly. But the texture is toothsome, and with each bite you're rewarded with the flavor of fresh soy milk. It's best served with just a few drops of soy sauce and maybe some grated ginger or sliced negi. "I'm kind of obsessed with tofu skins right now," said Iris, poking her head into the fridge to grab a round of yuba. Me too. In Seattle, I had to buy, grind, boil, and otherwise toil for a few sheets of yuba. In Tokyo, I found it at Life Supermarket, sold in a single-serving plastic tub with a foil top. The yuba wasn't as snappy or flavorful as homemade, but it had that characteristic fresh-soy aroma, which to me smells like a combination of "healthy forest" and "clean baby." Iris and I ate it greedily. (The yuba, not the baby.) Yuba isn't technically tofu, because the soy milk isn't coagulated. Japanese tofu comes in two basic categories, much like underpants: cotton (momen) and silken (kinugoshi). Cotton tofu is the kind eaten most commonly in the U.S.; if you buy a package of extra-firm tofu and cut it up for stir-frying, that's definitely cotton tofu. Silken tofu is fragile, creamier and more dairy-like than cotton-tofu, and it's the star of my favorite summer tofu dish. Hiya yakko is cubes of tofu, usually silken, drizzled with soy sauce and judiciously topped with savory bits: grated ginger or daikon, bonito flakes, negi. It's popular in Japanese bars and easy to make at home, which I did, with (you will be shocked to hear) tons of fresh negi.

Even though we were in Alabama, we definitely didn’t need any babies hanging out in the bar.

El Al Boeing 747 took on board 1,087 immigrants; but when it landed, it carried 1,088 people. A baby had been born during the flight.