“
Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed D.J.
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
”
”
Morrissey
“
Just for the record the weather today is slightly sarcastic, with a good chance of A. indifference and B. disinterest in what the critics say.
”
”
Panic at the Disco (Panic! at the Disco: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out)
“
Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.'
'What is it about, then?' I ask.
'It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.'
'I don't know how to get over it, Mum,' I say. 'At this point I'm so tired of myself. I don't know how to let go of her.'
'You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.'
'Does it get easier?'
'Much,' she says.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
The tyranny of the living body.
Listen -- those cells are at it again.
Gossiping.
Her veins are singing.
Belting out gospel and disco. Amazing Grace.
And her tired mind
says hush. Enough is enough.
”
”
Eve Alexandra (The Drowned Girl (Wick Poetry First Book))
“
The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges’ Funhouse or Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On will be released. Still less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly.
It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus. Thatcher’s neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift into so-called Post-Fordism – with globalization, ubiquitous computerization and the casualisation of labour – resulted in a complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet, perhaps because of all this, there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.
”
”
Mark Fisher (Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures)
“
She imagined herself whirling breathlessly beneath the flashing lights of some impossibly chic Manhattan disco. Suddenly, a hand touches her arm. She turns. ‘Pardon me,’ Mick Jagger says, 'I believe this next dance is mine.
”
”
Francine Pascal (Too Good to be True (Sweet Valley High, #11))
“
New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me.
This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants.
This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one.
I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
It’s only sixteen ninety-five," I say with a flutter of my lashes.
"You’re serious."
I prop my hands on my waist and stick out a hip, striking a pose worthy of a supermodel. "Look at me. Don’t I look serious?"
She collapses into the chair outside the dressing room in a fit of giggles so cute they make my insides fizz. "No! You must be stopped," she says.
"Why?" I strut down an aisle of yellowed lingerie, swiveling my hips, batting bras with flicks of my fingers. "I will be the king of the disco. I will be—" I spin and strike another pose. "An inspiration."
She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. "The real Dylan would die before he’d be seen in public in something like that."
"The real Dylan is boring." I brace my hands on the arms of her chair and lean down until our faces are a whisper apart. "And he’s not one fourth the kisser I am."
"Is that right?" Her lips quirk.
"You know it is."
Her smile melts, and her breath comes faster. "Yeah. I do.
”
”
Stacey Jay (Romeo Redeemed (Juliet Immortal, #2))
“
If only I could cry. I am beyond that. The light, the light, lending itself to empty downtown Saturday, but still the stupid insensate cars flush by oblivious to their stupidity, my silent plea.
It isn't Mexico. It's not Paris. It's a painting by Hopper come to life. I am trapped inside a dead thing. Language is impossible here, even in English. Who has the arrogance to say: I'm mad, this is my crazy view of things, help me.
I'm trapped in a silent world, a tableau of forty years ago. The walls are different, the tables, the heights of the veiling and the chairs. I loom above this letter. The view past the rows of cakes in the plate glass window is unfamiliar. I am a ghost. There is nothing now between me and death. Death is the unfamiliarity of everything, the strangeness of the once familiar. The same spatial configurations only the light is hollow, sick.
I think I lack the energy to hit expensive discos which I don't know where they are to be rejected tonight. I look passable. My energy's low. I love to dance but despair is not a good muse.
This Mexico, babe. Men who don't love you but act wildly as if they do initially. Self-involved, narcissistic men... The men drink and philosophize about pain. The women live it solo and culturelessly. No one cries, except easily, sentimentally. The devil, therefore God, exists.
Oaxaca was a pushover compared to this. Pain had boundaries there.
Spare us big cities, oh lord!
”
”
Maryse Holder (Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters From Mexico)
“
It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library. Everyone thinks they’re special—my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite like you. But I searched my name on Facebook and got eight tiny pictures staring back. The Marina Keegans with their little hometowns and relationship statuses. When we die, our gravestones will match. HERE LIES MARINA KEEGAN, they will say. Numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
”
”
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
“
Think testosterone,’ says Matthew, ‘multiply it by πr2 and double it. Forget boys locked in boarding schools. They’ve spent ten months as a caterpillar waiting for this. They’ve pupated, they’re mature and they’re desperate. They’re squaddies in the disco on a Saturday night. They’re sailors in port after a nine-month voyage.
”
”
Isabella Tree (Wilding)
“
I was sitting down hanging with the fellas them just for the girls, because really and truly this was bugging me. How could these fellas have the finest girls in the community, and they don’t work, they don’t have any money. Anytime something has to be purchased they would say, ‘Man, Scrooge, throw the blow; buy this and buy that.’
So we were sitting on a car one day. They were out to a disco the night before and this fella got chopped or stabbed. I didn’t know anything about it until the fellas came around looking for KC the next day. These fellas just yuck out their guns and started busting shots, and everybody just break off running for their lives. Afterwards I mumbled to myself that these are some crazy fellas. They just came shooting for no reason. The funny thing about it is this: guns were not even that common on the streets then. We’re talking around 1987, 1988. I believe the fella who fired those shots at us, goes by the nickname Dog and he lives in the US now.
I said to Ada, ‘What kind of thing this is? I mean, these fellas came and just started shooting.’
That sent a whole new way of thinking in my mind. Prior to that, I was just a person going to work, coming home, and chilling. I just happened to be sitting there one day. They didn’t know me and they didn’t care who I was. I never used to even be with KC and them. I just happened to be there that day. If I had known that those fellas were crazy like that, to come shooting at whoever they saw, I wouldn’t have been there hanging with KC and them. After that, my whole mindset changed. It was either shoot or be shot. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members.
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
Hey, Ben,” she says, ignoring the rest of us. “You want to dance?”
Ben’s cheeks turn the same scarlet as Rosie’s dress. He and Ryder exchange a pointed look while Lucy and I just stand there gawking.
“Go on, man,” Ryder says, nudging him. “You look great, Rosie,” he adds. “Nice dress.”
She smiles up at him, her blue eyes seeming to glitter beneath the disco-ball lighting. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.” She glances from Ryder to me and back to Ryder again. “The two of you…You looked good together up there.”
“I know, right?” Lucy nods, and I shoot her a “what are you doing?” glare. She ignores it. “Maybe these two should stop the hating and listen to their parents.”
An awkward silence follows. Finally, Ben seems to remember why Rosie came over in the first place. “Um, you want to go dance?”
“Yeah. I love this song.”
Ben nods. “Okay. Catch you guys later.”
Rosie’s smile seems genuine as she follows Ben to the dance floor. I hope that means she’s finally figured out what a sweetheart he is.
As soon as they’re gone, Lucy lets out a low whistle. “Whoa, did that just happen?”
“I think it did,” I say, watching as Rosie wraps her arms around Ben’s neck. She must have said something funny, because he throws his head back and laughs.
Lucy shakes her head in amazement. “I swear, it’s like we’re in some kind of alternate universe tonight.”
“Well, in that case, how about you and me, Luce?” Mason says with a cocky grin. “Think you can handle me on the dance floor?”
“Oh, what the hell?” Lucy says with a shrug. “Why not!” She reaches for Mason’s hand and drags him toward the dance floor but stops a few feet away and turns back to face Ryder and me. “Hey, you two--behave!” In seconds, she and Mason are swallowed by the crowd.
“And then there were two,” Ryder says, reaching for my hand. He leans down, his lips near my ear. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to kiss you right now?” he whispers.
“Later,” I say with a shiver. It’s not an empty word. It’s a promise.
He gives my hand a squeeze. “So…until then, I guess we dance.”
“We dance,” I say as a slow song begins to play.
Talk about good timing.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.
”
”
Peter Hook (Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division)
“
The doctors save the handsome man’s life, but he loses one eye. Before a nice glass one can be fitted, they give him a temporary wooden eye. The man becomes very depressed and sits at home, moping around. Eventually his friends come over and drag him out to a disco to try and cheer him up. One of his friends suggests he talk to a cute girl who’s all alone. ‘No, she’ll never go for a man with a wooden eye,’ he says. ‘Okay,’ says his friend, ‘how about that girl over there? She has a really big nose. Maybe she’ll dance with you.’ The man summons up all his courage, walks over to the girl, and says, ‘Would you like to dance?’ The girl gets all excited. ‘Would I?! Would I?!’ she says. To which the man responds ‘Big nose! Big nose!
”
”
James Patterson (The Nerdiest, Wimpiest, Dorkiest I Funny Ever)
“
I don't think about what it will be like to say good-bye. I don't ask about her leaving. I don't think about how sad I'll be without her, or say I'll miss her or how life will be a perfect graveyard without her living next door for the rest of our lives...Lucy's eyes, deep and blue and flecked with light from dancing disco stars hanging from the ceiling, remind me of the sky, but also of water. I've never been to Maine, but I imagine that the color of the ocean there looks something like Lucy's blue eyes.
”
”
Amy Makechnie (Ten Thousand Tries)
“
As Umber taught me, the Quran is teeming with queer possibilities. Now I’m not saying that the Quran is a guidebook to a queer utopia, because, like many religious texts, it has its fair share of hegemonic rules and restrictions. But it is also an extraordinarily poetic work, with a diverse range of thoughts, many of which feel compatible with being queer. Prophet Muhammed once said, ‘Islam began as something strange and will return to being something strange, so give blessings to those who are strange.’ Amen Muhammed! If you replace the world Islam with ‘people’, the sentence could feasibly be the slogan for a queer sex-positive disco in Berlin.
”
”
Amrou Al-Kadhi (Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between)
“
He really liked her—especially the way her femininity stimulated him. Alejandra was the type of girl that never let a boy entirely have her. If his lips tried to go for a random peck, she would turn the opposite way and smile a “no.” They would be seated at a restaurant and her peppy, shy voice would say, “Thank you for taking me here, but don’t expect anything.” He felt like he had her slippery heart in his hands, but never held it—instead her heart levitated, floating a few centimeters above his twitching fingertips, shining like a fickle disco ball, magnetized in the air by Alejandra’s masterfully crafted tension. She perfected this practice and learned it from her older sister. Except Alejandra felt that she was not as intelligent or gorgeous as other women, and that this prowess was all she had.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (A Happy Ghost)
“
I remember asking her out at the disco. Have we told you this story, love?’ ‘No,’ I say, as Mam says she’s heard it a thousand times. I have; it just winds her up. I think it’s the equivalent of someone who had a terrible car accident being told the story of how they nearly turned left, but turned right instead, and drove straight into a truck.
”
”
Eliza Clark (Boy Parts)
“
The plastic world has colonized us. When we climb into the car, airplane, board ships, when we purchase contemporary cuisines, get involved in the television world, from the studio and materials up the image of the world, we enter the world of artificial chemical universes, those of the cinema and their advertisements, of what we should buy and acquire. It is like this with the café-bars and discos, in other words the pleasure of children, and the same with the food that we consume, and the hospitals and schools, the hotels, all chemicals, a substitute. The ventilation of hotels without windows, the doors without keys, similarly the walls and doors and beds and baths, the water, the carpet and the floors. Everything a sham, paradises for allergies. One can say the same of the tones and music, and the attack on clothing cannot be overlooked, as well as the attitude of men resulting from it. The computers are made of this material and therewith our thought, our memory, the simulation of life. And thus life in genetic research begins and ends as a plastic creation and plastic death. Already the announcement has come to us that the museum bring the entire program closer to us on video screens, enlarged, interpreted, free and democratic and individually accessible. We will live in Leonardo’s world. The ground is prepared, now begins the attack on the blood. Much strength will be necessary to survive it.
”
”
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
“
Who is the world’s longest-serving monarch of all time? ‘Queen Victoria’ people will say, ‘But Elizabeth II is catching up’. Wrong! Sobhuza II’s reign of Swaziland began in 1899 when he was just three months old. During his reign, worldwide events that took place included the First World War, the Second World War, The Moon Landings, the birth and death of Glam Rock and Disco, and the invention of the compact disc (just!). On the day of his death, the 21st of August 1982, Sobhuza II had reigned for an incredible 82 years and nine months!
”
”
Jack Goldstein (101 Amazing Facts)
“
Shame, nothing says disco like a knitted evening gown.
”
”
C.J. Duggan (Ringer (Summer, #3.5))
“
Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal...
”
”
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
“
A guy meets a girl at a disco and she invites him back to her house for the night. Her parents are out of town, so she figures it is the perfect opportunity. They get home and go into her bedroom, where the guy notices that every surface is covered with stuffed toys. There are hundreds of them, fluffy animals and dolls everywhere: on top of the wardrobe, on the bookshelves, covering the windowsills, all over the floor, and of course covering the bed. Somehow, they manage to find space to have sex and afterward he turns to her and says, “So, how was I?” “Well, you can take anything from the bottom shelf.
”
”
Barry Dougherty (Friars Club Private Joke File: More Than 2,000 Very Naughty Jokes from the Grand Masters of Comedy)
“
During the last ten years or so, I've seen quite a lot of Gordon, selling off his land for him. You know Gordon. He goes for anything trendy, especially young people's fads. Goes all out for a while, until something else takes his attention. Disco dancing, anti-draft, cocaine, anti-nuke - he has his little fling at whatever is 'in.' Most of 'em seem kind of nasty to me, but then I’m a bourgeois flag-waver."
"He calls me a fascist," Helena said.
"Oh, sure. He'd call me one too, except that I'm an Oppressed Minority. I bother him because I don't behave the way his stereotype says I should.
”
”
Bob Leman (Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories)
“
Given that it was the late 1970s, I wrote the words “Disco sucks!” over my door. My mother thought that was vulgar. One day when I wasn’t looking, she quietly painted over the word “sucks.” That was the only editing she ever did. Friends who’d come by were always pretty impressed. “I can’t believe your parents let you do this,” they’d say.
”
”
Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
“
I call her Disco Madonna,” Sister Mary Thomas says. “You do?” Betsy says. Sister Mary Thomas finds that response funny and laughs yet again and then she starts singing “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles but she changes it to “Disco Madonna.
”
”
Mahvesh Murad (The Outcast Hours)
“
A little raver. Q: “Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?” A: “Yes.” Q: “Did the defendant say anything when she got out of the car?” A: “Yes.” Q: “What did she say?” A: “What disco am I at?
”
”
David Loman (Fifty Shades of Dave: Ridiculous Customer Complaints - The Compilation (Ridiculous Customer Complaints (And Other Statements) Book 3))
“
It’s about every rejection you’ve ever experienced in your entire life. It’s about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn’t dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don’t want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren’t good enough. You live through all of it again.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
While I still don’t wanna hear how everything is hunky-dory like a lot of those disco people and Barry Manilows are trying to sell us, I’m just completely fed up with cheap stupid nihilism especially when it starts acting trendy. I know society is sick and life is getting more complicated by the second, but if all you’ve got to say is get fucked life sucks you stink I stink who cares I’m bored whip me beat me kick me there's nothing else to do then I think you and everybody else would be a lot better off if you just kept your fucking mouth shut in the first place, not to mention your self-destructive habits to yourself instead of parading them around like The Red Badge of Courage or something. And this isn’t like If You Can’t Say Anything Nice Don’t Say Anything At All, it's more like… why restate what's been said and refuted already?
”
”
Lester Bangs (Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader)
“
Later that night, I drink a Peartini. Italy now has the largest death rate of any country since the pandemic began. When we return, the cruise lines announce that all operations will be suspended after we dock. I order a Corona beer. The crew, which has been so kind to us, is still unsure what’s going on. They believe they’ll be scattered across different ports or given berths on the ship. We decide to pack rather than go to the silent disco.
By the end of the cruise, movie theaters have unprecedentedly closed. President Trump says, “This is very contagious. This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something we have tremendous control of.
”
”
Gary Floyd (Eyes Open With Your Mask On)
“
A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,’ he says. ‘A decent girl wouldn’t roam around at nine o’clock at night. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.
”
”
Sue Lloyd-Roberts (The War on Women)
“
She lowered her seat all the way back until she was lying down, and she turned on her side to face me, her arm tucked under her head. “She still has the ticket stubs from the first movie we went to, like, twelve years ago.”
The way she was lying showed off the curve in her hips. I could almost picture her like that next to me in bed. Her lipstick was gone, but the stain was still on her lips, making them look pink and supple. I wanted to put a thumb to her mouth, see if it felt as soft as it looked.
She looked out of place in this shitty car with torn, faded fabric on the seat under her, duct tape on the glove box. Like an elegant leading lady right out of a black-and-white movie, dropped into a scene that didn’t make any sense.
I tore my gaze away, afraid she’d notice me staring.
“Lie down with me,” she said. “We have what? A forty-five-minute wait? Might as well be comfortable.”
I lowered my seat and stared up through the sunroof at the Los Angeles version of stars—the planes lining up to land at LAX.
We sat in silence for a minute, and I thought of that scene in Pulp Fiction, when—
“You know what this feels like?” she asked. “That scene in Pulp Fiction, when—”
“Comfortable silences. When Mia Wallace says, ‘That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.’”
She made a finger gun at me. “Disco.”
We smiled and held each other’s gaze for a moment. A long, lingering moment. And then, just for a second—a split second—her eyes dropped to my lips.
That’s all it took.
In that moment, I knew. She’d thought about kissing me just then.
This isn’t one-sided.
It was the first hint I’d seen that she was interested. That she thought of me as more than just a friend.
”
”
Abby Jimenez
“
Hidden up there behind some branches sits one glaring squirrel. “I don’t know,” I say. “He looks pretty pissed, though.” “Good.” I see now that there are more of them in the tree. There’s a whole team of them up there hiding. One squirrel is wearing a yellow Zorro mask. Two others stand stock-still: one green, the other disco-ball silver. Three others have matching gold-covered bellies. Together they look like a creepy family of angry Christmas ornaments. “So,
”
”
Matthew Norman (We're All Damaged)