Flasher Quotes

Religious people of any serious kind made her nervous: they were like men in raincoats who might or might not be flashers.

Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember―the enemy's gate is down. If you step through your own door like you're out for a stroll, you're a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.

Ta-da!" The man whipped open his coat. Shit! He wasn't wearing any clothes at all. She grimaced. Just her luck to go vampire hunting and find a flasher.

It occurred to me there were some fairly obvious reasons to wear a trenchcoat—because you were a detective, a spy, or a flasher…There are three reasons to wear a trenchcoat: because you have something to find, something to hide, or something you want desperately to show. The garment that seems to beg you ‘Don’t notice me!’ is also begging you to take notice, whether the wearer wants you to see what’s underneath, or whether he wants you simply to fear it. But part of the contract is for the wearer and the witness—who is also being watched—to maintain the fiction of non-theatricality, of non-spectacularity, of the extreme understatement of performance.

Last month, on a very windy day, I was returning from a lecture I had given to a group in Fort Washington. I was beginning to feel unwell. I was feeling increasing spasms in my legs and back and became anxious as I anticipated a difficult ride back to my office. Making matters worse, I knew I had to travel two of the most treacherous high-speed roads near Philadelphia – the four-lane Schuylkill Expressway and the six-lane Blue Route. You’ve been in my van, so you know how it’s been outfitted with everything I need to drive. But you probably don’t realize that I often drive more slowly than other people. That’s because I have difficulty with body control. I’m especially careful on windy days when the van can be buffeted by sudden gusts. And if I’m having problems with spasms or high blood pressure, I stay way over in the right hand lane and drive well below the speed limit. When I’m driving slowly, people behind me tend to get impatient. They speed up to my car, blow their horns, drive by, stare at me angrily, and show me how long their fingers can get. (I don't understand why some people are so proud of the length of their fingers, but there are many things I don't understand.) Those angry drivers add stress to what already is a stressful experience of driving. On this particular day, I was driving by myself. At first, I drove slowly along back roads. Whenever someone approached, I pulled over and let them pass. But as I neared the Blue Route, I became more frightened. I knew I would be hearing a lot of horns and seeing a lot of those long fingers. And then I did something I had never done in the twenty-four years that I have been driving my van. I decided to put on my flashers. I drove the Blue Route and the Schuylkyll Expressway at 35 miles per hour. Now…Guess what happened? Nothing! No horns and no fingers. But why? When I put on my flashers, I was saying to the other drivers, “I have a problem here – I am vulnerable and doing the best I can.” And everyone understood. Several times, in my rearview mirror I saw drivers who wanted to pass. They couldn’t get around me because of the stream of passing traffic. But instead of honking or tailgating, they waited for the other cars to pass, knowing the driver in front of them was in some way weak. Sam, there is something about vulnerability that elicits compassion. It is in our hard wiring. I see it every day when people help me by holding doors, pouring cream in my coffee, or assist me when I put on my coat. Sometimes I feel sad because from my wheelchair perspective, I see the best in people. But those who appear strong and invulnerably typically are not exposed to the kindness I see daily. Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don't feel that way. But those are a few and far between. More often, there is a better pay-off if you don't pretend you feel strong when you feel weak, or pretend that you are brave when you’re scared. I really believe the world might be a safer place if everyone who felt vulnerable wore flashers that said, “I have a problem and I’m doing the best I can. Please be patient!

I take it you’ve never seen a Flasher at work before?” Elwin asked her. “No,” Tarina admitted. “But I’ve wanted to, ever since I first heard the legends.” “Legends,” Bo scoffed. “You’re looking at a party trick—nothing more. You want to see something legendary, you should visit our microbiology labs.” “Yes, nothing’s more exciting than bacteria,” Elwin muttered. “And just so we’re clear—my ‘party trick’ saved your princess’s life.

He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .” We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn’t war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it.

Thank you, V, he thought as he jumped out himself. Balz stayed tight on her heels as she hit a little walkway with a long stride, and about halfway to her front door, he realized how ridiculous he looked: He was still nakie with a sheet wrapped around his hey-nannies, and he had a gun down at one thigh and a duffle bag full of click-click-bang-bang hanging off his other shoulder. Too bad this wasn’t Halloween for the humans. He could have called himself a flasher-assassin and maybe gotten away with it. Plus, hey, guy shows up on your trick-or-treat doorstep with a forty caliber in his palm, you were likely to dump your bowl of candy wherever he told you to put the stuff. So he’d clean up and Rhage would be psyched.

yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . .

Oh, I knew very well,’ I said, thinking back to Flasher, my childhood terrier, and the large ginger cat which used to live in the kitchen and whose death had left our cook sobbing and shaking in her Windsor chair for two days while the family dined off ham sandwiches and apples. Flasher’s death had been the end of childhood for me and even that was as nothing compared with the loss of Bunty. For Bunty, quite simply, was the dog of my life.

Scott slapped on their flashers, and pushed out of their car. The flashers painted the street and surrounding buildings with blue kaleidoscope pulses. Stephanie

Among them were a Bored Ape with a vaguely racist “sushi chef headband,” and a pixelated image of a cartoon penis, called a CryptoDickButt, which, incredibly, was worth about $1,000 at the time. (Davies told me that one was sent to him unsolicited, apparently by some kind of crypto flasher.)

I didn't have the energy to scream at the flasher or yell for security. And besides, the 'security team' was just a bunch of tanned strippers in peekabook bikini briefs and heels. So I took matters into my own hands. 'Thank God you're here. Get on top of me right now and force-feed me all of that man meat!' I shouted at him. 'Your penis is irresistible to me! I must have it in my body right this minute!' I started to back him into a corner. 'No, don't put it back inside your pants! I require all of the services you are offering me. I request that you inspect my vaginables and see if they meet your exacting standards!' As I pulled my own pants down, he ran out of the building, never so scared in his life.

flashers on. Moving to the back of the car, she popped the trunk to get to her crime scene kit. It was Monday morning, her first shift of a week running solo, and Ballard knew she would need to get at least one more wear out of her suit and possibly two. That meant not fouling it with the stink of decomp. At the trunk she slipped off her jacket, folded it carefully, and placed it in one of the empty cardboard evidence boxes. She removed her crime scene coveralls from a plastic bag and pulled them on over her boots, slacks, and blouse. She zipped them up

more often, the payoff is better if you don't pretend you feel strong when you feel weak or pretend that you are brave when you're scared. I really believe the world might be a safer place if everyone who felt vulnerable wore flashers that said, "I have a problem and I'm doing the best I can".

The Flasher of ’04.