Lipstick Love Quotes

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.

I'm cool right? There's no lipstick left on me?" he asked, his smirk turning into a full-wated smile. "I love getting kissed by women who claim they don't love me - makes my dick hard as a motherfucker.

She knew it should bother her more, being evil and all, but after she put on a little mascara and some lipstick and poured herself another cup of blood-laced coffee, she found that she was okay with it.

I wrote a thesis on love, and I wrote it in lipstick. Of course, I also got blood on the paper, because the lipstick was still attached to her cheating lips.

Merry Christmas. I bought you every shade of lipstick Chanel carries, so you can create your own million kisses in your lifetime. Hopefully you’ll share some of those kisses with me. Love, Crew

Thunder only happens when it's raining. Players only love you when they're playing.

Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there's no reason to add to everyone's misery by looking miserable yourself. That's my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect.

She was the kind of girl who wore dark lipstick and didn't need to speak a word to seduce you.

Every woman wants a man who can ruin her lipstick and not her mascara.

Insist on going to the cremation, insist on going to the burial. Insist on being involved, even if it is just brushing your mother’s hair as she lies in her casket. Insist on applying her favorite shade of lipstick, the one she wouldn’t dream of going to the grave without. Insist on cutting a small lock of her hair to place in a locket or a ring. Do not be afraid. These are human acts, acts of bravery and love in the face of death and loss.

Shaunee was digging in her purse like she'd misplaced a tube of one of MAC's seasonal lipsticks that you buy and fall in love with AND THEN THEY DISCONTINUE IT BECAUSE THEY REALLY HATE US AND WANT US TO BE CRAZY.

Tal told me he loved me, and told me and told me, but you don't tell someone that and then tell them they're not experienced enough in bed and should read a book or something to learn, or they should try wearing deep-red lipstick and tight skirts to look hot like their best friend once in a while. If Tal hadn't lied to me when he said he loved me, I might not be without a future right now, a sucker who was so chickenshit she allowed herself to believe a false dream from a false god. I'm not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him.

I am a woman. I don’t always act rationally, especially when it’s a week before my period, my brain was still strung out from orgasms, and I was looking at another woman’s lipstick on my man.

I'd been making desicions for days. I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever- a black slinky one- innapropriate- that she loved. I chose a sweater to go over it, earrings, bracelet, necklace, her most beloved strappy sandals. I collected her makeup to give to the funeral director with a recent photo- I thought it would be me that would dress her; I didn't think a strange man should see her naked touch her body shave her legs apply her lipstick but that's what happened all the same. I helped Gram pick out the casket, the plot at the cemetery. I changed a few lines in the obituary that Big composed. I wrote on a piece of paper what I thought should go on the headstone. I did all this without uttering a word. Not one word, for days, until I saw Bailey before the funeral and lost my mind. I hadn't realized that when people say so-and-so snapped that's what actually happens- I started shaking her- I thought I could wake her up and get her the hell out of that box. When she didn't wake, I screamed: Talk to me. Big swooped me up in his arms, carried me out of the room, the church, into the slamming rain, and down to the creek where we sobbed together under the black coat he held over our heads to protect us from the weather.

She had learned that words are not always promises, that music cannot save you, that your own abilities do not always lead to their predestined objective, that love is sometimes just camouflage for something much worse; she had learned to tame her dreams, had learned to paint over her disappointments with a dash of lipstick;

She wasn't looking her best; her hair was coming down, for she had shed hairpins as she'd run, and her face lacked powder and lipstick. She looked hot and tired and surprisingly happy. He thought that he had never seen anyone quite as beautiful, so absolutely necessary to his happiness. It wasn't the first time he had fallen in love, but he knew that this was the last.

I only believe in the easy things, like red lipstick and coffee before noon and writing essays in pen. I make my mind up about boys and then I unmake it, compare us to continental drift, two ships passing. I hit the snooze button too often. Write disposable poems on napkins and old homework, try to discipline myself when it comes to removing my makeup before bed. I am trying to understand men better, cut them some slack, write about them less. I dream about oceans and mountains and wolves. I do not always love myself. I do not always forgive myself. I write apology letters and do not send them. Usually, I do not mean it when I tell someone goodbye.

Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?

She kisses the children goodnight, leaving lipstick on their foreheads and a trail of Chanel No.5.

Lips are the outward sign, the emblem of desire, and lipstick is the ink in which we graffiti that message on our smile, our pout and pucker. When a girl blows a man a kiss she is sending him a piece of her soul.

He came over in long pur­pose­ful strides, sat at the edge of her bed, and in a ten­der, pos­ses­sive ges­ture wiped the lip­stick off her lips. “What is that?” he asked. “All the other girls wear it,” Ta­tiana said, quickly wip­ing her mouth, breath­less at the sight of him. “In­clud­ing Dasha.” “Well, I don’t want you to have any­thing on your lovely face,” he said, stroking her cheeks. “God knows, you don’t need it.

Stormy, who was larger than life, who taught me how to apply red lipstick “so it lasts even after a night of kisses and champagne,” she said. I

One historical note that I just love: When the suffragettes were marching, at one point they started wearing red lipstick so they would all be wearing the same bold color and stand in solidarity with one another. I love how this little thing many women had in their purses became a powerful political symbol. It's a reminder that we don't have to diminish ourselves as women to be seen as strong. You can push for societal change and you can love getting dressed up. You don't have to choose.

The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings of the projects that stretched for blocks along the drive. Something inside her sank at the sight of all that sameness, and she suddenly felt defeated. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In the past year, she'd started experiencing these moments of desperate emptiness, as if nothing really mattered, nothing was ever going to change, there was nothing new; and she could see her life stretching before her--one endless long day after the next, in which every day was essentially the same. Meanwhile, time was marching on, and all that was happening to her was that she was getting older and smaller, and one day she would be no bigger than a dot, and then she would simply disappear. Poof! Like a small leaf burned up under a magnifying glass in the sun. These feelings were shocking to her, because she'd never experienced world-weariness before. She'd never had time. All her life, she'd been striving and striving to become this thing that was herself--the entity that was Nico O'Neilly. And then, one morning, time had caught up with her and she had woken up and realized that she was there. She had arrived at her destination, and she had everything she'd worked so hard for: a stunning career, a loving (well, sort of) husband, whom she respected, and a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter whom she adored. She should have been thrilled. But instead, she felt tired. Like all those things belonged to someone else.

I wonder if you sisters full understand the greatness of your gifts and talents and how all of you can achieve the "highest place of honor" in the Church and in the world. One of your unique, precious, and sublime gifts is your femininity, with its natural grace, goodness, and divinity. Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength. It is manifest differently in each girl or woman, but each of you possesses it. Femininity is part of your inner beauty. One of your particular gifts is your feminine intuition. Do not limit yourselves. As you seek to know the will of our Heavenly Father in your life and become more spiritual, you will be far more attractive, even irresistible. You can use your smiling loveliness to bless those you love and all you meet, and spread great joy. Femininity is part of the God-given divinity within each of you. It is your incomparable power and influence to do good. You can, through your supernal gifts, bless the lives of children, women, and men. Be proud of your womanhood. Enhance it. Use it to serve others.

I loved that lipstick. I am going to miss it.

There's power in the words that come out of your mouth. Now imagine those words coming out of your red lipsticked mouth. They have even more power.

Pink reminds me of my love for dance. My youth. The innocence of being young. Tutus. Strawberry frosting on a vanilla cake (my favorite). And lipstick. I love lipstick. It also reminds me that I should take pride in my feminine traits, in being a woman. There is nothing remotely wrong with enjoying femininity. Curves. Hips. Lips. Empathy. Vulnerability. Sensuality. Patience. Intuition.

Banishing the love song, people discovered what else there was to sing about.

Chris gives me a new lipstick: red for when I want to be bad, she says.

There is an erotic charge prising the top from a new lipstick, leaning into the mirror and painting your masterpiece. Lipstick has its own unique taste and lingers on your tongue like semen.

So I had it after all the months. For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream. And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

You know which part of you drives me the craziest?” He brings his fingers to my mouth and traces my smile. “These,” he says. “Your lips. I love how they’re as red as your hair and you don’t even have to wear lipstick.” I grin and kiss his fingers. “I better watch you around my mom, then, because everyone says we have the same mouth.

Did you notice?” “Notice what?” “How small she is? Even her hands are tiny, but her fingers are long. I don’t even know how that’s possible.” He was still making that face. "I mean, I guess it’s her fingers. They’re longer than her palms, so it gives the illusion that they’re long in general. Pretty sure one of her hands would fit on my palm. Like in Beauty and the Beast when he holds her hand and it’s just a wrist disappearing into his big, hairy fist.” He added blinking to the face. “Did you just compare yourself to a Disney movie?

And here’s what I realize: she would never wear mittens shaped like kittens or a dress with a Peter Pan collar. She would never say, Love your dress, if she fucking hated your dress. She would never say, How are you? if she didn’t care how you were. She would never eat a lavender cupcake that tasted like perfume or wear a perfume that made her smell like a cupcake. She would never wear lip balm for cosmetic purposes. She would never wear it unless her lips were seriously, seriously cracked. And even if they were, she’d still put Lady Danger on them, which is the name of her lipstick, this bright blue-red that looks surreally beautiful on her but when I tried it on once made me look insane. Her perfume smells like rain and smoke and her eye makeup scares small children and she wears pumps even though she’s at least two inches taller than I am and I’m a freak.

Once, at the dacha, years ago,” she said, “we all decided to go mushroom picking, and our neighbor Vera—she was at least eighty at the time—dashed over to the mirror and started painting her lips. My mother said to her, ‘Aunt Vera, we are going to the woods; who’s the lipstick for?’ And Vera replied—I’ll never forget it—‘Who knows? Maybe that’s where it will happen!

I put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I'm damn brave to love who I love. Don't try to take who I am away from me." My chin trembled, "Well, what do you think's being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I do? ...I don't want to die and I don't know how to live. I'm really afraid.

once ruffle-skirted vanity table where I primped at thirteen, opening drawers to a private chaos of eyeshadows lavender teal sky-blue, swarms of hair pins pony tail fasteners, stashes of powders, colonies of tiny lipsticks (p.39)

Each morning fog rolls over the bay and caresses the Golden Gate, the most picturesque bridge in the world. In the evenings night descends from heaven like some mystical force of nature, alerting hearts that something wonderful is about to happen. The City by the Bay becomes a moonlit paradise of sounds and sensations. It teems with lights, music, ocean, and pretty girls ready to dance and have fun. San Francisco stretches out her romantic hand, beckoning you to join in all the living going on, all the love being found. And for this reason, night is the loneliest time for those of us who have no one. Oh, we try for love, desperately we make the attempt, gallantly we forge on. But inevitably we fall into a seductive whirlpool of night and garter belts, lipstick and alluring lingerie, darkened hotel rooms and passion devoid of love. Love is the trophy others raise high in happiness, leaving the rest to seek momentary solace in sex bereft of tenderness and meaning, pretending for a few moments, perhaps even a few hours, that it is something more. A hollow consolation prize for losing the romance contest.

We won’t get our rituals back if we don’t show up. Show up first, and the ritual will come. Insist on going to the cremation, insist on going to the burial. Insist on being involved, even if it is just brushing your mother’s hair as she lies in her casket. Insist on applying her favorite shade of lipstick, the one she wouldn’t dream of going to the grave without. Insist on cutting a small lock of her hair to place in a locket or in a ring. Don’t be afraid. These are human acts, acts of bravery and love in the face of death and loss.

When people grow old and look back on their lives, they don't regret what they did, they regret what they didn't do.

My dear lady, you have no idea just how scandalous I can be. ~Peter Viktor von Strassenberg, 1905

In the water’s reflection she saw only loving scenes from her childhood, countless memories, her mother kissing her good night, unwrapping a new toy, plopping whipped cream onto pancakes, putting Annie on her first bicycle, stitching a ripped dress, sharing a tube of lipstick, pushing a button to Annie’s favorite radio station. It was as if someone unlocked a vault and all these fond recollections could be examined at once. Why didn't I feel this before? she whispered. Because we embrace are scars more than our healing, Lorraine said. We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone?

Jay just blinked at me. “Let me get this straight. You were talking to a gorgeous blonde woman in a tight red skirt and heels, with a chest that has Playboy ringing her once a month for an interview, who was smiling and flirting with you like crazy and all you noticed was that she looked cold and her lipstick was bright?” Oh. Whoops. We were talking about breasts. Straight men usually notice breasts, don’t they? Shit!

That’s what makes us special,” she continues. “This isn’t just a courtship of boy meets girl. They fall in love, yadda, yadda. This is a lifelong commitment to men who aren’t satisfied living ordinary lives. It sometimes seems more of an obsession than a mission. One that can test a woman to her absolute limits.” She grins over at me, “But for him, for that man, I’ll do it. I’ll be there when he fucks up so badly he can’t celebrate how good he is or what he’s done. I’ll be there whenever he doubts himself and our relationship suffers because of those doubts. I’ll be there with my hair done, and my lipstick on, in my best heels, with my head held high on his darkest days, because that’s what he needs. And I don’t want him changing. I don’t want him to stop being who he is, not ever, not for me, and not for any baby we make.” She turns her gaze to me. “But I will use the tips of these heels to pierce and pin his brass balls down if he ever stops giving me what I need.

Our story ends happily ever after. It has to. We escape Battle Creek, pile into the car, and burn a strip of rubber down the highway. Fly away west, to the promised land. Our rooms will be lit by lava lamps and Christmas lights. Our lives will glow. Consciousness will rise and minds will expand, and beautiful boys in flannel shirts will make snow angels on our floor and write love letters on our ceiling with black polish and red lipstick. We will be their muses, and they will strum their guitars beneath our window, calling to us with a siren song. Come down come away with me. We will lean out of our tower, our hair swinging like Rapunzel's, and laugh, because nothing will carry us away from each other.

You make out with a boy because he’s cute, but he has no substance, no words to offer you. His mouth tastes like stale beer and false promises. When he touches your chin, you offer your mouth up like a flower to to be plucked, all covered in red lipstick to attract his eye. When he reaches his hand down your shirt, he stops, hand on boob, and squeezes, like you’re a fruit he’s trying to juice. He doesn’t touch anything but skin, does not feel what’s within. In the morning, he texts you only to say, “I think I left the rest of my beer at your place, but it’s cool, you can drink it. Last night was fun.” You kiss a girl because she’s new. Because she’s different and you’re twenty two, trying something else out because it’s all failed before. After spending six weekends together, you call her, only to be answered by a harsh beep informing you that her number has been disconnected. You learn that success doesn’t come through experimenting with your sexuality, and you’re left with a mouth full of ruin and more evidence that you are out of tune. You fall for a boy who is so nice, you don’t think he can do any harm. When he mentions marriage and murder in the same sentence, you say, “Okay, okay, okay.” When you make a joke he does not laugh, but tilts his head and asks you how many drinks you’ve had in such a loving tone that you sober up immediately. He leaves bullet in your blood and disappears, saying, “Who wants a girl that’s filled with holes?” You find out that a med student does. He spots you reading in a bar and compliments you on the dust spilling from your mouth. When you see his black doctor’s bag posed loyally at his side, you ask him if he’s got the tools to fix a mangled nervous system. He smiles at you, all teeth, and tells you to come with him. In the back of his car, he covers you in teethmarks and says, “There, now don’t you feel whole again.” But all the incisions do is let more cold air into your bones. You wonder how many times you will collapse into ruins before you give up on rebuilding. You wonder if maybe you’d have more luck living amongst your rubble instead of looking for someone to repair it. The next time someone promises to flood you with light to erase your dark, you insist them you’re fine the way you are. They tell you there’s hope, that they had holes in their chest too, that they know how to patch them up. When they offer you a bottle in exchange for your mouth, you tell them you’re not looking for a way out. No, thank you, you tell them. Even though you are filled with ruins and rubble, you are as much your light as you are your dark.

The grassy park was lined with dozens of kissing booths. Twinkle lights draped back-and-forth between tall trees, making a canopy of stars above the red and pink tables below. People were lined up at each booth, applying lipstick and perfume as they readied for their purchased kisses. Behind the booths stood a large white gazebo housing a group of musicians. As a love song filled the air, couples intertwined their bodies and swayed to the melody. Here and there, children ran about wearing red hats and eating lip-shaped chocolates, while women waited impatiently for quickie makeovers under a flashy pink tent. The park was littered with couples kissing behind trees and making out on park benches. And paper stars were everywhere; in trees, on the ground, above heads, inside mouths…. It was like Valentine’s Day. On crack.

A girl’s red lips imitate the hot blood coursing through the lips of her labia, a sign that she is healthy and ready for breeding. She may not know that. He may not know that. But this is the design, the primeval impulse to redden our lips.

The beauty of our partnership was that we knew never to be surprised. Candy heard the urgency in my voice. She merely dropped her lipstick, started the car, and drove off quickly but calmly. This was what true love was. Implicit understanding.

I’m here because of a letter. Not the kind with hearts and lipstick marks, but the kind that takes your breath away. I wanted it to have that effect on him, and so it was the story of how we fell in love told through our kisses. Both kisses we’d had and kisses I wanted to have, and places I wanted to kiss. Places like Paris and Amsterdam, along the river or by the canal, or Kauai under waterfalls. It was an epic love letter, and it was all I’d ever wanted in my life-to feel that kind of epic love.

Lipstick comes in phallic-shaped tubes. With just a breath of imagination, it feels as if you are holding a miniature penis, rubbing the head over your half-opened lips before squeezing down to spread the oily soft blush evenly over every curve and into every corner.

One day, you're in a physical landscape you share with this bizarre and fundamentally alien creature, not alien because she's female but alien because you're a fool in love and there's nothing not alien about that. And then when she's gone, you're alone and all the strangeness and wonder have gone out of the landscape and you're still a fool but now nobody notices how many days in a row you wear the same socks and cleaning the shower doesn't make the girl smile anymore so everything smells a little worse and doesn't get fixed when it breaks. I missed the feminine touch—not just hers, but mine. I missed being half-boy, half-girl, part of a whole. Now that I was male in a male environment, it was harder to manifest her physical chick presence, no matter how many of her MAC lipsticks I set out on the coffee table in a basket like so many M&Ms.

What Jessica said—hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them—was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby." All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both—just come with me Jess, please... I need you...." She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons.

There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head. So many dudes I’ve dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.) They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I “get them” more than anyone they’ve ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks. None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they can’t cure. They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about. Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice. They don’t want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real. So they invite me over when they’re going through writer’s block but don’t answer my calls during breakdowns. They tell me I look beautiful when I’m crying then stick their hands in-between my thighs. They mistake my silence for listening to them attentively and say my quiet mouth understands them like no one else has. These men love my good dead hollowness. Because it means less of a fighting personality for them to force out. And is so much easier to fill someone who has already given up with themselves.

My life has been fucked up this way ever since that night with Sarabelle. I woke up the next morning stark naked, sprawled out on my back, with a splitting headache, a killer case of dry-mouth, and a lipstick heart drawn around my left nipple. When I sat up, the room tilting around me…

It wasn’t her hypnotic eyes that drew him in or the wild sway of her hips; it was that devil’s blood-red lipstick smeared all over her chubby angel lips. He shivered with the magnitude of impending heaven and hell in one woman. He crashed into heaven while crossing the thresholds of hell.

Like that breeder-woman sitting at the bar, who thinks it's a buzz to go into a gay joint and has no doubt heard somewhere that this is one. Her lurid get-up's a joke, ludicrous. She's the type who dons the camouflage-green combat trousers, wraps a bandanna around her head and paints herself with black lipstick, imagining all the lesbians in the joint'll have the hots for her. Not so much imagining as secretly hoping. Naturally, no one goes and sits with her. She's been here before, and everyone gives the ice-cold shoulder, yet she still turns up again and again. Someone might argue we're zoo animals for her. But I've another theory. For her, we're noble savages, a kind of grey area outside the respectable, minutely organized community, an untamed wilderness it takes a lot of guts to step into. But if you do dare, there's a glorious smell of freedom floating around your trousers and giving the finger to society, making whoever an instant anarchist. Certainly, for her, coming here is like putting a washable tattoo on your shoulder : there's the thrill of deviance with none of the dull commitment - and she'll never have to wonder whether she's too weird to be seen out before dark.

I’m mesmerized by lipstick prints on coffee cups. By the lines of lips against white pottery. By the color chosen by the woman who sat and sipped and lived life. By the mark she leaves behind. Some people read tea leaves and others can tell your future through the lines on your palm. I think I’d like to read lipstick marks on coffee mugs. To learn how to differentiate yearning from satiation. To know the curve of a deep-rooted joy or the line of bottomless grief. To be able to say, this deep blue red you chose and how firmly you planted your lips, this speaks of love on the horizon. But, darling, you must be sure to stand in your own truth. That barely-there nude that circles the entire rim? You are exploding into lightness and possibilities beyond what you currently know. The way the gloss only shows when the light hits it and the coffee has sloshed all over the saucer? people need to take the time to see you whole but my god, you’re glorious and messy and wonderful and free. The deep purple bruise almost etched in a single spot and most of the cup left unconsumed? Oh love. Let me hold the depth of your ache. It is true. He’s not coming back. I know you already know this, but do you also know this is not the end? Love. This is not the end. I imagine that I can know entire stories by these marks on discarded mugs. Imagine that I know something intimate and true of the woman who left them. That I could take those mugs home one day and an entire novel worth of characters would pour out, just like that.

On nights when Gloria stayed up late enough to see Rachel come dreamily home she was always unsettled by the girl's appearance: clothes crushed and hair awry, eyes dazed and mouth swollen, with the lipstick eaten away. Love was often said to be torment, but Rachel could make it seem like punishment as well.

Do you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you ever wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume? ... Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.

Toddlers walk through life like we all wish we could: confident, demanding, and 100 percent positive that they are the center of the universe. They can kick their father in the testicles and feel nothing. They love to laugh. They love to destroy expensive cosmetics and to fingerpaint with long-wearing lipstick. Toddlers love to render electronic devices useless. They enjoy making debit cards and keys vanish into thin air. They like to permanent marker on shit. Toddlers live that #thuglyfe better than any of us could even try to because toddlers. don’t. give. a. fuck. The quicker you understand that, the better. Repeat after me: Toddlers don’t care and they never did.

You describe her as an Eden. This rare, unknowable place. Distant. And you tell me to wear her skin but I refuse. I shift in my seat. Distant. What is it about the men that go looking for old lovers in new women. And why is it that they always want you to touch them like she touched them. Wear her head like a show piece. Use her words as lipstick.

When you live a lie, you damage the soul.

You should only care about boys that smudge your lipstick, not your mascara.

You are remarkable, mo chreach bheag.

What? Do I have lipstick on my face or something?” No, but I wish I did.

He was fully anticipating her lips being bright red to go with her toenail polish. Damn, he loved red lipstick. But before he could get to those lips, she used them, to say, “Oh, dammit, it’s you.” Owen’s gaze bypassed her mouth to fly to her eyes. Because he’d know that voice anywhere. Madison Allain was home. A day early. Not that an extra day would have helped him prepare. He’d been thinking about her visit for a week and was still as wound tight about it as he’d been when Sawyer had told him that she was coming home. For a month. Owen stood just watching her, fighting back all of the first words that he was tempted to say. Like, “Damn, you’re even more gorgeous than the last time I saw you.” Or, “I haven’t put anyone in the hospital lately.” Or, “I’ve missed you so damned much.” Just for instance. He wiped his hands on his jeans. Okay, he was supposed to be nice to her. That meant treating her like she was one of the tourists who frequented this dock. Polite. Friendly, But not I’ve-known-you-my-whole-life-and-kissed-you-a-whole-bunch friendly. Just mildly hey-how’s-it-goin’ friendly. Nice. Polite. A little friendly—but not too much. He could do that. Though it probably meant not saying things like, “I still remember how your nipples taste.

Every single moment I spent with you, I fell deeper. It felt like falling into an abyss, because I knew I could never find my way back. There would be nothing to life without you anymore.

I carry you like my own personal Time Machine, as I put on my lipstick, smile, and head out to the party. It’s a line by one of her favorite poets, a woman named Donna Carnes, whose husband went out for a sail in San Francisco Bay and has not been seen since. I love it too. How many parties have I gone to over the years, and laughed, and had a good time, while still managing to hold Denise close?

His heart slammed against his ribs, and joy flooded him, followed almost instantly by distress. Even from fifteen yards away he could see that she wore no makeup, and lines of fatigue were etched on her face. Her hair was restrained with a clip at the nape of her neck, and for the first time since he'd known her, she looked almost plain. Where was the Daisy who loved to primp and fuzz with her perfumes and powder? The Daisy who took such joy in dabbing herself with apricot scented lotion and raspberry red lipstick? Where was the daisy who used up all the hot water taking her showers and left a sticky film of hair spray on the bathroom door? Dry mouthed, he drank in the sight of her, and something broke apart inside him. This was Daisy as he'd made her. This was Daisy with her love light extinguished.

We must thank the Islamic Republic for making us rediscover and even covet all these things we took for granted: one could write a paper on the pleasure of eating a ham sandwich. And I said, Oh, the things we have to be thankful for! And that memorable day was the beginning of our detailing our long list of debts to the Islamic Republic: parties, eating ice cream in public, falling in love, holding hands, wearing lipstick, laughing in public and reading Lolita in Tehran.

Maybe I had had an illusion, I thought. I stood there a long time, gazing at the rainswept streets. Once again, I was a twelve-year-old boy staring for hours at the rain. Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize. But this had been no illusion. When I went back into the bar, a glass and an ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound.

I think of the beauty in the obvious, the way it forces us to admit how it exists, the way it insists on being pointed out like a bloody nose, or how every time it snows there is always someone around to say, “It’s snowing.” But the obvious isn’t showing off, it’s only reminding us that time passes, and that somewhere along the way we grow up. Not perfect, but up and out. It teaches us something about time, that we are all ticking and tocking, walking the fine line between days and weeks, as if each second speaks of years, and each month has years listening to forever but never hearing anything beyond centuries swallowed up by millenniums, as if time was calculating the sums needed to fill the empty belly of eternity. We so seldom understand each other. But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite, then understand that no matter where we go, we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. All we can do is share some piece of ourselves and hope that it’s remembered. Hope that we meant something to someone. My chest is a cannon that I have used to take aim and shoot my heart upon this world. I love the way an uncurled fist becomes a hand again, because when I take notes, I need it to underline the important parts of you: happy, sad, lovely. Battle cry ballistic like a disaster or a lipstick earthquaking and taking out the monuments of all my hollow yesterdays. We’ll always have the obvious. It reminds us who, and where we are, it lives like a heart shape, like a jar that we hand to others and ask, “Can you open this for me?” We always get the same answer: “Not without breaking it.” More often than sometimes, I say go for it.

In order to embrace holiness without the stumbling blocks of attractive sin, we must stop sugar-coating and glamorizing what slips and sneakily slides off the straight and narrow. Putting lipstick and diamonds on a corpse will not prevent it from rotting!

Yankel's lipstick autobiography came flaking off his bedroom ceiling, falling gently like blood-stained snow to his bed and floor. You are Yankel. You love Brod. You are a Sloucher. You were once married, but she left you. You don't believe in an afterlife.

It feels intoxicating. My blood is on his lips, smeared like some fucked-up lipstick, and his huge gray eyes are so lost, to the point they suck me into Wonderland. That’s the only explanation I have for what I do next. Down the motherfucking rabbit hole we go.

Want to know what else I heard you did at the bar?” “I don’t think I do.” “You used your red lipstick to scribble ‘Alethea is a skanky hoe’ on the bathroom mirror.” In her opinion, truer words had never been spoken – well, scribbled. Her demon agreed. “You almost yacked in the Bentley.” Oh, God. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “Stop.” “We had to pull over so you could vomit in a bush.” “Stop.” “Then you got back in the car and said, ‘Taco Bell, anyone?’” “Stop.”  Knox chuckled. “But I haven’t told you what you did when you got home yet.” She buried her face deeper into the pillow. “I don’t want to hear it.” He spoke into her ear. “You told me you love me, you’d always love me, and that you even love my demon… which would have been really sweet if you weren’t bent over the toilet with vomit in your hair.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I am being strong for the two of us, like I have broken free from those chains of lipstick and perfect hair and can take pride in my worn feet and the hair around my nipples. And I know that one day we will go shopping together and she will finally be proud of this body we both used to hate so much. I'm sure of it, because recently I have found it in my heart to forgive her. And because all of this is so very lonely sometimes, I have started to wear some of her old clothes, her cardigans and scarves--I was always too fat for everything else--and I think that's a sign that I have started to miss her in that place where I should have loved so long ago. And I admire nothing more than people who have found a way to love their mothers; I think it's the biggest challenge in life, the one thing that would make the world a better place.

Doris Wales was a woman with straw-blond hair whose body appeared to have been dipped in corn oil; then she must have put her dress on, wet. The dress grabbed at all her parts, and plunged and sagged over the gaps in her body; a lover’s line of hickeys, or love bites – ‘love-sucks,’ Franny called them – dotted Doris’s chest and throat like a violent rash; the welts were like wounds from a whip. She wore plum-covered lipstick, some of which was on her teeth, and she said, to Sabrina Jones and me, ‘You want hot-dancin’ music, or slow-neckin’ music? Or both?’ ‘Both,’ said Sabrina Jones, without missing a beat, but I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would still be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

I...love my curves and clothes and shoes; I love the way adrenaline from dancing or love-making reaches my cheeks. I love my long hair and the way his fingers feel running through it. I like to touch my lips and look at them look in several different shades of lipstick And yup...I love the color pink.

They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits. They closed the doors and windows again so as not to waste time getting undressed and they walked about the house as Remedios the Beauty had wanted to do and they would roll around naked in the mud of the courtyard, and one afternoon they almost drowned as they made love in the cistern. In a short time they did more damage than the red ants: they destroyed the furniture in the parlor, in their madness they tore to shreds the hammock that had resisted the sad bivouac loves of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they disemboweled the mattresses and emptied them on the floor as they suffocated in storms of cotton. Although Aureliano was just as ferocious a lover as his rival, it was Amaranta ?rsula who ruled in that paradise of disaster with her mad genius and her lyrical voracity, as if she had concentrated in her love the unconquerable energy that her great-great-grandmother had given to the making of little candy animals. And yet, while she was singing with pleasure and dying with laughter over her own inventions, Aureliano was becoming more and more absorbed and silent, for his passion was self-centered and burning. Nevertheless, they both reached such extremes of virtuosity that when they became exhausted from excitement, they would take advantage of their fatigue. They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, much richer than those of desire. While he would rub Amaranta ?rsula’s erect breasts with egg whites or smooth her elastic thighs and peach-like stomach with cocoa butter, she would play with Aureliano’s portentous creature as if it were a doll and would paint clown’s eyes on it with her lipstick and give it a Turk’s mustache with her eyebrow pencil, and would put on organza bow ties and little tinfoil hats. One night they daubed themselves from head to toe with peach jam and licked each other like dogs and made mad love on the floor of the porch, and they were awakened by a torrent of carnivorous ants who were ready to eat them alive.

Pippa’s hair was down and fell over her shoulders. Beneath her jersey dress, her body was easy to imagine, and I reached forward, sliding a hand around her waist to pull her just a little closer. I wanted to kiss her. I knew that in part it was the wine, and the beer, and the heady sense of freedom in a small town where I knew no one, but I also knew that in no part was that feeling about Becky. Pippa bounced against me, singing terribly into the mic—perfect for the song, really. Her earrings cascaded down from her ears, nearly touching her shoulders. Her bracelets clanged on her wrist. Her lipstick stained her lips a seductive fire-red, and it made her happy smile seem boundless.

I was always the girl growing up who just wasn’t quite like the rest of them. I liked working hard. I liked contorting my body until I could feel the ache inside my bones, until I could feel the pain in my teeth. I liked to wear lipstick and nothing else and found myself fascinated with the shape of my lips and the different colors I could make them. I ate too little. Slept too much. Masturbated far too often and at far too young an age. I enjoyed the feeling of being naked alone behind closed doors, exploring my deepest secrets within my imagination, as I put my hand over the rapid pace of my heart to feel how nervous it made me. I blushed at the faintest mention of my name and almost perished when complimented. I loved to find the answers behind someone’s eyes. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of when someone REALLY looks at you. And I read. Every chance I got.

Her lips are moving silently around words I recognize. 'I carry you like my own personal Time Machine, as I put on my lipstick, smile, and head out to the party.' It's a line by one of her favourite poets, a woman named Donna Carnes, whose husband went out to sail in San Francisco Bay and had not been seen since. I love it too. How many parties have I gone to over the years, and laughed, and had a good time, while still managing to hold Denise close?

VISIONS OF GRANDEUR I'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door, Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park, Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College, And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish. I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia, Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice, Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill, And running my first New York City marathon. I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie. Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House, Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city, And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet. I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa, Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander, Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather, And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.

schoolgirls in pantyhose sitting on bus stop benches looking tired at 13 with their raspberry lipstick. it’s hot in the sun and the day at school has been dull, and going home is dull, and I drive by in my car peering at their warm legs. their eyes look away— they’ve been warned about ruthless and horny old studs; they’re just not going to give it away like that. and yet it’s dull waiting out the minutes on the bench and the years at home, and the books they carry are dull and the food they eat is dull, and even the ruthless, horny old studs are dull.   the girls in pantyhose wait, they await the proper time and moment, and then they will move and then they will conquer.   I drive around in my car peeking up their legs pleased that I will never be part of their heaven and their hell. but that scarlet lipstick on those sad waiting mouths! it would be nice to kiss each of them once, fully, then give them back. but the bus will get them first.

I spent ten miserable fucking years in the closet; wearing lipstick, and having these insecure, transient relationships, where we never said I love you, and we never did normal shit, and it was all behind closed doors… And you know what? No, Irina. I’m not fucking doing it. I’m not going back. Not for you, and not for anyone.’ And I was just like… Whatever. And she went off on one at me about my nasty streak. I’m rough, and I’m judgemental, and I’m self-involved and cruel. And I ask her if I’m so awful, why’s she still fucking me, then?

I have killed for work, for money. I have killed for revenge when I went after the men who murdered my mother. I have killed for Lucille, for my lass. My Lucy. My little brute. Mo chreach bheag. So many names I have for her, yet none of them can truly capture my feelings for her. How strong and fiery and all-consuming they are. And I know without a doubt I’d do it again. I’d tear someone to pieces with my bare teeth if they tried to come close. I’d burn down the entire world if someone dared to take her from me or dared to hurt her. And I wouldn’t stop there. No, I would give my life.

Because I don't make the mistake that high-culture mongers do of assuming that because people like cheap art, their feelings are cheap, too,” the late filmmaker Dennis Potter once said, explaining why pop songs were so important in his work, from Pennies from Heaven to The Singing Detective to Lipstick on Your Collar, his paean to the 1950s, the time he shared with the Independent Group—and Potter was also defining a pop ethos, defining what I think is happening in Paolizzi's collage. "When people say, 'Oh listen, they're playing our song,' they don't mean 'Our song, this little cheap, tinkling, syncopated piece of rubbish, is what we felt when we met.' What they're saying is, 'That song reminds us of that tremendous feeling we had when we met.' Some of the songs I use are great anyway, but the cheaper songs are still in the direct line of descent from David's Psalms. They're saying, 'Listen, the world isn't quite like this, the world is better than this, there is love in it,' 'There's you and me in it,' or 'The sun is shining in it.' So-called dumb people, simple people, uneducated people, have as authentic and profound depth of feeling as the most educated on earth. Anyone who says different is a fascist.

Intimacy The woman in the cafe making my cappuccino — dark eyes, dyed red hair, sleeveless black turtleneck — used to be lovers with the man I’m seeing now. She doesn’t know me; we’re strangers, but still I can’t glance at her casually, as I used to, before I knew. She stands at the machine, sinking the nozzle into a froth of milk, staring at nothing — I don’t know what she’s thinking. For all I know she might be remembering my lover, remembering whatever happened between them — he’s never told me, except to say that it wasn’t important, and then he changed the subject quickly, too quickly now that I think about it; might he, after all, have been lying, didn’t an expression of pain cross his face for just and instant? I can’t be sure. And really it was nothing, I tell myself; there’s no reason for me to feel awkward standing here, or complicitous, as though there’s something significant between us. She could be thinking of anything; why, now, do I have the sudden suspicion that she knows, that she feels me studying her, trying to imagine them together?— her lipstick’s dark red, darker than her hair — trying to see him kissing her, turning her over in bed the way he likes to have me. I wonder if maybe there were things about her he preferred, things he misses now that we’re together; sometimes, when he and I are making love, there are moments I’m overwhelmed by sadness, and though I’m there with him I can’t help thinking of my ex-husband’s hands, which I especially loved, and I want to go back to that old intimacy, which often felt like the purest happiness I’d ever known, or would. But all that’s over; and besides, weren’t there other lovers who left no trace? When I see them now, I can barely remember what they looked like undressed, or how it felt to have them inside me. So what is it I feel as she pours the black espresso into the milk, and pushes the cup toward me, and I give her the money, and our eyes meet for just a second, and our fingers touch?

In one slick move, he shoves his phone in his pocket and grabs me so we’re in front of the cabinet. His hand slides around the back of my neck, and before I can panic, he kisses me hard. Momentarily caught off guard, I just throw my arms around his neck and press my body against his. His kiss deepens until our tongues are twisting together, and I’m reminded of just how great a kisser he is. The lights flicker on, and Grayson pulls away from me with a grunt. I’m so flustered, it takes me a few seconds to collect myself enough to see a man wearing a suit and a hotel name badge eyeing us. “Excuse me, Mr. Cole, I’m afraid this office is off-limits for guests,” he says. I glance at Grayson and have to stop myself from laughing at the shade of my lipstick he’s now wearing. Grayson doesn’t miss a beat; he just grabs my hand and tugs me across the room. “I won’t mention this if you don’t,” he says as we pass by the hotel porter. I try for a sheepish smile as we walk past him. “Sorry,” I mouth. As we make it out to the hallway, a half-smothered giggle escapes before I can stop it. “You should probably go to the men’s room before you go back to the party.” A smile creases his lipstick-smeared mouth before he swipes his hand over it. “Yeah. This isn’t really my shade.” I snort a laugh and try to laugh off the kiss. But as I head back to the party, I’m well aware that kiss has only stirred a desire for another one. Not only that but as I pull my mirror out to check my own face, I realize something I didn’t in the heat of the moment. ​There was nothing fake about that kiss.

Owen felt his mouth curve into a grin as he heard the familiar clap, clap, clap behind him. That was one of his favorite sounds—high heels on the wooden dock of the Boys of the Bayou swamp boat tour company. He took his time turning and once he did, he started at the shoes. They were black and showed off bright red toenails. The straps wrapped sexily around trim ankles and led the eye right up to smooth, toned calves. The heels matched the black polka dots on the white skirt that thankfully didn’t start until mid-thigh, and showed off more tanned skin. He straightened from his kneeling position in one of the boats as his eyes kept moving up past the skirt to the bright red belt that accentuated a narrow waist and then to the silky black tank that molded to a pair of perfect breasts. He was fully anticipating her lips being bright red to go with that belt and her toenail polish. God, he loved red lipstick. And high heels. In any color. But before he could get to those lips, she used them, to say, “Oh, dammit, it’s you.” Owen’s gaze bypassed her mouth to fly to her eyes. Because he’d know that voice anywhere. Madison Allain was home. A day early. Not that an extra day would have helped him prepare. He’d been thinking about her visit for a week and was still as wound tight about it as he’d been when Sawyer, his business partner and cousin, had told him that she was coming home. For a month. Owen stood just watching her, fighting back all of the first words that he was tempted to say. Like, “Damn, you’re even more gorgeous than the last time I saw you.” Or, “I haven’t put anyone in the hospital lately.” Or, “I’ve missed you so fucking much.” Just for instance.

And here’s what I realize: she would never wear mittens shaped like kittens or a dress with a Peter Pan collar. She would never say, Love your dress, if she fucking hated your dress. She would never say, How are you? if she didn’t care how you were. She would never eat a lavender cupcake that tasted like perfume or wear a perfume that made her smell like a cupcake. She would never wear lip balm for cosmetic purposes. She would never wear it unless her lips were seriously, seriously cracked. And even if they were, she’d still put Lady Danger on them, which is the name of her lipstick, this bright blue-red that looks surreally beautiful on her but when I tried it on once made me look insane. Her perfume smells like rain and smoke and her eye makeup scares small children and she wears pumps even though she’s at least two inches taller than I am and I’m a freak. Why? Because life is shorter than we are, she says, so why beat around the bush?

Perhaps I am like you. I love the byways, the tiny adventures, the faces that smile for an instant and are gone, a little boy with his face between the railings of a fence, watching the shoes go by. What is he thinking about? The people and their joys and sorrows? No way, he is seeing the shoes, shoes that tramp, limp, scuffle along, and perhaps his greatest concern is the tiny bug they might step on. It is probably the true meaning of compassionate, wondering about people's passions, thier feelings. Passion, one of the loveliest words in the language, one of the most misunderstood. One can have a love for so many things, but novelists sometimes overwork the word. Perhaps one can have a passionate belief, but not a passionate love for a car or asparagus. Passion is private, gentle, consuming, understanding and personal. It expresses so many things but does not belong to lipstick. It is in nature, pictures, people, always people. I suppose compassion begins when you watch the shoes and worry about the bug.

I know he’s had his problems in the past… “He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!” “I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.” “What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently. She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.” “Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!” “You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why. He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?” She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.” “Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.” “I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.” He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before. Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him. He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard. “Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper. “Wh…what?” she stammered. His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off limits. Period. He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her. “Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

Do you ever feel like you are giving far fewer fucks and yet still caring so much it sometimes feels like there is only the most tissue-thin layer separating your soul from this world? Like your heart may be broken but your spirit is still rising? Are you refusing to conform and somehow still fitting just right? Able to look people right in the eye without apology and also like you’re a teenager again, bashful and blushing and off-kilter, like that moment when lips unexpectedly pressed against your head and face buried in your hair fingers trailed down y our arm, the way your stomach can flip-flop like that, even now. Do you ever walk on purpose even when you have nowhere to go? Do you notice things deeply, like dark red lipstick prints on pristine white coffee mugs? Like the way whiskey burns and cool white sheets feel against your skin at the end of the day? Are you claiming your identity, clear and strong and true, and also sinking into the vast unknowable mystery of your all? Do your days feel like longing and acquiescence and learning to stop grasping at things that are ready to leave or that choose not to come closer? Are you making a home of your own skin and inviting the world inside? Are you learning that cultivating solid boundaries and driving into a wide open horizon both feel like freedom, like the harsh desert mountains and the soft ocean wisdom and the road to healing that joins the two? Does it all feels like solidity, like truth, like forgiveness and recklessness and heat and sexy and holy, all rolled up together? Do you crave the burn of heat from another and the for nothing to be louder than sound of your own heartbeat, all at once? Do you finally know that you can choose a love and a life that does not break you? That you can claim a softer beauty and a kinder want. That even your animal hunger can soften its rough edges and say a full-throated yes to what is good and kind and holy. Do you remember that insanity is not a prerequisite for passion and that there is another pathway to your art, one that does not demand your pain as payment for its own becoming? Are you learning to show up? To take up space? To feel the power? Is it full of contradiction, does it feel like fire underwater, are you rising to sing?

At first, I didn’t know who Other People were, nor did I understand how concerned I should be about their perception of my actions good, bad, or otherwise. But I spent so much time with my grandmother, and she spent so much time talking about Other People, I eventually had some idea about the bad things they might say about me. They might say my clothes are too big, or small, or maybe even that they look old. If I’m hypervigilant about my personal hygiene, they might tell others about the time I used to stink. They might not be there for me. They might not love me. My grandmother didn’t see this as gossiping or being critical. She thought she was being helpful. Her fearful desire not to be “talked about” expressed itself as a constant monitoring of Other People’s behaviors and presentations of themselves, and she offered swift judgment whether the behavior or presentation was good or bad. Most were bad. This frustrated her to no end. Why weren’t people more careful? What kind of woman left the house without wearing lipstick? How could anyone let themselves get that fat? Who raised them? Who let them become this way? Didn’t they know Other People would talk about them?

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

Knowing Chris was getting married, his fellow Team members decided that they had to send him off with a proper SEAL bachelor party. That meant getting him drunk, of course. It also meant writing all over him with permanent markers-an indelible celebration, to be sure. Fortunately, they liked him, so his face wasn’t marked up-not by them, at least; he’d torn his eyebrow and scratched his lip during training. Under his clothes, he looked quite the sight. And the words wouldn’t come off no matter how he, or I scrubbed. I pretended to be horrified, but honestly, that didn’t bother me much. I was just happy to have him with me, and very excited to be spending the rest of my life with the man I loved. It’s funny, the things you get obsessed about. Days before the wedding, I spent forty-five minutes picking out exactly the right shape of lipstick, splurging on expensive cosmetics-then forgot to take it with me the morning of the wedding. My poor sister and mom had to run to Walgreens for a substitute; they came back with five different shades, not one of which matched the one I’d picked out. Did it matter? Not at all, although I still remember the vivid marks the lipstick made when I kissed him on the cheek-marking my man. Lipstick, location, time of day-none of that mattered in the end. What did matter were our families and friends, who came in for the ceremony. Chris liked my parents, and vice versa. I truly loved his mom and dad. I have a photo from that day taped near my work area. My aunt took it. It’s become my favorite picture, an accidental shot that captured us perfectly. We stand together, beaming, with an American flag in the background. Chris is handsome and beaming; I’m beaming at him, practically glowing in my white gown. We look so young, happy, and unworried about what was to come. It’s that courage about facing the unknown, the unshakable confidence that we’d do it together, that makes the picture so precious to me. It’s a quality many wedding photos possess. Most couples struggle to make those visions realities. We would have our struggles as well.