Pill Head Quotes

I raise my left arm and twist my neck down to rip off the pill on my sleeve. Instead my teeth sink into flesh. I yank my head back in confusion to find myself looking into Peeta’s eyes, only now they hold my gaze. Blood runs from the teeth marks on the hand he clamped over my nightlock. “Let me go!” I snarl at him, trying to wrest my arm from his grasp. “I can’t,” he says.

What is it with science these days? Everyone is so quick to believe in it, in all these new scientific discoveries, new pills for this, new pills for that. Get thinner, grow hair, yada, yada, yada, but when it requires a little faith in something you all go crazy.' He shook his head, 'If miracles had chemical equations then everyone would believe.

Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.

She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me.

I can’t function here anymore. I mean in life: I can’t function in this life. I’m no better off than when I was in bed last night, with one difference: when I was in my own bed—or my mom’s—I could do something about it; now that I’m here I can’t do anything. I can’t ride my bike to the Brooklyn Bridge; I can’t take a whole bunch of pills and go for the good sleep; the only thing I can do is crush my head in the toilet seat, and I still don’t even know if that would work. They take away your options and all you can do is live, and it’s just like Humble said: I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of living. I was afraid before, but I’m afraid even more now that I’m a public joke. The teachers are going to hear from the students. They’ll think I’m trying to make an excuse for bad work.

In light of my distanced telescopic exposure to the mayhem, I refused to plagiarise others’ personal tragedies as my own. There is an authorship in misery that costs more than empathy. Often I’d found myself dumbstruck in failed attempts to simulate that particular unfamiliar dolour. After all, no one takes pleasure in being possessed by a wailing father collecting the decapitated head of his innocent six year old. Even on the hinge of a willing attempt at full empathy with those cursed with such catastrophes, one had to have a superhuman emotional powers. I could not, in any way, claim the ability to relate to those who have been forced to swallow the never-ending bitter and poisonous pills of our inherited misfortune. Yet that excruciating pain in my chest seemed to elicit a state of agony in me, even from far behind the telescope. It could have been my tribal gene amplified by the ripple effect of the falling, moving in me what was left of my humanity.

I live in the borderlands. The word ghost sounds like memory. The word therapy means exorcism. My visions echo and multiplymultiply. I don't know how to figure out what they mean. I can't tell where they start or if they will end. But I know this. If they shrink my head any more, or float me away on an ocean of pills, I will never return.

When you're on the other side of it," she says, "fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes." She tips her head back and swallows the pill. "Just like when you're young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.

Looking down on it from the helicopter, with a bottle of Jack in my left hand, a bag of pills in my right hand, and a blond head bobbing up and doen in my lap, I felt like the king of the world.

It does not matter that the “intentions” of individual educators were noble. Forget about intentions. What any institution, or its agents, “intend” for you is secondary. Our world is physical. Learn to play defense—ignore the head and keep your eyes on the body. Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of “personal responsibility” in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility. The point of this language of “intention” and “personal responsibility” is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.

You got a problem with the Pill?” he asked. I shook my head. “Only taking hormones when I’m not having sex regularly.” “Jussy, you’re gonna be having sex regularly.

I don't mean to sound like a spoiled brat. I know that into every sunny life a little rain must fall and all that, but in my case, the crisis-level hysteria is an all-too-recurring theme. The voices inside my head, which I used to think were just passing through, seem to have taken up residence And I've been on these goddamn pills for years.

Dust sleeping on your bookshelf and all your plants are drying out you are too busy to save yourself is your mind heading for burnout? Coffee rings on your bedside table anxiety pills under your pillowcase working round the clock to foot the bill is there no time for breakfast these days? Friends haven't seen you in a while your phone is always out of reach you're slowly forgetting how to smile is your silence a figure of speech? Life can sometimes seem to be unfair but hoping is better than you think send the message in a bottle if you dare is it so hard to not force yourself to sink?

Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was having with myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.

The American College of Sports Medicine found that the productivity of people after exercise was an average of 65 percent higher than those who did not exercise. If I have something that's really bothering me, so much that it almost hurts my head to try to sort it out, I always find the solution in a puddle of sweat! Intense exercise is like taking a magic pill that gives you the ability to solve problems like a superhero.

All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” MY POINT EXACTLY. She tried to assemble her thoughts. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT. “Yes, but people don’t think about that,” said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed…” CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A…A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. “Talent?” OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS. “You make us sound mad,” said Susan. A nice warm bed… NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death

The door is cracked We used to meet like water does land no not that more like when skin touches skin kissing fingertips or when air escapes a lung and is felt across the world I've leapt over cracks in sidewalks and swallowed away troublesome back pains that could only be fixed with someone else's pills We met by your house one stray day and you drove me to the bay where we sat and kissed like it was yesterday And here you told me that you loved me and that you always loved me and that you would always love me the wind blew and I held you You rested your head on my shoulder and the wind blew warm Later, in your big red truck, we smoked some green and I kissed you harder and held your breasts, and felt between your legs and with a gasp you told me you were in love with me And then you drove me back and we promised it wouldn't be the end not this time The quill and inkwell on your foot I'm a writer and you are my greatest art I returned to my hell and dreamt of you once more

quiet clean girls in gingham dresses ... all I've ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen. I see men with quiet, gentle women – I see them in the supermarkets, I see them walking down the streets together, I see them in their apartments: people at peace, living together. I know that their peace is only partial, but there is peace, often hours and days of peace. all I've ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics, whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen. when one leaves another arrives worse than her predecessor. I see so many men with quiet clean girls in gingham dresses girls with faces that are not wolverine or predatory. "don't ever bring a whore around," I tell my few friends, "I'll fall in love with her." "you couldn't stand a good woman, Bukowski." I need a good woman. I need a good woman more than I need this typewriter, more than I need my automobile, more than I need Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I can taste her in the air, I can feel her at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built for her feet to walk upon, I can see pillows for her head, I can feel my waiting laughter, I can see her petting a cat, I can see her sleeping, I can see her slippers on the floor. I know that she exists but where is she upon this earth as the whores keep finding me?

But since death is inevitable we don’t have to deal with it (it’ll deal with us when it decides to). What we do have to deal with is the psychic, physical, and fusion diseases wrought during our so-called lives as byproducts of the elemental clash. In other words we’re all terminally psychotic and no doctor, hospital, pill, needle, book or guru holds the cure. Because the disease is called life and there is no cure for that but death and death’s just part of the set-up designed to keep you terrified and thus in bondage from the cradle to the crypt so ha ha the joke’s on you except there’s no punchline and the comedian forgot you ever existed as even a comma.

He (Tom Riley) gestured toward the canvases in the main room. "What are they, really? I mean, no bullshit. Because - I wouldn't say this to very many people - they remind me of the way life was inside my head when I wasn't taking my pills." "They're just make-believe," I (Edgar) said. "Shadows." "I know about shadows," he said. "You just want to be careful they don't grow teeth. Because they can. Then, sometimes when you reach for the light-switch to make them go away, you discover the power's out.

I currently take Lortab, which is a combination of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. I’d rather not take this medication, or any medication for that matter, but it is the only one that controls my pain adequately enough to allow me to function on a daily basis... I take the smallest dose possible to enable me to remain as clear-headed as possible to do what I need to do each day... Even with the minimal opioids I take, I still have pain all the time, 24 hours a day; without opioids, life would be torture.

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.

Perhaps it's something other than insomnia, to lie listening to children yelling as if they've re-created light; to try to dream, but succeed only in remembering; to toss and sweat in a dirty paste of sheets, while the drone of a ball game is gradually replaced by the buzz of a fly -- a fly buzzing like the empty frequencies between stations as its shadow grows enormous between the shade and windowpane. Is it insomnia for a man to wad his ears with the cotton from a pill bottle, to mask his eyes with blinders, and press a stale pillow over his head, praying for another day to burn down, so he can wake into another night?

The Doper's Dream Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in To a bubblin' hookah so high, When all of a sudden some Arab jinni Jump up just a-winkin' his eye. 'I'm here to obey all your wishes,' he told me. As for words I was trying to grope. 'Good buddy,' I cried, 'you could surely oblige me By turning me on to some dope!' With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand, And we flew down the sky in a flash, And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me Was a whole solid mountain of hash! All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills, Whur the Romilar River flowed by, To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow, So pretty that I wanted to cry. All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion, Mourning glories woven into their hair, Bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine, All their dope they were eager to share. We we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin', In the flowering Panama Red, Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea, And those brownies so kind to your head. Now I could've passed that good time forever, And I really was fixing to stay, But you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man, And he busted me right whur I lay. And he took me back to a cold, cold world 'N' now m'prison's whurever I be... And I dream of the days back in Doperland And I wonder, will I ever go free?

RONNIE CUTRONE: I loved Jim Morrison dearly, but Jim was not fun to go out with. I hung out with him every night for just about a year, and Jim would go out, lean up against the bar, order eight screwdrivers, put down six Tuinals on the bar, drink two or three screwdrivers, take two Tuinals, then he’d have to pee, but he couldn’t leave the other five screwdrivers, so he’d take his dick out and pee, and some girl would come up and blow his dick, and then he’d finish the other five screwdrivers and then he’d finish up the other four Tuinals, and then he’d pee in his pants, and then Eric Emerson and I would take him home. That was a typical night out with Jim. But when he was on acid, then Jim was really fun and great. But most of the time he was just a lush pill head. RAY MANZAREK: Jim was a shaman.

My tongue ran over my lower lip and I could taste the sin. It was thick and heavy in the air, and it made my head swim as I gazed into Abel's ocean-colored eyes. I wondered whether he tasted it too, whether his heart was pounding in his chest. I wondered most of all if it was artificial - a haze of adoration brought on by the pills. It had been so long since I'd wanted that; I didn't trust my own thoughts, but if felt too good to care.

Filip was from San Jose, but his painfully good looks excused that. He was tall, six-foot-something-or-other, intensely blue eyes, chiseled features, massive package. Didn't have Prince Albert in a Can, but he did have a thick gauged one through his cock head. His name really wasn’t Filip, it was Brent, an all-American moniker about as dark and mysterious as pastel-colored bobby socks. Initially, I joked about his choice of sobriquet, changing his name to go off to the big city, transform into Mr. Big Stuff, until it dawned on me I’d done the same damn thing with my ‘Catalyst’ surname. So I shut up. He comported himself with rigid shoulders and stiff gestures, as if he had a secret. Turns out he did. Filip was married, had a wife for more than a year now, but they had some kind of crazy arrangement. Days they were a couple; evenings they were free to do as they pleased. Where’d they come up with that idea, Jerry Springer?

 “If you wanted to go back to your place, we could,” Filip suggested. “But only until dawn.” Yeah, right. An affair is an affair, the way I see it. What difference is there between 5 and 7 a.m.? Was their marriage some sort of religious fasting thing, starve until the sun sets then binge and party down? I'd never sunk my teeth into married meat, but figured it was a logical progression from my I'm Not Gay But It's Different With You saga. And if I was going to sin, I was gonna sin good. That means no peeking to see whether it’s still dark outside.

yes at first you go down smooth as pills, all of me breathes you in and then it's a kick in the head, orange and brutal, sharp jewels hit and my hair splinters

I do not subscribe to the philosophy that there has to be a pill for every ill. I firmly believe there is a better way—it's called prevention.

I bolt my body whenever I get the chance. How many pills does it take to fall asleep? How many to meet the dead?

He popped a couple of pills when he was done and sat with his arms propped behind his head. “So. What’d I miss? I hear we do foursomes now?

You... didn't use the knockout pills, I take it?" he finally asked, staring out into the void. I shook my head. He sat down and we spilt the last Twinkie. "You realise we just sent a herd of flying pigs soaring out over medieval Wales," I said, sometime later, when the last little oinking cloud had disappeared over the horizon. "Hm." "You don't look too concerned." Rosier got to his feet and then actually extended a hand to help me up. "Maybe it will give the Pythias something else to do. And in any case......" "In any case?" " Well. The expression had to start somewhere, didn't it?

Behaviors may shift temporarily, but the core issues will remain. The feelings will also shift and change every day. After your time served, and years spent trying to make it work, it can be quite galling to have your partner pick up and leave. Many times, the narcissist does decide to head out for greener pastures— typically a new partner—and even though getting rid of him is ultimately healthier and better for you, it still stings. The sting of being rejected. The sting of not feeling good enough. The sting that no matter how hard you tried, it was never enough. While that has nothing to do with you, it is a difficult pill to swallow when they decide to pack it in and leave.

Is there a pill for when the image of a trumpet vine comes into your head? Will it erase it? Erase the voice saying, You should kiss me like it’s good-bye? Erase the tuxedo jacket, or at least the face above it? Erase the whole nine years?

It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is . . . I don’t know . . . weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.” “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It’s like a demon inside of you; you’ll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a—I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting.” “Yeah,” I said. “One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.” She turned to her computer, shook her mouse to wake it up, and then clicked an image on her desktop. “I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

You... didn't use the knockout pills, I take it?" he finally asked, staring out into the void. I shook my head. He sat down and we spilt the last Twinkie. "You realise we just sent a herd of flying pigs soaring out over medieval Wales," I said, sometime later, when the last little oinking cloud had disappeared over the horizon. "Hm." "You don't look too concerned." Rosier got to his feet and then actually extended a hand to help me up. "Maybe it will give the Pythias something else to do. And in any case......" "I any case?" " Well. The expression had to start somewhere, didn't it?

Good night,” I whisper to the bow in my hand and feel it go still. I raise my left arm and twist my neck down to rip off the pill on my sleeve. Instead my teeth sink into flesh. I yank my head back in confusion to find myself looking into Peeta’s eyes, only now they hold my gaze. Blood runs from the teeth marks on the hand he clamped over my nightlock. “Let me go!” I snarl at him, trying to wrest my arm from his grasp. “I can’t,” he says. As they pull me away from him, I feel the pocket ripped from my sleeve, see the deep violet pill fall to the ground, watch Cinna’s last gift get crunched under a guard’s boot.

The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!' He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the Police!' He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!' He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!' He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!' He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. 'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!' He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!' He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!' He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!

Guilt was a thorny carpet Laid on the ground I walked on. Repent and redeem, No vile soul feels a disesteem. Whispers filling my head, Too loud to ignore, Pills upon pills I swallowed them all, For a brief stolen moment, I dove into an ocean of a blissfully quiet oblivion. A hollow elm, A wingless butterfly, A shadow of what was once I.

JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life: 1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her? 2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details? 3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill? Or do as many mothers before you did—just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent. Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-school R-rated movies easily accessed on the TV, not to mention the Starr Report! In the days of fairy tales, sex was dangerous because so many women died in childbirth. Today sex is again dangerous because of diseases like AIDS. So what do we say?

She was back in three minutes just to tell me that she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t get a little nutty from time to time, but she felt she was past the pill period, and then she headed back toward the beach, a lissome broad in her mirrored sunglasses, walking on good legs, and she was far younger than her years, yet old as the sea she approached.

He knows her relationships are complicated. He knows whose calls she takes and which ones she ignores. He knows, as her doctor doesn’t know, that she isn’t taking her pills. He knows that she hears her mother’s voice in her head and sometimes she loses her own voice inside it; he knows she finds it again when he takes her face in his hands and says: Are you in there?

Depression goes through stages, but if left unchecked and not treated, this elevator ride will eventually go all the way to the bottom floor. And finally you find yourself bereft of choices, unable to figure out a way up or out, and pretty soon one overarching impulse begins winning the battle for your mind: “Kill yourself.” And once you get over the shock of those words in your head, the horror of it, it begins to start sounding appealing, even possessing a strange resolve, logic. In fact, it’s the only thing you have left that is logical. It becomes the only road to relief. As if just the planning of it provides the first solace you’ve felt that you can remember. And you become comfortable with it. You begin to plan it and contemplate the details of how best to do it, as if you were planning travel arrangements for a vacation. You just have to get out. O-U-T. You see the white space behind the letter O? You just want to crawl through that O and be out of this inescapable hurt that is this thing they call clinical depression. “How am I going to do this?” becomes the only tape playing. And if you are really, really, really depressed and you’re really there, you’re gonna find a way. I found a way. I had a way. And I did it. I made sure Opal was out of the house and on a business trip. My planning took a few weeks. I knew exactly how I was going to do it: I didn’t want to make too much of a mess. There was gonna be no blood, no drama. There was just going to be, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” That’s what it was going to be. So I did it. And it was over. Or so I thought. About twenty-four hours later I woke up. I was groggy; zoned out to the point at which I couldn’t put a sentence together for the next couple of days. But I was semifunctional, and as these drugs and shit that I took began to wear off slowly but surely, I realized, “Okay, I fucked up. I didn’t make it.” I thought I did all the right stuff, left no room for error, but something happened. And this perfect, flawless plan was thwarted. As if some force rebuked me and said, “Not yet. You’re not going anywhere.” The only reason I could have made it, after the amount of pills and alcohol and shit I took, was that somebody or something decided it wasn’t my time. It certainly wasn’t me making that call. It was something external. And when you’re infused with the presence of this positive external force, which is so much greater than all of your efforts to the contrary, that’s about as empowering a moment as you can have in your life. These days we have a plethora of drugs one can take to ameliorate the intensity of this lack of hope, lack of direction, lack of choice. So fuck it and don’t be embarrassed or feel like you can handle it yourself, because lemme tell ya something: you can’t. Get fuckin’ help. The negative demon is strong, and you may not be as fortunate as I was. My brother wasn’t. For me, despair eventually gave way to resolve, and resolve gave way to hope, and hope gave way to “Holy shit. I feel better than I’ve ever felt right now.” Having actually gone right up to the white light, looked right at it, and some force in the universe turned me around, I found, with apologies to Mr. Dylan, my direction home. I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt. I’m not exaggerating when I say for the next six months I felt like Superman. Like I’m gonna fucking go through walls. That’s how strong I felt. I had this positive force in me. I was saved. I was protected. I was like the only guy who survived and walked away from a major plane crash. I was here to do something big. What started as the darkest moment in my life became this surge of focus, direction, energy, and empowerment.

It's all that's left,' Leon said in a suddenly weak voice. 'It's what is left of civilization. You take raw material and you transform it. That is civilization. Physical love is all raw meat. That's why everyone's so preoccupied with it now. I have been told by a colleague ten years older than myself--as if it were possible for anybody to be ten years older than I am--that salvation comes from staring at the pubic region of strangers, and freedom, from inducing in myself, by the use of a chemical, the kind of ecstatic lunacy in which I spent most of my adolescence, a condition I attribute solely to the strength of my body at that time and the conviction I had then that I would see socialism in the United States during my lifetime. Now that my bones are weak, my brain is stronger. I don't expect . . . anything. But I cannot bear the grotesque, lying piety of my own unhinged contemporaries. One man, a literary star'--and here he broke off, laughed once, choked and shook his head--'oh, yes, a star, told me he only regretted the pill had not yet been developed in his own youth. All those girls who might have been his! In this age of generalized cock, is this the whole revelation toward which my life has been directed? I would, in any case, prefer to contemplate the organ of a horse. It is handsomer, larger and more comic than anything my fellow man has to show. It is the age of baby shit, darling. Don't kid yourself. My privacy has been violated--what I've admired and thought about all my life has been debased. Poor bodies . . . poor evil-smiling gross flesh. Perhaps we're going downhill, all of us.' He reached out and pressed her shoulder. 'Do you understand me?' he asked.

Movement offers us pleasure, identity, belonging and hope. It puts us in places that are good for us, whether that's outdoors in nature, in an environment that challenges us, or with a supportive community. It allows us to redefine ourselves and reimagine what is possible. It makes social connection easier and self-transcendence possible. Each of these benefits can be realized through other means. There are multiple paths to discovery and many ways to build community. Happiness can be found in any number of roles and pastimes; solace can be taken in poetry, prayer or art. Exercise need not replace any of these other sources of meaning and joy. Yet physical activity stands out in its ability to fulfill so many human needs, and that makes it worth considering as a fundamentally valuable endeavour. It is as if what is good in us is most easily activated or accessed through movement. As rower Kimberley Sogge put it, when she described to me why the Head of the Charles Regatta was such a peak experience, "The highest spirit of humanity gets to come out." Ethicist Sigmund Loland came to a similar conclusion, declaring that an exercise pill would be a poor substitute for physical activity. As he wrote, "Rejecting exercise means rejecting significant experiences of being human.

ASSIMILATION We never unpacked, dreaming in the wrong language, carrying our mother’s fears in our feet— if he raises his voice we will flee if he looks bored we will pack our bags unable to excise the refugee from our hearts, unable to sleep through the night. The refugee’s heart has six chambers. In the first is your mother’s unpacked suitcase. In the second, your father cries into his hands. The third room is an immigration office, your severed legs in the fourth, in the fifth a uterus—yours? The sixth opens with the right papers. I can’t get the refugee out of my body, I bolt my body whenever I get the chance. How many pills does it take to fall asleep? How many to meet the dead? The refugee’s heart often grows an outer layer. An assimilation. It cocoons the organ. Those unable to grow the extra skin die within the first six months in a host country. At each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked are you human? The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight, while it slept, there may have been a change in classification.

RECIPE FOR MAKING WONKA-VITE Take a block of finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is the easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hot furnace. When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Now add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next: THE HOOF OF A MANTICORE THE TRUNK (AND THE SUITCASE) OF AN ELEPHANT THE YOLKS OF THREE EGGS FROM A WHIFFLE-BIRD A WART FROM A WART-HOG THE HORN OF A COW (IT MUST BE A LOUD HORN) THE FRONT TAIL OF A COCKATRICE SIX OUNCES OF SPRUNGE FROM A YOUNG SLIMESCRAPER TWO HAIRS (AND ONE RABBIT) FROM THE HEAD OF A HIPPOCAMPUS THE BEAK OF A RED-BREASTED WILBATROSS A CORN FROM THE TOE OF A UNICORN THE FOUR TENTACLES OF A QUADROPUS THE HIP (AND THE PO AND THE POT) OF A HIPPOPOTAMUS THE SNOUT OF A PROGHOPPER A MOLE FROM A MOLE THE HIDE (AND THE SEEK) OF A SPOTTED WHANGDOODLE THE WHITES OF TWELVE EGGS FROM A TREE-SQUEAK THE THREE FEET OF A SNOZZ-WANGER (IF YOU CAN’T GET THREE FEET, ONE YARD WILL DO) THE SQUARE-ROOT OF A SOUTH AMERICAN ABACUS THE FANGS OF A VIPER (IT MUST BE A VINDSCREEN VIPER) THE CHEST (AND THE DRAWERS) OF A WILD GROUT When all the above are thoroughly dissolved, boil for a further twenty-seven days but do not stir. At the end of this time, all liquid will have evaporated and there will be left in the bottom of the cauldron only a hard brown lump about the size of a football. Break this open with a hammer and in the very centre of it you will find a small round pill. This pill is WONKA-VITE.

How did you sleep?” Why was he asking me that? How did he know about my insomnia? What kind of head games was Maurice trying to play? “Remember, last year I didn’t sleep so good,” he continued. “Yeah, I remember that. And this year?” “This year, I slept just fine.” “Josh needed sleeping pills,” said Ben helpfully. “Yeah, well, they’re basically a placebo, right?” “I tried to take sleeping pills one time in practice, and I fell asleep the next morning memorizing numbers,” said Maurice. “You know, lack of sleep is the enemy of memory.” “Oh.” “Anyway, good luck today.” “Yeah, good luck to you, too.

He rolled and thrashed in his bed, waiting for the dancing blue shadows to come in his window, waiting for the heavy knock on his door, waiting for some bodiless, Kafkaesque voice to call: Okay, open up in there! And when he finally fell asleep he did it without knowing it, because thought continued without a break, shifting from conscious rumination to the skewed world of dreams with hardly a break, like a car going from drive to low. Even in his dreams he thought he was awake, and in his dreams he committed suicide over and over: burned himself; bludgeoned himself by standing under an anvil and pulling a rope; hanged himself; blew out the stove’s pilot lights and then turned on the oven and all four burners; shot himself; defenestrated himself; stepped in front of a moving Greyhound bus; swallowed pills; swallowed Vanish toilet bowl disinfectant; stuck a can of Glade Pine Fresh aerosol in his mouth, pushed the button, and inhaled until his head floated off into the sky like a child’s balloon; committed hara-kiri while kneeling in a confessional at St. Dom’s, confessing his self-murder to a dumbfounded young priest even as his guts accordioned out onto the bench like beef stew, performing an act of contrition in a fading, bemused voice as he lay in his blood and the steaming sausages of his intestines. But most vividly, over and over, he saw himself behind the wheel of the LTD, racing the engine a little in the closed garage, taking deep breaths and leafing through a copy of National Geographic, examining pictures of life in Tahiti and Aukland and the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, turning the pages ever more slowly, until the sound of the engine faded to a faraway sweet hum and the green waters of the South Pacific inundated him in rocking warmth and took him down to a silver fathom.

You are loved. You might have heard that a million times, but it's no less true. You do have a Creator. He is with you. He is bigger than your situation and closer than your deepest hurt. He's not mad. He is cheering for you and rooting for you this very second. He's okay about all the things before. He sent His Son for that very reason. You can put down the blade. You can throw away the pills. You can quit replaying those regrets in your head. You can quit the inner-loop of self-condemnation. You can forget your ex. You can walk away from the porn. You can resolve your conflicts right now. You can sign up to volunteer at that shelter. You can thank your parents for everything. You can hug the person next to you. You can tell the waiter, "Jesus loves you." You can go back to church. You don't have to sit in the back. You don't have to prove your worth to the people you've let down. You don't have to live up to everyone else's vision for your life. You're finally, finally free. You are loved. I am loved. As much as I love you, dear friend, He loves you infinitely more. Believe it. Walk in it. Walk with Him. God is in the business of breathing life into hurting places. This is what He does, even for the least likely like you and me.

Early on, he tried to get the government help and all they gave him was some sleeping pills, so fuck the government [..] There are these things going over his head. Still he tries: eventually gets the wife, the home, the kids, the farm. He wants to be alone, but she wants to settle down and farmi with him, so he tries to want to settle down too. Stuff he remembers easygoing Les wanting ten, fifteen years back, before Vietnam, he tries to want again. The trouble is, he can't really feel for these folks. He's sitting in the kitchen and he's eating with them and there's nothing. No way he can go from that to this. Yet still he tries. A couple times in the middle of the night he wakes up chocking her, but it isn't his fault - it's the government fault.

--Your headache-- I am trying to imagine it Your head is in your hands The nurse is pouring pills onto a plate November again Too late Your headache It is a bird Wounded, in leaves Its sweet bird’s nest is full of pain in a distant place November There are daisies In the ruined garden, still blooming strangely And in a manic yellow hat, the old lady And the old man, dead in his bed And their daughter, the saint: Her dark, religious hair gets tangled in the branches She is screaming, grabbing While the nurses play Mozart in another room While the bats fly over the roof Snatch the black notes from the blackness Laughing You cry I am going to die I can see them through this window Their little black capes The touching ugliness of their little faces

I’m just getting to the good stuff (Cressida must seduce Nigel to gain access to the spy codes!) when Josh walks out of his house to get the mail. He sees me too; he lifts his hand like he’s just going to wave and not come over, but then he does. “Hey, nice onesie,” he says as he makes his way across the driveway. It’s faded light blue with sunflowers and it ties around the neck. I got it from the vintage store, 75 percent off. And it’s not a onesie. “This is a sunsuit,” I tell him, going back to my book. I try to subtly hide the cover with my hand. The last thing I need is Josh giving me a hard time for reading a trashy book when I’m just trying to enjoy a relaxing afternoon. I can feel him looking at me, his arms crossed, waiting. I look up. “What?” “Wanna see a movie tonight at the Bess? There’s a Pixar movie playing. We can take Kitty.” “Sure, text me when you want to head over,” I say, turning the page of my book. Nigel is unbuttoning Cressida’s blouse and she’s wondering when the sleeping pill she slipped in his Merlot will kick in, while simultaneously hoping it won’t kick in too soon, because Nigel is actually quite a good kisser. Josh reaches down and tries to get a closer look at my book. I slap his hand away, but not before he reads out loud, “Cressida’s heart raced as Nigel moved his hand along her stockinged thigh.” Josh cracks up. “What the heck are you reading?” My cheeks are burning. “Oh, be quiet.” Chuckling, Josh backs away. “I’ll leave you to Cressida and Noel then.” To his back, I call out, “For your information, it’s Nigel!

Girls seemed to have it easy in comparison. They mostly stood there in blue frocks or tight jeans or frilly skirts or whatever and handed out judgement, like flocks of Caesars in lipstick, crushing my fledging ego with their precious thumbs. And just like Caesar, they never seemed to earn the right to do that, it was theirs by birth. Who had decided this? I sure was never consulted. I had no choice, forced to bury my head in a game I had never agreed to join. I resented girls for it, and that cost me dearly. It nearly crippled me for life. But the winds of power were beginning to shift now. Just as those girls were becoming women, approaching the big 30 and being overtaken by a new batch of free riders, I was starting to get noticed. Time was a great leveller, and time was here.

Sometimes we think and worry nonstop. It’s like having a cassette tape continually turning in our minds. When we leave the television set on for a long time, it becomes hot. Our head also gets hot from all our thinking. When we can’t stop, we may be unable to sleep well. Even if we take a sleeping pill, we continue to run, think, and worry in our dreams. The alternative medicine is mindful breathing. If we practice mindful breathing for five minutes, allowing our body to rest, then we stop thinking for that time. We can use words like ‘in’ and ‘out’ to helps us be aware of our breathing. This is not thinking; these words aren’t concepts. They’re guides for mindfulness of breathing. When we think too much, the quality of our being is reduced. Stopping the thinking, we increase the quality of our being. There’s more peace, relaxation, and rest.

So…it wasn’t love at first sight then? With Dad? You fell in love later?” I don’t know why I feel disappointed. I don’t even believe in love at first sight. Except where it applies to my parents being perfect for each other. And anyways, isn’t that a kind of child-myth that all kids want to believe? “Sweetie…It was never love.” Screw disappointment. Now I feel gut-kicked. “What do you mean? But you had to…Then how did I…?” Mom sighs. “You were…the result of a moment of…weakness on my part.” But she takes too long to choose her words. I wonder what she thought of first, instead of “weakness.” Pity? Stupidity? She dabs her napkin at some imaginary syrup at the corner of her mouth. “The only weak moment we ever had, which is kind of extraordinary. Not that I regret it at all,” she says quickly. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything. You know that, right?” I wonder if “I wouldn’t trade you for anything” is also a child-myth. “So I was an accident. Not even the normal kind of accident. Like, a one-night stand, or a oops-I-didn’t-take-my-pill accident. I was an oops-I-accidentally-mated-with-my-first-experiment accident.” I put my head in my hands. “Lovely.” “That man loved you, Emma, from the moment you were born. He’d be very upset to hear you talking like that right now. Frankly, I am, too. I was not some experiment.” I bite my lip. “I know. It’s just…a lot, don’t you think?” “That’s why we’re going to have two pieces of strawberry pie, Agnes,” Mom says, her voice strained. I pull my stricken face from my hands and force it to smile. “Yes, please,” I say. I’m beginning to think Agnes isn’t a waitress for financial gain. I think she needs gossip to thrive. There’s no way a normal waitress would be or should be this attentive.

Potassium Cyanide si hatari inapokuwa nje. Ni hatari inapojichanganya na asidi za tumboni ambapo hubadilika na kuwa gesi ya 'hydrogen cyanide'. Gesi ya 'hydrogen cyanide' ni miongoni mwa sumu hatari zaidi ulimwenguni. Mtu akimeza kidonge cha 'cyanide' atapata madhara makubwa. Kichwa chake kitamuuma hapohapo na atachanganyikiwa akili. Ngozi yake itakuwa nyekundu, kwa sababu damu yake itakuwa nyekundu zaidi – kutokana na kuzidi kwa oksijeni katika damu. Mwili hautakuwa na uwezo tena wa kuchukua oksijeni kutoka katika damu ili uitumie, kwa hiyo damu itazidi kuwa na oksijeni zaidi. Atapumua kwa shida. Mapafu yake yatafanya kazi vizuri lakini mwili wake hautakuwa na uwezo wa kutumia oksijeni yoyote – hivyo atadhani ana matatizo katika mfumo wake wa kupumua. Atazimia. Yaani, oksijeni haitafika kwenye ubongo. Atapata kifafa na atatapika nyongo. Ubongo wake utashindwa kufanya kazi na atakuwa mahututi ndani ya sekunde kumi! Baada ya hapo moyo wake utasimama kufanya kazi, na atafariki dunia.

Stepping closer, I wiped away a tear from her cheek. “You’ll make a great mom.” “I guess we’re going to find out,” she said, melting into my arms. “I was on the pill. I can’t even do that part right.” Taking a deep breath and accepting this direction in my life, I said softly, “Don’t listen to the crap in your head. Listen to my heart. It’s known you from the beginning.” Lark tightened her grip on me. “You’re not mad.” “Why would I be mad?” “We just started dating.” “Oh, I had our whole lives planned out before you walked into my shop to fix your worm.” Lark smiled up at me. “Do you feel like I tried to trap you?” “Shit, you really have no idea how I see you. None at all. In fact, I’m happy on two levels. As the guy who wants to spend his life with you, I’m excited to think of our baby growing inside you. Plus, the caveman part of me is just excited that I beat Cooper.” Laughing, Lark nuzzled my chest. “And you knocked me up when I was on the pill. You have the mighty Thor of sperm.

He continued. “It has some severe side effects, tardive dyskinesia being the worst. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by uncontrollable grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking…” “You’ve seen those people,” the Flying Nun gravely added. She held a contorted hand up to her face, cocked her head, then shut one eye. “You obviously don’t get seasick,” I said. “Because a couple of hours of that is a day at the beach by comparison.” “Tardive dyskinesia can last forever,” he said. “Forever?” I said weakly. “The likelihood of tardive dyskinesia is about four percent,” he said. “It increases to ten percent for older women.” I blew out really hard. “Oh, man.” “I spoke to your doctor. He wrote you a prescription for a scopolamine patch for motion sickness, and Xanax for anxiety.” Xanax, I had! Bee’s battalion of doctors had always sent me home with Xanax or some sleeping pill. (Have I mentioned? I don’t sleep.) I never took them, because the one time I did, they left me nauseous and not feeling like myself. (I know, that should have been a selling point. What can I say?

Now, by all accounts, you have the perfect life: you have the high-earning husband, the rosy-cheeked children, and the Buick in the driveway. But something isn’t right. Household tasks don’t seem to hold your attention; you snarl at your children instead of blanketing them with smiles. You fret about how little you resemble those glossy women in the magazines, the ones who clean counters and bake cakes and radiate delight. (Looking at those ads, a housewife and freelance writer named Betty Friedan “thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor.”) Everything and everyone confirm that it’s just as you suspected: the problem is you. You’re oversexed, you’re undersexed, you’re overeducated, you’re unintelligent. You need to have your head shrunk; you need to take more sleeping pills. You ought to become a better cook—all those fancy new kitchen appliances!—and in the meantime be content and grateful with what you have. The cultural pressure of the 1950s was so intense that some women, in order to survive, killed off the parts of themselves that couldn’t conform.

He still has the same nightmares, ten years on. After Police College, exams, shift after shift, late nights, all his work at the station that's garnered so much praise from everyone but his dad, even more late nights, so much work that he's come to hate not working, unsteady walks home at dawn to the piles of bills in the hall and an empty bed, sleeping pills, alcohol. On nights when everything has been completely unbearable he's gone out running, mile after mile through darkness and cold and silence, his feet drumming against the pavement faster and faster, but never with the intention of getting anywhere, of accomplishing anything. Some men run like hunters, but he ran like their prey. Drained with exhaustion he would finally stagger home, then head off to work and start all over again. Sometimes a few whiskies were enough to get him to sleep, and on good mornings ice-cold showers were enough to wake him up, and in between he did whatever he could to take the edge off the hypersensitivity of his skin, stifle the tears when he felt them in his chest, long before they reached his throat and eyes. But all the while: still those same nightmares.

I pulled open the door and yelped.  The steady thump in my head increased its tempo. Clay stood just outside the door, leaning against the wall.  He held a glass of water in one hand and two pills in the other.  I tried to read his face, but he kept it perfectly blank.  I hoped that meant he wasn’t angry with me.  Desperate to relieve the pain in my head, I released my death grip on the door and gulped down the pills. When I tried handing him the empty glass, he shook his head and picked me up again.  My feet had been getting cold, anyway.  Holding the empty glass, I sighed and rested my head against his chest. He went toward my room, and I almost complained until I saw what he’d done.  He’d changed the sheets and remade the bed.  Socks, slippers, and my hairbrush lay on the quilt, waiting.  He’d known I would go for the shower and had given me privacy even though he hadn’t wanted me to get out of bed.  Not only that, but he’d gotten everything ready for when I finished. I looked at him.  He studied me, his arms still securely around me.  I leaned in, kissed his cheek tenderly, and hesitated there.  He smelled so good.  I just wanted to curl back up with him. 

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them. Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same. 'Still no movement?' the full colonel demanded. The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head. 'Give him another pill.' Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.

Condom,” she gasped. A movement stopped. “What?” Phoebe felt the earth open up in preparation of swallowing her. How could she have not mentioned this before? “I’m not on anything right now,” she whispered. “Birth control. I’m not on the Pill.” She gestured helplessly. “Shit, fuck, damn.” Disappointment tied her in knots. “I was really only interested in that middle part,” she joked. There was a second of silence, followed by a low chuckle. “You’re never predictable, Phoebe. I’ll give you that. Cross your fingers.” “What?” “Cross your fingers. I might have a condom in my shaving kit.” There was movement and rustling, then the sound of a zipper being opened. “I’m going to have to put on the light.” She briefly debated being polite and closing her eyes, but who was she kidding? She wanted to see Zane naked. In preparation, she raised up on one elbow and stared in his general direction. When the light came on, she saw all she wanted and more. He was kneeling at the end of the sleeping bag. Naked, aroused and more physically perfect than any man had a right to be. She saw the definition in his arms, the broad strength of his chest and his flat stomach before lowering her attention to his large, hard penis. The physical proof of his desire for her made her so happy, she nearly cried. Her other instinct was to part her legs, tell him never mind with birth control and protection and demand he take her right there. As that last bit was only ever going to happen in her fantasies, she contended herself with stretching out her arm and lightly grazing the tip of him with her fingers. He stiffened instantly, then turned to look at her. If she’d had any doubts about his willingness to participate, they were put to rest by the fire in his eyes and the tightness of his expression. He was a man on the sexual edge, and she couldn’t wait to push him over. He shook his head and forced his attention back to the shaving kit. At first he set the various items on the foot of the sleeping bag, but after a couple of seconds, he simply turned the container over and dumped out the contents. “Be here, be here, be here,” he muttered as he pawed through everything. Then he grabbed a square packet in triumph. “Got one.” She couldn’t help smiling. “Only one?” He grinned. “We’ll have to be creative after that.” He handed her the condom, then clicked off the light. “Where was I?” he asked. “You can pretty much be anywhere you want to be,” she told him. “Good. Then I want to be here.” He pulled off her panties in one smooth move. Then there was nothing.

The Pillowcase" is printed with iridescent fish, each facing a different direction. I bought it for you at the Portland Goodwill our last semester in college. Spring break we brought it camping. I pretended I’d eaten sardines before, pretended I liked them. I don’t remember what you said when the condom broke. Probably ‘Oh, shit.’ The next day we drove into town. I took a pill and another pill and it was over. I couldn’t tell the difference, could have told my friends but didn’t, just made lots of dead baby jokes and went to bed in your dorm room. You’d put painter’s tape on all the edges. With the pillowcase, it was like living in the blueprint of an aquarium. I slept there the night I smoked Sasha’s weed and you stayed up for hours rubbing my back, telling fairytales so I wouldn’t totally lose it. I slept there the night I tried reading you Haruki Murakami’s Sleep but fell asleep. I slept there the night after the day I lost the bet and had to wear a lampshade on my head and your professor said ‘Nice hat.’ Later I learned she owns a lamp in the shape of a woman. I slept there the night you said ‘I think I’m falling in love with you,’ igniting a great unendurable belongingness, like a match in a forest fire. I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do.

It was nothing I hadn't thought of, plenty, and in far less taxing circumstances; the urge shook me grandly and unpredictably, a poisonous whisper that never wholly left me, that on some days lingered just on the threshold of my hearing but on others roared up uncontrollably into a sort of lurid visionary frenzy, why I wasn't sure, sometimes even a bad movie or a gruesome dinner party could trigger it, short term boredom and long term pain, temporary panic and permanent desperation striking all at once and flaring up in such an ashen desolate light that I saw, really saw, looking back down the years and with all clear-headed and articulate despair, that the world and everything in it was intolerably and permanently fucked and nothing had ever been good or okay, unbearable claustrophobia of the soul, the windowless room, no way out, waves of shame and horror, leave me alone, my mother dead on a marble floor, stop it stop it, muttering aloud to myself in elevators, in cabs, leave me alone, I want to die, a cold, intelligent, self-immolating fury that had-- more than once-- driven me upstairs in a resolute fog to swallow indiscriminate combos of whatever booze and pills I happened to have on hand: only tolerance and ineptitude that I'd botched it, unpleasantly surprised when I woke up though relieved for Hobie that he hadn't had to find me.

This can’t be legal,” she whispered. He raised his head. “Why not?” “It feels too good.” He chuckled. She heard the sound, felt the soft exhalation of cool air on her bare, damp breasts, but she couldn’t see anything. Not him, not herself. It was strange, but in a good way. The darkness gave her courage. “Take your clothes off,” she said, knowing that she would never have managed the words in the light. “Yes, ma’am.” There was rustling, then nothing, then the distinctive sound of a zipper being pulled down. Her heart thundered in her chest. She tried to imagine him naked. What would he look like? Thinking about him naked made her imagine him standing in front of her--erect. And thinking about that made her think about him pushing inside of her. Filling her. Making her-- “Condom,” she gasped. A movement stopped. “What?” Phoebe felt the earth open up in preparation of swallowing her. How could she have not mentioned this before? “I’m not on anything right now,” she whispered. “Birth control. I’m not on the Pill.” She gestured helplessly. “Shit, fuck, damn.” Disappointment tied her in knots. “I was really only interested in that middle part,” she joked. There was a second of silence, followed by a low chuckle. “You’re never predictable, Phoebe. I’ll give you that. Cross your fingers.” “What?” “Cross your fingers. I might have a condom in my shaving kit.

On the eve of my move to New York, my parents sat me down to talk. “Your mother and I understand that we have a certain responsibility to prepare you for life at a coed institution,” said my father. “Have you ever heard of oxytocin?” I shook my head. “It’s the thing that’s going to make you crazy,” my mother said, swirling the ice in her glass. “You’ll lose all the good sense I’ve worked so hard to build up in you since the day you were born.” She was kidding. “Oxytocin is a hormone released during copulation,” my father went on, staring at the blank wall behind me. “Orgasm,” my mother whispered. “Biologically, oxytocin serves a purpose,” my father said. “That warm fuzzy feeling.” “It’s what bonds a couple together. Without it, the human species would have gone extinct a long time ago. Women experience its effects more powerfully than men do. It’s good to be aware of that.” “For when you’re thrown out with yesterday’s trash,” my mother said. “Men are dogs. Even professors, so don’t be fooled.” “Men don’t attach as easily. They’re more rational,” my father corrected her. After a long pause, he said, “We just want you to be careful.” “He means use a rubber.” “And take these.” My father gave me a small, pink, shell-shaped compact of birth control pills. “Gross,” was all I could say. “And your father has cancer,” my mother said. I said nothing. “Prostate isn’t like breast,” my father said, turning away. “They do surgery, and you move on.” “The man always dies first,” my mother whispered.

Guilt. Torment. Sorrow. Shock. Which?” she asked against his chest. “I’m trying,” he murmured on a weary chuckle. “But all I can manage is pride,” he added softly. “I satisfied you completely, didn’t I?” “More than completely,” she murmured against his damp shoulder. Her hand traced his chest, feeling the coolness of his skin, the ripple of muscle. “Hold me close.” He wrapped both arms around her and drew her on top of him, holding her hungrily to him, their legs lazily entwined. “I seduced you.” She pressed a soft kiss to his collarbone. “Mmm-hmm.” He caught his breath as the tiny, insignificant movement produced a sudden, raging arousal. She lifted her head. “Did I do something wrong?” He lifted an eyebrow and nodded toward his flat stomach. She followed his amused glance and caught her breath. He drew her mouth down over his and kissed her ferociously before he sat up and moved off the bed. “Where are you going?” she asked, startled. He drew on his briefs and his slacks, glancing down at her with amused delight. “One of us has to be sensible,” he told her. “Colby’s probably on his way back right now.” “But he just left…” “Almost an hour ago,” he finished for her, nodding toward the clock on the bedside table. She sat up, her eyes wide with surprise. “I took a long time with you,” he said gently. “Didn’t you notice?” She laughed self-consciously. “Well, yes, but I didn’t realize it was that long.” He drew her off the bed and bent to kiss her tenderly, nuzzling her face with his. “Was I worth waiting for?” he asked. She smiled. “What a silly question.” He kissed her again, but when he lifted his head he wasn’t smiling. “I loved what we did together,” he said quietly. “But I should have been more responsible.” She knew what he was thinking. He hadn’t used anything, and he surely knew that she wasn’t. She flattened her hand against his bare chest. “There’s a morning-after pill. I’ll drive into the city tomorrow and get one,” she said, lying like a sailor. She had no intention of doing that, but it would comfort him. He found that he didn’t like that idea. It hurt something deeply primitive in him. He scowled. “That could be dangerous.” “No, it’s not. He traced her fingernails while he tried to think. It seemed like a fantasy, a dream. He’d never had such an experience with a woman in his life. She closed her eyes and moved closer to him. “I could never have done that with anyone else,” she whispered. “It was more beautiful than my dreams.” His heart jumped. That was how it felt to him, too. He tilted her face so that he could search her soft eyes. She was radiant; she almost glowed. “Kiss me,” he murmured softly. She did. But he wasn’t smiling. She could almost see the thoughts in his face. “You didn’t force me, Tate,” she said gently. “I made a conscious decision. I made a choice. I needed to know if what had happened to me had destroyed me as a woman. I found out in the most wonderful way that it hadn’t. I’m not ashamed of what we did together.” “Neither am I.” He turned, his face still tormented. “But it wasn’t my right.” “To be the first?” She smiled gently. “It would have been you eight years ago or eight years from now. I don’t want anyone else-not that way. I never did.” He actually winced. “Cecily…” “I’m not asking for declarations of undying love. I won’t cling. I’m not the type.

I picked her up and carried her down the hall to the bathroom, just a pitiful skeleton with skin stretched over the top and a great red scar across her chest. She sank onto the plastic seat we had got from the hospital and closed her eyes as I washed her, leaning her poor bald head back exhaustedly against the back of the shower cubicle. "I'll just change the sheets," I said, "I won't be a minute - would you rather sit under the water, or shall I turn it off and wrap you up in a towel ?" "Under the water," she whispered. I had to strip the bed entirely, and two of the pillows were saturated. I replaced them with pillows from my bed, and while I was at it my duvet as well. Then I propped the poor woman up against the bathroom sink to dry and dress her, picked her up and carried her back to bed. Never have I been so grateful to be, after all, a strapping wench rather than a delicate wisp of a girl. As I pulled the covers up under her chin she opened her eyes, looked at me sternly and said with nearly her old decision, "This is not the way I wish to be remembered, Josephine." "I know," I whispered, the tears spilling unchecked down my cheeks. Nurses are supposed to be bright and matter-of-fact about these things: my bracing professional manner left a lot to be desired. "I'll get you some dinner." "No," she said. "Just my pills, love." Back in the kitchen I stood for a moment in a trance of indecision, wondering where the hell to start. It didn't really matter - when you're overcome with lethargy you just have to do something. And then the next thing, and then the next, and eventually, although you'd have sworn you were far too tired and depressed to accomplish anything, you're finished. I turned on the tap about the big concrete sink by the back door and began to scrub sheets and blankets.

Maddy’s going to pop soon,” Cooper said, finishing his beer and getting ready to head out. “Tucker is attached to her. It’s pretty fucking adorable. The guy about wets his pants every time she makes any noise that might be labor pain.” “You’ll be an uncle soon.” “I’m already an uncle,” Cooper mumbled, sliding on his jacket. “I just can’t hold the kid yet.” “You and Farah still planning on trying?” “No planning. We’re just trying now. She’s off the pill. Whenever it happens, it’ll be cool. Farah worries she’ll suck at being a mom. Can you believe that shit?” Cooper asked as his dark eyes warmed at the thought of his wife. “The way she takes care of Sawyer and me and everyone else and she thinks she’ll be a bad mom. These girls with their shit families get all fucked up in the head and no logic is going to fix it. They just need to face their fears and see how amazing they are when their idiot parents aren’t around to fuck things up.” “Should I fix things for Lark?” “I don’t know. If it was me, I’d go smack her stupid brother and father around. I don’t know if that’d be a good idea though. Those fucks aren’t low life drifters like Farah’s parents. That Larry asshole is a respectable member of the community. If you want to smack him around, you’ll need to do it in a more subtle way. Of course, if he ever fucks with you, we can just remind Mister Upstanding how his kind doesn’t run Ellsberg. It’s us dirty biker types who keep his house from burning down or his head from getting cracked open. If it comes down to it, I’ll help you take him down. Pop says behave. I say I’ve got my bud’s back.” Grinning, I shoved him away from me. “Crap. I’m worried you might hug me next.” “I was thinking about it,” Cooper said, smiling. “Farah’s turned me all nice and shit. I’m getting manners too. It’s disgusting.” “Horrifying,” I teased. “Thanks for the offer, but I feel like Lark needs to make a move. If she needs me to, I’ll burn down houses and crack open skulls. Right now, I feel like maybe she needs to find her way back to me. If she does, I’m keeping her and ruining anyone who tries to take her away.” “Now, there’s the punk ass jerk I became friends with.

Little Nicky heads to the Badlands to see the show for himself. The Western Roads are outside his remit as a U.S. Treasury agent, but he knows the men he wants are its denizens. Standing on the corner of the Great Western and Edinburgh Roads, a sideshow, a carnival of the doped, the beaten, and the crazed. He walks round to the Avenue Haig strip and encounters the playground of Shanghai’s crackpots, cranks, gondoos, and lunatics. He’s accosted constantly: casino touts, hustling pimps, dope dealers; monkeys on chains, dancing dogs, kids turning tumbles, Chinese ‘look see’ boys offering to watch your car. Their numbers rise as the Japs turn the screws on Shanghai ever tighter. Half-crazy American missionaries try to sell him Bibles printed on rice paper—saving souls in the Badlands is one tough beat. The Chinese hawkers do no better with their porno cards of naked dyed blondes, Disney characters in lewd poses, and bare-arsed Chinese girls, all underage. Barkers for the strip shows and porno flicks up the alleyways guarantee genuine French celluloid of the filthiest kind. Beggars abound, near the dealers and bootleggers in the shadows, selling fake heroin pills and bootleg samogon Russian vodka, distilled in alleyways, that just might leave you blind. Off the Avenue Haig, Nicky, making sure of his gun in its shoulder holster, ventures up the side streets and narrow laneways that buzz with the purveyors of cure-all tonics, hawkers of appetite suppressants, male pick-me-ups promising endless virility. Everything is for sale—back-street abortions and unwanted baby girls alongside corn and callus removers, street barbers, and earwax pickers. The stalls of the letter writers for the illiterate are next to the sellers of pills to cure opium addiction. He sees desperate refugees offered spurious Nansen passports, dubious visas for neutral Macao, well-forged letters of transit for Brazil. He could have his fortune told twenty times over (gypsy tarot cards or Chinese bone chuckers? Your choice). He could eat his fill—grilled meat and rice stalls—or he could start a whole new life: end-of-the-worlders and Korean propagandists offer cheap land in Mongolia and Manchukuo.

Only then did Shukhov catch on to what was up. He glanced at Kilgas. He'd understood, too. The roofing felt. Der had spotted it on the windows. Shukhov feared nothing for himself. His squad leader would never give him away. He was afraid for Tiurin. To the squad Tiurin was a father, for them he was a pawn. Up in the North they readily gave squad, leaders a second term for a thing like this. Ugh, what a face Tiurin made. He threw down his trowel and took a step toward Der. Der looked around. Pavlo lifted his spade. He hadn't grabbed it for nothing. And Senka, for all his deafness, had understood. He came up, hands on hips. And Senka was built solid. Der blinked, gave a sort of twitch, and looked around for a way of escape. Tiurin leaned up against him and said quite softly, though distinctly enough for everyone to hear: "Your time for giving terms has passed, you bastard. If you say one word, you blood-sucker, it'll be your last day on earth. Remember that." Tiurin shook, shook uncontrollably. Hatchet-faced Pavlo looked Der straight in the eyes. A look as sharp as a razor. "Now, men, take it easy." Der turned pale and edged away from the ramp. Without another word Tiurin straightened his hat, picked up his trowel, and walked back to his wall. Pavlo, very slowly, went down the ramp with his spade. Slo-o-owly. Der was as scared to stay as to leave. He took shelter behind Kilgas and stood there. Kilgas went on laying blocks, the way they count out pills at a drugstore--like a doctor, measuring everything so carefully--his back to Der, as if he didn't even know he was there. Der stole up to Tiurin. Where was all his arrogance? "But what shall I tell the superintendent, Tiurin?". Tiurin went on working. He said, without turning his head: "You will tell him it was like that when we arnved. We came and that's how it was." Der waited a little longer. They weren't going to bump him off now, he saw. He took a few steps and puthis hands in his pockets. "Hey, S 854," he muttered. "Why are you using such a thin layer of mortar?" He had to get back at someone. He couldn't find fault with Shukhov for his joints or for the straightness of his line, so he decided he was laying the mortar too thin.

It was the combination of many factors," Dr. Hornicker said in his last report, written for no medical reason but just because he couldn't get the girls out of his head. "With most people," he said, "suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty." But this is all a chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind. What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself. Her brain going dim to all else, but flaming up in precise points of pain, personal injury, lost dreams. Every other loved one receding as though across a vast ice floe, shrinking to black dots waving tiny arms, out of hearing. Then the rope thrown over the beam, the sleeping pill dropped in the palm with the long, lying lifeline, the window thrown open, the oven turned on, whatever. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

Over the hum of the appliances, she heard the knocking on the back door. The pain pill must not have knocked Spender out for very long! This time she wouldn’t make him stand there and wait. She jumped up, and rushed to unlock the door. Just her luck. It wasn’t Spencer who stood there, but Zeke, scowling at her through the glass. She supposed it was too late to turn around, take a sip of coffee, and head this way again, taking her time. “Didn’t find your key, I see,” she said as she opened the door. “Found it,” he said through clenched teeth. “Left it in my room this morning.” “Early-onset Alzheimer’s?

Son, you know what we stand for,” I told him. “We’re all trying to live for God. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. We’re paying for your apartment. We’re paying for your truck. You’ve got a decision to make. You’re either going to come home and basically live under house arrest because we don’t trust you, or you can hit the road-with no vehicle, of course. Somebody can drop you off at the highway and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. Those are your two choices.” Jep looked at me, lowered his head, and started pouring out his sins to me. He said he’d been taking pills, smoking marijuana, getting drunk, and on and on. He was crying the whole time, as he confessed his sins to us and God. I’ll never forget what Jep said next. He looked up at me and asked, “Dad, all I want to ask you is what took you so long to rescue me?” After Jep said that to me, everyone in the room was crying. “You still have a choice,” I told him. “Well, my choice is I want to come home,” he said. Jase has always been our most straitlaced son, so he was the hardest on Jep when he strayed. “Son, you can’t hang out with those people,” Jase told him. “Daddy won’t let ‘em get to me,” Jep said. “Daddy won’t and we won’t, either,” Jase promised him. “But you have to come to all the good things to help you. You’ve got to find better friends. You can’t be running around. You have to break it off with the bad influences.” Thankfully, our second prodigal son was coming home. It was a heart-wrenching episode for all of us. Alan was so distressed by his little brother’s struggles that he left our house, drove down the road, and then stopped and dropped to his knees and wept in a field.

Willie was actually the one who brought the seriousness of Jep’s problem to our attention. Willie was working with the high school youth group at White’s Ferry Road Church, and he found out Jep had asked one of the kids to go to a bar with him. Willie came to our house and said, “I’m done. We’ve got to do something right now. I’m just tired of it.” We called Alan and decided to have a family intervention. Alan lined everything up, and we were all waiting for Jep when he came to the house one night. Kay was terrified because she was certain I was going to throw Jep out of the house, like I’d done with Alan. I told Jep, “Give me the keys to your truck-the one I’m paying for.” He pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them to me. I told Jep what his brothers had told me about his behavior. “Son, you know what we stand for,” I told him. “We’re all trying to live for God. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. We’re paying for your apartment. We’re paying for your truck. You’ve got a decision to make. You’re either going to come home and basically live under house arrest because we don’t trust you, or you can hit the road-with no vehicle, of course. Somebody can drop you off at the highway and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. Those are your two choices.” Jep looked at me, lowered his head, and started pouring out his sins to me. He said he’d been taking pills, smoking marijuana, getting drunk, and on and on. He was crying the whole time, as he confessed his sins to us and God. I’ll never forget what Jep said next. He looked up at me and asked, “Dad, all I want to ask you is what took you so long to rescue me?” After Jep said that to me, everyone in the room was crying. “You still have a choice,” I told him. “Well, my choice is I want to come home,” he said.

Why do you treat us like a four-headed freak? All we need is a pound a week, Just enough for our beer and pills

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the sound I heard when I was 9 and my father slammed the front door so hard behind him I swear to god it shook the whole house. For the next 3 years I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died. I think he took her heart with him when he walked out. Her chest is empty, just a shattered mess or cracked ribs and depression pills. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s all the blood in the sink. It’s the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn’t love her anymore. It’s the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood. So much blood. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the time that I had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fucked his ex. I swear to god she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the six weeks we had a substitute in English because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling. But her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. And sometimes when things break, you can’t fix them. Nothing ever goes back to how it was. I got an A in English that year. I think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s that I do.

The speed limited my vision to the tunnel of the Toyota's headlights. The body could drive, I told myself, while the mind maintained. Maintained and stayed away from the weird peripheral window dressing of amphetamine and exhaustion, the spectral, luminous vegetation that grows out of the corners of the mind's eye along late-night highways. But the mind had its own ideas, and Kihn's opinion of what I was already thinking of as my "sighting" rattled endlessly through my head in a tight, lopsided orbit. Semiotic ghosts. Fragments of the Mass Dream, whirling past in the wind of my passage. Somehow this feedback-loop aggravated the diet pill, and the speed-vegetation along the road began to assume the colors of infrared satellite images, glowing shreds blown apart in the Toyota's slipstream.

the girls on the track team do their thang, when I spot ass.  See, when ya boy spots ass, I be on it.  I leave Dre and Twan, my teammates, and head over to see what the face looks like that's connected to this ass. Oh yea, I’m Rashard Peterson, number 06, quarterback for UMA.  This is my last year and I’ll have my Bachelors in Business Management.  I do my thang with Twan and Dre in these streets too.   If you want some weed, I got you, but that's pretty much all I’ll touch.  I never keep enough on me to get a charge. The most I’ll have on me is a blunt and shit, that's for recreational use. Ya boy ain’t dumb by a long shot. That's why I got this degree in the works, so I can open up different businesses.   Anyway, if you want pills then holla at Twan; my boy got opioids, tabs, Xanax

Suicide by Jason. I'd have to file that one away with the rest of them. The ways and means. Razors, pills, hanging, guns, jumping in the river, rigging up a car to feed me carbon monoxide. I'd been through the pros and cons. I wasn't sure how or when it would happen. Really hoped I'd be dead before people started finding out about all this weird sex stuff. Because if they knew this about me, I was sure they were going to assume that it was the reason. Everybody milling around my mother's house in black, eating little triangle sandwiches with the crusts cut off. 'Oh, of course. That's why. Well, how unfortunate.' I didn't want to be dismissed so easily. There were a hundred different reasons. Or there was no reason at all. There was just big, fat, fucking fate sitting on my head.

Sorry,” she said after a few minutes. Her voice was still a bit raspy, and she cleared her throat. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said, and she sounded nearly human again. “So I had a few shots of dark rum.” She shrugged. “Okay, more than a few. Anyway, it didn’t work. So I took a couple of sleeping pills.” Jackie closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “Boy, oh, boy, did that work,” she said. “I think I almost pulled a Marilyn.” “A what?” I said. “Monroe,” she said with a very small smile. “You know, screen goddess takes fatal overdose. Oh, my head.

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and ran my hands through my hair. Today of all days, I could not have these visions in my head. Maybe I would try the new pill. If it let me control my dreams as they promised, I’d program my mind for more productive nights. I’d dream of breaking a code to stop the next attack on America, while finding a smart girl who’d appreciate it. That’s what I needed: a smart girl, not a freakin’ dragon.

My lady—” Lock began but Kat held up a hand. “Okay, I just have to say this. Before we go any farther, could both of you please stop calling me ‘my lady?’ It’s getting really old. We’re not at the freaking Renaissance Fair, you know. I mean, what’s next? Are you going to offer to buy me a tankard of mead and joust for my honor?” Both the brothers looked thoroughly confused. “Buy you what?” Deep said. “What’s a joust?” Lock asked. Kat blew out a breath in frustration. “Never mind. The point is, I want you to stop calling me ‘my lady.’ All right?” Lock frowned. “But it’s the only proper term of address for an elite female.” Kat had a feeling she was getting in deeper and deeper, but she couldn’t help asking. “What’s an elite female?” Lock’s dark brown eyes were suddenly as hot as his brother’s had been earlier when he’d scented her. “One with a shape like yours, my lady.” His big hands described a generous hourglass in the air. “Most of the females on Twin Moons are lean and tough—our lifestyle and diet make them that way.” “But there are a few,” Deep went on, taking up where his brother had left off. “A lucky few whom the Mother has marked with curving hips and ripe breasts, full to overflowing.” His black eyes flickered hungrily over her body as he spoke and Kat had to fight the urge to cover herself. She suddenly felt naked under the blue silk gown. “They are blessed by the Mother—goddesses who walk among us. We call them the elite,” Lock continued, still eyeing her. “And naturally we thought you were an Earth elite. Were we wrong?” Kat stared at them, unbelieving. “Uh, I guess so. But on Earth we call it ‘plus sized.’” “Plus sized?” Deep raised an eyebrow at her. “You know—more to love? Pleasingly plump? Big beautiful woman?” His eyes gleamed. “Most intriguing. I like all those descriptions.” “I do, too.” Lock gave her a ravenous look. Kat felt the sudden urge to pinch herself. Are they seriously saying they come from a planet of skinny-minnies but they think plus sized girls are hotter? Did somebody slip me some crazy pills? She shook her head, trying to clear away the mental images the brothers’ words brought to mind. “Look,” she said sternly. “It’s great you’re so into women with curves, but we are getting way, way, way off point here. One, I’d prefer if you just called me Kat. And two, we need to do this…whatever it is we’re going to do and try to locate Sophie and Sylvan. They’ve been missing for hours now.” “Very

In the 1960s, however, the empire of production began to come undone. Within another twenty years—thanks to permanently negative trade balances, a crushing defeat in Vietnam, oil shocks, “stagflation,” and the shredding of a moral consensus that could not withstand the successive assaults of Elvis Presley, “the pill,” and the counterculture, along with news reports that God had died—it had become defunct. In its place, according to Maier, there emerged a new “Empire of Consumption.” Just as the lunch-bucket-toting factory worker had symbolized the empire of production during its heyday, the teenager, daddy’s credit card in her blue jeans and headed to the mall, now emerged as the empire of consumption’s emblematic figure. The evil genius of the empire of production was Henry Ford. In the empire of consumption, Ford’s counterpart was Walt Disney.

To indulge in an addiction is not always to seek pleasure. To mask pain or grief is usually the more common objective. The answer may not be found at the bottom of a spirit bottle, but it might give a moments respite from a mind asking the same questions, questions that have been relentlessly asked yet remain unanswered and unexplained. What is worse, drinking alone into a stupor or falling to your knees in a shower crying, again. Is it better to go to sleep with pain of thoughts causing raging wars inside your head or take just one more pill to dull the echoing thunder. One more won't hurt, not on top of those already consumed. What's wrong with an addiction if it's not causing others harm? A defiant thought that brings self assurance when there is no one present to give you the answer. The answer that you already know. That it is causing those who care about you more harm than you really want to admit. Which then becomes something else to haunt you. I am sorry for who I sometimes am, for who I have become, to what I can succumb, but try and remember that the person I am was not conceived by me alone. We are all an outcome of our lives experiences, and some of those experiences, like our darker sides, were not pleasant ones to endure.

Farah answered the door and I knew immediately her pants had recently been off. When our eyes met, I sensed she knew I knew. Farah gave me a casual smile then realized her ponytail was hanging weird off her head. “Sex is fun, huh?” Lark said, walking past her friend. “We’re like rabbits too.” Farah laughed. “We got home late and needed to let off some steam.” “Four times,” Cooper announced, bouncing the stairs. Grinning, I was ready to smack that smirk right off his face. “We have news.” “Moving in together is such a great first step in a relationship,” Cooper said, wrapping an arm around Farah’s shoulders. “We remember those days, don’t we, baby? So long ago.” “You’re being obnoxious,” Farah murmured to her husband. “A giant obnoxious stud.” Lark laughed and winked at me. “Speaking of studs, Aaron knocked me up our first time while I was on the pill. Bam! That is some super sperm!” Farah burst out laughing while I gave Cooper two middle fingers. He just glared at me like I’d knocked up my new girlfriend just so I could make him look weak. Yes, everything in the world revolved around Cooper including my sex life. “Fuck you,” Cooper growled at me. “Don’t feel bad. I mean, you had sex four times,” I said, putting up four fingers. “Wow, you’re bound to have at least one good swimmer in the bunch.” When Cooper ran at me, I took off through the dining room, past the kitchen, and out the backdoor. My buddy was big and strong, but he was slow. I was in the front yard before he got past his excited dogs. Lark opened the door for me then we shut it on Cooper who started cussing until he realized kids were nearby. Farah was laughing so hard she sat on the ground to keep from falling. “Let me in,” Cooper said in a low pissed voice as he glared through the side window. “Say it first.” “Congratulations, jackass. Now, let me in my damn house.” “That’s not what I want you to say.” “Then what? I’m not saying please, so it better not be that.” “Not please. I was thinking something like, ‘Gee, Aaron, can your balls dumb down things for my balls? I’d be ever so grateful to know how babies are made.’ Yeah, something like that.” Farah was rolling around on the floor and no help to Cooper who clearly wasn’t saying what I suggested. Lark finally unlocked the door and smiled at Cooper who exhaled like a pissed bull. “You’re welcome,” she said, grinning. “For what?” “I talked Aaron out of mocking you as badly as he wanted. This was the tame version. So you’re welcome.” Cooper shook his head and finally smiled.

In a booth, Bailey sat next to Vaughn while frowning at her drink. “I need a man!” she declared when she saw me. Vaughn glanced at her and sighed. “I’ll do you, but no names.” Bailey didn’t get it, but I laughed while Cooper acted irritated. Aaron kissed the top of my head then walked over to get us drinks. “Why can’t I trap a man into a relationship like you bitches?” she asked with complete seriousness. “Your subtly turns men off,” Vaughn answered when I just smiled. “Bailey, maybe you could try being more obvious in your need to trap a man. Like wear a shirt with lots of exclamation marks.” “Shut up, fuckhead. You don’t have anyone either.” “I have plenty of anyones.” “Whores aren’t attractive.” Vaughn grinned. “You make it too easy sometimes, B.” Cooper frowned. “Don’t even think of saying what you’re thinking.” “What we’re all thinking.” Bailey frowned at me. “What the fuck are they talking about?” “It’s one of those things that only makes sense when you have ball toxins.” Bailey smiled and nodded. “That happens a lot around me. Want to dance?” “Not really.” “Because you might puke?” “Why would she puke?” Vaughn asked, shoving a pretzel in Bailey’s mouth. Cooper rolled his eyes. “Aaron can’t use a condom properly.” Returning just in time for his friend’s comment, Aaron sighed dramatically. “I just have powerful sperm.” “I was on the pill too,” I said, sticking my tongue at Cooper who grinned. “His mighty sperm didn’t care though.” “You idiots don’t get how the pill works,” Vaughn said before realizing he sounded like a chick about to discuss her period. “Well, congrats, Aaron. You are now officially whipped like a bitch. How does it feel?” Aaron answered by kissing me like we might fuck right there.

Farah looked freaked out until Tawny hugged her and the tension faded from her face. A minute later, the table cloth lifted and Bailey appeared with beer bottles in her hands. “I figured you’d need booze to deal with the boredom of hiding.” “I can’t drink,” Farah said. “I’m off the pill and trying to get knocked up.” “I am knocked up. I also don’t like that brand of beer.” Handing the beers to Tawny, Bailey nodded. “Be back in a sec.” A minute later, Bailey returned with two cans of Coke for Farah and me. “So what are we talking about?” Bailey asked. “Men needing to protect their women,” I explained. “Lame. Talk about something I can join in on. What’s your sister like? Is she hotter than me?” “Yes.” “I hate her and you should tell her to watch out. If I see her, that pretty face is dead meat.” Grinning, I cuddled up with her as the table shook from fighting bodies knocking against it. “You’re having a baby?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me. “Everyone is getting married or having babies.” “Raven isn’t,” I said as Farah peeked out from under the table cloth to check on Cooper. She smiled and returned to her spot. “Judd and Aaron have stripped Mac down and are shoving him out the door.” Tawny laughed. “Judd finally got to punish Mac for letting me touch his arm months ago. Good for him.” Laughing, I leaned my head against Bailey. “Raven has bad taste in men. Going out with her will be great for you. If Raven likes someone, you’ll know he’s a loser. So she’ll distract all the shitty guys from you.” “Huh. And she’s hot, so she’ll draw guys to us. I think she might be my new best friend,” Bailey said, taking a swig. ‘Don’t be jealous. I just need a man because all of the kissing and fucking and marrying and baby making you guys keep doing. I can’t be the only one alone and Vaughn doesn’t count because he’ll be dead in a few months and shouldn’t be dating anyway.” We all frowned at Bailey who shrugged. “Those Devils fuck are going to kill him or he’ll try to kill them and get killed. Why do you think they call him Dead Man Walking?” “You’re bumming me out,” I told her while finishing my soda. “I wish Aaron was here.” “As you wish,” Aaron said, leaning down. “Look at you pretty girls hiding under here.” “We’re not hiding,” I said, crawling out. “We’re planning our attack. You know, just in case you couldn’t handle things.” When Aaron grinned, I noticed blood on his lip. “You’re hurt.” “You should see the other guys.” Glancing around, I noticed Mac’s friend was propped up on the pool table and the other guys were throwing pretzels and peanuts at him. In the corner, Kirk and Jodi sat as if on their porch drinking lemonade and admiring the sunset. “My hero,” I said, caressing the cobra. “Are you talking to me or the tattoo?” “Both, baby. Always both.

There’s no danger of disease,” he said. “I haven’t been with a woman since before the shooting, and in the hospital every cell in my body was screened. But there is another matter…. Are you taking pills?” She shook her head, but her eyes were clear. “Ah,” he said. “Mel can help with that. There’s something she can give you to prevent a baby.” “What if I didn’t do that?” she asked. “What if I didn’t go to Mel?” That caused him to straighten a bit. “I assume you passed biology 101,” he said. “There’s no telling what would happen.” She shrugged. “Probably nothing.” “If the amount of pleasure we have correlates to conception, there will be a hundred babies by the end of the week.” “If you’d like me to see Mel, I will. This is probably just crazy. I wouldn’t push you, rush you.” “Brie, you can’t rush me. I want to give you everything. If you wanted me to give you a baby, I would die trying, but only if it was our baby. Together. Maybe you should think about it a little longer, until you’re sure.” She

There’s one powerful way to quiet the voice in your head and the voice in their head at the same time: treat two schizophrenics with just one pill. Instead of prioritizing your argument—in fact, instead of doing any thinking at all in the early goings about what you’re going to say—make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. In that mode of true active listening—aided by the tactics you’ll learn in the following chapters—you’ll disarm your counterpart. You’ll make them feel safe. The voice in their head will begin to quiet down. The

When I hear Democrats wringing their hands about the ‘norms and guardrails of democracy,’ I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, and when I hear Joe Biden earnestly insist that Trump is some sort of aberration, I begin to wonder if we deserve what we’ve gotten. Open your eyes and look around at the world. Or, if international affairs aren’t your thing, look around at our own country, where life expectancy is actually in decline. We are rapidly heading towards a recession, domestic terrorism is on the rise, and pretty much everyone is addicted to some stupefying thing, from drugs to porn to Twitter.

I came to see the streets and the schools as arms of the same beast. One enjoyed the official power of the state while the other enjoyed its implicit sanction. But fear and violence were the weaponry of both. Fail in the streets and the crews would catch you slipping and take your body. Fail in the schools and you would be suspended and sent back to those same streets, where they would take your body. And I began to see these two arms in relation—those who failed in the schools justified their destruction in the streets. The society could say, “He should have stayed in school,” and then wash its hands of him. It does not matter that the “intentions” of individual educators were noble. Forget about intentions. What any institution, or its agents, “intend” for you is secondary. Our world is physical. Learn to play defense—ignore the head and keep your eyes on the body. Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of “personal responsibility” in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility. The point of this language of “intention” and “personal responsibility” is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream. An unceasing interrogation of the stories told to us by the schools now felt essential. It felt wrong not to ask why, and then to ask it again. I took these questions to my father, who very often refused to offer an answer, and instead referred me to more books. My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being “politically conscious”—as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty. Some things were clear to me: The violence that undergirded the country, so flagrantly on display during Black History Month, and the intimate violence of “Yeah, nigger, what’s up now?” were not unrelated. And this violence was not magical, but was of a piece and by design. But what exactly was the design? And why? I must know. I must get out…but into what? I devoured the books because they were the rays of light peeking out from the doorframe, and perhaps past that door there was another world, one beyond the gripping fear that undergirded the Dream.

– (image) green halo, hovering above my head –  / – (voice): desuetude, decline of neural pathways. Everything we’ve always wanted – / – (image) the bright blue-glowing logo of Baosteel – / (image) man in an expensive suit holding a purple pill between thumb and forefinger –

Why aren’t you on the pill?” “Hmm. Because I gave up men….” He chuckled, low in his throat. “How’s that working out for you….?” “I was fine until you. You’ve messed up a lot of my plans.” “You played hell on mine, too,” he groaned, lifting her T-shirt over her head, tossing it and steering her toward the bed.

Always search for the reason behind the problem instead of just heading for an instant pill, which is never the solution.

Taylor’s head was pounding. The dry air of Captain Price’s office coupled with the stress of finding Frank Richardson executed was going to drive her mad. She dug into her pocket, dry swallowed three Advil covered in lint. Being debriefed by her boss was not the way she’d planned to spend the afternoon before her wedding. She was sick to her stomach, the desiccated pills stuck in her throat.

Oh, shut it. Look, the pills have to be taken with food. You got a ham 'n' cheese on rye on you? I don't." "I'da made you some linguine with Sal sauce and brought it over for you. Give me more notice next time." Rehv headed out of the office. "You mind not being thoughtful. Makes me feel like shit." "Your prob, not mine.

In the evening, she took a sleeping pill. As the months passed, she became much kinder to me than she had been, but her new solicitude had an impersonal quality, as if she were tending a homeless man on the street rather than her husband. She stopped sleeping in Matt's bed and returned to ours, but I rarely joined her, choosing instead to sleep in my chair. One night in February, I woke up to find Erica covering me with a blanket. Rather than opening my eyes, I pretended that I was still asleep. When she put her lips to my head, I imagined pulling her toward me and kissing her neck and shoulders, but I didn't do it. At the time, I was like a man encased in a heavy suit of armor, and inside that corporeal fortress I lived with a single-minded wish: I will not be comforted. As perverse as it was, this desire felt like a lifeline, the only shred of truth left to me. I feel quite sure that Erica knew what I felt, and in March she announced a change.