Puffy Shirt Quotes

Izzy, are you—” he began. His eyes flew wide, and he backed up fast enough to smack his head into the wall behind him. “What is he doing here?” Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. “You don’t knock now?” “It—It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered. He seemed to be deliberately trying not to look at Izzy and Simon, who were indeed in a very compromising position. Simon rolled quickly off Isabelle, who sat up, brushing herself off as if for lint. Simon sat up more slowly, trying to hold the torn edges of his shirt together. “Why are all my clothes on the floor?” Alec said. “I was trying to find something for Simon to wear,” Isabelle explained. “Maureen put him in leather pants and a puffy shirt because he was being her romance-novel slave.” “He was being her what?” “Her romance-novel slave,” Isabelle repeated, as if Alec were being particularly dense. Alec shook his head as if he were having a bad dream. “You know what? Don’t explain. Just—put your clothes on, both of you.

When you think she deserves someone better? When you can’t imagine being the one who actually gets to keep her? That’s how you know you’re the one who deserves her. Not some asshole in a puffy shirt carrying a sword.

And sure enough,the youth in question was not his usual dapper self. His face was puffy, his eyes red and wild; his shirt(distressingly unbuttoned)hung over his trousers in sloppy fashion. All very out of charactar: Mandrake was normally defined by his rigid self-control. Somthing seemed to have stripped all that away. Well, the poor lad was emotionally brittle.He needed sympathetic handling. "You're a mess," I sneered "You've lost it big time. What's happened? All the guilt and self-loathing suddenly get to you? It can't just be that someone else called me, surly?

I feel completely embarrassed and remember the lock on the door and think: He knows, he knows, it shows, shows completely. “He’s out back,” Mr. Garret tells me mildly, “unpacking shipments.” Then he returns to the papers. I feel compelled to explain myself. “I just thought I’d come by. Before babysitting. You, know, at your house. Just to say hi. So . . . I’m going to do that now. Jase’s in back, then? I’ll just say hi.” I’m so suave. I can hear the ripping sound of the box cutter before I even open the rear door to find Jase with a huge stack of cardboard boxes. His back’s to me and suddenly I’m as shy with him as I was with his father. This is silly. Brushing through my embarrassment, I walk up, put my hand on his shoulder. He straightens up with a wide grin. “Am I glad to see you!” “Oh, really?” “Really. I thought you were Dad telling me I was messing up again. I’ve been a disaster all day. Kept knocking things over. Paint cans, our garden display. He finally sent me out here when I knocked over a ladder. I think I’m a little preoccupied.” “Maybe you should have gotten more sleep,” I offer. “No way,” he says. Then we just gaze at each other for a long moment. For some reason, I expect him to look different, the way I expected I would myself in the mirror this morning . . . I thought I would come across richer, fuller, as happy outside as I was inside, but the only thing that showed was my lips puffy from kisses. Jase is the same as ever also. “That was the best study session I ever had,” I tell him. “Locked in my memory too,” he says, then glances away as though embarrassed, bending to tear open another box. “Even though thinking about it made me hit my thumb with a hammer putting up a wall display.” “This thumb?” I reach for one of his callused hands, kiss the thumb. “It was the left one.” Jase’s face creases into a smile as I pick up his other hand. “I broke my collarbone once,” he tells me, indicating which side. I kiss that. “Also some ribs during a scrimmage freshman year.” I do not pull his shirt up to where his finger points now. I am not that bold. But I do lean in to kiss him through the soft material of his shirt. “Feeling better?” His eyes twinkle. “In eighth grade, I got into a fight with this kid who was picking on Duff and he gave me a black eye.” My mouth moves to his right eye, then the left. He cups the back of my neck in his warm hands, settling me into the V of his legs, whispering into my ear, “I think there was a split lip involved too.” Then we are just kissing and everything else drops away. Mr. Garret could come out at any moment, a truck full of supplies could drive right on up, a fleet of alien spaceships could darken the sky, I’m not sure I’d notice.

The way Sunny dressed was also meant to telegraph affluence, though not necessarily taste. He wore white designer shirts with puffy sleeves, acid-washed jeans, and blue Gucci loafers. His shirts’ top three buttons were always undone, causing his chest hair to spill out and revealing a thin gold chain around his neck. A pungent scent of cologne emanated from him at all times. Combined with the flashy cars,

Giveaway T-shirts stretched over monstrous beer bellies. Puffy NFL jackets and porky jowls. Granted, I'm in a bowling alley,but the differences between Americans and Parisians are shocking.I'm ashamed to see my country the way the French must see us. Couldn't these people have at least brushed their hair before leaving their houses? "I need a licorice rope," Cherrie announces. She marches toward the snack stand,and all I can think is these people are your future. The thought makes me a little happier. When she comes back,I inform her that just one bite of her Red Dye #40-infused snack could kill my brother. "God, morbid," she says. Which makes me think of St. Clair again.Because when I told him the same thing three months ago,instead of accusing me of morbidity,he asked with genuine curiosity, "Why?" Which is the polite thing to do when someone offers you such an interesting piece of conversation.

When dressing my son before his hockey games, I am always careful with the gear, with each legging, each strap and buckle... Not only are his slight legs swallowed by the wide pads, but his chest and arms are covered only by a tight shirt, accentuating the contrast. Next the puffy upper-body protector, insulated sleeves, and jersey overtop. The final step is the helmet. I start crying as I place it on his head, cinch down the chin cup, and close the cage over his face... I just put my seven-year-old son in a bomb suit and sent him on the Long Walk. p 183

Golden haze, puffy bedquilt. Another awakening, but perhaps not yet the final one. This occurs not infrequently: You come to, and see yourself, say, sitting in an elegant second-class compartment with a couple of elegant strangers; actually, though, this is a false awakening, being merely the next layer of your dream, as if you were rising up from stratum to stratum but never reaching the surface, never emerging into reality. Your spellbound thought, however, mistakes every new layer of the dream for the door of reality. You believe in it, and holding your breath leave the railway station you have been brought to in immemorial fantasies and cross the station square. You discern next to nothing, for the night is blurred by rain, your spectacles are foggy, and you want as quickly as possible to reach the ghostly hotel across the square so as to wash your face, change your shirt cuffs and then go wandering along dazzling streets. Something happens, however—an absurd mishap—and what seemed reality abruptly loses the tingle and tang of reality. Your consciousness was deceived: you are still fast asleep. Incoherent slumber dulls your mind. Then comes a new moment of specious awareness: this golden haze and your room in the hotel, whose name is “The Montevideo.” A shopkeeper you knew at home, a nostalgic Berliner, had jotted it down on a slip of paper for you. Yet who knows? Is this reality, the final reality, or just a new deceptive dream?

It was always right in front of me. The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats and full-length fur-collared leathers, which was their armor against the world. They would stand on the corner of Gwynn Oak and Liberty, or Cold Spring and Park Heights, or outside Mondawmin Mall, with their hands dipped in Russell sweats, I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear, and all I see is them girding themselves against the ghosts of the bad old days when the Mississippi mob gathered 'round their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired.

For her part, Patricia was looking at Laurence and feeling a kind of ache deeper than mere sexual desire, although there was that, too. All of her life, she felt like she had been telling people, “It doesn’t have to be like this,” which is the close cousin to “It can be better than this.” Or even, “We can be better than this.” As a little girl, getting pressed into the dirt by her schoolmates or padlocked in a foul old spice crate by Roberta, she’d tried to say that with tears in her eyes, but she didn’t have the words back then and nobody would have understood anyway. As the outcast freak in junior high, with everybody wanting to burn her alive, she’d given up on even trying to find a way to say, “It can be more than this.” But she’d never let go of that feeling, and it came back now, in the form of hope. She gazed at Laurence’s face (which looked squarer and more handsome without a big shirt collar framing it), his surprisingly puffy and suckable-looking nipples, his shaved pubes, and the way the leg and stomach hair erupted in a heart-shaped ring around the depilated zone. And she felt like they, the two of them, right here, right now, could make something that defied tragedy.

I brushed my teeth like a crazed lunatic as I examined myself in the mirror. Why couldn’t I look the women in commercials who wake up in a bed with ironed sheets and a dewy complexion with their hair perfectly tousled? I wasn’t fit for human eyes, let alone the piercing eyes of the sexy, magnetic Marlboro Man, who by now was walking up the stairs to my bedroom. I could hear the clomping of his boots. The boots were in my bedroom by now, and so was the gravelly voice attached to them. “Hey,” I heard him say. I patted an ice-cold washcloth on my face and said ten Hail Marys, incredulous that I would yet again find myself trapped in the prison of a bathroom with Marlboro Man, my cowboy love, on the other side of the door. What in the world was he doing there? Didn’t he have some cows to wrangle? Some fence to fix? It was broad daylight; didn’t he have a ranch to run? I needed to speak to him about his work ethic. “Oh, hello,” I responded through the door, ransacking the hamper in my bathroom for something, anything better than the sacrilege that adorned my body. Didn’t I have any respect for myself? I heard Marlboro Man laugh quietly. “What’re you doing in there?” I found my favorite pair of faded, soft jeans. “Hiding,” I replied, stepping into them and buttoning the waist. “Well, c’mere,” he said softly. My jeans were damp from sitting in the hamper next to a wet washcloth for two days, and the best top I could find was a cardinal and gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt from my ‘SC days. It wasn’t dingy, and it didn’t smell. That was the best I could do at the time. Oh, how far I’d fallen from the black heels and glitz of Los Angeles. Accepting defeat, I shrugged and swung open the door. He was standing there, smiling. His impish grin jumped out and grabbed me, as it always did. “Well, good morning!” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. His lips settled on my neck. I was glad I’d spritzed myself with Giorgio. “Good morning,” I whispered back, a slight edge to my voice. Equal parts embarrassed at my puffy eyes and at the fact that I’d slept so late that day, I kept hugging him tightly, hoping against hope he’d never let go and never back up enough to get a good, long look at me. Maybe if we just stood there for fifty years or so, wrinkles would eventually shield my puffiness. “So,” Marlboro Man said. “What have you been doing all day?” I hesitated for a moment, then launched into a full-scale monologue. “Well, of course I had my usual twenty-mile run, then I went on a hike and then I read The Iliad. Twice. You don’t even want to know the rest. It’ll make you tired just hearing about it.” “Uh-huh,” he said, his blue-green eyes fixed on mine. I melted in his arms once again. It happened any time, every time, he held me. He kissed me, despite my gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt. My eyes were closed, and I was in a black hole, a vortex of romance, existing in something other than a human body. I floated on vapors. Marlboro Man whispered in my ear, “So…,” and his grip around my waist tightened. And then, in an instant, I plunged back to earth, back to my bedroom, and landed with a loud thud on the floor. “R-R-R-R-Ree?” A thundering voice entered the room. It was my brother Mike. And he was barreling toward Marlboro Man and me, his arms outstretched. “Hey!” Mike yelled. “W-w-w-what are you guys doin’?” And before either of us knew it, Mike’s arms were around us both, holding us in a great big bear hug. “Well, hi, Mike,” Marlboro Man said, clearly trying to reconcile the fact that my adult brother had his arms around him. It wasn’t awkward for me; it was just annoying. Mike had interrupted our moment. He was always doing that.

He was standing there, smiling. His impish grin jumped out and grabbed me, as it always did. “Well, good morning!” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. His lips settled on my neck. I was glad I’d spritzed myself with Giorgio. “Good morning,” I whispered back, a slight edge to my voice. Equal parts embarrassed at my puffy eyes and at the fact that I’d slept so late that day, I kept hugging him tightly, hoping against hope he’d never let go and never back up enough to get a good, long look at me. Maybe if we just stood there for fifty years or so, wrinkles would eventually shield my puffiness. “So,” Marlboro Man said. “What have you been doing all day?” I hesitated for a moment, then launched into a full-scale monologue. “Well, of course I had my usual twenty-mile run, then I went on a hike and then I read The Iliad. Twice. You don’t even want to know the rest. It’ll make you tired just hearing about it.” “Uh-huh,” he said, his blue-green eyes fixed on mine. I melted in his arms once again. It happened any time, every time, he held me. He kissed me, despite my gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt. My eyes were closed, and I was in a black hole, a vortex of romance, existing in something other than a human body. I floated on vapors.

He was in a cage. He quickly rolled onto his back and stood, not checking to see how high the cage was. His skull made contact with the bars on top, knocking his gaze downward as he cursed out loud. And then he saw himself. He was wearing a flowing, puffy white shirt. Even more troubling was the fact that he also appeared to be wearing a pair of very tight leather pants. Very tight. Very leather. Simon looked down at himself and took it all in. The billows of the shirt. The deep, chest-exposing V. The tightness of the leather. “Why is it,” he said after a moment, “that whenever I think I’ve found the most terrible thing that could happen to me, I’m always wrong.” As

You didn’t even look at me,” I protest. He sits up on his knees and lifts my leg up by his shoulder. He’s not looking at my body. “You have pink toenail polish, and you have a bit of stubble on your legs.” He grins. “You can use my razor if you want.” His hand slides up my calf, toward my knee, leaving a wake of goose bumps behind. “Your thighs are firm, and you have a generous flare to your hips.” His hand slips to the front of my panties, where he drags his thumb back and forth for a moment. “You have this tiny dusting of hair, here.” His thumb presses against my cleft, and I arch my back to press harder against him. He chuckles. His hands drift up my sides, lifting the shirt. He tugs it up, until it rests just beneath my breasts. He presses a kiss to my belly. My nipples are hard and standing tall. He licks his lips. “Your nipples are pink and puffy and perfect. And your breasts will fit in my hands.” He throws the shirt back down, groaning as he lies back down on top of me, rocking his length against me again. “I saw everything,” he says. “I was just trying to be a gentleman.” He laughs. “You thought I didn’t look.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “Silly woman,” he scolds. “You looked.” That’s all I can say. And it comes out as a croak. Thank God he can’t hear the quiver in my voice. “I looked,” he admits. “You were naked. And so fucking beautiful that I could barely breathe. Of course, I looked.

He was dressed, as I supposed befitted a warlock, in black—long pants, large boots, and a long-sleeved, billowy shirt that reminded me of Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy pirate shirt.

Despite an icy northeast wind huffing across the bay I sneak out after dark, after my mother falls asleep clutching her leather Bible, and I hike up the rutted road to the frosted meadow to stand in mist, my shoes in muck, and toss my echo against the moss-covered fieldstone corners of the burned-out church where Sunday nights in summer for years Father Thomas, that mad handsome priest, would gather us girls in the basement to dye the rose cotton linen cut-outs that the deacon’s daughter, a thin beauty with short white hair and long trim nails, would stitch by hand each folded edge then steam-iron flat so full of starch, stiffening fabric petals, which we silly Sunday school girls curled with quick sharp pulls of a scissor blade, forming clusters of curved petals the younger children assembled with Krazy glue and fuzzy green wire, sometimes adding tissue paper leaves, all of us gladly laboring like factory workers rather than have to color with crayon stubs the robe of Christ again, Christ with his empty hands inviting us to dine, Christ with a shepherd's staff signaling to another flock of puffy lambs, or naked Christ with a drooping head crowned with blackened thorns, and Lord how we laughed later when we went door to door in groups, visiting the old parishioners, the sick and bittersweet, all the near dead, and we dropped our bikes on the perfect lawns of dull neighbors, agnostics we suspected, hawking our handmade linen roses for a donation, bragging how each petal was hand-cut from a pattern drawn by Father Thomas himself, that mad handsome priest, who personally told the Monsignor to go fornicate himself, saying he was a disgruntled altar boy calling home from a phone booth outside a pub in North Dublin, while I sat half-dressed, sniffing incense, giddy and drunk with sacrament wine stains on my panties, whispering my oath of unholy love while wiggling uncomfortably on the mad priest's lap, but God he was beautiful with a fine chiseled chin and perfect teeth and a smile that would melt the Madonna, and God he was kind with a slow gentle touch, never harsh or too quick, and Christ how that crafty devil could draw, imitate a rose petal in perfect outline, his sharp pencil slanted just so, the tip barely touching so that he could sketch and drink, and cough without jerking, without ruining the work, or tearing the tissue paper, thin as a membrane, which like a clean skin arrived fresh each Saturday delivered by the dry cleaners, tucked into the crisp black vestment, wrapped around shirt cardboard, pinned to protect the high collar.

The strong urge to give her the biggest hug I possibly could swamped me. But then our entrées came, and sorry, Alice, but they smelled so good I only wanted to hug them. Which I did not do, because then they'd be all over my shirt and not in my mouth. Which was the only place I wanted the beef roll, tender shreds of beef braised in garlic and ginger and soy sauce all chopped up and snuggled tightly inside a flaky, oniony, tender scallion pancake. The effect was something like beef Wellington, but better. Alice and I gobbled it down, using our fingertips to scrape up the last few flakes of pancake in the hot, peppery sauce. Then we turned to the other dish. "Is this... a doughnut sandwich?" Alice asked, cocking her head and blinking. "Yes," I said with relish. Alice's entire face lit up. "Excellent." And it was. From the outside, it looked like any normal glazed doughnut, shiny with hardened sugar and puffy from the heat. But the chef had sliced it down the middle and filled it with the most delightful combination of ingredients: a salty, savory aged prosciutto-like ham that melted in my mouth; little bits of tart, sweet pickled pineapple, leaves of grassy cilantro. Together, when they came into contact with the sweet, fluffy doughnut, everything crashed into a bite that was sugary and crunchy and tart and spicy and bright, so bright.

Joshua…” I spun around and had her in my arms in a heartbeat. “Kristen, oh God, thank you,” I breathed, kissing the side of her neck. It was like a reprieve from a prison sentence, seeing her. I was stuck here for two days, two days that I wouldn’t be able to get to her, and she’d come to me. But she didn’t hug me back. She put her hands to my chest and tried to make space between us. “Josh, I just came to talk to you, okay?” I didn’t take my hands from her waist. Her face was puffy, like she’d been up all night crying. Deep circles under her eyes. I leaned in to kiss her and she turned from me. “I need you to stand over there.” She nodded to the kitchen counter. “Please.” If she left, I wouldn’t be able to go after her. I was on shift and couldn’t leave the station. I didn’t want to let her go, but I didn’t want her to run off again, so I stepped back. She wore leggings and one of her off-the-shoulder shirts that I loved, and even though she looked tired, she was the most beautiful woman I’d even seen. And she loves me. I didn’t even know what I did to deserve her, but I knew I’d do anything to make up for the way I’d made her feel. She took a deep breath. “I’m having a partial hysterectomy the week after the wedding,” she said flatly. “I have uterine fibroids. They’re tumors that grow on the walls of my uterus. Mine are imbedded. They can’t be surgically removed, and they didn’t respond to treatment. They cause heavy bleeding and cramping. And…and infertility.” She said the last word like she had to force it out. She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked away from me, tears welling in her beautiful eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It was embarrassing for me. And I don’t need you to say anything. I just needed you to know why. Because it was never my intention to make you feel unwanted.” Her chin quivered and my heart broke. “I did want you, Josh.” She looked back at me. “I always have. You didn’t imagine anything.” The admission that she’d wanted me made my heart reach for her. I took a step toward her, and she took a step back. I put my hands up. “Kristen, nothing has changed. My feelings for you haven’t changed. I want you, no matter what. I’m so sorry—I didn’t know. When I said—” She shook her head. “Josh, this isn’t open for discussion. I didn’t come here to tell you so you could decide whether you want to date me. That’s not even on the table. I just realized that for the last few weeks, I made you feel unloved. And I’m really sorry. I thought you…well, I didn’t know you had feelings for me. I thought only I…Anyway, that’s my fault. I should have never let that happen.” I scoffed. “There was nothing you could have done to keep me from falling in love with you. Even if I’d known this from the very beginning, it wouldn’t have kept me away. You should have told me.” “No, I should have stayed away from you,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t.

Abdul-Rahim has been so lonely trying to avoid stories about the past that Almira wonders whether she knows anything about him at all. She knows his tastes and habits, the cinnamon apple car air fresheners, the roll-on applicator for under-eye puffiness and the economy-size package of antihistamines, his lucky shirt, serious shirt, the birthday and funeral shirts, his illegible signature and small handwriting; but she has no idea how to talk to her father, how to outgrow his air of total secrecy.

He wore white designer shirts with puffy sleeves, acid-washed jeans, and blue Gucci loafers. His shirts’ top three buttons were always undone, causing his chest hair to spill out and revealing a thin gold chain around his neck. A pungent scent of cologne emanated from him at all times.