“
I watched him pitch the ball at a table neatly lined with six bowling pins, my stomach giving a little flutter when his T-shirt crept up in the back, revealing a stripe of skin. I knew from experience that every inch of him was hard, defined muscle. His back was smooth and perfect too, the scars from when he’d fallen once again replaced with wings—wings I, and every other human, couldn’t see.
“Five dollars says you can’t do it again,” I said, coming up behind him.
Patch looked back and grinned. “I don’t want your money, Angel.”
“Hey now, kids, let’s keep this discussion PG-rated,” Rixon said.
“All three remaining pins,” I challenged Patch.
“What kind of prize are we talking about?” he asked.
“Bloody hell,” Rixon said. “Can’t this wait until you’re alone?”
Patch gave me a secret smile, then shifted his weight back, cradling the ball into his chest. He dropped his right shoulder, brought his arm around, and sent the ball flying forward as hard as he could. There was a loud crack! and the remaining three pins scattered off the table.
“Aye, now you’re in trouble, lass,” Rixon shouted at me over the commotion caused by a pocket of onlookers, who were clapping and whistling for Patch. Patch leaned back against the booth and arched his eyebrows at me. The gesture said it all: Pay up.
“You got lucky,” I said.
“I’m about to get lucky.
”
”
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
“
Is that an invitation?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Good.” Cade’s voice dropped lower, adding one last thing before hanging up. “And tell your friend in the striped shirt that he’s in my seat.
”
”
Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
“
It is a traveler’s fallacy that one should shop for clothing while abroad. Those white linen tunics, so elegant in Greece, emerge from the suitcase as mere hippie rags; the beautiful striped shirts of Rome are confined to the closet; and the delicate hand batiks of Bali are first cruise wear, then curtains, then signs of impending madness.
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (Less)
“
Hair brushed and face washed, Holly put her jeans and top on, a plain, blue, cotton shirt with cute thin stripes. She had no bra because she had no boobs. She didn’t even have her period yet. Such a little kid. The other girls talked a lot about bras and boobs and periods.
”
”
Michael Grigsby (Segment of One)
“
Matthew sighed as he set the bottle on the mantel. “You know what they say,” he said, as he and James left the room and began to wend their way back toward the party. “Drink, and you will sleep; sleep, and you will not sin; do not sin, and you will be saved; therefore, drink and be saved.”
“Matthew, you could sin in your sleep,” said a languorous voice.
“Anna,” said Matthew, sagging against James’s shoulder. “Have you been sent to fetch us?”
Lounging against the wall was James’s cousin Anna Lightwood, gorgeously dressed in fitted trousers and a pin-striped shirt. She had the Herondale blue eyes, always disconcerting for James to see, as it felt a bit as if his father were looking at him. “If by ‘fetch,’ you mean ‘drag you back to the ballroom by any means possible,’ ” Anna said. “There are girls who need someone to dance with them and tell them they look pretty, and I cannot do it all on my own.”
The musicians in the ballroom suddenly struck up a tune—a lively waltz.
“Crikey, not waltzing,” said Matthew, in despair. “I loathe waltzing.”
He began to back away. Anna seized him by the back of the coat. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, and firmly herded both of them toward the ballroom.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1))
“
For one ridiculous moment she considered changing into something sexier—at least from the waist up, as that was all he’d see on his camera—but decided not to bother. Logan had fallen in love with her in striped T-shirts and jeans. There was no need to mess with a winning formula.
”
”
Rob Thomas (The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line (Veronica Mars #1))
“
It’s like watching a James Bond movie. Morpheus—in a black trench-coat-style blazer that hangs to his thighs, gray tweed pants, a dark gray vest, skinny red tie, and black pin-striped dress shirt—could pass for a punk-fae secret agent who’s captured his villain. His thick blue waves touch his shoulders from under a gray tweed flat cap, and his wings drape down his back and across the floor, fluttering sporadically as he keeps his balance against Jeb’s resistance.
”
”
A.G. Howard (Unhinged (Splintered, #2))
“
In that latitude the temperature flirted with a hundred degrees for a few of the dog days, but to a child it can hardly ever be too hot. I liked the sun licking the backs of my legs, and the sweat between my shoulder blades, and the violet evenings, with ice cream and fireflies, wherein the long day slowly cooled. I liked the ants piling up dirt like coffee grounds between the bricks of our front walk, and the milkweed spittle in the vacant lot next door. I liked the freedom of shorts, sneakers, and striped T-shirt, with freckles and a short hot-weather haircut.
We love easily in summer, perhaps, because we love our summer selves.
”
”
John Updike
“
I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles.
This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear.
But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God.
...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.
”
”
Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
“
Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?” asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them.
“Why is it an either or question?” the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought.
”
”
Daniel Amory (Minor Snobs)
“
Not being able to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from Dirty Dancing on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it's over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is.
At some point, I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing.
”
”
Stephanie Danler (Sweetbitter)
“
Raoden regarded himself in a small piece of polished steel. His shirt was yellow dyed with blue stripes, his trousers were bright red, and his vest a sickly green. Over all, he looked like some kind of confused tropical bird. His only consolation was that as silly he looked, Galladon was much worse.
The large, dark-skinned Dula looked down at his pink and light green clothing with a resigned expression.
"Don't look so sour, Galladon." Raoden said with a laugh. "Aren't you Dulas
supposed to be fond of garish clothing?“
"That's the aristocracy—the citizens and republicans. I'm a farmer; pink isn't exactly what I consider a flattering color."Then he looked up at Raoden with narrow eyes. "If you make even one comment about my resembling a kathari fruit, I will take off this tunic and hang you with it."
Raoden chuckled. "Someday I'm going to find that scholar who told me all Dulas
were even-tempered, then force him to spend a week locked in a room with you,
my friend.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (Elantris (Elantris, #1))
“
When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl--not Frances, not anyone I've ever known--and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me--that one about being chartless--and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me--that one about the little lamb that made thee--and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (A Boy in France (Babe Gladwaller, #2))
“
Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes appeared, followed by impeccably creased matt charcoal pinstriped light woollen legs, followed by the beautifully cut lower hem of a jacket, its black vent revealing a scarlet silk lining, its open front revealing a flat muscular stomach under a finely-striped red and white shirt. Val’s legs followed, in powder-blue stockings and saxe-blue shoes, under the limp hem of a crêpey mustard-coloured dress, printed with blue moony flowers. The four feet advanced and retreated, retreated and advanced, the male feet insisting towards the basement stairs, the female feet resisting, parrying. Roland opened the door and went into the area, fired mostly by what always got him, pure curiosity as to what the top half looked like.
”
”
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
“
That’s the ceremonial uniform,” I said. “I mean a duty uniform. Light shirt, dark pants with a yellow stripe?” “Oh, Han Solo pants. Yeah, he had those on.” “Okay, thanks.” Pfft. Han Solo’s pants have a red stripe. And it’s not even a stripe—it’s a bunch of dashes. Some people have no education.
”
”
Andy Weir (Artemis)
“
Do you imagine at night someone
going to bed the very moment
you are going to bed? Turning
out the light?
And isn’t it so quiet you swear
the heart is telepathic.
Isn’t it–
from “Eros in His Striped Shirt
”
”
Beckian Fritz Goldberg (In the Badlands of Desire (Cleveland State University Poetry Series))
“
And not in the crazy fuck’s normal bizarre-drobe of zebra stripes and feather boas. The angel had a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Blue jeans that were one trip through the wash away from losing their structural integrity. And a Nirvana shirt from the Saint Andrew’s Hall performance in Detroit on October 11, 1991. That
”
”
J.R. Ward (The Chosen (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #15))
“
For folks who have that casual-dude energy coursing through their bloodstream, that's great. But gays should not grow up alienated just for us to alienate each other. It's too predictable, like any other cycle of abuse. Plus, the conformist, competitive notion that by "toning down" we are "growing up" ultimately blunts the radical edge of what it is to be queer; it truncates our colorful journey of identity.
Said another way, it's like living in West Hollywood and working a gay job by day and working it in the gay nightlife, wearing delicate shiny shirts picked from up the gay dry cleaners, yet coquettishly left unbuttoned to reveal the pec implants purchased from a gay surgeon and shown off by prancing around the gay-owned-and-operated theater hopped up on gay health clinic steroids and wheat grass purchased from the friendly gay boy who's new to the city, and impressed by the monstrous SUV purchased from a gay car dealership with its rainbow-striped bumper sticker that says "Celebrate Diversity." Then logging on to the local Gay.com listings and describing yourself as "straight-acting."
Let me make myself clear. This is not a campaign for everyone to be like me. That'd be a total yawn. Instead, this narrative is about praise for the prancy boys. Granted, there's undecided gender-fucks, dagger dykes, faux-mos, po-mos, FTMs, fisting-top daddies, and lezzie looners who also need props for broadening the sexual spectrum, but they're telling their own stories.
The Cliff's Notes of me and mine are this: the only moments I feel alive are when I'm just being myself - not some stiff-necked temp masquerading as normal in the workplace, not some insecure gay boy aspiring to be an overpumped circuit queen, not some comic book version of swank WeHo living. If that's considered a political act in the homogenized world of twenty-first century homosexuals, then so be it.
— excerpt of "Praise For The Prancy Boys," by Clint Catalyst
appears in first edition (ISBN # 1-932360-56-5)
”
”
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation)
“
Geeks in Australia never wore the striped shirts, pocket protectors, braces and thick rimmed spectacles always seen in American TV shows. They were just plain kids from good homes, a factor other social groups regarded as an exception to the rule.
”
”
Scott Monk (Boyz 'R' Us)
“
Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words I AM ALSO AN ALIEN. She had on a black skirt that was frayed at the hem, a worn-out black, mid-length leather jacket, rivet belt, heavy Doc Marten boots, and horizontally striped, green-and-red knee socks. She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind. In other words, she was exceptionally decked out.
”
”
Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy)
“
Her hair was well brushed that day and sheened darkly in contrast with the lusterless pallor of her neck and arms. She wore the striped tee shirt which in his lone fantasies he especially liked to peel off her twisting torso. The oilcloth was divided into blue and white squares. A smear of honey stained what remained of the butter in its cool crock.
'All right. And the third Real Thing?'
She considered him. A fiery droplet in the wick of her mouth considered him. A three-colored velvet violet, of which she had done an aquarelle on the eve, considered him from its fluted crystal. She said nothing. She licked her spread fingers, still looking at him.
Van, getting no answer, left the balcony. Softly her tower crumbled in the sweet silent sun.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)
“
The timeless marinière shirt, worn by beaucoup handsome French sailors, Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn and James Dean, has earned its place in the fashion hall of fame.
”
”
Libby VanderPloeg
“
His taste in clothes was horrible, but he didn’t buy cheap things. He wore corduroy or velvet shirts from Clyde’s, painted neckties, striped socks.
”
”
Saul Bellow (Seize the Day)
“
It is a traveler’s fallacy that one should shop for clothing while abroad. Those white linen tunics, so elegant in Greece, emerge from the suitcase as mere hippie rags; the beautiful striped shirts of Rome are confined to the closet; and the delicate hand batiks of Bali are first cruise wear, then curtains, then signs of impending madness. And then there is Paris.
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (Less (Arthur Less, #1))
“
Her laughter sounded like music. “What, you don’t hang out with missionaries in your downtime? When the rest of us go home and slip into sweatpants and T-shirts, you kick back in a polo shirt and khakis.”
No one but Isaiah and Beth teased me. People ran from me. Yet this little nymph thoroughly enjoyed this game. “Keep it up, Echo. I’m all about foreplay.”
She laughed so loudly, she slapped a hand over her mouth, yet the giggles escaped. “You are so full of yourself. You think because girls swoon over you and let you into their pants on the first try that I’ll follow suit. Think again. Besides, I have your number now. Every time you try to look all dark and dangerous, I’ll picture you wearing a pink striped polo, collar up, and a pair of pleated chinos.”
”
”
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
“
Please, I know you understand heartbreak. Stop Luc from marrying Marisol. Save my heart from breaking again.”
“Now, that was a pathetic speech.” Two slow claps followed the indolent voice, which sounded just a few feet away.
Evangeline spun around, all the blood draining from her face. She didn’t expect to see him—the young man who’d been tearing his clothes in the back of the church. Although it was difficult to believe this was the same person. She had thought that boy was in agony, but he must have ripped away his pain along with the sleeves of his jacket, which now hung in tatters over a striped black-and-white shirt that was only halfway tucked into his breeches.
He sat on the dais steps, lazily leaning against one of the pillars with his long, lean legs stretched out before him. His hair was golden and messy, his too-bright blue eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth twitched at the corner as if he didn’t enjoy much, but he found pleasure in the brief bit of pain he’d just inflicted upon her. He looked bored and rich and cruel.
“Would you like me to stand up and turn around so that you can take in the rest of me?” he taunted.
The color instantly returned to Evangeline’s cheeks. “We’re in a church.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” In one elegant move, the young man reached into the inner pocket of his ripped burgundy coat, pulled out a pure white apple, and took one bite. Dark red juice dripped from the fruit to his long, pale fingers and then onto the pristine marble steps.
“Don’t do that!” Evangeline hadn’t meant to yell. Although she wasn’t shy with strangers, she generally avoided quarrelling with them. But she couldn’t seem to help it with this crass young man. “You’re being disrespectful.”
“And you’re praying to an immortal who kills every girl he kisses. You really think he deserves any reverence?” The awful young man punctuated his words with another wide bite of his apple.
”
”
Stephanie Garber (Once Upon a Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart, #1))
“
Do I need to check up on you guys later? You know the rules.No sleeping in opposite-sex rooms."
My face flames,and St. Clair's cheeks grow blotchy. It's true.It's a rule. One that my brain-my rule-loving, rule-abiding brain-conveniently blocked last night. It's also one notoriously ignored by the staff.
"No,Nate," we say.
He shakes his shaved head and goes back in his apartment. But the door opens quickly again,and a handful of something is thrown at us before it's slammed back shut.
Condoms.Oh my God, how humiliating.
St. Clair's entire face is now bright red as he picks the tiny silver squares off the floor and stuffs them into his coat pockets. We don't speak,don't even look at each other,as we climb the stairs to my floor. My pulse quickens with each step.Will he follow me to my room,or has Nate ruined any chance of that?
We reach the landing,and St. Clair scratches his head. "Er..."
"So..."
"I'm going to get dressed for bed. Is that all right?" His voice is serious,and he watches my reaction carefully.
"Yeah.Me too.I'm going to...get ready for bed,too."
"See you in a minute?"
I swell with relief. "Up there or down here?"
"Trust me,you don't want to sleep in my bed." He laughs,and I have to turn my face away,because I do,holy crap do I ever. But I know what he means.It's true my bed is cleaner. I hurry to my room and throw on the strawberry pajamas and an Atlanta Film Festival shirt. It's not like I plan on seducing him.
Like I'd even know how.
St. Clair knocks a few minutes later, and he's wearing his white bottoms with the blue stripes again and a black T-shirt with a logo I recognize as the French band he was listening to earlier. I'm having trouble breathing.
"Room service," he says.
My mind goes...blank. "Ha ha," I say weakly.
He smiles and turns off the light. We climb into bed,and it's absolutely positively completely awkward. As usual. I roll over to my edge of the bed. Both of us are stiff and straight, careful not to touch the other person. I must be a masochist to keep putting myself in these situations. I need help. I need to see a shrink or be locked in a padded cell or straitjacketed or something.
After what feels like an eternity,St. Clair exhales loudly and shifts. His leg bumps into mine, and I flinch. "Sorry," he says.
"It's okay."
"..."
"..."
"Anna?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for letting me sleep here again. Last night..."
The pressure inside my chest is torturous. What? What what what?
"I haven't slept that well in ages."
The room is silent.After a moment, I roll back over. I slowly, slowly stretch out my leg until my foot brushes his ankle. His intake of breath is sharp. And then I smile,because I know he can't see my expression through the darkness.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but with a pale blue shirt open at the collar. He was in his Minnesota Senate office, with a hint of the American flag to his right, a couple of red and white stripes—not enough of a flag display to invite sarcasm, but it was there.
”
”
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
“
See that guy over there?" I nod toward a man in jean shorts and a Budweiser T-shirt. "Am I that obvious?"
St. Clair squints at him. "Obviously what? Balding? Overweight? Tasteless?"
"American."
He sighs melodramtically. "Honestly, Anna. You must get over this."
"I just don't want to offend anyone. I hear they offend easily."
"You're not offending anyone except me right now."
"What about her?" I point to a middle-aged woman in khaki shorts and a knit top with stars and stripes on it.She has a camera strapped to her belt and is arguing with a man in a bucket hat. Her husband,I suppose.
"Completely offensive."
"I mean,am I as obvious as her?"
"Considering she's wearing the American flag, I'd venture a no on that one." He bites his thumbnail. "Listen.I think I have a solution to your problem, but you'll have to wait for it. Just promise you'll stop asking me to compare you to fifty-year-old women,and I'll take care of everything."
"How? With what? A French passport?"
He snorts. "I didn't say I'd make you French." I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. "Deal?"
"Deal," I say uncomfortably. I don't care for surprises. "But it better be good."
"Oh,it's good." And St. Clair looks so smug that I'm about to call him on it, when I realize I can't see our school anymore.
I don't believe it.He's completely distracted me.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
On either side of them the essence of honky tonk beach resort had now enclosed them: gas stations, fried clam stands, Dairy Treets, motels painted in feverish pastel colors, mini golf.
Larry was drawn two painful ways by these things. Part of him clamored at their sad and blatant ugliness and at the ugliness of the minds that had turned this section of a magnificent, savage coastline into one long highway amusement park for families in station wagons. But there was a more subtle, deeper part of him that whispered of the people who had filled these places and this road during other summers. Ladies in sunhats and shorts too tight for their large behinds. College boys in red and black striped rugby shirts. Girls in beach shifts and thong sandals. Small screaming children with ice cream spread over their faces. They were American people, and there was a kind of dirty, compelling romance about them whenever they were in groups never mind if the group was in an Aspen ski lodge or performing their prosaic/ arcane rites of summer along Route 1 in Maine. And now all these Americans were gone.
”
”
Stephen King (The Stand)
“
Pretty,” he said. “The wine?” “You.” I was wearing a white T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms with a drawstring waist. My feet were bare and my hair was down and disorderly. “This would be perfect if we were in my apartment and not yours, and you were spending the night,” he said.
”
”
Janet Evanovich (Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum, #20))
“
So, Bran, tell us,” said a lanky guy in a striped rugby shirt and salmon-colored chinos. He was standing next to a guy in Bermuda shorts and buckskin shoes. Every year more and more preppies were showing up at her parties and if she was honest with herself, she knew it was Brandon’s influence.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising)
“
Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?”
“No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork.”
“Oh. Well, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. What kind of paperwork?”
He smiled. “Nothing important.”
Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He’d purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact.
Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He’d rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor.
He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century.
I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few “He’s not for me’s.” The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watching him walk around like a regular person was that it tightened my resolve. Yes. It would be hard because he was so unbelievably gorgeous, but it was now even more obvious to me that we didn’t belong together.
As he joined us at the elevator, I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “Figures. The guy is a tiger for three hundred and fifty years and emerges from his curse with expensive taste and keen fashion sense too. Incredible!”
Mr. Kadam asked, “What was that, Miss Kelsey?”
“Nothing.”
Ren raised an eyebrow and smirked.
He probably heard me. Stupid tiger hearing.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and moved to the corner hoping to keep Mr. Kadam between the two of us, but unfortunately, Mr. Kadam wasn’t receiving the silent thoughts I was projecting furiously toward him and remained by the elevator buttons. Ren moved next to me and stood too close. He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a knowing smile. We rode down the elevator in silence.
When the doors opened, he stopped me, took the backpack off my shoulder, and threw it over his, leaving me with nothing to carry. He walked ahead next to Mr. Kadam while I trialed along slowly behind, keeping distance between us and a wary eye on his tall frame.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
Ichecked myself over nervously. I had never been the new kid before, and I wanted at least one friend before the day was done. One besides Josh. Girlfriends were a necessity. Plenty had eyed me up at the ball but none had been brave enough to talk to me. Not even when I danced with Josh. I smiled unintentionally, thinking about Josh. Perhaps he would be my only friend. I could live with that, couldn’t I? No. Girlfriends were a necessity. Who would I toil over Josh with? And who would I talk about Briton with? No, I needed fiends. I surveyed my gray skinny jeans, black-and-white striped three-quarter-sleeve shirt, and knee-high beige dress boots, and grinned. I looked like a city kid. Great. No one would want to hang with me. My long hair looked silky and fine, not thick and unruly like it truly was, and I had on too much makeup. Yikes.
”
”
Tara Brown (Sunder)
“
Billy had not been her first lover, but he was the first she could not dance and dandle at her whim. Before him her boys had been clever marionettes with clear, pimple-free faces and parents with connections and country-club memberships. They drove their own VWs or Javelins or Dodge Chargers. They went to UMass or Boston College. They wore fraternity windbreakers in the fall and muscle shirts with bright stripes in the summer.
”
”
Stephen King (Carrie)
“
I want the rain to follow me, to mark me with a stripe down my chest and belly, to darken my skin, and blacken my hair. I want to be broken, to be eaten by the anonymous mouths, to be eroded like minutes and seconds, to be reduced to water and a little light. I want to rise, the doors of the rain to open, I will enter, rain alive among my fingers, embroidered on my tongue, and brilliant in my eyes, I want to carry it in my shirt pocket, devote my life to the discovery of its secret, the one blessing it whispers. Rain
”
”
Li-Young Lee (Rose)
“
Wait! It’s too heavy,” Elizabeth called after him. Nick kept right on walking until he reached the carriage and deposited the trunk on the rack in the back. When he returned to her side, he smiled at her. “Not much bigger than a hay bale, Miss Hamilton.” Before Elizabeth could respond, Nick stooped down, lifted the second trunk, and carried it to the carriage. In tired bemusement, Elizabeth watched Nick’s broad shoulders and the muscles moving beneath his faded striped shirt. She felt a stirring in her breast and wondered at the unexpected feeling.
”
”
Debra Holland (Wild Montana Sky (Montana Sky, #1))
“
When I got to the gig I was told I would be singing for a male vocalist. In walked this sexy, serene, toasted-almond-colored artsy young man—he just looked like the definition of an artist. His thick, dark hair was just in the beginning phases of dreadlocks. He had a perfect five o’clock shadow, with a thick stripe of goatee down the center of his chin. He was dressed rock star casual: heavy black leather vintage motorcycle jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt. He had a thin ring in his nose and smelled how I imagined ancient Egyptian oils would smell. His face was kind and fine, with a boyish smile. He went by the name of Romeo Blue. His friends called him Lenny. And about a year later, the world would know him as Lenny Kravitz.
”
”
Mariah Carey (The Meaning of Mariah Carey)
“
Now Justin stood in our reading room, leaning up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was tall, with a wiry athletic build. Usually, he was Mr. Ultra-Casual, with sun-kissed blond hair that he kept out of his eyes by pushing his sunglasses up on his forehead. Today, that messy blond hair was clean-cut, and he’d traded his typical board shorts and loose T-shirt for a striped shirt and khakis. His father, the mayor of Eastport, was running for re-election. Since the campaign started last month, Justin had become the mayor’s sixteen-year-old sidekick. I’d heard he was spending the summer working for his dad down at the town hall, which would explain the nice clothes. What sucked for me was that the new style fit him. He looked even better, the jerk.
“I heard you and Tiffany got into a catfight over me at Yummy’s,” Justin announced with an overconfident grin that pissed me off.
I slammed the door behind me. “First off, I dumped a soda over her head. That was it.”
“Damn, a catfight sounded much hotter. I was picturing ripped shirts, exposed skin.”
I rolled my eyes. “And second, it wasn’t over you, egomaniac. You can date every girl in town as far as I’m concerned. I hate you. I pray every night that you’ll fall victim to some strange and unusual castration accident.” I pointed to the door. “So get the hell out.”
His lips twitched, fighting a smile.
Ugh. I was going for “crazy ex filled with hate” not “isn’t she cute when she’s mad?”
“Feel better after getting all that out?
”
”
Kim Harrington (Clarity (Clarity, #1))
“
He turned him about in the light from the window. What are you wearing? he said. Harrogate shuffled and flapped his arms. Aw, he said. Just some old clothes. Did they rig you out in these at the workhouse? Yeah. They lost my clothes what they give me at the hospital. I dont look funny do I? No. You look crazy. He pulled at Harrogate. What is this? Harrogate held his arms aloft. I dont know, he said. Suttree was turning him around. Good God, he said. The shirt was fashioned from an enormous pair of striped drawers, his neck stuck through the ripped seam of the crotch, his arms hanging from the capacious legholes like sticks. What size do you wear? What size what? Anything. Shirt to start with. I take a small. A small. Yeah. Take that damn thing off.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Suttree)
“
The sharpie uniform is perhaps the most unlikely fashion statement you will ever see, a Frankenstein’s monster of baby-doll plucked eyebrows, skinhead-meets-mullet hair, 1970s fat ties and just a hint of bovver boy. Clothes worn too tight and too small. Kerry had prepared a shopping list: • bluebird earrings • three-inch Mary Jane corkie platform shoes • treads (shoes made using recycled tyres for the sole with suede thonging for the upper) • Lee canvas jeans • beachcombers • short white bobby socks • ribbed tights • a short, flared, preferably panelled skirt • satin baggies • a striped Golden Breed t-shirt or a KrestKnit polo shirt • a tight coral necklace from the surf shop • a Conti brand striped cardigan • blue metallic eye shadow from a small pot or a crayon
”
”
Magda Szubanski (Reckoning: A powerful memoir from an Australian icon)
“
When we got back to Manhattan, Maeve took me to a men’s store and bought me extra underwear, a new shirt, and a pair of pajamas, then she got me a toothbrush at the drugstore next door. That night we went to the Paris Theater and saw Mon Oncle. Maeve said she was in love with Jacques Tati. I was nervous about seeing a movie with subtitles but it turned out that nobody really said anything. After it was finished, we stopped for ice cream then went back to Barnard. Boys of every stripe were expressly forbidden to go past the dorm lobby, but Maeve just explained the situation to the girl at the desk, another friend of hers, and took me upstairs. Leslie, her roommate, had gone home for Easter break and so I slept in her bed. The room was so small we could have easily reached across the empty space and touched fingers.
”
”
Ann Patchett (The Dutch House)
“
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that I’ve always been interested in heroes, starting with my dad, Phil Robertson, and my mom, Miss Kay. My other heroes are my pa and my granny, who taught me how to play cards and dominoes and everything about fishing (which was a lot), and my three older brothers, who teased me, beat me up, and sometimes let me follow them around. Not much has changed in that department.
I’ve always loved movies, and when I was about seven or eight years old, I watched Rocky, Sylvester Stallone’s movie about an underdog boxer who used his fists, along with sheer will, determination, and the ability to endure pain, to make a way for himself. He fought hard but played fair and had a soft spot for his friends. I fell in love with Rocky. He was my hero, and I became obsessed.
When I decide to do something, I’m all in; so I found a pair of red shorts that looked like Rocky’s boxing trunks and a navy blue bathrobe with two white stripes on the sleeve and no belt. I took off my shirt and ran around bare-chested in my robe and shorts. Most kids I knew went through a superhero phase, but they picked DC Comics guys, like Batman or Superman. Not me. I was Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion, and proud of it. Mom let me run around like that for a couple of years, even when we went in to town.
Rocky had a girlfriend, Adrian, who was always there, always by his side. When he was beaten and blinded in a bad fight, he called out for her before anybody else. “Yo, Adrian!” he shouted in his Philly-Italian accent. He needed her.
Eventually, I grew up, and the red shorts and blue bathrobe didn’t fit anymore, but I always remembered Rocky’s kindness and his courage. And that every Rocky needs an Adrian.
”
”
Jep Robertson (The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness)
“
Wait in the car." He opened the door and started to climb out.
"Hold on! How long should I give you? What if you don't come back in a certain number of minutes? Should I call the cops?"
"Don't do anything. Don't call anyone. I'll be fine."
"But what if you're not?"
"Then go home."
And with that, he got out and jogged down the street, like if I heard screams or gunshots or whatever I would just drive on home like nothing happened. Well, good for you, I thought, watching him climb a short cement staircase and put a key in the door. You don't need anyone. Fine.
I watched the clock. Three minutes went by, four. I thought about knocking on the door, having of course no idea what I would actually do once I got there. Maybe I'd have to break the door down, wrestle Cameron away from the bad men, and then carry him out the way you hear people when they get a huge burst of adrenaline. Except the person I pictured rescuing was little Cameron, in shorts and a striped T-shirt, his arms wrapped around my neck.
Then there he was, bursting out of the apartment door and bounding down the steps, a big garbage bag in hand. He ran to the car, fast. I reached over and opened the passenger door and he jumped in.
"Go."
You can't exactly peel out in a '94 Escort, but I did my best. Cameron breathed hard, clutching the garbage bag to his chest.
"What happened?" I drove a good fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit, convinced we were being chased by angry roommates with guns.
"Nothing. You can slow down."
I didn't. "Nothing? Nothing happened?"
"They weren't even there."
Then I did slow down. "No one was there? At all?"
"Right." His breathing had returned to almost normal.
"Then what's the deal with freaking me out like that?" My voice came out high and hysterical and I realized how nervous I'd been, imagining some dangerous scenario from which Cameron had barely escaped, an echo of that day at his house.
"I don't know. I started to picture one of them pulling up and finding me there and...I panicked.
”
”
Sara Zarr (Sweethearts)
“
My feeling then was of forlornness, of the desperate inadequacies of this human linguistic apparatus that we employ to forestall, a little longer, aloneness, and of how futile these fumblings so often are. In the next lurch of solitude I began trying to add to the list of things not to say to someone in your marriage: Don’t ever use a pen while lying on the bed; don’t ever forget to put the cap back on a pen after using the pen; don’t ever use a pen if it’s new; put items in the refrigerator at ninety-degree angles; do not throw things in the bathroom trash if there are already a lot of things in the trash; don’t ever lie on the bed, made or unmade, in your clothes; don’t get into the bed without having showered; don’t put your bag on the bed, don’t put your bag on the chair, don’t put your bag on the counter, don’t put your bag on the table; don’t ever do the laundry; don’t bite your nails; don’t put the toilet paper facing out; don’t put the toilet paper facing in; don’t accelerate quickly; don’t wear those colors together, don’t wear those colors together, don’t wear a stripe and a plaid, don’t wear that shirt, that looks bad on you, that looks bad on you, and that looks bad on you, and that looks bad on you, and that looks bad on you too, are you sure you want to wear that, that looks bad on you; please stay out of the house one night a week, please stay out of the house a couple of nights a week so I can have some privacy; don’t put that there; don’t put that there; that plastic cup was given to me by my grandmother; don’t use my towel; don’t use my bathroom; you don’t understand your own family; you don’t understand your own role in your own family; you don’t understand what people think of you; you don’t understand other people; you don’t understand me, you don’t understand yourself; I need money for clothes, I need money for credit cards, I need money for school; don’t cut your meat on the plate, that sound is awful, cut your meat on the cutting board before putting it on your plate; don’t touch me. And when I was done
”
”
Rick Moody (Hotels of North America)
“
The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?
”
”
Michael Muhammad Knight (Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing)
“
I’m so sorry,” he said between kisses. “For what I said that night. For leaving you earlier. I never meant-“
“I know,” she whispered, wrapping a leg over his lip and shinnying up his body. Her lips grazed his ear. “I know. Just don’t leave me again.”
“Never.” The word burst out like an oath or a prayer, and God help him, he meant it. “Never,” he repeated, looking straight into her glimmering eyes. Then he sealed the vow with a kiss, deep and desperate and true. “Oh God,” he groaned when their lips finally parted.
She kissed him again, working her warm, slender fingers under the collar of his shirt to stroke the chilled flesh of his shoulders and back. He buries his face in her neck, inhaling the beautiful scent of her. He’d forgotten how roses smell sweetest after a rain. Trailing light kisses down to her collarbone, he began carrying her toward the bed.
“Make love to me, Gray.”
She didn’t need to ask. They both knew what was going to happen. But Gray felt the significance of her words. He might have bedded ladies and whores the world over, but for the first time in his life, he was going to make love to a woman. And not just a woman. His woman.
And this idea that should have been so unthinkable, so frightening-to his surprise, Gray found it wildly arousing. They tumbled together onto the narrow bed, and she began pulling his shirt free of his trousers. He rose up on his knees and impatiently yanked it over his head.
He peered at her frock in the darkness.
Bloody hell. Stripes.
Gray started to roll her over, looking for laces or hooks or some other ridiculous device contrived by the devil to thwart men.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
“
Sky's The Limit"
[Intro]
Good evening ladies and gentlemen
How's everybody doing tonight
I'd like to welcome to the stage, the lyrically acclaimed
I like this young man because when he came out
He came out with the phrase, he went from ashy to classy
I like that
So everybody in the house, give a warm round of applause
For the Notorious B.I.G
The Notorious B.I.G., ladies and gentlemen give it up for him y'all
[Verse 1]
A nigga never been as broke as me - I like that
When I was young I had two pair of Lees, besides that
The pin stripes and the gray
The one I wore on Mondays and Wednesdays
While niggas flirt I'm sewing tigers on my shirts, and alligators
You want to see the inside, I see you later
Here comes the drama, oh, that's that nigga with the fake, blaow
Why you punch me in my face, stay in your place
Play your position, here come my intuition
Go in this nigga pocket, rob him while his friends watching
And hoes clocking, here comes respect
His crew's your crew or they might be next
Look at they man eye, big man, they never try
So we rolled with them, stole with them
I mean loyalty, niggas bought me milks at lunch
The milks was chocolate, the cookies, butter crunch
88 Oshkosh and blue and white dunks, pass the blunts
[Hook: 112]
Sky is the limit and you know that you keep on
Just keep on pressing on
Sky is the limit and you know that you can have
What you want, be what you want
Sky is the limit and you know that you keep on
Just keep on pressing on
Sky is the limit and you know that you can have
What you want, be what you want, have what you want, be what you want
[Verse 2]
I was a shame, my crew was lame
I had enough heart for most of them
Long as I got stuff from most of them
It's on, even when I was wrong I got my point across
They depicted me the boss, of course
My orange box-cutter make the world go round
Plus I'm fucking bitches ain't my homegirls now
Start stacking, dabbled in crack, gun packing
Nickname Medina make the seniors tote my Niñas
From gym class, to English pass off a global
The only nigga with a mobile can't you see like Total
Getting larger in waists and tastes
Ain't no telling where this felon is heading, just in case
Keep a shell at the tip of your melon, clear the space
Your brain was a terrible thing to waste
88 on gates, snatch initial name plates
Smoking spliffs with niggas, real-life beginner killers
Praying God forgive us for being sinners, help us out
[Hook]
[Verse 3]
After realizing, to master enterprising
I ain't have to be in school by ten, I then
Began to encounter with my counterparts
On how to burn the block apart, break it down into sections
Drugs by the selections
Some use pipes, others use injections
Syringe sold separately Frank the Deputy
Quick to grab my Smith & Wesson like my dick was missing
To protect my position, my corner, my lair
While we out here, say the Hustlers Prayer
If the game shakes me or breaks me
I hope it makes me a better man
Take a better stand
Put money in my mom's hand
Get my daughter this college grant so she don't need no man
Stay far from timid
Only make moves when your heart's in it
And live the phrase sky's the limit
Motherfuckers
See you chumps on top
[Hook]
”
”
The Notorious B.I.G
“
The first touch came when Bull was lying full-length along the skirting board in the little six-foot vestibule that connected the bathroom to the kitchenette and the front door. He was the picture of powerlessness. His sensible, striped M&S shirt was rucked up around his back, his white, cotton Y- fronts dewlapped over the flat surfaces of his buttocks. Alan’s fine and tapering hand described an arc over him. He knelt as if stroking a cat. At the zenith of the arc Alan’s palm made contact with the small of Bull’s back. Bull stiffened bur did not cry out or resist…Oh, cruel deceiver! For how could Margoulis not have known that in this moment of breakdown, of cracking distress, the thing that Bull, of course, still desired most ardently, was the dry, sensible touch of a doctor.
”
”
Will Self (Cock & Bull)
“
COLEMAN SLEEPING BAG: LIGHTWEIGHT, LIME GREEN W/ BEIGE INTERIOR, WELL USED, ZIPPER BROKEN. 22 T-SHIRTS, SEVEN: ASSORTED BRANDS, COLORS, AND STYLES. 23 ENERGIZER LED FLASHLIGHT (NO BATTERIES). 24 SCARF: GRAY/BLUE STRIPED ACRYLIC FABRIC, FRINGE MISSING ON ONE END.
”
”
Tyler Dilts (A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (Long Beach Homicide, #3))
“
Abelard had on Wayfarer sunglasses, a dark blue windbreaker over a blue striped shirt, like he was on his way to a casual day of yachting. He looked cool and collected. The very opposite of me.
”
”
Laura Creedle (The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily)
“
Actually, it’s quite the opposite. She will have to go to bed earlier,” I say, sipping my coffee at the table with the same nonchalance. Faith gasps and her hand, holding toast to her mouth, flings to the table. I continue, “The teenage body needs more rest to function properly with all the new hormones raging.” Hezekiah pads down the steps, handsome in blue slacks and a striped polo shirt. “Daddy, is this true?” Faith says. “Do I have to go to bed earlier after my birthday?” Hezekiah catches my eye and furrows his brow in seriousness. “Absolutely. When I turned thirteen, my bedtime went from nine o’clock to seven o’clock.
”
”
Kim Cash Tate (Heavenly Places)
“
her gentle but continuous harangue as she coaxed him into dressing and tried to teach him to match his shirt and pants. But sometimes an incipient tantrum she had no time for meant that checks and stripes were the order of the day. “Have fun at the circus,” she’d say to Sean’s back as he ran out the door to catch the bus. Rebecca
”
”
Dexter Palmer (Version Control)
“
So they were here sometime before ten, but we don’t know how long before, and they were gone before eleven,” Robertson said. Robertson was sartorially distinct from his partner, wearing a blue-striped Façonnable long-sleeved dress shirt, dark blue slender jeans with the cuffs rolled up a half inch, and tan lace-up shoes; Lucas envied him the shoes. “We have a call on Likely’s phone, to Baker, at nine o’clock, so he was alive then.
”
”
John Sandford (Extreme Prey (Lucas Davenport, #26))
“
He had one leg crossed over the other and sat with both hands resting casually in his lap. He wore a three-piece suit, silvery grey in colour, with the jacket open to reveal the waistcoat and a striped red and white dress shirt underneath. His tie was ruby red and affixed to the shirt by a gold tie bar shaped like a pirate’s cutlass. His shoes were brown tasselled loafers with the toes polished to a mirror sheen. Light brown hair was swept back from a face that was far more youthful than Victor had expected. He looked no older than twenty-eight or nine.
”
”
Tom Wood (The Game (Victor the Assassin, #3))
“
She’d started calling him Bear in high school, after he’d put on weight. Embrace it, she’d said. You’re a mega bear babe, and everyone wants your honey pot.
He felt more like a hungover Winnie the Pooh. He even had the right outfit: a striped shirt and boxers. Though Winnie didn’t wear bottoms at all. Just let it all hang out, flashing the Hundred Acre Wood like the perv that he was.
”
”
Jes Battis (The Winter Knight)
“
Flair Hickory, celebrity counsel for the defense, stood, and not for the first time, Wendy wondered how Dan Mercer had the money to afford him. Flair wore his customary gray suit with thick pink stripes, pink shirt, pink tie. He crossed the room in a way that might be modestly described as “theatrical,” but it was more like something Liberace might have done if Liberace had the courage to be really flamboyant. “Ms.
”
”
Harlan Coben (Caught)
“
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”
”
Fire and Fuel Apparel
“
As I’m walking back out to the living room, my bedroom door opens, and Logan steps out. I have to catch my breath at the sight of him. He’s wearing black trousers, a black turtleneck, and he has on a royal-blue button-down shirt with long sleeves that’s open at the throat. He’s not wearing a tie, and he doesn’t need one. Goodness, he looks like he just stepped off the cover of a magazine. He has a jacket thrown over his shoulder, hooked by his index finger. He lifts the edge of his pants for me. “Are these socks too much?” he asks. He has on socks with multi-colored stripes. He grins. I shake my head. “None of it’s too much.” I sweep my eyes from his head to his feet and back again. God, he’s handsome. “You look amazing.” “I guess I clean up okay, huh?” he asks. He looks unsure of himself. “Logan, you look fabulous,” my mom says. She claps her hands together like she’s at the theater.
”
”
Tammy Falkner (Smart, Sexy and Secretive (The Reed Brothers, #2))
“
As far as she could tell, basketball involved a herd of impossibly tall men racing up and down a polished wooden floor, passing a ball back and forth until one of them forged ahead to the basket to try to score. It seemed that whenever the contest became interesting, the referees would blow their whistles and everything would come to a grinding halt. She couldn’t understand why the referees chose to wear zebra-striped shirts, either, since it wasn’t likely anyone would confuse the short, balding men with the players.
”
”
Debbie Macomber (The Manning Grooms: Bride on the Loose / Same Time, Next Year)
“
David Sassoon
For several decades, British designer David Sassoon has provided the best in evening wear for fashionable and famous customers from his high-profile store in London. His work has been featured in many international fashion shows and museums throughout the world, and his garments are in high demand at such notable stores as Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Harrods, and Neiman Marcus.
The Princess of Wales would often make surprise visits to my shop, as I had made her going-away dress and many other outfits for her trousseau.
In August 1982, Diana came to my shop with Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the daughter of Princess Margaret, who had been a bridesmaid at Diana’s wedding.
The Princess was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sailor-style two-piece outfit; Sarah wore a white shirt and a cotton skirt, as it was a very hot day.
Diana said that she would like to choose a long evening dress for Sarah as a present. The dress was to be worn at a ball at Balmoral Castle. This was Sarah’s first long dress, and Diana wanted her to have her dream dress.
There were lots of giggles and excitement as Diana helped Sarah try on some of the dresses, and the dressing room was full of laughter.
Finally, Sarah chose a bright red strapless taffeta ball dress, which made her feel very grown up.
We brought them tea while the dress was being fitted, and Sarah, who obviously adored Diana, listened to her advice about what accessories would complement the dress.
Sarah was so excited about her beautiful and glamorous present when they left the shop. Diana had made a young girl’s dream come true.
”
”
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
“
The dwarf seated at the head of the table was clad in a black shirt and vest with a gold robe wrapped around his broad shoulders. A thin circlet of silver with a single ruby set in the center rested atop his weathered brow. His black beard was striped with the grey of many years, and his eyes were deeply set and impossible to read. This
”
”
Brian D. Anderson (Dragonvein Book One (Dragonvein, #1))
“
She wanted to tear at his shirt and lick her way up his abs. Lord, she visualized that more than was healthy in the past five minutes.
”
”
Milly Taiden (Stripe-Search (Furocious Lust Shorts, #5))
“
She dressed for a future not yet with us but which she expected to arrive. That’s what her plain white linen trousers were for, her blue-and-white-striped “Breton” T-shirt, her frayed espadrilles, her severe and beautiful African head—everything so plain, so understated, completely out of step with the spirit of the time, and with the place.
”
”
Zadie Smith (Swing Time)
“
You got panties with flowers on them,” Hayley says, as she eyes the hip of my undies. She looks up at her dad. “Can I have some panties with flowers on them?” She pulls her pajama pants down at the waist and shows me hers. “Mine just have stripes.” I pull my shirt down over my hips. “What did I tell you about showing your panties to people?” Paul asks. She rolls her eyes at him. “Friday’s a girl,” she says. I bite back my snort because Paul isn’t laughing. I look at him over my shoulder, his eyes meet mine, and they go hot. And so do I. “I know she’s a girl.” His eyes roam up and down my back. “Most definitely a girl.” “We need to get you some waffles,” Hayley says to Paul. “Because you look hungry.” She says it very matter-of-factly, and I can’t keep from laughing this time. Paul shoots me a look of warning, and I throw my hands up. “What?” I cry. “I can’t help it.
”
”
Tammy Falkner (Proving Paul's Promise (The Reed Brothers, #5))
“
Chase located North in the break room. Instead of a flight suit or cammies, he was dressed in a white T-shirt and his dress blue trousers with the blood stripe running along the outer legs. Blood stripes represented the bloodshed of Marines during the Mexican-American battle at Chapultepec in 1847.
”
”
Carver Greene (An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series Book 1))
“
At 5:00 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbes stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realize how equal the Forbes and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier-mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5:00 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: “Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?
”
”
Peter Pomerantsev (Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia)
“
A soft knock on the door alerts me to a visitor. I glance down at my clothes; red and pinked striped shorts and a white t-shirt with hearts on it. My PJs. They'll have to be adequate 'cause I refuse to move from my current position.
“Yes?” I aim a pointed look at the door and wait.
It slides inward, revealing Graham. He’s in his PJs as well, which consist of gray athletic shorts and a yellow shirt with cut-off sleeves. I got him the t-shirt, hence why it reads 'Ken and Barbie For Life' in pink cursive letters. I love that shirt. Proof that he loves me in some form is the fact that he wears it.
”
”
Lindy Zart (Roomies)
“
A hunting rifle had been leaning against the wall on the other side of their room and Alora already had the rifle expertly armed and pointed at the door. She fired. The man on her left wearing a dark, grey-striped suit fell to the floor. A second shot rang out, from behind the intruders, and the other business-suited man collapsed in the hallway. Both were dead. Now, other men in suit pants and dress shirts were suddenly all over the hallway and crowding into the bedroom which smelled of cordite. ‘You killed that guy,’ said Sinatra, lighting a cigarette. Her voice shaking Alora protested: ‘But they had guns. ‘They were coming to kill us.’ ‘Those weren’t guns,’ added Sinatra. ‘They were walkie-talkies.
”
”
Mike Rothmiller (Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders)
“
Then suddenly, after only three or four months, I’ve got four or five badges and I’m promoted to patrol leader. I had badges all over the place, unbelievable! I don’t know where my scout shirt is now, but it’s adorned, stripes and strings and badges all over the place. Looked like I was into bondage. All that boosted my confidence at a crucial moment, after my ejection from the choir, especially the fact that I was promoted so fast. I think it was more important, that whole scouting period, than I’ve ever realized. I had a good team.
”
”
Keith Richards (Life)
“
There’s a communal memory of Cobain’s wearing flannel in this video, and that this image was the dawn of grunge fashion. This, however, is another case of the Mandela Effect—he’s just wearing a brown shirt with green stripes.
”
”
Chuck Klosterman (The Nineties: A Book)
“
At 5 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbeses stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realise how equal the Forbeses and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many Westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: ‘Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?’ A Hero for Our Times I am in a meeting at TNT when my phone goes off.
”
”
Peter Pomerantsev (Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia)
“
Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. The cool kids of the 1960s invited the old man who had been cool before they knew cool was cool to join them in a musical romp that nobody took particularly seriously. Crosby enjoys himself. He has nothing at stake, since he’s not the star who has to carry the film. He’s very casual, and appears to be ad-libbing all his lines in the old Road tradition with a touch of W. C. Fields’s colorful vocabulary thrown in: “You gentlemen find my raiment repulsive?” he asks Sinatra and Martin when they object to his character’s lack of chic flash in clothing. Crosby plays a clever con man who disguises himself as square, and his outfits reflect a conservative vibe in the eyes of the cats who are looking him over. The inquiry leads into a number, “Style,” in which Sinatra and Martin put Crosby behind closet doors for a series of humorous outfit changes, to try to spruce him up. Crosby comes out in a plaid suit with knickers and then in yellow pants and an orange-striped shirt. Martin and Sinatra keep on singing—and hoping—while Crosby models a fez. He finally emerges with a straw hat, a cane, and a boutonniere in his tuxedo lapel, looking like a dude. In his own low-key way, taking his spot in the center, right between the other two, Crosby joins in the song and begins to take musical charge. Sinatra is clearly digging Crosby, the older man he always wanted to emulate.*17 Both Sinatra and Martin are perfectly willing to let Crosby be the focus. He’s earned it. He’s the original that the other two wanted to become. He was there when Sinatra and Martin were still kids. He’s Bing Crosby! The three men begin to do a kind of old man’s strut, singing and dancing perfectly together (“…his hat got a little more shiny…”). The audience is looking at the three dominant male singers of the era from 1940 to 1977. They’re having fun, showing everyone exactly not only what makes a pro, not only what makes a star, but what makes a legend. Three great talents, singing and dancing about style, which they’ve all clearly got plenty of: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin in Robin and the 7 Hoods
”
”
Jeanine Basinger (The Movie Musical!)
“
The next morning everybody was wearing the official school uniform. The boys had on light blue shirts, blue pants, and blue ties. The girls had on blue skirts with stripes on them. I looked like a dork. But everybody looked like a dork, so I didn’t feel so bad.
”
”
Dan Gutman (Dr. Carbles Is Losing His Marbles! (My Weird School, #19))
“
A man in Bermuda shorts and a bright striped shirt was standing at the base of a huge camera boom, cursing with a richness of invective wonderful to hear.
”
”
Richard S. Prather (Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Five)
“
Parker stood near the pool, watching Logan drift onto the patio in all his young, radiant glory. Despite it being the last night of December, the southern air was muggy, complementing Logan’s pale, delicate features as he stood in a pair of khaki shorts and the same brown and blue striped rugby shirt he’d worn back at Soxers. The lights Parker had been stringing for the last two hours shone in his wide eyes, casting his guest in a most flattering glow.
”
”
Alex Winters (Boxers & Bubbly (Hotblooded Holidays, #2))
“
blue striped collarless shirt, red wild rag and a canvas vest—a bird’s head Colt Thunderer
”
”
Ken Farmer (Across the Red (The Nations #4))
“
Eros in His Striped Shirt”
I decided to stop
meeting my demons, detoured
that street, that orchard full of yellow
spheres that never revolved, and went
around the stairs where—
This is delicate.
There are things you should not say
because you love someone.
I woke many nights. The last
suddenly like a beat
in a drum: Demon If. If
with his black beard and his
brown coat, gazing down at
me from the stairs. How I followed him,
schoolgirl.
Do you imagine at night someone
going to bed the very moment
you are going to bed? Turning
out the light?
And isn’t it so quiet you swear
he heart is telepathic.
Isn’t it—
I came out of myself like fire
and went back in. We do
lose what we never had. Because
we imagine.
(A dangerous imagination, Mother said)
As if in a library—
as if on my naked shoulder—
they whisper Yes, we are horses
and offer the beggar’s ride.
But I’ve done to me and I’ve done to me.
(Out of control, Husband said)
Now I’m on foot, dragging
the mind’s clandestiny.
(You will meet the ministers
but not the Prince, I Ching said)
Night’s floored to the metal,
ruinous obsession. Flesh, beware—
to live is homesick.
”
”
Beckian Fritz Goldberg
“
Antidemocratic and xenophobic movements have flourished in America since the Native American party of 1845 and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s. In the crisis-ridden 1930s, as in other democracies, derivative fascist movements were conspicuous in the United States: the Protestant evangelist Gerald B. Winrod’s openly pro-Hitler Defenders of the Christian Faith with their Black Legion; William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (the initials “SS” were intentional); the veteran-based Khaki Shirts (whose leader, one Art J. Smith, vanished after a heckler was killed at one of his rallies); and a host of others. Movements with an exotic foreign look won few followers, however. George Lincoln Rockwell, flamboyant head of the American Nazi Party from 1959 until his assassination by a disgruntled follower in 1967, seemed even more “un-American” after the great anti-Nazi war.
Much more dangerous are movements that employ authentically American themes in ways that resemble fascism functionally. The Klan revived in the 1920s, took on virulent anti-Semitism, and spread to cities and the Middle West. In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin gathered a radio audience estimated at forty million around an anticommunist, anti–Wall Street, pro–soft money, and—after 1938—anti-Semitic message broadcast from his church in the outskirts of Detroit. For a moment in early 1936 it looked as if his Union Party and its presidential candidate, North Dakota congressman William Lemke, might overwhelm Roosevelt. Today a “politics of resentment” rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same “internal enemies” once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights.
Of course the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream. I half expected to see emerge after 1968 a movement of national reunification, regeneration, and purification directed against hirsute antiwar protesters, black radicals, and “degenerate” artists. I thought that some of the Vietnam veterans might form analogs to the Freikorps of 1919 Germany or the Italian Arditi, and attack the youths whose demonstrations on the steps of the Pentagon had “stabbed them in the back.” Fortunately I was wrong (so far). Since September 11, 2001, however, civil liberties have been curtailed to popular acclaim in a patriotic war upon terrorists.
The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
Around such reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.
”
”
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
“
She glanced at her arm, then down her body. Someone had stuffed her into pajamas with white, red, and black stripes. The shirt read ‘Naughty’ in dark script. The fire popped and Kiona jumped. What the fuck, ran through her head repeatedly.
”
”
Poppy Rhys (A Wolvenk Holiday (Women of Dor Nye #0.5))
“
Do you know the Ten Commandments?" Grandma Trudie asked me. I nodded my head. Of course I knew the commandments God gave the Israelites at Sinai. I knew them by heart and in order.
"What is commandment number six?"
"Thou shalt not kill," I answered proudly.
"Very good," Grandma Trudie said. "Then you will understand when I say that six million Jews were killed because the Nazis believed in their leader, Adolf Hitler, before anything else. When a human being is given the power to decide what is good and what is evil, the world is in chaos—crazy. Hitler said that certain people were not worthy of life, and his followers obeyed his orders without question. The Nazis showed us what kind of world we have when the Ten Commandments, God's laws, are disregarded.
”
”
Jacqueline Jules (The Grey Striped Shirt: How Grandma and Grandpa Survived the Holocaust)
“
A tailored and pleated version of men’s striped trousers flapped around her long legs and pinched in tightly at her waist – a black silk shirt, complete with silver cufflinks, rippled from broad shoulders across a small bosom. A single strand of pearls at the the throat. This was hardly a gesture to femininity, for the whole appearance contrived femininity in irony.
”
”
John Lawton (Black Out (Inspector Troy, #1))
“
They look at us clean-haired, well-behaved children in our maroon blazers, starched white shirts and striped ties with contempt. Their holey grey socks are crumpled around their ankles, they don't wear silly short-shorts like all the other boys in my – their shorts are long, right down to their scabby knees. They have greasy brown fringes hanging in their eyes. One of them has a scar on his freckled cheek. I think to myself, Thank goodness, two good-looking boys at school at last. I want to clap my hands together with glee. I don't know where this thought comes from. I don't recognize it. I've never cared about boys before, up until now they've been invisible to me, not important in my world. No one's ever told me about bad boys, that they're sexy and compelling, or to stay away from them. I work all this out by myself, today - at eight years old, in Class Three.
”
”
Viv Albertine (Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys)
“
Just the daily experience of walking down the halls proved liberating. Young women from Africa came to school wearing floor- length skirts in bright orange or hot pink, with contrasting head scarves in electric blue. Their counterparts from Southeast Asia showed up wearing hijabs adorned with sequins. Young men from Southeast Asia sometimes wore stripes of yellow paint on their cheeks as a form of blessing. Female students from the Middle East did their hair in elaborate updos and then draped wool scarves over their big coiffures, but wore jeans and American T- shirts. One day, I saw an Iraqi student wearing a black head scarf and a gray T- shirt that said I KNOW THAT GUAC IS EXTRA. You could be anything at all and register as gorgeous— you knew this, if you walked the hallways of this school. It was a place that eroded prejudices and expanded ideas of beauty.
”
”
Helen Thorpe (The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom)
“
Gary never stopped being a rock star, not even on his days off. He vanished into the bathroom for a long time to fix his hair and dressed in black skinny jeans accompanied by a red belt with three different chains hanging from it. His t-shirt had diagonal, red and black stripes on it, and his red canvas shoes were as seen on TV. It was hard to say whether Gary had dressed and behaved like a rock star from a young age or if he had assumed his role so well that he couldn’t even give it up in his spare time.
”
”
Pamela Harju (Yours Remotely)
“
Morrissey was singularly small, a man in his mid-thirties who had once been compared to a ferret. He had a thin trap of a mouth and greased black hair that he perpetually attended, directing it back from his forehead with a clogged comb. He was dressed now, as invariably he was, in flannel trousers and the jacket of a blue striped suit over a blue pullover, and a shirt that was buttoned to the neck but did not have a tie in its collar.
”
”
William Trevor (Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel)
“
Her name was Sheila. She was six and a half, almost; a tiny mite of a thing with matted hair, hostile eyes and a very bad smell. I was surprised she was so small. I had expected something bigger. The 3-year-old must have been nearly as tall as she was. Clad in worn denim overalls and a well-faded boy’s striped T-shirt, she looked like one of those kids in the Save the Children ads.
”
”
Torey L. Hayden (One Child)
“
My personal hell is a place filled with loud, cocky, inked hipster—millennials. It’s a place where every guy looks like a member of Mumford & Sons, and all the women shun makeup. No, it isn’t Lollapalooza, nor an Arcade Fire concert. No, it isn’t some hipster independent coffee shop serving the latest trend in cold brewed coffee and a donut. No, not a craft cocktail lounge playing Daft Punk on vinyl while everyone sits on low striped cushions and corduroy couches wearing color schemes of pants and tops that make no sense.
I’ll give you a hint. A woman walked around wearing a t-shirt stating, “Data is the new bacon.” Excuse me, but fuck you, it is not!
Okay, fine. Last hint. All the Mumford & Sons dudes and non-makeup wearing inked millennials are wearing the exact same shirt.
Slap yourself if you get this wrong. My hell is the APPLE STORE!
”
”
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
“
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Jana Ann Couture Bridal
“
One way to conceptualize antigen drift is to think of a football player wearing a uniform with white pants, a green shirt, and a white helmet with a green V emblazoned on it. The immune system can recognize this uniform instantly and attack it. If the uniform changes slightly—if, for example, a green stripe is added to the white pants while everything else remains the same—the immune system will continue to recognize the virus with little difficulty. But if the uniform goes from green shirt and white pants to white shirt with green pants, the immune system may not recognize the virus so easily.
”
”
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History)
“
Maps regarded Benji’s white and red striped shirt and said, “You look like one of those guys who steers a gondola.” “Uh,” Benji said, sitting up straighter and pointing to the parrot. “I’m a pirate. Yar.” “Pirate of the S. S. Gondola, maybe. Next stop, Baguette.” “Okay, stop.” “Plunder and pillage in the name of mi amore.” “Maps.” “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Tuscany’s finest red.” “Ugh!” Benji flopped back down on Maps bed, arms extended. “Why does Perry even like you? You’re awful.
”
”
Nash Summers (Diamonds (Life According to Maps, #2))
“
now? When she looked at herself she saw her outside changing, growing older, while inside she still felt young. Aging was a strange thing—made you feel like you were wearing a striped shirt and plaid pants. Mismatched. Because you never felt as old inside as you looked on the outside.
”
”
Debbie Macomber (That Summer Place: Island TimeOld ThingsPrivate Paradise)