Sunburn Quotes

Thine face is not worth sunburning.

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven.

We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing -- half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.

To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy.

I’m so sunburned I’m embarrassed, but you can’t tell I’m blushing because I’m sunburned. I’m so ashamed I could just lie on the beach and die.

As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far around it as others.

Realizing you love someone is like noticing you have a sunburn- you don't know exactly when it happened, just that you were too exposed for too long.

It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. ...It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as the players-more if they are moderately restless.

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

She had trouble being in her body in general, which was why she liked to be roughed up by the elements and was always either sunburned, windblown, or damp from the rain.

She knew this pain would fade again; like a sunburn, it would heal itself and leave her slightly more protected from the glare.

I’ll see you at your funeral, if you’ll see me at mine. I’ll wait at the edges for your ghost to rise (until the end of time). We’ll find someplace nice to haunt, an abandoned beach house filled with memories of summer sunburns. Children will giggle as we tickle their feet at night and they’ll never know the bad dreams we fight. We’ll make our own heaven. Walking in places we used to walk until death, dies.

Perhaps it’s my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

As my mother says, your forties are when you finally pay for your past mistakes, the cigarettes and sunburns, the Big Macs and smooth-talking men. She may be right.

I knew she would be beautiful today, of course I knew, but this is unbelievable. Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this. My God, she is not even walking, she floats around the room.

You and me on a deserted tropical island where you’d be perpetually naked and I could slide into you at any moment. I set one hand on my hip and shot him a look. “Sunburned and bowlegged. Sexy.

Everything was heightened the way it always is when summer is slipping away to fall, and you're younger than eighteen, and all you can do is suck your cherry Icee and let the chlorine sting your nose, all the way up into the pockets behind your eyes, and snap your towel at the pretty girl with the sunburn, and hope to do it all again come June.

The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

Traveling in a third-world country is the closest thing there is to being married and raising kids. You have glorious hikes and perfect days on the beach. You go on adventures you would never try, or enjoy, alone. But you also can't get away from each other. Everything is unfamiliar. Money is tight or you get robbed. Someone gets sick or sunburned. You get bored. It is harder than you expected, but you are glad you didn't just sit home.

I'm quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket were left in Australian hands, within a generation, the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other, and the thing is, it'd be a much better game for it.

Cleaning me up is just a preliminary step to determining my new look. With my acid-damaged hair, sunburned skin, and ugly scars, the prep team has to make me pretty and then damage, burn, and scare me in a more attractive way.

Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

But don't worry," she continued. "Most snakes don't want to hurt you. If you're out in the bush and a snake comes along, just stop dead and let it slide over your shoes." This, I decided, was the least-likely-to-be-followed advice I have ever been given.

This Summer is breaking my heart into pieces, to reveal a new and better heart that only beats for her.

Now is the time between birth and slaughter.

I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine.

No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.

Gohan...Is that sunburn or are you blushing?

Imagine a place where I could scream and not be heard, and fail and not be seen. A place where my insignificance would not hurt, because everybody would be insignificant.

Too late I realise that she has been the Summer of my life. What a slow and painful death this shall be.

She took her Eucharist before mine and I quietly apologised to Jesus for the downgrade from her tongue to mine.

Whoever deemed the ocean an invigorating place needed to reconsider the reality of crashing waves, sunburn, and sand wedged up into places no one should have it.

Some parts of her I keep in my memory, others in my heart. This, I keep in my blood. And all night in bed, my blood slowly drags through my veins, bringing that moment to every piece of my body. It is beyond words. This isn't a feeling, it is a state of being.

The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

It's a special art, asking people to do things, yet making it seem as if you never asked at all.

We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs.

My heart lurches, as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her.

Susannah, since the day I met you, I have wanted to let you know that you are a spill of gleaming gold on my otherwise dull and pointless world.

Two weeks of killer sunburn is worth a lifetime of being gorgeous

I’m in hell.” “Well . . .” Max laughed. “Don’t let the flames give you a sunburn.

Susannah, Save this letter: it marks the moment that my life finally started. I have never felt closer to Heaven than I felt today on the road with you. I can only hope that it was real, and that you will not change your mind. Now I am away from you, I have never felt further from home, further from myself. Susannah, since the day I met you, I have wanted to let you know that you are a spill of gleaming gold on my otherwise dull and pointless world. Yours always, Lucy

[We] were just leaning back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing--half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.

You defend your humanity with patience and determination, by making your voice heard to those who judge you a lesser being for your timeworn clothes, your callused hands, and your sunburned skin.

We wanted proper outback: a place where men were men and sheep were nervous.

Right now it seems as though I only have two options: either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be.

You told me mornings were the best time to break your own heart. So here I am, smoking your brand of cigarettes for the scent. I wonder if you still sing Beatles songs as you make coffee. You said your mother used to sing them to you when you couldn’t sleep, nineteen years before we met, twenty before you moved your clothes out of our closet while I was at work. By the way, I hate you for leaving all the photographs on the fridge. Taking them down felt like peeling off new scabs, like slapping a sunburn. I spent so many nights carving your body into pillows, I can promise you nothing feels like sleeping with your arm around me and your breath in my ear. Still, it’s comforting to know we sleep under the same moon, even if she’s so much older when she gets to me. I like to imagine she’s seen you sleeping and wants me to know you’re doing well.

But all that's hugely unlikely -- with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid. "What everyone forgets -- even me -- is the people who actually live here. In places like Central America, I mean. Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places -- the places so many people like us fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are always damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They have to. "So why can't travelers? If we've got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we're visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It's insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they've been dealt.

And for a moment there, despite the bruising, despite the snarled dirty hair, despite her sunburned skin and the suffering in her eyes that she refused to let defeat her, she was one of the prettiest things he'd ever seen. ~Dallas and Amy~

Gus hated feeling anxious. He also hated warm ketchup, loud people, sunburns, parallel parking, jams and jellies, Instagram, Sarah McLachlan’s SPCA commercials, rubber glue, Michael Bay’s DVD commentaries, Michael Bay’s films, Michael Bay, and that weird feeling that tattooed, bearded hipster caused in the pit of his stomach that felt like he had tripped down a flight of stairs into a frozen lake that got lit on fire.

It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect.

I love like an albino. But I don’t want to get sunburned, so would you please pass the ketchup?

Whenever I saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet managed to say so much when he exclaimed, ‘My Ántonia!

When we join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we board the Good Ship Zion and sail with her wherever she goes until she comes into that millennial port. We stay in the boat, through squalls and stills, through storms and sunburn, because that is the only way to the promised land.

Karou had things to do. Sometimes they took a few hours; other times, she was gone for days and returned weary and disheveled, maybe pale, maybe sunburned, or with a limp, or possibly a bite mark, and once with an unshakable fever that had turned out to be malaria.

Just FYI," Lenny says, his face still red from the nasty sunburn. "I've got a shitload of condoms in my duffle. Front pocket." "For what?" "Listen if you don't know what condoms are for I'm not gonna teach you." "I know what they're for, shithead. I just highly doubt you're getting any ass on this trip." "Watch me," Lenny says. "My boy gets action all the time." "Yeah, I bet your right hand is tired from all that action" I mumble as I walk to the bathroom. "I'm a leftie!" Lenny calls after me. I try not to wince from thinking about it.

Australia is mostly empty and a long way away. Its population is small and its role in the world consequently peripheral. It doesn't have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn't need watching, and so we don't. But I will tell you this: the loss is entirely ours.

Hopefully, he’ll be able to persuade Hades not to kill you. That wouldn’t be conducive to the start of a good relationship.

I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.

[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.

I am a vacation. I am the Caribbean, and a fruity drink and a sunburn and a break from real life. But I am not real life. No one lives in the Caribbean. No one wants a fruity drink every day. I’d rather be water: necessary.

And a naïve part of me thinks that since we have made it this far, we will make it forever. If we existed for even a second, we could exist eternally.

Look, I don't know what you are, but you're more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I've met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they're all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. ... And geologists don't make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.

I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

I will not be quiet. I cannot believe you’re moving to Greece. That’s… that’s insane.” Now hang on a second! “It’s not insane,” I shot back. “It is! Who moves to Greece? Do you know a single soul who’s moved to Greece?” He didn’t give me a chance to reply before he continued, “No? Me neither. No one moves to Greece. Goes there. Yes. Gets laid. Definitely. Drinks ouzo. Lots of it. Gets a sunburn. Of course! But you don’t move there!

For example, you might have a sever sunburn as a child. Many decades later, you might develop skin cancer at that same site. This means it probably took that long for the other mutation to occur and finally tip the cell into a cancerous mode.

You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It's just a fact of life.

Life in Australia would go on, and I would hear nothing, because once you leave Australia, Australia ceases to be.

She is fresh air, and warmth, and mornings in July. What is there to fix? There is evil in my yearning, know, I just can't see where yet.

I'll marry you if you get past all the shame of being with me.

Australians are the biggest gamblers on the planet – one of the more arresting statistics I saw was that the country has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population but more than 20 per cent of its slot machines

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

My own feelings are a hedge of briars that I can’t bring myself to touch. There are so many unhappy people, I just don’t want to find out that I am one of them. They walk among us, they touch you, and you become them. Introspection is like cyanide. Life is fine this way, ignorance is easy, I do what is easy. Doesn’t that make the most sense?

She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake’s. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils.The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her.It was a moment when a woman’s soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.

Describing his experience with the sting of an extremely toxic jellyfish, he did something you don't often see a scientist do: he shivered.

It was so bad, it was worth more than we paid.

How we begin and how we end any relationship is a product of planning, fortuity, and personality. Many enterprises commenced in good faith spiral into confusion, discord, and disarray, generate turmoil and corruption, sunburn the sensitive parties, and conclude in a cesspool of regret and animosity.

[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: "Go to the third planet and fly around till you see the big red rock. You can't miss it." If ever on earth they dig up a 150,000-year-old rocket ship from the galaxy Zog, this is where it will be. I'm not saying I expect it to happen; not saying that at all. I'm just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging.

Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.

In the morning a new man was behind the front desk. "And how did you enjoy your stay, Sir?" he asked smoothly. "It was singularly execrable," I replied. "Oh, excellent," he purred, taking my card "In fact, I would go so far as to say that the principal value of a stay in this establishment is that it is bound to make all subsequent service-related experiences seem, in comparison, refreshing." He made a deeply appreciative expression as if to say, "Praise indeed," and presnted my bill for signature. "Well, we hope you'll come again." "I would sooner have bowel surgery in the woods with a a stick." His expression wavered, then held there for a long moment. "Excellent," he said again, but without a great show of conviction.

I often use alcohol as an artificial check on my skills.

No, you don’t remember, and sometimes it’s best that way. Sometimes it’s best to start fresh. Every day, fresh. Living always in the present, unburdened by the pain of the past. Most of us drag around our misdeeds like giant dead birds tied to our necks; we condemn ourselves to telling every stranger we meet the story of our anguish and inadequacies, hoping that one day we will be forgiven, hoping that we will find a person who will look at us and pretend to ignore the ridiculous dead birds hanging from our sunburned and weather-beaten necks. And if we find that person, and if we don’t hate him for not hating us, if we don’t hold him in contempt for not treating us contemptuously, as we expect to be treated—nay, as we demand to be treated—well, that person will be something of a soul mate, I imagine.

It's hard not to be demolished by the thought of her because I have lived in a body that has loved her and eyes that have witnessed her. She is part of my muscles, my tissue. She is unforgettable. Presumably, if she ever remembers me, it is only when she catches a perfume that is vaguely familiar, and it takes her hours to recognize it as mine.

Dogs don't like me. It is a simple law of the universe, like gravity. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never passed a dog that didn't act as if it thought I was about to take its Alpo. Dogs that have not moved from the sofa in years will, at the sniff of me passing outside, rise in fury and hurl themselves at shut windows. I have seen tiny dogs, no bigger than a fluffy slipper, jerk little old ladies off their feet and drag them over open ground in a quest to get at my blood and sinew. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

I came to California to study oceanography.” “That sounds like a perfectly good reason,” she said. “Well”—he flicked his pen in short strokes around the hedgehog’s face—“as it turns out, I don’t actually like the ocean.” Georgie laughed. Neal’s eyes were laughing with her. “I’d never seen it before I got here,” he said, glancing quickly up at her. “I thought it seemed cool.” “It’s not cool?” “It’s really wet,” he said. “And also outside.” Georgie kept laughing. Neal kept inking. “Sunburn…,” he said, “seasick…” “So now what are you studying?” “I am definitely still studying oceanography,” he said, nodding at his drawing. “I am definitely here on an oceanography scholarship, still studying oceanography.” “But that’s terrible. You can’t study oceanography if you don’t like the ocean.” “I may as well.” He almost smiled again. “I don’t like anything else either.

A young woman stood in the hallway, a suitcase at her feet, a cardboard carton in her hands. She wore a yellow cotton dress with a white flower print. The silver dragonfly on her necklace hung in the hollow of her collarbone and her thick red hair cascaded past her sunburned shoulders. She will tell you that she hadn't chosen that dress with any care, or the necklace, that she hadn't washed her hair or scrubbed her face, put a little red on her lips. Don't believe it. No one looks that good by accident.

She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.

You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It’s just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing.” “What’s that?” “It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could all go up in a puff of smoke.”           HOWE

Years from now, I will say that tonight was the night I knew that she was the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. This is about more than her body, her tanned skin, her perfect mouth. I am in love with her blood, with her smell, with intangible things that I will never hold – her laugh, her anger, her soul. She kisses me, and she has a thousand reasons to be upset with me, but tonight she is not upset. She just keeps saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you, in this life and the next and the last”.

I would rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback.

I’m getting thirstier every minute. If it didn’t hurt you, it won’t hurt me. If my papa was here, he’d let me have some.” “You’re not going to tell him about it, are you?” said Jesse. His face had gone very pale under its sunburn. He stood up and put a bare foot firmly on the pile of pebbles. “I knew this would happen sooner or later. Now what am I going to do?” As he said this, there was a crashing sound among the trees and a voice called, “Jesse?” “Thank goodness!” said Jesse, blowing out his cheeks in relief. “Here comes Ma and Miles. They’ll know what to do.” And sure enough, a big, comfortable-looking woman appeared, leading a fat old horse, and at her side was a young man almost as beautiful as Jesse. It was Mae Tuck with her other son, Jesse’s older brother. And at once, when she saw the two of them, Jesse with his foot on the pile of pebbles and Winnie on her knees beside him, she seemed to understand. Her hand flew to her bosom, grasping at the old brooch that fastened her shawl, and her face went bleak. “Well, boys,” she said, “here it is. The worst is happening at last.

…a waitress came out and plonked in front of each of us a small standard terra-cotta flowerpot in which had been baked a little loaf of bread. "What's this?" I asked. "It's bread," she replied. "But it's in a flowerpot?" She gave me a look that I was beginning to think of as the Darwin stare. It was a look that said, "Yeah? So?" "Well, isn't that kind of unusual?" She considered for a moment. "Is a bit, I suppose." "And will we be following a horticultural theme throughout the meal?" Her expression contorted in a deeply pained look, as if she were trying to suck her face into the back of her head. "What?" "Will the main course arrive in a wheelbarrow?" I elaborated helpfully. "Will you be serving the salad with a pitchfork?" "Oh, no. It's just the bread that's special." "I'm so pleased to hear it.

The cloud weeps, and then the garden sprouts. The baby cries, and the mother's milk flows. The nurse of creation has said, Let them cry a lot. This rain-weeping and sun-burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child. Let body needs dwindle and soul decisions increase. Diminish what you give your physical self. Your spiritual eye will begin to open. When the body empties and stays empty, God fills it with musk and mother-of-pearl. That way a man gives his dung and gets purity. Listen to the prophets, not to some adolescent boy. The foundation and the walls of spiritual life are made of self-denials and disciplines. Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you're doing, and how they're doing, and keep your practices together.

By the time we reached the front door of the party house—a total mansion, like Harrison had said—Nathan was far behind us. Well, he’d promised to stay out of our hair. “Wow,” I heard Bailey gasp as the front door swung open for us, though I wasn’t sure if that was her reaction to the freakishly large house or to the drop-dead-gorgeous guy standing in front of us. “Good evening, ladies,” he said, stepping aside to let us enter. Automatically, I found myself standing up taller and sliding my shoulder blades back for optimum cleavage exposure. It was like a flirting reflex. I just wished I wasn’t all sunburned. “Hello to you.” He grinned at me. A cocky, sexy grin. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. He glanced at Bailey then. “Any of us. I’m sure I’d remember those pretty faces.” I swear, Bailey was blushing so hard I could feel the heat radiating from her body. “Oh, you’d remember,” I agreed, tossing back my hair and putting a hand on my hip. “I’m Whi—” “Whitley!” I jumped and spun around involuntarily. Harrison was standing beside me, looking thoroughly delighted. “Hello again, darling. You look gorgeous—and the lack of flip-flops is making my day. Those slingbacks are perfect!” I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the hot guy, but he’d already moved on and was chatting with a group of kids a few feet away. Goddamn it. “Wesley is just so busy,” Harrison said, following my gaze. “You have to give him credit for being a great host. He talks to everyone. Seems like way too much work to me.

It’s interesting that Melburnians don’t tell jokes about Sydney. They tell jokes about their beloved footy. To wit: A man arriving for the Grand Final in Melbourne is surprised to find the seat beside his empty. Tickets for the Grand Final are sold out weeks in advance and empty seats unknown. So he says to the man on the other side of the seat: ‘Excuse me, do you know why there is no one in this seat?’ ‘It was my wife’s,’ answers the second man, a touch wistfully, ‘but I’m afraid she died.’ ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.’ ‘Yes, she never missed a match.’ ‘But couldn’t you have given the ticket to a friend or relative?’ ‘Oh no. They’re all at the funeral.

Must she eat like a dog? My cheeks redden, but I make no moves to conceal this, and in a wild moment of abandonment – something I have never known before – I think, I would be the microbes in the beef that her body seeks and destroys if it meant she would be paying me even the slightest bit of attention. The warmth and the wet of her mouth. What a thought to think! How suddenly and vehemently I think it. And how hot my cheeks are. It makes perfect sense to want to be inside her mouth, to be torn to pieces by her; until I catch myself wanting it, and I am shocked, I am disgusted. I almost laugh at my own absurdity.

The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount—100 tons—of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible.

I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside—tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air—decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems. It is a terrible burden to bear.

On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me – first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.

She was especially taken with Matt. Until he said, “It’s time to fess up, hon. Tell Trace how much you care. You’ll feel better when you do.” Climbing up the ladder, Chris said, “Better sooner than later.” He nodded at the hillside behind them. “Because here comes Trace, and he doesn’t look happy.” Both Priss and Matt turned, Priss with anticipation, Matt with tempered dread. Dressed in jeans and a snowy-white T-shirt, Trace stalked down the hill. Priss shielded her eyes to better see him. When he’d left, being so guarded about his mission, she’d half wondered if he’d return before dinner. Trace wore reflective sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but his entire demeanor—heavy stride, rigid shoulders, tight jaw—bespoke annoyance. As soon as he was close enough, Priss called out, “What’s wrong?” Without answering her, Trace continued onto the dock. He didn’t stop until he stood right in front of . . . Matt. Backing up to the edge of the dock, Matt said, “Uh . . . Hello?” Trace didn’t say a thing; he just pushed Matt into the water. Arms and legs flailing out, Matt hit the surface with a cannonball effect. Stunned, Priss shoved his shoulder. “What the hell, Trace! Why did you do that?” Trace took off his sunglasses and looked at her, all of her, from her hair to her body and down to her bare toes. After working his jaw a second, he said, “If you need sunscreen, ask me.” Her mouth fell open. Of all the nerve! He left her at Dare’s, took off without telling her a damn thing and then had the audacity to complain when a friend tried to keep her from getting sunburned. “Maybe I would have, if you’d been here!” “I’m here now.” Emotions bubbled over. “So you are.” With a slow smile, Priss put both hands on his chest. The shirt was damp with sweat, the cotton so soft that she could feel every muscle beneath. “And you look a little . . . heated.” Trace’s beautiful eyes darkened, and he reached for her. “A dip will cool you down.” Priss shoved him as hard as she could. Taken by surprise, fully dressed, Trace went floundering backward off the end of the dock. Priss caught a glimpse of the priceless expression of disbelief on Trace’s face before he went under the water. Excited by the activity, the dogs leaped in after him. Liger roused himself enough to move out of the line of splashing. Chris climbed up the ladder. “So that’s the new game, huh?” He laughed as he scooped Priss up into his arms. “Chris!” She made a grab for his shoulders. “Put me down!” “Afraid not, doll.” Just as Trace resurfaced, Chris jumped in with her. They landed between the swimming dogs. Sputtering, her hair in her face and her skin chilled from the shock of the cold water, Priss cursed. Trace had already waded toward the shallower water off the side of the dock. His fair hair was flattened to his head and his T-shirt stuck to his body. “Wait!” Priss shouted at him. He was still waist-deep as he turned to glare at her. Kicking and splashing, Priss doggy-paddled over to him, grabbed his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Startled, Trace scooped her bottom in his hands and struggled for balance on the squishy mud bottom of the lake. “What the hell?” And then lower, “You look naked in this damn suit.” Matt and Chris found that hilarious. Priss looked at Trace’s handsome face, a face she loved, and kissed him. Hard. For only a second, he allowed the sensual assault. He even kissed her back. Then he levered away from her. “You ruined my clothes, damn it.” “Only because you were being a jealous jerk.” His expression dark, he glared toward Matt. Christ started humming, but poor Matt said, “Yeah,” and shrugged. “If you think about it, you’ll agree that you sort of were—and we both know there’s no reason.