Wearing Converse Quotes

As long as everyone's wearing their own pants." "I see I have come in on a fascinating moment in the conversation.

Who said I can't wear my Converse With my dress, well baby That's just me!

Maybe we should have this conversation in an alternate universe where Alternate Indy gives a shit what Alternate Lee wants her to wear.

You’re here!” Isabelle danced up to them in delight, carrying a glass of fuchsia liquid, which she thrust at Clary. “Have some of this!” Clary squinted at it. “Is it going to turn me into a rodent?” “Where is the trust? I think it’s strawberry juice,” Isabelle said. “Anyways, it’s yummy. Jace?” She offered him the glass. “I am a man,” he told her, “and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone, woman, and bring me something brown.” “Brown?” Isabelle made a face. “Brown is a manly color,” said Jace, and yanked on a stray lock of Isabelle’s hair with his free hand. “In fact, look – Alec is wearing it.” Alec looked mournfully down at his sweater. “It was black,” he said. “But then it faded.” “You could dress it up with a sequined headband,” Magnus suggested, offering his boyfriend something blue and sparkly. “Just a thought.” “Resist the urge, Alec.” Simon was sitting on the edge of a low wall with Maia beside him, though she appeared to be deep in conversation with Aline. “You’ll look like Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.” “There are worse things,” Magnus observed.

What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others. "It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say. "Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through." That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.

Wayne's a little attached to that hat," Waxillium said. "He thinks it's lucky." Wayne: "It is lucky. I ain't never died while wearing that hat." Marasi frowned. "I ... I'm not sure I know how to respond." Wax: "That's a common reaction to Wayne.

I borrowed this from Kyle. My other shirt was pretty filthy." "Wow, you're wearing each other's clothes now. That's, like, best friend stuff." "Feeling left out?" said Kyle. "I suppose you want to borrow a black T-shirt too." "As long as everyone's wearing their own pants." "I see have come in on a fascinating moment in the conversation." Eric poked his head through the curtain.

I don't have any idea what to wear anymore, so I tried to cover all bases." "Try skin." "Little chilly for that." We looked at each other across the coffee table. His eyes didn't say, I'd heat you up, and mine didn't say What are you waiting for? He didn't reply, Fuck if I'm making the first move, so I was careful not to say, I wish you would, because I can't, because I'm... and he didn't snap ...choking on your pride?! "As if you aren't." "Excuse me?" "Really Barrons," I said drily. "I'm not the only one who didn't just not have that conversation, and you know it." There was the faint, sexy lift of his lip. "You're a piece of work, Ms. Lane." "Right back at you.

I’m a succubus.” He shook his head. “No, you aren’t.” “Yes, I am.” “You aren’t.” I was a bit surprised to be having this conversation. “I am too.” “No. Succubi are flame-eyed and bat-winged. Everyone knows that. They don’t wear jeans and sweaters.

I'm wearing clothes in my thoughts and dreams though. What am I wearing in yours?" she asked. "Me." Conversation between Mary Rose and Harrison in Julie Garwood's FOR THE ROSES

She doesn't have a ring on each finger, or a big diamond on each ring. She doesn't wear a gold watch that costs as much as a fancy car. In fact, she doesn't own a fancy car. She doesn't carry an enormous designer bag. But she might have a newspaper under her arm. She might mention Sartre or Foucault in a conversation. It's her personality that sparkles and nothing else: the signs of intellectual wealth.

Okay, here are the top ten reasons why I can't stand my sister Lucy: 10. I get all her hand-me-downs, even her bras. 9. Whem I refuse to wear her hand-me-downs, especially her bras, I get the big lecture about waste and the environment. Look, I am way concerned about the environment. But that does not mean I want to wear me sister's old bras.I told Mom I see no reason why I should even have to wear a bra, seeing as how it's not like I've got a lot to put in one, causing Lucy to remark that if I don't wear a bra now, then if I ever do get anything up there. it will be all saggy like those tribal women we saw on the Discovery Channel. 8. This is another reason why I can't stand Lucy. Because she is always making these kind of remarks. What we should really do, if you ask me, is send Lucy's old bras to those tribal women. 7. Her conversations on the phone go like this: "No way... So what did he say?... Then what did she say?... No way... That is so totally untrue... I do not. I so do not... Who said that?... Well, it isn't true... No. I do not... I do not like him... Well, okay, maybe I do. Oh, gotta go, call-waiting.

Words are small things. No one means any harm by them, they keep saying that. Everyone is just doing their job. The police say it all the time. 'I'm just doing my job here.' That's why no one asks what the boy did; as soon as the girl starts to talk they interrupt her instead with questions about what she did. Did she go up the stairs ahead of him or behind him? Did she lie down on the bed voluntarily or was she forced? Did she unbutton her own blouse? Did she kiss him? No? Did she kiss him back, then? Had she been drinking alcohol? Had she smoked marijuana? Did she say no? Was she clear about that? Did she scream loudly enough? Did she struggle hard enough? Why didn't she take photographs of her bruises right away? Why did she run from the party instead of saying anything to the other guests? They have to gather all the information, they say, when they ask the same question ten times in different ways in order to see if she changes her answer. This is a serious allegation, they remind her, as if it's the allegation that's the problem. She is told all the things she shouldn't have done: She shouldn't have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn't have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn't have showered. Shouldn't have drunk alcohol. Shouldn't have put herself in that situation. Shouldn't have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn't existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn't she think of that? She's fifteen, above the age of consent, and he's seventeen, but he's still 'the boy' in every conversation. She's 'the young woman.' Words are not small things.

No, It does. And if I left, you’d probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to put it on, because the whole time I’d be knowing how perfectly it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all fucked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club and say, ‘Hey, that’s my jacket’ and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me- even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can’t ruin the image of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I, or anyone else could. If I don’t owe it to you, and I don’t owe it to me, I at least owe it Salvatore.

Halt?" he said diffidently. He heard a deep sigh from the short, slightly built man riding beside him. Mentally he kicked himself. I thought you must be coming down with some illness for a moment there," Halt said straight faced. "It must be two or three minutes since you've asked a question." Commited now, Horace continued. One of those girls," he began, and immediately felt the Ranger's eyes on him. "She was wearing a very short skirt." There was the slightest pause. Yes?" Halt prompted, not sure where this conversation was leading. Horace shrugged uncomfortably. The memory of the girl, and her shapely legs, was causing his cheeks to burn with embarrassment again. Well," he said uncertainly, "I just wondered if that was normal over, that's all." Halt considered the serious young face beside him. He cleared his throat several times. I believe that sometimes Gallican girls take jobs as couriers. he said. Couriers. They carry messages from one person to another. Or from one buisness to another, in towns and cities." Halt checked to see if Horace seemed to believe him so far. There seemed no reason to think otherwise, so he added: "Urgent messages." Urgent messages," Horace replied, still not seeing the connection. But he seemed inclined to believe what Halt was saying, so the older man continued. And I suppose for a really urgent message, one would have to run." Now he saw a glimmer of understanding in the boy's eyes. Horace nodded several times as he made the connection. So, the short skirts...they'd be to help them run more easily?" he suggested. Halt nodded in his turn. It would be more sensible for of dress than long skirts, if you wanted to do a lot of runnig." He shot a quick look at Horace to see if his gentle teasing was not being turned back on himself-to see if, in fact, the boy realized Halt was talking nosense and was simply leading him on. Horace's face, however, was open and believing. I suppose so," Horace replied finally, then added in a softer voice, "They certainly look a lot better that way too.

Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me to stop, till it’s time for lunch, till the skin on my fingers wears off layer after layer, because I like doing things for you, will do anything for you, just say the word, I liked you from day one, and even when you'll return ice for my renewed offers of friendship, I'll never forget that this conversation occurred between us and that there are easy ways to bring back summer in a snowstorm. What I forgot to earmark in that promise was that ice and apathy have ways of instantly repealing all truces and resolutions signed in sunnier moments.

Climb the Ferris wheel?!” echoed Aru. “Do I look like Spider-Man to you?” “Well, you sometimes wear those pajamas…” said Mini. Brynne snorted. “What pajamas?” asked Aiden. Abandon conversation! screamed Aru’s brain. Abandon conversation!

Lily appeared, wearing her nightclothes, in the doorway. She gave an impatient sigh. 'This is certainly a very LONG private conversation,' she said. 'And there are certain people waiting for their comfort object.' Lily,' her mother said fondly, 'you're very close to being an Eight, and when you're an Eight, your comfort object will be taken away. It will be recycled to the younger children. You should be starting to go off to sleep without it.' But her father had already gone to the shelf and taken down the stuffed elephant which was kept there. Many of the comfort objects, like Lily's, were soft, stuffed, imaginary creatures. Jonas's had been called a bear. Here you are, Lily-billy,' he said. 'I'll come help you remove your hair ribbons.

There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos. There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.

I opened the paper bag and frowned. "You left me a garlic bagel?" "Last awake, last choice," Alex said. "My breath is going to be terrible." "More terrible," Alex corrected. "Well, that's fine. I'm not kissing you. Are you kissing him, T.J.?" "Wasn't planing on it." T.J. popped the last of his bagel in his mouth and grinned. "I - I didn't say anything about -" I stammered. "I didn't mean ..." My face felt like it was crawling with fire ants. "Whatever. T.J., why are you wearing those glasses, anyway?" I'm good at subtly changing the conversation like that when I'm embarrassed. It's a gift.

There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovely disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.

Sloane?” Lia turned to her next. Sloane stared at Lia, a blush spreading over her cheeks. “I’m not undressing until we establish a conversion rate,” she informed us tartly, gesturing toward her mountain of chips. “Sloane,” Michael said. “Yes?” “How would you feel about a second cup of coffee?” Forty-five seconds later, Sloane was in the kitchen, and neither of the boys was wearing a shirt.

Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain that is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.

There were things you could do with family that you just couldn’t do with friends: You could let them see you wearing the same outfit three days in a row. You could invite them over for lunch and then mostly ignore them as you finally got off hold with the internet provider. You could have an entire conversation while wearing Crest Whitestrips.

None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you're wearing--which are several years out of style if you're trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you're trying to hold fast to your recent past--and not either one of us. 'Real' is a four-letter-word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof.

My loss of faith is sudden, and it's not so much a conversion as a reappraisal. Children are still modeling the world, still understanding how it works; their convictions are malleable, like their bones. Thus, I experience no sudden horrible wrench as my belief is uprooted, but rather a feeling like the right pair of glasses being put in front of my face after some time wearing someone else's.

I dunno." She sat on the bench and hugged the robe like a pillow. "I still think that Brett guy is cute." "Good luck getting him away from Bekka." Cleo gathered her silky black hair into a high pony and pink-dabbed Smith's Rosebud Salve on her lips. "She's got more grip than Crazy Glue." "More cling than Saran Wrap," Lala added. "More hold than Final Net." Cleo giggled. "More possession than The Exorcist," Lala managed. "More clench than butt cheeks," Blue chimed in. "More competition than American Idol," Frankie stuck out her chest and showed them her diva booty roll. The girls burst out laughing. "Nice!" Blue lifted her purple gloved hand. Frankie slapped it without a single spark. "I hate to be a downer..." Claudine shuffled back into the conversation wearing her slippers and robe. "But that girl will destroy you if she catches you with Brett." "I'm not worried," Frankie tossed her hair back. "I've seen all the teen movies, and the nice girl gets the boy in the end.

I’m wearing a tuxedo.” I nearly choke. “A what!” “A tuxedo. With matching Converse.” “Over my dead body!

Abigail,’ he says. ‘I thought it was you.’ ‘Hi!’ I say loudly. ‘Mark!’ ‘Who?’ says Robert. Fuck, he doesn’t know his real name. Why do I give everyone stupid nicknames? ‘I almost don’t recognise you out of your SKINNY JEANS,’ I enunciate carefully. He’s wearing grey flannel trousers and a pink T-Shirt with leather Converses. He speaks clothes exceptionally confidently for a straight man. I wonder if he’d take me shopping. ‘Oh, right. Got it.’ ‘That’s odd,’ says Skinny Jeans. ‘Since I was wearing nothing at all when you left my room without saying goodbye . . . let’s see, seven weeks ago?’ ‘Um, yes. Well, you know . . .’ I trail off. Come on, Robert, I think desperately. ‘I’m sorry, were you planning on making me breakfast in bed?’ says Robert. Yes! Make a joke! ‘I’m sorry, were you planning on making me breakfast in bed?’ I say. Skinny Jeans grins. ‘Scrambled eggs? Toast? On a little tray?’ ‘Scrambled eggs? Toast? On a little tray with a rose on it?’ I say. ‘Don’t fuck with my script,’ says Robert, which makes me grin slightly more broadly

It's hard to have a serious conversation with you when you're wearin' lighted cocks on your head." AJ defiantly thrust out her chin and the penises bobbled. "We aren't having a conversation. You're give me tough-guy attitude. If you won't acknowledge me in public, you don't have the right to chastise me for anything I do in public or in private. And now you lost the right to do anything to me in private either, bucko." "Quit bein' so goddamm childish." Her eyes narrowed to silver slits. "Quit bein' such a goddamn dickhead." "You're the one with dicks on your head, baby doll." "Yeah? I can take mine off any old time I please, but you wear your dickhead like a second skin. Or should I say as a second foreskin?

political correctness gets a bad rap, but all it really boils down to is minority groups asking that they not feel marginalized and hurt by everyday conversations or the media.

The death of a friendship was usually slow and insidious, like the wearing away of a hillside after years of too much rain. A handful of misunderstandings, a season of miscommunication, the passing of time, and where once stood two women with a dozen years of memories and tears and conversation and laughter — where once stood two women closer than sisters — now stood two strangers.

You know the drill "don't wear revealing clothes,don't drink too much, in fact don't drink at all. Don't talk to strange men, but don't ignore men who are probably just trying to have a conversation with you. Can't a man even have a conversation with a woman these days without being accused of being a rapist? How dare you unfairly malign all men with your paranoia and man hating, don't you know that 99% of men are good and decent and would never harm a woman? What do you mean you let him walk you home? What were you thinking? Don't you know how dangerous that is? You girls have to learn to take better care of yourselves. You can't just go walking around with strange men it's not safe. You never know what might happen. You'll give them the wrong idea. What do you mean you won't let me walk you home? But I'm just trying to get you home safely, I'm not a threat to you. How dare you make me feel like I might be a threat to you. You know you're the reason men are giving up on even trying to be polite to women anymore. . . .

In one Starbucks, I spotted a young Frenchman wearing blue Converse sneakers, baggy Levi's jeans, and a red T-shirt with a giant Abercrombie & Fitch logo splashed across the front. As I watched him wash down his cheesecake with gulps of venti hot chocolate, I had to wonder: can't they revoke your French citizenship for this sort of thing?

When Seymour and I were five and three, Les and Bessie played on the same bill for a couple of weeks with Joe Jackson -- the redoubtable Joe Jackson of the nickel-plated trick bicycle that shone like something better than platinum to the very last row of the theater. A good many years later, not long after the outbreak of the Second World War, when Seymour and I had just recently moved into a small New York apartment of our own, our father -- Les, as he'll be called hereafter -- dropped in on us one evening on his way home from a pinochle game. He quite apparently had held very bad cards all afternoon. He came in, at any rate, rigidly predisposed to keep his overcoat on. He sat. He scowled at the furnishings. He turned my hand over to check for cigarette-tar stains on my fingers, then asked Seymour how many cigarettes he smoked a day. He thought he found a fly in his highball. At length, when the conversation -- in my view, at least -- was going straight to hell, he got up abruptly and went over to look at a photograph of himself and Bessie that had been newly tacked up on the wall. He glowered at it for a full minute, or more, then turned around, with a brusqueness no one in the family would have found unusual, and asked Seymour if he remembered the time Joe Jackson had given him, Seymour, a ride on the handle bars of his bicycle, all over the stage, around and around. Seymour, sitting in an old corduroy armchair across the room, a cigarette going, wearing a blue shirt, gray slacks, moccasins with the counters broken down, a shaving cut on the side of his face that I could see, replied gravely and at once, and in the special way he always answered questions from Les -- as if they were the questions, above all others, he preferred to be asked in his life. He said he wasn't sure he had ever got off Joe Jackson's beautiful bicycle.

In hindsight, I see it was my decision not to let go. I didn't know how, though some days I focused completely on it: using therapy, distraction, exercise. Other days I left myself wildly grieve. Finn affects it all: every conversation I have, what I choose to wear, what books I read, what films and shows I watch. There's that Buddhist quote, (S)he who angers you owns you. She owned me. I allowed it. She controlled me. I knew this feeling of misery would pass, that what I needed was time, but I was impatient. Unfortunately, we must live through the present to get to the future, writes Hanif Kureishi in his novel Intimacy.

We all have what it takes to do exactly what we want to do in life, no matter what anyone else says. If someone tells you, “You can’t do this because you are [fill in the blank],” I say embrace the challenge. Wear it like a new pair of Converse or Jordans. Meet it head-on.

How to Make People Want to Start a Conversation with You Singles proficient at meeting potential sweethearts without the benefit of introduction (in the vernacular, making a "pickup"), have developed a deliciously devious technique that works equally well for social or corporate networking purposes. The technique requires no exceptional skill on your part, only the courage to sport a simple visual prop called a "Whatzit." What’s a Whatzit? A Whatzit is anything you wear or carry that is unusual—a unique pin, an interesting purse, a strange tie, or an amusing hat. A Whatzit is any object that draws people’s attention and inspires them to approach you and ask, "Uh, what’s that?" Your Whatzit can be as subtle or overt as your personality and the occasion permit.

I was thrilled. I had never met a famous writer before. I examined him closely as he sat in my office. What astonished me was that he looked so ordinary. There was nothing in the least unusual about him. His face, his conversation, his eyes behind the spectacles, even his clothes were all exceedingly normal. And yet here was a writer of stories who was famous the world over. His books had been read by millions of people. I expected sparks to be shooting out of his head, or at the very least, he should have been wearing a long green cloak and a floppy hat with a wide brim. But no.

I went back in and grabbed my running clothes, then changed in the bathroom. I opened the door to the bathroom, stopping when I saw Kaidan's toiletry bag on the sink. I was overcome with curiosity about his cologne or aftershave, because I'd never smelled it on anyone else before. Feeling sneaky, I prodded one finger into the bag and peeked. No cologne bottle. Only a razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. I picked up the deodorant, pulled off the lid, and smelled it. Nope, that wasn't it. The sound of Kaidan's deep chuckle close to the doorway made me scream and drop the deodorant into the sink with a clatter. I smacked one hand to my chest and grabbed the edge of the sink with the other. He laughed out loud now. “Okay, that must have looked really bad.” I spoke to his reflection in the mirror, then fumbled to pick up the deodorant. I put the lid on and dropped it in his bag. “But I was just trying to figure out what cologne you wear.” My face was on fire as Kaidan stepped into the small bathroom and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. I stepped away. He seemed entertained by my predicament. “I haven't been wearing any cologne.” “Oh.” I cleared my throat. “Well, I didn't see any, so I thought it might be your deodorant, but that's not it either. Maybe it's your laundry detergent or something. Let's just forget about it.” “What is it you smell, exactly?” His voice took on a husky quality, and it felt like he was taking up a lot of room. I couldn't bring myself to look at him. Something strange was going on here. I stepped back, hitting the tub with my heel as I tried to put the scent into words. “I don't know. It's like citrus and the forest or something...leaves and tree sap. I can't explain it.” His eyes bored into mine while he wore that trademark sexy smirk, arms still crossed. “Citrus?” he asked. “Like lemons?” “Oranges mostly. And a little lime, too.” He nodded and flicked his head to the side to get hair out of his eyes. Then his smile disappeared and his badge throbbed. “What you smell are my pheromones, Anna.” A small, nervous laugh burst from my throat. “Oh, okay, then. Well...” I eyed the small space that was available to pass through the door. I made an awkward move toward it, but he shifted his body and I stepped back again. “People can't usually smell pheromones,” he told me. “You must be using your extra senses without realizing it. I've heard of Neph losing control of their senses with certain emotions. Fear, surprise...lust.” I rubbed my hands up and down my upper arms, wanting nothing more than to veer this conversation out of the danger zone. “Yeah, I do have a hard time reining in the scent sometimes,” I babbled. “It even gets away from me while I sleep now and then. I wake up thinking Patti's making cinnamon rolls and it ends up being from someone else's apartment. Then I'm just stuck with cereal. Anyway...” “Would you like to know your own scent?” he asked me. My heart swelled up big in my chest and squeezed small again. This whole scent thing was way too sensual to be discussed in this small space. Any second now my traitorous body would be emitting some of those pheromones and there'd be red in my aura. “Uh, not really,” I said, keeping my eyes averted. “I think I should probably go.” He made no attempt to move out of the doorway. “You smell like pears with freesia undertones.” “Wow, okay.” I cleared my throat, still refusing eye contact. I had to get out of there. “I think I'll just...” I pointed to the door and began to shuffle past him, doing my best not to brush up against him. He finally took a step back and put his hands up by his sides to show that he wouldn't touch me. I broke out of the confined bathroom and took a deep breath.

When I returned, wearing an uncomfortably large white shirt, with a decorative frill in the front, I tried to introduce the Wife Project, but Claudia was engaged in child-related activities. This was becoming frustrating. I booked dinner for Saturday night and asked them not to schedule any other conversation topics.

Ruth must have loved Yahweh, because she would live at the bottom of the social ladder for a long time. Despite her conversion, for the rest of her life, she would wear the stench of an outsider. As this chapter’s subhead states, Ruth was at the bottom of God’s community. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 27

Take up citizenship and the conversion it entailed, send a couple of your sons to the levy when they were of age, pay taxes calculated not to drive you and your family into penury or the mountains and the life of a bandit. Oh, and while you’re at it, steer clear of debt and disease. Chances were — mostly — if you did all that, you’d never starve, never have your home burned down and your children raped before your eyes, never have to wear a slave collar.

I make up characters. I create whole worlds in my head. I add words to the lexicon of daily conversation—maybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.

Show up with stories to tell. Your whole life prepares you for the big moments, so go in confidently knowing you have years of experience to your name. This goes for interviews, dates, or any important conversations. It's ultimately about whether they're a fit for you than you a fit for them, so be funny and self-assured and wear hot pink if you feel like it.

People know me by the way I live my life, not by the labels I wear, and that means we can hold all sorts of conversations and learn from each other in a way that would not happen if there were the walls of ignorant prejudice between us. --Oisce

Ten salespeople, all young, all dressed in generic cotton casual, looked up from their conversations, spotted the money in her hand, and simultaneously stopped breathing-their brains shutting down bodily functions and rerouting the needed energy to calculate the projected commissions contained in Jody's cash. One by one they resumed breathing and marched toward her, a look of dazed hunger in their eyes: a pack of zombies from the perky, youthful version of The Night of the Living Dead. "I wear a size four and I've got a date in fifteen minutes," Jody said. "Dress me." They descended on her like an evil khaki wave.

For a moment, I was perfectly relaxed, and I began enjoying the sight of this beautifully candlelit room full of well-dressed people. Then Mr. Merchant made a grab for my décolletage from behind, and I almost spilled the punch. “One of those dear, pretty little roses slipped out of place,” he claimed, with an insinuating grin. I stared at him, baffled. Giordano hadn’t prepared me for a situation like this, so I didn’t know the proper etiquette for dealing with Rococo gropers. I looked at Gideon for help, but he was so deep in conversation with the young widow that he didn’t even notice. If we’d been in my own century, I’d have told Mr. Merchant to keep his dirty paws to himself or I’d hit back, whether or not any little roses had really slipped. But in the circumstances, I felt that his reaction was rather—discourteous. So I smiled at him and said, “Oh, thank you, how kind. I never noticed.” Mr. Merchant bowed. “Always glad to be of service, ma’am.” The barefaced cheek of it! But in times when woman had no vote, I suppose it wasn’t surprising if they didn’t get any other kind of respect either. The talking and laughter gradually died away as Miss Fairfax, a thin-nosed lady wearing a reed-green dress, went over to the pianoforte, arranged her skirts, and placed her hands on the keys. In fact, she didn’t play badly. It was her singing that was rather disturbing. It was incredibly . . . well, high-pitched. A tiny bit higher, and you’d have thought she was a dog whistle.

She doesn’t have a ring on each finger, or a big diamond on each ring. She doesn’t wear a gold watch that costs as much as a fancy car. In fact, she doesn’t own a fancy car. She doesn’t carry an enormous designer bag. But she might have a newspaper under her arm. She might mention Sartre or Foucault in a conversation. It’s her personality that sparkles and nothing else: the signs of intellectual wealth.

Honestly, I'd rather be anywhere else. Even home, where my dad begins almost every conversation with, "You should lose the black clothes and wear something with color." Puh-lease. Like I want to look like every Barbie clone in Hell High, a.k.a. Oklahoma's insignificant Haloway High School. Ironically, Dad doesn't appreciate the bright blue streaks in my originally blond/now-dyed-black hair. Go figure. That's color, right?

But later, just as we're turning the corner into my road, and I'm beginning to panic about the pain and difficulty of the impending conversation, I see a woman on her own, Saturday-night-smart, off to meet somebody somewhere, friends, or a lover. And when I was living with Laura, I missed... what? Maybe I missed somebody traveling on a bus or tube or cab, *going out of her way*, to meet me, maybe dressed up a little, wearing more makeup than usual, maybe even slightly nervous; when I was younger, the knowledge that I was responsible for any of this, even the bus ride, made me feel pathetically grateful. When you're with someone permanently, you don't get that: if Laura wanted to see me, she only had to turn her head, or walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, and she never bothered to dress up for the trip. And when she came home, she came home because she lived in my flat, not because we were lovers, and when we went out, she sometimes dressed up and sometimes didn't, depending on where we were going, but again, it was nothing whatsoever to do with me. Anyway, all this is by way of saying that the woman I saw out of the cab window inspired me and consoled me, momentarily: maybe I am not too old to provoke a trip from one part of London to another, and if I ever do have another date, and I arrange to meet that date in, say, Islington, and she has to come all the way from Stoke Newington, a journey of some three to four miles, I will thank her from the bottom of my wretched thirty-five-year-old heart.

An exaggerated sense of occasion, or any sense of occasion, for that matter, will automatically impede your ability to have fun. Conversely, a well-cultivated obliviousness to the conventions of any occasion is guaranteed to up the fun quotient. When people ask me, “What are you wearing to [such and such event]? I’m not sure what to wear...,” I experience a strong desire to kill them. These whiny people, with their obsolete sense of appropriateness, are the Antichrist.

Rea­sons Why I Loved Be­ing With Jen I love what a good friend you are. You’re re­ally en­gaged with the lives of the peo­ple you love. You or­ga­nize lovely ex­pe­ri­ences for them. You make an ef­fort with them, you’re pa­tient with them, even when they’re side­tracked by their chil­dren and can’t pri­or­i­tize you in the way you pri­or­i­tize them. You’ve got a gen­er­ous heart and it ex­tends to peo­ple you’ve never even met, whereas I think that ev­ery­one is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but re­ally I was jeal­ous that you al­ways thought the best of peo­ple. You are a bit too anx­ious about be­ing seen to be a good per­son and you def­i­nitely go a bit over­board with your left-wing pol­i­tics to prove a point to ev­ery­one. But I know you re­ally do care. I know you’d sign pe­ti­tions and help peo­ple in need and vol­un­teer at the home­less shel­ter at Christ­mas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us. I love how quickly you read books and how ab­sorbed you get in a good story. I love watch­ing you lie on the sofa read­ing one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other gal­axy. I love that you’re al­ways try­ing to im­prove your­self. Whether it’s running marathons or set­ting your­self chal­lenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to ther­apy ev­ery week. You work hard to be­come a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. I think I prob­a­bly didn’t make my ad­mi­ra­tion for this known and in­stead it came off as ir­ri­ta­tion, which I don’t re­ally feel at all. I love how ded­i­cated you are to your fam­ily, even when they’re an­noy­ing you. Your loy­alty to them wound me up some­times, but it’s only be­cause I wish I came from a big fam­ily. I love that you al­ways know what to say in con­ver­sa­tion. You ask the right ques­tions and you know ex­actly when to talk and when to lis­ten. Ev­ery­one loves talk­ing to you be­cause you make ev­ery­one feel im­por­tant. I love your style. I know you think I prob­a­bly never no­ticed what you were wear­ing or how you did your hair, but I loved see­ing how you get ready, sit­ting in front of the full-length mir­ror in our bed­room while you did your make-up, even though there was a mir­ror on the dress­ing ta­ble. I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in No­vem­ber and that you’d pick up spi­ders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not. I love how free you are. You’re a very free per­son, and I never gave you the sat­is­fac­tion of say­ing it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you be­cause of your bor­ing, high-pres­sure job and your stuffy up­bring­ing, but I know what an ad­ven­turer you are un­der­neath all that. I love that you got drunk at Jack­son’s chris­ten­ing and you al­ways wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never com­plained about get­ting up early to go to work with a hang­over. Other than Avi, you are the per­son I’ve had the most fun with in my life. And even though I gave you a hard time for al­ways try­ing to for al­ways try­ing to im­press your dad, I ac­tu­ally found it very adorable be­cause it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to any­where in his­tory, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beau­ti­ful and clever and funny you are. That you are spec­tac­u­lar even with­out all your sports trophies and mu­sic cer­tifi­cates and in­cred­i­ble grades and Ox­ford ac­cep­tance. I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked my­self, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of my­self, ei­ther. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental. I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.

When he can't take anymore, Galen plucks his phone from his pocket and dials, then hangs up. When the call is returned, he says, "Hey, sweet lips." The females at the table hush each other to get a better listen. A few of them whip their heads toward Emma to see if she's on the other end of the conversation. Satisfied she's not, they lean closer. Rachel snorts. "If only you liked sweets." "I can't wait to see you tonight. Wear that pink shirt I like." Rachel laughs. "Sounds like you're in what we humans like to call a pickle. My poor, drop-dead-gorgeous sweet pea. Emma still not talking to you, leaving you alone with all those hormonal girls?" "Eight-thirty? That's so far away. Can't I meet you sooner?" One of the females actually gets up and takes her tray and her attitude to another table. Galen tries not to get too excited. "Do you need to be checked out of school, son? Are you feeling ill?" Galen tosses a glance at Emma, who's picking a pepperoni off her pizza and eyeing it as if it were dolphin dung. "I can't skip school to meet you again, boo. But I'll be thinking about you. No one but you." A few more females get up and stalk their trays to the trash. The cheerleader in front of him rolls her eyes and starts a conversation with the chubby brunette beside her-the same chubby brunette she pushed into a locker to get to him two hours ago. "Be still my heart," Rachel drawls. "But seriously, I can't read your signals. I don't know what you're asking me to do." "Right now, nothing. But I might change my mind about skipping. I really miss you." Rachel clears her throat. "All right, sweet pea. You just let your mama know, and she'll come get her wittle boy from school, okay?" Galen hangs up. Why is Emma laughing again? Mark can't be that funny. The girl beside him clues him in: "Mark Baker. All the girls love him. But not as much as they love you. Except maybe Emma, I guess." "Speaking of all these girls, how did they get my phone number?" She giggles. "It's written on the wall in the girls' bathroom. One hundred hall." She holds her cell phone up to his face. An image of his number scrawled onto a stall door lights up the screen. In Emma's handwriting.

It’s nice to have space at the end of the night to be alone with my thoughts. Somewhere to hang the happy face I force myself to wear even when I’m having a shitty day. I’m grateful. I’m exhausted, overworked, and stressed out, but I’m grateful. I force myself to say it, out loud. I’m grateful. I take a few moments to feel it. Recognize it. I force myself to smile, to unclench the tightness in my face that would otherwise default too easily to anger. I whisper a quick thank-you to the unknown, to the air, to the lonely ghosts eavesdropping on my private conversations with no one. I have a roof over my head and clothes on my back and food waiting for me every morning.I have friends. A makeshift family. I’m lonely but I’m not alone.

My soul is the gods’; my heart is yours. Leiard smiled—a sly, secretive smile. It was an expression she had never seen him wear before. Was this just her mind embellishing the mood she sensed from him? I’ve always suspected souls were a concept the gods invented to encourage people to serve them. In fact, I once had a conversation with a god in which he admitted that —

Gustavo Tiberius speaking." “It’s so weird you do that, man,” Casey said, sounding amused. “Every time I call.” “It’s polite,” Gus said. “Just because you kids these days don’t have proper phone etiquette.” “Oh boy, there’s the Grumpy Gus I know. You miss me?” Gus was well aware the others could hear the conversation loud and clear. He was also aware he had a reputation to maintain. “Hadn’t really thought about it.” “Really.” “Yes.” “Gus.” “Casey.” “I miss you.” “I miss you too,” Gus mumbled into the phone, blushing fiercely. “Yeah? How much?” Gus was in hell. “A lot,” he said truthfully. “There have been allegations made against my person of pining and moping. False allegations, mind you, but allegations nonetheless.” “I know what you mean,” Casey said. “The guys were saying the same thing about me.” Gus smiled. “How embarrassing for you.” “Completely. You have no idea.” “They’re going to get you packed up this week?” “Ah, yeah. Sure. Something like that.” “Casey.” “Yes, Gustavo.” “You’re being cagey.” “I have no idea what you mean. Hey, that’s a nice Hawaiian shirt you’ve got on. Pink? I don’t think I’ve seen you in that color before.” Gus shrugged. “Pastor Tommy had a shitload of them. I think I could wear one every day for the rest of the year and not repeat. I think he may have had a bit of a….” Gus trailed off when his hand started shaking. Then, “How did you know what I was wearing?” There was a knock on the window to the Emporium. Gus looked up. Standing on the sidewalk was Casey. He was wearing bright green skinny jeans and a white and red shirt that proclaimed him to be a member of the 1987 Pasadena Bulldogs Women’s Softball team. He looked ridiculous. And like the greatest thing Gus had ever seen. Casey wiggled his eyebrows at Gus. “Hey, man.” “Hi,” Gus croaked. “Come over here, but stay on the phone, okay?” Gus didn’t even argue, unable to take his eyes off Casey. He hadn’t expected him for another week, but here he was on a pretty Saturday afternoon, standing outside the Emporium like it was no big deal. Gus went to the window, and Casey smiled that lazy smile. He said, “Hi.” Gus said, “Hi.” “So, I’ve spent the last two days driving back,” Casey said. “Tried to make it a surprise, you know?” “I’m very surprised,” Gus managed to say, about ten seconds away from busting through the glass just so he could hug Casey close. The smile widened. “Good. I’ve had some time to think about things, man. About a lot of things. And I came to this realization as I drove past Weed, California. Gus. It was called Weed, California. It was a sign.” Gus didn’t even try to stop the eye roll. “Oh my god.” “Right? Kismet. Because right when I entered Weed, California, I was thinking about you and it hit me. Gus, it hit me.” “What did?” Casey put his hand up against the glass. Gus did the same on his side. “Hey, Gus?” “Yeah?” “I’m going to ask you a question, okay?” Gustavo’s throat felt very dry. “Okay.” “What was the Oscar winner for Best Song in 1984?” Automatically, Gus answered, “Stevie Wonder for the movie The Woman in Red. The song was ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’” It was fine, of course. Because he knew answers to all those things. He didn’t know why Casey wanted to— And then he could barely breathe. Casey’s smile wobbled a little bit. “Okay?” Gus blinked the burn away. He nodded as best he could. And Casey said, “Yeah, man. I love you too.” Gus didn’t even care that he dropped his phone then. All that mattered was getting as close to Casey as humanely possible. He threw open the door to the Emporium and suddenly found himself with an armful of hipster. Casey laughed wetly into his neck and Gus just held on as hard as he could. He thought that it was possible that he might never be in a position to let go. For some reason, that didn’t bother him in the slightest.

She got out of her dress and stood there in a white slip, like Elizabeth Taylor’s white slip in the film, though this actress looked both less artificial and also somehow less convincing. I could see a care label bunched inside the seam of the slip she was wearing, which destroyed the effect of reality for me, although the slip and its care label were undoubtedly themselves real. I concluded that some kinds of reality have an unrealistic effect, which made me think of the theorist Jean Baudrillard, though I had never read his books and these were probably not the issues his writing addressed.

I was coming up on a cross street when a man wearing a filthy suit stepped out from around the corner of the building ahead and directly into my path. Bent with age, he turned bleak red eyes to me and stared. Pressed with his chest to both hands he carried a paperback book as soiled and bereft as his suit. Are you one of the real ones or not? he demanded. And after a moment, when I failed to answer, he walked on, resuming his sotto voce conversation. A chill passed through me. Somehow, indefinably, I felt, felt with the kind of baffled, tacit understanding that we have in dreams , that I had just glimpsed one possible future self.

I once watched a crowd of people wearing nothing but Speedos and Santa hats jog down Boylston in the middle of winter. I met a guy who could play the harmonica with his nose, a drum set with his feet, a guitar with his hands, and a xylophone with his butt all at the same time. I knew a woman who’d adopted a grocery cart and named it Clarence. Then there was the dude who claimed to be from Alpha Centauri and had philosophical conversations with Canada geese.

But Jane had tried that with Mothers Group and failed. She just couldn’t relate to those bright, chatty women and their bubbly conversations about husbands who weren’t “stepping up” and renovations that weren’t finished before the baby was born and that hilarious time they were so busy and tired they left the house without putting on any makeup! (Jane, who was wearing no makeup at the time, and never wore makeup, had kept her face blank and benign, while she inwardly shouted: What the fuck?)

Ready for what?” Just then, Jonah came bouncing over, wearing a blue-and-red dinosaur costume. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he yelled louder than necessary. My mom put her hand on his shoulder and he stopped bouncing. She continued to look at me, waiting for an answer. “I’m going out with Isabel,” I said. “You didn’t tell me that,” Mom said. I panicked, my mind rewinding through the week to try to pick out the conversation I could’ve sworn I had with my mom so I could reference it now. It didn’t exist. “You said you’d take us trick-or-treating,” Jonah whined. “Ashley can take you,” I said. My sister shook her head. “Nope. I’m going to a Halloween party tonight.” “Can’t Mom take you?” I asked Jonah, desperate now because I knew how he got when he had his mind set on something. Mom gave me her disappointed look but to Jonah said, “Yes, I’ll take you.” The dinosaur head tipped forward as he looked at the ground in a pout. It was a really pathetic sight. As I clung to my stained shirt, I knew neither

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

Whatever mirth Miss Wynter had been holding onto burst out in a spray of eggs and bacon ... 'It's a good thing you're wearing yellow,' Elizabeth said to Frances. Frances glanced down at her bodice, shrugged, then lightly brushed herself off with her serviette. 'Too bad the fabric doesn't have little sprigs of red flowers,' Elizabeth added. 'The bacon, you know.' She turned to Daniel as if waiting for some sort of confirmation, but he wanted no part of any conversation that included partially digested airborne bacon

I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer, she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes in and out like a savvy diver… –and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough, and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue light from one sky, searching.

Phoebe Hurty hired me to write copy for ads about teen aged clothes. I had to wear the clothes I praised. That was part of the job. And I became friends with her two sons, who were my age. I was over at their house all the time. She would talk bawdily to me and her sons, and our girlfriends when we brought them around. She was funny. She was liberating. She taught us to be impolite in conversation not only about sexual matters, but about American history and famous heroes, about the distribution of wealth, about school, about everything. I now make my living being impolite. I am clumsy at it. I keep trying to imitate the impoliteness which was so graceful in Phoebe Hurty. I think now that grace was easier for her than it is for me because of the mood of the Great Depression. She believed what so many Americans believed then: that the nation would be happy and just and rational when prosperity came. I never hear that word anymore: Prosperity. It used to be a synonym for Paradise. And Phoebe Hurty was able to believe that the impoliteness she recommended would give shape to an American paradise. Now her sort of impoliteness is in fashion. But nobody believes anymore in a new American paradise. I sure miss Phoebe Hurty.

But know this: whether you actively engage in the violent culture of hate or merely step out of the way to give it permission to persist and room to grow, you are complicit. And white people, you give permission to this culture every day you do nothing more than have “conversations on race.” You don’t get to just have conversations anymore. You don’t get to just wear a safety pin and call yourself an ally. You don’t get to just talk while the rest of us fear for our lives because discrimination, rape culture, and xenophobia just won the White House. Too often oppressed people are told to exhibit an inordinate amount of grace and patience while white people are “on their journey.” And it’s true: No one is born woke. We all have work to do and we should respect where people are. But as Dr. King reminds us, too often “wait means never,” and your journey may cost someone their citizenship, their religious freedom, or their life.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

December 25, 4:30 p.m. Dear America, It’s been seven hours since you left. Twice now I’ve started to go to your room to ask how you liked your presents and then remembered you weren’t here. I’ve gotten so used to you, it’s strange that you aren’t around, drifting down the halls. I’ve nearly called a few times, but I don’t want to seem possessive. I don’t want you to feel like I’m a cage to you. I remember how you said the palace was just that the first night you came here. I think, over time, you’ve felt freer, and I’d hate to ruin that freedom, I’m going to have to distract myself until you come back. I decided to sit and write to you, hoping maybe it would feel like I was talking to you. It sort of does, I can imagine you sitting here, smiling at my idea, maybe shaking your head at me as if to say I’m being silly. You do that sometimes, did you know? I like that expression on you. You’re the only person who wears it in a way that doesn’t come across like you think I’m completely hopeless. You smile at my idiosyncrasies, accept that they exist, and continue to be my friend. And, in seven short hours, I’ve started to miss that. I’ve wonder what you’ve done in that time. I’m betting by now you’ve flown across the country, made it to your home, and are safe. I hope you are safe. I can’t imagine what a comfort you must be to your family right now. The lovely daughter has finally returned! I keep trying to picture you home. I remember you telling me it was small, that you had a tree house, and that your garage was where you father and sister did all their work. Beyond that I’ve had to resort to my imagination. I imagine you curled up in a hug with you sister or kicking around a ball with your little brother. I remember that, you know? That you said he liked to play ball. I tried to imagine walking into your house with you. I would have liked that, to see you where you grew up. I would love to see you brother run around or be embraced by your mother. I think it would be comforting to sense the presence of people near you, floorboards creaking and doors shutting. I would have liked to sit in one part of the house and still probably be able to smell the kitchen. I’ve always imagined that real homes are full of the aromas of whatever’s being cooked. I wouldn’t do a scrap of work. Nothing having to do with armies or budgets or negotiations. I’d sit with you, maybe try to work on my photography while you played the piano. We’d be Fives together, like you said. I could join your family for dinner, talking over one another in a collection of conversations instead of whispering and waiting our turns. And maybe I’d sleep in a spare bed or on the couch. I’d sleep on the floor beside you if you’d let me. I think about that sometimes. Falling asleep next to you, I mean, like we did in the safe room. It was nice to hear your breaths as they came and went, something quiet and close keeping me from feeling so alone. This letter has gotten foolish, and I think you know how I detest looking like a fool. But still I do. For you. Maxon

If I could write an autobiography for fear, it would read like this: __________ Hi, my name is Fear. F-E-A-R. But you are going to call me a lot of other things as you start to get closer to me. I’m terribly unoriginal. I’m like every has-been out there, but you give me way more credit than I deserve. You should keep doing that. I like it when you make me bigger than I actually am. I’m going to make you feel alone, and I like it when you believe you’re the only one who’s ever felt this way. You think I’m custom-catered to fit you, but I’m really no different than the brand of me your best friend wears. I’m a ballad lurking in the hearts of a billion people, and I will do anything to keep you from realizing that I am just the same song on repeat. You all know all my words. I’m pretty jealous though. I want you alone with me at night. I’m not afraid to say I’m greedy or that I don’t want to share you. I’m a territorial lover, and I would rather you not have solid and deep conversations at dinner parties or find a community that doesn’t leave your side. I wrote you a story a long time ago, and I don’t want you to figure out that you’ve outgrown the plotline. I wonder why you don’t get over me sometimes, but then the realization hits me: You come back because you know I want you. You come back because you know the sound of my voice. You come back because you know the way I move and how I shut you down. You’ve stood face-to-face with me so many times and I have told you who you are. The crazy thing is, you’ve believed me.

The door opened and Keelie came out, still wearing the T-shirt she’d slept in. It was his and he was going to bronze it, or maybe sleep with that damn thing, because it would smell like her . . . “Can I borrow the shirt?” she asked, tearing him out of his fantasy. He blinked. “Ah. Yeah.” Okay. Keelie walking around wearing his shirt did something to his brain that just wasn’t conducive to conversation, but he managed a fairly normal smile as he picked up his coffee. “There’s coffee.” Keelie gave him a grateful smile. “I need it.” Her hands closed around the cup and she lifted it up to her lips. He watched, practically mesmerized as she took a sip. A soft sound, somewhere between a moan and a sigh, escaped her. His dick hardened. How in the hell could she get him worked up just by drinking coffee?

To pray in the midst of the mundane is simply and strongly to assert that this dull and tiring day is holy and its simple labors are the stuff of God's saving presence for me now. To pray simply because it is prayer time is no small act of immersion in the God who is willing to wait for us to be conscious, to be ready, to be willing to become new in life. Prayer, Benedictine spirituality demonstrates, is not a matter of mood. To pray only when we feel like it is more to seek consolation than to risk conversion. To pray only when it suits us is to want God on our terms. To pray only when it is convenient is to make the God-life a very low priority in a list of better opportunities. To pray only when it feels good is to court total emptiness when we most need to be filled. The hard fact is that nobody finds time for prayer. The time must be taken. There will always be something more pressing to do, something more important to be about than the apparently fruitless, empty act of prayer. But when that attitude takes over, we have begun the last trip down a very short road because, without prayer, the energy for the rest of life runs down. The fuel runs out. We become our own worst enemies: we call ourselves too tired and too busy to pray when, in reality, we are too tired and too busy not to pray. Eventually, the burdens of the day wear us down and we no longer remember why we decided to do what we're doing: work for this project, marry this woman, have these children, minister in this place. And if I cannot remember why I decided to do this, I cannot figure out how I can go on with it. I am tired and the vision just gets dimmer and dimmer.

Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?" The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence. "I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference. "I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words." "Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr. "I have. I sent you some." "But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more." Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said: "I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket." He barked again and subsided. Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?" "What? Naturally not." "You'd consider it too cheap." "Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging. "Do you ever go to them?" "No--almost never." "Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?" Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue." "Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write--that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well.

Once, before I had you, I saw you. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I was pregnant and standing alone outside a party, and when you kicked, I shut my eyes and saw you on a beach we would arrive at almost five years later. You were facing the water and wearing your blue swimsuit and I knew, from the curve in your spine and the nut brown of your skin, that you were mine to protect like nothing else ever will be. So when you first started asking me hard questions, the ones about America and your place here, I wanted to find you the right answers - the kind that would make you feel good, welcome, and loved. I thought if I could just remember the country I'd been raised to believe in, the one I was sure I would eventually get to, I'd be able to get us back there. Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything. I can't protect you from becoming a brown man in America. I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't. Even now, just writing that down, I want to say something that will make it okay, or even make it make sense, but I can't. Will they ever really understand it themselves? Will they ever change? I have no idea. Our burden is how much we might love them anyway. And this is maybe the part I worry about the most, how the weight of that will twist you into someone you don't want to be, or worse, make you ashamed of your own heart. I hope you will remember that you have nothing to be ashamed of. I hope you will remember that your heart is a good one, and that your capacity to feel love, in all its complexity, is a gift.

Jason: That conversation was weird, huh? Jason: For what it’s worth, you truly held your composure. Jason: I wasn’t frightened at all. Jason: Okay, throwing down some honesty. I was a little frightened. Jason: Just a little, nothing like pissing my pants or anything like that. Jason: Did you know you have a pulsing vein in your forehead when you’re angry? Jason: I counted its pulse rate and I think you might have high blood pressure. Jason: I’m not a nurse, I don’t know about blood pressure, but CVS has one of those arm-pressure-checker things. Want me to take you? #WorriedAboutYourHealth Jason: #PulsingVein Jason: #SerpentTongue Jason: ^^ Oh shit that was for Knox. Jason: I wasn’t saying you have a serpent tongue. I’m sure your tongue is normal. Not one ounce of evil in it. Jason: Okay, I was talking about your tongue. Jason: I feel like since you’re not texting back I might be digging myself an even bigger hole than before. Am I right? Jason: I’m going to take your silence as a yes, which in that case, you don’t have a serpent tongue. Love that pulsing vein, and not once was I frightened. There. *Wipes forehead* Glad we cleared that up. Have a good night. #GodBless Jason: P.S. Don’t know why I said God bless, just go with it. #PrayerHands Jason: P.S.S. I’m wearing my flannel jam-jams. I like when they ride up in my crack. #FeelsNice

Your eyes drooled. I saw them.” He was totally perplexed by this argument. Was he not allowed to speak to anyone? “I’m wearing dark sunglasses. How can you see my eyes?” “She’s jealous, Seth.” He looked at Maahes for an explanation. “Why?” Lydia broke off into her hand gestures. “Are you yelling at me, now?” Maahes laughed. “Oh yeah, kid. She’s calling you a lot of names.” That surprised him. “You understand her?” Maahes gestured back at Lydia in the same language. For some reason, it angered and hurt him that they’d cut him out of the conversation. “Are you mocking me?” Lydia flicked her nails at him, then turned and stormed off. Seth had no idea what he should do. He didn’t understand human emotions or relations. Not really. It’d been too long since he had any. Maahes let out a heavy sigh. “You hurt her feelings, boy. You need to go apologize.” “How did I hurt them?” “Think about it, Seth. She risked her life to bring you here, to save you from hell, and what do you do the first minute she leaves you alone? You let another woman flirt with you.

game hunting was flourishing; and, dining at Muthaiga Club, I was offered trout freshly caught in the mountains, together with some last bottles of a particularly fragrant Rhine wine. Not since that last bright summer in Paris in 1939, when the wealthy of the world came flocking to spend their money lest they should not visit Paris again, had I seen women so well groomed, wearing so many lush furs. Baboon pelts and leopard skins were particularly popular. Great log fires burned in the grates of the club chimney places, though the nights were scarcely sharp. The men wore dinner-jackets or dress uniform. The conversation tended to hunting. In the day one had golf at Brackenridge, or swimming or riding or fooling round the game reserves where giraffe still roam haphazardly. Normally one looked in at a roadhouse for an apéritif around eight in the evening, and after dinner perhaps went down to Torr’s to dance. They say the altitude at Nairobi makes people slightly crazy, but after the desert I found it all delightful, as though the world were enjoying one long holiday. As

At length, when the conversation-in my view, at least -was going straight to hell, he got up abruptly and went over to look at a photograph of himself and Bessie that had been newly tacked up on the wall. He glowered at it for a full minute, or more, then turned around, with a brusqueness no one in the family would have found unusual, and asked Seymour if he remembered the time Joe Jackson had given him, Seymour, a ride on the handle bars of his bicycle, all over the stage, around and around. Seymour, sitting in an old corduroy armchair across the room, a cigarette going, wearing a blue shirt, gray slacks, moccasins with the counters broken down, a shaving cut on the side of his face that I could see, replied gravely and at on cc, and in the special way he always answered questions from Les - as if they were the questions, above all others, he preferred to be asked in his life. He said he wasn't sure he had ever got off Joe Jackson's beautiful bicycle. And aside from its enormous sentimental value to my father personally, this answer, in a great many ways, was true, true, true.

Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint. Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes. When I opened my eyes I felt that I had understood something, and the cells of my body seemed to light up like millions of glowing points of contact, and I was aware of something profound. Then I stood up from my seat and collapsed.

THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS ...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answering. And then he stopped coming home altogether. Something about the first day of a season, honey. Something always gotta sacrifice its blood. Everything that has its time must be lifted from the earth. My boys don't bother with seasons anymore. My sons went to sleep in the spring once and woke up to a motherless summer. All they know now is that it always be colder than it should be. I wish I could fix this for you. I'm sorry none of my children wear suits anymore. I wish ties didn't remind my boys of shovels, and dirt, and an empty living room. They all used to look so nice in ties. I'm sorry that you may come home one day to the smell of rotting meat, every calendar you own, torn off the walls, burning in a trashcan. And it will be the end of spring. And you will know.

My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up, my father lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist, my mother marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A smart guy, he took every course the Navy offered, aced them all, becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the service. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes. My mother watched and learned, getting good at the ways of this new world. She dressed beautifully. Our quarters were always handsomely fitted out. She and Dad were gracious, well-spoken. They were far from rich, but there were books and there was music and sometimes conversations about the world. We even listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays. Still, when I finished high school, their attitudes and the times said that there was little point in further educating a girl. I would take a clerical job until I could find the right junior officer to marry and pursue his career, as helpmeet. If I picked well and worked hard, I might someday be an admiral's wife.

I don’t like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they’ve been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there’s no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I’ve read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I’m the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor’s office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else’s cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone’s last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There’s an awful lot of stuff I like.

A flash of lightning ghosts into the room, and when it leaves again, my eyes follow it back out to sea. In the window's reflection, I glimpse a figure standing behind me. I don't need to turn around to see who creates such a big outline-or who makes my whole body turn into a goose-bump farm. "How do you feel?" he says. "Better," I say to his reflection. He hops over the back of the couch and grabs my chin, turning my head side to side, up and down, all around, watching for my reaction. "I just did that," I tell him. "Nothing." He nods and unhands me. "Rach-Uh, my mom called your mom and told her what happened. I guess your mom called your doctor, and he said it's pretty common, but that you should rest a few more days. My mom insisted you stay the night since no one needs to be driving in this weather." "And my mother agreed to that?" Even in the dark, I don't miss his little grin. "My mom can be pretty persuasive," he says. "By the end of the conversation, your mom even suggested we both stay home from school tomorrow and hang out here so you can relax-since my mom will be home supervising, of course. Your mom said you wouldn't stay home if I went to school." A flash from the storm illuminates my blush. "Because we told her we're dating." He nods. "She said you should have stayed home today, but you threw a fit to go anyway. Honestly, I didn't realize you were so obsessed-ouch!" I try to pinch him again, but he catches my wrist and pulls me over his lap like a child getting a spanking. "I was going to say, 'with history.'" He laughs. "No you weren't. Let me up." "I will." He laughs. "Galen, you let me up right now-" "Sorry, not ready yet." I gasp. "Oh, no! The room is spinning again." I hold still, tense up. Then the room does spin when he snatches me up and grabs my chin again. The look of concern etched on his face makes me feel a little guilty, but not guilty enough to keep my mouth shut. "Works every time," I tell him, giving my best ha-ha-you're-a-sucker smirk. A snicker from the entryway cuts off what I can tell is about to be a good scolding. I've never heard Galen curse, but his glower just looks like a four-letter word waiting to come out. We both turn to see Toraf watching us with crossed arms. He is also wearing a ha-ha-you're-a-sucker smirk. "Dinner's ready, children," he says. Yep, I definitely like Toraf. Galen rolls his eyes and extracts me from his lap. He hops up and leaves me there, and in the reflection, I see him ram his fist into Toraf's gut as he passes. Toraf grunts, but the smirk never leaves his face. He nods his head for me to follow them. As we pass through the rooms, I try to remember the rich, sophisticated atmosphere, the marble floors, the hideous paintings, but my stomach makes sounds better suited to a dog kennel at feeding time. "I think your stomach is making mating calls," Toraf whispers to me as we enter the kitchen. My blush debuts the same time we enter the kitchen, and it's enough to make Toraf laugh out loud.

before he went back to helping the boy. Missing from the Warrior tent were Kalona and Aurox. For obvious reasons, Thanatos had decided the Tulsa community wasn’t ready to meet either of them. I agreed with her. I wasn’t ready for … I mentally shook myself. No, I wasn’t going to think about the Aurox/Heath situation now. Instead I turned my attention to the second of the big tents. Lenobia was there, keeping a sharp eye on the people who clustered like buzzing bees around Mujaji and the big Percheron mare, Bonnie. Travis was with her. Travis was always with her, which made my heart feel good. It was awesome to see Lenobia in love. The Horse Mistress was like a bright, shining beacon of joy, and with all the Darkness I’d seen lately, that was rain in my desert. “Oh, for shit’s sake, where did I put my wine? Has anyone seen my Queenies cup? As the bumpkin reminded me, my parents are here somewhere, and I’m going to need fortification by the time they circle around and find me.” Aphrodite was muttering and pawing through the boxes of unsold cookies, searching for the big purple plastic cup I’d seen her drinking from earlier. “You have wine in that Queenies to go cup?” Stevie Rae was shaking her head at Aphrodite. “And you’ve been drinkin’ it through a straw?” Shaunee joined Stevie Rae in a head shake. “Isn’t that nasty?” “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Aphrodite quipped. “There are too many nuns lurking around to drink openly without hearing a boring lecture.” Aphrodite cut her eyes to the right of us where Street Cats had set up a half-moon display of cages filled with adoptable cats and bins of catnip-filled toys for sale. The Street Cats had their own miniature version of the silver and white tents, and I could see Damien sitting inside busily handling the cash register, but except for him, running every aspect of the feline area were the habit-wearing Benedictine nuns who had made Street Cats their own. One of the nuns looked my way and I waved and grinned at the Abbess. Sister Mary Angela waved back before returning to the conversation she was having with a family who were obviously falling in love with a cute white cat that looked like a giant cottonball. “Aphrodite, the nuns are cool,” I reminded her. “And they look too busy to pay any attention to you,” Stevie Rae said. “Imagine that—you may not be the center of everyone’s attention,” Shaylin said with mock surprise. Stevie Rae covered her giggle with a cough. Before Aphrodite could say something hateful, Grandma limped up to us. Other than the limp and being pale, Grandma looked healthy and happy. It had only been a little over a week since Neferet had kidnapped and tried to kill her, but she’d recovered with amazing quickness. Thanatos had told us that was because she was in unusually good shape for a woman of her age. I knew it was because of something else—something we both shared—a special bond with a goddess who believed in giving her children free choice, along with gifting them with special abilities. Grandma was beloved of the Great Mother,

Simply put, within AS, there is a wide range of function. In truth, many AS people will never receive a diagnosis. They will continue to live with other labels or no label at all. At their best, they will be the eccentrics who wow us with their unusual habits and stream-of-consciousness creativity, the inventors who give us wonderfully unique gadgets that whiz and whirl and make our life surprisingly more manageable, the geniuses who discover new mathematical equations, the great musicians and writers and artists who enliven our lives. At their most neutral, they will be the loners who never now quite how to greet us, the aloof who aren't sure they want to greet us, the collectors who know everyone at the flea market by name and date of birth, the non-conformists who cover their cars in bumper stickers, a few of the professors everyone has in college. At their most noticeable, they will be the lost souls who invade our personal space, the regulars at every diner who carry on complete conversations with the group ten tables away, the people who sound suspiciously like robots, the characters who insist they wear the same socks and eat the same breakfast day in and day out, the people who never quite find their way but never quite lose it either.

CLEA!" she screamed, and threw herself into my arms. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but I didn't care. I hugged her fiercely in return. She pulled away and saw Sage, and her eyes went completely round. "Is this the trouble you're in?" she asked, looking him up and down. "I so approve." "Rayna, this is Sage. Sage, Rayna." "Pleased to meet you," Sage said, offering his hand. "The pleasure is all mine," Rayna purred. "Unless, of course, it's all Clea's, which is even better." Sage smiled and might have even blushed a bit, which was highly entertaining. Before leading us to the car, Rayna insisted I take her heavy winter coat. It was thirty-four degrees outside, and I was still wearing my little black sundress. Of course, Rayna herself was wearing a lacy push-up camisole. She took Sage's arm "to keep her steady on the ice," though I think her main goal was to see if his arm was as muscular as it looked. By the openmouthed gape she shot me after her first squeeze, it was. "They'd make a cute couple," Ben said, nodding to Sage and Rayna. "Don't you think?" I settled for a noncommittal "Hmm." In the car, I slipped into the front seat beside Rayna. With only her eyes, she asked me if Sage was mine. With a scrunch of my nose and a shrug, I explained it was complicated. She nodded-she understood-then gave an eye roll that clearly said I was insane if I did anything but jump at the chance to be with him. The whole conversation took about a second.

You must know something.” “And why is Archer Cross here?” That was from Jenna. His voice had apparently changed over the summer, since he actually said the words instead of squeaking them. “He’s an Eye.” “Didn’t he try to kill you?” Nausicaa had drifted up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “And if so, why exactly were you holding his hand earlier?” Conversations like this usually ended in pitchforks and torches, so I held my hands out in what I hoped was an “everyone just calm the heck down” gesture. But then Jenna spoke up. “Sophie doesn’t know anything,” she said, nudging my behind her. That might’ve been more effective if Jenna weren’t so short. “And whatever reason we’re here, the Council had nothing to do with it.” Jenna didn’t add that that was because the entire Council, with the exception of Lara Casnoff and my dad, was dead. “She’s just freaked out as the rest of us, so back. Off.” From the expressions on the other kids’ faces, I guessed Jenna had bared her fangs, and maybe even given a flash of red eyes. “What’s going on here?” a familiar voice brayed. Great. Like this night didn’t suck out loud enough already. The Vandy-who had been a cross between school matron and prison guard at Hex Hall-shoved her way through the crowd, breathing hard. Her purple tattoos, marks of the Removal, were nearly black against her red face. “Downstairs, now!” As the group began moving again, she glared at Jenna and me. “Show your fangs again, Miss Talbot, and I’ll wear them as earrings. Is that understood?” Jenna may have muttered, “Yes, ma’am,” but her tone said something totally different. We jogged down the stairs to join the rest of the students lining up to go into the ballroom. “At least one thing at Hex Hall hasn’t changed,” Jenna said. “Yeah, apparently the Vandy’s powers of bitchery are a constant. I find that comforting.” Less comforting was the creeptasticness of the school at night. During the day, it had just been depressing. Now that it was dark, it was full-on sinister. The old-fashioned gas lamps on the walls had once burned with a cozy, golden light. Now, a noxious green glow sputtered inside the milky glass, throwing crazy shadows all over the place.

That’s why no one asks what the boy did; as soon as the girl starts to talk they interrupt her instead with questions about what she did. Did she go up the stairs ahead of him or behind him? Did she lie down on the bed voluntarily or was she forced? Did she unbutton her own blouse? Did she kiss him? No? Did she kiss him back, then? Had she been drinking alcohol? Had she smoked marijuana? Did she say no? Was she clear about that? Did she scream loudly enough? Did she struggle hard enough? Why didn’t she take photographs of her bruises right away? Why did she run from the party instead of saying anything to the other guests? They have to gather all the information, they say, when they ask the same question ten times in different ways in order to see if she changes her answer. This is a serious allegation, they remind her, as if it’s the allegation that’s the problem. She is told all the things she shouldn’t have done: She shouldn’t have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn’t have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn’t have showered. Shouldn’t have drunk alcohol. Shouldn’t have put herself in that situation. Shouldn’t have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn’t she think of that? She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman.” * * * Words are not small things.

Once again this unspeakable man had caused her to make a complete fool of herself, and the realization made her eyes blaze with renewed fury as she turned her head and looked at him. Despite Ian’s apparent nonchalance he had been watching her closely, and he stiffened, sensing instinctively that she was suddenly and inexplicably angrier than before. He nodded to the gun, and when he spoke there was no more mockery in his voice; instead it was carefully neutral. “I think there are a few things you ought to consider before you use that.” Though she had no intention of using it, Elizabeth listened attentively as he continued in that same helpful voice. “First of all, you’ll have to be very fast and very calm if you intend to shoot me and reload before Jake there gets to you. Second, I think it’s only fair to warn you that there’s going to be a great deal of blood all over the place. I’m not complaining, you understand, but I think it’s only right to warn you that you’re never again going to be able to wear that charming gown you have on.” Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch. “You’ll hang, of course,” he continued conversationally, “but that won’t be nearly as distressing as the scandal you’ll have to face first.” Too disgusted with herself and with him to react to that last mocking remark, Elizabeth put her chin up and managed to say with great dignity, “I’ve had enough of this, Mr. Thornton. I did not think anything could equal your swinish behavior at our prior meetings, but you’ve managed to do it. Unfortunately, I am not so ill-bred as you and therefore have scruples against assaulting someone who is weaker than I, which is what I would be doing if I were to shoot an unarmed man. Lucinda, we are leaving,” she said, then she glanced back at her silent adversary, who’d taken a threatening step, and she shook her head, saying with extreme, mocking civility, “No, please-do not bother to see us out, sir, there’s no need. Besides, I wish to remember you just as you are at this moment-helpless and thwarted.” It was odd, but now, at the low point of her life, Elizabeth felt almost exhilarated because she was finally doing something to avenge her pride instead of meekly accepting her fate. Lucinda had marched out onto the porch already, and Elizabeth tried to think of something to dissuade him from retrieving his gun when she threw it away outside. She decided to repeat his own advice, which she began to do as she backed away toward the door. “I know you’re loath to see us leave like this,” she said, her voice and her hand betraying a slight, fearful tremor. “However, before you consider coming after us, I beg you will take your own excellent advice and pause to consider if killing me is worth hanging for.” Whirling on her heel, Elizabeth took one running step, then cried out in pained surprise as she was jerked off her feet and a hard blow to her forearm sent the gun flying to the floor at the same time her arm was yanked up and twisted behind her back. “Yes,” he said in an awful voice near her ear, “I actually think it would be worth it.” Just when she thought her arm would surely snap, her captor gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling headlong out into the yard, and the door slammed shut behind her. “Well! I never,” Lucinda said, her bosom heaving with rage as she glowered at the closed door. “Neither have I,” said Elizabeth, shaking dirt off her hem and deciding to retreat with as much dignity as possible. “We can talk about what a madman he is once we’re down the path, out of sight of the house. So if you’ll please take that end of the trunk?” With a black look Lucinda complied, and they marched down the path, both of them concentrating on keeping their backs as straight as possible.

You see I'm wearing the tie," said Bingo. "It suits you beautiful," said the girl. Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner. "Well, what's it going to be today?" asked the girl, introducing the business touch into the conversation. Bingo studied the menu devoutly. "I'll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake, and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?" I gazed at the man, revolted. That he could have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick. "Or how about a bit of hot steak-pudding, with a sparkling limado to wash it down?" said Bingo. You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. This chappie before me, who spoke in that absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head-waiter at Claridge's exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frite au gourmet au champignons, and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn't just right. Ghastly! Ghastly! A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it.

Before I knew anything about church, I'd assumed that most Christians spoke the same language, shared a sense of fellowship, and beyond minor differences had a faith in common that could transcend political boundaries. But if I had imagined that, initiated as a Christian, I was going to achieve some kind of easy bond with other believers, that fantasy was soon shot. Just a few months after I began going to St. Gregory's, I found myself at a restaurant counter in the Denver airport, waiting for a flight home from a reporting trip. A woman—perhaps noticing the silver crucifix I had recently and self-consciously started to wear around my neck—caught my eye and smiled as she took the stool next to me. She had short blond hair and a cross of her own, and was wearing some kind of sexless denim jumper that reeked of piety. I smiled back, and we exchanged small talk about the weather and flight delays, and then she asked me what I was reading. I showed her the little volume of psalms that I'd borrowed from Rick Fabian. “From my church,” I said proudly. “What church is that?” the woman asked. She leaned forward, in a friendly way. “Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, in San Francisco,” I said, as her face rearranged itself, froze, and closed. It may have been the “San Francisco,” I realized later, but the city's name was a reasonable stand-in, by that point, for everything conservative Christians had come to hate about the Episcopal Church as a whole: homosexuality; wealth; feminism; and morally relativist, decadent, rudderless liberalism. The church I'd unknowingly landed in turned out to be a scandal, a dirty joke at airport restaurants, a sign—in fact, thank God, a sure bet—that I was going to eat with sinners.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

were more than mere insects. Over time I realized the bees could tell my emotional or energetic state. When I embodied kindness around them, they treated me with the same. A cloud of exuberance surrounded us, as though the bees were templating euphoria into the air. I want you to know I didn’t just tear off my bee suit one day and “become one with the bees.” That took years. But eventually I did retire my bee suit. The first time I walked right up to the hives wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, I felt a bit anxious and self-absorbed, but then I remembered to turn my thoughts away from myself, to open myself to the bees and let them feel me out — which they did. They landed on my bare arms and licked my skin for the salty minerals. When I held a finger next to the entrance, a sweet little bee delicately walked onto my fingertip and faced me. She looked right into my eyes, and for the first time, we saw each other. And so I became part of bee life. Becoming Kin I soon found myself having more intuition about the hives. One morning in early spring, before the flowers had come into bloom, I suddenly had the idea that I should check one of my hives. I found the bees unexpectedly out of food; so I fed them honey saved from the year before. That call I intuitively heard from the hive likely saved its life. Another time I had the feeling that a distant hive in the east pasture was on the verge of swarming. When I walked up to see, sure enough, they were. Events like this taught me to trust my intuition more, and listening to my intuition continues to bring me into a closer relationship with all the hives. In my sixth year with bees, something new happened. I had begun a morning practice of contemplation, quieting my mind and opening my heart. I entered this prayerful state, asking for guidance, direction, courage, and truth. Even though I didn’t mention honeybees, they immediately began appearing in my thoughts and passing me information I had never read or learned from other sources. I believe the sincerity of my questions opened a door. When the information began coming to me, I listened with attentiveness, respect, and gratitude. The more I listened, the more information they shared. Since my first intuitive conversation with the bees, I have had many others. At first I didn’t know how to explain where the information came from, and that bothered me. I told my husband’s

Busy in the business of day— my storming blood has just met a pair of eyes rainswept sand…. That face, again, that face like sunken sand— the sand, sunken, of a face that ancient…. More worn than my face unborn— contours I have known in the bones of her cheeks a recognition— a pair of orphans unmasked at morn…. Because only, only a girl borne of remembering could wear that countenance of mourning…. Across the wash pale soft of dawn float close weighty blossoms on thresholds unknown— for the fragile, delicate tenderness of her composure just-holding, achingly, on the edge of things…. A world of raindrops floating in her eyes— in her eyes sand grains softly settle…. Although to one another we are only a presence in the room and all's silence between us— still, hers is a presence I’ve known: of age more somehow than the day I was born a relation there remains nose kissed to nose…. Slaving in the sweat of the sun I’m back at it in the beds— as, over all the grounds, waxing with the sun personalities of sheds, tines, the animals, define themselves…. Heading now to the meal hall to eat and talk, after digging— when my momentum stalled: by hedges of the wall's the visage of her in the sunny landscape a teardrop of midnight…. Tearing's the flesh of my heart on my cheeks in tears— for her fragile chin and the wrinkles of her eyes when she smiles so glassy I could cry…. Commotion of knives and forks— today the commons are aloud with cups and conversation: a wisp here, a leap of voices there the day’s news bounces its way through the crowd…. Splashing up a laughter of glasses the guys devour their stories about girls at the party— and when we eat our fill glad in our stomachs there’s lots of chin in it we raise each other’s grins sitting in satisfaction and stimulating to the sun…. Tense in the laughter of friends and companions— lines of my age un-wrinkle: by portals of the door her expression there's more sober than smiling: for guile am I un-abled…. Not the friction of sticks, no, nor some feverish itch that must until exhaustion consume— but a long blue flame, slow and fluidly moving will our relation be: a translucent vein loose in the midnight river…. Now— into the doings of day: but to approach her my eyes can't meet my walkingʻs fallen dead at the knees and thoughts of my head now drown in blood— blackness and oblivion...

But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out. As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness. In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: he never expresses his fears or misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfactions and doubts - as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves. The different perspectives on expressing or concealing dissatisfactions and doubts may reflect a difference in men's and women's awareness of the power of their words to affect others. In repeatedly telling him what she feared about their relationship, she spoke as though she assumed he was invulnerable and could not be hurt by what she said; perhaps she was underestimating the power of her words to affect him. For his part, when he refrains from expressing negative thoughts or feelings, he seems to be overestimating the power of his words to hurt her, when, ironically, she is more likely to be hurt by his silence than his words. Such impasses will perhaps never be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties, but understanding the differing views can help detoxify the situation, and both can make adjustments.

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

But we may fairly say that they alone are engaged in the true duties of life who shall wish to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No one of these will be "not at home," no one of these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day. No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small, whom he may consult every day about himself, from whom he may hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself. We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one. But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing.

Cribbage!” I declared, pulling out the board, a deck of cards, and pen and paper, “Ben and I are going to teach you. Then we can all play.” “What makes you think I don’t know how to play cribbage?” Sage asked. “You do?” Ben sounded surprised. “I happen to be an excellent cribbage player,” Sage said. “Really…because I’m what one might call a cribbage master,” Ben said. “I bet I’ve been playing longer than you,” Sage said, and I cast my eyes his way. Was he trying to tell u something? “I highly doubt that,” Ben said, “but I believe we’ll see the proof when I double-skunk you.” “Clearly you’re both forgetting it’s a three-person game, and I’m ready to destroy you both,” I said. “Deal ‘em,” Ben said. Being a horse person, my mother was absolutely convinced she could achieve world peace if she just got the right parties together on a long enough ride. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. The three of us were pretty evenly matched, and Ben was impressed enough to ask sage how he learned to play. Turned out Sage’s parents were historians, he said, so they first taught him the precursor to cribbage, a game called noddy. “Really?” Ben asked, his professional curiosity piqued. “Your parents were historians? Did they teach?” “European history. In Europe,” Sage said. “Small college. They taught me a lot.” Yep, there was the metaphorical gauntlet. I saw the gleam in Ben’s eye as he picked it up. “Interesting,” he said. “So you’d say you know a lot about European history?” “I would say that. In fact, I believe I just did.” Ben grinned, and immediately set out to expose Sage as an intellectual fraud. He’d ask questions to trip Sage up and test his story, things I had no idea were tests until I heard Sage’s reactions. “So which of Shakespeare’s plays do you think was better served by the Globe Theatre: Henry VIII or Troilus and Cressida?” Ben asked, cracking his knuckles. “Troilus and Cressida was never performed at the Globe,” Sage replied. “As for Henry VIII, the original Globe caught fire during the show and burned to the ground, so I’d say that’s the show that really brought down the house…wouldn’t you?” “Nice…very nice.” Ben nodded. “Well done.” It was the cerebral version of bamboo under the fingernails, and while they both tried to seem casual about their conversation, they were soon leaning forward with sweat beading on their brows. It was fascinating…and weird. After several hours of this, Ben had to admit that he’d found a historical peer, and he gleefully involved Sage in all kinds of debates about the minutiae of eras I knew nothing about…except that I had the nagging sense I might have been there for some of them. For his part, Sage seemed to relish talking about the past with someone who could truly appreciate the detailed anecdotes and stories he’d discovered in his “research.” By the time we started our descent to Miami, the two were leaning over my seat to chat and laugh together. On the very full flight from Miami to New York, Ben and Sage took the two seats next to each other and gabbed and giggled like middle-school girls. I sat across from them stuck next to an older woman wearing far too much perfume.

By becoming the aggressor in sharing the good news of Christ with everyone in earshot, I became the one doing the influencing for good rather than the one being influenced for evil. I deduced that my Christianity is not about me but about Christ living through me. Jesus Christ represents everything that is truly good about me. Oddly enough, it started with a prank telephone call when I was seventeen. As I was studying the Bible one night, I had just said a prayer in which I asked God for the strength to be more vocal about my faith. All of a sudden, the phone rang and I answered. “Hello?” I asked. No one answered. “Hello?” I asked again. There was still silence on the other end. I started to hang up the phone, but then it hit me. “I’m glad you called,” I said. “You’re just the person I’m looking for.” Much to my surprise, the person on the other end didn’t hang up. “I want to share something with you that I’m really excited about,” I said. “It’s what I put my faith in. You’re the perfect person to hear it.” So then I started sharing the Gospel, and whoever was on the other end never said a word. Every few minutes, I’d hear a little sound, so I knew the person was still listening. After several minutes, I told the person, “I’m going to ask you a few questions. Why don’t you do one beep for no and two beeps for yes? We can play that game.” The person on the other end didn’t say anything. Undaunted by the person’s silence, I took out my Bible and started reading scripture. After a few minutes, I heard pages rustling on the other end of the phone. I knew the person was reading along with me! After a while, every noise I heard got me more excited! At one point, I heard a baby crying in the background. I guessed that the person on the phone was a mother or perhaps a babysitter. I asked her if she needed to go care for her child. She set the phone down and came back a few minutes later. I figured that once I started preaching, she would hang up the phone. But the fact that she didn’t got my adrenaline flowing. For three consecutive hours, I shared the message of God I’d heard from my little church in Luna, Louisiana, and what I’d learned by studying the Bible and listening to others talk about their faith over the last two years. By the time our telephone call ended, I was out of material! “Hey, will you call back tomorrow night?” I asked her. She didn’t say anything and hung up the phone. I wasn’t sure she would call me back the next night. But I hoped she would, and I prepared for what I was going to share with her next. I came across a medical account of Jesus’ death and decided to use it. It was a very graphic account of Jesus dying on a cross. Around ten o’clock the next night, the phone rang. I answered it and there was silence on the other end. My blood and adrenaline started pumping once again! Our second conversation didn’t last as long because I came out firing bullets! I worried my account of Jesus’ death was too graphic and might offend her. But as I told her the story of Jesus’ crucifixion--how He was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, beaten with leather-thonged whips, required to strip naked, forced to wear a crown of thorns on His head, and then crucified with nails staked through His wrists and ankles--I started to hear sobs on the other end of the phone. Then I heard her cry and she hung up the phone. She never called back. Although I never talked to the woman again or learned her identity, my conversations with her empowered me to share the Lord’s message with my friends and even strangers. I came to truly realize it was not about me but about the power in the message of Christ.