Wednesday, June 12, 2002

MEMOIR OF AN EROTIC MINIMALIST

1. I forget how many star tattoos Sylvia had, but nipples were her favorite body part. When she ended it, I wrote a poem:

The lips of ambition
bit the tit of our passion,
and drew until blue.

2. The sun warmed the plastic stall. As "We Are The Champions" swelled, the moldering curtain was swept aside and Wanda joined me for the last chorus.

3. I took Tereza's virginity on the Fourth of July.
Our neighbor's stereo repeated the same Alanis Morrissette song for at least 45 minutes.

4. A year or so after letting our little fling die out, Bingo and I finally had sex, drunkenly, while her boyfriend (my downstairs neighbor) was out of town.

5. The best part of sleeping with Olivia was when Elway helped me take my socks off.

6. Margaret began having an asthma attack during the second round. I felt proud.

7. Once Simone told me that blowing into the vagina could cause a fatal embolism, I became morbidly obsessed with the idea. During cunnilingus.

8. After we took turns whacking each other with my belt, Chun-li told me she bet I'd make a good boyfriend, for someone else.

9. Whenever I hear "Invitation to the Blues" I think of Annie: we tore up the literature room of the library one Halloween and decided not to sleep together. Three years later, we met up at a party on campus, and with drunken speed requited our passion on the back of the hill.

10. Jane and I were just friends, nothing more, though I was disappointed to find that she'd taken out her nipple ring since the last time we'd hooked up.

11. After we finally did it, I glanced at Justine's planner while she was out of the room. She had written "I think he & I understand each other sexually better than anyone I?ve known."

12. Artemis told me a thing she wanted us to do with a vibrator, but couldn't just yet because her only one was so large she was afraid it would smash my nuts. I think that was when I fell for her.

13. My first time was on my waterbed listening to Beethoven with a girl I'd loved for several years, but who was just coming to love me. I had enough time to realize that somehow I'd known how it would feel.

-Correspondent Aaron X.

Thursday, March 28, 2002

OH, OLIVE GREEN

Oh, olive green. You are my favorite color in the crayon box. You are my cardigan sweater. You are my corduroy suit with leather elbow patches like pimentos. You are the interior fabric of my dad’s ‘76 Volvo station wagon. Oh, olive green I can hardly get enough of you.

I even love you with pocks and scars olive green. Oh olive green now close your ears. Some people call you “puke green”. But they are the “gray is the new black” folks who don't know what they're talking about. And I don’t want to mention your embarrassing second cousin "drab", because he’s a mood killer. The army’s color of choice. They're a good match if you ask me.

Oh olive green I can't get enough of you. But lately, I don’t know, it’s just not the same.

Is it me or are you pulling away, olive green?
Something is driving a wedge between us. Are you seeing other people? I've seen you in software advertisements, and as prominent colors for covers of quasi D.I.Y. literary journals. You're running around everywhere like a floozy; like a royal blue or a cherry red might. You’re becoming accessible! Dare I say easy? Oh no olive green, feed me alone your pea soup love. Feed me alone, your dirty, dirty martini.
Drizzle me with your oils, olive green.

It was the day after St. Patrick’s Day, the gaudiest of all holidays, and I was feeling its cheap hangover mightily. And there you were olive green, passed out on the curb with a Leprechaun’s hat and a four-leaf-clover in your clutched fist. Oh the shame.
The shame! Where did our love go? Where is your sense of what’s right, olive green?

I am traumatized olive green. But needless to say, I am coping. I am taking care of my self. I am doing what I need to do. I am taking a hot bath with candles. Oh olive green. I am slipping into my cardigan and sliding on my corduroy suit. I will be okay. I will sip green tea tonight, to us, and watch NOVA. Alone, alone my olive, olive green.


-AARON L

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

(It’s Never to Late to) Rout out the Gold

BOSTON - Sportsfans and Mormons alike are bursting at the seems. No, Brigham Young hasn’t resurrected himself. But Salt Lake city is all abuzz anyway!
(non-alcoholically, of course) because it’s Olympic time! And I for one am intoxicated with Olympic fever again! Believe me, my life is reaching a feverish pitch! All chills and sweats.
Riding high on my local football squad’s Big Win at the Big Easy, I’m ready to win again. Never underestimate the relationship between your local sports team and your personal self worth. Let’s be honest. We, USA, deserve to win. And win big. I’d say we deserve at least 86-92% of this year’s events.
Given the current climate, I would think it only patriotic for the rest of the world to voluntarily give up their golds. Hand them over. You’re either with us our against us, as one esteemed statesman put it. Yes, we have more athletes competing, and yes the Olympiad is on home soil; but come on, we’re never going to win the Nordic Combined without a little, ahem, allied help, shall we say? And Curling, pa-lease!
The opening ceremonies are upon us patriots. What better way to heal than to channel all your nationalist zealousness into the winter games. I think this is actually a good opportunity to show the rest of the world who’s boss again. I bet most of you, like me, have nearly forgotten the debacle that dogged the US Olympic Committee just two years ago.
See? We can move on, and should to move on! This is what America needs right now in light of recent
events. Some good ass whoopins!
Countrymen, harness your jingoism! And defenders of freedom around the world join us in routing out the gold; for the security of the world and for the love of God. Are you listening Norway? Belarus? How about the German Lougers, do you hear me? I think Brigham Young would join me in asking the rest of the world to hand over their gold. Do what’s right.


-Aaron L.