Bulleit Kentucky Whiskey Bourbon Review

I’m not gonna get fancy with this one. Here is my first reaction:
“Soap? Bourbon?
Soap…? Bourbon…?
Soap. Definitely soap.”
Yes, it has a quick, up front, hit ‘em in the nose taste of soap that disappears almost immediately. If your tongue blinked, you could easily miss it. But my tongue did not blink, and once I noticed the soapy taste, that was that. Much like walking in and seeing your mom eating your dad’s ass, things can never go back to normal after that information is processed. (Don’t get me wrong, it’d be reassuring to know that after all these years your parents were still getting freaky, but at the same time, it’s something you don’t really want to know… you know? Man, talk about a double-edged sword.)
I’ve ordered Bulleit this a few times in bars before this Quest for Flavour started. Since I hadn’t refined my pallet at all and I wasn’t doing any sort of side-by-side comparisons (and I was probably drunk) I didn’t really notice the flavor. It was just whiskey to me. I got it cuz I felt the need to branch out and the orange label popping off the amber liquids appealed to my color fetish. Also, ordering “a bullet, neat” sounds kinda badass.
While I still love the way the bottle looks, I’ll just stick with drinking Palmolive since it’s cheaper than this AND it softens hands while cleaning dishes.

Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey Review

I can review this whiskey with one word, a word that I’m guessing the last three dates I’ve been on could review my presence and performance on said dates.
“Meh”. (All blame falls on me, this I realize. Self-inflicted, Sensible wounds make for bad company).
As in, it wasn’t great, it didn’t suck, it was nothing to write home about, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (-1- being “like talking to a box of dead squirrels”, -10- being “we finger-blasted each other in the back of an El Camino (yeah you read that right, she got to the second knuckle on me too), and -5- being “the greeter at Wal-Mart seemed pleasant enough”) it came in at a solid 4.2.
Much like those last three dates, the taste of this whisky caused nothing spectacular to happen in anyone’s mouth. If I walked into the bar and saw this sitting there, lonely on a stool reading a shitty paperback, and after a quick but thorough inspection I found that no one named Jameson or Maker’s was in the room, I’d sit down and have a stilted conversation with Tullamore. We’d start talking about the weather within about ten minutes, which is always a bad sign on a date, I’d pretend I had to pee after eleven and go bomb the bathroom with whatever pen happened to be laying around (hypothetically speaking, of course. People who do that in real life are dicks), then I’d make a casual-ish exit and never go back to the bar again just so as to avoid having to repeat the experience.
To summarize, you could do a lot better (easily) and you could do a lot worse (equally simple). At about $26 a bottle, save yourself eight bucks and go the Kilbeggan route.
Simply put, there is no secret magic in this bottle. Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

Half-Dreamscape # Monsieur Satan, 16. 2. 2012

It’s about 3 AM and I half wake up to murmurings outside my window, which considering where I live isn’t anything strange. I’ve heard fights, puking, promises of hard sex, breaking glass, screeching tires, laughter, screaming, cars bumping other cars in sloppy attempts at parallel parking, and a whole slew of other things that make living here so fun.
But right now is different. It’s unnaturally still out. Even my asshole upstairs neighbor who likes to listen to Metallica at this hour is mum.
The murmurings are rising and falling, and they’ve got a phlegmatic hue that makes my gag reflex activate (my only weakness, mucous-based sounds and sights). The cadence tells me that words are being spoken, and it’s clearly a monologue as it keeps on going and I can just feel that there is only one person (?) out there. Like the atmosphere isn’t impacted enough for two people. You know what I mean, like when you walk into a room and you can tell that someone is there? Not for any reason other than you can feel it in the air, as if the molecules are pressed together a little too tight for just you to be there.
Anyhoo, I can’t make out the words but the sounds are accented in a way that makes me think it’s French. Not that I can tell if it’s a language at all, but the syllables are hitting in ways that just feel French.
So apparently I have some sort of phlegmatic, French-speaking demon outside of my window. There was no way I was going to look, so I just stayed in bed wondering if it was going to sense, in the way that I did, that I was alert and aware of whatever incantation was happening outside my window.
And that made me casually realize that the sad little chain on my door that is supposed to make me feel secure wasn’t going to stop anyone, or anything, from getting in here if it, they, s/he wanted to.

Haunted Trailer Park #3: The Pantyhose Connection

[Also from the lost Joshua Tree sessions. This was for a painting of a pantyhose shop that had run out of customers and time. I still wonder, who in God's name would open a pantyhose outlet in the middle of the desert? Seriously.]

You try waking up every damned day in a cramped and dusty trailer that you share with the random scorpion or tarantula and living with the fact that for whatever reason you thought it would be a good idea to open a pantyhose outlet way the hell out here, in this cur’sed heat no less. For the record, no one else can figure out what compelled you either. Sometimes the madness is subtle and slow burning.

Haunted Trailer Park- The Geography of Desolation

[I wrote this for an artist who was having a show in Joshua Tree, featuring his paintings about Joshua Tree. These weren't some Georgia O' Keefe nature images, but pictures of abandoned shops, ruined and forgotten cars, and the weathered faces of the desert dwellers. He opted not to use it, and I can see why. The people of Joshua Tree don't need some anti-desert rant knocking them down. The Desert throws enough low blows at them, they don't need some hack running up and kicking them when they're down. Anyhoo, here's the piece. No hard feelings, Jesse]

The Geography of Desolation—all across the desert miniature End Times are taking place, laying waste to random intersections of theoretical latitude and longitude lines—The flash of hope that gave birth to this place has long since died out—the beauty that high-falutin’ East Coast artists flout gets old quick when you have no options other than basic human survival, murder, suicide, or high desert evangelism—
It’s hard to believe that these cars ever ran, that they were once more than just rattlesnake nests and dented tableaus for sloppy graffiti—it’s impossible to accept that these ruins of a single-wide ever housed a person or a family, what with its rusted ribcages and tattered plastics, faux woods and shitty cabinet latches that never worked in the first place—it is utterly unfathomable that anything even close to a good idea was ever birthed here, nurtured, and allowed to blossom from a dream into a reality—the empty storefronts and shattered signage are testaments to that…
What breaks steel can just as well break flesh, break the mind, and it does so, slowly, with great patience and skill—look around, it is no accident that all of the plant life is covered in spines, and the wildlife hates you and will kill you if you insist on pestering it with your presence—this is no place for the soft bellies and tender blinking eyes of our species—we need love and affection to thrive, and there is nothing that is able to be hugged in these parts that will not result is massive injuries and discomfort…
But we have hope, and tenacity, and this thing called perseverance, and we believe we can, if not tame, at the very least co-exist within this harsh environment, but time and time again we loose to the desert—it does not want to live in harmony with us, and we are not worthy adversaries—so it happens, in the dead of night Hope leaves town—in the hell of the afternoon Sun ideas wither and die—the skin wrinkles and cracks, harsh lines Spackled over with the dust of 50’s era atomic tests that are widely remembered but rarely discussed—why do you think you can get 100 acres for $15 around here?—the toll is taken and glances become glares, chemicals become routines, our soft and rounded edges become hard and brittle, we become cacti, all unapproachable and only suitable for black and white photography—the Now is nothing more than a waiting game: Sun comes up, Sun goes down, and in between someone is murdered in a flash of insanity, someone takes themselves out of the game for good with a single shotgun blast to the face, someone drinks themselves to death in a busted-up Airstream, and yet another someone blows themselves up while trying to blow something else up—Time becomes a curse, dragging it all out, but it is also a blessing, albeit a delusional one, because in a Sun-baked mind it is easy to think that if one waits long enough…only if…only if…
And that is what you are left with, a stream of dot, dot, dots stretching off into the Horizon, down a lonely and forgotten highway.

Scotch/ Whisky Review: Kilbeggan

I was all about the Kilbeggan for a year or so until I decided to start paying money for whisky/ scotch.
I went to a scotch tasting at the Pearl Liquor Store cuz it was free booze (hammered, I got. Yes, so much so as to make me speak backwards like Yoda) and the guy that was hosting it was Scottish and wearing a kilt, which gives him cred (it wasn’t a utili-kilt, which would have made him a bag of soggy dicks instead of the Johnny Appleseed of DUIs). I credit his as the guy who introduced me to scotch. My friend and I were also there to get a bottle to kill for the weekend and he steered us away from the cheap CRAP (Rogue whisky which is something I would never consider touching now, and some other shit in a mason jar) and turned us towards us some cheap GOOD stuff, namely, Kilbeggan.
Simply put: it’s good shit. If you like Jameson or Maker’s, it’ll fit the bill. I mean, I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison but as far as I’m concerned it’s the bee’s knees when it comes to affordable but ‘licious whisky. It goes on sale occasionally for around $18, but when it’s not discounted you can grab a bottle for around $20 which is four-ish bones cheaper than Maker’s and about seven less than Jameson (don't quote me on that). Those two are my go-to drinks at a bar cuz, let’s face it, Tony’s or the Speakeasy aren’t gonna carry this little-known Scottish prize. But for home drinking, or if I’m going through a flask stage (Goodfoot= yes, you could get a bazooka into that place… Crown Room= NO! I can barely get my eyebrows into that place since the OLCC cracked down in them. Props to them, though: they took my Krink at the door but returned it five hours later when I left. Though they gave a look like I was lucky to get it back. Still, that’s a pretty cool move), this is where it’s at. Hearty, strong, it’s got a good bite on the pallet but only a gentle nibble on the wallet. It’s what a good whisky is supposed to be.
That said, doing a side-by-side in my den of sadness and failure with my previously reviewed Balvenie, I found it, comparatively speaking, a little watery. It still had the kick of a good whisky and lacked the shitiness of anything shat out by Kentucky (sorry Asseline Netherton, your bourbon leaves me feeling neglected). It didn’t have the brute force and viscosity of a low-level yet formidable whiskey. That may be like comparing apples to abortions but I’m not a pro, so I’m sticking to that until someone sets me straight with a fistful of brass knuckles and a branding iron.
All that said, Kilbeggan is usually on hand at the hovel for guests. But the expensive stuff is out of view in a cabinet somewhere for SPECIAL occasions…like when I have guests… which means there isn’t really any reason for me to hide it I suppose.
Damn, I gotta recalibrate my shit.
OK, new rule: Guests get the first glass of good stuff (usually, if they are a friend, or have a vagina, or eyes, or are wearing clothes, or aren’t, or are cops asking about the domestic violence next door, or have more than zero fingers, or less than zero fingers, or … OK, anyone who comes into my house gets a taste) and after that we tear through the Kilbeggan. That way you get cred for having good whisky in the house AND cred for going outside the norm when you drop down into the lower ranks as the night goes on.
It’s the equivalent of having Rachels on your iPOD (System/ Layers (2003) or Selenography (1999)) for normal times, but when things get green or chemically, you also have the Rachels/ Matmos collab Full on Night (2000) to say, “Yeah, I got good stuff, and I also got the SHIT! And you are a valuable enough guest to get a taste of the real shit… that’s hidden behind the bulk polenta.”
I don't know why I have bulk polenta. I don't know what it is or how to cook it. It just sits there, hiding the good stuff.


Avalanche’s one-sentence review: “Like trying to River Dance in a bathroom stall.” [Ed- I have no idea what this means] [Author- I too am not clear on what this means. I also didn’t know I had an Ed.]

Scotch/ Whisky Review, Volume 1: The Balvenie

I decided to go for some kinda big money booze because my palate is getting picky and fonder of things that I hated in my younger years. I mean, back in the day if you told me I’d like beets and brussels sprouts I would have thrown a lamp at you, but now a days, beets and brussels sprouts are good, cuz they FEEL healthy, and considering my lifestyle, even if it’s not healthy, if it FEELS healthy I’m gonna jump on it.
OK, that doesn’t really apply here. What I’m getting at is that taste buds evolve with age, and as I get older my tastes are growing into new dimensions. Every girl I’ve been involved with since 1998 has been into whisky. And while that beverage has become a more prevalent presence in my life as time goes on, those ladies, much to my own foolishness, keep on fading away leaving me with nothing but this whisky. It’s my own fault, and I own it with tears and loneliness.
A year or three ago there were free tastings in one of our liquor stores (idiotically controlled by the OLCC. Oh how I miss California, where, like an adult, you can buy condoms, chips, a light bulb, two pounds of apples, and a gallon of vodka all in the same store… at 1 in the A.M.). It was a scotch thing, which I knew nothing of, but soon discovered was an alcohol that occasionally tastes a lot like a mouthful of peat moss. Kind of like how beets taste like dirt. Even if you hadn’t actually had the privilege of experiencing a mouthful of dirt, you can imagine ex-ACTLY how it tastes. And with that, if you tasted some hard-core scotch for the first time and said, “WHOA! What the fuck does THAT taste like?!” and someone said “peat moss” you’d be like, “Oh, OK. I can see that.”
So, this is a twelve-year, price-prohibitive (compared to what I usually drink) scotch whisky (which, I'll tell you since I didn't know, the difference twixt scotch and whisky is that scotch is whisky that comes from Scotland I felt dumb when I learned that). Two casks, hand-turned barley or some shit on the floor, old Scottish distiller keeping it old school. Point being, this is a good entry into the world of scotch. I have no vocabulary for this business, so bear with me whilst I drop some layman’s terms on your face.
The smell is of a heady caramel with a slight kerosene burn that people who like whisky have come to love. It’s also more viscous than Makers or Jameson. If you take a small bit and hold it in your mouth you can feel it being thicker than water or the cheaper stuff. I mean, it’s not like motor oil or (so I’ve been told) semen, but it’s definitely thicker than other things I usually drink (like motor oil… or semen… WHOA! Wait…)
The up front taste, right when it hits your tongue is whisky, but when it flows to the back it gets a slight peat moss flair. Not enough to put one off, like some hardcore shit where you’re like “Dude! Who just dropped a shovelful of dirt into my face?!”, but enough to help you swagger some baby steps into the scene.
All in all, I’d say I dig it and it is a perfect entry into scotch for those of you who enjoy whisky but are looking to get deeper into the… brown alcohol scene (hey Amaretto, go fuck yourself). Once I save up enough extra cash I’ll get deeper into the scotch scene and fill you in. But for now, if you’re on the same curious path as I am and have and extra (gulp) fifty bucks to drop, this is a good beginning lesson. Just do as I do and keep some cheap shit on the shelves for when alcoholic friends drop by. Keep this in the cabinet behind the bulk flour, rice, and almonds.

Dr. Avalanche’s off the cuff review: “Tastes like licking an oak tree.”
To be clear, Avalanche has weakly proclaimed that he refuses to be a snob. But tell me, does pretending that Southern Comfort and The Cure’s “Seventeen Seconds” are the pinnacles of existence make you a man of the people; a veritable Bruce Springsteen of the degenerate set? I say it makes you a twat who is slumming with a grimace just to earn street cred.
But he is entitled to his own opinion… even though “Head on the Door” has ALWAYS kicked “Seventeen Seconds” ass and, to quote an amazing person:
Dear Southern Comfort,
You aren’t very comforting!

Food Night, Volume 2: Chicken Burrito

Chicken Burrito Review

Again, trying to be healthier. Tonight was burrito night! A boneless, skinless chicken breast cooked in its own sadness and fear, with a light sprinkling of salt, pepper, and garlic salt.
Throw in a half of a Roma Tomato (I like their firmness but out of season, like now, they aren’t as awesome. Heirlooms are the shit, but when I’m preoccupied with buying $50 bottles of scotch and cans that rattle, I can’t really be expected to drop two bucks on a tomato… I know, fucked up priorities. Get in line to wag a finger), a half of an avocado (lightly salt it, along with any other veggie, about fifteen minutes before eating. This is a really good thing to do if you’re making a pizza. TRUST IT!), a few slivers of yellow bell pepper, a few bits of the cheese of your choice (I prefer the sharp cheddar. I like my cheese to have a bite, like my booze or my wasabi or my women… OK, I have no women, but if I did, a wee nibble here and there would be nice [insert solitary, lonely tear rolling down solitary, lonely cheek] ), some multi-whole grain tortilla that feels like that rubber mat shit you stick under a throw rug to keep it from slipping out from under you, and, my downfall, some sour cream. Not fat free, not low fat—the real deal. Some things you gotta go whole with, like sour cream, and half and half. Have you had fat free half and half? Shit is GROSS! Half and half IS fat. So how it’s made, I have no idea. All I know is that it’ll ruin a cup of coffee quick snap.
Throw that in with HTRK’s Work (Work, Work) album and the new issue if Vice (which, and feel free to argue with me on this, has kinda sucked since Gavin left the fold) and you’ve got yourself a pleasant evening of food, sounds, and reading.
Side note: I did NOT get taken advantage of this evening, unlike pork chop and salad night. My game was slipping and I tried to talk politics and religion with myself, which is ALWAYS a terrible idea on a first date. I realized quickly that this was a no go, a dry night, another night of meeting with the Band of the Hand, so I started dropping the baby-rape jokes. If you’re gonna blow it, do it big and loud.
At least I had some good food. And that HTRK album is really good.

Food Night: Volume 1

I’ve been feeling too fat from beer these days and at some point I developed a serious addiction to frozen pizzas so finally I had a moment of clarity and decided to (temporarily) clean up my act and start eating healthy. Vegetables, small portions of fresh meat, home-cooked shit. Contrary to popular misconception (Suzie Q, lookin’ at YOU!) I can cook some shit up. So here is where I am.
Yes, I’m writing about food I’ve made. These are truly the end times. Anyhoo:
Salad consisted of butter lettuce (washed to avoid e.coli), broccoli (ditto), a half of a Roma tomato (purposely covered in e. coli that I bought in bulk from Winco), one-third of a cucumber (skinned cuz the skin was a little too intense), some mushroom slices (I’d bet that most people who loathe mushrooms because they’re “grown in shit” regularly use catsup… and the things that go down in a catsup factory (Tracy, CA!) makes mere shit seem like a box of See’s Candies, so zip it!), some orange bell pepper slices (not grown in shit or a catsup factory), kidney and garbanzo beans (legume protein!), a sprinkling of gorgonzola (OK, I can never be truly healthy because I am addicted to cheese), and (in the blue Andy and Bax camping shot glass) some balsamic vinegar mixed with a dash of extra virgin (three hymens!) olive oil and two cloves of diced garlic.
Pork chop was salted, peppered, garlic salted, lightly paprikaed on a whim, and cooked in a quarter-sized dollop of butter.
Red wine was on hand (and in liver).I realize that white goes better with pork but I can’t stand the stuff. Deal with it.
Tom Waits’ Closing Time was on the iPOD (CD used for demonstration purposes only). By the time “Martha” rolled around I had finished eating (OK, I was actually done halfway through “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” (track #2 for those of you who, for SHAME, don’t know). I eat fast. I was raised in a den of wolves and if I didn’t eat quickly, I didn’t eat).
I retired to the creaky couch/bed that keeps my chiropractor in business. The food was great and I was dropping my A-game on myself, talking about puppy dogs and ice cream cones and shit . The wine flowed, I kept chatting, kept making myself laugh, the music played, and much like Tom Waits said on Nitehawks at the Diner, before I knew it I had taken advantage of myself.
It was a good night.
I called myself up six weeks later and told myself that I had missed my period. Shortly after that phone call I changed my phone number and stopped hanging out in the places that I had met myself (so long, Victory Bar and Star Bar, I’ll miss your heavy-handed pours and hamburgers, respectively).

First Date... again, not really

FIRST DATE:

And she said [leaning into the question with obvious physical interest, fifty minutes into a date that, for all intents and purposes, for all outward appearances, seemed to being going quite well]:
Do you have any consuming hobbies right now? Like, what is the thing that you are just TRYING to own right now?

And he said [in an apathetic panic, the eternal self-doubter, not knowing that things were going well, thinking that masturbating twice a day and covering the city in spraypaint wasn’t something that should be brought up at this early a stage, even though they were his primary, all-consuming hobbies]:
Uh… I’m thinking about learning how to juggle fire? [He had no designs on this until just now, and after blindly pulling it out of his ass, still had no plans on doing any such thing. Fire was hot, blisters sucked. To this very day, he has no idea why he said this.]

And she said, excitedly [she lived in the Alberta District of Portland, Oregon twixt the years of 1999 and 2037. If you know what that means, you know. If not, disregard this bracket and move on]:
Oh, like poi balls? Or batons? I saw an AWESOME fire juggler the other night downtown at Pioneer Square. He was juggling flaming bowling pins! I guess he didn’t have permission cuz the security guys shut him down pretty quick.

Him [knowing he was sinking deeper into dumb]:
Uh, no. I mean, yeah, that’s cool. Totally. But… I’m not talking about juggling THINGS that are on fire. Just, actually, to learn how to juggle fire. You know, like fire, on its own, in its purest form.

Her [one delicately plucked eyebrow arches]:
Uh… but. How? I don’t get it… I mean, you need, like, SOMETHING…. like, as a vector or something? A carrier? Something that is actually on fire?

Him [noticing her eyebrow and, understandably, lack of understanding ,but mind totally blown with the realization that fire needs other things to exist—that, as a highly destructive though sometimes cleansing device, it cannot exist solely on its own. That shit was crazy to him right then and there, but he couldn’t abandon the story line, couldn’t stop running, because if he did he’d be gored to death by his own idiocy. It was like the running of the bulls[hit]] [double brackets, bitches!!!]:
Yeah, I know that it sounds like something in the realm of “not possible”, which is why I feel like it’s a good thing to learn. You know, like, people can juggle things that are on fire. We see it all the time. It’s not easy, but it has been done to death, right? But no one has figured out how to juggle just fire on its own. You know, deal with it on its own terms?

Her [other eyebrow arching with beautiful incredulity, looking bored and finished, the forward lean from the initial question undone to a back lean, slouched against the chair that, as far as he was concerned, was absolutely not designed to encourage people to hang out for long periods of time]:
:

Him:
Yeah, uh… [searching for something right to say, floundering, seeing the stupidity of his words reflecting off of her face, a face that he was realizing he’d never get to kiss, never be in a position to smell that intimate smell of breath expelled though nose unless he upended this tipped canoe of conversational idiocy. On a cellular lever, he knew he couldn’t right this dumb].

And that was that. End of Night Point Tally:
Failure- 10 points,
Possible Future (or even a kiss goodnight)- 0 points

So he went on about phrenology and dowsing and every other thing that would make it impossible for her to want to have anything to do with him on an intimate level. He remembered specifically wincing, internally, when he brought up the subject of chemtrails, something he had no belief in though he found himself railing about their evil.

Dreamscape Number “Sappy Asshole”

In real life, we had only been on one date. It was a standard meet-n-greet. She had a pretty smile, a firm grasp on good music, and a strong sense of independence that appealed to me.
The dream took place on our 4th date. We were comfortable with one another, had a good banter, and shared a handful of quiet conversations close to one another that bordered on confessional. We hadn’t kissed yet, cuz she was a girl who wasn’t prone to first moves, and because I was a pussy.
We went to a small restaurant that had enough style to elevate it from diner status—wood paneled walls, secret booths, soft light, prices that didn’t make it feel like you were getting raped by a psychotic chef.
It was empty, literally. We both knew the spot, and new that it was good, so the usual rule of empty restaurant = botulism and dickish staff didn’t apply. It was just a slow afternoon.
Our waitress was older, 60 or so, and it’s shitty to say, she was competing with the younger, hotter (two were WAY hot) waitresses. She suggested that we sit out on the back patio, twice. The weather wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything anyone would want to dine in. Overcast, sporadic drizzle, hovering in the early ‘50s. We declined twice, then She of the Date saw a silent pleading in the lady’s eyes, like she needed a table or else it was all over. Not on a global level, but on a personal level. And really, when it’s all over on a personal level, things may as well be over on a global level. Why we distinguish twixt the two doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Anyhoo, date agreed, waitress said she’d bring us coffees and menus in a second, and we went out… and it was lightly raining. There were about 5 tables on a small, tree-covered deck that had been well maintained. I looked at her. She looked at me. We smirked in unison.
She found the one table that was under the thickest tree, hoping the branches and boughs would protect us. Nonetheless, the table was damp, as were the benches. She stepped up onto one of the benches and turned to me, small navy blue umbrella dangling, all bound and useless, from her left hand.
“Well…” she shrugged.
I snickered and walked up to her. We hadn’t really touched yet, but it was due. Not consciously. The universe just needed it to happen. She was 5’ 1”, so even standing on the bench she wasn’t all that tall. My face came up to chest level on her and I walked up, close, and some unseen hand simultaneously dropped my forehead against her chest as she leaned into me. It was nothing sexual, just physical and comforting. I felt at home for the first time in a long while, temporarily forgetting that I’d no doubt end up temporarily ruining her life within 6 months or so, if I stuck to my unfortunate pattern. It was nice just to have a moment, to feel right, and in touch with someone else.
She leaned all the way into me and I put my arms around her as she came off the bench, me supporting her tiny frame, her arms still at her side, me slowly letting her slide down me. I felt it and mildly panicked, and apparently she felt it too when she got to that point, her knee brushing it.
“You’ve got a bone, huh?”
“Uh… oops?” I blushed
That was when I heard the waitress come out with coffee and beverages, probably putting a bullet into this moment for now. Before I totally let her go and we acknowledged the new arrival she reached up with her perfect lips, her ridiculously white teeth, all up on tippy toes, and whispered into my ear:
“It’s OK, I like it.”
And I melted.

Allow me to clarify

A (paraphrased… thanks Avalanche) quote from ol’ William Burroughs:
I came into this world alone and I’m gonna leave it the same way.

Now, I understand the sentiment, and I love me some Burroughs, but I gotta call bullshit as it isn’t really accurate. Barring the absolute worst case scenario (pregnant mom dies in the forest, lost, alone, awhile giving birth to you) this just isn’t true.

The more accurate version is:
I came into this world covered with the blood and vaginal secretions of a screaming, half-naked, drugged-up woman and I plan on leaving in the same manner.

While presenting certain moral stumbling blocks, at the end of the day, would it not be more fun to take this route?

Cesarean babies, you’re on your own. I’m not gonna get involved with sliced-open abdomens and anesthesia.
Even I have my limits.