Waiting to Be Thin by Seenat Thongdee

Waiting to Be Thin

By Seenat Thongdee

In my closet, there are three stacks of jeans. One stack for the “fit now” jeans. One for the “will fit if I lose ten pounds” jeans. And the last category—which, when I lay eyes upon it, sets my head into many fantastical journeys—is the “may someday fit after being stranded on an island for six months with only half a carrot and water each day” jeans.

I have struggled with my weight all my life. My mother breast fed me until I was four. Even as I drank my mother’s milk, I still liked to eat the powdered milk by the spoonful. By five years old, my relatives were already calling me “Baby Pig.” But at that age, it was endearing. They would squeeze my chubby cheeks and exclaim, “How precious!”, and afterward put little treats in my greedy palms. Childhood was the happiest period of my life. I was surrounded by the warmth of my family and relatives, and the goodness of sweets.

Then when I turned seven, my mother gave birth to my sister. Nothing really changed. I still had all the sweets I wanted, maybe even more than before. I ate while my parents tended to my sister. For many months, I thought she was the ugliest little thing—all red and wrinkly. But then she got better looking as she got bigger. I liked playing with her. I would tie her soft hair in little rubber bands of different colors and wrap her up in my mother’s colorful scarves. One day I gave her a piece of candy and she began choking. My parents said I shouldn’t give her sweets and told me to stay away from her from that day on. I was not to be alone in a room with her.

I am thirty-three now, and I never did lose that baby fat that my mother said I would lose. Instead, I’ve gained adult fat on top of my baby fat. And my sister’s wedding is in three months. There is still enough time left. I have my goals all written out week by week. Total weight loss desired is 30 pounds, which isn’t so bad. I’ve read somewhere that the first 5 to 10 pounds are water weight anyway. That leaves only 20 actual pounds that I need to lose. And then there’s SPANX, which gives the appearance of being 5 to 10 pounds slimmer. So the absolute number of pounds required to shed is 10. *** Read on! ***

Bro by Matt Hoffman

Will knew she was getting tired of him, as they usually did—tired of the repetitive, unimaginative movement of his jeans against hers, barely keeping in time with the rap beat bouncing off of the basement’s brick walls; tired of the way his hands hung limply on the front of her hips. She had accepted his invitation to dance with a shrug, and as far as he could tell, her interest hadn’t increased. He wasn’t surprised when, as the beat faded away to a second of interstitial crowd noise, she released herself from his grasp, turned, and said that she was going to go use the bathroom.

“Okay,” Will said.

The relative silence was broken by a new beat, distorted bass and snare over barely audible synths. She squeezed her way through the crowd of dancing couples, heading in the direction of the stairs, away from him. Will watched her go for a second, looked around at nothing in particular, and started making his way over to the bar, apologizing as he pushed dancers up against their partners in an attempt to clear a path.

Will waited behind a cluster of people until the bartender, a muscled guy in a frat T-shirt, handed him a half-empty red cup and turned away to the next customers. Some of Will’s beer sloshed onto his sleeves as he made his way to the wall, where he had a little space to stand.

Will sipped his beer and looked around. A few colored lights flashed intermittently over the makeshift dance floor, turning the dancers’ skin and clothes red, blue, yellow. A few strobe lights were blinking, indistinguishable from the occasional flash of a digital camera. At the far side of the room, it looked like some stragglers were still being let in, two or three at a time. Were Will’s floormates around? He scanned the crowd and spotted Ed from the quad, who was standing on the calmer side of the room talking with a short
girl in a red blouse. Will decided not to bother him.

Will sighed, leaned back against the rough brick, and decided he might as well wait around for—had she told him her name? Whoever. Bathroom girl. There was a chance she might actually return. Will glanced over at the dance floor to see if she had found a new partner yet.

That was when Will saw him: The guy was moderately tall, dressed in crisp off-white khakis and a neon orange polo, the collar popped to his jaw, aviator glasses gleaming beneath his brow. He was grinding authoritatively with a pretty girl who had a tight pink T-shirt, a denim skirt, and long, dark hair. Her eyes remained shut as she danced, her face set serenely into an expression of entranced satisfaction. The guy held a red cup in one hand and bore the hint of an apathetic half-smile.

But he was Will. ** Read On! **

Finding a Book Under the Bureau You Keep Your Keys On by Michael J. Rosenbaum

Finding a Book Under the Bureau You Keep Your Keys On
by Michael J. Rosenbaum

As you move toward another day, on your way to work, your hand absently, mechanically, swings over the top of the bureau that sits next to the front door of your apartment, meaning to grab the keys that are kept there. But in its haste to move on toward the door knob, your hand doesn’t completely close around the keys and they’re knocked to the floor. A shock goes through you as the keys make the kind of small, crashing sound that keys make as they hit the hardwood floor, and you stare at them for a moment, unsure—the routine broken (strangely, the hand has continued on and turned the knob and opened the door). Recovering quickly though, you bend over for them. But as you do, you notice a stack of papers under the bureau.  Another incongruity. You drop to your knees and press your face close to the cool wood for a better look and you find that it’s not a stack of papers, not in the way you thought it was, but is a book instead. So you reach under, curious, mind whirling through the memory bank, trying prematurely to solve the mystery, even though the answer is only a moment away. ** Read on! **

Gibraltar by Mark Sutz

Gibraltar
By Mark Sutz

Like most identical twins, my brother Oscar and I were indistinguishable from one another to most people. We weren’t the kinds of twins who harbored any unique moles or tics or cowlicks that would, to the discerning eye, separate us one from the other. On every square inch of our bodies, we were exactly alike, two people walking the earth who seemed in every hop, slurp, action or speech, to be the same. Even when we got into trouble, the harsh punishments were meted out in doubled, equal chunks. Our bar mitzvahs were even held in unison, our passage from boys to men held side-by-side, firmly cementing in our minds that we were going to travel through our lives closer to one another than most could imagine or desire.

The only thing different about us was the titanium rod that had been inserted into Oscar’s ankle when we were twelve. He’d sustained a nearly identical injury to me during a particularly vicious skiing accident, an impromptu downhill race we’d engaged in during a ski trip in Zermatt.

Even the scar left visible on his ankle we shared, but when the doctors had gone into my ankle they’d determined I wouldn’t need the permanent assistance of a metal rod to help strengthen my joint. The scar on the insides of our left ankles was shaped like a fingernail moon. Try as we might, we couldn’t ditch our identicalness.

That is, until we were eighteen and Oscar met Luisa. ** Read on! **

The Spider in the Sink by Jean Ryan

The Spider in the Sink

by Jean Ryan

 Ants are easy. Their very numbers make them expendable. They goad you into it, the way they march across the kitchen and besiege your sugar bowl in broad daylight. Who wouldn’t pick up a sponge and decimate them? 

But what to do about the spider in the sink?  No bigger than an aspirin, it shrinks in terror when your hand approaches. Somewhere the little fellow made a wrong turn; it does not want to be in your sink and now it can’t get out. With a splash of water you could send it down the dark hell of your plumbing; you wouldn’t even have to look. There is a chance the wee bug would never cross your mind again. 

You don’t take that chance. You tear off a piece of toilet paper and nudge it beneath the creature, and in your nightgown you walk through the house and out the back door and you shake the tissue over a bush. One day perhaps this spider will eat the aphids off your rosebuds. But that is not why you save it. 

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 Your husband did not wave before he pulled out of the driveway and your thoughts keep snagging on this. Every morning you wait for that gesture, his hand arcing out the window, and today he simply drove off. Now as you push his clothes into the washer, you try to recall what color shirt he was wearing, which pair of boots, and your mind draws a blank. Not much was said over toast and coffee. Your heart did not melt at the sight of his thinning blonde hair and you can’t say if his gaze lingered on you. It would be on a day like this, without clues, without touchstones, that he would leave and never come back.  ** Read on! **

Georgetown Kisses by Sarah Harris Wallman

Georgetown Kisses

by Sarah Harris Wallman

Trimble had a bad habit of prolonged eye contact; the so-called windows of his soul seemed perpetually open for business. His wife used to call it his “basset hound look.” He remembered that every time he saw the basset-shaped bank by the cash register at the corner convenience store. You were supposed to deposit change for crippled children, or maybe it was pediatric cancer. Trimble was not a consistent contributor, though if he had pennies he’d just as soon give them away. He wasn’t without sympathy, he just didn’t have as much as his eyes suggested.

That day he put in a whole quarter. He was nervous about the way the clerk was staring at him. He’d paid with a twenty and they were waiting for her manager to bring her more ones.

“That’s real nice,” she said. “They help kids.”

He shrugged, but made eye contact. It was accidental. Her nametag said “Lena.”

There were three people in line behind him, waiting to buy formula or pints of ice cream. The store was one of the few in Georgetown that offered such low-key goods, so there was always a line. Trimble made sympathetic eye contact with all of them, too.

“Do you like to read this?” said Lena, poking at the copy of The New Yorker he was buying.

“Not really,” he laughed. It was true. He was looking for conversation-fodder on the off-chance he and his wife had a conversation. “I just live with someone who does.” This was not quite true. ** Read on! **

Dog Farts and Dancer Girls by Brady Allen

Dog Farts and Dancer Girls

by Brady Allen

Emotions. They are misleading. Of this, he was sure.

They puttered along in the downtown traffic. Snowflakes were clinging desperately to the windshield in the borderline freezing weather, seeming to know that a sudden burst of sunshine could end their already short existence.

Anger: not as it appeared—beneath it was always sadness.

And sadness was impossible without first having happiness.

No wonder so many people are just generally fucked up. Emotions aren’t clear cut or reliable.

Next to him, she put on her makeup, looking into the mirror in the passenger-side visor. In her late thirties and she still had the face of a child, a face alive with curiosity, but with a certain sadness, too, if you looked deep into her eyes. This said that she must have been happy once, and the childlike quality said she wanted to be happy again. She had the look of a kid who has suddenly realized that she must grow up one day and that it won’t be everything she expects it to be.

He had a can of Coors between his legs. Ice cold from the cooler in the back seat. And he had one in his hand, sweating, almost empty.

She worked the mascara on her lashes. “So?” she asked.

Neither of them had spoken for five minutes or more, but he knew exactly what she was asking. ** Read on! **

The Minx by Cassandra Dunn

The Minx
by Cassandra Dunn

Like me, the minx was a ten o’clock regular at Lily’s Cafe. She wasn’t friendly, although she wasn’t rude, she just never returned my smiles or made any effort to exchange greetings. She always hid behind her oversized sunglasses, feigning absorption in the man beside her, a magenta smile on her face, a girlish giggle squeaking out of her throat.

She was Asian, slim and petite, probably early forties to judge by her hands, as my years of living in LA had taught me to do. Faces lied about age all the time, bodies, too, but hands kept you honest. She always dressed like a young girl, in short skirts, low-slung tops, with chunky jewelry and ridiculous heels she tottered on. She never came alone, was always on the arm of some older man.

Today’s guy was fairly casual, in his jeans and button-down shirt, and fairly young, with his hip shaved head, his recent tan, his confidently squared shoulders while he waited for their order.

I took my coffee, tried and failed to exchange a smile with her, had to settle for one from her latest guy, which made me like him and made the game of people-watching less fun. Now I was invested. Now I was worried about him, this complete stranger, resting his hand casually around the waist of the minx. ** Read on! **

Man Murders Wife by Judy Viertel

Man Murders Wife
by Judy Viertel

I’m running. I stop to retie my shoe, and find myself looking at a young woman’s breasts. She’s walking towards me—I don’t mean to stare, I’m not a lesbian, although my short hair and lack of makeup often confuse people. It’s the way her tight shirt pushes her breasts up that makes them difficult to ignore. They’re oddly rounded, like two cereal bowls propped against her chest. As I finish with my shoelace, she wobbles past on spiked heels. Ankle breakers, my grandmother would have called those boots, and her leather skirt is so tight she can only manage tiny, nibbling steps. The two men she’s walking with have to support her as she steps down into the crosswalk. They look ten years older than her. They outweigh her, each of them, by at least a hundred pounds. It’s none of my business. Even so, I start thinking about something I recently read.

A man murdered his wife. She was a fashion model. Did he use a gun, or was it a knife? I can’t remember. He killed her and dumped the body. But first, he cut off all her fingers. He pulled her teeth. Why? No fingerprints, no dental records. There was no way for the police to identify the body. But those detectives, they were smart. They traced the serial numbers in her breast implants. That’s how they caught the husband. ** Read on! **

The Heartbreak Next Door by S.G. Rogers

The Heartbreak Next Door

by S.G. Rogers

With her mom’s help, Helena spent the weekend baking and decorating cookies for Valentine’s Day.  She’d set aside one special cookie for her next-door neighbor, Erik. It had taken her a half-hour to decorate that particular one. She’d piped white icing around the edges of the large, heart-shaped cookie and then filled the inside with a checkerboard of colored icing. Helena had finished it off by piping XOXO in the center. It was the prettiest cookie Helena had ever made.  She could hardly wait to give it to Erik when he got home from school on Valentine’s Day.

Erik happened to be the most gorgeous boy in the seventh grade. He was unusually tall and well muscled for a kid his age, with grey eyes and blonde wavy hair, but that wasn’t important to Helena.  She had known Erik since they were both toddlers. They used to run naked through the sprinklers back then, oblivious to the differences between boys and girls. When they got a little older, she and Erik would pitch a tent and camp out in the backyard.  It was so much fun to lie there at night, just the two of them. They would tell ghost stories and talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up. When they started school, Helena couldn’t help but notice girls would act goofy whenever Erik was around. They all wanted to marry him for some reason. The boys couldn’t decide whether or not to hang out with Erik or pound him into the ground. Erik’s involvement in sports had the dual benefit of keeping girls at bay and winning him acceptance by his peers.

Although Helena was often pushed aside by girls who wanted to be with Erik, she wasn’t jealous. Helena knew that silly girls would come and go, but best friends were forever. Besides, Erik was frequently embarrassed by all the attention, which made Helena all the more sympathetic and loyal. Eventually, though, the girls learned to cope with Erik’s glamour, and the incidents calmed down.

Until this year. ** Read on! **