just to say i love

this is just to note that the internet has at least 3 different publication dates for iHo & all of them are unacceptably far away.

and rereading the seven Kushner books i do own for at least the fifth time isn’t the same.

the end.

‘I landed on the pinnacle where we had starved together and, a few hours before dawn, watched a new star appear over the western horizon, flare to brilliance and fade as it moved away, becoming just another star, then a dim star, then nothing. I walked to the edge and looked down the sheer rock face to the dim frozen rippling of dunes half a kilometer below. I sat with my feet hanging over the edge, thinking nothing, until the sun’s oblique rays illuminated the dunes in a soft, tempting chiaroscuro of low relief. Twice I shifted my weight as if to jump. When I didn’t, it was not for fear of pain or loss. The pain would be only a bright spark and the loss would only be the army’s. And it would be their ultimate victory over me—having ruled my life for so long, to force an end to it.

That much, I owed to the enemy.’

— Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

lifeserial:

Matthew Allard
“Any Old Book Will Do”
To Slow Down The Time: Stories

BILLY has a book fetish. It’s the same as some people are attracted to feet, or breasts. It’s the same as that one woman on the Internet feels about roller coasters.

“Are you an ass man?” his father once said.

Billy’s prom date, Violet Tweedy, was halfway down the front walk, halfway to the car with her corsage already pinned to the front of her persimmon gown and her lovely auburn hair piled high atop her head like sauce-stained spaghetti noodles. Before Billy could get out the door after her, his father had grunted the question. His fingers were wrapped like one of those vending machine claws around an aluminum can of Natural Ice and, through the open door, his eyes were unwrapping Violet Tweedy’s bum. He was tearing her candy wrapper of clothes off with his mind. And beneath the expensive Sears dress she’d saved for, it—her bum—was there, sort of hovering above the sidewalk like two overripe grapefruits unconcerned with gravity.

“I’m an ass man, so I’d understand if you’re an ass man,” Billy’s father added, his tongue pressed to the back of his two front teeth.

“Later, Dad,” Billy had stammered. A teenage boy who likes books—really, really likes books—rarely feels comfortable talking about sex with his old man. That’s just the way it is.

And, no, Billy is no “ass man.” Sure, he likes girls—“sexy chicks” his dad still calls them, adjusting the volume on Survivor—but he’s most attracted to their faces, their big aquatic eyes and, perhaps, Raggedy Anne doll freckles. Billy does like girls. But, just make no mistake: Girls do not do for Billy what books can and have done.

[keep reading!]

Lovely Jenny: Four books that help explain you.

Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray Published