Tag Archives: leather

Blatant Self-Plagiarism

“You know,” she said, curling up in the passenger seat and pressing her cheek against its red leather, “I had this dream last night. You were made of pizza and I ate you.”

She reached across the console and rested her hand on mine, concernedly.

She continued: “It was awful. I felt like calling you, but I knew you were sleeping.”

Bullshit, I thought. She hadn’t called me in months. She only agreed to go out with me tonight because I told her – to my karma’s horror – that I was dying. We drank too much wine, and, in her drunken state, she decided that her dream portended my demise. Then she asked if I thought she had gotten fat.

In our months apart she got a new boyfriend and I got a new car. I stuffed her in the passenger seat and drove her home.

My car idling in her driveway, its headlights glaring at the back of an unfamiliar vehicle, she refused to remove her hand. Her house was dark.

“If K is so great,” I huffed, “where is he tonight?”

She sighed, said nothing. Then she moved to kiss me but sank her teeth into my face instead.


The Coming Slaughter

I hate discount retailers. But I go begrudgingly to the discount retailer because I do things for the pretty girl I love who always loves a bargain.

The discount retailer offers nothing of value for anybody. The girl I love marches off to the women’s things and I find myself in the men’s section, dodging lower-class people as they clamor for cheap stuff. Two men argue over a leather jacket.

I make my way to the men’s shoes. I fantasize about seeing the girl I love naked as my eyes gloss over countless pairs of misfit footwear that seem like death row inmates awaiting imminent execution.

But I spot, accidentally, in an unmarked shoebox, a single Ferragamo loafer that, presumably, even I can afford. My X-rated fantasy vanishes and I excitedly snatch up the loafer. I search for its mate. I search everywhere. I ask an unhelpful sales associate to find its mate. He rolls his eyes: “Sorry, I guess it’s lost.”

I attack the sales associate. The police arrive and I’m arrested. I don’t know where she is–the girl I love.

I’m issued prison garb–shirt, pants, loafers. The shirt and pants are awful, but the loafers aren’t so bad.