I waited outside for Shelli, thinking this was like a fantasy: the girl who jilted you coming back after so many years – on your 25th birthday, yet – to tell you she was leaving her husband, the man she left you for.
When I started kissing her, I did not think about it, and when I was on top of her, I was beyond thought. Finally I asked the question a man should never ask: “Did you come?”
As I drove back from the airport, as day turned into night, I thought of my life: it’s a great adventure now, but I’m bound to be disillusioned, because I know I’ll never achieve the things I’m setting out to do.
Andy tries to convert people subtly, Josh said. If a group of people are sitting around and somebody says, “Starsky and Hutch is a pretty good show,” Andy will say, “Yeah, it’s good – but Jesus is better.”
On campus, when I saw Dean Jones this morning, he said, “You still look like a freshman.” I told him I was on my way to take my comprehensive exam for my second master’s degree.
I saw only one person whom I was attracted to: a beautiful kid, about 18 or 19, slim, with curly dark hair, who was wearing a yellow Le Petit Prince T-shirt and cutoff jeans with sneakers and no socks.
On the way to The Bagel, I saw an old drunk puking on Sixth Avenue, and on the way back to my car I saw the same drunk, recovered, jauntily lighting up a cigar in a doorway on Carmine Street.
In the spring, a young man’s stomach turns.
If my hand is unsteady, it’s because I’m still shaking. A terrible, terrible tragedy has happened. It’s one of those things where you sigh and thank God it didn’t happen to you.
If someone had told me seven, five – even two years ago – that life could be this good, I wouldn’t have believed them.