Her robe came open; it was like hugging an ice sculpture swan. I shivered.

The attic room in the student town of Ordrecht went for 365, 52 euros monthly, not including the safety-deposit, called borg in Dutch.

“Lucky boy, just too late. Because we have crisis in Holland,

In the mornings, the woman sees her husband off to work in her night dress, sometimes with curlers in her hair. After he leaves, she always lights a cigarette and stands with the glass-paned storm door cracked open. I can tell the inside of their house smells like knock-off Estée Lauder and menthol smoke.

In the anatomy lab, we are peeing into cups to check for any abnormalities within the urine

I was outside of time. Teensy amoebic televisions snowed in my eyes. My throat felt like burnt hair.

I fucked his heart, ruined the fitted sheets,
flamingos left erect in a pool of afternoons

My professor is French. You can tell by her voice, and because she just told us that she and her husband met through adultery, as if it was an app on your phone.

Emily was mine first.

other byproducts are produced
sticky sweat, the stink of loneliness

Sarah has just been promoted at the publishing house, and I realize she thinks she is doing her job at this party

Smile in heavy make-up, feeling like a pill is stuck in your throat.

/pəˈzeʃ.ən/

One morning I woke up with my right scapula in my mouth. You would think that is physically impossible, but in the case of demonic possessions it is actually more normal than not.

A snag with Monday is I have to neck all three of my Subtext in one go. Each under the tongue. The man who administers, Sven, can’t be arsed to say why but he’s a pure archcretin.

There’s an impulse to reduce the Tommy and Pam love story to easy pop-psychology terms: they had a trauma bond, he had a Madonna/Whore complex after she became a mother.

We drank the acid. I immediately felt fucked.

If, for instance, Jezebel had to use the men’s room for some reason, I would rather pee on myself.

I imagined finding him hanged beneath the creak of a taut rope as often as I didnt.

That’s why we are “in relationship,” to deliberately alienate each other’s unhappiness—to build an incredible shrine to unhappiness that would be seen for miles in a flatland, if such a shrine could be visible.

But there's no blood
It's all gone, I'm dry

I spent the next couple hours grooming myself and getting drunk. I was sick all the time back then.

Do you ever get mad
and want to 
hit something?

a howl of anguish and a bolt from the, a bruise, and yes, even lurid strangulation on the— 

why it’s positively gothic darling, really!

I tolerated Marcus and Haley because I knew their drill. Marcus would pick me up with drugs coursing through his system

Hallucinated a flaming forest as if lucid dreaming around 9 p.m. Shit myself. Barfed orange slushy chunks.

I blast the airhorn before the lump on the floor knows what’s going on.

My wife watched me walk headfirst into a mirror.