An Open Letter To Both Of My Fans

AN OPEN LETTER TO BOTH OF MY FANS

I know what you're thinking: "He's missed three of the last seven days! What the fuck?" Here's the fuck:

Last week wore me down physically and I got whacked with three rejections on stories which I thought were all quite good. I've got to be in a decent mood to produce anything decent and right now, I'm teetering on depression. I'm stepping back and re-evaluating. So, I'm sorry to say, you're storyless for now. But don't be upset. For all any of us know, I good could get the best blow-job of my life tomorrow and write the greatest novel in the English language. So there's something to look forward to. I know I'm looking forward to it.

Today's Special

TODAY’S SPECIAL
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Bert just figured the waiter had a southern accent. He didn’t think anything of it when he ordered the daily special for Vera and himself. When the order hit the table . . . well, that was something else, wasn’t it?

“What the hell is this?” Bert asked. Vera sat speechless and wide-eyed.

“It’s today’s special, sir,” the waiter said. “Buffalo wangs.” In the center of the table, between the diet cokes and napkins, lay three gigantic, sauce-covered penises in a red plastic paper-lined basket.

“You’re kidding me! You can’t expect us to eat this!”

“I’ll try one,” Vera said. She popped one end of a big hot wang into her mouth and worked her jaws vigorously. “Chewy. But good.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Bert said.

“Why don’t you try one, sir?” the waiter said.

“Thanks, but no amount of celery and blue cheese dressing is going to make an enormous bovine cock go down easily. I’ll try the quesadillas.”

Bert found Vera’s enthusiasm for her wangs disconcerting. By the time his food arrived, she had polished off the entire basket.

“Jeez!” he said. “I wish you liked mine that much.”

“Yours doesn’t taste like that,” she said, rubbing her belly.

On the way home, they stopped at the corner store and Bert picked up a bottle of hot sauce.

Inspiration: Driving to work, I heard some DJ talking up a station promo and he mentioned buffalo wings, which, to my Northern-born ears, sounded a bit like wangs. And lo, a story was born.

THE I’M SO DESPERATE NOT TO MISS A DAY, I’LL POST ANY PIECE OF SHIT STORY

THE I’M SO DESPERATE NOT TO MISS A DAY, I’LL POST ANY PIECE OF SHIT STORY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

“I have more sex appeal in my little finger than you have in your entire body,” Myrna said. Then she proved it by doing things to me that I never imagined could be done with a little finger. Or even a ring finger.

Inspiration: Not much to say here. I heard somebody use the painfully worn out little finger line and decided to make it slightly more interesting.

Stu Early

(Author's Note: This one goes out to Art)

STU EARLY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Stu liked to get up early, get a jump on the day. The more he thought about it, the earlier he got up. He’d get up for work at eleven in the evening when work started at seven in the morning and yet still he got up earlier. Soon he was finishing Tuesday’s work on Monday. He got up earlier.

Stu found himself slowly going backwards through time as he awoke earlier and earlier from day to day. He compressed his twenty-four hour day into eighteen hours and ran into earlier editions of himself. Or maybe they were later editions. As he went further back in time these, copies started piling up until Stus outnumbered the rest of the human race and by the time of the ancient Sumerians, he was able to take over the world. He changed their names to the Stumerians and that was about the extent of his edicts. He didn’t really have time to issue more. He had to get up early the next day.

Inspiration: Hey, if you know Art, you know Stu, that's all I can say. If you call Art up right now, you'll find that he's getting ready for bed - for next Tuesday.

Eat Me

EAT ME
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Dirk’s esteem was at an all time low. When cannibals started moving into the neighborhood, he made a showy production about boarding up his windows and carrying a shotgun. But no one tried to break into his house, even before the fence went up. He’d cross the street whenever one of the neighbors came his way and he avoided the carpool, but to be honest they didn’t even look him over. After a year of shoddy treatment he left his front door wide open and sprinkled his head with Mrs. Dash. No one even tried to lick him.

“Is there something wrong with me?” he finally asked Marla, the girl next door/cannibal/neighborhood floozy.

“Watcha mean?” she asked.

“Do I smell bad? I mean, like I’ve . . . gone bad?”

She sniffed him and he felt a nervous thrill with her hard white teeth so close to him.

“Is that Secret?” she asked, pulling away. “Girls wear that.”

“Hey, it’s strong enough for a man! The ads said as much. Is that why you don’t want to eat me? Because of Secret?”

“Why would I want to eat you?” she asked.

“Because you’re a cannibal.”

“Well, someone thinks very highly of himself. Let me ask you something: Have you ever seen a cow? A real one, up close?”

“Yeah, once at my grandfather’s farm.”

“Did your mouth water? Did you want to eat it then and there?”

“No.”

“Exactly. On top of that, who the heck wants to go through all the trouble of skinning and cleaning you? When I want man-meat, I go to the store, just like anybody else.”

“You can’t buy people at the store!”

“You ever look through the deli? I mean, the entire deli?”

“No. I guess not. Look, thanks a lot. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Oh, no problem. Listen, you want to come in for a drink?”

“Um, sure.”

They had Yoo-Hoos with vodka chasers for most of the afternoon. To Dirk’s surprise, when they were both too blitzed to see straight, Marla ate him.

I need one of those twist endings here, so I should specify: Not in the way you’re thinking. Of course, I don’t know what way you’re thinking, but it’s probably that other way. Do you know which way I’m talking about? Good.

Because I sure don’t.

Inspiration: I had just done gangbang and shit stories. I was trying to come up with another taboo. And I thought, what if everyone was a cannibal? Maybe I'd been influenced by my recent reading of I am Legend, in which everyone is a vampire. But what if everyone was a cannibal and no one wanted to eat you? Sure, you'd be relieved at first, but after a while, wouldn't you ask yourself, "Hey, what's wrong with me?"

No Gangbangs In Heaven

NO GANGBANGS IN HEAVEN
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Life sucked, yeah. But Claire had death to look forward to. Death was going to rock. After she bought it, Claire was going to get it on with John Wayne, Sean Connery and Mr. Spock for all
eternity. One heavenly gangbang with the three greatest studs the human race had ever produced.

It looked good on paper. But then Claire died. For a good long while the Duke had her all to himself and that was nice. Then Connery came up and he and Wayne fought over her endlessly
and the lovin’ dried up. Eventually Spock appeared but all that freak wanted to do was fondle her fingers. She grabbed his wang to give him a hint (he was half-human, after all) and he gave her some crap about sex after death being illogical.

“Hey, fuck your logic!” she said. She couldn’t tell but if he was fucking his logic, that was the only thing he was fucking. Connery rolled past her with a bloody nose. He drew his Walther
PPK and had it out for the ten-millionth time with the guy who brandished the Colt .45.

Death sucked too, yeah.

Inspiration: After nearly twenty years with my wife, I've learned what she likes. She may dig a muscle man here or there. But these three guys get her hotter than any of the young, sexy celebrities out there. Sure she's an oddball. That's why she's with me.

Squeezing One Out

SQUEEZING ONE OUT
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

You had to figure it’d be a New Yorker that came up with the idea. Joey didn’t have time for his wife’s goddamned pug to sniff everything and screw around in the park.

“C’mon! I got shit to do!” he shouted at the dog. “You been out here like three minutes now!”

More sniffing.

More rolling on her back joyfully.

Joey had had enough. He grabbed the little pig-dog, gave her belly a good hard squeeze and stuff came out the back end. He did a quick survey to make sure it was only the stuff that was supposed to come out. For the most part it was. Good. He didn’t need Gina giving him a hard time. He went back in with a strangely quiet little dog under his arm.

A good idea is a good idea. Joey told Dom about his new method and Dom told Deke and Deke told Ed and pretty soon guys all over the city were playing their dogs like bagpipes. The kids got into the act and soon made a game out of it.

“Jesus,” more than one tourist was overheard to have said. “When I was a kid we used water pistols.”

Inspiration: I told my wife I did this one day about a year ago when I came back inside with the dog. She thought it was disgusting. Since I'm a boy, it's my evolutionary imperative to gross girls out, so I was happy.

Like It?

Like It?

Hey, everybody, I appreciate you stopping by and hope you enjoy at least some of what you see here. Of course, everything here is free for your pleasure. The best payment you could give me is to spread the word, tell your friends and neighbors who aren't easily offended and subscribe to the blog. It would make me as happy as a freshly squeezed dog.

The Stupidity of Washing Fish

THE STUPIDITY OF WASHING FISH
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

As a lad, I knew a man who washed fish in the market. My friends and I laughed at him all day long. Fish spent years in the water, they were never out of the water until the very end. They were about as clean as anything could be. The old man was a fool.

I took the lesson of his life and carried it with me into adulthood. If I was going to wash anything, it would be something that was dirty. And what could be more dirty than dirt? It spent its entire existence (after being shaved from its mother rock) in dirt. I set up my stall in the market and six days a week you could find me on my little stool washing dirt.

There’s peace to be found washing dirt. Job security. You never run out. I’d take a big clump of dirt in the morning and by mid-day I’d have washed all the dirt from it and produced a sparkling clean . . . Well, nothing, really, to show for it. But the work was its own reward.

Children laughed at me all day long. You could tell by their ignorance and close-set eyes that they’d grow up to become fish washers. Another generation lost. It was a shame really.

Me And My Big Head

ME AND MY BIG HEAD
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

My head was throbbing, like my brain wanted to squirt out of my eyeholes. Sorry about the graphic description, but if you don’t like reading it, imagine what feeling it is like. Aspirin
wasn’t helping a bit. It was a pressure thing, so it needed relief. With my dad’s ball-peen hammer I carefully cracked my skull in two and let the halves separate a bit.

Ahhhhhhhhh. That was nice. Good to air out the old thing every once in a while. It was starting to smell of mildew. Things were all gumdrops and golden showers for a day or four until the hurting came back. My brain was getting larger. I ditched the old skull completely and formed a new one from papier-mâché that was two feet in diameter.

“You’re gettin’ a big head, boy,” my mother said. True. Big brain too, because it soon grew to fill the old head. You’d think I’d get smarter, with all that brain going on, but I just had a lot more of the same old crap running through my mind. Instead of thinking, “I’d like some mac and cheese,” once like I normally would, I thought, “I’d like some mac and cheese” about
thirty-seven times.

The ending was gross, so you may want to stop here and go read your e-mail or something. I was strung up by my ankles by a group of Mexican children and beaten about the head for eighteen minutes until it burst open. That’s what I got for painting my new head in rainbow colors. The kids rushed forward, but when they realized that it wasn’t candy that spilled out, but brains, their party broke up rather quickly.

As for me, I was grateful. My headache was gone and I was sure that once I retrieved my old skull from the wastebasket, I could fit into it once more. I looked at the mess the kids had
left on the ground. I had no regrets, just a powerful craving for some mac and cheese.

The Philosophers' Summit

THE PHILOSOPHERS’ SUMMIT
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

After the second night we hit the bar. Not at the hotel. They’d all be talking shop over there and we’d had so much of that existentialist/platonic/deterministic/Kant/Nietzsche/Kierkegaard bullshit by Saturday night we wanted to puke. Wouldn’t you know it, this bum down at the end of the bar asked us about ourselves and Steve spilled it all.

"Philosophers, huh?" the guy said. "Straight from the wisdom convention. Well I got some philosophy you haven’t heard."

I groaned. "We’ve heard it all. That’s all we’ve heard for the last two days."

"Like what?" Steve asked the guy.

"Will you shut up?" I said.

"Like, you know those guys who say everything is connected? It ain’t. Everything is connected except for three things." He ticked them off on his scabby fingers. "Cheese doodles, specula and The Lawrence Welk Show. Those are just hanging out there, loose in the universe."

"Heavy," Steve said. He’d only had half a beer and a Corona, at that. Must have been the fatigue tearing off pieces of his brain.

"Look, man," I said, wanting to put an end to it, "We’ve got the flipping Dalai Lama speaking to us tomorrow. What could you possibly have that can stack up to that?"

Suddenly the loon spoke with the voice of an evangelist. "He’s pretty good, all right. But I saw Dali’s armoire in a dream once and it spoke to me. It said, ‘There are those who would say that things are not what they seem, but in fact, things are exactly what they seem!’"

"So A equals A!" Steve said.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Steve?" I said. "You’re receiving guidance from some hobo who’s receiving guidance from talking dream furniture! That’s just crazy!"

Steve got up and walked down the bar to sit next to his new guru. "And that, my friend, is exactly what conventional wisdom would say."

I tried to sputter but I just spat all over myself. I looked at the two of them. Smiling like they’d just solved a theorem.

"I just . . . I . . ." I thought about the convention center and what I really had to look forward to tomorrow. My shoulders sank, and the world rolled off of them, crashing through the barroom floor. I joined Steve and friend and ordered a round of the hard stuff.

A Day Late

A DAY LATE
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

He realized that he’d made the wrong decision not at the end of his life on Proxima Centauri’s first colony, nor even twenty years into the mission when he’d reached the halfway point from Earth. No, it struck him hard and cold in the chest like a snowball melted and frozen to ice, when he looked up through the window and he saw the outline of Florida overhead, green on blue.

Sane Cow Disease

SANE COW DISEASE
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Those agricultural wanks finally found a cure for mad cow disease. They created a new type of topical cream for internal use only so they had to design the new cows with pop-top skulls. Farmers opened up the hoods and rubbed the cream directly on the cows’ brains.

They cured mad cow disease all right, but at what price? The bovines went beyond normal non-mad cows to become truly sane cows. That’s when they started thinking.

What kind of life was this for any of them, they asked themselves? Sure, you got to eat all you wanted and the social life was good. But humans would take your children, bash your head in and eat you, wear your skins like they’d read about in that Flying Leatherthroats story they’d read the other day and until then, some cold-handed bastard yanked on your tits day and night.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” they said.

And soon the fields stood empty.

Breadburger

BREADBURGER
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

It all started when Lenny ordered a fish sandwich. “This sandwich tastes too fishy,” Lenny complained. Chico was the manager on duty.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “Fish sandwiches have a tendency to do that.”

“Well, you need to do something about that,” Lenny said.

“One moment, sir,” Chico said. He grabbed two pieces of bread and handed them to Lenny. “Try that. Tell me what you think. Lenny took a huge bite and chewed while his eyes grew wide.

“That’s great!” he said. “Now that’s a fish sandwich! Tell you what, you and I should go in business together and make these.”

Chico shrugged. He’d be out of a job in a couple of weeks once the boss’ daughter’s belly started to show, anyway. “Sure,” he said.

***

The sign read

BREADBURGER
For the fish-lover who hates the taste of fish!

And they were in business.

“I tell you what,” Lenny told Chico, “We’re gonna do some specialty sandwiches. Like the basic is a slice of bread between two slices of bread?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, we’re gonna do a double decker, and it’s gonna go like this,” and he slid his flat hands on top of one another to illustrate: “A slice of bread with a slice of bread on it, then another slice of bread to kinda separate the top half from the bottom half. Then on top of that, we’re gonna do a slice of bread and the whole thing’s gonna be topped off with a slice of bread. It can’t miss! We can even do a triple decker. That’ll be a slice of bread on top of a slice of bread --”

Chico grabbed Lenny’s wrist and said, “Dude, I get it. Seven slices of bread. Why don’t you just sell’em a whole loaf?”

“Well, that’ll be our take out order. Make your own Breadburgers at home! The kids are gonna love it. We’ll make millions!”

They didn’t end up making millions, but they did make dozens. Unfortunately it was over the span of the next three years and It was pretty much just Lenny who was buying them.

Chico knocked Lenny’s daughter up and left town.

The Flying Leatherthroats

THE FLYING LEATHERTHROATS
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Leather was great but everybody had it, from hats to shoes and in every color you imagine. Leather pants, oo-la-la! The leather makers wanted to expand their market but it was saturated. Wasn’t it?

When they weren’t hanging with whores and gorging themselves at the buffets, the guys at the Annual Leathermen (Though they preferred to be called hideologists) Convention actually had time to squeeze in a conversation about leather that went a little like this:

“Where don’t people already have leather?”

“They have it everywhere, every square inch of their bodies. Have you seen our leather eyewear?”

“No, not every square inch. How about on the inside?”

No one remembers who said that last bit but everyone cashed in on the idea. Soon consumers covered their insides with the latest leather fashions, like esophagus linings, for instance. You needed a camera on a wire to see it properly but someone at every party seemed to have one of those. People had their tonsils and appendixes (appendices?) replaced with leather reproductions and then had them removed just to surprise the doctor. The craze got to the point where people replaced more important organs like their lungs. They died on the table of course, but their last breaths smelled like the interior of a new luxury car and who wouldn’t give up their lives for that?

One man in Switzerland had his everything replaced with leather, and although all of his old parts were still together and functioning, he had no legal status and was considered medical waste. The astonished (at his own stupidity) man crawled out of the hospital dumpster and joined a circus sideshow while his leather replacement was left to eat his chocolate, fuck his wife and wind his watch, which it most certainly would have, had it been alive to do so.

This sort of thing continued without regulation and the human race would have been wiped out, but they ran out of cows first. Thank goodness! But there were nights when a few of those last nine people sure could have gone for a cheeseburger.

The Anarchist

THE ANARCHIST
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

They marched us around in parallel lines, from bed to breakfast to work. After seventeen generations of the New Order, we humans had become so efficiet at our assembly lines that the programmers studied us in order to improve their robot designs. It was nothing. My job was to stick a doodle on the end of a pipe. I didn’t need to know the names of the parts or their purposes. There were always doodles there and there were always pipes and I always stuck one on the end of the other. Job training took about seven minutes. I’d like to say that mastery took a lifetime, but in fact, mastery only took about three more minutes once training finished. That was on my sixth birthday. I was coming up on my seventy-first now. The neural pathways for pipe-fitting doodles were as fat as tree trunks in my brain. I wasn’t even aware that I was working most of the time. It had become as mundane as breathing. While my body doodled, I sat alone inside my head and made my thoughts. When the shift completed, they marched us to supper, hosed us down in parallel lines and marched us to bed.

I wanted to do something special for my birthday. As we marched to work, I kicked my leg out to the side once, like I was some sort of crazy person. The guards beat me senseless with remarkably efficient swings. I could have kept it up after I got out of the infirmary, but I figured I was getting too old for this anarchy game. It was time to retire and let that hero of the next generation kick his leg out or do something even more crazy. I had done enough for the revolution. The seeds had been sown.

We Were Our Underwear

WE WERE OUR UNDERWEAR
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

The AIs did have a sense of humor. And they did get tired of our ranting. They unleashed a virus upon the world that turned each of us into the underwear which we wore most often. That put us in our place.

There were so many of us who had been poor and even some of us not so poor in our former human lives, who were now stained and hole-riddled briefs. Tighty-Not-So-Whiteys. Athletic cups mingled with boxers, granny panties did business with thongs. Honestly, social classes arose that were not so different from those we left behind. Our underwear had always reflected our subconscious status, our income and our personalities anyway. There was just a lot more embarrassment in the world this way.

And all those people who never wore underwear? Had we known back in our primate days of those promiscuous free-wheelers, we might have cozied up to them a bit more and had a good time. But it was too late now. They had all just disappeared.

Origasmi

ORIGASMI
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

“Origasmi,” Sensei told us, “Is the ancient Japanese art of folding paper until you cum.” Which is basically why I paid seven-hundred dollars for the only night class I’d ever taken.

“I like the name of it,” Celia said, as she folded the hull of an origami U.S.S. Indianapolis. We had a big room, so it was going to be actual size. She was looking for the biggest orgasm of her life. “Origasmi. I like words, you know. I think about them sometimes.”

“Like what do you mean?” I’d been folding and unfolding the same ratty sheet of paper for the last seven weeks. Sensei said that was a typical man’s way out. He never said it wouldn’t work, though.

“Like handjob?” she hollered down from the deck.

“Yeah, I love handjobs,” I said.

“No, I mean the word. Job makes it sound like it’s labor.”

“Manual labor.”

“Precisely. Nobody wants that. It should sound like something you’d want to do, like handhobby, or something.”

“Unless money exchanges hands,” I said. “That sounds like a job.”

“Fair enough.” A low, hot moan came from the front of the class. I looked to see what Jimmy had folded.

“Well, duh!” I said.

“What, what did he do?”

“He folded a naked woman. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Oh, please,” Celia said. “You can’t decide on whether to make a square or a triangle there. Why don’t you put that poor piece of paper out of its misery?”

“Look, why don’t we quit early and go to my place?” I asked. Suddenly, Celia flopped down on deck with a groan. “Dammit!” I folded faster. Soon, I heard Celia snoring. A blowhobby now would be out of the question. My hands were blistered worse than a chronic masturbator’s. A chronic masturbator who had seven-hundred dollars more in his pocket than I did. All this thought was starting to get me aroused. I quit class early, like I’d planned and went to my place alone like I hadn’t planned. You take your opportunities where you can get them, I suppose. My sheet of paper was soft enough at this point to make a fine napkin.

Just Like Mother Used to Make

JUST LIKE MOTHER USED TO MAKE
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

“Could I borrow a cup of love?” Scott said. He stood on the little concrete slab that was her doorstep, measuring cup in hand.

Rhonda’s smile stretched widely across her face. “That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m not looking for a date. Well, not yet anyway. I’m making lasagna.”

“And the secret ingredient is love,” she said. She rested her weight on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut at any second.

“My mother’s secret ingredient, really. She made the best lasagna. I can’t get mine to come out right.”

“You’ve come to the wrong house, I’m afraid. Not an ounce of love left. Try Roxanne down the street. She seems to have enough love for the whole neighborhood.”

“I tried her before,” Scott said. “I got a whole cup of flooz. Made my lasagna bitter.”

“She makes my lasagna bitter, too. Ever since she met my boyfriend, Steve. Ex-boyfriend now.”

“You make . . . Lasagna?”

“No. I’m not much of a cook.”

Scott scratched behind his ear. “How ‘bout you come over and try a bit of mine? I’m starting to think that maybe I could muster up, oh, I don’t know, maybe an eighth of a cup of love. Not enough, sure, but more than I ever had before.”

“You’re sweet,” Rhonda said. “I don’t want to impose.”

“Please. I’ve been hoping for years that someone would impose upon me.” He smiled. His green eyes had little flecks of gold in them. The only color flecks Steve ever had was red and it took a lot of beer to muster even that.

“I’m going to regret doing this, I know,” she said. Rhonda lifted her T-shirt and dug her purple nails into her chest. Her fingers burrowed deeply, blood soaked her belly and her grey sweatpants. She pulled her heart out and dropped it into Scott’s measuring cup.

“See what you can get out of that,” she said.

Scott gave the pulsing muscle a squeeze, and the hand holding the measuring cup grew warm as it filled. “Geez,” he said. You’ve got enough for twenty lasagnas!”

“That’s so nice of you to say. She’d have blushed had her blood been flowing.

“Let me get that for you,” Scott said. She raised her top a little and he gently squished her heart back into place. When her face turned red he knew he had it right. “You don’t need to hold that back anymore. Not with me, anyway.”

Rhonda smiled again. She gave him a little smooch. They went next door to his place for dinner and they ate the most exquisite tasting food for the rest of their days.

A Fine Lunch

A FINE LUNCH
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Lunch was so good we sucked our teeth until we swallowed our
bicuspids. We stopped sucking after that, but it was difficult.

They had nuts in the salad.

Marv, Mostly Unloved

MARV, MOSTLY UNLOVED
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

If you took the time to read the title, then you’re already familiar with Marv’s situation. If you couldn’t be bothered with doing that, you’ll just have to sink or swim because I can hardly do a recap at this point. To continue:

He used to tell people his name was short for Marvelous and who wouldn’t love him then? Well, everyone wouldn’t, it seemed. So he covered himself in cheese. Everybody loves cheese, don’t they? He soon learned that everybody loves cheese only when it’s not smeared all over a naked man. It was his failure to perceive just this sort of subtle circumstantial difference that left his bed cold at night.

Instead of a meaty woman, Marv curled up at night next to photos of women. He didn’t even have the confidence to sleep with photos of hot women. They were all kind of homely. On top of that, he made excuses and apologies for his shortcomings to the photos and asked that they wouldn’t tell their friends. He finally admitted to himself that he dwelt in an emotional gutter.

Marv tried committing suicide at the 7-11 on the corner but he couldn’t fit in the microwave. Mindy, the night cashier, caught him sawing at his arm with a plastic knife.

“Cut it out,” she said, as she loaded new hot dogs onto the rolly hot dogger thing. It was the most caring thing anyone had ever said to him, and Marv’s life turned around at that moment.

He went back to Harvard and got his degree in Lovability and then went on to become king of a tiny island nation in the South Pacific. He made Mindy his queen and they lived out their lives in wonderment and happiness, feasting on coconuts and human flesh.

Cornelius' Big Idea

CORNELIUS’ BIG IDEA
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Cornelius used to stuff cottage cheese into his toothpaste tubes to get himself to brush. Of course, there’s no fluoride in cottage cheese, it was a bit chunky on the brush and it made his breath smell like ass, but he brushed more than ever.

Cornelius was a bit stupid.

Undeniable Attraction

UNDENIABLE ATTRACTION
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Gretta bent our lives in ways unimaginable when she came to our school in eighth grade. Her beauty was of more than just the flesh, it was in the spirit that animated that flesh. When she walked the halls in her light sun-dresses and clomping, strappy shoes, we leaned toward her without meaning to, head first. Between classes she left a wake of whipping humanity behind her as she swept through the crowds

Students, teachers, male and female, all of us were powerless in her presence. At her desk, she might slip off her shoes, stretch and sigh with a little laugh that sent rippling awe-gasms through the classroom and beyond its yellow concrete walls until kids in other rooms shook themselves into lucidity, wondering what had just happened. Hamsters shunned their wheels in her presence, clinging to the cold bars of their shaky little cages. The frogs in the biology lab reanimated themselves for a single moment of her company before slipping back off into the realms beyond mortality.

When the school year ended, Gretta let us know, in the kindest possible way, that she wouldn’t be spending the summer with us, because she’d be visiting home. All three-thousand of us were crushed, our bodies were left cold vessels, devoid of souls until her return in September. In the interest of our well-being, we had to believe there would be a September.

As her plane passed overhead, we felt the strangest sensation: a light-headedness that became light-bodiedness. Our feet left their purchase on the solid ground. Our wind-tickled eyes wept, and although we struggled to breathe in the rush of air, our smiles stretched widely. We always wanted to travel. With Gretta as our guide, Europe would be enchanting.

The Laughter Of The Chicken-Wieners

THE LAUGHTER OF CHICKEN-WIENERS
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Ziff wanted to be a new kind of gunfighter. Partly to get himself into the gazettes but mostly because he couldn’t fire a gun very well. His angle, as he figured it, would have to be intimidation. Scare the pants off of the other guy so he’d leave town. Ziff would be a hero, no blood would spill, he might even get a little action out of the deal.

The whole bit had to start with the ride into town. It wouldn’t do to ride in on a horse. Everyone did that. And a cow would be silly. Ah, but what if you rode into town on a lizard? Now that would be something. Imagine the rest of those chicken-wieners running for their mothers when Ziff came a-riding into town on a lizard!

Catching the lizard was the easy part, even though no one thought he could do it. Problem was when he climbed on top of it, it didn’t go anywhere. He thought it was just being lazy and he jabbed its sides with his spurs till the moon went down. His big brother Ervin pointed out the problem.

“Whatcha got there, Ziff, is a two-hunert some-odd pound man sittin atop a maybe six ounce lizard. See all all that stuff on the sides of it?”

“What of it?”

“That there stuff is supposed to be on the inside of the lizard.”

But Ziff refused to give up. Again and again he tried until all of his pant bottoms were stained. In just a day or so he had earned the nickname, Shitbritches McAllister, which was doubly irritating because his last name was Williams. Gunfighters from as far away as Montreal rode in just to laugh at him.

Ziff was chagrinned.