Two Cities, One Story: A Portland-Brooklyn Exquisite Corpse
“I was looking for a quiet place to die.” (1) I had no prospects for girlfriends. I was shy and anxious and probably a little gross. But the prostitutes were hardly out of my league. (2) “The world was a grand confusion. When I was drunk, and my mind couldn’t do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot.” (3) I was thinking only of moving myself forward. My mind was a crystal vase that contained only that one desire. My body was its opposite: a bag of broken glass.” (4) “There are so many ways to go wrong. All we’ve got are metaphors, and they’re never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.” (5)
I wanted to eat all the colors to get to the not feel. But even that was not enough for a burning girl.” (6) “I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.” (7) “When we started, there were fourteen bottles of whiskey, a bottle of Italian wine, a pint of schnapps, seven hemp cigarettes, and a pile of stardust that fit in the palm of my big hand.” (8) My hand smelled bad for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t help instinctively sniffing my fingers when no one was looking. (9) “The truth of the story lies in the details.” (10) “We’ll get skinny and start to resemble animals. Language will elude us. Nothing could have prepared us for this.” (11) As far as I can tell, I am the itchiest person in the world. (12)
“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” (13) “She had such control of tone, in her text messages, she was the Edith Wharton of text messaging.” (14) “She saw volcanoes erupting, whales migrating, and icebergs looming at sea before she ever saw a skyscraper or what could properly be called architecture.”- (15) “Abstinence is entirely voluntary; indulgence is entirely acceptable. Sexual fear and sexual frustration are both extremely rare.” (16) “She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.” (17)