Nurses - "Bright Ideas"

I was at the ballet tonight, I went alone despite trying desperately to bring Thomas along. He is completely consumed with work and is only melancholic and distant when taken away from it so I decided against pressing the matter. Even though it's the first snowfall tonight and the city is swirling with holiday gasps and bristles, and it's so beautiful that I can't imagine anything else I'd like to do than share that with him. But so it goes sometimes. I sat in the orchestra section, and in the row in front of me, a gentleman was speaking to his wife throughout the entire performance. Muttering under his breath while still watching the dancers, and it went on so long I was able to write some of it down: they're separating like a drop of oil on water, the outer ring is melting like warm snowflakes and the center is raising arms to the sky and dressed in red. The legs are all scissors--cut cut cut cutting everything, cutting the audience--the men are fiery, more fiery even than the one in red, and suddenly everything stops, you can hear they've stopped--the one in red is coming center stage and slowly opening her hand, and what is it, you can see it, it's the most beautiful and luscious thing, a gift of--oh my and the chaos is like windy snow, and it's gorgeous. As gorgeous as you, my love. Having seen that ballet countless times in my life, this was a unique experience among them. And it's with guilt that I admit I embellished their relationship ever so slightly. I added, "as gorgeous as you, my love." For I simply wish he had said that, but in fact he did not. Though in the re-telling, somehow, it must be added.

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I Come To Shanghai - "Your Lazy Eye"

I met my father-in-law-to-be for the first time tonight. I will say generally that I am glad he lives in a remote filling station off the Cape, because I would be completely content only seeing him every three or four years at the most. I hope you'll forgive my incontrovertible condemnation and not think I am entirely vindictive. I feel I can speak honestly here and it's simply something I've had welling up in my breath for what seems like countless hours, and just had to extricate it from the confines of my chest. With that unpleasantness behind us, I can describe him more objectively. He is a short man, with a deep complexion, his hair, I believe, he must have found on the driveway in front of the house, and his halitosis reminded me of rancid crackers. He has a rat's demeanor and a horse's awkwardness. I of course don't mean a horse unbridled and free, they are as graceful as clouds in the sky, but a horse in a stable at night, the way they shuffle and look behind them and are unable to turn around. He has an exclusionary way of talking that makes simply everyone who listens feel completely unimportant and prisoners of whatever happenstance he is recounting. He has one eye that looks around the room as normal, and one eye that slinks and crawls around the room, as if with one half of his face he is pretending to act as normal, and with the other half revealing his leering and peering true persona. His teeth can't be described as anything other than little bullets stuck dumbly into his browning gums, and his smile is like that of a split and rotting apple. His compliments stick like peanut butter to the floor, and lay embarrassingly for everyone to gawk at, and who can be blamed. To quote this incomparable cretin: "You, my dear, your flesh gleams like a cooked cornish hen, and you could put out a cigarette with those legs." I didn't dare tell Thomas why I was crying.

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