tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20199777268295954712023-11-15T09:46:20.454-08:00Lola Loves RichardA Hollywood tragicomedy
told in 6-Sentence ChaptersMoo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.comBlogger180125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-27122342200888121772012-10-13T12:01:00.004-07:002012-10-19T06:58:29.710-07:00Fat Angel <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">I’m getting <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">fatter</b>, </span></i><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Lola chided herself, as her busy, chattering, mind skittered from her
diatribe against Jackie, to an inner self-accusatory monologue about her own physical
appearance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No…no, I <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AM </b>fat</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(</i>Lola despised the word “Fat” because it
sounded like, and reminded her of “Rat.”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then, as if a soundtrack were rising to support her free-associations, Lola
heard the words of a distant rock n' roll song: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Well, you’re built like a car, You got a hub-cap, diamond star halo</i>.”
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the music confirmed Lola’s
self-impression. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AM </b>built like a car</i>, Lola
cringed, as she lamented her self-perceived physical liabilities. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But at least I have a halo</i>.</span><br />
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Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-225909826288267852012-05-11T15:41:00.000-07:002012-10-19T05:04:55.893-07:00The Décor Isn’t Working<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As Lola
continued her accusatory diatribe—a colorful torrent of incrimination and
condemnation—Jackie’s eyes, which had remained artificially soft and attentive
despite the barbs of Lola’s initial verbal onslaught, momentarily
drifted from Lola’s face, to glance around her office. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Jackie became
aware, as if seeing these objects for the first time, of the warm decorative
touches she’d made to the room so that her clients might feel comfortable
enough to enter that calm confessional state that was thought to be
prerequisite to delving into their inner psyches; a state which made accessible
to “talk therapy” the various psychological wounds that had caused her clients
to place themselves in Jackie’s highly regarded care, in the first place: Warm
wood paneling; a tasteful and not inexpensive reproduction of a Willem de
Kooning painting; a New Yorker cover depicting a Cape Cod summer scene; a vase
of freshly cut flowers—which gave the room a comfortable, non-human living
presence; and some small statuary, including a piece that looked like an
earthen colored Mesoamerican fertility god and a smooth flowing Henry
Moore-like thing.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lola must
have detected Jackie’s flight of inattention, because the minute Jackie’s eyes
returned to Lola’s anger-contorted face, Jackie heard Lola say. “Are you even
fucking listening to me?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As Jackie
heard herself calmly respond “Lola, I’ve heard every word you’ve said. You
think I’m sleeping with Richard.” she simultaneously thought to herself, <i>Hmmmmm….This
décor doesn’t seem to be working.</i></span></div>
Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-61628509080749439202012-05-05T14:24:00.001-07:002012-05-14T04:29:30.066-07:00Lola Knows<div style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“You and that
fucking Richard are sneaking behind my back.
You’re sleeping with Richard and pretending to be my ‘therapist,’ my
‘friend’. Some ‘therapist,’ you are,”
Lola contemptuously sneered, her lips curling like a rabid coyote. “And you
think you’re SO smart. You think I don’t know anything, that I’m just some
little blond bimbo. Well, I DO know, I
know EVERYTHING! </span></div>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-2657485589827604162012-05-04T10:33:00.001-07:002012-05-14T04:29:43.435-07:00Therapeutic Calm<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #0b5394;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lola had
hardly sat down before she shrieked, “I didn’t come here to talk about <i>me</i>.
I came here because <i>you</i> are
screwing my boyfriend. The only reason I
started therapy with you is because you're sleeping with Richard, and I wanted
to see for myself what kind of two-timing bitch you are.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #0b5394;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #0b5394;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Jackie immediately
suppressed her feeling of shock and incomprehension. She struggled to suppress her immediate reflex to say,
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Instead, Jackie exuded a well-practiced professional calm, turned to her
fuming client, and said, “You seem angry Lola. Please tell me more about what
you’re feeling.”</span></div>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-82143030775606435782012-03-15T08:17:00.001-07:002012-05-14T04:30:01.458-07:00An Injury to One is an Injury to All?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #073763;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Jackie dare not reveal to her client that she’d seen the bizarre
scene that had unfolded in her front yard: a client beating up a
therapist’s boyfriend. Tempted as she was, Jackie knew she couldn’t
directly ask Lola why she had assaulted Buck on her front lawn. She
couldn’t even ask Lola how she knew Buck. Jackie was bound by a
professional oath of confidentiality, an oath that imposed a kind of
“straightjacket” on Jackie’s curiosity. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As Lola entered Jackie’s office and assumed her customary spot in the
analysand’s chair, all Jackie knew she could say to her bellicose
client was, “So, tell me a bit about how you’ve been feeling, since the
last time we met.”</span></div>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-17408175441033908552012-03-11T12:01:00.000-07:002012-03-15T08:20:58.960-07:00A Lot On Her Mind<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-size: x-large;">Richard
drove Lola home in silence. He knew
something was wrong. She sat in the back
seat of his limousine, fondling her purse like it was a rosary. As she distractedly looked out the limo’s window,
her delicate fingers worried her handbag’s little leather straps into a knot. Richard thought it best that he not ask her
any more questions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As he
pulled the lumbering black car up to the front of Lola’s apartment building, Richard silently wondered about why Lola hadn’t
renewed her gun permit? <i>Maybe she just forgot that she owned a gun?</i>
Lola
seemed to have an awful lot on her mind, these days</span>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-44207078004171361202011-12-25T11:01:00.000-08:002016-08-19T18:20:25.303-07:00The Whole TruthAs Richard pulled his limo up to the front of the Santa Monica police station, Lola pantomimed a tiny wave, as she seemed simultaneously to float and to trudge down the station’s white steps. Opening the back passenger door, she slipped across the broad back seat, directly behind her chauffeur boyfriend and steeled herself for Richard’s unavoidable questions.<br />
<br />
Richard turned down “The Killers,” whose noisy angst blared from the car’s radio, and asked “What are you doing here? Were you arrested, or something?”<br />
<br />
Lola replied through the limousine’s half-lowered dividing glass, “They discovered that the permit to my handgun expired, and picked me up to ask a few silly questions.” <br />
<br />
To avoid Richards puzzled gaze, Lola immediately turned her head to look down Olympic. It wasn’t a lie exactly, it just wasn’t as a court would say “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-44567619372518789052011-12-03T08:33:00.001-08:002012-03-15T08:18:42.597-07:00TastelessLola’s emotions tore at her, as if they were switchblades wrested from her by an unknown gang of assailants, then used to flay her. Empty as a ghost's tongue, she was at a total loss for words. <br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Maybe I’m not feeling ANYTHING</i>?<br />
<br />
<br />
Overhead, the sky’s blue gray haze floated like cigarette smoke exhaled in a daytime cocktail lounge.<br />
<br />
<i><br />
Tell the truth Lola</i>, she chided herself.<br />
<br />
<i><br />
I want an ice cream...........ANY flavor at all, will do.</i>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-20744842613630326092011-11-05T04:23:00.000-07:002011-11-06T07:57:11.600-08:00Texting: a Vow of SilenceAs the breeze shuffled in from the Pacific, Lola paused for a moment on the precinct station’s white stone, front steps. Her altercation with Buck, and the ensuing encounter with the police, left her feeling vacant as a lost glove. <br />
<br />
Feeling now like she never wanted to speak to anyone ever again—Buck, Jackie, even Richard---Lola wondered if she could actually endure a self-imposed vow of silence? She reached into her hand bag, and gingerly removed her cell phone. <br />
<br />
<i>I’ll just text Richard to ask him to pick me up and drive me home.Texting,</i> she reassured herself, <i> MUST be exempt from a vow of silence.</i>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-88698610482461004792011-10-05T11:14:00.000-07:002011-10-05T11:50:27.749-07:00Brand New RefrigeratorLola often had difficulty distinguishing the inside from the outside. Where did her self “end” and others—in this case, Buck--- “begin”? Had she been hitting him, or had he been hitting her? She looked down at her blouse and it was white and clean as a bleached cumulus cloud—no blood, no grass stains. She didn’t feel any pain. Buck, on the other hand, looked like he had been attacked with a red paint ball gun—his shirt splashed and speckled with blood---maybe his own? <br />
<br />
Released in her own custody, and now standing outside the Santa Monica Police station, Lola suddenly felt cold and vacant as a brand new refrigerator—all its shelves and drawers stark white and completely empty. The persistent low-pitched electrical hum in her head iced her scattered thoughts to a glacial standstill.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-25950606642356184792011-09-17T11:10:00.000-07:002011-09-17T12:09:05.623-07:00Superman: Suicide or Murder?After Lola left Jackie’s home office, Jackie realized she didn’t have another client until 3:00 PM, so she sauntered from her office into her kitchen, fixed herself a cup of mint tea, and wandered into her surprisingly dark, mid-day living room. Her mind, surprisingly blank—she often “went blank” after a therapy session with Lola--Jackie sipped her tea and stared out of her living room’s large picture window, where she expected to see nothing pictured, but the warm, lazy stillness of her quiet Melrose neighborhood. Instead, she was startled by the sight of two hulking LA cops standing like rooted oaks on her front lawn, Buck barely on his feet as he teetered in a state of beaten dishevelment, and a furious Lola, animatedly pleading with the two, stone-faced officers. <br />
<br />
Although Jackie could see that her client and her boyfriend were both in the custody of the Police, she reflexively refrained from running out of her front door to confront the two cops. Instead, she took a deep, calming breath (just as she so often implored her clients to do in moments of distress), and told herself to simply watch, simply observe, the bizarre scene that was unfolding in her front yard. As she did, a peculiar thought popped into Jackie’s mind: <i>Hadn’t George Reeves, the actor who, in the 1950s, played Superman on TV, committed suicide after his career ended? Or had he been murdered?</i>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-6711335524393919442011-06-15T08:13:00.000-07:002011-09-11T15:09:47.494-07:00Harvest Moon<i>Why do things that seem so far away, sometimes look so near</i>?<br />
<br />
A few minutes ago, Buck had been a figure who occupied a space "light years" in her past, now he was here, right here, in front of her--well lying on the ground in front of her, after she'd punched him, again and again.<br />
<br />
<i>What's gotten into me</i>?<br />
<br />
Lola's noisy thoughts turned to recollections of the golden harvest moon. <br />
<br />
<i>It can seem so large and looming, as it perches above the San Gabriel mountains on the late October horizon. No matter how close it <b>looks</b>,</i> she reminded herself, <i>it's merely an optical illusion.</i>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-40645297382244941592011-05-28T14:39:00.000-07:002011-05-28T14:57:14.239-07:00Lola's Beautiful DayShe begins to make a list—not the kind of list you scribble down and take the supermarket—but a mental list of impossible things that are<b> nearly</b> possible: laughing fish, blue lemons, birthday cakes with dynamite candles, her skeleton, fresh out of bones, the man she almost married, a dark hole aimed at a bullet. <br />
<br />
<i>My thoughts are radio waves, with geometric messages, no one, but I, can hear. Whatever I do, I must not let anyone know how to find me-- not here, not now, not ever.<br />
<br />
It’s not that far to the coast, only a half-hour drive. The sun’s setting into the vague afternoon fog, that hunches around the Santa Monica pier this time of year. It’s a beautiful day.<br />
<br />
For a drowning.</i>Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-80917345074064164772011-04-22T07:54:00.000-07:002011-04-22T07:57:22.503-07:00Slo-Mo LipstickTime slowed down for Buck. <br />
<br />
As Lola punched him again and again, he observed her perfectly applied lipstick---how the tiny vertical lines in the skin of her quivering upper lip looked like cherry-red ink spikes on a Richter scale. And Lola’s paper-white blouse—as she’d wrestled him to the ground—it had remained perfectly clean and starched, as if it had been freshly retrieved from the dry cleaner’s.<br />
<br />
When the cop finally pulled the pummeling Lola off Buck’s supine body, Buck couldn’t help but notice that one of Lola’s open-toed pumps had come to rest about 30 feet from where she had assaulted him, in the dry, un-watered grass of Jackie’s front yard. It looked like a miniature scene of an overturned farm implement, abandoned in an open field, which had gone to seed. <br />
<br />
As the cop helped Buck rise to his feet, Buck’s punch-dirty body felt like he’d been stripped nude, dipped in honey, and left to endure a million slow-motion stings of the buzzing occupants of an angry apiary. <br />
<br />
<i>Why does Lola feel that she needs to wear lipstick, anyway</i>?Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-72797921511464750402011-03-03T19:35:00.000-08:002011-03-03T19:47:31.831-08:00Left HookFrom a distance, it appeared that two bodies were writhing in tangled lovemaking. But why would two people make love in broad daylight on the brown, un-watered lawn of this Melrose home? Even in LA, you didn’t often see this kind of spectacle.<br />
<br />
As the police approached, it was clear that a woman and man were doing <i>something</i> on the lawn, but as the two officers cautiously drew closer to the lump of human conflict that thrashed about in front of them, it became clear that it was far from love that was being made. <br />
<br />
The first cop jumped in and pulled the dainty blond combatant off the punch-pummeled body of the man that lie underneath her. Lola threw one last punch at Buck, who now all too viscerally understood that nothing hurts so much as the searing sting of a fuming ex-girlfriend’s well-placed left hook.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-62455085146944677102011-02-20T10:48:00.001-08:002012-05-14T07:40:19.466-07:00Hoped You Were Dead.Lola’s mind filled with a kind of black mental grease that covered and clouded everything; her thoughts, her memory, even the pathways of the sensations that futilely tired to run from her spider-like fingers and reed-thin arms, to her brain. “Buck?” she stammered, as she desperately clutched her driver’s license. She looked up into Buck’s similarly stunned, yet surprisingly expressionless face. Everything escaped from her—--every thought of control, of location, of who she was now. “Buck? Buck. I hoped you were dead.”Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-6888370272708358452010-10-16T13:28:00.000-07:002012-03-15T08:20:27.187-07:00Bridge-Building<span style="font-style: italic;">Hadn’t he met her half-way, in fact, more than half-way</span>? Richard pictured love as an expansive river over which two lovers, typically, built a bridge toward one another. <span style="font-style: italic;">Aren’t we supposed to meet in the middle</span>? he thought. A current of fear ran through him now, as he imagined that he was building the entire bridge himself. At first, he pictured Lola, innocently standing on the other side, her dainty hands seemingly beckoning him, but as he approached her, he could see she was really waving him away, as if she had decided bridge-building was not for her. Richard feared he was about to fall now, into the deepest, darkest flow of the speeding torrent.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-30737752766395454542010-10-10T19:18:00.000-07:002010-10-10T19:28:37.306-07:00Backing-up into the Future?Following the unmistakable thud of the collision, Lola grabbed her purse and jumped out of her little car. She skittered around the back, and immediately bent over the right rear fender to see how much damage she’d done. Thankfully, it wasn’t too bad—after all, she’d only been going a few miles an hour, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to maneuver out the tight parking space in front of Jackie's house. As she examined the damage to her car, the driver of the car she’d bumped, a man who appeared to be in his early thirties, approached her with his drivers license in one hand, and his sunglasses in the other. Lola didn't immediately look up, but if she had, she would have seen that the man who approached her walked towards her with an oddly familiar gait. She would have seen that he was wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and cowboy boots.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-6183038761984134982010-09-14T08:38:00.000-07:002010-09-14T09:11:50.908-07:00Electra UninsuredEven though Lola had started therapy with Jackie, months ago, as a way to find out if Richard had been cheating on her, she was surprised now to discover that she was actually learning things—seemingly important things-- about herself, despite her original ulterior motives.<span style="font-style:italic;"> <br /><br />Know thyself, isn’t that what Socrates had said, or had it been the oracle at Delphi</span>? Lola couldn’t recall now, she was preoccupied with today’s session.<br /><br />Emerging from Jackie’s office, she crossed the burnt grass of Jackie’s front lawn, and slid behind the steering wheel of her little smudge of a beige compact car. She was lost in thought about today’s session: did she really choose men who, on the one hand, reminded her of all the things her father was unable to be for her, but on the other hand, were just like her father in some imperceptible way? Heedlessly, she shifted the transmission into reverse, and immediately backed into the car parked behind her. The smash of collapsing metal instantly jarred Lola from thoughts of her ‘Electra complex,’ to fears that she hadn’t paid her auto insurance bill in more than two years.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-27455142967269841782010-08-14T11:02:00.000-07:002010-08-14T11:03:07.983-07:00She Wears His CologneLola gently daubed a bit of Richard’s cologne behind each of her ears and then sneaked just an ever-so tiny splash onto her chest. It didn’t bother her at all that she was wearing a man’s cologne. How many women, she wondered, were confident enough—or just didn’t know better than---to wear a man’s cologne? The sweet, earthy fragrance mingled with her natural sent, and the resulting admixture smelled simultaneously woodsy and oceanic, like the scent of a stand of California Redwoods towering next to the Big Sur coast. She immediately imagined the roots of huge trees anchoring her lithe body to the earth, as early morning striated sunlight combed through her being, like streamers of light cutting through the forest’s foggy canopy.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-15353934098781536432010-07-18T09:26:00.001-07:002010-07-18T12:35:25.155-07:00Unmarked BorderAn imperceptible line runs between love and not love, and it is a gray, ambiguous territory on either side. Sometimes we tread one side, sometimes the other, as if unknowingly crossing and re-crossing an unmarked border.<br /><br />As Richard pulled his car up to the front of the restaurant to pick her up, Lola opened the car door and gracefully slipped into the passenger seat. Surprisingly, tonight, she felt a kind of gratuitous glow for this plain, yet unusual man, who worked so hard to make her happy, and about whom she often wondered if she really were in love.<br /><br />Now, as Richard gently smiled at her, and pointed the car toward 4th Street, Lola discovered she didn’t care if she couldn’t quite tell which side of that blurred border she now stood.<br /><br />Richard calmly eased the car into the right lane, careful as he did so—or so it seemed to her—to stay within the neat white lines of his narrow lane.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-20393401173746993702010-07-13T19:01:00.001-07:002010-07-13T19:01:37.241-07:00Crawlin' DraginImmediately following her session with Jackie, Lola met Richard at their favorite Chinese restaurant, in Santa Monica. It was more than both of them could afford, but Lola promised herself at least one good meal, "out" per month. So maybe the Crawlin' Dragon, wasn't the greatest Chinese food, in LA, but it was really good, and the waiters remembered her name whenever she appeared there.<br /><br />After dinner, their waiter left Lola and Richard with two fortune cookies, one for each. While Richard was fumbling with the check, rooting around in his pocket for his wallet, Lola leaned across the table and surreptitiously switched her fortune with his. She opened the cookie, read the words "The Love of your life will appear in front of you unexpectedly," and immediately swallowed the tiny white paper--downed it, before Richard could see--in one quick and skittish gulp.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-6969836669156140622010-07-11T18:10:00.000-07:002010-07-11T18:12:25.777-07:00Looked Like He Just Shot His HorseLola looked at Jackie, “I was so young, and it was so long ago…back in Boston, when I was still a ‘girl’, still in college. During the first few years of school, I must have dated 35 boys, but all of them were idiots, emptier than a bucket with a big hole in it. By my junior year, I’d stopped dating, completely, because it was a totally futile exercise—a little like Sisyphus pushing a giant bolder up a hill, only to be run over, again and again. Believe me, I’d given up any hope of meeting anyone I could really love, anyone really worth loving.<br /><br />Then, one day, while I was sitting in Harvard yard, it was a bright spring day, and this boy—I still remember that he wore dark blue jeans,a white button-down shirt, and scuffed up cowboy boots—approached me and asked if I knew anything about ‘heroic couplets.’ I immediately thought either this had to be the worst come-on line I’d ever heard, that this guy was completely joking,or that here, at last, in the middle of Cambridge Massachusetts, had finally arrived the man of my dreams---even if he was wearing beat up cowboy boots and looked like he had just shot his horse, to put it out of its misery.”Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-70781129904772783612010-07-11T11:18:00.000-07:002010-07-11T11:19:31.952-07:00Stock FeintIn Jackie's office today, Lola settled back into her 'analysand's' chair, which, as she imagined it, felt like a recliner on the first class deck of the Titanic. Lola relished the undivided attention she received in therapy, and she liked the way it made her feel when she talked about her struggles--her doubts and fears---with an intelligent woman peer, even though she knew she couldn't tell Jackie quite EVERYTHING--that would be disastrous. <br /><br />"I keep dreaming about this man...well, a boy, really when I knew him, back in college," Lola nostalgically confessed. "It's been fifteen years since I've seen him, but he keeps periodically showing up in my dreams like an old ghost. What do you think it means when I have recurrent dreams about a man I haven't seen in such a long, long time?"<br /><br />Jackie gently smiled, as she deployed a stock feint, "What do YOU think it means, Lola?"Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2019977726829595471.post-81546411088392201092010-07-03T08:53:00.000-07:002010-07-03T09:56:38.216-07:00Home Office?Buck turned off his car’s engine, and gazed for a moment at the red tile roofs that seemed to predominate the bungalows in Jackie’s Melrose neighborhood. A strange uneasiness began to cast a shadow over his previously chipper mood---at least his father would have called it ‘chipper.’ He found himself wondering if Jackie felt entirely safe conducting her therapy practice out of her home? <span style="font-style:italic;">What kind of woman would regularly invite the emotionally troubled, the psychologically disturbed, to spend an hour each week, under her roof</span>? He puzzled over whether it was a kind of brazen foolishness that allowed Jackie to see ‘clients’ in the place where she lived, or if it was a sign of a kind of laissez-faire bravery. Unable to follow this thought any further down what felt like a too-dark mental path, Buck preferred to think it was the latter.Moo Moo Camushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17064456307258147627noreply@blogger.com0