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<< go back Copyrights held by the authors. Content may not be reproduced without their permission. From Starlee Kine's "Four-Minute Journey Into Night": I knew this guy named Dave when I lived in Chicago. He was the underachieving little brother of a successful fashion designer. He was pretty paranoid and loved conspiracy theories. One night when we were out at a bar, he pointed to a poster of the moon landing and grunted. “Can you believe they're still trying to sell us on that one?” he said. He was so skinny he could fit inside a pillowcase, and when it got hot he would cut holes out for his arms and wear nothing else. He lived in a loft with a million other guys and one summer they all pitched in to buy a wobbly Ping-Pong table that was on sale. Dave turned out to be a sort of Ping-Pong savant, and he spent the next three months in his pillowcase, playing nonstop with whoever was around. (...)
Dave's driver's license had been revoked a few years earlier because he'd been caught driving with an illegal ice cream sign on the top of his car, so you had to go to his house if you wanted to hang out. His building housed the Odwalla juice headquarters on its ground floor and the guys always had crates of remainder juice in their fridge, even when they were at their most broke. After investing in the Ping-Pong table, none of them could afford to eat for two weeks and they survived on nothing but fancy hybrid beverages and energy drinks. Which might explain why they were all so good at Ping-Pong in the first place. To Be Continued... in your copy of Swivel #5. Click here to order!
This Christmas I am joining my emotional, scruffy boyfriend David and his beautiful teenage son Jack for their holiday celebration at big gay Grandpa's house. I don't know what David and Jack's excuses are for sighing heavily and punching the couch on the birth of our lord, but I know mine. For me, it's yet another year I'm starting my life completely over. I'm like a foster kid who has been in and out of the system, except that instead of going from family to family, it's fiancé to fiancé. I've stopped and started so many different Christmas traditions over the years that the only ritual I'm left with is asking, “So what are you guys doing this year? Can I come?” Like a bad animal, as soon as I lick the butter, I'm out. And once again, it seems, I'm up for adoption. At age thirty-six I still want a home, and I'm ready to prove to David and Jack that I'm a great addition to the holidays. While I can't offer any special Christmas cookies or Famous Holiday Spinach Balls I do have good cheer. In fact it's all I have, much like Tiny Tim. Except I'm bigger. Less tiny. Thicker, let's say. So I'm a thicker, huskier, more able-bodied version of Tiny Tim. To Be Continued... in your copy of Swivel #5. Click here to order!
"I was just thinking,” Toby said. “Everyone's scared to death of these vultures." He took a drink of champagne and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "We need to make some kind of repellant." I sat at the other end of the couch and he moved his feet to give me more room. "How would we do it?" I asked. "We play off people's insecurity," he said. "Take a guy afraid they'll find him while he's playing golf. Sell him a golf umbrella with metallic panels." (...) Toby bought fifty golf umbrellas from a wholesaler for his vulture project. He handed me the new, lower debt tally when I walked in the door. "I wanted panels of aluminum, and fabric glue," he said, "but it was impossible to cut the panels correctly. I ended up buying jumbo rolls of aluminum foil and stapling them to the nylon. That's on the second receipt." I thought very hard about being supportive. "The second receipt," I said. "Under the first one. These will sell," he said. There was a finished one next to him. "My old manager at the putting green said he was very interested, and all I showed him was the prototype." He pointed at a mass of foil and nylon. The staples had snagged on the support poles and ripped the fabric, and he lined the exposed rips with tape and rows of staples and more foil. "Since I'm bankrolling, maybe I should be able to help." I rustled the prototype with my toe and he snatched it away. "I'm doing this for us," he said, exhaling through clenched teeth and laying in another row of staples. "You're profiting from this." |
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