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Writing a Story for You
[Los Angeles, 1991. For me this story is always paired with Valentine’s Day (below), because I started writing them the same night, in that laundromat – but it is about a different man, a different time, a different city.] You’re dead, but you wanted to write stories. You were just about to get published, just…
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Valentine’s Day
[Los Angeles, 1991] I met Gary about a week ago, we’ve only seen each other twice, but I’m surprised at how happy I am around him – beautiful, sharp-edged features, a strong soldier’s face and warm Southern voice, and of course his fierce enthusiasm in bed. And he seems to like me so much. I’m…
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The Photograph
I register the details almost instantly, looking away before I can realize what I’ve seen. Turning my head, too quickly, snapping a look of innocence over my eyes. Have they noticed anything? I try to fit the details into a coherent image: the flat, glossy print, the mustache, a flash of teeth, what is that…
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[untitled]
This poisoned morning: dark gray shades that shift one to the other, and the doorway’s flesh begins to soften with the acid wash of sunlights our unfocused eyes can’t bear; we run down blackened streets, we try to flee serrated knives of light, the glaring dawn, turn sharpened corners, freeze to watch the change in…
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Dislocated
Feeling, late at night, peculiarly disconnected, dislocated: not merely in time and space, but in intention, in dream – I feel as though I don’t know who I would want to have been, what I would want to have happened. Regrets, as you no doubt know from the rest of my blog, are not unusual…
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Vathek
After a rather long and chaotic day (many undergraduates being foolish – getting distinctly irritated with some of them), reading Beckford’s Vathek (and The Episodes of Vathek) for fun, late at night. My taste for fantasy was established largely by Lin Carter’s vast publishing venture in the 1970s, the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. A lot…
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Paul Attinello 