Paul Attinello

Category: Writings: Prose

  • Reitalianization

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    paulattinello
    in

    [Los Angeles, 1990] Tonight is party night – lights, glasses, guests: a dazzling and varied collection of Italian designers, Italian models, a very choice set of imported beauties (tutti questi Italiani). The only non-Italian is our host, who introduces us to his new boyfriend Gianfranco, a richly dark man with remarkable hands who, in the…

  • Awakening II

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    paulattinello
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    I wake abruptly into a dark space, responding to some dull sound, some impact, I can only sense the aftershock. I do not know where I am, a flat, low bed, no light, I reach out clumsily to find a switch, any switch: light, music, electric shocks, trying to find a way of altering the…

  • Going to Japan

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    paulattinello
    in ,

    I’ve never been to Japan before. On a crowded street corner, breathing the acid tang of the gray air, I look at the little hand-drawn map and try to figure out where north is. The oval, blank faces flow past as though they ride on swift, efficient engines, though occasionally one glances at me: gaijin,…

  • WDC ➔ SFO

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    paulattinello
    in

    I grew up in Washington, D.C., where people are always careful of what they say. There are many gay men, but they don’t tell those who can’t use the information: congressmen and lawyers don’t want just anyone to know about their personal lives, and they give you only their first names. There is a lot…

  • Stimulus / Response

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    paulattinello
    in

    [Los Angeles, 1991] You are still in your bathrobe. You’ve been tired, irritable all morning, avoiding thinking or thinking about thinking, wandering around staring at the undone dishes in the sink, the hairs in the bathtub. Wishing it would all go away, picking up a sponge and putting it down again, trying to force yourself…

  • The shark’s last love

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    paulattinello
    in

    Floating out of sight under the boat’s rim, waiting for the end. Pain in his hammered tail, bleeding on the chains, but he thought, Glory, glory, and remembered richly textured gray skin, the smooth flow of ridgéd spines. Twisting and snapping, such power, he’d fly far away to race through favorite waters, to moan with…

  • The Tale

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    paulattinello
    in

    Once upon a time, she said. As he ran, the iron crown began to burn in his hands with a dull red heat. The king’s daughter leaped to her feet to stare at the golden key hanging in midair, inches from her eyes. As he dug at the oak’s roots, breathless for fear of the…

  • The Book of the Sun

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    paulattinello
    in

    My room grows larger, and daily there is less in it, but it only becomes more beautiful: when small rugs fade and vanish one by one, the bright bare wood floor can be seen, echoing the differently grained walls of the many bookcases. The various small light sources, floor lamps, swiveling and jointed, vanish gradually,…