ConvocationMid-morning late-August, sweating already in our too-tight jeans sitting here in slack discomfort. The convocation speaker, bald and male, and in every otherwise clichéd, academically gowned, certified mundane. Silver-tongued he is not. The timeless pattern these obligations are meant to be. Full of generic boredom, bland declarative sentences float in hot toxic air over our heads toward the auditorium ceiling. I cannot suppress a yawn as flutters of orange and yellow butterflies escape from my mouth. A pretty girl beside me giggles, cupping from around my head whole handfuls of whirling lepidoptera. Her long blonde hair is jeweled in dappled white and blue butterflies as she smiles knowingly at me. And maybe the speaker too has mentioned something jokingly about the butterflies in his stomach as he apologizes for traditionally boring us so on such a beautiful August day, wasting our time in here listening to him. And as I yawn once more out roars a Pearl-Orange Harley Mirage Sportster, black and purple-edged butterflies painted on the gas tank, laughter bellowing out of its blinding chrome exhausts. Now the whole audience is hooting and clapping, on their feet and smiling as the beautiful blonde, with all the world’s butterflies still in her hair, and I climb up on the Harley. Cracking the throttle I lift the gleaming bike into a wheelie and up the aisle we varooom to hell outa there. Trailing Monarchs, Swallowtails, and Painted Ladies, vivid and iridescent, into the clear August day. Flirting Screwdrivers“Flirtation is merely an expression of considered desire coupled with admission of its impracticability.” --Marya Mannes A lonely male Philips screwdriver is flirting at Finnigan’s Bar & Grill with a Slotted-blade female screwdriver in a dimly lit corner, both sitting at a small green faux-marble table. They are drinking, not surprisingly, Smirnoff screwdrivers. But after a couple of rounds (in which the female Slotted screwdriver insists on paying for her own drinks) the Philips screwdriver, warming to the rising flirtation between them, says, “Say, why not the next round, on me, eh? And let’s say we do a Sloe Gin screwdriver this time around?” Which is puzzling to her. “But I don’t know what Sloe Gin is?” she says. Pronouncing it “Slooow Gin” wondering if this is a hint from Philips-blade that things are maybe moving too fast between them. But she smiles anyway, enjoying the building buzz of their second regular vodka-orange juice screwdriver. Philips-blade sensing a bit of Slotted-blade’s slight pullback says,“Well it’s still a screwdriver but with two parts of Sloe Gin, one part Southern Comfort and then filled with orange juice: It’s called a Slow Comfort Screw.” Slotted-blade screwdriver giggling with hilarity, blushing slightly, says to Philips screwdriver, “Ok, I’m all for it, let's do it!” The Philips screwdriver senses an opening here. Lovers In |
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