1001 Ways to Embarrass Yourself While Avoiding Injuries

Money is a many splendored thing. I spend time worrying about money like someone who cares about the planet spends time thinking about all the ways Mother Earth could combust or collapse from all the fucking terrible stuff we're pouring into her. I dream about money, all the ways I could spend it, the clink-clinking sound of coins dropping onto cold, hard marble-topped counters ringing in my ears. Man, nobody wants money like I do. I dream of holding it in my hand, the green dollar bills crisp and tight and smelling like Wall Street Greed, which to me, smelled like bagels and lox. It smelled like high-end sofas and shit like that. It's a pity when when Gordon Gekko said, '' Gimme guys who are poor, smart and hungry," he forgot the girls and he definitely forgot someone like me. I kept a copy of the Wall Street Journal under my pillow at night and I read it like the Bible. People around me always aspiring to be doctors to cure cancer, engineers and lawyers- sure,...

Interestingly, she did not mind having an unfairly, unconventionally beautiful family. It made no difference to her, and in fact was beneficial though she was undoubtedly pretty but it was unlike the eccentric beauty of her brothers and sister. She was proud to announce to her friends, their presence because indeed for an ordinary person the mere presence of someone beautiful who is related has a positive beatific effect on that person, who possessed less extravagant beauty. She was certain that by pointing out her sister, Simran, she would too gain some of this benevolent halo-ic effect. Perhaps the beholder would see a similarity somewhere in there- the same curve of the lips, the same hollow of the necks, the tilt of her nose. It was now then established that she too was elevated. And wonderfully, with minimal effort.

She fingered the cross around her neck. Quinn Chan, the devout Christian, the most faithful, the good Protestant fundamentalist daughter- she it was who now had no faith. Looking at the bible on her table, she turned her face away and stared at herself in the mirror. Her once long, thick black hair had been cut short, close to her chin. It was now more fashionable, as Mr. Quentin said, her Geography teacher, longer at the back and short at the front. Like a horizontal upward sloping slash. She watched carefully the gap between her two front teeth, her pale almost purplish lips, her mole just above her chin that stuck out slightly. Where was He? She'd sat with Cosima, crying her eyes out. Her sallow hands clutching at darker ones, wringing them again and again. Where was He? Cosima shook her head, I don't know. I don't know. She'd always felt this inescapable sense of people leaving , always leaving her life. Johnny had left, and for months afterwards, she saw ch...