1001 Ways to Embarrass Yourself While Avoiding Injuries

In this increasingly neoliberal world where everyone is trying to run away from their cultures and roots, is it the pertinent move to migrate, metaphorically, back to one's roots? Should I date an Indian boy? Or more specifically, an Indian American boy? Plus, there are so many different sub-ethnicities to navigate, like are they North indian or South Indian? Are they Punjabi, Malayalee, Tamil, Telegu? Do you they even curry? Well, I'll let you know on the next segment of: Indian boyfriend??

Lenin is floating down a fucking river, Trump is in the White House, there are people dying more and more, there are bombs and global disagreements and people have started feeling things-in-their-bones again.  I've learnt that I really hate questions. I hate having to listen to them and I definitely despise answering them because everyone likes to think that they've come up with something deep and profound when really it's a regurgitation and rearrangement of what someone else has said.  I don't like facing facts, they're cloying and annoying. No one can get jobs anymore, least of all me. I'm tired and idealistic. I believe in a single payer healthcare system and college-for-all but look where that got Bernie. Most of all, I'm hungry. How did I go so wrong? I started out on a full stomach, and I had good intentions. I wanted to help people now I'm just another blue-collar dispensable fucker with no convictions or concerns besides when I'm go...

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,...

I'm so indescribably happy; it's as if someone has put me on the highest cloud and allowed me to glimpse upon humanity. Somehow, from up here, I can only feel tenderness for how frail and fragile we humans are, and ebullience at how perfect we are. How we can FEEL, and love and hurt and anger and sadden and then gladden our hearts again and again. I can feel the connection between my soul and whoever I am meant to meet, their happiness pumping vibrantly into my own bloodstream. How red and beautiful the union; and suddenly I am aware. Hyperaware of the world. I can almost see the light rays split into the spectrum, is he listening too? Can he hear my heart beating up-down-up-down like I can feel his? A breathtaking moment suspended in time and space, and all the anguish is gone. I love you, I whisper into the air, and I know the wind is carrying these soft words of love to his ears somewhere in the distance. The human heart has felt all this before, and still, every t...

He's a professor, but not mine, of history and Classics at my college, with dark brown hair and dark, deep-set eyes and a strong squarish chin. He never talked to me until the day we were stuck in the elevator in the Hirsch Humanities Building, and he was trying to light a cigarette. He asked me for a lighter which I had kept in the back pocket of my jeans under my winter coat. "Thanks," he mutters elegantly into his palm, with the Marlborough dangling between his teeth, a hint of his pink tongue showing. I smile for too long at him, when he had stopped looking. "How long do you think we'll be here?" I ask, a natural deference to authority, or his natural gravitas. He looked deeply intelligent, as if his Oxford education had imprinted itself upon his brows, cheeks, forehead and eyes. His eyes look so dark, so black that you could scarcely see the pupil. They were opaque eyes that frightened me and because of this, intrigued me. He fiddles with his co...

Someone has cut the flowers, trimmed the stems, slashed the bushes upon which they grew and still though I try- I cannot seem to forget you the bright creature so nymph-like and tall. My very own Sappho has bloomed before me stuck in betwixt and between youth and age with your long black hair and liquid pools of the darkest ermine as eyes. Summer is coming and the ripe autumn leaves and fruits are bursting with indecent passion, We used to roll around the fallen flowers and then a kiss from me to you. Neruda is romantic, but he forgot to describe  the unknowing beauty of those he cannot possible ascribe to, cannot see, hold or touch. My darling, he hath nothing to compare you to, Not star not moon not sun nor sky you surpass all in your Beauty it is like singing to a bard your conquests How pointless, how pitiful no words can describe my Sappho in bloom like verdant green in an abundance of brown You alone are there. When you smile it as if there ha...

Fintan Whelan sat at the table, nursing a beer in his smooth Irish grip, looking down at his empty plate, his long thin fingers silently tapping as if searching for something to do. I watched him intently, memorising how unlined his face remained despite his approaching the threshold of middle-age, that forty marker, stealer of youth. His hair had remained a medium brown free from any trace of grey, almost black but not quite, and his skin was clear, his mouth sufficiently pink and eyes still blue though they were no longer piercing in gaze. 'Mr Whelan,' a voice volunteered, a thin, reedy voice, my own, 'what about one last story?' He looked up from his plate, glad to be rescued from his condemnation of silence. His voice is soft and smooth, like good wine, yet still masculine. It was once seductive to me, though the words he speak seem jarring to me now. 'Alright, one last one. The strangest thing Ms. Reddy did,' he begins, animatedly now. The tensi...