John Goldbach - It Is an Honest Ghost

‘Boxers or briefs?’ she said. ‘Oh I hate it when guys wear briefs or boxer-briefs because it’s like they’re trapping their sweaty penis smell — SPS — in. You pull down the waistband to suck a guy’s cock and it’s like a locker-room smell wafts toward your face. You gotta air that shit out. And protect your sperm. It’s really the only thing attractive about you, like on a subliminal level. The potentiality of something better, beyond your disappointing existence. You know.’

‘I know. And you’re left feeling, what just happened? Who was that? How could this be? How can I go on? I must go on … I’m not so sure … Something’s stopping … ’

‘My singing voice is stronger than ever, though … ’

‘If life, and like the formation of an ego, et cetera, like if life works on you like waves against a coastal shelf, like eroding you and forming you at the same time as you become an adult, then early heartbreak’s like the tsunami in the formation of the adult ego-slash-coastal shelf. You know.’

‘Yeah. Sure. It was fun. I’m glad you’re a vegetarian.’

‘I have to pee. I’m going to pee.’

‘Yeah. And we always came together.’

‘I hate dreams most of the time. I hate when the day’s residue makes me dream of, like, me and Snooki doing surveillance for Michelle Obama. It’s bullshit.’

‘You’ve got a long way to go, buckaroo.’

‘The Prophet’s never accepted in her home country,’ she said.

‘Whatever. You’re so gay, even if you think you’re not. Three of your friends relentlessly hit on me and then you invite me in here with you. Don’t think that has nothing to do with it.’

‘The only good thing about dying is you really start to like life. What a joke.’

‘Give an asshole a modicum of power … I never want to subordinate anyone and I never want to be subordinated … ’

‘I know it sounds cliché but he just fit. Everything, like not just his dick size. But he did get a bit of a panza and it did bother me, the way it rubbed up against me. I know that sounds superficial. It’s weird.’

‘I like Wodehouse because his novels are like antidepressants.’

‘I don’t want to be cremated. My life’s ambition is to become a skeleton. At least for a little while.’

‘She’s about as empathetic as a boa constrictor.’

‘People say cellar door ’s the most like phonoaesthetically beautiful phrase but I prefer lethal injection .’

‘We let film and video do far too much of our dreaming for us.’

‘My theory on celebrity is that after twenty-one you’re no longer a celebrity; it’s democratizing.’

‘Women are just so wildly beautiful that getting them pregnant, perhaps several times, altering their bodies, is the only way to get them to accept the monster that is Man. But I’m not saying women are so shit-hot in the end, either.’

‘Sure — let me know.’

John Goldbachis the author of The Devil and the Detective , a novel, and Selected Blackouts , a story collection.

The author would like to thank the following:

T. F. Berger, T. Berry, J. Breakfast, T. Burke, A. Carless, S. Gordon, L. Henderson, K. Hutchinson, M. Iossel, P. E. Lessard, R. P. Lindsay, M. Maillet, M. Matthews, D. McGimpsey, J. Novakovich, J. Parker, V. Simmonds, M. Sutton, A. Sweetman, A. Szymanski, C. Tucker, H. Waechtler, B. Wainaina, E. Walsh and (esp.) A. Wilcox. And his friends and family, &c.