Twenty-two year old Virgil sits with Anette, the second girl he’s ever been with, at a table in the back corner of her favorite sushi restaurant, the one he hates. It’s a busy place, and a line for the unisex bathroom starts to form right next to their table as soon as they pick up their menus. The people in line have nothing to do but look at them and look away, sheep-faced, as though they’re ashamed of having to pee or whatever it is they’ve lined up to do. Anette usually has to go a lot, every twenty minutes or so, and she wants to be right there when the last person goes in. Strategic. He used to think he liked girls who could drink hard, but that was back when girls didn’t want to sleep with him, and he hadn’t even thought about the mess. All the pissed jeans and late-night puke, thick and stinking of rust, not to mention morning puke, toxic leftovers that simmered at the bottom of an empty stomach and rose up watery and fluorescent, like mercury. When she started coming around, he thought pretending not to mind her messes could be his way of expressing intimacy, since they weren’t really talking to each other yet. But after a few months, he started to wonder how intimate he wanted them to be.

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Good For A Laugh

We had a pretty good birthday weekend: swimming on Saturday and the Red Fury taking the Cup to Iberia on Sunday. And we watched a lot of Twin Peaks. That Agent Cooper cracks us up. The works of Mark Twain are usually good for a laugh, as are those of Flannery O’Connor. Worldhum has some serious travel writing to read while you wean off the World Cup, after which you can visit your favorite library — online. It’s just one more way institutions are adapting to a mobile world. Another year, another move.  — Andrew Geer