Live the dream, Potato

No One Belongs Here More Than You

It's not often that on wine-soaked nights the conversation turns to current avant garde fiction. Though I am certainly a literature nerd, it's unusual that I force that upon others without some sort of accomplice. My roommate's sister Lindsay was in town last week and, as a hopeful doctoral candidate in poetry, she fit the bill. The topic at hand was a book of short stories that my roommate, Anna, had purchased for me while in Paris with Lindsay, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Anna read the book but was taken aback by some of the sexual content, Lindsay read parts of the book and was frustrated by the use of sexual content. I read the book and barely noticed the sexual content. Just call me Jaded.

Despite the possible shock tactics and questionable merit (the author is no Proust...well actually she could be. I've never read Proust. But I highly doubt that she's Proust.) I did come across some interestingly, at times beautifully, phrased ideas and perhaps the best name for a dog ever...Potato.

People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.


We wetted each other's blouses and pushed our crying ahead of us like a lantern, searching out new and forgotten sadnesses, ones that had died politely years ago but in fact had not died and came to life with a little water. We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.

Always running and always wanting to go back but always being farther and farther away until, finally, it was just a scene in a movie where a girl says hello into the cauldron of the world and you are just a woman watching the movie with her husband on the couch and his legs are across your lap and you have to go to the bathroom.

We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.

This made her so angry that she did the dishes. We never did this unless we were trying to be grand and self-destructive.

Then Potato ran by. He was a little brown dog, just like the woman said. He tore past me like he was about to miss a plane. He was gone by the time I even realized it had to be Potato. But he looked joyful, and I thought: Good for him. Live the dream, Potato.