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“Kaman chay, chawaga?”
It was a green stone head of the demon Pazuzu, personification of the southwest wind. Its dominion was sickness and disease.
At the palace of Ashurbanipal he stopped and looked up at a limestone statue hulking in situ. Ragged wings and taloned feet. A bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in feral grin. The demon Pazuzu.
What the freak’s going on?
squelch
Burkey-Wurky.
“Shall we summon the writer? I believe he’s in Paris!” “Hiding?” “Fucking!”
she’d darted a furtive, embarrassed glance to a Jesuit in his forties standing amid the cordon of spectators. He had a dark, rugged face. Like a boxer’s. Chipped. Something sad about the eyes, something grieving, and yet warm and reassuring as they fastened on hers and as, smiling, he nodded his head.
cunting,
“cunting boor”
He turned a significant look to the dialogue coach, who immediately padded up to him dutifully and proffered his open script to him like an aging altar boy handing the missal to his priest at solemn Mass.
“An’ I painted.”
“It was a gray horse!” added Regan.
“And I get to play a nun who discovers she’s a lesbian, right?”
“… new script … a triptych …
“Oh, you thought Psycho needed a laugh track.”
Regan had soup, two sourdough rolls, fried chicken, a strawberry shake, and blueberry pie topped with chocolate ice cream. Where does she put it,
In her wrists?
Nice. Nice clothes. Yeah, Rags, look here, not over there at the daddy who never writes or calls.
“Rock Around the Virtues.”
“Ever think about dying?” Chris asked.
“No, love, I don’t! I don’t think about it, I just do it. Why on earth bring up dying, for heaven’s sakes!”
I am Swiss.”
Red and white bunting left over from a party for the previous tenant’s teenage son.
when she noticed the Ouija board
“cunting evil spirits!”
But Judy’s family was away for Easter,
Kids! Where do they get their ideas!
even gay.
He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be.
He dimly remembered another Christ.
“What’s the problem?” “Tom, I think I’ve lost my faith.”
The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. My mother’s nine First Fridays. Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. No, too emotional. Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak? “Lord, give us a sign…”
his eyes. Ah, my God, let me see you! Let me know! Come in dreams! The yearning consumed him.
“Well, specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised me to keep my goddamn fingers away from her cunt.”
She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable and reflected her hope for the evening.
“Who knows what gravity is. Or matter, when it comes to that.”
“Well, it really is sick,”
“Seems she was living by herself, and I guess she was dead for several days before they found her.”
I handled the situation demurely?”
In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. —Aeschylus
duty
described in vivid, erotic detail an imagined homosexual encounter involving Mary Magdalene and the Blessed Virgin Mary. “That’s enough, now, you don’t have to read it all,”
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“Just the usual: measles and mumps and chicken pox.”
“She just called me a ‘cocksucker’ and hung up the phone.”
“I guess I do have a lot of them, don’t I?” “Yeah, a couple.”
“Any bed-wetting? Vomiting?” Chris shook her head. “She was fine.”
“Want to play some Monopoly or somethin’, sweetheart?”
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