Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories

by Cookie Mueller

He's one of those kinds of people that you imagine was already an adult while still a baby. The same, just smaller.

In the world there are many brave people: those who climb Mt. Everest, those who work in Kentucky coal mines, those who go into space as astronauts, those who dive for pearls. Few are as brave as actors who work with John Waters.

On beach blankets bare butts were broiling in the sun like luscious ham hocks. Pubic hair unfurled in the breeze.

Yeah, life is tough in the real world. Actors wait on tables, ballet dancers work as topless go-go girls, artists wash dishes, and that's not even the worst part. Someday you might bring your garbage on the subway, someday you might even shit in your own bank.

What do I need with some dumb adult, some supposed lover? Some person whose angst rivaled my own? Some fully grown person who never grew up? Someone to share a cramped New York apartment and closet space with? Oh no. I will rid myself of excess baggage and sentimental flotsam! Who needs it?

George Washington probably slept on my sofa before Martha Washington gave it to the Salvation Army, which was where I bought it for twelve dollars.

She reminded me of a giraffe. This is what future women will look like, I thought. Ethereal, long, lean, able to see the scope of things from a higher altitude, ready to lope away when danger threatens.

“Why are you hanging out in New York, wallowing in your miserable soup? Traveling cures everything. I know.”

I felt like a tiny, over-cooked, shriveled old meatball swimming alone in Italian sauce.

I was afraid my eyeballs would explode. Could a human being hold this kind of beauty in their eyes without going blind?

Being a human being isn't easy, what with all these insatiable physical, emotional, and intellectual desires.

I have lived in New York City for about nine years now. Since one year here is equivalent to seven anywhere else, that makes sixty three years for me.

I hated it when the pigeons used to wake me up, screaming and flapping on the window sills amid all their caked up guano droppings. Now I have discovered that eighty percent of all city pigeons are gay. Male pair bonding seems to make more sense for them here. I read it in some very reputable science journal. Now I respect them for this instinctive genius for population control.

I used to hate the fact that there weren't any fish in the fountains and lakes in Central Park, but then I found that they've all been fried up and eaten by hungry people and that's good because it's really proletarian. I've been hungry and I have a fishing rod, so I get this.

Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

This really was just the beginning and she was finally, after all these years, being included into life's mysterious order where tranquility's sweet bloodless arms would envelop her and rock her until the end.

There is a great art to handling losses with nonchalance.

“Why Newark New Jersey?” Alex asked. “I don't really know, but I'm sure my calculator isn't wrong. Newark might have some kind of odd force we don't know about.” Joanna was sure there must be some messiah growing up in Newark. There must be some explanation. Newark? Somehow it just wasn't anything like all those other places.

One has to wonder what a mother could have done to make a child so interested in urine. Does a mother wear a tasteful rubber dress and strap a toddler to a toilet seat in a bathroom that is warm and soothing and smells great? Or maybe the mother is just an innocent oddball, a weirdo, a knucklehead with a twisted take on reality that makes strange things seem perfectly normal.

Hidden and waiting in just about every ordinary event is potential humor.

This is a rare period in human history. Never have so many with so little become so big for a duration of time so short. Never before has such a shiftless bunch of life's lightweights hewn such formidable nests for themselves in so many people's minds. Never before have the woody, meandering paths of directionless plodders led to the blazing floodlit clearing in the forest, the center ring for the mini–history makers.

Everyone is patiently waiting for a new expression in art, but art is busy supporting itself as a religion. It doesn't have time to support an evolution, so it becomes mired in redundancy. Could it ever bounce around as mass media? If people understood it, it could, but it needs a public translation. Modern art should come with instructions for use.

Grouchhood is great. Being a malcontent, lodging complaints right and left can make you a better person. You have to have opinions while looking for art or searching out the other forms of divinity in daily life. Doing it in print is exhilarating.