Don’t think because I hid in the bathroom that I didn’t enjoy last night’s office party. I loved your red-ribbon costume of Eve dying during an avant-garde theater production. I stared in the mirror for nearly an hour wearing my Jewish payess, having gone as Woody Allen from a scene in one of his early movies. Inside the medicine cabinet I found a row of miniature women dressed in gossamer. Such costumes! I said. Such attention to detail! Right down to the dead fly’s dull domical eye. I’d just made clear that I wasn’t even remotely Jewish when a blubbering man in half a horse suit kicked the door down and said the shrimp had arrived. I went to find you, but a warm bottle of tequila turned me into a warm bottle of tequila. Then I danced the traditional Jewish bottle dance next to a bird-bath with an amazing pair a’ bushtits. Then I was ashamed because I wished I had petals and could drink light. I wanted to pollinate my seed, to incorporate handcuffs, to bedrock. I ran to bury my face in the shrimp but all I could see was a bowl of cold, curled, slightly pink bodies of women in cocktail dresses.

Tim Carter is 23 and lives in Tulsa. There is nothing significant about this man. He is not part of a secret society. He does not know where you live and is not, as you sit here, approaching your house with his car.

Originally published in This Land, Vol. 5 Issue 1. Jan. 01, 2014.