The typing in the back room thundered pompously. I met Mona in this exchange office in St. Vitus eighteen months ago. I had just peeled myself out of the hands of my boss and buried my nose in the novel I was reading at the time. My boss fancied himself a writer. Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, he was a tall, bony bachelor. He moonlighted as an editor of an environmental magazine with a circulation of zilch and dabbled in fiction. Editor had a needlefish mouth and a hard-edged jawline....
Be aggressive. Be patient. Set your expectations high, but not too high. It was December 2015. I was twenty-four years old, sitting in the dressing room of Penthouse, one of Denver’s top strip clubs, while scrolling through “luxury dating” blogs on seekingarrangments.com. A site where sugar daddies (rich men) and sugar babies (beautiful, willing women) could meet in a transparent space. This was the site’s advice for how an aspiring baby could...
The day we met, we died. I have to start there. Or Flora said she died, and I said, Me too. Pretty much whatever Flora said, I said, Me too. That was what we called it: the time we died together. Kids at school asked what it was like to die, and Flora said it was like becoming the sun. I made it up completely because I couldn’t remember at all. I...
