I handed him a dried cherry - a single one, and a small one - not immediately realizing the danger I had put myself in. (This was an admitted misstep on my part. It's astonishing to me that, at this stage, I have still not learned to sit quietly alone and think, for five solid minutes, about whether there are any possible exceptions Kierstedt may take to any food presented to him, OR SUFFER.) So a dried cherry, sweetened, true, sweetened and not organic, but Christ. He took it from me with a visible level of suspicion better suited to one who's half-considering hiring an unmarked "cab" in a sketchy Balkan neighborhood, say. "What're these sweetened with?" "Not sure, probably soaked in sugar syrup, maybe, but at any rate not meat, fuck." Just don't eat it, then, right, God, but he did, and listen it was like I tried to kill him, like I wanted him harmed, to hand him this cherry, he bellowed "Fuck, you can't taste the fucking corn syrup? Fucking corn syrup? These are toxic," in a tone of bone-deep outrage, sincere and imploring. "Toxic", huh; look I really must insist words retain some semblance of scale, of discrimination. If every single thing you dislike is either "fascist" or "toxic", I, it just seems a little exhausting, doesn't it?

"Jesus. Jesus Christ. Y'know what'd be sooooo great and fancy? If you could one single time manage to be within 50 feet of a cop without needing to somehow, through whatever means of communication, get him to understand how much you hate cops."

[in the voice one can only rarely push him hard enough to evoke, the one that veers so close to that of "The Simpsons"' Snake that God, not to giggle, the effort required . . . ] "That so. Uh-huh. Well, it would be super great if you could one time manage to enter and exit a fucking Walgreens without looking at EV-er-y, SIN-gle, NAY-il POLishhh."

"Huh. Tough shit on that."

[Snake slowed down to half speed] "Tough shit on YOURRR shit." - the end of "shit" sounding snapped off and swallowed.

And that's like a huge outburst of sass from him, that's him insolent (this's the new one, the tawny one with the crushed-rock-candy irises, mind). His temperament still fascinates and mystifies me, I'm so unaccustomed to such creatures - how is his surface so very fucking smooth? Where are the parts you can ruffle?

I assume the two crickets who've recently arrived in my closet were scooped up off the floor of (it could only be) the Vivarium, forcibly relocated because I'd complained about how long it's probably going to be before I again live somewhere where I hear crickets at night. But I haven't asked for confirmation. Somehow to do so'd knock some of the honey dust off the matter.

So that "Brokeback Mountain" adaptation I've been biting tongue depressors thinking about for what, God, two years now, plus? arrives in theaters soon. The v. good Annie Proulx short story from which it is adapted features a certain line of dialogue I hope is intact in the screenplay. During the male protagonists' first fuck, as the bottom cowboy is about to come he says, I'm serious, "Gun's goin' off [italics Proulx's]. This line is, I really mean this, the only genuinely hot thing I have read, only. And oh, I realize the chance of that making it into the film is slender as saffron threads, but a girl can hope, a girl can bite tongue depressors.

While everyone else was making hot Halloween party, I was having drunkenly hollered at me "Aw fuck did you let that boil? You're cooking seaweed, you're not fucking sterilizing hospital linen." And some time later -
"Kin'y'taste the broth pleace."
"Yeah, but uh, what am I tasting for exactly?"
[eyes rolled spasmodically ceilingward, in a voice so snotty you could practically see it come out of his mouth] "Ummmmm, DELICIOUSNESS?"