Beautiful Blemish Read Online Free Page A

"This was just delivered for you," he tells me.   I give him a worried look but he just smiles weakly and walks away.
     I open the wrapping and it is a photo album.   It is neatly put together and has many photographs of me as a young girl, playing with my relatives or my old dog, a beagle named Kip.   There are photos of my mother and father together, of vacations, of holidays, sometimes there are pictures of people I can't recognize.   The last page has an envelope glued into it.   I open the envelope and find a couple of Polaroids inside.   The first one is of my mother, naked and looking directly into the camera.   She is laying on her side on a nondescript hotel bed.   At first I want to laugh, but I stifle myself and set it face-down on my desk.
     The next Polaroid shows a man wearing a football helmet, shoulder pads, and nothing else.   He stands atop the same bed, hands on his hips like a super hero.   Awkwardly, it is hard to tell if he is excited or not.   His penis is pointing straight at the camera and is surrounded by a circular bush of hair.   The pupils of his eyes are red from the flashbulb.   I quickly put it down and pick up the telephone to call my mother.   There is no answer at her hotel room.   I find tears in my eyes and put my face in my hands.   I breathe deeply and count to twenty inside my head.   When I stand to stretch I see him again, walking by, smiling, sipping out of an Orange Julius.   He sees me move away from my desk and stops as if waiting for me to come out and thank him, as if he's been waiting this whole time for me to receive his present.   I try to collect myself and call over to another woman that I'm taking a quick break.  
     I step into the mall.   I feel myself shaking and think I might even charge at him if I don't watch myself.   I want to break something, something that has some legitimate answers inside.   Suddenly I am grabbed from behind.   I wrestle away and stumble to the ground.   It is my mother, fully clothed in a Fila sweatsuit and fresh from a facial at the Nordstrom's.   I look at her with shock and anger in my eyes.   She can't help but to burst out laughing.   I look at Skip.   He looks concerned.   But not for my mother, for me, sprawled on the floor again.   He moves to help me but my mother grabs on to him, laughing.   She is trying to make him laugh, as if they just pulled the greatest joke in the world on me.   I watch them and hear the muzak filling my ears.   She is draped on his left shoulder, barely hanging on, her loud mouth is open and pointed at his neck, her eyes pushed shut.   He looks uncomfortable.  
     I wait for it to become quiet.   I want to tell her something.   I want to tell her that they are meant for each other.   And then I want them to go away.            

 
 
New Suburban Lit
 
I.
This morning, as I started my car, I had the strange feeling that I had forgotten how to drive.
     As I approached an intersection, someone honked their horn and yelled at me, “Hey asshole, did you forget how to drive?”
 
II.
I was watching a game show on the Spanish channel. People had to race to a microphone and then sing a karaoke song. Then someone had a bunch of crap poured on their head.
 
III.
I was at a party with my wife and some friends. We were on an outdoor patio and there was a gathering of snakes on the hillside just underneath the patio. We leaned over the railing and watched the snakes slither against each other as we drank. We chatted and laughed at each other’s jokes. Every few minutes we would get silent and watch the snakes. We began to realize there were too many snakes.
 
IV.
While watching a true crime show on television the other night, I heard the announcer say that one dangerous man had killed four people in six months. I quickly found myself thinking: I could kill more people than that in six months.
 
V.
Random profanity has always pleased