One looked like a woman but was too tall, or maybe it was just that the other one was so small, like a little boy. I saw them around Portland all the time that summer. Were they young or old? Couldn't tell. Were they from the present, or another era; i.e., time-travellers? Wasn't sure. They were in black and white, neckties and knickers. A little dirty. Always leaning on each other.
--From "TV," a story by Miranda July, The New Yorker (June 9, 2014).
I met Arlene in college, in the freshman dorm. We were not roommates but suite-mates in the corner section of a squat brick house at the center of a small college campus in the middle of Ohio. We both had moved from opposite coasts with the desire for a personalized liberal-arts college experience and had become friends due to proximity and availability more than compatibility. For example, we had nothing in common. She: Blue Ridge Mountain town. Me: central Californian suburbs. She: declared international-relations major with three eclectic minors. Me: not yet totally decided. The men she liked were brutish jocks; I had located within two weeks every single soulful gentleman on campus who wrote poetry. I found them by the length of their hair or the wear of their jeans. She liked big-budget romantic movies; I saw every documentary I could find at the library, and if I’d had any retention ability, I would’ve stored a great deal of knowledge about the world. She had a perpetual perm, because she felt it added volume to the thinness of her hair and gave her a look of energy; I was hard-pressed to use a brush because I preferred a ponytail, and part of trying to attract those poet-men was to look a little like I had wandered onto campus by accident after having spent ten years with the wolves behind some farmhouse, living off scraps and reveling in the pure air like a half-girl Mowgli, half-woman Thoreau. . . .
--From "Bad Return," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by One Story (Issue 158, January 2011) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013), trade paperback edition pp. 99-129.
I can't remember the words of things. The words for words. I have lost my words. What's this from? Is it the Internet? Texting? E-mail? I see it in kids, too; it's not an aging thing. An aging issue. I do know that at the supermarket yesterday, I asked the guy where the weighing thing was, the thing that weighs other things, flailing around with my hands, indicating, and he crumpled up his forehead and said, "You mean the scale?"
"Yes"--I said, beaming, pumping his hand--"the scale!" As if he was the winner of an SAT prize giveaway. . . .
--From "Wordkeepers," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by McSweeney's (Issue 41, July 2012) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013), pp. 153-160.
I was at the Bev with Sylv and we were eating Chinese food takeout from Panda Express . . . she was going on about how she'd checked her messages and Jack hadn't called even though he said he would but maybe he was caught in traffic. Even though he has a phone? But I'd never say that out loud. Sylv's the first friend I've had in a long time who really is way high on the friend pyramid, and the way she dances! She bops around really energetically but she's also still. Like she's moving her torso but her feet don't move, and then sometimes she'll take one step, and it feels like a thesis statement. Like it is a topic sentence about her butt.
--From "Lemonade," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by Tin House (Issue 33, Fall 2007) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013), pp. 85-97.
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