John in the Wilderness (Modern Digital Edition)
by Colin FlemingPage 2 of 2
To the woman who asked me to staple her clit with plastic staples... I will have to decline. Though I am now haunted by the very concept of plastic staples. What on earth are they more properly intended for?Addendum II: Yes, people love the beach. Got it. But writing "I love the beach, and I can stay in and go out..." and leaving it at that suggests to me that there's little reason to have bothered writing at all. In this particular case. You can stay in or go out? How could you not do both? Unless you were, I don't know, held in some dungeon or other. And the people who say "I also hate art,” or "I think sports suck too" — what are you reading? And there's no need to send a picture. I see enough of them. Words will do. Words are good. But please be in reasonable shape.
Addendum III: Rape fantasy people: I cannot help you. Even if I wanted to. The risk is too great, for one thing. If an alleyway encounter/tryst/“acted”assault did sound like something I’d be up for, what of the legal ramifications? You might turn on me. And then where would I be?
Addendum IV: Apparently, there is some rule that one must declare that they love to laugh. As opposed to the people who hate it. I don't know, maybe there was once some fellow who proclaimed "fuck that, I absolutely hate to laugh.” Now, he'd probably have been fun to get a drink with, singular guy that he was. As for the people who have written and asked how I get through life without typing "LOL" — "it makes things shorter" (um....doesn't it make things longer by three letters?) — before announcing that they believe I am lying for surely I am a "closet loler"... I fully grant that when I am in hell, we will have an eternity to be together. So for now, let's just do our own thing. Ah. The spirit buckles. To the woman at the coffee shop on Salem Street in the North End, whom I end up sitting across from these past few days as I read some giant book on Impressionistic photography: I probably should just say something. The code word is "plastic.” No no no no. I go too far.
Colin Fleming's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Slate, The New York Times Book Review, Spin, The New Criterion, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Washington Post and many other publications. He has fiction forthcoming from The Hopkins Review, The Republic of Letters, Boulevard, TriQuarterly, The Southampton Review, and Gargoyle, and is completing his first novel, Drivel In Wormwood, and Dibs On Blood, a collection of short stories.
