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ce36051
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He gives her a look. She gives it right back. We couldn't have really had something good, he thinks, regret filling his lungs like water. "Sometimes I think that too," Casey says, and he realizes that, once again, he's spoken out loud. "But I try not to, because then I get angry at you."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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dcb6946
|
Around age twenty-six, in an effort to stave off thirty, I began embracing the new alternative angst bands, like Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, et cetera, but at thirty, little of that remains. At thirty, you're back to the comforting sounds you grew up with. You have enough genuine angst of your own, you don't need it in your music.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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4ebf750
|
You OK?" she says, raising her eyebrows. "You're teetering." He nods and steadies himself against the wall. "Aren't we all," he says."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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781ee66
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Grief can be catered just like anything else.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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96ae478
|
shudders and seems to sink a bit further. "And the contractor is running two other jobs in the neighborhood. The Jacobsons, he's redoing their pool house, and he's doing" --
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7322946
|
I don't think any of us really knows how to knock someone out," Chuck said thoughtfully. "You knock someone out with a blow to the head, its got to be a hard one, and nine out of ten times the victim will suffer a concussion. It isn't like those wimpy little karate chops to the back of the neck Captain Kirk is always using." "What we need is a Vulcan pinch," I said. "Are they referencing Star Trek again?" Alison asked. "They are," said Lind..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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6d7c9e7
|
Then I'm telling it wrong." "Bad?" "Yes. Divorce shouldn't be friendly. It just makes everything that much more confusing,"
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7c38c25
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I love Hailey and what we have works. Shes's beautiful, she's smart, she's a great mother, and she's heads above what I ever thought I could see in myself.
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mother
self-worth
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Jonathan Tropper |
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43204a0
|
Now we had to work to make ourselves fit into each other's lives, to maintain our relevance to each other. In college our collective friendship had been at the center of our lives, and now the centrifugal force of time had pushed it out to the perimeter, where it was in danger of spinning off the circle altogether. Thirty . . . shit.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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b417fc3
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It's funny, or tragic, really, how an ordinary act like helping someone with their homework could be the inadvertent trigger for almost a decade of silent suffering.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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cb943fc
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Non sai mai quando sara l'ultima volta in cui vedi tuo padre o baci tua moglie o giochi con il tuo fratellino, ma c'e sempre un'ultima volta. Se riuscissimo a ricordare ogni ultima volta, non smetteremmo mai di crucciarci.
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morte
separazione
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1058282
|
Dad didn't believe in God, but he was a lifelong member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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b042fd3
|
And the violence of the coupling itself, primitive and elemental, reminding us that we're all just dumb animals clinging to our spot on the food chain, eating, sleeping, and fucking as much as possible before something bigger comes along and devours us.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7fbf57a
|
Solange unsere Gedanken nicht durch Scham oder Schuldgefuhle gefiltert werden, sind sie selbstsuchtig oder lieblos und daher grosstenteils zu keinem Zeitpunkt fur den offentlichen Konsum gedacht, da sie entweder verletzend waren oder uns wie die selbstsuchtigen, lieblosen Bastarde dastehen liessen, die wir nun mal sind. Das, woran wir andere teilhaben lassen, sind nicht unsere wahren Gedanken, sondern sorgfaltig geschonte, verwasserte Versi..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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48fc3d5
|
V detstve vse kazhetsia vechnym, nezabyvaemym, detstvo zapolniaet soboi ves' mir, a potom ono vdrug konchaetsia, i ty kidaesh' zemliu na ottsovskii grob i v uzhase ponimaesh', chto nichego vechnogo net.
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детство
жизнь
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Jonathan Tropper |
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ebae2d8
|
Skazhi, o chem ty seichas dumaesh', - prosit ona. - Pozhaluista. Absurdnaia pros'ba. Nashi otredaktirovannye, ne priglazhennye chuvstvom viny ili styda mysli ne otlichaiutsia prilichiem ili liubov'iu k blizhnemu, oni sovershenno ne prednaznacheny dlia ozvuchivaniia, poskol'ku mogut libo kogo to bol'no ranit', libo vyiavit', kakie my na samom dele sebialiubtsy i podonki. V sushchnosti, my nikogda i ni s kem ne delimsia svoimi mysliami, my de..
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одиночество
откровение
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Jonathan Tropper |
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06f2aab
|
Ona tebe izmenila, i ia ponimaiu, kak tebe bol'no. No eto lish' seks, mal'chik, udovletvorenie telesnogo zuda. My pridaem etomu slishkom bol'shoe znachenie, nas tak zaprogrammirovali. V rezul'tate my teriaem iz vidu kuda bolee vazhnye veshchi. Les gustoi, i seks v nem - lish' odno derevo.
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любовь
отношения
секс
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Jonathan Tropper |
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3350535
|
Ti da fastidio se fumo?" Non rispondo perche non avrebbe importanza. Non puoi permettere che il tuo cane caghi sul marciapiede, ma e perfettamente accettabile soffiare sostanze cancerogene giu per la gola deglia altri. A un certo punto i fumatori si sono autoesentati dalle regole del contratto sociale."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7e24e1a
|
Childhood feels so permanent,
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7d1061a
|
You realize that you don't understand yourself better than you understand anyone else.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e0684a0
|
Bugs, Thumper, Roger, Peter, Velveteen. I name them after their storied counterparts and then I try my best to brain them. Because they remind me of where I am, marooned out here in this life I never planned. And then I get pissed at Hailey, and then I get sad about being pissed at her, and then I get pissed about being sad, and then, never one to be left out, my self-pity kicks in like a turbine engine, and it's like this endless, pathetic..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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613968a
|
Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up. "Look"
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Jonathan Tropper |
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17de73a
|
Besides, I came from the eighties, a neon, hair-sprayed decade from which very little music made it out alive.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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34826aa
|
Well, you are dying--on purpose.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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06d1991
|
When did being right become worthless, and being at fault irrelevant?
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Jonathan Tropper |
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df8c6ba
|
In the classroom, though, the water rains down on us as Phillip grabs what's left of the joint, still lit, and swallows it whole, with the confidence of someone for whom joint swallowing is a routine practice.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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fdb284b
|
You're just the sperm donor, Norm," he says, heading for the door. "That's all you were ever good for. Fucking sperm."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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467f691
|
apology. "It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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58d16f6
|
When you're younger you just take it as a given that things will fall into place on their own. Relationships, family, careers, the whole deal. They might not come as you picture them, but they come in some form. You just never figure that they might not come at all. And then you hit thirty and...shit! You suddenly realize that they're not necessarily coming and you panic.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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9e5a35f
|
I smile. "You were always so good at not covering up." Penny's smile is sad and a little off. "It's the antidepressants. They've obliterated whatever filters I have left."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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89e7da0
|
We knew marriage could be difficult in the same way that we knew there were starving children in Africa.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7b5a27f
|
it's a point of pride whenever you can point to the ways in which you're avoiding your progenitor's defective character. I'm not like him becomes your mantra,
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Jonathan Tropper |
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43338a7
|
Moments later, there was a loud, protracted crashing sound. "Motherfucker!" "What was that?" "I just backed through the garage door." "Jesus. You okay?" "I'm fine," she said. "The whole damn door came down. I'll just drive over it." "Drive carefully."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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2671d0e
|
You get married to get an ally against your family.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d97d802
|
You never know when you're going to die, but maybe something in you does, some cellular consciousness that's aware of the cosmic countdown and starts making plans, because on the last night of her life, Hailey surprised me by wearing a blood red dress, cut low and tight in all the right spots. It was almost as if she knew what was coming, knew that this would be our last night together, and she was determined to keep herself from fading too..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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5080573
|
Penny's honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous, but no less welcome for it.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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24fd721
|
That's the problem with college kids. I blame Hollywood for skewing their perspective. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet-cute, happily-ever-after is a foregone conclusion.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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15296c5
|
To have nothing when you're twenty is cool, it's expected, but to have nothing when you're halfway to seventy, softening and widening on a daily basis, is something altogether different. It's like setting out to drive cross-country without any gas money.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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9328bad
|
And no matter which way you turn your desperate gaze, there's absolutely no land in sight, which is strange, because you didn't think you'd gone out that far to begin with.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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50e5f65
|
The cobbler's children go barefoot,
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Jonathan Tropper |
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61da548
|
Dad is bent over me, fixing my wooden leg with a socket wrench.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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5876006
|
I sift through the jumble of emotions she evokes in me, trying exactly to isolate what it is I feel for her, which is like untying a severely knotted rope, where all you end up with is more knots in a different configuration.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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aedc318
|
When you've been married to someone for a while, you occasionally share these brief psychic moments, and right at that instant I know what she's going to say just before she says it, even while I'm thinking that it can't possible be true.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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c501813
|
Lo que he aprendido, despues de nueve anos de rinas matrimoniales, es que todo lo que viene despues del <> es una mierda--.
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pareja
|
Jonathan Tropper |