I am sitting in a room with at least three hundred people, and I have been asked to move to the back because of my gigantic hat. I am not sure how to react. If I move, I will undoubtedly read about my shame in tomorrow’s gossip section, or at least I will hear about it tauntingly during my daily super-spacial swimming with fellow gentlemen. I do not want this. And, I reason, if the people behind me were important enough to do something about it, they would very probably not be sitting behind me.

SHIRT: “The first hanging is also the last.”

BED: “Tiredness: the little death.”

PILLOW: “Once bitten, twice shy.”

Forget your diet. We both know why you came here.
You ogle my browned buns,
my prime-beefcake physique,
and you cannot stay away
because I’m built

Light spills into the hotel room
like ill-prepared lemonade from
the sky’s 5-cent stand, the one
all the hung-over grown-ups
have been trying to avoid.

Orlando blinks

“I don’t know what to tell you, our last exterminator wasn’t worth jack. He bumped and bruised his way through our home like a Neanderthal on steroids.”

“He was a cute Neanderthal from what I remember.”

“Eh, I don’t like the cleft chin thing; it reminds me of a plumber’s crack. And when someone’s ripping your kitchen apart and tearing up your hydrangeas, it’s pretty difficult to find them attractive.”