He stopped, finally, and smiled. __onestly? With this thing I think I could get my jerk-off muscles so well-developed that I could rub out a spooge with one pump! If that__ not worth $19.95, I don__ know what is.

Duke was already sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for her. She got in and started the car. Duke busted into a Slim Jim of his own. __ou hairy toad fucker. That stuff__ nasty. Your toilet must be like a nuclear reactor._ Dove turned on her windshield wipers as a light mist seemed to fracture the glass. ____ sorry, Whore Basket. I couldn__ hear you over the noise of you crapping your pants!_ Duke took another huge bite and chewed the waxy meat like gum. __his stuff is off the charts. I could eat vats of it.

Here__ the deal. We go in, you stand there like the asshole you are, and I explain you aren__ gay lovers with the pharmacist. Sound good?_ Dove clicked her blinker on and checked her side mirror. __ll I heard was blah, blah, holding your dick later, blah, blah._ Duke rolled down his window and stuck his face into the night.

That__ sweet. Nice of you._ Johnson put his hands in his pockets. Dove couldn__ help but wonder if he was massaging a sore bag of testicles. Dove looked around, and Johnson shuffled his feet. It seemed neither knew what to say, but she hoped neither wanted to part ways either. Johnson__ default was always medical. __ow__ your infection?_ Die. Die. Kill me. __t___ cleared up_ nicely._ Dove twisted her hand into her hair.

Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.

Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal__he motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?