Well Wishes

            “If ever you need a friend, I’ll be there ‘til the end.” The card featured a childish animation of two stick people holding hands underneath a sunny blue sky, unidentifiable animals frolicking in the background. Norman smiled as he read the handwritten note underneath the message. Jen cared about him, and whether she would ever reciprocate his feelings for him or not, Norman was happy to have at least this sentiment. When he saw Anthony walk into the hallway, his smile shifted into a scowl. Norman threw the rest of his things into his personal space, slammed his locker shut, and shouldered Anthony aside as he marched to his next class.

Pastoral Poetry

            I led a fascinating life for the first eighteen years of my life. I grew up in a small rural town, miles from any major city, and helped out on my parents’ farm after school. Living so far out in the country, I was sent to private schools from kindergarten through high school, and was exposed to few other cultures. I tried to befriend the few students at my schools that would be considered ethnic minorities, but doing so led to disapproval from my peers. I sympathized for those students, but in the world of children and adolescents, fitting in is more important than living by principles. As a farm boy, I was subjected to a fair amount of teasing as well, but as people gradually came to see I had money, they backed off. I call those people Money, because it’s their defining feature. They like Money, Money makes them happy, and when they encounter things that are not, or defy, Money, they tend to either throw Money at it, or take their Money and run far away. In the fifth grade, I once declined an offer to go to recess with a girl because she looked unkempt and somewhat malsuited to her uniform. That was the closest I came to being Money, and when I saw a group of Money pull her hair at recess that day, I immediately apologized to the girl, and befriended her. We dated for a few years, but that wouldn’t come for a while longer in my education.

Crunch Time

            Julian started freaking out. It was 8:19 pm, and he had a group paper to finish by midnight. 2,000 words on a current political issue was his contribution to the group, and it was the last day of classes, so people were vomiting left, right, and directly behind him. Julian knew it was partially his fault. He had all day to finish the assignment, and there he sat, pulling his hair and clawing at his eyes and cheeks. He put into a fair amount of thought into it during the day, though! He read a newspaper that morning to get ideas, attempted to engage in some political discourse with a guy on the bus – he ended up being asleep, and homeless. He spent the rest of the day trying to keep other things off his mind – his girlfriend was getting clingy, his parents weren’t talking to him, and he got two failing papers back.

Gay Straight Alliances in Middle and High Schools: the positive effects of support systems for sexual minority youth

Today, I'm posting the paper I wrote for my Psychology of Sexualities class. It technically meets all my requirements (it's over 2,000 words, and it's going up before midnight), and if you want my references, leave a comment, so I can send you/post the articles!

Initiative P

            Beelzebub sat on his throne of adulterers – the sinners of the day – and let out a deep sigh. Was this really what he wanted to keep doing with the rest of his eternity? That coup he tried to pull seemed like only a few months ago, but he knew based on the rate of new souls arriving, a couple thousand years had to have passed since then. He grabbed a body from the upper portion of the throne’s back, and munched on the cheater’s leg as he thought about the concept of damnation. It seemed like a pretty arbitrary process. Beelzebub had no say as to who made it into Hell; he only got Gawd’s leftovers. There must be some sort of screening system. If the human was only kind of bad, didn’t that at least warrant them a second chance? Beelzebub chuckled the first time he heard someone ask if they could get their sentence lightened to purgatory. As if purgatory actually existed. The stories humans tell themselves to sleep better at night, seriously. No, Beelzebub sat on the red frowny face end of the spectrum, and the only other option was the blue smiley face way on the other end, with mortality smack dab in the middle.

Night In

            The motor in Sean’s car purred more and more quietly as it cooled off, leaving Sean with the difficult decision of sitting in the ever-cooling car, or braving the 20 second cautious jog to the front door. The door of the car creaked open, and the cold evening air rushed into the car. There was no turning back now. Sean felt his legs creak as well, and apologized to the car door after hearing it close much more violently than he anticipated. The air made everything feel more rigid. Individual blades of grass stood erect next to one another, threatening to shatter on impact, lodging their clorophyllic shrapnel into whatever shoe disturbed them. Sean was careful to tiptoe over the lawn: his shoes were leather, and exposing them to ice in this weather would stain them worse than the diluted tomato sauce stain on his shirt. He scanned the pavement leading to the door, and identified the patches of black ice he would have to avoid. Although they seemed innocent enough, the obsidian patches of sidewalk meant a dislodged kneecap and a twisted ankle. Sean shuddered as he imagined the tendons being ripped from muscle, and the sickly crunch of bone on bone.

True Romance

            By the third time I had read Penny Babcock’s Midnight Dawn, I knew I was in love. Not with her, of course! I’m talking about the book, obviously. I don’t like women like that. But I do like women! I have plenty of girl friends! I mean, they aren’t my girlfriends; they’re my friends who also happen to be girls. Oh, listen to me; I’m a mess. It’s just that whenever I talk about Babcock my heart starts pounding and I get all flushed and start thinking about how I’m going to meet the man of my dreams one day while in a coffee shop reading the same Babcock novel as him and our eyes will meet but not for too long and he’ll introduce himself and we’ll fall in love from first sight and spend the rest of our lives and eternity together! Her works are pure poetry. I don’t know where she gets her inspiration, unless she herself has been through all the romances and heartaches her characters have faced. I’ve had a handful of boyfriends myself, but none of them are nearly as magical as the stories I read. My last boyfriend, Doug Parker, turned out to be a real asshole in fact!