• miasmic
• ennui
• gun moll
• courtesan
• actrice
• brassiere
• olfactory
• idiosyncrasies
• torpor
• perspicacity
• dillenttante
• fissures
• gladioli
• scion

-

• vivien leigh
• the doppler effect

-

• each of his words was a softly falling little dollop of English mashed potatoes
• i felt another of those sudden onslaughts of love, the desire to run to them and embrace them both, to be seen in their company, to live my life among men and women who dressed up like this and then went down the sidewalk like cinema kings.
• the city was new again, and newly dangerous, and i would walk its streets quickly, eyes averted from those of passersby, like a spy in the employ of lust and happiness, carrying the secret deep within me but always on the tip of my tongue.
• but because i can find them so easily in myself, i no longer -- say it, bechstein -- i no longer need them. one can learn, for instance, to father oneself. but i can never learn to be a world, as phlox was a world, with her own flora and physics, atmosphere and birds.
• when i remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days i ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness -- and that i lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. the people i loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places i sat with them, movie lots and monuments. no doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, i have exaggerated everything.