Good Days

On good days he flosses. Sometimes he doesn’t. All of the women he dates are obsessed with their teeth; with them, no perversion is more reluctantly revealed than the secret of his high mediocre oral hygiene. Are all women that way? All women in his demographic? (All women, properly understood, plainly a concept that exceeds his grasp; even being glib has its limitations.) Maybe it’s the bad days that he flosses, neglect signifying, rather than torpor, blissful repudiation of the routine.

On bad days, he imagines there are no stories to tell. To imagine that there are stories yearning to be told, entrusting themselves to his care, these are the good days, a sense of purpose, the supple embrace of purpose like a fine leather coat. Stories are like, well, stories – what could be better than that? What metaphor adequate to elevate such an august referent? Sleep on it, and he does. There’s tomorrow, and the stories are in his care. Or, perhaps it's on good days that he imagines that there are no stories to tell. But there are. He thinks.