Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories

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Don’t tell me about bad boys. I’ve seen my black clouds come and go. Coming they walk with their shoulders back like they’ve got a raw egg tucked inside each armpit, and they let their legs lead them. Going, you can count on the fact that their butts will cast no shadow on those lean long legs. You can’t compete in the arena of squalid romance if you’re one of those guys shaped in the rear like a leather mail sack: you’re automatically disqualified. That’s just the way it is. I didn’t make the rules.

My prodigals make up for slender means by wearing their jeans tight enough so that their billfolds have a hard time sliding in. And they make up for the fact they’re usually kind of stupid by not saying much. This is important. This is the litmus test. The last thing you want is a desperado with a big mouth; you might as well invite a wild elephant home for dinner.

See, for years I have done some serious observation, up close and from a distance. I’ve seen them hawk and spit before the drive-up window, I’ve watched them jimmy the pinball machine at King Arthur’s Reef. Yeah, yeah: I know King Arthur had a table, he didn’t have a reef, but ours is a coastal town and the natives feel claustrophobic inside any bar that doesn’t have a nautical theme. Why it matters I don’t know, because inside is always dim — so you can’t see that the only decorating theme is duct tape, which holds the stuffed fish to the walls and crisscrosses the red vinyl in the booths, and even bandages some of the more expensive bottles of liquor that no one has the heart to throw away because of something as picayunish as a little broken glass.

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