Max Ross, “Nobody Remains in the Garden”
“No, it wasn’t raining yet. But the clouds were coming in, and Mark Ross, convinced that rainfall contributed to his baldness (he’d read about this in one of the three newspapers he subscribed to), popped open his umbrella. As they walked around the lake, his and his wife’s shoulders touched beneath its dark green canopy, which fluttered slightly, like a wing, in the pre-drizzle breeze. There wasn’t much hair left to protect—a sparse brown-gray covering he kept cropped close.”
—
“Junior year in college, I went through a phase where I’d remove my underwear halfway through the day and slip it into the backpack of an unknowing boy. I became almost perfect at it. I’d chew on the execution for hours—when to roll them off my hips and how to keep them balled in my hand while I took notes in class. The best time to lean over, unzip his bag, place, and rezip. I would complete the transfer while tossing my hair or wiggling my shoulders because I knew flashy gestures were the best way to get people to ignore me.”
—
“Occupy Wall Street is a joke, you tell me during our weekly phone call, a joke that’s gone on too long, a joke whose punch line, if and when it arrives, can’t possibly justify the time it took in coming, the anxiety and then the boredom it produced in its own making. ‘All these protestors,’ you say, ‘are like cousins from out of town, college dropouts trying to find themselves in the city, knocking on your door asking if they can sleep on your couch. And at first you’re kind of charmed by the gleam in their eyes, their flannel shirts and their fingerless gloves, their wool caps and their rucksacks, at first you look at them and remember yourself at the same age, the plans that you had, so you take them in, you feed them, you listen to their complaints, you offer bits of encouragement and advice, cookies, power bars. But then a few weeks go by, and every time you come home from work there they are, just hanging out, just bullshitting, taking up more and more space, their clothes sprawled on the floor, their folk music trembling in the air, and then they start asking if their friends can hang out, and soon enough you come home and you’re apartment’s full of kids, you’re choking on patchouli and incense and clove cigarettes.’ Here, you laugh. You are always cracking yourself up. ‘Until one morning you’re like: All of you, get the fuck out. And you start throwing their shit out the window.’”
—