Screengrab by Various Today in Hooksexup's film blog: Scott publishes his new book, Zooey Deschanel, You Will Be Mine. Plus, the top ten biopics of all time!
Dating Advice From . . . Glassblowers by Ariana Green Q: How does your job affect your skill set in the bedroom? A: I work with beads, so I don't do much blowing. Working as a glassblower makes you immune to double entendres, by the way.
It was hot, a languid summer day, smelling slightly acidic like the juice of an ant squashed between your fingertips. I signed up for the 200 meters, and lay on a towel in the sun.
There were whispers about the photograph before anyone had seen it. Apparently the red-haired boy had it in his bag.
I thought about how it would be to put a carrot in my vagina. I thought about how I smuggled candles into my bedroom sometimes and used those late at night when no one could see me. I knew using a carrot would be the same, but somehow the idea of a vegetable inserted into someone's vagina played on my mind.
I thought about how, if there was a photo, there would have to have been a photographer watching her insert the carrot into her vagina. I wondered if she had gone into the next room like an artists' model and emerged with the carrot properly inserted, removing the light cotton sheet from around her shoulders, lying or sitting on the divan.
My race was next. I had never been in a race before. I had never worn my swimsuit in front of my peers. I wondered suddenly if I should have signed up at all. Was it too late to have myself scratched from the starting block?
Then someone brought me the photograph, torn from a magazine. Sepia. Old. It reminded me of the elegantly posed portraits of our great-grandmothers, only this grandmother was not wearing any clothes and there was a carrot in her vagina.
I needed to take my school dress off. I was wearing my suit underneath. Everybody else had already changed into theirs; they lay in the lazy spread of the hot bleachers or flat on their backs with their knees spread to make an even tan. I could never lie like that.
There were whispers about the photograph before anyone had seen it.
I folded the photograph into the novel that I had been reading, even though Wendy Jones was waiting to see it, and stashed it deep inside my schoolbag. I didn't want to remove my dress in front of everybody, but they'd called my race and everyone else was already standing near the edge of the pool.
I pulled the sack of checked fabric over my head and stood at the starting block. The other girls wore bikinis. Bikinis were big that particular year. The other girls had sleek flat chests and skinny hips. I was too round. I was aware of my new breasts, which were already so large that you could hold a pencil under them. I'd read about this in someone's magazine. Are your breasts too floppy? Of course I had answered the multiple-choice questions when no one was looking.
I missed the starting gun but I plummeted anyway, a moment's delay and then the fat slap of water, the bliss of submerged oblivion.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
