Free 98 Wounds by Justin Chin

flirtation in its minor and major scales and arpeggios. Being a soggy ball of crankiness and wearing my heart on my sleeve as if some emo bomb just exploded certainly does not help things. And in all honesty, in most of my waking life, I’m just crushed by a terrifying discomfort of being in my own skin whenever I am in public.
    And then, there’s booty . And then there is booty. When the time comes, and it will for everyone I’m certain, when you have to choose between sex and dignity, go with dignity. Unless, of course, – and here you get to fill in the blank with whatever you want.

    I confess. I don’t have sexual fantasies any more, not like I did when I was a pup. And such terribly elaborate and dirty ones they used to be, too. These days, I seem to have a lot of domestic fantasies. In 78 percent of those fantasies, the object of my affection is an ex-boyfriend. In almost all of those fantasies, he’s wearing much better clothes than he does in real life. In one version of that daydream, we raise kids together; in one, we have a farm or a sprawling mansion; in another, we care for elderly parents; and in another, I die á la Ali McGraw in Love Story or Elsa the Lion in Born Free ; and in yet another, we plan our big gay wedding. In one version of that wedding, I’ve concocted a snowstorm of gardenia petals inside the church as a surprise; in another, Tony Bennett sings at the reception. And in yet another, Shakira performs. She was so blond.
    There used to be an old disco stomper, “So Many Men, So Little Time.” Now, it’s So Many Issues, So Little Time. I used to make fun of people with issues. Ha ha, I said. But now, I have them, I have issues. I have whole subscriptions. And I have arthritis. I have a pile of bills to pay, obligations to fulfill. I have a liver that is slowly turning to mush. I have my weaknesses whose hungers must be fed. I have all this chaos in my veins. I have half a tank of gas but I’m sure it’s enough to get me to where I want to go.
    At the end of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth , the heroine who has lost all hope of knowing herself, of finding love or even settling, crumples onto the floor and wails, “I’ve tried so hard, but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person.”
    I am a useless person and I am content to lay in bed with the cat watching nine continuous hours of the Food Network or the Top Chef marathon on Bravo. And I’d say things to her like “Omigawd, Decat, did you see that? They’ve just marinated the sesame seeds and stuffed them into the asparagus, which they’ve lightly blanched and seasoned with the oils from crushed lemongrass and infused with just a tiny drop of mirin; then they’ve stuffed all that into a snapper which has been rubbed with handfuls of minced Korean ginger root and drizzled ever so lightly with light soy sauce and just three drops of that 75-year-old balsamic; then all of that is stuffed into a game hen whose cavity has been brushed with truffle oil and powdered liberally with Ras el Hanout, and then the whole thing is wrapped with slices of pancetta and its all going to salt-bake in a big hole in the backyard filled with red hot Bolivian lava rocks and salt from the Caspian Sea. Oh no! They’re going to sous-vide the whole thing in someone’s bathroom sink apparently, what a twist! Isn’t that clever?”
    Then I’d grab the cat’s head and make her nod as if she was saying, “Yes! Yes! That is ingenious, I wouldn’t have thought of doing that to snapper because I don’t have opposable thumbs, can I have my Science Diet Lo-Cal kibble now?”

    My dear mom has a plan for me. It worked for my brother and so she thinks it might just work for me. Go With God! is the plan. On the eve of his wedding, my brother told me that Mom was always tormented by the idea that he might marry a bimbo. She decided to fast and pray for a