Blowies, Brownies, and Rejections.

"I want a blowjob."

"Really?" Marie asked. "You think that's going to work?"

"I had a long day. I'm tired. I don't have much energy left," I said.

"So?"

"So, I figured I would just ask. What would it hurt?"

"Your chances of getting a blowjob, for one."

I put my feet up on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. "Everything sucks."

"Awe, poor baby," Marie said. "You actually have to go back to work. It must be so hard on you after a month vacation." She was speaking to me like I was a toddler. She sat next to me. "Besides, you don't get blowie's for going to work two days in a row."

"Three?"

"No."

The television was off, but I looked at it all the same. I wondered if it was some sort of instinct now. In living room. Stare at T.V.. Who knows?

"I'll cook you dinner though if you want," she said.

"No thanks. My back hurts though. Could use a rub."

"Why? I thought you just went to class today?"

"Ladder safety training. Fucking things are heavy."

She gave me a half grimace. "Maybe tonight I'll rub your shoulders." That meant no. If it didn't happen immediately, it wasn't happening.

Oh well, I thought.

Marie got up and went into the kitchen and began to make something. I laid back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. I had submitted a few short stories to some magazines when I got home from work. My rejection letter folder was getting thicker. I used to frame them as inspiration, but before long they became debilitating, and the last thing I needed was to be a few bottles of wine into a story look up at the framed rejections, and have some terrible epiphany about my abilities as a writer.

Some magazines would send you a formal letter in the mail.

"Dear Mr. Martin,

We regret to inform you..."

Others would shoot you an email,


"Dear Mr. Martin,

While we enjoyed 'A Mad Man, His Dick, and Four Balloons', we regret to inform you..."

They were all the same. Stamped with the impersonal copy/pasted signature of some assistant editor, sealed with the indifference of a man stuck in his own dissatisfaction somewhere, addressed to me. But, I kept sending the fucking things out. Maybe someday...

"So what's tomorrow?" Marie asked from the kitchen.

"Wednesday."

"No, I mean, what are you doing tomorrow at work?"

"Oh. First day in the field. I meet my trainer tomorrow."

"Cool. Hope it's someone you like."

"Yeah, me too," I said. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some drunken curmudgeon. Hates his job, but is absolutely brilliant at it. Some lost blue-collar genius."

"I don't think that will happen."

"Let me dream."

She came back into the living room with a large mixing bowl and handed it to me. "You have to use your finger. I kept the spoon."

Inside the bowl was chocolate something or other. "Brownies?" I asked.

"Yep. Figured you'd prefer it over a blowjob." I questioned her logic.

"I think we may have to have a talk about that," I said.

"If you don't want the brownies I can throw them out."

"Oh, no," I said. "I want them."

"Then don't complain."

She walked back into the kitchen and I swirled my finger around the bowl. A large clump of brownie mix rested on my finger, and I ate it. It was no blowjob.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome."

A good woman might not suck your dick on command, but she'll make you brownies just because. It evened out somewhere in there, and I was a lucky man.

I tried not to think about work.