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| What can you know about a person? Nothing, really. Perhaps it's useful to know that Kali has red hair, that Viktor has blond hair, that Marcelo has dark curly hair and a round face...that Chris changed his name to Kalay sometime around 1987...that Mona has a boyfriend in Greece and a nervous twitch around her eyes...that Sara has Polish blood and is French, Monica has Italian blood and is American, and Andy has British blood and was born in South Africa...that Robert's first girlfriend was obsessed with his feet...that Jean-Michel has slept with eight women in his life...that Jennifer, who has blond hair and a round face, has had sex with over 200 men...that Slava, who was born in Prague, has Arab features because his father was Turkish...that Greg's father directed the jazz band at UCLA. |
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| It's useless to put this in any order because it doesn't make any sense. I might as well just go on. Greg showed me the condom he'd used once and was now keeping in the freezer. Later his girlfriend Lisa got tired of taking care of him and decided she was a lesbian. Renée once accused Phineas of bringing home, to the house they shared, a case of yogurt and eating just the top part of each one. Phineas has red hair. When I first met him, it was quite long. He was a fan of Johnny Rotten, whom he claimed to have spit on once. He wore a lot of thrift-store clothing. This was in 1981–82. I saw him lying naked on a bed once. In fact, I met his entire family. Renée's father is a brain surgeon who wrote a book. She says he is a millionaire. Renée was Kim's fourth girlfriend in college. The first was a stoner, the second a virgin, the third was quite plain. Renée was the one he eventually married eight years later. I was invited to the wedding but I didn't go. At the time of the wedding, Phineas was in Bolivia. |
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| I'd like everyone to know they're part of a fabric, or maybe we should call it an "awkward patchwork" because that's what it is. The pieces don't really fit together. Ellen was the product of her father's effort to avenge himself on a woman who wouldn't go out with him by sleeping with her friend. He was only with her for a few days before she became pregnant. At first she wanted to get an abortion, but a friend of hers who'd just gotten one illegally collapsed on the floor at a party, hemorrhaging badly. So she got scared, and she and Ellen's father got married. The marriage lasted for maybe a year after Ellen was born. Now Ellen's mother lives in Nebraska and her father in San Francisco. |
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