Broken Hearts Damaged Goods by Jack Gunthridge

thinking.  He’s great at listening, but he doesn’t talk about
himself and what he is feeling.
    Some nights he goes
into the living room to work on his writing, or he will just sit there
thinking.  I know that he is a creative writing major, but you would think an
artist would be able to express himself better in person.
    I remember falling
asleep last night with his arms around me.  Okay, we were spooning, but he was
holding my hand.  Actually his hand kind of spooned my hand with his fingers
intertwined in mine.  We drifted off in conversation.
    Then when I woke up at
four in the morning, I noticed that he was gone.  I found him in the living
room.  He was just sitting in the dark.  I tried talking to him, but he said
that nothing was wrong.
    I didn’t know what else
to do, so I just put my arm around him and put my head on his shoulder.  I figured
that I would let him know that I was there for him, when he was ready to talk.
    I don’t remember much
else after that.  I woke up this morning in my bed.  Jack woke me up when he
entered with the breakfast that he made me.  He seemed in an unusually good
mood.  He was like a guy that was in love, which made the entire world okay. 
He even greeted me with a kiss as he put the tray across my legs.
    “Are you doing okay”,
was the first thing that came to my mind.  It might have been a little
insensitive for a guy that had just made me breakfast, but I was confused by
his behavior.
    Again he said that
everything was fine.  And I let it drop because I wanted to believe that if he
was torn between two women, I was winning at the moment.  The more time I spend
with him, I should be able to get him to love only me.
    I know I promised him
that we would be each other’s cocoon where we would heal each other so that we
could turn into these beautiful butterflies that will just fly off to find some
perfect love.  But I’ve been thinking that I don’t want to heal him to have him
leave to love somebody else.
    I’ve decided that I’m
going to perform an exorcism on him.  I’m going to drive that fucking bitch
that broke his heart from his mind and heal his heart.  Once I drive the
darkness out, I will replace it with the light of my love.

A Kiss is Just a Kiss
    By
    Jack Webber
    I got my first
girlfriend when I was in kindergarten.  It was a magical time where a boy and a
girl could play the perfect couple.  We were young enough and stupid enough to think
that love could just be sustained by enjoying each other’s company.
    In that idyllic state,
I received my first kiss.  Like my relationship, it was simple and sweet.  We
weren’t going for complex.  We were just playing the common male and female
roles that we had seen on TV and in movies.
    It seems that such a
relationship is not sustainable.  Boys and girls can’t play the sex roles that
they’ve grown up with.  They haven’t lived enough to know that humans are more
messed up than our parents and Hollywood would allow us to believe.
    It is in this awkward
stage between grade school and junior high that boys and girls first learn that
they are better off without the opposite sex.  Bros before hoes.  Sisters
before misters.
    And then comes junior
high when the girls start to become more attractive.  You don’t know why, but
you want to try to impress them.  You start changing your behavior to get their
attention.  You could blame it on some sort of weakness on your part, but the
fact of the matter is that women spend a large amount of time at this age to
make men weak.  It is actually rather cruel.  Men would complain, but there is
a certain bliss in the free fall.
    It is during this stage
that I received my first true kiss.  It was at an eighth grade dance.  We were
doing a little slow dance.  I really liked this girl, and not because she was
fun to hang out with or because I thought she was cute.  We were no longer
playing roles.  We were getting to know each other.
    More than an