THE FUTURE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE - GREGORY SHERL

The Future for Curious People - Pg 294

   And I don't know why, but Evelyn softens into me. I slide my hands around her waist. I pull her to me. And I kiss her. We fall in place. Evelyn's eyes were closed before my lips touched hers and I don't want to feel left out, so I close mine and imagine everything that will probably not happen: days feeling like amusement parks, burying my mother together, following our kids into tubes, dying together in a bed the size of the moon.
   And for a few moments, Madge ceases to exist. For a few moments, I understand why we have lips. We give escalators of light a reason to wrap around our heads. I discover a new part of mouth and teach it to French. I study every movement like a history lesson.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 209

   I decide this is my favorite part of her neck--the left side--but if someone were to ask me tomorrow, I might say, No, no, it was the right all along. Or I never said it was her neck--why do you think I always walk behind her at grocery stores and strip malls? But this neck! Men don armor for this kind of neck. Break oaths to God. Discover continents and cut off their ears.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 203

   Godfrey smiles. It's dark, but holy shit. This is why birds make noise and music sounds like music.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 187

   Amy and Bart are staring at the floor, or maybe Bart is staring at his boat shoes. I bet the floor is wondering why it's getting so much attention. I imagine the floor doesn't want the attention--it just wants to be a fucking floor.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 184

   I take another sip of beer and count to one hundred. I've heard this helps--the counting, not the drinking, though I've heard that helps, too, just for different reasons. I'd check my pulse, but I can never find that shit. I'd be a terrible doctor. This one's dead, too, I'd tell the nurse. I just don't feel anything happening. Must be an epidemic or the zombie apocalypse. Would the nurse call the CDC or would I?

The Future for Curious People - Pg 171

   I do not know how to get from here to there--I do not know where there is. If I knew that, I'd have a better chance of getting there. I am not a grown-up. I ride a bicycle and glue flowers on my rain boots. Last year, I hosted a cocktail party but realized I didn't know how to make any cocktails. We drank out of mugs and jelly jars. I have a job and a best friend who steals things like a juvenile delinquent. We talk about our crushes. What if life goes on this way--on and on. It can't. Once, I was an eleven-year-old who was terrified that I would never be able to give up playing with Barbies. I'd be a closet Barbie player my entire life--a dark hidden shame. Were there more like me? Was there a support group? And then one day I realized I hadn't played with them in ages. It was over. How will this part of my life be over?
   And worse, why would I want it to ever end?

The Future for Curious People - Pg 162

   "Look, science and the mysteries of true love can only coexist for so long before weird shit occurs."

The Future for Curious People - Pg 154

   Everything is so goddamn clear, especially Tina's shiny skin. I wonder if she applies lotion on it or if the lotion does it itself. Like the lotion says, No, no, I've got this. You just keep lying there.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 144

   I stand at the door, staring at the chipped paint, the dirty knob. If someone asked me what I was doing, I would say, I don't know. Please tell me. I am not waiting for Adrian to come back. I know that.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 143

   I'm already beginning to feel lonely--the hole in me that maybe no one can fill. Or maybe I'm lonely because Adrian is more outside my front door than inside my front door and that means something.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 142

   I follow him to the front door and open it.
   Then the lag. We both want this to end, but we don't know how. Or we both want to stay, but we don't know why.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 138

   I open the door and we look at each other like strangers who've just happened to constantly fall into bed with each other over the last few years.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 135

   There's a quiet moment. I flop back onto the bed. I think of origami and how I wish it were human. One minute I could be a puffed-up box and the next minute a crane.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 124

   The woman at the bus stop is kind of beautiful. Her skirt is too short for the cold and I love the way she's hugging herself and stomping her feet to keep warm--innocent but sexy. I could probably watcher her be cold forever, which sounds kind of mean.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 119

   He looks like he tastes like a sledgehammer, but in a good way.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 116

   I notice the flush of my cheeks, the dimples in his. I'm smiling. Godfrey's smiling. Still, we're crying. Everything is so tilted. I feel completely alive and therefore vulnerable as if that's what feeling fully alive demands; this scares me, too.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 116

   It's deafening, the quiet. The camera zooms in. Godfrey and I are crying. I want Godfrey to say something. I want to hear his voice. I want him to tell me why we're crying. I want his mouth pressed against my lips, and I want to know everything he's ever thought. I want to learn it all slowly. I want the ridges of his teeth.

The Future for Curious People - Pg 113

   In my newfound Time Bomb Theory of Heart Calcification, as I now name it, how much toughening of my heart did Adrian cause? How many small rejections, how many missed opportunities, how big of an accumulation of jadedness has taken its toll? I think of my heart. This isn't its first hardening of a loss. How much is left?

The Future for Curious People - Pg 112

   I say, "What if there is this time bomb to love. What if it's like you fall in love with so many people who just aren't right for you, and with each one, your heart toughens up, and you have to find the one who is right for you before your heart is completely calcified in your chest?"
   "Like there's a closing window."
   "Right."
   Adrian shakes his head. "No. It's more like every person you fall in love with is right for you but just not at this moment. Like the now-you would be perfect for the me ten years from now, but because we can't sync it up, we'll never make it. Unless you're willing to wait for me to become that person."
   "But my ten-years-from-now self can never be my now self, so I'd have to completely stop growing--deep down--so that we can sync up."