EAP: The Magazine Archive

by Clarinda Harriss.

“Jesus, what’s this?”

The cleaning lady’s niece holds up a largish, bright purple, semi-translucent object which she has just discovered in a pot of geraniums. Her aunt guffaws.

“Brenda, Hon,that would be a dildo.” Then Vera realizes that Brenda doesn’t know what a dildo is.

“It looks like a thing.” Brenda eyes the dildo with puzzled dismay. “Like, you know, a Thing.”

“It’s supposed to look like a Thing,” Vera laughs. “It’s a vibrator. That’s a pretty neat one, actually, it really does look just like a . . .Thing.”

These kids. So easily shocked. So scared of words like penis, and of course Brenda would not say “dick” or “cock” in front of her aunt.

“And it looks like it’s kind of squishy,” Vera adds, chuckling a wicked chuckle. Shocking Brenda is a hobby of Vera’s. Brenda involuntarily squeezes the Thing and recoils.   The purple plastic really is squishy.

“What do you think she does with it?” Brenda asks.

“Oh, for chrissake, Brenda, what do you think she does with it?”

“No, I mean, she’s, like, sixty years old.” Brenda blushes to the roots of her red-not-found-in-nature hair. Tactless! Aunt Vera must be about sixty herself. An alarming vision of Aunt Vera and the Purple Thing presents itself to Brenda.   Brenda wipes it away from her forehead like sweat.

Vera draws herself up to her full five feet and inhales, thus making her bosom look as if it’s five feet around. “Hon, if there’s one thing you need to learn before YOU start pushing sixty, girls just like to have fun.   Like in the song.   And guess what, girls come in all ages.   Old girls. Rich old girls, like Miz Willis. Poor old girls like your poor old Aunt Vera. And they all like to have fun. Mark my words.”

“This doesn’t look like fun to me,” Brenda says, still holding the purple dildo—of which it must be said that it does look exactly like a penis if penises came in florescent purple—and regarding it with a combination of disgust and disbelief.

“It will, Hon. Someday. Mark my words.”

A couple of minutes of silent dusting. “So what’ll I do with it?” Brenda asks.

“Turn it on and have fun!”   Vera sees the look of abject horror on Brenda’s face. “Just kidding, baby. Stick it back in the flower pot. You know Miz Willis hates it when we move things around.”

(reprinted with permission from The Potomac, Winter, 2017)

by Tony Whitehead and Phil Smith. No one kills an angel. Mandi Lyon changed that. Though it was never her intention to upset the balance of so many worlds on the morning she arrived back in the county of her birth. Raised by adoptive parents, from whom she had drifted away after college when work […]

by Chris Farago. I promise not to wander off without you. The woods are dark and odd and possibly full of elms, And I know how you hate elms, So I will take you by the hand, by the wrist, By whatever you need to be taken by to feel safe, And I will steer […]

by Stephen Mead. It’s simply complicated. The future is behind you. You are on an escalator standing backwards. Beneath you is the present & the past has your eyes. Seeing only these two, you feel the other exactly where your hands aren’t. I’ve forgotten the Greek phrase for this. My tongue is of the Sphinx, […]

by Bruce Thompson. There, there; everything will be all right. Or else it won’t. There are two kinds of lullabies. One kind promises a safe, beautiful world in which children are cherished and loved. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. Go to sleepy little baby. When you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses. The […]

by Tim J. Myers.   Once a poor family lived in a cottage near a forest. One day their landlady came and said, “There are too many people here!” “But we pay our rent!” the father protested. “Yes,” said the landlady, “but your new baby makes five of you. Either pay more money or leave!” […]

by K. Marvin Bruce. In the night she screams. I’m bathed in a cold sweat. Her night terrors began from the beginning. Rocky Grove College, 2005. Senior year. Can’t say how she caught my attention. I’m a sensible business major. My career will pay the bills. I see her at the Union. She looks desperate, […]

by Ron Singer. The dirty white spot was an irregular hexagon or heptagon about an inch-and-a-half in diameter, with jagged edges. It was located on the sidewalk directly in front of the door to my apartment building. I presume it had once been a facial tissue that fell from someone’s pocket as they reached for […]

by Rose Jermusyk. She had come so far already, left her beloved highlands in the old country, crossed an ocean hoping the grass really was greener. She went to church with neighbors who had come before her, but she was on her own. All alone and always in transit between her boarding room at the […]

by David D. Horowitz. “Don’t worry about making subtle distinctions in your dissertation. You want to make a big splash to get your work published as a book that gets you an academic job.” Thus, a professor decades ago advised me and the six other students in our graduate seminar. I greatly respected this professor—but […]