“A couple years before, he’d adopted a St. Bernard puppy he promptly named Claude, and spoke to only in perfect Parisian French. I never saw Claude during his legendary baby cuteness, but I knew he’d grown up to be enormous, peevish, a huge pain in the ass, and the subject of several lawsuits.” Ashley Walker remembers a vacation on the Vineyard.
“Seems I’ve had the flu for a while and didn’t know it, but then I’m rarely aware I’m sick because I can’t get sick. For days now, I’d struggled awake, knowing however raw, stripped, and unlovely the morning routine was going to be, it had to be done, no bullshit.”
“If a man needs to hole up in his house or his car, depending on his fortunes, suck down a lot of meth or booze or stare at his flat screen 24/7, we’ll defend his right to do any or all that shit to the death.” Ashley Walker staunchly defends the rights of her neighbors.
“And in much the same spirit, I’m here to report on our doin’s since the past dark time, back when I got delayed by teeth and time. Time for ketchup.” Ashley Walker brings us up to speed in this week’s Gorked.
“Before. Before the whole damned roof fell on both of us, before we lost money, business, and health, before we both got horribly sick, before my guy Nearly Fucking Died, before All That, I had a blog called Write and Wrong.” In the beginning…
“I am watching Law and Order reruns. Hard-core shit. These are the Precambrian ones with a young steamy Chris Noth and a typically baggy Paul Sorvino. I’m eating carbs too. The big bad kind you can only microwave. Make your breath smell like Fritos.” Ashley Walker lives on the edge.
“But I’d also begun to feel a bit guilty for my sneery view of the newcomers. So lately I’ve tried to overlook the sight of tiny exotic dogs shitting on my grass and, more bizarrely the owner picking up its bitty crap carefully with vinyl-gloved fingers.” Ashley Walker is a little confused.
“When Real Love glanced my way, then gave me the nod, I went gladly, even knowing that damage and sorrow would come too. No experience is pure, and even when stupidly young, I knew that much. I knew the costs.” Ashley Walker on Real Love.
“August is when you start thinking about putting in an Arizona-style yard, one like the weird balding guy has, that guy with the guns and the burglar bars over on San Juan: it’s all gravel and cow skulls and napolito cactus at his place.” Unfortunately for Ashley Walker, that look doesn’t fly in Dallas.