I told Deborah a story that someone had told me about seeing Seal fall off a treadmill while working out at Chelsea Piers gym. I belonged to Chelsea Piers gym the year it opened, when I lived in Chelsea, and I’d seen Seal there a few times. A friend of mine’s ex-girlfriend belonged, too, and she’s the one who told me that she saw Seal fall flat on his face.

“Who told you that?” said Deborah. She’d only been half listening, at best.

“My friend Robert’s ex-girlfriend. We were neighbors. She’s a lesbian now,” I added. “Come to think of it, another one of Robert’s girlfriends is a lesbian now, too. I guess he either has feminine qualities that lesbians are attracted to, or else he does something to turn them off to guys.”

“You can’t do anything to turn a girl gay,” said Deborah. “It doesn’t work that way. If it did then every girl would be a lesbian.”

“But every girl is a lesbian,” I said. “All it takes is a couple of drinks.”

Deborah thought for a second, then nodded in agreement. “You have a point.”

—The Known Universe

“I like David Lynch movies, but I can’t imagine what one of his screenplays looks like. Does he even write screenplays? If he does, they must be pretty annoying to read. And then, this girl goes into her living room, but it’s not really her living room it’s this other place and suddenly she’s not herself anymore, but someone else, and this guy shows up and you think it’s one guy but it turns out to be this other guy from before who you forgot all about and then a midget shows up and says some stuff in a made up language… Imagine finding that written on the back of a business card?”

—The Known Universe