intransigence jennifer I don't want to love him. No, I want to feel his warm wrinkles smooth out in my mouth, and his gently swaying balls bouncing limply on my lips, then coming to rest on them like a trivet. I want to rub my finger across the tiny fleshy beads of the head, my nails turning the red one white, if only for a second or two. I think about watching TV while sliding my thumb across it, idly, breaking his concentration on the game. Trying to stay cool, yes myself, and I don't want him to know about the itch inside my shorts until I grab his hand and slide it there. I could even kiss him, dispassionately, forgetting for the moment who he was, only a faceless mouth and tongue and teeth, the one from last Tuesday's waking dream. I'm fried from drinking Coke and talking to myself about that. But I don't want to love him, 'cause the last time I did that, I got fucked, and I hate to get fucked. ©1999 by Stacy Vincent 000728 ... lunarfern ...is the most pretentious word ever invented. almost as bad as oscillate, or behoove. why use a cold and technical word that most of the world doesn't understand? it's the irritating side of knowledge, the inability to speak without your head up the ass crack of a thick thesaurus. there are plenty of words that better describe what intransigence is. maybe it's clinging to an idea until her fingernails bleed. or maybe they take a fat magic marker and black out every viewpoint that is too bright for his mind. or maybe he's just stubborn. eschew obfuscation: avoid saying things in a manner so intellectualized that you lose the sense of what you're saying in the first place 000730 what's it to you? who go blather from