Jarod Kintz

“I’d Poe’s nude for the approval of a dead poet. No names come to mind, but I’m sure there must be one I’d get naked for.”

“She didn’t have the body of the supermodel. But that’s OK, because she didn’t have the face of one either.”

“I put the “cat” in category. And not only do I put it there, but I pet it too.”

“We made love like September swims in August. But that’s natural, because it’s too cold to go swimming in October.”

“We were in love. When I say we, I don’t mean her and I. I mean me and my clone were in love with her. But she didn’t even know I existed, just as I didn’t know my clone existed. I still don’t know he exists.”

“Which is more valuable into showing how I think: the order I think of things, or the order in which I arrange them once I’ve thought of them?”

“When I get excited I drool. That’s why I buy bibs wholesale from my dentist. Based on that alone you could label me a romantic.”

“The year you were born marks only your entry into the world. Other years where you prove your worth, they are the ones worth celebrating.”

“If you were to ask me what kind of musical sound I aspire to produce, that noise would be a wet nipple sliding across a cheese grater. I’m a sucker for love songs.”

“I wish there were a vending machine that served cats. Not to eat, but to pet during my work break.”

“If you just give me a chance, I could be the man you’ve never dreamed of and never wanted.”

“I collect the most valuable thing in the world—free time. But unlike other priceless things, I don’t need a safe to keep it safe, because I keep all my free time in the past, where nobody can touch it—not even me. My collection grows larger every day.”

“I’m a closet sociopath. You can tell by all the skeletons I have hanging up next to my clothes.
”

“When my internal voice goes external, and I’m in a noisy crowd, I can hardly hear myself think.”

“A shadow is midnight’s whisper, I thought as I shouted at my invisible clone. Killing your own clone is the only time you could commit murder and suicide at the same time by killing just one person.”

“I’m building a hot air balloon out of my love for you. I’m starting with the hot air, and then I’m going to surround that with saran wrap, because after all, I’m only using leftovers.”

“There should always be one more cat than person, so everyone has one to pet, and I have two to myself.”

“Sometimes the thing that brings us together also pulls us apart. Sort of like a zipper.”

“Broke is a relative term, like sister, cousin, or Uncle Sam.
”

“Love isn’t stackable and interlocking, like boxes or Legos. Love is like a one-legged man standing on a three-legged chair that is placed on top of a two-legged piano. I should know, because I’m the guy trying to tune that piano, fix that chair, and affix a prosthetic leg to that guy—who happens to be my piano teacher. Mr. Balloonky, you get down from there now!
”

“I can bench press steam, but not fog. I just have to wait until the fog lifts itself.
”

“I asked her to wear something revealing, so she showed up in a prophet's toga.”

“I don’t eat Sloppy Joes. I eat Tidy Josephs.”

“Pants don’t walk without legs in them. Let that be a lesson in love.”

“Out of all the guys she could love, I am two of them. But she chose my clone over me and that hurts. And it feels good.”

“The couch was wide enough for two, but I sat in it alone. Was I obese in body—or skinny in love?”

“From the corner of my eye I saw her. Of course this chance encounter with Rebecca wasn’t serendipitous. (I’m not throwing that word out there to illustrate my broad vocabulary, but rather to show that I am a John Cusack fan). 
”

“Mrs. Indianapolis was in town again. She looked like a can of Sprite in her green and yellow outfit. She always likes to come down to the front desk just to chat. It was 4:04 am and thankfully I was awake and at the front desk when she got off the elevator and walked towards me. 
“Good morning, Jacob,” she said.
“My name is Jarod,” I replied.
“When did you change your name?”“I was born Jarod, and I’ll probably die. Maybe.”
“You must be new here. You look like a guy named Jacob that used to work at the front desk.”
“Nope, I’m not new. And there’s no Jacob that’s worked the front desk, nor anybody who looks or looked like me. How can I assist you, Mrs. Indianapolis?”
“I’d like to inform you that the pool is emitting a certain odor.”
“What sort of odor?”
“Bleach.”
“Ah, that’s what we like to call chlorine. It’s the latest craze in the sanitation of public pools. Between you and me, though, I think it’s just a fad.”
“Don’t get sassy with me, young man. I know what chlorine is. I expect a clean pool when I go swimming. But what I don’t expect is enough bleach to get the grass stain out of a shirt the size of Kentucky.”
“That’s not our policy, ma’am. We only use about as much chlorine as it would take to remove a coffee stain the size of Seattle from a light gray shirt the size of Washington.”“Jerry, I don’t usually give advice to underlings, but I’m feeling charitable tonight. So I’ll tell you that if you want to get ahead in life, you have to know when to talk and when not to talk. And for a guy like you, it’d be a good idea if you decided not to talk all the time. Or even better, not to talk at all.”
“Some people say some people talk too much, and some people, the second some people, say the first some people talk to much and think too little. Who is first and who is second in this case? Well, the customer—that’s you, lady—always comes first.”
“There you go again with the talking. I’d rather talk to a robot than to you.”
“If you’d rather talk to a robot, why don’t you just find your husband? He’s got all the personality and charm of a circuit board. Forgive me, I didn’t mean that.”
“I should hope not!”
“What I meant to say was fried circuit board. It’d be quite absurd to equate your husband’s banter to a functioning circuit board.”
“I’m going to have a talk to your manager about your poor guest service.”
“Go ahead. Tell him that Jerry was rude and see what he says. And by the way, the laundry room is off limits when no lifeguard is on duty.”

“When I told her my love would stop her tears from falling, she started laughing. She laughed so hard she started crying. Damn. Double damn!”

“Of course, if I had misbehaved that day, my dinner was a salad made entirely out of iceberg lettuce, with water on top instead of dressing. It was like cabbage soup without the dignity.
”

“Growing up, my mom made dinner every night. Usually this would be a large salad with kale, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, all organic of course, and sometimes she’d sprinkle nuts on top for texture. Kale has a metallic taste, like chewing on the hood of a Mercedes. No, something safer, like a Volvo.”

“My mom is all about risk vs. reward. So for example, if I were to go out on a date and have unprotected sex, the risk/reward would be possible STD for me vs. possible grandchild for her. Duh! Bring on the grandchildren!
”

“As far as how my mom might view me, I can imagine her saying something like this to me: “You may be ugly, son, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be rich. In fact, it kind of means you have to be rich. At least if you don’t want to be asexual and alone your whole life.”

“The office is painted with green and red stripes. It’s not painted that way so my mom can experience Christmas 364 more days a year. It represents the stock market, with green symbolizing greed, and red representing fear. Buy when the masses are fearful, and sell when the population is greedy.”

“I’m tired of calling @PapaJohns. I wish they’d call me for once. I’m starting to think they don’t love me.”

“Thor once took an IQ test, and he was scoring so high that the referees took away his ability to shoot three pointers.”

“But if she could be here, she probably wouldn’t be here. But that won’t stop me from ordering for two, and if I can’t eat it all I’ll take the leftovers home so I can heat up my loneliness and enjoy it for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Before I walked into the door, the room got shades darker as a cloud did a summersault in front of the sun. I turned my head up to the sky and saw Gauss in the glass smirking down at me. In that moment I was reminded of a story about Gauss. 
When he was in the fifth grade, his teacher wanted some quiet, so he asked his class to add up all the numbers from 1-100. Thinking he had plenty of time to relax, he was shocked that within minutes Gauss had an answer. Gauss had cleverly noticed that the numbers 1 and 100 added up to 101, and 2 and 99 also added up to 101 and on down until you hit 50 and 51. So there are 50 pairs of 101, and a simple multiplication problem by Gauss left his teacher perplexed.
The recollection of this story reminded me about my own fifth grade experience. Thor was the volunteer at my school for the “Math Superstar” program. After each assignment, stars of various colors signifying degrees of excellence were stuck on all the papers handed in. Like the Olympics, gold was the highest honor. 
Wendy, the girl who sat next to me, was baffled that no matter how many wrong answers I got (usually all of them), I consistently had gold stars on my papers. She thought Thor was showing a personal bias towards me, but the truth is that I knew where he kept his boxes of stars, so I simply awarded myself what I thought I deserved. Hey, Gauss, how’s that for clever?”

“The house I grew up in is one of a kind. It’s a bibliophile’s fantasy, and if the Library of Congress had a little brother who was a midget, you could find him residing in my parents’ house.”

“Thor pushes the empty wheelbarrow by me and I decide to say something. “Wheelbarrows are great, huh? They make even the lightest loads lighter. Too bad nobody’s invented a wheelbarrow yet that could carry man’s emotional burden.”

“I decide to go outside to enjoy the weather. Out of the corner of my eye I see Thor pushing an empty wheelbarrow, and I wonder if it’s some sort of thought experiment. Either he just got done dumping mulch in the back yard, or this is a great set up for a Zen koan.”

“It’s a shiny tin can of a day, bright but gray. Welcome to one of Florida’s two overcast days per year. A Florida winter can last a brutally long 48 hours, and in that time the state’s residents don’t know how to cope. Probably there are more suicides on these two days in Florida than in a whole year of Seattle’s drizzly existence.”

“My favorite salad dressing is vodka. And my favorite ice cream flavor is coffee, though I prefer it melted and hot enough to burn flesh.”

“I poured a compass into my coffee, to give the flavor some direction.”

“Tonight when she came down to the front desk she was wearing neon green hot pants and a pink leopard print jacket. But the best part was that her boots almost matched her jacket. I think she’s on to something. Why let the fact that you’re 65-years-old interfere with your ability to dress like a colorblind fourteen-year-old?”

“It also must be hard to have a wife like Mrs. Indianapolis. She’s in the fashion industry. She’s not a model or designer, but she is a buyer—not for a retail outlet, but for her four closets, whose combined square footage is probably comparable to Rhode Island. If an article of clothing is leopard print or neon colored, Mrs. Indianapolis either owns it, or soon will.”

“It’s now 4:17 am, and I just got done dealing with Mrs. Indianapolis, of Indiana. She’s a regular here, and she accompanies her husband on all his business meetings. When I say business meetings, I mean of course rounds of golf played at the prestigious TPC at Sawgrass. I feel bad for the guy. Life for a multi millionaire must be hard.”

“It’s 3:33 am as I’m writing this down on loose sheets of printer paper. I’m in the back office sitting behind the manager’s desk, just enjoying the good life. In essence, this job enables me to be a real writer, because here I am writing, and getting paid to do it.”

“Sometimes I put on a black scuba suit and go walking on the beach, to relax. If I could, I’d sleep in a scuba suit—on a waterbed. Not that I actually ever get in the ocean. Too many dangerous things in the water, like barracudas, sharks, and of course there are many lawyers here on the east coast.”

“When I saw a murder taking place, I almost didn’t have time to make coffee before stopping it. But thank God I did, because otherwise somebody would have died—and even worse, I’d be tired.”