Naresh got on to the bus that was going to the small town that he had been posted to. Lakhanpur, a place he had never heard of, was eons away from the urban environment inhabited by him prior to his present course in life. Naresh was going away for the first time from his parents who were in Delhi, a place he had spent a good part of his life in. They had provided him with a reasonable amount of money in order that he never felt any immediate need for it till his first salary.
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"I'm worried about my boys, Marge," Gina Smith confessed to her best friend after church one day.
"Why?" Marge replied. "You're a great mother, and your boys seem happy and they do ok in school, right?"
"I know... maybe I'm over thinking, but I feel like they need more of a male influence in their lives. Clancy never was around that much right after the divorce, and he rarely calls now than he and Kimmy have moved to California," Gina said, practically spitting out the name of her ex-husband's new, younger wife.
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At what point does a preference become a fetish?
I met Stella at a party. She had arrived with the critic Darian Fellini. Back then, Fellini was one of the art world's big stars. His book -- All the Naked Women -- had just come out, and everyone was talking about it. Was it art criticism? Or was it pornography? As a 19-year-old art student, I didn't really know. And I didn't really care.
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It was my fault, I'm sure. I was preoccupied and I was piloting the shopping cart very poorly so it's no surprise I bumped into somebody. I clipped her cart with a bit of a jolt which brought me out of my distraction in a hurry.
"Sorry! Sorry, that was my fault." She gave me a smile, a sweet, forgiving thing that was a tiny ray of sunshine in my personally overcast day.
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During my final year of high school my English teacher, Miss Jacobs, became pregnant. This alone is not so remarkable. The problem, however, was that Miss Jacobs was a miss and not a missus. Once the members of the school board found out about Miss Jacobs' pregnancy she was given the option of pregnancy leave (firing her was only an implied threat), after which she was shunted off to another school. Those who banished her probably thought it magnanimous of them to not sew a red A to her blouse before sending her off.
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Margaret Rose Austin -- Meg to her friends -- grinned as she stood in her kitchen and listened to the hullabaloo from across the lounge. It was her son Todd's 18th birthday, and he and his buds were noisily discussing their plans for the evening, in terms that suggested they'd forgotten there was a respectable middle-aged lady just across the hallway. Not that she minded so much; she'd known most of the boys almost since the day they were born. Heck, she reflected as she washed up the greasy plates from the chili dogs and brownies she'd made for them, she'd grown up with most of their parents.
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You're never going to believe this. Honestly. I can hardly believe it myself, it's why I absolutely HAVE to tell someone. I'm not normally like this. It's just so unbelievable. But so fucking fantastic. It's kind of like finding out you've won the sexual lottery. I'm rambling, I know, but when something like this happens to you, you'll understand why.
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Alison May sat in her classroom, her delicate fingers tapping on the processed plastic-for-wood top of her desk. She had watched thousands of students sit in their rows as she droned the same information to them year after year. She watched them fix their eyes on the clock above the chalkboard, trying to mentally will the hands of the timepiece to move faster. This desperate act of telekinesis was a common one around the world, and she believed that it wasn't wholly unjustified on their part.
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My sister Annette was gazing at me with a super serious expression. As a critical care nurse, she was concerned for the state of my well being.
"You need a break from all this craziness, I'm worried about you," she said.
"I'll be ok," My voice sounded unconvincing.
"Can't you take any time off? Go away for a week or two and relax. Remember you've already had a heart attack and..."
"Jesus sis that was twelve years ago and it was minor..."
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Once there was a lonely lady. Very lonely. And for far too long a time. Her neighbors were all middle-aged like her. And all were married. But not her; she had no interest in marriage nor in her neighbors' tedious husbands. It was enough to work, to cook and clean for herself. And she could please herself whenever she wanted to, and she wanted to often. But still, now and again, she felt lonely, she felt the desire to have another with whom to share some pleasure.
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