Corporate-adopted trendsetters discover love and sex in their sheltered world of product testing.

(from In Persuasion Nation)

Then came the final straw that broke the back of me saying no to my gonads, which was I dreamed I was that black dude on MTV’s “Hot and Spicy Christmas” (around like Location Indicator 34412, if you want to check it out) and Carolyn was the oiled-up white chick, and we were trying to earn the Island Vacation by miming through the ten Hot ‘n’ Nasty Positions before the end of “We Three Kings,” only then, sadly, during Her on Top, Thumb in Mouth, the Elf Cap fell off, and as the Loser Buzzer sounded she bent low to me saying, Oh, Jon, I wish we did not have to do this for fake in front of hundreds of kids on Spring Break doing the wave but instead could do it for real with just each other in private.
And then she kissed me with a kiss I can only describe as melting.

This one’s so pretty and heartbreaking and funny and crazy. Saunders is the king of the company-man narrator. An excellent, rewarding reading experience. What else to say?

Read it here in a strangely horizontal format or here on some message board looking thing.