Barbara Anderson (writer)

"& so I bring my journal writing & sit amongst / the ferociously chic at Cafe Flor (which I call / Cafe Voyeur) in an era when everyone has a therapist & no one has a lover. and I have a slice of carrot cake / and a frothy mochachina, sprinkled generously with nutmeg / & cinnamon, sitting there pondering "The Convolution of Desire / & Terror that is the paradigm of human sexuality." And I write / it down completely impressed with myself, smug with the glow, / wondering if anyone-man or woman, or middle aged transsexual / with bad makeup from the nether twilight world of the Tenderloin-- / would stop by to cruise me. YES, EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE / I HAVE AN OUTSTANDING MOMENT OF OBSOLETE HAPPINESS."

"Sybil was now banging on about how hard Humph worked and the havoc caused by boarding school fees for seven. Jack refrained from telling her that you would expect seven children to be more expensive to raise than one or two and that no one had an electric cattle prod on either her rump or Humph's as they herded their offspring into private schools."

"Later that evening, he sat in the bar, pint in one hand, pipe in the other, with good food beneath his belt and listened to the natural harmony of the Welsh fishermen singing their songs of Wales and the sea"