sky-colored dirt

A stranger sent me a friend request. I keep a fairly curated friend list, which has less than five people I’ve never met in real life. If I don’t know you, I want to know why I should. So I asked one of our few mutual friends about him. “He’s a guy who friends every pretty girl.”  Okay, got it. This bro is throwing spaghetti to see what sticks to the wall. I’m nobody’s wet noodle. As I inch closer to 48, I have plenty of solid reasons to dislike men. (I’ve been writing those stories for years right here online—a new form of real-time memoir?) Yet I haven’t allowed the noodle throwers—or any manner of garbage behavior—to win. I still enjoy the company of men. Always have, from the time I was a headstrong grade-schooler in a terrycloth jumper pouting after getting vetoed from a rock battle with my big brother and boy cousins. Not one to heed warnings, I did get in on it long enough to get clipped in the forehead, with a scar above my eyebrow to show for it. Around the same age, I also s...