My friends and I are in an on-again/off-again writing club where the rules are simple. Every two weeks you have to submit three short stories that it took you 20 minutes or less to write. These are the results.

I had personality factors to consider.  All he cared about was how a woman’s ass swayed in a pair of sweatpants.  There had to be a certain weight and wobble to it.  Other pants were fine, he said, but sweatpants told the truth.

We sat on a bench and watched 5th avenue traffic sludge past, the central park zoo at our backs.

He chewed gum while he smoked.  He wore sweatpants.  He constantly nuzzled his crotch with his knuckles, the male equivalent of a girl twirling an end of hair, automatic gestures from deep within the base idiocy of our respective genders.  He threw his cigarette in the grass beneath the water fountain.

“I’ll tell you what we fucking need,” he said.  “Some cheese.”

“You mean money?”

“No,” he said, “I mean fucking cheese.  Like you eat it, the cheese.”

“I like cheese.”

“Who fucking doesn’t.”

“You got a point there.”

When we stood up, he looked down at his crotch.  You could see his dick through his sweatpants.  He said, “I’m fucking ready when you are.”

We head for the Plaza hotel’s fountain, prepared to walk the almost 70 blocks to Murray’s Cheese if we had to.  They had caves beneath Bleeker Street.  Caves to age cheese.  People who specifically tended those caves, cultivating cheese in a dark, arched dungeon.  Arched brick is the key to perfectly even aging.  The veins of mold in your cheese will glisten, glow in the dark, and thump as if coursing with blood.

Approach your selection crouched, on soft feet.  Move slowly, as if militarily advancing on your child from behind as it cuts your dress shirts to pieces with an electric knife.  But instead of rabbit punching it in the ear and shattering the child’s eardrum, you grip the cheese softly and bring it to your mouth, leading with your tongue.