Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die

Malachy McCourt

Sleeping Beauty

Only when he was with a girl who had been put to sleep could he feel himself alive.

Yasunari Kawabata, Nemururu Bijo

(House of the Sleeping Beauties)

That's the best thing that a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Toyko Hostess

Gradually I became embroiled in a drama that I created through my various customers and the other girls. The world of the club was both safe and thrilling. It was addictive. The better I became at my job, however, the more I lost touch with myself, and while my sham 'loves' with my customers deepened into something like real affection and compassion, the 'real' relationship in my life floundered.

I didn't do it solely for the money .I wish I had. I did it for reasons far more dangerous: I needed adoration and approval and I, like so many victims of typically arid American upbringings, was addicted to the rush of adrenaline that love and praise, however insincere and deluded, can bring. After a few slow months in Japan's floating world, real life was, for a while, too slow for me.

From Tokyo Hostess, Claire Campbell

Insect Love

imago \ih-MAH-goh\, noun:

1. An idealized concept of a loved one, formed in childhood and retained unaltered in adult life.
2. Entomology. An adult insect.

Hong Kong Neon

Style and the 1920's

Gone is the flapper. In her place has come the young woman with poise, of soft-toned and correct speech, soberly dressed, and without closely cropped hair. Such, at all events, are the specifications of Miss 1928 as portrayed in the current number, of the “Junior League Magazine,” which is the national organ of the younger social sets of some thirty of the principal American cities.

According to an investigation which has been conducted by members of the Junior League throughout the country it has been revealed that the flapper has sung her swan song in north, south, east, and, west. “Those hard-boiled little things with shaved necks have gone completely out of’ style,” says one active Chicago member of the Junior League.

“This year’s style in young girls is to be quiet, conversational, and terribly in earnest about careers.”

Another article in the magazine, written by four members of the Junior League in different parts of the country, says that the flapper was a post-war creation. Her hair overnight resembled that of a Hottentot; her skirts ended about her knees; she sneaked her brother’s cigarettes, and swore like a trooper. She chewed gum—great wads of it—vigorously and incessantly. Her make-up was as crude as a clown’s.

MISS 1928.

Miss 1928 on the other hand, is much more subtle and polished, and she wears black satin instead of cerise. She blends rouge evenly and inhales cigarettes gracefully without puffing furiously and, unlike her predecessor, she drinks her liquor from a teacup rather than from a flask.

One Connecticut damsel gives the following recipe for the flapper:—”Take two bare knees, two rolled stockings, two flapping goloshes, one short skirt, one lipstick, one powder puff, 33 cigarettes, and a boy friend with flask. Season with a pinch of salt and dash of pep, and cover all with some spicy sauce, and you have the old-time flapper.

“Then you have me real modern American flapper: Two bare knees, two thinner stockings, one shorter skirt, two lipsticks, three powder puffs, 132 cigarettes, and three boy friends, with eight flasks between them”

Coup de foudre

French [koo duh fudr]

(i) flash of lightening; (ii) thunderbolt; (iii) unexpected event or disaster, bolt from the blue; love at first sight