“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans.” Two sad, strange and brilliant stories about eviscerating loneliness. One involves a stripper in an itchy wig, hopelessly in love with her callous best friend; the other, intensely and almost defiantly twee and weird, involves an intergalactic dark blob that deflowers the narrator. July writes with a mordant directness that conveys great emotional depth and complexity.
First published in The New Yorker, September 2006 and available online here. Collected in No one belongs here more than you, Canongate, 2007
