Sam Lipsyte

Fraz wishes they could meet at a coffee bar, or a full-service bar, or a full-service meat cart. He likes the street meat, the tangy skewers. He doesn’t mind the toddies. But the candles, the garden scents, menace his dainty machismo.
Listen, such are the sacrifices one makes for the cause, for mental archery, for love.

He could sense Tovah’s displeasure, her weariness. The qualities in Fraz she once claimed to adore were maybe not such adorable qualities anymore.

he names of her children sometimes embarrass Tovah. They were Fraz’s idea. He had declared himself the creative one, which is how people (men) describe themselves when they aren’t the competent ones. Tovah has a degree in poetry and two chapbooks, even if that was a thousand lives ago, but somehow he bulldozed her on the kids’ names.

He was shocked and grateful, but also afraid, perhaps, that he could never sustain the heart she summoned in him