Ashley Lazlo

I looked up from the printout, laid it back down on the breakfast table and smiled “it’s a great start” “But? There is always a ‘but’ ”  For a successful writer Michael could be so needy at times. What is the reason for the wife making him wear her panties I asked, Michael said the plot would gradually reveal the wife to be a twenty-first century successful business woman who enjoyed dominating her male staff.  “So the panties are a way of her making her husband understand she is completely in charge?” I asked. Pleasure spread across Michaels face at my picking up his reason for the paragraph “so how does that look to her with his mass of pubic hair bulging out?” I turned back to the printout “is she just dominating during sex or is she starting to assert herself as the marriage alpha?” Michael writes for five hours each day finishing mid-afternoon. Our life centres around this. And rightly so. Michael is the breadwinner. I kissed his cheek, the mid morning sun hid behind high...

Two things hit me as I stepped out of the uber - music and cold. The music that filtered out from the new years party was something so unrecognisably soft and slow I could be forgiven for thinking muzak outside of an elevator had been legalised. Breath-mist hung above my head like an empty speech bubble, from a distance I could be mistaken for a smoker sucking the last goodness from a cigarette whereas, in reality, I was waiting for music to entrance by.  Walking in I purposely loosened the belt and let my long winter coat fall open as if I was taking time to adjust to the warmth of the room. Revealing my gold Zhivago sequin mini in the process was purely coincidental. A slow song ended and the pace picked up, something by Tove Lo began playing.  I handed my coat and purse to the hatcheck, she handed me a long hard stare.  I once overheard a man on a bus say ‘you only get one chance to make a first impression’ to himself. I paused as I recalled the bus ride while waiting ...

Angela and I bought a house together when the area was still a little rundown around two years ago, we were a late twenties career couple with no thoughts on joining the marriage club.  The house was a sound financial decision, we had an agreement drawn up before buying the house as if some mystic force had instilled a feeling of what the future may hold. Friends who divorced or parted soon declared the relationship equivalent of war on each other.  We had no need for such behaviour. Just like an identical twin knows what the other is thinking we both knew it was over for us before thoughts became words, we had become like students who had inadvertently slipped into adult life while still sharing the same house before our second cohabiting anniversary.  With the wisdom of hindsight what we thought was love turned out to be something different,  something totally different - the feeling we greedily consumed and accepted as love was only lust. Our decision to part seem...