The Lists #4 by Clinton Crockett Peters

Seven Ways to Tell You’re in a Paul Verhoeven Film

1: You take your shirt off and aren’t wearing a bra. You also smile during a co-ed shower.

2: You’re Kevin Bacon. As soon as you turn invisible, you go right for the breast of the woman you hate.

3: You always cock your head sideways when you’re thinking, even if it’s to wonder why so many women don’t seem to be wearing bras. Or why a giant beetle is spewing lava.

4: Two breasts aren’t enough.

5: You think flapping in a pool like a desperate minnow on a hook while riding a tasteless slime ball is a good time.

6: The real you isn’t the one who has committed unspeakable acts of violence and genocide, but the one who is desperate to prove himself and follow the clairvoyance of a Sesame Street reject growing out of a man’s chest. The host man will later become a deranged general and on a distant planet inform everyone that the once-thought mindless insect enemy can, “Suck your brains out!”

7: You’re part man, part metal. But all cop. And shoot between the legs of a screaming maiden, instead of over her shoulder, or around her torso, or wait for a better shot, or tell her to ‘Grab your ankles, lady!’ You’re all cop and fire phallically true.

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A former wilderness guide, Clinton Crockett Peters (Episode 115) has an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow. He is a Teaching Fellow pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of North Texas and has work published or forthcoming in Upstreet, American Literary Review, Antimuse, Los Angeles Review, and Ethos. He writes regularly for AMRI.