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[rayheinrich]

gj said: "made the last bit up just to disgust us."

Didn't make it up, Kathy really did that. (I did it back too.)
Love has its gross rituals that are proofs of intimacy; I was
just relating one. I guess Kathy's and my threshold for gross
is higher as we mainly thought it was funny. (To put it in proportion:
oral sex just HAS to be MUCH grosser than snot.)


gj said: "In my early poetry-writing days I would attempt to write
a serious poem...but then would put a comic punch-line on the end
(because, I suppose, I didn't want people to pour scorn on my writing
and so I pipped them at the post, so to speak)...is this what you are
doing?

Wasn't doing that on this one, but yes, I have done similar things in the
past. I remember getting SO pissed at surprise endings that I began putting
them at the front as a sarcastic joke. But it worked so well I added it to
my toolkit. My wife (one of our intimate rituals is farting contests) says
that telling the reader who the murderer is at the start is a time-honored
device in mystery fiction. It relieves the reader's obsession with a resolution
and allows her/him to concentrate on the story.