Moch showed us a slide: a photograph of a rough piece of ground. Besides the scraggly grass and twigs and dirt there was a dandelion bloom and nearby a bottle cap. “Juxtaposition of entities disparate but not,” he said. “Get your paints and brushes and go to it.”

I had several ideas. Two days later I showed Harker what I’d done.

“Interesting,” he said. “What do you call it?”

“Blowjob,” I said.

Harker thought about this a while. “I guess it makes sense,” he concluded. “I mean you’re blowing the dandelion bloom, kind of the opposite of drinking from the bottle. Kind of a meager dandelion bloom, though. And the stem is pretty short, too. As for the bottle, I hope you didn’t swallow the cap.” He laughed.

“No, I bit it off,” I told him.

“Whoa.”

“Yup, spit it out like a watermelon seed.”

“And the cap’s going to grow into a new bottle of beer or soda or whatever?” he said. He laughed again. “But I have to say, to me it doesn’t give the full flavor of ‘Blowjob.’”

“I figured you’d say something as clueless as that,” I said. “That’s why, just for you, I did an alternative version. Do you deem the, uh, stem sufficient?”

“Holy fuck!” Harker exclaimed.

“Holy and Fuck—disparate but not,” I said. “Maybe I need to do a third version.”