Hi - this is like a joke fable that blurred my attention after five 
lines. Sorry but thanks for sending it and good luck!

Just because you have Word on your computer doesn't mean you can just type 
something on a file and send it out. Not to sound like a condescending 
a-hole, but it doesn't really seem like much effort has been expended or 
much pressure exerted on the language or much thought put into trying to 
affect a reader you've never met. So. Thanks and sorry and good luck.

I am sorry to take so long and then even more sorry to pass on this without 
much explanation - sorry, sorry, sorry - just that I've totally slacked on 
reading submissions for a while due to sickness after healthy involvement in 
the world for a while and now I'm looking at many many submissions and 
really just looking for ones that totally assert themselves and say accept 
me, my friend, or maybe even something more brash. I think what happened 
here with the beginning of your story is that I stopped, thinking about Mike, about naming characters "Mike" instead of Spalding or Sterling or Snickerhuatonton or President Bush. And then gay-apparalled 
stopped me. Made me wonder about Xmas. Gay elves? David Sedaris? And then I sort of skimmed down and read intermittently and then hit reply and started typing, and before I finished typing I also suggested that maybe you should stick to the "left justify" mode which doesn't make all those weird varied spaces between words. But thanks again for sending this and sorry for my quick response and not-so-careful consideration - it's really like what I do is scan the language for its writerly DNA and if it's a match for the site I read much more carefully and if it's not really a match . . . anyway - thanks again - and best of luck getting this one posted somewhere!

Okay. I read it again, closely and slowly, knowing what you told me about 
its origin, while sipping chicken soup on my birthday. I am an old man 
now. And maybe because in the northeast we have this thing called
"wintertime" that makes one dark and depressive and sometimes slow to coddle
whimsy, especially as one gets older and colder and becomes more aware of 
the super-sad state of the world, the corruption and inequalities and 
generally accepted idiocies etc, maybe because of all this I am a bit 
resistant to the idea of a breakfast burglar? The song I have up on myspace
right now is called "a whorehouse is any house" and it's similar to the 
cuddler story. Oddly, right now in philly there's a foot fetishist who late 
at night holds up women and massages and kisses their feet . . . But I guess
what I like about this story is the third section, after the introductory 
disorientation with Martha and the clarifying quote about the narrator's 
history, when it gets more into the father-son dynamics, but it doesn't 
really go too far into it, and sadly sort of relies on the semi-typical 
queer stuff. It seems to this reader at least that you had a bright idea 
based on something you'd heard, something importantly that you know 
about but the reader does not, but then when you relate that information I 
don't quite feel the enthusiasm you must have had at first for the idea, I'm 
not infected with it at least, in part because the story seems sort of 
fragmented, constructed in four parts maybe instead of an integrated whole? 
Or maybe it didn't seem to engage me enough from the beginning, or maybe I'm 
a little more resistant to what seems mainly whimsical now more than ten 
years ago, or maybe the serious elements I'm engaged by in the story seemed 
dragged down by the whimsicality and the weirdness of the idea of a 
breakfast burglar? Does that make sense? I'd like to love this -- as I love 
you and what you've done -- but you are not this piece of writing, and if 
you're to have any love for me you've got to respect that I am not going to 
be anything other than 100% earnest about my response. I'd be an asshole in 
the long run, otherwise, if kindly on this my special day . . . I have three 
or four stories I've worked 4000 hours on, stories seven times 
longer than what you sent, stories I've submitted everywhere and have been 
sort of semi-close (or at least apparently closely read) at some of the best places and other places too but no one ultimately accepts them and they 
should totally freakin' be published, of course (!), but finally it comes 
down to the response of one or two people -- and there's nothing a writer 
can do about it but work and keep sending out the things you 
love and feel confident about no matter the response by fuckers like 
me! So. Sorry, again, but to say anything other than what's above would be 
totally immoral.

Hi - thanks for sending something again after all these years we were sort of in a semi-sleeping website silence while at the midwestern gradual school. I really like the attention you give to the old-timey language - was sort of amazed at how consistently you found the right sort of faux-french adjectives - but I guess for the site I'd maybe like for something like this to be a bit more explicitly profane and paced a bit quicker? Thanks for sending something again, though, and definitely try with other things whenever.

Hi - this one won't really work for the olde Eyeshot - it's clear, 
definitely, but it's primarily about domestic relations related to onions, 
and while that is perfectly understandable and laudable as a lauching point 
for what might have been an unpredictable exploration of stenches, this one 
sort of wallowed in vidalialand and didn't really seem to take the reader 
anywhere, right? Think about the person on the other side of the screen -- 
not me -- but those so-called "readers" - how do you want them to respond to your stuff? How do you want to move and manipulate them, make their minds go all moo-moo-mmmm? Got me? I think I'm saying that I think the issue here is not in the execution but more in the instinct. I suggest you challenge your 
conception of what you think a story should be, or more so, what it should
DO to a reader.

I think the thing is to compare what you write to things that you like to 
read. If you do that, really do it side by side, you'll see a serious 
difference between what you sent and what's sort of expected, even in AM 
Homes or Carver or Lipsyte, things considered spare . . . Good 
luck - keep at it - all that.

My daily tarot e-mail just said this, "The Knave of Pentacles card suggests 
that my power today lies in recognition. I am enthusiastic about, and take 
pride in my new found validation or potential and will use it as a motivator 
towards greater things. My asset is self-worth." So thanks for fulfilling 
that prophecy via appreciation of receiving a semi-earnest/quick response. 
Admittedly, since Eyeshot's been inconsistently active for like two or three 
years, we don't receive as many subs these days, so it's easier to respond. 
Definitely send anything whenever you'd like and we'll try to respond real 
quick like. Please use this message as a motivator for greater things, as 
will we.

At first I thought you took some pages from a Frank McCourt memoir, 
copied them, then added a dash of Pac Man. I liked a lot of this, the parts 
that seemed most authenthic about life in Dublin, staring into the fire 
and the conflict between helping others or not (as well as the potential 
depression related to not helping). But then there were little whimsical flashes, 
like you didn't want this to be all that serious, though it seemed like it 
wanted to be more serious than it was, had a certain gravity pulling it 
nicely toward seriousness, but something in you kept popping up and 
winking about lesbian intrigue or Pac Man etc, undercutting the 
established tone. I like that it's more substantial and not as impatient in 
terms of superquick movement, but this still doesn't quite feel right for the olde site. I liked a lot of it and at times wavered toward being more positive but the ending sort of just nudged me toward writing this little explanatory note. Thanks again and sorry and good luck elsewhere!

Hi - thanks for sending something - my question for you, I guess, would be why bother? what's the point? is orgasming in someone's mouth enough? what else is there to this? could there be more? can the simple little sensationalist thing of the word orgasm suffice to make anyone wanna post this or read it and then walk away thinking what? The world is not a very beautiful place - well, the natural world is beautiful, but I mean the world we've made isn't always so hot, lots of sorrow and ugliness and self-induced disease and evil ideation, so maybe it's one's duty not to add to all that crap, to make things more beautiful, and by "beautiful" I think I mean elegantly complicated, ecstatic, open, elusive, varied, alive but also caught in amber . . .

There should probably be more scene, with description intergrated into it. Your description is fine, but there's too much too early and the girl you're describing isn't moving - she's just being drawn but not really coming to life, got me? And then you only sort of hint at scenes that don't really exist in particular, described worlds? So I had trouble seeing it. It felt real, though, which is great. But I think you might want to consider trying to up the narrative oomph, meaning tell a
story, make the characters come alive as they move through physical space, 
and try to hypnotize the reader with aerodynamic language so the reader can 
see and feel things that don't exist, that is, imagine shit. Yeah? I don't 
really read things looking for a certain type of story, I just sort of scan 
the story's literary DNA and then either engage it or skim it. I'm really 
good at doing that after years of this. I tend to accept things that I read 
all the way through, that get my attention in a tasteful, interesting way 
and drag me through the story till the end. If my mind wanders after the 
seventh sentence, all is lost. Hope that helps.

Hi - thanks for the kind words - i read missed connections on craigslist all 
the time and this could be posted on there maybe - i don't think i'm gonna 
post it though, but thanks for sending it and good luck.

Hey - when i taught creative writing i had a rule that kids couldn't write about sex, drugs, rock and roll, murder, death, or perversion. I said this because if i didn't everyone would write about drugs and drink and death. There's everything else to write about! I think you write relatively well about drugs and friendship and all, but also maybe stylistically what I was sensing was that I couldn't really see or smell or sense these kids, and that's what's really important - also the language seemed sort of totally anonymous, which actually serves you well but maybe isn't exactly what I'm looking for? Anyway - thanks for sending this and good luck with it and send something else whenever.

Thanks for sending this and sorry for the slowish reply. I've been reading 
too many submissions today and have rejected every one, in part from spite, 
since I should be outside enjoying the saturday but am instead inside, a wee 
bit hungover, not enjoying submissions but getting them out of the way - I 
enjoyed reading what you sent. I've spent the last few hours reading things 
that didn't feel real at all, stories with characters named "Mike" who go to the dentist etc, and it was refreshing to read this and it feels absolutely real, believable, which is what Twain said differentiated fiction from non-fiction (fiction must be absolutely believable), and while what you sent is almost surely non-fiction, it's also fiction, which is fact arranged in an artful way. Again, I like what you sent and would like to read something else if you'd ever like to send it. I don't think I'm going to post what you sent this time because it's enjoyable and authentic and yet maybe a bit too offhanded or like excerpts from an online travel journal or something - it had definitely activated my voyeuristic capacities but maybe there could be more to it, or maybe it feels a little too easy to forget a second after the pleasureable experience? Anyway - thanks for sending this and sorry and send more?!

Your sister is totally smokin'. Your story's first paragraph is good, and so is your language, the rhythm, the aerodynamics of it. After the first paragraph or so, though, this one needs to take off, to keep moving, think of a rocket going into space, this one takes off and then floats instead of intermittently being boosted by another blast of unexpected awesomeness. I thought I'd accept this after the first paragraph, and this thought coming after rejecting a few dozen in a row that really have my writerly spirit sinking, and so I was psyched at first but then feel like you can put more effort into this one or can send me something else now or later or whenever, but in general I like your sister, thanks for sending the picture, though maybe she's got an unfortunate nostril issue, and I like your prose, its urgency, its reality, I guess. So send more stuff!

Hematite? I had to look that word up. Thanks for sending this. It's clear but maybe too spare for what I tend to like to post. Have you ever read A Sport and a Pastime? Damn that's some good erotic writing . . . Thanks for sending this and sorry and send more whenever, maybe a bit shorter?

YOU ARE SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE! WHICH IS A GOOD THING! WE LIKE ENTHUSIASM AND ENERGY! I WOULD SURELY LIKE TO DRINK ESPRESSO WITH YOU AND RUN AROUND AND CHAT AND THEN HAVE ACROBATICSPORTSEX. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO READING WHAT YOU'VE WRITTEN IT'S LIKE TOO MUCH Y'KNOW LIKE TOO MUCH ENERGY AND ALL OVER THE PLACENESS AND SPORTSEX WHEN WHAT WE THINK WE REALLY LIKE TO SEE IS MORE CONTROLLED ENERGY NOT MANIA BUT SOMETHING MORE LIKE DIRECTED FOCUSED EFFUSIONS OF FORWARDLY PROPELLED PROSE IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN AND MAYBE SOME LIGHT PETTING AND SLOW CARESSES UNDER A WARM COMFORTER ON A COOL EARLY AUTUMN RAINY MORNING IF YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

There's something about your language that seems really young, an innocence to it. What you sent isn't really a story. It's a handful of sentences sort of about a dog, like you maybe read some Lydia Davis and then saw a dog and started writing? Maybe I'd suggest to really only bother writing something that seems necessary to write, not to screw around with anything other than what must be written, and also while writing keep in mind that you're trying to affect someone you've never seen, either make them laugh or agitated or randy or sad? There's an innocent manneredness to what you sent that seems like a barrier between you and writing something good, or enjoying and gaining anything from the whole process of writing maybe? Write because you have something to say, is what I'm saying, and try to make it affect another person. But thanks for sending this and hope all's well!

Nice breast pic! But in the third sentence: "Sometimes he’d be stood there" . . . That ain't right! But thanks for the titty. And good luck!

Thanks for sending this but I gots to say sorry man 'cause this is maybe 
like a little too quick or spare or ADD'd or something in a way that 
distracted me - I guess I sort of like to see things that hypnotize me into reading, that assert an authority and an execution of language and sort of propel it all with narrative oomph? But thanks again for sending it and sorry and good luck with it.

Thanks for sending this and sorry for taking a month to look at it! We suck. I suck. You don't suck, but I'm gonna pass on this story because we don't do dental. Good luck getting it posted somewhere and thanks again for considering Eyeshot.

Thanks for submitting something - I tend to really have terrible trouble with things that start with people in bed sleeping etc, like Proust even, and I guess I'm not the biggest fan of stories featuring "the man". Granted, this is "unfinished" but still. Thanks again for submitting and sorry and better luck next time.

Thanks for sending something and sorry for letting the weekend pass 
without responding. There's a lot to like in this story, especially the 
parts that feel real like the taxi ride or the repeated scenes that don't 
really go anywhere, as scenes in real life so often fizzle, so there's a mimetic thing that I like about this throughout, but at the same time I'm not so sure if it really goes anywhere in a satisfying way for this reader, which might intentionally be the case, but if so maybe the language could come up a notch or two, otherwise what's the pleasure in reading the existential unease of the sensitive urban male, similar stories I've written, autobiographical maybe to a fault, maybe too filled with reflections of life more than an organization and deployment of that life 
into something maybe a bit more meaningful than real life, AKA "art". Thomas 
Wolfe says that fiction is fact selected, arranged, and charged with 
purpose, and I think this story doesn't quite feel propelled or charged with 
a purpose other than depicting unsatisfactory encounters, rather consistently 
and often well. I kept looking for an alternative starting point, since there was something I liked about it and though I might be able to post an excerpt, but each scene, selfconsciously I think, edged away from intrigue or development, a series of episodes that stream together, segued with moments where the dude is alone, thinking . . . So. With all that said, I'm psyched you sent this and hope you send other stuff in the future, maybe shorter and maybe more committed either to performative language spiels or a flowing, engaging narrative? Or something else. Say hi to the old neighborhood for me. And check out Beat the Devil at Union Pool on Friday - a diminutive Indian lady who plays harmonium and reminds you of Morrison or Iggy Pop.

The bit about the vibrator enjoying cave exploration is pretty clever but I 
agree with Mr. Zuniga that this is maybe just a bit too senselessly or 
mildly amusingly graphic. I'm just not sure who would appreciate it or find 
it funny, so I'll thank you and pass on it.

Hi - thanks for sending something - this is pretty straightforwardly erotic, 
without for example calling those body parts anything other than their most 
common names, dick, clit, pussy, and thereby maybe misses an opportunity for 
some fun. The last line is great. Some others are pretty tender and it seems 
you're always pretty attentive, other than a typo or two. But I think I'll 
pass on it 'cause it's maybe a bit too sexy instead of a bit more of the 
last-line stuff.

My first impression this time was that the guy's name can't be Carver, or it 
could be but I think then you'd need to change the prostitute's name to 
Paley or Lessing or Sontag. The larger issue related to that name I think is 
that it never really feels real, always feels like a story to me, which is 
fine if it then feels more like a fable, like a tale, but this sort of feels 
like a story to me, one that has some wonderful moments, sharp evocative 
lines like when it's mentioned that he was thankful for all the TV he'd 
watched, implying that the conversation was nostalgic and not so heady, but 
I guess it doesn't quite feel to me like it's something that I can really SEE, because what I was seeing the whole time was the writing, the story's storyness, and the goal I guess is to get the reader to see past the language while simultaneously admiring it. Hmm. Anyway. Thanks a lot for sending this. I'm definitely going to post things more frequently, sometimes more, considering I have some more time and would like to have an active Eyeshot back out in the world. Thanks again and sorry and send some more stuff whenever.

Hi - thanks for sending something - my first impression is that this is a 
little long and also a little overwritten - though I admire and support 
highly detailed writing, it's a tightrope - how do you write with imagery 
and abstractions and piled-up modifiers without stalling a sentence's 
essential aerodynamics? The thing to do I think is to be really careful of 
certain words like espied and tumescent and others than sound high-falutin 
or stodgy - if you purposefully overwrite, the key I think is to choose high and low words and make sure that your number-one concern stylistically is forward propulsion. And that brings in the whole thing about content, since you also want to be able to see through the words to what they signify, right? So. Anyway - thanks again for submitting and sorry and hope you get this posted or published elsewhere.

Hola - I like the way you write. The first part of this is mainly consciousness presentation stuff and then the second part is dramatized. At first I thought that maybe the first part didn't have quite enough glue to it, meaning my eyes weren't quite sticking maybe because there were some semi-whimsical moments with hermit crabs and filet mignon innuendo(?) and sexing up mermaids. I thought maybe the beginning could be shortened or streamlined a little for posting on the web? And then the story continued on and pretty much totally shifted from an engaging if not quite totally sticky representation of consciousness to dialogue that I wasn't totally interested in reading, so I skimmed to the end. The langauge is attentive and errorless and all, but I guess, right now reading this, I wasn't all that into the situation or the world those words expressed? Anyway. Thanks for sending something and good luck finding a home for it. The sensibility (mermaid sex, waiting on the beach for a raft, etc) matches eyeshot's historical tendencies, but maybe next time send something a little shorter and maybe a bit more balanced in terms of consciousness and dramatization? Or not. Thanks again and sorry.

Hi - I really liked when the lights went off and the cherry of the cigarette could be seen better. I think the whole thing might need to be like that, actually -- intensely focused images! -- otherwise, well, it's a story about a boy jacking off looking at some girl-next-door love forlorn, and while the language is serviceable it seems to me maybe not totally honed enough to pull this off, that is, to keep the "so what?" question from entering the reader's brain and getting all tangled up in evoked images. What else? I like the general instinct but maybe less so the ambition and oomph and so I think I'll pass on it and thank you for sending something and ask you to send something again some time and I'll also wish you well in a final sentence of considerable and-conjoined length and thank you again and apologize a first time for the same-day service of this potentially annoying, earnest response. Happy new year and remember it will soon be springtime.

Hi - thanks for sending something . . . Not sure what to say about the story. I liked the bit about taking sleeping pills to sleep in the sack with Grace. I was a little worried about the semi-demented repetition of her name to begin many sentences, when after the title I was pretty sure that the pronoun "she," if repeatedly used, might refer to this lady. A few typos, including one at the end of the first paragraph. Reminded me at times of some of Tao Lin's simplicities, but then words like televisually etc sort of undercut that. The return of the "poignant" tomato sauce thing at the end, hmm . . . So. Yeah. I guess I must thank you once again and apologize and thank you and apologize and hope that the swiftness of the response overcomes any annoyance. I'm an oft-rejected writer and absolutely freakin' abhore the form-letter received after six months, even though I receive them often. Good luck with everything and say hello to something in Cambridge for me, like the falafel at the Middle East?

Thanks for deciding to start writing and also thanks for sending this to 
Eyeshot. It's pretty smooth and sort of funny and definitely makes sense. I 
laughed about shirtless Iggy entering Starbucks and Mom's Moody Blues 
remark. Overall, I liked it, thought it had a good instinct and friendly 
tone, but I guess maybe I also thought there could have been a little more 
than mentioning a rock-related coincidence at a Starbucks to someone twenty years younger. Your language is enjoyable and clean but maybe you could crank the ambition engines a bit higher next time -- or maybe all my suggestions swerve toward fictional revamping anyway -- or maybe, even for a non-fictional piece, it'd be cool to get away from Iggy and focus maybe a bit more on the slow/soft trauma of aging, of losing possession of the stuff that had once been so totally yours, that soundtracked life, etc. Or maybe not. Again, I liked this okay but maybe would have appreciated some more oomph? Maybe try http://barrelhousemag.com? Good luck and thanks again for sending something and happy New Year.

Hi - thanks for sending something - I guess the first thing I can say is that it's too long for what I'd like to post now, and the second thing is that no matter the length I might not be all that psyched to post language like "He looked at the girl's breasts again. They were big and soft." I don't know what to do with that. I agree with the old adage that writing, somewhat, is about making the familiar seem miraculous and the miraculous seem familiar. I'm not quite sure what this story is doing, with this dude named "Hell". He doesn't feel real. And yet he doesn't feel totally unreal, either. It's like he's caught in this unreal reality that is right now comprised of what might be called "the stuff of storyworld". Granted, I didn't read all 17 pages, but the tone, the atmosphere, the sense of the language, that is, the things I really look for in any writing, right now seems a little underdone while maybe the characters and the story and its world are not quite focused and made material just yet? Anyway. Thanks for sending something. I really appreciate it. And hope this quick and honest response is somewhat helpful, even if you totally disagree. It'll at least give you something to think about. Keep at it. Sounds like ridiculous/lame advice, but it's really all that matters. Sitting thy ass down and making more of this stuff till you create real unrealities or something like that. Good luck -- 

Hi - thanks for sending this - I guess I like the instinct of the writing, appreciate the time you spent on it, and would like to encourage you to keep at. There's something good going on here, but I guess this one reader who just tried to look at it couldn't really get into it, in part b/c of the names, in part b/c of the situation. I guess it felt like a story, like you're entusiastic about the writing bits, the physical act of it, the form, but haven't yet totally harnassed the content yet? Who knows? Anyway. Good luck with it and hope you find a home for it soon.

Hello - thanks for sending something again -  I like what you sent okay - I like the repetition and the self-awareness (passive-aggressive post passive phrases) and the writing colony stuff - it seems like a sort of exercise, maybe, sort of self-consciously so - I don't think I'll post it because maybe I'd like to post some things in this new late-to-mid-decade era that are maybe clearer and more flowing and entertaining, less elusive. It's real well written, 'cept for a minor typo midway, but I guess I'd like to post some things with maybe a bit more oomph? Anyway. Send more stuff whenever. And thanks again. 

Hey there - thanks for sending this story and pic. I tend to post most of the pics, so forget about that. The story, I think I can say a few quick and hopefully helpful things about: the first would be the second tense thing, which immediately sort of distances things for this reader at least - the second tense tends to best be used for describing really traumatic events, i think, b/c then the distancing seems more like a psychological plausible tactic than simply a fictionalizing technique, like this is basically about "I", but if you say "you," it'll feel more fictional and less like a diary or blog. The second thing has to do with your instinct at this point, I think. And i write the following totally out of experience having written things like this when I was younger: of course it might be "total fiction" carefully crafted to seem like non-fiction, but still. I think you might want to always keep in mind why a reader who has possibly at one time before been 23 and out of college and facing life and maybe has some distance on such an era might want to read this presentation of the same thing, esp. when the actions or details here are sort of defused over time. For a story like this to engage me, at least, I think it'd need to be more focused in time, a pivotal moment, not a sort of continual recent past involving these semi-blandish occurences. I might have missed something exciting or engaging or peculiar, but I only did so b/c I skimmed after a while. Why? Because it's not focused in time and therefore there's more pressure for the prose to entertain or hold the reader's attention, and while the prose is fine, it's not tense enough or interesting enough really to activate this reader's interest in the situation, which isn't really much of a concentrated or dramatic one, right? So. With all that said, I'd maybe just think about considering the reader more and focusing things. Make a world come alive though precise sensory description. Make some people, other than some shadow self, come alive. But mainly always ask yourself how this story might possibly interest a psychologically and emotionally (semi-)mature reader. That's all for now. Good luck with everything. 

This is like the sixth submission I've read in three days that has involved the dentist. Something is very wrong with the world if the world's writers think that writing about the dentist office is gonna turn readers on. There's an entire world out there, and yet writers write about the dentist office, as though there is no other event worth writing about. I need to update the submission guidelines posthaste! No dentist stories! Otherwise, you write very clearly, but also I think you might want to think about syntax, like starting sentences too often with "When," which creates a sort of predictable feeling in readers that can be underminded in fun ways like a joke setup, but otherwise if the second clause ain't unpredictable, eyes glaze. Anyway. Thanks again for the kind words and thanks for sending this - I hope you get it posted somewhere and I hope you one day try Eyeshot again with something about going to see The Hunger Artist.