Best Lead of the Month

'Back when I was young and broke and back when the girls I liked were broke as well, I used to steal gas from the service station I worked for and try to convince my little princesses that driving around in circles in the dark, sharing hits from a papery weak joint and glugs from a screw-top bottle of warm peach wine constituted a lavish big night out. The cost of those dates was rarely more than five dollars, but my favorite dates were even cheaper. I'd appear after school at one of the two Dairy Queens where my tawny foxes worked and pepper them with doltish jokes and stories while they pumped sludgy hot fudge onto sundaes or spritzed Fantastik into linty cracks where the freezers met the floors. If I hung around long enough, my girls would pitch me a Peanut Buster Parfait, the most expensive item on the board, and banish me to my parked Chevy until quitting time.'

--from The Price of Love, by the Montana-based novelist Walter Kirn, in the February issue of the fashion magazine Elle. Which proves, once again, that great writing can be found in some surprising places, and that you should give those stray mags the benefit of the doubt upon encountering them in the doctor's office. They just might surprise you. For earlier leads of the month, click here, here, here and here.