"I went into the kitchen; poured a cup of the java whose aroma had drifted out of my apartment, rode the fog of dawn down a flight of stairs and slipped under the front door of my obnoxious neighbor, Greta Greenhorn."

More of this descriptive languge, it’s great.

More showing versus telling i.e. this sentence,

“What are you doing?” Emma said softly. She always spoke softly especially when her voice was still wrapped around a dream."

could be showing by rearranging like this,

“What are you doing?” Emma’s voice was still wrapped around a dream."

Here we are not told she has a soft voice, we can see it.

"Finally feeling satisfied, I sat on my couch looking out the window watching the far off headlights of a few scattered cars traveling along the Pacific Coast Highway." A metaphor here would be great. What do the cars look like? What do the headlights remind you of?

I like this, "These kids suffered from a variety of emotional maladies with names ranging form attention deficit disorder to grand theft auto." Using grand theft auto really adds a twist and gets the reader’s attention.

"For the past two and a half years, I have taught, and I use that phrase lightly, there. Day in and day out, I would drink my coffee, kiss my Emma goodbye, walk to my Toyota, drive down Abbot Kinney, stopping at the habit, order a blueberry scone to go. I’d head out the door, usually stopping to join the acopella homeless group for a few bars of “We Are The World.” Hurry back to my car, burn rubber all the way to Washington Boulevard, turn right at the corner where the sidewalk was still painted with blood stains from last years drive-by shooting, get on the 405 freeway, exit at the Florence Manchester exit, make a right just past Burger King and park."

This is brilliantly written. The reader is able to take that drive with the narrator. We know that he has driven this so many times that he could probably do it blindfolded. The key here is that you didn’t tell us that, you showed us. Great job on this!

"…thought George Washington was the mayor of South America," seems to be a stretch here. Maybe not Washington or South America. Try something a little harder.

Here’s another example of the above, "They often brought guns to school, but thank god, they couldn’t figure out how they worked." I get the sense that these kids aren’t that stupid if they know gang signs…

The sex scene is descriptive, but I think it’s sort of a letdown when the narrator reports he calls his private part Oscar after the hot dog. The barking thing is funny, yet not exactly believable with the knock on the door…

The story definately has a twist. While this plot tool is a great one, I do not see it serving a purpose here. The begining seems to have greater meaning than the ending. Something is missing.

I would recommend fleshing this story out more (no pun intended). Why are the two parts related? What is the distance between the two? Beauty? Or that they are both a perversion of humankind? This could be the start of a great story. Keep working it.

-Ann