Those three old ladies, those babushkas cloaked in fur. They exited the restaurant cackling, arm in arm in arm. Still, two of them slipped in the slush, and one fell on her ass. You’d think they’d know how to walk in it, what with their combined years. But they didn’t care, those drunk old beauties.…
Milena was my partner for the ice breaker. I was fine with Milena, but I had my eyes on Agnieska, or Kate. We had to share our most memorable experience as teachers. The one where we deeply touched a student, I guess. I guess the point was to get us in the mood for touching…
Consider the arrival of a new tenant to a basement apartment. He is a young man in his late twenties. He has a goatee and sideburns, because the year is 1998, and most young men of that time had those things on their face. He wears jeans and a t-shirt, has very few belongings, all…
Blood and pieces of bone begin to slide up the bedroom wall. A sonic boom sucks out buckshot, sealing holes left behind. A pasty, overweight man in his late forties sits up in bed. Splatter flies off sheets. The back of his head pieces together, a jigsaw puzzle of skull and scalp. He leans forward,…
Sitting at his keyboard, Caulfield could not see around the soft, gray walls of his cubicle. But when he rolled back and turned to his left, he could see across the aisle into Johnson’s. He could see Johnson’s shoulder, the arc of Johnson’s back, the chair under Johnson’s ass. He could also see out the…
It’s like the New England Patriots calling themselves “Brady.” If every player cut their hair and dressed like Brady.
I, Walt, do sincerely apologize for the terrible title. I’ve never been much good at titles. But it’s true. I’m deep down in it. I didn’t even know the Get Back movie was coming. A good friend of mine, known to some as Ice Drummer, sent me a link to the trailer just a few…
She rarely got hacked off, but flag burning was on the news a time too many and she blew. Cried out how people shouldn’t burn that flag, they should get down on their knees and kiss it. Her sentence, like a lot of her sentences, started with no. Like a place-holder, with different meanings according…
I asked her once how she could smoke a cigarette and still taste so sweet. She just smiled and said “I’m cool like that.” I laughed, pulled her close but not close enough. I needed her inside my insides, her soul in my soul. And that’s what love is. The feeling of needing to be…
We think the neighbors are into porn. Watching it, making it, getting paid for it, something. They aren’t roofers, that’s for sure. They had the van repainted for roofing, as if they’d legitimately revamped their business. And they tried to recruit us as roofers, in a multi-level marketing kind of way. But they aren’t into…
She lived with us in that old house I grew up in, I know that now. She seemed to come and go, though I never saw her. And when we went, when we moved out after all those years and headed up north, I heard her silently pleading, screaming don’t go. I froze, alone in…
The businessmen rise early, dress smartly in tight pants and fleece vests. They map out their day, plan phone calls, taking care to sequence them properly. Many calls depend on prior ones, the results of previous conversations. Who reports to whom, who must know what by what time. Follow ups and proactive reachings-out. Partnerships and…
I dreamed about Kate last night. We sat behind her, me and the family, my wife and our girls, in Poland, in an auditorium, no leg room between our hard wooden seats and the ones in front, one of which was hers, Kate’s. As the massive crowd let out, outside, the girls ran ahead, as…
After he won I was in shock for I-don’t-know how long. Weeks. Months. The world felt bizarre, surreal. I remember looking at people who looked like Republicans. I remember eating lunch in restaurants with people who looked like business people eating lunch. I’d come to know they were not to be trusted, but I didn’t…
In Japan, there is a place called the Suicide Forest. It is well-known. Many people go there to… well, there’s no need to describe what they do there. But there are photographs of tattered necktie remnants hanging from tree branches. Bones below them half-covered with earth and vines. For example. In the 1990s, a style…
We were in Mexico, you and I, visiting your family, officially, but looking for your future wife, unofficially. You were, I mean — not me. Not that it matters. Anyway, you were lying on your bed, headphones on, listening to the new Flaming Lips CD, Clouds Taste Metallic, at my request. I asked what you thought.…
I met with a specialist. An expert in her field. Her field is a big one, many experts like her running around inside of it. Each of them with a certain area of expertise. Some of these experts overlap a bit, some of them are pretty far removed. No one knows everything. I’d been looking forward…
waltbox 