The shuttle hurtles toward the sky, impossibly big, with impossible power, and we hurtle with it. There only sound in the universe is the crackle of voices from the onboard intercom and Mission Control. We lean toward the television. This is it, after all. This is where we are going. We are all going to escape this small town. We are all going to be astronauts.
Read MoreThe movie began like all Disney movies do. A privileged yet bleak childhood punctuated by loss. Thea doesn’t have any issues with Disney; she’s quite moved by a legacy of female helplessness and sacrifice.
Read MoreAfter 73 days of 140 miles of mind-numbing asphalt lined by pines and oaks and cedars, ink and paper and computer screens deciding if I am rich or poor or worthy of Uncle Sam’s largesse, over two months of waiting to be told if my kids can eat or get their teeth cleaned or get paranoia-inducing vaccines, and answering stupid questions …
Read MoreI once dated a woman whose parents had, when she was a child, bought her a Stradivarius violin. My knowledge of those violins, back then, was minimal—what they cost, their rarity—but I did know they were luxury items, that she’d been musically spoiled and would laugh playing any other instrument. They would, of course, all be inferior.
Read MoreI was freezing. I’d refused to trade my black leather / jacket for a coat that would cover my pregnant belly. / The gusts from Lake Erie were bitter. You held / out a candle, to warm my hands by. That was the December / Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon.
Read MoreHere is the good uncle, everyone’s favorite uncle, studious former all-star big man on campus, the kind of guy who picks up leaves one at a time until the lawn is a green carpet, uninterrupted by flecks of dead matter. Now the good uncle is telling a joke or passing around barbecue-flavored potato chips, but later he will be in front of the television set, forehead wrinkled in concentration while he tells children who aren’t his own to be quiet …
Read MoreYou keep trying to take advantage of a technicality—you doubt your own modesty (something valid, unreturnable, righteous, delayed). Sharp words, a quick apology—infringement you notice, adapt easily, without complaint. You are a good sport who’s asked to play, to join.
Read MoreYou knew there was something else, you knew there was something else, & so you waited…until I confessed that he had pressured me into sending a nude photo & then you shattered each of my DVDs in your hands, twisting, snapping, one at a time, in front of me, & kept going until everything I cared about was in pieces on the floor between us & then: you smiled.
Read MoreWhen I think of the radio man now, I think of Neil Young first: how his eyes lit up when we appraised the genius of Young’s melodies—nostalgia and grunge mixed with a dark abdomen of story.
Read MoreWhen I lived in Lubbock, Texas in my twenties, I used to wake to knocks on my bedroom door in the middle of the night. The knocks angry, insistent, three, sometimes four. Knock knock knock knock. I’d jerk awake, stare at the thin door made visible by the streetlight outside my window, my breath quick.
Read MoreIf someone said they were going to kill themselves, we kept them on the phone until they promised not to or until the police came or until they actually did kill themselves, which they never did. I made $13 an hour. We sat in a small white room. It was hard to keep track of the days and then it was hard to keep track of the months.
Read MoreIn August 2016, I left Seattle. My home of ten years, the Pacific ocean, the place where I made countless friends and met my wife and taught myself how to write and became a father and established the beginnings of an artistic career and truly, finally, maybe figured out who the fuck I am.
Read MoreThe Virgin Mary is peeking out from behind the edge of the bookshelf, praying for rescue, Anne of Green Gables looming large at her back. I’m six or seven, small enough to kneel beside the ceramic nativity on the shelf of cupboards that spans the length of the room and props up shelves of books. It is Christmastime, and Mary has become the heroine of my small hands.
Read MoreI came out in the only way I knew how, which is an Irish Catholic way of saying that I lied: I told her I was ‘newly’ attracted to a boy in my high school freshman class, but I insisted I was still straight. Insisted. I treated this same-sex attraction like a fresh, anomalous thing, even though this desire was the norm for me, constant and moving in all directions.
Read MoreWe were fifteen. We’d snuck into a place we weren’t allowed to be. We’d gone inside my house, I don’t remember why, and the lights were out, my parents not at home. The only light came slanted through the windows. Chris played the piano in the living room while Paul roamed the upstairs hall. What song did he play?
Read MoreIt’s my job to call on Christmas. Mine to call on Thanksgiving. Valentine’s day is optional, but I still call because I know it’s her favorite. On my birthday, it is her responsibility to call. On her birthday, it’s mine. That’s how it has always worked. I suppose it would be easier if we lived closer, but we don’t.
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