“God damnit, Jesse!” screamed my history teacher, as he kicked over a front-row desk that had remained—like all the front-row desks—unoccupied. His name was Brad Beckett. I always liked to imagine that he was a relative of Samuel Beckett, the playwright, but there were lots of Becketts in New England, and really I had no reason to have made the connection.
Read MoreIn the beginning: sound. Metal striking metal.
In the beginning: sensation. The torque of a rollercoaster. And then my car stops and I awake fully to the white billows of the air bag. Pain from my side where the seat belt has cracked my ribs. Afterwards, I wear green black and purple in a beauty-queen sash of a bruise.
Read More1. Once, I had a tiny pink lizard named Ike who consumed his freshly shed skin before it was entirely separate from his body. The act of shedding and eating was repulsive and entrancing; I peered through the glass to watch on the wooden stool I had swiped from the kitchen. The fluidity of the motion gave the illusion the tiny creature was grinning as he consumed his own flesh.
Read MoreEvery couple has a definitive how-and-where-we-met narrative. Here’s the one my husband and I tell at dinner parties:
I was a counselor on a teen tour to Israel. He was the manager. He hired me. We fell in love in Israel that summer, the summer of 2000, the summer just before the second intifada.
Read MoreWhen is a mother not a mother?
When she’s dead.
I told that wrong: When is a dead mother not a dead mother?
Read MoreOn Mexican food
On Ocean’s 11 and the West Wing
On government
We hate rhetoric short enough to fit on a sign
I take a picture of your coffee cup after you leave. Then I lick the spoon you used, still resting in the cup, still tasting of the warm, bitter liquid. But not of you, of course.
Read MoreThe first time I saw my dad hit someone, the movement was too fast and too slow at the same time. One moment, he was walking, and the next there was blood all over the hallway from the other man’s nose. The blood shone against the white tile floor. I stood there forever while it spread, and the sound of pain the other man made struggled through the thickened air to catch up to me.
Read MoreIn most cases, “My house burned down” is a get out of jail free card. For instance, “I’m sorry officer, I can’t find my ID, my car, I mean my house, burned down. Let me riffle through all my worldly possessions in the back seat to find it for you.” And subsequently, “Sorry I’m late, boss, I got pulled over on my way. Also, my house burned down.”
Read MoreThere is an overlooked advantage to writing memoir. Unlike the medium of a diary, the true intent of the memoir is not to conduct a literary magic act or preserve a memory like a wooly mammoth trapped in the unforgiving black mouth of a tar pit.
Read MoreApril’s lips are chapped. They’re rough and scrape against mine, and the taste of nicotine fills my mouth. Her fingers are wrapping around the tendrils of my mullet. And she pulls my hair a lot harder than I expected. It’s my first kiss. Well, the first one I count, anyway.
Read MoreZoear16: Hi, you there?
My Squad1997: We’re always here.Come ovverrr for a girl’s party!
Auto response from Zoear16: BRB, hanging out with my BFFs!
I arrived at the City Museum in St. Louis with a vague memory of a friend’s summary of her experience there. “It’s crazy,” she had said. “An architectural marvel,” she called it.
Read MoreI meet Angel by the metal payphone outside 7-11. I stroll outside with my breakfast, a giant-sized blueberry Slurpee. It is a sugared oasis from the cod I slice and fry and serve and, after my shift ends, the cod I steal from the food court.
Read MoreATV stands for all-terrain vehicle stands for Tilley Baker circa 2007 stands for eighteen years old stands for captain of the soccer team stands for seat straddled by the operator stands for low pressure tires stands for around 6:30 at night stands for dusk stands for off road escape stands for farm access road stands for chain across a farm access road …
Read MoreThe graveyard is full of music and movies, a field of dead grass scattered with headstones made from vinyl sleeves and DVD cases, but this is the first short story you’ve put in the ground. The first book to mark a tomb.
Read MoreThe conversation turns to cockroaches, which Francine has a mortal fear of. When earlier she walked into the kitchen of the bar Anna and Yeorgos had just signed a lease on, she let out an almighty shriek. Dead cockroaches everywhere. The place had sat empty for two years, so no wonder. There were more in the bathrooms.
Read MoreA little purple wildflower that waits for me beneath the helmet on his motorcycle seat the first time he picks me up. The ride we catch later back to town with a man who calls himself Little Bear after we lose the keys to the motorcycle. The smell of fake pine and musty cigarettes that emanates from the upholstery while I am pressed between men I hardly know.
Read MoreWe're in the dining room, sitting around a big wooden table with heavy legs, meant for a family to gather around it and break bread. We are a family, I think, in some ways. There are six of us, seven, eight, and the room is filled with our voices. I’m sitting on his knee. He rests his heavy head on my shoulder and talks around me.
Read MoreAt what point in fame-dom is it no longer acceptable to go to the Cheesecake Factory for a fancy dinner? This is not a reference to kink culture. By fame-dom (second syllable pro-nounced like dumb), I mean how famous can you be and still deem a chain restaurant upscale. And by famous, I don’t just mean actresses and musicians. I mean CEO’s of local nonprofits, cat whisperers, professors, and public servants, from street sweeper to Justice Antonin Scalia.
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