“Ever give a massage to a big fat dude?” he asks, which is the most Midwestern thing you can say, even in the most Midwestern bar in San Diego. … more
“Ever give a massage to a big fat dude?” he asks, which is the most Midwestern thing you can say, even in the most Midwestern bar in San Diego. … more
He was frightened that his wife had gone over the edge, that the neighbours would gossip about the crazy lady taken away in the night. I imagined his daughter’s classmates telling her that her mother had screamed so loudly that all the birds had flown away.… more
There was no oasis. No needles. Only mirages. Like the imaginary tar pit that turned his bebop jaunt into a slog. And the swarm of bees that punctured him with empty stingers. Even the music came to life in the form of a fanged-beak, blood-red buzzard that circled overhead.… more
The garage still smelled like her. Motor oil and lavender detergent. She used to change the oil in both trucks. Said she liked the quiet under the chassis. Said it made her feel like a mechanic and not just someone’s wife.… more
As her non-existent father figure, Gwyneth shall mourn him for what could have been rather than what was.… more
My wife says I need to give a shit. I say I never understood that expression. Who would want to be given shit? She agrees that it’s a peculiar expression, but that’s beside the point.… more
Instead of sitting in my mother’s living room, thirty-one, drunk, and jobless, I would be twenty-one, sober, and doing something responsible and worthwhile and American, like fighting in a war somewhere, and everything would look like a 1940s comic book… more
Your body is a dead and rusty brass section. French-horn shoulders and cornet forearms, tuba torso, your head a trumpet that cannot sing of how you’ve come to be this funky metal. When you speak, it’s all screeching off-pitch.… more
We die, he says. Utters that last syllable bombastically—spits it out with firework freshness, so much so that I swear I can see the concept of death colliding with his premature psyche, making its meteoric crater in the smooth terrain of his young and innocent mind.… more
What forty-three-year-old husband with a teen who just passed her written driver’s test and has only liberal arts colleges on her list to visit should be thinking about changing careers? And who is he to think any of this rumination will get him anywhere?… more