Know your audience. Play Willie. Play Hank Williams. Play Patsy Cline. Play Springsteen and hum along. Cry into your drink. Try to feel happy. Talk to the bartender. Try not to look at yourself in the mirror behind the bar. Drink until you can’t feel the pain in your lower back. Drink until your cash is gone. Bring just enough cash so that you stay long enough, but not too long so people think you have a problem. Don’t get kicked out. I love you.… Continue Reading
I’m sure plenty of his friends’ parents stroll through his line, but I wondered how many of them had taken him to a concert in Detroit when he was 15, and if I was the first on a Saturday night, buying beer and sushi in a Dusty Rhodes t-shirt?… Continue Reading
What says “Christmas” more than a blinking, schizo forty-foot tall American flag with elves at the bottom saluting the drivers. Not the flag, no sir, but the drivers. Dead-eyed creepy elf fuckers robotically raising and lowering their hands to their foreheads. Salute!… Continue Reading
Beneath the raw flesh slick with ointments, I could see the ghost of his past self. He was beautiful. I told him as much. I said, Does it make you uncomfortable? I see it. Your beauty.… Continue Reading
The house was dark by the time he reached the steps, no porch light, no downstairs light, but he could hear a radio playing somewhere nearby, something country, twangy. He stepped inside and, immediately, his mother called down to him to not turn on the light and to come up the stairs, she needed his help.… Continue Reading
If there was ever just one bird left in the shoot, it’d get pardoned. Let out to fly away. Makes you wonder what the truly guilty do with freedom. I’ve stopped pretending I don’t feel a little crooked about everything.… Continue Reading
A week before, she’d up and left. I’d hardly gotten around to plowing my heart from where it hung. I was spending obscene sums at patisseries, flaking crumbs to the floor, buttering my fingers and suckling them to a sheen. I was already searching for something to forget.… Continue Reading
Mole heard his mama talk about Gilly and how he hadn’t been the same since coming back from the war. Looked like she wanted to spit talking about their neighbor. No compassion. And his mama would never spit. … Continue Reading
I knew Bridget Brown Eyes. She was different people. She was a paternal orphan. She studied organic chemistry. She got a bikini wax. We went on two dates. We hated each other over dinner on the first. We agreed to another date because, if we could get around each other’s awful personalities, we would have liked to sleep together.… Continue Reading
It wasn’t on purpose, but Jimmy Franks is a real piece of shit, so I’m not sorry it happened either. If I was gonna break anyone’s beer bottle, I’m glad it was his. Well, in the abstract, at least.… Continue Reading