I know it as soon as I wake up. There’s a surprising clarity, a lens that’s found its focus, followed by a sickening dread. I want to hide under this soft blanket and retreat to sleep, but I know I can’t. It’s our last day …
The problem with having a psychic in the building is we are often mistaken for clairvoyants. The fortune-telling business is one floor above, yet people are forever coming into our office and asking for a reading. This, despite our being a fully functioning vision care …
Joel and Mindy stand at their kitchen sink, peeling peaches for freezing. They place the deep red and gold slices in glass jars that will be filled with a light syrup. These are Red Havens, classic peaches that are perfectly ripe the first week in …
Like everything else included in having a child, it happens fast. Probably because most people wait twelve weeks to announce, leaving the interested parties about six months to get contracts signed. Ryan found this out the day after he and his wife posted the announcement …
The Department of Motor Vehicles in California is a great equalizer. It has no race, income, gender, or sexual prejudices. It treats everybody miserably. What happened to this state? Rising rents, astronomical home prices, traffic congestion, homelessness. I remember growing up in California in the …
A funeral was not the place for an erection, especially the funeral of one’s mother. Simon knew this. He knew it so well that he imagined hellfire consuming his balls. Pubic hair for kindling. Unfortunately, this did nothing to change how attractive the undertaker was. …
My psychiatrist shoots dope. He returns from the bathroom with his shirt sleeves rolled up. I can see where he stuck himself. He should do a better job considering, at some point in his career, he had to have injected patients. Poor patients. First committed …
“One might say that the ancient right to take life…was replaced by a power to foster life, or disallow it to the point of death.” — Michel Foucault, “History of Sexuality, Vol. 1.” …
The door was locked but a sign pressed against the pane read ‘OPEN’, so I pushed my thumb against the buzzer and waited. The window-display – a mass of objects arranged over dark, velvet-covered blocks – was as crowded and glittering as a city skyline. …
Morgan picked me up in a borrowed car. She called it Bella. Bella wasn’t pretty. The bare trees slipped fast by the passenger window. I had flown straight from my last gig at a festival in Arizona into the pit of winter in the northeast. …