Featured Stories
Now that I’m a dad I have been trying to follow the path of truthfulness. It’s a process. In full candor, it is not one without a few detours. For example, once I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I knew it was wrong but if you’ve ever been to Reno you will understand my inability to suppress the urge. Of course, then I compounded the offense by telling everyone that Johnny Cash did it. Johnny wrote that song about it and made a lot of money. I see now how wrong that was.
Despite the occasional slip-up I really am trying to do better. Fatherhood will do that to a man, Honesty is important, after all, according … Read more »
As a young girl bearing the trifecta of awkwardness—baby fat, curly hair with freckles, and a mouth full of metal braces—all I wanted was to fit in. So when I was faced with a serious spinal deformity at 13, I made the decision to protect what little normalcy I had, even if it meant secretly risking my health.
It started in the seventh grade during a routine scoliosis screening. You remember the drill: girls in one room, boys in another, each told to remove their shirt and bend forward while a rent-a-nurse examined the sea of adolescent backs for irregularities. In my case, this uncomfortable scenario included two encore examinations and a letter for my … Read more »
"Laurel is on the pages of Life magazine!” Roger shouted. It was days after Woodstock and celebrity was in the neighborhood.
Laurel was our celebrity. She didn't just GO to Woodstock - she was memorialized in the pages of Life. No one was surprised. Like a celebrity, Laurel was also a stranger.
Whenever and wherever she appeared, Laurel smelled like fresh sex in broad daylight. Laurel was gloriously wanton, whorishly flush when she'd smile at a new man. Meeting up with Laurel was like walking into someone's bedroom unannounced.
Laurel was at least 25 years old, the first old hippie I met in 1969. Blue-eyed and beautiful, her dark roots peeking through short blonde curls, Laurel could run her fingers through her hair and take … Read more »
MILK RUN
Back at home a young wife waits.
Her Green Beret has met his fate.
He has died for those oppressed . . .
—Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler (1966)
Captain Bracey, Mr. Stephens and I were headed home to Vung Tau after a day-long parts route or “milk run.” I had finished putting the emptied cargo compartment of the Caribou in order, stowed my cleaning supplies, and laid back to relax. As I reread my latest letter from Myra Faye, I hummed words from a recent Righteous Brothers song, You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’, oh-oh that lovin’ fe-e-elin’ . . .
Myra Faye and my relationship had been like an overworked Army airplane, in the sky sometimes, on the ground lots. And … Read more »
Early in July of 1969 I proudly suited up in my blue blazer and bow tie for my very first airplane flight—a family trip to Miami from which I brought back pilot’s wings and my first case of sunburn. Only a couple of weeks later, Apollo 11 and its three astronauts would win the Space Race. This week, as pundits wax poetic about the cultural significance of the first moonwalk, I recall a slightly fussy and fastidious five-year-old who found three heroes in a time when they were in scarce supply for a future gay kid enthralled with the Huntley/Brinkley Report, Jo Ann Worley on Laugh-In and Benny Goodman’s more jitterbug-worthy compositions.
I was a constant source of amusement, even bemusement. “He’s so…creative,” my mother … Read more »
But no one seemed to notice my heroic effort. Fabrice marched inexorably off the front, and Terri, Louise, Nancy and Frank passed me one by one. We breasted a ridge and Camp 2 came into sight across a basin of deep snow. I glanced behind me, gulping for breath, and realized with satisfaction that I still led three people: Marshall, Dmitri and a new, enthusiastic guide we’d acquired named Pinky. On this section the strangest thing happened.
My one-step-one-breath rhythm, a pace that had served me well on every mountain I’d ever climbed, was suddenly no longer adequate. As the lead climbers shrunk in the distance, my one-step-one-breath became one-step-two-breaths, and then one-step-three-breaths, but the additional air didn’t propel me any faster. If anything I … Read more »
I moved toward the roof of South America with the tiny, shuffling steps of an old man, looking down at the bootprints my so-called friends had left in the snow. The sight filled me with gloom. Yet it was more appetizing than what loomed above: an old volcano about 100 stories tall, the summit of Mt. Aconcagua, the object of my sweaty desire for the last two weeks, a brutal thumb of rock that was my only hope of saving face.
The only sound was the uneven rasping of my breath and a faint, chilly breeze off the Andes. Then, clank! The steel crampons of my right boot hit stone. I had reached the rock. For an hour I’d aimed for this resting spot as … Read more »
When I was six months pregnant with my son, I broke up with my mother. We were standing in her kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning. It was almost my third trimester.
Up until two days earlier when Michael, the father-to-be, and I left our home in Brooklyn for my hometown in Louisiana, I’d been in a state of bliss. I never left home without my ultrasound pictures, like a Jehovah’s Witness wielding Bible scripture, proclaiming proof of God in our midst. No one was exempt from blow-by-blow reports on the baby’s every move, my every craving, graphic details of my birth plan. My elation was incorrigible, invincible, I thought. But I hadn’t yet seen my mother, and … Read more »
There are true stories that are unfortunate. Then there are true stories that are really really unfortunate. I was kidnapped, tortured, robbed and released while traveling on business in Shenzhen, China, exactly 5 years, 21 days and 14.5 hours ago but who’s counting. At this pt in time feels like it happened to somebody else.
I’m a bona fide New Yorker with street smarts so it is embarrassing to say I was mugged in China where muggings are rare. Anyway, on my 2nd day in Shenzhen, a city of 12 million, I was casually walking down a side street when four guys jumped me, dragged me into a dimly lit apartment, stripped me of my clothes, shredded my wallet, and … Read more »
No one had to tell us we lived in a shack at the bottom of Chestnut Hill. We knew we lived in a shack but it was our shack. We loved it and were happy in it. All around us there were beautiful houses with large manicured lawns. Mom said they were old Victorian houses with warm fireplaces and indoor toilets and bathtubs. Some houses even had gorgeous race horses fenced in and grazing in their backyards. Mama said the rich people wanted our shack condemned and torn down because it was an eyesore. Pop said we will live in our shack until they kick us out and that is what we did and we were happy.
It was actually a two-family house. We lived … Read more »
There's a little sign on the dashboard of my 1975 Chevy van that says, "Are we there yet?"
It started off as a joke, a question I would ask myself, not to determine if I was closing in on the next city, the next campground, the next rest stop or the next job. I wanted to know if I was happy yet.
Maybe deep down inside that's what we're all asking, "Am I there yet?"
"Am I happy? Am I successful? Am I loveable? Am I brilliant? Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I competent?"
I'm sitting here with my utilities off, my van packed and the question hanging heavily in my mind.
"Do I move back in the van, keep the apartment, … Read more »
Six words. Six little words. I was mortified. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
My Dad picks me up from the airport and we drive seven miles to sit in a sports bar in Ferndale the night before Thanksgiving. It’s tradition. We order from a happy hour bar menu. We are not rushing to thaw a turkey, and we pity the people who do. Our eyes fixate just over each other’s heads as we watch the Seahawks on two separate wide-screen televisions. Communication isn’t really our thing. Our cheeseburgers arrive with everything on them, despite my detailed instructions for everything on the side.
“There’s mayonnaise on … Read more »
I was born in 1960 into a blue-collar lower income family on Long Island twenty-five miles from New York City. My family had a strong sense of giving to the community. My dad is a volunteer fireman and has been for over fifty years.
Somehow I always seemed to find the trouble. My mom always said I was a good kid, but my dad well that was another story. He would say “good kid? He was never good to go bad!” I guess that was the struggle that I had to fight alone. At the age of 16 I was arrested for shoplifting. This began a string of criminal activity that became the beginning of the end.
In January 1978 a few months prior to my 18th … Read more »
I believe the bridal bouquet toss, like capers in salad dressing or advertising in restroom stalls, is perfectly ridiculous and should be done away with immediately.
Last week at my cousin’s elegant and boisterous wedding, I was bantering with an acquaintance when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was a family friend’s mom, donned in a sky blue suit that offset her ash gray hair.
“Hi, Mrs. Karras,” I said and kissed her on the cheek. “You look pretty tonight.”
“Not now,” she said and recoiled. Her manner implied she had discovered a live grenade in the courtyard, or that the caterer was low on baklava.
“Your cousin’s about to toss the bouquet,” she said and pointed to the throng of single women gathering on the … Read more »
For two years after college I rented an apartment in The Gables, a cheaply-constructed condo community where budding yuppies flock to breed. The Gables is famous for its pool: Throughout the summer young singles gather there like mosquitoes in a birdbath. A few swim laps, but mostly they wade. In the shallow end.
That the entire Gables neighborhood is painted in shades of beige is a perfect metaphor -- or a beacon of warning, depending how you see it -- for the homogeneous hell that lies within.
At the time I was living the prescribed life of a young Potomac Jew. It never occurred to me to question my fate; In a year or so I'd meet a Jewish doctor/lawyer/consultant and float down the aisle in big … Read more »
"Yo man. Let me get this straight. You teach five hours a week and they pay you 50 G's?"
It wasn't a rhetorical question. Calvin, who as far I know answers only to "Hot Rod," was expecting an answer, and I wasn't sure what to say – especially since I was pretty sure that Hot Rod didn't even know that I don't teach in the summers.
"Dawg, I'm in the classroom five hours, but I spend a lot more time preparing for class. It's just like out here, baby (I shove the basketball into the pit of his stomach); I only teach your ass for about an hour, but I spent years perfecting those pretty moves."
Hot Rod chuckles at the lie. I play hard, have a passable … Read more »
In the summer of 1984, when I should have been pursuing a path befitting of a college graduate, I took a detour instead to places less ambitious and more nefarious: Male strip joints. It wasn’t until I reached rock bottom (no pun intended) – when I was unceremoniously kicked out of one of the seedier clubs for my bad behavior and watched as a policeman handcuffed my God-fearing, cross-wearing best friend Linda – that I climbed out of the gutter and onto higher ground.
The timing of my descent was as well-defined as the moment I regained my footing. It began when my longtime boyfriend told me he loved me, then disconnected his phone the following day: my graduation day. It continued with a couple of … Read more »
Memoirs, it is often said, are a confluence of memory and imagination. This fragment of my memoir is true.
Going to college In Nashville, I had a girlfriend, Lynne Lastname, from Evansville, Indiana. Pretty. Tall, thin, long blond hair. A “real” blonde. It‘s easy to tell. Anyway, I met her at a SCLC meeting about a month before Kennedy was shot.
On that sad November day, I was reading to a blind student from Kentucky, Barry Lastname, when my roommate, Terry Lastname, walked in and told me the news from Dallas. Lynne and I spent a lot of time together in late November being pissed off at the senselessness of the assassination and quite depressed along with the rest of the country.
Wrote a short, … Read more »
In the last several months, I've taken up horse riding. Until recently, I had had a single experience on a horse when I was 17 and on a camping trip in upstate New York with my high school boyfriend. Let's just say that it was short-lived and ended with the horse running back to the stable after nibbling my feet. I asked for my money back.
I was never what you would call an athletic kid. It's not that I wasn't fit. I danced from the age of 3 —ballet, modern and tap. I was raised by intellectual, artist-types. My mother is a classic New York Jew who believes if you perspire you are working too hard and should immediately return to the air-conditioned salon … Read more »
Things fell apart at the Godfather Party. As a lapsed Catholic and an Italian who moved away from the extended family, I knew my choices regarding to the holidays: I could lament there’s no grandmother in our kitchen sautéing garlic in the morning and layering the meat, cheese and eggs for a pizza rustica. I could long for the days when a family hike up to my grandfather’s Hudson Valley grape vines was the best way to get an appetite for apple pie. Or, I could rally my husband and daughter to make our holidays in the Midwest exactly what we want: fun and, if possible, infused with some variety of faith. It took us a year to learn this was much easier said than … Read more »
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