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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
La Calidad De La Vida
Every year my back goes out. It’s like a special anniversary, which I celebrate by groaning a lot and walking around like Groucho Marx with his tie caught in his zipper. This year it happens to me in Mexico, where I rent a large, brand-new, slightly leaky, four-bedroom house for sixty dollars a month in the medium-sized town of Jerez de Garcia Salinas, about eight hundred miles due south of El Paso, Texas.
January 2000Winter Was The Season
I don’t like saying goodbye to the people I’ve worked with at The Sun — not after we’ve spent years together drinking too much coffee and meeting impossible deadlines and struggling to make the magazine better and trying to be better people ourselves. But sooner or later they leave. A spouse gets a job offer in another city, or graduate school beckons, or it’s simply time to move on. We promise to keep in touch, and often we do. So it’s goodbye, but not really goodbye.
December 1999Fears Of Your Life
Michael B. Loggins spends his days writing, drawing, and painting at Creativity Explored, a government-funded art center in San Francisco’s Mission District. The center hires developmentally disabled adults to create art and often publishes their work in the independent magazine Whipper Snapper Nerd. Publicity from the xeroxed-and-stapled publication has resulted in gallery exhibits in San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles.
December 1999The Trouble With Smitty
Smitty was lying on the seat beside me, getting antsy to exit his holster and have some fun. I told him to be patient. I didn’t want some rancher investigating gunshots. The dirt trail was badly rutted and washed out in a few places. It led me down into a dry creek bed at one point, and if not for four-wheel drive, I’d probably still be there. The windows were down, and I could smell the clean scent of sage.
December 1999And Thy Right Hand Shall Teach Thee
The Littleton massacre won’t go away, and not because politicians and commentators are still yapping about it, but because no one can forget it, and because Littleton has taught some deeply disturbed young people (all affluent, all white, all male) how to make an impact on an America that wants nothing from them but their capacity to consume.
December 1999At My Bedroom Window
The night sky outside my window is so watery I want to backstroke into it, sink beneath its silver-flecked surface. I am sad and it is beautiful; in this, we make a good marriage. I imagine my parents up there now. Sometimes I miss them so much I’d do anything to have them back. I keep a large color photo of them on my bureau so they can watch me dress and undress every day. I no longer care if my father sees me naked.
November 1999The Artist’s Mother
I’ve longed for someone since I can remember, and not a night goes by when I don’t reach for her. It’s been hell having something between my legs, but as my mother would say, we must make the best of what we have and not complain of what we don’t.
November 1999To Kill A Deer
Later, everyone would agree it was the least likely time to encounter a deer. The two young guys in baseball caps who stopped to help us on the freeway said it. So did the highway patrolman who came to fill out the accident report after the two guys in baseball caps had gone to the next town and called for help.
November 1999Infant Ward
This child is not my own, but still the words of possession slip from me: “My baby girl. My sweet baby.” Although I’ve never seen her before, I think I know what she needs: the lights at her hospital bedside dimmed, her loose arms girdled securely against her chest. She has no name except “Girl” and a family surname typed on the identification card at the foot of her crib.
November 1999After The Stillbirth
Afterward, I walked in graveyards, clearing away trash and fallen branches. I pulled up weeds that obscured the names on old headstones, though most of the names I revealed meant nothing to me. I took special care with the graves of children.
October 1999
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