Browse Topics
Adolescence
Estrellita
As I closed my front door and began to walk up the street, someone called to me. I turned and saw a young girl approach out of the darkness. She appeared neat and studentlike, slightly stooped by the weight of a backpack, a brand-new notebook under her arm. Her long, shiny hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She spoke to me in rapid Spanish, in a pipsqueak voice.
November 2001
Due To Illness
Raymond’s in the same “promising” eighth-grade section as me — the promise being based on some test we took at the end of seventh grade — but I don’t think of Raymond as promising. Nobody does. He wears high-water pants, and his glasses are held together with masking tape. He has a scattering of white pimples on his forehead, beneath his greasy bangs. Sometimes he smells.
July 2001One Saturday Night
One Saturday night, my father gave me fifty cents to buy the Sunday New York Times. The Times was part of my family’s weekly ritual. Already, at age sixteen, I was bitter about this paper, because I had been born with a love of comics — every type of comic: Batman, comic strips, MAD Magazine. Yet each week, the gray Sunday Times arrived, thick with facts and want ads.
July 2001Love, Michael
To me, my brother was his letters home. Even now, his lucid, correct handwriting remains more vivid in my mind than any picture.
November 2000Car-Crazy
Unlike some of my more mechanically minded eighth-grade classmates, I didn’t know a thing about how cars worked. I’d never even changed a tire. I just liked how cars looked. While other kids drew hot rods in their notebooks, I made “design studies,” trying to predict what changes the Big Three automakers would implement in their new models. How could the designers possibly improve upon dual headlamps? My answer was to integrate them into the grille beneath a pair of “eyebrows ” that sloped toward the center (a design that was, in fact, used in the 1959 Dodge).
August 2000Happiness
Ground zero, fuzzy kittens, the most beautiful roundhouse right punch
August 2000The Morning After
A beautiful, naked woman on a white horse; a marriage proposal; a Dustbuster
January 2000The 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 1999Old Maids
My aunt Eunice never married. I have not married either, and I think that perhaps we remained single for the same reason, though I may be wrong. Eunice never said why she hadn’t married, except in the joking way one replies to the curiosity of children.
July 1999
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today