(I would love any criticism/commentary on this story if you are so inclined……) “Y’know, I think, really, it’s just, like, that our timing was wrong.” I hated the words as I heard them; hated myself for uttering them; hated him for making me that person; hated the fact that they were bullshit, too. They bobbled around the pickup like invisible, durable bubbles, glancing off the windshield, the headrests, the gearshift. I swear I watched Clint
The first time that Farah and I snuck away for a one-on-one conversation it was 1997, a particularly bad “smog day” in the San Bernardino valley, and Route 66 choked with traffic under the brown air. We ate Denny’s fare—her: coke, coffee and fries. I ordered an uninspired omelet. Mostly, we smoked and bemoaned the emotional incest of our small college, but this transaction left me feeling unaccountably charged, like we’d discovered a game-changing philosophical truth hidden in the
At the far southern end of King County Youth Service Center, clustered around control post four are L, M, N, P and Q Halls. Each one of them has a word, as in “March” Hall, but that’s the only one I can remember. I’m consistently fucking up the proper title and inventing others (like “Moldy Hall”), which makes the kids laugh—they tend to have the right names down pat immediately upon arrival. This cluster of “halls” (read: cell blocks) is
A few feet to my left, a bright-eyed young kid with impeccable braids is telling Fred, our sixty-year-old English instructor mentor, how to spell “finna”—as in he’s “finna make some changes.” It’s spelled F-I-N-N-A, for sure, the kid tells him, but it’s got nothing to do with sharks. He’s not sure where it comes from. It was a hard sell this session, sitting faux-casual on a desk in front of Mr. Ishmael’s math class and trying
Last month a drunk trucker bumped into the register on his way out the door. That revealed the grime that had built up underneath, which caused me to finally move the whole checkout counter over by the window. That’s how come I saw Him coming last Sunday evening. He unfolded from a dusty Grand Cherokee and looked up at the café’s sign like it was a sunset. I dropped three mugs, two plates and a water glass, but