Storylog

Tom

You and I are lying on the bed.

I stare at the ceiling, at the shadows created from the motel curtains and the hot autumn sun beating against the window. The television has been off for some time, now. It’s quiet and dim and in the distance, I can hear the highway. Our things are packed, and we are an hour or so away from leaving.

I know a few things, like you love me, and I no longer love you. I know that when we leave here, I won’t see you again, but when we kiss goodbye near our cars, when you hold me, it will feel like it always felt, like it felt before you slept with that woman who shares my name, and when your voice gets choked as you talk into my hair, I will promise to write . . . I will promise to call. I will promise to keep things going as long as we can, and I will mean those things.

I will mean them, because when your arms are around me, I will, for a moment, forget that they were around her. And the love that we shared will be enough for me. I will close my eyes, and I will inhale that soapy-clean smell that hangs on the collar of your shirt and the warm skin of your neck, and I will feel the softness of your hair that curls there, and I will feel how much I will miss you. Until you let me go, and you pull back to kiss me again, and I look at your eyes. And then, I will remember. And when you kiss me, it will feel the same, but different, and it will taste bitter, and I will realize I have lied, and I won’t care. Read the rest of this entry »

I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale’s (the original one) a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door. Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call. (read more @ Free Range Kids)

He’s alone in the lobby of the Chinese joint on the corner. He kicks a plastic ball — the big, colorful kind you buy at the dollar store for fifty cents — against the wall, and he focuses intently as it travels back to him. He pauses as I walk in, and resumes as soon as I’m safely at the counter. The woman who took my order when I used to come here every weekend finishes shoving sodas in the big refrigerator, and turns to a face she doesn’t remember. She’s aged more than a year in the past year. She looks tired and worried. Her small breasts jut frantically beneath the stained white t-shirt that shields her slender frame. She looks as if she hasn’t known happiness for a very long time. Read the rest of this entry »

I was 13? 14? I don’t remember, although it was only a few years ago. I was either a freshman in high school, or an eighth grader. I’m a senior in high school now, and looking back, my memories from then seem shrouded and indistinct with time.

I was going to a concert at the legendary Stone Pony on the Jersey shore. The Kottonmouth Kings were playing, along with several acts I neither knew nor cared about. To be honest, I didn’t even care about the Kottonmouth Kings all that much, I just wanted to go to a concert. It sounded so cool and grown up, and held echoes of adulthood. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m suspicious of people that won’t let me email them the job. That insist on meeting, face to face. That insist. I’m suspicious of people that insist

He took the folder from me and motioned for me to sit, which I did, which I welcomed, after that long walk up Columbus Avenue, after writing and driving and parking and walking instead of emailing

He opened the folder and looked at the page, his hands showing he would flip through quickly, but hesitated. Hesitated. Waiting. Reading. He sat back. Then back a little farther. Then relaxing. I looked at my manicure, and my shoes, and my watch. I looked at his desk, and his tie, and his wedding ring. His eyes were locked. He was really reading. Not thumbing though it. Not checking it over. He was really reading it. Each Word. Read the rest of this entry »

The first thing the doctor said when I was born wasn’t “it’s a perfect baby girl” or anything similar to that.

It was “Oh no, her hand…”

I was born with a malformation of my left hand, which pretty much means I have no fingers, the beginning of knuckles and little nubby things.

I was the only one who didn’t cry at my birth. The first thing my father ever said about my future was, “How will she ever get married with one hand?”

The doctors then proceeded to give my mom a private room and a steak and lobster dinner as a “condolence.” I think it’s funny that my mom got a free steak and lobster out of the whole ordeal–at least something good happened. Read the rest of this entry »

The Worshams were eccentric. They were wealthy-Old Money Virginians—so they could afford to be. They lived down at Yellow Sulphur Springs. Yellow Sulphur, as we fondly called it, had been a resort in the late 19^th century, a hot spot for rich folks to come out and get some fresh country air, drink the healing waters of the spring, or whatever rich people did on resorts a hundred years ago. But when I knew it, it was a bunch of run-down, paint-peeling Virginia historical landmarks with full-length covered porches, scattered on the slopes of a wooded hollow through which a creek, fed by the springs, gurgled its way. Some of the old wooden houses were closed up and due for renovation sooner or later (hopefully sooner, since I doubted they’d make it until later). Others were inhabited by odd characters, even stranger than the Worsham family—a Native American guy named Arnie, who also went by Ravenfeather or something like that; a man who made statues out of PVC pipe filled with concrete and collected all kinds of old junk; granola hippie women; and various other mysterious, unseen characters whose existence added to the Yellow Sulphur mystique. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Silk

At the fabric market, a two-tone silk in mauve and gray shimmers, then billows when I free it from the bolt. Delicate cranes fly along its fold. An old woman studies me studying the silk; I can’t let go. “This is so soft,” I say, “so—” But it’s in English. The old woman squints and says something over and over that I finally realize is “pajamas.” Of course, I think. The last person to make me homemade pajamas was my mother in Minnesota. She held the tan tissue paper patterns against my stomach, my breasts, my arms and legs, her fingertips warm through thin paper. This old woman, too, touches me freely: spins and tucks and measures and pinches. I buy three meters, feel the heavy weight of it in the plastic bag as I walk away. Read the rest of this entry »

“Tell us about your first kiss.
Who was it with? How old were you?”

I don’t remember my first kiss. But I have a much better story—about the first time a guy showed me his penis! I was in high school—I think it was the summer of 1978—so that would make me 15.

I had a major crush on Tim—but he was WAY out my league. Soooo handsome. Sooo smart. Soooo funny (he could recite every Steve Martin standup routine from heart! In fact, he was even at the Blues Brothers ‘concert’ where Steve Martin was the opener!). I loved being around him but knew I only got to be there by being best friends with his best friend’s girlfriend, Kathy.

Kathy had bunches of friends from Chicago staying at her home for the entire summer (she had just moved to SoCal that year). Pretty much the entire rest of our clan also stayed at her house overnight. We must have enjoyed a big pool party because on this particular summer night, there were 33 of us sleeping on the floor in the living room, her bedroom, and the downstairs den. Read the rest of this entry »

Isn’t it weird how size determines how important the life of something is? If this was 10,000 rabbits or 10,000 dogs, would the response still be the same? (digg comment)

I am visiting my family in Florida for the holidays. I was chillin at my sister’s house when we looked out back and noticed a swarm of honeybees congregating on their swing set. There are a lot of kids around, including my sister’s 3 kids. They were inside at the time, fortunately. (read more @ something awful)