We know who has her period and who is still waiting. If a girl takes her backpack to the bathroom or sits pool-side in swim class, she has her period. So do the girls who—when they ask Can I go to the bathroom? and the teacher says, No—say But I really need to go.

I was aware, somehow, that people tended to get intense feelings about the bands they loved and that music had Mystery, capital M. But my family was not intense. We were American cheese on Wonder Bread.

What I do know: Janet Wellington made eye contact with me in the YMCA pool. I also never had a chance to look my mother in the eye and say goodbye. 

On a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon when I didn’t want to walk outside: a box proclaiming to be synthetic urine for sale in Nirvana, next to Louie’s Tux Shop and across from C.J. Banks in the Muncie Mall, behind the counter where they sell glass pipes blown to resemble tiny carrots and octopi, next to a rack of Rasta wigs.

I turn 30 next month but I’m no longer afraid because I read somewhere that time is an illusion. I am purchasing an anti-aging moisturizer, just in case. It’s expensive, but money is no object. I’m worth four figures.

I was looking forward to ruining my chances of being able to run or march anywhere. 

I found out about William Bates when I begin struggling with vision loss, in my mid-twenties. If you try to research vision loss in any capacity, you find him.

I’ve been tasked with digitizing my father’s slides, a hundred or so he inherited from his aunt.

I was going to see Verdi’s Falstaff with Robin.  My driver said “I hate Bill de Blasio. The MTA is corrupt. Uber is corrupt. I’ve been driving... more

And yet, when it came to hitting a baseball, I always liked my odds.

The solidity of contact is registered first in the hands. The knowledge radiates outward from there. 

“You can’t pee here,” Brendan tells me as I climb inside the doorway leading into the belly of the Green Monster. What he... more

The girl wonders how he went from a boy with big league dreams to selling booze at a store on Long Island.

Breathing heavily, we make it to the corner of the vacant dry cleaner’s. Still no one has rented it, I say. 

Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew. 

The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would... more

The first time this happened, I sighed when he walked away, squinting my eyes to see if he had a wedding ring.

When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”

Kinsella, Annie: Cinnamon-haired romantic lead in Field of Dreams. Played with zeal by Amy Madigan. Equal parts romantic and pragmatic, she raised a farm and a daughter, vanquished small-town Nazism, and offered unconditional support to her crazy-ass ghost-loving husband.

In 1974 or 1975 my father took my sisters and me to our first baseball game. It was always going to be a Yankee game, wherever that might be.

You cannot think of baseball without thinking of your grandpa. The two forever tangled in each’s DNA.

Later that evening, Ken Caminiti died alone in a bug infested Bronx drug house.

“I’ll be right up,” I said, seeking the comfort of the remaining parental arms. But no, he told me, “wait until morning.”

Mike and I sat in our separate seats and waved to each other. I’d texted him the night before and asked “Wanna see Don Giovanni tomorrow... more

Scream and jump out, I said, watching us slide toward the water, letting the safety belt hold me in place.