My father is talking fast, telling me how the redhead is waiting for him.

Once her parents were reliably asleep she helped herself to a long hot shower, a respite which was what she imagined drugs must be like.

This act of attention lifts you momentarily out of your debilitating amiss-malaise. 

“Must have been rich kids,” says Al. “A lot harder to make money staying anonymous.”

It all started with a wrong clap. I remember that because Dave was saying that when she was born, her dad got mad that she clapped on the 1 and the 3 and not the 2 and the 4. He was clapping weird.

The thing about Grandma is that she seems to show up unannounced and she doesn’t care about the substance of the prayers, just that they end in Amen.

 I know Max is probably hard by the time we get to the overlook at the dam. He puts the car in park and tells me he mixed a cd, just for me, because I’m so special.

- I can’t believe this is

As a young boy, I lived in the Bronx in the mid-1980s during a time when it was infamous for its squalor, a third-world dilapidation captured in movies like Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver. I remember

The sleet has stopped but the cold is something unthinkable. It lends a deathly permanence to the still, heavy darkness. I stand shivering on the sidewalk and look up at the Hollywood sign. I try to

The boys stood in the vacant lot outside the convenience store, which was closed today due to a special occasion. There was even a sign on the door. Armando was getting high again. Stew was quiet.

He’s still rambling about my womanhood, my untapped, ethereal potential, when I reach for a tissue and blow his hot load out of my nostril.

Dolphins are too good for this world, I think, as I reluctantly, fearfully, kiss one on its domed rubbery mouth while someone snaps a picture.

One day her daughter says to her mom, in front of you, that she wants to go to art school, just like you. And it is the first time you realize, her mom does not want her daughter to be like you.

Walking through the dense forestry of unrefrigerated 24- and 30-packs, Pete was in search of something that would stand out from the rest.

He looks at me a little like how the alley cats look at the mice behind the house, but I don’t mind.

When the angel came I was young.

He had lost his virginity to nothing less than the beast of the swamp.

I’m not fat exactly, not fat like an orangutan or avocado, but I’m also not thin. Not thin  like those women on commercials, with bodies like Coke bottles – all dipped and smooth, tastin’  somethin’ like cherry. I’m lumpy like expired cottage cheese.

The great neon calamity of his own life exhausts him.

The currency of self-loathing is everything you’ve ever said.

Did you know emus have two sets of eyelids? One for blinking, one for dust.

Everything’s fuzzing in every direction, the flowers and the water and the stars, and the pizza is impossibly good.

Everything would be fine, sort of, if she could close this deal.

There is a strength of purpose, I suppose, a fortitude and integrity, in simply admitting yourself to be a malevolent presence skulking the dingy alleyways of your own life.

Most of the conversations were boring. Too many back and forths with men she either found only mild to medium attractive or so peculiarly hot that they must be bots. Too many men relating her skin color to some sort of food item.