If you’ve ever been asked to place your anxiety on a litmus test of 1-10 and have no idea what a 10 would constitute, then you know how jarring and disconnected this question could be. I thought about running away from the office, I thought about knocking over one of her plants 

In the staff meeting she thought about enemas.  

In nearly every used book—bought, borrowed, or salvaged—I’ve found them. 

I was drunk and coked up and thought it’d be a good idea to cut through some strange wooded area. Then I was completely underwater. 

We were sitting on the shores of the Atlantic, waiting for the wind to change and the black flies to get blown back out to sea when the plane went down.

For all the hours we’ve spent with strangers, all the conversations and shared stories, we ask no one’s name—until now. 

There are five categories for hurricanes; most of the buildings here were built to withstand categories one and two.

No one is going anywhere, he says. You will sleep here tonight.

“Ah, so you’ve had an ordinary life,” she said.

In which we listen to ourselves being recounted in the mouth of the boyfriend 

The people in my workshop suggested the stories were detailing co-dependency. From my position of fiction writer I laughed and nodded in agreement so as not to appear too sentimental towards the material. I thought of my classmates as boring and responsible and generic, and reasoned that they couldn’t understand the characters’ interactions because they were only limitedly tolerant of anything eccentric—

I do not remember this, cannot call up the image. 

We are launching a new project, HOBART HANDBOOKS, the first project of which is our Handbook on Baseball, collecting some of our favorite pieces from our last thirteen years of online baseball

The story goes that Mario is Luigi’s brother. Nearly all we know about him is that he is a brother.

Sometimes we appreciate things a lot later in life than we should.

The tourists stand on the hostel balcony, shirtless, sun on their golden skin and hair or maybe their skin is the sun.

Yesterday my mom called me up and asked me to buy her cigarettes. I told her no and hung up. 

By dread I’m inspired, by fear I’m amused. The phrase was cursived on a cocktail napkin and folded into my handshake by a steel-haired young woman two weeks before my 20th birthday. 

In my head I can't believe what he just said. How the hell are we going to take a bunch of ordinary popsicle sticks and turn them into bombs? Bombs? Shit, they explode. There's fire involved! Is Kevin nuts? We'll kill people!

At my friend’s bonfire on a chilly Southwestern night, a blond woman in Birkenstocks approached me and said that her name was Singing Humyn.

Only one person on the team had a significant mustache. She was the only girl, but she wasn’t good at math. 

Once outside, I unroll The Jacka's sweatshirt from my jacket, revealing the XXXL garment, in all its glory, reeking of blunts and harsh body odor.

Two years earlier in a set of skyscrapered offices with panoramic views of dusty Los Angeles, I was an underling and he was not.

April 6, 2014
Opening Day
San Diego Padres
vs.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Dodger Stadium
Los Angeles, CA

San Diego



Los

She lasts another day, maybe two.