Now, you book an appointment on a whim. But it’s not a whim. You’ve been thinking about this for a while.

It was my senior year of high school, either late 1998 or early 1999. Everyone in my middle-class suburb used landlines. I flipped the phone open and closed, removed the battery, pulled out the antenna then pushed it back in.

Like the other day, when we got into a fight about who was the luckier between the two of us to have found the other.

When I was eleven, I saw the hip-hop group TLC bust onto the stage of some live TV show wearing giant colorful overalls... more

For Caite’s Sweet 16 we get a couple rooms at the Motel 6 on Cerrillos, not the one downtown with the outdoor pool, the one on the... more

But I did enjoy some of those late evenings of silly stories and joking around with my students and letting my guard down enough to remind them I was a human person with a sense of humor.

On the contrary: I wanted people to see my spectacle. I wanted them to never forget it. Z had wondered: what if the joy of experiment dies with joy itself? If the relationship ends, what if we’re done with it forever?

That night, long after your mom goes to sleep, when the house settles, you masturbate furiously in a bed that doesn’t belong to you.

I know brain damage.

When I was 22, my mother was excited for the first day at my new job, but not so much that she couldn’t wait to tell me about the demon that... more

I loved it immediately, though I was surprised when my mother approved it.  

Sometimes I stop talking to my boyfriend for no reason.

We’ve taken our son, my wife and I, to get his first haircut. He is nearly two, and once I place him in the seat they’ve... more

I didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d last eaten. I also knew he needed water.

The last night of the trip, you stay with one of his friends in Vallecitos, New Mexico.  

Soon sunlight would be replaced by nighttime.  I felt this, the same way my grandma could feel the rain coming on.  

I don't notice anything when the television is on.  A bomb could go off in my kitchen and I wouldn't notice the wreckage until the next commercial break.

In 1994, I subscribe to a magazine for wholesome Christian tweens, recommended by the Amy Grant fan. My mom approves; unlike the ones I sneak into our grocery cart, its cover never hints at sex.

Like a punch. Like Margera. BAM.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is smaller than the Met and cheaper than the Met... more

In the 150 years before the typewriter reached mass production and public consciousness, there were a wealth of origin stories and nearly a hundred inventors: a medical doctor in New York; the head of an institution for the blind in England; a bicycle inventor in Germany; a priest in Brazil. 

I was halfway to the Drew Barrymore/Gwen Stefani hybrid image of my dreams; a few more years, I thought, and I’ll work at the Coffee Beanery at the mall.

The man I love who does not love me back sends me someone else’s tweet. The only text is a hashtag: Notre Dame. The... more

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.