Parker is the coolest kid in fourth grade. Everyone thinks so. If Parker says something is cool, it’s cool. Period. I don’t know any better, yet. Parker says this band that sings a song about Buddy Holly is cool. I ask around but none of the other fourth graders know what I’m talking about.

I could have no path, no idea of what I should be or how I should live. I could skate through neighborhoods, where I wouldn’t find a Mormon church or anyone who knew I had strayed from the path I was raised to follow

Plastic and puke co-exist. Children frolic in the belly, the guts and intestines, the ballpit.

The source was unreliable. It's possible that I was the source.

I walked through the senior hallway, heart beating fast. The boys’ stares burned into my skin as they whispered things to each other.

In my head, dating women was a body competition.

Because let’s face it, boiled tea does not meet my privileged standards for heat. 

My mother tells me how my father died. I’d learned only a week before that he had gangrene in his toes because of a sore he’d let fester.

I remember being young and small and barefoot on the concrete floor: look closely and see how the cicada shells vibrate as the Texas Hill Country winds sift in.

It’s the first time I remember feeling that superstrong tween indignation that he’d taken something that was supposed to be just mine.

At six years old, my father wanted to introduce me to his church friends. As a part-time pastor, it was crucial he make a good first impression.

I was 20 and I went around to have naked time with Matt.

Girls in white dresses. Girls with boys. Girls hanging on the arms of boys and girls who turn to give you a look as they pass by, asserting their position. Girls who know how to flirt with boys.

I could never straighten my legs for a cartwheel and with roller skating, I could never move them right.

If I’m going to be honest, my life has been running at something of a parallel to Husker Football for the last ten years, over which time I’ve tried to hack it as a musician, restaurateur, and writer.

My mother once jumped off a boat into a swarm of jellyfish. Why did she think they would not sting?

I awoke no more than ten minutes ago and already so much has been consumed

I used to write in circles. Starting in the center.

Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4

Apart from all these violent events, Raziel, De Kuff, and the other cult members have been moving between Jerusalem, Safed (site of the ancient

My body is uncomplicated. It is a tool, finely tuned for this moment.

The next day, I woke first and made French toast. I had a teenaged hangover, buzzing and giddy.

The story of religious mania and the story of political violence look very likely to converge on each other.  Having consciously elected the first, Lucas keeps being drawn, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unwittingly, toward the other. Both feature his new inamorata, Sonia Barnes.

There is a universe of existence we have no words for, and maybe that is why we sequester ourselves in naturally quarantined cities: fear of the unknown and unintelligible.

During our first few years together, Leopard went through the washing machine after I peed on him, many times.

If Lucas is the most obvious Bob Stone avatar in Damascus Gate, Adam De Kuff might also be a contender, sharing with his author an improperly managed mental illness (it’s made very plain that De Kuff has stopped taking his prescribed bipolar meds a long while back)