I tell people I’m married. It just makes it easier. No one asks questions about my wife. And it makes me look better, more stable – a happily married man. Well, maybe not so happily, or else what am I doing in bed with you, but a stable married man. Married for twenty five years. The truth is, Alison left me after three years. What we had, I know I can never have again. There isn’t a day when I…
My mother told us bedtime stories. I listened carefully to every word. Some of the things I learned: Don’t eat porridge that is too hot or too cold. It’s okay if an infinite number of princes die trying to cut through the thorns that have grown up over the castle, but the princess must be prevented from dying (although not from sexual assault) by having her fall asleep. Chasing after the approval of a mirror for your looks is a…
When I was in middle school, they took us on a tour of a hat factory. I think that I had not even known that such things existed. Hats are not as popular now as they were back in the forties or fifties, but this place still made those old-fashioned men’s hats: fedoras or trilbies, maybe even Stetsons. It had been important once, this hat factory. It had stood near the center of town and had been the town’s second most…
Right before we broke up, my boyfriend gave me a sweater for my birthday. It was very beautiful, made of forest green wool. I told him thanks, and closed the box. No, no, he said, try it on. Okay, I said. I took it out of the box. It looks too small for me, I said (you should know that my body is on the large side). No, he said, try it on. I’m sure it will fit. I pulled…
The thing to remember about dogs is that they are actually partly tame wolves. This method of training them is to work with their inner wolf. You will need to source a supplier of sheep, since especially at the beginning, you will be using them as a reward. Choose the sheep based on your dog’s breed: obviously it would be difficult for a cockapoo to take down a large ram. Wolves are nocturnal, so schedule your training for night time,…
Netflix and Chill “Do we have plans for this evening?” “Not unless I have to work. You know, crime never sleeps. What would you be up for?” “Let’s just get a pizza and watch something.” “Okay, I’ll call in the order and you pick something. Anchovies?” “Only if you like them, Bruce. Let’s see. Ben-Hur, no. King of Kings, no. Hey, have you seen the Barbie movie?” “Yeah, a couple of times.” “The Dark Knight Rises?” “Hard pass. Christian Bale?…
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“Hey, Walt! There’s. . . people on the floor!” Walter looked at me as if I was crazy. Of course there were people on the floor. The New York Stock Exchange was bustling, even more lately with the bull markets we’d been having. “No, look! Over there!” I pointed at a small family grouping. “If management finds out we let in some tourists, no more cushy security jobs for you and me.” Walt squinted over at the intruders. “Guess we better get them…
I was in the science museum gift shop. There were lots of toys and things that I couldn’t figure to how they were related to the museum, but it seemed like someone had said, “This is scientific!!” (yes, with all the exclamation points), so they put it on the shelf for $23.95. In the museum itself, there was a huge cross section of a tree. There were little markers, like flags planted by explorers, that showed all the human things…
When I was about ten or eleven years old, I read a book that terrified me. It had a supernatural being that could take people over and leave them as empty husks. My father tried to comfort me by talking about how fears could be irrational. He gave as an example a fear from his childhood. He had been afraid that there was someone hiding behind the couch and that they were going to jump out and beat him with…