Six months into our seven year relationship, I had to break up with B and send him back to Kansas. The whole spectacle was like some 90s hair band love ballad video. The bipolar drive to the bus station, B’s arms flailing in the air like some Evangelist, begging me to let him stay. That […]
Tag / writer’s life
Saying the Names
I remember John Flanagan. He had a head of red hair and a mouth full of over-sized teeth that seemed to get even bigger if you stared long enough. Despite the can of Bulmer’s in his hand, he was just a kid. That night, the only night I would ever be in his presence, he […]
Nazi Time Machine
It was over a Sausage McMuffin with egg that the manifestation of what I believed to be a brilliant idea birthed itself in my brain. “Let’s eat mushrooms and go to the Van Gogh Museum,” I said and then took a sip of my coke. “Okay, let’s do it,” Jacquie said, sitting across from me […]
Death’s Interruption
“You have to write yourself out of this. Quit creating new chapters and write the ones you have,” my psychologist Mike said last September, sitting in his fancy doctor office, a step up from the dusty classroom-like one he had at the rehab facility I first saw him at in 2014. I remember the day […]
The Eight Ball
It started with an eight ball, not of cocaine, but the plastic toy you ask a question, shake, and turn over to see the answer. We were checking out at Primo’s Deli when B grabbed it from the counter and handed it to me, the tips of his fingers bridging mine. Memory paints the December […]
A Series of Bad Ideas
The itch of restlessness is no stranger to me. Before drugs played a role in my life, I often scratched this itch by putting into play some really bad ideas. My earliest memory of feeling this way was preschool. Ohio heat stuck to my skin through my corduroys as I sailed through the air on […]
Paintbrush and Trigger 