Short Stories, Long Odds

A Moment On The Road

Sometimes there’s more truth in things like pictures and words than you can possibly have planned on.

(I’m cheating for last week by bringing you something old in order to do something new this week. Even though I’ve published this before it is still one of my favorites. My intentions wishlist for this piece is to add two stories I originally left out and for some reason didn’t want to amend until the last few weeks or so. One story involves Ground Zero and the other story involves little kids and danger and me subsequently using The Dad Voice for the first time. And a boat.

So I’m going to add those in.

This was written in 2003, the job I had was a drumline instructor for a high school band, and the trip we took was in 2002, 6 months after 9/11.)

All I’ve been able to think about today is how I’m going to quit my job, and New York City.

» Read the rest of this entry «

I.
At the high school reunion
Although I hadn’t spoken to her in years
we were always seriously connected
like good friends
(she assured us)

and another girl’s Libertarian boyfriend
cornered me to talk about Uribe
and Chavistas

and said, alternatively,
“The government should get out of our lives.”
and
“Are we gonna take him out or what?”

I kept drinking, and nodding.

II.
Waitress: “Do you want another bourbon?”
Me: “What do you think?”
She brought me two.

III.
The guy with the crewcut
is a cop now.
Which totally makes more sense than anything else out of the whole night.

IV.
On all fours
and dressed to the
nines, scrubbing the

carpet with an old toothbrush
while Ben Folds sings ‘Evaporated’.

Thankfully, I am medically
unable to see metaphors.

V.
Pal: “Hey, do you remember on New Year’s that one time when that guy passed out and pissed in your bed?”
Me: “I thought that was you.”
Pal: “You’ve been telling people I pissed in your bed for ten years?”
Me: “I thought that was you.”
Pal: “No, that was Matt. I just put him in there.”
Me: “You’re as good as guilty then, and it is going in my book. Read all about it, from Random House: You pissed in my bed.”
Pal: “But that’s not true!”
Me: “Random House has lawyers.”

VI.
She asked me if I
drank scotch and sat behind a
big desk and wrote about politics and stuff

I said, actually, I do
She said, is that fun

I said, I would maybe say it is more interesting than fun
She said, You always seemed like a guy who would think interesting things are fun

I said, How’s your father

(Written in early 2005; this was the only column I ever wrote for my college newspaper.)

We, as a species, have a habit of expecting that the worst thing possible is exactly what will happen, if for no other reason than it so seldom does. This preparation in the mind – to expect abject terror, defeat, or sorrow – makes it so that when things are nominal, or average, or so-so, we are relieved.
» Read the rest of this entry «