When I was nine, I became best friends with Chubby Morgan to humor my mother, who was on the verge of taking me to a psychiatrist because I spent most of my time alone or with imaginary playmates.
Stealing Almonds
A Funeral
Florida was everything that my parents had promised, and I was miserable. The hotel featured a sprawling labyrinth of hot tubs, waterslides and juice bars. The arcade had games I normally would have never been allowed to play, and women in red, blue and purple swimsuits of varying styles were everywhere. At first, the distractions were enough, but I soon became twitchy and weird like an animal with fleas. Everything sent me into a state of chaotic desire, the warmth of the swimming pool, the sound of the squeak of my back on the rickety waterslide, the coolness my hand felt on the side of a concrete.
His Name Started with F
He sat on the far end of the bleachers in the schoolyard, legs pulled up with both arms wrapped around his knobby knees. He had frizzy black hair that was big enough to poof around his head and fine enough to let light leak through like a halo...
Not Always Duck Soup
The year 1974 began with me watching a Marx Brothers movie on WGN in the partially finished basement of our next-door neighbors, the Birdlemans. Hopped up on Pepsi and cocktail wieners, I relished the late-night affair, despite the basement’s dog hair and exposed, asbestos-wrapped plumbing. Mr. and Mrs. Birdleman were upstairs entertaining friends in the manner still reminiscent of the prior decade—stiff drinks, cigarettes, and Polyester knit dresses.
Walk Better
“You walk better than most people I know.”
An insult conveniently wrapped in a compliment. A stinging backhand. The intent was clear: after several years, he finally brandished new ankle-foot orthotics, or AFOs, and given his previous struggles, the comment came from a place of love, of pride.
But it was, in fact, a slight. A slight against his intelligence, for he knew otherwise. That his walking was worse than the average person. That the culmination of aging and the progression of his symptoms would cripple him in various ways, both obvious and subtle. For the sake of being polite, he grit his teeth and smiled.
A Soldier’s Minute
The soldiers stood looking over a man, in his early twenties, unaware that his blood was being gradually diluted in the thick squelch of mud. His watch that had first alerted the men to his location, glimmered in the moonlight, marking the moment and time of a man who’d fallen.