CHICAGO, IL -

I’ve always tried to write stories on here with the site title in my head.

About times when I get nervous.

Or breakdown.

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COLUMBIA, MARYLAND-

While Jilly and I were living in Vermont, we happened upon this fantastic guy named Milton Young. We were both in a J. Lo phase at the moment and, having shortened just about everyone’s name to a J. Lo incarnation, we began calling him M. Yo. It stuck and, three years later, he’s still M. Yo.

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By R Kent

PARIS-

I’m leaving Paris.

In a little over a week, the lovely Isabelle and I will move to Arusha, Tanzania.

While the move is only for five months, and we will be back here in February, I feel as if it’s the end of an era, in a way.

By next week, I will have lived in Paris for twenty months.

‘My first twenty.’

Though I’d spent plenty of time here before over the years, it’s different when you’re living in a place for the first time. (more…)

NEW YORK CITY-

I have a love-hate relationship with The New York Times Style Section:  while I read it religiously, I find myself insulted by the way it treats my generation, as though we’re all a bunch of self-absorbed idiots with $3,000 to spend on a handbag.  Take the cover story this past Sunday, on Life Lists.  Apparently, Generation X, of which I’m a member, is fond of compiling lists of things they must do before they die. (more…)

LOS ANGELES, CA-

I was thinking about bad smells this morning. The Industrial Revolution. How big cities at the dawn of the twentieth century were often cesspools for pollution and disease and putrefaction.

Coal smoke.

Stray dogs.

Gas lamps.

The sun cutting through the dense layers of muck and filth, bathing urban landscapes in an eerie yellow light.

Animal carcasses rotting in the streets.

Piles of rancid garbage left to rot in the hot sun, composting on the curbside.

And so on. (more…)

SANDY, UT-

Though I have an MFA in poetry, spent several years in a creating writing Ph.D. program, and took numerous creative writing workshops as an undergrad, recently when my opinion was asked, I steered two friends away from the MFA.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

Today I started my day badly.

I woke up already crying, which I was a bit proud of because not many people do that.

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CHARLOTTE, NC-

I dream in color.

I can also taste things in my dreams.

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SONOMA, CA-

I’ve been dumped by a lot of women in my life, but not one of them has ever thrown a drink in my face.

I’m not sure why this should matter, but it does. When my relationships have fallen apart, it’s usually been quiet and civilized. They’ll calmly explain their reasons, or just stop calling me until I figure it out on my own. It’s never been a big dramatic blow-up. Just once, I would’ve liked one of them to end our relationship with a bang, like throwing all of my clothes out on the lawn, or walking over to me at a public gathering and slapping me hard across the face, screaming something like “You worthless son of a bitch!”

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SACRAMENTO, CA-

For the first time in my life I’m leaving without running away.

It’s making me a bit nervous actually.

Most of my traveling has been panic-driven.

“I hate my life. I have to get out of here,” I’d say. (more…)

THE DEEP SOUTH-

“Yes, yes gentlemen, the singers, right here, God bless,” the old rotund preacher with Grecian formula sweating through the sides of his hair instructs, motioning to a tight spot near the back of the pulpit between a hot tub baptistery and the casket.

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SAN FRANCISCO/ST. PETERSBURG-

June 20

St. Petersburg is nothing like Prague, where half the population speaks English. In St. Petersburg, people dress like they’re auditioning for a Las Vegas dance troupe, but when you try to speak to them in the language of Las Vegas, they roll their eyes and suck on their cigarettes like you’re a piece of trash on the street to be ignored. In fact there’s plenty of trash on Nevsky to be ignored, probably because there are no trash cans, so maybe Russians are simply averting their eyes to avoid becoming morbidly depressed at all the ugliness in the world, my sorry non-Russian speaking self included.

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Auvergne, Fr.—

I came back this week from a few weeks in Chicago and found that something had changed.

It was like that British Airways commercial.

A guy wakes up and goes out onto the street in New York and it’s empty.

Someone else wakes up, goes outside and finds that he’s the last person on earth.

Whoever wrote that commercial must have been in France in August (or on Sunday, but that’s another post for another time.) (more…)

OTAKO, JAPAN-

Mr. Dave, our heavy-set, super-enthusiastic American supervisor,

(like this, but heavier)

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WASHINGTON, D.C.-

One

On Friday, as I step off the bottom of the escalator at the U Street Metro station, I hear a woman screaming. She is not just talking loudly, or shouting. She is screaming. Her voice sounds desperate. It breaks as if she’s close to tears. She is saying, “I’m trying! Lord knows I’m trying! God knows! I’m trying! I’m trying but it’s so hard! You don’t know how hard it is!”

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PORTLAND, ME-

One morning in Maine, two 30-something women and a hound-dog of a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix made their way along the circumference of Mackworth Island.

Carol is playing tour guide.

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PARIS-

I will never be French.

Three weeks ago I was standing in a slow-moving line snaking toward the Delta ticket counter at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Since I was so far away from even being able to see the front of the line, I tried catching the attention of an airport customer service agent.

The agent was a young woman with a cool smile and a disaffected air that seemed to indicate that while she realized she was a member of the customer service industry, she had very little desire to actually have to serve a customer.

I caught her attention with an ‘Excusez-moi’, and she turned and countered with a ‘Bonjour.’

I asked her if I was in the correct line for my flight.

She said, ‘Bonjour.’

I nodded and asked my question again.

She said, ‘Bonjour.’ (more…)

TULSA, OK-

The morning is soupy, humid and warm, and we all know the mercury will climb quickly. A ride on a bus and an uphill walk, rubbing elbows with an army of spectators, and then I see the sun breaking over the roof of the club house. Shadows stretch across the golf course, a man-made jewel. The sky is infinite shades of pink and blue.

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TORONTO, ON-

I wish I knew the secret to being a great writer like Kurt Vonnegut. If I had the chance, I would take Vonnegut’s alter ego, Kilgore Trout from Breakfast of Champions, on a road trip through the American Midwest. Gazing out at the endless flatlands would number Trout’s brain sufficiently for me to coax out Vonnegut’s secret.

Breakfast of Champions contains drawings of assholes that look like a hand-drawn asterisk.

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PONTEVEDRA - SPAIN

Spain is a country teeming with pleasure seeking.

Having become a democracy only 30 years ago, this country exudes a type of national adolescence that is hell-bent on vices and enjoying the party as long as it lasts.

You can see it when you walk down any street on any evening around midnight and witness an entire family eating a meal well past midnight, the parents sipping on wine and smoking cigarettes while the kids thumb away at a Game boy. (more…)