TULSA, OK-
A while back I drove to Texas and attended a high school reunion. Events like these are surreal for most everyone, but as I approached Wichita Falls on a cold and still Friday evening, the intensity of it all was overwhelming—the color of the sky, the emptiness of the prairie, the quiet roar of my tires on interstate asphalt. I felt like I was driving into someone else’s dream.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY-
My childhood was a combination of magic and terror.
I come from a loud, sprawling clan of first generation Italian Americans who, for the most part, resided within walking distance of each other in the hamlet of Pelham, New York, a suburb of Manhattan.
They loved food, God, their newly adopted country, baseball and their family with fervent yet equal abandon. My earliest memories are of the wrap around porch of my grandparents’ home overflowing with cousins and aunts and uncles eating, drinking and talking all at once, of my older cousins wearing teased bouffant hair styles, and white lipstick, their hemlines inching way above the knee, of my grandfather and his brothers drinking homemade wine and smoking hand rolled cigars beneath the grape arbors in the backyard, of going into Manhattan, my hand held firmly in my grandfather’s, to watch the circus elephants arrive in town linked trunk to tail, of Jones Beach, of Coney Island, of rambling village parades where nearly half of those marching were related to me. Of holidays: of Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter, Halloween and the Fourth of July where the house was always full of people who had known me since I was born.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA-
Does Nick Cave know about my love life?
I found out my wife was cheating on me. Not the greatest feeling in the world after a decade of marriage. I admit, there were times when I met another attractive woman and thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could just…but I put that thought right out of my mind and went home a committed guy.
Not that sex was the only thing to the petit mess that our marriage was. There was me, the writer, and what she thought the writing life style would bring her.
When we dated, I was the quirky artist guy. She thought listening to Nirvana made her alternative and Nora Roberts was literature. (more…)
BOULDER, CO-
It was early in the morning. Lori answered the phone and handed it to me. My father’s voice.
“Uche…there’s been a terrible…”
“Uche…you should know…”
A pause as gruesome guesswork played through my mind. I wanted to hear rather than continue imagining, but did I really want to hear? He drew a constricted breath, and it came in a wave before his voice broke.
“Uche, Chika died tonight. Imose died tonight. Little Anya is just barely hanging on…”
Died. Died. Barely hanging on.
My nieces.
BALTIMORE, MD-
You might remember my mother, Bonnie Blau, from the interview I did with her about a year ago. We talked about the fact that she thinks she looks like Bruce Springsteen. You can read that interview here. As a follow up, here’s an interview with my mother where I ask her about one of my favorite photos. It’s the only picture I have of me as a little kid with my mother.
Do you remember where this photo was taken?
It was taken by your dad in Watertown, Massachusetts.
What was that time of life like for you?
It was nice. We lived in a nice place. All our friends were the same age and had children the same age. And life was pretty simple. We didn’t have any money but life was simple because taking care of kids is simple. And everyone was in the same situation so it was one of those nice situations. If I needed someone to take care of you, someone would come over. And the kids could go in and out and run outside. Although you didn’t go out much, you mostly stayed with me. And when you went out you took off all your clothes. You were bad. You were good, but funny. It was a nice time of life. Everyone was equal. There was one family the Dugans* that lived two houses down. They were kind of out of place because he was an alcoholic and
TULSA, OK-
In fiction, one common and generic way to refer to well-drawn, realistic characters is to call them “round.” As in:
“…characters as described by the course of their development in a work of literature. Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. By contrast, round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.”
–2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. (more…)
LAS VEGAS, NV -
I moved back to Vegas from Charlotte over a year ago. The reasons? Too many. But one of them was that my mom (my grandmother actually) was battling cancer and I wanted to be by her side. I spent many sad nights on the east coast thinking about what she was going through. It hurt like nothing I ever felt before. I felt like a horrible son.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA-
A little over three years ago a friend of mine in South Florida sent me a Craigslist post from a gentleman in the Los Angeles area seeking writers for a new website. The writers had to fit two criteria. They should be situated on any part of the planet, the weirder and more varied the location the better, and they must be able to write good creative non-fiction. When I received the email I was holed up in a mansion bordering a golf course on the outskirts of Cascais, Portugal with an injured leg and a bored and shitty attitude. I fit the first part of the bill, for I was definitely living in a weird and remote location, but I was no writer, oh no, never would be. Not me.
My friend in Miami pestered, cajoled, threatened and persevered and, one night, tipsy on Beaujolais, I relented and sent off an awkward, self-conscious and self-deprecating letter to the guy who’d posted the ad.
Two days later I got a reply from a dude called Brad Listi. He was a Real Writer with a Real Book, and A Blog, and Ambition, and Motivation, and Credibility, and he said something that changed my life forever.
He liked my work.
It’s amazing what a little approval can do.
LAS VEGAS, NV-
With a delicate caress of the bow, the Gypsy violin begins its song. The Taborny Dance starts off slow, with a woman’s graceful hands and the froth of her emerald skirts. I watch the audience from my usual spot just behind the right curtain. When Rubina goes center stage, people lean forward in their wooden seats. Her cat-like eyes slant at the corners as she smiles down at the crowd, like a royal queen at her subjects. Most of the men in the band are either in love or in lust with her. At least that is what my grandmother, Ksenia says. She does not approve, but since Rubina is one of the most talented dancers, grandmother keeps her opinions to herself.
ANNAPOLIS, MD-
Visceral: Of or pertaining to the viscera.
Viscera: The organs in the cavities of the body, especially the abdominal cavity.
Viscus: Singular of viscera
Viscous: Of a glutinous nature or consistency; sticky; thick; adhesive
Vicious: Addicted to or characterized by vice; grossly immoral; depraved; profligate
I could go on looking up definitions of words all day. My vocabulary is so lacking. Visceral, though. That’s a good one.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA -
65 years ago, the wall was written upon. The allies invaded Normandy, signalling (for all intents and purposes) the beginning of the end of World War II. Neither of my grandfathers were involved in those invasions. One was 4-F, the other was 2-B. By June 6, 1944 both of my parents had already been born, so even if my grandfathers had fought at Normandy, my arrival on this planet thirty-nine years later would not have been necessarily altered. But my father fought in Vietnam, my brother joined the Army a month before 9/11, I grew up in Navy Town, USA, and I share my birthday with, arguably, the most important day of combat in the entire 20th century. So the military has always been present in my life. By the time this posts, it will be June 6, 2009. So I thought I would take a look back and see how things have changed, and what I have learned, in the last year. (more…)
LOS ANGELES, CA-
Well, it’s official: after 37 years on this planet– 37 years of being chased by homicidal maniacs, trapped in mazes, falling off cliffs, forgetting how to drive stick while the steering wheel comes off in my hands as I navigate particularly treacherous mountain roads, having my teeth fall out when I show up late for school with no pants on only to find my term paper was due the day before, falling into the ocean while clutching my computer which contains the only copy of the book I’m writing, oh and going back to college and finding that somehow I wasn’t assigned a dorm room and have to live on the street oh but I didn’t register anyway and all the class are full and nobody seems to care about my predicament– um, stop here, sentence too confusing.
I finally had the most fucked-up dream of my life.
If I weren’t listening to Judas Priest right now (Sad Wings of Destiny) I would never have the strength to talk about it. But luckily I am!
So. I had this dream. And in my dream, I was in… Walgreen’s!
(more…)
PARIS-
Parisian women never look up. They don’t. They just don’t. It’s a fact. No eye contact. So don’t expect it. You’re never going to get it.
A true Parisian woman finds the floor fascinating.
I’ve seen them in their daily commutes. Ladies getting where they have to go. They sit in their seats and stand in their standing places.
LAS VEGAS, NV -
My father turned on the speakerphone, then dialed the number. His long, recently dyed hair shone black against the sunlight streaming through our Los Angeles apartment windows.
I glanced at my stepmother, Natali. She winked, a pair of golden teeth gleaming at me. She loved meddling, gossiping, trouble of any kind. So did her teeth.
Lyda–a retired hair dresser from across the hall–stood behind my father, arms crossed at the elbows, lips moving in worried waves.
I couldn’t believe they were actually doing this. But they would not listen to reason, so I hoped nobody was home. And then it came, the answer on the other end of the line. “Hello?”
Natali jumped in her seat. Lyda looked like a ripe tomato at a food festival, happy and terrified at the same time.
“Bless me, Boris,” my father said, motioning for us to stay quiet.
MANHATTAN-
“So do you love her?”
What throws me is how some of them smile as they frisk you with the question. Maybe because naive people like to pretend they’re cynical a lot of the time. That they can peg pretty much every human being as either an underdog or a whore, as if those were the only categories anybody can fall into.
After I put my head down and tongue the inside of my cheek what I’m really doing is trying to work out if damaged-goods-hearts maybe have that same magic vending machine candy has. Candy tastes better when it falls. More flavor. Achieving maximum flavor potential; ask anybody whose tried it.
Thing is, if you fall for somebody sometimes the effect it produces actually deactivates everything the person you fell for feels for you. No tag-backs.
VANCOUVER–
Lately, for the last few months at least, ten seconds after they—friends, family, strangers, ex’s—ask me about her, they ask me the same question: “you in love with her?”
And every time they ask I clam up and put my face down. Even if I’m on the phone with that Cuban girl who had my number in a wrenching way and she can’t see me:
“Brinicio, you don’t think I can hear you blush over the phone?”
Harpooned from across the continent.
SARANAC LAKE, NY-
I shave my legs more often, dice green vegetables back into my diet, and find myself looking into the mirror in search of a favorable impression more often.
I let the v-lines of my shirt drop seductively low, unhindered by scarf or sweater.
And just now, as I was walking, I became aware of a sultry swing of the hips that has infiltrated my stride, stretching from swirled embroidery on jean pockets down to brown leather boots.
It is mating season. (more…)
BOULDER, CO-
Mitochondrial DNA is a profound, primeval truth. As far back as all the creatures we can see with our naked eye, ourselves included, it’s meant that the blueprints for the energy of our lives are passed only through the lines of mothers. Poetry is all about such profound truths. Sometimes those truths possess lives in cruel ways. Sylvia Plath is known as a writer and a woman who killed herself. Her daughter became a writer. Her son has just killed himself. A tragic purification of the mitochondrial line. It so happens that Sylvia’s imagined rival, mistress of her husband Ted Hughes, and Sylvia’s rival to the dramatic (but not poetically) minded, also killed herself, and her daughter with Hughes. But that is soap opera, not poetry.
LAS VEGAS, NV-
At the age of twelve, I suddenly developed a crush on George Michael. I was still living in Russia, and spoke not a word of English. The miles separating me from my love only increased the fierce desire to worship him in the three languages I did know.
At the time, everything Western barely trickled in through the cracks of the strict Soviet censure. But the harder the government worked to keep us away from the ‘Devils Across the Ocean’, the more successfully it failed.
PORTLAND, ME-
We have the ritual down pat: My Mom gives me an old t-shirt to wear and she takes her clothes off to her underwear. I mix the hair dye in the bathroom, wearing those plastic gloves that come in the package. I squeeze the dye into a little one-cup Tupperware dish and use a small brush from another hair dying kit to apply the color.
