My parents had me in their early twenties, which meant we grew up together. They weren’t emotionally prepared for marriage or parenthood then, and if their upbringings had been happier we might have all been spared our fates, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Despite their tender ages, I was a second-chance baby, one […]
The crowd at Roland-Garros angered me from the start this year with its indefensible booing of Marta Kostyuk, a Ukrainian who declined to shake Belarusian opponent Aryna Sabalenka’s hand at the net. But its support of native sons Lucas Pouille and Gaël Monfils has also moved me to tears (like its support of Gilles Simon
It took me a couple tries to admit that I was gay. It’s a story I’ll explain more fully one day, but for now all that’s relevant is that I came out to myself at 14 and to a lesbian aunt within a year of that, on our way to see Life is Beautiful at
Hanging on the Telephone Read More »
I was waiting in line to order a burrito when I sent my family a text message announcing my engagement. My sisters still find this bizarrely informal (they must’ve expected herald trumpets), but we were hungry and Crankenstein’s acceptance of the proposal had been a foregone conclusion. When we first discussed marriage, she made it
“Do you remember the lady from The 700 Club –” Crankenstein started to ask me a couple weeks ago, and before she finished the question, I knew the answer was no. My parents would’ve thrown our television out the window before subjecting their family to evangelical Christian programming, while Crankenstein was raised by religious fundamentalists
I don’t remember who gave me the generous gift of a shiny red “My First Sony” Walkman sometime in the early ’90s, but allowance being what it was then for an early grade schooler, I could generally afford no more than cassingles.* The earliest cassette I recall being gifted was the Oliver & Company soundtrack,
The Warmth of the Sun Read More »
There’s a lot happening on the Internet these days that reminds me of the recovered memory, ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder crazes of yore. It’s not just an erosion of critical thinking skills as we retreat to online echo chambers, or the dissociative identity disorder nonsense that’s rampant on TikTok; it’s an all-purpose cultural
Remembering the “Michelle Remembers” Publisher’s Note Read More »
My grandfather was one of those men who was widely and charitably remembered as a “character” by people too polite to call him an asshole. Friends, family, passing acquaintances, even Bob Costas — yes, he had a long-running personal beef with the smarmy sports announcer, the particulars of which we won’t get into here today
As a kid I saved a portion of my meager weekly allowance and spent the rest at the used bookstore. Located in a suburban strip mall alongside a sandwich shop, Payless shoe store, a rotating cast of tax preparation franchises and a Blockbuster Video, it was filled mostly with romance novels and Tom Clancy paperbacks.
You Are — Your Life, And Nothing Else Read More »
When my wife and I first started spending the night together, I had minimal knowledge of her troubled history with sleep. She cautioned that once she took her night meds she’d be zonked out, which indeed was the case, but she judiciously omitted a few piquant details that I’d have to encounter myself in due
In the Still of the Night Read More »