I was in the 4th grade when I found out about it. I was probably one of the last to know, because I still didn’t talk to anybody. A boy walked up to “Your mother has a hole . . .”—he to...

like in a chair the color of the s… as you listen to lazy piano music and the aircraft overhead are not at war. where the last drink is as good as

got into my BMW and drove down to… pick up my American Express Gold… told the girl at the desk what I wanted. you’re Mr. Chinaski,” she

Lydia had two children; Tonto, a boy of 8, and Lisa, the little girl of 5 who had interrupted our first fuck. We were together at the table one night eating dinner. Things were going we...

Sunday, I am eating a grapefruit, church is over at the… Orthadox to the west. she is dark

my first and only wife painted and she talked to me about it: it’s all so painful

The voices of the people were the same, no matter where you carried the mail you heard the same things over and over again. “You’re late, aren’t you?” “Where’s the regular carrier?” “He...

drunk and writing poems at 3 a.m. what counts now is one more tight

Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there ten hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, "I want to tell you some– thing. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuc...

I only met one student at City College that I liked, Robert Becker. He wanted to be a writer. “I’m going to learn everything there is to learn about writing. It will be like taking a ca...

I didn’t contest the divorce, didn’t go to court. Joyce gave me the car. She didn’t drive. All I had lost was 3 or 4 million. But I still had the post office. “I saw you with that bitch...

Jimmy Hatcher worked part time in a grocery store. While none of us could get jobs he could always get one. He had his little movie star face and his mother had a great body. With his f...

the waste of words continues with a stunning persistence as the waiter runs by carrying the… tray

The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed wit...