she wrote me for years. “I’m drinking wine in the kitchen. it’s raining outside. the children are in school.” she was an average citizen

in the slow Mexican air I watched… and they cut off his ear, and his… no more terror than a rock. driving back the next day we stopp… and watched the golden red and blu…

The boys on Dorsey station didn’t know my problems. I’d enter through the back way each night, hide my sweater in a tray and walk in to get my timecard: We had a game going, the black-w...

To pacify Lydia I agreed to go to Muleshead, Utah. Her sister was camping in the mountains. The sisters actually owned much of the land. It had been inherited from their father. Glendol...

That evening after dinner Joanna produced some mescaline. “You ever tried this stuff?” Joanna had some paints and brushes and paper spread on the table. Then I remembered she was an art...

Her father really hated me. He thought I was after his money. I didn’t want his god damned money. And I didn’t even want his god damned precious daughter. The only time I ever saw him w...

That night I took Tammie to the harness races. We went upstairs to the second deck and sat down. I brought her a program and she stared at it a while. (At the harness races, past perfor...

I took Tanya to the airport the next afternoon. We had a drink in the same bar. The high-yellow wasn’t around; all that leg was with somebody else. “No. You love sex and there’s nothing...

re-reading some of Fante’s The Wine of Youth in bed this mid-afternoon my big cat

I used to hold my social security… up in the air, he told me, but I was so small they couldn’t see it,

drive to the beach at night in the winter and sit and look at the burned-dow… wonder why they just let it sit th… in the water.