The next night as they moved the group from the main build– ing to the training building, I stopped to talk to Gus the old newsboy. Gus had once been 3rd-ranked welterweight contender b...

I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy,...

I went to my place, started drinking. I snapped on the radio and found some classical music. I got my Coleman lantern out of the closet. I turned out the lights and sat playing with the...

I didn’t see Lydia for a couple of days, although I did manage to phone her 6 or 7 times during that period. Then the weekend arrived. Her ex-husband, Gerald, always took the children o...

The riots ended, the baby calmed down, and I found ways to avoid Janko. But the dizzy spells persisted. The doctor wrote me a standing order for the green-white librium capsules and the...

you know what Li Po said when ask… Artist or Rich? I’d rather be Rich,” he replied,… sitting on the doorsteps of the Rich.”

all of a sudden I’m a painter. a girl from Galveston gives me $50 for a painting of a man holding a candycane while floating in a darkened sky.

I forget the beginning time. 6 or 7 p.m. Something like that. All you did was sit with a handful of letters, take a streetmap and figure your run. It was easy. All the drivers took much...

I had begun to dislike my father. He was always angry about something. Wherever we went he got into arguments with people. But he didn’t appear to frighten most people; they often just ...

at exactly 12:00 midnight 1973-74 Los Angeles it began to rain on the palm leaves outside my window

Our English teacher, Miss Gredis, was the absolute best. She was a blonde with a long sharp nose. Her nose wasn’t much good but you didn’t notice it when you looked at the rest of her. ...

this is important enough: to get your feelings down, it is better than shaving or cooking beans with garlic. it is the little we can do

these things that we support most… have nothing to do with up, and we do with them out of boredom or fear or money or cracked intelligence;