the rooms at the hospital went for 550 a day. that was for the room alone. the amazing thing, though, was tha… in some of the rooms

Each night as I got ready to go on in, Joyce had my clothing laid out on the bed. Everything was the most expensive money could buy. I never wore the same pair of pants, the same shirt,...

our marriage book, it says. I look through it. they lasted ten years. they were young once.

R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was for the misfits. Like I said, it was either that or gym. I would have taken gym but I didn’t want people to sec the boils on my back. There...

you haven’t lived until you’ve been in a flophouse with nothing but one light bulb

But the next morning it was the sa… “That’s all, Chinaski. Nothing fo… It went on for a week. I sat ther… Then Bobby Hansen, one of the old… “I don’t care. I’m not kissing hi…

“I’ve made it,” she said, “I’ve c… through.” she had on new boots, pa… and a white sweater. “I know what… want now.” she was from Chicago an… had settled in L.A.’s Fairfax dis…

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

around 2 a.m. in my small room after turning off the poem machine for now

what is it about lobsters and crab… those white-pink shells that always make me hungry just looking at them there in the butcher’s display case

Sara was preparing the turkey dressing and I sat in the kitchen talking to her. We were both sipping white wine. The phone rang. I went and got it. It was Debra. “I just wanted to wish ...

But there were some good moments. My sometime friend from the neighborhood, Gene, who was a year older than I, had a buddy, Harry Gibson, who had had one professional fight (he’d lost)....

I was the last one off the plane and there was Joanna Dover. “Joanna, let’s have a Bloody Mary while we wait for my baggage. Oh hell, I don’t have any baggage. But let’s have a Bloody M...