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...

During the second and third grades I still didn’t get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I wo...

On Christmas I had Betty over. She baked a turkey and we drank. Betty always liked huge Christmas trees. It must have been 7 feet tall, and 1/2 as wide, covered with lights, bulbs, tins...

he hooked to the body hard took it well and loved to fight had seven in a row and a small fle… over one eye,

I blacked out after that. I guess I had consumed more whiskey than I thought. I don’t remember arriving at Nicole’s. I awakened in the morning with my back to somebody in a strange bed....

he met her at the racetrack, a str… blonde with round hips, well-bosom… turned-up nose, flower mouth, in a… wearing white high-heeled shoes. she began asking him questions abo…

The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove ...

twitching in the sheets— to face the sunlight again, that’s clearly trouble. I like the city better when the

One night I was coming around the corner after sneaking down to the cafeteria for a pack of smokes. And there was a face I knew. It was Tom Moto! The guy I had subbed with under The Sto...

The baby was crawling, discovering the world. Marina slept in bed with us at night. There was Marina, Fay, the cat and myself. The cat slept on the bed too. Look here, I thought, I have...

very tall girl lifts her nose at m… outside a supermarket as if I were a walking garbage can; and I had no desire for her, no more desire

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

the Egyptians loved the cat were often entombed with it instead of with the women and never with the dog but now