My mother eloquently captured the incongruous nature of her marriage to my father with a powerfully mundane anecdote: her own mother, dirt-poor Irish immigrant though she was, offered her every penny of her paltry life savings to not marry my dad. For my maternal grandmother, an ever-suffering Catholic from the land of perpetual potato blight and British oppression, it was unthinkable that her only daughter—shy, studious, virginal, and still living at home at the age of thirty—would choose to let herself be physically and spiritually defiled by a man who could most politely be described as White Trash…
July 25, 2010
Odd Couplings
April 19, 2010
Bottom-Feeder
You can suck on my anger
until you choke on my fear
You can spit or you can swallow
I don’t really care…
April 16, 2010
Imaginary Friends
{…first appeared in the Clockwise Cat…}
I was a bland and humorless child. The causes of this condition are legion. Start with the combed-over, slicked-down hair, parted just above my left ear and extending in a single horrifying mass all the way to my right ear. Throw in debilitating shyness, paralyzing social anxiety, and a genetic inability to catch, hit, throw, or run while holding a ball of any kind, and you have the makings of one sorry specimen of American boyhood—me. And it was all down hill as I made my way into an awkward adolescence and dysfunctional young adulthood: glasses with lenses as thick as bricks, volcanic pustules of cystic acne, and a nearly terminal case of protracted virginity…
Read the rest in The Cynic Online Magazine…
February 15, 2010
Politically Ill
While familiarity may breed contempt in some social circles, most people who get to know me are more commonly afflicted by morbid curiosity. It takes only a few conversations of any depth before I find myself confronted by an inevitable question. “So, what was it that turned you into such a depressed and bitter drug addict?”
For many people, this might be a complicated question, if not offensive. Who can say with certainty what twists a normal human mind, full of potential and promise, into a mangled mass of neurons such as mine. Genetic defects, perhaps; a brain born incapable of producing that optimum mix of neurotransmitters essential to a happy and fulfilled life. Or a half-buried childhood trauma that wordlessly drives one into a self-destructive cocoon of chemical isolation. Or, conceivably, being smarter than most of one’s peers and capable of recognizing the tortured hypocrisies that fill the world we inhabit…
Read the rest in the Clockwise Cat…
January 29, 2010
Plausible Undeniability
{…excerpted from a longer piece which first appeared in Spooky Action at a Distance…}
Because I grew up in a bland, East Coast suburb far removed from my Midwestern roots, I rarely met any of my extended family members. Of course, since the invention of the automobile and the airplane, geographical distance only goes so far in explaining the dearth of family connections experienced by people such as myself. A certain degree of emotional distance is also to blame. In my case, this was due in large part to the fact that the families of my mother and father were unlikely to view one another with any sense of familiarity, let alone friendliness.
Although neither side of my family was over-populated by over-achievers, at least my mother’s side included professional musicians and artists who lived in real cities like New York. My father’s family was more likely to include professional railroad and carnival workers in Wichita. It was differences like these that bespoke a gaping chasm in world view within my extended family unit…
Read the rest in Short Humour’sPeople of Few Words, Volume 2…
January 6, 2010
Imaginary Friends
{…excerpted from a longer piece which first appeared in the Clockwise Cat…}
I was a bland and humorless child. The causes of this condition are legion. Start with the combed-over, slicked-down hair, parted just above my left ear and extending in a single horrifying mass all the way to my right ear. Throw in debilitating shyness, paralyzing social anxiety, and a genetic inability to catch, hit, throw, or run while holding a ball of any kind, and you have the makings of one sorry specimen of American boyhood—me. And it was all down hill as I made my way into an awkward adolescence and dysfunctional young adulthood: glasses with lenses as thick as bricks, volcanic pustules of cystic acne, and a nearly terminal case of protracted virginity…
Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…
January 4, 2010
Plausible Undeniability
{…excerpted from a longer piece which first appeared in Spooky Action at a Distance…}
Because I grew up in a bland, East Coast suburb far removed from my Midwestern roots, I rarely met any of my extended family members. Of course, since the invention of the automobile and the airplane, geographical distance only goes so far in explaining the dearth of family connections experienced by people such as myself. A certain degree of emotional distance is also to blame. In my case, this was due in large part to the fact that the families of my mother and father were unlikely to view one another with any sense of familiarity, let alone friendliness.
Although neither side of my family was over-populated by over-achievers, at least my mother’s side included professional musicians and artists who lived in real cities like New York. My father’s family was more likely to include professional railroad and carnival workers in Wichita. It was differences like these that bespoke a gaping chasm in world view within my extended family unit…
Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…
December 27, 2009
Dysfunctional Desire
{…excerpted from a longer piece which first appeared in Gloom Cupboard…}
At the time, it seemed like the ideal moment to make my move.
It’s not every day I find myself engaged in rapt conversation with a beautiful woman fifteen years younger than myself; her eyes fixed on mine with an intensity suggesting more than a passing interest.
Smoothly, coolly, nonchalantly, I said, “We should get together sometime. Like, go somewhere. Or something”…
Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…
December 23, 2009
Cruising
{…first appeared in BURST…}
This was the defining moment that separates men from boys.
He opened the driver’s side door with a swagger.
No longer would he have to endure fatherly admonishments about traffic safety. Now, there would be speeding. And drinking. And girls. Lots of girls.…
Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…
The Little Things in Life
{…excerpted from “Sexual Psychosis,” which first appeared in The Legendary…}
When the first of my failed marriages came to an end, there was only one thing I wanted: sex. Not passionate lovemaking infused with deep emotion, but raw fucking that leaves a really big wet spot. I seriously entertained the idea of hiring a hooker for her services, but I was a “high-end call girl” kind of guy on a “toothless crack whore” budget, so paying for sex was out of the question. And, as a shy alcoholic who’d been dry for less than a year, joining the inebriated herd at a singles bar was unthinkable. So I decided to try what was then a relatively new option for desperate and socially isolated people in search of companionship: internet dating…
Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…
