You are currently viewing the stories for “September 2002.”
Another September as bright as a dime. Another morning of clear air, another day of hearing shrieking jets and watching strangers acting strange in the streets. Another day of firefighters in their FDNY T-shirts and brotherhoods of policemen in their dress blues, this time like old war veterans dressed up for the parade, assuming a public identity that seemed to [...]
This story ends with a blind Chinese Bibliophile. But it begins in a moment of weakness, when I capitulated to the temptations at hand and called a realtor who specialized in barnes and farm houses and asked to look at a few. The rolling hills and open skies of Western New York had me in their spell, and I, in [...]
What follows are some stories about David Brown and his flower shop. But before I tell you about him, I have to explain why, whenever I look into the store window I now see, in addition to all the flowers, a face. For a period of several months David Brown was absent from his own store. He wasn't well. He's [...]
I am not a firefighter, police officer or paramedic, but when a nurse at the Red Cross barricade mistook me for one and asked, "Are you coming?" I said, "Yes." That was 8:45 P.M. on September 11th. What followed was a two-day odyssey at Ground Zero. I worked with many good-willed people on bucket brigades and setting up triages. I [...]
I am a skeptic when it comes to psychics like John Edward, the hunky television charlatan, who claims he is able to communicate with “The Other Side.” When I have a premonition I tend to deny it. I denied one in late August of last year when I was seven months pregnant. While organizing my wallet, I paused on two [...]
I electrocuted a rat early this morning. It was approximately 2:20 am. There were no eyewitnesses. I heard the electrical noise. It was a sustained bug-zapping sound that went on for a good thirty seconds. I knew immediately what was happening when I was startled awake. I just listened, victorious, with a great feeling that my vigilante justice had been [...]
As the country endures its day of paranoid scuffling, maudlin wallowing, and commercial 9/11 reality-tv overdose next week, I will be manning the phones at a major newspaper conglomerate. Because I’m the temp. Looking for work post 9/11 has been an utter joy – armed with not one but two Masters degrees and skills, as one of my “counselors” describes [...]
I moved to New York City, a naïve T passenger from Boston, in October 2000. In line with its puritanical ways, the Boston subway system, better known as the T, was all color-coded simplicity. The subway map could be masterfully replicated by any seven-year old armed with four crayons-red, orange, blue, and green, each line appropriately named by its respective [...]
There is usually classical music playing on the radio. Arty stands patiently behind his counter at the back of the store, his hands resting on the top of the counter like a dealer at a blackjack table that is momentarily devoid of players. Old cameras in glass cases. Old super Eight movie cameras. And new cameras, too. A photographer's paradise. [...]
When I first working as ESL teacher twenty year ago I was be a little nervious. In that time I am more young than now, and when I turn around to writing at blackboard, I am think the students looking at my ass. But that a long time ago. Now my ass she is nothing for look. Today I am [...]
We found the doll right there on 16th Street in Brooklyn, outside the Baptist church (now, don’t get too excited, they’re boring white Baptists--no big hats or electric guitars anywhere in sight). The doll was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Only its feet were showing, chubby little feet in high-button boots. The church folk had been cleaning out [...]
The summer of 1957 left-hooked me. I should have seen it coming. Dad left on suspiciously extended business trips. Strange excursions, given his sedentary and lackluster job as an advertising sales agent for RH Donnelly. One day he even appeared outside our Flatlands apartment in a shiny cherry red Triumph, offering to take my girlfriends and me for a spin. [...]
There it was, in my Inbox, mocking me. Dragging me down to its oceanic depths. Instantly, drowning me in thoughts of that horrific day downtown in August of 2000 when I attempted to swim a mile in the Hudson River. The New York City Swims people e-mailed a friendly reminder to sign up for this summer's swim, 8/4/02, from the [...]
The neighborhood is barren of niceties, wide cobbled streets separate low buildings of a century past, warehouses of animal flesh with racks for hooks hanging out over the freight doors where trucks deliver their carcass-cargoes. In the pale dead winter afternoon I stumble over ice and snow blocked gutters to a set of heavy glass double doors into a narrow [...]
