You are currently viewing the stories for “August 2006.”
Edgar was a nice kid. He was soft-spoken and respectful and called my mom “Ma'am.” (I had never called anyone “Ma'am” in my life.) Edgar had to be coaxed over and over before he relented and agreed to call my dad “Artie” like the rest of the kids did. Edgar wasn't handsome like Peter, or stocky like Mark, the freshman [...]
The date seemed to be going well. Not mine—I wasn't on a date. The one behind me. "Which do you think?" I whispered to my best friend, Alex, leaning in over my moo goo gai pan. "First? Third?" "You always skip second," she said. She was right. Alex and I smirked at each other. Second dates at kosher places? How [...]
We found it. After two years of wasted Sundays touring sad places in forgotten boroughs, my wife and I had finally found a place we liked, a place that was affordable. Well, maybe we didn’t like like it. It was a six-flight walk up that the real estate broker called a “handyman’s special.” My wife called it a “common man’s [...]
I saw him first. He was lounging; a big grey parrot perched above him while lizards slunk and swaggered in a terrarium nearby. Our eyes met; his were big and dark and luminous against pale coloring. He yawned. Stretched one arm up in a dramatic arch. There was another fellow right next to him, but it was he, Clovis Stirling, [...]
Adam Purple cycled by me as I walked down Second Avenue near 3rd Street early on a sunny spring morning. It was nothing unusual—in the past twenty-five years he has pedaled by me dozens of times while making his rounds below 14th Street. A few weeks earlier, I had seen a photograph of Mr. Purple’s long-since demolished Garden of Eden [...]
I was walking my boyfriend, Frank, to the Target near our house. We were out of paper towels and Diet Coke, and it was his turn to do the shopping. A few blocks away, he closed his eyes, and began breathing deeply, in and out. I grabbed his arm and steered him gently away from a stoop. “What are you [...]
“Leap and a net will appear.” Right. You know what appeared the last time I leapt? MasterCard debt and an empty bottle of vodka. Don’t get me wrong – vodka can really cushion a blow, but a net it is not. I moved to New York City on a whim. Well, most people call it moving—I call it running away. [...]
It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday in April 1973, and my first-day tour on the job, when that seminal alarm sounds. The disembodied voice of the dispatcher booms from loudspeakers throughout the firehouse, “Attention the following units…Engines 83, 60, 41-1 Ladders 29, 17-2 Battalion 14…Respond to…” The box number and address are given, and then the dispatcher adds, “We are receiving [...]
We took the train to the very top of Manhattan, exiting the subway into a neighborhood of large boulevards and boarded-up storefronts. Black sedans cruised by and occasionally stopped to ask us if we needed a taxi. At 9:30 on a Sunday morning, it was already steamy. This was only our fifth Sunday in the city. My fiancé and I [...]
A guy on my street, let's call him Eddie, is probably thirty-eight, only two or three inches shorter than Wilt Chamberlain, with a sort of pirate's crook nose and a Russian infantryman's sinewy musculoskeletal system. He doesn't seem to mind the smell of trash. I know this because he's my trash man. He used to live somewhere far beneath my [...]
I had never gone to the Frying Pan—the restored boat/event space docked beside the Chelsea Piers—before last week. It was one of those places that I’d almost been to a bunch of times, but never actually made it. I nearly didn’t go that night, either, but I’m glad I did, because I think I ended up there under perfect conditions, [...]
