You are currently viewing the stories for “September 2009.”
For decades my libertarian desire for privacy kept me lining up with the teeming hordes of commuters at the Verrazano and Throgs Neck Bridges because I didn’t want “them” to know where I was going to or coming from, and how often. But eventually, against my better judgment, I silenced the screaming voices in my head and I succumbed. Though [...]
I moved into Gramercy Park through sheer dumb luck. I didn’t discover Eden with my own bumpkin nose; I had help in the form a lanky, soft-spoken boy who was returning home after living as a piste-addicted ex-pat. I met him after some of my own colossally unproductive post-college years in Colorado. We had in common a faux-elitist notion that [...]
“If you could be anything in the world and talent and money weren’t an issue, would you still be doing what you do, or something else?” My husband posed this question in an attempt to liven up a rather staid Upper East Side party one night. The gathered Wall Street wizards, lawyers and M.B.A. types thought about it. “Exactly what [...]
The old upright piano was in the living room from my earliest recollection until the day my father died. He must have brought it sometime in the early ‘50s, soon after he'd gotten married. Dad would spend hours playing Brahms, Schumann, Clementi, Chopin. At the end, he would always start playing an old Russian folk song called “Two Guitars” and [...]
Our hands had not touched--other than to acknowledge each other’s presence or successes--in over thirty-five years. Now his open right hand lay by the side of his softly draped figure, a whisper’s distance from where I was sitting. A curtain, walling off a roommate, shadowed us from the bright day. “Remember how we agreed I’d tell you when something major [...]
There’s a low of five degrees today, and a woman gets off the 2 train with no hat, gloves, or scarf. An older man offers her some space under his umbrella, and she graciously accepts. I walk ahead of them, keeping my eyes down and forward to keep from slipping. Having underestimated the snow, I left my boots at home [...]
A tree grows in Brooklyn, and snow falls. Both are scarce, as were friendships on Madison Street. My only friend was a girl my age whose single mother was a police officer. Only once was I invited to her house to play. It was a row house like mine with three long rooms: windows in the front and a fire [...]
Thursday, Sept 10th: The St. Mark's Books Reading Series presents a reading from "Lost and Found: Stories From New York," featuring Sam Lipsyte, Bryan Charles, Betsy Berne, Debbie Nathan, Courtney Coveney, and Thomas Beller. @ Solas Bar 232 E. 9th Street (between 3rd and 2nd Aves) 7:30PM sharp ** Monday, Sept 14th: The Saint Ann’s Review Reading Thomas Beller and [...]
