You are currently viewing the stories for “April 2011.”
My Uncle Carmine had a theory that the reason for the longevity of women was due to the fact that their sex makes men wait for them and every minute and hour of a man’s waiting is stored within the genetic code of a woman’s body. In America that advantage of life over death is more than five years and [...]
A skinhead handed Henry a beer. When you’re alone, other loners find you, and they are often alone because they’re fucking weird and the Lower East Side of New York City has the most professional weirdoes on the planet. “Mickey Skin,” he said. He ran his hand over his scalp, then held his fist in Henry’s face, knuckles tattooed “SKIN.” [...]
I settled into my bus seat, put on my glasses and continued editing my book proposal. As I considered rearranging a few words, the letters seemed to blur. Mist from the April rain, perhaps? I removed my specs and passed my index finger through the ring that should have encircled a lens. I dreaded going to my optician to replace [...]
What is it, I wonder, about the German fondness for the flesh of the pig and the Jewish abhorrence of it? Like lust, revulsion too is a visceral thing fueled by the same hunger, only in reverse, a passion linked to the salivary glands that passes down the gullet to tantalize and taunt the gut. For Viennese Jewish refugees like [...]
On a brisk bright February afternoon, father and baby daughter entered the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street. A planned Cobble Hill Cinemas screening of Duck Soup the month before had been canceled due to a single-digit temperature (sorry Groucho, Daddy really wanted it), so this was to be the four-month-old infant’s maiden moviegoing voyage. The Wednesday matinee was part of [...]
I thought I’d been having a bad year—chewed up and spit out after a couple of months in the New York City public school system (which is a whole other story I was advised by my attorney not to write about until after our lawsuit was resolved)—but then I met the saddest, sorriest creature I’d ever seen. An anabantid, a.k.a [...]
On a steamy afternoon last July, I paid a barber to shave my face. I had no real reason to indulge in this service. I had no company party to attend, no weekend away with the missus scheduled. I didn’t even have firm dinner plans for the night. Like eating and ironing, shaving is one of the few things I [...]
As I walked past High Point Coffee on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, a heavy bag of groceries in each hand, I was surprised, even alarmed, to see that the windows were dim. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet on a warm April evening. However, I reflected as I approached, I am High Point Coffee’s only customer, so perhaps they had [...]
