You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Love.”
It wasn’t easy for us to dress for Thanksgiving. Basically, we had interchangeable wardrobes in two sizes: Levis, BVD tees and plaid flannel shirts. Occasionally, I wore a leotard or a 1950’s thrift shop sweater, but there was nothing formal enough for dinner with his family in Queens. So, we dropped by my parents and in my old bedroom closet [...]
It was January 2022, almost a year since my breakup. The air was chilly and filled with Omicron. I'd reached my limit of stoical solitude and turned to OkCupid. My profile, I hoped, would present as light, clear, and open. I used phrases like, "Bundling up and dining outdoors these days." Read: I'm risk-averse but adaptable. Read deeper: I'm self-protective [...]
Sitting in the sunset in the middle of Central Park, the unfamiliar boy and I huddled together in the growing chill of late October, using the excuse of needing bodily warmth to search for some other, more abstract warmth of feeling. We had spent the whole day exploring the Met Museum, and afterwards walked around the park trying to tell [...]
On Match.com, Ken’s moniker was “Dull.” He wrote that among his favorite things were office carpeting, spam, and waiting rooms. “I bet he lives in one of those storage units off the highway,” my friend Meg said as she read over my shoulder. My own profile was styled after Nancy Drew. Hair color? Titian. Hobbies? Motor boating, driving too fast, [...]
On the subway Thursday morning, a man sat beside me, with his wife or girlfriend (no ring) standing over him. He was about 35, with long wavy hair pulled into pony tail, and a scraggly beard — kind of a 21st-century beatnik look. She was done up like a character from My Cousin Vinny — jet black hair in a [...]
1. I went into college with virtually no experience, so virginal I believed myself to smell of baby powder. Touching a boy daringly was grazing his shoulder. That was till I met him, a studio art student from England (a would-be dream for high school me). He pursued me in the somehow typical NYU way of asking me to act [...]
During the middle of my spring semester, I remembered the homeless man in front of the 21st street CTown. He was the poem in my poetry workshop. He was the protagonist of my memoir workshop free-write. I remembered my love for him. My professor loved him from the first paragraph. I went to high school in Long Island City, LIC [...]
For thirty-five years its posture has been folded into a deep curtsy, dormant over a hanger, as if waiting for a curtain call. After that one moment in the spotlight, it’s never been worn again. Unless we consider fleeting fantasies of varying scenarios I’ve had over the decades that flash-forwarded to, well, the age I am now. Sixty. I am [...]
Last week I officially let go of my faux-boyfriend. The moment of truth happened in a lavender room with a gray sofa and wooden lectern at the Office of the City Clerk on Worth Street. Jamie and Tomoko said, “I do,” and smiled. They kissed each other and thanked the clerk. I waited for something to feel different, but it [...]
"Henry, why must you be such a baby?" I say to Mr. Henry Longfellow, my piebald dachshund, as I carry him in my arms across Central Park West on our way into the Park next to Tavern on the Green. I am not young or especially strong. Carrying an overweight dachshund is not easy. Henry is shaking. The sounds of [...]
When you lose someone so important to you, who feels larger than life, sometimes you act a little crazy while going through the grief. Maybe it is to counter the silence and life's unfairness, but at the time, your actions can feel magically vibrant. This is one of those stories. The day was St. Patrick's Day 2002 and I drove [...]
Today it hit. I woke up with the usual thought—coffee. Despite the heat that caked my mouth like cracked paint, my craving kicked in immediately. I rolled out of bed and as I walked toward the kitchen it suddenly hit. My heart was broken. The heartbreak had been triggered the week before but the realization, like a sluggish messenger inadvertently [...]
