…In one of them her ex-husband sat in the bathtub reading the New York Times, his hard-on clearly visible like a boat half submerged in water. That had been a joke too. The next one showed a sunrise, geese rising from a lake in crazy hundreds. But the photo didn’t capture the noise of that thing or her own joy… [Read More]

…said something was inside a man like that. But he liked you. You know that. That’s the only reason my mom trusted you.” Samuel heard all of this and then felt stupid again for reacting defensively about the reading. He didn’t read books anymore, and he didn’t know why he felt shame for that in front of this girl. He… [Read More]

…but she didn’t turn for home. In a bit, she told the baby, we’ll go home in a bit. An old woman was sitting on the park bench throwing bits of bread to a few pigeons. Willa had seen her there before, sometimes asleep, sometimes reading a dime store paperback, but mostly, she sat and fed whatever birds happened to… [Read More]

…her favorite cue from the rack on the wall. “Care to make it interesting?” he said, chalking his own stick. “Nah. I don’t gamble.” “No, you don’t, do you?” he replied, looking at her intensely now, reading her. “You’re no dummy. I never thanked you for suggesting I sell that RetImaging Systems. Have you been following it?” She had. After… [Read More]

…the one place in the whole carriage where nobody was looking: like a black hole. Like the possibility of something going terribly wrong. I lifted one foot. Still nothing. Then I lifted up my whole self and started walking down the aisle. People couldn’t even blame the fact that they were reading, because nobody was. They just weren’t seeing me…. [Read More]

…at the time, that is to say — he never was and never could be wrong. However, from my parents’ whispered conversations behind half-closed doors, their meaningful sidelong glances and eye-rolls at the Pravda-reading Grandfather — and from the certain sotto voce exchanges between the stern-looking, poorly shaven city strangers milling around the Roshchino park in the dark — I… [Read More]

…Prevent AIDS. It changed how I thought about pedagogy. We could use AIDS awareness to practice reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, and we could use English to explore the stigma surrounding AIDS, dispel myths, discuss why people have sex, and learn how some HIV-positive people have accepted their status. Getting tested was a common motif in the texts and… [Read More]

…it’s too far to walk just to sit on a blanket. The people reading in chairs tire me too — How do they manage to be so relaxed? Does it require a lifetime of practice? — while the whiteness of vans in the sun echoes through the parking lot. Those lines in the lawn become wavy near the lot. As… [Read More]

…legs forced inside a skirt, she deflected every semantic trap the inquisitors set for her. I sat in the library reading biographies—what could I do? I didn’t know why Vaseline was funny; that rubbers were a kind of shoe. This morning, however, wasn’t it you who stopped me on the street to say the color of my dress was holy?… [Read More]

…thought of her in her flannel nightgown, stacking the cushions on the floor and pulling out the sofa bed, of the dusty old blankets he remembered from his own childhood, her scratched reading glasses and pill bottles on the cluttered end table — the whole picture filled him with shame. *** Helena had spent a week removing the old shingles… [Read More]

…of Milton Hershey. I imagine a Cuban orphan getting trained for the job that killed his father. I imagine Kitty getting so fed up with the water spray she demands her fountain run on chocolate instead. I imagine millions of candy bars shipped across the nation, rattling in their wrappers, each one packaged with a paper slip reading: Pleas Hellp…. [Read More]

…had to sneak in the booze. I’d buy sixty-four ounce water bottles at the CVS and dump them in the gutter before pouring in a handle of Stoli. Late at night I’d drink alone in my little dormitory, reading a comic book instead of the Bible. I’d sit there thinking “God will strike me down, God will strike me down.”… [Read More]