Cleopatra-style hair and cigarettes

08Mar09

Since I liked the number 17, I scanned the list of sponsors’ names and found the seventeenth:  “Ray W.”  The list was written in various inks and in pencil on poster board and tacked with thumbnails to the paneled wall over the water fountain.  I wrote down Ray W.’s phone number, sat through the hour-long [...]

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My Black Cat

28May07

At about seven o’clock in the morning on September 1, 1994, I crawled into bed, alone. The next half hour was to be, in retrospect, the eye of the hurricane. Still, but uncomfortably so. Calm, but deceptive. Not really safe.

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Autumn 1994

22May07

Bandol, the black-and-white cat I grew to love as my own, unexpectedly had to go to the vet. It was not good news.
I had first encountered the feline when I started to date the woman. We were eating Chinese food in her Astoria, Queens apartment and I had given Bandol a taste of my eggroll. [...]

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Going 100 m.p.h.

04Feb07

The sheriff’s deputy put me in the back of his cruiser. I was surprised at how little leg room there was. It was fairly uncomfortable, and would have been all the more so had I been handcuffed like a criminal and forced to sit with my arms behind my back. I was kind of intrigued [...]

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