...we had already parsed the difference between mortal sin and venal sin, in preparation for our first confession, but this particular Sin, she tried to tell us, was something we all were born with, not anything we actually did.
What if I was too different? What if I was, like so many Western women in their eyes, individualistic and egocentric, putting self before family? What if I was cold and impersonal and aloof? What if I took their son away from them?
This was a celebratory time for American culture, unless you happened to be Black. As viewers saw in Ken Burn’s documentary Jazz, musician Dave Brubeck recalls the return of his military outfit, his band, to their home base in Texas.
I went to the bedside and held Tamika. She was cancer-thin. I had to hold her gently because bones filled with cancer can break easily. She was crying and could not talk because of her gagging and gasping.
The oldest attendee is the ex-priest who looked out for us on the way up and is now married. He was very concerned with the local paper listing sexual abusers that had been on his team and may be wrongfully accused by grifters looking for money from the church.
Long-time readers of Unlikely Stories might remember me writing about my daughter, Michaela. (Michaela was assigned male at birth, so you might remember me writing about my son.) On October 24, 2023, Michaela died unexpectedly in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon.
He handed me a small piece of paper with a number on it. I took it and stared at it for what seemed a long time. Then, I stood up and tore it apart in front of the man's eyes. I moved right in front of him, so now his face was at the height of my genitals.
Even revolutionary kids are kids. Sometimes they are not mature enough to understand such an ancient principle that "snitches get stitches." But it is difficult to uphold principles under torture, as you could imagine.
Once aware that I knew what was happening he schemed and forced my Khmer friend to lie and have me arrested for blackmail and sex trafficking. I was arrested for what he was doing. I learned that innocence doesn’t mean anything in some countries; Cambodia is one of them.
...within the unlikely First World environment of graduate-educated, progressive, cosmopolitan, psychologically sophisticated circles, I encountered two targets of exorcism and an accusation of witchcraft. For one demon-ridden friend, it was traumatizing; for the other, transformative.
My parents lied once to me and my sister as teenagers, bringing us to church on a Saturday morning under false pretenses expressly for the purpose of having our Sunday School teacher meet us in the parking lot and listen to our parents harangue him about how disobedient we were.
Australia’s federal government would prefer that we forget this crime against humanity, this X in flesh in the air. Will you let them?
Then the shooting in Florida happened. The NRA wanted to bring guns to teachers. I couldn’t even get my students not to steal my candy or ink themselves with my stamps that were in my desk.
Once a year in Budapest the local government of each district has an event called “lomtalanitás” or “ungarbaging”, an opportunity for people to rid their closets and basements of anything that they don’t need.
my eyes never healed so I may see it all and that I never forget there are those who could use a hand with alms a line we’re human beings for Christs’ sake and some of us are not at home but we’re still here.
Sometimes, I think there are talismans. If you can hit on the right configuration, you can open doors to other places. If you’re patient, you can pick the lock. I’m still trying out different combinations: a pocket watch and a pitcher of Wyler’s Electric Grape?
We didn’t have time to complete much of a medical history, but I knew she was a sex worker and soon I’d be treating her customers. After my examination, I gave her a prescription to take to our pharmacy. Elliot handed her condoms on her way out.
I had a feral streak and that day when the ice cream truck passed by I ran out of the house, straight into a big sedan driving down the street. I bounced off the side right by the front wheel.
In tonight's episode, a team of Army doctors treated roughly a dozen different patients: one spinal cord injury, one missing ear, multiple lacerations, contusions, and abrasions. One solider suffered from shock, one inflamed appendix requiring surgery, and of course, multiple gunshot victims.
The bunny person takes off their head like a series of Russian nesting dolls, over and over again. Unexplainably, each time, beneath the previous head is the same head, the same size, the same texture. How do they all fit?
As Howard gathered bags of marijuana and Etienne’s expensive
New scale
That he had stolen from Lady Snow’s,
I smeared my blood on the walls in a detached, tongue-in-cheek
Gesture,
I have no genetic fitness. I did once: my genetic material was carried by my sister’s daughter, my godchild and niece, Irene, whom I raised and let down. She committed suicide at the age of 35. She was a psychiatrist who knew pharmacology well and a determined individual who said that if she were to kill herself, she would do it so that no one would know.
At the same time, my suicidal mutterings and fantasies became more frequent, and more pronounced. I have mentioned that I sometimes spend days thinking of nothing but reasons I should kill myself. For months in 2016 and 2017, I thought of little else.
Someone took over a five-story hotel in the Filmore/Bush district of San Francisco and started renting cheap rooms to hippies. They named it, cutely, “The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Girls (and boys also).” Over a hundred old hotel rooms all rented to folks in the scene.
The girl capsizes herself with alcohol, Black Beauties, angel dust, sex with strangers, and slicing. Darkness barely discusses her. Blood covers our kneecaps one night from smacking into a lamppost. We buckle under her when she passes out.
When the black hole swallowed my relationship with Mom and my entire US-based extended family three years into my post-MFA writing drought, I was left to make sense of a story that seemed to have come to its natural conclusion.
It rained rocks in the old neighborhood where I grew-up (or just grew). The neighborhood known as “Zylonite”—a little patch of earth on the outskirts of a small mountain-town just south the Vermont state line.
Mandated by the court to enter therapy, his chart had a red notation at the top I didn’t recognize: “Violence/aggression risk.” His diagnosis was “Schizoaffective disorder,” and the chart noted he had a long-term substance abuse problem.
Later that night, I was haunted by images of mortars and shell cartridges, but remember distinctly that even before the tree-planting school trip I used to think, “what if I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself in the fascist encampment?”
The siren sound of labouring mothers—groans and intermittent screams—came from behind the swing doors, and, when we pushed them open, we were greeted with the smell of bleach and Dettol.
“Dad, we’re on strike. It’s crazy here. People get arrested just for looking the wrong way at a cop. And a lot of time it’s not just the regular police but this special Tactical Squad that’s full of nutcases who LIKE to hit people.”
The paddy wagon door opened, the floor white grey the color of seagull shit. There was a small barred window and a metallic bench. As the door closed, six Tactical Squad officers lumbered in, helmets strapped, visors down.
In this dream I am 112 stories high, a fluffy kitten placemark thrusting up from my summit adds another 13 stories. People crowd the windows of the observation area on the top floor and ooh & ah at the violet-burnished clouds, the sun squeezed tangerine at the horizon.
Fax a copy of your driver’s license, fax copies of the death certificates of long passed relatives mentioned in the debt paperwork. Fill out the questionnaires, all of them. So many people to please, so many people to pay. All those supplying required services require compensation.
Robyn resembled Liza Minnelli and belted out a bit of “Cabaret” to anyone who would listen. I listened. She took a fast fancy to me in a bar one Saturday night, but when I learned she was nineteen I waved goodbye being thirty-two.
Our silence bangs against the heater.
He draws the blinds partly closed,
says he longs to bring Jerusalem here,
heart of his, held captive when
they banished him, forbade return.
Memories fade, even of those dearest to us. That’s how it should be, probably. Mom passed down her boxes of memorabilia, but I wonder if they are worth saving for future generations. Do we need more than a handful of posed snapshots, outlines, caricatures, and legends?
And so
some dreams will merely be delayed a year,
some dreams will be realized ahead of schedule,
some dreams will be deferred, perhaps permanently,
One day, the first time she had left the house in days, much less showered, we passed by a swan in a lake, her neck improbably high and elegant as she floated by. Absently, I commented on her beauty.
“Swans, seriously, swans? You think I want to look at a swan? You are so clueless. You disgust me.”
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