Now they are back at that shady music venue on the edges of town by the freeway on-ramp. Bill and Mike, college chums. A weeknight but they pretend they’ve still got it in them. 2005, mid-thirties. Neither of them have… Read More ›
Memoir
First date, can’t wait
First date with a girl, spring 1985. I’m 14, a freshman: she’s 16, a junior. An embarrassment to date an underclassmen but there you go. She’s in the band, but beautiful. Mom says you need a “good haircut” which means… Read More ›
Over the Neptune
This bar is his bar. What he’s like matters less than the personality of the bar he conforms to. We enter by the restrooms off to the side. It smells like what you’d expect from a city bar. But they… Read More ›
Double time
In mid-May Lily graduated from the boarding school in Utah and we flew into Las Vegas and rented a van to move her things home. I asked if she could start the process before we got there. Then I helped… Read More ›
Head GAMES
When the singer of the 1970s band Foreigner Lou Gramm sings the song Head Games he puts the emphasis on the word GAMES like he’s angry. I get it, I played head games too. Like the night Susannah E- came… Read More ›
Your portion of life on a plate
When we got the warning about a violent storm coming we drove to the store for ice cream and organic cheese puffs and gas for the generator in case the power went out. I had gotten the blue light pre-cancer… Read More ›
The you you are now
Sometimes when I’m walking the trail in the early morning dark I’ll sense motion and realize there’s a large deer crossing my path. Dawn said there’s been coyotes attacking people in Bellevue and I should carry a cudgel. Maybe a… Read More ›
The better together speech, 1984
The way the clouds pass across the sky and stretch like see-through gauze through my window. Stretching back to another time. Stumbling onto the stage and crossing it as a 14-year-old. Dropping my speech, the papers scattering across the floor,… Read More ›
My prayer for you
Patches of snow in the foothills on a bleak morning in March. It is your first week sober. You’ve been a daily drinker for 20 years now and this is the longest you’ve gone since you can remember. It is… Read More ›
One more wish
That was it. Sometimes I could see how the rest of my life would play out by the way it was going day by day. We watched the sequel to Dune, that world’s lore, the large underground worms and the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 