I envied Andrew Gabler for all he had that I didn’t have. He wore name-brand clothes, had chestnut-brown hair that shone, was good looking and built, athletic, played soccer better than I did and wrestled (though I always thought wrestling… Read More ›
Memoir
A clean house does not a clean mind make
When we bought this house I planned to take care of it. It was bigger than any place we ever lived, and the guy we bought it from looked frazzled when he was showing us how you do everything, and… Read More ›
Anthony’s Navel: Mark Paxson on growing up with books
May I introduce to you the one and only Mark Paxson, or King Midget, in the first of my Saturday guest post series ‘Anthony’s Navel.’ Enjoy Mark’s piece below, follow his blog to hear more of his stories, and happy Saturday…. Read More ›
On the Road, with Robert Smith (1987)
God bless my dad, that summer we drove out west and only had three tapes, two of them mine. We took a train from Chicago to Denver where we rented a car and camped around the Rockies, then drove to… Read More ›
Monday stop light meditation at the five-way
The kids were small enough then they didn’t have the wherewithal to complain or object, they just got in the car with the dog, the three of them in the back and me driving, Dawn saying isn’t this nice, and… Read More ›
“Rain starting in 38 minutes”
When I came down in the morning I didn’t know where Dawn was, the coffee was brewed but she wasn’t in her office or the bathroom and for a moment I imagined her crying, in the dark—but she was just… Read More ›
Factotum (for Peel)
After college I moved to the beach and got a job delivering pizzas; my friend Peel moved to New York and dabbled in homelessness and then on to Portland, where he fell in with a group of shoplifters who returned… Read More ›
A branch the size of an oar on a medieval slave ship
I worked a couple hours in the yard cleaning up branches and breaking down limbs clipping, sweeping, yanking out roots and pruning, stuff we probably should have done in the fall—then just got in the car and drove out to… Read More ›
The Sponge Factory diaries (Philadelphia, ’95)
Perhaps Philadelphia got its edge from the fact that the mayor ordered the bombing of a house in a residential area in 1985, a house with children and potential convicts inside — or perhaps it was like a jealous younger… Read More ›
‘How little remains’ (on youth, memory, memoir)
I went back to the old apartment. The old apartment was best going back to alone. I tried taking my kids there or Dawn, but to them it was just an old apartment. To me, there was so much more…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 