Last week my friend Anthony sent me a piece he wrote about an R.E.M. album that was important to him and a college radio program he used to listen to, and I thought I’d start a weekly guest post column… Read More ›
Memoir
Lightning strikes
The work ethic was strong in me then, like the Force. It was a Monday for our checkup on Dawn’s pregnancy. I decided not to go into work, to make breakfast and enjoy time with just the two of us,… Read More ›
Building 37
I’ve now contracted at Microsoft for six months. Today for the first time I had a meeting in a different building. The buildings are numbered; I just had the number but didn’t bother to look up exactly where it was,… Read More ›
In the white room with black curtains near the station
March came and so did the arborist, all of it on its sides sagging down: the trees and shrubs, the lawn, moss taking over but I like the moss, it leaves your outline after you lie in it. We hadn’t… Read More ›
‘The first thing we’ll do is round up all the homosexuals’
My head in the hand sink in the morning under the cold water spigot and now, my chest hanging out in the manner of a woman’s, with the hormonal levels petering out, the muscle tissue gone soft. I did a… Read More ›
Most of them witches
In the manner of my mom’s partner Eberhard I held my head under the hand sink and let the cold water run over me and down my torso as I stood and grunted, examined myself and got dressed. It makes… Read More ›
Tourette’s
There are times I come out of the men’s room at the Microsoft campus and can’t remember where I am. I look left and right, I pick a direction and walk with confidence but it all looks similar and slightly… 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 ›
Last Valentine’s Day, in Berlin
Last year on Valentine’s Day we left Berlin by train in the late morning, and though we had great weather our time there, that Sunday it was gray and wet (like how you’d picture Berlin in mid-February), but it made… 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 ›
Bill Pearse 