July 6, 2020
His pledge name was Smackhead
Here, a snob was as common as a dandelion, and I began to present myself to the other kids in my dorm as a guy from Long Island; I emphasized the “g” in “Long,” and called myself a guido, neither of which I had ever done before. I wasn’t even fully Italian. Most of my mother’s family was Irish and Czech. But it was a handle to hold: Italian-American Long Islander.
June 19, 2020
Today 60 percent of the American population, according to recent reports, possesses a database implant that allows a range of augments to be downloaded directly into the brain. The artificial intelligence can allow a person, for example, with no chiseling experience the ability to create a lifelike wooden sculpture. While there are no reliable statistics within the art world, a recent anonymous survey of working artists in New York City under 40 reported an above-average augmentation rate compared with the general population.
Genuine tears!
To think that my dead penis had turned into our last best hope in this world. How ridiculous life turned out to be sometimes!
Her daughter, my daughter, our daughter
My daughter was my reason for waking each day, and I wanted to kill myself for having in some fashion already resigned myself to losing some part of her. Selfishly, I saw my world as illusionary, fragile, existing only because others allowed it to exist. I realized that I was ever awaiting such a moment of loss, that I was, in fact, daily resigned to death but had never resigned to life.
June 12, 2020
So many well-meaning people in my own family confront me, they instruct me, they denounce me, Richard said, they tell me You only have one mother. They say it like it’s a bad thing. One is enough. These flagrant children, boil them like corn, boil them in a sack. It is other people who tell us who we are, other people who tell you what you can be and whether or not you have become it yet, all these other people. Other people are reality, Richard said, other people who want to drink your blood, this is well-known.
May 29, 2020
Birds and leaves became my theater, my pornography
Mrs. W liked to say that there was no shame in physical labor, and often mentioned that her father had driven a taxi. (According to my friend the cook, he had owned a fleet of taxis, but I was too polite to let on that I knew this.) She used to talk at me while I cleaned and honestly I didn’t mind her. I knew she was lonely and unhappy. I knew that many lives that seem smooth and sparkling on the surface are in fact cold and treacherous.
May 1, 2020
And this is something the fake news media never mentions, I say at all of these things, I’m not a doctor
What a moment. And we could have some sort of, we could make it a day to celebrate our great first responders and our great country, have everyone come out on the streets, looking up at such a beautiful sight that is coming down at them. This whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful. I’m not a doctor, but it’s a powerful idea.
April 3, 2020
I passed the theater and saw a sign for a new play, called Closed Today
March 6, 2020
“What are your strengths and weaknesses with hoses?”
Naked Valkyries are ve-ry ve-ry spiritual!
What was stopping him from selling his honey in Ukhtoma? What, with a car, he could go anywhere he wanted. Even to Yaroslavl. Even to Moscow. Sasha turned green with envy when he saw someone buy anything from the old man. He clenched his jaw with rage. If Vovka weren’t in prison, he would give him a thousand to pop the old man’s tires. Or just to scare him a little. Doing it himself would be too much. The police were nearby, too. Sasha weighed in at a hundred kilos and could smash the fidgety old man like a fly, but unfortunately it just wasn’t possible.
The breathing is getting weaker, a faint echo of its now extinguished life force.
January 10, 2020
I wished I too had worn a pink shirt and pants for my wife
