Weiss felt that New Year’s Eve is essentially amateur hour.  Her husband Baker loved it, thought it was the ultimate party time.  Baker loved getting dressed to the nines, Weiss did not.  As far as Weiss was concerned New Year’s Eve ended with the ball drop but for Baker it went on till sunrise.  Baker…

She was a Kazakh from western Mongolia and I wanted to lift up her frock.  Her people hunted with golden eagles in the snow.  We were far from it at this point in our romance; in fact we were stranded in Costa Rica, near the Playa Carrillo.  Look, I’m an American from Boston and she’s…

Clark was a model in a Stefano Ricci ad.  He wore a suit and overcoat and stood in front of a locomotive among some majesterial mountains.  As we all know, Stefano Ricci’s slogan at this time was Honour – Power – Pride.  It is believed that Clark was able to use this to his advantage…

I crashed landed in Boston like a motherfucker when I was sixty one years old. My partners didn’t like it, and indeed there was talk of fustigating, but I had to put those other places well behind me. I stuck to my guns. Clarity, of course, only comes with age. I mean, I’d started wearing…

Thomas Brane hit the big time in professional philosophy – if indeed the phrase “big time” can be applied there with any modicum of accuracy – when he was well into his mid fifties.  Very late one evening, walking home from a date that hadn’t gone well, as he was contemplating his newfound notoriety in…

If there’s only one thing you can remember, make it be this: The consequences of your ignorance almost always become the content of your sorrows. I like to study the spit out wads of gum in the urinals in the gym locker room.  I enjoy seeing how long the same ones remain there until staff…

I don’t know the story of the Book of Judith, but the work on Cassidy’s first page of her story isn’t very good – the writing is flat, nondescriptive, simple, merely a list of who the characters are and what they do: “Chad Nebu was in his 12th year as leader of the Warpath Men…

Tears now; they fall off her cheek and onto the plate, on top of the bread.  With one huge last burp the percolator settles.  Now another ballad,  bluesy version of some Broadway show love song.  “Sometimes I think he isn’t going to make it,” she says, trying to buck up and not let her tears…

He had to be physically restrained, carried away from the foot of the coffin.  Kneeling to pray, he remained there way too long.  People began to get uncomfortable, especially since no one knew who he was or why he was in attendance.  He began to cry loudly, yelling out “This could have been me!  This…

He would simply stroll into the funeral home, get in line to view the body, say a brief prayer at the casket, make up some line when he gave condolences to the family (“I used to work with your husband years ago”).  When caught at it – the directors and other employees if the funeral…