I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

What happened then was not entirely innocent or spontaneous. I had been impressed by a scene in Some Came Running by James Jones, where the teenage writer sneaks his girlfriend home and makes love to her on his childhood's bed.

So back to Berkeley we went, and started our own commune in a huge rented house on Derby Street where we could tear the fences down in all the neighborhood backyards. We created what we called “The Meadow.”

Hunger only makes people hungry, but bad hair can ruin your whole day.

a store called ROCKING FROCKS. In its window was a black tee shirt that said in big white letters, I'M NOT A SLUT, I'M WITH THE BAND.

“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue just came out, and all over America librarians are flipping through its pages and rolling their eyes. The swimsuit issue, which isn't actually about swimwear at all, but, is, instead, about young, beautifully shaped female…

I was sitting on the steps in the entryway to our apartment building taking off my running shoes when I spotted a paperclip on the floor. I assumed it had fallen from the mail that my wife had just taken from our mailbox. Once my shoes were removed, I went down to pick…

Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.

Matthias Fenstermacher loved onions, but hated slicing them, and so he labored to produce a tearless variety. His first attempt was indeed tearless--instead of weeping, the slicer was overcome by fits of uncontrollable giggles. The potential hazard was

I awake one morning to find that still, the leaves continue to fall.

I am reaching out at you, to you from the nest. From the nest, please come to the nest, to see me and to hear my life story. From the nest I go, and then I arrive at the nest, suddenly, just in time to be…

not the sky

He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.