Stories tagged pat-strachan

Boys Who Do the Bop (from The New Yorker)

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Enid closes her bedroom door when she changes her clothes but leaves it ajar when she's doing her face; is she hoping some small talk might reach her dainty ears?

Read Chinese (from The New Yorker)

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Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison—right now that’s all I can say.

Satellite Dish (from The New Yorker)

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Just as one thing I say is “Don’t worry about me,” one thing I think is that you love somebody by living with them...

Father Must (from The New Yorker)

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It might not seem easy to breathe any love into a name like Father. It’s a stiff word—it’s not soft, like, say, Papa—but sometimes you have to breathe love into names you don’t choose.

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

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Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

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“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Yellow Dining Room (from The New Yorker)

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...you should pick a VERY OLD millionaire. Very old, and NOT VERY WELL...

Carmen (from The New Yorker+ a Jimmy Breslin "afterword" from Newsday)

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Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

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...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

How I Invented the Designer Jean in 1968 (Memoir)

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Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...