For the Love of Donnie Baseball
byI wanted to be Don Mattingly. A power-hitting first baseman with a Mario moustache and greasy slabs of eye black streaked across his cheekbone, he was the type of man…
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Tidal Wave
byOn this August afternoon, the summer sun blazing in the western sky, I’m one of 15,000 enthusiastic spectators watching a women’s professional soccer match. Men, women, and children cheer from…
Love in the Time of Horse Collars
byIn 1979 my father refused to prosecute Dan Hampton. The then rookie Chicago Bears defensive lineman had been arrested for driving under the influence the night after he helped the…
Tattoo You! The Permanence of S. E. Hinton
by“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the dark movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” S.E. Hinton, The…
Horn
byAt first it was just a rough spot under his fingertips as he shampooed his hair. He would pick at it and scour it with conditioner, thinking it a strange…
Comrades
bySometimes, you know you have to do a thing, even if you can’t say why. But sitting in the taxi on the way to LAX, I couldn’t help but wonder…
Surveillance
byWe were different. Our brothers liked the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History and dioramas of animals slaughtering each other, we had less interest. One brother was a bully,…
Consecration
byWhen Allen was diagnosed with myocardial ischemia, Nora’s husband had already died from it nine months earlier, seven hundred miles away in Jacksonville, Florida. Allen never met him and only…
When a Door is Not a Door
byShe never blocked me. I search her name, and there she is, there’s her picture. A few clicks, and there’s her life. And in my dumb hope, I wonder if…
American Television
bySome time in the late seventies, when Iraq was flourishing, we bought our first television. Some other families we knew already had a TV, other uncles who worked at Mosul…