My parents’ garage is a deep and cavernous place, worthy of a treasure map. There are shelves of old dishes; teetering stacks of luggage; Christmas ornaments in cardboard boxes gone slack with age. Propped against one wall is a giant foam-core poster of the Sex Pistols, which I rescued from the curb outside a Hollywood [...]
I spent the first seven years of my life in Los Angeles, in a little gray house on a tree-lined street called Cantaloupe Avenue. My memories of living there are hazy, dreamlike. I remember the rusted jungle gym in the backyard. The smell of chlorine. Lemon trees, and the tiny gray dove that made its [...]
“This might have been a mistake,” I said. My friend Lily, head cocked in sympathy, nodded. “Definitely a mistake.” It was a cold night, and we’d just met friends at a favorite bar in our neighborhood. Short on cash, I’d ordered the $4 well whiskey, neat. Its smell alone made my eyes water. And I’d [...]
If your home were on fire, what would you take with you? My roommate, Natalie, and I contemplated this recently in socks and slippers, sprawled in our living room on a rainy weekend afternoon. After establishing that much of what was really valuable to us—travel mementos, yearbooks, hard copies of old photographs—were stowed safely at [...]
I ate Thanksgiving dinner this year perched on an ottoman, the kind that’s hollow on the inside and meant to be filled with throw blankets and extra cushion covers. This one, much to my glee, contained my roommate’s collection of high school CDs – The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes, and, best of all, a [...]
It was a warm day at the Brooklyn Flea. Shoppers showed their shoulders, and drank watermelon agua frescas on ice; perused beer crates filled with records that smelled of dust and squeezed un-socked feet into vintage shoes several sizes too small. Summer was on its way. It would be my first in New York City. [...]
My dad left Glencoe, Illinois in 1960 to attend Antioch, a small liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He was eighteen. Boyish, with hair cropped neatly above his ears. My grandparents accompanied him on his first day and helped him move in, unpacking his belongings from Nixon-stickered suitcases. Months later, he returned to Glencoe [...]
Somewhere in a closet at my parent’s house is a journal I kept as a child. It’s orange. It has gold pages. There’s a painting of a cat on the cover. I don’t remember much of what’s written in it, save for the fact that I assigned each day a letter grade, a decision inspired [...]
