Hey, Dawg. Bye, Dawg. I mean, that's kinda how it feels right now. The time that we got here in (too fast). The speed we made (too effin' fast). The distance covered (are you effin' kidding me?). What the heck just happened? (Hold please) Clearly this is gonna take a minute. But I need to … Continue reading Are you effin’ kidding me?

I'd hear her tell about it.  I can’t imagine it, though.  Her stringing a bunny upside down and bapping it upside the head 'til it froze dead.  Bunnies. Chickens too.  A part of me always wanted to see what it was actually like, but that was when my grandmother was younger and in Portugal.  Maybe … Continue reading Birthday girl

I don't really look back at my high school days with any great fondness or nostalgia. They were okay. I did well in the classroom, I started every game my senior year at point guard, got my first stinky pinky in the backseat of my Volare, which if you didn't know any better could've easily … Continue reading Commencement

My Vegas lounge ring tone starts riffing. It’s him.  It’s one hour later there and, Oh shit, here it comes.  The news isn't supposed to arrive until the following morning, but here it comes. We’d been waiting with held breath these last forever months: me, him, mom, who's now in the background.  She’s usually asleep … Continue reading Ice cream deferred

I picture her in a squat, stony house on a Portuguese island, stepping up on a stool to grab this bowl or that salt to help her mom cook. Because it's what my grandmother, the cook, told me about her little helper, my mother.  I picture her in Puerto Rico on her honeymoon in some … Continue reading Happy birthday

There's a scene in the movie Boondock Saints when Willem Dafoe, who plays an FBI agent, is standing in the middle of a neighborhood where a gun fight happened.  It’s a crime scene.  There’s carnage everywhere.  Dafoe, or Agent Paul Smecker, plays back to all the forensics guys and others what he thinks took place … Continue reading ‘I don’t have AIDS’

I was fresh out of Quartermaster school and everything, and I'd write him letters in morse. Dit-da-dit kind of stuff.  He corrected me. In morse. It had to be close to fifty years for him since his last time talking to ships via morse off the Island of Sao Miguel in the Portuguese Azores, and … Continue reading Only man I ever kissed

It's official. You can leave the house now and rent your own apartment. Order up a tattoo and put it anywhere. You can vote. Drive for Uber (in that thing?). Okay, maybe not. So many more things now. Not to mention hair everywhere, spriggin', sproutin'. You could pass for one of the young revolutionaries. You … Continue reading 18