Rapid Eye Reality turns ten
Two weeks before nineteen men crashed airplanes into my country, I started a blog. This blog. It was an exercise, an outlet suggested to me by my friend, Susannah. We were eating shrimp and...
Category: Friends & Family
Promises
There is nothing uplifting about a downmarket Las Vegas hotel. It’s simple living, hours in a stiff bed comforted by a flickering laptop screen, whatever junk food I could liberate from the giftshop downstairs,...
Thank you to everyone but the guy in the middle of the road
There was a guy in the middle of Stone Avenue. My wife and I had just pulled out of The Handlebar and were on our way to visit with a bunch of old friends....
Missing Gulfman, five years later
For the last three days, it has rained from the sunshine. We live in one of those places where half the people you meet aren’t natives. It’s not like Florida, a place northerners settle...
The moms in my life
One woman kept me safe until I was old enough to keep myself safe. Another woman keeps me sane so I can be a good father. This is what moms do. They give all...
To the man buying my house
Dear Ben, In September of 2000, I was 26 years old and had been married only three months. Scoop, a 13-pound dog that bit people for sport, was 18 months old and could jump...
Earplugs
The first stop of the morning was for earplugs. We went to Home Depot together and walked among gods on a Saturday morning. They were immortal more-than-men who would destroy things and build new...
The man at the grocery store
My wife is paranoid. She’ll admit it as readily as I say it, but she’ll call it “observant” or “careful.” She’s suspicious of people I’d pick up as hitchhikers or trust to give me...
In search of a married man
Power-fetch at the soccer fields zapped Big Girl Dog of enough energy that she wouldn’t want to eat the walls again for several hours. We were on the half-mile walk trek home when the...
Listen
I worry about my oldest boy, but only because I see myself in him. He’s driven, but fights frustration. He’s joyful, but an easy mark for emotion. He also falls a lot. Genes are...
The reasons I’m happy
I woke today more content than I’ve been in some time. As I said to my wife, I expect it to get better, but even if it doesn’t, I am as happy as I...
Four fathers
It’s a two-hour flight from Atlanta to Springfield, Missouri, one that leaves un-argued that Atlanta is a Cher-Madonna-Bono-city, while Springfield requires a state designation to determine whether it is Brad Pitt or a Brad...
Iceman cometh
My dad taught me many things: how to play in the key of G, how to shave, how to eat four pounds of crab legs without throwing up in public. I can’t assign a...
The life cycle of a vomiter
Stage 1: The body’s will–Notable during the first several years of a child’s life, Stage 1 is exhibited by body and mind exhibiting no will as it relates to vomiting. What wants to come...