Month: July 2013

Posted on

I Don’t Exist

He pretends I don’t exist, with this carefree air about him that disguises the turmoil I hope he feels. Whether it is turmoil over missing out, or if the turmoil is that I’m still here, I don’t think I’ll ever know, but I do know it has to be there. Otherwise, what has it all really been about for him all this time?

And we’ve never met, although we’ve been in the same building, the same room, even the same small airspace many different times. My wife and children are even genetically linked to this man, not that you would know it from the moments we’ve been close enough to have conversations that never existed.

Continue reading “I Don’t Exist”

Posted on

Twelve O’Clock

The clock reads midnight Minute hand poised as if pointing While it hides its hour brethren One of only two perfect times In the course of every day Night owls gather around To bellow and moan, both in time With the beat of my heart Rushed and intermittent Trapped in this chest of mine And … Continue reading Twelve O’Clock

Posted on

The Fugly Duckling

Who is that guy?

I grew up thinking I was ugly, or “fugly,” as the teenagers called it in the early ’90s. Don’t worry, I won’t explain the combination of words it takes to come up with the word fugly, but suffice it to say it wasn’t a very nice word to call others. From an early age I remember looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw, though. Sure, I knew I was smart, and I knew my family loved me (at least most of the time), and I knew someone would always be there for me, but I realized even then that I wasn’t what you would call classically handsome. It took me ages, however, to comprehend that none of that mattered anyway.

Take a look at the number one culprit of eating disorders everywhere, the mass media. The magazine shows a woman with a ridiculously slim waist, practically nonexistent breasts, and “an ass that just won’t quit.” On the television you can see a woman with a normal-sized waist, enormous breasts, and “an ass that won’t quit.” This second type is known as the “hourglass” figure. It seems like the only prerequisite for being famous is to have a posterior that refuses to stop. Continue reading “The Fugly Duckling”

Posted on

Lights! Camera! Autographs!

I remember the first time I beheld a signed copy of a popular novel. It was one of those Lawrence Block tomes about a seedy character named Matthew Scudder, books that I used to eat up like Frosted Flakes. They were vapid, but somehow kept my interest the way few books did in the early ’90s. Then, I saw a book in a bookstore (I don’t even remember what book it was, but it was in Borders) that had a sticker on its cover that proudly read “Autographed Copy.” I wondered at how a book could blatantly lie like that, but then when I opened the cover, there it was, just as advertised, the author’s signature. I thought, “It’s got to suck to be famous because everyone wants a piece of you,” and then I realized that particular author wasn’t famous. Oops.

Then I became an English teacher and headed off to the mecca of all English teacher hangouts, the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) national conference, held in Pittsburgh one year. At the conference, to my great surprise, were all kinds of authors who sat at booths at prescribed times, and, you’ll never believe this, SIGNED BOOKS FOR TEACHERS. I know. I’m still trying to catch my breath over that one, and this was a number of years ago when I was at the Pittsburgh conference. I was like a kid in a candy store. I met Nicholas Sparks, Lois Lowry, Laurie Halse Anderson, that guy who wrote the Uglies series, and many more. I was hooked. Continue reading “Lights! Camera! Autographs!”