Starbucks, I Never Knew Ye
August 31, 2005

I drink liquid constantly. Diet Coke, Diet Dr Pepper, coffee, water, iced tea. Also, booze. This results in my needing a bathroom almost exactly every 30 minutes. You could set your watch to this. (Please don’t.) Of course, all my... more

Worst. Apartment. Ever.
August 24, 2005

Less than a week ago I was the unexpected house guest of two gay men I’d only met that night. At a bar in the East Village, they told me about the apartment they’d just moved into in Park Slope—affordable,... more

Today, I Made a New Friend
August 22, 2005

Hector is the largest man I’ve ever seen. He is 400, 500 pounds. (At that size, you can give or take a hundred.) He is so wide he looks like two people smooshed together, and he wears a basketball jersey... more

Good/Bad Logic
August 19, 2005

This afternoon I decided to order a meatball sandwich for lunch. This is an example of bad logic, because it is the kind of indulgent, lazy shit I do when I drink too much the night before (bad logic, too,... more

Show Me the Way
August 18, 2005

Every day, I get lost. I know this will happen—the way I know I’ll feel sleepy after a big bowl of pasta or puke after Jagermeister shots. There is simply some blind spot where my sense of direction should be.... more

I Think Sumpin' Jumped Into Mah Undah-carriage
August 15, 2005

I was about an hour past New York on my way upstate when the car started spewing pink smoke. I don’t know much about engines, but that seemed bad. An hour or so later, after a few quick fixes that... more

A Pox Upon I-95
August 11, 2005

Reason for the pox #1: The traffic on the 30-mile route from Richmond, Va., to Fredricksburg, Va., crawled along at 10 miles an hour on a Saturday afternoon … with no discernable cause whatsoever. Reason for the pox #2: It... more

Ah, Nature. So...Natural
August 09, 2005

I have fantasies about hiking the Appalachian Trail. In these fantasies, I carve three months out of my life and spend each day in a meditative, Zen-like trance climbing along the great winding, rocky path traversed so long ago by... more

Appalachia Song, Part 1
August 07, 2005

I was only about an hour out of Nashville when the landscape finally opened up. The monotony of green trees and blacktop started to buckle and swerve. Highways caved into cliffs as I grew closer to the Great Smoky Mountains,... more

Southern-Fried Comfort
August 03, 2005

I don’t eat fried chicken much. It’s like hot fudge sundaes or sex with strangers – I quite enjoy it on occasion, but it leaves me feeling guilty at best, icky at worst. I can’t remember the last time I... more

Now Leaving Texas
August 02, 2005

I moved to Texas when I was three years old. I figured that, surely, it was a mix-up. Even as a kid I didn't think I belonged in the Lone Star State, with its snakeskin boots and honky tonks. Wasn’t... more