Pastrami

Pastrami

Photo by Alexander Reitter / Shutterstock.com This is a story of grease, and the bonds it forms. We were three good Jewish boys, Flatbush yeshiva bochurim, and when we went about breaking the law of our forefathers, we did so thoroughly and with care and diligence....
The Straw Chair

The Straw Chair

Photo by Xauxa (Håkan Svensson), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons At ten years of age, I stopped being innocent. The experience was not sexual in nature, but something darker. Funny enough, children are natural in the world of the invisible, but if the door of the...
After Watching a Couple Hug Goodbye at the COS Airport

After Watching a Couple Hug Goodbye at the COS Airport

Photo: EQRoy / Shutterstock.com The Woman was exiting the Springs Marketplace with no souvenirs—because she had already gotten stickers and a postcard of yellow aspens in downtown Colorado Springs—when she locked eyes on this couple embracing for their cliché goodbye...
The Whale Burns His Own Body

The Whale Burns His Own Body

What always shocked the Moby Dickheads was a whaleboat’s flimsiness, how squat the gunnels, how thin the planks separating whalers from depthless ocean and the 65-ton sperm whale they’d stabbed. All yesterday I’d been stuck working the whaleboat exhibit. That meant...
My One and Only, Moonbean

My One and Only, Moonbean

Photo by Anna Sui The Moonbean café, unyielding and un-air-conditioned sits right at the border of Kensington Market in Toronto, Canada. For as long as I remember, which isn’t too long in the grand schemes of things when the scheme is the scale of Toronto, it’s been...