I twisted through Varanasi’s suffocating maze, side-stepping skinny cows and men on motorcycles, their mouths blood-red from the local chew. Silhouettes in shop windows. Music blasting from phones. The

Towards the end of elementary, an older boy gave me the master key to the school. Weeks later, he would take the key back, but, for a little bit, just before summer began, I had the master key to Queen

Mom’s dad Wells came by one night. I watched him through the kitchen window, parking his car. Always a new sedan of some kind, never German. “Too ostentatious,” he’d say. “Pop,” as the grandkids called

I should’ve known I’d meet you. The limitless vineyard. The turtle-shaped cloud. Everything had a strange significance or the cabernet was playing tricks. You came in bubbly, balletic, hair flowing from

Grade six. I had a girlfriend. But it was following the same tragic pattern: an initial flirtation followed by a brokering of the relationship between her friend and I, after which I’d become paralyzed

What set me off was that little mango-pyramid. It was lying there on the kitchen floor. A polyhedron of terror. ⠀ The morning had started out great. I got up early, meditated, showered. I put steel cut

He hit the gas coming out of the s-curve winding around the canyon, his diesel engine rattling, the sky an overcast of glare and gray trees throwing jagged shadows on the narrow road. ⠀ He would do these

I drank honey vodka from a coffee cup and waited for you to emerge. It had been a long day. So literal. So many talking-heads. At one point I’d muttered to myself, “You’re an asshole, Lovick, that’s your

I didn’t think I could get any lonelier after that summer, but when high school started this kid John had it out for me pretty much immediately. He was small but had big friends. He came at me in PE punching

Why am I thinking of Van Der Beek? I imagine it’s because I’m at that Coffee Bean on Hillhurst where I wrote that thriller I got him to read. I wrote a lot of it here — its epic patio walled-in with trees

I drove into Vancouver from LA in time to have a late dinner with mom on the West Side before knocking out on her couch. I awoke at 3am looking out the window at the maple trees, the ocean, the mountains,

Some psycho was staring at me from across the gate at the Minsk airport. He’d been staring at me for a long time. On multiple occasions I had tried to hold this asshole’s gaze and each time I had looked

I was feeling good about my ability to riff with the locals. Servers, tailors, Grab drivers — so many solid interactions. I don’t travel a lot, but I’m nimble when I do. When confronted with hostility,

Lately I’ve been feeling like a lemming. I’ve grown a man bun well passed the tipping point. I bought a diesel Mercedes long after its anointment as the hipster whip du jour. I moved to Santa Monica at