First Person Shooter

The pain ripped through my chest like a dozen steak-knives, snapping me over at the waist, leaving me staring and grimacing at the floor. I was on a PATH train headed back into the city after a night of house sitting in Hoboken.

Well, this is it, I thought, I’m going to die right here. Fuckin’… »

Unlike most smokers I’ve known over the years, I didn’t first light up at 13 or 14 in a cheap attempt to be “cool” or one of them “rebel” types. I didn’t hang out in junior high bathrooms, hacking and coughing in order to be one of the guys.

Neither one of my folks smoked, either…. »

The morning had been as usual as most any other. I tapped my way down the sidewalk at the appointed hour, and reached the subway platform about ten to six. It was warm down there, but at least there weren’t too many people. Half a dozen, maybe.

As I walked toward my regular pillar to wait,… »

Maybe this happens to everybody, but they just don’t talk about it. They’re probably afraid that if they mentioned it to anyone, they’d sound, I dunno, crazy. But it’s like this.

Sometimes I step outside the front door of my apartment, and suddenly find myself very confused by the world.

I’m not talking about large-scale issues. I’m… »

It was typical. I sat down to put on my shoes before heading out to the bank to deposit some rare and desperately-needed checks, when outside my window I heard the rain begin to come down hard.

I can’t tell you how often this has happened.

So I sat there a few minutes, waiting patiently. Rain falling… »

My nephew is five years old and like all children of that age and era, is obsessed with Barney The Purple Dinosaur. One weekend I visit him with a gift: A purple rabbit’s foot I’d gotten with skeeball coupons in Coney Island. “What is it?” he asks as I hold it out to him.

“It’s Barney’s… »

You could say that my Magic Jew arrived via freak accident, one of those bizarre physical embodiments of ’shit happens’ that strike with nose-thumbing defiance of all laws of logic. And while many freak accidents can make for deliciously cruel entertainment on YouTube or in newspaper columns invariably called ‘This Wacky World’, their ‘holy fuck’… »

In the past, I’ve had some anger issues. Or as my close friends liked to call them, ’sudden explosions of psychotic rage.’ Almost anything could set me off instantly, but I saved special fits of fury for people who were incompetent, arrogant or blatantly stupid. Often, a little misunderstanding could quickly get out of hand… »

I was standing outside the office having a quick smoke before walking the half-block to the deli, same as every day.  For the most part I’m completely (and thankfully) ignored by the hundreds of people who  pass by, but this time a man wearing a set of large headphones looked at me and muttered something… »