First Person Shooter

The Red Suit

I had the benefit of hearing this story twice. Ali told it to me once, and then I got to hear him tell it to an unknown couple that we invited to sit at our table in some bar a few years later. I realized with the second telling that Ali had refined this… full story HERE »

One day Ali and I were sitting around shootin’ the shit, telling stories and drinking beer. The topic drifted to the natural beauty of the hills and mountains around Knoxville. Ali said he loved getting out into the mountains — like he had done one day with me and Herbie when we’d gone hiking in the… full story HERE »

Well, even though our buddy Joe is dead, we just can’t get enough of him. Nor, it seems, can many of his other loyal readers. Thankfully, for those of us around the bar who miss his top-shelf wisdom and his speed-rack wit, Joe’s good friend Ken Smith compiled and published fifty of Bageant’s best essays in… full story HERE »

Guatemala unfurls from the fractured landscape of my memory in a vast expanse of broken glass and Christmas lights, cobblestones, coke-covered mirrors and sex. The time is only divided into two sections: with a girlfriend, and without a girlfriend. Beyond that, any distinct chronology fades, obscured behind a miasma of drugs, laughter, music, sex, cigarette smoke… full story HERE »

The tiny room I lived in, in the large Soho loft, was like something out of Being John Malcovitch. It had been haphazardly pieced together by previous tenants years ago who must have been a family of traveling gnomes with gyroscopic bodies. There were no right angles; in fact there were only very wrong angles.

Nothing… full story HERE »

Fuck. I needed some money. Three days prior I paid rent with the last of my crumpled bills and was now down to zip. Nada. A few nickels, dimes and pennies in a change jar; that was it. I had already gone through the quarters.

My stomach growled. “Fuck you, stomach,” I said.

I went to the… full story HERE »

There’s a strong case to be made that corrupt behavior in Guatemala in the form of paying bribes at the borders (and anywhere in between) is both beneficial and on moral high ground.

“We’re not here to save the country from itself, just to get the job done.”

My traveling companion snapped those words at me as… full story HERE »

I’ve had some jobs in my day.

It always happened like this. I needed some money so I found some way to make it. The thought of a career never really was my thing. Being something – a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief just didn’t ring true. The sense of permanence, grown-up-dom, self-importance, and lack… full story HERE »

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’… full story HERE »

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…. full story HERE »