He took a sip of my father’s weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. This shit’s like making love in a canoe.Excuse me?It’s fucking near water.
He also made a 1-2-3-4 cake, which calls for one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs. I ate half of it, which amounts to one entire stick of butter.
Having been destroyed, it is now indestructible, meaning I can wear it without worry. For half this price, I could have bought an intact sweater, thrown it to a tiger, and wrenched it back myself, but...
Happiness is harder to put into words. It's also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I've begged them...
Given the choice between four perfectly acceptable movies, they invariably opt for a walk through the Picasso museum or a tour of the cathedral, saying, I didn’t come all the way to Paris so I can sit...
Frustrated with drawing, I switched to the printmaking department, where I overturned great buckets of ink. After trying my hand at sculpture, I attempted pottery. During class critiques the teacher w...
For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac, which is one of the few things I'm actually not.
Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind.
Exceptions were made for Friday episodes of One Life to Live, and, occasionally, for Oprah, who was one of the few black people Helen had any regard for. Perhaps in the past she had been more open-min...
Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable down-swing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times...
Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns.
But at the end of every show we would realize that true happiness often lies where you very least expect it. It might arrive in a form of a gentle breeze or a handful of peanuts, but when it came, we...
Because that’s really something I can’t stand — when people refer to themselves as crazy. The truly crazy are labeled so on the grounds that they see nothing wrong with their behavior. They forge ahea...
At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES — CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, readi...
As a business traveler, you'll likely be met at your destination by someone who asks, So, how was your flight? This, as if there are interesting variations and you might answer, The live orchestra was...
And it’s bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else’s pad.
Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned, or taxed out of existence. Though it sometimes seemed like a nice idea, I hoped the revolution wou...
A Japanese woman we’d met in Paris came to the apartment yesterday and spent several hours explaining our appliances. The microwave, the water kettle, the electric bathtub: everything blinks and bleep...
A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be comi...
Even if I were informed, what's the likelihood of changing anyone's opinion, especially a couple of strangers'? If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn't theirs be?