The thing is: I can make this story hilarious. There are wild gesticulations and crocodile tears and three different voices, as well as a punch line about why Sober Tristan still has asthma. I can spin any of Drunk Tristan’s exploits until my listeners cry from laughter. Bits about Drunk Tristan kill. I didn’t quit drinking the first time I got thrown out of a bar, nearly thirteen years ago. The Devlins were playing an encore, and I decided to rush the stage and climb on an amp.
Movement Therapy
Soon you’ll see swans turn black with time, how their legs lengthen as their necks shrink.Allow them to trot on a countertop pecking for crumbs. And when you lose the keyto the antique cabinet hidden in your garage, ...
Sleeping between jobs while working on a degree
My son doesn’t believe that I sleep; he hearsthe computer keys sending Morse Code to my professors;By day he counts in Mandarin: 一 yī, 二 èr, 三 sān, 四 sì, 五 wŭ…at night he listens to me speak to a monitor;the computer screen lights the living roomlike a low hanging...
Lavender Sequence
i.We have misunderstood everything. But not severelyor as a mistake. And now we have gotten away with it.Sometimes, there is no need for consequence. Sometimes it is not up to anyone at all.The fool is making his rounds....
Wandering
I’m lying on a gurney, being wheeled down a long hallway with overhead fluorescent lights, while chewing on—what I think—is a tooth. If I had to guess, then maybe a bicuspid, the ones in between the canines and molars. A nurse with short curly brown hair is holding my hand,...
In Dayton, Ohio, in 1919
Paul married a stenographer. A girl from church with ice-blue eyes and sandy hair braided in the modern way. He was nineteen, assembling pumps for Barney & Smith, the giant rail-car maker. They talked about things over tea. Big things in low voices. They liked the idea of in-laws and...