Category: stories from a bar with no doorknobs

• April 25, 2022

  Making Love On the Moon.

  

    This was a dry slice of wisdom handed down by Mr. Joe Watson, and on the surface, it was nothing new. This is a man’s world, Lucky, he told me. They are the takers, the mapmakers. Self-appointed gods of history. And if there’s one thing God’s incapable of, it’s offering any kind of explanation…
• March 7, 2022

  sonia’s window.

  the boy sat on the floor of Sonia’s apartment in 100 degree summertime. dry desert heat flowing between the decrepit patio and the bedroom. cigarette clamped between his lips, steeped in the details of the day. indifferent to the nameless young anarchist stretched across the couch, struggling to decipher the cover of a vintage 12…
• February 16, 2022

  suicide at 35.

    At the time, I couldn’t have told you how many years I had left to live. Spring of 2004 in the city of New York. The trees were on their yearly walkabout. Some going so far as to erupt in resplendent blemishes. Cherry petals rippled along Brooklyn streets and the walkways of Washington Square…
• February 6, 2022

  dirty day.

  From what the windows had to say, it was going to be another lovely morning in Sunset Park. Thought I’d give it a spot test. Rolled out of bed. Headed for the front door of my basement rental. Careful to avoid the empty bottles, tiptoe around incomplete notebooks and pornography. Paused at the door. Little…
• January 17, 2022

  welcome to creole nights.

    Open season, another lonely night on the calendar. February 7, 1999, and three days earlier, Amadou Diallo had been shot. Twenty-two years, all summarized in a single moment: reaching for his wallet, violently thrust into the next life with the help of nineteen slugs from four officers of NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit. Dead on…