“I could tell Karen liked the book I got her.”

“She liked the book, eh?” I reached into the backseat, bumped the edge of her carseat and fumbled to hold her hand.

“Yeah.” She squeezed my hand between both of hers.

“That’s good. It’s nice when someone likes a gift you got for them.”

“Well, the nice part is getting a gift for them.”

“Yes. It’s nice to buy gifts for people. I meant also that it feels nice if someone likes something you got them.”

“It also just feels nice to get someone a gift. Even if they don’t like it, they know you wanted to get them a gift.”

“That’s true. Good point. I like that.”

I’d stood behind her chair at the birthday party. A mom next to me turned to me when her daughter gave Karen the birthday girl her gift, and said “I’m not sure they actually know each other’s names. They’re in the same dance class.”

“Mine’s in that class too.” Later I thought that...

Age seven. Will and I are in my room, each holding a walkie-talkie with silver antennas extended.

“You smell,” with his thumb Will’s holding the orange button on the side of the plastic case, “like feet. Do you read me? Over.”

“I read you. You smell,” I begin to giggle, “like farts.” I take my thumb off the button.

Will laughs, then adds “you forgot to say ‘do you read me, over’.”

“Do you read me, fart-smell? Over.”

Will throws his head back laughing. It’s contagious, I do the same.

“Okay boys,” my dad pokes his head in the doorway, “time to wrap it up, bed time.”

“Okay.”

In the quiet we hear soft voices on the radio. We turn it up loud. The static hisses and spits like a cornered cat. Under it, men speaking. It’s hard to make out what they’re saying.

“Breaker, breaker,” Will’s holding down the talk button again, “breaker do you read me over?”

“Say again?” a voice answers.

...

As a younger straight man, like many younger straight men, I had occasional fantasies of, uh, let’s say romantic physical contact, with two women at the same time. As a man approaching forty this appeals to me much less. I think I respect women now. I’d like to think so, though I think that’s more up to the women in my life to say. Certainly I do more than when I was a teenager. And so the young man/older adolescent fantasy breaks down (most men, by the way, are aging adolescents, this is news only to men, aging a little in the sense of maturing and a lot in the sense of rotting in the way over-ripened and bruised fruit does if left to sit too long in the sun) because the fantasy as I had it was fundamentally one about being self-centered while other people are the object of my attention, or rather, give attention entirely devoted to me. As in, it wasn’t a particularly mutual fantasy is...

“Before Sam got pregnant I couldn’t imagine loving another baby as much as I love Aaron,” Jonah said, “but now, it’s like, I don’t know, a skyscraper of love. I love that baby so much, especially when it kicks, and it’s gonna be even more when it’s born.”

I’d smiled, nodded, finished my second glass of wine. At the time I didn’t have kids, didn’t think I wanted kids, and was about ten years younger than Jonah. Kids was a sticking point between my girlfriend and me at that point.

I’ve got two kids now. Their births felt miraculous. I mean, they were crazy. Screaming, crying, exhaustion, stress, thunder, lightning, winds tearing at trees and dropping biting flies and frogs from the sky, biblical kinda shit, and then movie ray of sunlight parts storm clouds angels singing when I got to see the baby’s perfect little head emerge for the first time. Honestly, the one kid was frowning deeply...

My wife went out. My turn to do bedtime solo. Me and the kids made paper airplanes. My older kid was pissed because she couldn’t get them to fly very far. It surprised me that you have to learn to throw a paper airplane. I looked up a hang-glider style paper airplane I remember from when I was a kid. I found a youtube video for a style of paper airplane that won some world record, probly for geekiness. I made the plane. My kid flew it all the way across our house. “I’m even better at flying this one than you Daddy!” “You sure are, baby.” “Make me a paper hat now.” I looked that up. My younger kid had a total meltdown because the origami gemstone wasn’t jewelry. “I’ll figure out how to do this tonight and we can work on it tomorrow.” “Okay.” We get off the computer. I get the little one’s pajamas and diaper on. We all read books together. I pick up both girls and carried them while I...

My phone buzzed. I checked my pocket. Actual phone call, not a phantom vibration. It’s Rick. Ricky. I flip the phone open. Don’t call him Ricky. Don’t ask what’s wrong or tell him my insides jump when his name comes up on the display.

“Rick! Hey!”

“Hey big gringo what’s the good word?”

“Not much man. Kids. Job hunting. Winter. What’s with you?”

“The same. The usual.”

“The same? You got winter down there in the south?”

“Oh yeah. It was down in the 40s the other night.”

“Fuck you.”

“I even had to put on a jacket.”

“Fuuuuuck youuuu.”

“How’s the job hunting?”

“It sucks. Where you working these days?”

“Still welding at that metal shop.”

“The one you were at last Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“Still thinking of quitting?”

“Yeah. Any day now. Sick of breathing the fumes and shit. That shit fucks you up.”

“Makes sense.”

“And sick of the red necks. Some of these motherfuckers say the...

If I cross my eyes I can see the tip of my nose. If I look down and stick out my lips, tongue I can see their tips as well. The glimpses are brief, hazy, vague, and a lot of work. Crossing my eyes hurts a little, and all of this is silly and feeling silly is for me the kind of sensation that makes it hard to hold any other thought. And so the seeing takes up so much work that I can’t think. I don’t know if this is just me or not. You tell me - try to think about the last argument you had with a loved one and what you wished you said, and do this while crossing your eyes and then looking down to see the tip of your outstretched tongue. How far did you get, mentally?

I see my hands effortlessly. They’re in my field of vision at work (on a mouse, on a keyboard, moving in the air while I talk), while I chop onions to saute as part of dinner for my family, while I hold a pencil and try to...

I’m at the park between my house and my job. I stand under the monkeybars, looking up at the chipped grey and brown metal of the first and second bar against the flat matte lighter gray sky. I take a deep breath slow, let it out, wiggle my fingers. I look at the tops of my shoes then back at the run, reach up as a jogger runs by. I grab the second bar with both hands.

The hem of my t-shirt pops up. The cold air tells me an inch or two of my belly is exposed. In my mind I can see the pale white skin and the black wiry hair and the curve of flesh. Disgusting. You fuck. I remember my dad yanking me out of a chair by the armpit, his hand like a vice (later as I brush my teeth I will pull up my shirt and hiss from the pain - hissing quietly though, I do not want anyone to hear - as, full of hypochondriac worries about germs and illness, I dab at the cut there with tissue paper soaked in...

Ten or twelve years ago a friend mentioned he was reading this book Infinite Jest. Other people in the room said “oh, The Big Book.” I hadn’t read it. As far as I can remember, that friend, and every friend since who has mentioned it, talked about it’s length and how it had lots of footnotes. “Footnotes? In a novel? That sounds annoying. I think I would skip them.” “No, they’re, like, part of it. You should read it.” I still haven’t.

This fall I started reading some nonfiction by the book’s author, though, David Foster Wallace. I read most of three collections of his stuff. I skipped a fair bit in the first collection, essays on novels I haven’t read yet and don’t plan to any time in the foreseeable future. When his writing’s good, it’s great. I like his characterizations of people, and I find his essays thought provoking and intelligent without having to make the words and sentences...

“How you doing?” She’s just gotten out of the bath. She’s dressed, but toweling her hair as she walks across the living room. The younger kid’s asleep, the older kid’s watching a video (a pang somewhere inside compels me to tell you the older kid gets an hour a day of screen time; this parenthetical admission sets off at least one more pang), so it was a moment of relative freedom (another pang - what kind of father talks about his kids this way?) and in that moment she took a bath. I wrote. Well, that was the plan.

“The god damn network, or maybe it’s this shitty fucking laptop, I don’t know, I just wanted to check my fucking email real quick before doing some other shit and now it’s half an hour or so later and I’ve only just now wised up and have stopped turning the modem or whatever the fuck it’s called off and on and off and on.” I pause for breath, notice her face has the...