She leaned way out of her comfort zone to "friend" him on Facebook and then again to accept his frequent texts and phone calls.

Over months, he wooed her with words until she believed he adored her and agreed to meet him for a night of long-awaited passion.

 The following day he cooled measurably, and when they returned to their respective home states, he told her that, because she was married, he could not continue the "relationship."

She was devastated and sought…

My mother rides the 104 bus, her 90-year old body bent into a question mark by rheumatoid arthritis. She lives alone now, taking buses to her many doctor appointments: the one for her heart condition, the one for her deafness, the one she talks to about her depression.

She has not yet asked if she can live with me, has not said the words, “I cannot remember what I am supposed to do, today, or…

He was nondescript in every way except one: his penis was out of his pants and standing at attention right there on the 104 bus!

What on Christ’s home planet was the man thinking? 

And how come I was the only rider who saw it?

Later, between Latin and history, I told Annie Shapiro about it. She said that I should stop looking at men’s…

Eventually, like rivers to the sea, all city buses ended up at The Forum, which was okay by most Montrealers, since that's where the hockey games were played.

One evening, and I don't remember how, I was in possession of a ticket to go watch Les Canadiens play the Boston Bruins. I rode the 104 downtown to the terminus when the urge took me to a bar next to the hockey rink.

The 104 bus…

I saw my first dead person on the 104 bus.   Madame Louise  Chevalle was the landlady over three short, shitty-brown  apartment buildings that formed a U-shape at the corner of Fielding and Montclair Streets, and she was a pinch-faced, almost-bald bitch of a hag, notorious for crowding new immigrants in, at exhorbitant prices.

 The buildings were hot in summer and ice cold in winter, and more than half the electrical circuits hadn't worked since Louis St. Laurent was prime minister…

1.

Jackie Ruth, my best friend, and I were students at the Morris Winchefsky Yiddesheh Shul two days a week after regular Anglo school. We were small, patient children, able to entertain ourselves with word games and spelling quizzes while we waited for the 104 bus to lumber its brown self around the corner of Monkland Avenue and carry us to class.

In Shul,…

Terry keeps three saved messages from her on his voicemail, all of them received within seven minutes of each other one Friday back when he loved her, and all of them spoken in her “sweet” voice, the one she used to get back in his good graces after she’d done something selfish.

Selfish was her specialty, and selfish was her default M.O.

 He should have hit 7, for delete, long ago, but…

I have a secret garden fantasy because I am more myself outdoors than inside an apartment or beach house.

Imagine a quiet place surrounded on three sides by dense bamboo, the notched, straight and hollow stalks with their dark arrow-shaped leaves bending in the wind.  The fourth side of this secret place is protected by a high, moss-covered stone wall in which there is one small red door.…

In my dream, Michelle Bachmann and Ann Coulter are going to fight each other in a boxing ring, in a big warehouse with grime and dim lights, kind of like in the movie Fight Club.

They're both in Donna Karan suits (made in China)  and Jimmy Chu pumps (also made in China).

A bunch of stiff-haired women form a phalanx around the ring and I catch a glimpse of…

Day and night, there is only this pain in my face..

It is excruciating.  For three days I've had no solid food, I have been to a dentist and a doctor,  but they couldn't   find a cause.

I sleep to get away from the pain using Lortabs, Lyrica and Xanax.  When they wear off, the pain begins all over and I  grab the pill bottles.

I once wrote a short story about a dying man on morphine and I imaginatively wrote,  "The pain clawed through his medication,"  and I…

He brushed the stove clean and made a fire.   Keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut, he finished unloading and backed out through the swinging doors.   

On this Saturday, as on every other morning, the old ladies sat looking out into the bright haze that struck off the water along the Durban beachfront.  

 …

I called you outside to see the moon, and you stepped out unclothed so that together we could witness the lucent, tilted crescent that orders our tides.

 I wanted to stand behind you, my arms around your bare waist. I wanted to place my head as close as possible to yours so that my eyes would see exactly what you were seeing.

I have this longing to see the world through strange eyes and…

No one told me about her. I was looking through some photographs I found inside your drawer.  All the joy within me died.

Then I found out you also  have a wife in Chino and one in Cherokee.

You’ll be living on the road, my friend, as soon as I finish this letter.   As for me, I will get by, I will get by, I will survive.…