~Grayson Tighe Limited Edition rollerball pen with neverending ink.

~A book which when rubbed lovingly becomes any existing book one wishes for, like a Genie or Nook but not.

~Epica handmade Italian leather journal with neverending pages that whispers daily Law of Attraction tips.

~Something naughty that shows erotic movies and talks dirty while it takes me over the moon and Neptune.

~The ultimate computer which will never be…

Tina was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, 4'11" with a uniform of tight jeans and tank tops, even in winter; my mother asked her to look after me while she was away -- easy money since I was fifteen and out of diapers.

As soon as my mother was out the door Tina called her AA boyfriend Bruce and his AA friend Tom to come over, "Tom is real good if you're into fuckin'," she said, unaware I was still a virgin but okay, good to know, then the thirty year olds arrived and the…

"I always calm down when there's a storm, dark cloud cover."

"It's like a cap on the sky, so it doesn't look so big and overwhelming."

"I never thought of it that way."

"Fog and snow are the same, slowing everyone down, herding chaos and differences - everyone is looking up."

"You're right."

"Which is why I could never get used to living with high ceilings."

*Inspired by Kristine

Lorne was my first boss and gay acquaintance, a trim man in his late fifties with a pronounced chin, thick silver hair, gold wire-rimmed glasses; he ran the Dairy Queen in Seabrook, Texas and was fond of boys under the age of eighteen, especially a fifteen year old named Sydney.

Sydney was a runaway who lived temporarily with a black sheep uncle in nearby Kemah, a charmer with a face anyone would fall for, like Shaun Cassidy with a been-around Mickey Gilley smile.  Lorne…

"Dance Me To The End Of Love"

Dance me to your beauty

with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic

till I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch

and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

Let me see your beauty

when the witnesses are gone

Let me feel you moving

like they do in Babylon

Show me slowly…

The den is crowded with generations of Williamses and Thurgoods, a chaos pouring in from the next room where a "nervous" Granny Williams and my deaf cousin Thelma set the long table for our overrated annual meal, "NO Thelma, knock that goddamn cat off the table!"

Grandpa Thurgood is telling the same story about hiding in the pecan tree at Jimmy Trevor's house and pinging rocks at Rita Trevor's window; Grandma smiles politely, pretends she never tires of…

When you told me it was your favorite song I felt disappointed.  I was seventeen and John Denver wasn't cool.  Sunshine On My Shoulders was probably his least cool song. 

When you died I thought differently, just as Annie heard her song like new after John's plane went down.

The songs were the same but we heard something else, his longing for spring and the sharp catch in his throat as the ski lift carried him over white mountains, what he…

The woman with the blank face is wearing gray sweats and flip flops, her dark hair up in a pony tail.  Dr. C kneels beside her in a corner of the waiting room and whispers what look like serious questions then calm careful assurances. 

Across from the women is a door with the words "Serenity Center" etched in glass behind which magnetism taps depressed brains, a safer option than electroshock therapy.  The woman in gray wears a coil on her head three hours a week…

He is trustworthy in a Jimmy Stewart sort of way but deep like a mystic who can write like Leonard Cohen then make me laugh like Robin Williams only he's not as tortured or reclusive.

He may not look like Kevin Kline but he has the same presence as Harold in The Big Chill and he always measures his words before he says them, like Jim in Father Knows Best or Tom in The Courthsip of Eddie's Father; he has the calming effect of Ms.…

Gussie Mae's father was a gentleman, a respected physician who owned oil and gas mineral rights and invested well, but she was a grounded spirit and never grew dependent on the generous lifestyle. 

She married a handsome man who carried himself like her father at first but later revealed a violent temper; she was proud and determined to make the marriage work so she stayed with Grandaddy Kincaid until the day he almost succeeded in pushing her and their three year-old…

Maybe we are all a little mad in our twenties since we are more prone to do things like leave bars with strangers, fly with him on a Harley at 80 mph south to Galveston after midnight, wake up in a strange house if we slept at all after the cocaine and the sleepless relief of not having sex with him since he generously confessed once your clothes came off that he had genital herpes. 

And is it mad to go home with a Jenny Craig manager you've just met an hour earlier when on a…

"He's licking the floor," the woman at Macys says with bugged eyes watching my son now balanced belly down on his favorite beach ball.

I answer casually, aggravated but feeling obliged, "I know...he does that sometimes for sensory input - the smooth, the cool sensations - to compensate for a processing disorder."  Then to clear up any confusion I condense his issues into the universally recognizable diagnosis which abruptly ends these conversations and brands Julian as a…

I was bragging to my hairdresser about Mr. Bill Floyd, Ms. Amy (Cita) Auker and Kim Brittingham, a friend in New Jersey whose first book was released in May of this year.  Yeah, I told Ivan I spent a weekend in North Carolina with some very talented people, gave him a little synopsis of books a couple of these writers have published, and I felt a glow inside, always do when a writer I feel I know well (enough) publishes.  Honestly, I don't feel envy.  The worst thing I've ever felt hasn't…

He even  hired someone to clean the house, restricted his own food intake, and established a new home for Cerberus in the basement.

But that sort of fierce clan loyalty was exactly what Christianity sought to overturn.

Even senescence is color-coded.

He stood there, staring at his feet, as motionless, and for all the world as insentient, as a post.

In the ruin of the ship green fungus was growing up out of the mouths of the two…