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Friendship
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Primer On Friends, Family And Community
Friends: Not to be confused with admirers, or friendly faces, or lovers. No one has a lot of friends — at least, not good friends, and that’s the only kind.
April 1975Fiction
The Marriage
Summer in College Town. At 7:30 a.m. eating a bagel with cream cheese at Out To Lunch they discuss getting married. At 5:30 p.m. the same day they are in a lawyer’s office in Raleigh writing their marriage contract.
April 1975Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Two Dollars An Hour
On my first day at the book warehouse, D., the boss, is complaining of sore muscles and a bad headache. Baseball on Saturday, drinking with the boys on Sunday. “I done indulged too much,” he says wearily. His manner is relaxed and friendly.
January 1975
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Flying And Diving, Shucking and Jiving — There Is No Other Life But This, But What Is This?
Susan says she is not a religious person, but she has a high regard for religion, and she doesn’t like to see it downgraded or made fun of. And Saul Alinsky, a Chicago “social activist” said that “Seeing is Believing” should be taken a lot more literally.
October 1974Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sy’s New York Diary: Amazing Flesh
I read, in the newspaper, about a man who is dragged from his car, knifed repeatedly for the few dollars in his wallet, and left bleeding in the gutter. My mother says her friends don’t go out at night. It’s an old story, old as the city’s tired and dour expression, old as the dry and wrinkled hands of a man trying to remember better days and remembering nothing but bone.
October 1974Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sy’s New York Diary
The city so easy, after all, alive for me like some lover never truly left behind, never truly known: the perfumes, the hidden places, the exquisite fears and sweet temptations of the night.
June 1974
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