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Sexuality
Sy Safransky’s Notebook
February 2005
It’s not just Norma I’m married to, after all. I’m married to loneliness. I’m married to fear. I’m married to desire. I’m a devoted husband. I treat each of my wives with respect.
February 2005Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Peep Show
Back in my peep-show youth, at New York’s seedier venues, the small booth windows were glassless, and patrons were strongly encouraged to reach through and touch the dancers for a small fee.
February 2005
Readers Write
Hero Worship
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, family members, Wonder Woman
January 2005
Fiction
Rose’s
My stomach lurched because I realized that Carl looked like his father, and therefore would not become handsome. He would never escape the prison of his ugliness. I hated Mr. Leach for destroying the beauty of Carl’s face for me.
January 2005
Poetry
In Praise Of Four-Letter Words
We yell shit / when the egg carton slips / and the ivory globes / splatter on blue tile. / And when someone leaves you / bruised as a dropped pear, you spit / that fucker, fucking bastard, motherfucker.
December 2004Fiction
The Rat
“Rat check,” my father would say when he came home from work. And we would run to the various traps to see if we’d caught the rat. We slept lightly, each hoping and fearing that we would hear the slam of the trap in the night and be the one to go running with the news that the rat at last was dead. But we found nothing, heard nothing.
September 2004
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Three Short Essays
Driving across America the August before I stopped drinking, I found myself in Tennessee, taking note of that big look that trees get in the East at the end of summer: a line of them at the far end of a field, like blooms of dark green ink dropped into water.
September 2004
Fiction
Jane
Once, while passing notes during a chemistry lecture, Jane and I decided we would each write on a piece of paper what articles of clothing we had not taken off on our last date. When we unfolded each other’s notes, we had both written the same thing: socks.
April 2004
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