Feature Stories
So palpably painful was their parting that even above the bus’s noisy idle and squawking children, it seemed that anyone who passed by could hear the break between mother and child. I did.
They’d give tortillas to us plain — good enough! Or they’d roll a few drops of lemon juice in one, or a pinch of salt, or both. I ate a couple of these mini-tacos while I waited.
Eighteen hours in the field, and my acquaintance with J. was doomed forever. He never got over my verbal abuse. We climbed together one last time a year after our adventure, but it just wasn’t the same.
Mexicans out here lie low. I know a Chicana poet who teaches at the University of Colorado, and every semester or so, some genius in a truck calls her a “greaser” or an “Injun.”
The night sea off the coast of La Jolla was smothered in fog on December 18, 1917, and in those pre-sonar days the American submarine F-1 had no way of knowing that she was on …
The bookstore “pop-up” for Niek Tosches’s Ditto: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams reads: “The Great American Show Biz Story — Straight Up with a Hark Twist” — and dark it is. Darker …
The bookstore “pop-up” for Nick Tosches’s Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams reads: “The Great American Show Biz Story — Straight Up with a Dark Twist” — and dark it is. Darker …
“I got Starkist Charlie’s lunch kit and crackers.” “Do you have a sandwich?” “No, I don’t like sandwiches. Had a cantaloupe and Double-Tough Oreos.” “Double-Tough?” “Double-Tough.” “None of this Twinkie shit, just hard-ass Oreos.” “You got it.”
This story was primarily written because of thoughts and feelings I have about female addicts. I have been a heroin addict for 20 years. I am on my fourth prison term because of my need …
When you get out of your car to investigate, you will find nothing but a circle of trailers in the middle of the desert, a corral of lights like the lanterns hung in a circle of pioneer wagons.
“Come on, you slut! Pick it up before I put a cap in your ass!” This was no idle threat, for a fully loaded Colt Python lay near at hand in a large Ziploc freezer …
Vigilant readers may recall an article published in these pages last fall. It was a story about used cars and hubris — deep, seductive, mind-enchanting hubris. I still remember, precisely, making a left off Orange …
On Highland Avenue, in the heart of National City — a mile-and-a-half-long boulevard along which the city's gangs conduct their lethal parades on weekend nights — a red car sits in a small parking lot …
“Everybody was leaving the costume party. They were going to a packing shed and party some more. My brother George and his wife were both sleeping when they got another phone call."
“One of our students, a tenth-grade boy, committed suicide right after New Year’s. On that first Friday back, a 15-year-old boy collapsed on the P.E. field — an aneurysm or stroke — and lost his breathing capacity.”
My father loved Mary’s chicken pie, and she was fixing us one for dinner. To make the pie, she had to start out by stewing what she called “an old hen.” The hens arrived headless.