My Writerly Blog

The dogs outside announced his arrival. Charlotte stared at him as he hobbled toward the front door. She wished her mother were here to tell her what to do. She wished there were another way. He rang the doorbell; she reached for the rifle, knowing that today was to be one of those days when the gun was the only thing old Nate Whiting might listen to. Though she’d known it was coming, the chime of the doorbell still startled her. Clutching the butt of the gun – a twenty-year-old .22 he’d given her for her sixteenth birthday – she gathered up the emotions that kept her waking up to answer his call every day, and swung the heavy oak door wide open. “Morning, Dad,” she said through the screen door. He squinted at her, placing her face. “Which one’re you?” “Charlotte, Dad.” “Speak up!” “I’m Charlotte,” she repeated loudly. She cracked open the screen door, letting in a brace of biting winter air, and hollered at the dogs. “Hush up!” The dogs’ yapping trailed off. Her father grunt...

I recently received a forwarded email that I actually read and enjoyed. In my snottiness and sophistication, I generally delete forwards without even reading them – so to avoid bad luck from chain letters and sappy “this is what a true friend is/pass it on so you know God loves you” junk – this one came from a reliable source: my best friend. It was a list of “Things You’ll Never Hear a Woman Say.” Being rabid sports fans, my friend and I had issues with several of these “things”: 1. “While you were in the bathroom, they went for it on fourth down and missed. If they can hold them to a field goal, they’ll still cover.” Okay, first of all, what sports-fan-female dates or watches football with a brain-numb dope who goes to the bathroom on fourth and short when the game is on the line?!? Especially if it’s not only the game in doubt, but your gambling money. This is like those people who just HAVE to go out for Junior Mints right when the FBI agent is about to figure it all out and...

In response to the vomit-inducing, over-marketed holiday that is Valentine’s Day, I would like to lobby to have a new holiday on the yearly calendar: Losers’ Day. Really, Valentine’s Day is redundant. Couples already get to do cool, sappy, “togetherness” things on every other holiday. Why do they need another day solely devoted to them? We always talk about what couples did for V-Day. Romantic dinner, buckets of ice and champagne, $100 flower arrangements and hip-expanding boxes of chocolates. Don’t forget the trendy “propose in a hot-air balloon shaped like a heart” story. But what do the single people do on V-Day? We sit around and feel sorry for ourselves and hug the teddy bears our mothers gave us because they felt sorry for us, too. So I have an idea: Losers’ Day. Couples not allowed to participate. There is no PDA on Losers’ Day, or candy hearts or flowers or jewelry commercials. This day is all about us, the lonely ones, the ones with more battery-operated devices than...

People move to LA in flocks creating a constant and heavy influx that drives up real estate prices and clogs the freeways. I’ve heard, however, that we transplants turn around and hoof it out of here in an average of seven years. Why? What’s so bad about LA, I mean besides the obvious exaggerated real estate prices and not-so exaggerated smog layer (excuse me, marine layer)? It’s a huge city, with tons of night life, tastes of every culture, beautiful beaches, year-round summer, and let’s not forget the oh-so-frequent Starbucks celebrity sightings. What do I love about LA? Where could I possibly begin…oh, let’s start with that perpetual summer, shall we? Today, in the dead of winter, where New York is covered in snow and bears in Montana are still in too deep a sleep to even wake up for a mid-hibernation pee, the high was 72 degrees. My winter coat is still at my mother’s house in Albuquerque, stuffed in a closet and covered with dust. I don’t even remember what color it is. T...

Unlike many romantically-inclined folks, I am not under the misconception that songs and movies and books are the real world. The real world is not Brad Pitt giving you flowers and sending you Japanese love poems. At no point in the land of reality does being “twenty pounds overweight” translate into the body of Renee Zellweger. Hell, I’d give my right arm to be dumped by the likes of Rhett Butler, but it just doesn’t happen that way. No, the real world is bird crap on my windshield, running out of toilet paper, and spewing coke out my nose. It’s trying on bras at Victoria’s Secret, looking like I’m trying to shove two giant water balloons into a rubber band. It’s knowing that by the time I’m forty, these nice, if lopsided, breasts will hang somewhere in the vicinity of my kneecaps. I’ll have to get larger belts just to calm the swaying. The real world is finally getting that fabulous guy to ask me out, and he takes me to a porn shop, winks lasciviously at me, and asks, “See anyt...

July 9, 2004 1:00 p.m. She said she loved me, and I wanted to kill myself. “Christ, Mother, I know that already,” I snapped at her. How could I not? Over my twenty-two years, I had learned that my mother used the word “love” like a sixth grade English teacher uses punctuation: as a tool. As a garnish. As a manipulator. She drew back from me, and the pearly pins ready to decorate my hair paused. “Well, Louise, there’s no need to be snarky about it. I only try to do what’s best for you, you know.” “I am aware that’s what you tell yourself.” I sighed and gestured for her to resume pinning my hair. I had to: somewhere out in that enormous gothic nightmare of a cathedral a man was waiting for me to walk down the aisle. Waiting to whisk me away to our new home 3,482 miles away from my hovering mother. A man who rarely said he loved me, which at the time was just fine by me. Now, sitting here in an open-air hut in the middle of an uncivilized jungle, I would desperately like to laug...