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[...] I lived there for six years. It’s where I became myself—or at least a self that would last me a very long time. I never permitted any lovers to move in. I needed to eat messily while reading, to sometimes not get dressed all day. To work in bed. To wake up in the middle of the night with the …

He wasn’t as young as he looked, but he was younger than he thought he was. Thirty-one is young, I said. He winced like I was just being polite. He felt like a fuckup, like he should have done more by now. He’d wasted time on stupid shit. He was working overtime these days; he needed to save up twe…

Fontana’s wasn’t exactly what I would call healthy. I ordered the Shrimp Diablo. The young waitress was barely civil, but I treated her warmly nonetheless; I always go out of my way to not be like my mom in these situations. She often felt she was being mocked—so she mocked back. She’d get nervous …

I drove to Fontana’s listening to Portishead at a very loud volume. This had been my main album in the midnineties when my ex-girlfriend and ex–best friend were living together in the apartment next door to me and loudly consummating their new love. The lovemaking involved some kind of hitting foll…

I sat in the car while he filled the tank and a young man cleaned my windshield, which was unnecessary but I guessed part of the service. The guy with the squeegee had a Huckleberry Finn/Gilbert Blythe look that I used to flip out over as a teenager but with more closely cropped hair and a downy li…