A friend in Boston was leading us on his wonderful tour of the city. I had never been before. We were looking over the harbor, walking through what he said was the second oldest graveyard in Boston. I was blithering on about my ancestors, the name was French, they were disinvited from that country, though, ha ha, and spent a few centuries in England and Ireland before making their way to the colonies. A professor who researched the name and wrote a book said most went south “to be slave traders, the rest were in a ship that blew way off course and ended up in New England where they distinguished themselves as horse thieves.”

Then I looked down. By my foot was a grave that read “Elijah Corlew” — early 1800s. My friend has the grave on his tour.

When I was in my early 20s, I was living in Brooklyn but working in White Plains, which is in Westchester County just North of the City. That meant I reverse commuted about 45 minutes every day. I did various combinations of train and car pools. During the summer months, I would often wear shorts and a t-shirt to commute and change into my work clothes once I reached the office. On one such day, I was riding in the front passenger of my car pooling colleague (whose name I don’t think I could remember even if large sums of money were attached) with the window open and something told me to close the window, so I did. Less than half a minute later, the entire window exploded all over me and I felt something hit my arm. I looked in the foot well of my seat, and there was the center hub of a bus with a long bolt sticking out of it with a nut on the end. I feel sure that if I hadn’t put the window up, it would have hit me in the head and certainly killed me. But the impact of the window caused it to only glance off my arm. I was covered in glass and had a throbbing bruise on my arm that would, in the days to come, turn all shades of purple and green. But I was never so happy that I listened to that impulse to put the window up.

For the information of your readers – I am the person who played the mother in Cindy and Donna. My stage name was: Suzy Allen. I never used the name Susy Allen and any information shown for Susy Allen does not apply to me. I don’t know why I was not credited properly. I agree that Cindy and Donna was a terrible movie, but the stagehands and crew said I was the best actor in the movie! We spent an entire day filming one scene, with me and my “husband” driving on a freeway, with me nagging him about not taking me out often enough !! I had a lot of fun trying to be the whining, miserable wife for the movie, even though in real life I am nothing like that character. It was also very interesting for me to have to dub in some of my lines after the movie was finished. Quite a challenge to get everything right on cue.

Context.

(thanks, Robert)

Once, after half a day of hanging out with friends at a park, one of them noticed that his ring had slipped off somewhere. We’d been tearing ass all over the park for hours, and he had no idea when he lost it, just that he had it when he got there. A dozen of us hunted all over the park for over an hour, to no avail.

We gave up finally, and sat on the picnic tables, bumming out on the end of our fun day. For no particular reason, I got up from the table, closed my eyes and turned around a bit, pointed in the direction I was facing, opened my eyes and walked 14 steps in that direction. I looked down, and there was the ring, in the grass.

Some of the people there thought that I had planted the ring, and some people were kind of freaked out about it, but it felt completely natural and easy to me, like I just tuned into something inside me. I didn’t even need to concentrate, I just needed to NOT block something that said “there” and “14.”

When I was in college my grandfather came for a visit and we spent an evening talking: grandfather, father, son. I heard family history and personal anecdotes — reasons for choices made long ago. That night, after everyone had gone to bed, and the extended family had left, I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water — there was a sound I couldn’t quite figure out, a repetitive, almost meditative, cyclical looping. I paced all parts of the kitchen trying to figure it out. Finally I opened the microwave and found — it’s hard to describe now because I don’t know if they still make them — but a battery powered gyroscope type of thing a cousin had set to spinning and placed inside there — too quiet to hear until everyone had gone away.

Once (more than 20 years ago) I had cancer and was getting chemo therapy. I often couldn’t sleep so I would stay up writing. The drugs made me sort of frantic and caused borderline hallucinations. Anyway, I wrote a story about a solitary almost homeless woman who spent long nights in a storeroom at a church, making doll clothes to sell. One night she begins to play at making something different, even though she knows she can’t afford such frivolity. I was up all night writing it. When I went in and woke Cindy that morning the first thing she said was “I had the strangest dream. It was like I was right there, in a place I have never seen.” Then she told me more about the dream–and it was the story I had just written, recounted in astonishing detail. Here’s a link to the story, “Issue from the Grotto of the Street Hermit Saint.”

Here’s one story: About a year ago, I went with some friends to a “haunted” hotel (the Hotel Lawrence in Downtown Dallas). Something about this place just turned something “on” in me. Everything was familiar; I knew my way around the hotel completely. I entered one of the rooms and immediately knew someone had died there. I didn’t see it happening, but it was almost like I was reading about it in a newspaper — a series of journalistic cliffs notes. A woman. 1940s. Suicide. Window. That window. We talked to the hotel staff and they showed me the article from the mid 1940s about a woman who had committed suicide by jumping out the window of a room on the 10th floor. No one had ever confirmed why she had jumped, but I know why. I also know she was wearing a red scarf.

There is a wind-storm and I am probably sixteen or seventeen, driving along a single-lane country road in my Ford F150 truck. It’s been windy for a few days, by now, and this road is elevated slightly, with a drainage ditch on either side, but no brush. Farmland. A single row of telephone poles are on the left side of the road, and I am probably driving too fast — the wind is pushing against the truck, which somehow makes me feel not only invincible but impossibly cool. Even though I know the road is deserted, I look behind me in the driver’s side mirror and think “That is so odd, the poles are sideways.” I realize that they are falling and I look up and see them begin to fall in front of me and one is about to hit my car. I turn the wheel sharply and start driving over the tilled soil. For some reason it doesn’t occur to me to slow down. I drive to the edge of the field, and get back on the road. Other cars are here now and they’ve stopped. The road is completely blocked, back for a ways since as one pole started to fall it brought all the others with it.

My wife and I never have sex and I think she could benefit from talking Viagra. The trouble is she wouldn’t be able to take away sex from me when I do something bad. I know every guy out there in the world reading this knows what I am talking about. I recently switched over to asian women only because of this simple yet gosh awful truth that women keep doing and men keep putting up with it. Not with asian women though!! Love going out with asian women because they say yes to anything you want. I have been dating this one asian chick and she has only been in the U.S. for a year. Barely speaks english its so nice not having to listen to a trick yap about how I don’t give her enough attention or nag about everything under the sun.

My question for the readers is: Why do women need a viagra like drug if they aren’t puttin out? They won’t take it anyways.