Cheers, kid!

Dear Cougster: I don’t know what to tell young adults about their 21st birthdays, other than “don’t expect too much.” Like New Year’s Eve or bachelor parties, it’s often an occasion more gleefully anticipated than fondly remembered. Basically, if you get through it without hurting yourself too badly, scrawl it loopily into the “win” column … [more]

Borrowed Valor

It’s a joke and a cliché and the truest thing you’ll ever hear from us: “You weren’t there, man.”

Paleolithic

For Yogi, and my many other brothers, in and out of arms, in and out of harm’s way: We started sharp and young, so strongThat brittle hardly matteredWe knew ideas were right or wrongThat only weak stones shattered Just off our banks, history flowedChanged us without our knowingWe thought we’d make a mighty splashThe river … [more]

Bones & Blood (a listicle)

Diary entry from near my birthday in January, 2017: As a toddler, I was startled to learn from my larger, older cousin that a kid (say, for example, a larger, older cousin) could deploy a toy truck made from six pounds of rock maple as an effective, two-armed cudgel. That was the first time I … [more]

Darkly Dawns the Solstice

A couple of years later, I left the careful silence of our never-home apartment to spend my birthday alone, sleeping rough under a ’58 Willys in the company of my good dog Junior and a dented bourbon flask.

Happy Day

Can’t hit an unwavering, choirboy-pure high note anymore (hi, Mom!), but these days I kinda like shuffling through a few songs, growling like Tom Waits’s bartender. There are few fucks left to give and each time I find one, I do my best to pass it down to our kids.

Light One Candle

I don’t know his name and never will. That candle is hard for me to label, and even harder to light. May his memory, tough though that is, be for a blessing.

Outcomes

I’m not proud of any of this. As I write this, it’s National Coming Out Day. That’s not my day, any more than Black Lives Matter is my life. I don’t have any desire to dorksplain the meaning of situations, life circumstances, or events to which I am not party. More important to listen, I … [more]