Growing up in the 1980s and 90s with an absent father and an in-over-her-head mother, TV became my co-parent. My dad ran off—or maybe he was kicked out by my mom, details are fuzzy—when I was about four or five. I don’t know my exact age, because, like I said, details are fuzzy. My mom does not like to talk ... Read More

My father tells me to make a turn and drive down a narrow alley, and there, in the town a few miles north of Pittsburgh where I lived until I was seven, is an entire neighborhood I never knew existed. “What’s all this?” I say. “Tomashek’s,” my father says.  “It’s down this way.” I remember the name. “Hell itself,” my ... Read More

The Archbishop of Chicago is dead, and my mother watches the funeral live on Channel 7. I’m also in the living room, eating a sandwich. I’m ten years old and not Catholic. I’m not sure what I am. My father is Jewish. I do like dinosaurs a lot. Soon, my mother has to drive me somewhere. Maybe it’s a school ... Read More

  1973

Little Red Riding Hood and a little wicker basket of bread and strawberry jam. Big black wolf slaps a pink tongue over shiny canines. Flip through the pages, smack down the book. Squint eyes shut, cover your ears. Crimson teeth chewing on soft tissues and tiny bones. Chuk chuk chuk like Ah Ma’s cleaver on meat. Ah Ba says, ... Read More