NEW! Revisiting Meg

An essay inspired by the publication, eighteen years later, of a new book about my favorite fictional character.

REDISCOVERED! Why I Eat What I "Don't Eat"

A short piece on food and peace, probably written in summer/fall 2004 as part of my Gourmet Guest project. I think I once planned to revise and expand it but that never wound up happening. I stumbled across this piece again recently in a recipe notebook, at a time when I was trying again to wrap my head around a political confict, and decided it should see the light of day.

Like It's This Secret Code

A scene from my memoir-in-progress. More recently deleted from the memoir itself, but I still like it as a stand-alone piece.

The Pre-Fame Days

These are our pre-fame days, Andie said to me once, like she's rehearsed it, like she'd thought about it and saved it to tell me. What gets me about that idea is that you don't know until it happens if you're gonna be famous, you don't know beforehand if your pre-fame days are ever gonna end.

Rooted In Something Called Friendship

This is the fourth story in the Ilana camp trilogy, perhaps my favorite of the four. Camp is a world which influenced my life profoundly for many years, and I'm still trying to make sense of it all.

CULT

You're hooked by their songs...

You Can't Go Back In

"Paul, did you ever feel like coming out to someone?" Maggie says it like she knows something I don't. The two of us are at Lou Green's Restaurant and Bar, her choice, my birthday. I'm twenty-one.

Dyke Haircut #3

The closest I've gotten to the elusive "Dyke Haircut #3" came about on Boston Common during gay pride...

Nothing But My Handwriting

It seemed like no matter how you looked at it there was something else to consider... This is the third in the now-trilogy of Ilana stories, as I continue to try to make sense of the camp which shook up my life in a few too many ways. The first story in the trilogy, "Ilana '93," is published in the Spring 2000 issue of Blithe House Quarterly, and the second, "When I Got a Catcher For My Rye and All," is on my CD, hear me out.

Later Juncture

Late in college, my best friend ran into and recounted a conversation with my eighth-grade crush. "OH, you know Audrey," he said, "how is she? Didn't she have a crush on me in middle school?" When my friend nodded, he admitted in a stage whisper, "I had a little crush on her too." I was surprised by how much it affected me to hear this so many years later, how it helped me reshape some of my interpretations of the past, how it felt in a way validating. I turned then to "Later Juncture," the latest incarnation of a story about "unrequited love" I had been trying to tell for years. I tried rewriting one more time. The acknowledgement in the story became one not of infatuation but of possibility, of "yes I've thought that way about you too," and its place became that of untravelled road in a realized life. Finally the story itself felt real, felt like something which would actually happen rather than like something I merely wished would happen.

Meeting Chapin

This story has more than one beginning. It began a few weeks ago: I turned twenty, I went home, I saw her in concert. It began nearly five years ago: I bought a tape of hers, Shooting Straight in the Dark. It began just before that: Mr. Nicholson--her former and my then-current English teacher--showed our class a videotape of her performing at the Grammys. It begins now: I try to put this in words and hope I can tell it right.

Writing My Way

Your mere "hello" could become a ten-page story, your worst insecurities could put me on the bestseller list, your lifetime achievement could be a line of mediocre prose.... This piece is the Personal Statement I submitted with my application to Emerson's MFA program; it served as a credo of sorts throughout graduate school. In a sense, it is also a sequel to "Meeting Chapin."

On the Ritual of Coming Out

A few thoughts, written originally as part of a longer manuscript and read for a National Coming Out Day rally at Tufts.

 

My Kid The Hassid

To celebrate "fifteen years of the Cabbage Patch Kids bringing love to families everywhere," Mattel, Inc. sponsored a Cabbage Patch Kids "Memorable Moments" contest. I was lured by the thought of $15,000 to help pay for grad school, but I guess they didn't think Brandon Neil was memorable enough...

 

Fluid Sexuality

My feelings about labels and identity spend a lot of time in flux, but this dialogue consistently resonates. There's something liberating about the first line, "I'm open to the possibility," and something both optimistic and grounding about the last.

 

Observing

What's your favorite holiday? I love that question because it's such an unthreatening way to begin a good conversation. It works equally well at parties, over email, and on awkward first dates. And of course there are so many to choose from....

If you could spend an evening with any one person, living, deceased, or fictional, whom would you choose and why?

This essay got me into college. It's sort of bragging, I guess, to show it off here. But the college counselors and English teachers at my high school started using it to teach the seniors how to write good college essays, and I thought it might inspire other students struggling with the challenge. The quotation is from Ellen Emerson White's White House Autumn, and the copy I sent to Penn and Yale included a proper citation.

The Coming of Sylvester

Wandering around Penn one lonely summer night, I came across a group of people singing and playing guitar. It brought me back to my camp days, so I boldly sat down and began making friends. Turned out they were all Christian medical students and pre-meds who were spending their summer immunizing little kids and studying Bible. It took a while to realize they were singing what I thought of as "Jesus songs." Uncomfortable with the lyrics but drawn to the music and community, I started imagining a universal song. I imagined the story of the song coming from my Grandpa Abe, a poet who had suffered from both depression and Parkinson's disease, and "The Coming of Sylvester" was born.

Endings

This was the first story I wrote for my first college fiction class which later received my first rejection letter. When I tried to revise it recently, I would up scratching out every single word. I include it here because thinking about the ending still gives me chills.

Cowboy

Ode to Having an Oven

From the V-Fridge

Untitled

what i wanted to express

What I'll miss most.

journal poem