The Reluctant Herbivore
One morning in early September I developed a small pain in my left foot while walking in to work. It felt like nothing more than one of the brief aches a habitual ambulator like myself occasionally...
View ArticleHappy Naked New Year
It was sometime in the mid-nineties, after the last ragged, dying gasps of my foolish decision to marry at nineteen. The disco ball sparkled fragments of light romantically around the floor, where I...
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That’s What I’ve Been Trying to Tell You
We met in New York when I auditioned for a play she’d written. She didn’t cast me. I struck her as being too intelligent for the part, or so she told me later by way of softening the blow. She’d done...
View ArticleBenders
I was sitting with Go at a bar on Main Street where years ago I fucked a girl leaning up against the building. We hadn’t seen each other in over ten years and were catching up over wings and whiskey....
View ArticleExplain Why You Do or Do Not Vote
BACKGROUND: 750 feet in the air, on the top floor of One Atlantic Center in Midtown Atlanta for Alston and Byrd, LLP’s hosting of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation Winetasting and Silent Auction...
View ArticleOne Way to Survive an Abusive Relationship
To be fair, we abused each other. It was not–as one might use the cliche–a one-way street. The first time we had a big a fight I threw a desklamp against a wall where it shattered and the sparks sifted...
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Anecdote for Brutalism
Campus sits west of the Chicago river, at the circle interchange of the Kennedy and Eisenhower expressways. In the 60s UIC wedged its way into and consumed Chicago’s Little Italy, grew tentacles into...
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Robinson Recalls His First Year of Marriage
She used to walk through the house, skirt rustling like rain. How was he to know she’d end up drunk— face puffed like a corpse in a lake? That they’d grow as capable of savagery as they used to be of...
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TNB Music Saves the Holidays
Is it that time again already? Hell yeah, Dre. Welcome to the 2012 holiday season. Are you ready for it? If you’re anything like the staff of TNB Music, you are most certainly not. But that’s OK,...
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Andrew W.K. Saves Christmas!
One is hard-pressed to find a more festive American than Andrew W.K. The muti-talented musician, artist, motivational speaker and TV host announced his arrival with his 2001 debut I Get Wet, and its...
View ArticleExcerpt from Fix, a memoir of codependency and addiction
PART I/July 2010. I see him, but I hope no one else does. The guy leaning over between the train tracks and the station bar has a guitar in one hand and a plastic baggie in the other. I am stopped at...
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Other People: Episode 140 — Rosie Schaap
Rosie Schaap is the guest. She is a contributor to This American Life and npr.org, and she writes the monthly “Drink” column for The New York Times Magazine. Her memoir, Drinking With Men, will be...
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Nowhere Men
I was in the basement of the downtown Los Angeles courthouse, where I was researching a possible nonfiction book about an overlooked film-noir actor whose offscreen brawling and balling led to...
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The Path of Least Resistance
I was arrested on April Fool’s Day, 2001, for OVWI, “operating a vehicle while intoxicated.” I crashed my jeep into a chain-link fence and a tree, narrowly missing a telephone pole, while coming home...
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Dead Girl’s Closet
I was driving to Adelanto listening to some comedy radio show. There’s nothing in Adelanto. At least nothing anybody wants. Just a collection of old cracked streets and faded one-story businesses. The...
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Getting Sober with Marijuana
I’ve never calculated the amount of money I spend on marijuana before because I’m afraid of what I’ll discover, but here are the facts: I go through roughly an eighth-an-ounce of marijuana per week....
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Pretending I Have My Wits About Me
Accountability The salt is out everywhere and right now we are in the midst of a rain that is frozen. I’m content to remain here and do various things that need doing, but the dogs, they are bored....
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Ben Tanzer: The TNB Self-Interview
Welcome. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here, and I appreciate the chance to talk with you about my new essay collection Be Cool—a memoir (sort of) from Dock Street press. Well, great,...
View ArticleDrive-By Poetry
Rejection letters are always a drag; whether they are negative responses from job opportunities, university admissions boards or literary journals. However, there is nothing quite as spirit-crushing...
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