“That’s my hat.” Your accuser’s black hair frizzes in a calamitous scribble—she really needs the hat more than you do.
You respond with a lie.
“No, it’s mine.” Yes, you lie, and the monosyllabic words feel all wrong as they roll off your tongue. But it’s January; it’s Upstate; it’s finders keepers. So you repeat yourself. You’re [...]

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She deals with it by swimming.
Lap after lap in the cool early autumn evening, alone in the motel pool in her black one-piece suit with the straps that criss-cross in the back. After the tenth lap she holds her breath and sinks to the bottom, where little yellow lights cast rings of gold that ripple [...]

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On those spring afternoons in sixth grade’drowsy, slumped back at my desk, tracing the letters of Sue Ann Finger’s name carved on the underside of the writing surface’I spent my daydreams trying to visualize a map of the unknown between a girl’s legs. Attacked by a sudden boner, I’d slither in my chair and whisper [...]

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David sat alone in his unheated car in front of his father’s house and stared at the Christmas lights that circled the front windows and wondered if his father knew that this was the day he was going to die. He had wrapped the gun inside a plastic bag and chucked it in the glove [...]

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While still in diapers, a boy gets his first erection. Lying on the changing table, he stares into his mother’s loving eyes, feels the gentle caress of the wet nap against his soiled bottom, and grows erect. Most mothers must laugh at the absurdity of these little boners, at the pure egotism of the tiny [...]

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