Story
The Slop
J. Boyett
He spat his toothpaste into the sink, rinsed his mouth, then as he straightened saw himself in the mirror and froze. Yesterday he’d been in a public bathroom with mirrors mounted on all the walls, which had given him the c...
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Story
Darth Trip
Marc Olmsted
“New York is a head without a body. California is a body without a head.” - Vincent Zangrillo
“You sound like a cowboy, only intelligent.” - Vinny’s friend to me
Return of the Jedi wasn’t really any go...
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Story
Christmas in the Heart of Dixie
Patrick O'Neil
It’s hard to find a vein when you’re driving. It’s even harder to find a vein when you no longer have any. Shit, my veins used to stand out like well-torqued E strings. I could just feel around with my fingers. You kno...
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Story
Parisian Literary Imposter
bart plantenga
Luke discovered Sophie’s latest map, “LUKE’S BRAIN – XXX DESIRES & FANTASYS & BEAUCOUP DE RIEN,” taped to the perfectly fine desklamp he’d rescued from the street. Sophie hated that lamp, the kink in its aluminum...
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Story
Togetherness
J. Boyett
On Christmas morning of 2020, in Morrilton, Arkansas, enough hatred was exerted in the living room of David and Nancy Dunbar, and in a focused enough manner, to raise a Krzllgian Fleshbeast and zap the whole family into its ...
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Story
Autobiography
Ron Riekki
I joined the Air Force to get money for a film that was shooting in Los Angeles. I had already been in the U.S. Marines and am the only Marine in the history of the Marines to hate the Marines. Or to be brave enough to say...
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Story
Sugar Foot
David Simmons
Chauncey liked to freebase smack with the foil positioned so that the shiny side was up. What he hoped to gain from this was self-induced Alzheimer’s. It came from burning the aluminum.
Chauncey said, “I don’t wanna...
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Story
Dahmer, Dolphy & Me
Daniel A. Brown
“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
– Job (5:7)
I had never killed or cannibalized a woman but I did fear that I might be turning into a serial killer.This was 1992, a few years after Ted Bun...
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Story
Cultivating Pippi Longstocking
Neil Martinson
One warm spring afternoon in 1990 I was walking across the Williamsburg Bridge on my way to Manhattan, as I’d done countless times during my years in Brooklyn. A recent, tumultuous breakup was still fresh in my mind, but I was beginning to feel somewhat liberated, enjoying the freedom of finally living alone, and learning to have fun again. The bridge scene from Pippi On The Run flashed into my mind, and in a split second I knew what I had to do.
In this movie, the heroine Pippi Longstocking’s indomitable approach to life achieves its peak expression, centering around her ability to achieve anything she wants, often by refusing to accept the impossible. The scene in my mind has Pippi and her two friends Tommy and Annika looking down from a bridge at a steam-engine train chugging along the tracks below. Pippi suggests all three of them jump off the bridge onto the roof of the moving train. Uptight Annika begs her not to do it, bu...
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Writing
The Prisoner
James Reich
I remember his gallows thighs. His cock swung like a rope. The camp was weighted with snow and silence, settled with barbed wire, starvation in its planks and silted soup. Among the black beds, in cover of crowding, we fucke...
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Story
The Cowboy
James Reich
Here came a cowboy with sun-saddled skin. He had killed but once, but had killed simply, in Santa Fe where the turquoise tells. The cowboy was young with a jackrabbit’s poise, a buck-toothed boy, spring-heeled and dun. It ...
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Story
Mermaids Are People Too
bart plantenga
“That happens to be nothing less than a mermaid.
An authentic, flesh & blood mermaid.”
—William Powell, Mr. Peabody & the Mermaid
Bikini Girl requested – demanded! – that I show up at the Monkey Bar in a...
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Story
Brushes With Fame
Bernard Meisler
When I lived in New York City, I frequently had brief, meaningless encounters with celebrities.
I used to have a place on 6th Street between 2nd and 3rd. One time I was at my front door and a limo pulled to a stop ri...
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Story
Overtime
Glenn Russell
For many years Neal Merman commuted back and forth to his place of work like countless others. Neal performed the job of an everyday clerk in an insurance office; a room with blank walls, linoleum floor and forty desks under...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #12 – Suzi Kaplan Olmsted, Carl Watson, Arthur Nersesian
Suzi Kaplan Olmsted
Quarantine is effectively over (for now...) so this is the final Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading! We go out with a bang! This week features:
- Suzie Kaplan Olmsted (5:40)
- Carl Watson (23:40)
- Arthur Nersesian (38:5...
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