Alphabetical Summer
August 26, 2010
Quiet can be hard to come by when you decide to have an exciting life; it’s an interesting trade.
Do Vegetarians Get Divorced?
July 29, 2010
Those gunshots cleared up my selective hearing; they were crisp, authoritarian reminders that sometimes the one thing you don’t want is the one thing you have to live with, and that sometimes, even the most wrenching ends are justified.
Poems About Boys
June 29, 2010
I had the opposite of a fairy tale in mind. I knew that the worst could, and probably would, happen to me. There’s nothing like a prevailing assumption of doom to spice up the interplay in any budding relationship…
I’m Lying to You
May 29, 2010
I’d rather give you confidence than honesty, because we all have flaws, we all look haggard and tired some nights, and if I notice it, I’ll lie about it every single time. I won’t just omit the negative, I’ll overlay it with what I see more clearly, which is the ideal, the person I know.
You Would Drink Too If It Happened To You
April 29, 2010
We ought to have been line-judging for my friends in order to stem the inevitable arguments, but I looked to the side of the court, and there they were: SWINGS, and not the godawful OSHA-safety-approved ones; these were the old fashioned, steel bar, infinite-height-achieving swings. The swings from my rickety, overheated elementary school’s playground. I couldn’t even sprint toward them; I had to lope, skip, and variously sway my body with joy.
Go Ahead, Push that Button; The Hippies Say It’s Ok
February 7, 2010
And while today, many Baby Boomers have (somewhat stunningly) adopted a sharply conservative attitude toward the behavior of their children (the Millennials, who are being told not to do drugs and not to have premarital sex by their parents who, in 1968, probably did it by strobe light in the Haight after smoking a tie-dye-papered fatty), the relationship freedoms that the Boomers brought to American society still linger.
Double-Plus Ungood
January 29, 2010
I take the perspectives of my friends very seriously when I’m making a decision or wrestling with a problem. If I had a Jersey Shore name, it would be “The Committee.” So I talked to my friends. And to their friends. I even talked to the friends who had worn perma-smiles since their wedding days. I needed perspectives on how to be better.
Twenty Years of Triscuits and Pepperoni
December 29, 2009
I wasn’t a witty kid — I was a scrawny, annoying weirdo — so when it was my turn, I scrawled “A Cadillac Was Here” across the side of her cast. Most people would have been irritated, huffy, but not Sue; she smiled at me, and the combination of her braces and the bronze lipstick she’d borrowed from her artistic sister was dazzling. It was on, and for good. We were friends for life.
Sam Absolves Your Guilt
November 29, 2009
Sloth? I’d sleep till noon every day if I didn’t have to, you know, work. Gluttony? I probably gained five wonderful pounds on Thanksgiving Day, and I donated food to a pair of local food banks so that maybe others could do the same. Lust? Relationships, even healthy ones, founder without a little bit of lust. If there were an eighth deadly sin called the Sin of Liking Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, I’d be happily guilty of that one, too.
Yenta on Vodka
October 29, 2009
Once, and only once, did my mischief-making do anyone any good.
I had a comfortable buzz at a beach house party in Rhode Island, so I found an empty couch and struck up a conversation with a guy named John who had a friendly smile and who also seemed drunk enough to be staying put.
Maybe it [...]
Hell Ghent for Leather
September 29, 2009
When I tell people that I don’t eat meat, the first thing they do is look down at the gorgeous, vintage cowboy boots I am inevitably wearing. These same people say, “Sam, your boots, while fabulous in a sleekly-rugged, just-the-right-amount-of-badass way, are made of leather. Leather, as you may know, is the tanned skin of cows young and old. Doesn’t that contradict your vegetarianism?”
About this author
Sam loves summer vacation...