BORED, SUBURBAN WHITE KIDS IN THE CITY I can’t properly explain my college years without talking about TRASH. TRASH was like that cool, yeasty, and bittersweet smell that hits you when you walk into an old riverside bar. TRASH was a concept, an outrage, a figment of our imaginations. TRASH was that group of guys that you pass by on the street during a wild night and they’re laughing and shoving each other at their own private joke and you want to turn around and hang with them. “TRASH!” was what that tall, willowy black girl who worked behind the snacks and magazines shop in the IIT Student Union building…

FAITH This little (half) Irish Catholic boy was struggling with the whole concept and purpose of God at age fifteen. I’d seen too many bad things happen to good people, and via my reading was becoming quickly aware of other cultures, perspectives, and modes of spirituality that seemed equally or more valid to mine. When I realized that the only reason why I was attending Sunday mass was to sit behind the girl I liked, I was through with it. In retrospect, this was a necessary part of growing up for me, and I’ve never looked back. SCHOOL School days in freshman year started with my clock radio going off…

The NeighborhoodI grew up in a suburb bordering the City of Chicago. This meant rectangular blocks—a regular precision of eight per mile on the long side, and sixteen across, just like the big city. The East Chicago and Hammond refineries and steel mills were only 10 miles away, so things would get fragrant on a day with the breeze blowing in off the lake. There were taverns on the corners of the secondary streets, and long alleys behind the houses for garbage pickup and we thought, while growing up, that the rest of the world was arranged this way. This gridiron was the stage of the drama of my youth. …

The first thing I remember is my first step. I’ve heard childhood events fade from memory if they happen before age three, but that first step is still as clear as day to me and was corroborated by my mom years later. It was a sunny afternoon in spring, with dust motes swirling in the sunbeams across our living room. She stood me up, held me steady while pointing me towards my dad, and just told me to go. My dad was about three feet away, near the cocktail table (in the 60s all aspiring working-class households had to have one—like a whiskey carafe). I remember exactly how he looked,…

March 31, 2017. After The Company offered a one-year severance buyout, I walked away after 35 years. My title was Business Manager. In a LinkedIn sense I guess I was in technical sales support. What I actually did was pull together written proposals for large broadband wireless networks for governments. The writing part, for me, was easy; the challenging part was demonstrating how our technology met the customer’s requirements, which were often ambiguously stated. After seven years of doing this, it was getting monotonous and I’d use my break time to write fiction. Between 2014 and 2017 I’d finished six short stories and I felt ready to tackle the novel…