32x344 Bonnie at the Bagel Shop

Every Sunday, it’s the same skit, eight weeks running. Bonnie – bearing a touch of the ginger – calls me Amy and thinks I want the garlic herb spread. Neither is correct.

32x345 Rusty (Happy 71st Birthday)

Used to be a greaser, son of mill workers in Connecticut. Sold oil rigs in Latin America. Pumped gas while in stockbroker school. I forgive him for being right-wing Evangelical. My Pop.

32x346 Friday

Needs revision -- pending.

32x347 Fred

A short friendly Filipino man, he engraved his given name into the ignition key of his gold Datsun/Nissan Maxima. I bought it for $3,000 and named it after him. Kept the key.

32x348 Arthur

Small-town, third-generation attorney. Spoke like a Southern gentleman, leered liked an old man. I could peer into his office from my apartment, he, into my bedroom. Grinned knowingly after I had guests.

32x349 Cauley

“Glycerine” played. You like? he asked. I love Bush. He snorted and wiped his mouth with one tattooed arm. It was the first time I heard him laugh since his father drowned.

32x350 The Moaner

Maybe it’s intestinal, I hope, seated. Faceless, she is. Body-less. Nothing but ankles and shoes is all I know of her. Oh, and her sounds. More suited for pornography than public stalls.

32x351 The man behind the counter at the Qwik-Mart

His skin was the color many Americans fear. But the night I cried as I bought a six-pack and cigarettes, he saved me with these words: “Never look back, always look forward.”

32x352 Jenn Warren

A bleached-hair rebel at a strict Evangelical school, you refused to renounce Axl Rose. A softie at heart, you made me see Beetlejuice a dozen times in the theatre. Favorite movie: Xanadu.

32x353 Olga Barerra

One of many owners of an ice cream parlor, my after-school gig, she sweetly loaned me a few hundred for a used car. Where are you so I can repay you finally?

32x354 The Boy Down The Street

Reading Apt Pupil reminded me about Greg's diary entry about how he smashed a nest of duck eggs with an oar. Such detail for a ten-year-old, even if it was make-believe.

32x355 Sharon, Clerk

Shoop-shoop, she sang from her cubicle, when she wasn’t muttering, muttering, under her breath. After they escorted her out, we found binder after binder holding scribblings, scribblings, of every slight against her.

32x356 Fr.K

Red-faced. Horn-rimmed. A pressure cooker of a priest. The white collar choked his chubby neck. Soon after the accusations started to come out from the past, he stroked out, never to confess.

32x357 Max S.

High-school bully, a decade later at the reunion, you remained: short and husky and still a total dickhead.
Why are you talking? Say what?
You work at a screw factory?
Karma reigns.

32x358 Indian Telemarketer

Yes, he’s just doing his job. Persistent and polite in his message about how he can save me money. Yet professionally ignorant to the fact: You’re interrupting me while I am busy.

32x359 Her Baby Girl

Her tiny hand gripped me, tight around my pointing finger. The rehab center read about her mother’s arrest and got them into the program so she could be born clean. She was.

32x360 SWF Pregnant Addict

Cops caught you stumbling out of a crackhouse, belly round and eyes empty. I wrote your real name in the newspaper. It didn’t even occur to me that you had a job.

32x361 Matt from ALB to CLT

Single-serving sitting in 13B, then a layover at the airport bar downing beer with jager. We wished for more hours and a cheap hotel nearby and ignored her photo in his wallet.

32x362 The Girl with Perpetual Sniffles

Ten years from pre-K on, her shy eyes were always runny. She dreamed of becoming a meteorologist, predicting God’s mood. Instead, she chose the life of a Republican operative with breast implants.

32x363 Seventh Grade English Teacher

“The purpose of an education is to achieve a closed mind,” he lectured out of a tight mouth under a brushy mustache, squinty eyes looking down at me. You inseminated my war.

32x364 Starbucks Barista #1

A real FILF, the Gen-Y espresso maker seemed junkie chic, but it was just because of his babies. It was the crying that kept him up, not any drug legal or otherwise.

32x365 His Name Tag Said Kirk

Adventure Club security man with the Bill Shatner weave, he tossed the cop and his underage mark and said with over-refined and rouge-cheek charm: "Every person you meet can change you."