"All of those killed would not have been hoodlums or murderers--many would have been victims of mob psychology or innocent bystanders. If a shoot-to-kill policy was right, my judgment was wrong."

Found an old phone number and felt compelled to dial it.  Her last name was Jackson and she looked something like Michael Jackson circa the Black or White video.  I always wondered why, for a video about racial and gender equality someone decided it would be exciting to have him leap atop a brand new Lincoln and to smash its windows with a tire iron.  Or did he break them by screaming?  I’m not sure.  Either way, I think a tiger entered just after that from around a dark corner along a bright red brick wall.  At the end of the video was a montage of people shirtless from the shoulders up, each shown individually like a mug shot, before metamorphosis into the next person.  It went from a black man to a white woman to an Asian man to a black woman to a white man and so on in that fashion. 

Judge Carrie Ann Inaba said she felt a connection with the beyond in the performance and Judge Bruno Tonioli invoked Grey's name from the movie when he proclaimed, "Baby is back where she belongs."

There have been a few Amy’s in my life. 

One, early on, I rub up against during middle school dances, especially when Hungry Eyes comes over the loudspeakers, and all you can think about is Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey abiding desperately by dance space.

Another only months after my divorce, buys me sports coats and breath mints and lets me finger-bang her ass on the first date, after I half-ass a pasta primavera with cashews and fresh basil, and an eight dollar bottle of Merlot.  We watch the original Dawn of the Dead repeatedly rewinding the part where a keyed up cop kicks open an apartment door blasting clear the head of a “dirty spic,” because we laugh so hard we can’t breathe. 

But the one I remember best I meet through Shay.  I hate Shay for many reasons, but mostly because she owns a parakeet but doesn’t own a birdcage.  Amy has recently ended a long term abusive relationship and is deeply in need of compassion. 

Only months earlier, her mother left her father for another woman who promptly hit on her while she was showering. 

She had large bruises on her body and a large gap between her two front teeth large enough that I always wondered how many toothpicks I could stack between them.

After we fuck I tell her I don’t want a serious relationship, but that I really enjoy her and we should do it again. 

One day she wears overalls to my apartment and I tell her I cannot see myself introducing her to my mother. 

For my birthday a group of us go to Anacone’s and Amy is playing pool while I sit at the bar drinking the “working man’s special.” 

I jealously watch every guy in the bar walk over as she bends over to align her shot, her skirt hiking her thighs.  When she shoots she squeals as if she’s been caught doing something inappropriate. 

That night she gives me head in the alley behind the bar. 

I never call her again.

Judge Carrie Ann Inaba said she felt a connection with the beyond in the performance and Judge Bruno Tonioli invoked Grey's name from the movie when he proclaimed, "Baby is back where she belongs."

There have been a few Amy’s in my life. 

One, early on, I rub up against during middle school dances, especially when Hungry Eyes came over the loudspeakers, and all you can think about is Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey abiding desperately by dance space.

Another only months after my divorce, buys me sports coats and breath mints and lets me finger-bang her ass on the first date, after I half-ass a pasta primavera with cashews and fresh basil, and an eight dollar bottle of Merlot.  We watch the original Dawn of the Dead repeatedly rewinding the part where a keyed up cop kicks open an apartment door blasting clear the head of a “dirty spic,” because we laugh so hard we can’t breathe. 

But the one I remember best I meet through Shay.  I hate Shay for many reasons, but mostly because she owns a parakeet but doesn’t own a birdcage.  Amy has recently ended a long term abusive relationship and is deeply in need of compassion. 

Only months earlier, her mother left her father for another woman who promptly hit on her while she was showering. 

She had large bruises on her body and a large gap between her two front teeth large enough that I always wondered how many toothpicks I could stack between them.

After we fuck I tell her I don’t want a serious relationship, but that I really enjoy her and we should do it again. 

One day she wears overalls to my apartment and I tell her I cannot see myself introducing her to my mother. 

For my birthday a group of us go to Anacone’s and Amy is playing pool while I sit at the bar drinking the “working man’s special.” 

I jealously watch every guy in the bar walk over as she bends over to align her shot, her skirt hiking her thighs.  When she shoots she squeals as if she’s been caught doing something inappropriate. 

That night she gives me head in the alley behind the bar. 

I never call her again.

The official figures underestimate the true number of male victims, Mays said. "Culturally it's difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of the authorities. Men are reluctant to say that they've been abused by women, because it's seen as unmanly and weak."

The last time Rebecca and I have sex I seduce her while we’re sitting on the couch dividing our assets and liabilities. 

Maverick is on the kitchen floor licking the tiles. 

Garbage bags full of clothing and personal items are piled on the hardwood floor mingling with tufts of dog hair and dust.

It’s just after noon and I pour myself a gin and tonic and turn on TCM.  Sniper, starring Tom Berringer and Billy Zane, is playing for the twelfth consecutive day. 

Rebecca is holding our credit cards and asks me if she can have the cork coasters and the bamboo salad bowls.

She’s upset and begins crying.  I’m more horny than upset, and after I grope her thighs and then her breasts, and push back her hair behind her ears, she drops our credit cards on the floor and begins touching me. 

We kiss on the couch.  Then we kiss on the bed where I watch her cry as we take off each other’s clothes.  She cries some more and then I’m inside her.  She’s no longer crying but she’s wet all over.

Before long she roles me over and grinds her clit into my pelvic bone for only second before coming and then grows impatient for me to finish. 

When I finish she slides off me and a glob of semen somehow drops into my navel. 

“We were always good at that,” she says, cupping her groin and plodding to the bathroom.

Normally I follow her in to clean myself and to watch her spray a mix of semen and piss into the bowl and we high five like some kind of fucking team before she squirts bits of shit at the arrival of an abrupt fart. 

But this time I wait outside, and we don’t high five while she’s leaking into the porcelain. 

Instead I stand there admiring my naked body in the mirror, listening to Maverick lick the same spot over and over, feeling a warm summer breeze wisp through the kitchen window, and her menstrual blood drying on my crotch, as I wash the dishes.

The story takes a look at her long history of bedwetting that she couldn't shake until high school. "They're stories that I've felt like I would probably be interested in reading should I know how to read. And, you know, sometimes it gets a little tender. It's kind of like when Fonzie (on 'Happy Days') first cried, I guess."

Misread bed sheets as bird shit and felt compelled to read the poem aloud.  The poem was called Wrap Yourself in Bed Sheets.  There was something about a lunatic and a sleepless night.  There were puddles, wind tunnels, and apparently much to live for.  It didn’t read very well and the line breaks kept missing a note.  Being wrapped in bird shit would have made a much lovelier sound.

For six months, Mary Nixon and 10 other orphans were relentlessly belittled for every little imperfection in their speech to test the theory that children become stutterers because of psychological pressure. ''I don't think anybody today likes the idea of seeing orphans, children, used that way,'' said Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation in Memphis. ''But it's really important to keep things in historical perspective.''

It was a class with Renee Gladman, week one, 7/4/2005, where we discussed abstraction as an important element to explore place and time.  It was this class in particular that stuttering was first introduced to me as empowerment over impediment.  After several days of stuttering through going around the room and reading, just like in 8^th grade when I would try to time my bathroom breaks for when it was my turn to read just so they would pass over me, only to return and have Dr. Farkis, a.k.a. Hitler, make me read anyway.  All the girls I liked were in that class.  Michelle, a thin, considerate brunette who gained nearly a hundred pounds after high school, Audra who had two kids and is married to an FBI agent, and Leslie, who I saw once at the mall years after high school while I was high on LSD and even then didn’t have the courage to say hello.  Long story short, Kilroy told me he loved when I spoke.  Said it sounded like music, and that no one he’d ever met sounded like that.  I miss that guy. 

Shane was sitting in the bleachers when an errant soccer ball smashed him in the choppers, breaking his new bridgework. "The force of those balls going across the gymnasium, especially thrown by middle school students, could be quite strong."

I am among the quickest and the weakest

And I can say without hesitation

That nothing prepares you

For an algebra exam

Quite like a half dozen

Pimply, half-erect

Sweating boys

In yellow short

Shorts lunging

Red rubber balls

But this time one hits

Sanders’ groin

Bending him at knees

Before dropping him.

After losing, Shane Deluca

Beats him to tears with his tennis shoe

While everyone watches

It rise over the lockers and
Listens for the sound of rubber
Meeting flesh

Before breaking into
hysterics, impatiently
waiting for the bell.