In the 1960s, I returned home after graduating from college for about six months. My parents were happy to let me move back in for a while so I could save enough to move out on my own. I appreciated it, but after having had my freedom for four years, living at home sort of cramped my style. The worst part was having no privacy while using the telephone. We didn’t have cell phones back in the day. Our phones were attached...

Two months after she’d received it, Rachel was still at a loss over what to do with the damn poster. Her ex – a man she’d seen in person once since she’d left him thirteen years earlier – had recently died. She remembered their relationship in grand gestures and emotional manipulation, and Rachel expected nothing from him. So to say her inheritance was unexpected, was putting it mildly. It wasn’t to say that the poster wa...

From the notes of Dr. Kelsey Ransom, PsyD Bertie and Rachel have been making excellent progress in session. As of my seventh meeting with them, I’m finding that I am able to listen more and mediate less. Bertie has been conciliatory in giving Rachel room to speak, and Rachel has been more direct in speaking her mind. And as has been my experience in these cases, I am now being asked if they are ready to leave the program....

She wiped at the sweat coalescing on her forehead, sitting off-kilter on the stump outside of the barn. The summer heat was unbearable for a young woman who’d only just recently left the comforts of city living, and the stink of warm hay and manure assaulted her nostrils. Some of her sisters, she was told, had learned to ignore the stench. The homespun sundress she wore clung insistently to her body at her chest and thigh...

The summer between my junior and senior years in high school my parents gave me a two-month stay in Europe. I had just turned seventeen and was very excited about the adventures that awaited me. I was to be accompanied by my older sister Jenny. I got along well with Jenny who was two years older than me and in college. She had gotten a similar trip when she was seventeen but had traveled with my mom. As you’ve probably gu...

“God damn!  You ain’t sticking that boloney roll in me!”  That ended Don’s and my chances of pussy that night. There were three of us; me, Don, and Bob.  I lived about twenty-five miles out in the country and had a car.  Bob lived in the city’s West End, the “baddest part of town”, as a Jim Croce song phrased it.  Don lived in a small town about fifteen miles north of the city.  We’d all met via CB radios and had become f...

Those days you lived in a shoebox. You often thought about moving to a bigger, nicer apartment in a cleaner, quieter neighborhood, but you somehow never got around to it. Plus, you could walk to work – theoretically, at least. Also, your lack of funds and your (probably unhealthy) fixation on that independent coffee place right down the road may have had something to do with it.The building you called yours had apparently...

"Hey, Case,“ was all my sister said as she hugged me, graciously ignoring the sweat and the travel stains I was sporting. I was very aware that I was painting a generally unappealing image, standing on her front step in crocs (crocs! With socks!) and with my hair wild and all my worldly possessions littered around my feet. Apart from a slightly sad smile and a sympathetic note in her voice as she greeted me, I almost coul...

Claire sat at her large maple desk on her roller chair with arms ready for another day of “work”. She would spend a couple of hours on mm live finding some new blood for her significant business. She glanced down and saw the man crossed legged and naked under her desk, waiting for her when she would tell him he could. He was the latest who had come calling, and she was rather fond of him already. He was one of the very fe...

"Where are Tim and Ed?" I asked my mom and the girls. "They ran into some of their asshole friends," Jenny stated, followed by Felicia shooting her a look. "They're meeting us at the pizza place at the end of the boardwalk at 6," my mom said. "Do you know where they are?" I asked, not wanting to hang out with 4 women and listen to them point out the hot guys on the boardwalk. "Last I saw they were by Midway," Jenny said w...