04.05.2020

Loading...
Jenni Adams parked her rusted pickup behind the Harper house and killed the engine, sat at the wheel as an east wind brought rain over the steep shingle roof and drove it hard against the windshield. The surf would be big today and she anticipated a fight getting through the waves. She wanted this moment to last, sitting perfectly still, letting the urge to swim build inside, the anticipation almost sexual. For Jenni, a lot of things were almost sexual.
read more
29.04.2020

Loading...
I lived in a town where my mom and dad worked at a small state college; mom was an administrative assistant in the human relations department and dad was a lecturer in history. Laura Hughes worked as a women's tennis coach and women's health counselor at the college. She was a good friend of my mom and had straight, shoulder-length, blonde, hair, large green eyes, and prominent cheek bones. She was in good shape. She was the star forward on an over-30 women's basketball team, aptly called, "The Matures," and my mom played a guard on the team.
read more
22.04.2020

Loading...
Down came the windows, though she knew that the interior would have a fine coating of gravel dust by the time she returned home. It was the first truly warm day of the year. The office had hired a couple of people to reduce her workload. She'd finally come to her senses and returned to single life after a string of two bad relationships.
read more
13.04.2020

Loading...
Donna, Amanda and I have been good friends since we were kids in grade school. We grew next door to each other, Donna on one side and Amanda on the other, and played together after school through our whole grade school years. I caught a lot of flak from some of my other friends, teasing that I was going to get girl cooties if I hung around them, but that didn't stop me. We had fun together and the difference in gender at that age really didn't bother me that much, both of them were pretty tomboyish and we had plenty of fun climbing trees and building snow forts and the like.
read more
11.04.2020

Loading...
Not for the first time Ralph cursed his rotten luck as he cleaned up the mess other people had left behind in their offices. A scant six months ago he had been one of these office types but that was before he had lost his job and, to add insult to injury, his wife had left him for his boss.
Somehow his life had spiraled out of control after that.
read more
30.03.2020

Loading...
Chase wiped the sweat from his brow. Damn, but it was hot in this attic! He had promised to help his neighbor, Mrs. Gumshot, clean out her attic in exchange for her late husband's jazz albums. Mr. Gumshot had been a bandleader and had a massive collection of old jazz hits.
read more
28.03.2020

Loading...
Memory triggers.
They come rushing at you when you least suspect them.
You can walk into a house and take in the heady aroma of a cake being baked and you'll be transported back to your grandmother's kitchen. You can smell an empty beer bottle and suddenly there you are playing hide and seek behind a pile of your uncle's empties. Smell is our most powerful sense and we all have a repertoire of aromatic triggers nicely tucked away in that gluggy grey mass we call a brain.
read more
27.03.2020

Loading...
"What are you staring at?" said Julie as she came up silent on slippered feet beside her friend Elaine, who was gazing out of the picture window.
Elaine turned with a smile. "Nothing much. My future, I suppose."
"Future, huh? And what do you see?"
"Loneliness."
"Why? You're still young."
"Forty next birthday, divorced for the second time, and haven't been laid in almost three years."
read more
25.03.2020

Loading...
Grandpa thought he was in heaven! The 55 and older community was actually about 65 and older, and most of them were women, so when I visited him, he'd light up and was proud to show me off.
He was still a spry 82, went out for a few beers every afternoon at the local bar, which was really a package store with a bar in the back room, complete with old time bar maids, songs from the Forties, and a million old war stories.
read more
06.02.2020

Loading...
I had been watching my mother's friend, Mrs. Ashlock, for many years. She was about forty-five with a face pretty enough for a movie star and a slender but voluptuous body that was the envy of her friends. I was what they call "sexually precocious," I guess. Women's bodies became an object of vague, unfocused but intense desire at about the age of seven. Photos in popular magazines such as hosiery and swimsuit ads drew my interest and caused an unidentified but pleasurable stirring in my chest. Janet Ashlock, however was real flesh and blood and was often in our home or we in hers.
read more