My first mehndi.
Here’s me in Bryant Park with the puddles, the begonias, the sycamores, and the ghosts of the heroin addicts and male prostitutes who used to call...
I won you guys (at Marquee)
Talking Heads- Sugar On My Tongue
Today was/is my mom’s birthday.
Because I am a stupid fool and because I haven’t fully grokked enough Greek mythologies about pride and hubris, I...
Once I saw a ghost.
This was in New Hampshire, in January 2010, just after my third book had been published. I was scheduled to do a reading at the bookstore in Portsmouth the following evening. I had driven all day through a snowstorm, and I was staying in a small inn a few blocks away from the bookstore. The weather was still terrible when I arrived, snow and ice and rain mixed together. I had dinner and then went straight back to the inn. There would be no wandering the streets that night.
There was only one other room occupied, and the inn was quiet and dark. I didn’t care if it was creepy, I was happy to be off the road. I got under the covers, still shivering from the weather. I was fully-clothed. I opened up my laptop and started to answer some emails. And then I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something floating. Very slowly I looked up.
There was a dark figure hanging from a noose of bloody red roses. The figure was definitely in the shape of a human, it was long and had bulk, but none of the features were fully realized. I stared at it for ten seconds, maybe fifteen, the whole time thinking, “This is bad, you should stop looking at this.” And then finally I forced myself to look down and it was gone.
Later (like, five minutes later, because I googled it) I found out the inn was known for being haunted. There had been one hanging in its past, in the room above mine. I guess the ghost got lost.