The Real Memphis Mike (don't settle for imitations)

 If you've been following along on the home version, you know I've started a new book. While still fiction, it's a departure from what you may be accustomed to from me. Allow me to set the scene: 2 middle aged American musicians, in Hokkaido. If you've ever experienced jet lag and a hangover, you might be able to appreciate this excerpt. - MM Vince really wasn't prepared for his first night sleeping on a tatami mat. In his mind, it was little more than a lumpy futon mattress on an old pallet. He also wasn't ready for Daniel's snoring, which sounded like a congested heifer. Between the lack of comfort, the noise, the booze, and the jet lag - he didn't sleep well at all. And he got so little of it. After a few hours, he gave up. He got dressed, found a pen and left a note.  Couldn't sleep. Went for a walk. Back later. - V  He left the note in the bathroom. He figured one of them would find it.  Hiroshi's neighborhood looked different in the early m...

Marilyn wasn’t her real name.  It was the name she used. The one people remembered. Like her idol, Marilyn Monroe, she understood that names mattered. People remembered her. Not for what she had once hoped to become, but for what she had become instead. She was known to the police. To psychiatrists. To probation officers, pimps, and pushers. She moved through the system the way some people moved through neighborhoods - familiar, practiced, expected. By the time she arrived, her reputation had already gotten there first. --- The night manager read her file before ever meeting her. It was thick in all the wrong ways - incident reports, evaluations, arrests. Schizophrenia was stamped across the top, the diagnosis of convenience. But the details underneath told a different story. Long-term drug abuse. Manipulation. Violence when necessary. Charm when useful. Nothing suggested confusion. Everything suggested control. There were rarely empty beds. When one opened, it filled quickly - usu...

 My dear friend Yanka has been in the hospital for a couple of days now, and it drives me nuts that there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s thousands of miles away. My language skills are limited, which means there’s only so much I can communicate, and only with certain people. I can’t just call the hospital - and anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely would if I could. Last night I got word that she’s doing slightly better. The phrase I heard was “serious but stable.” I have no direct way to contact her family, so I’ve been sending messages and hoping someone can make sense of my Yoda-like Bulgarian. I’m lucky to have such a friend. Yanka is incredible. She grew up a village girl, became a nurse, and then life took a turn I doubt she ever expected. She won a singing contest, and suddenly she had a career. In 1971 there was the plane crash. Yanka was one of the few survivors, and the experience changed her deeply. A few years later she formed Trio Bulgarka. Their music was al...

 I still don’t know if he ever fired a shot. That’s the funny thing about small-town stories. By the time they’re finished making their rounds, everyone remembers something different. Someone heard shots. Someone else swore the police found an arsenal in his house. Another person claimed he tried to lure a kid inside. But the truth is, none of us really knew. All I knew for certain was the way he used to greet us. The Southend projects sat just a few blocks from downtown, close enough that you could still hear traffic off Fourth Street and smell the bakery some mornings. Kids cut through the sidewalks on their way to the chippy, and old houses leaned into each other along Fifth like they’d been standing there too long. And almost every time we passed his place, we heard it. “Hiiiiiiiiiiii neighbor.” He’d draw it out in a soft voice that never quite sounded friendly, even though it was clearly meant that way. My friend and I would hear it whenever we passed his place. This was down ...

 Pascal philosophized that all human problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone. He believed people fear loneliness because it forces them to confront their own anxieties, leading them to seek constant, often shallow, distractions. For millennia, humans have found ways to build relationships and propagate the species. Until now.  What's changed?  If media is to be believed, the younger folks just ain't getting freaky like their grandparents did.  Josh was thirty-four years old and had never so much as held a woman’s hand. That was the line he liked to start with when he argued online. It had a certain tragic rhythm to it, something he felt people should recognize as proof of his personal deep injustice. Thirty-four years. As if time itself had wronged him. His bedroom was still the same room he had grown up in. Posters had been replaced with a second monitor and a ring light for recording videos no one watched. The carpet smelled faintly of dust ...

  It began with shadows. His vision was already getting bad. Diabetic retinopathy. His great-grandmother had gone blind from it, but that was a long time ago. Modern medicine had come a long way since then. But his vision was definitely getting worse. His world was slowly growing darker and more shadowy. He'd come to terms with it. What he hadn't come to terms with - yet - was his Parkinson's diagnosis. He'd noticed his left forefinger was twitchy. It didn't hurt, and it really wasn't impacting his day in any big way. His doctor asked about it during an office visit. The questions kept coming, and soon he had ticked enough boxes to warrant the diagnosis.  Parkinson's Disease. He'd had some of the early signs for a few years, but the doctor had initially chalked them up as resulting from the stroke he suffered. Ever since, he'd been moving slower. His voice was quieter and raspier. Constipation was common. He'd never slept well, but he slept worse...