From The Sun:
“If you were a man who lived in Washington State in the early 2000s and you threw a phone at your spouse or exhibited worrisome behaviors in front of your parole officer, you might have been referred to the anger-management program for men at Seaport Medical Center. For a year I worked in the clinic there as a research assistant, making handouts for the groups and role-playing with the men to test their ability to control their tempers.”
From The Sun:
“In the summer of 1980, when I was ten years old, a stranger sneaked through our trailer’s unlocked side door at 2 AM. He lifted a few gold-plated necklaces from my mother’s wooden jewelry box, then entered my bedroom. When I woke, the man pulled his hands out of my underwear.”
From Pangyrus:
“We received them in Portofino, their eyes glittering as their Louis Vuitton luggage piled onto the decks of the 165-foot sailing yacht. After years of working in Italy, the six guests stood in what I’d come to regard as Italian-ness, which came with olive skin tones, gold jewelry, and upright bearing. The ladies wore silk scarves and, as though it were a uniform, possessed the thick, magenta-tinted hair that surrounded their faces, painted with makeup that might seem clownish anywhere else but in Italy was fashionable. The men donned white button-down shirts, which flowed into linen slacks, gold chains shining against their thin, bronzed chests.”
From Memoir:
“Panama, 1994
There was only one answer to the question: Would you like a second helping of iguana? On our last night in Panama, I found myself with a beer in hand, slapping mosquitoes at my ankles, and watching as our hosts cooked Iguana on a stick over the bonfire. Helena, the wife, had prepared iguana two ways for us, and in addition to the iguana kebab, she had a large, black sooty pot of stewing iguana which simmered near the fire, tendrils of oily steam curling acridly towards me. Our host Dieter stood over the bonfire, his eyes wild, his toothless mouth open, the rough lined skin on his face sagged in scalloped lines. Dieter was skinny to the point of appearing underfed, and when he moved quickly, he looked like a dancing skeleton who chortled.”