Picture: I'm hanging out in the "teen center" after a couple of bottles of Boone's Farm when a girl comes and grabs me by the collar and drags me outside. She starts yelling at me about a "note" that she found in detention. I have no idea what she's talking about. She slaps me and everyone chants. "fight, fight, fight." I don't fight. I let ( Read more... )

I finally decide that it's really not worth the effort. Trying to be clever and dramatic, I take the idea from the Jim Carroll song, People who Died, with 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Seems to suit my style. I mail apology letters to close family and friends, cook myself a romantic dinner for one, and do it. I listen to songs that have meant a ( Read more... )

Picture: Ransomville Speedway Stockcar Races. Warm, flat pitcher of beer with a paper plate keeping the dust out. Ron Spatarico, car # I don't know, the boy who beat me up at age 5. My friends and I cheer for him to crash his car. Dust flies, cars crash, and he's out. Smoke fills the air. My crowd goes wild. I smile.

1) Total number of books I own ( Read more... )

I create a semester at sea program, setting sail from port of call to port of call in the Mediterranean. We study history, culture, literature, politics, agriculture, vinticulture, economics and oceanography... all as it relates to food. I spend mornings at the open air marche, afternoons on fishing boats, and evenings sampling wine out of the ( Read more... )

Picture: I wake up on the floor at a friend's house. There are others, so many others, sleeping everywhere. I see the burnt carrot in the ashtray, and it all comes back... Party Bob Burden style. I know if I look outside, I will see a melted circle of snow where a flaming snow carrot was attempted... Ga! Ut! My poor aching head.

I leave work today and go downtown. I have drinks with dinner, then go out bar hopping. I get so drunk that I can't walk, much less drive home. I miss the bus. I sleep in a doorway and wake up with puke on my arm. Someone I work with walks by...

Picture: I'm in an apartment in Daytona Beach. One of the guys that lives there comes home and demands that a $70 chunk of his crack is missing. No one is allowed to leave under threat of violence as he picks up dirt and small rocks off the carpet and licks them and lights them on fire. I plan an escape through the bathroom window. Crack is ( Read more... )

I run away to cooking school at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA, as it is fondly called by the students). I received a scholarship for my apple pie recipie, years in the making. My internship is in France, where I take tradition and turn it inside out, to my great success when I open a restaurant in Greenwich Village in NYC. Reservations ( Read more... )

I live in the town that I grew up in. I dream and dream and read travel magazines and watch foreign films and documentaries about other places and other things. I have two children that I love and a husband that I hate and an everpresent dream to escape. Secretly I am addicted to valium and martinis and like to fancy that I am someone else.