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"The Good Times"
Sharp, staccato Scottish dialogue more macho than Mamet's fills James Kelman's new story collection.
By Todd Pruzan
[07/06/99]

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"Bucket of Tongues"
A former janitor turned literary player pens gritty tales of Scottish street life.
By Steve McQuiddy
[07/06/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
A bumpy ride
My taxi driver boyfriend slept with one of his fares. Can I ever trust him again?
By Garrison Keillor
[07/06/99]

Totally RIP-ed
The strange story of Lenin's embalmers and a collection of cheeky epitaphs suggest that the Reaper may not be so grim after all.
By Jonathon Keats
[07/02/99]

Ivory Tower
The ethics of baby-killing
His protesters call him a Nazi, a hater and a snob, but the most interesting truth about Peter Singer is that there are many more like him.
By Jason Zinoman
[07/02/99]

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When I was 24, I met Sam, a tormented, bespectacled writer who was, I believed, nothing short of brilliant. Sam published in well-respected literary journals, was a veritable encyclopedia of information, could talk film noir with the best of them. And yes, OK, he was Jewish. A literate Semite who liked movies. What more could a girl ask for?

So Sam and I entered that precarious territory known as a relationship. We did all those nauseating couple things: walks in the zoo, autumnal strolls through Harvard Square, weekends wearing nothing but grins. He was a little more neurotic than I'd bargained for -- he suffered from occasional bouts of agoraphobia and separation anxiety -- a little competitive when it came to our respective writing careers, but soon our lives were entwined. We both taught at the same college and we hung out with the same circle of friends.

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I even felt close enough to him to talk about my food problem. Like so many women, I was obsessed with food and weight; as I liked to describe it, I was a failed bulimic, a failed anorexic. I'd mastered the binge but I couldn't perfect the purge. Like so many men, Sam just didn't get it, and he questioned me endlessly: "How old were you the first time you weighed yourself?" and "What's your favorite food?" Sam seemed genuinely fascinated by this, and upset by the obvious pain it caused me. He seemed to really want to help me shake "the food thing," and I appreciated that.

And so I'd answer as honestly as I could, grateful that someone finally cared enough to ask. I'd never spoken about it with anyone before; it was my own private hell. It took a lot for me to talk so openly with Sam, but I trusted him.

With time, though, Sam grew progressively more irritable when it came to the food thing. "Why can't you eat like a normal person?" he'd say, his brown eyes blazing behind his round John Lennon-style glasses. And then, more specifically, "Why can't you eat with me?" To him, food was something intimate, special, something to share with the people he loved. My relationship with it, of course, was a lot more complicated, and try as I might, I couldn't just change 16 years of conditioning.

Sam and I had been dating for about a year when he handed me the manila envelope.

Next page | This wasn't fiction, this was my life