Bob Levin

“It’s All Yours, Lestrade.”

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“(T)ruth is just not a matter of discovering objective facts.

Wikipedia. “Philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard.”

Restrictions had been off for a week when Goshkin returned to the café. The tables were spaced. The front door and windows were open. Less than a fifth of the chairs were taken.  Few customers were masked.

“The Republicans want so’s you can’t discriminate against the unvaccinated.” Murray looked up, worried, from his Times.

“So they’ll die.” Large Victor bit his croissant.

“Guys. Shekit,” Goshkin said from the next table.

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If Bob Dylan Says “Home”

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Out our front door, Marin is so steep the mountain goats need crampons. But the Hispanic fellow, early 40s, GE Appliance truck, curbed his wheels and popped out. Adele had the garage door open and he’d spotted the Mustang. “Can I take a look?” .

He walked around it. Twice. “I’ll give you thirty-five, Cash.”

“Let me get my husband. He’s the one who drives it.”

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I’m Not Looking for Trouble But…

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On the day Stanford beat Arizona for the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship, its coach, Tara Vanderveer defended women’s basketball in the New York Times. “I don’t think anyone says, ‘Well, professional basketball, they’re bigger and stronger, so I’ll just want to watch professional basketball.”

Actually, I say that.

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Jonah

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The first thing he said to me was how did I like the girl he had been with at the party, and I said, “Nice,” and the second thing he said was, “I ate her for the first time last night.”

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Off the Wall

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“Is that a fucking thumbtack?” Fritz said to the Skeleton-and-Roses poster behind me. Some of us regulars from the café were zooming. “It ought to be behind glass. In a vault.”

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Gentlemen[1] (Author Keeps Punching)

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The basement had bare concrete floor. bare plywood walls. Ceiling beams lay exposed. Pipes showed here and wires there. Storage cartons rimmed the perimeter, reliquaries for the bones of books Shemp’d authored. Dust a more likely outcome than university archive.

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The Bag I’m In

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Things being as they were, when it became clear COVID would close the gym, I started hunting something new to punch. A heavy bag, I should say, besides being a fit way for any sentient being to respond to the world, aids your average septuagenarian’s anaerobic condition, hand-eye co-ordination, and balance – so’s he don’t fall on his nose when going down the hall for the night squirt.

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Me Two Cents

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One evening in the summer of 1960, while waiting on a rocker-sofa on the porch of a friend’s home to give him a ride to a party, his step-father sat down beside me – and grabbed my cock.

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Game Theory

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Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August, by Oliver Hilmer (Other Press. 2018. Trans. from the German by Jefferson Chase) begins on the first day of that summer’s Olympics and ends on their closing. But the Olympics were a smokescreen, a puppet show, a diversion of less significance than the fireworks which concluded Joseph Goebbels $800,000 last-night party, bloodying the sky red.

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