he hooked to the body hard took it well and loved to fight had seven in a row and a small fle… over one eye,

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

re-reading some of Fante’s The Wine of Youth in bed this mid-afternoon my big cat

That night I managed to get 2 or 3 drinks into Cecelia. She forgot herself and crossed her legs high and I saw some good heavy flank. Durable. A cow of a woman, cow’s breasts, cow’s eye...

I took women either to the boxing matches or to the racetrack. That Thursday night I took Katherine to the boxing matches at the Olympic auditorium. She had never been to a live fight. ...

Dee Dee had a place in the Hollywood Hills. Dee Dee shared the place with a friend, another lady executive, Bianca. Bianca took the top floor and Dee Dee the bottom. I rang the bell. It...

I had Fridays and Saturdays off, which made Sunday the roughest day. Plus the fact that on Sunday they made me report at 3:30 p.m. instead of my usual 6:18 p.m. This Sunday I went in an...

rose red sunlight; take it apart in the garage like a puzzle:

I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub we...

There are sketches on the walls of… and outside a large green bus swer… insanity sprung from a waving line… says the radio, and Jane Austin,… “I am going to do her portrait on…

awaken at 11:30 a.m. get into my chinos and a clean gre… open a Miller’s, and nothing in the mailbox but the Berkeley Tribe

call it th e green house effect or… but it just doesn’t rain like it used to. particularly remember the rains of… depression era.

The voices of the people were the same, no matter where you carried the mail you heard the same things over and over again. “You’re late, aren’t you?” “Where’s the regular carrier?” “He...

monkey feet small and blue walking toward you as the back of a building falls of… and an airplane chews the white sk…

My father had two brothers. The younger was named Ben and the older was named John. Both were alcoholics and ne’er-do-wells. My parents often spoke of them. “Neither of them amount to a...