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There was a church across the street from where I lived. In the middle of a bad investing day, when my heart was pounding so bad I thought I would die, I would go to church. It was always empty. I’d get as close as possible to the statue of Jesus. I would touch his […]

“My boss came in and told me the police were waiting for me,” he said. He was very political and I thought, as these things go, that the police maybe didn’t like his politics. He was from another country if that counts. We were at breakfast. I didn’t know him too well and figured, OK, […]

“You can’t do that,” she told me. Cindy was a VP in the marketing department. I was on my way to see the CEO of HBO. I was a junior analyst programmer in the IT department. A very exciting job. I made $40,700 per year. It was 1995. I lived on a foam futon and […]

You decide to plagiarize one of the most successful books ever. You take a book that won the National Book Award and you retype it from scratch and pretend it’s yours. You submit it to 20 publishers. You put a fake name on it. 100% of the publishers send back rejection letters. They hated it! […]

The first Thanksgiving that I spent alone was right after I separated from my wife. By the end of that day I experienced: fear, loneliness, lying to thousands of people, and enjoying it. I woke up and I imagined my kids saying, “Is Daddy going to be with us?” They were tiny still. They didn’t […]

“He beat his wife to the point where her face was split open,” our friend told us at lunch. “Then they called a private doctor who came over to the house to sew up his wife’s face.” I was having a hard time picturing it. “How do you know?” I asked. “I spoke to the […]

FIRST… THE THREAT! Her college sent this email to me and my daughter at the end of her second year. Dear [X], This in an IMPORTANT email reminding you of your debt to [ABCD College] in the amount of $16.92! This amount is your damage fee you were assessed back in May. It is VERY […]