RichEisbrouch
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“Are you relaxed?” Jessica Seong asks softly. “Umm,” says Gene De Wijk. They’re in Jessica’s office. “Good. What I’m going to do is relax your body. I want to do it very quickly. Once your body knows how to relax, you can do it very, very quickly. I’m just going to count to five. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Your body is relaxing. You’ve relaxed before. This is the way you’ve relaxed before. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Completely relaxed. Compl
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“The Rashomon Effect” describes an event given contradictory descriptions by each person involved. It describes the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Every element of the story is largely identical, but the dishonest retelling of the events shows each person’s ideal self by lying. Gay lawyer Ben Carleson – from In The Plan – is back, this time in 1985, near the beginning of his career and soon after he finished law school and passed the California bar exam. But he and Gene De Wijk met over a different kind of bar.
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2020 A tedious short explanation about young Rich and his love for holiday letters, a very sad and tragic comedy (Sorry, Will) The history of my New Year’s letter began accidentally on Christmas Eve 1968, when it seemed there was nothing to watch on the seven black-and-white TV channels coming into my parents’ house except various competing versions of A Christmas Carol. So I squirreled up in my garret bedroom, unpacked my typewriter, and started a long, time-passing letter to
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Leo was doing some nearly volunteer college design work again, mainly advising a young lighting designer, Kevin – tall, thin, good-looking, young, and a bit unfocused, maybe because of all those easy assets. At six one morning, when Leo and Gus were staying at Leo’s parents’ house outside Dallas to celebrate Leo’s birthday, his phone woke him. It was Kevin. The first thing Leo asked was, “Do you know what time it is?” “Yeah – a bit after 8:00. Too early? Sorry. I know you stay up late.”
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The interview wasn’t really an interview. It was a conversation between friends – actually, friends of friends. Leo had been given a call about Gael and was hesitant to follow up because he really wasn’t interested in teaching that year. He had a lot of commercial work lined up, but the friend made Gael, his students, and his directing sound so interesting that Leo decided to give it a chance. He’d been up late the night before, with the usual final tech rehearsals, and when he met Gael, it
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Leo was passing time before Saturday dinner at his twenty-fifth high school reunion. The hotel was in kind of a sports resort – golf, tennis, volleyball, pickleball, swimming, hiking – and he’d been there before for earlier three-day reunions – the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth. But he’d never had time to explore the grounds. Now he did, and though he didn’t play golf – almost never at all really, after he swung his great aunt’s old clubs in maybe fourth grade and couldn’t get interested –
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He was visiting friends who still taught at the university where they’d all been grad students forty years earlier. The two of them had finished their degrees and had tumbled into jobs, though not in their expected field or department. He’d skipped out of his degree, almost at the very end, for all sorts of then-reasonable considerations: The department wasn’t close to having the reputation it had long maintained. He already had a Bachelor’s and Master’s from the school, so a third degree would
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He’d been feeling lousy all day. He felt drugged when he woke up and didn’t seem to get better for the hour he lay in bed, trying to feel less out of it. It seemed like a combination jaw, ear, sinus ache. Eventually, he got dressed, fully, since it was November, in flannel-lined pants, a long-sleeved business shirt, a crew neck sweater, and wool socks and work boots. Then he topped that with a knee-length overcoat. No hat – he hated the baseball caps that so many guys wore, and those tweed Irish
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The supplication of farmers. People began engaging in consumerism hundreds of thousands of years ago. Tourists come to see major museums, nice gardens, lovely streets, historic houses, famous old places, and pizzas. You have to wonder how big the cow flue is. We can not conclude that their stocks may lead into downstairs. When it comes to natural disasters, humanity usually has no choice but to shrink back to the safest corner with everything they got. In modern society,
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I think you're thinking in the same direction as these student writers. Which might be scary.
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Most of the universities have corn requirements. This recommendation is surrounded by question marks? The ship got one captine and more than one chief spoil the food. They will be left with many unwashed questions. Sir Robert Edison invented the electronic light bulb. Imagination can make people bold to jump out of the box. Anyone will be in favor of eliminating poverty, starvation, and bad shoes. Politics leads people to act like short-sighted frogs. As an old ad
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Commen sence. The cogerency of ideas. Informational asymmetry. Conslutting firms. Prefoaming talent. How crural. Agender. Hamful. Winglingness. Nugatory actions. The industrial revelation. The sacred sanctity of the sanctuary. She is reely weel-known. The was generation. Newton discoverd garivity History is a nebulous friend. A veal of fa
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Billy and the goon were stretched on Billy’s comfortable bed. “Tell me your name,” the goon said. “You know it.” “Tell me.” “Billy.” “You’re thirty-eight.” “Almost thirty-nine.” “And you’re still called Billy?” “Billy Joel... Billy Idol...” “Billy-the kid.” “William?” “Bill.” “Bill.” “Good.” “What’s your name?” Bill asked. “You already know it.” “I do?” “Think.” Bill studied the goon. He’d just taken off his ski mask after B
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Billy was in his basement again, this time crouched to change the oil burner filter, when something landed on his neck. He thought it was a spider and went to brush it away but came up with the goon’s hand. “Oh, no,” Billy thought. “We’ve done this.” And he could feel the vise grips on his chest. Instead, the goon said, “Finish what you’re doing.” So Billy did. “Stand.” He did. “About face.” Billy did that sharply. “Main room.” Soon, Billy and the goon were there.
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Billy bought a device. He saw it online, and, even though he knew better, got fascinated – actually, a little obsessed. But when it arrived, even the tiny alligator clips hurt his nipples, and he didn’t dare turn it on. “I’ll leave it for the goon,” he decided. “He’ll know what to do.” So when the goon turned up in Billy’s backyard one afternoon, as usual slipping in masked, Billy said, “ I bought you a toy.” The goon refused to use it. “Jealous I can hurt myself?” Billy teas
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Billy went to get his monthly haircut. It was a private, appointment only shop, and Billy was the lone customer. When he got there, Jonah’s back was to him, and he was washing his hands – he was a fastidious man. But Billy recognized the familiar smock and sat in his chair. Except when Jonah turned, he was the goon, in sunglasses and a fake mustache. “Fifty,” the goon said. “Naked.” “In here?” Billy asked. “Yeah – I’m locking the door.” “Where’s Jonah?” “Taking a paid break.
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Billy was sitting in the back row of a stadium style movie theater. He didn’t see movies this way very often, preferring his familiar, comfortable, living room chair with his feet stretched on the matching hassock and a beer at his side. And – often – with his hand down his pants. But he wanted to see this movie – one of those sci-fi epics that are all expensive special effects – on a big screen and from a long enough distance to appreciate it. The movie had just started, when a hand slipped
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Billy was in the drug store. This was one of those small, old fashioned, family-owned drug stores, really just a storefront in the downtown area. He could have used the pharmacy at the hospital, but this was usually faster. Besides, his family knew the owners so had been coming here for years. He was waiting by the pharmacy desk to pick up a prescription, when a voice said, “I think you want to go through that doorway and up those stairs.” Billy didn’t turn around. He knew the prescripti
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Billy was watching his ten-year-old nephew play soccer when a voice behind him said, “Don’t turn around. Meet me under the stands – now. A door’s unlocked.” Less than five minutes later, Billy was tied naked to a tractor while he could hear the crowd faintly cheering above him. “Think you can outyell that?” the goon asked. “Don’t even try. This thing was built by the WPA. It’s three foot thick.” Just for the heck of it, Billy yelled. There wasn’t even an echo in the maybe twenty foot
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Billy was in the dim, hot crawlspace above his garage when he realized he wasn’t alone. The goon had somehow silently crept up the ladder. “Not sure I can do fifty here,” Billy joked, not that the goon had a dependable sense of humor. “Do ‘em anyway,” the goon snapped, which Billy knew was coming. So he worked his way flat on the splintery boards and started his push-ups – practically, banging his head on the low, sloping ceiling every time he came up. “Strip,” the goon said when
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Billy was in the gym, working on his abs, and it was getting late. But he knew the owner, and the guy often let him stay after hours. “Just turn on the alarm and pull the door shut,” he said. “It’ll lock after you.” “I won’t hurt myself,” Billy promised. “Well, don’t sue me if you do.” Billy always laughed at that. It’s not like he was using power tools and might cut off a thumb. Billy was tugging at the cables, facing the training machine, when he felt a pair of hands clamp
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Billy was in one of the far corners of the local chain bookstore when his neck was grabbed from behind, the hand easily spanning from side-to-side and propelling him forward. “Where we going?” he asked. But there was no answer. So he figured they were about to explore another unknown storeroom. But when the nearby elevator doors closed behind them, the goon flipped off the switch and the car stayed put. “What if someone needs it?” Billy asked. “They’ll use the escalator.” Thi
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Billy was coming out of the men’s room at his local gas station when a voice commanded, “Fifty.” There was no choice. But before he could drop, he was pushed next door into a small black storeroom. When enough light came under the door to see the goon’s bare feet, Billy dropped to the concrete and did his push-ups. “Stand,” the goon ordered next, and Billy did. His shirt was quickly stripped off, though his tie was left neatly taut around his neck. His nipples were bitten, first one then the
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Billy was browsing a car showroom one evening, when the goon said, “Through that door ahead of you, into the parts department.” As usual, he followed Billy, adding instructions. “Right.” “Left at those shelves.” “Into that aisle.” “Keep walking.” The aisles were narrow – a dim maze, the shelves ten-feet high and packed with car parts. The parts department was closed. “Right through that door,” and Billy entered as the goon turned on the lights. They were i
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Billy felt that this time the goon had gone too far. He was naked. In the dark. On a farm road he recognized as being some five miles out of town. He’d have to walk his way back, hoping to find something to cover himself along the way. Sweating from the heat and the situation, he was half relieved when he heard a car horn honk behind him and turned to see a pick-up truck not a sheriff’s deputy. He wouldn’t honk, anyway. “Where ya headed, handsome?” the driver asked, ignoring the fact Bil
