The lights dimmed. Mary-Rose, in her black-and-white jail-striped dress entered the stage from the left. My left, not hers. I held my icy drink in my hand, legs crossed as I watched her nervously center herself behind the microphone. New Orleans was new to us, but they may have been a good thing, since we were the unknowns of the crowd. My manager Vinny got her the gig, after she promised that no one would start booing or throwing things at the stage. Normally I worked behind the swinging kitchen doors, but tonight, I was a VIP, front row to...

Lola was no showgirl; but by looks you might think otherwise. Pin-straight, jet-black hair to her waist, a faux leather skirt, and a jeweled tanktop adorned her petite frame. She was rebellious; a 17-year-old "new kid in school," she was trying to make a good impression on the boys - she made more of an impression on her 7th period math teacher, Eric Harrison, a 29-year-old single man with math on his mind, and not much else until Lola showed up; front row seat, leather-like skirt wearing, flipping her hair like she had no cares about life. I watched from...

We stood watching lights of a city I would soon leave behind. Atop the hotel roof, we clung to each other on my last night in Cleveland. The triangle-shaped Rock Hall was lit beautifully. The river below, the stadium where the Browns played just a short ways away. It had been an incredibly hot day for Ohio; yet we held hands the entire day. Woke up with fans blasting, drinking ice water that had turned lukewarm overnight. My feet stuck to his hard wood floors, making squeaking noises as I walked to the kitchen in my summer pajamas; a night...

I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.

I lived a short life. Just 42 years young; at the peak of my career as a well-renowned chef in New York City. Most people say it was an accident; the gunman ran into my restaurant, and randomly shot rounds into the kitchen and at the restaurant patrons.

As a dead person, unreliably, I can tell you this is not true. I say unreliably because no one will ever know that I am telling the truth here....

You can count me out. I'm over it. Through with you, done with everything....That's a lie. Count me in, it's about time, right? Six years is long enough to be apart. I've waited for this; you, maybe not. Either way, the date's approaching. Count me out, though, it might be a bad decision. No...count me in, I can't wait to see you. Remember that summer? Remember that WINTER? No, no, I can't see you, count me out. Count me in, count me out, I can't decide one way or the other. No, for sure, count me in, what am I...

Goodnight... I didn't think I would wake up. Well, maybe I did. Seventeen pills ought to have done it. It didn't. I guess I had known that. My sophomore-year project on suicide told me that. That seventeen wasn't enough. And I shouldn't have told anyone either. I got dragged to a counselor in front of my crying father (who never cries). I got dragged to a therapist, whom, thank God, realized the insanity of my life, and my mother (who refused to talk about her issues). Maybe I would have gone a different route, used talking, anything else, other than...

The sun set. My boat had stopped drifting. The Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania was calm. The rain stopped, the crickets chirped, happy with the still summer air. My bathingsuit was finally dry. The only problem with that river is not having shelter on either side from a rainstorm. I watched the residents of the river banks put umbrellas over their heads while grilling. Some took their dogs and children inside. The teenagers laughed, and had mud fights. The rain stopped, the grillers closed their umbrellas, the dogs came out to play, and the teenagers stuck their feet...

It was becoming night. Quickly, stealthly, Navy SEALS approached a haunting compound. Sand-surrounded, barbed-wire covered; its contents unkown, its inhabitants, suspected. This was do-or-die time. The code "Geronimo" was on everyone's minds. This desert, this foreign country, was their home for the past year. Now they had Presidential orders, "capture or kill," "wanted, dead or alive." It wasn't just read off of an old saloon poster. This was it. With intelligence officials watching, and waiting, the world went about its business, until five hours later, when everyone got word of the actions that occurred inside that haunted-looking building. A terror-leader...

Wow. The Statue of Liberty. I've lived in New York my whole life, and have personally seen it one time, and it's on my I heart NY credit card, of course. I played the Statue of Liberty once in a 5th grade play about America. I was "Miss Libby" and I sang about inflation. "The Red White and Blues" my song was called. I was 11. I wasn't a very great singer, but my teacher had great faith in me, as did my mother. There's a VHS tape of it somewhere, I do know that. Only once, though, have I...

Millions. It seemed like it anyway, the number of people that were lining California's streets in the 60s and 70s. "Making it" or trying to... Rebelling, singing, pan-handling, and trying to fit in. Half-clothed, non-clothed boys and girls (we couldn't call ourselves men and women, we were only 15 and 16 most of us). We were in a revolution. Haight/Ashbury was the center of it all, at least for us. The LSD had its hold on some of us, others were fine just being thousands of miles away from where they grew up, just to feel "free." San Francisco changed...