THE WORKS OF SCOTT PARANADA-FRIED

Welcome to the writing website of Scott Paranada-Fried!

Based out of Fort Lee, NJ (a stone's throw from Manhattan, Scott is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, polyglot, voracious reader and writer, husband and father to beloved Lily Bea. His writings (short stories, novels, and memoirs) explore themes of loss, memory, and friendship with a touch of humor and a lot of heart.Scroll down to read some of his short stories and learn about his upcoming projects.

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BiographyScott Paranada-Fried spent much of his twenties travelling the world and learning languages. A focal point of his journeys was East Korea, where he spent a total of five years in Japan and South Korea. Then, he settled down in New York City, became an ESL teacher and started a beautiful (and growing) family. He has written numerous short stories and manuscripts for several books. Publication is just around the corner!

Scott Paranada-Fried's short stories

An elderly woman celebrates her anniversary by going on a first date with another woman.

A man ends up on a train to purgatory for a crime he committed as a child.

When a girl learns her teacher is an influencer, she thinks she will finally be popular until she realizes it requires a price she’s not willing to pay.

A woman briefly connects with the son she gave up for adoption.

An elderly man has to pay a heavy price to reclaim the loves of his life.

My grandson Sam is the apple of my eye - when he was sixteen, he told me he was pansexual. He’s eighteen years old now, still with gorgeous curly hair. Two years ago, he valiantly attempted to explain to me for a good half-hour what pansexual was. Finally, when he saw I wasn’t getting it, he said, “I like girls and boys.”
I said, “I hope you choose a girl, Sam. Life will be easier for you that way.” He gave me a look of exasperation, but it quickly dissipated.
“Well, Grandma, I told you my secret. Now tell me yours!”
He stared at me through his hazel eyes, expectant and loving at the same time. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I came out to him, my voice shaking from the enormity of it all. I half-expected to go to my grave without telling a soul, but Sam had just told me his truth and I would be damned if I were too scared to do the same.
I told Sam I thought I liked girls, which at first confused him because I had been married to his grandfather for a long time. He pondered the information for a couple of seconds and said, “I guess sometimes we take a while to figure things out. It’s cool.” Then he spent the next thirty minutes delivering a soliloquy on Real Housewives that I didn’t understand in the slightest. How he beamed, though, when he talked about his interests!
After the speech, Sam said, “OK, time to get to work. Let’s find you a girl.” When he said the word “girl,” I shuddered. I wondered what I was getting myself into.
Sam set me up with an account on "This is Our Year," a dating site for well-aged folk like myself. At 65, I would be dating again for the first time in decades. I filled out the dating profile. I wrote I was interested in women and wanted a long-term relationship, though that was a bit of a misnomer at my age. I added my hobbies: racquetball, crochet, and reading. I gave him a bunch of photos of me knitting. I didn’t get a single hit.To read more and vote for this story for Reader's Choice Award, click here!

Cal opened his eyes to find himself a passenger on the back end of a nearly empty train car. He stretched his brain, but he couldn't remember getting on the train. Did he have somewhere he was supposed to go?He spotted a girl with pigtails holding on to the handrail in the middle of the subway car who he thought he knew. He tried to place her name. Was it Caroline? Or Charlie? Or maybe Camy? Cal dredged through his memories with the intensity of a toddler committed to getting a coveted dessert from an ice cream truck. It was such a long time ago. Years had passed since she had entered his thoughts and a decade or more since he had killed her. Chloe. He remembered now that her name was Chloe.A conductor with an ancient, gravelly voice made an announcement. "Next step is 666th Avenue. Transfers are available here to the 6th and 7th Circles. Make sure you don't leave any belongings behind because you won't be coming back." He concluded with a harsh chuckle.Cal strained to remember Chloe, and then a vision came to him: He and Chloe were in swimsuits, playing at the beach on an overcast day. They made mudpies and sand castles over which hovered dragons and around which stood alligator-filled moats to keep out intruders. They were soulmates of sand and water.The subway car came to a screeching halt in the middle of a tunnel. Goddamned A Train, he thought. He noticed that Chloe was clutching a gleaming steak knife which was partially sticking out of her stomach. The knife made him shudder and provoked unbidden memories, further into the past. Cal saw she was wearing the same blue blouse she had worn on their playdate on the last day of her life.Cal and Chloe were hanging out at his house, playing with dolls. She was smiling, her tongue focused on the gap in her mouth where a tooth had loosened and fallen out that morning. She told him she had big plans of putting it under her pillow and receiving a shiny quarter from her fairy godmother. He wanted to love that she believed all the old stories, but that reminded him of his mom so he had to throw the thought away.Chloe had been so excited about coming to see him that day, she had pilfered perfume from her older sister - the same perfume his mom had used. When he got a whiff of the acrid fragrance, he began to hear his mom’s voice in his head. He had to make it go away. He ran to the kitchen and took the steak knife which granny had used to chop onions to make her famous spicy chili. She cooked better than his parents ever could. He stabbed Chloe in the stomach with the knife. Blood gushed out of her like a river. But the voices in his head didn't quiet.The woman on the subway car who looked like Chloe was wearing a lacy dress that exposed her soft legs. Her eyes were scrunched up, staring at her phone that was inches away from her face with its off-center nose. Cal thought maybe he was mistaken about her because she was dead and this woman was alive, but then she smiled. She was missing a tooth.Cal stared into her auburn eyes that were still deeply buried in her phone. It wasn't his fault, he told himself. His parents were killed by stray bullets, one after the other, in front of his eyes.At that time, his granny consoled him by saying, “That's what happens when you're poor and live in Crown Heights. Deficiency by birth, I call it. We just got slightly more unlucky than most.”And when Chloe died, granny said, “Poor child, it’s not your fault. That’s all we know here. But it's sad all the same.”Chloe’s parents weren’t so understanding. They begged the judge to put Cal away in juvie. Chloe’s father, holding his wife tightly, said to the judge, “This boy clearly has demons inside of him. Nobody knows who he will kill next.”The judge responded, “I concur. He will be in juvie until the day he turns 21.”In juvie, Cal worked out every day, as much to temporarily quell the voices as to develop his body. He became a man there before he was supposed to. Then, shortly after being released, he superficially stabbed an old woman and accosted the officer who arrested him. The judge said it was a clear, if failed, attempt to achieve suicide by cop. The judge sentenced him to time served and psychotherapy.Chloe finally turned up from her phone and looked around, meeting Cal square in his chestnut eyes. At first, he looked away, but her gaze was too sharp. He felt like she was drilling a hole in his brain. Did she remember that he killed her? His mind raced to a life that he could have lived, but didn’t, because of the grave choices he made. She was strikingly beautiful. This woman could have been his wife. They could have had children together."It's been a while, Cal,” said Chloe, in a soft voice.Cal remained still, unsure how to react."You know where this train goes, don't you?" she asked."I don't even remember getting on, and you're supposed to be dead.""Yes, I know, sweetie. But as you can see, it's not a permanent condition."Her scent rushed at Cal like a blast of strong wind: raw onions and pungent perfume. He had the same feeling he'd had when he went to grab the steak knife. He stood up in a fright.Chloe said, “Sorry about that. I can only be as you remember me.”Cal sat down again, but his heart was galloping. “So where are we going then?” he asked.The train came to an abrupt halt in the darkness. He thought he heard a gunshot, but it was too faint to be sure."That's pretty much up to you," said Chloe. "Are you ready to move on?""Move on to what?""The great beyond, heaven, whatever you want to call it. To put the suffering behind you.""I'm not dead," he said insistently."No, not yet. You've certainly become an impressive physical specimen. You must work out a lot.”"What else do you remember about me?” Cal asked. "All my memories are laced with pain."“We went to the beach a lot. We buried each other in the sand. You made me laugh with your wicked sense of humor and your mischievous grin.”"I'm really sorry about everything," said Cal."Honey," she said, reaching out to stroke his chin. “It’s not your fault. You were in so much pain. No one should have to see your parents die like that. But you can be released now. I forgive you.""Why do you forgive me? I killed you. Isn’t that my ultimate deficiency of character and humanity? I deserve to be the personal slave of Satan himself for what I did.""Callie, there's more to your story. I know what you did after juvie. You became an elementary school teacher. You tried so hard to make up for what you did to me, though it didn't work out. Too many things reminded you of me and your parents. You almost strangled a student, and you went to jail again. But you tried. That’s all anyone could have asked of you."Cal teared up. He hadn’t cried at all when he killed her. Granny said it must have been shock, the same thing he experienced when he saw his own parents shot dead from the rearview mirror of the car. He had been waiting for them to come home from a trip to the convenience store.The train came to a stop again, but instead of darkness, now there was a dazzling light."Listen, my love. This is your stop, if you want it to be.”"And if I don't?""The train will circle back and return you to the land of the living, but it won’t be like it was before. The pain will increase ten-fold, one hundred-fold. It will be unbearable. Best of luck, sweetie."She planted a kiss on his lips. It tasted of salt water and sunshine. Then she morphed back into the little girl she was the day she died and left the train. The steak knife lay beside him.Cal wiped the tears from his eyes. He was a six-foot tall man who was supposed to be strong and brave despite everything: the death of his parents, the death of his best friend.Cal hadn't realized the conductor had moved to his end of the car. He had dirty long dreadlocked hair down wrapped around his waist.“What’s your name?” asked Cal.“You can call me ‘D’,” he said, sniggering.“For death?”“Death or dread or damnation. Take your pick. I’ve heard it all.”“So what do I do now?”“Repent. The steak knife is right there. I've heard you've had quite a bit of experience." He chuckled darkly."This isn't exactly an easy thing to do.""Neither is making Beef Wellington, but I do a bang up job. Now, this is the last time I'm going to ask you to do it. They'll have my head on a pike if the train is late again. I need this job for the health insurance, God help me."Cal took a deep breath and stabbed himself in the chest."No, that barely made a dent. You're not going to get away with it that easily. Do it the Japanese way. That's the only way to release all that pain. Shall I demonstrate for you?"Cal closed his eyes. He took the knife and plunged it into his belly and drew the blade from left to right, slicing open his stomach."Much better. And your aorta is intact! There's a samurai movie in your future, that is if you had a future."The pain was so searing as to be almost incomprehensible, Chloe's agony coupled with his own. The sweet, tantalizing release of death beckoned on the horizon."Is that enough?" said Cal through clenched teeth."Nearly," said D. "You can't go into the next world with any pain. They consider it a contaminant for some reason. Just give it one more healthy belly scream.Cal yelled like a banshee, shaking the graffiti-strewn windows until they cracked."Attaboy. You can remove the knife now. It's all over "Cal excised the knife from his stomach which quickly sealed up and gazed at the instrument. The knife was a lot bigger than he remembered it. But it wasn't the weapon that had grown. He looked at his reflection in the window and saw he was a small child again. The voices in his head were silent. For the first time in his life, he experienced something akin to peace."Hurry up now," yelled D. "Time's a wastin'."Cal quickly gathered his belongings and exited the train. The doors slammed shut behind him. In the distance, he could hear the conductor laughing.His parents were waiting for him.His mom smelled of the same perfume, which was no longer revolting, but sweet, like peppermint. "I didn't expect you here so soon," she said.His dad said, "Hush, that doesn't matter now. The important thing is that we're all together again.""Where’s Chloe, daddy?" said Cal."Son, she's not dead anymore. Your sacrifice canceled her demise."Cal shed a tear. Even in paradise, Cal thought, he would never live a fairytale.

Becca brings her doll to school for “show and tell” because that’s what Ms. Kim told everyone to do. When it’s her turn, she goes to the makeshift podium at the front of the room and proudly displays Alouette to the class. She tells them how Maman sang her the French lullaby every night before she passed through the Heavenly Gates.The students smirk at her and comment on the doll’s fraying hair and imperfect coloration, just loud enough for her to hear. Everyone except Gabe, that is, sitting directly across from the teacher with arms folded and smiling cryptically. Ms. Kim is the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. She looks at her reflection and tilts her voluminous chestnut hair slightly to the left, before stopping the children from their harsh words with a wave of her hand. They instantly fall silent.She doesn’t understand their antipathy. She made Alouette in the image of Maman, sewn with the fabric from her red satin dress, though it’s faded now. Her skin, the color of chocolate milk, is the color of her skin, too. How can the children not love her, all of her?The others’ Kosmo dolls are all the same - plastic, artificial, inhuman. They differ only by the hue of their eyes. Pale white skin envelopes each of them, stick-straight and meticulously manicured hairstyles cover their brows. One by one, the children come to the podium, name their doll, and relate their origin story as relayed on the cardboard box they came in. Each child’s narrative is the same, yet they applaud after each presentation, as if each one is a fresh work of genius.After class, Gabe goes over to Becca and whispers in her ear. “You’re new here, so I’ll let you in on the unspoken secret of this school. Miss Kim’s an influencer with 10.1K followers. You'll listen to her if you know what’s good for you. I see potential in you, Bec. I just don’t want you to squander it on nostalgia.”“I don’t understand. What does Ms. Kim influence exactly?”“Our playthings,” laughs Gabe, shaking his perfectly tousled, Kpop-inspired hair. “Many of us didn’t even buy dolls before we met her, but now we all love them. We’re so fortunate to have a teacher who’s an influencer. Sometimes, she even tells us things that will trend before she posts them.“Your Grammy has a smartphone you can borrow, right?” She nods shyly.“Follow her social on The Feed. Her handle is @mizzkimmie. She curates content about the hottest dolls. If you purchase them, you’ll be like us - mainstreamed, popular. You do want to be hip, don’t you? People will envy and adore you when you get the whole collection.”The hours drag until dismissal, but when the bell finally rings, Becca races home. She kisses the photo of her mom on the mantle and makes the sign of the cross as she was taught long ago. They don’t go to church anymore because Grammy says God let her down too many times. But Maman, she never lost faith.Grammy's relaxing on the beaten-down couch, lost in thought. No, not relaxing, asleep. Her snore is soft and delicate, like a newborn’s.Becca sees Grammy’s phone on top of the TV and grabs it. She’s surprised to find the Feed app already installed. Is Grammy more with it than she realized? The FoodieDelights account populates, displaying gorgeous food porn pictures by an influencer named Paula. She's a reflection of what Grammy would have aged into, had she taken care of herself. Becca looks up from the screen and focuses her gaze on her frail Grammy, mouth agape, thinning hair sticking out in every direction. She looks back at the screen. The influencer smiles with her eyes, radiating confidence. Becca thinks nothing more of it. She finds the log out button and clicks.She signs up for an account and cautiously presses enter after typing in the name of her new online persona, Beccouette. She’s a hybrid of herself and Alouette. She scrolls through a feed of food, travel, fashion and other trending topics until she spots @mizzkimmie holding the latest Kosmo doll.Follow. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Her eyes glisten from the content. She can’t help but absorb what’s being fed to her. She’s immersed as a digital minion, anonymous in the sea of Ms. Kim’s followers. She feels a vague sense of accomplishment, like she earned third place in a race or finished an intricate art project.She returns up the post showcasing the Kosmo doll. It looks even less realistic on the tiny screen, just random features plotted on a grid with little care or direction to guide them. But her teacher, wearing an elegant black scarf, radiates such joy in her smize. Caption under the image reads: "Hey fam! Vintage stan is the new modern.” Becca scrolls more. A wall of hashtags is hidden coyly inside her comment thread. #itgirl #getlit #mizzkimmie #gomainstream"She nudges Grammy on the shoulder, provoking a yawn and then a loud groan. She wakes up from her reverie frowning.Becca asks, “Can we go to the superstore now? There's something I want to buy."“You already got all your pencils and notebooks and all that for school, didn’t you? What else could you possibly need?”"This is special, Grammy. I'll use the babysitting money I saved up."“Fine. I need to get more turkey necks for dinner anyway."Becca stares one more time at the app, burning the face, the torso, the legs of the Kosmo doll into her memory, into the place where she keeps recollections of Maman. She turns her piggy bank upside down and shakes out the change. Nearly twenty-one dollars, she counts.The store is decorated for the holidays, with Santa and his dozen bright-eyed reindeer on display, though it’s only early November. Becca searches frantically for the doll, finally finding it on the bottom shelf under editions of Candyland and Trouble. There’s only one left, looking forlorn. She doesn’t notice a girl creeping behind her.“I was looking for that. I saw it on the Feed,” exhales the girl.“Sure, whatever you want,” says her mom, not even taking her eyes off her phone. She then races into a different aisle to grab a concealer she saw on her feed. Meanwhile the girl makes a beeline for the doll, but Becca is quick on her feet. She grabs the plaything, clutching it to her chest.The girl, a Jack O’Lantern grin on her face, stares right through her. She extends her arms and lunges for the doll, which despite Becca’s grip, crashes to the floor. Hard plastic collides with linoleum. She can see, even from afar, a gaping hole in the doll’s forehead.“You see what you made me do, you little bitch?” says the girl. Doll’s a piece of crap, anyway." She walks away, pushing a cart filled with a mound of toys, curated from content found and pushed by other influencersBecca picks up the doll. She looks like she was stabbed. No, she won’t let this demon child ruin her dreams and her hopes. She’ll stitch up her wound, repair her body.To her surprise, Grammy says, “Come on, let’s buy this doll. It’s time you released your hold on Alouette.”“That’s not why I’m getting her, Grammy. I don’t want to forget Maman. I just want to be popular.”“Maman would never have done what she did if she really loved you. She was a weak woman. You have to let her go. Maybe this newfound popularity will help you do that.”“Heaven forbid,” says Becca, loudly, as the cashier gives her a startled look."That will be $24.99. Cash or charge?” she asks. The androgenous teenager looks like Gabe. She's wearing a slightly crooked nametag with the name Charlie scribbled across it, matching her slightly crooked teeth“No,” moans Becca. “I don’t have enough. Can’t I get a discount? Don’t you see her head is broken?”“Let me see what I can do.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a Band-Aid which she carefully presses against the doll’s forehead. “That should cover the wound.”“I still can’t afford it, though. And I have to get it." Becca pulls out Grammy's smartphone from her purse and scrolls to Ms. Kim's feed.Charlie peers at the screen in Becca's hand. Instant recognition for the influencer's layout.“Give me what you got, then. That's what your influencer would want. We’ll call that the price for damaged goods.”“Thank you so much! You don’t know what this means to me,” says Becca, spilling her hard-earned savings onto the counter.Grammy looks admiringly at the new doll. “Let’s hope this is a new beginning,” she says. Becca gives her a cold stare. Part of her wants to throw away the new doll, if only to spite Grammy. But she can’t get herself to relinquish her chance to be popular.********The next day Becca arrives early to school, clutching the Kosmo doll to her chest. Ms. Kim gives her a wide-open smile as Becca carefully conceals the bandage on the doll’s forehead with her arm.Ms. Kim says, “You got it! I was afraid it would be sold out. It’s so popular these days. I’m sorry they don’t have Black dolls yet. I suppose I can contact the company so you can get one that's more like your Alouette. In any case, the children will be so excited. You’re one of them now. You’ll be mainstreamed in no time. You can leave your past of not fitting in far behind.“Excuse me, I’m getting a text.”Ms. Kim reads that her latest commission for selling the dolls is more than a week of her teacher’s salary. Her following is at 10.4K now. She keeps her exultation to herself, but she can't help smiling.Though it’s not “show and tell” day, the students are still clinging to their dolls. Gabe smiles when he sees Becca.“You did it, bb. You’re one of us, now. We’re part of an exclusive club. Wait, what’s that on your doll's face?”Ms. Kim stops cold and immediately turns around. “Miss Rebecca Thomas, let me see your doll right now.”“Show it to her,” says Gabe, softly. She has to approve everything here, like a gatekeeper.”"Don't you ever want to express yourself, Gabe?""Sure, but that's not what our world is like. Please do what she asks."Hesitantly, Becca places the doll in her teacher’s baby soft hands with their perfectly manicured nails.Ms. Kim yanks the Band-Aid off the doll’s brow, making a sound reminiscent of nails on chalkboard, but somehow worse. “She’s damaged. Broken dolls don't belong here. You take a selfie holding that disgusting thing and post it on your feed and your reputation instantly unravels. The Internet never forgets,” she says, scornfully.Tears stream down Becca’s face. "I fought for her in the store and I spent all my savings just so I could be one of you. Now you say she’s worthless? No, I’m not giving her up.”Ms. Kim says, “No, I didn’t think you would. I see how you cling to that raggedy doll. You’re not one of us. You never will be. You’re OK with unkempt and broken things.”Becca reaches in her bag and takes out Alouette, frayed strings dangling from her head. She stares at its chocolate skin, which is her skin and her Maman's.“You're right, Ms. Kim. My dolls are hard to look at with all their blemishes and imperfections. They're not like you, not perfect. But you don't know what Maman went through at the end. She lost all her hair from the stress. And then, one night, she couldn't take it anymore. I tried to save her, but I was too late. When I reached her unmoving body on the pavement, I know I shouldn't have but I tore off a piece from her red satin dress because I still needed a piece of her. I don’t want to forget her, Ms. Kim.” Her teacher silently clutches her own Kosmo. Lost in her own world, she doesn’t see Gabe go over to her desk and grab her phone.Gabe says, “She’s not perfect either, you know."“What are you doing, Gabe?” says Ms. Kim.“Your hair, Ms. Kim. It’s just like Becca’s doll. You conceal it with a wig.”“Gabe, I told you that in confidence. You were my number two.”“No, not after today” He grabs a pair of scissors and slices a tuft of hair off her doll.“Desecration,” she screams wildly. “You’ll never be popular after this. You’re doomed to be an outcast.”Gabe grabs a piece of fabric and ties it around his doll's forehead. He says, grinning broadly, "That's better. We’re both rebels, now." He takes Ms. Kim’s phone, snaps a selfie with his transfigured doll, and uploads it to her feed. He hashtags it with her brand and algorithms, and watches her following count go from 10K to 6,000 to 4,000 to… He grabs his own phone and unfollows. Her spell is broken. She's no longer trending, no longer mainstream.The rest of the class grab their scissors and markers and start to refashion their dolls, each in their own image as Ms. Kim, straining to hold back tears, struggles to remember who she used to be.

My husband Bill and I were all set to pull out of the raucous campsite in search of needed peace and quiet when I heard a name amid the cacophony of teenagers next door. I stood still, our cooler filled with half-eaten bologna sandwiches frozen in my hands.Bill said, “Why did you stop moving? Do you want to go to a different campsite or not? You’re the one who forgot to bring sound-cancelling headphones like I suggested."“I heard someone say Herbert,” I said abruptly.“Herbert,” he said, stretching out the two syllables, like he was acting out Arnold Schwarzenegger. "You think you finally hit the jackpot?"The cooler, weighed down by several bags of ice we purloined from a local convenience store, was torture in my hands. I released it and it hit the ground with a bang.Bill continued, “So what now? Are you going to check him out? You’ve already given up on him once.”I crossed my arms. “That’s unfair. We made a mutual decision.""Nope, you're the one who decided to go off birth control and not tell me. I’m going back to the tent."“Herbert,” I yelled at the tent next door. No one responded.“You’re crazy! What if he’s got a knife... or a gun? The boy doesn’t know you from Adam.”“They’re teenagers on a camping trip. How dangerous could they be?”“You well know I wasn’t an innocent teenager. I stabbed a guy and would've ended up in juvie if my parents hadn’t been well-off.” I heard a peal of thunder in the distance. If I got this kid wrong, I was stuck being next door to these mongrels all week. Bill wasn't going to give me another chance to get away from this campground.I shook the boys’ tent hard, but it had no effect. Then I grabbed a pair of scissors and punctured the tent, just enough so I could stick my hand in. I wondered what a hand stab wound would feel like, and I decided I could bear the agony. I waved my hand inside the tent a few times, like mine was the hand of God. Still nothing.But then a boy of about seventeen emerged. He was wearing a navy blue tank-top and sporting the beginnings of a goatee. I didn't recognize his face. When he talked, he had the deep, brassy voice of a baritone.“What the hell do you want?”I stammered and shook before speaking. “I just wanted to ask you one thing.”“Hurry up then. The boys are going to think something is wrong.”“Can you tell me when your birthday is?”He thought for a moment, and then he said, “October 23, 2004.”I took a deep breath. “My son was born on October 23. He would be seventeen this year. His name is…”“Let me guess - Herbert. So you're the woman who gave me up. You just happened to be in a campground near my hometown? How long you been tracking me for? You can go to hell"My eyes welled with tears “I had my reasons for what I did.”“I don't give a shit about your reasons. Now I have a mother who's smart enough to leave me alone. I certainly don’t need another one on my ass.” He was almost snarling now.“I’m not asking to be your mother. I made peace with what I did a long time ago. When I heard your name, I just needed to know if it was you. A mother has that right. I'll go now."Then a black-haired boy stepped out of the tent. “Everything cool, Ralph?” he asked."Wait, you're not Herb?""Herb’s dead, miss," said the other boy. "Been dead for three weeks. We got his ashes in the tent. We're going now to scatter them in the river now."What happened to Herbert?" I said, tears streaming down my face and mixing with the rain."Suicide," the boys said softly, in unison.The black-haired boy left and came back with a glass of cold water and offered it to me."Why did you pretend to be him when I asked?" I said.Ralph replied, "Cause at least for a moment I could pretend he was still alive. I could hear his voice again. Ma’am, your kid was a tortured soul. He’s in a far better place now."I thought if I had reached out before or if I hadn't given him up, I could have prevented this tragedy. The guilt pouring over me was overwhelming. I wanted to lie face down in the mud and follow in my Herbert's footsteps, but I wasn't brave enough."Come with us," said Ralph. "Let's go bury him together." For a moment, I thought I should invite my husband on the trip, but I was afraid he would say something inappropriate or profane. I needed my moment of grief without him. So as he listened to podcasts in our tent, the boys and I traversed the slippery path to the river. Ralph let me hold the jar of ashes, and they shared stories of my son. At the river, I said my goodbyes to the only child I would ever have.

Jagged MemoriesThe old man, dressed in a hooded UPenn sweatshirt despite the heat of the day, took a break from using his newly purchased plastic grabber to pick up parkland trash. He was fatigued from his effort but also proud of his accomplishments - fourteen soda cans, ten candy wrappers, and one used condom that he had deposited in a nearby garbage can that was perilously close to overflowing. He made a mental note to contact the department about that. He didn’t want all his work to be for naught. Still, seeing the prophylactic had made him smile, a story he wished he could tell his wife. The moxie of two young people doing the deed in the fresh air, unafraid of someone bearing witness. Joon hyeon himself had been like that as a younger man, making love on an out-of-the-way beach in his small Korean hometown. They had had relations several times, perhaps as much as a dozen. He tried to come up with the girl’s name but it was lost in the recesses of his depleted memory. Only a brief description of her remained in his mind: pretty, but quiet.Some years later he met Soon hee, and soon after, he invited her on a similar rendez-vous. She was adamant in her refusal. She did want sand getting into her undergarments, nor be responsible for rumors spreading like wildfire in the small village. The daughter of a pastor would not submit to such indignities. She ably performed the duties that were expected of her, bearing him two daughters. For his part, he worked too much and drank even more than that.Joon hyeon was retired now. He preferred to spend his time at home, rereading his novels. He had been an English literature major at university in Korea, but as his memory deteriorated he once again needed a Korean translation by its side. That morning he had become fed up with his wife’s harangues. He had been subjected to them for a while, but this one was more vicious. In between sips of coffee, she yelled at him for repeating a story he had already told on numerous occasions about meeting a minor celebrity at a bar in his youth. The man had been a police detective in a short-running dramatic series in the late seventies. He thought it was a nice story to tell. He didn’t remember telling it to her before.“The doctor must have been wrong. Stopping the drinking hasn’t helped with your brain,” she said, her words like boiling water in his ears. He remained silent, his body shaking from shame.In his days as an attorney his memory had been razor-sharp. Now, it was more akin to a sieve. He couldn’t recall where he put his watch, his keys, and once his wedding ring after a shower. He didn’t get a second chance with the ring. To safeguard it, his wife took it from him and put it in her jewelry box. She said to him, ”Someday we might need the gold for your care.”One month before, the couple had paid a visit to his doctor. Soon hee recalled in painstaking detail the failings of his memory while he stood there stone faced. He was supposed to be the head of the relationship, but that hadn’t been the case for a long time. Perhaps it had never been the case.The doctor, sensing that the wife was in charge, directed his questions to her.He dispensed with the pleasantries started with the heavy hitter. “Is he a drinker?” Joon hyeon wondered if he had skipped the lessons on bedside manner during his medical school studies.Without skipping a beat, Soon hee responded, “Yes, a bottle of soju daily, without fail.”Joon hyeon turned a shade of near crimson. He was, despite his americophilia, at heart a Korean man, and Korean men drank soju. The drink was a comfort, a relaxant, a social lubricator. So had it been for his father and grandfather and all the generations before them. Not all of them had died young.The doctor said, still talking to the wife, “Well, that’s the surest way for his memory lapses to turn into larger gaps and someday for his memory to fail him altogether.” As the two of them conversed, Joon hyeon felt like a ghost, and not for the first time. In high school in Busan he had felt that way too, seemingly invisible to his classmates except when they wanted to bully him. For some reason, those memories never faded away.Soon hee turned toward her husband with a glare of hostility. He’d always thought she’d have been beautiful if she smiled, what with her rosy cheeks, perfectly set jawbone, and alabaster skin that had remained smooth well into her seventies.“I need you to stop,” she said to him. She spoke quietly and in Korean. She had never learned the tongue as well as he.He responded in English. “But I’m a man.”Without warning, she slapped his right cheek, just above his wrinkled jawline. He staggered back not so much from the impact as from the shock of it. They were in a public place! He looked for a mirror, wondering if the hit had made a lasting impression. He didn’t touch the spot for fear of finding blood.The doctor, a young man in his twenties, was taken aback. He muttered, “Ma’am, we don’t do that sort of thing here,” in a voice that was far less confident than it had been a moment earlier. Joon hyeon looked at his wife, who showed little sign of regret. she hadn’t attacked him before; that he would have remembered. But now he feared for the future. He was increasingly frail. Another blow might kill him.“I’ll give up drinking,” he said, speaking to the wall between them.“You’d better,” said his wife.He stopped drinking, but only in the daylight between them. He became adept at hiding the alcohol from her, sneaking bottles of the potent liquid in cabinets, beneath his bed, and in his underwear drawer. He called on them at night when she was sound asleep in their bed. He was not proud of his actions, but he felt like the booze was the reward he deserved for putting up with his woman all those years. The slap was just the icing on the cake. But the booze was like a burgeoning snowball in Korean winter. The more he drank, the more he forgot, though forgetting was what he feared most of all.Joon hyeon walked back from the park, feeling elated from his good and productive work. He thought he would tell his wife the story about the condom after all. She might not appreciate it, but at least it was a new story and she did keep that pile of erotic novels by her bedside. He walked jauntily into the dining room where he usually awaited his meal with the day’s paper or a novel. What he saw there stopped him cold - two bottles of soju on the table and one shot glass. He recognized the bottles as some of the ones that he hid in his underwear drawer.She stood there in a pink, flowery dress, a scowl on her face. She said, “Drink up or I’m leaving you. Every single drop in those bottles in front of you. You told me that you’re a man, so be a man.” The last phrase made him feel like he was being slapped all over again. Worse, it reminded him of his father. His father spent most of his childhood downing soju with his friends. Only one memory of him persisted. It was after he had been beaten up in a fight by a kid who insulted him and called him a bookworm. His father, an athletic wannabe, told him to step it up and be a man. He was eight years old.Joon hyeon stared at the bottles in front of him. The brand was Daesun, the favored distilled spirit of Busan. The bottles had been imported from Korea and were available in his local grocery store in their immigrant neighborhood. But for his beloved soju, he had placed his memory on the sacrificial altar. Had it been worth it? He recounted the benefits: the drink gave him an initial stimulating feeling, then a warmth like a puppy, and finally, stress would roll off of him, dissolving like sugar in water. He had had a tough, demanding job and he did it for much of his career in a second language; without soju would he have endured? He avoided the more relevant question: why did he need it now?His wife was in the kitchen adding pork and onion to a mix of kimchi and kimchi brine. She grilled beef over the stove, and it sizzled. The small house was redolent of garlic and sourness from the fermented cabbage. Then without warning, the aroma of the food brought back the name of the girl. Her name was Hwa-young, meaning an elegant flower. They had once picnicked with such food on the beach before their play.The shot glass on the table was not glass, but ceramic. It has been gifted to him by one of his grandchildren some years before. He acknowledged the wit of his wife, She was simultaneously attacking his past and future, a two-pronged assault. He would be left with nothing more than this rough, tortuous present from which only his books could give him intermittent solace.The smell of the kimchi stew wafted more strongly now. Soon hee cooked it well, as his own mother had in their tiny kitchen in Busan. He stared at the bottles and the glass. He told himself that he desired but a taste. He didn’t need a whole bottle and certainly not two. He poured himself a shot, noticing that his granddaughter Christina had carved her initials on it. She must have been so proud of her work, and the thought made him sad.The noises in the kitchen diminished as Soon hee took the pan of beef off the heat. She returned to the dining room while the food settled for consumption.“So what’s it going to be?” she said.“I’m not going to drink that whole thing.”“Husband, your life is already a misery. Over and over again, the same stories, the same forgetfulness. You know, our daughter was here the other day. She was the one who found the bottles. She came to me, crying. Don’t you want to remember?” The edge in her voice had diminished. She sounded almost plaintive now.“We have good memories together,” she said. He could only remember that they had been to Disney once. They must have had a good time there. People always had a good time at Disney. There was a photograph on the wall of all of them smiling broadly in front of Cinderella’s castle. Would he have remembered it at all without that photograph? He was getting depressed again. He had to change the conversation.“I felt good today, picking up the trash.”“I was wondering where you went.”“I went to our park. I met a nice man with a little girl and we chatted for a while. Then I picked up some soda cans and candy bar wrappers. And there was a … a condom in the trash, and… Never mind. You wouldn’t want to hear about that.”“No, tell me, dear.”“I saw the condom and it made me wonder whose it was. I thought it must be nice to be young and in love.”“Do you think that we weren’t? You got me the most beautiful bouquet of roses on our first date. At night, you would come outside my building and serenade me with Korean folk songs as I watched you from my fourth floor apartment window. You convinced my father who was even more stubborn than you that you were the right person for me even though you were deep in debt and didn’t have a penny to your name. That was a not so minor miracle.” He tried to recall those memories, but his brain resisted it. It seemed like they belonged to someone else.“Why did you hit me?” he asked. There was no anger in his voice, just curiosity.“I needed to bring you back to your senses. You’ve always been a stubborn soul. But I’m sorry about that. I won’t do it again.”“And I won’t drink this.” He took the shot glass and brought it into the kitchen where he poured the contents into the sink. The kimchijjigae, grilled beef and a pot of fresh rice rested nearby. He watched the liquid swirl in tiny circles, coming into contact with tiny pieces of carrot and onion peel on the way down the drain.The wife said, “The doctor didn’t promise that your memory will return even without drinking. But let’s give it a shot. You’ll have more bandwidth to read your Huckleberry Finn’s and East of Eden’s.”He tried to remember the plotline of Huckleberry Finn, but he could only remember Huck, the boy who wanted freedom. And he had read it so many times.“Could you read it to me?” he asked.“My English isn’t that good.”“It’s good enough and I can explain what it means, if you want. And maybe you can help me remember things too?”“Yes, my mind is, what do they call it here, a steel trap.” She said the last words in English and there was a newfound mirth in her voice when she said it. They sat down to eat their meal of stew, grilled meat, and rice together. As he savored the delicious food, he wondered what she would say to a trip to the beach.

How Do You Say Kosher in Japanese? A Memoir

PrologueBefore I embarked on my first journey to Japan in mid-2001, a friend gifted me with a journal and a well-worn copy of “Neither Here Nor There,” a comedic travelogue written by Bill Bryson. “You’ll have the time of your life,” predicted my friend. “You have to write about it, though, or you’ll forget the little details, the intimate moments that make it all worthwhile. The things you’ll want to remember on a rainy day in forty years when you’re reminiscing about times gone by.” Taking her advice, I scribbled daily in my journal, often in my rudimentary Japanese. I jotted down notes about my experiences in the margins of my Japanese grammar books that I had brought along for reference. I distributed lengthy and possibly witty newsletters to my family and friends back home about my Japanese exploits as a pseudo-celebrity in my speck of a town. Reading said newsletters, my friends urged me to turn it into a book. A mere twenty-two years later, you are holding the product of that labor in your hands (or more likely on a device). Congrats on your wise investment.So let’s get down to brass tacks. I want to tell you what makes my experience unique, one of a kind, adorable. I was far from the only American +Jewish + gay expatriate to spend time teaching English abroad (or even in Japan), but there were seminal, sometimes cataclysmic events that occurred both in my life and in the larger world during my two-year stay in Japan. I came out from a damp, poorly lit closet where none of the clothes even matched. My dear grandmother with whom I waxed eloquent on the origins of Al Qaeda and the technological revolution suddenly departed from this mortal coil. A group of Al Qaeda terrorists (in the literal sense of the word) hijacked American airplanes and plowed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Under, around, and through these traumatizing events, I built a small life in a small town, strived to master a challenging language and a millennia-old culture, and learned how to be a better, less daunted, and more purposeful human being.Finally, a word or three about modernity. My oriental (Am I allowed to use that word?) adventures took place in a time when I possessed far less technology and digital interconnectedness. I lacked both a smartphone and a GPS device. My only phone was a landline; my internet access was limited to ten hours a month on a laptop that had already survived eight semesters of being out through the academic ringer. But I loved that. For without the golden key that fit all locks, I was free to explore, to take chances, and to get unforgettably, irretrievably lost. In that process came discovery and renewal, a reimagining of the soul. Since I couldn’t look up on an unthinking, unfeeling machine the answers to my questions, I had to ask people, experiment, screw up. In short, I had to be human, warts and all.More coming in 2026!

Almost in Bloom, a novel

Chapter 1
With pizza boxes tied behind him, Miguel biked along Fifth Avenue gawking at sky-high monuments he had dreamed about long before he became an illegal. The wonders of New York were all above him: gothic cathedrals, sleek apartment buildings topped with elaborate penthouses, slender towers of steel and glass. His neck strained from the effort. Sweat slickened by the broiling sun gushed in torrents from inside the rim of his counterfeit New York Yankees cap, nearly blinding him. Still he couldn’t resist his gaze. He didn’t want to miss anything he could tell Dad, that is, if Dad ever talked to him again.
He looked at his smartphone - two minutes left to reach John R.’s place with the food, and he was still three miles away. He couldn’t chance running red lights; that was not something that people like him could do. Instead, he glided to a stop in advance of every yellow light as drivers bristled behind him. They stuck their heads outside tinted windows and taught him English curse words he might never have known.
Eighteen minutes later, he arrived at a stately moss-infused brownstone and rang an antique, bird-shaped doorbell for the top floor, the third. A small garden with crocuses and tulips covered a corner of the front yard; the rest was a Japanese rock garden. He prepared himself for a scowling face, a rejection, even a refund request that would come straight out of his paycheck, which scarcely covered spaghetti and tomato sauce. He strived to think happier thoughts: for the first time since he had started his deliveries, he hadn’t gotten lost. He tried to be proud of that fact; New York City was far more complicated to traverse than he’d imagined.
A tall man with fading brown hair streaked with red appeared, an air of giddiness on his face. Miguel untied the pizza boxes from the bike, juggling one of them between his hands when he touched its scalding surface. He checked the man’s order against a receipt. The boxes had the contents written in block letters, the careful handwriting of a child or a secretary: veggies no mushrooms and margherita with bacon and pineapple.
In his village, during the too-often times when there was nothing else for nourishment, he and his friends would bang pineapples on the rocky soil, rolling them back and forth to separate the meat of the fruit from the core. The pineapple’s juice would drip down the chin of his six-year-old and seven-year-old and eight-year-old self, and he was in ecstasy. Then, when he was nine, they moved to Colombia, to Maracaibo, the big city, and there were no more pineapples to smash against the ground.
The man waited patiently for Miguel to prepare the order; his expression remained unchanged. His soulful, sapphire eyes blinked often in the harsh sunlight. Below his nose was a faint goatee enveloping his mouth in a thin layer of ashy gray. Under that, his tank top accentuated admirably well-developed biceps and deltoids, impressive for his age, the stuff of magazines he kept hidden. Miguel turned away from his body, fearing to incur the wrath of his father, even across distances.
Miguel focused his mind on the pizza. What was the occasion for John R. ordering it? This couldn’t have been his regular diet unless he had some crazy metabolism that Miguel, with his bulky frame, would have envied with all his heart.
“The pizzas are a little hot,” Miguel said. He took care with the pronunciation of the words to minimize his Spanish accent, a habit he developed in pursuit of bigger tips from his mostly white customers.
John R. took the boxes from him and placed them on his front stoop. “Yeah, caliente,” John said, but he handled the pizzas with aplomb.
The use of caliente struck Miguel. Was he making fun of him or was it comradeship? It was often hard to tell with Americans. Some were so proud of the few Spanish words that they knew from their long-ago elementary school foreign language education that they wanted to use them whenever they could. Others mocked him with their eyes and their tongues, annoyed that he didn’t speak perfect English even though he had only been here four months.
The man fumbled in his pocket before pulling out a couple of wrinkled bills.
“I already paid online for the pizzas, but I didn’t include the tip,” he said. He was holding two tens in the palms of his large hand. Generally he only got a buck or two for these deliveries and rarely anything for the late ones. He was disconcertingly, alarmingly generous. Twenty dollars was half the cost of his order. Was he a rich man, a man just having a good day?
“Thanks. You do know I was late, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. Dimples appeared on his cheeks, a wonderful gift of the sunlight.
“You can get a free pizza if you want, or even more if you complain enough.” God, what was it about John R. that made him blurt out this honesty bullshit?
“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“But It’s my fault.”
The man paused for the length of a heartbeat, and he said, “Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”
“No, this is my last delivery of the day.” That was the first truth Miguel wanted to tell. He looked into John R.’s eyes and saw that he was smiling.
“Would you like to come in the house for a little bit?
Miguel stared at him, not saying anything.
He continued, “I’m not usually home for these deliveries because my niece orders them during the day while I’m at work, but I wasn’t feeling well this morning and I didn’t go into the office. Anyway, when I look at you now, I see my late mother. My mother was an immigrant, from Sicily, in Italy, you see. She never learned English very well, but she worked hard to support us, me and my brother and sisters, cleaning rich people’s houses sixty or seventy hours a week, maybe more. When I see someone like you, working hard, trying to learn English, fitting into our society, I want to help, be a friend. Any way I can. Can I get you a beer?”
Miguel wanted to say yes to the invitation, but in his mind he heard his mother warning him, even as she kissed him goodbye.
“Ten cuidado,” she said. “You don’t know who you can trust in our world.”
Her words caused adrenaline to pulse sharply through his body. His heart pounded noisily in its chest cavity. Blood rushed to his extremities. And then panic: he thought John R. could murder him, just like that, inside a house where no one would see. Miguel was just a nameless migrant who was caught in the wrong place by an angry soul. His smile, his graciousness, were no more than a clever facade, his twenty dollar gift a gateway to hell.
“No,” Miguel shrieked like a barn owl. “I won’t let you.” His own voice felt foreign to him, like it was coming from a different body.
Passersby stopped in their tracks and gaped; children who had been playing next door gathered at the perimeter of the yard of this house in this normally quiet neighborhood. But that was not what Miguel saw. Instead he was back in his house in the village. He was alone with his mother, and they were cooking dinner. Two men in black appeared in the kitchen out of nowhere, one brandishing a gleaming knife. The man with the weapon approached his mother and used it to gouge a hole in her pink dress, exposing her intimates. Before he could go further, his mother unleashed a blood curdling scream, and the men fled. During the whole time Miguel sat in the corner of the room, tremulous, not daring to say a word. He was just twelve at the time of the assault, a mere child. But, at twenty-three, the trauma of the event was still raw. He’d never spoken to anyone about it, and his mother never brought it up. And then, as it always did, the memory faded, and he returned to the present, as if his mind could only handle so much torment.
“Let me do what?” said John. His voice remained mellow, the sound a gumdrop might make, or a marshmallow.
Miguel said, “Nothing. Forget it.”
John put a hand on Miguel’s shoulder, rubbing it slowly. He said, “This is what I did when Emily used to have nightmares, which would happen fairly often since her parents died in an accident when she was five. She would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating something fierce, but when I read her fairy tales and rubbed her shoulder, she would calm down, return to the land of normalcy. You know I thought I wouldn’t be a good parent. I was already forty at the time I adopted her, but somehow the two of us have managed. Emily is nineteen now. I would love for you to meet her.”
The warmth of the human contact felt good on Miguel’s body. He couldn’t remember the last time he was touched by anyone. Certainly not since he’d come to America. Gradually, his heartbeat stabilized, the adrenaline slowed its pulsing.
“By the way. I don’t think I ever properly introduced myself. I’m John.”
“I’m Miguel,” he whispered.

Look for the complete novel in 2026!