Archives from 2010

Last month, the Living Out Loud column started its eighth year in CityBeat. That’s a little amazing to me, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Those who write here are observers of everyday life. If you’re paying attention to that life, you’re always going to fin

Sometimes I believe a person can't control his or her own thoughts. As Christmas approaches this year, my mind is on my father and our relationship. It's much too late to change anything now. My father is dead. I'm going to take you back to a Christmas t

I consider myself a pretty decent guy. With people that I see and meet, I try to be nice and polite. I make the attempt to treat other people the way I want to be treated. But let me be honest here. Maybe I am a horrible person. When I pay attention to t

Most of the leaves are off the trees now. In walks that I take in my neighborhood, I watch neighbors rake up those leaves — a job I haven’t done in years. However, I remember the last time I did, and it always brings back memories of an old friend. In th

This story is basically true, but I'll be changing a few facts around. I don't want Mary — that's the name I'm going to give her — to recognize herself. The reality is she probably won't be reading this anyway, as she doesn’t like alternative newspapers.

I could hear the three of them making fun of me as they started to get closer. I’m guessing they were teenagers, 17 or 18 years old. I was walking back home from a convenient store carrying a plastic bag full of grocery items. One turns to me, “hey, moth

On most mornings while at the bus stop downtown to catch a Tank Bus over to Kentucky, I see this guy. Before he gets on the bus, with his hands, he makes the sign of the cross. I'm smart enough to know this is a Catholic ritual. That's all I know. One m

Tags: Opinion, Living Out Loud, Larry Gross

I must have been on some kind of list of people to notify when she died. I didn’t know the person who delivered the sad news. A few days later, on a Wednesday morning, I took a bus up to that funeral home on Glenway Avenue where she would be laid out. I

Tags: Opinion, Living Out Loud

I’m the kind of guy who usually comes around to modern technology sooner or later, but most of the time more later than sooner. I resisted e-mail for years, wasn’t all that interested in the Internet and was one of the last people on the planet to get a

Tags: Opinion, Living Out Loud

Weeks after this chance encounter, I'm still shaken by it. Sometimes memories of people from my past don't need to be updated with their current reality. On Race Street downtown some weeks ago, I was standing at an ATM taking $40 out of my checking accou

Tags: Opinion, Larry Gross

Standing at the bus stop at Dixie Highway and Commonwealth in Erlanger to get back to Cincinnati was becoming torturous. It was mid-afternoon, hot as hell and the bus was late. When it finally arrived, it was crowded. In fact, standing room only. When I

There's this gas station at the corner of Werk Road and Glenmore Avenue I walk up to sometimes to purchase my cigarettes. I told the girl behind the counter what brand I wanted, and she pointed to the rack behind her. "This one?" she asked. "No," I said.

Tags: Opinion, Wikipedia

Outside of the words I'd prepared, I remember very little of what I said on stage at York Street Cafe in Newport last month. I do remember, after realizing I was totally screwed, saying, "I'm totally screwed," but that's about it. I thought I more or les

Tags: Opinion, York Street Cafe

I have a few stories I'd like to tell about some of these friends of mine. There's the man in the minivan, the treasure seeker, the bartender, the closeted lesbian, the chronic dater, the asshole and even an volunteer for Stop AIDS. Despite their quirks,

"I mean, I have to buy all my gas at BP now." "What?" I said. "Yeah, it's costing them a fortune to clean that mess up," Andrea says. "I gotta do my part to help them out." My mouth is hanging open now, but the good news is that our food has finally arri

My daughter had a birthday last week and my son last month. With both firmly now in their twenties and lives of their own, I don't see them together that much anymore. That's why I like it when those birthdays roll around. It means we'll do dinner somewh

I've never considered myself much of a pack rat. Furniture, clothes, dishes, books — I've never had any trouble selling, throwing out or giving away things I don't want or no longer need. They're just material processions. Most of it isn’t important to m

Tags: Opinion, Charles Dickens

Last week I wrote about how The Most Miserable Man in Cincinnati has moved from downtown to my neck of the woods in Westwood. After our bus ride together, it got me thinking it’s time to move. Bus rides with Lee are something I don’t want to make a habit

I’m not in the mood to deal with Lee. I haven’t seen him in almost a year. He lives in an apartment building downtown close to the CityBeat offices. I and other CityBeaters who smoke are more or less forced to listen to his ignorant, often racist remarks

When I was diagnosed with diabetes more than 10 years ago, I was also informed that I have neuropathy — nerve damage in my legs and feet, one of my side effects of being diabetic. I had some numbness in my feet, but I didn't have a difficult time getting