
I started feeding the stray cats when I moved in with him. To attract company, I began leaving food and water by the front door. Fuck Off was the first cat to frequent our patio…

As a punk band from Tampa we were treated like kicked sand— a nuisance and a bother to be brushed aside or shoved off the stage as fodder for mosh pit marauders and their skinhead soldiers down front—that shit happened, no lie.

On the morning of the Inevitable Event, one hundred and eighty adolescents––the early comers, twitching like feral cats at the long mica tables of the cafeteria, heads bowed to handhelds––stiffened in synchrony, reflexively, like an orchestra tensing to the lift of a conductor’s baton.

Rockabilly music twanged in the humid air of downtown Deland – the Deland Fall Festival of the Arts was in full swing.