MONOPOLE

          That night, Mark and I drive across the Bay Bridge into the city. The hue that radiates across the late-evening sky makes it seem like the sun isn’t setting in any particular direction. It feels too bright for the hour. A strange calm reverberates from the traffic on the bridge. The pattern of the road against the tires. The San Francisco cityscape becoming more pronounced across the water in the distance. We’re headed to meet Jaron when he’s off work at nine-thirty.

         Jaron delivers pizza for a place called Pizza Orgasmico. They mean like orgasm. It is San Francisco. The front of the building is one large window, with a cartoon superhero painted on it holding a pizza pie. “That’s right,” it reads in red letters on the window. “It’s that good!”

         We’re sitting at a table in the corner of the narrow restaurant. Two normal-looking girls about our age pass by to leave through the open door beneath the buzzing glow of a neon sig...

      “Yes?” Teddy says like it’s a question, rising from the levitating sofa to go investigate the sound, which in all likelihood indicates that his escort from Crystal’s has arrived.

      “Your guest has arrived, Mr. Doe,” the room confirms.

      “Yes, of course,” Teddy says. “Wonderful. Please send her in—no, wait a moment.” Teddy rushes to the bathroom to inspect his appearance. The lights come on automatically as he enters. Looking in the mirror, he pats his newly trimmed hair and straightens his tuxedo, and pretends his freshly shaven face doesn’t look as caved in as it does and that his eyes aren’t dark and tired. He rushes back to the floating sofa and sits with a leg crossed to appear casual.

      “Go ahead and send her in, please,” Teddy tells the room, expecting to momentarily greet his guest. Nothing happens. “Let her in, please. Thank you,” Teddy says authoritatively. Still, nothing happens. He stands up and rushe...

Immoral robots have taken over the financial system! They were created by the hard work, greed, and ingenuity of the sons of America’s wealthy baby-boomer generation—but the robots immorality is a reflection of their creators, who are merely the cultivated seeds of a bygone generation, hardened by the drive to succeed that their fathers instilled in them.

          They soon become the arrogant frat boys that populate America’s collegiate system, but they are plagued with more of an intellectual capacity than they know how to cultivate for themselves, so they go to business school to learn the building blocks of success, just as their fathers had hoped for them. And whether they are the top of their class or they just jump through the hoops, they all get their credentials. (Say what you will about them, they are not an ignorant bunch.) They then go to work for their fathers’ firms, or their fathers’ friend’s firms, or those of a friend of his. They are handed all the top-shelf accounts...

From the award-winning short story A Vain and Terrible Thing, or Therapy, or Mr. Mitchell’s Cock Charade.

What if I told you that I don’t have any clue how to write? Well, don’t worry because I’m not telling you. I’m telling me. I just watched Annie Hall and it got to me because things like that get to me and I could sit here forever and forever trying to reflect upon it, but that sure wouldn’t do any of us a whole hell of a lot of good, now would it? I’m just as worthless as I’ve always been, but this time I’m not going to try to be so lewd about it. I’ll try to put into words what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, and when I come out on the other side maybe I won’t be so dripping wet as I was the last few thousand times around. I’m neurotic and self-absorbed, and am just as dying as I’ve always been, only this time there’s no one else around to feel so goddamned sorry for me.

This is what happens when you run out of drugs and the porn gets old. This is what happens when you’re too grown...

From the award-winning short story A Vain and Terrible Thing, or Therapy, or Mr. Mitchell’s Cock Charade.

I wake this morning to a dream of empty hallways, vast silent bedrooms. I walk past a window and there seems to be a dark brown dust blowing all over everything, covering all of it. I don’t think much of it, so I wander more about the apartment. I walk past the large mirror in my bedroom, only to find two reflections of myself. The one on the left is me in my flourishing youth, with an unkempt pile of hair atop my head and the slightest hint of a facial hair just below my mouth at the bottom of my chin. The reflection on the right is me how I look right now, in my boxer-briefs and a tee shirt, and with shorter hair, still disheveled from my sleeping.

            I stare confusedly into the mirror at my two reflections. I raise my left arm up a bit to test the reactiveness of these me’s in the mirror. They both move accordingly and then, quite slowly and magically, the reflections be...