I moved to Paris, France, in April 1985. It was cold, and the people were anything but warm. Getting anything done was a chore because people weren't interested in getting anything done, they stopped whatever they were doing between noon and two in the afternoon, they closed on Mondays, and they generally don't like anyone with whom they didn't go to high school.

I was lonely.

Even my birthday turned out to be depressing, because it falls on the most important holiday in France--May Day--and all the stores were closed, and the Parisians had all gone away for the weekend.

Eleven stories told from the depths of anger, lust, and the confusion of doing the right things at the wrong times.

Michael Missing, the name of eleven different young men in various states of unrest, is the linked but unrelated protagonist of these wry and angry tales—a hit man, the cabin boy of 19th century French pirate Jean Lafitte, erstwhile baseball hero and the man who would be President of France, a frustrated salesman who loses an evening with Captain Kirk in the unrequited hope of laying the town slut of Scarsdale.

Readers will shudder as, to their dismay, they recognize themselves, or at least part of themselves, in the naïve and angry young man who sincerely wishes things were different, and who regrets he has never overheard someone say, "Michael is a real good guy."

AFFAIR

by Michael Hickins

We were holding hands. I tried slipping her the tongue, but it was no go.

I had a lot of romantic fantasies about my job back then--not so much fantasies as versions of my life which didn’t happen to be the way things turned out.

Well, selling books for a very high-quality house was the way it had turned out. And the truth was, I was going to have to sell fifteen or twenty books this particular day, or I’d never make quota by the end of the month. (When I say “sell ten books” or “sell twenty books,” you understand, these are orders, not individual books.)

Here is what is irremediably, irredeemably, intrinsically wrong with the game of professional football: it is like the worst aspects of American life. Individuals are expected to sacrifice their bodies and minds for the benefit of the collective endeavor, just as office workers are expected to be team players, meaning that they should put the company before themselves, their families, and their communities.

Just as American office workers work longer hours for the same pay, it being understood that if they don’t, they will be replaced by overseas workers, most football players are paid relatively poorly (with very few exceptions), especially given the short life expectancy of their jobs. Moreover, like all American workers, football players have no guarantee of keeping their jobs or of catching on with another team, particularly if they are cut near the end of training camp or in mid-season.