Status Updates From Avalon

The diner felt nostalgic inside, as if we were revisiting a past we had not been alive for. The tables were topped with abalone-patterned red melamine and rimmed with a dully shining metal like nickel or magnesium.

“Rowling is irrelevant to discussions of magic. Those books are about social segregation and dominance.”

Fifi did not like San Luis Obispo. The beauty she had cherished as a visitor struck her, after she moved there, as mere vegetation and rocks [...].

He learned from experience what he wanted to learn and forgot the rest.

His parents were Jewish and his look, he claimed, was “Asian nerd” because—he claimed—Jews are Asians. It was the worst brand of geek irony, offensive, yet opaque, based on an old fascist idea that Jews are “Orientals.”

We were both determined to see our lives witnessed, though our commentary remained superficial and beside the point, as befits children.

A ten-year-old stepchild represented circa eight years of unpaid labor and a potential twenty thousand dollars in earned income tax credits, if the IRS played along.

I am certain that in their minds no real man was ever naked. Identity was a question of tools, machines, leathers, and weapons.

In 1978, California Proposition 13 limited local property taxes to one percent of a home’s 1976 assessment. Moves, additions, and new construction triggered punishing reassessments. To maintain conspicuous consumption while living in the same modest houses for fifty years, rich people took up gardening.