“Fooling Around with Neil”

Someone on Goodreads wrote of  Lunch in Brooklyn, “But where was the fooling around with Neil part??”

This was my first published story, in Sassy, July 1992. It takes place in 11th grade, as the small Quaker school years are coming to a close. The story was built backwards from a note my husband had left me one day, of the “going out, back 5ish” variety, where at the end he scrawled something, which could have been “love” or “later,”  I really couldn’t tell. In the context of the note and our relationship, it was insignificant, but what if this were something a boy had written in a girl’s yearbook?

The other day I did a search on the story title and up popped a blog of the same name with a stated (and very much unfulfilled) intention to create a screenplay based on the story. The story was 22 years ago, the blog 10, but who doesn’t like to write something that has been remembered?

Have Lunch in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood

Read a little more of Lunch on Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.

“The Gift of Tongues” combines the New Yorker’s love of rooftops with the middle schoolers love of the grotesque and overtly sexual.

And in the spirit of NYC 1970s autobiographical realness, here’s a picture of me in 7th grade, holding a light meter for my father, who was a photographer. New Yorkers will recognize the Fox Police locks.