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Baffler Archives: Stories

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Inter Office Mail
January 10, 2013
As of this moment I am practicing the letter. Sitting alone at my kitchen table, tonight, ten-thirty, I am practicing how to write the perfect letter with my brand new Bic ball-point pen and stolen company stationery. The problem is that there are so many ways to write this ...

Then They Say You’re Drunk
January 09, 2013
The morning’s nutter was there. Brixton, Guy decided, must have more headcases per square inch than any other place in the world. He had sojourned in the great cities of the continents, had seen some sorry, deformed, trashy sights, but for multitudinous loonies Brixton was ...

Disnae Matter
January 07, 2013
Ah wis it that Disneyland in Florida, ken. Took hur n the bairn. Wi me gittin peyed oaf fi Ferranti’s, ah thoat its either dae somethin wi the dough or pish it doon the bog it the Willie Muir. Ah saw whit happened tae a loat ay other cunts; living like kings fir a while: ...

Clip-On Tie
September 23, 2012
I had a real problem with time during my first few weeks of guarding. I sought a way to compress it, to make the six hour shift go faster. I tried meditation but I’ve never been quite sure if I’m doing it right. It always feels like I’m just being quiet. Now I try not to ...

Famous Men
September 23, 2012
I have met the famous men, the gaunt Caucasians with the powers you’ve heard about and thought you could fight, the men of letters, their names known to the captains of publishing, the teachers of literature, and the readers of Esquire, men successful enough to dress like ...

Gedney Goes Underground
September 04, 2012
Extreme. Gedney Market typed on his Powerbook as the elevated train plunged into the ground just before Division Street on its journey to the Loop. The scrotum-spifflicating gtr of Luftboffer’s frontman/boy-toy Dirk Polnschlaeger strafes the global village with white-hot ...

I Am the Light
August 29, 2012
My name is Howard. I am the light. At first I was unaware of this, as you are now. But like you I came to understand what I am and what I must do. I am the way. Everything I do becomes legend. Remember the rock group Big Panty? Remember their slogan: DO BONGS? I used to work ...

Outside My Window
Outside my window: a gray day in Ann Arbor. Two cops—in shorts, on bicycles—glide by. A roiling sea of blue and gold middle-aged bodies ambling onward, purposefully. A sign on my front porch: “Reserved Parking Only.” A navy mini-van vomits forth a pot-bellied man with a ...

The Grace of God
August 29, 2012
“And then I came in and switched places,” says Blake, “and she thought I was Chris for quite some time and—” “Which would justify her enjoyment,” says Chris. Blake rolls his eyes with mock contempt which Chris either doesn’t notice or doesn’t acknowledge, ...

Nervous Ashers
August 29, 2012
There were mountain huts full of smallpox strung out along the hillsides between Escatawpa and Morgan City, birds boiling up and out of freestanding chimneys under the routine advent of rainbows and chainsaws, the old sound of cheap labor rising and falling in the weather that ...

The District Supervisor
May, 1946. Willard Rochester sat in his office in the Federal Building in Manhattan. He glanced at his watch. It was 10:15 p.m. He heard, clunking below like the steps of Jacob Marley in the basement, the footsteps of the night watchman. He looked at the coffeepot, idly ...