Dave's Fiction Warehouse

A new year that already feels old I have this theory that decades, from a historical perspective, don’t really start or end on the years that end in 0. A casual look at the last hundred years or so suggests that real changes in the zeitgeist don’t become apparent until the third or fourth year of any given decade. That’s a facile rule, I know, and one full of exceptions. But if you cherry-pick the history, you can make a plausible case.   For example, it’s hard to argue that the memories we associate with the Sixties started on Jan. 1, 1960. It’s more like 1963, with the birth of Beatlemania and the Civil Rights movement coming to a head and the assassination of JFK.  That was also the year the Viet Cong really became a thing – which would end up killing more than 50,000 Americans over the ensuing decade.  The seventies, in turn, didn’t start until 1973 or so, with the rise of Disco and the formal end of the Vietnam war and the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon i...

L ast night we headed for bed just before midnight. The New Year’s Eve gunfire was like the opening battle scene in “Saving Private Ryan,” to the point that the dog followed us upstairs to cower by the bed. My wife asked me what my hopes for 2018 might be. She asks things like that. I hadn’t thought much about it, but the answer came pretty quickly: “To see Donald Trump driven from office in disgrace.” I don’t know if that says more about me, or more about Trump. Is my life so barren that I should for the first time in my life care that much who occupies the White House? Or is this president so loathsome in every respect that his ouster should be my fondest wish? Obviously, I’m going with the latter. Trump cast a pall over pretty much every day last year, a thickening miasma of dread and disgust that all the late-night comics in the world couldn’t quite dispel. I woke up in the morning with minor hopes and dreams, and every day there was some new outrage concerning Trump and his terrib...

S hould auld acquaintance be forgot? Probably not, but life goes on, you know? One of the few things I really loved about the movie "When Harry Met Sally" was Billy Crystal’s frank admission that he didn’t know what the hell “Auld Lang Syne” was supposed to mean. I don’t either. But if I’ve had a bit too much drink on New Year’s Eve — and that is not unheard-of at the Warehouse — I still can get misty-eyed over the song, watching the boozy couples sway amid the confetti. Probably because the generally accepted meaning of “Auld Lang Syne” boils down to “for the old times.” Who can’t drink to that? The older I get, the better I was. With all due respect to Robert Burns, here’s a ballad composed by James Watson in 1711 that is a bit easier to comprehend: Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon; The flames of Love extinguished, and fully past and gone: Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold, that loving Breast of thine; That thou canst never once reflect On Old lo...

J anuary is named for the two-faced Roman god Janus, who looks into the future with one face and into the past with the other. That's kind of where I'm at, too. On these dark days following the winter solstice, I look at the year ahead and resolve to be better in some small way, even as I look at the year past and realize how unlikely that is. Was it just 12 months ago I was standing in front of this same mirror, vowing to hit the gym, cut down on the fatty foods and take it easy on the wine? I think it was.  Those vows are too easy to make after the excesses of the holiday season. Suddenly the waistband is a little too snug and you've got some acid reflux going on, and a little headache just behind the eyes, and you realize that in a whole year all you've achieved is another trip around the sun with everybody else. It really is time to make a change, you think, and this time the change will extend beyond the first week of February.  Which no doubt why the Romans inve...

The New York Times runs a blog called Proof, wherein various contributors hold forth on the meaning of booze in their lives. As you might guess, a fair number of them are alcoholics or the children of alcoholics. Their posts smolder with the pain of a drunken past and austere pride at having taken a better path. I salute them. That can't be easy. In fact, I propose a toast ... I started drinking at 16. Vodka and 7-Up in a paper cup. It tasted like kerosene; in retrospect, maybe it needed a bit more 7-Up. But it made an impression, the magical way acquaintances became friends, mundane thoughts became profound, sophomoric jests became uproarious. I didn't get sick, didn't black out, didn't even have a hangover the next morning. I was a shy person who'd stumbled on to a reliable way of becoming less shy. Imagine if you had a bad case of acne and you could apply something that would make the zits vanish, if only for an evening. That was how I felt. I've been drinki...