Middle Class American White Boy

I’ve been a scribbler since I plagiarized Stephen Stills’ anthem to love Suite: Judy Blue Eyes back in high school in an effort to win over a pretty girl who thought I was nothing but a loud, obnoxious jock. I wanted her to know I had a soft side.

It worked! And I learned the power of the written word.

I soon began to scribble original poetry and prose. God awful stuff. Cliché-ridden, melodramatic gobble-de-gook.

But I kept at it and, well, became reasonably adept at stringing the words together

So what is this Middle Class American White Boy all about?

It’s sort of a memoir in verse. This Second Edition contains twenty stories (narratives) from some crucial or mind-expanding time in my life. The idea is to tell as much story as possible in the fewest possible words. The Universe, for instance—my own personal War & Peace—tells the tale of my time in Argentina during the Dirty War. When I wrote the account many years ago it topped out at almost 30,000 words. I have now reduced that same story to a narrative verse of just over 900 words.

You can read (either silently or aloud) each story in the collection in 2-8 minutes. To hold your attention for even that long—before you scroll away or wander off—I try to create one rapid-fire image after another in your brain.

Middle Class American White Boy unfolds chronologically. I travel. I dream. I mature. I write. I publish. I fall in love. I marry. I become a father. My view of life and what is important expands and changes. Always, in every narrative, I question the status quo, especially my own.

But no matter how far I roam, deep I think, or believe to the contrary, I am and always will be a Middle Class American White Boy.

As we say here in America: Say la V!



Cover Art Public Domain. Geronimo, of the Bedonkohe band of the Apache, whose ancestors first arrived in what would become known as the American Southwest around AD 1200.