It was Will’s birthday. Not that it mattered much. Life doesn’t stop kicking your ass just because you lived another year. Will was the restaurant manager—my boss’s right-hand guy. Tall, sharp jaw, good cheekbones. Looked like that golden boy quarterback…

I was a haole—white mainlander—trying to manage construction projects on the west side of Oahu. Not just any projects. Big ones. Government jobs, infrastructure—projects that put you in the mix with hard men, Filipino and Hawaiian, most with tribal tattoos…

I owned a tequila bar called Amalia’s in Bend—a place where the guac was good, the tequila better, and I could walk in like Tony fuck-in’ Soprano. People came just to shake my hand, like I was some local legend,…

My time in Hawaii spanned five years, but it aged me like dog years—every day was a cocktail of beauty, danger, and cosmic slapstick. Before that, I’d done my time in Whittier, Cerritos, Norwalk, Compton—those cracked sidewalks of Los Angeles…

Kapolei was never pretty. Not really. It’s where you go when you’ve given up on Oahu fantasies and just want a place to sweat, sleep, and avoid eye contact with the neighbor who’s always shirtless and yelling at his dogs.…

She had the kind of body that distracted you mid-sentence—tattoos sleeved all the way down, Elizabeth Taylor eyes with a punk-rock grin, and a rack that could’ve broken treaties. Confident. Dangerous. Wild as hell. The kind of woman who didn’t…

I always wanted to be in a hurricane. Not read about one. Not watch it on the Weather Channel. Be in one. Feel it. Let it remind me I’m just skin, bone, and borrowed time. And as luck—or lunacy—would have…

I didn’t marry for love. Not the kind that keeps you up at night or makes your hands shake. Those twenty years were a loveless contract held together by the unconditional devotion we had for the kids. That was the…

I was pretty settled into my little spiritual routine. I wasn’t searching anymore—I was orbiting. Little rituals kept me alive. Sunsets, mostly. That was my thing. I’d throw a bottle of wine in my backpack and hike out somewhere high,…

I used to load up a backpack with two bottles of wine and a single glass. That was the ritual. No water, no food. Just the essentials: alcohol and intention. There was an old Afghan scarf I carried too, something…

I was working overtime in Sedona, self-purging, trying to scrape the bullshit off my soul with nothing but rocks and sweat. People had started calling me Tony Soprano, not because I killed anyone, but because I carried that alpha stink.…

You know, I was a kid once. A little boy. Like most of us, I was loved for just being me, for existing in the world, for breathing in and out, for being a puppy who wagged his tail. And…

You ever notice how men get lured into the hunt? They think they’re gonna bag a lot of deer—hell, that’s the whole damn point, right? The struggle, the build-up, the anticipation. You start to believe it’s all worth it, the…

I had invited 5,000 people to my Cinco de Mayo block party in front of my restaurant—yeah, a little more than I had bargained for. The Fire Marshal was threatening to shut me down, and I was already pulling people…

I remember the first time I saw my organic father. I didn’t need a paternity test, a long speech, or a blood draw. He came walking over the horizon in some dusty park, and even before he reached the bench…

I can honestly say I don’t have very many regrets, mostly because I don’t look back long enough to let them settle in. I usually just keep moving, forward, sideways, diagonally—doesn’t matter. Whatever direction the wind’s blowing, I ride it…

Buying a restaurant was supposed to be a straightforward venture—get some good food on the table, keep the booze flowing, make enough money to pay off the debts, and hopefully not end up hating the place. What I didn’t realize…

I was in my usual spot at the bar, nursing a drink, letting my buddy’s voice drone on like a busted air conditioner. Didn’t matter what he was saying. Bars aren’t for conversation; they’re for killing time, for numbing the…

I had nothing left. That’s what I remember most about that time in my life—being stripped down to the bone, down to the raw, ugly core of who I was when everything else was gone. I had lost my marriage,…

I was wasting away in Scottsdale, drinking through the last embers of what little money I had left. Sundays were for debauchery, the kind you could almost pass off as brunch if you threw an omelet next to your beer.…

I had one goal: burn through every last dollar. Spent a year in Sedona pretending to find myself, then three more in Scottsdale pretending to be someone else—someone who had money, women, and all the time in the world. I…

The Walmart Bathing Suit Suicide Now that my father had made his grand public declaration—that my brother’s wife was no longer welcome, that he and his robotic wife were done with grandparenting, and that they wanted nothing to do with…

They say men need a partner. Someone to keep them in check, to balance the chaos. Someone to remind them to take out the trash before their home turns into a breeding ground for Satan’s larvae. But I wasn’t interested…

I spent a couple of days scouring Sedona for a place to stay, running out of patience, running out of money, when I stumbled across a Craigslist ad for a casita in Oak Creek Valley. Drove by, took a look,…

After New Mexico—after massages that sent my soul drifting somewhere between this world and the next—we drank our days into oblivion. And at night, if I missed my daily quota of five love-making sessions, my Amazon blonde would transform into…

We hit Albuquerque first, only to find out the festival had been shut down by bad weather. So we did what lovers do when the world disappoints—we holed up in a Marriott, drowned our sorrows in each other, and killed…

I was parked at some nameless, piss-stained rest stop outside Las Vegas, staring at the neon glow of the city and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Just hours earlier, I had packed up my shit,…

There was a moment—one of those rare, raw moments—when my organic father leaned in close, hand on my neck, and asked, “Can I ask you something?” His voice had that serious weight to it, like he was about to drop…

I had just taken a beating in court. Five days of legal torture, representing myself because I was out of money, while my soon-to-be ex-wife threw every lie, every exaggeration, every twisted half-truth at the judge, hoping something would stick.…

Hospitals smell like death. Not the fresh kind, not the blood and guts and screaming kind, but the slow, sterile decay of people waiting to be taken. I sat next to my dad in the ICU, watching the machines do…

My little brother Ryan never got much out of life. The scraps he did get weren’t worth having. My dad and mom divorced when he was still in the crib, and from there, he was more or less on his…

The Blood That Binds and the Knives That Cut When I got the call that my dad had cancer, I didn’t hesitate. I raced down to see him, to make sure he was still standing, still him. He and Nick…

It was always a ritual. Whenever life felt too heavy, or the longing for a simpler, warmer connection grew too strong, I’d pack everyone up in the Suburban and race down to see Grandma. Sometimes, I didn’t even wait for…