Things Men Carry

30/04/2024

There's a scene in the movie Boondock Saints when Willem Dafoe, who plays an FBI agent, is standing in the middle of a neighborhood where a gun fight happened. It’s a crime scene. There’s carnage everywhere. Dafoe, or Agent Paul Smecker, plays back to all the forensics guys and others what he thinks took place in an attempt to solve this case....

There’s a scene in the movie Boondock Saints when Willem Dafoe, who plays an FBI agent, is standing in the middle of a neighborhood where a gun fight happened. It’s a crime scene. There’s c…

28/03/2024

I don’t know where he’d come up with it, or if he coined it himself, but he’d say s**t sometimes like, “Liquor's quicker, candy's dandy, but p***y don't rot the gums.” He was a lot of things. Funny was one of them. Irreverent. Once he called a school priest a pious fool to his face at what I think anyway was one of my high school fundraisers....

I don’t know where he’d come up with it, or if he coined it himself, but he’d say s**t sometimes like, “Liquor’s quicker, candy’s dandy, but p***y don’t rot the gums.”  He wa…

07/03/2024

I live in a small burb outside of Seattle. There are parts way richer and parts way sketchier, but where I live is pretty much blue collar. Everyone is armed just about. There are no Biden signs on front lawns. There are no Trump signs, either. That can only mean one thing: they’re voting for Trump. People who vote for Trump are generally very quiet or elusive about voting for Trump....

I live in a small burb outside of Seattle.  There are parts way richer and parts way sketchier, but where I live is pretty much blue collar.  Everyone is armed just about. …

04/02/2024

I was fresh out of Quartermaster school and everything, and I'd write him letters in morse. Dit-da-dit kind of stuff. He corrected me. In morse. It had to be close to fifty years for him since his last time talking to ships via morse off the Island of Sao Miguel in the Portuguese Azores, and the old son of a bitch would correct me....

I was fresh out of Quartermaster school and everything, and I’d write him letters in morse. Dit-da-dit kind of stuff.  He corrected me. In morse. It had to be close to fifty years for him sin…

25/01/2024

Goes fast🥲

It’s official. You can leave the house now and rent your own apartment. Order up a tattoo and put it anywhere. You can vote. Drive for Uber (in that thing?). Okay, maybe not. So many more thi…

28/12/2023

I cried Monday. A lot. It was at my home parish decked out in Christmas celebration. Poinsettias and glittery Christmas trees and a standalone, gazebo-like structure with cream-colored silks for a cover, while underneath a nativity scene. I cried for the baby who would just wind up getting insulted and berated His whole adult life. He still does. I cried for my mother who was buried 35 Christmas Eves ago, …...

I cried Monday. A lot. It was at my home parish decked out in Christmas celebration. Poinsettias and glittery Christmas trees and a standalone, gazebo-like structure with cream-colored silks for a …

05/12/2023

We loves us some good fiction 'round here. Many thanks to author Tim O'Leary for this piece. Now don't just go looking for his latest collection, Men Behaving Badly, where this story is published; buy a dang copy.

In retrospect, I never should have put that snake in Annemarie Kitsap’s mailbox. It wasn’t like it was a rattler or cottonmouth. Nothing that would jump out and fang you. Just a big bull. Ferocious…

29/11/2023

Anyway, how was your Thanksgiving?

After my biological white mom got knocked up by my biological brown dad, she passed me over to the nuns the second that I was out the chute. She then took a little time off from getting pregnant so…

23/11/2023

I can’t tell him it’s just a charley horse. That’s about as quack advice as, Guess what, Dawg, there’s much much worse on the horizon--mom and dad going t**s up, an injury, take your pick--and that's gonna be the real weight that'll take the air out from under your stride someday. This ain't nothing but a charley horse Like that's gonna make it smooth over, sure....

I can’t tell him it’s just a charley horse. That’s about as quack advice as, Guess what, Dawg, there’s much much worse on the horizon–mom and dad going t**s up, an injury, take your pick& #821…

13/11/2023

To life, here here

(This is part I of II. Meet part II here shortly )

13/11/2023

To life again, here here

So many thanks to Mike for letting us share this incredible, life affirming story with our readers. Cheers, Homie.

13/11/2023

Light reading (yeah, right)

I reach out to a homie very recently about Gaza. We’re not that close he and I, but every time we get together we banter ethnically, which means we flip each other s**t for being more superio…

13/11/2023

When all you got are f-bombs, hand the reins over to You Know Who

I want you to know One thing. You know how this is:If I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashof the wrinkled body of th…

13/11/2023

From Victoria

After asking some friends which app-based dating site they would recommend, several suggested Tinder. “But I thought Tinder was just for casual hookups? And that, that’s not really what I’m looking…

13/11/2023

On being a dad.

I was a total mama’s boy. Right up ’til my late teens. She did everything for me. She took care of business the day the doberman snarled at us from a stone wall. Well, that maybe doesn&…

13/11/2023

Yes, we fancy ourselves actual kings around here. Plenty more where this came from.

Like we agreed at the outset, one of us would stand outside next to the other’s coffin before it’s about to be lowered.  It’s a little sad too of course. I didn’t want …

13/11/2023

Meet Victoria

So, shall we talk about dating? I’ve got a slightly different perspective on it these days. Let me start with I’m an attractive (I’m told hot), single, stylish, white (does it matter?), educated pr…

13/11/2023

Another one posted a little earlier this year

It was around the start of Lent, and after about a week of being passed out in the hospital, when a very dear homie of mine finally came to. It was like this really intense, can’t-seem-to-wak…

13/11/2023

A little later a posting than I planned, but see last post detailing the fubar with Facebook, er, Meta.

I like this David Benavidez. He swears a lot. At the gym, in interviews on Showtime. He made easy work of Kyrone Davis some time around the pandemic (2021) and then, in the post-fight interview wit…

06/11/2023

Hello friends! It seems there was some tomf**kery perpetrated some time back--FB transitioning to Meta?--hell if I know. Point is I couldn't post writings from TMC on to this site. I spent a lot of time with my domain host today. I think it's been un-tomf**keried. Do me a solid? Reply to this post and lemme know you got it? Thanks in advance.
Neal

23/03/2023

https://thingsmencarry.com/2023/03/22/theres-violence-coming/

I think about what would I do if I were to lose my cushy day job as a come-home-everyday mariner. It’s very unusual for guys in my trade to be able to do that. But what if something were to h…

24/11/2022

Title of piece purty much covers it. Happy Thanksgiving, homies

I didn’t have a housewarming party. I just figured if someone came over, knowing it was a new house I’d bought, they would just do the natural thing and bring something to help christen…

01/11/2022

S**t, I meant to post a few weeks ago. No wonder my readership's down:)

A few times this past year I was faced with a question that felt like something frothy-toothed and unsettling standing over me. It even happened on a few dates I went on. This one time I got into i…

30/08/2022

Assuming this applies to you, you can do it.

I’ll just keep going, then.  Floor’s yours when you want it back, David. When the CDC the other day admitted publicly that they could’ve done a better job, I thought to mysel…