Stories Archives - Sensitive Skin Magazine

Intersection

Bari Lynn Hein

I come here every Friday. Same time – between three and three thirty, before rush hour. No one knows I come. In the summer it was easy to gather the dead flowers from the week before; all I had to do was snap their dry ...

The Liver of a Beagle

Ann Levin

If I hadn’t known before, then I knew on the plane. Everything was different. It was the first time I could remember that I wasn’t afraid of flying. I couldn’t drink, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t even need the al...

What Life Dictates

Peter Wortsman

New neighbors. The walls are thin. The mole on her chin makes it safe to fantasize, or so I think. “I’m Crowley,” she says, “that’s Jim.” Jim the Psycho gives me a look that says: I’ll kill you if I ca...

AS HE TOLD IT (In Kitchens)

Bonny Finberg

Love, built on mutual fantasy in order to fortify against loneliness, eventually becomes a prison. I approach the beginning of the end never really having had love that doesn't feel like a betrayal. Anyone I have ever...

Confessions of a Bad Boy: An Act in Fore Plays

J. K.

Play One Hot car and hot girl after two hot nights. Pushing the pedal, I sped my new girlfriend’s blue Mustang down the Bay Area Autobahn. I could hurtle for miles at a buck twenty—if it wasn’t for the CHP. San Fran...

Two Micro Stories by Roberta Allen

Roberta Allen

THE DYING MAN The dying man just told the barmaid and two customers that he is dying. The two men stare at their drinks. The barmaid washes glasses so she doesn’t have to look at the dying man. “I’m so sorry,”...

S02E03 – Sensitive Skin Live At San Francisco LitCrawl

Bernard Meisler

Sensitive Skin live at LitCrawl, recorded at the Valencia Room, San Francisco. Instead of the usual conversation, why not give a listen to last week's Sensitive Skin reading at LitCrawl, live from San Francisco? Reade...

Problem Child

Ron Kolm

It all started with a big bang -- the sound of something heavy smashing against a wall, and it came from the apartment directly below mine. I headed out into the hallway to see what had happened, and was greeted by the secon...

East of Bowery & The Circus Life

Drew Hubner

East of Bowery was what my mother called the place where we lived when I was a kid, and this is the way our family lived: when my mom wasn’t completely drunk yet, and if my dad got high in time, he might come in and Diz, m...

Episode 18 – Rob Roberge

Bernard Meisler

Rob Roberge in conversation with Bernard Meisler. Rob Roberge Rob Roberge, novelist (The Cost of Living, More Than They Could Chew, etc.), memoirist (Liar) and guitarist (The Urinals) and I spoke about everything from ...

20 Feet from Enlightenment: A Coming of Sage Story

J. Macon King

Never cease from exploring the other side of that ridge... even though you may get lost, or step on a rattlesnake. Here in California I sometimes feel a bit guilty for not being spiritually woo woo enough. I’m just a regul...

Episode 17 – Andrew Hubner

Bernard Meisler

Andrew (Drew) Hubner in conversation with Bernard Meisler. Andrew (Drew) Hubner, is the author of East of Bowery, We Pierce and American By Blood, and an educator at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. We spoke abo...

Invisible Sharks

Mike Roberts

I spent a fair amount of time in the Gulf of Oman back in 1988. My shipmates and I were escorting Saddam Hussein’s oil tankers through the Straights of Hormuz, where the Iranians liked to take shots at them with their Silk...

Episode 12 – Norman Douglas

Bernard Meisler

Norman Douglas in conversation with Bernard Meisler. Norman Douglas, Bernard Meisler and Tina Carstensen, relaxing in her Avenue D apartment, 1986 Norman Douglas is a writer (though he says he's not) and a poet (though...

Warren Oates Possessed It

Philip Quinn

It was more important than importance itself to get it right, to shoot the damn movie and make sure the actor actually a friend who wanted to be an actor got it right, namely that expression on his face that made him seem li...