The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Disclaimer: this story is based on real events, but is no way are a journalistic recording of what actually transpired. Harvey High was a real person and we had this conversation. That’s all I will admit to. I heard Harvey High died a few months after this story took place, but I might be wrong. I sure…
How can a cabaret act have an unprintable name and still succeed?
Repost from 2017 for Christmas. In June of 1999 I was traveling back to Portland after visiting my father in Tucson with my three-year-old daughter in tow. We missed a connection and wound up in the Las Vegas Airport. It was my first time in that city, and in the late hour the airport was almost empty An…
November 23rd, 1997 The neighborhood was located in a little triangle formed by the intersection of two major highways. For once, the highway designers had gotten it right, placing the on and off-ramps in such a way that they were both invisible and practically inaudible to the homes of the neighborhood. My friends Holly and…
In the late 90s. Portland experienced a “heroin renaissance” when a lot of cheap junk saturated the city. It took a toll. I would see junkies nodding in doorways, or sometimes doing the “junkie lean” in the middle of the sidewalk. When high they were ethereal beings. They seemed to dwell on a different plane. Their edges…
This is a shorter vignette, almost a poem. It dates from October, 1999. The rainy city poised on the brink of a new millennium, floodlit cranes in sharp relief against the blooms of gray mist. The world was full of possibilities for a man just past thirty, full of longing. This little piece brims with some…
One of the benefits of city living is that you generally don’t need a car–f you are willing to make certain compromises. Cargo carrying is one of them. Groceries, laundry and other bulky errands require ingenuity and planning. Groceries especially, since laundry can be put off ad infinitum. I grew up in the supermarket era.…