The walls are white and bare. This is because what you put on bedroom walls is important, defining. I’m learning this by visiting with friends, seeing their bedroom walls decorated with posters of basketball stars, handsome quarterbacks, rock bands, even centerfolds in one case.
Greg Bottoms
Greg Bottoms is the author of eight books of creative nonfiction and short fiction, including the memoirs Angelhead (2000) and Lowest White Boy (2019). His essays have appeared in Agni, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Harper's, Oxford American, River Teeth, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of Vermont, where he is a Professor of English.
One Summer Morning
It was the first devastation I experienced in life, the first time I knew existence was temporary, even though I vaguely believed then in the conventional idea of a Protestant Christian afterlife, believed we all reunited as our conscious selves in eternity with the ones we love, sort of like in a vacation home rental somewhere.