125 of 210 : Mary Beth

Let’s see: she’s my half-brother’s son’s wife’s mother. Which means we’re not really related, thank God. She sent me the most inflammatory email, unbelievably homophobic and racist. I explained how offensive it was. She said she hadn’t actually read it before forwarding it. I told her that was even worse.

124 of 210 : Cisco and Vicenta

Fullblood Yaquis, they gave me my “Indian name,” as they called it: Maito Sewa Yoleme. El Milador de Milagros. I saw them in a dream two years before I met them. Heroin stole a few years from Cisco, and even treasured friendships can fade, but I still feel their presence.

123 of 210 : Carl

We’d sing the night away at Friends, our favorite piano bar (there was nothing Carl couldn't play, but he loved the old standards best). At 2 we’d go dancing at eXile, then around dawn head to Au Pied du Cochon in Georgetown, where we’d unfailingly order lobster and fried eggs.

122 of 210 : The Stamp Man

We went back to his house for drinks after Ingrid’s. Once there he accused us of stealing his stamp collection. He showed us his badly burned torso—courtesy, he said, of his ex-wife who similarly coveted his stamps. When he pulled a large kitchen knife, we ran for our lives.

121 of 210 : Julie

When my cousin divorced her first husband, it was for good reason. She then married a sweet, hardworking guy who was devoted to her daughters and utterly worshiped her. This week we learned that she’s left him and is in love with someone else. Even her daughters think she’s nuts.

120 of 210 : The Astrologer

I went to a professional to me help interpret my birth chart. He studied the printout in silence for several uncomfortable minutes, occasionally glancing up at me nervously. Then he rubbed his hands together and said, gamely, “Well, let’s try to find something that’s positive in this chart, shall we?”

119 of 210 : Sal

Few college characters were more fascinating than the drug-and-drink-addled fellow who lived next door. One early morning I answered the banging on my door to find Sal standing there, stark naked and with a raging erection, asking if I had orange juice so he could make screwdrivers for his girlfriend.

118 of 210 : Holly #2

I honestly can’t recall how we met, but she was four years my junior, and in my senior year in college I took her to her high school prom. She had a smoking body, and a smoky, sexy, DJ’s voice. Alas, I was more interested in her (male) best friend.

117 of 210 : Holly #1

A sweet girl with a hole in her heart. When we became friends, she warned me that if she ever fainted, I was to let her lie still, and she’d come to after a few minutes. One day, on the way to dinner, she fainted. But she never came to.

116 of 210 : Marguerite

When I was a baby, she’d carry me with my head in the palm of her hand, my body draped across her forearm; I’d giggle continuously as I watched the world go by. We start out in bliss, then spend the rest of our lives trying to find it again.

115 of 210 : Pick Temple

Even though I’d already been on Romper Room, I found myself on the Pick Temple Show, a local Western-themed kid’s show. Those of us in the onstage Peanut Gallery saw what went on behind the scenes in making a television show, and I wasn’t alone in finding it terribly disillusioning.

114 of 210 : J.D.

J.D.’s horse came to me in a dream. “Tell them he’s afraid of his power, that his bluster will disappear when he embraces his talents as healer and psychopomp.” I’ll also tell you he fashions singular works of wearable art from stones and wire. Power will out, as they say.

113 of 210 : Gregg

Pen-pal Gregg forwarded some oddly poetic e-spam, translated from the Russian: Let us restore the neglected calculation. Leader! From you suddenly left bookkeeper? You they did betray? You are substituted? Tomorrow tax? Bookkeeping cruelty! Tracking calculation by our specialized company, minimization of Nalogooblazheniya, resolution of debatable questions in tax organs.

112 of 210 : Pat #4

Your classic playground bully. Pat was bigger, heavier, and stronger than any other fourth grader, but still found it necessary to terrorize everyone else. When he showed up with a badly sprained but inartfully wrapped thumb, he was frightened and in serious pain. I made friends with him that day.

111 of 210 : Pat #3

Pat and Ginger were best man and matron of honor at my parents’ wedding. When Ginger became ill, Pat took care of her. When Pat became ill, I drove him to treatments. She went to a nursing home, he went to hospice; a month later, they died—two days apart.

110 of 210 : Pat #2

I’ve never felt such loathing for another human being. She was my receptionist, but seeing as how she was the president and founder’s sister-in-law, I could hardly fire her. Incompetent, nasty, rebellious, lazy, and crazy to boot. Only after her husband died of AIDS did we have a genuine conversation.

109 of 210 : Pat #1

He’s known as the Nathan Lane of Central Illinois. His dinner theatre costumes are often rather loud. “I know that spam generators string together random phrases to slip past filters,” he writes, “but this email I received is just insulting!” Thank you for your interest in circus clothes, it began.

108 of 210 : Gerry

Jim had a crush on Gerry’s roommate, Jody, so he persuaded me to invite them both over for dinner. When we paired off for conversation after dessert, I learned that she and Jody were a couple, and frantically tried to catch Jim’s eye before he said something embarrassing. Too late!

107 of 210 : The Thompsons

Our next-door neighbors’ dog, Pinky—a Dalmatian with a pink nose and pinkish spots—dearly loved one particular sparrow who’d come down and perch on his back while he’d lay in the yard. One day he rolled over and accidentally crushed his little friend, and he mourned visibly for weeks.

106 of 210 : Karen

She would talk and talk and talk and smoke and then talk some more. Things turned around when she got a silky black Lab-Whippet mix, Chip, the virtual mirror image of my blond Lab-Whippet mix, Goldie. I’d let her talk all she wanted just so the dogs could romp together.

105 of 210 : The Landlords

She was sweetness personified. He was pleasant for maybe one month. She’d bake me cookies, ask me to dog-sit, invite me to use their truck if my car died. He’d complain about the basement flooding, the ancient refrigerator dying, the woodpile just being. It was two years of passive-aggressive misery.

104 of 210 : Phoebe

She took my hands and, trembling stongly, transferred energy into me. Even though nothing in my experience of her indicated that she had such talent, I felt a strange electricity (less dangerous but more powerful, somehow) pass from her into me. And my crushing headache was gone in an instant.

103 of 210 : Melissa

First she was Missy, the funny gay woman. Then she became Melissa, the conflicted lesbian who fell in love with her boss, Carole. Then she became Melissa, the serious straight woman who fell in love with her decidedly married boss, George. I long for the happy, uncomplicated days of Missy.

102 of 210 : The Mountie

I lost my wallet in rural British Columbia, and some beneficent soul turned it in to the RCMP. A Mountie counted and carefully dried every bill, tried very hard to find me, and was altogether gracious. Unusual kindness and honesty? “Well, no,” he said, quizzically. “Then again . . . this isn’t Vancouver!”

101 of 210 : Mark #2

Speaks with a slight Irish accent, always has, even though he was born and raised in Kentucky and his family members have suitably Southern drawls and aren’t particularly Celtic in their lineage. Always seems rather skittish, afraid of the world, despite innumerable self-empowerment seminars. Makes you want to kick him.

100 of 210 : N.

Wounds happen. The more you make yourself open and vulnerable to someone, the greater the peril. Many times, happily, your risk is rewarded with trust, intimacy, love. Then again, sometimes you get hurt so profoundly that you wonder if the wound can ever heal. Mine did, but it took years.

99 of 210 : Brad

He’s not what you’d call a shy person. But the afternoon he took us out behind the art gallery to the storage building crammed with beautiful antiques in various stages of restoration, and pulled out several indescribably powerful collages he had created, he was as bashful as a little boy.

98 of 210 : Mr. LeMahieu

First I corrected his slipshod discussion of Eliot in front of the class. Repeatedly. Then, when he angrily called me into his office, I told him to come to class fully prepared or I’d tell the dean of his affair with a student. Amazing what a little blackmail can do.

97 of 210 : Chuck

Those poor bats. Violently roused from their sleep by fire and smoke, they flew wildly up from the dry well and collapsed on the ground, gasping for air. Chuck and I thought it great sport, and did it again and again. How could we have been capable of such cruelty?

96 of 210 : Stephen

One day my friend Stephen broke into his neighbor’s home, stole the old woman’s jewelry, and bashed her head in with a lead pipe. “All my l-life I’ve been b-b-blamed for things I d-d-didn’t do,” he explained. “I g-guess I just wanted to be b-blamed for s-s-something I d-did do.”

95 of 210 : Wanda

She was homely, her hygeine was frightful, and she had a nasty attitude: a misfit among us misfits. One day I walked her home. The filth was indescribable, flies swarming everywhere; her father was absent, her mother a drunk. I pitied her acutely, but still didn’t want to befriend her.