Maz Do

Aug 9, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Maz Do

Every corner of the dead woman’s house smelled of her perfume, the kind a woman wears when she’s seventy-two, well-traveled, and extravagant. Everything had gone badly for her, we knew—she wasn’t like our grandmas or great aunts before them, who spent life carefully, thriftily, never overdoing it, rationing out a coin for each day well-earned. That was the way they’d raised our mothers and how our mothers, in turn, raised us. No, she was like no woman we’d ever met.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Dylan Levi King |Maz Do

In 2004, when I was seventeen years old and invested in the idea that young people should experiment with psychedelic drugs, I checked into a motel on Albert Street in Regina, Saskatchewan; sprinkled a research chemical called α-Methyltryptamine from a tinfoil wrap onto a pair of Wendy’s chicken tenders; and rinsed the foul taste out of my mouth with a pony of Black Velvet rye.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Ann Neumann |Jasper Craven |Rafia Zakaria |Maz Do

The first time I saw a dying patient suffer through extreme pain came shortly after I joined a hospice volunteer program in Manhattan. I was assigned to visit Marshall, a former welder, who occupied a double room in an all-HIV facility on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side. Our first visit was quiet. Marshall seemed too demoralized by his condition to entertain a guest, so we watched TV. But when I arrived for our second visit, I found him literally doubled over.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Donald Morrison |Tarence Ray |Maz Do

It has been close to ten years since I’ve ridden a bike through downtown Portland, Oregon. I was born and raised just outside the city, in a quiet suburb called Tigard, and I have vivid memories of taking my father’s bike as a teenager, loading it onto the TriMet bus, and riding an hour north, where I’d deboard and cruise the lush, green streets. I’d stop for water, needles, and dope—before settling down somewhere along the Willamette River to get high.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Ian Dreiblatt |Maz Do

Explanation alone cannot explain our parlous state of affairs.