Empty Calories and Male Curiosity: Stories

by Ted McLoof

In a blue-collar New Jersey town at the turn of the millennium, teenagers navigate the strange territory between childhood and whatever comes next. They grapple with sex, drugs, 9/11, and Tom Cruise while wondering if any adult around them is worth becoming.

In "Future Girl," the AIDS crisis delivers unexpected lessons in grief. In "Elegy for a Sporting Goods Store," the dawn of the internet threatens their after-school mom-and-pop jobs. In "The View from Hawthorne Heights," they weigh the looming Iraq War against the pop music on their radio.

As technology creeps closer and history unfolds in real-time, these Jersey kids deploy every tool they can find to keep reality at arm's length—for just a little while longer.

Ted McLoof teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, but he is and always will be deeply from New Jersey. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, Hobart, Minnesota Review, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His story collection Anhedonia was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. Empty Calories and Male Curiosity: Stories is his second book.