Funny Stories from the Bottomless Pit is a collection of short stories. The heroes of these stories are often homeless and usually mentally ill to one degree or another - bipolar, autistic, schizophrenic, delusional, and so on. We got it all. Oh, and alcoholics. We got alcoholics galore. The young ones are runaways. The older ones are unemployed or in the process of being fired or quitting. Almost all of them are suicidal. They bump into each other over the course of these ten stories, which took thirty years to write, try to cheer each other up. The first story, As Marbles Go, was written in 1986 after I dropped out of high school. It won a junior college prize and was published in their journal even though it was an ugly mess of spelling and grammar mistakes. It has since been revised, cleaned up. Excerpt from As Marble Go: "That realization created a tiny explosion inside his head, unlocking it, and his marbles spilled out onto the floor. Some of them bounced over to where all those cute girls in wool sweaters sat. They had never noticed Humberto as he ogled them from the back row and they still didn't, snobs to the end. Even as his mind machinery lay exposed at their feet, all they could manage was to be disgusted that a boy so inferior to them had had such a horrific accident so near them. What was his problem anyway? A few marbles kept dribbling and spinning and then hopped down the long trail of stairs, for what seemed like forever, and eventually rolled right in between the professor's polished shoes, amid gasps from the class. The professor glared at Humberto above his eye glasses and then aggressively kicked the marble, a small green one, off his stage. The entire class broke into laughter, embarrassing what was left of Humberto as he gathered his books and abruptly headed for the exit, slipping on several marbles along the way out, each fall invoking more laughter."