The Man Who Sawed Off His Own Arm

Pinned upside down in his wrecked van, Lee Risler felt himself being reclaimed by nature, like a carcass. That's when he did what he had to do. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( An Imperfect Weekend At dawn on the third day, Lee Risler awoke in bed, his face buried in the rumpled nest of his feather pillow. The sheets were warm and soft and familiar, redolent of Ivory detergent and dry Mojave air. Chickadees sang in the locust trees outside his window, the fountain gurgled in the grove. He turned his head slowly, luxuriantly, toward the night table, opened his eyes. His clock was in its usual place, as was his book, his glasses, his framed picture of Bryn and the kids. He felt his lips form a smile. He lay there a few minutes, nuzzling into the pillow, swimming languidly upward from the depths of sleep. Ahhh, this feels soooo good, he told himself. I'm so happy I made it out. He drew a long cleansing breath through his nose, let the air fill his diaphragm, his lungs. He exhaled through his mouth—a light, controlled, sibilant stream. At last, he moved to get out of bed. He'd been gone for a while. There was much to do. But he couldn't get up. He was stuck. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( Coming Home I spent the first decade of my life in Uvalde. I was born there; rode my bicycle to school there; saw my first movie there, at El Lasso Theatre; and spent the first allowance I ever earned there, to buy a grilled cheese sandwich at the Rexall Drugs. It’s where I had my first lemonade stand, on the corner of North Getty Street. It’s where I dug my bare toes deep into the St. Augustine roots on our front lawn to cool off on hot summer days; where, in the dirt alley behind our house, I got bitten by enough red ants to pass out; where I learned to join hands before meals and share my gratitude. I’m sickened by the spate of mass shootings in America—especially those at schools, which are supposed to be some of the safest of spaces for our children and the closest extensions of our own homes. But this time felt different, more personal. Now, for the first time, my innocent childhood memories of Uvalde felt naive—more like dreams than memories, slightly hazy and suddenly overly sacred. Times like these make us all feel a bit more foolish. We hug our kids a little longer, knowing their innocence won’t last as long as ours did, hoping their children won’t know the same. [Read the Full Story]( Troubadour's Pioneer Backpack Is Refined, Rugged, and Ready for Anything "You can’t only mean business, you gotta be it.” That’s the lesson I learned growing up watching my dad, a businessman, commanding the people around him. They were not yes men, and he was no tyrant. But they deferred to his words whether they worked for him or not. My mom explained that it’s all about respect—to get people to listen to you, you must earn their respect; and in dad's world of suits and ties, that not only being about business, but looking like it at the same time. Those were some big ass words for a small boy. But many years later, I was reminded of them when I was shopping for a backpack I would use daily. Troubadour’s Pioneer backpack is one I could envision my dad carrying with him to his office, looking all serious and determined, ready to take on the day and command respect—like how the Pioneer commanded my attention. I knew I had to give it a try when I caught myself staring at it for too long. While I'm not a businessman, and I seldom wear suits, it became my go-to carry for whenever I go out. It's the jack-of-all-trades backpack that absolutely means business. [Read the Full Story]( Haunting New Fiction From Joe Mungo Reed: "Islanders" There is still pleasure in these days occasionally. Now, for instance, Robert’s fingertips trace the bulge of my skull behind my crown, draw very slowly down my neck, over the raw skin, following tendon and taut muscle to the bumps of vertebrae between my shoulder blades. “That’s nice,” I say. He exhales. He starts again with the clippers. Over the whir, Robert says, “I always envied your hair.” I say, “I know,” because I do. Robert’s hair was thinning when I met him, cropped off (on my advice) by the time I moved in with him. My own hair has stuck around until today, though, not graying but losing color like an old photograph. “Hebridean hair,” we called it when we first bought the island and noted the way that the fierce winds would leave me looking like a cartoon madman. I think of mentioning this but then I look up at the bathroom mirror to see that Robert is weeping. I close my eyes. I hunch forward as he clips behind my left ear and the hair continues to tumble onto my shoulders. He would resist my commiseration, I think, and also—well—this is what he wanted. [Read the Full Story]( Saying Goodbye to My Chest I have never written about my chest, which seems bizarre given that I’m a writer and I process everything by writing about it. I’ve been living in this body for 34 years, and had the tissue I’m having removed for roughly 21 of them. During those 21 years I’ve taken dozens of workshops and written hundreds of pages. I’ve written about my relationship with my grandmother, my experience in locker rooms, my love for Bruce Springsteen. I’ve written about my feelings on marriage, my performance anxiety, a particularly memorable Greyhound bus ride. I’ve spent a year and a half in an MFA program, where all I do is write. And yet: I’ve never written about my chest. Not for the nineteen years I’ve been thinking about having this surgery. Not when I had my first consultation, when I was eighteen, or when I finally booked the date, seven months ago. Not even when I was fourteen years old and put on a binder for the first time. You couldn’t have torn me away from the mirror that day—I stood in my bedroom for I don’t know how long, marveling at the way my white T-shirt fell against my flat chest. There is no word for the pleasure of seeing yourself as you always imagined yourself to be, but that is exactly what I felt, looking into the blue plastic-framed glass in my childhood bedroom. Ecstasy comes close; euphoria is the word we sometimes use. Perhaps it is even simpler, though: I loved the way I looked. It had never occurred to me, before this day, that this was a feeling I could have. [Read the Full Story]( Meet Mike Krzyzewski, Retiree Exactly 142 days after Coach K became Mr. K for the first time in nearly 50 years, Mike Krzyzewski is telling me about his MasterClass. John Legend did one! So did Robin Roberts. The next day, he’ll jet off to Vegas, speak at a convention, play video poker, and take his wife, Mickie, out to eat. When Krzyzewski returns to Durham, you’ll find the man in his yard, pruning trees and handing out kibbles to his puppy—named . . . wait for it . . . Coach—who, of fucking course, “is actually a really good athlete.” Retirement! It happens. Even for a guy who won 1,202 college basketball games. “In retirement, although I’m not retired,” Krzyzewski, 75, clarifies, “I’m doing all the things I want to do.” I’d take a wild guess that talking to me wasn’t numero uno on his post-Duke bucket list. But he picked up the phone to promote Netflix’s The Redeem Team, out now, which gives the Last Dance treatment to the 2008 men’s U. S. basketball team. Now that he’s a civilian, would Krzyzewski finally like to share in a public forum how he really feels about N*rth Car*lina? “To focus on one school is not something I’ve ever done,” he says, totally deadpan. “I’ve tried to focus on winning a championship, and a win over a specific opponent can never be as good as a win over every opponent. And that’s the way I’ve looked at it my entire life.” Yeah. Still Coach K. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019