At parent-teacher conferences, Mr. B suggests that my son, Django, explore other genres over the summer. My son is gorgeous, broad-shouldered with curly-blonde surfer hair. “Do you really think that?” he wants to know. “Or do you just have to say that because of the standards?” He’s also a sharp one. A full grade ahead […]
I was in Montana the night we lost my sister. But I was on my way home, too. What? I was. Montana was a bust. Like Brazil before it. But different, I suppose. Montana was a bust in an I-accidentally-moved-in-with-a-male-stripper-who-gets-into-knife-fights kind of way. Whereas with Brazil I had simply underestimated the impact of the third […]
Sometimes I like to let go and follow a blind path. Even if that path finds me crashing a convention at a nearby hotel. Keeping my distance and drinking alone. Even if that path offers up men who are brave enough to approach, but have no way to reach me. Because sometimes that path leads me […]
Mr. Shafroth, my year eight history teacher, stands in the kitchen of his campus house with my field hockey coach. “Are you kidding me?” she shouts. He is lucky she doesn’t have her stick. “What could you possibly be thinking? Bringing her here?” I sit quietly in the spare room, on a mattress platformed by […]
On Thursday, one in a long string of my exes rang me up. He was in a bit of a state, wretchedly hung-over and piecing together some uncomfortable flashbacks of a failed threesome the night prior. Whoops. Did I just say that? “You won’t say anything to anyone?” he asked. “Who would I tell? Your […]
[a follow-up to the previous post, with the legs, i hope, to stand on its own] Utter darkness. And a foreboding awareness. I stand and wait for his approach. I can sense his movements as if he were a twin I never had. And when he is in range, I thrust an invisible knee at […]
because. because. because. because the momentum was there. and so was the alcohol. and so was the sense of complete despair and the conviction that nothing made a wrench of a difference, anyway. i don’t remember those days much anymore. but when we first started hanging out again, it all came stampeding back to me […]
It turns out that he is, authentically, a large man. This is validating, because for a while there I thought it was just my imagination that made him so. But no, he really is. I found this out because I gave him a shirt in size L and he said, “It won’t fit.” And I […]
“I just need to be doing my own thing. I’m claustrophobic here,” is what he said, before he left. And I stood there with a beautiful baby on my hip and nodded and when he came back for his last bag he held my face between his hands and kissed me full on the mouth, […]
One of my earliest memories is of being carted back to Kmart in a borrowed Cadillac and being hoisted up on the counter so that I could confess to the manager that I shoplifted a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker, in cotton candy flavor. Mum encourages me to wear a wonderful slip-lined tulle dress for the […]
