I look at people. I see them looking back. I had always felt invisible but on the beach that morning I see that I am always seen. I don’t know what to do with it but I know it. I divide things into two categories. Things I like about myself, things that I am glad to have strangers’ eyes fall upon. And things that I hate, things that make me turn up inside out and want to hide. But these two things are all mixed up. The seen and the concealed. The beautiful and the shameful are all part of the one body so for the first time I feel the desire to rib myself up. To tear pieces out, or contort, fold over them. I want to collapse in some parts an expand in others, like and explosion, like gases destroying the air, breaking in and out, finding the weak points of the world, feeding on combustion, bright and violent and unavoidable. Read more →
My stomach tightened with the familiar jealousy, like a coiled snake inside me. For the thousandth time, I wished I’d been born a boy, and that I was athletic and confident, with Etienne’s dark skin and good looks. I wondered what else Daddy had told my brother, and why he hadn’t bothered to tell me. All those father-son fishing trips in Yellowknife still rankled. I wanted to be my father’s chosen companion, and the keeper of his secrets.
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But things weren’t equal. On our team, three fully-grown men, Jason, Jeff and Rich, changed everything. They smoked cigarettes only when they weren’t smoking other things. They reminisced about their history in Juvenile Hall. Their girlfriends brought them beer to drink after the games. Our coach never told them what to do. They enjoyed absolute freedom from the team, the coach, the rules of the game, their parents – basically every source of authority that I knew of. Read more →
This was before doughnuts were hip. Before college kids and yoga instructors and graphic designers were willing to shell out four bucks for a single hand-crafted, artisan-designed ring of deep-fried dough. I served coffee and mopped the floors, filled the sugar containers and napkin dispensers, and wiped the burnt-orange countertops, emptied the ashtrays. This was in the days when you could smoke in restaurants and the stale smell of cigarettes rose off the yellowed walls in tiny wafts like the whispers of decrepit, bitter men. Mostly, I was there to decorate the doughnuts.
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“On Sunday, there were hundreds of people here busting up ice, cleaning the street,” H recalled. “I decided I wanted to help, walked up and down the street looking for a spare shovel or pick—nothing. I thought, ‘okay, I’ll grab a bag and at least hold it for them to make ice bags for the barricades.’ There wasn’t a single free bag. Even when a man came with a stack of them, people attacked them like they were… tigers! I ended up sharing a bag with another woman. We each held a side with one arm as a young man shovelled ice in. She even picked up her cell on the job. Without letting go of the bag: ‘What? Where are you? I’m outside Ukrajinskyj Dim. Yes. Come help! We’re shovelling snow!’ ”
They carried, carried Halya into the dark forest
Tied her to, to a pine tree by her braids
Oh, Halya! Young Halya!
Tied her to, to a pine tree by her braids
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A volleyball girl wrapped her arms around my waist to help me down but collapsed with my weight. We fell into the dirt and someone said, Look, they’re dikes, so she started laughing and grinding her hips against mine. I didn’t resist. I had lost all feeling in my body anyway. I told myself to laugh. Laugh like her.
Dustin arrived at the party in his blue truck. At school my hands would grow clammy around Dustin. When he smiled it made my belly squirm. We hadn’t talked yet but I had rehearsed conversations in my head. When the phone rang at home I prayed it was Dustin on the other end even though he didn’t know my parents’ number.
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