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Sexuality
Shock Value
In general my job was predicated on my ability to suppress rage. I was an itinerant instructor, an adjunct whose career depended on good reviews from my co-instructor.
May 2023On Seeing A Sex Surrogate
Pounding the keys with my mouth stick, I wrote in my journal as quickly as I could about my experience, then switched off the computer and tried to nap. But I couldn’t. I was too happy. For the first time, I felt glad to be a man.
March 2023The End Of The World
Maybe the end of the world wasn’t fire and explosions and lawlessness and bodies in the streets. Maybe the end of the world was some smaller thing.
February 2023The Strong, Silent Type
Jaclyn A. Siegel On Masculinity And Male Body Image
Risak: How is the “masculine body” defined?
Siegel: In the U.S. we typically see a mesomorphic ideal: lean, muscular, and with a low body-fat percentage. This is persistent across the U.S. and common in LGBTQ+ communities in particular. Sexual-minority men are at elevated risk for eating disorders due in part to the lean ideal being perpetuated in their communities.
February 2023Thursdays For Haru
Haru Jenkins’s husband has been abducted at 3:23 AM every Thursday for six years. . . . It should go without saying that aliens abduct him.
December 2022A Private Thing
People laugh about pubescent horniness and untimely erections, but nobody talks about getting them before puberty on a regular basis. I was aroused whenever nothing was demanded of my limbs or mind — in class, at church, on the bus, in the car. Once, I even got hard at football practice while staring off at the Catskill Mountains and half-assing my way through groin stretches.
September 2022Sticks And Stones
In 1986 I was the Horse Girl of St. Margaret’s, the tallest girl in sixth grade, with dark-brown hair I tossed like a mane.
July 2022Without Ceasing
You never grew tired of watching her work. You loved the hum of the machine, the sawdust that stuck to her sleeve, and how she bent her head over the wood like something swan. You knew she was sharing something intimate with you. You were witnessing prayer.
May 2022