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Sexuality
A 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 2022
Sticks 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 2022
Without 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
Saved
It was true what Mrs. Berry said: no one expected to see an old woman in a muscle car, a red and black Mustang convertible with a scooped hood and an engine that ran with a throaty hum.
March 2022
Louisiana Saturday Nights
Man who once was a boy on a strawberry farm in Ponchatoula. / Man who pulled me onto his lap in front of his friends, / played my spine like a fiddle. / The notes were off beat, / off-key, a collection of minor chords in my teenage heart.
February 2022Sometimes Things Just Don’t
We always went to Dancing Pins because it was cheap and we could spend all day there, easy, no complaints. We’d go when our mom was drunk and didn’t have anyone to sleep with. She brought her own vodka in a paper bag, like it wasn’t obvious.
February 2022
Happiness
She liked classic rock and country, while I favored singer-songwriters with whispery voices and acoustic guitars. She teased me that this was typical of kids whose older parents had made them listen to Bob Dylan instead of Michael Jackson. In fact, my parents had usually listened to silence, but I liked her theory anyway, because it suggested that my personality was not my fault.
June 2021
What I Lived For
When I was young, I lived for what I thought of as “lyrical moments,” when the details of life were suddenly heightened and approached the transcendent. . . . Of course, if you live long enough, you start thinking more and more not about the lyrical but rather about time. . . . I am living to stay alive.
May 2021
