“You’re pretty strong for a girl.” In retrospect, I believe it was those six brief but toxic words that sounded the death knell for the beautiful, flowing locks of sandy brown hair I sported as an eight-year-old. They were uttered to me at the St. Croix Valley YMCA summer day camp after an archery lesson left a blunt-tipped arrow embedded firmly in a hay bale, unyielding as Excalibur to the pre-adolescent grasp of my fellow campers. In an uncharacteristically bold […]
So there’s the name you are bestowed at birth, the one on that certificate with the curlicue border that you can never find when you need it for some official purpose. Then there’s the name you get from your mother or your older brother or your cousin that highlights some attribute that only they see, or maybe, their rhyming abilities – like in my case, Ellie Bellie, Ellen Ellen Watermelon or, my personal favorite, Ellen Blum the Sugar Blum For […]
I have a friend. I use the word friend because the word fuckbuddy is, as of late, something as ethereal as the beautiful human-unicorn. We’re friends but we’re mostly benefits, so awhile back we did what adult pals do together- we had a play date. He came over. Our friendship at that point was based on the logistics surrounding the benefits, where we gave each other directions, a brief hug of hello, a little bit of chit-chat. (How’s work? Congrats! […]
It’s impossible to feel like a badass in a turquoise Ford Tempo. That’s unfortunate, because right now, I need to feel like a badass. I need to feel like a tough guy. I need to feel like the baddest motherfucker in White County, Illinois as I’m driving to do maybe the bravest thing I’ve done in my 16 years: tell a grown man to keep his hands off my girlfriend. *** That morning started like most other mornings my junior […]
How To Wear It was read as part of Miss Spoken’s November 2014 show, Body Hair. You can find Maya at 20:33. When I was 20, I had a friend who I would sleep with. He had an idea of how women were supposed to be sexy: shaved cunts, expensive lingerie, long, silky hair, white skin, and I had an idea that I was sexual but not sexy. He moved to Missouri, and I decided to take a cross-country road trip to […]
Me Talk Titty One Day was read as part of Miss Spoken’s May 2014 show–the theme was Boobs. You can find Jasmine at 15:30. I’m fat. I am actually quite fat. I’m fat pretty much everywhere, from the top of my big old Charlie Brown head to the bottoms of my Fred Flintstone feet. Fat everywhere except for two places. The area between my neck and my stomach. Specifically, MY BOOBS. If I had to pick any two places on my body to […]
I was fifteen years old when my family moved from Guatemala to Uptown, Chicago. On my first day in Chicago I befriend some Mexican kids who offered to show me around the neighborhood, especially Chicago’s famous lake shore. I got really excited and I told them in perfect Guatemalan lingo, “Vamos a chingar la pita,” which to me meant nothing more than, “Let’s go have some fun.” Unknown to me, my, “Vamos a chingar la pita,” to these Mexican kids […]
Men, as a rule, do not suffer well. We cannot cope with the sadness that threatens always to overtake us. We are always afraid, and cannot put a name to being so. We are chronically confused, but are incapable or unwilling to acknowledge this reality. Mostly, I think, we do not like the admission that we are sad, and confused, and afraid. That’s what all the fuckin’ and fightin’ is about. And how sports have come to consume us. We […]
Whenever I use a public restroom, I go for the handicap bathroom stall. When I’m in there, I like to imagine how I’d remodel it if I were forced to live there. Like if the entire building were taken hostage while I was in the restroom, and they hostage-takers said, “You have to stay in there for an indefinite amount of time as we make our point or until our demands are met.” This is not a fear. This is […]
