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 […]
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 […]
Room 376 is a quiet eighth-grade classroom. We have just come back from spring vacation. Suddenly- BAM! The door slams open with such force that the windows shake. In walks, no, in struts a skinny boy, who exclaims: “Hey hey hey homies, it’s me, Michael. I’m the new kid in school.” I have to tell you, from the point of view of a teacher, it is never a good sign when the kids announce themselves. Our aging security guard Mr. […]
Things I’ve been doing differently these days: Fewer adverbs. More suspense. More nose hair monitoring. Less sleep. Not drinking enough water. Way more open discourse with animals on the street than their owners would prefer. And while I’m not exactly proud of this, I’ve been getting my hair cut at a place called SportClips. Sport. Clips. A place for people that love sports so much they’re here to cut their hair off just to prove it. Sport. Clips. Two words […]
Listen. I am eight years old and we are in a rural Iowa town. It is 1990. We have a pretty cool stereo; it has a double tape deck so you can dub tapes, an AM/FM radio, and a turntable that we use to listen to Yellow Submarine. Resting on the floor, attached to the record player, is a set of old speakers. They are covered in about an inch of dust. Written in the dust on the top of […]
I’ve only truly feared for my life once. I was driving from Big Sur to San Francisco with two friends. We decided to stop at a ranch to go horseback riding on the beach. We talked to the stablehand, and were introduced to our horses. “Do you have any riding experience?” he asked. “Sure!” we replied cheerily, because junior high riding lessons totally count, right? I mean, I still knew all the words to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and […]
