Posts tagged story
A Sense of Us

Vinegar-soaked fish and chips in a London pub, our families escaping the summer heat in 2006. You, me, your brother, my sister, all of us in a dark wood booth beside a window. English bric-a-brac, the smell of Guinness. In the spring, we’d both graduated from the University of Oklahoma and turned twenty-two within months of each other, which meant we’d known each other half our lives.

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Autumn

My mind is fucking racing. I lay here in thick, suffocating silence, stranded in the gulf between nausea and despair. Curled in the fetal position I stare. I stare at the poster haphazardly hung on the wall outside my door. It’s unframed, the corners curling at the edges. I used to love this risograph print of Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums, sitting in her bathtub, hands draped over the edges as she stares at something I can’t see.

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Beneath the Yellow Sunflower

Some hot and humid afternoon in July, it was the 20th, a Wednesday, I think, I ventured off into the unknown abyss of modern lesbianism and vegan Asian cuisine. The sweat trickled down the crisp colored skin of my forearms as I made my way from the bus stop to an unfamiliar vegetarian Asian restaurant with an obnoxiously huge sunflower sculpture on top. The hostess greeted me.

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The Hypnotic Danube

I am standing in front of the microwave with its door open, ready to insert the bag of popcorn I’ll have for dinner. As I reach for the bag, I hear the lush opening notes of “The Blue Danube Waltz” by Johann Strauss. My body freezes, immobilized as if zapped by some 1950s, paralyzing ray gun. Before I can turn around to see if it’s an ad on TV, my eyes puddle up.

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You're Supposed to be Suffering

It’s hot. I wear an old tye-dye dress and sneakers, my bangs stuck to my sweaty forehead. Photographs will later reveal I have the sort of bowl haircut stylists default to when you’re too young to know what you want, and your parents just want something cheap that won’t get gum stuck in it. I’ve come to a standstill on the sidewalk to watch a mosquito bite my bare calf.

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Skin Suit

I never felt comfortable saying “my body” or “the body;” it never felt like mine, yet it also seemed more personal than “the.” Growing up, it was commented on: You’re so skinny, so petite, what a tiny peanut, you should really eat more, better hang onto that figure. No one ever said anything about my 4.0 Grade Point Average, the poetry contests I won, or the dreams I had of escaping the life of expected bodily perfection.

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I-O-U

Cameron, my boyfriend of six months, sits across from me in the cheap, Canton Chinese restaurant where we always eat. The white-walled, empty space fills with light through the windows, and wood tables are vacantly spread throughout. We look at each other blankly. The only sounds that come out our mouths are loud chews and slurps of stir-fry noodles hitting our lips with long, hungry uncomfortableness.

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The Modern Art of Loving Yourself

Modern love doesn’t mean a type of love we haven’t seen before, but it does mean it’s a love still seen as radical by those it encounters. It makes people look twice when they see you walking down the street. It makes your friends comment, “I’m so happy for you!” on your Instagram pics. It both surprises and entangles everyone it meets, creating an aura they begin to crave as well. It’s the type of love they should really be making potions for.

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When Relationships are Hard...Keep Going

I am difficult to love. I know that. And I’m pretty impossible to live with. Trust me, I recognize that too. I’m stubborn, have high expectations, and can be a smart ass. Luckily for me, I fell in love with someone with the exact same qualities. Clearly everything goes smoothly in our house on a daily basis. I’ve never found myself saying, “Do you even know what a toilet bowl brush looks like?”

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