Last Call
Last Call

Tall ships lined up like regal ducks in the Delaware outside the floor to ceiling windows of the Rusty Scupper. The lights from Penns Landing illuminated their bulky masts, casting cross-shaped shadows upon the concrete. It was nearly midnight. Two parties hung on for last call: a middle-aged couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and two handsome guys who’d been downing gin and tonics for nearly two hours. Exhausted after a long shift, I looked forward to washing the smoke and liquor off my body and crawling into my bed a few blocks away.

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Change of HeartJulia NusbaumSexual assult, #metoo, law school, feministComment
Autumn
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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Change of HeartGuest Userchange of heart, depression, story Comment
The History of My Daughter
The History of My Daughter

“Shoot your vagina up to the ceiling” one male doctor helpfully suggested as your head inched forward and back into my body again. Limp I stared into the bright white hospital light above me where I saw a vision of my own blood and guts floating on the ceiling. I learned later that this particular delivery room was famous for having a tinted convex light that reflected the labor in detail if you knew to look.

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Our Grandmother's StoriesJulia Nusbaumchildbirth, Motherhood, Mother daughter, birthComment
Whispers Through the Glass
Whispers Through the Glass

I inherited three things from my paternal grandmother: my middle name, an engagement ring, and the desire to be a writer. I didn’t know that Gram’s ambitions to be a writer matched mine until I was sixteen, when I read an essay she wrote titled “Why I Am What I Am.” In it, she writes, “I have a very decided ambition to become an authoress. I have always loved to write…I have a vivid imagination, which was probably kindled by the necessity of my finding something within myself to amuse myself, for I had very few friends my age.” As the youngest person in both my extended family and my neighborhood by nearly a decade, I knew what she meant.

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Our Grandmother's StoriesJulia Nusbaumgrandmother, Childhood, childbirthComment
Occupation
Occupation

Rose, I saw a picture of you today. The first one, I think, I’ve ever seen. Your face was kind, like my Gran’s. For some reason this surprised me. But you must have been kind. Your daughter is kindness personified. The photo was sent by Amanda, your granddaughter, my aunt. I’d fired off an email this morning, and by lunchtime there you were, sitting in my downloads. I tried to zoom in on your face, but you pixelated on my phone screen. You were sixty-three, sitting in the garden with Great-Grandpa on Amanda’s eighth birthday. My mother, a chubby toddler, sits on Great-Grandpa’s lap. Sixty-three is the age my parents are now, but you look much older than them. Maybe it’s your clothes, your hairstyle, or the black and white camera. Maybe it’s the war, the guilt and grief that you carried away from it.

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Our Grandmother's StoriesJulia Nusbaumwar, childloss Comment
The Real Erica Kane
The Real Erica Kane

Daytime soap operas held all the answers.

In fifth grade, my friend Connie introduced me to daytime soap operas so I could learn about things of which I had no firsthand knowledge, things that Connie already understood—love triangles, how to successfully ruin the social and business reputations of others, dead people coming back to life as their previously unknown evil twin.

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Our Grandmother's StoriesGuest Usergrandmother, abortion, father, jewish womenComment
The Dinosaurs of Parkchester Public Library
The Dinosaurs of Parkchester Public Library

I didn’t learn to read until I was eight years old, a full month into second grade. It’s not something that entirely made sense, since I had learned how to spell simple words in the previous year, and I could speak English with the same ease as Spanish since the end of kindergarten. Reading, however, was something that had slipped past until the day my teacher took me aside, bewildered by my scattershot collection of knowledge.

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Our Grandmother's StoriesGuest Usergrandmother, reading, mother, childhoodComment
Space
Space

It’s hard to disappear in this digitally-connected world. Have you ever Googled yourself? I have. It’s amazing how much someone can find out about me in just the ‘top hits’ when I put my name in. In all, close to 25 relevant entries appear, and I’m not remotely famous. I think most of my friends can say the same, yet when I tried to find Ben Krieger on the internet, I came up empty.

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Missed ConnectionsJulia Nusbaumfriendship, friends, missed connections, womens storiesComment
Split
Split

I met Dennis when he was in high school, I was in college, and we were both teaching English at a religious summer camp in Croatia. He came with a group from Oklahoma, including the team leadership. I signed up with a friend from college. We had a few days of training in Chicago before flying. The all-White male leadership set the tone for us, as we sat in a stuffy hotel meeting room, on the third floor, with closed windows on a windy day. There they asked us to write what we thought our lives would have been like if we had not found Christianity. Was it a trick question?

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Missed ConnectionsGuest Userreligion, missed connections, relationshipsComment
Letter
Letter

Once, I read a letter I wrote to you out loud in a slam poetry open mic. I wasn’t intending on speaking that day but now that I look back, I probably saw myself in the poets, songwriters, and artists who were barely older than me but just as weary: They’ve spent half their young lives chasing love or at least the thrill of writing about it, and you know me, you’ve always known me. Who am I to deny myself a group like this one?

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Missed ConnectionsGuest Usermissed connections, love letter, love, relationshipsComment
Extraordinary Ordinary
Extraordinary Ordinary

I have been on many, many dates, including an abundance of first and only dates. I thought I had experienced most first date repertoires—coffee dates and dinner dates, exciting dates and boring dates, dates to the theater and dates to the comedy club, dates that led to relationships and dates that came to screeching halts midway. I’d been on first dates with sixty dollar steaks and first dates with six dollar burgers. I’d been on first dates with lawyers and professors and police officers and firefighters. I’d even been on first dates with married people, unbeknownst to me, of course.

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First Date StoriesGuest Usermy first date, love, nature, relationships Comments
“Hang Out”
“Hang Out”

I moved to a new city where I knew no one in the fall of 2016. I was twenty-three at the time and had graduated college the year before. Now I was settling in this new place with a new, real adult job. Like many people in many places, I turned to dating apps for entertainment. To make friends, to find dates, to explore the new city. Sometimes it was for a physical connection, but sometimes that was just a bonus if it happened at all. It was more about creating moments of connection, even if they were brief.

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First Date StoriesGuest Usermy first date, relationships, friendship Comment
Keep a Light On
Keep a Light On

Merlin used to like to listen to music. He’d crawl up on the bed and sit next to me, while something played from my phone to try and calm my aching nerves, even though he couldn’t hear or see very well, with no teeth and no claws. I think in a way he could feel the vibration of the sounds through his body, like a purr resonating through my bones whenever he would sit on my chest to go to sleep. It’s like he knew I needed the comfort, like he knew I needed the consolation only a one-eyed cat could provide in a period of dark depression, bipolar mania, or skin-picking compulsion.

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GriefGuest Usercats, pets, grief, lossComment
Love's Pressure Valve
Love's Pressure Valve

Once again grief knocks down my door, tosses the furniture, grabs my throat, and slams me up against the wall. Grief has no manners. It’s not polite, or thoughtful, or kind. Grief is a punch to the gut and then another. It doesn’t stop when you’ve had enough, when you cry uncle, when you tell it you did your best and to leave you the fuck alone. It’s like birth, noisy and painful and messy, no way out but through.

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GriefJulia Nusbaumgrief, death of a parent, death of a friend, death of a pet, dogs Comments
Where Do All the Poppies Go?
Where Do All the Poppies Go?

I thought that when you left, it would get easier. The pain of yesterday still cuts through every bone—all the flesh that reminds me of my mortality, all the flesh that reminds me of you. All of my flesh and bone that belongs to you—that is you. They say there is no greater love than the love we receive from our grandmother. That never felt true to me until there was no more love to receive.

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GriefGuest Usergrief, grandmother, granddaughterComment