I have a deep abiding love for convenience stores. They are clean and succinct. They don’t require anything extra of me, neither bra nor brush, conversation or confrontation. They give me protein, caffeine, and those pillowy “Bon Appetit” cream danishes that can set the worst of worlds to rights. There are lots of convenience stores…
Every time I got the front of the Suicide Prevention Chat queue, each a half hour wait, the system crashed. Three times. When you’re in a bad place you have a certain blindness. So I just reentered the waiting-line again “There are 64 people ahead of you….” over and over. I could have used the…
Crystal died so fast.
She never knew what to make of me. Our daughters had been best frenemies since age six, their squealing little naked bodies careening through our small house, slipping on laminate, streaking from their daring “night swim” in our inflatable Intex Quik-Set into a hot shower.
“…when I hear women saying that the cards are stacked against them because of the Patriarchy I think, “Yeah no shit. Welcome to the world, Princess. Stop stomping your dainty little foot sniffling “not fair!” Grab the fucking deck and reshuffle.”
You did it again, I told myself. Spread open your arms, pointed at your vital places and said, “aim for here…it will hurt best here.”
. I loved it. I hated it. It felt sick there and so special too. Like Nigger Ben Butte, all wrong, distasteful even, but sickly compelling in its defiance.
Yesterday morning I decided to euthanize my dog. Within an hour of my decision, she was limp on the floor of the vet’s office. I kept grasping and ungrasping that thick roll of fur and fat that substituted for her neck. It was always a pre-meditated decision to pet Stitch. She shed obscenely in summer and she…
My male GP offered to do my pelvic exam. Since he and I have established an appreciation of each other’s forthright manner (when I told him I was fat because I eat poorly and rarely exercise he was struck dumb from the shock of having a fat patient own that fact.) I wasn’t suprised when he…
I’ve laid down two toothbrushes and a tiny travel pack of Colgate. And two fist sized jawbreakers on sticks. The cashier starts to chuckle and I slam my hand down a little too hard on the pine wood counter. Every goddamn thing in this place is pine wood that looks like it’s been lacquered with…
I just spent the last hour, at my 8 year old’s desperate request, translating a true story (taken from one of my earlier pieces) of weird and brutal murder, into a tale worthy of her next Show and Tell. And finding pictures. And let me tell you, it is HARD to find pictures that are ok for…
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