When it snows, I’m accustomed to rushing to the window, plastering my eyes against the glass, feeling the eyebrow-brush against icy pane as I struggle to find contrast. At night, I look at lamplight, dull yellow or hard sodium orb,…
Tag: But the Past Isn’t Done with Us
A Sexual Education
Content warning: explicit sexual content, rape, rape culture When I was 11, I watched Anita Hill’s testimony during Clarence Thomas’ Senate confirmation hearing. It felt like everyone was watching, or at least listening. My parents held a week-long garage sale…
Rainy Morning Notes to Self
You awake with a start, bolt upright, an I-overslept-my-job-interview panic in your pulse, but of course it’s hours too early and there’s barely any light making it through the new rectangle of blinds at an angle unfamiliar relative to your…
For the Record
I have long joked that I live my life as though I will eventually be worthy of an archivist. This has, at times, clearly been more than a joke. And is, arguably, a fancy way of saying that I’m a…
Futon for Sale
Futon for sale. Sturdy wood frame with small queen mattress and blue mattress cover. 80″ x 50″ when flat. 32″ high in couch mode. Used. I first encountered this futon when it was fairly new, serving as the bed in…
Snacks for Thought
I’ve been reading a ton this spring, which is a welcome change from last year, when I read close to a decade-low number of both books and pages. I heard Junot Diaz on the radio a few weeks ago during…
Grace, Aziz, and the Seemingly Inexplicable: What I Got Wrong
Last week, I posted a six-point treatise on what we could learn from the Grace/Aziz Ansari encounter first documented in the (in)famous Babe.net article written by Katie Way. I cheekily noted that no one would agree with all of the…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Suicide: 13 Reasons Why and S-Town
Content Warning: This post will talk extensively about suicide. It is the author’s belief and, indeed, thesis, that talking about suicide, honestly and in detail, is the best form of suicide prevention. But if you feel differently, this post may…
APDA Nationals 2017: A Debate Odyssey
It is three-thirty in the afternoon on a Thursday, the day before the first American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) Championships to ever be held at Rutgers University will commence. I am in a grungy but comfortable New Brunswick apartment just…
Twisting the Night Away
For more of my life than I care to admit, I was an avid player of Dark Age of Camelot, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for, well, long). Dark Age, for the uninitiated, was basically the precursor to…