A Queer Coming of Age in Five Makeouts
Partying as a teenager is hard in New York City, where very few people have houses and almost everyone has nosy neighbors.
My First Makeout Was Reenacting the Kissing Scene From ‘Cruel Intentions’
At 17, my lack of kissing was a sensitive subject for me. It wasn’t for lack of trying.
The Music I’ve Made Out To: An Ode to Queer Kissing in Public
I believe in making out at the club, at the dance party, in the backseat of your car, in the corridor to the stairwell of your building, in the movie theater, at concerts, on the beach, at sports events, and at the brewery where making out isn’t really the vibe but you’re so hot for it you do it anyways.
What If The Girl You Made Out With On New Year’s Eve Becomes Your Wife?
“You tell everyone you see that night, including but not limited to all the friends you came with, another friend you run into, a stranger on the street, your dog and your Uber driver, that you are not going to have sex because you don’t want to ruin the friendship.”
An Essay About Poltergeist but Actually It’s About My Dead Mom
Compared to my parents’ volatile relationship, their divorce, and the financial instability that came after it, being scared of ghosts seemed like a waste of time.
My Body as Haunted House Metaphor
Horror movies, like many genres of entertainment, are deliciously, or not so deliciously, depending on where one sits, populated by tropes.
All Girls Want To Eat Each Other
Cannibals, like lesbians, are feared for their selective appetites.
Play Parties Let Me Explore My Asexuality
Maybe I didn’t always know I was ace, but I can’t say there weren’t signs.
Toward a Definition of Fat Fetish
I look at my body in the mirror. Fat, yes. But desire is a crooked hook down my throat I cannot articulate.
I’ve Always Loved Deception
As I begin my career as a therapist, I have to hide parts of myself.
I’m Going To Keep On Cruising at the Men’s Only Club
I’ve always been struck by the mostly silent language of cruising.
When Passing Isn’t Impossible Anymore
What happens when you start to pass? And what happens when you decide that’s not the end-all-be-all anymore?
Crafting The Narrative Of Abuse
Narratives of violence and abuse are so familiar in our history and culture that we hardly notice them. Corinne Manning shares what it took to notice and transform these narratives in their own fiction and their story collection, We Had No Rules.
I Grew Up In A House That Was Haunted
In finding out that the legacy of redlining was so connected to my childhood home, I started to wonder what else I harbored that no one had ever thought to explain to me. I wanted to understand how my family and I became this way: so oblivious to our direct complicity in white supremacy
Bonus Time: Living To Be Queer Elders
In QTPOC community, the future can feel precarious. If queerness is so often associated with action and survival, how do we learn to slow down and rest so we can live long enough to grow into the queer elders we always dreamed of having?
This Year Is Gonna Be a Good One: Birthday Diaries, 2001-2018
17 years of birthday diary entries.
How to Be a Grown Woman
“Maybe I could teach you how to do that and you could teach me a couple of things I’ve been wonderin’,” I told her. She shook my hand. It was a deal.
How I Learned to Tie a Tie Without My Dad
Perhaps he would have loved me enough. I’ll never know, and my eschatology doesn’t include a heaven from which re-embodied souls watch over our earthly lives. All I have is speculation about how he might have reacted to his daughter’s bisexuality, and to his daughter not being precisely a daughter at all.
Why Did You Betray Your Own Heart, Cathy?
“Last week I found one of those butter-coloured strands on my dress, and wondered. Then I realised it was one of my own, greying hairs. Ten years have passed, and she’s straight now, living with the boyfriend I introduced her to nine and a half years ago.”
I Am a Sex Idiot
I feel nothing and everything when I’m with her and I want that more than I want to protect myself. I know this will hurt me, but pain is part of my life, so I allow it in bursts I think I can control.