A Road Trip With Your Father In Honor of His 74th Birthday, In Playlist Form
A road trip which happens to coincide with the occasion of Prince’s death and the release of “Lemonade.”
The Unresolved Body in a State of Conflict
Often, when I’m having sex, a very specific thought runs through my head on a loop: “don’t touch me.” What gives? If I get so much out of being close to other people, shouldn’t sex be the ultimate way to prove it?
Sometime In June
“Keeping abreast of the passersby, the evidence of our intimacy was in the way we carried our hands. They were strategically placed so when they touched, it could be disguised as a perpetual accident. In honor of our silent dance, those near us were careful to walk around us instead of in-between.”
“You’re Carrie, Y’Know?”: 7 Ways My Nondisabled Friends Get it Right
Because the world sure as hell isn’t telling me my body matters. And having nondisabled friends who do, who affirm me precisely for standing out, means I don’t have to accept pity masked as kindness.
Tattoos and Disability: Surviving An Experience Not Everyone Can Handle
“I made a choice about how I would look, and didn’t realize until I’d done it how unprecedented that was.”
Mama Outsider: No Place Like Home
“Every day since my father died has been at least a little fucked up. There is no such thing as a non-fucked up day when you are a Daddy’s girl without a father.”
In A World Lacking Lesbian Rom Coms, I Made My Own
“Sidetrack is a show largely about my life and my experiences, because after years of watching so much television that erased me, I just wanted to write myself in.”
Skydiving in Two Genders: An Essay on Trans Visibility
“I decide I’ll test the durability of a BB cream by Tarte at thousands of feet in the air, then feel ashamed at worrying so much about how I look, then feel the dread again, that all this might go completely wrong, not because I’ll fall to my death, but because I’ll be reduced to my past.”
On Performing in The Vagina Monologues When You Don’t Have a Vagina
“There’s an annoying song that’s only playing all the way through all day long on some days. Others, I can barely hear the chorus, and others I can’t hear it all. But every day, I know that that song will be there again one day, maybe even tomorrow, maybe even later that same day. And I hate this song.”
Broad City, Ilana and Space Enough for Bothness
I remember the day I found out that Ilana from Broad City wasn’t biracial. I Googled around until I found evidence that there were others like me: biracial girls who felt a little bit incredulous; just a hair shy of betrayed. To this day I haven’t been able to convince whatever part of my brain that initially projected that identity onto her to unclench.
The Pace of Queer Time
“I’ve been thinking recently that queer time for me is a self-declared snow day. A chance to stay in bed and explore ourselves unhindered by the outside world. A chance to exist, to play — free from the hetero pillars of career, marriage, and lineage.”
Grandma’s House on Memory Lane
“As an adult, I wrestle with the stupid irony of having watched my grandmother live out her Alzheimer’s and not remembering anything about it.”
Make Big Life Changes Less of an Ordeal With a Lean Systems Perspective
I’d say about 90% of industrial/systems engineering work boils down to this super easy exercise: stop for a minute and think about what the main objective is. Now look at what you’re doing. Is that activity getting you closer to the goal?
I Feel Pretty
“I know exactly why I did it. Attempted to shave my face. I wanted to be like my dad.”
Life, Death and Surrender: It’s Hard to Know When It’s Time to Say Goodbye
On losing a pet, resilience and vulnerability, human frailty and animal intelligence, and everything that goes into saying goodbye.
How Rape Jokes Sound Inside Queer Bodies
If the performer had known that I write about the horrific violence against my community by day and process the trauma of that work in my journal by night, maybe he wouldn’t have made that joke. But I bet you he would have resented the implication that he shouldn’t.
My Trans Body as a State of Desire
“My brain is lit like the map of a major metropolis at night. My body is, too. ‘I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire,’ Anaïs Nin wrote, and that’s pretty much it. Or, put another way: I have found an affirmation of selfhood, and I haven’t thought to immediately annul it.”
Laying Down My Bullshit and Dancing at Dawn
“In Berlin people talk about it, expats especially, in hushed, reverent tones. The sound system, which is supposed to be one of the best in the world. The DJ acts you’ve never heard of with names like Fuck Buttons. And that magical moment in the morning when the blinds at Panorama Bar are yanked open and the suddenly-illuminated, all-night revelers start to cheer.”
When Real Life’s Getting More Like Fiction Each Day
When I say I was obsessed with RENT, I mean obsessed. I grew straight out of American Girl Magazine into the world of wildly risqué musical theatre. My mother tended to encourage the things I was interested in, but this one… well, it baffled her a bit. How could a good church girl from the suburbs of Connecticut relate to this musical?
So, We’re Getting Married Now?
“Neither of us were comfy with the public spectacle of the thing, especially G. She didn’t like the thought of publicizing our private relationship. We also felt a bit blah about marriage itself, which can feel like an outdated institution. And there were practical worries, too — like how would we plan a big event, with so much on our plates?”