Beware the Pleasures of the Flesh
I knew I was leaving Anthonie Collins after that evening he asked to arrange sex with another man and woman. Not at the beginning of that night, but by the end. We were all in the hotel room, getting ready to start the action with awkward introductions.
Anthonie blurted out, “We should all be Facebook friends after this.”
I sent him a death stare. My hands flew to my hips which thrust forward in indignation.
The night before I had written him a text that said my only limitation for the evening was that he not try to get this…
When you write memoir-based pieces, it feels like it’s all kinda already out there, but…
- I was a probation officer right after college graduation for three months while my internship supervisor went on maternity leave. It was one part hilarious, because of my appearance, which is not intimidating. I have been described as “sweet, kind, understanding, etc,” by people in interactions. It’s not the disposition typically associated with probation work. This dispositional mismatch was clear to me during my year-long internship my senior year of college. But I needed the money, I knew it was only for three months, and…
Right-wing media poisoned family relationships
One figure stands out in my miserable youth of fundamentalist evangelical repression as the epitome of feminism, modernity, and humanism. My aunt, Nicky. She was actually named after her father. They stuck an “ita” at the end of his masculine name and thought that would do. It just made for an ugly name. Since she hated it, too, she always went by Nicky.
She was the first woman deputy sheriff in my hometown county, Black Hawk County, Iowa. She let me hold her gun once when I was young. My parents were not into guns, so this was a big…
A Pseudo-Poem About Home from a Non-Poet
Folks sing a song about the hills where I’m from
It’s an exquisite tune with ideal words to strum
Written by a guest to these parts
She knew about how we don’t like
To make our problems other people’s concerns
So, I sang the line over and over
To scream its truth
To break the silence
It’s blissfully green come summer and spring.
Enough to shut my mouth about the humidity thing.
How many of us have detasseled corn?
I got the skin on my arms torn
Accountability for abusive behavior
Facts have emerged about Brett Kavanaugh’s early life and environment which show a guilty culture, if not the guilty act. We learn that he spent time with boys in high school who consumed far too much alcohol. We learn that Republican women on CNN will describe this behavior as “typical” and “common.”
What kind of fraternity was Kavanaugh in? What was its culture? During the 1980s when women began protesting sexual assault on campus with “Take Back The Night” and “No Means No,” was his fraternity building a culture of gender equality and concern for women’s safety?
We can…
Eating disorders don’t automatically go away after bariatric surgery
See ma, no chin
Cuz now I’m thin
Watched a show yesterday
Women and girls on display
Woke up with chocolate
on the pillow
It joined caramel on my shirt
and in my hair
But I am all better
Nothing I saw affected me
Focused on fat so weighty
I handled it all fine
My feels will fall in line
I was just tired last night
Lots of people would, right?
Just like me with a mouthful
Exhausted to sleep with a handful
But I am all better
This poem came following my reaction to the documentary, Embrace, on Netflix
By Encouraging Proto-Thinking, He’s Dumbing Us Down
Five-year old Jordan Bray had two heroes. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Captain James T. Kirk. I was glued to the television to watch both of them. It sort of figures they would both die in the same Tweet thread.
First, I was alerted that William Shatner had sent out a tweet about Laura Ingalls Wilder losing her literary award named in her honor.
In light of this tweet, I thought I would approach this man who represented the “enlightened, scientific white man” who “learned from the past” about culture such that the brave exploration of new worlds was not…
The accusation of crying wolf is the opposite of the problem we have
Today, on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, along with their chattering class, tried to tell liberals how wrong they are, again. Not that it isn’t a daily occurrence, but today was particularly galling. The thesis was that we have been crying wolf about authoritarianism in Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, Jr, so everyone got numb to it and became Nazis.
What they said was stupid, of course. What actually happened is that too many Americans looked at the authoritarianism that started with Nixon, and said, “Of, that’s fine.” Joe Scarborough watched Ronald Reagan preach about black welfare queens over…
From the Internet to my Husband
You were raised to believe you are always right. You are given the most time to speak in every room — always allowed to dominate conversations. This is perhaps why you won’t let it go when I use the word Orthodoxy to describe old-guard conservatives or traditionalists in the United States. You have to tell me, “No, you are using that word incorrectly.”
Even as I write this essay, you are still lecturing me on the connotations and denotations of Orthodoxy, prattling in my ear. I’m such a foolish girl. Those people aren’t “right” or “correct” so they can’t be…
I admit it’s also a personal request
I made a sacrifice. I wanted to save the children I love more than anything from the abuse I was experiencing. It may have all been for nothing.
By taking over the parenting from my mother, I didn’t prevent my younger brothers and sister from experiencing trauma nearly as much as I hoped.
My sister was taken from my mother when she was a breastfeeding infant. You may have recently heard about this happening again. I was ten and the oldest so it didn’t affect me as severely. I have another brother who took his own life, so I would…
