You’ve heard of flightless fish that get flung out of
the water for wanting something special

By March of 2016, my cousin Josh and I were practically flat broke. We’d been having an incestuous and adulterous affair, one that elevated his title to “cuzband” (he hated that term). Four years

The great neon calamity of his own life exhausts him.

One night I was so drunk, I couldn’t feel my face.

Everything would be fine, sort of, if she could close this deal.

Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel All-Night Pharmacy has everything I want from a book: a toxic sister relationship, countless nights at a seedy LA nightclub, and an unexpected sapphic romance. After her

There is a strength of purpose, I suppose, a fortitude and integrity, in simply admitting yourself to be a malevolent presence skulking the dingy alleyways of your own life.

Right away we shared amphetamines. He fed them to me to keep me awake.

You have to keep in mind this is a true story, and the events I’m about to describe took place before 2006 in a desert land which I’ve never been able to find again on any map. And years later, when I

Loud noises bother me. Crunching on chips. What did they do five hundred years ago when they didn’t have chips? They ate grapes. Quietly.

I tell her I want some kissing, one
minute of mat kissing before lesson plans,
emails, dishes.

Dexedrine,
obedient beauty,

a low-calorie
alternative

for excess.

and by the way, I wear jeans too, and I’ll fuck that white girl, absolutely, from the commercial, the camera trails her on the beach, she’s smiling, now she’s hiding behind her hands . . . 

They put her flyer on their mailboxes and look at me like she’s dead.

My boy on the boulevard bubbling.
Triple wick rip tide in my mind.

Seeing a picture of my tits online didn’t bother me as much as it should have. 

With snot running down my chin, weeping, I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that this key situation would go on forever.

I have to believe that what I am writing — what I am living through — means something.

There is no hotel breakfast. No air conditioning. No Tour Guide singing in the next room.

Bliss can flip into alienation and back into elation, adding to the teasing uncertainty of identity.