Spring was months away; I could pretend peril didn’t exist.
“And then after I came out to my wife, she stumbled across People Can Change,” said the man from Fresno.
Don’t they let you? Don’t they ever let you lay down your head?
n the car, on the way to the hospital, I put my head in my lap and my hands over my ears, willing the city to disappear.
So obviously I couldn’t do it. She would have known it was real.
Years after reading the story (Junot Diaz' "Drown"), after teaching it to high schoolers (many of them POC), I set out to rewrite this queer of color narrative in my story, "The Monks." I wanted to show how a straight, masculine guy of color could brush up against queerness and feel empowered by it, not scared, even if in the slightest of ways, the slightest of spiritual progressions.
Marriage is often thought of as having little to do with eroticism.1
I met my husband while bartending in Oakland. He applied to be the new chef. Tattooed knuckles. Chubby cheeks. Full beard.
That summer held the moment, in real time and in my memory for several years, of something he said that I didn’t hear.
The mushrooms I bought yesterday are moldy; the lines around my mouth have deepened. Tomorrow I am a mother for the first time.
It’s really Freudian, that. Turning a doctor into a parent for a few minutes. That’s why Maeve likes him.
In his hospital room, he handed over his phone and I called his family.
Previously on...
Part 6 || Part 5 || Part 4 || Part 3 || Part 2 || Part 1 || Prologue
I Googled things that bond people. Google said trauma.
We’ve sat in pot smoke-filled basements, watching boys play video games, and I’ve sipped wine with my parents on special occasions, but neither of us have been to an actual party before.
Ken pounded out three novelty songs on his busted up acoustic guitar, looking like a knock-off Daniel Johnston.
‘Le Trou Normand,’ I said to the Garçon, winking knowingly at him.
We long to see the world from her point of view, the worker. But do not ever long to be the worker.
My mother had been on a rampage to find me a husband since I started college.
Really I think all art should be freely available
I’m good at getting fucked up. I’m good at having fun. Go go go. I’m best at forgetting.
To try to allay his doubt, or figure out of it’s real, [Li] mentally consults his in-progress novel, as if it were a friend. He intuits, in an intuition described by the line you quoted, that his doubt is wrong, is habitual and self-sabotalogical.
If a ghost is the impression you leave after you, then the divot you leave in your old bed is a ghost.
Within 1-3 weeks, the body will begin to actively decay. This is when the organs, muscles, and skin will liquify. The hair, bones, and cartilage will remain.
