he: you should go out more.
me: are you gonna go with me?
he: yeah
me: where we gonna go?
he, voice dropping an octave: to the living room
irl
my lil newsie
Chathe: i’m not extra. stop calling me extra.
he: …
he, pulling collar aside: i’m just gonna expose my neck like this, though.
he: …
he: i’m not being extra. i’m just being me.
he: i’m an extra boy.
he: extra, extra! read all about it!
he: *aggressively hums the nickelodeon jingle*
he: sing “hello” by adele
me: šµhello darkness my old friendš¶
he: no
me: š¶hello / is it me you’re looking for?šµ
he: is that adele?
he: i just wanna live under your ass forever like a rock crab.
he: that’s my natural habitat.
me, with my mouth on his dick: tell me about your penis
he: it’s a sad tale he: literally and figurativelyafter sex
Chatme: what are you thinking about?
he: how i need to learn more about the free syrian army.
me: why’re you always thinking about ISIS when you should be thinking about us-es??
Ladybae and I asked our white bartender what heād miss most about celebrating Thanksgiving in a restaurant, as opposed to homecooked. His response: āgreen bean casserole.ā
Uhm. What?
We managed straight faces, then – on the way home – laughed ātil we cried.
braxton hicks but
Standardfake period cramps
A Story with No Purpose, Part V
StandardāSo what are we doing?ā he asks. It’s the last day of the con. Breakfast is thinning out when he plops down across from me with his legal pad.
āHuh?ā I stare stupidly.
With mild impatience: āWeāre teaching a class in an hour. We should talk about what weāre doing.ā Ah, right. That. I’m bottoming for his class. Iād assisted for this one before, but he wanted to quickly discuss which trance techniques heād be demonstrating.
While I watch, he clicks the lead into his mechanical pencil and writes something on the pad. I focus on the placeĀ where pencil meets paper. My breathing shifts. I lick my lips slightly.
He notices. Hypnotists always notice. Thinking for a beat, then rolling his eyes, āAh, this is feeding your weird experimentation thing.“ Ah. Right.
We move on, finishing our negotiations, but my wetness lingers. The legal pad, the pencil, the notes, the wide expanse of table between us, his dismissive tone, my unshakable sense of smallness. Eureka.
A Story with No Purpose, Part IV
StandardShe walked into the room weād be sharing and exclaimed,Ā āThank God, another woman of color.ā My feeling of lightness was instantaneous: the feeling of sinking into a warm bath.
I hadnāt interacted with a brown person since exchanging hair compliments with a black man at the airport. It had been twenty-four hours of rooms filled with white people. That morning, as a stopgap, Iād danced outside alone to Angel Haze, on repeat, feeling desperate.
We would have several conversations about marginalization during the white-filled, kink-fueled weekend, each heavier than the last.
Heavy can be good. Heavy keeps you grounded.