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 Saying No, Fifty Years Later I recognized a face on our Facebook alumni page as a secret I’d kept—the teacher who molested me.I didn’t understand the corrosive nature of secrets then, the way every silence strengthened the wall between my heart and the world. That I would develop a history of keeping silent and keeping secrets….continue |
 A Note is Passed/ Hippocampus We were nine, ten, eleven, then twelve years old together. A note is passed, and it’s over. Every living thing has a survival instinct, a go-to strategy. Mine tells me to hide in small dark places. I don’t remember feeling a thing. I remember feeling nothing. This is how I survive being unlovable….continue |
 Rescue Me/ LitroUK I believe God, in his wisdom, made topless bars and whorehouses so lonely men have someplace to go. I sat next to David at the bar. He told me he had $10,000. In his pocket. In 1981, you could buy a building on Avenue C for $10,000. Not a really nice building, because there were no really nice buildings on Avenue C. I smoothed the fifty-dollar bill out on the bar and decided I didn’t like him, not one little bit. You can’t buy your way into the bottom, you have to earn your seat…continue |
 Cage Match / Panoply If the crowd were still here they’d see a girl, maybe seventeen, maybe not even, spread-eagle in the center of the wrestling ring, staring up into the lights. continue…continue |
 Flying Solo / O, the Oprah Magazine Menopause was the best thing that could have happened to me. It’s been years since I’ve had sex with anyone other than myself. I wouldn’t say I’m celibate or sexless. I’m simply clearheaded. continue… |
 The Hangover Club / The Fix The medical community will dry you out, detox you, and lately, it seems, they’ve jumped on the “if you can’t cure them, cash in” party bus. All of these “morning-after instant Dr. Feelgood IV cures” remove what generations of evolution built in for our own good: consequences. continue… |
 The Mouse, Her Kid, and Me / Drafthorse Literary Journal Some things you remember even the bad parts being good. Heroin is like that, for one example. The Mouse for another. She looks the same, thinner, but tough. Still tough. Dark, gorgeous, hard. You could easily imagine her pulling a gun on you. It’s no strain to imagine her using it to shoot you. |
 Starvation as Source Material: Laia Abril’s “Thinspiration Fanzine” Turns Anorexia Into Art / xoJane Part of what art is supposed to do is upset sensibilities and shake up the status quo. But there are other, unintended consequences. |
 What “The Deuce” Got Wrong / BUST Much in the same way TV and movies delete the laughter when portraying AA meetings, The Deuce has sucked all the fun out of Times Square. continue… |
| Don’t Be That Guy / BUST No means no. Really? Okay, so what about when she doesn’t say no? What about when she doesn’t say anything? That’s a loophole, right? It’s a get out of jail free card, isn’t it? continue… |
| Can Revenge Porn Save Your Life? / BUST Twenty-three women have filed suit against “Revenge Porn” site, Texxxan.com, and their webhost, GoDaddy (as if GoDaddy wasn’t already on your shit list). continue… |
| The Name Game: Yours, or Ours, but Not Mine / BUST So, you get married, and maybe you want to change your name to his. Or join the ranks of the hyphen-ates. What if he wants to change his last name to yours? According to the Florida DMV that ‘only works for women’. continue… |
ANTHOLOGIES
Whorephobia (Seven Stories Press/Penguin Random House 2022) “Mardi Gras”
Johns, Marks, Tricks, & Chickenhawks(Soft Skull, 2013) : “Dating for Dollars”
The Bust DIY Guide to Life: Making Your Way Through Every Day (STC Craft, 2011)
Hos, Hookers, Callgirls & Rentboys (Soft Skull, 2009) : “Killing Time”
Cosmopolitan Bedside Quiz Book: Great Sex & Relationship Quizzes (Hearst, 2003)*
Penthouse-Between the Sheets (Grand Central Publishing, 2001)*
Bearing Life: Women’s Writing on Childlessness (Feminist Press, 2000): “Tie Me Up, Tie Me Off”
The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin, 1999)*: “Lesson Number One”
Best American Erotica 1995 (Touchstone, 1995)*
