On Election Night, I thought again of the boy who assaulted me. When had I finally stopped blaming myself?
“Have my friends and family been hoping for a new me? Have they all been waiting for a transformation?”
“I wanted to be like that: hard and boney, a body full of fuck-you’s.”
“In the beauty parlor, I watch my ringlets collect like dark, bushy tumbleweeds on the checkered floor.”
Shaving pubic hair. Accepting mother’s advice. Can a woman (or a horse) own her experience of the world?
“I wanted to finally be free from the anxiety of wondering if I would be seen as attractive, or seen at all.”
When I cut myself it wasn’t for attention. I cut to feel safe. And to stay sober.
I’ll go through the egg-freezing procedure that will give me the chance of maybe, one day, having a child.
“I have a theory that Western popular culture is on a mission to desexualize Asian men. And it’s working.”
“If you opened me up you would find no redness, no veins, only a political thunderstorm.”