You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across ...
Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does the feminist kill other people’s joy by pointing out moments of sexism? Or does she expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under public signs of joy? Does bad ...
I should meet many people who do not know anyone personally who has been raped or molested as a child. But I can't remember seeing a newspaper without a rape or molestation charge in it somewhere, and when I ask groups how many people know someone pe...
from Pearls and Poison… “In two minutes the cops are going to come barreling though that door,” I whispered to Auntie KiKi hoping to get her mind off the body in the back room. “Any suggestions how we tell these workers out here their candida...
We do not build the kingdom of God on earth by our own efforts (however assisted by grace); the most we can do through genuine prayer, is to make as much room as possible, in ourselves and in the world, for the kingdom of God, so that its energies ca...
No one had told her this would happen, that her girlishness would give way to the solid force of wifehood, motherhood. The choices available were all imperfect. If you chose to be with someone, you often wanted to be alone. If you chose to be alone, ...
Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's import...
Pansy rolled over and went to sleep, but Petunia stayed awake long after Olga left, and long after Oliver crawled out from under the bed, grabbed some sandwiches, and slipped out the door. She hoped that he was going to Galen and Rose's room, and she...
Girls like guys to be a challenge. It gives them some mold to fit in how they act. Like a mom. What would a mom do if she couldn't fuss over you and make you clean your room? And what would you do without her fussing and making you do it? Everyone ne...
A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more sele...
But I knew it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone ov...
Shit!"Holly said when our eyes fell on her bra lying at our feet. I snatched it from the ground, trying to stuff it in my pocket, but Dad was already inside the room, looking us over carefully, eyes scanning us head to toe, pausing at the bra danglin...
Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?" he said. "The imps don't need it, do they?" "Ah, zis is for my experiment," said Otto proudly. "You know zat another term for an iconographer would be 'photographer'? From the old word in Latation,...
I am so sad. I am so sad it makes me heavier than the sum of my parts. I shift, restless, but it doesn’t help. It’s like—time. All this time in here is on me, has its hooks in me. Maybe if I sleep more, I’ll wake up and I’ll feel different,...
...I realized how naive I was. My aunt Tina was right: this stuff does exist, and it does hurt people, and although there are lots of people at Liberty who condemn violence against gays--including Dr. Falwell himself--the number of students who want ...
As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on m...
You made me dinner, so I made myself vomit—twice. Once to clear some room in my full stomach so I could eat, and the second time as an expression of what I thought about your cooking.
We can be much, much more than we were taught in teachers college... more than stern ladies at the front of the room who teach children to recite by rote. We can be, we MUST BE, learning partners, champions, observers, explorers, friends- and , for t...
Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve onl...
This was a great magic. Festin had no more performed it than has any man who in exile or danger longs for the earth and waters of his home, seeing and yearning over the doorsill of his house, the table where he has eaten, the branches outside the win...
There was a lull. Sammy was staring across the room at George Opdyke, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. I was about to say he was lost in thought, but Sammy was never really lost, and he never actually thought, for that implied deep reflection. H...
