You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Women.”
I, Granny, took the helm at approximately 1200 hours. Steering a true course, all was calm for the day. The squab finished his mess; skies remained calm, no squalls of crying. Grandson and I played toss with a small orange ball and spent hours crawling around. Tumble salts off my legs; giggles of delight. Peek-a-boo's repeated over and over again [...]
If you are of the runty persuasion (for our purposes let’s say 5' 2" or shorter – ceiling-skimming 5' 3ers need not apply) you likely know the terror that is the general admission rock show. You may – as I did for years – swear off the concert hall forever, foregoing its unforgiving expanses for the more amenable terrain of [...]
That morning I got up in the afternoon. My friend Micki came from 204th/Post Avenue, from her man's crib complaining about his small penis saying, "My baby brother's got a bigger dick than his!" And I had to get up and shower, leaving her in my room and I took the loofa with me because I scrub the dead skin [...]
“If you want to tell a story – start telling it. It might come out OK. It might not. At least you tried – better than leaving it in the fridge of memory. Sooner or later, like all man-made things, fridge will stop working and all goods will rot.” --Some guy on the steps near Ganga in Varanasi, India 1. [...]
Heath Avenue. I recognized the building right away. Public housing always stands out from all other domiciles. It looms, and, like a tall man, commands your attention. But when you look up, expecting to see his face, you see a blank outline, no distinguishing features. No nose. No mouth. No eyes. We parked on the side street around the corner. [...]
So we thought a movie, and he says “you pick one.” I look into it and suggest either that one about the Rwandan genocide or "Raging Bull" in a new print at the Ziegfeld. “Remember,” I ask him, “remember how at some point they started issuing tickets for actual seats at the Ziegfeld, with seat numbers? I wonder if they [...]
My love life is typical in most respects. My relationships all have a beginning middle and end. With me it just happens that this all takes place in the span of a week. I don't like to waste time. Day 1: My last affair began on a dark and stormy night. It was a Wednesday and I had planned to [...]
During my first year of teaching, I became used to crying in public. Not subtle sniffles that I could have, with a considerately discreet audience, played off as a common cold or allergy attack (the watery eyes, the reddened nose, nostrils like cavernous mines), but sheer go-for-the-gusto wailing, sobs shaking my body like I was caught in some Santeria possession-dance. [...]
All night Foxy Kropotkin had thrown the covers on and off. It had been hours since she told Virginia to get her an orange soda. She thought to herself, Larry’s not cold yet three days—but I still have the credit card. In an instant she was out of bed. She pulled her coat over her muumuu, went out the door, [...]
If all goes according to plan, in three weeks I will run the New York Marathon. For most people, training for a marathon is empowering. It gives them a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of self-worth. For me, it has been one lesson after another in humility. At five am one morning this past August, I set out on [...]
Although I moved to New York in 1994 with Manhattan in mind, I quickly became fascinated with the city’s boroughs. On weekends I'd take the subway to Coney Island, Brooklyn, Astoria, Queens, or the Bronx Zoo to see the other parts of my new home. Staten Island, however, remained elusive. In my early days, I often took the Staten Island [...]
I came to Washington Park because I did not know where to go. Riding in a cab with my friend John, on his way to study at the NYU library, provided me with a sure and fast way out of his apartment. This morning, a fight had been close to breaking out between the two of us, and the sound [...]
i'm getting fat. the thing is, i i'm a dominatrix. so i really can't. it's not that i'm in the habit of over indulging. my sister just got back from switzerland. so i'm eating her presents. that's p-r-e-s-e-n-t-s, not presence. i know you're going to think everything i say is about sex. that's what happens when you're a dominatrix. this [...]
A curved Turkish saber? Yataghan. Faulkner's fictional county? Yoknapatawpha. A musical by Irving Berlin, three words? Yip Yap Yaphank. You don't hear these words every day. But Dad has explained their value. Lots of vowels, certain infrequently-found consonants. They make the puzzle come together. And I am likely to encounter them again, in future Double-Crostics. My father and I sit [...]
She did not call him. She leaned back, listened to the music and examined the ceiling. slicing eyes. beauty and envy in one frame. "I'm here," she tossed. "Seriously?" "Yeah. In the Red Room." Her pink, dainty pumps wept silver jewels in the fronts. Her hair was maybe too big but it worked. The drive had been defined by the [...]
In a small Detroit suburb referred to as Ferndale is a bar known as "Como's." It sits just off Main Street, which is quiet, solemn. Streetlamps give off an orange glow over a trash-littered sidewalk. Empty storefront windows line the street. Faded signs stand out from the few businesses that struggle to remain open. Buildings are old, uncared for, withering. [...]
I woke up feeling cold this morning and the clouds were fighting their way in between the bedroom blinds that were left open in the middle of the night. I found my body naked and bent and I thought about Nicole Du Fresne and her star quality blonde hair and blue eyes and perfect teeth and I wondered how her [...]
Brookti came from Ethiopia 8 months ago when she was around two. Initially I'd tried to adopt domestically, but it turns out that adopting in the U.S. as a single mother, aside from being a 21st century version of some kind of slave trade, (i.e. black/interracial children are 'a third of the price' of Hispanic children), and assuming you're not [...]
Manhattan is the capitol of the unexpected encounter. There are no dogs barking to warn you of the unexpected, no dust being kicked up on a long curving dirt road as a stranger approaches. So it was that I found myself standing in Nussbaum & Wu, wishing that her presence had kicked up a little more dust. Here before me, [...]
I immediately rediscovered my stance - Kruger's signature red boxes, the bold typed messages upon entrance erased the damage the glossy magazine had done. I remembered whose side I was on when viewing Kruger's commands: "you are a captive audience", "your body is a battleground", "we are your elaborate holes", "your comfort is my silence." Every picture and its copy [...]
Periel / Central Park Vivi / Greenwich Village Jyllian / Soho Sophie / Little Italy Kate / Park Slope
There’s this place on 57th between 8th and 9th called Dramatics for Hair. There are a few of them in the city. Dramatics has this thing going on where they give each of their employees a “dramatic” name, something like Flame or Lightning or Cognac. They are usually nouns but once in a while you meet an adjective. Naming the [...]
In the reading room at the Public Library they were working in the pleasantly vague, ethereal light, the faint smell of body odor hanging in the air, the many laptops and furtive glances. In Bryant Park, behind the library, a girl sat amidst a sea of chairs and stared out at the empty lawn. The sky was grey, a white [...]
I first came to Williamsburg in 1992 , to visit a painter friend’s studio. He would travel there every day from the Upper West Side, a long but worthwhile trip because the studio space was so cheap. Back then, the crowd of people that got off with us at the Bedford Avenue L stop disappeared quickly and mysteriously, and we [...]
The beers cost seven dollars and the DJ had A.D.D. He kept stopping the tracks midway through, throwing the girls off. There were two rooms, and opposite the bar in each room was a stage. The stage in the front room had a baby-blue wooden banister cordoning it off from the bar, and a sign in magic marker on poster [...]
There are some guys whose pattern is to realize a supposed deep love once they know a woman doesn’t want them. Maybe that explains me and Cristina. Maybe guys like me can't love at all, so we mask our loveless souls with occasional dream loves, pure in their unobtainability. We safely suffer limited devotions at the alters of impossible bitches. [...]
"I want to crawl head first into a small cave and curl up into a fetal position." -From Tanya Corrin's journal, February 7, 2001 Tanya Corrin and I are having brunch in Little Italy and discussing reality TV shows like 'Survivor' and 'The Real World.' She's saying that she doesn't think that they're real at all, that they're almost comletely [...]
The summer of 1957 left-hooked me. I should have seen it coming. Dad left on suspiciously extended business trips. Strange excursions, given his sedentary and lackluster job as an advertising sales agent for RH Donnelly. One day he even appeared outside our Flatlands apartment in a shiny cherry red Triumph, offering to take my girlfriends and me for a spin. [...]
It was the beginning of summer and my two young sons had taken to counting Jaguars. “There’s one!” Alex, then eight, would cry, elated, from the backseat of the car. “Oh, there’s another one.” “Look over there—there’s two more!” five-year-old Ferran would trill. Anyone unfamiliar with the Hamptons might have assumed we were on a safari, mistaking my sons’ enthusiasm [...]
Staying at a disheveled hotel in Midtown across from Madison Square Garden, I call and ask her to meet me at the restaurant downstairs for breakfast. We haven't seen each other since she moved away three years ago and have only spoken on the phone once (when she called to flirt with me after leaving her boyfriend). I walk down [...]
Thomas Beller: You once said that one of your roles, Nora of Doll's House, helped you find out where you stood as a woman today. What did you mean by that? Liv Ullman: I don't believe that one single play will teach you what you are. I think that every time you work on something, whether it is a play [...]
I ran away to Manhattan with a rich girl. Well, it was more of her sweeping me away than running away with her. I was actually running away from a different rich girl, who had introduced me to this new rich girl. I was 19 years old, halfway through my studies at a prestigious university in Boston. I had grown [...]
Allison and I met on the dance floor at Sway. The sign on the wall indicated "NO DANCING" but defiance was in the air that night, and what's wrong with a little good time anyway? I felt like partying, was out to meet somebody, and always loosen up when dancing. I was wearing my Mariachi-inspired studded black jeans, which I [...]
These days, it is she who gets on her tip toes when we greet each other or say good-bye. But she still wears that same perfume for special evenings, and when I smell it I’m transported, without even being aware of it, not so much to a particular time, but to a feeling, that wondrous, excited, slightly worried feeling that [...]
I once had a girlfriend who bought me clothes. At first this made me extremely happy, but then something changed, and these gifts, which had seemed such a pure expression of love, began to seem like little apologies. The first thing C. gave me was a blue T-shirt that she had embroidered, while on jury duty, with a little flower--a [...]
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