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Culture and Society
Don’t Think Too Hard about Avocados
It’s the brown spots that worry me, the ones that appear on the edge of the avocado after you leave half in the refrigerator. Harmless or no? . . . I’m not talking about overall browning, though. I’m talking about distinct dark spots speckling the flesh. Are they brown or black? I’ve never been very good with colors.
February 2024The Bleeding Woman
So, Maryam the elder goes on, they arrest Yeshua and some of his followers and bundle them off to our dear high priest, Caiaphas, who decides it’s better for Yeshua to die than to cause problems with the Romans. The high priest is always sucking Roman cock—can’t help himself—so he turns Yeshua over to the governor, lots of bureaucracy, you know how these things go.
February 2024Loving a Sport That Doesn’t Always Love Me Back
I’ve always enjoyed pickup: the sudden poetry of it, the immediate bond and intimacy among strangers. . . . It’s all guts and very little glory—yet there is some glory, even if only a handful of spectators are watching. One OHHHHHHH, after you cross someone so hard they fall on their ass, can make you hold your head high for the rest of the week.
February 2024A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
February 2024Is This Desire?
Clarissa Smith on the Intersection of Human Sexuality and Pornography
Being honest or open about your Pornhub habits is not the same as telling someone, “I’ve just seen Call My Agent! on Netflix. I think you’d like it.” Part of the reason for that is that most people don’t spend terribly long on Pornhub.
February 2024Kissing Strangers in the Street
Afterward I checked my phone. There were a dozen messages from three of my girlfriends who knew where I was. Like a chorus of Muses they asked, Are you alive? The dom was in the shower. I leaned against the glass-topped desk, my abandoned martini on the nightstand. I was very much alive.
February 2024Sunbeams
February 2024From our earliest beginnings, we have been a nation obsessed with sex, titillated by it at the same time that we fear it, elaborating rules to contain it at the same time that we violate them.
Longshanks
The elf hits me doing what feels like eighty, blowing through the light at the new intersection by the outlet mall. One of his headlights glances off mine, and he swerves on two wheels before slamming into a construction barricade with the sound of a typewriter dropped off a roof. No seat belt: he is thrown from the car and sails into the desert.
February 2024Fantasy
Calling a 1-900 number, moving to the tropics, writing fan fiction
February 2024The Hat
“You found it?” I could tell my answer had pleased him. By then the cashier was ready for me. The checkout had two conveyor belts, and I pushed my cart around to the belt on the opposite side, relieved to be out of close proximity to the man, who now stood across from me.
January 2024