Author: nonfictionwoman

As I sit down to write you, I think of myself at your age, exactly 21 years ago. I turned 21 a couple of months before you were born, so I didn’t have that celebratory first drink on my birthday that year. In fact, I don’t even remember my birthday that year or many others [...]

(Even if I pass on drinks; even if I am noticeably pregnant) "Are you pregnant?" (And if I have indicated that I am pregnant) "So. Was this pregnancy planned?" (And if I have the baby or don't have it) "Are you going to get your tubes tied now?" Note: The answer to all of these [...]

This week, Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, "I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye," was published in The Atlantic. He scribed an excellent assessment of the Kanye mania dominating the headlines for the last few weeks (months? years?), and he did it with compassion and unwavering sobriety. His clear-eyed focus and precise prose reflect an intimate and historical understanding of [...]

Sunday December 3, 2017 I know I should write down everything that happened and everything that is happening. I don’t really know what’s happening though. One day, there was Tam, and now there is no Tam. Except, now everything is Tam, and I barely feel like Tiff without her. I talk to her in my [...]

Yesterday, I had a miscarriage. Maybe it's still happening. If so, my physical symptoms are minor. In fact, throughout the whole ordeal, I've only required about 5 Tylenol. The fact that only 5 Tylenol and about a day separate me from being an expecting mother baffles me in the same way I was baffled two [...]

“My cognitive confidence seems to have vanished altogether,” [she writes.] “Even the correct stance for telling you this, the ways to describe what is happening to me, the attitude, the tone, the very words, now elude my grasp.” —Joan Didion (via Michael Specktor for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Positions of Privilege: On Joan Didion's [...]

"I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance, I want drugs, I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, to be [...]

What would you do if the sirens went off tonight? Would you go into the basement? What would you take with you? What if you didn’t have a basement, where would you go? What would you do? What if you were outside? In public? In a compromising position? In a car, in a fight, on [...]