“God is good!” my uncle Albert chanted, and his congregation agreed in full force.
YES! AMEN! YES GOD, AMEN!
“God is willing to... more
My sister once told me if you clench your butt cheeks together you won’t cry, a tip she learned from a hairdresser. I took a deep breath and went back to my office with my boss, squeezing my ass cheeks as tight I as could.
At eighteen I got two stars tattooed on my ankle. I used to tell people a variety of stories: they were falling stars, they were the stars from... more
The following is either a CONFESSION or a LIE or a LITERARY EXPERIMENT. Choose Your Own Adventure. If you would like... more
What I've written here is, of course, something that Kurt Cobain will never know. On April 8, the discovery... more
This wasn’t supposed to be an essay.
I became obsessed with the idea of bunting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to make my own.
After I turned thirty-five, the age of forty circled me like a shark. My dread of it intensified with each passing year. On my thirty-eighth... more
Ironically, hours before we went to see Whoopi, I texted two friends from my bathtub that I didn’t think I would ever write another essay. It was “too hard.” “People only want to vilify you, so they look for words to use to that end, and ignore the rest of what you’ve said.”
Jack Daniel screams his way down my throat & it’s a dry thrust.
Now I’m not dating anymore and I use the gold duffel bag to haul my belongings from one house-sitting gig to the next.
At first, it seemed like a poet’s dream day job. A job of watching, then describing.
“Bit ‘im in the jugular,” the truck driver tells me about the bear ten feet away, describing the day the bear went crazy.
The morning of our second date I drew a card – now I can’t remember which one...
It’s someone’s job to bury the dead.
On my last night in Zhenjiang, the three other laowai and I—each of us western foreigners: three upstaters and a guy from Toronto—walk the condominium-lined miles out to the banks of the Yangtze river.
Summers to Harridge, April 20, 1950: I am writing to inform you of the changes in the Washington ball park. It is rather difficult to... more
Crack! The sound of impact, ball on bat...
I couldn’t cut my hair (I’m no sheep) and I sure as hell couldn’t change my love of the Houston Astros.
Canvas after canvas I see my life in scenes the artist cannot know.
Then I hear it. Loud as the train coming into the station. Fuckinragabagagrrahfuuck. Ah ha. Of course. The unmistakable call of the down and out drunk.
I immediately remembered the Sex and the City episode where Samantha wants to sleep with the Franciscan priest she refers to as Friar Fuck.
Do you ever make pieces of origami, folding a sheet of paper over and over intentionally? Do you feel silly? Do you question each fold, or trust that the folds will add up to the frog or the bird you were promised?
They may even remember that while the game licensed team names, logos, and stadiums, and specifically licensed Ken Griffey Jr.'s name, statistics, and likeness—they did not license the names of Major League Baseball's other 699 players.
Radio Tower, 4yrs old
The radio tower had big cones on top. We were in the car and I said to mom, “What are those?” She didn't... more
"I didn't want to ever be outside of this moment. I knew at some point I would look at the picture I'd just taken and feel an overwhelming sense of loss. I thought as long as we could manage to stay inside this particular hotel room, to avoid our phones and every person with whom we'd ever come into contact, we would continue to feel whole. We were revolutionaries, goddamnit. These were our accumulation of beautiful moments. Before the world fractured us. I don't expect you to understand how I became Brad Pitt in that moment, how we all just flew along down the highway. Bandits. Ex-patriots. In love with this countryside, if not this country. Paper Moon. The Last Picture Show. All of this shot in black and white. Only the final scene in color."
FOUR NEW ESSAYS BY CHLOE CALDWELL! Plus the original essays that made you fall in love with Chloe!
Jason Phoebe Rusch is a queer writer from the Chicago suburbs. His full-length debut Dualities explores gender and patriarchy from the perspective of a man who was socialized and is currently still read as a woman. He is interested in complication and nuance and messy human failing, his own and that of others.
