Years after reading the story (Junot Diaz' "Drown"), after teaching it to high schoolers (many of them POC), I set out to rewrite this queer of color narrative in my story, "The Monks." I wanted to show how a straight, masculine guy of color could brush up against queerness and feel empowered by it, not scared, even if in the slightest of ways, the slightest of spiritual progressions. 

Beautiful, the flat-forever fields of Wisconsin as I barrel on through flurries, gobbling cheese curds, until, through the fluff, the end appears.

Marriage is often thought of as having little to do with eroticism.1

I met my husband while bartending in Oakland. He applied to be the new chef. Tattooed knuckles. Chubby cheeks. Full beard.

That summer held the moment, in real time and in my memory for several years, of something he said that I didn’t hear.

Our Man, as we now call him.

The mushrooms I bought yesterday are moldy; the lines around my mouth have deepened. Tomorrow I am a mother for the first time.

It’s really Freudian, that. Turning a doctor into a parent for a few minutes. That’s why Maeve likes him.

In his hospital room, he handed over his phone and I called his family.

Previously on...
Part 6  ||  Part 5  ||  Part 4  ||  Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

I Googled things that bond people. Google said trauma.

We’ve sat in pot smoke-filled basements, watching boys play video games, and I’ve sipped wine with my parents on special occasions, but neither of us have been to an actual party before.

Ken pounded out three novelty songs on his busted up acoustic guitar, looking like a knock-off Daniel Johnston.

‘Le Trou Normand,’ I said to the Garçon, winking knowingly at him.

We long to see the world from her point of view, the worker. But do not ever long to be the worker.

My mother had been on a rampage to find me a husband since I started college.

Really I think all art should be freely available

I’m good at getting fucked up. I’m good at having fun. Go go go. I’m best at forgetting.

“And no one knows in what guise the end of the familiar will arrive.”- Joy Williams, “Cats and Dogs” 
 

Dale-Anne has heard a noise in her backyard, loud enough to pull her up from sleep.

To try to allay his doubt, or figure out of it’s real, [Li] mentally consults his in-progress novel, as if it were a friend. He intuits, in an intuition described by the line you quoted, that his doubt is wrong, is habitual and self-sabotalogical.

If a ghost is the impression you leave after you, then the divot you leave in your old bed is a ghost. 

Within 1-3 weeks, the body will begin to actively decay. This is when the organs, muscles, and skin will liquify. The hair, bones, and cartilage will remain.

Gratitude is not the response she expected. She smiled through thin lips, missing the hoped-for fight.

The whole first week after moving into his Brooklyn apartment – our apartment he keeps correcting me – I’m horribly constipated.

Gunderson could hear the vehicle’s noisy carping from eight blocks away, like a herd of wild trashcans rolling down the street.

Oh, Anya!

I’ll dig a pit where it can roam, feed off the aporia of my lust, wash its hooves in semen, soak in pools of piss.