Breathing heavily, we make it to the corner of the vacant dry cleaner’s. Still no one has rented it, I say.
Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew.
The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would... more
The first time this happened, I sighed when he walked away, squinting my eyes to see if he had a wedding ring.
When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”
Kinsella, Annie: Cinnamon-haired romantic lead in Field of Dreams. Played with zeal by Amy Madigan. Equal parts romantic and pragmatic, she raised a farm and a daughter, vanquished small-town Nazism, and offered unconditional support to her crazy-ass ghost-loving husband.
In 1974 or 1975 my father took my sisters and me to our first baseball game. It was always going to be a Yankee game, wherever that might be.
You cannot think of baseball without thinking of your grandpa. The two forever tangled in each’s DNA.
Later that evening, Ken Caminiti died alone in a bug infested Bronx drug house.
“I’ll be right up,” I said, seeking the comfort of the remaining parental arms. But no, he told me, “wait until morning.”
Mike and I sat in our separate seats and waved to each other. I’d texted him the night before and asked “Wanna see Don Giovanni tomorrow... more
Scream and jump out, I said, watching us slide toward the water, letting the safety belt hold me in place.
The bracelet tells someone where she is, honey. But it doesn’t tell you why.
Sitting still can be tough on a body, just as the shifting earth, and plunging and thawing temperatures can be hard on a pipe.
The world does not write enough odes
to in-betweenness—the way you can be
together / feel apart / apart / feel... more
I didn’t realize, when we were falling in love, that her father was a pathological extrovert.
3) Almost all seemingly-ruined meals can be salvaged if you add something. About 80 percent of the time, that something is wine. And if a meal is going to fail, let it fail spectacularly.
There is a ceramic pot full of my mother’s cigarette butts on the front steps of my childhood home, hot-glued back together by my father after one of our cats saw a chipmunk, and went for it.
The first time I went to the opera I went because I wanted to see a man go to hell. My dad got us tickets to... more
A dog would live too long. An axolotl would stink the house. Reptile equipment is confusing, complex. I’m allergic to cats. What I really... more
I have a tattoo on my back that’s almost a secret. My partner is the only one who has looked up close. It feels like it’s sometimes... more
“You should just ask yourself what your needs are,” Stephanie says. She raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of sangria, swallows... more
My dad says the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day. He says if you ain’t the lead dog the scenery never changes. If you can’t run with the big dogs then stay on the porch.
A stain; an unintended mark that, once made, resists removal. Inadvertent remnant and by-product, it is something made while we were looking elsewhere; evidence that our attention faltered, or that some vessel failed to function.
The Friday after the sexual assault hearing of future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when we were all wondering if it mattered anymore what anyone said or did, I drove with a group of guys up into the Colorado mountains.
"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.
