stories about hugs (a post which was saved in the drafts for a few months for reasons I have since forgotten. perhaps my standards have lowered.)

1. arrest

I walked into orchestra and set my ukulele down beside the trashcan, as I do every class day, and stretched my shoulders back, squinting at the board to see what scale I was supposed to have learned by now. A spunky little violinist with short hair and a leather jacket skipped in front of me, slowed down, and asked if I needed a hug.

In truth, my first instinct was to say no. The tactile defensiveness surged back up in my gut, and my brain clicked at the sight of her face, quickly categorizing her into the "haha, haha, not today, Shady" section of potential disasters.

She knew the answer before she had asked it. She walked towards me, her arms slowly stretching outward, wrists up. Like she was surrendering to arrest. And then, in this proximity, I sighed, registered her question, and answered it in an honest and resigned, "Why not?"


2. headlock

My brother snuck up behind me in the hallway while I looked for cereal in the cupboard. He chuckled, giving himself away as his little arms slowly crept around my waist. On instinct, I spun around and grabbed his wrist and put him in a headlock as he laughed and laughed and laughed, struggling to change his nearness.

"What are you doing?!" I asked ironically, which only made him laugh more.

"I just wanted to hug you!" he said.

My brother's nine-year-old hugs are typically violent and unsolicited. He squeezes as hard as he can for as long as he can, until the victim asks to be let go of. This is probably a healthy phase of development, but so far it has lasted his entire life.

I held him back at arms length. He tried to stop smiling and failed. "Please can I hug you?" he begged, erupting into giggles.

I looked at him sideways, testing him. He did nothing. "Alright, fine."


3. grace

"You did not speak to her with grace," Martensen said in a grossly accurate honesty which is always refreshing and never helpful. We sat beside each other on the windowsill, looking straight ahead.

"I know. I know that. I wasn't aiming for grace."

He shrugged, and walked outside, and I met him there, tossing my backpack against a brick pillar. It landed suddenly and fell slowly forward with a pitiable concrete sigh. Martensen laughed.

"Grace," I said, looking at where it had fallen. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me sideways, lifting his chin to rest it on my head, pinning my arms to my frame. He stayed like that for some time, not moving. Charlotte looked at us, puzzled, and said, "That doesn't look reciprocated."

"It's not," we said in unison.

tiny girl

There's a tiny girl at the laundromat with light-up sneakers running up to me and back to her mother, playing leap frog on the floor.

titles of unpublished (or unwritten) blog posts

• of all the tigers I have seen

• only a psychopath

• an actual flannel shirt

• sunflowers: how someone could hate a thing for dying

• astounding: a dialogue

• nyquil

• untimely nostalgia: hope, codependency, & the end of moonbeams

• apple: a dialogue

• grace

• records of a human phonebook

• the patriarchy & victoria's secret

• ting ting & the tilapia

• subliminal (a list of casually violently homophobic things that I have heard, and laughed at nervously)

• reasons for punching

• spring fling foresight

• whale aftermath

• to all the old men who have winked at me, as if expecting some sort of response

• lockdown [pt. 2]

• if you give a mormon coffee

• crying about rocks

gender & giraffes (or, why you shouldn't lie to kids, ever)

My youngest sister Saraiah is four years old.

On father's day, my stepdad took his son to a race track, leaving my mother, sisters, and myself to do whatever we wanted.

"Today's an all girls day," my mom told Saraiah. "It's just you and me and Selah and Shady!"

"Shady is not a girl," Saraiah responded emphatically. "Her's a boy!"

My mother was baffled. "...Why would you say that?"

Saraiah sighed angrily and folded her arms. "Because she is as tall as a giraffe, and giraffes are all boys!"

Our mother reasoned with her about how both boy and girl giraffes have to exist for the species to survive, and how Shady is neither of them, because she is a human, and then she pulled out her anatomy and physiology textbook and explained what made a boy and a girl, because that's who my mother is. Saraiah remained skeptical.

When she told me this happened, I laughed for a while, and then remembered a day about ten months earlier when I had told Saraiah I was a boy -- partly just to mess with her, and partly to see what she would do. She frowned, and said, "You not a girl?

"No."

"But I still a girl."

"Yes, you're still a girl."

Then she moved on and, as I had believed, promptly forgot the whole conversation.

At first we all thought she was just being silly, and would adjust easily to the new information regarding my gender, but throughout the day she would continue to bring it up, making sure. Even for weeks afterward.

We'd be lying in my bed, which she sleeps in since she's scared of the dark, and she'd be playing with my hair and then whisper softly, "Shady?"

"What?"

"You a girl."

"Yes."

Or while we're playing with my dog, "Shady? Calley's a girl. Her's a girl, right?"

"Yeah, she is."

"And you a girl!"

"Yes!"

"And me!"

"Yes!"

After all these conversations one would assume it would be enough.

But one day, we had a small family over for spaghetti and bread.

Half of my family is allergic to gluten: my mother and sisters. Whenever we do get supermarket bread -- a rare delicacy -- only my stepdad, brother, and myself eat it. On this day, one of the other little girls at the table picked up a piece of bread, and Saraiah gasped. "Mom!! Her's is eating wheat!"

"Saraiah it's okay, she's not allergic."

"But her's a girl!!"

I sighed, exasperated. "Saraiah, I'm a girl!"

Saraiah's eyes widened, fork held tightly in hand. She looked around the table, at the two separate pots of noodles, at the plates, at the faces of our guests. You could see how hard she was trying to understand.

I realized then what made it such a problem. If I was four years old, I would definitely categorize my family with my mother and sister on one side, and my dad, brother, and Shady on the other. It made perfect sense as a social binary. We all eat wheat. We're all tall. We all have slightly lower voices, all wear baggy pants and button-down shirts. None of us wear jewelry.


I had been debating whether or not to cut my hair off, but then realized at that moment, watching my sister try desperately to understand the world around her, it would only make Saraiah's life that much harder.

perry

An urban legend.

back

Young girls, middle school girls, matching patriotic bikini tops. They are slouching, nervous, happy, yet to understand the mystical qualities of the shadows under their own shoulder blades of which they cannot see. Skin stretched over spines, told too skinny by their mothers, browning in the sun above the amusement park.

And boys, boys who travel in herds, remove their shirts in herds, swing them over their shoulders in herds, hair short and wet, eyes grinning. Backs straight and tall, lean and proud, some flexing uncomfortably as they approach the backs of girls.

And the backs of children, in the backseat with the windows down. Children running towards the water rides unsupervised, all ribs and spines and healthy hunger, hunger which cannot be filled with the food stamps keeping them alive. Hunger to run and chase and catch and throw, to laugh and cry and shout and scream, to bend backwards, to break bones.

The backs of pennies in a dirty fountain, backwards wishes in the water where a dead bird floats where birds do not belong.

Nine years old and the boys stand up straighter and the girls slouch shorter; the boys get louder, the girls get softer; and you notice the backs of them in the crowds, watch the gradual realization of bodies, the gradual stretching of spines.

From the back of the line, backs of men beneath t shirts, some soft and padded, muscled and slouching under the weight of family backpacks. Backs of girls in crop tops, above the hems of faded jean shorts, soft and dimpled and they know what they're doing though they know not what will be done. Backs of women, seemingly burdened, shirts that hug the skin and bra straps of infinite variety all consistently more interesting colors than the clothes that cover them.

And all of them move to the front of the line, and all of them lean back in their seats, and you are looking at your shoes, looking for something you want to have back, something you left here in middle school. Something in the scaffolding, something in the framework, something in the chipping paint. And you're waiting, searching for words abandoned in this place, words of great significance, and you want them back somehow. You want them back.

Backs of hands lifted in the swirling blue sky, screams tossed backwards and hurled into the air behind, you want them back, you want them back, you want them back.

Backs of nickels, backs of dimes, backs of quarters collected at the bottom as the bird is fished from the surface of the water, floating on its back. The wishes are more expensive these days. You wonder how much they all add up to. You wonder how many came true.

You wonder how many wishes were never asked for, lying on your belly in the grass during the homecoming picnic last year. Unnoticed freckles on your back. Unnoticed beauty on the undersides of leaves dancing above you, everything backwards, everything wrong, everything alive and holy.

And you want that wish back like the bird wants its life back.

Everything alive and holy.

unholy underwear

When I was maybe eight years old, I discovered slips.

I call it a discovery because it happened entirely on my own. I noticed these off-white silk skirts my mother and sister wore under their church dresses, and asked nothing about them. But when I found one in the laundry room, I figured I should wear it.

Because that's what people do, right? They wear slips under their church dresses.

I had no hint of understanding as to the reason and function behind slips, and I wasn't about to ask. I just slipped it on (ha ha) and got my books and went out the door.

As I walked out of the car and through the parking lot outside the church, the slip -- much too big for my frame -- slowly fell from my waist and eventually gathered in a small silk heap around my ankles. I looked down, stepped out of it, and put it in my bag.

My aunt, who had witnessed the whole thing, approached me laughing. I asked blankly what it was she was laughing at, and she stopped and looked at me, puzzled.

"Well--" she tried to explain, "your slip fell off..."

I looked at her.

"And slips -- slips are kind of like underwear. ... So, it was, you know, embarrassing."

I looked at her.

"...Since I could see it." She was beginning to feel cruel.

"Oh," I said, and looked at the undergarment in my bag. I blushed, and laughed, immediately embarrassed. On command. Feeling exactly as I had just been told to feel, as it had been explained to me.

---

Since then I have, of course, learned the function of slips, acquired ones which fit, and worn them appropriately, careful that they are not noticed, simply because of what I was told that one unfortunate evening when I was eight.

Children are only ashamed of what they are told to be ashamed of.

And proudly so.

They hide what they are told to hide, and they do not really think of how the slip must feel to be kept so carefully from public view -- every edge of lace, every small seam. The children are proud of their proper embarrassment, and why shouldn't they be? Undergarments never ask why you are embarrassed of them.

You hold no obligation to them.

Everyone wears underwear, and so everyone knows that everyone else does too. But whenever you see it in public (outside of the purposeful sagging-pants look, or maybe not), you are immediately embarrassed. Because underwear is meant to stay under whatever you wear.

Do you hide what you're ashamed of, or are you ashamed of what you hide?

Is it only the function of the slip -- the purpose of residing under a proper skirt -- that produces embarrassment? Or is it because of embarrassment that the slip must belong under a skirt?

You are proud of this shame. You are. You're supposed to be.

---

People aren't like underwear. That's what I'm saying.