The Smiths “There’s a Light That Never Goes Out” sounds from the speakers. Dim candlelight, cognac leather chairs with red velvet cushions, crimson painted walls lined with black and white portraits of 80’s music legends. The waiter sets down a warm ceramic plate of steaming hot vodka rigatoni. Instead of the familiar, how little of this can I eat to look like I’m starving, I think: come to mama. I scrape a few hot-pink noodles onto my plate, then hers. She dives in, and narrates my thoughts. 

I don’t tell you where I go. I say: an island in the Mediterranean, Florence or Berlin. Don’t call!  

We don’t text. I don’t think of you at all. I don’t even talk about you to anyone. People don’t know we’re involved, and I like it that way. 

Just mentioning your name to others makes them see me in a certain light. Or actually, no light. You overshadow people, you have that power (and you love it, admit it).

Once I mention you, it’s all about you. 

My father is every man,
Every man is my father.

Every evening a clean slate 
A table cloth white as a canvas
At opposite ends we sit
Face to face 
With the sea in our backs 
And an ocean between us

Her stiletto nail circles the rim of her martini glass
My hands are jealous of her dress
Will she? Does she?

Narrator: The day you were born, you almost died. The amniotic fluid spiked by Mother Nature herself. Trapped in the belly of the beast, floating in poison, for 24 hours, your ultimate safe space was Chernobyl.

I am a jellyfish woman. 

My skin is transparent, an open window to a network of diamond veins glowing in radiant blue, magenta and reddish purple hues. Electrical signals rushing through my nerves illuminate me like shooting stars the night sky. 

My parents are big, lush, green trees.

They listen. They are always there when I need them. I can lean on them. They hold space for me. They dry my tears with their big green leaf hands.

“Dad’s dead,” my sister’s voice said on the other end. I heard, but I didn’t feel. I knew, but I didn’t understand.

I’ve always hated heels. They are red lacquer foot coffins. Velvet torture devices in disguise. Instead of diving head first into my mother’s high heel collection like most girls at age 13, I bought my first pair of Vans, black and white checkered slip-ons with red cherries. They would be the proud first of an impressive Skate-4-Life-Can’t-Skate-To-Save-My-Life shoe collection including Converse “chucks” that my girlfriends and I used as a canvas for our teenage angst.

“I just Amazon-primed a beautiful, big, neon pink strap-on to plow my girlfriend,” I said matter of factly to my co-workers over a bowl of slightly lukewarm, but exceptionally coconut-y chicken korma in an Indian restaurant in Wyoming.

“I’ve been looking for freedom” blasted out of the Kombinat Sternradio Type R 160 model with a handy cassette deck set in a chic wooden frame and red leather case, the only radio allowed in the GDR. A few months ago, this would have been unthinkable. Rock & Roll meant resistance, anarchy, revolution, difference. The opposite of sameness.

29th Floor. ’Bing’ the pre-war elevator doors pushed open and a heavy cloud of powdery soapiness announced Mrs. Bigsby. Mrs. Bigsby used to be Mrs. Harrington. The Harrington. The grand dame of theatre. Word on the street was she killed her third husband, poisoned him with tetrodotoxin.

I’ve always had a thing for extreme temperatures, scorching hot showers, icy skinny dipping, it’s nothing to me. I enjoy it in fact. My body is not a temple. It’s a well-oiled steel machine that I use to crush toxic men’s tiny little egos. Men of all shapes and sizes from bony, meaty to walking-steroid ads for Fitness First become shadows of themselves in my presence. I am the ice queen, the boss of the video game of their lives they cannot beat. They just can’t handle it. And I love it.

Since the beginning of time, humans have moved their bodies to the rhythm of music. Dancing is freedom. But not all dancers are created equal. On a Saturday night out somewhere in Brooklyn, I dragged my body through a dark, ominous pulsating crowd of shadows. The more eyes I felt like spotlights on my body, the less it felt like my own. Something else was controlling me, pressing my buttons, instructing me how to move my limbs. I was no longer a human, I was a puppet.

I grew up in the 90’s, the era of the popstar and MTV. I was a massive Britney Spears fan. She was my icon, my role model. So naturally, I wanted to look like her, move like her, capitalize on my body just like her. This piece examines how we need more women in leadership roles to inspire girls to seek intellectual success instead of male validation when they grow up.

Imagine you lived in a place,
as safe as your mother’s womb, where you can just be.

Without rules, judgment or expectations,
Making you tip toe all your life.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful place?

When I walk past those men, they demand: why don’t you smile, you’re so beautiful! When I walk past those men, they demand: you dropped something, bend over!

Boy meets Girl