Tag: Fiction

Open the Window, Let in the Cool Air The aging chorus girl is supposed to take dance lessons, but instead she takes a lover. The aging chorus girl is supposed to move left-right-left, but instead she shimmies up to a fellow resident to make her intentions known. It’s Cha-Cha Night in the common room, and…

My Octopus Wife My wife and I liked to play a game. I called it the Big Squeeze, but I don’t know what she called it. Perhaps nothing. I would bring a container to her den, and she would contort herself into its shape. On stormy days when the sea wasn’t safe for me, I…

Inkling All the rage: doodling on each other’s skin. Girls begin to wear Bics as accessories—stuck in buns, behind ears, on belt loops, over bra straps. Sometimes they dare to draw phallic symbols or crushes’ names that only wane when nail-scrubbed under scalding water. Mostly it’s just nonsense—hearts and stick figures and such. There’s so…