Issue No. 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. MEMORY YARDSALE CONTACT I’M LEARNING TO BE ALONE AGAIN DEEPEST, DARKEST
II. PDA IN P-TOWN BISOU I WAS ASKED TO WRITE ABOUT PHYSICAL INTIMACY GOOD GIRLS
III. YOU & I A COLLECTION BY PAULA NAJAS SHOWER THOUGHTS I THINK, THEREFORE I AM
The Intimacy Issue
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR his past summer, I lived a salty-aired dream for three whole, beautiful months. If I wasn’t working to raise money for my other life in the city, I was taking nighttime boat rides and day trips with my oldest friends by my side. So when I returned to the city, there was a signiicant transition period. I swapped the sand for concrete and had to readjust my rhythm to New York’s buzz. In doing so, I relected upon these two worlds that I simultaneously exist in and the relationships I’ve made in them. And within these worlds, I’ve built walls around myself to create degrees of intimacy that are comfortable. I decided that for this issue, my fourth one, I would dedicate it to breaking down those walls and exploring the extents of intimacy I experience. However, I realized that in order to be fully intimate and explore the capacity of human connection, I would have to include other perspectives, in addition to my own. So I also broke down the walls around Childs Play and reached out to potential contributors, in aims of growing as a publication. his issue has three sections: emotional, physical, and intellectual. In each of these categories, diferent aspects of intimacy are explored in varying forms, each relaying genuine stories. I’m so grateful for these contributions and insight because Childs Play has now become a family. A family that can be honest and communicative with one another. Pursue through these following pages and experience the diferent variations of intimacy that we have shared. Break down your walls and enjoy what follows.
Emma Childs
emotional intimacy Be Your Own 3am // Adult Mom Harvest Moon // Neil Young Color Song // Maggie Rogers My Fear #1 // Cloud Control It’s Time to Wake Up 2023 // La Femme Wild Heart // Stevie Nicks Just Saying/I Tried // he Internet You Always Hurt he One You Love // he Mills Brothers Transform (feat. Charlotte Day Wilson) // Daniel Caesar Somehow. // Phony Ppl Carry Me Home // Jorja Smith Your Best American Girl // Mitski
MEMORY YARDSALE
EVERYTHING MUST GO, TOO MUCH CLUTTER! by Emma Childs
A black, leather purse, $6: Wandering from shop to shop on a hunt for ishnet tights, we stumbled into a showroom of designer dresses. Before the attendants could scold us, we grabbed handfuls of gowns and ran to the dressing room; you put on a nude, backless dress, and I a green one with a halter neckline. We crated accompanying tales to match our newfound decadent personas, each detail growing more and more outrageous as the luxury went to our heads. I fell to the ground laughing, enveloped in sequins and silk.
A grey tee-shirt with a hole on the right shoulder, 50 cents: he pit pushed our bodies together and your hip molded into mine. As the bass echoed throughout the room and the lasers pulsed into the damp air, your lips mouthed the lyrics into my neck. I never found out your name but hey, it was fun.
A pair of tortoise shell sunglasses, $3: We were going 60 mph on the highway and I couldn’t stop laughing for the life of me. We screamed the lyrics to each other and soon enough, our voices overpowered the radio. While we loated down the freeway, the wind whipped in from the window and formed your hair into a halo around you. he tint of my lenses gave you a rosy pink hue and you became a part of the watercolor sunset.
Two, mismatched keys cuddling together on a chain, slight rust damage, 5 cents: he summer air around us was hazy and I could sense your nerves. If someone were to ask me when I irst knew I was falling hard for you, falling dangerously, stupidly hard, I would say it was as soon as I saw those keys. You clasped them around my neck and they hung next to my heart for weeks.
he Great Gatsby, well loved $1: Our moms dropped us of at the theater and we pretended to be much older than we actually were. We watched from our seats at the top of the theater and reached at the symbolism with ambitious minds. Aterwards, we ran out on a high from the technicolor decadence and talked about our dreams of moving miles away. I reread it as soon as I got home, dreaming of a colorful, outrageous life of my own.
A black and white polka dot umbrella, $2: he four of us ran around in the rain by Washington Square Park, fumbling into each other like a broken pinball machine. We licked our sot serve and skipped along the streets with a misty, neon haze illuminating the streets. Our throats were coated in sugar and giggles were swirling out of our mouths; it was pure magic.
A pair of black headphones, working condition $1: We listened to French music and drank what was let on your shelves. Aterwards, with lips tart from lemons, you kissed me goodbye and said “see you again?� I asked you for the name of that one song and listened to it on the train ride back home.
by Eva Miele
photos by Emma Childs
I
have a hard time making eye contact. I have a hard time having a genuine moment without needing to make it less heavy. I always need to take a real feeling and cut it with commentary, kill it with a laugh. I need to dismiss. I need to protect myself. I know I come of conident and outgoing, I’ve been told it over and over again. But if you really look at my compulsive overuse of words and phrases, my unexpected bursts of song during conversation, you’ll notice not only an excess of sound, but also an absence of pauses. An absence of space in a conversation where discomfort could have been. A place where feeling could have been felt. A place where something real could have been established. I don’t want to be hurt. I had something once that was real and when I think about it, it started with him noticing that I couldn’t look him in the eyes. He brought it up to me as we sat beside each other in the back of a crowded auditorium. he house lights were on. I was warm and cold in that exact way that doesn’t need any more description to be understood, warm in the cheeks and ears but cold all over the surface of my skin. I was hoping my goosebumps wouldn’t expose me and what I was trying not to feel. I laughed of his observation, tried to change the subject, and he said you’re doing it. I asked what I was doing. You’re being fake you. I knew fake me well. I oten played the fake, ‘showy Eva,’ silly and buzzing and light. She wasn’t so much fake as she was shallow, but I got his point, I and furrowed my brow pretending that I didn’t. Be real with me. Look in my eyes. Stop looking away! I really tried to hold my gaze steady, locked on his sharp hazel ones. I was voted class lirt in our high school yearbook. I was always trying to attract everybody, to hold their attention, to engage. But this little game of eye contact was hard. All those things that made me class lirt were hard with him, because I liked him. I hadn’t admitted it to anybody, not my best friend, and barely even to myself. he moment I liked somebody in that way, that way which I couldn’t control, I hung up a curtain of outward indiference. I could at least control what he knew. He could never know that I liked him that much.
Which eye am I looking in? I guessed wrong and he smirked but kept staring. His turn. You’re looking in my… let. He was right. He smirked and the lights dimmed and I felt relieved. I had been sweating a lot. I hope I was wearing enough deodorant. I hope he didn’t notice my bad skin or my double chin. I hope this made him like me. I hope he didn’t know I liked him. he show started and his arm was on the armrest next to mine and his knee was only an inch away and over a painstaking ten minutes I nudged it with my own. I felt jolts of energy and held it there as long as my racing heart would allow. I was eighteen, I was an adult for god’s sake, and I was initiating contact like I’d never touched or been touched before. He brought it up a week later, when we were laying in bed fully clothed. You were so obsessed with me, he teased. You kept pretending to accidentally touch my leg. I did not, I responded. I changed the subject. He was facing me and we were curled up and we’d been there for awhile and it was four p.m. and we had rehearsal in a few hours. I was happy and I felt safe and then I was waking up from a nap I hadn’t realized I’d taken. We kissed and I realized I hadn’t cared about my skin or my body in hours. Every move along the way was his. I was always last to show my hand. He’d told me he’d never slept, just slept, beside a girl before. I reciprocated. He said I love you and I froze and he said no, like, I have love for you like my friends or my sister or and I cut him of and said oh yeah, me too, of course. He said he’d told his friend I was his dream girl and I inally admitted that yes, I had been obsessing over him. Fixating to the extent that I told my therapist something was wrong with me and she had to reassure me it was scary, but okay, to feel. Hours later in bed we were quiet and my head was on his warm chest, ear to his heart, but the only heartbeat I could hear was my own and it was way too fast because I was planning my big move. I was planning to say it for me, say it without being prompted. I didn’t have to look in his eyes. hat is to say, no director would have made me deliver the lines directly to him because my head was on his chest. I could have whispered it there and the scene would have cut to us frolicking in a meadow. But I had to do it, I had to, so I pushed myself up on my elbows to reach his line of sight. I wanted to do that thing that felt so unnatural. Eyes locked. I love you.
Eyes locked.
I love you.
He paused and, of course, even though he’d said it irst only hours before I was afraid. It’s one of the feelings I remember most from that night. One of the longest moments. I replay that last night over and over and I’ve picked it apart piece by piece and the part that plays in blaring red with sharp detail is those seconds before he responded. I was sure he’d realized that I wasn’t enough. hat pause was ridiculous. He’d decided to unlove me. Yes, that was it, it had been a luke all along. I felt cold heat in my spine and I wanted to get up and run home when he hugged me to him and carefully responded: hat’s
a
scary
thing.
Loving
me.
I pressed my face to his chest and held him tighter. I was scared I suppose, he was reckless and cocky and too beautiful for this world. He was a risk, and love was a risk, and I liked it safe. And right then in his arms, despite all that risk, I did feel safe. hat’s a scary thing. Loving me. Eight hours later what made him ‘him’ was gone. His body, his empty body, was on a bed in the E.R. hooked up to bulky machines that made his chest rise and fall like clockwork. It was his body, but instead of those intense eyes, I saw closed lids surrounded by purple and navy eye sockets. Swollen features. Warm hands that didn’t feel right when I held them. Sot, dark hair tousled around ears that couldn’t hear me reading him my letter goodbye.
‘
I did love him and I do love him. And that last night when I was leaving his house, I’d put on my shoes in the entryway as he walked back towards the stairs ater a drawn out goodbye by the door. I looked back as I let. hat’s the last moment of him I have, him ascending those stairs. Bye! I’d yelled. Love you! I added seconds later, too many seconds later. My whole drive home I beat myself up over how awkwardly I’d said that, those damn seconds, my voice an octave too high. I’d tried to say it casually, like I would to my friends when my parents came to pick me up ater childhood sleepovers. But it didn’t come out casual at all and I know now that’s because it wasn’t a casual love. It was a new love but beyond that, a new kind of love. And there I had been, in his shirt, driving home hot with embarrassment because of my clumsy exit. Filled with that new warm tingly love. he last sound from my mouth to his conscious brain was that parting Love you! and in the year since, his friends and family have told me about the last time that they spoke with him. So many worry that they weren’t close enough with him, at least not right before. hat they didn’t reach out during those inal weeks, hadn’t seen him in awhile, hadn’t texted or called. hey couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken, the last time they’d hugged at a party or brushed shoulders in the halls. hey weren’t sure he knew how they felt. It was a risk, all a risk, and that parting moment was the beginning and end of something. It was awkward and it was scary. And I’ll always know, always get to know, that our clumsy, humiliating Love you! was the last thing he heard from me. His back was turned and he was walking up those stairs, back to the room where I’d forced my grey eyes to lock on his green speckled ones. he lights had dimmed, our knees had brushed in that auditorium, and he knew.
I
remember standing in the aisles of a Pennsylvania Target, rustic wooden owls and faux vintage telephones looming over me, as my 11-year-old world crumbled. I’d called my best friend Sahar’s well-memorized land line and they’d said they couldn’t have a play date, news that squeezed my heart tight and shortened my breath. I knew they thought I was pathetic, never wanted to see me again. I nagged my mom constantly as she pushed our cart out of the store. “Why can’t they play today? Are they lying? Do they not like me?” I whimpered, my voice careening into a falsetto. My mom assured me these reactions were normal. Ater all, only children need their friends more. On days I did have plans with Sahar, I was ecstatic--my legs jiggled so hard they jolted the crumbs lining my mom’s Subaru. I was happiest sitting on Sahar’s carpet, laughing so hard we leaned on each other. I felt like I’d never be as happy as I was in those moments. I’d never be as happy as I was when our shoulders were touching. I knew who I was and where I belonged-right there on that carpet. When we played with our Webkinz, I compulsively asked her if she was bored, my delight at being part of a greater whole only comparable to the fear that she’d grow tired of me. As I got older, my normal worries and cute attachments grew into a throatblocking static that a pediatric psychiatrist diagnosed as chronic anxiety and depression. I got medication, got therapy, and grew out of my ixation on my friends. I thought of it as a phase, isolated from the person I knew I was: smart, funny, popular. High school was predictably weird, but through the crop top phases and experimental drinking that turned to next day oh-shit-I’m-transferring shame, I was surrounded by constantly supportive people and a best friend that never let my side. If I was upset, she drove to pick me up. If she was upset, I’d drop everything to cry on Facetime with her.
We sobbed even thinking about going to diferent colleges. I wasn’t sure I could be a single entity. But eventually we separated, and I fulilled my clichéd liberal arts dream of moving to New York to study screenwriting.
I’ve never believed in my own self worth; instead I’ve developed a habit of using my friends and my mom to create a daily idea of myself. It’s taken me years to igure out I don’t actually believe in myself, but only believe in the self I’m handed to by my loved ones. I don’t want to be that self anymore. just had this conversaMy irst semester freshman year was I with my best friend. more incredible than I realized even then. tion I felt like I’d inally found it--that thing all the kids in indie movies about dis- I told him I thought I needed to spend less covering yourself ind. My new friends time with him. Less time. hat’s a comand I traipsed around the city, our wide pletely inadequate way to put it. A small eyes pointed up at the sky like the tour- way to say that every minute of every day ists we mocked. Everything was right and is going to be diferent because I orient I was so happy I could burst. I had a new my days around him. I am so grateful for world, new friends, a new best friend. our freshman year together. But I think We were a pair, not two people but one. I’m strong enough now to admit to myself One day, when we were in a museum, that emotional intimacy doesn’t equal a he turned to me, grabbing my arm, and desperate, all-consuming need; that’s desaid “I love that I can say ‘we’ and every- pendency that I should never have rely on. body knows who I mean.” I loved it, too. Self intimacy has been the irst step to I’m in my irst semester of my sophomore take the irst step towards self love, a year now, coming of a year of grow- path I’m only starting to see at my feet. ing anxiety and horrible self esteem that I thought I was secure, but I didn’t have snowballed until my only options were the introspection to recognize that the to go home or to prioritize myself en- love I held for myself depended on only tirely and unconditionally, with no guilt what I collected from the world around or shame. hat meant realizing it’s not me. Now I’m hungry for the moments normal to have a panic attack when my when I walk through the park and lisbest friend had other plans. hat it’s not ten to music, or laugh out loud at a joke normal to take a taxi downtown at 8:30 nobody told me. Every time I ind one on a Monday night because drinking I want to pull my phone out and text a is the only way you think you can feel friend about it. I want to tell them about comfortable in your own skin without the amazing jazz musician on the corner, somebody telling you that you can be. or the lamboyant hat that cracked me up. But I try to stop myself. Maybe it’s enough I’ve inally come to terms with a problem that I heard it. Maybe it’s enough that I I’ve hidden from myself since my days sit- laughed. I’m not sure, but I’m learning. ting on a nubbly carpet playing Webkinz.
Featuring Kelley Glennon & Jacob Potts Photos by Emma Childs
We all have things we are scared of. Some people hate spiders, some people despise clowns, and some people would choose death over public speaking. But what about those other fears, the big, abstract ones that keep you up at night and haunt the dark crevices of your mind? What if these fears, the ones without a physical manifestation, forced you to confront them and you couldn’t run? What if you had to face your deepest, darkest conceptual fears?
physical intimacy Nature Feels // Frank Ocean Psycho Lovers // Local Natives Everyman Needs a Companion // Father John Misty I Wanna Boi // PWR BTTM You and I // Margaret Glaspy Miserable America // Kevin Abstract When I Get My Hands On You // he New Basement Tapes Another Time // NxWorries Girlfriend // Kitty he Passion // Jaden Smith Someone Great // LCD Soundsystem I Want You // Bob Dylan
IN PDA IN PDA P-TOWN P-TOWN by Jacob Potts
up in Massachusetts, one of the bluest states I grew in the country and the irst state to legalize same-
sex marriage. hat fact comforted me as I was coming to terms with my identity as a gay man. hanks to my relatively liberal surroundings, I could be open with others about my sexuality, introduce people to my boyfriend, and wear t-shirts promoting the type of “gay propaganda” that would have gotten me arrested, beaten, or worse in other parts of the world. I was lucky. Not only was I born in gay-friendly New England, but I was also born into a family that accepted me for who I am instantly. Compared to the nightmare that others live through every day because of their identity, my world was idyllic. I am conident that thousands of lives would have been saved if all the LGBT+ people that have tragically committed suicide over the years had the same friends and family that I had.
hand with another guy in my hometown, I still never summoned the courage to do so. he staring is unbearable. Whenever a man holds hands with another male who is not their toddler or their arthritic grandfather, people stare. Even those who call themselves “allies” and have “lots of gay friends” can’t help but stare. To them, I am a curiosity. A spectacle. A zoo animal. I am so abnormal that they need to ix me in their vision for several seconds to understand me. For them to judge me. It doesn’t matter that these people are strangers, many of whom I will never encounter again, much less be confronted by. It still stings to see the disapproval in their eyes. It stings to know that some random passerby need only one look at me to write me of as a hellbound sinner. It stings to recognize that an alarming number of Americans feel the need to cover their kids’ eyes when I walk past, sincerely believing that observing my “lifestyle” will corrupt their innocence. My love is “inappropriate” for children. To them, my hand-holding is rated-R.
Even with all that support, showing public displays of afection was (and is) outside my comfort zone. I’m not talking about the vomit-inducing public makeout sessions that straight people have done for decades. I’m not talking about fondling or ass-slapping. I’m just It stings to see your abnormality relected back at you talking about holding hands. in the eyes of hundreds of “normal” people who could While I doubt I would face much more abuse than the do the exactly what you’re doing without an ounce of occasional utterance of “faggot” if I walked hand-in- shame.
“ The
sheer euphoria that bubbles up inside you when you can hug and kiss your queer S.O. in broad daylight can make your year. It’s like the devil that’s been sitting on your shoulder your whole life, telling you that you’re perverted, has been swatted away and squashed under a drag queen’s stiletto heel. The shame vanishes.
One day, I traveled to an alternate universe: Provincetown, Massachusetts. For the uninitiated, Provincetown has deservedly earned the label “he Gayest Town in America.” According to US Census data, it has the highest number of same-sex couples in the nation.
”
alongside his “friend;” I am the type of conident gay man that makes iteen-year-old girls yell “YAAS QUEEN!” I start delighting in launting my sexuality as I strut across the very land where that the ultraconservative Pilgrims irst stepped of he Maylower.
Each time I visited the Gayest Town in America, I Every aspect of P-town life relects this. It is impossi- couldn’t help but start but start kissing my then-boyble to ind a spot downtown where a rainbow lag isn’t friend for all to see. In the moment, I didn’t care if I visible. Drag queens and male strippers run through was being gross, even by queer standards. For the irst time in my life, I could broadcast my love to strangers the streets advertising their shows. without getting judged. I could show intimacy with Its annual “Carnival,” equivalent to a “gay pride pa- another man in open air. I could be authentically me. rade,” attracts fun-loving queers from all over the country. his event is beautifully cathartic for people If this experience meant so much to me, I can’t imaglike me who just want to walk around covered in glit- ine how much it meant to people less fortunate than me. People who grew up in the Bible Belt. People who ter with the person they love. grew up with homophobic parents. People from counQueer PDA in Provincetown is beyond normal; it is tries where being gay alone is punishable by death. commonplace. My then-boyfriend and I could have People who, unlike me, are not white, cisgender men. ripped of our shirts and played tonsil hockey in front Someday, I hope that the rest of the nation mirrors of city hall without any scandal. the queer utopia at Provincetown, but I’m not optiI can’t overstate how liberating this is. he sheer eu- mistic. he same country that elected a president who phoria that bubbles up inside you when you can hug kick-started his campaign with blatant prejudice and and kiss your queer S.O. in broad daylight can make a vice president that supported conversion therapy is your year. It’s like the devil that’s been sitting on your not going to suddenly embrace all LGBT+ people and shoulder your whole life, telling you that you’re per- rewrite its deeply-ingrained social norms. hat said, I verted, has been swatted away and squashed under a encourage everyone reading this to protest injustice, donate to the Human Rights Campaign, and vote for drag queen’s stiletto heel. he shame vanishes. candidates that protect our rights. When I go to Provincetown, my public persona completely transforms. I am no longer the well-behaved he least you can do is smile at the next proud queer boy with an ambiguous sexual orientation walking couple you see and let them live their love.
Bisou
photos by Emma Childs
I Was Asked to Write About Physical Intimacy By Emma Szymanski 11.12.17 at 9:08pm I lay here with you. he bareness was (my) goal all along. I didn’t mean to use you, but you used me too. At least now we have put the tools down and the moans and deep-throated visceral echoes into your and my mouths have stopped. here is a deafening silence, muted itself by occasional slow and arcane breaths (of (us) (both)), emergent from the depths of that abyss we have shared in, delved in, and eventually, tiredly exited from, (at least partly) together. Sweating in the dark but the city light enters the space like the whiteout stains on the coils of my ingerprints when I try to clean up my former scribbles on a scholastic page. (You came, you always cum, I didn’t). (Don’t be sorry; no one ever makes me). July 20th, 2017 at 11:16am I can’t see the color of your eyes In a dimly lit room where someone raises the volume of the music If we go home and take of our clothes won’t we be thinking of other people? I apologize in advance because I’ll probably fuck this up in about a month You’ll pretend you like beer I’ll pretend I read books oten his is typical it’s cyclical his supericial repetition Your turbulent romantic reputation with yourself Here comes somebody else I wrote that about you (and I and everybody else) before we even really met. I mean I had met you through that seminar at school and you were close with someone I used to know and do drugs with (i.e., we were friends) and you said you had seen me around since freshman year and then we barely talked at my best friend’s birthday party and I sold everybody edibles and slugged from a twenty-dollar bottle of red wine that stained my teeth but you let early and I talked to other girls and then we made out ive days ater in my dirty blue twin bed. And both of us admitted that although the sex has been and is still really good (these few weeks you’ve kept mentioning that our libidos don’t really match up; i.e., in my words, because, no ofense, but I’m the only one that really says the most of what I mean all the time anyway: I don’t think we fuck enough). But too we said that masturbating is always better for us both, just in a diferent way. I can make myself cum. No one else does? I wonder if they (or I mean, I hope, you, because I’m not really interested in everybody else much of the time anymore, anyway) can or will. So yes, it’s true, I am in love with myself. But too, I guess like how I wrote, you—I am talking to myself—have a turbulent romantic reputation with yourself, are in a turbulent romantic relationship with yourself, and you—now I mean you—and I and everybody else. (Primitive Nascent Of the womb) (I am always a child and you are too)
(How many months older are you than me, again? Six, I think; no, ive. I looked up the compatibility of our astrological signs and it wasn’t looking good. But you told me you’re barely a Pisces anyway, on the cusp, and I remember that I’m trying to determine the path of my (and our?) fate through the presentation of an LED rectangular screen with words typed by someone I’ve never met who counts on the stars to spoil the surprises of the hapless and/or happy happening accidents between us (you and I and everybody else) both. I read my own horoscope and I like to think about the manifestations of those twelve or so signs in people’s personalities but I’m not one for future-telling. Wouldn’t you rather be anxious about uncertainty than despairing about the infallibility of the (not a or our) “future”? I know you would, but that’s because you’re more head than feelings and I’m more heart than loor beneath feet and overhead ceilings)
Nakedness is a skin and I mean that clearly literally but I mean that as something beyond and within. I mean that around you I am naked all the time and okay I mean that I always want to rush to rip our clothes of but too I mean that when you’re looking in my eyes behind the wispy smoke of a cigarette (drag, one, two) that I probably gave you I’m choking on unsad and unsaid and uncried tears that are so all-consuming that I’m numb to the thought and the wholeness of that kaleidoscope of that emotional symphony. I am naked, exposed, but I know that most of the time you just see this body encased and fully enclosed in those clothes, especially in the moments that we meet up just to smoke when you’re around and it keeps getting colder outside but I keep feeling closer to you. Surprisingly (!) I smoked my irst cigarette-ater-sex with you. Love is the maturation of infatuation (in any sense) (I wrote that outside of the dollar pizza place me and my friends have always gone to) Where does it all go—our innocence? Does it burn away like dry incense? I’d like to know, I’d hope to follow I’ve found that spirit but I can’t follow it I hope the youth and color of my world is something that you ind too Unseen in your own and (selishly) I hope to be your catalyst in the way that you are my (a) muse(ment) Know that I’ve always only said what I meant I’m glad we touch (in any sense) In this instance I will extend my patience Liberation: I will try to love you without expectation Fortune: mostly in the warm and dark in the divine ater-sex-cigarettes-and-breaths in my bed and when we give each other simply stellar head and the things you’ve (let yourself) said and in these blocked-letters as words someone will’ve maybe read and for when, with you and I and nobody else, it’s so much better to rest in quiet naked togetherness than to voice what I (keep) feel(ing more of for you (and nobody else)) in the unbound spatiality my head (Just now I wrote all this because of you, but for me and everybody else)
good girls
I t ’ s t i m e we s t e p i n t o yo u r ow n s k i n . F e m i n i n i t y h a s b e e n p e r ve r t e d i n t o a s u f f o c a t i n g exc e p t i o n d e m a n d e d o f wo m e n . We a r e ex p e c t e d t o b e b e a u t i f u l , b u t a r e d e p r i ve d o f t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o r eve l i n i t . S h e d t h e ex p e c t a t i o n s a n d s h a m e t h a t a c c o m p a ny f e m i n i n i t y. H u g yo u r f r i e n d s eve n t h o u g h yo u s a w t h e m a n h o u r a g o . G i g g l e . S h o u t . C r y. A l l ow yo u r s e l f t o b e u n a p o l o g e t i c a l l y f e m i n i n e a n d c r e a t e a d e f i n i t i o n t h a t ’ s yo u r s .
Featuring: Camer yn Mar tin @camer yn_mar tin Ka t h e r i n e M i l l s @ k a t h e r i n e _ m i l l s M i a @ g r o o v y. m Samantha Moura @samantha_moura Photos by Emma Childs
intellectual intimacy Losing All Sense // Grizzly Bear His Master’s Voice // Monsters of Folk Green & Gold // Lianne La Havas Zebra // Beach House Bassically // Tei Shi Cool Blue // he Japanese House Sweet November // SZA Mistake // Lake Street Dive Lovely You // Monster Rally Walking Away // Haim Otherside // Perfurme Genius Albatross // Fleetwod Mac
you and i by Emma Childs veryone used to talk about how remarkable it was that we never fought. We didn’t need to, we were best friends and we existed in our world. In our world, there were midnight tea parties and fairy houses and cherry jello for breakfast. In our world, we had our own language. We operated with glittery winks, eye rolls, and giggles to send our messages from across the dinner table. It drove Dad crazy. We existed together and never worried too much because that’s how it was, us against the world. It was always gonna be you and I.
E
But then we grew up and the imagination games became childish and the inside jokes forgotten about. You entered middle school, and I, the little sister, staggered behind. You’d have friends over and I’d sit in the corner watching you guys play video games. I never joined in but I liked my corner. It meant I was included and wasn’t falling too far behind. You eventually outgrew the videogames and instead, would go upstairs into you room, with the door shut. here was no way I could sit in the corner up there so I’d stay downstairs. It wasn’t a bad thing, we were growing up, and I knew it was okay because eventually, the friend would leave and you’d open the door and I could come in. We’d lay on the loor and scream angsty pop lyrics to each other. We’d paint our nails and laugh ourselves into ab workouts. We were still there, together, communicating side by side. But then you got into high school, and eventually, a few years later, so did I. We outgrew our angsty pop phase and I learned about eyeliner. You tried every activity possible and I stuck to the one that it. We fought a lot, usually about who could use the bathroom irst in the morning, but that was normal, we were teenage girls. We were busy and had our own schedules, but every morning we’d drive to school together at 7am. During that groggy, 15 minute ride, we were together again. We played along to the radio station trivia contests and made fun of our teachers. Once we got to school, we’d part ways, of to irst period, and start our separate days.
home on holidays and on some nights, when I wasn’t with him, you and I would sit by side on the couch and watch Will Ferrell movies. We’d laugh into the darkness and eat way too much tofee popcorn. Something was still there between us, between you and I. But then one summer you came home and something was of. I don’t think either of us knew what happened but we both knew something had. One night you suggested we go to dinner, just the two of us, to that Italian place that we both love. On the car ride there, I racked my brain for conversation topics that would seem natural; the recent celebrity meltdown, our parents, that show we both watched last year which we agreed was decent. We got to the restaurant and let the silence ill the clammy air while we looked over the menus. I mentioned how I might get the gnocchi, you said you were craving seafood. I was examining the marina stain on the tablecloth when you said my name. I looked up at you. I stared at your moving lips while the words “I feel like I don’t know you anymore” fell out of them. here we were, across the dinner table from each other, just like we had been countless times before, but this time was diferent. Our giggles had been replaced with frowns and absolutely nothing was glittering. You were speaking in a dead language that I was no longer luent in. We’d never had that problem before: a language barrier. I stared out the window the whole drive home and watched the moon tag along behind us.
We moved on from that dinner and got to a place that was comfortable, a point to where we could exist simultaneously. here’s no animosity between us, I know that, but sometimes that hurts more. It’s the absence of anything at all that stabs me awake in the middle of the night. I had a dream a few weeks ago that you and I were young, back at the old house. We were playing tag outside and yelping with joy in front of the old cherry tree. I awoke and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a nightmare. hose girls were so far away, the goofy ones who had fun together. We live in our own worlds now and it’s been weeks since I’ve last heard your voice. But then those rides stopped. You graduated and I wonder if we’ll ever get back to how it once was. Back went of to college in Pennsylvania and I stayed be- to the world of fairy houses and nail polish and trivia hind on our peninsula. You got a boyfriend and I and tofee popcorn. Back to the world of us. Back to did too so then they entered our worlds. You’d come when we thought it was always gonna be you and I.
A Collection by Paula Najas
We Speak in Code I am scared that someone else Will one day understand he language that we invented Every time we kissed. I do not want anyone to see What I saw in you. It is selish of me, But I am still rooting for us. All the way.
photos by Emma Childs
Spring Spring usually came to me In the touch of hands And a kiss of your Cherry blossom lips. Summer in the sound Of a song And the song of Your laughter. Autumn as the turning leaves hat turned too early and A glass of wine that knew no more About love than it did about lust. Winter in the form of a storm. I did not want to say goodbye. I did not know how to hate you Or how to thank you. Spring came to me this time Not as your name, But as the loneliness of a single tulip. How breath-taking to watch it bloom.
Vita Nova With your absence A thousand places lost their color, Meaning and illusion. With your absence Came the feeling of having My feet nailed to the same place In which I saw you for the last time. You took the light of day with you. Still, your absence Brought with her a bouquet of roses And a welcome letter. Hope came with her And I, with eyes all teared up, Read what was written on it: “Vita Nova.�
Me Before Her he one who comes ater me Is going to have to keep her eyes Closed all the time, I doubt you will be able to Hide that you have my name Tattooed all over your skin.
Me Before Anyone he one who comes ater you Will teach me how to love he most remote corners of my body. He will not have to throw me On the ground to worship at his feet To understand that my love is true.
shower thoughts by caroline dupuy my irst favorite part of my body is my hands. when i stretch them out i can pretend for a moment that they’re not mine. my ingers are slender, my wrists look fragile the most delicate part of me when i sit down in the shower i like to stretch my legs up against the wall on the white tile. they look longer from down here. my body shaped like an L, water pouring down from my toes gathering a pool at my belly my second favorite part of my body are my legs if i isolate these parts of my body, i am not myself i am somebody with long legs, and delicate wrists you might assume the body that’s packaged along with it is also long and delicate i let the hot water burn my skin as if it’s peeling away layers now i’m cross legged looking down at softer edges my torso is not delicate, it never has been. if i don’t think about it id say this is my least favorite part of me i know the text book from front to cover the question is when i’ll start believing it.
i think, therefore i am featuring adrian philpo, fei martinez, & maya tatikola photos by emma childs Can you look in the mirror and hold your own gaze? Being selfaware is no easy feat. This type of introspection is not something you are born with; it is a muscle that must be exercised and nurtured. Self-awareness is an upwards battle with no clear inish line, nonetheless, it is your duty to actively participate. Look within yourself to surface your most authentic elements.
thank you.