It’s not me,
it’s you.
(Contents Page)
Horror Stories
How to Deal with Being the Girl Guys ALMOST Date Total Sorority Move Recruitment Chair
How to Get Over Someone Who was Never Actually Your
Boyfriend “Big Ten Blonde”
An Ode to Fireball Alex Buscemi
How Leaked Nudes Led to a Good Kid Being Expelled from
College Total Frat Move Intern
On Tinder, Off Sex Ali Rachel Pearl
When an Open Relationship Comes at a Price
Eliza Kennedy
No Labels, No Drama, Right? Jordana Narin
(Contents Page)
Flash (back) fiction My Voice
Josh Raab Sweltering Summer
S. Kay
Reasons that You’re the worst
Craigslist: Missed Connections
Total Sorority/Fraternity Move: Column Unknown Authors
Twitter: #YoungLove
Twitter: Why We Broke Up Various Authors
To: The Younger Generation From: Tyler Curry
RE: Deferred Author’s Note
Admit it: If you didn't already Facebookstalk the man you've made Friday-night plans with, you most definitely will after the date. The updates that your new man posts, the photos that he takes and the status updates that he "likes" have become just as important as the words that come out of his mouth on the date. At dinner you may even sporadically pull up an app on your iPhone to illustrate the story you're telling or provide a visual of your best friend who is just too fabulous for words to describe. On their face, social media may seem like just another tool to get to know a person, but in reality, applications like Facebook and Instagram portray a distorted, disjointed and altogether imaginary version of the people we are.
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Horror Stories: High school and college suck for everyone, especially these authors. How to Deal with Being the Girl Guys ALMOST Date Total Sorority Move Recruitment Chair
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A
s we’ve all surely experienced, there are many different types of guys: the douchebag, the jock, the too emotionally attached, and the one who says he’ll call but never does, for example. Well, I’ve discovered over the years that we ladies can be broken down into categories, too. One friend who will go all the way but stop just short of sex with any guy is the tease. Another beautiful, thin, intelligent, and kind friend who was just too distant to commit to any one suitor is every guy’s “one who got away.” Yet another dear friend is the one who makes out with guys in bars every weekend but couldn’t tell you the last time she’s fallen in love for fear of being hurt again. Me? Well, I’m the “almost” girl. Through all my life, I have always been the “almost” girl. I’m the girl who the guy has almosthooked up with or almost dated or almost fallen in love with, but time after time, it turns out that I was only almost hot enough to date
has left me with a deep-rooted scar that I am only almost good enough; that is, that no matter what, I will never be good enough. This feeling is as true to me as being short, having brown eyes, or knowing that two plus two is four. This truth has been reaffirmed time after time, year after year, with heartbreak after heartbreak. I was almost good enough for my first love, but he left me for my best friend. I was almost good enough for my high school sweetheart, but he cheated on me and led me on with promises of love and a future for the following three years. Over time, I realized I was good enough for some things. I was good enough to be the best friend of guy after guy that I fell for, while they chased after, dated, proposed to, and married other women. I was good enough to make out with in a bar, but never to be called back again. I was good enough for guys to cheat on their girlfriends with. Hell, I was even good enough to be the beard for my first college boyfriend who turned out to be gay.
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“I may be biased, but it’s my personal opinion that being the “almost” girl is the hardest, cruelest, most heartbreaking type of girl to be.”
For all of these things that I was good enough for, I always fell short of what I wanted so desperately to be good enough for: all the love, respect, and care that I always wanted but never thought I deserved out of a relationship. for being too aggressive, too out I may be biased, but it’s my there–the girls who put me in the shadows. And truth be told, somepersonal opinion that being the “almost” girl is the hardest, cruel- times I do. But honestly, the one person I should blame–but never est, most heartbreaking type of girl to be. I wish I was the tease. I want to–is myself.
You see, at the end of the day, the responsibility falls on me. I’m the one who allowed guys to walk all over me. I’m the one who never made a move. I’m the one who was too afraid to let my voice be heard. I could sit in my room and mope about being the “almost” girl, like I have so many times before, or I could recognize this fear in myself and make a change. After all, if I want to stop being the “almost” girl, I could blame being the “almost” girl on so many things. I the responsibility comes back to me, could blame the boys who never because I’m the only one who can called me back. I could blame so- change that. ciety for telling me to sit back and Being the “almost” girl is tough –the actual toughest–but as with anwait on gentleman to come calling. I could blame other girls ything bad, going through rough wish I was the one who got away. I wish I was the one who’d never been in love. I wish I was the one who could look love and emotion square in the eye and say, “I’m better off without you,” and walk away. But I can’t, because I’m the “almost” girl. I’ve been heartbroken, hurt, and absolutely annihilated by love, but somehow I can’t stay away.
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times makes you stronger. After you’ve been the “almost” girl for long enough, you start to break. And in this case, that’s exactly what you need to do. Being walked on enough times gives you the courage to get up off the floor. Being talked over enough times gives you the strength to find your voice. And being screwed over enough times gives you the motivation to take your love life into your own hands. Sure, it’s easier in some ways to pity yourself and remain the “almost” girl, but when it comes down to it, you’ll never be happy until you can begin to take control of your own happiness. No, standing up for yourself won’t make all the men fall in love with you, but it’ll give you the courage to flirt, take chances, and pick your own suitors. If they like that about you, that says great things about their character. If they don’t, you don’t need a(nother) pussy in your life. no, more than good enough–for yourself, then the rest just seems to fall into place.
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How to Get Over Someone Who was Never Actually Your Boyfriend “Big Ten Barbie”
“It’s going to feel weird when you go from talking to someone every day to not at all“
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R
elationships can be tricky in college. Literally everyone is telling you not to settle down because you need to live up these four years. But with all the date parties, mixers, themed gatherings, random events and nights out, there are so many chances to meet people. So what happens when you do meet someone that you kind of like. You start to text all day long, meet up with him before and after nights out, and sometimes you might even reach the point of sober hangouts and sleepovers. But it’s college so neither one of you necessarily want to put a title on it. You’ve found yourself in a fling. College flings can be so fun. It’s like dating someone but without all the pressure and expectations of being someone’s girlfriend. But, all good things must come to an end and sometimes there isn’t a solid reason why you and your fling drift apart. This puts you in a weird spot. It’s not necessarily a breakup,
Breakups absolutely suck. One bad breakup is usually the source of this relationship-phobia in twenty-somethings in the first place. It is definitely the main reason why I have steered clear of serious shit in college. Because ain’t nobody got time for that. Usually getting closure can help fill the empty void you feel upon breaking up, but this isn’t a real breakup, so there’s no “Let’s talk. It’s not you, it’s me. Blah, blah blah.” Both of you were looking for a no strings attached kind of thing and it ended how it started — casually. It might be a little awkward and unnecessary for you to seek out this kind of information since it’s no one’s fault, which low key kind of sucks because you can’t do the normal “fuck him, he’s a dick head, that mother fucker doesn’t deserve to be with a catch like me, !@#$&^%…” pep talk when you start to get that feeling in your stomach. So why does that leave us heavy hearted in what was supposed to be an extremely amicable and casual situation? Because it’s not the norm and there is no playbook on how to get over it.
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So, I am here to help. First off, don’t feel embarrassed or stupid that you’re upset your fling has ended. It is completely natural. It’s going to feel weird when you go from talking to someone every day to not at all. Plus, it’s nice to feel wanted and have someone to lay with from time to time. Losing that sucks. No matter how tough you act on the outside, everyone has a vulnerable spot and you need to allow yourself to be sad. Seriously, this is crucial to moving on. If you act like you don’t care, when you clearly do, there is a high possibility that next time you see him (or the next time you see a bottle of wine), you will end up in a downward spiral of emotion. You have girlfriends for a reason and they want to be there for you as much as you want to be there for them. They will completely understand how you are feeling, because I promise that they have been in the same situation before and may have some sound advice.
Even if they are clueless, it is always nice to talk to someone, even if they are just there to listen. It is extra important to cease and desist all social media stalking. Who cares who tweeted at him, tagged him in a photo or what stupid shit is on his Snapchat story. That doesn’t mean you have to unfollow him on every social platform but don’t seek out information on his whereabouts. Out of sight, out of mind. It works. Trust me. There will always be that friend who says the only way you will ever get over someone is to sleep around. In most cases, that is pretty crappy advice and will leave you questioning everything. If that is not your normal MO then you need to stay true to who you are. Focus on having fun with your friends, getting to know different people and remembering that everything happens for a reason, because it is highly unlikely that you will find a prince in a pig pen. College is honestly a weird time for everyone. It can be equally difficult and wonderful all at once. Just remember that you WILL find someone and what’s in front of you is just not meant to be.
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An Ode to Fireball Alex Buscemi
I
love Fireball. Or, as people call it after drinking it all night, “FUEEGO BOLAA, MOTHAFUCKAA!” But maybe that’s just me. It’s very possible that’s just me. Anyway, Fireball is the most popular liquor amongst American millennials right now.
And for good reason. The geniuses at Sazerac Co., the Louisiana-based distillery who created it, have achieved a feat once thought to be impossible: branding an alcohol that women love, and the guys can drink without the shame that accompanies a shot from a bottle of, say, flavored vodka.
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Not that a man should care about any judgment that may arise from a drink of Cherry Burnett’s. Alcohol is alcohol, and when you’re in college, the last thing you can afford to be is picky. But for whatever reason, some fall victim to the stigma. “Cherry Burnett’s! Ha! Do you have a vagina? Are you gonna sit down to pee it out later?… You know, cause of the vagina?”
The taste doesn’t burn too much, though. I think the “burn” refers to the sensation in your urethra that surfaces a few days later — a direct consequence of the questionable decisions you make upon consuming mass quantities of the stuff. As far as the “heaven” part of the slogan goes, they weren’t lying.
It’s like Christmas in your mouth. Not the Holidays. Christmas. I’m not being exThat’s where Fireball comes clusionary. Hanukah tastes like potatoes in. They slap a badass demonand Kwanzaa tastes like squash. Christmas looking decal on the side of the tastes like Fireball. That’s just the way it is. bottle right next to an equally baI don’t make the rules. Fireball tastes like dass slogan: “Tastes like heaven – burns like hell!” This fools the men- gingerbread cookies and milk and pine needles and Claymation Rudolph. It tastes tal midgets who would otherwise like you traveled to the North Pole, slipped write it off as a “drink for chicks.” It’s considered almost manly, but in Santa a couple hundreds, and let the elves just bukkakke in your mouth. That’s what reality, it’s as sweet and sugary as that Cherry ‘Nett’s. It’s a goddamn it tastes like. With that being said, you pay the marketing masterpiece is what it is. price. Not financially — shit’s cheap as hell The slogan also doubles as a — but physically. They say the more sugary sort of challenge. the drink, the worse the hangover. Well, I “Burns like hell? Pshhht. I ate don’t know if you’ve ever poured a shot of a habanero at Chipotle the other Fireball, but it’s like squeezing molasses week. This ain’t shit!” Glug, glug, into a cup. It rolls out of the bottle it’s so glug.
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thick with sugar, especially when you freeze it. Drink upwards of seven or eight shots, and the next morning you’ll be in the hell the bottle warned you about. I think a lot of the hangover pain comes from the makers dumping in large quantities of antifreeze – enough for several countries in Europe to ban it altogether. Pussies. If your alcohol isn’t torching a hole in your stomach wall like it would a sheet of ice stuck to a windshield, are you even drinking? I usually drink it straight, but there are several mixologist-approved concoctions you can make with the blazing liquid goodness. Mix it with some apple juice for the perfect autumn tailgate companion. Mix it with chai tea for what I call a “Weekend In Thailand” – it comes from Asia and it burns. Or, especially for the ladies, mix it with RumChata for a Cinnamon Toast Crunch shot.
No matter how you drink it, you can’t go wrong with Fireball. year, bitches..
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How Leaked Nudes Led to a Good Kid Being Expelled from College Total Frat Move Intern
D
errick looked down at his shoes and then back up at the dean before quickly looking back down at his shoes again. He knew what he had done, the dean knew what he had done, and, thanks to social media, the entire world knew what he had done. Derrick is just a slightly misguided kid with a mouth that would make a sailor look like a priest, but, for once, it wasn’t his mouth that got him in trouble. It was a damn group text.
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A few weeks ago, Derrick was procrastinating instead of writing a paper that was due the next day, and day drinking with a few of his pledge brothers. The sudden urge to piss came over him, so he headed straight for the bathroom to break the seal. As he unzipped his pants, he began to think about Caroline, a sweet blonde Alpha Phi from his physics class. With zero inhibition, and an urge to take sweet Caroline on a quick trip for some afternoon delight, he shot her a text.
Next thing Derrick knew, a few very provocative pictures of miss Caroline popped up on his screen. While he stared in awe at her ridiculous body, his best friend walked into the bathroom to find him ogling his phone. He wanted to know what Derrick was looking at, and Derrick obliged willingly. DUUUUUUUDE!! You gotta send that to the group text! She’s fingering herself with a pencil to emulate the fact that you have a pencil dick!
You up? Caroline: Ummmm it’s 3 in the afternoon. Of course I’m up. How drunk r u? I’ve just had a few, wanna get together? We had some fun last time.
Not amused with the description of his manhood, Derrick did fire out the nudes to the rest of the fraternity group text with the simple message “Hitting this tonight.”
Caroline: I knooooowww…ugh I really want to but I haaaavvve to finish this paBig mistake. As soon as it hit Chad’s per phone, he screenshotted the mesOh, come on. It’ll only be for a few. sage. See, Chad is the fraternity doofus who hates everyone and onCaroline: I can’t. But I think I can give ly joined because his dad was a legacy. This was his shot to ruin Derrick’s you a little preview for later life.
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So he quickly uploaded it to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and everything in between. The shitstorm that ensued was colossal. Girls wouldn’t talk to Derrick. The fraternity removed him from the chapter. The school pulled his scholarship. And now, he faced the dean. He sat and listened to the life lesson being given to him by this gray-haired old man, and he knew how it would end. He had read this story one too many times on the internet to know what happens at the conclusion: he would be expelled.
Practice Safe Texting
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On Tinder, Off Sex Ali Rachel Pearl
W
hen I called my health clinic last month to refill the birth-control pill prescription I have had for 10 years, I was put on the line with a doctor — not my normal gynecologist — who began asking questions about my health.
“That’s correct,” I said. To pre-empt a safe-sex lecture, I told him I hadn’t had sex in two years, so it was really a moot point. “So you’re secondary abstaining then,” he said, surely making note of this somewhere in my records.
“It says on your form that you’re in“Well, I think ‘accidental abstaining’ is terested in both men and women but that you do not use alternative more appropriate,” I said jokingly, forms of birth control outside of the pill,” he said.
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attempting to maintain some dignity in this conversation with a man I likely would never meet who seemed to view me as some kind of morally reformed or seriously disturbed woman in my mid-20s. After we hung up, I Googled “secondary abstaining” and learned that it refers to someone who is sexually experienced but has chosen to no longer be sexually active, usually for reasons relating to religious faith, unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. I am without faith in almost all respects, I have never been pregnant, nor have I had any STD’s. I have never stopped desiring sex and I have never identified as asexual. In fact, I frequently want to have sex with people, but I simply do not.
I’m “secondary” in a lot of things these days: secondary vegetarian, secondary sober, secondary nonsmoker. But here is how my secondary abstaining departs from my secondary everything else..
I quit eating meat because I developed a deeper concern for the environment. I quit smoking because it’s bad for you. I quit drinking because I have a problem with alcohol. But I never actually quit having sex. Sex just stopped being a thing that happened in my life.
My most recent sexual experience was two years ago in a barn in Kentucky with a photographer I had met in Ohio eight days before. I was temporarily living on a farm in Independence the day he drove from Columbus to spend the afternoon with me. I bought a bottle of Larceny bourbon the night before in preparation and had consumed half before he arrived. I had never had sober sex with a new partner, and I wasn’t about to start with a guy I barely knew. I know many people are adept at this sleeping-with-strangers thing. I have never known how to do this. I have never known how to go from, “So what’s your name?” to having you in my bed or me in your bed or us in the back of a car in the parking lot of a Target.
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The photographer and I had sex twice, in one evening. It was everything television and film tells me sex should be: Spontaneous. Unhesitating. In an exotic (read: not domestic) location.
It’s not that I haven’t wanted to have sex since then. It wasn’t one of those bowl-you-over summer romances. It was what it was. Fun. Invigorating. Kind. But we lived 3,000 miles apart, and I was still heartbroken from my previous relationship.
It was on a wooden bench swing If I were to update the definition near a river in the trees behind the of “secondary abstaining” I discovered barn. And then it was in the barn, in through my Google search, I would add the summer heat and humidity. the following to the list of reasons Afterward, we walked hand in someone may stop having sex: failed hand down the main road leading to relationship, broken heart and being town, giggling while we watched the fireflies appear and disappear around cheated on after a near proposal by the man you spent your whole life lovus in the fading daylight. It was roing. mance and whirlwind. It was sweat and sweet. Maybe this is where faith comes That last morning in Kentucky, I in. Maybe my secondary abstinence isn’t in allegiance to God but to my own woke at 6 a.m. to the soft sound of broken heart and the fear that seems rain and the tinny sound of Bon Iver floating from his cellphone speakers. to produce a kind of magnetic repellant whenever I come close to someHe photographed me while I one I desire. packed my clothes, and I remember My friends don’t seem to underhim telling me that airports are rostand my secondary abstinence. They mantic because they’re where people ask if I’ve had sex yet. come to understand what they feel about each other.
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“How can you go so long?” they ask. “I can’t imagine.” They say: “You have to lower your standards.” “Go to the bar more.” “Join a dating website.” “Make really good eye contact.” “Get rid of your hang-ups.” “Be more open.” “Stop being afraid.” “It’s just sex,” they say. “You have to stop refusing to sleep with people just because you don’t immediately want to marry them.” My secondary abstinence is the wallflower type: sitting quietly on the couch at the party making everyone else feel a bit more awkward for having a good time. Every night that I go to a concert or a party, every day that I walk around the neighborhood, I find my secondary abstinence trailing me like a sad
I asked my friend how to tactfully respond to my most recent Tinder message from a man named Dakota who teaches yoga and doesn’t have a tiger in his photo. I found the profile of a man whose name is probably Matt and told him I’m new to this Tinder thing and asked him how it works. “You match with a bunch of people, no one ever messages each other, and no one ever has sex,” he responded. That seemed unlikely to me, but he was all the way down in Long Beach, Calif., anyway, which is too far to drive for sex, so I cut my losses and we unmatched each other. When a friend recently asked me, “Why do you think you never have sex?” I fell back on all the clichés. I told her: “I just want to focus on myself for a while.” “I’m afraid of getting hurt.”
“It’s not as if I haven’t tried to move on from this phase of my life. I joined Tinder. I sat in my friend’s apartment, punctuating our conversation with questions like, “Who is supposed to write to whom on this thing?” and “Why do so many guys have photos with tigers? Do you have a photo with a tiger?”
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“I want to be in love first.” “I don’t have time to meet people.” “Los Angeles is impossible.” But I’m not sure I believe any of these reasons apply to me. I’ve focused on myself my whole life. I’m worried about getting hurt, but no more than most. Some strangers are smoking hot. What is love anyway? I have plenty of time. Los Angeles is full of men and women of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds, and those men and women populate every restaurant and yoga class and dog park in my life. There is a woman I sometimes love, a death penalty investigator too fresh out of a breakup from the woman who broke her heart. There is a man I sometimes love, a writer and lead singer in a hard-core punk band, who constantly declares, “I don’t have sex,” and “I don’t do love,” in the same moment that he sways closer to my face, nearly but not quite giving one of us the opportunity to make a move.
The man I sometimes love tells me, “Love is a leaky boat.” The woman I sometimes love tells me the blooming jasmine in Los Angeles reminds her of walking to school in Egypt as a teenager. And in her head she is somewhere far away from here, from us. We don’t have sex, but we have intimacy. It’s not that I’m choosing to abstain from sex in these situations, but that sex seems to be choosing to abstain from me. In my imagination, the sex I have with each of them when I’m riding my bike home from work or when I’m stuck in traffic on the freeway or when I’m otherwise far away from myself is epic. It is all dark rooms and brick walls. Aggressive and gentle. It is the kind of sex that makes a person fall in love instantaneously. Except we never have sex. And we never fall in love. We fall into almost love and then life takes us away from each other. And without that memory of skin against skin to connect us across distance and time, we become, once again, strangers.
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When an Open Relationship Comes at a Price Eliza Kennedy
(page 19)
D
uring college, I spent a few wonderful evenings making out with a longhaired poet. I spent a few weeks messing around with a gentle, funny religion student. I even briefly, if accidentally, dated a high school student (since when do 17-year-olds have beards?).
This is what you do in college. No longer tethered to childhood routines and unburdened by the judgments and prejudices of people who know you best, you explore and experiment, sampling new ideologies, new points of view. New people. So I sampled, freely and happily. But my situation was different from most: I also had a serious boyfriend at the time. Serious, as in we lived together. We owned two cats together. I wasn’t breaking any rules, however. We had an open relationship.
It was a complete disaster. My boyfriend and I met in Introduction to Philosophy. He was dark-haired, charming and endearingly weird, one of those passionate, articulate boys who live life in superlatives. The music he listened to was the best of all possible music. The books he read stood at the pinnacle of literature. He himself was going to be the greatest philosopher of his generation. I know, I know. But I was only 18! I was, and still am, a sucker for a quick wit, a raucous laugh and a big brain. Moreover, my boyfriend was generous with his grand convictions: The people he surrounded himself with were destined for greatness, too. Loved by him, I felt swathed in glory. Inseparable from the start, he and I explored the new world of our university together, attending readings, plays and concerts. We ate pie and sushi. We drank gin and lemonade. I spent the summer in his hometown, falling under the spell of his courtly father and gracious mother.
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Back on campus in the fall, he and I moved in together, filling a ramshackle apartment with music posters and thrift-store furniture. Cue the cats. Cue domesticity. Or rather, don’t. My boyfriend was committed to living his life according to strict intellectual principles, and for him, personal freedom was paramount. Love could not require constraint, foreclosure or deprivation. He argued that even though we planned a future together, we should always permit each other to do as we pleased, including dating other people. Whoa, sorry, what? I was from a small town in Illinois. My idea of romance was as conventional as could be, involving me and my boyfriend “sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” First comes love, then comes marriage, and so on.
That playground taunt is also a promise: Exclusivity leads to safety, to vows, to happily ever after. There was no room in our tree for other people. Or was there? I wasn’t on the playground anymore. I was supposed to be exploring, experimenting, sampling new perspectives. I wasn’t a philosopher like my boyfriend, but I was studying English literature, including Percy Bysshe Shelley. As he wrote: “True Love in this differs from gold and clay, / That to divide is not to take away.” Shelley railed against the prevailing morality that demanded lovers marry and be monogamous, and so travel “the broad highway of the world … / With one chained friend.” One chained friend. Sounds like fun.
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I had no wish to shackle anyone to me, especially not the person I loved best. I didn’t want to concede — by being possessive, by demanding fidelity — that my love was anything less than capital-T True. If an open relationship was necessary to prove how well I loved my boyfriend, I was happy to comply. Thus we were off on our grand romantic adventure. The longhaired poet and I had a class together. He was earnest and soulful. He wrote poems on ragged notebook paper and left them at our door in the middle of the night. His poetry was terrible, but it was about me, which improved it immeasurably. My boyfriend was amused, maybe slightly impressed that I had inspired verses, but largely indifferent. His attitude seemed to be: Go have fun. So I did. Not too much. I was still present, still a good, loving girlfriend. I was just sometimes somewhere else, with someone else. Then my boyfriend’s attitude changed. He started emerging from his study with questions when I arrived home. Who was this guy? What was his major? Where was he from? What did he read? Was he smart? Questions morphed into criticism. That poetry was awful. His handwriting wasn’t that hot, either. Look at those “t’s.” Then my boyfriend caught a glimpse of the guy, and full-on outrage ensued. Are you kidding me with that hair? He doesn’t look soulful; he looks constipated! What are you doing wasting your time with this clown? I was doing just that: wasting my time, very enjoyably. But it wasn’t worth my boyfriend’s interrogations and disbelief, his implicit suggestion that by choosing poorly, I had made myself less lovable to him.
So I chucked the poet and asked whether we needed to rethink our arrangement.
(page
Of course not. There was nothing wrong with our principles, only with how I had implemented them. I was free to continue being free. I just had to do it better. Or something. I moved on. I spent time with my friend who was studying religion. With my hairy high school student. With a woman who lived in our building. A pattern emerged. My boyfriend would react at first with nonchalance. He would become mildly curious. Then subtly judgmental. Then not so subtly. He always ended up in the same place: offended, incredulous and scornful of my romantic interests for their obvious flaws, and of me for my apparent blindness to them. He was so convinced of his own correctness and so skilled at arguing his positions that pushing back was always an exercise in futility. So I would capitulate and abandon each new love interest, causing a lot of undeserved pain. How were my boyfriend’s own adventures in free love progressing? They weren’t. He didn’t date anyone else as long as we were together. Why? He never gave a clear answer. Too busy. Too picky. I felt like the butt of some twisted joke. Romantic freedom was his principle, and yet I was the only one out there living it. Halfway through our junior year, he moved out. The weight of other people hadn’t caused our bough to break, but it certainly hadn’t helped. No longer in thrall to his supremely persuasive rationale for open relationships, I understood why he reacted as he had.
He was jealous. He feared losing I’d thought I was living his principle, but I had really experienced only one side of being in an open relationship — the fun and easy side. How would I have responded if he had been the one making out and messing around? Not well, I suspected.
(page 23)
Enough with the sampling and the experimenting. I didn’t want anyone to feel threatened or insecure. I didn’t need a crowd. From now on, I was going to stick to one friend at a time. Yes, chains are heavy, chains rust and abrade, but they also bind us and keep us safe. After graduating from college, I dated, in succession, a Swedish guy living in Italy, a fellow editor at my first real job, and a disgruntled ad man. Each time, love bloomed. Then it faded. Except for my love for the disgruntled ad man. Him I married, and our love is still very much alive. All around me, friends were doing the same. Pairing up. Settling down. Marrying. Engraving their faithfulness on rings and proclaiming it in vows. Cue domesticity. Cue happily ever after. Or don’t. I have watched and listened as some of those friends learned how fascination fades. How reality can dull the bliss. Their eyes began to wander, or their hearts did. They cheated. Or split up. Or cheated, then split up. Or stayed faithful and married, but now feel hemmed in and hamstrung. They’re all around me, these people who said “you, and no other,” and meant it. Until they didn’t. Back to Shelley, who wrote: “I love Love — though he has wings, / And like light can flee.” Sad to say, that pretty much nails it. I had fled an open relationship, opting for the safety of a closed circle. But the wreckage of monogamous relationships lies all around us. The notion that they’re somehow more stable than open ones is an illusion. Not because monogamy is unsafe, but because all romantic love is. It’s powerful and thrilling. It’s also terrifying.
(page 24)
Marriage isn’t the place to sample and explore, as I did in college. But even here, romantic love is more complicated than in the old children’s rhyme. It’s still an experiment — in trust, understanding and communication. Like any experiment, it could fail. There are no guarantees. As a wife and now a mother, I see that giving my heart to just one other person may be the riskiest way to love of all.
(page 25)
No Labels, No Drama, Right? Jordana Narin
“My Jeremy is coming to visit this weekend,” Maddy whispered to me one night while we were out for a friend’s birthday. “Your what?” I asked. I thought I had misheard her. “My Jeremy,” she repeated. “I’ve told you about him. His name’s Will. We grew up together in Washington. He’s visiting from school. My Jeremy.” And just like that, a name — one I referred to often — became an archetype, a trope, an all-purpose noun used by my college friends to talk about “that guy,” the one who remains for us in some netherworld between friend and boyfriend, often for years. I met mine, the original Jeremy, at summer camp in the Poconos at 14, playing pickup basketball by day and talking in the mess hall late into the night. Back home we lived only 30 minutes apart, but I didn’t see him again until 11th grade, when we ran into each other at a Halloween party in a Lower Manhattan warehouse.
(page 26)
I was dressed as a rabbit and he as a vampire. As we converged, he put out his hand to meet mine. “Has anyone ever told you how well you rock a tail?” he teased, tracing the lines on my palm with his fingers. “You should really get those bloody fangs checked out,” I replied, suddenly conscious of my bitten-down nails. As Maroon 5 blasted in the background, he murmured drunkenly in my ear, “I’ve missed you.” “I’ve missed you, too,” I murmured back, standing on tiptoes. Under the muted flashes of a strobe light, we shared our first kiss. We stayed in touch for the rest of high school, mostly by text message. But we also met up in person when his school’s basketball team played ours and when I ventured from New Jersey into Manhattan for academic events or to attend another warehouse party. I was eager to move on from high school, Every time his name and talking to Jeremy was an escape, a peek inpopped up on my to an alternative universe where shy boys with phone, my heart raced. moppy brown hair and clever minds seemed to he wrote with praise and to tell me it moved him, lessening the shame I felt. Still, we were never more than semiaffiliated, two people who spoke and loved to speak and kissed and loved to kiss and connected and were scared of connecting. I told myself it was because we went to different schools, because teenage boys don’t want relationships, because it was all in my head. I told myself a lot of things I never told him.
(page 27)
Two years after our first kiss, we were exchanging “I’ve missed you” messages again. It was a brisk Friday evening in our first semesters of college when I stepped off a train and into his comfortable arms. He had texted weeks earlier on Halloween (technically our anniversary) to ask if I would visit. We had not talked since summer, and I was trying to forget him. We had graduated from high school into the same inexpressive void we first entered in costume, where an “I’ve missed you” was as emotive as one got. I decided to leave him behind when I left for college. But he wouldn’t let me. Whenever I believed he was out of my life, I’d get a text or Facebook comment that would reel me back in. And I wouldn’t let me, either. His affection, however sporadic, always loomed like a promise. So I accepted his invitation, asking myself what I had to lose. I lost a lot that weekend: A bet on the football game. Four pounds (from nerve-driven appetite loss). A pair of underwear. My innocence, apparently. Naïvely, I had expected to gain clarity, to finally admit my feelings and ask if he felt the same. But I couldn’t confess, couldn’t probe. Periodically I opened my mouth to ask: “What are we doing? Who am I to you?” He stopped me with a smile, a wink or a handhold, gestures that persuaded me to shut my mouth or risk jeopardizing what we already had. On the Saturday-night train back to Manhattan, I cried. Back in my dorm room, buried under the covers so my roommates wouldn’t hear, I fell asleep with a wet pillow and puffy eyes. The next morning I awoke to a string of texts from him: “You get back OK?” “Let’s do it again soon :)”
(page 28)
And we did, meeting up for drinks in the city, spending the night at my place, neither of us daring to raise the subject of what we were doing or what we meant to each other. I kept telling myself I’d be fine. And I was. I am. But now, more than three years after our first kiss and more than a year after our first time, I’m still not over the possibility of him, the possibility of us. And he has no idea. I’m told my generation will be remembered for our callous commitments and rudimentary romances. We hook up. We sext. We swipe right. All the while, we avoid labels and try to bury our emotions. We aren’t supposed to want anything serious; not now, anyway. But a void is created when we refrain from telling it like it is, from allowing ourselves to feel how we feel. And in that unoccupied space, we’re dangerously free to create our own realities. My friend Shosh insists that I don’t actually have feelings for Jeremy. “You don’t know him anymore,” she says. “I think maybe you’re addicted to the memories, in love with a person you’ve idealized who probably isn’t real.” Maybe she’s right. Maybe my emotions are steeped in a past that never presented itself. Still, he envelops my thoughts. And anyway, Shosh has a Jeremy of her own, another guy at another school she holds both close and far away. To this day, if I ever let a guy’s name slip out to my father, his response is always, “Are you two going steady?” He means to ask if we’re dating exclusively, if I have a boyfriend. I used to hate it.
(page 29)
“People don’t go steady nowadays,” I explain. “No one says that anymore. And almost no one does it. Women today have more power. We don’t crave attachment to just one man. We keep our options open. We’re in control.” But are we? I’ve brooded over the same person for the last four years. Can I honestly call myself empowered if I’m unable to share my feelings with him? Could my options be more closed? Could I be less in control? My father can’t understand why I won’t tell Jeremy how I feel. To me, it’s simple. As involved as we’ve been for what amounts to, at this point, nearly a quarter of my life, Jeremy and I are technically nothing, at least as far as labels are concerned. So while I teeter between anger with myself for not admitting how I feel and anger at him for not figuring it out, neither of us can be blamed. (Or we both can.) Without labels to connect us, I have no justification for my feelings and he has no obligation to acknowledge them. No labels, no drama, right? I think my generation is venturing into some seriously uncharted waters, because while we’re hesitant to label relationships, we do participate in some deviation of them. But by not calling someone, say, “my boyfriend,” he actually becomes something else, something indefinable. And what we have together becomes intangible. And if it’s intangible it can never end because officially there’s nothing to end. And if it never ends, there’s no real closure, no opportunity to move on. Instead, we spend our emotional energy on someone we’ve built up and convinced ourselves we need. We fixate on a person who may not be right for us simply because he never wronged us. Because without a label, he never really had the chance.
(page 30)
When I realized I hadn’t misheard Maddy, I asked her to elaborate. “You know what a Jeremy is,” she said. “You practically dubbed the term. He’s the guy we never really dated and never really got over.” Most people I know have a Jeremy in their lives, someone whose consequence a label can’t capture. In years past, maybe back when people went steady, he may have been the one who got away. For my generation, though, he’s often the one we never had in the first place. Yet he’s still the one for whom we would happily trade all the booty calls, hookups and swiping right. He’s still the one we hope, against all odds, might be The One. But until we’re brave enough to find out for sure, there’s life to keep living. Until he can be labeled ours, just calling him Jeremy will have to do.
(page 31)
Flash (Back) Fiction: Flash Fiction that lends to our readers’ past relationships whether they be real or purely fictional.
(page 32)
My Voice Josh Raab
I have never been much of a talker. I never really liked it: the sound of my voice. I never really liked it because of the sound in my head. I felt like I swallowed a small vibrator that was stuck at the turn in my throat, where the skin is closest to the spine, where the skin is closest to my spine. Where that fleshy thing hangs down like the T-rex right before the big drop on the Jurassic
Park coaster. Where people point guns. Where the food drops down to your stomach. Where the vomit rises up. Where the breath of life inhales. Where you last breath leaves. Where your lover’s tongue tries to reach. The turn in your throat that anchors the end of a tongue you’ll never see. Where my whiny voice leaves into the world and where the skin is closest to the spine.
(page 33)
Sweltering Summer S. Kay
They click on a hot guy’s selfie, using photo metadata to locate him on a
satellite map. No pool. They’ll keep looking for a boyfriend.
(page 34)
Columns and lists: explaining why it’s never our fault.
Why you’re the worst: (features from)
Tinder Bios Craigslist “Missed Connections” Twitter’s #YoungLove Twitter’s “Why We Broke Up”
Total Frat&Sorority Move Wall Posts 37 Reasons Why You Sort Of Hate Your Boyfriend (page 35)
Tinder: Bios of the Best and Most Eligible Singles
(page 36)
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Craigslist: “Missed Connections”
(page 45)
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(page 47)
Why We Broke Up
Via Twitter
(page 48)
(page 49)
37 Reasons Why You Sort of Hate Your Boyfriend Rachel Varina
1.
He said he liked something that you hate.
Or he said he hated something you really, really like, which is equally annoying. 2.
3. And you sort of want to punch him in the face every time he says he hates pesto. 3.
4.
No one hates pesto.
5.
You Snapchatted him something sexy, but he didn’t text you about it.
6. Which is odd, because your tits definitely deserve a response. 7.
Or an engagement ring. Whichever.
(page 50)
8.
It’s Wednesday. And I’m sorry. Are you not his Woman Crush or…?
9.
He changed the channel.
10. Because apparently sports are more important than Keeping Up With The Kardashians. 11. He said that Kylie was hot.
12. Sure, she’s hot. But he didn’t have to say it. 13. AND follow her on Instagram. 14. He’s wearing that shirt you hate. 15. The one that you know his ex bought for him. 16. Not that you’ll tell him that. But still. You know that he knows who got it for him. You know? 17. He said he was going to bed, but guess who’s on Facebook? 18. And guess who just ignored your text? 19. Two words: Guys night. 20. Also, him having fun at guys night? What’s the shit about. 21. The sheer fact that his exes still exist. 22. And that no matter how hard you try, you can’t help but stalk their Instagrams. Every. Single. Day. 23. t’s been a good ten minutes since he texted you back. 24. And like…you get it. He’s at his dying grandmother’s house. But still…
(page 51)
25.He ate your leftovers. 26. The leftovers you were daydreaming about. 27. The leftovers you saved for this moment after a long, hard day. 28. The leftovers he knew you were really, embarrassingly, grossly excited about eating. He fucking ate them.
29. Leaving the seat up like it’s his mothereffing job. 30. He randomly texted you “I love you” which is oddly suspicious. 31. What’s he doing? Why does he love you? Does he feel guilty about something? Is he cheating on you? 32. He asked why you’re wearing a hat inside. 33. And when you said “because, fashion” he rolled his eyes and snatched it off of your head. 34. He made you give back the sweatshirt you stole. 35.The teasing will never stop. Like, ever. 36. And despite it all, you know that’s he’s the guy for you. No matter how many times he makes fun of you for crying at Subaru commercials or singing Adele totally off-key. You’d still rather put up with his football Sundays, his annoying-yet-lovable friends, and his total lack of understanding for anything pumpkin spice, than not put up with him at all. 37. You know. Most of the time
34. “He made you give back the sweatshirt you stole…”
(page 52)
T
his is where I, Christian, the author and publisher, break up with you, the reader. We can still be friends, though...I, guess. Maybe someday we’ll cross paths again when I swipe left on your Tinder profile or flirt with you by retweeting you on Twitter. Either way though, it’s not me, it’s you, you’re the one who has come to finish the end of our first issue. Granted, there will be many more considering we all have issues. If you have a cringe-worthy story to tell or reason why you’re ex (or you) is the worst—let us know by either tweeting, instagraming, facebooking, or going old school and emailing us at
ccwilley@butler.edu. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading other single’s problems. It’s been real. L8 S8R, Love the Worst,
(we’re done)