YOUNG T UMBLR GRRRL feminism & internet culture
an anthology of poems & short stories
YOUNG T UMBLR GRRRL
YOUNG T UMBLR GRRRL feminism & internet culture
an anthology of poems & short stories
Edited by Marie Darsigny
Concordia Univeristy, Fall 2013
For Becca Rosenthal, the greatest poet I’ve ever had the chance to know, and love love love.
Copyright © the authors, 2013 Except introduction © Marie Darsigny, 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Published and distributed by MMMAGIE PRESS 5455 De Gaspé, Montreal, QC Canada H2K 3Y2 The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Concordia University. All illustrations by Jennifer Mehigan Cover design by Marie Darsigny
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Young Tumblr Grrrls: feminism & internet culture, an anthology of poems and short stories, edited by Marie Darsigny. 1. Poetry (English) - 21st century. Darsigny, Marie, 1986ISBN 0-80808080-00
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ... 8 POEMS & SHORT STORIES ... 16 Gabby Bess ... 17 Tracy Dimond ... 20 Chelsea Martin ... 21 Megan Boyle ... 24 Melissa Broder ... 30 Ana Carrete ... 32 Mira Gonzalez ... 33 Sarah-Maude Beauchesne ... 35 Ariana Reines ... 38 Leigh Stein ... 40 EJ Koh ... 41 Ashley Opheim ... 43 Luna Miguel ... 45 Roxane Gay ... 46 Jenny Zhang ... 47 BIOGRAPHIES ... 49 BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 51 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...52
INTRODUCTION In April 2013, writer and poet Gabby Bess published an article on Thought Catalog about her fear that the excitement surrounding alt lit, or alternative literature, was soon coming to an end. Titled “Can Someone Do Something Exciting So I Can Care About The Internet Again?”, the piece was questioning, to put it simply, the future of internet poetry. Bess was worried that the trend was coming to an end, with literary pieces from alt lit authors more and more often indistinguishable from one another. Bess wrote: “The ebooks of those associated with and deemed ‘alt lit’ could all be printed out and shuffled through, indiscernible from each other. The onslaught of content seems overwhelming and uninspiring. Gene McHugh writes: “One reason why it’s possible to spend that much time consuming media, is that there is now an effectively unlimited amount of instantaneously available, free media through which one may consume twenty-four hours a day as well as the devices through which one can execute this consumption. It becomes plausible to just sit and consume all day, popping from one interesting thing to another interesting thing to another — all of them different and equally interesting. If everything is equally interesting, then isn’t it all just boring?” Bess then goes on to express her worries about the state of her literary community, asking how writers can still innovate and create something exciting together. Myself, I’ve been following the alt lit movement for quite a while, and I can see how one could think that internet poetry has lost a bit of its appeal: it is not a revelation anymore, and clichés of the genre now abound. In a world where anyone can publish his or her own .PDF ebook, what exactly is still exciting? As a poet and writer, I am still trying to find ways to produce work that is original, while Young Tumblr Grrrl 8
sticking to a certain genre, and targeting a certain audience. As a woman and feminist, I tend to value and share the work of my peers. For the past few years, there has been a very strong feminist movement on the internet, reminiscent for me of the 90’s riot grrrl movement. If the riot grrrls had zines and cassette mixtapes, the 2010’s young girls have Tumblr. Put a hashtag in front of feminism, and you’ve got a community.
Confessional writing is not only for little girls’ diaries (something Virginia Woolf would surely agree with)... Internet provides a myriad of platforms on which to detail our daily lives in its most intricate details.
If Sylvia Plath was alive, she’d have a Tumblr blog. Tumblr is a microblogging platform that was launched in February 2007. It gained popularity pretty fast, mostly due to its potential for easy configuration that doesn’t necessitate extensive knowledge of HTML coding. Tumblr has quickly become a widely used platform. However, it has the reputation of appealing mostly to teenage girls. Why? Of course, as I mentioned, it is really simple to edit. But, furthermore, Tumblr provides a strong sense of community: users can tag their posts and reblog content from other users, thus engaging in an ongoing dialog. A search for #feminism on Tumblr provides you with more than thousands of pages to explore. Related keywords suggested by Tumblr: women, rape culture, misogyny. It really is a never-ending source of content. In that way, I understand Gabby Bess’ concerns about the quality and the originality of the work that is produced by young artists.
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Young girls now learn the basics of post third-wave feminism while browsing on stranger’s blogs. As much as it is refreshing to see those young feminists care for issues that are still worth fighting for, it is also intriguing to witness this never-ending spill of personal thoughts and personal stories.
My own interest in broadcasting my feelings at large on the Internet started pretty early. A fan of LiveJournal, I would post lists and poems about my feelings – which I had a lot of. Before smart phones, I remember having to log in to my school’s library computers in order to check my MySpace messages. I was envious of my friends who had a 24-hour access to the web via their Blackberries and I dreamed of owning such a cool device. Meanwhile, I would take pictures with my Olympus digital camera, and transfer them to my old HP laptop in order to upload them on my Skyblog. A few years later, smartphones became the norm, and I suddenly could afford an iPhone.
My mom still frowns when I check my messages during our Sunday dinners. Name a social media platform and I’m pretty sure that I’m on it. I have written articles about my personal life, poems about my sex life, and prose about my constant lack of motivation. It is all out there, you can just Google it. Our baby-boomer parents had raised us to be good kids, worrying about how our extra-curricular activities would look on our resumes. We blew it all off by posting our entire lives online. Why do we feel like sharing these details with strangers? Furthermore, who is really interested in reading all of this?
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“The intimacy of the Young Girl, now equivalent to all intimacy, has become something anonymous and exterior, an object.”
(Tiqqun, 24)
Tiqqun is a French collective that founded a philosophical journal in 1999. However, it is only in the last years that their work has been translated in English, thus suddenly reaching a wider audience. Their book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl was translated by Ariana Reines, an American poet featured in this anthology. It sparked great controversy, certain readers accusing the voice of Theory of the Young-Girl of being highly misogynist, a reflexion that I can surely get behind. However, Theory of the Young-Girl offers some gems that I find applicable to the behaviour of internet culture enthusiasts. Disclaimer: I totally include myself in these descriptions, for I am probably just another YoungGirl. After all, I, too, write about my own experience, elevating my simple observations to the rank of literary confessions.
“There is nothing in the Young-Girl’s life, even in the deepest zones of her intimacy, that escapes alienated reflexivity, that escapes the codification and the gaze of the Spectacle.” (Tiqqun, 48) Back in 2011, when young and then unknown writer Marie Calloway published her story “Adrien Brody” (Muumuu House), the internet went crazy. Who was this young girl describing her sexual encounter with a man twice her age? Why were we reading this highly personal account of a controversial relationship? Personally, I read like I read fiction, just scrolling down the page and following the narrative. Yes, it was shocking. The crude depiction of sexuality and promiscuity brought by internet culture was still a pretty new topic to Young Tumblr Grrrl 11
write about. Since Calloway had described her story as an account of actual events, people wanted to know who was this men, Adrien Brody, obviously not the actor of the same name, but a seemingly influential New York editor. However, in the end, none of this really mattered.
“For the Young-Girl, what is most secret is also most public.” (Tiqqun, 48)
The exercise itself fascinated me. The ire that it sparked in the literary world captivated me. Were people angry because a young girl was openly discussing her sexuality? Were they angry because this text did not fit their definition of literature? I find the confessional genre to be extremely fitting to the internet culture. After all, the 21st century brought us tools with which to share every aspect of our life, so why not use them? Female alt lit writers took advantage of numerous social media platforms and shared away with courage and honesty. Sadly – but expectedly – this did not please everyone, and female alt lit writers were asked to kindly shut up and return to their pink fluffy diaries.
However, some female writers did not shut up, they did not give in to the criticism that their work was unworthy of publication. It is to be noted that I use the word feminist without knowing if the writers featured in this anthology would describe themselves as feminists. I consider them feminists simply because they write about their personal life openly. The writers featured in this anthology all have a raw openness about their issues, which I consider an admirable tool of resistance.
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Feminist theory had me believe that all writing is political. Creative writing teachers will tell you to speak of the general by using the specific. If a girl talks specifically about a bad date she had at Chuck-e-cheese with a boy named Adam who spilled an entire cup of ice tea on her 500$ purse, she speaks to all girls who had bad dates: the details only make it more compelling. Readers might bluntly ask: ok, then, what is Jenny Zhang (featured in this anthology) saying to the general public when she talks about her vagina? I included that kind of work in this anthology to show the diversity of levels on which these feminist writers play. Some of them write about the daily annoyances in their lives, and some of them write about their vaginas: great. Feminist alt lit, or young tumblr girl literature as I call it, is subversive and probably not for every reader. Detractors denounce its lack of substance, seeing only enumerations of mundane activities or attentiongrabbing lines. To me, the playful and blunt tone used in these poems is more endearing than off-putting. It speaks of those feelings that are too often deemed as simple, boring, or not worthy of a poem. Everything is worthy of a poem, if the poet knows how to write about it.
A good example of that is Megan Boyle. In March 2013, Megan Boyle – the author of Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee, a columnist at Vice, and the muse for Tao Lin’s latest novel Taipei – began keeping a liveblog on her Tumblr. In a tweet, she explained her decision:
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At first, it seemed like a funny idea; people followed her without too many expectations, maybe only for the voyeuristic quality of the experience. However, as Megan kept blogging, something else seemed to take over. It became a performance where all filters were removed, where the reader was granted access to a painfully honest record of a person’s life. When asked for how long she would continue liveblogging, Megan said she wished to push the experience to the extreme, or even until she dies, justifying her stance by saying: “Wouldn’t it be cool if 500 years from now like a kid could find a thing like, “Woah this person’s life, like totally and full.” I feel interested in making that. So that’s why I don’t quite want to stop all the way yet.”
This idea of documenting and archiving the day-to-day life of a person living in 2013 seems interesting to me. Poets and artists have always use their art to comment on society, to document how they feel and evolve in one particular place in time. I feel interested in observing the consequences of putting our lives online, in following women that have moved the actions of their private lives into the public eye. These women have chosen to put words on their daily actions and feelings, in order to share them with a broad audience. Unlike a 1 http://electricliterature.com/blog/2013/08/28/interview-liveblogging-with-megan-boyle/
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celebrity gossip magazine or a reality tv show, the subject here is the one in control of the broadcasting. She willingly stages her voice and her words, becoming both a subject and an object.
Not all women featured in this anthology have Tumblr blogs. However, they all have a strong internet presence. They use the web not only as a promotion tool, but as inspiration for their writing, and furthermore, as another space to inhabit. Internet might sometimes be a direct inspiration for their writing, but their art goes beyond a simple name-droppring of internet culture buzz words.
I also tried to collect poetry about relationships, love, or the failure of connecting with other people since all of these themes are often cherished by young tumblr grrrls. The Millennial generation, to which most of these poets belong, have often been criticized for being selfish. They have been deemed egocentric, or incapable of caring for other people. Of course, there is a lot of self-reflection in these poems. To me, this kind of introspection can only be a good thing.
After all, knowing yourself well is the key to a fascinating Instagram feed. I hope the readers of this anthology will enjoy these voices that are talking about everyone’s insecurities, about the collective failures, fights, or victories we all experience in our personal lives. After all, we never really grow out of this. We can all, at times, be young Tumblr grrrls. Young Tumblr Grrrl  15
In 2045, will Gabby Bess’ selfies be exposed at the MoMA? Will Megan Boyle’s liveblog be turned into a full length feature film directed by Justin Bieber? Will Tao Lin be president of the United States? Will anyone remember me?
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POETRY & SHORT STORIES
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GABBY BESS
OVERSIZED T-SHIRTS What if I’m actually boring and I only know how to communicate with people [men] via a hyper-sexualized version of myself? I’m posting this inquiry to the conspiracy theory message boards. Sitting on your couch in my best underwear, with my hair up and your old shirt on, I am a small boy swallowed by his father’s clothing proud and smiling: ‘LOOK WHAT I’VE DONE, DAD.’ I’ll sit on your couch and project an image of the word ‘boring’ onto your forehead as if your thoughts were showing through your skin. Our fingers will be fractions away from holding hands. There is probably a mathematical equation for figuring out the amount of time spent staring at empty hands in average lifespan. You will look straight ahead and I will look at you, projecting more words onto your forehead. Young Tumblr Grrrl 18
GABBY BESS THE UNIVERSE HAS TAUGHT US A GREAT TRICK Lately all of Jane’s friends had been swallowing themselves whole. This was the conclusion that Jane came to when all of her friends seemingly disappeared from her life. This was especially inconvenient for Jane because at midnight it would be Jane’s 20th birthday. It was 10pm on the east coast. Jane lived on the east coast. In her apartment on the east coast, Jane lay on the wooden floor with her iPhone suspended above her face held by her hands. Jane stared at her iPhone wondering who she could text. “They have all eaten themselves,” Jane declared sadly as she scrolled through the contacts in her phone alphabetically. IT Administration, Olivia Aiken, air1magic, Alice, Amtrak, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. Jane felt alone. Jane tried to convince herself that her friends would not leave her on purpose. Maybe, Jane thought, all of her friends had orchestrated this great prank against her. They had orchestrated this prank just to show Jane what great friends they were. And since they were great and fabulous friends they could joke around on such a high level. Maybe, Jane thought, her friends would materialize themselves inside of her apartment at exactly midnight. The faces of her friends would be flushed red, teeming with excitement, at finally seeing Jane after having to hide from her for so long. They would run up to her, all arms and embraces, as they told her all about the illusion that they had learned. “Look, Jane” they would say, “ The universe taught us a great trick. We can swallow ourselves whole and return again. We have returned just for you. Nothingness was wonderful but we are deeply sorry that we left you to exist alone.” The trees and the darkness outside of Jane’s window obscured her view of the street below. For all she knew, her whole street could have swallowed itself to feed the universe’s intense hunger. Jane didn’t know how to comprehend the universe. She imagined the universe as a giant sad thing that consistently felt alienated by its self because it was too large and too sad for anyone to possibly understand it. For a moment, Jane felt bad for the universe. Maybe the universe needed her friends more than she did. But then Jane thought about how it didn’t make sense to feel bad for the universe. The universe was just chemicals. Jane felt bad for herself again. When something swallows itself there are no remains. Whatever was simply returns back to nothingness. Jane sat in her small apartment surrounded by nothingness. Everything inside of her apartment remained normal. Jane shifted her eyes without moving her head to look at the expanse of her apartment. Her couch was sitting in the middle of the naked wood floor. The lamps, end tables, and various stacks of evidence of Jane’s existence remained completely still. Jane positioned herself on her back on the wooden floor. Lying on the floor, she lifted her leg up as far as it could go. Jane was not very flexible so her leg did not go very far. She bent her leg at the knee and curled her abdomen to try to coerce her foot closer to her mouth. Jane stretched her mouth wide and wildly thrusted her leg toward her head and her head toward her leg. This caused Jane to roll around on the floor like a dumb happy dog. Jane could not swallow herself whole. Jane laid out like a starfish in defeat. “I’m an asshole starfish,” Jane thought. While rolling across the floor, Monday had Young Tumblr Grrrl 19
turned into Tuesday and Jane had turned into 20. Jane’s friends had noticeably not materialized in her apartment. Since Jane could not swallow herself she attempted to do the opposite. Jane laid across the floor of her apartment and tried to make her body 1 million feet long. “I am the biggest asshole starfish,” Jane thought.
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TRACY DIMOND I’M NOT THAT CONCERNED I turn quotes in my head I want to recite Buffy but I need to publish some books, at least two books, before that. I’m sure there’s some exponential degree before I discuss Third Eye Blind. They’re a band people used to know, but everyone whines about Goyte while I pretend I didn’t buy acrylic paint to replicate the video for Halloween. I’ve read more Steinbeck than I’ll ever read poems, prayed for Jeffrey Goldblum’s safety from velociraptors. Nothing I do is cool. I’m not that concerned because I can wear short skirts and don’t need anti-aging cream: I’m still carded at bars.
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CHELSEA MARTIN KNEE At the bar, you touch my knee repeatedly. It seems to be accidental at first, a very slight touch with the back of your hand during dramatic gesturing during climactic points in our conversation. We are drinking whiskey. You are a person. Maybe using the word ‘person’ makes it seem I haven’t noticed that you are a man. I happen to believe that people outside of myself can’t incite feelings in me, that the feelings I am capable of feeling are the ones that I will feel when my body finds that it is time to feel them, regardless of who happens to be near me at the time. Still, I often tell my boyfriend that he makes me happy and I mean it and believe it. I say, “Happiness is my new favorite thing to think about, because it makes me feel horrible.” We talk about the different ways happiness is portrayed in books and movies. Finding happiness, losing happiness, cultivating happiness. You say, “Happiness is so nice that it almost makes life worth living.” My friend Megan is talking to your less attractive friend. She had started drinking before we came out so that she would have the courage to appear composed and confident in front of you, but now she is talking to your less attractive friend and looking a little drunk. I attempt to make a non-pathetic and non-convoluted smile for Megan but a pathetic and convoluted one is all I can come up with. She doesn’t look at me and I think maybe I shouldn’t’ve smiled at all. You are making constant eye contact as you talk to me and your eyes are too close together. Everything I say seems so funny and I don’t want to stop talking to you and miss any of the funny things that might come out of me. (Um, I smoked pot before coming out.) It is something to consider, if we’re making a list things to consider, that most relationships are mirrors of yourself, and that those who you choose to be around is largely dependant on what you want to see in yourself at that time. There isn’t even enough time to say all the funny things I’m thinking of, so I begin excitedly typing them into my phone. You say, “Who are you texting?” I say, “I’m not texting.” You say, “I have the confidence to talk to you about happiness because I am drunk and because you gave me a nickname earlier today.” Young Tumblr Grrrl 22
I say, “What was the nickname?” You answer or begin to answer, but I can’t hear the answer over the increasing volume of the bar noise. You say, “Do you have a lot of ex-boyfriends?” And I say, “No.” You say, “Do you stalk them on the internet?” “No.” You say, “Yes you do. Everyone does.” I say, “I don’t.” You say, “You don’t go on their Facebook pages and stalk them?” And I say, “I’ve been to their Facebook pages but not very often.” You say, “Yes you do. Everyone does.” And I say, “No I don’t. You’re projecting.” And you say, “I’ll admit it. I stalk my ex-girlfriends on Facebook. Everyone does it. I’ll admit I do it.“ I feel this compassion for you suddenly, which isn’t something I feel a lot. I imagine you alone in your apartment, masturbating and trying to write an dating profile based on the clues about yourself you think you’ve found on his ex-girlfriends’ Facebook pages. I say, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I think about my boyfriend. I visualize the letters that make up his name, but my brain has written it in Courier and the font size is too small and I feel irritated by it. At the bar, I order another whiskey, even though I wanted beer, because I told everybody that I was gluten-free and we had this whole conversation about how I couldn’t drink beer. My stupid whiskey comes and I stupid drink it. “I wrote a story,” you say, in a tone that indicates to me that you think you have revealed something intimate about yourself. If we were actors I think the camera would zoom in a little to appreciate the calculated tempo of my eyes as they shift from Point A (the top of your left shoulder) to Point B (your Young Tumblr Grrrl 23
left eyebrow) to Point C (a hair on your chin) to Point D (a freckle on your cheek). Megan and I were on her porch earlier tonight, sharing nostalgia for when we were teenagers, for when we lived together and shared everything, yelled goodnight to each other from our rooms on opposite sides of the apartment, and fought about the chore chart. She said we would never have the same closeness again. At the time I thought she was referring to our proximity, but now I think she meant something else. I haven’t mentioned my boyfriend at all tonight to anybody, which I recognize as a betrayal of some kind. But I don’t know what kind. I say, “What’s the story about?” It has been a few minutes since you have touched my knee, and I wish that you would touch it, and you do touch it, and I feel guilty for having wished it, and I wish you hadn’t’ve touched it. You touch it again later and I feel guilty again, but to a slightly lesser degree.
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MEGAN BOYLE Two excerpts from SELECTED UNPUBLISHED BLOG POSTS OF A MEXICAN PANDA EXPRESS EMPLOYEE I i want to own a warehouse that stores all the empty dolphin tanks and cigarette butts of the world i want to make eye contact with a stranger and say ‘fuck’ in a way that makes them feel like i’ve caught them doing something shameful i want my legs to be 50 feet long and i want to step on things and say ‘oops’ very sarcastically i want to interrupt a game of magic the gathering by busting through a wall on a motorcycle i want to delete everything from someone’s computer except a giant ms paint picture of a dick that takes forever to load i want to spill $75 in dimes on a linoleum floor and watch someone closely as they pick them up i want to fall backwards into a pit of bioluminescent pokémon i want to hang a piñata full of emotionally damaged lobsters between a high school and a pond i want to stand in a room so crowded that no one can move without touching each other and i want everyone to fall asleep at the same time i want to pull very long, multi-colored strings out of my brain and place them next to a bowl of doritos at a party
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II ADAM: I had a big fixation on him that lasted all of high school. It happened my first year of college, on leap year, 2004. I’m glad it was him, I was a little drunk so I don’t remember feeling that self-conscious during it, but afterwards I did. It hurt, but in an exciting way. There were a lot of awkward moments. I weighed a lot then, probably 165. We used a condom, it was strawberry flavored, and my underpants said “POW!” on them like a Roy Lichtenstein. One of the best kissers. It was at a party which raised money for a hard cider home brewery. I bled on the sheets and he got them cleaned. Nice person. Terrible ex-girlfriend who he was still in love with. I was convinced that this ruined my life for awhile, but I don’t feel that way anymore. JAKE: I also had a crush on him in high school, based solely on physical attraction. If someone had told me in high school that I would someday have sex with either of these guys, I wouldn’t have believed it — not because they were ‘out of my league’, because I was painfully shy and insecure and didn’t really even talk to boys until my junior year of high school. Jake didn’t use a condom because I was on birth control, and that really shocked me, I used to think any time you didn’t use a condom you automatically got pregnant. We hooked up for a few years, on and off. Never kissed me, unless I asked. NOAH: We met in college. He was in acting school and had a fairy tattoo. One time we smoked weed under the el tracks and started making out. He liked Paul Simon a lot. Sex was kind of routine, but okay, he was a mechanical kisser. We didn’t use condoms. Happened a few times. NICK: We went to summer session at an art school together in high school, then both ended up at the same college. He got in a car accident and died last year. I had a big crush on him, but he didn’t want to date me. We only had sex once, in the laundry room, standing up. My friend walked in on us. It was his second time. We didn’t use a condom. He told me I looked like a Greek statue. JESS: Jess is a girl and she gave me my first orgasm from another person. We hooked up twice. We were really good friends. I wish we hooked up more. I wish we were still friends. It felt weird giving/receiving oral sex to a girl, like my head was above my body, and it was surfing or something. I don’t know how to describe it. RYAN: Ryan ‘got lucky’ because he was a boy who hung out with Jess and I one night and we had a threesome. He reminded me of Frodo, I wasn’t attracted to him. We didn’t use a condom. We had sex for maybe three minutes. It only happened once. It wasn’t good. DEREK: Derek was Jess’ ex-boyfriend and one night we stayed up all night talking, I forget how that happened. We had a really good talk, got sleepy, and started spooning. Then we had sex. It was dry and unmotivated, I remember thinking “why am I even doing this?” We didn’t use a condom. I don’t think he came either. He said he owed me one. Only happened once. Young Tumblr Grrrl 26
MIKE: Mike is Jake’s brother. We were/are really good friends. One night on spring break, a bunch of us had a fire in the woods and ate hot dogs. Mike came over to my house after that and we watched Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Living Dead, I think. We ended up spooning on the couch and touching each other’s faces for a long time. He took off his glasses and asked when my parents would be awake. I said “late,” and then it happened. It was really good, I was very attracted to him and he was a great kisser. I had a big crush on him that didn’t go away for awhile. We’ve hooked up several times. I’ve had a few orgasms with him. No condoms. Maybe once we used one. ANONYMOUS GUY: We had sex at a friend’s party. I was drunk and I didn’t want to and I think I started crying and made him stop. DAVE: I’m surprised I remember Dave’s name. He followed me home from this party one night and we had sex in my creaky loft bed. I didn’t want to have sex. I had my period. I was drunk. He was persistent and I think I was really bored the whole time. He ‘dirty talked’ and it was annoying. I was mean to him. After he finished he said, “uh, one of us is bleeding,” and I said, “oh my god, is it your first time!?” and he followed me into the shower. I said, “you can wash up but then you have to go.” He wanted to stay. It was probably a 45 minute train ride back to his dorm. The next day he called me and asked if I had AIDS. I said, “no.” We didn’t use a condom. JUSTIN: Justin and I dated for a year. It was a shitty relationship but I think I just really wanted to be with someone, which is a shitty reason to be with someone, but I didn’t realize it at the time. Sex was okay, he gave me orgasms. It got boring/routine pretty fast. I ‘wore the pants’ in this relationship, which he didn’t mind on the surface, but I think it actually bothered him a lot. We had melodramatic fights. One night after I broke up with him, he sexually assaulted me and I dropped out of school. No condoms, ever, I don’t think. NEIL: Neil and I dated in high school and I broke up with him. Then we weren’t friends. Then we were friends. Then we were really good friends. Then I thought I was in love with him and we had sex one night. He gave me an orgasm. Then I told him I was in love with him and he rejected me. We somehow pushed through it and are good friends. I feel very comfortable having sex with him, I don’t feel self-conscious. One time he tried to fist me, and it felt very intimate and good, which surprised me. He’s physically curious in a way I feel I also am. Everything feels heightened with him. There is an open line of communication during sex, which feels natural and genuine. I have orgasms. We use condoms, mostly. STEVE: Steve was my other serious relationship. Over winter break 2006, I hung out with Neil a lot, and Neil hung out with Steve a lot, so I also hung out with Steve. I was still dating Justin at this time. Then I broke up with Justin. Then the thing with Neil happened. About a week later Steve and I drank mead and hooked up at Neil’s apartment. Then we hung out a lot, and decided to try a long distance relationship. Then I dropped out of school and it wasn’t long distance anymore. Sex was consistently good, sometimes great, I always had orgasms, he was a good kisser, he had a scar on his lower lip which I liked to feel. I felt an understanding with him that I have yet to feel with another person. We Young Tumblr Grrrl 27
listened to the Velvet Underground’s “Self-titled” and Broken Social Scene’s “Feel Good Lost” a lot when we did it. I was the ‘big spoon,’ almost always. I broke up with him and treated him poorly towards the end, then immediately regretted it and drunk dialed him a lot. I regret a lot with him. We met at the wrong time. Sometimes we used condoms. He is a good person. We don’t talk. RICKY: Ricky and I used to work at the same place. We dated for a month, after I broke up with Steve. After Ricky and I dated, Steve and I dated again for a month, and were ‘confusing’ for another two months. Ricky was a very good guy but not for me. Sex was pretty good, kind of too violent sometimes, but I still had frequent orgasms. He ‘dirty talked,’ and that always kind of removes me from sex, it makes it a parody or something. We used condoms. VINCENT: Vincent was an influence in my decision to break up with Steve, but I didn’t want to admit that for a long time. He was one of Neil’s friends. We flirted one Halloween and at his Christmas party we had sex. We sometimes had ‘dates,’ which were confusing. I was never sure if they were dates or we were just hanging out, but 97% of the time they would end in sex. One time at a big dance party I got extremely drunk and cried a lot and asked him why he didn’t love me, and talked about how existence is meaningless while sobbing for about two hours. We still hung out and hooked up after that. Our ‘thing’ lasted from January to March, then carried into July a little. I still like him a lot, despite. He lives far away now, and has a girlfriend. We always used condoms. He is a great kisser. Sex was adventurous, imaginative, very intense and had lots of eye contact. He never went down on me, though. One time we fell asleep on his basement floor, holding each other. JAMIE: Jamie is a girl. She was a very good kisser. It felt different in a good way, but I always feel confused when I’m with girls, like I’m one step outside of myself, watching myself. We have the same bedspread. She’s funny and I like her a lot. I wish I felt like I could have a relationship with a girl. ANTHONY: I visited my former college to go to homecoming with my old friends. I met Anthony while dancing. He was a freshman and it was his first time. He was a really good kisser. I bought him and his friends a handle of gin (they paid me back) and we hung out in my old dorm. It was nice. I wanted him to be sure he wanted his first time to be with a stranger, he said he did. I left right after it happened. We used a condom. WILL: Will is Jake and Mike’s older brother. One day after a bonfire he asked if I wanted to come over to his house and smoke a bowl. We ended up having sex for ten hours, nonstop. It’s the longest I’ve ever had sex with anyone. We hooked up/hung out from February to May. We had a lot of fun together, he would make me breakfast and dinner and liked to be sung to. It felt like a relationship but it wasn’t. I wanted it to be, so I ended it. For a few months during Will’s and my thing, I was also hanging out with Vincent probably once a week. I thought that if I put together these two non-relationships that felt like relationships, they would make one whole one. Not really, though. We never used condoms, and I wasn’t on birth control. We have the same sense of humor. He had a foot fetish. He went down on me a lot. I had lots of orgasms. I liked being with someone who had a foot fetish. Young Tumblr Grrrl 28
FRANK: Frank and I worked at the same place for awhile, but then he quit. We flirted a lot at work. One night I asked him to come over. He said “oh baby” and used my name a lot. I didn’t like it. I think I had to stop myself from laughing a few times. Afterwards I was hungry, so we got falafel. It was maybe two in the morning. He said grace before eating his falafel. I asked him what that was about. He said one time he did acid and saw god or something, and now he blesses his food. He mumbled a lot and didn’t make eye contact. I tried to get him to leave for about two hours and he finally did at four in the morning. Never responded to his text messages or calls after that. We used a condom. KEVIN: I was roommates with Kevin, but then we had sex and I think it made our relationship more complicated than it should’ve been. I was the aggressor. I wanted to date him. We had sex maybe twice, but a lot of nights we would make out or I would blow him and he would tell me to go to sleep. We got in huge fights and projected a lot of shit onto each other, I think. He never went down on me. He was a very good kisser and we used condoms. I felt intensely attracted to him. I never had an orgasm. I feel positively about him now. JOSH: Josh and I met at my work. He was very shy and we had the same sense of humor. He only mentioned to me once that he had a girlfriend, and it was to tell me that they broke up, but I inferred that it was probably a more ‘complicated’ situation than that. We hung out and hooked up a few times this summer, but I wasn’t sure if it was a ‘just sex’ thing and honestly I’m tired and bored of wondering this all of the time with guys, so I wasn’t motivated to find out what he thought. He was maybe the best kisser I’ve kissed. We used condoms, mostly. I would’ve liked to date him, under different circumstances. JAMES: I had known James through mutual friends for about five years, and this summer there were people over and he was one of them. I’ve always been attracted to him. He has a way of looking at you, but not at you, just past you or something. Pretty good/average kisser. Probably the most ‘adventurous’ person in bed. He lasted a long time. I had an orgasm. He wanted to do it again in the morning but I had to work. We didn’t use condoms. I said, “I hope you don’t have Secret AIDS,” he said, “I hope you don’t have Secret Pregnancy” and we laughed and parted ways. I feel good about this. (As of right now, I’m not pregnant nor do I have AIDS). KYLE: Kyle was the most attractive guy at a Halloween party this year so we had sex in the basement. Unfortunately it was the basement of a girl who didn’t know that people have sex at parties sometimes, and had a little sister who screamed, “get out of my house!” This was a ridiculous experience and I think it’s funny, I almost can’t believe it happened. We didn’t use a condom. He was an okay kisser I think. It was just alright. We were both drunk. I was dressed up like a piece of pizza. I don’t think he had a costume. AGE AT FIRST TIME: 18 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, 0 days AGE AT PRESENT: 23 years, 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days TOTAL MALES: 21 Young Tumblr Grrrl 29
TOTAL FEMALES: 2 (2 not mentioned, I’m not sure they count as sex, it was just making out and fingering) TOTAL ORAL SEX PARTNERS: 20-30 ORAL SEX GIVING TO RECEIVING RATIO: 9:3 (probably) TOTAL OFFICIAL RELATIONSHIPS: 4 TOTAL AMBIGUOUS RELATIONSHIPS: 9 TOTAL ONE NIGHT STANDS: 11 TOTAL PARTNERS I’VE SAID “I LOVE YOUR”: 3, and maybe two .5s TOTAL PARTNERS WHO HAVE SAID “I LOVE YOU” TO ME: 3.5 ALCOHOL INVOLVED IN FIRST SEXUAL ENCOUNTER: 13 MARIJUANA INVOLVED IN FIRST SEXUAL ENCOUNTRER: 2 TOTAL STDS: 0 TOTAL PREGNANCIES: 0 BUTT SEX: 0 CAME ON MY FACE: 0 CAME ON MY TITS/STOMACH/BACK/ASS: 2+ ASKED BEFOREHAND: 2 PLACES I’VE HAD SEX: All rooms a house can have (not counting the garage), car, on a blanket under a tree, the woods, public bathroom, maybe — probably, laundry room, trampoline, started to on the top/roof of a construction site at night (he was not a construction worker). WHAT I FELT AFTER COMPLETING THIS LIST: Satisfied for having completed a task, surprised at how many details I remember, surprised at how passive I’ve been, detached from myself, angry at myself a little bit, self-pity a little bit, sad about failed relationships, happy remembering some moments/times of my life, irrationally hopeful, glad that I’m not in the past, puzzled at why I divert to other people to decide things about my personal safety, relieved that I don’t have AIDS or children.
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MELISSA BRODER TRANSCENDENTAL CRITIQUE As always there is schism between skeleton and never asking for a skeleton tearing around the kitchen. You enter with biscuits and each contains a gemstone that tastes like its color: ruby is cherry, pink tourmaline pussy. The word for wish is want. Knowledge gets us what? Not enough biscuits. Sick dogs sniff each other out. I build an oven over your mouth and set the door on fire. Grunts are still possible. Let’s corpse.
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WATERFALLS The most romantic thing a human being can say to another human being is Let me help you vomit. No human being has ever said this to me & I keep going to god too clean as though god is frightened of muddy feet. If I am missing a hairpin I don’t go at all. Please describe your vomiting; it is like a psalm for me a place where wilderness might be new. Other people’s dirt makes a lovely frock. Grant I be forgiven in the gush.
CHAMPIONSHIP God keeps unfurling me with God’s gigantic helium. There are scratch marks all over my life. That’s from my mitts. Other human, this unfurliness is far too spacious. Would you lend me some muscle? Let’s write a sermon on control. Let’s write a love song for heavyweights and by heavyweights I mean everyone. Young Tumblr Grrrl 32
ANA CARRETE
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MIRA GONZALEZ THIS FRIDAY I WOKE UP AT 2PM started drinking alcohol at 3pm at 11pm i went to a party wearing the same clothes i wore on thursday at 12:30am the guy i lost my virginity to told me he is having a baby at 1:30am i ate drugs in the bathroom without telling anyone i don’t know how to maintain relationships most of the people i’ve had sex with have negative feelings about me now starving to death during sex is something i would like to do this week every time i look at my computer i fight the urge to open a word document and list everything i ate that day here is what i ate today: coffee, curry vegetable thing from whole foods, plum i am most comfortable around people who criticize me because i feel like anyone who isn’t constantly criticizing me is lying or expecting me to be something different seems insane that you need money to do things like develop a drug addiction, or move across the country i don’t identify as ‘depressed’ even though i feel depressed seems unfair that i only get to feel a finite amount of things in my life lately i have been assuming that dried fruit has more calories than regular fruit i feel like 400 dead jellyfish in the middle of a freeway
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2 WEEKS AGO I WAS LOOKING FOR DRUGS AT A PARTY one guy gave me alcohol then diagnosed me with ‘major depressive disorder’ i said ‘i don’t think i have that’ and ‘thank you’ today i stole and drank 3 red bulls people have gone into cardiac arrest from drinking more than 3 red bulls in a day thinking about dying makes me feel tiny and calm i feel mostly uninterested in dying right now at 2pm i took pain killers and walked to the beach i touched a crab and a sea urchin and a squishy thing i think i am going to stop wearing my glasses things seem better when i can’t see clearly i want to have an emotion that feels like being slowly punched in the face for 3 years
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SARAH-MAUDE BEAUCHESNE PAS UNE HISTOIRE DE PISCINE Sur le balcon en forme de L les gars fumaient des cigarettes en creusant des cernes sous leurs yeux leur front était mouillé et leur bouche était sèche sèche la pluie venait juste de commencer à tomber ça faisait un peu de bien. Ils étaient quatre à aspirer du cancer qui fait du bien surtout l’été ils étaient quatre à supporter le chaud et le gris du temps, à pas trop parler parce que c’était essoufflant. Dans la cuisine y’avait aussi moi les yeux tout petits les bras longs la voix qui chialait et notre amie la comédienne les cheveux humides les shorts serrées le fuck you facile. On préparait de la pizz dégueulasse avec pas de passion culinaire on voulait aussi faire des chips avec des aubergines mais non finalement. C’était le genre de soir qu’on se crissait vraiment de rocker ou pas le camel toe il était bien là installé confo dans nos shorts en jeans mais on n’avait pas l’énergie ni moi ni elle pour se poser des questions connes comme «man est-ce que ma crotch est legit à soir». Faisait chaud. On était fatiguées. Notre entre-jambes avait le fuck you facile aussi. Pis aussi les gars dehors qui fumaient des topes avec leurs cernes quand même belles ils nous trouvaient merveilleuses de la face ET de la crotch depuis un bon bout déjà faque c’était correcte. Pas de stress autre que la pizz négligée et la chaleur de partout dedans dehors. Les quatre gars dehors c’était quatre catégories de personnes qui méritaient chacune un trophée pour leur humanité, leur appétit, mais surtout pour leurs bons goûts un trophée en or pas foule shiné mais en or quand même genre qui prend pas trop de place mais que quand tu le check comme faut y’a l’air vieux pis précieux. Anywayz. C’était des gars beaux de la face même fatigués, beaux du corps aussi à chacun sa shape, c’était des gars avec la peau douce, les yeux doux et des voix qui disent souvent la bonne vérité. Un des quatre c’était un cupidon moderne celui qui vit à Paris, l’autre c’était l’amie à un rappeur célèbre qui a faite une toune avec QUEEN B, l’autre c’était l’homme des bois de ma vie et l’autre c’était l’ami le plus à la mode que j’ai (il a la narine percée et une estik de belle back couèffe). En cuisinant de la pizz qui donne envie de vomir je me rendais vraiment compte que c’était beau en criss-calice une chix. Je trouvais. Qu’ils avaient raison. De croquer dans des filles. Plusse qu’une fois par semaine. J’ai beau chigner à tout bout de champs que j’haïs ça presque pas mal moyen les filles mais je trouve ça beau pareil. Je m’auto-props moi-même pis aussi toi pis toi pis toi pis toi dans le fond j’ai le goût de faire jouer la toune RUN THE WORLD (de Beyoncé justement) pis de toute vous checker danser même si c’est un peu creepy comme image moi tu seule qui check mille filles qui dansent. On mangeait notre pizza avec pas de passion avec le bout des lèvres sèches aussi. Les gars chialent que ça goûtait le rubber pis le d’sour de bras, moi pis mon amie on leur pitchait la croûte dans face parce que c’est con y’avaient yink à nous cuisiner du caviar Young Tumblr Grrrl 36
aux gueules de loups calice. Pas rassasiés pantoute, on voulait faire l’étoile dans une piscine, mais il était tard et les enfants qui font pipi dans l’eau ça nous écœure alors on s’est squeezé dans la Mini blanc cassé de notre ami romantique aux cheveux de la même couleur que son char et on a roulé jusque dans la montagne urbaine des bières entre les jambes (faudrait pas que l’oncle de mon amie Magie qui est dans la GRC lise ça). La piscine était brouillée peut-être que les arbres voulaient pas qu’elle reflète le ciel (parce que oui j’ai appris y’a pas long que l’eau de piscine était bleue à cause du ciel ris po). Ça faisait presque peur dans la nuit la piscine pas sûre de vouloir nous accueillir mais le ventre vide on avait vraiment envie de vivre quelque chose de rafraîchissant et d’aquatique. La première à se crisser dans l’eau c’était mon amie comédienne elle a les même cheveux que son voisin de 8 ans qui joue au basket dans ruelle (sa mère paraît que c’est une prostitu). Elle avait sauté dans l’eau en bobettes pis en brassière molle du American Apparel, je la trouvais chanceuse parce que moi mon tronc est trop long alors ça me fait pas des bra comme ça. Je mets juste rien ça me donne des airs de fille qui s’en criiiiiiissss qu’on voit ses mamelons quand y fait frette. En tout cas elle nous avait toutes challengés à sauter de même avec de la fougue dans le plongeon alors les gars se sont dépêchés à faire des concours de bombe, moi je les checkais du haut de la chaise de lifeguard en cachant mes totons avec mes doigts fuckings glacés. Mon amie voulait voir la vue de mon spot à moi je crois qu’on était un peu tipsy (ventre vide + beer = tu tipses vite) parce qu’on a décidé de se frencher et de se toucher la peau de fille. Rien de fou juste de la curiosité bien placée de choses belles qui se touchent. Les gars étaient pas sûrs de trouver ça excitant parce que pour eux on est un peu comme des animatrices de camps de jour, mais à la fin je pense que inévitablement leur maillot était plus serré que d’habitude. C’était le fun la frencher quand même. Mais les deux je suis sûre qu’on aurait pu arrêter un peu n’importe quand. C’était pas une question de vie ou de mort, ce french-là, juste un jeu de société en plein air. Puis un moment donné, on s’est mise à grelotter genre à littéralement claquer des dents alors la curiosité sexuelle devenait plus difficile je veux dire que donner des becs avec le danger de croquer de quoi de pas correcte c’est moins langoureux. Mon amie avec la back couèffe avait déjà sorti son peigne et l’homme de ma vie voulait aller faire du drift avec la Mini alors l’amour physique qu’il y avait entre mon amie et moi s’est juste terminé librement avec une pichenotte sur le toton, pour rire parce que c’était quasiment devenu sérieux notre affaire. Dans la voiture, les gars étaient pas prudents ils écoutaient «RICH AS FUCK» de Lil Wayne vraiment pas PAS fort et les quatre roues auraient vraiment pu nous en vouloir si elles avaient eu des sentiments de roues surtout que six dans un modèle réduit c’est fucking pas fin automobilement. Mon amie était tout nue dans sa sortie de bain en forme de guépard, moi j’essayais de chanter le verse de Wayne, l’air était pas si bon mais y’avait assez de plaisir dans la voiture pour nourrir un enfant qui a pas de plaisir pendant au moins 10 ans. L’été finissait, la nuit aussi, le matin voulait nous donner des leçons, la saison aussi finalement. Young Tumblr Grrrl 37
L’été ça devrait tout le temps être ça; une voiture trop petite, des maillots qui se serrent, de la pizza dégueulasse et des lyrics de Lil Wayne parce qu’il l’a l’affaire lui. Sti la vie c’est simple.
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ARIANA REINES PERMANENT WATER
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LEIGH STEIN IMMORTALITY At the gym, they told me I would not die, I would only get sexier, and I believed them. I spent my nights wondering if this was going to turn into something long-term, if this was what is meant by casual, or if this was just my annual catastrophic disappointment because if it wasn’t, then I would have to brace myself. I took my medication and looked at pictures of people who were not in love with me. I deleted their names from my cache, said hello to my cat over the phone, took more medication. Days passed. I learned it’s hard to measure your own increasing sexiness. I enlisted bystanders. I passed mirrors and pretended they were not mirrors, but clean windows, and I was not myself, I was a clean stranger. Some days I was sure she wanted to come home with me, and I had to let her down easy, through the window, like a priest. Once I’d been unleashed from thoughts of my own death I was free to be loved in the way I always knew I’d deserved: reciprocally, in Fiji, our bodies lithe and bronzed like gods, but at the same time I felt like a vampire, and none of my friends could relate. They were jealous of my book deal, my time spent at the ashram while they were here, suffering another winter, their unsexiness a flourescent sign that blinks all night.
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EJ KOH THE SIMPLE EQUATION
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EJ KOH BEYONCÉ’S QUADRUPLE PLATINUM SINGLE
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ASHLEY OPHEIM I AM HERE i kind of wish there was a time machine app that i could download to my iphone for free right now. i want to do things without thinking and without consequence. i was raised by a broken supercomputer. i was raised on an empty landscape. i want to go to a yoga gathering in a forest with a bunch of earthly humans who have glow in the dark hearts and feelings that shine right through their skin. i am always thinking about all of our heart beats, how they beat together. if i could give my heart a new beat it would be to a four tet song. i play a four tet song from my laptop. all day long i try to find that space between inhaling and exhaling. i am not a tree and probably won’t be one in my next life. i want to go to a rave in the sky and dance with an aurora borealis. i want to braid wasp stingers into my hair and forget everything i know. i want to eat some magic mushrooms and trip out in the forest. i want to lay down on some moss and know that there are wild animals all around me. they would be there and you would not because you hate yoga and nature. ‘fuck nature, i rejected nature,’ you say. i want to have a revelation so i do. i am a flower. i want to eat berries straight from the bush and not from some stupid plastic box that i will throw in the recycling and forget to take out on tuesday night. i will hear the recycling truck roar by in the morning when the sky has orangey-red clouds floating in it and it is that hue that always makes me think ‘apocabliss.’ as in, apocalypse, but not. Young Tumblr Grrrl 44
i am so sad and i am so happy that every second is a new possibility. is buddha the internet? i feel like a snow bank. what’s a snow bank? does it have feelings? do i perceive reality or do i create it in my mind? my ultimate reality is twitter and dirty dishes, which kind of feel like the same thing to me. if i wish hard enough, could i manifest some freshly-baked peanut butter cookies? could i turn myself into a rainbow or a rich kitten? can’t i just nap in the sun? can’t i just be a rainbow already? i make myself a coffee and kick the recycling bag very hard, but only in my head. it is still here. i am still here. i turn the radio on and off. i eat some berries from a plastic container. i notice a mirror is missing from the living room and wonder why. like, woa i’m awake and oh well. like, hello leg. god it would be horrible to get your identity stolen. it’s a shame we can’t all read minds because then this poem would be over and i wouldn’t need to write anything down and then maybe i could make it back to the forest before it’s gone forever. it’s a shame there isn’t a free mind-reader app i could download. oh god, nature is dead.
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LUNA MIGUEL English translation by Jeremy Spencer
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ROXANE GAY I ALWAYS FORGET MY GROCERY LIST I wrote a letter to a woman who was mourning the death of the child of her sworn enemy. In the letter I asked her a question about joy. I could not have known that the woman to whom I wrote that letter was in mourning. She wrote back. Her letter contained only six words: I do not believe in joy. In the mail today was a letter from my mother—one of her weekly missives, her careful words written on the thin paper she tears from notepads she buys at Safeway. She included two of my baby teeth. The tiny bits of hard, yellowing enamel fell into the palm of my hand. It made perfect sense. My boyfriend uses the word gay as an adjective. When he does this, I calmly explain why his language choice is unfortunate, why it is wrong. He pretends to understand. Ten minutes later, he’ll say something like, “I love Michael Jackson even though that’s gay.” When we go to bed and he falls asleep before me, I start kicking him. It’s transference. I’m really kicking myself. Sometimes, he wakes up sore and bruised. He asks, “What happened?” I tell him he should see a doctor. I often go to the grocery store in the middle of the night when the aisles are crowded with pallets stacked with shrink-wrapped cereal and frozen dinners because the shelves and freezers are being restocked. I find dirty college students wandering the cookie/cracker aisle in t-shirts and flannel pajama pants so they don’t have to procrastinate in their overcrowded apartments and tiny dorm rooms and can instead spend money they don’t have on food they don’t need but definitely want because they’re half drunk or high. I wear short skirts and low cut shirts and high-heeled boots. I paint my face with a little too much make up. I like to dance in the aisles. I look crazy. I can’t control it. The bland tones of easy listening are inescapable. I throw my head back and twirl around on my heels, staring up at the fluorescent lights. When I’m dizzy and breathless, I stalk the store for an inappropriate man who I will consort with in the back seat of his car in a dark corner of the parking lot. I will grip a door handle or a headrest and stare through the dirty window of a Mustang or a minivan or a Mercedes at the store’s neon sign moving in and out of focus. The heel of my boot will catch on a seat belt. I will be sweaty from dancing in the aisles. The inappropriate man will take the credit. Country music will play on the radio, or classic rock, or something with too much bass, and I will hate it. I will blame my boyfriend for this predicament. If he were someone I could love, I wouldn’t be having terrible sex in the dirty back seat of a dirty car in a dirty parking lot with a dirty man who calls me a dirty girl. I will think about how I don’t believe in joy either. I won’t tell the inappropriate man my name nor will he ask. When I get home, I will remember I had a list I wrote on the back of one of my mother’s letters. I needed soft cheese and laundry detergent and a bottle of ginger ale. I will send my boyfriend to the store with the list. He will say, “This is so gay.”
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JENNY ZHANG THE LAST FIVE CENTURIES WERE UNEVENTFUL The last five centuries were uneventful the stitches that melted from my ripped open cunt tasted like mint and changed color when I peed I peed with the door open because this is bounty the universe has a fat lip we put every cock from China inside it and splash in the slippery oriental jizz you feel like seppakuing because your butthole is unretractable you feel like seppakuing because your butthole is too determined you feel like seppakuing because one time a man was rejected by a woman she said, You’re creepy and he got a gun and wrote a manifesto against bikram yoga against women with great bodies against women who want to have babies with other men against women who want to have babies with men who are not allowed to be part of their lives after they have the baby against women who know they are good looking against women who have died for knowing they are good looking against women who loved women and mocked men for jerking off to the idea of a woman touching a woman I have jerked off to the idea of a man jerking off to the idea of a woman touching a woman and that idea bought a samurai sword from ebay and seppakued I wanted to have a baby I wanted to carry my baby to term I wanted to have milk oozing from my tits I wanted to have bigger tits than the tits I have now I wanted to drink my own milk and breastfeed myself I wanted to breastfeed my mother and tell her I love her I wanted to miscarry a baby by falling down the stairs I wanted to toast to my own miscarriage with breast milk from my tits I wanted to have bigger tits without having a baby I wanted you to tell me I’m the reason why the world is going to hell I wanted to give you the hell you said I was capable of creating no one really cares but you do and I do Young Tumblr Grrrl 48
we take the relics of entire countries and trash them in the sea when we dive for the past we find unearthed thoughts the fertility of what you think could one day be is just the honest desire to be remembered after you’re dead so much that you focus on how to be great so much that you focus on how to be new so much that you forget to love your father so much that you forget to love your mother so much that you forget to love your children so much that you forget to love your pets so much that you would forsake the barren godforsaken twice farted sea which gave rise to the queen and her queenly farts and her princely kingdom where she once told you and I and our children to fear everything and we did and we lived like that and we still live that and we still know nothing hiding our big dreams in the invisible centers of roses where we feel big and round and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready
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BIOGRAPHIES GABBY BESS Gabby Bess is the author of ALONE WITH OTHER PEOPLE (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013). She lives in Brooklyn. http://twitter.com/seemstween TRACY DIMOND Tracy Dimond believes in casual clothes, hard work, and coffee. In 2012, she published SORRY I WROTE SO MANY SAD POEMS (Ink Press Productions), a collection of poetry that explores humour in dark thoughts. http://twitter.com/snarkysyntax CHELSEA MARTIN Chelsea Martin is the author of EVERYTHING WAS FINE UNTIL WHATEVER (Future Tense, 2009) and THE REALLY FUNNY THING ABOUT APATHY (sunnyoutside, 2010). She is currently living in Oakland, California. http://twitter.com/angelbaby_2002 MEGAN BOYLE Megan Boyle is most famous for a liveblog that she started in March 2013, documenting all her daily activities. Her first book SELECTED UNPUBLISHED BLOG POSTS FROM A PANDA EXPRESS EMPLOYEE was published in 2012 by Muumuu House. http://twitter.com/meganboyle MELISSA BRODER Melissa Broder is the author of two poetry collections, MEAT HEART (Publishing Genius Press, 2013) and WHEN YOU SAY ONE THING BUT MEAN YOUR MOTHER (Ampersand Books, 2010).By day, she is an Assistant Director of Publicity and Social Media at Penguin. http://twitter.com/melissabroder ANA CARRETE Ana Carrete is a bilingual, gchatting, video-making, online-lit-mag-editing 21st-century poet. http://twitter.com/ana_carrete MIRA GONZALEZ Mira Gonzalez lives in Venice, California. Her hobbies include drinking wine in bed, maintaining one way conversations with her cat and burritos. She published her first book in January 2013, I WILL NEVER BE BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH TO MAKE US BEAUTIFUL TOGETHER (Sorry House). http://twitter.com/miragonz
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SARAH-MAUDE BEAUCHESNE Sarah-Maude Beauchesne grew up in a pretty cool city in the province of Quebec, on a street that has the name of a bird. She studied creative writing at Université du Québec à Montréal and published two collections of short stories on publie.net. http://twitter.com/lesfourchettes ARIANA REINES American poet, playwright, and translator Ariana Reines’s books of poetry include The Cow (Fence Books, 2006), which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar, 2007); and Mercury (Fence Books, 2011). At once personal, Romantic, slippery, and extreme, Reines’s poetry investigates and overturns lyric conventions. https://twitter.com/arianareines LEIGH STEIN Leigh Stein is the author of the novel THE FALLBACK PLAN, and a book of poems, DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE. She has been writing about her life online since 1999, and is currently working on a memoir about New Mexico, death, and the Internet. http://twitter.com/rhymeswithbee EJ KOH EJ Koh is a poet and author. Her first novel RED (Collective Press, 2013) is due out this year. Http://twitter.com/thisisEJKoh ASHLEY OPHEIM Ashley Opheim is a Montreal-based writer who also edits literature for Metatron, writes a literary blog for The Rover, and operates the reading series This Is Happening Whether You Like It Or Not. She has three e-novellas published online: How To Be a Rainbow, Aura Halo and oh, inverted universe. http://twitter.com/hologramrainbow LUNA MIGUEL Luna Miguel is a Spanish writer and journalist, who works both in Spanish and in English. She is the author of 3 books of poetry and a novella. http://twitter.com/lunamonelle ROXANE GAY Roxane Gay writes a lot. She is the co-editor of PANK, the editor for THE RUMPUS, the fiction editor of BLUESTEM, a contributor for HTMLGIANT, and an assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. http: //twitter.com/rgay JENNY ZHANG Jenny Zhang is the author of the poetry collection DEAR JENNY, WE ARE ALL FIND (Octopus Books, 2012). She writes for teenage girls at Rookie magazine, and teaches high school students in the Bronx. http://twitter.com/jennybagel Young Tumblr Grrrl 51
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bess, Gabby. “Oversized T-Shirt” from Alone With Other People. New York: Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013. Illustration and “The Universe Has Taught Us A Great Trick” from the author’s personal website gabbygabbypoetry.com. Beauchesne, Sarah-Maude. “Pas Une Histoire de Piscine” from the author’s personal website, lesfourchettes.net. Boyle, Megan. Both poems are excerpts from Selected Unpublished Blog Posts From A Mexican Panda Express Employee. New York: Muumuu House, 2012. Broder, Melissa. “Transcendental Critique” “Waterfall” “Championship” from Meat Heart. Baltimore: Publishing Genius Press, 2011. Carrete, Ana. All poems from Baby Babe. New York: Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2012. Carroway, Marie. “Adrien Brody” from Muumuu House’s website muumuuhouse.com. Dimond, Tracy. “I’m Not That Concerned” from Illuminati Girl Gang Volume 3, a chapbook published by Gabby Gabby. Gay, Roxane “Little Babies” from thediagram.com and “I Always Forget My Grocery List” from vinylpoetry.com. Gonzalez, Mira. Both poems from I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together. Brooklyn: Sorry House, 2013. Koh, EJ. “The Social Equation” and “Beyoncé’s Quadruple Platinum Single” both from the author’s website thisisEJKoh.com. Martin, Chelsea. “Knee” from Illuminati Girl Gang Volume 3, a chapbook published by Gabby Gabby. Miguel, Luna. “Symptoms” from PopSerial Issue3, http://issue3.popserial.net/luna-miguel. Opheim, Ashley. “I Am Here” from the author’s self-published e-novella Aura Halo. Reines, Ariana. “Permanent Water” from Mercury. Albany: Fence Books, 2011. Stein, Leigh. “Immortality” from Dispatch from the Future. Brooklyn: Melville House Books, 2012. Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012 Zhang, Jenny. “The Last 5 Centuries Were Uneventful” from HTML Giant website. Young Tumblr Grrrl 52
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All illustrations by Jennifer Mehigan www.flickr.com/photos/jennifoofoo The editor would like to thank Gabby Bess for her interview with Megan Boyle, published on Thought Catalog, as well as Juliet Escoria for her interviews with Megan Boyle, published on The Outlet.
2013, Marie Darsigny