SPARK Magazine Issue No. 22: RAW

RAW: TAKE WHAT’S YOURS — BECOME ONE WITH YOUR DESIRE.

WELCOME TO THE MAISON — THE HOUSE OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS.

Take your time chasing the dragon, gorging yourself on that eternal high, finding the light at the end of the tunnel. Let the sunlight swallow you whole. Let it kiss the tip of your nose before it burns your skin to a bright, screaming pink. It’ll all be over before you know it, but for now, you’re right here with us. Eliminate your inhibitions so you can practice exhibition. Remember: everyone’s watching, so put on your best show — itmaybeyourlast.

This issue is about desire, freedom, and fearlessness. It’s about baring your skin for all to see without shame. It encourages indulgence and opulence, and begs its readers to abandon their reticence. It gorges itself on the banal, the carnal, and the vain, and never thinks twice before speaking. In doing so, it urges you to do the same.

RAW is the material manifestation of the blood, sweat, and tears that our staff has put into the creation of this issue. In three immersive phases — OUT FOR BLOOD , BREAK A SWEAT , and SAVE YOUR TEARS — we implore you to savor the fruits of our labor, and lick the plate clean as you do so. So enjoy the pleasure while it lasts. As staff writer Danielle Yampuler writes, “Welcome it. Let it in, let it engulf you” (pg 144). But in the end, no se va, se queda.

editor in chief saturn eclair

managing director mateo ontiveros

design director jaycee jamison

layout director ava jiang

assistant layout director jazmin hernandez arceo

assistant layout director emmy chen

graphic design director caroline clark

assistant graphic design director lucy leydon

web development director ava jiang

editorial director katlynn fox

senior print editor andreana joi faucette

associate print editor anjali krishna

associate print editor wynn wilkinson

associate print editor anagha rao

co-senior web editor sonali menon

co-senior web editor renata salazar

assistant web editor neerul gupta

assistant web editor olivia ring

creative director laurence nguyễn-thái

assistant creative director yousuf khan

assistant creative director sonia siddiqui

co-director of hmu meryl jiang

co-director of hmu lily cartagena

assistant hmu director averie wang

co-director of modeling vani shah

co-director of modeling brandon akinseye

assistant modeling director alex basillio

co-director of photography liv martinez

co-director of photography isabelle milford

director of videography maddie abdalla

assistant videography director belton gaar

director of styling vi cao

assistant styling director emily wager

assistant styling director emily martinez

spatial styling director lauren muñoz

business director divya konkimalla

assistant business director kevin tavan

co-director of events anh tran

co-director of events abby bagepally

assistant events director evangelina yang

director of marketing sophia amstalden

assistant marketing director ana catalina márquez

co-director of social media lea boal

co-director of social media eric martinez

assistant social media director ruth par

staff

sofia alejandro barrios, kaamilah ali, fernando alvarez, miguel anderson, ziada araya, michelle arriaga, otofu ayaku, binny bae, josephine bandora, ritika banepali, ariel barley, beach beachum, sydney bellman, iman bheda, lili bien, riddhi bora, sadie bowlin, cristina canepa, colin cantwell, aaron castellanos, andrea castellanos, tai cerulli, srikha chaganti, morgan cheng, april chiu, anastacia chu, mackenzie coleman, angelo corridori, aidan crowl, esmeralda cruz, nicole dao, christopher davila, virgil de hoyos, reyna dews, nirvika dhanasri, sheryl dsouza, amara ego, dakota evans, gianina faelnar, faizan firdaus, kenia gallegos, yvette garcia, jean garcia, shreya goel, juju gonzalez, phia gonzalez, mimo gorman, joshua grenier, karina gutierrez, ashley guzman, dylan haefner, adeline hale, victoria hales, jane hao, genevieve hendrie, audrey hoff, floriana hool, nicole howard, alexandra howard-tijerina, melissa huang, jordyn jackson, grace joh, noor khan, annie kim, maddie lindell, cynthia lira, angelina liu, sophia lowe, juniper luedke, maria luevanos, dillon luong, kani manickavasakam, elizabeth martinez, maya martinez, keena medina, hermino mendez, mariela mendoza, andres menendez, vivian montoya, pebbles moomau, nizza morales, arliz munoz, bella muñoz, natán murillo, miu nakata, yatziry nava, ashley nguyen, kim nguyen, criss novikoff, emily nunez, kaili ochoa, tasmuna omar, jake otto, katherine page, gerald palacios, bryn palmer, shilpika pandey, liesel papenhausen, audrey park, grace park, madison payne, nicholas peasley, angel pena, ariana perales, river perrill, joy delight pesebre, sarah poliuc, brandon porras, ziyan raboodi, nithya raghavan, jaishri ramesh, sydney raney, angelynn rivera, bella rogoff, cat roland, emely romo, andromeda rovillain, kennedy ruhland, xavier ruiz, josh rush, natalie salinas, marissa sandoval, miguel serna, nikki shah, anoushka sharma, cameron shin, noah silber, adalae simpao, anoushka singhania, alex skowronski, chase smyth, lucia soldi, jaden spurlock, ava stern, victoria sturm, gray suh, avani sunkireddy, summer sweeris, matthew taylor, brian thai, aahil tharani, london tijani, tyler tran, reyana tran, remy tran, tomas trevino, josemanuel vazquez, tanya velazquez, aidan vu, joy wang, will whitworth, xavi williams, melat woldu, cassidy wong, danielle yampuler, jayne yi, elsa zhang

My journey with SPARK Magazine began with Issue No. 15, where our first general meeting unfolded over Zoom. Kudos to Maya, the EIC for Issue No. 15 and 16, whose presence left an indelible mark. Even in a virtual setting, I dressed the part. I am a stylist after all, and I have to earn my respect. The creative energy during that Zoom session was invigorating, as I connected with prospective collaborators and competitors, individuals who would serve as perpetual wellsprings of inspiration for my SPARK Magazine journey. This meeting coincided with the magazine’s rebranding, and I was perfectly aligned with this transformative phase.

Transitioning into the role of Assistant Styling Director for Issue No. 20: Labyrinth, I led a dynamic community of stylists until Issue No. 21: CICADA. It was during this period of evolution that I became acutely aware of the burgeoning creative landscape in Texas* and recognized the necessity for a guiding principle to uphold equity, collaboration, and safety: the SPARK Standard.

The SPARK Standard serves as a beacon, establishing norms for equity, collaboration, and safety at SPARK Magazine. It cultivates an environment that empowers creatives to seamlessly integrate into the creative production process. “HOW YOU SPARK” embodies consistent professionalism, “SPARK TOGETHER” fosters collaborative synergy, and “SPARK YOUR VOICE” underscores the importance of integrity. Establishing such a standard of creativity enables us to focus on our core mission: storytelling.c

Issue No. 21: Cicada marked our rebirth, setting the stage for Issue No. 22: Raw, where we embrace sharpness, subversion, and experimentalism. Our chapters, “Out For Blood,” “Break A Sweat,” and “Save Your Tears” emphasize what it means to live with no inhibitions.

This issue features Daizy Lopez, the visionary behind the “Espíritu Libre” fashion label, delving into the essence of love and liberation. We explore muses in “SAINT MIDAS ‘’ living through the eyes of a Betty Catroux, indulging in the desire to be wanted and worshiped as inspiration. I smile when reading “Sonic Anarchy” as my heart is energized by the sounds of my favorite bands.

We also experimented with new editorial approaches, created captivating merchandise, and spotlighted our members’ diverse experiences, particularly during Women’s History Month and Black History Month. Our highly anticipated Word Reveal deliver vibrant beats curated by our resident DJs, igniting a continuous rhythm that keeps us moving all night long. We unleash untamed energy, performing with unwavering enthusiasm and a fearless approach, resulting in an electrifying experience that’s undeniably RAW.

Serving my community through SPARK has been an unparalleled honor, as we endeavor to ensure that every voice is not only heard but also respected and acknowledged. Telling our stories, occupying space, and imprinting our mark on our work holds immense significance in our creative journey.

Live vicariously. Be Raw.

*Suite650isdedicatedtoprovidingequitableaccesstostudiospaceandproductionresourcesforthe purposesofeducation,communityengagementandartisticexpression.ThankyouSuite650forsupporting SPARKMagazinewiththeirproductionstudio.

Drop A Bow, Saturn Eclair Editor In Chief

OUT FOR BLOOD

love is a highway reminiscing in rose the first brick saint midas empress and i the buzz maladie du barry the beautiful & the damned roadkill green light!

BREAK A SWEAT

the kisscode (xoxo) follow the velveteen rabbit venus in leo taking off my bra we love lay in wait i love you, bro virginity purge lovespell

graphic by MATEO ONTIVEROS & LAURENCE

SAVE YOUR TEARS the green side of the moon phoenix beyond the grave the nail miser princesa tibetana sonic anarchy whispers from the abyss an eternal night rubberneck dirty girl sunburn

graphic by MATEO ONTIVEROS

THE OPULENT FLAME GLIMMERS BRIGHT AND WHISPERS TO YOU THE SWEET NOTHINGS OF AVARICE. ENTRANCED, YOU FALL IN, ITS SMOKE ENSNARING YOU IN GOLD.

LOVE IS A HIGHWAY // REMINISCING IN ROSE // THE FIRST BRICK // SAINT MIDAS // EMPRESS AND I THE BUZZ // MALADIE DU BARRY // THE BEAUTIFUL & THE DAMNED // ROADKILL // GREEN LIGHT!

layout CAROLINE CLARK creative director YOUSUF KHAN photographer AARON CASTELLANOS videographer CAMERON SHIN stylist MICHELLE ARRIAGA & YOUSUF KHAN set stylist YOUSUF KHAN hmua MERYL JIANG models NATÁN MURILLO, MERYL JIANG & NOOR KHAN

by

BRYN PALMER

LOVE IS A HIGHWAY

FADE IN:

1 EXT. SCHOOL PARKING LOT - EARLY EVENING

We OPEN in the parking lot of a local high school. Warm coral hues dance their way through the powder blue sky. We see the lead woman, back turned, inspecting her motorcycle. With a crimson rag, she intently rubs debris from its surface to regain its shine. The camera pans to her classmate, who approaches her with intrigue.

CLASSMATE Nice Ride.

Startled, the lead turns. Looking down on her seemingly feeble classmate, she smirks. The biker exploits others for game, and this stranger looks ready to play.

LEAD WOMAN

Wanna take it for a spin?

The classmate nods, for this is the perfect opportunity to charm their challenger. The lead woman grabs her bike handles and swings her leg around the saddle. The classmate ineptly stumbles onto the seat, avidly wrapping their arms around the lead’s waist. The woman starts the engine and cunningly accelerates from the lot to the --

HIGHWAY

Three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic cause staticity in the street. The road warrior carelessly glides between lanes, brewing road rage within annoyed drivers. Horns blare. The daredevil menacingly glances into the rearview mirror to assess her passenger’s state.

LEAD WOMAN

How ya doing back there?

The classmate suppresses vomit, closes their eyes, and breathes deeply. Secretly terrified, the peer attempts to alleviate their anxiety in hopes of impressing the woman.

CLASSMATE Is this all you’ve got?

The woman concludes round one of her game: Intimidation. She advances to round two. Fueling her plaything’s distress, she further accelerates. Wind blows her long, black hair into her passenger’s face. View obstructed, the classmate frantically reaches for her mane to move it. Upon touching it, they feel its luscious silkiness. Lusting for more, they urgently, yet gently run their fingers through her smooth tresses. Buoyant notes play as “KABHI KABHI MERE DIL MEIN” fades in. The music is a tender declaration of love --

CLASSMATE

(singing --)

SOMETIMES, IN MY HEART A FEELING EMERGES SOMETIMES, IN MY HEART A FEELING EMERGES

The classmate suddenly dives their nose into their persecutor’s hair. Inhaling her fresh and floral scent, their hands continue grasping at her tresses. Sparks fly from the bike’s engine.

CLASSMATE(CONT’D)

(singing --)

THAT YOU’VE BEEN CREATED JUST FOR ME THAT YOU’VE BEEN CREATED JUST FOR ME

IN SLOW MOTION - Hypnotized by a surge of love, the peer clasps their legs to the bike for stability while leaning back, arms gaily floating above their head. Riding on, the lead woman doesn’t seem to notice.

CLASSMATE(CONT’D)

(singing --)

UNTIL NOW YOU WERE LIVING AMONG THE STARS UNTIL NOW YOU WERE LIVING AMONG THE STARS

The singer abruptly jumps up, standing on the moving vehicle. Twirling about, they continue their ballad. With an apparent lack of sight and hearing, the lead remains oblivious to the folly occurring right behind her.

CLASSMATE(CONT’D)

(singing --)

YOU’VE BEEN CALLED DOWN TO EARTH JUST FOR ME YOU’VE BEEN CALLED DOWN TO EARTH JUST FOR ME spark

BLACK HAT | RagzRevenge

They continue their confession as fellow drivers revolve around the bike, assembling their vehicles into a heart formation. Day turns to night as the last slither of the sun fades out with the music. The speed demon slows her bike and turns back into the --

SCHOOL PARKING LOT

As both riders disembark the motorcycle, they place their hands on the saddle for security. The camera zooms in on their fingers as they lightly brush against each other.

CUT TO:

LEAD WOMAN’S POV

IN SLOW MOTION - Her classmate’s lips part. They reluctantly retract their hand, but the initial contact leaves them yearning for another feel of her soft skin. Launching their hand toward the biker’s, the classmate reclaims her waiting hand. The peer’s pupils dilate as they examine the woman’s enchanting brown eyes for signs of mutual affection.

CUT TO:

CLASSMATE’S POV

The lead clasps her hand around the classmate’s, accepting the embrace. Coveting dominance, she strategically places her spare hand around the classmate’s neck, cunningly inviting them for a kiss. A lip lock will complete round two: Enamorment. Then, only one will remain.

CUT TO:

IN SLOW MOTION - Both parties lean in. Sexual tension rises. Their lips pucker. The peer’s unsteady breaths brush the woman’s expecting lips. Closing the distance between them, they reach closer and closer until –

PARTNER

*clears throat*

The camera pans to the lead woman’s partner of three years. Arms crossed over their chest, hip dramatically poked to the side, and face contorted in aggravation, they shake their head disapprovingly. The classmate’s eyes widen. For how could another have already claimed their (almost) lover? Their focus oscillates between the partner and the lead, whose expression lacks surprise. This isn’t her first rodeo. She rolls her eyes annoyed at her date’s intrusion on her impending affair. Guitar strums intensify and a vocalist cries out as “AAP KI KASHISH” plays.

CLASSMATE (singing --)

YOUR ATTRACTION IS EXHILARATING YOUR APPEAL IS SO INTOXICATING WHAT CAN I SAY TO YOU MY BELOVED

The classmate leaps into the air, returning to the ground on both knees. Grabbing the lead’s hand, they lightly brush their lips against her gentle knuckles. Envy boiling within them, the partner seizes ownership of their girlfriend’s spare hand, dragging her away from the peer, whose hand desperately falls to their lap as their gaze follows suit. The lead, enacting her best performance, dramatically reaches for the classmate, but upon unreciprocated eye contact, her gaze quickly averts to her lover.

PARTNER (singing --)

THE MAGIC OF YOUR CHARM IS SUCH THAT CRAZY HAVE I BECOME MY HEART IS TIPSY SLIGHT SMOKE HAS LIFTED WEATHER HAS CHANGED BRIGHTER IS THE LAMP

MOTH HAS BURNED

Heavy rain suddenly pours. Thunder rumbles. Electricity cracks as lightning bolts terrorize the sky. Water droplets bead on their skin. The downpour penetrates their hair and clothes, making everything heavy with wetness. The footage cuts to the partner fervently dancing atop a school bus while their girlfriend sits on the concrete below. Legs outstretched, ankles crossed, and head cocked to the side, she watches in amusement. Despite the interruption, her success in the second round prevails.

The two fools continue to sing, charging after each other and wrestling in the puddles. Meanwhile the woman boards her bike, starts the engine and speeds away.

Her abandonment completes the final round. The lead giggles to herself, relishing in yet another sweet victory.

The final score: 3-0.

Scan for LOVE IS A HIGHWAY video.

Reminiscing in Rose

by MARIA LUEVANOS

Reminiscing in Rose

I WASN’T JUST COMMITTED TO BEING MYSELF NOW, I WAS

devoted

layout JAYCEE JAMISON & ASHLEY GUZMAN photographer ESMERALDA CRUZ videographer MADISON PAYNE stylists REYANA TRAN & ADELINE HALE hmua MARIELA MENDOZA model ARLIZ MUNOZ

Like “Ocean’s Eleven,” our elaborate heist was set in motion. We were eight, too young for makeup but more than interested. We tried to withhold our giggles as we made our way into an older sister’s room. The house was old, the floor creaked, and the bedroom door alerted everyone of our plan. My friend grabbed the purple box, decorated with stickers and a small silver latchet. Jackpot. This box might as well have been treasure for us. We kept it close and held it carefully. With it tightly hugged in my friend’s arms, we made our great escape successfully, finding refuge in the four corners of her closet.

“What if they find us?” One of us would ask each time, a hint of panic and a lot of hesitancy. As if taking turns, the other’s response would be a giggle, a signal of encouragement and an agreement that we’d take our chances.

Like a game of dress-up, we had clad our faces in bright colors. We felt we were on the precipice of adulthood; we became our older sisters, our mothers, the Disney channel stars we sat down and watched every week. We became everything we were destined to be. I decorated myself with rhinestones and glitter. We switched brushes and swapped lipsticks and mascara wands, innocently unaware of germs and where to put what. We replicated what our Bratz and Barbies looked like, changing into clothes that were too big and makeup that was too adult. We tried different nail polish colors, adding blue on top of purple, not caring to take off the layer before. When we felt sneaky, we’d grab the red nail polish, wear her mom’s blazers, and play adults. Red was the forbidden color. Like bad words and beer, it was only meant to be used by adults. But we’d do it anyway. The closet was chaotic with her mom’s heels, my mom’s jewelry and the carpet barely visible under the clothes of our various wardrobe changes — it was a mess. But the

“BUT, GOD

closet was our secret New York Fashion Week. We used our hands and pushed air through our gritted teeth to mimic the cameras, developing photoshoots in our memories. When we felt that a suspicious amount of time had passed or heard the stairs creak, we’d embody the Flash, quickly covering our traces.

This was my introduction to makeup. It made me nervous. It felt wrong. It felt vulnerable. It felt exciting.

I believed this game of dress-up would be brought to life as I got older, that a familiar experience from girlhood would embrace me in womanhood. But the older I got, the more I realized this game was a chore. I saw myself losing the Disney I once idolized. I watched as makeovers became removing glasses, straightening hair, using colors that would help you camouflage instead of stand out. It was a punchline when characters were presented with a “no make-up” look; they were called tired or sick. I began to feel like I was the before of the makeovers. Whereas makeup was once an expression of creativity and exploring different versions of myself, it became a task of blending in with everyone around me.

I learned that to have a bare face was to be naked. Growing up, I felt that naked was a bad word. Even now, it doesn’t comfortably roll off my tongue. I knew that naked meant being seen in a way that was irreversibly vulnerable. So when I learned a face without makeup was a face naked, I made sure I was never at risk of being exposed.

And somewhere along the way, the glitter left and the bold colors mellowed. Rhinestones and different colors of nail polish for each finger were too childlike. Red was still too adultlike. I learned makeup was meant to conceal not accentuate. The colors became soft, neutral pinks.

“MY IDENTITY AS A WOMAN STOOD

INDEPENDENT OF MINE AS A GIRL,

BUT WE ENTANGLED SO BEAUTIFULLY”

The glitter became a brown almost indistinguishable from my eyelids. I didn’t try anymore with the nail polish, the rhinestones disappeared, and altogether, my days of dress-up were gone. I wouldn’t say I missed those days. After a while, it felt that those things were only relevant to a past self, one who had yet to grow into adulthood. And it wasn’t that not wearing makeup or nail polish made me feel adult — of course, the adults around me did both of those. It’s just that it didn’t feel natural. That bridge from colorful childhood antics to monotonous adult routine still didn’t feel walkable.

Last year, my roommate brought out two bottles of nail polish. There were only 30 minutes before we had to leave, but she was

convinced that it was more than enough time. Maybe it was, but I have always been bad at painting my nails; I spill it, I stain something. My hands shake and I’m easily distracted. The colors I liked were too bold or too grown, and sometimes they didn’t match. Painting my nails wasn’t something I really did anymore.

But I had nothing else to do, so I used the bottle she wasn’t. Eventually, 20 minutes went by and the nail polish sat on the skin of my left fingers. Some on the nails too, though they were smudged, and some layers showed lighter than the others. When time inevitably ran out, and my other hand was even worse than the first, the option to wash it off was gone. But I wasn’t worried about it looking a certain way.

I felt like a time traveler in that moment. I was 20 yet eight at the same time. With each layer of nail polish returned a layer of my past. Girlhood was a time when I was unapologetically myself. My games of pretend were an unconscious, innocent manifestation of the woman I hoped to become. There were no rules to follow, no color schemes to match. It was a time when I was committed to being myself because I hadn’t learned how to be anything else. Even entering my twenties. I was still just playing a game of pretend. I pretended to be a woman the only way I knew how. I mimicked what wasn’t mocked and I embraced what was advertised. But, as I sat there painting my nails, I felt the innocence of girlhood intertwining with the novelty of womanhood.

That day, I decided to play dress-up.

It felt vulnerable as I began to decorate my adult face with the rejected influences of my childhood. The brushes, my brushes, were now tinted with the untouched bold colors of the palette. I used the glitter and rhinestones from my concert bag. The makeup I put on resembled that of my younger self, but the process felt natural. My identity as a woman stood independent of mine as a girl, but we entangled so beautifully. I was no longer pretending to be a version of myself that I thought I needed to be. I was authentically and unapologetically myself. And I wasn’t just committed to being myself now, I was devoted

I started painting my nails more. I started wearing my makeup out. Like I had cut the strings on a marionette, I gained control of my own body. So my room was a mess: there were nail polish stains, foundation spilling on my dresser, music still playing from my speaker, and clothes on the floor.

But, God, did my makeup look good. ■

It’s

human to fight for what you want.

by

AMARA EGO

layout NICHOLAS PEASLEY

It was the summer of 1969, Greenwich Village. The highest temperature in New York City that year had been 97F, and the city’s weather climate had almost been as erratic as its political climate.

The air was thick with the humidity pushed from the Hudson, but also with defiance and liberation.

It was the perfect brewing pot for a heady cocktail of rebellion.

NEW YORK, New York

Within Greenwich Village lies The Stonewall Inn, standing tall at 53 Christopher Street, between 7th Avenue South and Waverly Place.

It was an ordinary building from the outside, hardly noticeable amidst the hustle and bustle of the city streets. Yet within its walls, history was being forged. The Stonewall Inn wasn’t just any bar; it was a sanctuary, a haven for those who didn’t fit neatly into society’s prescribed boxes. Queerness flourished, identities blossomed, and love, in all its beautiful complexity, was celebrated unapologetically.

Inside these walls, individuals were able to be true to themselves without fear of judgment or discrimination. Drag queens with hearts as big as their feather boas, the butches and femmes whose energy and grace defied traditional gender roles, the transgender individuals dared to live authentically in a world that sought to erase their existence.

They were the catalysts, the vanguards of change, the champions of equality — ordinary yet extraordinary, whose actions would reverberate through history, forever altering the course of queer liberation.

For those who dared to challenge the constraints of conformity, the Stonewall Inn was a nondescript haven. It was in this dimly lit refuge that the echoes of change reverberated, where the first brick was hurled, not just at the establishment, but at the shackles that bound the collective soul.

While the origins of the first brick remain unclear, one undeniable truth remains: something significant was shattered that night. It wasn’t just the physical breaking of glass; rather, it was the sound of liberation echoing through the air, the fierce roar of defiance

reverberating against the walls of oppression, heralding a new era where courage trumped conformity. The marginalized found their voices and refused to be silenced, establishing a legacy that would echo through the annals of history for generations to come.

United in purpose, these queer individuals demonstrated their refusal to be relegated to the sidelines, throwing a brick of rebellious defiance. This act of resistance at The Stonewall Inn ignited a flame that refused to be extinguished, with its sparks spreading to furthest corners of the nation.

Far enough to reach the Lone Star State.

AUSTIN, Texas

It was the summer of 1970, Austin. The highest temperature in Austin that year had been 102F. In the sweltering heat of this Texan summer, a quiet revolution stirred in the heart of Austin.

In Austin, the news of Stonewall spread like wildfire.

While the streets of Greenwich Village were ablaze with the riots at Stonewall Inn, a scrappy queer community in the Lone Star State felt the aftershocks of resistance, even if they were hundreds of miles away from the epicenter.

From the pages of underground newspapers to the hushed conversations in dimly lit bars, their call for acceptance echoed through the streets. It was a time of courage and uncertainty, and a small but determined group of queer individuals dared to dream of a different future.

Born from the embers of Stonewall’s defiance, the Gay Liberation Front embodied a spirit of radical activism and unwavering solidarity.

They were the first queer organization to be established on-campus. A monumental move for queer visibility, their presence promised a new era of acceptance and advocacy. However, their celebrations were cut short.

University President Bryce Jordan swiftly revoked their organization status just three days later.

Despite this setback, the Gay Liberation Front persevered, their resilience fueled by a determination to challenge injustice and pave the way for a more inclusive future. It too was time for them to throw their first brick, and they too didn’t just protest; they orchestrated moments of rebellion, turning the city into their stage of resistance.

Whether it was staging zap actions — rapid, daring interventions designed to shake heteronormative spaces — or hosting guerrilla theater performances that provocatively challenged societal norms, the Gay Liberation Front showcased a steadfast dedication to their pursuit of liberation.

With their bold actions and unwavering solidarity, the Gay Liberation Front didn’t just demand change; they embodied it, igniting sparks of hope in the hearts of all who dared to dream of a world where love knew no bounds.

But the road to liberation was fraught with challenges.

Campus leaders, still wary of the Gay Liberation Front, pushed back against their demands for recognition. It was a battle fought in the halls of academia, a struggle for legitimacy in a world that often sought to silence their voices. Like Stonewall, where resistance sparked a movement, the Gay Liberation Front persisted in their advocacy efforts.

In the spring of 1974, their perseverance paid off, and they were officially recognized as a sanctioned student organization on campus.

When we throw the first bricks, we are not just hurling objects; we are asserting our inherent right to be seen, heard and accepted for who we truly are. There’s no more room for change, only acceptance.

Fighting back against these demands, we’re not just challenging the status quo; we’re reclaiming our right to exist fully and authentically in a world that often seeks to diminish our voices. It’s in these moments of resistance that we tap into a reservoir of courage, drawing strength from the countless trailblazers who came before us, whose footsteps echo through the annals of history.

To be human and our authentic selves.

Unapologetically. ■

"THERE’S

NO MORE ROOM FOR CHANGE; ONLY ACCEPTANCE.”

layout BINNY BAE photographer MATEO ONTIVEROS stylists ELSA ZHANG & LILI BIEN set stylists MATEO ONTIVEROS & ANGELO CORRIDORI hmua EMELY ROMO & MERYL JIANG nail artist ANOUSHKA SHARMA models MERYL JIANG, ANDRES MENENDEZ & VICTORIA HALES

by

TOGETHER, THEY’RE HYPOCRITES AND HEDONISTS AND HELPLESSLY INDULGENT TO THEIR CORES.

ANDREANA JOI FAUCETTE

It’s 1967 in Paris. The streets are wet with rain, and the clubs are full with eager bodies seeking release. One body in particular crosses the street onto Boulevard Montparnasse and into ChezRégine , his eyes half-obscured by thick-rimmed black glasses.

This place is like his home. Other men like him gather here, where they can swipe stolen kisses between one another in secret corners reeking of dry gin and saccharine cologne. The whole of Paris knows that the elite come to rub noses here, at the gay bar for the stars, and so they don their finest frocks for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to makeitbig.

Yves, brooding and quiet, catches the eye of a blonde from across the room and can’t shake it. Amongst the shining, sweaty crowd, she manages to seem utterly untouched by all of the madness. She’s no star, but she has what everyone there was chasing after. The plumes of cigarette smoke swirling from her painted-red lips fail to obscure a certainty about her sexuality that makes him stop in his tracks. Her lips curl into a playful smirk as she averts her eyes, refusing to meet his piercing stare — and so the two of them begin their dangerous dance.

He is complimentary in his initial approach, lauding the woman for her striking resemblance to him — tall, thin, utterly unapproachable. He’d always been a narcissist in that way.

The attraction is all at once physical, spiritual, and mental. Their introductions are brief, and words are useless over the senseless rhythm pouring into their eardrums. He knows what to call it then, and doesn’t bother to mince words — he’s never been one to do so.

Loveatfirstsight.

Of course, their lips will never touch. But his hands will know her body in a way I can only dream of. He thinks in terms of her, of her figure. His touch is like Midas, and he’s a fastidious, mercurial king — eager for his muse to turn to gold beneath his fingers. Together, they’re hypocrites and hedonists and helplessly indulgent to their cores.

And, certainly, you know his name. It’s one you’d be remiss to forget. It demands to be said with the whole of your mouth, from tongue to lips to cheeks. It colonizes the whole of you.

YvesSaintLaurent.

spark

Yves has this feminine ideal preconceived from his earliest days, spent hunched over etchings of ballgowns billowing from graphite-hewn female silhouettes. Though he was teased to no end by his schoolmates — his hair was parted too neatly, his stature too ungainly and awkward — he sought comfort in the gowns he designed for his mother and sister. He had the eye of a designer since the age of five — all he had ever needed was a willing canvas. His mind is utterly possessed by the curve of Betty’s hips, the way that her shoulders jut out broadly, forming his androgynous “feminine ideal.” Rolls of draping fabrics bought in bulk — silk, mink, fox — fly from his lithe fingertips to her sinewy form. He sticks a pin right above her waist, pinching where the fabric would cinch her best and peering above his tortoiseshell glasses with that knowing look in his eyes. And she’ll stand there, lit cigarette in hand and a pout on her lips.

As for her, Betty Catroux, once called Betty Saint, she very may well have been nobody without him. She was the illegitimate daughter of and a French model. She knew what she wanted. More importantly, she knew how to get it.

She doesn’t particularly care about fashion — that’s not what inspires her. It’s Yves, and it’s the way that he looks at her. She does what she wants, and what strikes her as desirable in the moment. She wears his creations because she’s bored, or because Yves recommends it, or, many times, because she’s drunk. In that way, she is Yves’ polar opposite, balancing out his meticulous attention to detail.

With Yves, Betty feels like she is living in a fairy tale. She shares champagne with supermodels and celebrities whose names she could have only dreamed of knowing before, and spends summers and vacations with Yves in their very own Garden of Eden, indulging without regard for tomorrow. She has a lover — a husband whom she married soon after meeting Yves. Though she’ll carry on her husband’s last name, everything is electric with Yves. He looks without taking, touches without claiming, loves without lusting. He worships her like she’s his Virgin Mary, and she can’t help but devour the hyperdulia.

The feeling is mutual. Yves is inspired like he’s never been before — he releases collection after collection, designed perfectly for none other than her . For Betty. Lesmoking— YSL’s rendition of the men’s tuxedo jacket — is the perfect accessory for such a muse. She always styles the jacket as a second skin of, mostly unbuttoned with nothing underneath, as if she wants Yves’ creations to be as close to her body as physically possible.

When they’re forced apart by land or sea, or their respective partners and families, they write each other letters, as if every moment apart physically pains them. He calls her ma Pulu, a nonsensical nickname he created just for her as part of a language known by only the two of them. He promises to write back at the end of each declaration by signing avecmongrandamour— with my great love.

By day, they lounge together on yachts, enjoying the pristine sunshine kissing the tips of their noses, so carelessly emulating the social class of people they once claimed to hate. And by night, they dance their hearts away, sacrificing their souls in religious devotion on the dancefloor to one another — always close enough to raise questions, never quite close enough to answer them. They sneak into dimly lit back rooms together and dust bits of white powder off of shiny gold spoons into their noses.

She whisks glass after glass of tepid champagne into her mouth, complaining of the morbidly decadent hors d’oeuvres that she must force down to stay conscious. She hates food. She only eats so she can drink. Following long nights, they often end up in the hospital — together— in terrible condition.

They wake up with the light in their eyes — maybe the sun shining above is Paris, maybe it’s Milan, or maybe this time it’s New York City. They can never keep track. But with his shiny new plaything around, he’s off jet-setting without a care in the world. Betty and Yves are photographed in Japan, New York, then Paris. In some photos, he’ll drape his arms around her shoulder lazily in a comfortable display of affection. They’re seen together in embraces, arms wrapped around each other, always close, always touching — never kissing, always teasing at it.

He misses phone calls from Bergé, his partner in both business and love, begging him to gethisshittogether . When he does answer, his words are slurred. The days bleed into the nights that drip into early in-between times spent shielded by a group of intimate wannabes who sought his approval more than they cared for his wellbeing.

Bergé and Yves fight like brothers and don’t love like lovers any more. When their shared home is left half-empty, Yves isn’t surprised — only filled with a dull, throbbing hunger. His appetite becomes more insatiable, unbearable than ever, with the Pierre-shaped hole left behind. As much as she would like to, Betty can’t fill it, even in her clothes especially designed by Yves for her. So she does what she can — she doubles him. She pours him a double shot of whiskey, on the rocks. Their noses go red together in back rooms, and they ache for times where they once fell alive.

YvesSaintLaurent.

His name is written in the stars now, etched in gold on his two front-row seats at Paris Fashion Week — one reserved for him, one Betty. Days and nights go on, women and men come and go, but Bettyalways remains. Though Yves had always tended towards the melancholic, falling into depression like one falls in love, with Betty, his equal, hisfemininedouble , all he can see is her.

In 2008, Yves loses a long battle with brain cancer. Though they are estranged, his business partner and ex-lover, Pierre Bergé, is the one to break the news. The announcement given to the press is brief, and offers little in the way of explanation. In the following months, publication after publication posts their take on the life of the infamous Yves Saint Laurent — his life, his legacy, his brand. His name lives on eternally, etched in gold on his tombstone.

Betty now spends her days doing very much of nothing, as had been her dream for some time. She still speaks with Yves each night, toasting to his framed portrait with a glass of her finest champagne. It’s as if nothing has changed. She knows that’s what he would have wanted. So, in her posh apartment on the Upper East Side, she dons her favorite le smoking, taking special care to wear nothing underneath — she wants to be as close to Yves as possible, even in death.

Taking a seat on her chaise lounge, she holds her champagne flute by its golden rim, and toasts to a framed photograph, grinning at the framed photograph of her masculine double — Yves.

“HE’S A FASTIDIOUS, MERCURIAL KING, EAGER FOR HIS MUSE TO TURN TO GOLD BENEATH HIS FINGERS.”

YvesSaintLaurent. “Bonnenuit,maPulu.” ■

and I

by ANASTACIA BARBIE CHU

Like a pair of aristocrats, we sipped on Italian water, debating whether the blanc gomme or gris antarctique Paris loafers were more beautiful as I spoke in French with the Russian woman next to me.

layout CRISTINA CANEPA photographer SARAH POLIUC stylists BELLA MUÑOZ & DIVYA KONKIMALLA hmua EMELY ROMO & SRIKHA CHAGANTI models APRIL CHIU & KANI MANICKAVASAKAM

oaring down the ancient cobblestone roads that weave throughout the labyrinthine streets of Rome, my mother and I nestled closely in the snug confines of her dear friend Valentino’s crimson convertible. It was past midnight, and we rushed in and out of narrow alleyways and the grand expanse of the once-magnificent marble structures adorning the city.

My eyes etched memories into my mind as we passed the epochal sights of the Roman Colosseum, Castel Sant’Angelo, and 17th-century Baroque palazzos that shone from the dim yellow lamp posts decorating the sidewalks. Once we finally stopped in front of a small salon, I inched out of the tiny vehicle and inhaled the crisp embrace of the night. Here we were, amidst the mythical city of Rome, and what was the first thing my mother and I were doing? Getting an expensive haircut. Valentino beckoned us to our thrones of velvet as he caressed our ebony locks of hair, his silver scissors poised in anticipation. Snipping away, it took him barely an hour to complete both our haircuts, yet the result was incredible. With each snip of the scissors, my mother shared stories with us as we all laughed and bonded over the arrival of my mother and me in a new city, together.

Since I was a toddler, my mother

has been jetting off to destinations abroad, taking me with her as her little accomplice. I was always encouraged to cherish the finer things – not because of our inherent wealth, but because my mother had a keen eye for beauty and elegance. Growing up with a single immigrant mother, it was a sacrifice for her to be able to take me abroad, yet she treasured my pursuit of knowledge, the importance of understanding different cultures, and most of all – the art of enjoyment. Consequently (but not unexpectedly), I learned the European fashion houses before I could even master my multiplication and division tables.

At home, my childhood playgrounds could be found at my mother’s favorite stores: Neiman Marcus, Mulberry, Ferragamo, and Carolina Herrera. Abroad, we would peruse and play at her other favorites: Brunello Cucinelli, Moncler, and Louis Vuitton. Ushering me to the dressing room, we would try the extravagant garments on together. I would awkwardly stand in front of the mirror waiting for her to examine me, desperately seeking her affirming yesses. A haughty figure worthy of both fear and reverence, my heart shattered when I was met with scorn and disdain rather than praise. Like an empress whose decrees are absolute and irrevocable, my mother’s opinions of the fabrics that clung onto my skin would determine my selfworth and our sentiments for another. Craving her compliments and validation, her adulation for me was often heard when we were both elated and felt at ease from our travels. Shopping made it easy to accomplish that.

“The dressing room also became a sanctuary.”

BLACK HAT WITH GOLD DETAILING | Leopard Lounge BELT | Austin Pets Alive!

BLACK CLOCHE HAT | Revival Vintage

"Yet thisdream always feels elusive.”

"That

"Craving her

"Welcome to Monte Carlo." $795

"Like a pair of aristocrats.", $75

As such, our conversations while shopping always had a deeper subtext – an unspoken dialogue about unresolved issues and unspoken emotions. The way the conversation flowed and the tone of our remarks subtly defined the status of our relationship for the weeks to come, without the need to say our actual feelings directly. “That color is beautiful on you” marked a moment of reconciliation during a phase of aggression, while a deeper indication of an apology emerged when we both agreed that a particular dress was, in fact, rather unflattering despite the designer label. Hence over the years, the dressing room also became a sanctuary of sorts – a refuge of maternal intimacy and connection.

My mother and I traversed the long, winding street daring to enter a storefront gazing through the windows of stores of foreign names, from Goyard to Miu Miu, displaying their newest collections of luxurious delights, At last, we paused in front of Hermes and dutifully waited for our turn to go in. Behind us, a woman wearing noir fur gloves and a stunningly blue purse clicked her boots. Eyeing her bag, I pondered where I had seen the specific design of her purse. Glancing through the pristinely clean glass windows, I realized: it was a palladium blue Kelly bag. A real Kelly. “Welcome to Monte Carlo,” I mused. Observing this woman’s perfectly blownout hair, thousands of dollars worth of Van Cleef necklaces and Cartier bracelets, I looked at my mother and shared an expression of beguilement.

"Uninterrupted togetherness", $150

$7,500

"Soaking in the opulence.", $975

"A place of love and protection", $29,000

"Unresolved issues and unspoken emotions.", $5,650

"Reconciliation during a phase of aggression.",

"A keen eye for beauty and elegance.", $350

"I deserve the best.”

As we stepped into the store, my eyes were dazzled by Kellys and Birkins worth more than the mind could fathom. Rare leathers and silk scarves, carefully handcrafted by artisans, lay there on display for all those who were worthy (and wealthy) enough to look at. Touching the exquisitely soft fabrics of monochrome cashmere, my mother and I quietly commented to one another in a delightful mix of Chinese and English about what we thought to be chic. Like a pair of aristocrats, we sipped on Italian water, debating whether the blanc gomme or gris antarctique Paris loafers were more beautiful as I spoke in French with the Russian woman next to me. Yet as much as I cherished this memory for myself, I must accept that my experience was not solely mine. I often erase my mother as a significant aspect of my favorite experiences when traveling as a defense mechanism and reaction to our

fraught relationship. This habit originates from an ingrained fear of ruining a treasured memory with the negative sentiments that I associate with my mother, as we often have an unspoken tension between us. But I wish that it wasn’t so. Perpetually yearning for deep, heartfelt conversations with my mother, I long for a mutual understanding and emotional connection with her. Yet this dream always feels elusive. However, I’ve come to understand that her ways of expressing her love and tenderness for me were always there. In our moments of uninterrupted togetherness such as this, soaking in the opulence of our lavish European shopping expedition, our affection for each other was greater than ever.

With every fancy dressing room we now shimmy into, I release any harbored resentment towards my mother. Trying

on pieces that we know we may never purchase until we inevitably do naturally brings out her inner critic. But as she presents a better item, I realize that she comes from a place of love and protection. Words are not needed to express the depth of our connection. The silence excavates more about my mother, the lofty price tags a background for my growing appreciation for her. She raised me to relish the finer things and to expect the best because I deserve the best. Our methods of connecting through materialistic means do not diminish the authenticity of our relationship and love for one another. Amidst our materialistic tendencies, I love and appreciate our shopping habits not for the sake of merely adding more clothes or jewelry to my collection, but using these moments as opportunities to unearth more about my mother and, by extension, myself. ■

THE

by ARIEL BARLEY

layout MELISSA HUANG photographer ISABELLE MILFORD stylist CYNTHIA LIRA & ALEXANDRA HOWARD set stylist YOUSUF KHAN

hmua KENNEDY RUHLAND & JUNIPER LUEDKE models BRANDON AKINSEYE & JOSEPHINE BANDORA

WHY DID I DOIT?

WELL, THE ITCH, THESCALP-FEELING, AND THE ATTENTION .

why buzz it?

I’m young, sitting on our couch; it’s stainless, for the most part. I perch right where Dad will spill his stupid decaf coffee on the cushions in a few years. The house hasn’t been renovated yet, so my little brother and I still share a pink room where cardboard butterflies dot the walls.

Mom sits behind me, warm-blooded like I’ll be one day. I lean into her — all reptilian.

“Your hair is beautiful, you know.”

She says this like it’s nothing, a universality. Like: Dad is an architect, the cats outside will haggle the door for food at six, and my hair — even snagged in a metal-toothed comb — is beautiful.

I decide then that I like having something beautiful, like my green Tinker Bell wings and my red heart tee.

well, the itch

“I want to buzz my head.”

I’m lying. The thought is a worm in my head, wriggling.

“Really?” Hailey looks at me, and her nose scrunches up. Her hair is long and curly.

“Yeah. It’ll help me fit into my swim cap easy.”

“Don’t.”

Okay, I think, stung. Iknewyouwouldsaythat.Plus,I’mnot reallygoingtodoit.

It’s junior year, and I’m warming down after a swim meet. My shoulders cut through calm water. This is my favorite part of swimming: the aftermath. It’s where my body tells me that I’ve done something good. I can use that to override the fact that I haven’t gotten any faster in a year.

I grab onto the wall and slip off my swim cap. The water cools my head as it soaks in, tempering the redness of my skin. My tears disappear, blending into water.

(Something about swimming: you can cry in peace, surrounded by a hundred people.)

My hair floats up around me. The clockwork anxiety that’s clawed at my stomach leading up to this all week sputters out. That’s the cycle with swim meets: train, dread, race, repeat.

I don’t love swimming, but I love the way that it swallows up my teammates — that they can adore the sport so candidly, with such a seductive passion.

I love that people gasp when I tell them I practice eight times a week. I love that boys compliment my biceps, and that girls like how my hair is bleached by the chlorine. I love butterfly, because my knees can hyperextend (which makes me a little faster, and it’s easy to disguise that grand lack of talent as a special skill).

I’ve grown complacent with mediocrity here. I want to quit, but I’m not really going to do it.

the scalp-feeling

“Rub my head?” Cecily begs. She lays upside-down on our couch, wheedling. You look like a cat, I think. “Only if you rub mine.”

The scene is a New Guild party, a semester ago. My biceps are long gone. I’m in pink and peplum, and I’m, like, so fucking drunk.

“NO COMBINATION OFPREGAMES AND PARTIESHAVEGOTTEN

In an act of cartography, Behr and I uncover the bathrooms about an hour into the party. I’m sort-of about to piss myself, so I reason with the girls at the front of the line. We make it out alive, but a bathroom trip marks the point in the night where we’re thinking we should leave — the point that decides the severity of tomorrow’s headaches.

Right on time, I turn to everyone and ask if we can go home after this,ugh.

My friends agree, discussing which pizza we want to get. We decide we’ll stay for one more song.

And then, miraculously, that song is Azaelia Banks. So, we stay — longer — and the atmosphere just lights up.

I don’t drink anymore, but I start to feel the buzz in my teeth. Heat sits warm and heavy in my cheeks, and my friends flit past me like little gnats, and we all weave through the bodies dancing around us (for something like the fourth time tonight).

We flaunt too-confident hellos with typically irrelevant characters, and lock buggy arms and legs all the while. Behr smiles at me from somewhere, and then Shel bumps her shoulder against mine, and then Matthew kisses my nose. Everyone rubs my scalp because short hair makes people want to poke at you.

Tonight, I could throw up everywhere, and the people around me would still hold me tight. This is my worst and my best simultaneously. I feel it all the way home, and into my apartment, and into my pumpkin-patterned blanket.

(I’ll talk about this night for a long time after — hail it as the perfect going-out night. My friends will attempt to recreate it; we’ll see if there’s a reliable formula that we can apply to our Saturdays. No combination of pregames and parties have gotten us there yet — to this plane where the love for our friends becomes a physical sensation.)

BROWN LEATHER JACKET | Revival Vintage VEST | Revival Vintage

ORANGE SWEATER | Revival Vintage

BLUE SCARF | Austin Pets Alive!

BLUE SKIRT | Austin Pets Alive!

and the attention, obviously

“Your hair!”

I smile, and do a little twirl. The joke is that it’s just me spinning, without any other moving parts. “My hair.”

Lush has lipstick now. I find this out from Cecily, who hands me an unassuming black tube. It goes in her floral makeup bag, clinking onto all of the other products. She leaves me with the bag, because what’s mine is hers, and we have a product-testing ritual that must be upheld.

I plop the bag on my bathroom counter, brushing away toothpaste and ladybug hair clips. The lipstick is red.

I bring it to my hand and draw a little heart to test the opacity. The heart is solid and a little wonky. Lipstick normally has an indent in one direction to help with application, but this tube looks more like a crayon (fitting, because lipstick has always felt childish to me — a tool for drawing on adult features).

Lipstick is for popstars and my pretty mom in her pretty wedding pictures; this is what I’ve always thought.

I apply it despite that rule, cringing at how waxy it feels. Beauty guru videos play in my head, warning me not to overline. They guide me through the unfamiliar movement.

Once finished, I blink at myself.

I don’t love the way it looks — the color, and the shape, and everything aesthetic. The red is much. So excessive. I tend to look best in purples and pinks, and the red clashes with my skin. Yet, I can’t look away from this version of me (and really, it’s just me with red lips, but it feels far more significant).

When I show Cecily, she says that she loves it on me. I think she might’ve said this even if she hated it, but I can tell by the stretch of her skin that she means it. I drink that up, live off of it, and decide right then that I can be a lipstick girl if it makes people look at me.

TOTHIS PLANE WHERE THE LOVE FOR OUR FRIENDS BECOMES A

but what do you think, mom?

PHYSICALSENSATION

My hair — the hair is all around me.

“What do you think?” I ask.

Mom purses her lips, like when she’s eating my candy and doesn’t realize they’re sour gummy worms until it’s too late. She holds her mother’s scissors to her chest. She has always been my hairdresser, as Grandma was for her.

“I think my daughter is beautiful,” she says.

She hates it. I figure I’ll survive. ■

“I

DRINK THAT UP, LIVE OFF OF IT, AND DECIDE RIGHT

THEN

THAT I CAN BE A LIPSTICK GIRL IF IT MAKES PEO PLE LOOK AT ME.”

by KATHERINE PAGE

layout ANH TRAN

My head is stuck in the guillotine. The blade stays idle.

“Madame du Barry stands inches away from a mirror, fixing her makeup. I am standing behind her, waiting to do the same.”

omething still new to me is smooth walls. I spent most of my life with textured walls: a cheaper and faster option that covered imperfection with imperfection.

Bumps stuck out awkwardly and sharply, their disfigurement demanding attention. This made it hard to put up any decor — posters ripped or looked wonky. Putty would not stick, and if it did, it took the paint off with it.

When I arrived at my college dorm, my luxurious paradise, I packed posters and postcards onto the shiny refined walls. I curated honeycombs of art for the smooth surfaces. When I wake up in the morning and see my crafted mural, I find myself smiling with accomplishment.

I handpicked art with Greco-Roman and European influences: the academia aesthetic, Rococo, Renaissance, Art Nouveau, Monet, de Goya, Gabrielle d’Estrées et une de ses soeurs, Mucha, Bieres de la Meuse . But one postcard in particular always sticks out to me. She sits right above my desk — Jeanne du Barry.

Big white-gray hair falls in graceful ringlets around her neck. Feathers and flowers adorn the crown of her head. She flaunts her perfectly white decolletage and pink rosy cheeks. Her lips are pursed into a sweet smile, and her sparkling green eyes stare at me now.

I find myself looking back.

When I was a kid, my mother owned a sewing business. She was a seamstress, and as her daughter, I was expected to help. I’d measure out the fabrics, fetch her pincushion, and hold folds and ruffles in place while she pinned them down. It wasn’t lucrative, but it was fun — fun in the way that childlike eyes frame everything serendipitously. In reality, I helped because if I didn’t, she couldn’t have sewn enough pieces in time. And that meant later, I would see her crying over the little white envelopes that doomed us to smaller meals.

I imagine Jeanne du Barry had a childhood similar to mine because her mother was a seamstress too. I imagine that she knew the feeling of pricking her thumbs on sewing pins and getting scolded for the little trace of blood she left on the fabric. I imagine her trying to fit a thimble on her thumb and getting dismayed the same way I did when she realized her hands were much too small. I imagine her wrapping herself in bundles of pretty fabric, pretending to be someone much more than she was, the same way that I did.

Everyone I’ve become friends with at school has lived with some kind of exorbitant opulence. When I venture out of my dormitory, I am assaulted by their stories of grandeur — Paris, Germany, Romania. I hear about their countless ski trips, the amount they spend on groceries, the small luxuries they get to experience day to day. Madame du Barry accompanies me as I

hear about these things, and she sees the way I can do nothing but listen. The stories bounce around my head at night, tinged with jealousy as I wish that I was raised in a better environment.

I watch her as she does the same. The moment she manages to step foot into the Court of Versailles, taken in by the King as his maîtresse-en-titre , she hears the nobility buzzing on and on about hunting trips, lush pastries, and grand carriages carrying them through the palace garden. She is silent — not allowed to speak in court because of her lack of status. We are both forced into silence because of the predicaments of our shameful childhoods, and we must listen to people vaunt about lives that we try to live every day. Despite this, we try.

Madame du Barry spends her days trying on new gowns and jewelry. She spends her mornings painting a thoughtfully curated picture. Servants tie her into her corsets and petticoats. They style her hair and makeup as she frets and fusses about every tiny detail. That strand is out of place. This blush is the wrong shade. She adorns her hands and wrists and neck and hair with glittering bijouteries.

I’m stuck in a similar lifestyle. I spend my time buying new shoes and sweaters, online shopping, and scrolling through Pinterest, curating every aspect of myself that I can. I meticulously curl my bangs, punctiliously sketch my eyeliner, and scrupulously pick an outfit. Like du Barry, I agonize and anguish about every detail of myself. My shirt is the wrong shade of white. My hair is uneven and stupid-looking. As I leave my dorm, I am shaken by my fear of looking sloppy. Not in the sense that I look messy and unkempt, but in the sense that the cheapest option is always the ugliest. Can they tell that my shirt is name-brand, that my shoes are $150? Or do they see through my performance? Do they perceive me as I was only a couple of years ago, re-wearing the same five pants and shirts and smearing my face with the cheapest makeup available?

Madame du Barry stands inches away from a mirror, fixing her makeup. I am standing behind her, waiting to do the same.

I don’t need to worry about money now, but I still do — it’s the consequences of my own actions. Trying desperately to emulate the more moneyed people around you means spending a lot of money yourself. Clothes, shoes, jewelry, perfume, makeup, decor — these all add up. I can afford them all now, but the money I have left over for things like rent and tuition dwindles as I fight my most shameful desires. I confide this to the Comtesse and she stays smiling sweetly at me. She spent most of her life drowning in debt. She amassed her arrears from her time in Versailles, spending and spending and spending. Du Barry had a large monthly allowance from the King, but still she spent money she didn’t have on superfluous things up until her death.

If I close my eyes, I can see it: the guillotine, the angry crowd cheering as the executioner drags Jeanne out of the tumbrel. She screams and begs for her life. «Tuvasmefairedumal!Pourquoi?» She had been denounced by the Jacobins, accused of using her money to help the wealthy flee from the French Revolution. When she was caught, she begged for her life, offering precious gems and jewels she had hidden in exchange. Still, the Jacobins dragged her to the guillotine, intent on killing her for her life amongst the nobility.

Is this a warning? Is this what lies ahead of me? Her story feels too uncanny, as if someone was trying to tell me I would end up like her, ostracized from those I try to be and rejected by the people I knew in the past. Will my financial irresponsibilities swell, balloon, distend until they blow up in my face? Will it get to a point of no return? Will I face my own metaphorical chopping block, put right back where I started, or worse? Jeanne du Barry was never able to overcome her own cardinal impulses. Will I?

I see the way Jeanne struggles and writhes against the men who firmly lead her to her fate. She screams and yells. Her head is placed inside the lunette. «Degrâce,monsieurlebourreau,encore unpetitmoment!»

Her lack of ignominy is jarring. She begs and pleads for her life, denying her guilt, absolving herself from blame. She tries to save herself by throwing more money at the problem. Jeanne du Barry is tone-deaf and consumed by greed and decadence, but I feel shame deeply in my bones. It radiates off me like a bad smell, and I can taste it like bile in the back of my throat. The thing I am embarrassed of most is my childhood, and everything I do, everything I buy, is to escape my history. My spending habits come from shame, and now they are my shame. But Jeanne du Barry was gluttonous and proud and corrupted by her lifestyle. Unlike me, she was never ashamed.

The blade falls, and her head comes rolling onto the wooden platform, her white curls swiveling and twisting with it. It stops right at the edge, right in front of me. Her green eyes stare blankly at nothing. I am nothing but a face in the crowd.

In my dorm, I notice a blank spot where Madame du Barry’s postcard once was. I look behind my desk to find her fallen between the baseboard and the wall. I return to my mirror, alone. Inches away from her, I continue to do my makeup. ■

“It stops right at the edge, right in front of me. Her green eyes stare blankly at nothing. I am nothing but a face in the crowd.”

Beautiful The

Paris is the city of

what's lost

by ANJALI KRISHNA

The Damned

layout SHERYL DOUZA photographer ALEX SKOWRONSKI stylist EMILY WAGER set stylist EVANGELINA YANG hmua ANGELYNN RIVERA & RIVER PERRILL models BELLA ROGOFF & XAVIER RUIZ

Before they leave for the night in Montparnasse is when Zelda loves Scott best. She loves the way they look together in the mirror, the small apartment crowded full of their ornate belongings. She loves how his suit is well-cut to his slim body, how his silky tie matches her gloves. Even when they’re angry — even after she told him he couldn’t satisfy her in bed, after she accuses him of sleeping with Ernest Hemingway — he’ll kneel to help her with her shoes and zip up her dress. Scott will turn Zelda around to him with gentle hands, scan her up and down and help her from the stairwell.

In spite of all the screaming matches and burnt clothes and what happened on the French Riviera, they complement each other. Zelda has always been beautiful, and Scott’s androgyny complements his identity as a writer. Arm in arm, they disappear outside while their young daughter, Scottie, waits fast asleep.

They’ll return to the apartment stumbling, halfpast four, and fall into Indian cotton sheets. Drunk off one another and whatever they’ve taken that evening, they’ll dream. Scott wakes weeping, how he had that one afternoon in New York, in the back of that cab where he realized he would never be this successful again.

Zelda sees visions of only pink ribbon in tight bows, wrapped around her ankles to her neck.

Their story begins in Montgomery, Alabama where he watches her dance for the first time. Dance doesn’t seem to be the right word for it — the way she floats across the stage in pink chiffon and whispering satin shoes. She doesn’t recognize she’s in a country club’s small theater and is not starlight incarnate.

As Zelda glides, he loses thought for a moment of Ginevra, to whom he constantly sketches letters when his mind drifts, of the suicide note hidden in his army-commission drawers. He wonders what beautiful words he could write for this Southern Belle, so lost in the stage, instead.

While she turns, she fixes her eyes on the man — cheap charcoal suit, dark eyes boring into hers across the theater. Fix your eyes on a spot in the horizon, Zelda’s dance teacher had told her. You’ll never fall. While this country club set she’s known her whole life keeps their gaze on her feet and contorting body, this one man is searching through her very soul. It’s “Dance of Hours,” one of her favorite pieces. Tonight, for these ten minutes, she struggles between darkness and light, evil and good: more herself that she can admit. She becomes something other than the tongue-in-cheek debutante that everyone knows her to be. Zelda straightens her spine and catches his eye thrice more through the fouettes. Those are the eyes of a dreamer.

He’s produced a flower when he approaches her after the show. She knew he would find her once she appeared from

“She loves him, she thinks, she this dreaming boy with those wonderouseyes. eyes.

backstage. She’s flirtatious — she always is — and he blushes. Zelda can’t decide if it’s an act. She’s the most beautiful woman in this Alabama aristocracy and she knows this man — Scott — will remember her laugh. She doesn’t mind him either, though she feels her father taking in Scott’s work out shoes.

Scott goes home and writes another letter to Ginevra. But he’ll also pick up Zelda under the cover of night later that week, for dinner and dancing and drinks he cannot afford. Sitting in a dark speakeasy booth, he’ll lean close to tell her of his dreams, of the 120,000 word manuscript nestled safely in his army-issued trunk and his hope to publish before his inevitable death, fighting someone else’s war in Europe. In some ways, he’ll tell her, he looks forward to this death. While Zelda will finger her martini glass and lean in just as close, she’ll reject his proposals soon after the Great War ends for his lack of prospects. She loves him, she thinks, this dreaming boy with wondrous eyes. But there are standards to maintain.

She'll wed him, becoming Zelda Fitzgerald, only once the manuscript, This Side of Paradise, is sold to Scribner’s for $90,569.

Together in New York, Paris, and the French Riviera, the newlyweds consummate their union in gin-fruit cocktails, sliding down the bannister at the illustrious Biltmore hotel. They live the life which both had always dreamed of and, at first, it’s as glamorous as they could have imagined. But that spark from the first night they met is missing. Scott writes in letters that the couple is little more than enemies. Behind closed doors, they argue with a drink in hand about cheating, about their quickly draining wealth.

She wonders, as she laces the ribbons on her pointe shoes, where the dream they’d begun with has gone. Scott is happy, she knows this much. He’d told her that one afternoon, he’d found himself weeping in the back of a Manhattan taxi.

I’ll never be this happy again, Zelda. What we have — this city, the money, this age — will never come back to us. She tightens the rib -

bons as she thinks about what her husband is doing at this moment, of the women with their hands all over him on the Long Island party circuit. The ribbons dig into her skin.

Scott flees to Rome with Zelda in tow to finish the manuscript. They settle again in Paris, and Zelda begins to dance 10 hours per day. When she sleeps, she dreams of curtains and roaring applause. Her husband waits in the rafters.

When Zelda dances, it’s with the abandon of her spirit, fingers raised as high as they can go, feet pressed together like a secret kiss. Yet it’s the order that has always called her to dance, discipline amongst chaotic emotion.

She needs that discipline as she overhears Scott’s phone calls about unpaid loans and reads the telegraphs forecasting impending eviction from their little home. Zelda pretends she doesn’t know and bloodies her feet on pointe. This, at least, she can control, if she can’t handle her husband’s constant drinking and her daughter’s wailing.

There is magic in the room when she dances, her old teacher told her as a child — so Zelda has brought it with her throughout the world, while Scott has taken her to places where they can be wild and free. He has fulfilled the promise he made to her when they were just children. He wrote so he could steal her away from peach fields and that man who promised a Southern dynasty dating to the Confederation. Zelda leaves him to write again, to save them once more.

He is her partner in every pas de deux — her lover, her husband, her soulmate — and despite everything that is wrong with them, she trusts him to make it right. She leaves him to write and goes to her ballet lessons.

She knows what they called her, that group of writers they run with in the city — gold-digger, psycho, alcoholic — as if they all weren’t bred of the same stuff. As if they didn’t all devour the words her husband wrote, spit them out, and beg for more.

These Americans in Paris walked through city nights as if they’d belonged their entire lives, like they emanated the glamor and history of the city instead of replicating it. They were all here and pretending that they weren’t running from something. Something had been missing in America, so

"Her lover, her husband, her soulmate."

they’d been digging through libraries and galleries in Europe to find what they’d lost. They wrote, or crafted, or they tried drinking, snorting, and smoking it all away. Once they’d burned all their bridges in one city, they’d travel to the next. They returned with words about their tiny hometowns and humble histories — they returned with the Great American Novels written in Europe.

Scott and Zelda had traveled the Western world but they were still themselves, who they were whispering in that Montgomery speakeasy and sliding down banisters in New York hotels. They are still a little too much, a dreamer and his muse, as crazy as they were when they first met. Here in Paris, Scott can write novels about it. And Zelda, she can dance.

They’ll curtsy and bow together at the end of each night, and face each other to offer performance in a kiss before sleep. ■

ROA D

GODHOOD: IT'S AT A HUNDRED MILES-PER-HOUR D

by DILLON LUONG

layout KAILI OCHOA photographer AARON CASTELLANOS videographer NOAH SILBER stylist DIVYA KONKIMALLA & VI CAO set stylist LAUREN MUÑOZ hmua AVERIE WANG & JUNIPER LUEDKE models OTOFU AYAKU, FAIZAN FIRDAUS & JOSEMANUEL VAZQUEZ

Islam the car door shut. The summer heat is oppressive, taunting me as it settles on my tanned skin. I close my eyes. Breathe. My phone is still fucking broken. How am I going to explain to her why I’m late?

Nevermind.

Ten minutes ago I beat Google Maps directions into my mind like a migraine. Now, my breaths pulsate throughout my body like a wasp, and a headache circulates my consciousness with a noose. The heat smothers my face with sweat — plastic wrap pulling me into the headrest, waiting until I stop resisting.

It’s pointless. I won’t make it in time.

I open my eyes. I was born in this car. The hood is the jaw, the seats are the tongue. The heat swallows me whole, and I feel the thrum of the engine rattle with a heartbeat. I’m in it, a place where power manifests with the ignition. With a click, I become omnipotent. Kill it.

I steal the wheel. Crank the shift until it digs a groove. Slam. The. Gas.

And I rip the road, and I burn the sun. The car explodes forward, exhaust plunging terror into me like a heart attack.

It’s time to die.

At the traffic light with time to kill, I think of her. I remember when we first met, we talked about horror films. It was awkward and my head spun. When I spoke, I stalled mid-conversation, and when I acted I sputtered aimlessly. When she asked for recommendations, I screamed inside instead.

I always feel this way, choking on doubt until I crash and burn. Everywhere I go, there are traffic lights and roadside signs in my warbly mind, and every forward effort stops short with detours and distractions. I can’t help but stop myself before I get the chance to try. People and cars are equally chaotic and destructive, but reading between the lines is not the same as racing between lanes; the pit in my stomach is still out of fear, but what fills it?

I look up at the red traffic light. It beckons like a lighthouse.

Impulse. For me, driving becomes a beating, roaring impulse to act.

My hands shoot out for the wheel. I don’t know how, but I’m on the highway. The truck ahead of me bungles forward. My tires have become jagged teeth, and as I zip past, the air throbs with a ripcord. My body belongs to the car — a hive mind. Each rumble is a rhythm, a pattern I read through the grooves in the steering wheel. It is what metaphysically bonds me to the monster I reside in. When the car speaks, I listen.

What sounds like a bomb goes off in the engine; I turn left.

Like true rebellion, danger is liberation — release, from thought, from inaction. Often, I feel like I look through myself. I shrink and shirk from the future and its consequences. Frozen abstractions take hold of my day-to-day and pin my moment-to-moment. I crucify myself for the imaginary acts I could’ve done and will do, and the inner me dies as I get stuck to the what if

It’s part of why I love this; I find it hard to breathe. My body has to fight back, pull me from my incandescent mentations into the present reality. The future and past have no meaning and time finally becomes a construct. Driven by fear, I am free from it. Adrenaline becomes hypnosis, my mind nothing but the road just so I can act with my wants and needs. It is as these moments that I am possessed by some otherworldly knowledge: that though I drive straight towards it, I escape my death.

I roll the window down. The wind screams, and I scream back. Traffic tears past me like razor wire, and I barely avoid bleeding out. Here, I have no time to think, to speak, to hit the brakes. I’m riding a metal monster, already in its maw, the belly of the beast. It whispers in my ear that it wants to kill me, so I cut lanes and cinch skin tight gaps to stay one step ahead. It takes everything to focus, to be in this moment so I can be in the next. I am paranoid, but I am self-aware and present. Speeding and navigating is as natural as breathing, and on the Highway River Styx, it’s all I need to cross the afterlife. I have never felt more part of myself, never more alive.

When I’m like this, catatonic and cathartic, I am just a vessel. The old me, full of fear and worry, has molted off. I’ve killed myself. The car is on fire. My new skin sticks to the seat as I melt into madness; I knew the summer heat would get to me. I’m not actually dying, but light whirs by me and the sun speckles my vision and I’m stuck in an oven. Hell is hot and like a lighter to lips, I want to get as close to the fire as possible.

I’m all but ashes now, and I misremember whether I came here to destroy or cleanse the self.

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“I’M ALL BUT ASHES NOW, AND I MISREMEMBER WHETHER I CAME HERE TO DESTROY OR CLEANSE THE SELF."

I am falling apart. The summer spell distorts my glare; when I breathe, the car heaves. It doesn’t matter, this thrill brings me structure. It holds my hands on the wheel because I can’t feel them anymore. It tells me to take over the left lane as it binds my skeleton to our frame. We, metal and me, are not paralyzed to act. Like a miraculous cure, it grants us hyperfixation on the task at hand — a slice of time so small at 100 miles-per-hour, all in the grip of the wheel.

We can race the echoes of my ethos until the road becomes an obsession.

This is how we love ourselves, the closest to godhood we’ll ever get. We are seething. An 18-wheeler has taken the left lane. It is almost as if the car, speed, the road, suddenly shout, tail it. Shame wipes off the windshield. We see a gap in the traffic ahead, and we need to pass it. Slam it. We run the length of the side, a little more, carving deep into the pedal. PUSH IT!

Another truck turns in front of us.

for another route forward. Another truck appears behind us; my heart pounds like engine pistons and my hands clam slick around the wheel, out of control. Out the side, I see another. Everywhere I look there are labyrinthine, shifting sets of metal hulls closing in on me unknowingly. Soon, inches ahead and behind a truck, I just stare at a wall, and I realize we’re driving straight into it at seventy. It’s a hall of mirrors, and the only way out is shattering glass.

There are two kinds of people. Those who stay on the road and those who stray off of it — the roadkill. The traffic line separates us, and we must revel on this tightrope because it is the only way across. The truck walls oscillate. They’re so close together that they exude this immense pressure. Within the vehicle, within ourself, within me, I feel the crux of who I am, compacted into one core purity, free of limits and false intention.

Roadkill is dead. Yet, I find myself drawing closer, identifying further, to see what’s on the other side of the line. I know I shouldn’t, but the closer I get the, more in-sync I become with myself — it’s intoxicating. I shouldn't

We must have been in a blindspot. We look out the rearview, fidgeting spark

stop short again; it's all I do. I should push my urges. I need to see what I’m capable of.

A gap opens ahead. Narrow, but enough. We’re at terminal velocity and our entire being, the car and I, shake uncontrollably. Within this liminal space, I am the animal backed in the corner, and I am nothing but impulse. I make my choice.

I want to be roadkill, if only to live.

We shoot forward. The world crashes aloud like a drum, but I am deaf to it all.

We see the sky again.

My eyes are rolling back into my head. This is omnipotence; this is a hallucination. My body stiffens and twitches with rigor mortis. I am dea— I turn into my exit, careening down the bend.

Stopped short. I always stop short. It’s never enough. It will never be enough I am empty.

–

Stopping at her house, I step out into the hot sun. I’m reminded why I came here in the first place: I should be here for her, not the road. To want to throw it all away for a car ride, it must be a terribly selfish thing.

She’s already walking over. “You're early… you didn’t speed again did you?”

A pause. “Of course not, there wasn’t any traffic today. Why would I?”

I say the same bullshit every time. I slam the car door shut. ■

Do you really feel alive?

layout GRACE PARK photographer JULIUS GONZALEZ videographer NATALIE SALINAS stylists LILI BIEN & TOMAS TREVINO set stylist ANGELO CORRIDORI hmua AUDREY HOFF, XAVIER WILLIAMS & FLORIANA HOOL models MORGAN CHENG & BRIAN THAI

by OLIVIA RING

“He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

There’s an ever-burning electric lamp that sits at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock that guides ships back to shore. The luster of green reflects across the bay, directly toward Jay Gatsby.

The green light is meant to be symbolic of Gatsby’s love for Daisy — albeit a superficial love and one that inhibits Gatsby emotionally. He can’t move past his love — it informs every decision he makes, every direction he’ll choose to go in. His life has become one governed by heartbreak. He is no longer living it for himself.

Heartache puts a romantic filter on our past. We long for the same person we fell in love with. We don’t allow ourselves to consider anything deeper, anything that may destroy this perception.

Perhaps Gatsby’s hopes of a future with Daisy, rendered through a lens of superficiality, make the dream futile. Daisy, to him, is a dream thing. He is in love with a version of her that no longer exists but that he still fantasizes about. He believes these dreams will be fulfilled if he complies with a guise of luxury, burying himself under layers of grandeur.

Beyond the pretense of opulence, there is little depth to be found. We know he lived a life before yearning, but desire has led him to change himself beyond repair.

Like Gatsby, we curate new masks for ourselves when we’re trying to impress. We try so hard to meld these masks into our own faces, to make the two become one, but they never quite fit. We become a hollowed version of the mask instead of a complete — alive — version of ourselves.

What can the green light really symbolize for someone who lives as an empty vessel, longing for something he knows he won’t be able to obtain? He is a ship lost at sea, never to return the shore.

There’s an underlying theme of hope, but it feels shallow. The green light is a light at the end of an infinite tunnel — one he will never see the end of.

Why do we long for things that we know, consciously or subconsciously, are unobtainable? Maybe it absolves us from the potential rejection that comes with wanting something tangible — something that could be real. The deepest part of Gatsby knows this desire is in vain, that Daisy wouldn’t come back to him. But still these comforting desires persist.

facade

When we dream, the visions we conceive are the ones that are the furthest from reality. We lack true vulnerability and succumb to numbing our wants and desires, prioritizing our solace over facing discomfort.

Like Gatsby, we tend to yearn for things that feel comfortable but don’t challenge us. Maybe living life as a shell of ourselves is more comfortable than living a life that could potentially cause you pain. Outside of the facade of the glamor and the parties, do you really feel alive?

“Honey, I’ll come get my things, but I can’t let go (I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it) Oh, I wish I could get my things and just let go (I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it)” - Lorde, Melodrama

When you’re sitting at a traffic light, it feels like you’re sitting there waiting and waiting for the light to finally turn green. Your heart begins to race, your mind starts buzzing. There’s a sort of exhilaration in the anticipation. Past that green light, the rest of your life awaits you.

In “Green Light,” Lorde is waiting at that traffic light. She’s ready to move forward — to let the new sounds in her mind guide her. She’s waiting for that signal to tell her to go.

There’s a tangibility in this green light. Unlike Gatsby’s, you aren’t separated from the light by a bay of water. You sit 30 feet from this light. Once you put your foot on the gas pedal, you’ll speed past it and toward what lies ahead.

This light won’t burn forever. A few moments after you pass it, the light will turn yellow, then red again. It becomes entirely different for the next driver who approaches.

Did it frighten you?

How we kissed on the light up floor?

Wanting, really wanting, is inherently daunting. So much so that we tend to suppress our wants. We pretend things don’t mean as much to us as we do. We act like we don’t care when, in reality, we care a lot. We pull away from things right when they’re within our reach. We risk that rejection — we’re afraid we may face a lack of fulfillment. (Why would you want to live a life with all of those risks? Wouldn’t it be easier to live without them — to be comfortable?)

Heartbreak is an innate motivator. We seek closure through a posthumous understanding of the past. Lorde, as the song progresses, surrenders her desire for understanding and seeks closure on her own terms. You can’t let heartbreak control you. You have to confront it — to drive toward it.

You need to let go of the person you knew let your skewed vision of them go. You said you loved the beach, you’re such a damn liar. An idealized version of them no longer serves you. It no longer exists.

There’s a presence of uncertainty in Lorde’s “Green Light.” There is no finality in what she wants — no concrete destination. She speaks about wanting to let go of the things holding her back emotionally and to push forward. We’re never sure what the green light will lead her to, whether the risk will be worth the reward. Still, the act of taking that risk might be worth it on its own.

We’re averse to making any decision that may cause us pain.

“This light won’t burn forever. a few moments

after you pass it,

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It becomes entirely different for the next driver who approaches.” will turn yellow the light

and then red again.

But life is intrinsically painful. How long can we avoid feeling pain before we stop feeling our emotions as resolutely as we should be?

The more we try to avoid feeling pain, the less we really live.

We need to embrace the discomfort and pain that comes with taking risks, with taking those steps forward. Sometimes, it’s worth it to accept a lack of resoluteness and to keep moving ahead despite that. Embracing the moments that are uncomfortable makes the feelings of euphoria so much more powerful. What’s the point of living with diluted emotions?

We should be living to feel alive.

The unrestrained ecstasy that Lorde feels at the end of “Green Light” shows that, despite the consequences, these risks are worth taking. It’s worth that euphoria you feel when you step on the gas pedal and start driving. That feeling of fear mixed with exhilaration — it’s what we’re always searching for. It’s what we need to continue to search for.

You sit at a traffic light — its red glow washes against your face. Your car radio is so loud it drowns out any thoughts that could deter your decision.

You wait for the light to turn green. ■

Scan for GREEN LIGHT! video.

2017 MAZDA MX-5 MIATA | Z Zepeda

FIND YOUR RELEASE AND SALVATION IN THE GLISTENING SWEAT STICKING TO YOUR SKIN. THE HEAT RISES TO A FEVER PITCH BEFORE BOILING OVER, LEAVING ONLY HEADY SMOKE IN ITS WAKE.

THE KISSCODE (XOXO) // FOLLOW THE VELVETEEN RABBIT // VENUS IN LEO // DAIZY LÓPEZ: ESPÍRITU LIBRE TAKING OFF MY BRA // WE LOVE AND LAY IN WAIT // I LOVE YOU, BRO // VIRGINITY PURGE // LOVESPELL

When unsure, I consult the code.

the kisscode

by

layout CAROLINE CLARK creative director JAKE OTTO photographer DYLAN HAEFNER videographer CAMERON SHIN stylist ANGEL PEÑA & KEENA MEDINA hmua FLORIANA HOOL & SRIKHA CHAGANTI models JAKE OTTO, PHIA GONZALEZ & CHASE SMYTH

1: on the forehead (meaning “hello, and I love you.”)

for little dogs, who scratch happy at shins and move their tiny bodies with their tinier tails for mothers, who sit on the paisley-print couches and watch doctor dramas. (this kiss can only come from the adult, the girl who has reconciled her mother as worthy of affection) for friends who look up for daughters and sons, one day — the ones with mini-dresses and buckled mary janes, with a mother who will buy them a whole closet for each size-up (thrifted, just like hers) for an apple (honeycrisp, probably,) just before teeth sink into to it for stuffed bunnies, worn with time

2: on the cheek (meaning “you’re coming to my wedding” or “I hate you, like, a lot”)

for friends who look down. this kiss uses tiptoes, but can come more naturally with high heels and platforms for not-friends who don’t deserve Kiss 1 . this kiss is dramatic, overexaggerated like sugar and honey mixed into a goop for distant relatives. they pinch cheeks and don’t have memorable names for grandmothers with leathery skin and knobby fingers; they have hair from a magazine and a shrill voice for the french (?) for cutesy Instagram photoshoots (at train tracks, or coffee shops, or the beach during winter)

3: on the nose meaning (“I love you and I think you love me” or “I’m drunk”)

for cats, who sniff and sniff and wrap wormy tails around human legs. this kiss happens midair, with their skinny legs dangling and their voices shrill with protest for birthday girls who have known each other for years — who light candles with colored flames and throw fairy themed-parties for little brothers, who hole up in their room. this kiss is quick and harsh, tinted with tricky laughter and accompanied by a twisted earlobe for drunk twenty-somethings, who fall into their friends with fuzzy vision. this kiss is everything, the memory that stays behind in the morning “exactly, precisely.” this kiss is necessary, a friendship benchmark

4:

on

the lips meaning (“I like you like you” or “I trust you enough, I guess”)

for friends-to-partners, first and foremost, after Kisses 1 and 2 have run their course for watching, annoyed but happy (at/for parents who tease each other over reality television, who meet in church and sing together in cars) for very drunk twenty-somethings, who spend afterwards all curled up in bed from pulsing hangover pain

5: not at all meaning (“I don’t love you yet, or I love you, and we’re done”)

by WYNN WILKINSON

layout GIANINA FAELNAR photographer LIESEL PAPENHAUSEN stylists ANGEL PEÑA & JORDYN JACKSON set stylist ZIADA ARAYA hmua ANGELYNN RIVERA models JORDYN JACKSON & MIU NAKATA

When I was six years old, my greatest fear was a house fire. My century-old home, wilting off its Victorian brick foundation like a droughtstricken primrose, seemed a prime candidate for such a disaster. At bedtime, I feared no closet monster, but I laid awake terrified of impenetrable, suffocating walls of smoke. I knew better than to concern myself with anything but my own survival. After all, anything lost — but a life — can be bought. Even the family dog was on his own.

But I knew, too, of a fate worse than death: the anguish of losing my Friend. I knew that my parents and dog could look after themselves. Instead, my allegiances lay with my Rabbit, the stuffed animal whose entire life had been dedicated to the beginning of mine. I held Him close to me in bed, hopeful that He’d somehow ward off the dangers of dry wood and outdated electrical wiring. Uneasy, I’d drift off only under His dutiful, unblinking watch.

I had learned only recently what death was, and I spent many nights in a tantrum over the unfairness of my parents’ mortality. Yet somehow, I was prepared to sacrifice life and limb for my Rabbit. He was old, yes; older than me, certainly, and perhaps older than my parents and our infirm house. He never told me. His mystique engendered within me feelings of apricity, a calming, comfortable warmth unsettled by the sharp wind, that is, the nagging feeling that I’d accrued a debt that could not be repaid. The corpse of immortality was still stiff in my mind, and the new understand-

ing that my first Friend could be reduced to charred polyester — and I’d simply move across town — was too much to bear. No, if he burned, I was obliged to burn with Him.

There were other toys besides my Rabbit: action figures, trading cards, trucks and blocks galore. But I’m no good at pretending I don’t play favorites. My Rabbit always starred in the dramatic war games that would annex the floor of my room, a triumphant commando standing amidst the scattered forces of evil and Lego. Imagine that: my gentle Friend on the front lines! The supporting cast, had they possessed the same faculties as my Rabbit, doubtless felt overlooked. But their hard, plastic exteriors rendered them playthings, not playmates. At night, they laid strewn across the carpeted battlefield as my Rabbit and I took refuge under the covers, and they remained there until my parents scolded me or the war drums sounded up once more.

My Rabbit knew nothing if not how to humor His Child. Anxious to share my life with Him, I often took Him on backyard Adventures. Silent and attentive, He’d sit and listen as I showed Him the newest additions to my tree branch arsenal and demonstrated brewing potions from sow thistle sap. These Adventures brought me joy and Him comfort. Unaware of the subtle breeze He’d set at my back, I matured under the watchful gaze of His dark, reflective eyes which twinkled with the satisfaction of a job well done.

But kids grow up; this, too, He knew long before I did. Our Adventures gradually became less frequent, and I left my Rabbit in my room most mornings — sometimes intentionally, sometimes carelessly. One evening, I crawled into bed and realized He wasn’t there. A shameful sweep of the house yielded no results, and a moonlit search in the garden did no better. For the first time in ages, I slept without my Rabbit.

At the end of The House at Pooh Corner, Christopher Robin begs Pooh not to forget about him. He makes his Bear promise to be understanding when their friendship degrades with time. Pooh acquiesces, trustingly; he hasn’t the foresight, one might assess, to know that’s being abandoned. The story ends, simply and gracefully, before Pooh discovers this painful inevitability. Even so, it’s hard not to imagine an acidic sadness lingering just beneath spit-stained satin, and when I was younger, this chapter never failed to open a Very Deep Pit in my stomach.

After all, why shouldn’t he seethe? Why shouldn’t Pooh loathe the boy he’d loved so purely, the boy who abandoned their friendship to study knights and Brazil and factors? When after three months I happened upon my Rabbit wedged between a door and a draft stopper, I didn’t dare celebrate. The unforgiving Texas sun had bleached His fabric dye to a pitiable ochre, and even that was hardly visible beneath the dirt and grime coated on His crumpled frame. I bathed Him in the sink. Maybe I apologized. Does it matter? He returned my gaze, unfazed by the dish soap, as if to ask, like Pooh, "Understand what?” And like Christopher Robin, I didn’t have the heart to elaborate. That night, He laid silent alongside me in my bed. The next morning, I forgot Him there when I left for school.

Creatures like Pooh and my Rabbit devastate me because of their formidable patience, their willingness to accommodate our every plea for understanding. The knowledge that lures us from them, the enchanting intricacies of the socialized world, is far outstripped by the wisdom they already possess; try as we might to introduce them to the “real world”, there can never be parity. And yet, and yet — they refuse to leave until we do. The Child, consumed by guilt, fails even to scare the Friend off.

A cynic might conclude that friendships like these are merely delicate ventriloquist acts that falter once the Child sees through their own illusion. In some ways, they’d be correct; I grafted a personality onto my Rabbit — a voice, thoughts, desires, a knack for swordsmanship — out of necessity. There is much He never revealed. Yet even this conjecture was written in His lesson plan: He rightly saw fit that I practice imagination and creativity, so He assumed the role of a canvas and urged me to paint. Why would He feel anything but pride for his pupil? How could He grieve over gifts freely given?

After his rediscovery, my Rabbit stopped sleeping in bed with me. Whether I exiled Him to the toy chest or He chose, of His own volition, to migrate there Himself is up to one’s own perceptions of His autonomy. To assume the worst is to disparage the wisdom of the learned.

My Rabbit, older than me and anything I knew, was anything but naive to life’s cycles. Surely He never expected me to, in the words of Christopher Robin, “do Nothing” forever, and there was nothing of consequence to be found in my classrooms that my Rabbit did not know.

I’ve consulted the authoritative literature: Milne, Freeman, Williams. The whole lot of them record that a Child’s love for their Friend weighs no more than a feather, that it is sustaining and reifying.

They write that it satisfies the Friend’s desire to be cherished, to be company. The arborist waters the oak tree until it can subsist off rain alone, but doesn’t expect to rest in its shade forever. I never excluded my Rabbit from my fire escape plan, not even on the eve of banishing Him to the local Goodwill. That morning, I was too weak to even cry, and I dared not look in the plastic donation bag. If I had, I might have caught His eyes: pristine, dry, and glimmering with pride.

I decided when I was young that I’d worship no grudge-holding god. A harsh god is unworthy of my devotion and time; this, too, was a seed He planted in the ground of my soul. Even now, I wonder if He found another Child to rear, another unconditional love to dole out. The thought is comforting, if jealousy-inducing. When she scatters her toys across the floor, does she differentiate between polymer and velveteen? Does she brew potions, collect sticks, fear fire? And how old does she think You are?

Some weeks ago, I went jogging in my hometown. A startled bunny scurried across the trail and took shelter beneath a cleyera shrub. The curious creature watched me from a distance, taking in my presence as I paused to admire the strong legs, soft ears, active nose, and gleaming eyes in the underbrush. I blinked at Him and smiled. Then I turned tail and ran. After all, I had a pace to maintain. ■

Venus Leo in

by KAAMILAH ALI spark

For matters of the heart, LOOK TO

Venus

layout EMMY CHEN photographer KENIA GALLEGOS stylists SONIA SIDDIQUI & MICHELLE ARRIAGA set stylist ASHLEY NGUYEN hmua XAVIER WILLIAMS & EMELY ROMO models NIKKI SHAH & ARLIZ MUNOZ

Absolute magnetism. Your Venus is in Leo, and most of your memories are hazy but that’s the one part you can’t forget: faces centimeters apart, inching closer, daring one another without words. You don’t know how it happened. You can only speculate you moved in first and him next. Suddenly, you’re retreating into each other, biting lips and running fingers through hair. It’s the kind of kiss you smile through. You wish you could remember it better, but you don’t. You do, however, remember every second that led up to it.

It's never about the kiss. It’s never about the moment that your lips actually touch; it’s always about the rush around it, the seconds before and the seconds after. The borderline. How thrilling it is to almost kiss — how thrilling it is to pull away from a kiss and smile at each other like you’re sharing your favorite secret.

You remember leaning back against the brick wall of the bar you’ve spent too much time in and grabbing a fistful of fabric and a handful of hair: the boldest you’ve been in months.

A couple of glasses of something that burns on its way down and suddenly you’re someone else entirely. You’re batting eyelashes and flittering about, flashing that one smile, making that one face until you get what you want. You forget to be shy. You start imagining elevator rides you could take with strangers full of tension and restraint that would pour out into your too-long hallway, through your doorway, and down onto your mattress. You could lean against walls forever, having the most fascinating conversations about nothing because on the nights where you want to be, you are the most interesting girl in the world.

You worry you don't fall in love with people. Instead, you fall in love with conversations, with moments. You think life should feel like a movie, every second brimming with climax and cinema. Mundanity should be punctuated by romance and in between the big moments, life should blur

“TO WATCH SOMEONE WORSHIP AT YOUR ALTAR FEELS LIKE WORSHIPING AT YOUR OWN."

“YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH STRANGERS NOT BECAUSE OF WHO THEY ARE BUT RATHER WHO YOU BECOME WHEN YOU'RE WITH THEM."

together like a montage. Wayward fantasies eat away at you while you’re supposed to be participating in the real world. Maybe it’s wrong to fantasize about perfect strangers but it's a lot more fun — a lot less painful than fantasizing about anything with the potential to become real.

You look for answers in the stars and they tell you it's because your Venus is in Leo. Venus is the planet that rules love, beauty, and romance. It sits in your eleventh house in the sign of Leo: proud, willful, and affectionate.

The stars whisper that you live for allconsuming passion. The planetary alignment at the time of your birth has destined you to search for reminders of your beauty and decorate yourself with a love that is a vehicle for vanity. You long to be center stage, but you cannot carry a tune and lack the poise of a dancer, so instead you perform in love. It’s all an act. The world is your stage, any man your au dience. It’s all a performance and the prize is to be wanted.

It's no wonder you fall in love with strangers not because of who they are but rather who you become when you’re with them. For a few mo ments, you get to fall in love with your self, looking through the eyes of another. It’s a hard feeling to put into words. As you let yourself trace back through the memories, allowing the rapid succession of flashbacks to rush in, you see yourself as you truly want to be: the object of desire.

It’s never about your suitor. It’s about the way they look at you that keeps you suspended, spinning helplessly in circles like a ballerina in a jewelry box. It’s an addictive kind of voyeurism to witness someone looking at you like you could be everything and anything they need. To watch someone worship at your altar feels like worshiping at your own. If they look away, if their gaze is broken, then you’re a ballerina dancing for no one. The mirror in the jewelry box cracks and you're left staring at your fractured reflection. They don’t know that the performance you put on is not for their benefit

but for your own. They are simply a looking glass: a reminder that you are beautiful, wanted, needed, and desired.

Your Venus is in Leo, so if for just a moment, someone can make you feel like the girl in a movie, stared down at with hungry, desperate eyes, you’ll chase that feeling to the ends of the earth. You’ll fall in love for the night, and a little piece of you will fall in love forever.

That little piece is what stirs up trouble. When there are no more flirtatious dance floor glances or sheepish almost-kisses, it becomes harder to let sleeping dogs lie, to let one fun night be just that. You want more to come from moments that don’t have much more to offer. You crave the rush, but more importantly, you crave the ravenous admiration which is your life-

When the well of veneration dries up, you run yourself ragged chasing explanations for your fragile disposition. The horoscopes you frantically read with tear-stained cheeks only say that you hunger for worship. The planets and comets and stars, however they align, leave you fated to love someone for a night and grow bored between the nights you live for.

It’s during those in-between nights that the wayward fantasies creep in. You dream only of lingering gazes, cheeky smiles, and staring at each other’s mouths while talking about nothing. You pray for dancing in between lips crashing together, being spun around in circles on the dance floor, and laughing at how stupid you probably look but how perfect you ac-

Your Venus is in Leo and you're destined to spend your nights looking for mirrors in place of lovers. You can employ your grandiose stage presence in romance, your fine training in seduction. But at the end of the night, you’ll keep dancing for no one, in helpless spinning circles. ■

by ANDREANA JOI FAUCETTE layout AVA JIANG photographer LIV MARTINEZ stylist CYNTHIA LIRA set stylists LAURENCE NGUYỄNTHÁI & MATEO ONTIVEROS hmua AVERIE WANG & MERYL JIANG models DAIZY LÓPEZ, SANTINI ANGUIANO & PRANISHA KARUTURI production SATURN ECLAIR

She’s a designer sharing this moment, a diosa in her own right. Un Espíritu libre.

Behind the scenes of a photoshoot, two women in cropped velvet bustiers and matching skirts that skim their ankles emerge from a private dressing room. A veil cut the accompanying fabric billows from the crown of their heads, obscuring all but the front of their hair. Thick gold chains, heavy with the weight of gaudy jewels adorning them, hang from the top of their glittering bodices.

The models receive the royal treatment — their bodies are ornamented from temple to toe in full Diosa sets, just launched on the brand-new Espiritu Libre website. The usual pre-shoot buzz that fills the room as photographers rush to make last-minute adjustments is silenced as the models step in front of the backdrop.

Daizy Lopez — the designer behind the pieces — is the last to step forward, a bashful smile on her face as she adjusts her red lace veil.

No one in the room can take their eyes off of the three of them. It’s mesmerizing.

As a camera flashes, Daizy fixes a bobby pin on model closest to her, ensuring the velvet veil stays put atop her dark hair. The interaction is second nature to her, and she steps back as someone takes a picture of the moment. The camera’s flash lights up the smile on her face — now proud, unabashed. The women flanked on either side of her mirror the same expression.

It’s illuminated then — the look on her face. She’s a designer sharing this moment, a diosa in her own right.

Daizy Lopez is a free spirit — un espíritu libre.

She’d be the first to tell you that, and her Instagram handle (one that hasn’t changed since she was in high school) would corroborate it. So when it came to selecting a name for her fashion label, it all fell together quite naturally for the Austin-based self-taught designer.

“I’ve always been a free spirit … very spontaneous and whimsical with life and what it throws at me,” Daizy recounts. “It was very fitting to make [the brand name] ‘free spirit’ in Spanish, paying homage to my Mexican roots.”

She knew that, in designing her pieces, she wanted to be able to pass some of that energy onto those around her. As someone who was naturally energetic and rebellious, she could never hope to contain her own creative energy. In some ways, she was only ever destined to pass it on, giving parts of it away to others — those who may need it.

But before Espiritu Libre, before the glamor of runway shows

and Austin Fashion Week, Daizy was just a little girl. She vividly recalls being in elementary school, constantly cutting up clothes, upcycling them into a mismatched amalgamation of the pieces they once were.

“I was always wanting to do something bigger, always wanting to have a voice, rebel, just not conforming,” Daizy explains. From her earliest days, the family and friends surrounding her knew she was destined to chart her own course in life, to carve out a place in this world entirely unique to her.

As she grew into that very niche in the fashion industry, the creation of her brand evolved as an extension of her career as a stylist. She had been styling for TV shows and short films, a gig that eventually developed into her making pieces for her to style. Entirely self-taught and validated by the overwhelming approval of her fellow creatives, Daizy began putting pieces together using inspirations and materials based on the community around her.

Just like that, Espiritu Libre was born — and Daizy began the journey of building a brand from the ground up.

“I need to have some girls wear this out and look cute, it’s just sitting here,” she remembers musing to herself after designing a few pieces to style on set. That’s how she thinks — endlessly oriented towards her craft and those who wear it.

But Espiritu Libre has become much more than some girls having — though, at its core, it still is. With the inspiration of Austin’s vibrant Latino community and her

“Daizy built a brand like no other, interweaving sensual silhouettes to embody the free spirit that

contemporary elements of Latino culture and Daizy herself wants to share with the world.”

old clothes — only this time, there’s hundreds of others like her applauding, eager to see their culture showcased like never before.

From the moment she started her brand, she knew she wanted to do things differently from the industry standard. She saw a lack of representation for people that looked like her, namely Latina women. For that reason, she exclusively uses women of color as her models. Being based in Austin, she felt particularly responsible with keeping the Tejano community alive within an industry that doesn’t make space for people like her.

Her diosas, the women who choose their bodies to be the hallowed space upon which her pieces may rest, are an extension of Daizy’s principal inspiration: her family. And their nomenclature — diosa meaning goddess in Spanish — was no haphazard coincidence.

“The pieces have this ethereal effect — it makes anyone who wears them feel this divine feminine energy,” she says. “The way it makes people feel… like this heavenly goddess, it makes them be that person when they walk into a room.”

Pioneering this delicate foray into the uncharted waters of the fashion industry, Daizy sought guidance from her Latina roots. As the Espiritu Libre brand flourished, she found herself uniquely endowed with a newfound sense of purpose to spotlight a community that has long since been overlooked in traditional creative spaces. In their newly launched website, the site’s name dances across the top of the screen, illustrated in the style of a golden nameplate necklace, reminding any diosas thinking of purchasing their very own Espiritu Libre design of Daizy’s Mexican roots.

“Me being a Latina myself, I just wanted to be more represented,” Daizy explains her reasoning for her creative choices, distinctive in their willingness to go against the status quo. “I want to do that

Her family has grown much larger since her first show — she’s gotten engaged, had a baby, and spearheaded her career in fashion design. She cites her son, now a year old, as the driving force behind her brand’s recent uptick. His birth is the defining moment of that era of her life, and Daizy says he’s what pushed her to continue doing more runway shows instead of scaling it back into her comfort zone.

“Every runway show, [my son] is there, getting ready with us, getting passed around with all the models,” Daizy reminisces.

“It’s a very family-oriented thing … I have a family and I have friends in a lot of them, so now it’s become a family business.”

Now, Espiritu Libre is more than a brand, more than a simple exchange between a model and a designer, or between buyer and wearer. Amidst the bustling creative energy present in Daizy’s life, her son is now an unwavering presence, seamlessly blended into her newfound role as a fashion designer and reminding her to keep her espíritu libre alive to pass down for future generations to come. What’s more, she hopes to inspire other creators like her to take advantage of the opportunities abundant in the creative scene.

“Once you start, it’s going to be fine,” Daizy urges any young diosas eager to share their free spirits. “You’re gonna fail. There’s gonna be trials and tribulations that you go through, but that’s the first step. From there, things will fall into place.”

Daizy is entirely sure of herself as she says this; she’s speaking from experience. Her brand, born from the eager buzz of untamed creative energy, is now ripe with the fruits of her labor. With each new endeavor she ventures into, Daizy finds herself guided by the same unshakeable sense of purpose. For this reason, it seems that the Espiritu Libre family will grow exponentially along with the love Daizy continues to pour into it. ■

“the Espíritu Libre family will grow exponentially along with the love Daizy continues to pour into it.”

MY BRATakingoff off

by NEERUL GUPTA

layout JAYCEE JAMISON photographer ADALAE SIMPAO stylist DIVYA KONKIMALLA & CYNTHIA LIRA set styling ASHLEY NGUYEN hmua DAKOTA EVANS model TANYA VELAZQUEZ

spark

HEELS | Austin Pets Alive!

BELT | Austin Pets Alive!

WHITE TOP | Austin Pets Alive!

You’d think men would know how to take off bras given how often they’d like to see what’s underneath them.

“You put this thing on every day?”

“Yes.” He was still struggling.

“Can’t imagine why. Why?”

The two Long Islands settling in my stomach didn’t dizzy me as much as his question. I grasped at a response, seizing for a reason I confined my body daily, perspiring more at a lack of feminist explanation for intuitively covering my chest than at the impressively toned body yearning for mine. Thin hands slowly slid lace down my shoulders in typical sultry fashion. I didn’t notice. Unease spilled into my cervix, following warm hands tracing down my stomach. Hungry eyes tried to capture mine, but I was fixed on the black cage sliding off cream sheets. My bra fell to the ground, and I never picked it up again.

You call it braless; I call it brafree.

Strutting around streets with pronounced nipples catches the attention of non-wearers and wearers alike. What is to them one-fourth of a second is enough for me to notice. I know you looked, I know you’re wondering, so let me tell you why I took it off and why it bothers you.

Women — a term I use inclusive of all bra-wearers as this is discursively treated as a woman’s issue — pull straps to their shoulders every morning without a second thought. Wire and fabric fight gravity daily, and they may win from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m, but what’s the first thing women do when they come home? While the garment can support and comfort, I wondered if we weren’t entirely honest with ourselves about a bra’s helpfulness, and if it takes away more than it gives. Tossing out my variety pack forced me to face why I had worn them at all.

For a night out, push-ups were a must. For a few hours of piercing underboob pain, you can look one cup size bigger!

If I wore a strapless top, strapless or stick-ons rounded my girls out. That skin pinching and pulling is silicone adhesive, but at least you look all-natural!

To treat myself, a bralette was a decent choice. Instead of not wearing a bra, you can buy one for $30 that makes you look like you aren’t wearing one!

When I described my daily chest and back pain, women creatively informed me that I was “just wearing the wrong type of bra.” Maybe, or maybe I was just wearing a bra for the wrong reasons. It imitates a wearable testimony of self-respect. Without a bra, I transform watchers into witnesses of my shamelessness. With one, I trade letting my body breathe for satiating eyes that aren’t mine.

My first brafree weeks were not all that freeing. Without cloth to fabricate a plump look, my tear-drop breasts revealed their true shape through summertime tank tops. Now looking back at vacation pictures, I see a normal chest. But at that moment, worry caved into my diaphragm. Shame brewed inside my rib cage, spreading to fingertips that inched towards a jacket even under a stifling sun. I consciously fought the urge to reach for a bra at all times of the day.

Reward revealed itself soon thereafter. The skin between my shoulder blades had been cinched in by bra strap lines. As the marks faded, so did my chronic back pain. (I guess it wasn’t chronic after all.) Even breathing felt different, as if I could inhale more oxygen under an unconfined chest. As my breasts relaxed, so did I.

I had covered or cleavaged for others, and when my breasts changed, so did their gaze. Bras may be for the male gaze, but it wasn’t theirs that bothered me. Their pupils quickly surveyed my chest, and I brushed off any remnant of self-consciousness just as fast.

Women were different. Unblinking eyes fell below mine and returned a witting expression asking, Did you forget, or do you really think you look good? The female gaze pierced my chest far more uncomfortably than any

“WITHOUT A BRA i transform watchers SHAMELESSNESS.”

into witnesses of my

bra ever did, momentarily making me want to race to my protective covers decomposing in dirt, brushing off filth so I could purge myself of my own.

But there is nothing dirty about my natural breasts. What is more real, cleaner even, than wandering the world with an unfabricated body? Still, her eyes questioned me. All day, women practice keeping their bodies upright, a bra supporting pronounced posture. Take it off, and see our backs curl into question marks. They ask me why I took it off but not why they put it on.

So I asked. Scouring the streets of Austin, I approached over 30 women — students clinically overcaffeinated, professionals taken aback by my candor, mothers who looked like they needed a break — willing to entertain a five-minute conversation. Do you wear a bra, and why or why not? Wearers rushed to words like “comfort” and “security.” Elaborate please, and they spoke of “social norms’’ and “the public.”

Half of the public women referred to are owners of breasts themselves, and their bodies protrude flesh and nipples just the same, even if in different shapes, colors, and directions. But this isn’t the public they inexplicitly named.

It is men we fear to inadvertently insult or invite with free-flowing breasts. And instead of challenging the norms that challenge our bodies, we battle each other. They stare at my breasts in distaste as a continuation of the checks and balances we keep one another accountable with, adding to the list of crossing legs, traveling in groups, and crawling home by dark. It is, effectively, protection through condemnation.

Some women rationalize my brafreeness as lazy ignorance. But I have studied their judgment under harsh lighting, and they stare at their own reflection in my eyes. To some women, I’m playpretending prostitute, hoping to flaunt and deceptively capture the attention of her, her competitors, or worse, the men we compete for. A woman’s sexuality amplifies when her bust does, and although mine seems smaller without a bra, she reddens at my perceived threat. Is it me she fears or herself?

Patriarchy seeps into the world’s every fabric, including the one women wear on their chests. I embodied my liberation by undressing my body — an act of silent disobedience. I had worn a bra to obey unwritten rules, but I am the author of my body no matter how it’s read.

Flora can rise after ash, as can a woman after being torched by her own. Must women find themselves scorched by my brafreeness, I welcome their screams into winds that trail my smooth back. I hope they can look at it and imagine the same for themselves.

Women should continue to wear bras if that’s what they want. I will continue to not because that’s what I want.My brafreeness caused my breasts to shrink, which came with both increased comfort and criticism. I am privileged and marginalized differently from two bra sizes ago, so I recognize that liberation looks and feels different across different bodies. All I wish is for us to turn wearing a bra from a subconscious act into a conscious decision. You have the autonomy to make the choice, even if it’s different from mine.

Me? I carry myself as naturally as I came into this world, and I intend to leave it just the same.

by

KATLYNN FOX

layout JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO photographer KIM NGUYEN videographer HERMINO MENDEZ stylist GENEVIEVE HENDRIE & ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN set stylist EVANGELINA YANG hmua SRIKKA CHAGANTI & AUDREY HOFF models NIKKI SHAH & JAKE OTTO

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take

I kneel over the bed, clasp my hands together, and squeeze my eyes shut. I talk to the sky, I whisper to it in my head until it becomes a shout from my mouth. I pray for safety, for love, to be held, for my soul to be cherished in life and death — but most importantly, I pray for sleep. And so it comes and goes like a flickering light. I fall asleep as a kid, with my heart to the stars, and I wake up in Paris.

14 Rue Meslay

I was lying on my side in Ellen’s bed — crunched up and trying to take up as little space as possible in the empty room. She was out at class and I was awoken by the sunlight. The French doors were open wide and the breeze was so sharp it slammed the bedroom door shut without reason. I was alone in a new country surrounded by a language I didn't understand. A few weeks ago I didn't have a passport or any concept of jetlag, now I understand why people say not to nap when you get off the plane. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had a bed to sleep in.

I had a friend's arms to fall into and a place to rest my head.

I shoot awake. Only a few days have passed this time. It’s summer, it's hot during the day but dipping into the 40s at night. The sun set at 9:40 p.m. and rose again at 6:12 a.m. I was watching it then.

The windows were perpetually open and the air was freezing. Glasses littered the dining room table, the coffee table, the side table, and the bathroom floor from when Gracie dropped one before we went out. The evidence from the night before was as haphazardly discarded as our bodies were. We sprawled out on the couches with our heads buried in cushions and red hair sticking up in every direction.

I’ve only been asleep for a few hours now but it feels like seconds. I look over at Nikki and her crazy hair and bloodied knees next to me on the cushions. The first time I had a conversation with her was 18 hours ago, plopped in the middle of Paris together. I hadn’t gone a day without talking to her since then. She had flown from London just for the night, with the clothes on her back and a book in her purse that she used to draw in more than read.

In a bit, we would rise after the sun and recount the night spent hopping from café bar to clubs over croissants and French hot chocolate — though she prefers a London fog.

My eyes open and I'm in my apartment with my $5 nightstand from Goodwill holding two glasses of water, two watches, and two week-old flowers I can't get myself to toss out. The alarm hasn’t gone off yet. The puppy and I are in our respective beds.

Eloiza lies next to me. I rarely see her asleep so it shocks me, only for a moment. I always fall asleep first and wake up second. She's peaceful and the crease between her eyes has disappeared. I wonder if she’s dreaming and I decide she isn’t. She looks too calm. Her dreams are often distressing, bring on haunting premonitions. Her sister called her Joseph the dreamer, the seer. She hates this comparison. She doesn't want to be responsible for the things she can’t control.

I think it’s fall now but daylight savings time hasn’t happened yet — time hasn’t fallen back — so I sit for a few minutes and watch the highlights on her face spring to life as the day starts.

I don't bother rubbing the sleep sand from my eyes and I settle back down. I hold her close again and she stirs for a moment. I tell her I love her and she echoes me unconsciously. She surely won't remember it, but I don't doubt it to be true. So I take her word for it and pray for many more mornings like this. I pray to not die before I wake with her in my arms. Please, Lord, don’t deny me this one pleasure.

“ I fall asleep as a kid, with heartmy t the stars, and I wake up in Paris."

St. Marks Avenue.

My eyes could barely stay open. We stayed out all day and now it was nearing 2 a.m. Eloiza was in Paris visiting a friend just as I had visited Ellen. She slept on his twin bed in the dorm and roamed the streets with her guide. My goal most nights was to wish her goodnight when we were getting ready to go out and stay out late enough to tell her good morning before I crashed.

It was our second night in the city — if you could even count Crown Heights as the city. I was too nervous to try my luck sneaking into the Manhattan clubs twice in a row, so I stayed behind in the one bedroom tucked away in the basement of a brownstone.

The night before, we pushed two twin beds together and squeezed five bodies in. Tonight, I lay in the fabric alone. The girls had just left after trying on each other's clothes and leaving lipstick prints on cheeks and foreheads and necks. I bid them farewell and promised to lock the door behind them.

So I turned the deadbolt until it clicked and bounced down the steps. I threw open the fridge and ate a thousand-year egg that I brought back from the restaurant yesterday. I took a sip from the kettle and another one from a discarded wine glass full of red. I surveyed the living room: five makeup bags, two hair dryers, one bottle of tequila, and one bed. I turned the lights out and burrowed under the blankets. I listened to the faint sounds of New York and I fell asleep by myself for the first time in months.

I woke up the next morning surrounded by bodies and smudged makeup. “You’ll never guess where we ended up last night,” Melat said.

On our last day there, we shoved fur coats into bags and sat on suitcases, putting furniture back to its original state. Only then did we realize that we had a pull-out couch the whole time. Oh, well.

Preston Hollow

I sit up and I’m sweating again in my bed in my mother’s home. It’s 5 a.m. and I can't sleep through the night these days. It’s December now and weeks have passed since I crawled over a sea of girls to hang off the edge of the bed in New York. I was alone now in a California king with me and the puppy. A mountain of white sheets and fluffy duvet and she velcros herself right next to me. I understand her deeply.

It’s below freezing and the dripping faucet is the only sound I can focus on. Christmas lights from the lawn still beam through the bedroom window, though the holiday has passed now. I will sleep to come, though I know it won’t last. I will wake up alone again. In the early hours of the morning, after the sun rises and the timer outside extinguishes the lights, I will lay still, waiting for human life to defrost in my house.

So I pull the puppy closer and snuggle in.

I suppose even when I am alone, I still have her to call home. ■

"I suppose even when I am alone I still have her to call home."

layout JOY DELIGHT PESEBRE photographer LIV MARTINEZ video cinematographer CAMERON SHIN video editor JAYNE YI stylists MIGUEL ANDERSON & OTOFU AYAKU set stylist LAUREN MUNOZ hmua FLORIANA HOOL models CHASE SMYTH, VIRGILIO DE HOYOS, & NATÁN MURILLO

by BEACH BEACHUM

GREEN ARMY VEST | Leopard Lounge

To Hunter, my first brother,

I met you when I was a plagiarist. I had just learned that personality is supposed to be formed by imitating those you respect, and I started mirroring everyone around me. First, it was my dad, who was meant to be my mentor, best friend, and idol. I think you and I liked each other because we helped each other pretend to be our fathers. Better sons could get away with discovering themselves in their own ways. We had to pretend in order to be safe.

When I got bored of cheating off my dad, I copied off of you. I thought you would give me security, so I plagiarized your personality. I hadn’t found out yet that it wasn’t yours. I thought that if I regurgitated your identity back to you, that if I mirrored your being, then you wouldn’t find a reason to leave me. You knew that.

Everything changed when you got into wrestling. I remember the day that you first asked me to wrestle with you. We were playing Battleship on your living room floor, and you told me you were bored. I hated people being bored of me. When you asked if you could show me some wrestling clips, I gave in.

Then you started to act out the clips with me. I kept telling you that we didn’t have to wrestle, but you assured me that we did.

I held my breath and laid down so you could abuse me until I felt like it was love. I had nothing to protect. I remember you punching me in the gut with the strength of deception, holding my throat with the anger of a stolen childhood. I was too weak to say no, and you hated yourself too much to not use me like a ragdoll. If I stayed quiet and let you strangle me, then I would still be in your grasp. You didn’t like wrestling, but you kept doing it because your dad was watching us. It was his job to make sure you become a man, or at the very least, become him. This was your interview.

I don’t think it was your fault, Hunter. We were both victims of the situation.

We grew apart when I moved to another middle school. You didn’t reach out and you found other people. It hurt me, but I couldn’t tell you. We were friends because I let you live out a fantasy I wasn’t a part of.

The last time I saw you was when I watched you play football as a defensive lineman. I guess you really did like wrestling.

I left you as a man who plagiarized other men because he wanted to be close to them. I didn’t understand how to do it myself, so I cheated. Silently, I copied you until I fit into other men’s playbook.

To Johnathan, my second brother,

I met you after I had been caught. I had spent all of sixth grade chasing a high of masculinity that I never found, hanging out with people that I hated, who hated me back. But they made fun of me in ways that made me feel like I was one of them. If I could learn to take their insults, then maybe they would stop noticing me there. They always noticed me.

You showed me stupid memes in our English class that I didn’t think were funny, but I laughed anyway. I loved to believe that you cared about what I thought. You kept showing me memes and talking to me about Star Wars. When I had spent enough time listening to you, you felt like we were friends.

I spent most of seventh grade at your house. Most nights, your mom would make dinner for us and she’d call me family.

With spring coming, you decided that it was time to plant some seeds. We tried out for tennis together and gossiped about the other boys like moms at a book club. You were the only person on the team who would talk to me. I took comfort in that. The coach made us doubles partners and we played against people that were incompetent. I reassured you that you deserved to be higher up on the ladder, knowing that we both could have been there. We beat up other teams together, and it became cathartic as I watched you celebrate. It felt like I had a brother.

You would talk to me about the girls you liked, the porn you watched, and which friends you would hook up with first. I just listened to you like a mother because I was scared that you were bored of me as a brother. You told me I was loved because I did something that you loved. I could be one of the guys and listen to you like we were a couple. Your mother, your girlfriend, and your brother: I was a triple threat. I didn’t have to cheat anymore; I could just focus on you.

But we were friends. No matter what role I was relegated to in your life or what need I filled for you, we were still close, I think. We did the things that other boys did. We played with lightsabers together, we rowed in canoes together, and we went to birthday parties together.

Your mom didn’t like that. She knew things about me that I didn’t know.

I remember the last day we were supposed to play tennis together, and you kept trying to say you were busy. I knew you weren’t, but you kept insisting. You told me that your mom said we couldn’t hang out anymore. She hid me from the family. I kept telling her that I wouldn’t hurt you. She didn’t believe me.

I don’t think I’ve ever stopped feeling like I’m hiding a weapon.

To Aaron, my first real brother, I was so scared when I met you. You are everything that I had been taught to ignore. You listen to rap, you skateboard, and you embody every stereotypical part of masculinity that I was taught to run away from. I didn’t talk to you for most of our first semester together because of it. When you would be kind to me — pick something up for me, help me with a quiz, ask me how I was doing — I wrote it off because, frankly, I didn’t believe you.

I remember the moment I accepted your kindness. We were at a party together, and I finally gave in.

The noise of the party suffocated me, a melody of drunken tears and atrophied innocence. As I fought the clamor of the attention hounds, you asked me how I was doing. Words flowed out of me, breaking the dam of comfort. You concentrated on my thoughts with a delicate tenderness and you reported them back to me with a calm precision. No other man had let me talk without expecting something in return. With your hand on my back, I could feel the tension unfold. A promise of reassurance enveloped me. If I tried to escape your shelter, then I would be punished with the bitterness of subservience. In the most miniscule of moments, you protected me from the whispers of abandonment and you screamed at me to be heard.

After that day, we spent a month together until it was time for me to go home from college. We experienced the day I left together — getting breakfast, running errands, packing my clothes — and it was time for me to go to the airport. I started to walk to the Uber, expecting to leave without a trace.

You looked at me, processing that I would be leaving, and then you held me close like I was walking into another life. It was a complete acknowledgement of my being, a silent hug that somehow screamed “I see you.” It wasn’t anxious, it wasn’t romantic — it was a hug only a brother could give. All my other brothers had left me before they could hold me.

With you, I don’t have to be a plagiarist, a mother, or a girlfriend: I can just be your brother and that’s enough. I am not a threat to you. I hope you read this and know that you managed to teach a very hurt person how to be taken care of. Even if I have to update this letter in the future to reflect a new reality, know that you have helped me discover a part of myself that feels comfortable being close to other men.

I say this to you because you’ve said it to me too: I love you, bro. I love you.

Scan for I LOVE YOU, BRO video.

PURGE

“THIS PROMPTS ME TO TAKE MY HEAD OUT OF HER OWN AND ASK WHETHER OR NOT THE ANSWER EVEN MATTERS.

by DANIELLE YAMPULER

layout YVETTE GARCIA photographer MADDIE LINDELL videographer MADDIE ABDALLA stylists KEENA MEDINA & SADIE BOWLIN

hmua JAYCEE JAMISON model MIMO GORMAN

Ilean my head in close. Our hair is touching and I can feel their breath on my ear. It’s warm, wet, but I savor it like it will be the only intimacy I receive all week. They’re saying something, they’re leaning in because I said I couldn’t hear them.

I’m flirting with them — or talking to them. The line is blurred to me. I’m not sure whether I’m attracted to this person, or if I just wanted to see if they’d be attracted to me. Beer is drying on my sleeve where someone accidentally splashed it earlier, and it may stain. I hope their breath does as well. I hope their hair leaves a strand tangled in mine.

I hope this person whose name I will not remember leaves a larger mark than they deserve, just one of the many I will receive tonight. Then I will watch as they fade over the course of the week and start over at the next party when I feel too clean again.

This is just how it goes. Some nights will end with hands on hips, mouths to lips, and others with just a few stains. It doesn’t particularly matter — whoever does it, however it’s done, their fingers will dig deep in my throat so that I can throw up all the aspects of myself that I don’t want to be. Then I will devour my endless insecurity until I find the need to be emptied again.

This is the virginity purge. If virginity is a construct, then this cycle shows that it never leaves. It happens after a breakup, when you enter college — at the beginning of every life phase is the virginity purge. This is a time when you need to get that innocence out of your body, when you need to throw up white lace and garter straps to prove something. Hopefully, it’s to yourself, but it never really is.

It’s painful and it hurts and maybe it’s a bad habit to have, but it’s better than carrying that word with you. Virgin. This idea that, as a virgin, you’re entirely unsullied, ready to be sacrificed. Accompanying it comes a unique vulnerability born from starting over again. One that you thought had been covered permanently but now stands bare and defenseless

“WHEN YOU START A NEW BOOK, YOU CRACK ITS SPINE; A HOME IS ONLY YOURS WHEN IT’S CLUTTERED.”

Maybe the same logic applies here.

It doesn’t have to be sex. It just has to leave a stain even peroxide can’t take

out. At some point, you’ll begin to question if that really exists, or if every little mark washes out with enough time. This makes the endgame unclear.

I was a liar in elementary school. I think most kids naturally are. I used to tell my friends about fantastical dreams I never had, stories that never happened. I lived off their excitement, the way they’d ask for more. Before I learned the importance of honesty or credibility or any of that other bullshit, I learned two things: everyone loves a good story, and attention is invaluable.

I’m not sure I ever grew out of that way of thinking. I may have learned not to fabricate my stories, but I also learned that the more I do, the more I can deliver back to the people whose attention singularly satisfies me. Maybe that’s why chronicling the purge is practically as fulfilling as the act itself, if not more. Crafting and polishing the tale to be recited in a manner so nonchalant, as if it was never intended to be said.

I practice this recital all the time. It has its own room in my head, where blurred faces listen in awe. They receive my story exactly in the way I wish them to, recognizing that I am telling them that I am a girl people are drawn to, entranced by. This is a girl people desire

Yet, whenever I try to speak it aloud, the words become painful and never make it past my lips. The recitation is the release, but I can never force it out without feeling the shame.

It’s embarrassing. If the entire reason I purge is to let people know I am capable, why can I never do so? I know a girl who keeps a spreadsheet of all the times she’s had sex. Each row includes who she did it with and whether or not she climaxed (a column filled with entirely ‘no,’ if you’re curious). This is a girl skilled in recitation, and it is as invigorating as it is repulsing. I judge her harshly for the act, and I desperately want to be her.

I catch myself wondering how many of these encounters she truly wanted to have, and how many were done purely to add another row to scroll past with practiced nonchalance. Where did her desires start and her exhibition end?

Then I realize that I don’t know her.

I’m putting every single insecurity and desire I’ve ever had onto her and presuming our brains work the same. The single time I hung out with her, she laid bare her exploits and spreadsheets. I thought she was laying herself bare as well, but now I wonder if she was only displaying a girl she’d meticulously crafted. This prompts me to take my head out of her own and ask whether my entire cycle is a performance, and whether or not the answer even matters. Especially if the exhibition is just as orgasmic as the act itself.

“WHOEVER DOES IT, HOWEVER IT’S DONE, THEIR FINGERS WILL DIG DEEP IN MY THROAT SO THAT I CAN THROW UP ALL THE ASPECTS OF MYSELF THAT I DON’T WANT TO BE. THEN I WILL DEVOUR MY ENDLESS INSECURITY TO BE EMPTIED AGAIN.”

Maybe for me, for her, for every person who’s ever dropped an unsavory story on me, the desire only exists because of the need to be perceived. Maybe sexual desire is uniquely and innately intertwined with a want to be known. Therefore, the verbal exhibitionists’ goal must be to extend the release gained from being seen.

To illustrate, my best friend lost her virginity in a hidden field in one of the richest neighborhoods in Houston. She and her boyfriend had planned it days in advance to ensure nothing would go wrong. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable, considering they had to wrap up quickly so that they would not be caught, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that it was done.

I know this because she told me so on the same day it happened, indulging me in every detail, completing the American ritual — the one that mandates that she, and so many others, become verbal exhibitionists when it comes to sharing the loss of their virginity. It pervades pop culture; no sensual coming-of-age story feels complete without the ritual of spilling wine on yourself just so you can show your friends the irremovable stain. However, this causes me to think about which came first: the stain, or the sex?

It’s a word that’s purely taboo thanks to what it is related to. Virginity. In theory, it should be the cleanest word in the English language, something Western values aspire to: the virgin, who has not yet had… what? And its relation to that word dirties it before it ever had the chance to walk outside.

It is stained, and you, by proxy, were born stained because you were a virgin, meaning you had the capability of not being one anymore. That’s why it always flies back, why it always knocks on your door, even when you flee hometowns and bedrooms you’re no longer allowed in. When that happens, you can cover it in vomit and sweat and sticky stains that smell like nail polish remover.

Or you can remember the time before you truly grasped that word. A time when grass stains were the most of your worries, when you navigated the world with childish wonder because the only thing you were expected to do was explore.

Return to that time.

When it—the virginity, the shame, yourself — returns to you next, explore it. Cover it in soft touches, in friends you’ll get to know, in love

The next time breath stains you, realize that you are capable of penning it in with permanent marker. Do so. Only through this acceptance will you be rendered something stained enough to be returned to yourself.

PURGEPURGE IT

LEAVE A MARK

PURGE ITITPURGE IT

LOVEDESIRE

LOVE DESIRELOVE LEAVE

“ ONLY THROUGH THIS ACCEPTANCE WILL YOU BE RENDERED SOMETHING STAINED ENOUGH TO BE RETURNED TO YOURSELF. ”

It doesn’t have to be sex. You just have to let it leave a mark. So, welcome it. Let it in, let it engulf you, the innocence and the ignorance and the fear of never being seen.

Then purge it. ■

THRICE-BLOOMED IN (FIRST 2 TEACH THE BEETLE POLLINATION CAN BE FUN) (THEN 2 SHOW THE CHESTNUTS THAT THE SHOW HAD JUST BEGUN) (LAST 2 TELL THE MOON OUR FEUD IS OVER & I WON)

MY HEART IS SLICK FROM SUMMER RAIN THAT FALLS WITH SANGUINE THUDS MY VENULES COURSE WITH BRITTLE QUARTZ THAT FRACTURES IN MY BLOOD MY LIPS ARE LIMESTONE RIVERBANKS WHICH SEASONALLY FLOOD IN THE STREAMBED SPIT-SHINED KUNZITE POLISHED IN THE MUD

I UNDERSTAND THE POROUS PRAIRIE SLICK BENEATH MY TONGUE IN MAY I RECOGNIZE THE CROWDED WHISPERS URGING ME 2 SIT & STAY I UNDERSTAND I GET A SAY THEY RECOGNIZE I GET MY WAY I UNDERSTAND THE GRANITE’S PLAYFUL SHIMMER ON A ROSY DAY

THE ORIOLES ADORE THE RIPPLED TEXTURE OF MY RIND

MY AMBROSIAL PRESENCE SEEMS 2 SUBJUGATE THE MIND MY SOUL GREW ON A TREE WHERE EVERY BRANCH WAS INTERTWINED MY LOVE OUTSTRIPS THE NECTAR OF EACH GARDEN MYTH COMBINED

MY WORDS FLUORESCE LIKE CORAL IN THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF HEARTACHE I DISREGARD THE TOXINS OF ANEMONES & SEA SNAKES

THE SIREN SINGS OF GIVE & TAKE SAILORS FIGHT 2 STAY AWAKE MY MYSTERY ATTRACTS PEARL DIVERS YEARNING 4 MISTAKES 2 MAKE

SPEAK THIS IN THE MORNING WITH UR MIND ON ANY1: I AM THE AMBER LOTUS WHO HAS THRICE BLOOMED IN THE SUN

graphic by MATEO ONTIVEROS & LAURENCE NGUYỄN-THÁI

LAZE IN THE FILTHY, THE OBSESSIVE, AND THE GREEDY. BATHE YOUR SOUL IN SUMPTUOUS LIGHT AND MEMORY.

THE GREEN SIDE OF THE MOON // PHOENIX // BEYOND THE GRAVE // THE NAIL MISER // PRINCESA TIBETANA SONIC ANARCHY // WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSS // AN ETERNAL NIGHT // RUBBERNECK // DIRTY GIRL // SUNBURN

by AUDREY PARK layout AVA JIANG creative director EMILY MARTINEZ photographer REYNA DEWS stylist EMILY MARTINEZ hmua RIVER PERRILL & MIU NAKATA nail artist MIU NAKATA models MIU NAKATA, VANI SHAH & JORDYN JACKSON

spark

When Millie hit puberty, strange things started happening to her body.

The dry skin around her ankles and elbows started flaking. It was itchy and irritating. Every time she tried to scratch herself, she shed waferthin strips of skin all over the floor. Whenever she sneezed, she became a confetti-cannon.

Millie tried applying extra-moisturizing lotion and body oils on the affected area, but the flaking didn’t stop. It moved to her torso. Her neck. Her face. No ointment or moisturizer could alleviate her condition, and soon her entire body looked like peeling wallpaper.

Millie had to sit on a paper napkin all day to collect the shedded skin. She wept bitterly as she imagined all the mocking nicknames her schoolmates would call her once they saw her state.

Creepy Myrtle. Bonito-head. Millie-feuille.

They always She bought all the games and dolls and gadgets that everyone else liked, but she was always told she played wrong. She wore bright, pretty dresses and shiny-buckled shoes, but she

sucking, humming, and whistling.

“Oh, what am I supposed to do?” Millie croaked to the silver-winged bugs. “Other girls fret about pimples and bad hair. I bet none of them have to worry about turning green!”

The bugs flew in synchrony, partitioning like a glittery bead curtain, letting light into the dusty bedroom. Millie saw the moon. Millie saw Mars. Millie saw far, far beyond that. The silver-winged bugs and silver-pointed stars pooled in her eyes that were large and brilliant like clear jade.

Light cuts through air like a flashing glaive

The moon pulls on the ocean waves

If your skin and nails never fit quite right

The moon pulls on you, hopeful and bright

Millie closed her eyes and listened. The moon beckoned her in strange languages. Clicking, sucking, humming, whistling. Ringing, thumping, twinkling, croaking. Run to me, run to me.

She slowly stood up, half-bent so her back brushed against the popcorn ceiling. Her spindly, green leg went through the window first, reaching the ground from the second floor. She felt crabgrass poking between her seven toes. She felt the gritty brick siding of the suburban house on her palms.

Millie was free in the buzzing summer night, a breath of fresh air. She was closer to the sky than she had ever been. With an outstretched hand, she touched the zenith – dark, cool miasma that congealed at her fingertips.

Who are you? Who do you want to be?

“I want to be with everything

beautiful in the world,” she responded.

Repeat your name. Don’t you forget it.

Millie, Millie, Milliliter Millie, Millie, Millimeter Millie, Millie, Milliseconds

Home is far away

The silver-winged bugs beeped and honked at each other, hurriedly fluttering in loopy paths and forming a long chain heading west. The queue disappeared into the horizon, into the place where everything beautiful in the world lived. In one step, Millie had crossed the entire neighborhood, rows and rows of roof-shingle mounds. In another step, she felt the churning ocean splashing at her knees.

Clicking, sucking, humming, whistling. Ringing, thumping, twinkling, croaking. Splashing, buzzing, popping, barking. This was the song of the moon and the ocean.

One by one, the silver-winged bugs dived into the night ocean, drowning in the powerful waves. In every spot a silver light went out, a half-bloomed lotus flower appeared in its place.

Then every two lotus flowers formed the feet of golden-faced ballerinos. They spun on one foot

by ANGELINA LIU

layout ANOUSHKA SINGHANIA photographer TAI CERULLI stylists MIGUEL ANDERSON & TOMAS TREVINO hmua JAISHRI RAMESH nail artist ANOUSHKA SHARMA models OTOFU AYAKU, PHIA GONZALEZ, XAVIER RUIZ & TYLER TRAN

“IT’S AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST, AN

OTHERWORLDLY FEELING, AN EROTIC DESIRE”

1977 sees the premiere of Saturday Night Fever and the opening of nightclub Studio 54. Black lace skin tight suits, jumpsuits exposing cutouts and cleavage and assless leather chaps adorn clubbers, the intoxication from hard liquor purveying the crowd. Disco is all the rage, and the club serves as a hearth. The music fans sexual liberation and engulfs the frenzied bodies. Those inside the walls emanate light. They are envied, those past the stanchion a recognizable status symbol.

It’s snowing outside of Steve Dahl’s office on Christmas Eve of 1978. His face is sunken and red, heavy with frustrations of a failed professional career. He’d just been fired from Chicago’s WDAI station after working there only ten months. He breathes a heavy sigh and rubs his aching temples. Dahl had loved spinning rock tracks, accompanying them with white macho commentary and homophobia. As most were during this time, WDAI was inevitably switching to become a disco station. His role was obsolete. Losing his job to the glittery scene solidified his already contemptuous relationshi1p with the disco genre.

The air is thick with the scent of hard liquor and the sweat of a hundred dancing bodies. The fire consumes, burning hot and heavy. It roars triumphantly as the flames dare to lick the sky. It takes a life of its own, spreading dangerously. It’s an unquenchable thirst, an otherworldly feeling, an erotic desire. The rhythmic thumping is hypnotic, the electrifying sounds pulsating. Tracks by Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer swallow nightclubs whole, drenching clubbers with pleasure. Inside the walls is a safe haven, one where men can join hands with one another and dance without public scrutiny. House music is an attitude, a feeling, a yearning.

Disco stood for the LGBTQ+ community, flashy outfits, and divine exclusivity. Dahl resented everything about it with fervor. He didn’t want to simply shut it out and turn it away, no. That would be far too simple. He wanted to watch it all burn and make a public spectacle out of it.

Teaming up with Garry Meier at Chicago’s WLUP, the duo mocked and scorned disco records relentlessly. They wanted to see the demolition of the genre, to watch it crash and explode into a million glitzy fragments.

After much deliberation, the pair collaborated with the White Sox and crafted Disco Demolition Night: as long as attendees brought 98 cents (WLUP’s frequency was 97.9) and a disco record, they could blow it up at the center of Comiskey Field. More than 50,000 people attended, many interpreting the word ‘disco’ as any record that featured black artists.

Located in the mostly white, working class neighborhood of Bridgeport, Comiskey Park was inherently anti-disco. With the records piled high to burn, Dahl couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. A couple months ago, this genre had cost him his livelihood. Now, he could sit back, feet up high and an ice-cold beer in his right hand, and watch it all detonate.

In the first game of the double-header, fans began throwing liquor bottles and firecrackers onto the field. The stadium was oversold, the crowd rambunctious and ready to capitalize off of pandemonium. Patrons began tearing up the seats, setting fires, and storming the field. The second game was forfeited and victory given to the visiting Detroit Tigers.

The warmth of Disco’s flame sputters. The fire diminishes, growing weaker by the day. The cold and relentless wind batters the blaze as it desperately attempts to regain strength. Exhaling its last breath, the orange glow extinguishes into gray smoke, carried away into oblivion by the bitter current.

Although disco didn’t disappear overnight, the genre began slowly fading into background sound. Music labels began slashing their dance music departments and radio programmed boogie, rock, jazz — anything but disco. Disco Demolition Day played a significant role in the death of the era.

The tremendous heat that once hypnotized masses has been reduced to a pile of broken logs and dark gray ash. The bonfire is barren. The LGBTQ+ community is forced to shy away from public displays, fearful of the hate and hostility of outsiders who don’t understand. The space where freedom of expression ran free has beenstripped. There’s no more dancing or shiny glass balls. All that’s left is a memory of a movement that once stood for so much more.

Men like Dahl had won.

On 206 South Jefferson St. sits a nightclub named The Warehouse. Sitting at three stories high, the exterior of the former factory is expressionless and unassuming, a perfect facade for the crowds it hosted. During a time where being African American and gay was a precarious combination, the club emerged as a sanctuary where anyone could be anything.

After crossing the barrier, music immediately engulfs you. The sound ascends through the floor, up the flights of stairs, and rushes for release at the top of the industrial roof. There’s a never-ceasing, pulsating rhythm that takes a life of its own, breathing a fire of four-on-the-floor beats. It’s something spiritual that only happens once a week, much like Sunday morning church. Societal and religious expectations no longer held a grasp on the primarily Black gay male crowd, for they had found their salvation.

Frankie Knuckles, the resident DJ, found a multitude of ways to keep the music fresh and his audience dancing. In an era without disco music, he experimented with re-edits of songs by adding new beats, extending intros and breaks and splicing different songs. Mixing a large variety of music with a reel-to-reel tape machine, he added percussion breaks and extended the breakdowns of energetic sections of songs. The pioneer created a melting pot of independent soul artists, underground European dance mixes, and imported Italo disco.

Grabbing various records, Knuckles re-arranges them with his turntable, synthesizer and drum machine. From flame, he welds a sound that is wholly new. His music is an experience, something that cannot be mimicked or challenged by the playing of a pressed vinyl or cassette tape.

He takes speeches from Martin Luther King and mixes them with deep cuts from the Philly soul catalog. When he tires of it all, he turns off all the lights and sets up a record that sounds like a speeding train about to crash into the club. He knows what turns the simmer into a boil. He is the architect, those within the walls at his mercy of his divine direction.

At first, the New York native faced skepticism from the Chicagoans. After all, the club was private and invite only. However, with time, Knuckle’s distinctive sound attracted thousands to flock to the Warehouse Friday through Sunday night. He kept his crowd dancing from dusk until dawn, playing marathon DJ sets that lasted more than eight hours.

Driving by, clubs advertise ‘house’ music on large vinyl banners, coined from the original hearth at The Warehouse. The sound is infectious and quickly catching. The ember has reignited, the inferno an unquenchable thirst.

What was started in a small Chicago club by the Black and LGBTQ+ community gave birth to an entirely new genre. Clubs in the area began copying the sound, and it reached New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia and Europe.

Men like Dahl had lost.

The phoenix rises from disco, possessing such power that its soundscapes can heal anything that it touches and the ashes can bring the dead to life. The creature reigns immortal, indestructible, and forever born again. ■

by BRYN PALMER layout ANH TRAN

“I

wantpeopletobeafraidofthewomenIdress.”

A firebender emerges before the crowd. Identity masked behind a daunting scarlet face covering, she commands flames to burst from the ground, engulfing the circumference around her. The angelic melodies floating in the air combined with the graceful flow of the beads attached to her dress do little to subdue the sinister nature of her calculated movements and hellish presence.

“Letmenotforgettheuseofmyownhands,thatofacraftsmanwitheyes…thatreflectthetechnology aroundme.”

A vision of cherubic beauty, a harmless damsel drowns underneath layers of tulle. Trapped in a seemingly endless revolution, she stands defenseless between two mechanical arms as they taunt her in anticipation of their murderous attack. Without warning, they launch forward, relentlessly polluting her dress with a chaotic array of black and yellow graffiti. No longer pure, she falters off into the stygian abyss.

“Theworldneedsfantasy,notreality.Wehaveenoughrealitytoday.”

Plagued by global warming, the Earth’s terrestrial realm now lies deep within the Atlantic Ocean. With metallic, sapphire-hued skin, geometric hairstyles, and sculpted facial features, humans evolve into anthropomorphic beings. Scales coated in coruscating paillettes replace skin, skeletal or claw-shaped platforms cover feet, and puffed peplums decorate these poised hybrids.

From the calamitous persecution of Joan of Arc and the Romanovs, Lee Alexander McQueen envisioned beauty. When the industry resisted, he sought ways to embrace the mechanization of fashion while preserving the natural. Intrigued by Darwinism, he conjured up an aquatic world where humans and nature lived harmoniously.

But despite imagining great beauties, his brain tormented him.

On February 11, 2010, Lee committed suicide. He died with a desire to extinguish the version of his brand that lacked his creative direction, but this wish followed him into the afterlife. Owned by the conglomerate Kering Group, House of McQueen still operates today.

Like other revolutionary artists, Lee’s influence extends through the brand’s modern releases. In “The Ice Queen and Her Court,” the first collection after his passing, angels embodied life through heavenly feathers and white tulle roses. Their fallen counterparts, ravens, invited death as they sported distressed leathers and fishnets. It enticed wistful viewers to witness another collection from McQueen.

But it was a falsehood. It wasn’t Lee, just his name. It was really Sarah Burton, his successor and the house’s creative director. It was really Kering Group — for them, it was an opportunity to make money.

In a 2006 interview with Fashion Television, Lee said, “If I ever get that old and I’m still around and I leave my company, just burn the place down.”

“So you’d never let someone else carry on the McQueen tradition or the McQueen brand if you weren’t actively involved?” asked the interviewer.

“I don’t think so,” said Lee. “That person would have to come up with the concept for my show, and my shows are so personal. How can that be?”

Lee toiled all his life, striving to build his name and legacy. To the fashion guru who understands the intricacy of his catalog, his vision still holds value. In their pursuit of financial gain, Kering diluted the brand’s artistry to appeal to the mainstream. Introduced during the Spring/Summer 2015 men’s collection, the Oversized Sneaker reigned as the leading luxury tennis shoe. Scarlet soles guarded the feet of ninjas. Punk Harajuku bangs shielded their identity. Sliced by katanas, black double breasted blazers exposed their red flesh

Though well-received, their thick laces lacked innovation compared to Lee’s reimagining of the human foot as hooflike through his Armadillo Shoes. Their immense soles fail to surpass the craftsmanship of Lee’s heeled prosthetic leg, its dark elm wood carved with vines and flora. Valuing these creations, Lee refrained from selling his footwear. Kering, on the contrary, attached a hefty price tag of $500 to their shoe. Now, when the average individual hears the name McQueen, their thoughts go to tennis shoes.

“The sacrificial lamb forfeits his felicity for that of the ‘commoners,’ and this is how he has been repaid.”

But posthumous work doesn’t always have to be exploitative. The ethical execution of work after an artist’s death comes when individuals value the original creative’s vision over their own egotistical aspirations.

The woman created by Gianni Versace commanded men. With the world serving as her runway, she covered just enough skin to be deemed socially acceptable. The femme fatale exposed her curves with figure-hugging fabrics, lured onlookers in bold colors and prints, and appalled conservatives with her risqué cut-outs. Draped in gold, she manifested the feminine form of Italian luxury.

When serial killer Andrew Cunanan assassinated the woman’s maker in 1997, her alluring presence persisted.

Strong familial relations upheld the House of Versace following its patriarch’s death. Successive leadership mirrored Gianni’s own decisions. When he lived, his sister Donatella served as the brand’s vice president and creative consultant.

As his muse, Donatella embodied the Versace woman and accumulated the knowledge required to successfully extend the lifetime of her brother’s creation. The woman still dons the enticing Medusa head logo while captivating audiences in her chic Baroque prints.

A stone wall sustained by kinship guarded the golden boy’s brand from public ownership. Donatella chipped 20% of the barrier in 2014, when she reluctantly traded stock with

investment company Blackstone. Just four years later, she surrendered. Now a pile of rubble, the former fortification collapsed when the guiding spirit relinquished all shares of Versace to Capri Holdings in 2018.

“It’s counterproductive to pigeonhole myself into such a small arena, because it doesn’t make design move forward if it’s only to a select few.”

Diversifying the usual elitist audience, Lee Alexander McQueen welcomed the working class into a realm otherwise unbeknownst to them when he produced the world’s first live-streamed fashion show, “Plato’s Atlantis.” He revolutionized the industry for the sake of inclusion, yet the mainstream disregards his attentiveness to their erased presence in the fashion world. Weaponizing his feat of integration against him, the world uses his own creation to enjoy the very act he resented.

Kering Group continuously releases new McQueen collections to meet a demand. Followers of the brand break bread with their oppressor, and their redeemer is on the menu. The new House of McQueen devours its creator and licks the plate clean. The sacrificial lamb forfeit his felicity for that of the ‘commoners,’ and this is how he has been repaid.

“It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle - everything has to end.” ■

THE

by AUDREY PARK

layout YOUSUF KHAN photographer ISABELLE MILFORD videographer MADDIE ABDALLA stylists YOUSUF KHAN & VI CAO hmua MERYL JIANG & JUNIPER LUEDKE models NOOR KHAN & CHASE SMYTH

That rat – that infiltrator – is here to take over my life. And if I can’t catch that rat, then the only fate I have is to lose it all.

long time ago, my mom told me a story about a careless man who cut his fingernails and toenails by a river. Out of all of the stories she told me — out of all of her stories about tigers and monsters and ghosts — this one scared me the most.

It went like this: a long, long time ago, there was a man cutting his fingernails and toenails in the morning. He was in a rush, so he let his nails fall into a river and float downstream into the woods. A rat drinking water on the riverbank fished them off the surface. It ate the nails — all ten of them — and it became him.

The man went about his day, then went home for supper. But when he tried to enter his home, a stranger suddenly blocked his entrance. A stranger was eating his food, wearing his clothes, and grimacing with his face. His mother and father stood behind the stranger, gasping in fear and astonishment at the sight of their son at the door.

“It’s a spirit disguised in my form,” the stranger accused. “Trying to trick us and take our rice, our money, our lives!”

The man tried to reason and plead with his parents, but no one listened. Nothing was his anymore. Left without a choice, he fled into the dark woods, never to be seen again.

Clarity, rage, and fear hit me all at once. Of course I would be the target.

That rat – that infiltrator – is here to take over my life. That rat isn’t human, but it knows how to play one better than I do. It will be a better student, a better daughter, a better friend than I am.

And if I can’t catch that rat, then the only fate I have is to lose it all — die alone in the woods, just like that careless man.

I have to get better.

Once I know what the rat has done, there’s never a moment where my heartbeat isn’t running jackrabbit swift. I get startled by innocuous pedestrians, my face turns green and nauseous. I gnaw on my nails until there’s nothing left to chew, and they pile up in the trash can in taels of silver.

Monday: I pay special attention to my clothes and makeup. When I do my makeup, it isn’t a matter of something so trite as self-empowerment. It’s all about looking the part of a comfortable, approachable woman sweet smiles and polite words. This is what the rat wants to be. I can do it better.

I bet that it really hurt turning into me. I bet the rat contorted a

It’s a cautionary tale that parents tell their children to get them to properly dispose of nail clippings at home rather than scattering them on the ground. It worked on me. Out of all of the tales my mom told me, this one still scares me.

I have a nervous habit of biting on my fingernails, and it happens everywhere. I’m always anxious that the people around me can see my flaws bubbling up to the surface ugly, strange, and overwhelming. With every movement I make, my nails get bitten to the quick. My fingertips get covered in saliva and I carry slivers of nail in my palm like a toddler barefisting Cheerios.

Then, I find myself standing over a public trash can, contemplating. It would be reasonable to throw away my fingernails immediately. But I can never get myself to do it. There’s a childlike fright that pulls me away, jumping to imagination and possibilities at a dizzying speed.

Is there any reality in which a rat could physically transform into my doppelganger just by eating my fingernails? There could be. There probably isn’t. That’s the thing: I can’t know for sure.

If safeguarding against the risk of a stranger taking over my life comes at the small price of holding onto my nails until I get home, then I’ll always return them home where I can stare into my bathroom trash can. It’s filthy, a pungent blend of dirty hair, period pads, and unpleasantly wet tissues. The odor gets sharper as my heartbeat spikes.

There shouldn’t be anything missing from the trash can. Who would want anything from the filthy bathroom trash can? But something is missing: my nail clippings, my nail clippings I collected and was so careful to bring home every day. There used to be so many. They were all gone.

I heard, a long time ago, that rats could sense a decaying person. I heard that rats studied those people intimately while lying in wait, eating all of their secrets and depravities so that they could worm their way into warm homes. Respected, accomplished people are difficult to imitate. Usurping the useless, waste-ofspaces is much easier.

I look deeply into my reflection while I’m stretching out my lashes with mascara. I see my deep brown, twitching eyes. The rat’s beady little eyes.

“I heard, a long time ago, that rats could sense a decaying person.”

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“You’re in my place,” I whisper back, and I fall back into myself.”

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fridge, then start invading my relationships. It’ll whisper poison into my loved ones’ ears, convince them that it deserves their love more than I do.

I have to try harder. I have to stop slipping up.

Thursday: I try, I really try – but failures start piling up. Unread texts pile up, rejections pile up. My friends tell me they’re too busy to see me, and I can’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. I can’t bear to look at anything – that damned rat is suffocating me.

It’s drawing closer, getting bolder with its moves.

Friday: If my body outside speaks and walks and looks perfectly identical to my body at home – if my body makes my identity to strangers, to friends, to my family – if my body at home is clothed and seated, and my body outside is naked and running – then who do I become? If my identity is built out of my merits with other people and my possessions, then what do I become?

I’m nothing. I’m replaceable.

Tonight, the rat gets in.

Saturday: We snarl at each other like animals. There’s no difference between us. I want to pound its face until it’s

unrecognizable from mine. I want to tear its beady, rat eyes out of my face.

It’s not fair. Nothing was mine, not even me. Nothing was ever mine.

The rat interlocks our fingers, and our palm lines are identical. It interlocks our legs that have moles in the exact same places. The body is interchangeable. All I needed was an upgrade. Replace me with a better me. The costs were clear – losing this game meant that everyone else would win.

It looms over me, smiling sweetly. It presses closer with its warm, familiar body. I’m hanging by a thread. I’m going to be the loser. Looking deeply into my human eyes, the rat speaks:

“Does it really matter if such a useless creature goes to die in the woods? I don’t think it does. I don’t think anyone will be able to tell the difference if you disappeared. Let go of your body, let go of your days. Don’t deny this poor rat.”

I run my fingers over the pulse on the rat’s neck, tenderly. The costs were clear, but I couldn’t pay them. The fingers turn into claws, puncturing jagged fingernails into the vein.

“You’re in my place,” I whisper back, and I fall back into myself ■

Los actos de amor y los pedazos de mi vida que de alguna manera, quizás en una vida anterior, me han hecho pensar en la vida que me sigue. Queriendo o no, son mis razones para vivir, y existir.

My life is built around places, enriched through walks within a confined neighborhood, and now grass that smells like all that is familiar. Today, I remember less. Today, I am dull, and it is Tuesday, and it feels like the end. I live stuck in a living room thinking. I think about whether I ever do enough. I think about my never-ending lack of peace, my confusion, my scatteredness, and the ways I find to express myself that make sense only to me, but I can only begin to be true and to speak true by telling you the things that compose me, for better or for worse.

For it is all that I want to make sense of how I feel, to make sense of this, of myself.

Mi vida empezó en el jardín de mi primera casa, el que era más chico que el cuarto de mis papás y salíamos a disfrutar solamente una que otra vez — el jardín — mi conexión más cercana a la naturaleza y la luz del sol en aquel tiempo. Aquí fue donde nuestra primera perra, Lola, que era del tamaño de un gato, con la actitud de un humano, pasando por las mismas emociones que tú y yo, corría lo que podía, asomándose en los hoyos que conectaban nuestro jardín con el del vecino.

Si ahora intento contar mi historia, con referencias solamente dirigidas a mi ser, sería no solamente una desgracia, sino una mentira. Si no es mi historia — es la de mi primera casa, la de mi hermano nombrado por mi padre y mi abuelo. Mi mamá y Lola. Mi vida es un cuento de todos, de nosotros — y para entenderlo se tiene que entender esto.

I was born into a family of Mexican immigrants in Austin, when the city was known for frogs painted on sides of buildings and as the less chaotic, smaller version of California. My dad told me California was the first option, but a good friend said it should be Austin – that Austin was the better option. When I was born into this family, they chose to buy a house on a street named after a chestnut, and my life next door to the heiress of Bush’s Chicken, the most popular girl in seventh grade, began.

My room in Chestnut Ridge remained the same over the years instead of shapeshifting with the “woman” I was becoming. It remained, and it was purple, with at least 20 different stuffed animals. My nightstand was white and made for a little girl. Of course, that little girl was once me, but now I think of the pink dollhouse knob on its drawer and wonder how it never broke. Then, it was just my nightstand. Now it’s the toy of a child, a symbol of my youth, and the only proof of my life before fear. The carpet, dull and beige was where I lay with friends as we scattered to get ready for homecoming. It’s where I had sleepovers and laughed behind my parents’ backs. We felt so big and bad for the things we were doing and saying, but nothing was ever real; nothing was ever serious.

During this time, what mattered most in life began: transformation. All that mattered was the way you filled your clothes, and how our tastes became indistinguishable as we chose from pools of people given to us, best suited for our young and underdeveloped personalities.

For it is all that I want to make sense of how I feel, to make sense of this,

When you are young, in retrospect, you think of yourself as incapable of complexity. So naive at eight years old, incapable of thoughts, or at least those of any value. But it was then, and I know it was then, that I realized that not having blonde hair was not that of a lack of trend or coincidence but of a curse. I rubbed my stomach differently, arching my back in the mirror. My neighbor — the girl who survived cancer, the most popular girl in school, the heiress of Bush’s Chicken — would never have hair on her stomach.

Everything I needed was around me during this time. All I needed to do was to walk a few steps, and it was there. I was at school, I was at the bus stop, I was at home. I was on a walk with my brother Alejandro, always talking about the very serious girlfriends he had in high school. There were two worth mentioning — both with blonde hair and names only letters apart from being the same. When we weren’t walking together, I waited for the day I introduced my first boyfriend to my dad at the door. My brother brought a new girlfriend home each year, and I stood waiting to greet her. When we did walk, it was usually initiated by his persistent inability to be alone or to be bored. He would come into my room with nothing much to say except for long strides, pacing back and forth until he asked, “do you want to go on a walk?” Because there was time for this then, and the things worth worrying about needed only to be resolved by a walk.

En nuestra segunda casa, en San Jerónimo, me encontraba a través de las paredes del jardín, azules y aplanadas de cemento, con árboles de bambú organizados perfectamente como pares de gemelos, esparcidos, divididos por familias de bugambilias. En este jardín, ningún árbol se encontraba en el centro, solo por el alrededor, distante a una selva o un encuentro de naturaleza cotidiano, y más cercano a uno casi artificial. El pasto perfecto y verde todos los días.

Esta casa es donde murió Lola en sus 15 años de vida. Pero mínimo aquí, de la manera más libre posible para un perro con actitud de humano. Mínimo, pienso en Lola y pienso en todo el espacio que logró tener, paseando por pastos verdes y perfectos a su ritmo.

Hoy pienso en mis perros, Luka y Mika, pero no pienso en sus recorridos en el jardín como pienso en los de Lola. Pienso en como antes nuestro jardín apenas encontraba razones para existir, y para tan solo reconocerse con el nombre “jardín”. Y como Lola, llegó a tener todo el espacio del mundo. Esto tal vez es porque siguen aquí conmigo, Luka y Mika, mientras vivo tan lejos y tan rápido. Y tal vez lo que encuentro imposible es reconocer lo que tengo ahorita como un momento a punto de definirse. Mientras vivo, y me definen los lugares y las personas y las energías que consumo diariamente. Mi cuerpo las almacena en partes de mi corazón, incapaz de aceptar que mi vida sigue acelerando sin parar, y que en algún momento se convertirán en los corridos que Lola una vez tuvo en el jardín de San Jerónimo.

Estos momentos, en San Jerónimo, son los últimos que recuerdo de una vida lenta, mientras vivía despacio, a través del jardín.

Today, I recognize the voices of birds I once knew when I used to go on walks with my brother. The birds and I became familiar with each other because they knew all we ever did was walk. They knew nothing was ever really wrong, so they kept their songs in tune for us. Today, the only way I can describe how I feel is with how the grass looks at me as I lay on it right now. It surrounds me with newfound desires, my witching desires, blistering like the innocence my mother once held and cared for. The innocence kept within a sevenyear-old perception of white rabbits before they become beady-eyed, and we begin to question the imposition of pureness beneath everything soft and white. Today, I am found incapable of describing the present how I do the past because I still live in those places. The only thing I can grasp from the world in front of me belongs right next to me, right now — within the patches of grass scattered in sunlight, with bodies lying next to each other. The grass I lay in now becomes the grass I laid in when I was young as I cling to the only places and stories I remember of my childhood.

Dentro de mis pedazos más valiosos, y temas de corazón que siguen tiernos y verdes. Sigo en mi primer cuarto en el que dormí de niña, en mi primera cocina, y en mi primer jardín. Entonces, como no tengo manera de descifrar de donde soy, a donde voy, lo único que puedo hacer es mirar hacia atrás, y recordar que mi alma permanece en las escrituras, los pensamientos, y las caminatas que tuve a los 15 añosy así para siempre. ■

“Everything I needed was around me during this time. All I needed to do was to walk a few steps, and it was there.”

A vision of liberating chaos emerges and reaches out of a night in Manchester in 1976.

by AIDAN VU

layout NICHOLAS PEASLEY photographer DYLAN HAEFNER video cinematographer LIV MARTINEZ video editor SOFIA ALEJANDRO BARRIOS stylists KEENA MEDINA, SUMMER SWEERIS & ADELINE HALE set stylist LAUREN MUNOZ hmua KENNEDY RUHLAND & ABBY BAGEPALLY models COLIN CANTWELL, NATÁN MURILLO & MIMO GORMAN

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Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester in 1976.

The ticket stubs were incorrectly printed with “Friday, June 4th, 1076”— the period of construction for the Tower of London by William the Conqueror. The stubs displayed the previous opening band, Buzzcocks, but they’d had to drop, and progressive rock band Solstice had to step in to cover for them. Four dozen people were in attendance that night, filling the first four or five rows of the venue.

Manager Malcolm McLaren, who sported a leather suit for the night, went around local pubs to draw people to the event. This included a 19-year-old Mark E. Smith, the future lead singer of legendary Manchester band The Four — with a raised eyebrow to complement his eccentric figure. McLaren’s strive to promote his anti-fashion clothing store “Sex” with his then-girlfriend Vivienne Westwood was etched in these small gigs for the group of provocateurs he threw together.

Solstice began to play — another painstakingly plain rock band. McLaren discouraged people from coming in to witness the opening support group.

An audible sighing. A concert held together by safety pins. Another wasted Friday night.

The Sex Pistols came on. Vocalist Johnny Rotten bested a ripped yellow jumper. Guitarist Steve Jones wore an all-in-one boiler suit. Drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock donned Oxfam attire.

Someone from the audience exclaimed, “You’re not very sexy, are you?”

Rotten shot back with “Why, do you want some sex?”

The fog of cigarette smoke filled the theater’s ceilings. Around the same time, a stream of fumes covered the outside of a rundown home on the outskirts of Sacramento, California. A young girl and her brothers watched piles of ripped denim, torn shirts, and leather engulfed in the flame that their father had set. My mother and uncles were molded by American society and Vietnamese cultural standards from my grandfather — one where appearance was everything and well-mannerisms were the law of their land.

As the flare in Sacramento grew, the low-lit stage in Lesser Free Trade Hall mirrored the poor acoustics muffling the bold lyrics of the Pistols. The band’s music steered completely away from the conventional culture of the time, distancing them from the pacifist hippies of the 1960s. Mid-way through their setlist, they sang “No Feelings”:

I got no feeling, no feeling, no feeling

For anybody else

Except for myself

My beautiful self-ish

CHAOS IT WAS

EMBRACING

“ IT WAS

“ IT WAS UTTER CHAOS , EMBRACING

WITH OPEN ARMS. ” “ IT WAS UTTER CHAOS , EMBRACING

IT IMPERFECTION

CHAO

IMPERFECTION WITH OPEN ARMS.

IMPERFECTION

UTTER CHAOS , EMBRACING IMPERFECTION WITH OPEN ARMS.

OPEN ARMS OPEN ARMS

Rotten’s staccato-style bursts and slurred pronunciation of the lyrics loosened inhibitions, encapsulating total release. It was a raucous noise of thrashing intensity where you could only hear the faint clapping and cheers from the audience in between the songs. It was utter chaos, embracing imperfection with open arms. A short melody, a rhythm, or even a lyric defines a musical motif — a redoubtable beginning that carries the potential to grow into a symphony of everlasting emotion and meaning.

Among the audience that night were Morissey, three members of Joy Division, and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson — all of whom were only just emerging into their roles in the music industry; following that night, all would go on to articulate their beliefs through their respective crafts. This was the reaction to the punk rock movement in the United Kingdom — centering the punk identity around an ethos of protest, autonomy, unorthodox fashion, and combative artistry.

Motifs, though small and unassuming, contain immense expression and innovation. They add complexity to a piece by combining and extending, which requires absorbing new material and creating a hybrid of themes and textures. The Pistols entrenched their motif of cultural and musical reformation, carving their names in the gaps of the wooden panels as the few then-nameless individuals became spellbound by their influence. The composition grew with an insatiable fervor, crescendoing outside of Manchester.

The University of Houston, Houston in 1996.

In college, my mother put distance between herself and her family’s home, finally gaining some form of liberation from her father’s pressure.

She drove her exhausted GL Prism, which didn’t have its own CD player. But again, having a player symbolized more of a luxury during that time. Being sheltered throughout most of her life, she was restricted access to the internet and television.

Piles of brown and orange hues covered the ground as she entered the campus courtyard that was a host to many unfamiliarities to her — one being that it was a space of musical mergence. There were students strumming guitars to love songs and a battling sound between boomboxes and CD players, emptying the quietude of the shedding trees.

If you, if you could return Don’t let it burn… You float like a feather In a beautiful world… Shakedown, 1979… The wave coming crash into me…

The atmosphere was a mosh of the Cranberries, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Dave Matthews Band. An underlying chord resonated across the lawn, a familiar whisper of discontent and yearning for release. “You’ve never heard of No Doubt?”

My mother’s boyfriend had interrupted the overwhelming moment. Taken aback, she responded hesitantly as she recounted past encounters with the title.

“Maybe?”

Her boyfriend pressed the button of his CD player, which spun with a soft whirr. He skipped past upbeat rhythms and ballad-like lyrics, stopping at a song named “Don’t Speak”.

It’s all ending We gotta stop pretending Who we are You and me

In that moment, my mother was transported to Lesser Free Trade Hall. She saw Joy Division and The Four thrashing against one another as Johnny Rotten’s harsh, discordant notes matched the extravagance of his fellow bandmates. The artists represent a series of jagged stitches in the cloth No Doubt was cut from, but each retained their individual voices in the musical blendings across campus. Together, they weave a shared narrative of resistance — from punk rock to new wave to riot grrrl.

The echoes of Lesser Free Trade Hall resounded through the faint speakers of a used CD player. The Sex Pistols abrasive motif of transformation, willed by fate, had become an enduring means to catharsis and liberation. My mother embraced the freedom offered by the music, bearing witness to and immortalizing the spirits of those manifold artists who, while converging in harmony, maintain their own pitch.

As my mother reached for the air in erratic movement, a long forbidden sensation of passion in her soul was ignited, meeting with the embers in Sacramento that seemed so distant. A relentless cycle of destruction and renewal was unfolding. Amongst the other students around her, it was then she grasped the profound truth: amidst contradiction, there exists the potential for rebirth, a self-revolution waiting to unfold as it did for the few at the Pistols’ first gig in Manchester. ■

" AN UNDERLYING CHORD RESONATED ACROSS THE LAWN, A FAMILIAR WHISPER OF DISCONTENT AND YEARN ING FOR RELEASE.

layout JOY DELIGHT PESEBRE photographer JOSHUA RUSH stylist REYANA TRAN & ADELINE HALE set stylist ANGELO CORRIDORI hmua REYANA TRAN nail artist ANOUSHKA SHARMA models PHIA GONZALES & MORGAN CHENG

by JOY WANG

layout EMMY CHEN photographer WILL WHITWORTH stylist REYANA TRAN & MIMO

GORMAN set stylist EVANGELINA YANG hmua JAISHRI RAMESH & MERYL JIANG nail artist MERYL JIANG models LONDON TIJANI & MIU NAKATA

Ican’t even think in here.

My roommates jeer at the televised football game to my right, and a dog howls in shrill anguish to my left. And if I hold my breath, my upstairs neighbors’ climaxing moans will join them. The circulating heat of my bathroom fan hums with my sighs. I wiggle my toes, and I can feel the cool metallic edge of my bed frame.

Strapped to my scratchy bedsheets, I lie awake in earnest. My eyes are already sore from staying open too long in the stale air of my new room. The edible I took as makeshift melatonin has yet to hit, so I wait in this purgatorial paralysis instead. Fear dips my lungs into a congealing slop. If I don’t sleep now, I’ll stay a prisoner to this catastrophe of capitalism.

I turn my face against my pillow, and it’s as if the sun has been sealed entirely away from me. I imagine that it lies just beyond the thin plaster of my walls, its wayward tendrils of light stowed into the uneven bruises along the topcoat paint. My uncharged sunset lamp — bought on a landlord influencer’s recommendation — sputters out its final pitiful dying light. I watch as it groans and undulates painfully with the stillness around us, as if it, too, in its Amazon plasticity, has been extinguished by this never-ending room.

The management desk was so sure that it was going to be easy. “Most people hardly open their curtains anyway,” they had insisted, eager for me to jump on their last unit left: a windowless 4x4. The only affordable offer left near campus.

Now, with only a Sky Lite Galaxy Projector charting my night vision, I am greeted again by my forthright wall. In such a regime of darkness, its perpetuity stretches beyond all imagination; the four sides it is caged by cave into each other, and in their place, my wall will rage on for an eternity.

I poke at the fingernail indents left by previous inhabitants. The walls’ virgin renterfriendly cleanliness mocks me — untouched, unmoved, uninterrupted. Unlived.

I can’t reasonably relax under its glare, so I opt instead to exhaust myself in the only way I know how: I put my fingers between my legs. I’m gazing at the visible drywall in front of me when I cum, my fluids puttering politely into my hands.

But when I close my eyes, an orgasm-induced fatigue washing me anew, I realize at once that sleep can no longer be my sole intermittent escape. Instead: the hazardous melting plaster of my walls waits for me. I’m plunged into a churning, cavernous emptiness so deep I can no longer feel — even in my dreams, I belong only to this room. Desperation arrests my fraught mind so wholly, but I welcome it because thinking is the only reminder that I have a body. But even this stifling terror cannot plug in the gaping holes of my skin.

I shudder so violently that I fling awake. And now I’m at it again — I thrust into myself, over and over, until I can’t stand it anymore, until I am undeniably wrought with feeling, until I can never again yield to the night. My groin spasms from pain, the raw ache of motion striking through me.

I drag myself upward, panting from the exertion of fighting, and I pry my legs away from the magnetic force of my bed. I stumble straight into the corner of my desk — of course,

a mere few inches away from me because how else will we both fit — searching for something more to anchor me down in my imminent weightlessness.

Swiping my hand across a littered chain of Tupperware and take-out containers, I grasp onto the only usable spork left, and I gorge on the moldy dregs of my leftovers. Campbell’s and Kraft and Jell-O roll down my throat until I start choking from my rush. I’m buckling in nausea, the most natural human inclination, and I think, 'Thank God.'

But after indistinguishable foodstuffs soar heatedly through my throat, I’m dangling again in that goddamn murk. Cubes of moist bile drop steadily from my lips, and I panic-crawl into an interloping nether-space. The dimensions of the walls morph around me the further through the square footage I stretch across; I can’t tell where I end and where this room begins.

The voiding darkness opens its great mouth under me, and I start falling through every dimension. I’m quick to scratch off my vomit-drenched Vans and Levi’s. They, too, cling readily to me, afraid, quivering, knowing that we are all that is left. But when I finally get rid of all that I own, they become nothing as easily as I have. I shudder, but I know better than to look behind me.

Now as bare as the day I first drew breath, I at last hold myself true, trembling in time with my heart. But I succumbed a long time ago to this room, back when I signed the lease, and my body can only follow suit. Blood surges, red-hot and angry, from my embattled flesh. I stop resisting my foretold failure at last, and the all-encompassing night sears straight through me.

Defeated, I lay my numb body down, now as heavy as the air around me. My skin and hair and nails fuse with my bodily liquids, and I sink into the irritated gray plaster of my walls.

But when I close my eyes, I dream of light. I’m staring directly into the sun, its incomprehensible enormity burning a purifying rod through me. I watch as it ambles further and further away until it shrinks permanently behind the cracked drywall. Night gushes forth, lapping at the retina-blearing magnificence. But it prevails: sunlight gets congested into the beads of air in the room’s interior paste and spun into the veins of haphazard paint layers. An empire will always fall.

My eyes fling open, and hope ignites through me. I smooth my fingers over the holes tried by past years’ tenants, and I know at once what I must do. I begin clawing furiously through the coagulated tons of regurgitated soup and ejaculation and blood that surround me. I can feel so intimately the licks of my heart stirring once more, and I know that I can nearly see it now.

I push myself to stand again, and I run across the remaining solid ground until I reach the edge of my eternal wall. It all begins roaring back into me, these spectres of touchdown chants and canine melodies. I hold my breath, the same yearning flaring within me like never before, and I tear open the infinite expanse in front of me.

DON’TSTOPDANCINGUNTILTH E ATRUC I N FALLS.

by ANAGHA RAO

layout JAYCEE JAMISON & GRACE JOH photographer DYLAN HAEFNER stylists BELLA MUNOZ & JORDYN JACKSON

hmua REYANA TRAN & SHILPIKA PANDEY nail artist GRACE JOH models TYLER TRAN, AIDAN CROWL & JORDYN JACKSON

urtains open on a little girl, eyes glistening with ambition. She’s bold and vivacious. She’s a star in her suburbia — glued to tap shoes, church choir, school plays. If there’s a stage, she’s on it. The boys want her, and the girls want to be her.

But she wants more.

She yearns for a grander stage, brighter lights, louder applause. Mom shuttles her to audition after audition. More, more, more! Even merely auditioning was exhilarating; she never viewed it as a chore. She loved being the switch that turned directors human, watching their tight-lipped, generic smiles keel over in laughter, curl down at drama. She’d later realize that’s why she wanted to act: to bring humaneness to humanity. But it never seemed like enough. Dance well, sing louder, act better. She begged to meet the one pair of eyes that saw the fire in her belly, saw that she already knew she wanted to give her life to the stage. All she needs is one chance to do it on the big screen, to hear the cheers of millions.

And then she gets it.

“There’s only two types of people in the world: the ones that entertain, and the ones that observe.”

You’re never prepared for your big break. She didn’t think people could scream so loud — but then again — maybe a million at once can. She is God’s gift to Earth, unattainable even to other stars. She’s in the Big Apple!

LA! Her childhood home could fit in her kitchen. She’s drowning in designer. She doesn’t remember when she wanted these things, but it’s part of the role, she figures. She gets off on people’s admiration, partly to distract herself from the distance she started to feel from them. At times, she felt like a circus animal, obedient to the beck and call of her ringmaster. Stripping her humanity to feed her voyeurs, she started to feel less real.

Months go by in studios, on tour buses. The skyscrapers that once dotted her dreams were right in front of her, but they all start to look the same. This is the first time she doesn’t go home for Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s for the best — they’re starting to ask for more. They’re not the only ones. Crabby directors and stingy record labels wring her out to line their pockets. They call it mentoring; she tells the press she’s sculpted with a heavy hand. She tried to be tough, keep her authenticity at first, but they were nicer when she gave in. It’s all worth it when the crowd roars.

Loneliness fractures her sanity, and liquor glues it together. She couldn’t break; if she broke, she wouldn’t be a star, and who was she if not a star? The parties get wilder, nights get longer. It was the same thing every night, but if she didn’t go, she’d break. Funny how she felt like a prisoner to everything she dreamed of. But her dream was a farce from the start; she is the circus freak. The spotlight’s glare is unforgiving, and she becomes blind to who she is. There used to be a bolder line between character and reality, but she can’t find it anymore. All she knows are the characters she plays on TV, her Facetuned selfies. Sobbing behind the caked layers of her clown makeup, she dances to the sinister tune of her own demise — an innovative choreography of taking shots, smoking cigs, and popping pills. But this is the only refuge she knew, a brief respite from her neverending performance.

The Big Apple goes rotten. She shows up to set in sunglasses, makeup smudged from the night before. Tours get sloppy; she’s mixing up her choreos. She doesn’t remember how it got this bad, but she doesn’t care. She figures it’s punishment for selling herself. Tabloid upon tabloid dissects every fold, every mistake. She’s started to do the same. She pops one. That makes it feel okay.

Her manager tells her to take the day off. She’s too hungover to protest. Fuck him. What does he know? She stumbles to her bathroom and grabs a bottle on the way. She pinches her sallow skin and hollow cheeks. Broken acrylics brush over chapped lips. Her eyes are dull, glazed over, and her nose turns at the stench of the rotten decay leaking from her heart.

She can’t recognize herself.

“Spotlight on me and I’m ready to break.”

Enough hiding — let’s give them a show! She lights her bed on fire, and walks out with nothing but sunglasses and a pack of Reds. There’s a cacophony of sirens and alarms behind her, but all she hears is quiet peace. Officers and bodyguards crowd her, concerned, but their faces stiffen when she emerges with a smirk on her Botoxed face. She did this to herself.

It’s showtime.

In a whirlwind, contracts and front lawns alike are set ablaze. I would tell you more about the chaos that ensued, but frankly, she doesn’t remember. The only record she has of her mania is mugshots upon mugshots. Of

And oh, the afterparties — how intoxicated they make her feel, chasing adrenaline high after adrenaline high. But soon it’s inadequate. Can a girl get some real shit? Let’s take it to the next level. These people don’t know her. Their opinion doesn’t matter. No one knows her. Did she even know herself? A void grows in her heart. Drink it. Smoke it. Pop it. Anything to fill the void. So many bodies in a room, and yet she couldn’t be lonelier. She misses her mom’s hugs. More. More. More.

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course, she serves cunt in all of them. She never takes them seriously. Quickly, she realizes can never be punished, not really. Right? She is America’s sweetheart.

Even when her novelty wears off, she doesn’t care. Her future was fucked from the start — at least she’s free now. She had missed having control. She can do whatever she wants now, and it is exhilarating. She’s saving herself from fading into obscurity, and she’d rather be dead than irrelevant.

There are also the hospital bills. She doesn’t like thinking about those so much. They feel more like punishment than the police reports. Paper gowns and sedatives strip her high, and she is forced to realize how deeply sad she ia. She has no regard for her life because she never felt like she was living one. None of this shit was real — not the parties, the drugs, or the fame. None of this happened to real girls. Real girls had normal jobs that ended at 5 PM and families that went out for ice cream every Friday. That’s how her life used to be. She had it so good before and didn’t even know it.

And even better? Everyone else knows. All eyes are on her. It’s what she always wanted, right? Even when she wasn’t acting, she was ensnared in a perpetual spectacle, the whole world eagerly awaiting her next act.

“All eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus.”

Did we do this to her? We loved her but never liked her and made that clear. How could we? Even in her presence, she felt so far up, far gone. Sure, we cheered at her success, but it was her failures we craved. Even in our very human worlds, we were comforted at the sight of humanity. We rubbernecked at her every suffering for our amusement, became the market for nitpicky paparazzi. Maybe we were the ringmasters in the end.

The brightest stars cast the darkest shadows. We trail behind her, shaded, in constant pursuit of breaking our routine. Were we jealous of her perfection? She lives lifetimes worth of experiences in a night. She represents our darkest desires, and we live vicariously through her. We fantasize about dropping everything and buzzing our head, setting a driveway on fire. We yearn for her rush, and she begs for our stability. Her escape became ours. But we can bounce in out of these worlds — she’s stuck.

Deafening applause reverberates from the theater. The curtains close on a woman-shaped shell. ■

layout BINNY BAE photographer REYNA DEWS videographer BELTON GAAR stylists

SONIA SIDDIQUI & MIMO GORMAN set stylist YOUSUF KHAN hmua JAYCEE JAMISON & XAVIER WILLIAMS models MELAT WOLDU & CAT ROLAND

by AVA STERN

ines curl around the iron bars of my cage, organic spirals strangling the metal. Roots sprout from below, breaking apart the cool foundation with the strength of my growth.

There’s a person-shaped hole in the clutter on my bed. The four walls of my room curtain me off from the outside world, forming a protective screen to shield their eyes from my wasting. Dirty clothes loom over the winding path to the bathroom. I weave my way through discarded jeans and bath towels, deciding for once to face myself in the mirror. Examining my reflection, I feel a strange excitement at the deepening purple circles under my eyes, at the sunless pallor of my cheeks. I turn this way and that, imagining the way I would draw eyes on the street.

What’s going on with her? Is she okay? All press is good press.

My toothpaste has become offensive. The sharpness of the mint seems sensationalized, trying too hard. I glare at my hoard of personal care products, spiting them for their mocking insinuations. Each bottle on my bathroom counter points to something about me that needs to change, but I am no ship of Theseus; I was born fully made. I don’t understand why I need to scrape layers off one by one, revealing something new and baby pink underneath. Let me be enough.

Humans compound chemicals into creams and then glance at you

longways when you don’t hand over your money. Billion-dollar industries run on the marketability of insecurity. Even grunginess has been commodified into something to be sold. I long to escape into something real, but it seems impossible. All roads lead back to the public eye. If authenticity exists, I pledge myself to its chase. I want to wear my scars and bumps as badges of honor. I want to run down the street barefoot, turning my heels tar-black. I want to remove myself from that which humanity has constructed and exist in a completely unmanufactured state. I want to be dirty and to love myself for it.

Forfeit self-editing – remember that nature already sculpted you.

The trickle of a brook tickles my toes: pebbles slide and mold to the contours of my step. I hope there are worms wriggling under me, that life thrives where no one thinks it would. I scrape my foot on a particularly sharp rock and watch as my blood intertwines with the currents of the stream. I watch as the patch of scarlet diffuses into the surrounding water; a part of me will now forever be with this river, skipping along the stones. Grabbing onto the trembling branches above me, I drag myself from the stream. The sun dries the spots of mud that splatter my bare chest. I feel no different than the tree trunks I pass, than the silt that slips under my feet. Decades of history adorn them as they adorn me, and I celebrate the dirt that lies under my fingernails.

Out here, when I crawl with the insects and sway with the leaves, I feel the absence of eyes like a second skin. No one watches me save the stars glittering from above. My muscles twist and flex of their own accord, without apprehension. It’s a sweet, sweet release.

I have always wondered why humanity insists on playing God. Have we never considered that we are the weeds bursting through nature’s design? We see ourselves as perching atop nature’s creation, never acknowledging our deeply integrated part in the world we destroy. The human body was constructed meticulously over millennia, each and every part of us arriving through some biological necessity. If authenticity is what I chase, nature must be where I begin.

I hereby choose to let myself run according to my celestial programming. I let hair sprout from my legs and sigh in relief — I have been cold for so long. I stand in the sun and let its rays brown my nose and pink my cheeks. Sweat dries in sticky patches across my skin, yet still I laugh at my ability to run. I examine my bone structure with the palm of my hand — my hooked nose, my sharp jaw, and appreciate that I am the culmination of hundreds of generations. My ancestors suffered, longed, grew, and broke for me to exist the way I do. I am electing to live in the body they created for me, the way it was built to be.

Finally opened and disentangled, do you love what you see?

I unfurl my limbs no earlier than noon. Undulating in last night’s clothes, I wake up bit by bit, opening my mascara-bound eyes last. I roll over, meeting myself in the black reflection of my phone, attempting to reassemble my mind and my body. I feel echoes of life lingering like kisses on my skin. Maybe it’s the mussed hair, or the sweat-damp tank top, but I feel somehow more beautiful than I did last night, lying here bare-legged in the stark morning light. The black smudges under my eyes are precious; my experience has left its traces on me. Of course, I savor that.

When I see myself lit by black light, or sense that I am covered in the smell of another, I wonder why banality was ever considered beautiful. It revolts me, frankly, the way purity creates allure. Authenticity has been left somewhere far in the past, far from the realm of eroticism.

As for me, I have come to terms with the fact that I was not born sexy yesterday. I want you to feel each of my seven thousand and

eighty-one days as you slide your hand across my back. Time has not left me untouched. Dust me for his fingerprints, I’m covered. Measure your handprint against those already carved into my skin. Embrace me for what I am, not what I curated myself to be. I will be real whether it pleases your eye or not.

Dirtiness has much less to do with externality than with freedom. Many try desperately to look as if they don’t care but come off cloying. Authenticity cannot be cherry-picked; that’s why it’s so rare. To be real, you must simply be. There is no rhyme or reason, no methodology. Even the smallest application of energy mars its facade. Letting go, allowing the rivers of time to pass over me without impediment, has set me on the path towards reaching that impossible, unconscious place. I walk alone, barefoot, clawing my way towards a simple existence.

Eden had no gardener. I let myself grow. ■

SUNBURN

layout JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO creative director SONIA SIDDIQUI photographer LIV MARTINEZ videographer BELTON GAAR stylists VI CAO, EMILY MARTINEZ & SONIA SIDDIQUI hmua

MERYL JIANG model ALEX BASILLIO

by ANAGHA RAO & ANJALI KRISHNA

PLAY SCENES

Every star has numbered days, even the sun. Oh, to have spent a lifetime boiling and crackling, Keeping everyone light years away; She will not hesitate to incinerate you, consume you —

The fluorescent lights in her office sting Elodie’s furrowed brow. Years spent in this corporate temple just ended with her as a discarded cog in the machine. How the mighty have fallen, she thinks, looking outside the landlord’s office. It is, indeed, just another trailer.

She looks outside, pointedly avoiding the man’s eyes as he explains her rent payments and examines the veritable array of farm animal statuary. Elodie glances back at her landlord and wonders where he got these statues, in dozens and in a variety of creatures. She catches the eye of a small golden bird, perched in the entry lamp, and glances away quickly again, as if it’s going to up and fly away. She feels a sudden urge to run — like free-falling in a dream and waking up, kicking her feet into nothing.

So much warmth for all to marvel at, So much warmth that flames snake through her singed nostrils and ignite every synapse. She’s always on, that Sun. Fuel is finite, though. Every star has numbered days, and the sun will make sure you know it’s her last.

Elodie has never felt like this before. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a dream; her mind was marred by babbling analysts and the opening bell. But you couldn’t even hear the freeway out here. The disconnect lets her lungs expand, her mind wander.

No longer captive but not yet at ease. The light was once an embrace, Protective yet destructive, I could soon smell my flesh burning; Her fiery decree taught harsh lessons to me.

The trailer she’s been shown to is pink. Shockingly, ridiculously pink, and in a way, it’s adorable. It’s the animal statues, centered around a picnic table and a dated fountain, that scare her. There’s a leaping horse atop the fountain, spurting out water feebly through its open mouth. The angel looks like a baby, Elodie thinks, dribbling out formula onto its cheek. She remembers the black marble countertops of her previous rental and heaves her things inside.

While Elodie pops the tab on another Lonestar, she eyes the horse outside. From her kitchen window and the head of her bed frame, she can meet the fountainhead’s eyes. Elodie keeps her eyes on the horse outside until the moment she falls asleep.

SCENE SELECTION

On her second day, Elodie has to ask the park manager for a bandage in his dimly lit trailer. She knows he saw her kick the mid-sized goat statue near the entrance of her new home, saw her pull off her flip-flop to find her foot bleeding. Maybe he heard her yelling on the phone at the former colleague who had called for her new address to send the last of the checks. She wonders if this man — the fifty-something creature that controls her living situation — knows that she doesn’t have enough to cover next month’s payment. He hands her the bandages without question. His eyes speak enough: I’ve seen your type. His eyes glint with self-efficacy, dulled by the dust of pity, as if they’re not living a trailer away. Next time, Elodie decides, she’ll brave the animals’ wrath by herself.

From her incendiary clutch I flee She dims, and I notice she is me

IN THE SHADOWS I DISCOVER LIBERTY

She sees them while she sleeps, flitting through and crowding dreams of her former offices. When she wakes, she’ll find them multiplied, stone birds perched on her clothesline and the baby goats inching closer to her trailer.

Elodie doesn’t know a single person in this state. She spends the next few weeks with the cattle as the world descends to winter and names them. She fixes up the chipped paint on the chickens and leaves fresh lemonade at the picnic table for the sheep. She talks to the cows and she tells them that she’s being forgotten, how it feels less like a friend lost and more like a weight lifted.

I AM FREE LIKE THE SUMMER BREEZE HEAVY IS THE HAND THAT MOLDED ME BUT NOW I AM FORMLESS PROSPEROUS

I CURL UP TOWARD THE BRIGHT SKY AND MY GRIN TURNS WITH ME I NO LONGER FEAR THE SUN — I FEEL SYMPATHY

If you lose everything on Wall Street, they respect you jumping off their buildings. They respect a splattered body on the pavement, but they would never respect her here: in cutoffs and uncomplicated happiness. You have to live and die on their terms and money. When you step outside of the rat-race, you’ve failed, and you’ll see it in their eyes while they watch you pack your desk. There aren’t any photos of Elodie’s to put away. The glint in their sly eyes signals that they know this is best for them, that they’re better than you for having it. Perhaps she always felt detached from the machine, and they could sense it. Maybe that’s why they kicked her out. Total buy-in is necessary from each cog in the machine. They obviously know everything at the ripe age of twenty-five.

I WAS THE SCORCHER AND I SCORCHED MYSELF ONCE LIFE NEEDS LIGHT BUT LIVING NEEDS LEISURE AND I AM FREE LIKE THE SUMMER BREEZE

Spring blooms in the trailer park and Elodie decorates her trailer in flowers as pink as her paint. Elodie wakes one afternoon to find the horse’s spout flowing again, and she smiles. She doesn’t see the hammer and cogs hidden behind goat hovels, or the nails bitten between the teeth of birds. They’re feathers and fur, rippling in the summer breeze. ■