The first time I saw the Skinny Russian Girl, I judged her in the exact way I dread others judging me. She tiptoed into yoga class late, and before I’d even seen her face, when all I knew of her was a vaguely narrow form in the periphery of my vision, I thought the damning [...]
It was Saturday morning and we were still in bed, beginning a very intense discussion, when you happened to knock on our door. “You’re looking at me funny,” he’d just said. “Like you don’t know who I am.”
“Well, I guess it’s just a side of you I hadn’t considered before,” I said. “Not that it’s [...]
The last time I went home to Minnesota, I got together with my best friends from high school and we stayed up through the night — first watching an ill-advised screening of “2 Girls 1 Cup” and then recovering for the next six hours, talking and eating flan — until eventually we’d convinced Adelia to [...]
“No way,” I said. “I hate that church.”
Heads raised in surprise. I looked down at my plate of Christmas Eve meatballs, chest swelling and constricting with confusion. I hated that church? Seriously? Wasn’t that an ignorant thing to say? As a Unitarian I’ve always claimed to be open to other ideas and curious about all [...]
I somehow found myself at a Christmas formal for the MassGen hospital’s cardiac unit, surrounded by shiny-haired couples wearing red ties and black velvet. Nat King Cole crooned from behind sparkling trees, and somewhere, someone made an inside joke involving prosthetic limbs.
“How do I wind up in these fancy things,” I thought to myself, poking [...]