Rubber Missiles

Rubber Missiles

An Exercise in Unlearning

Article by Anna Heimel, art by Utshaa Basu

Content Warning: Religious indoctrination, abortion

I remember the off-white light in the girls’ bathroom. I untied my shoes as I overheard a word. Masturbation. It was Ella who said it across the room. It echoed through those white tile floors.

I’d never been told what it meant, but I knew that I knew it. Ella said, it’s when you have sex with yourself. Ella’s mom was a doctor and it showed. Ella was smart. She always seemed to know more than me. It killed me. She knew the word masturbation, but did she do it too? I doubted it. She did everything right. She didn’t know shame, she never over-ate, she never made mistakes in math class. Surely. She never touched herself until she burned. 

I did it for months after that day in the bathroom. One morning I sat, raw in religion class. The teacher said: Do unto others as you would yourself. We read from our shiny books that broke down the bible into small sections of self-loathing. Sex is sacred... don’t have sex before marriage... don’t participate in self-gratification…

Excuse me??? 

Did this book covered with a smiling cartoon Jesus just tell me what to do with my body? Jesus smiled at me as my stomach burned with anger.

I continued my nightly routine. It felt a little bad, but it felt too good to let the words from that book interfere. Looking back, I know the guilt nestled quietly inside of me. 

Three months later, the teachers brought us to the library for a “talk” about abortion. I knew what that word meant; my mom had told me women get them when they need them. So their lives aren’t ruined. She had one once in law school. I sat down on the itchy floor. The fluorescent light stared. It was seventh grade and my school had recruited an anti-abortion activist to speak to us. The smiling woman started talking. She talked about pussies like she didn’t have one. She stared at me as she said: Sex is sacred. I looked down at the carpet. She continued: Don’t have sex before marriage. If you do make that mistake, keep the baby... life starts at conception. She talked about sex like it was an accident. Like she didn’t know what it felt like to cum. I sunk further down into the itchy floor and my stomach churned. 

I looked up again. My eyes met spiky forceps that wound through the smiling woman’s hands. She opened and closed them slowly as she detailed how doctors used them to crush the baby’s skull...mutilate its limbs...rip it from the mother’s uterus. She stared at us, making sure we imagined what she said. She kept smiling eerily as Ella and I exchanged nervous looks. 

Three years passed. I was in high school. I walked across the soft white carpet of Ella’s boyfriend’s basement. I was wearing short shorts. The shorts the staring woman said would invite men to take advantage of me. I knew this wasn’t true, but I did wear them because I wanted to be looked at. I wanted to drink a lot of vodka and kiss a man. To be touched by someone else’s hand. I made eyes at the blonde boy across the room and he walked over. I felt powerful. I told him how drunk I was and giggled. He put his arm around my waist. He pulled me closer and my stomach burned. I wanted him. He stared into me and met my lips with his; he sucked on them and pulled my tongue inside his mouth. He put his hand around my neck, gently but intently. I felt close to him. It felt like we’d done this for years. The neon blue light wrapped around us as my body sunk into his. My skin tingled hotly as his cool grip grew firmer. 

The next day my stomach churned when I found out he had a girlfriend. I was the other woman in my first sexual experience. He used my body and lied about it to his girlfriend and to Ella (who knew he was bullshitting). She and I told him what he already knew. Still, I couldn’t help think about that night with him when I touched myself. I focused on his body and reconstructed every scene. When I drank, I could feel him. His touch grew stronger with every sip; so many nights, I sipped too much to reach him.

Months later, after trying and failing to have sex in college, I sat at home in isolation. My body was healing as I pushed rubber missiles inside of me. I had started pelvic floor therapy and I could put things in me without pain. I had a friend who became my lover. I tried and failed to let him inside of me. Months passed. Eventually, I visited him and it worked. I let him in under those warm yellow lights and it didn’t hurt. It didn’t... those yellow lights were too soft. We broke up, but my body absorbed his love. It dissolved the fear inside of me and allowed me to open myself without pain. 

Some days, sex still stings. But I do it, honoring the work I put in to gain control over my body. Some days, I even enjoy it. Some days, it is euphoric. My new love and I turn on the red lights and soak each other in. When the sting subsides, it burns so good.  Everything is red and warm. 

The Sins of the World

The Sins of the World

Dancing with Dreams

Art and Article by Katie Kamio

All the sins of the world live in the abandoned barn in my backyard. They accumulate one. by. one. In crevasses of discarded cans and under molding leaves. Then, when darkness comes, they creep into my bedroom, consuming my dreams.

The music starts and they dance with me. I turn left and we dip into a waltz. We twirl round and round in circles; they tell me how I can have it all. As we come to a hold, the side of the room vanishes and is replaced with a veneer of shimmering gold.  I see myself dressed in heavy golden fabric, leaflets peeling off my wrists, the dress’s hem drooping to the floor. She or me stands in an arched passageway that looks out onto a quiet sea and the breeze disturbs her hair. She gazes back at myself, stretching her spine. Then, the wind picks up and a sheet of white paper blows into view, someone’s frantically scribbled handwriting across it. I squint at the paper scuttling across the floor of the archway, blowing against the wall before going airborne. It flutters up towards her and I watch the nose of my regal self wrinkle, and in the wall, she reaches out to touch it. As the paper tentatively connects with the fingertips of her gilded hands, its white hue slowly bursts in a vibrant explosion, like a leaf turning color in the wind of a biting fall. It’s a metamorphosis so subtle it’s almost undetected until one day, I look up and am faced with a wall of red. But here, the white paper turns golden and the letters start to fall off the page. Each letter jumps off of the sheet and plunges to the marble floor, leaving her to stare, crestfallen, at a halo of misshapen stains encircling her skirt. As the sheet floats down, leaving her fingertips, it scrunches itself into a ball. The spikey ball seems to pull inward with its own gravitational force, folding in on itself until its edges start to smooth and roll into a tiny golden droplet. As it falls, the droplet rolls down her dress, disintegrating into the fabric at the hem. As the drop disappears, another sheet emerges, along with a second, and before long, she is surrounded by a storm of paper and gold. I peel my eyes away from the chaos and back into the ballroom, where all the sins gather, their eyes still watching the frenzy of white and gold. The music leaps and becomes more upbeat. I turn to the right and we flow into a salsa. As the music bears down on my rhythm, I think back to the archway and feel the urge to return.

I pivot back to the veneer, now a dark navy, and see myself in my kitchen late at night. I’m in pajamas and swallowing the last ice cream sandwich instead of leaving it for my brother. He’s not there to see the black font on the box grow, consuming all the light. The black lettering continues to expand, swallowing so much light that the fridge disappears. Then, the darkness abruptly stops expanding, a portal suspended in the air. My hand reaches again into the non-fridge, searching, looking for another sandwich, another treat I shouldn’t take. The darkness consumes my hand and for a moment, all is still. Then wider and wider, the darkness creeps across the adjacent wall. As if breaking a barrier, the dark jumps up my arm, dragging me into the depths of the freezer. I start to feel a tingling in my gut and I can hear the music again. All the sins of the world hush. They whisper, “It doesn’t have to be scary.” An ice cream sandwich utopia slowly develops. Cookie crumbles decorate ornate chateaus and the fountains flow cream. I pull away from the wall and settle back into the arms of the sins. 

As if on cue, the beat starts throbbing under our feet, pulling me back to the dance. A feral feeling crawls from the end of the room, slinking up on us, and then it pounces. Trapped in the tumultuous rhythm of the song, my arms and hips flail to the sound. As I jolt left and right, the floor cleaves open, leaving a steep crack down to the depths of the ground. Hot liquid seeps up and I start to feel the knot at my center harden. As I peer down at the dark eddies of nothingness, I feel spidery fingers settle on my back. The pressure hardens into a shove, I turn to find all the sins in the world smirking down at me. I grab their hands as my balance falters. Heat coats my body and before I can say,

“Stop! Stop it!”

I find myself falling into the depths with the sins on top of me. Angered, they twist, contort, and then plunge faster. They break the dream dimension and soar out of my head and into the waning night. The sins of the world crawl into the dense bushes outside my house, before slinking back to the crevices of the abandoned barn. 

I awake to find my body in my bed, in my room, in my house, curtains glowing with early morning sun. As I peel myself from the covers, I can’t help wondering:

did something happen last night

Vivere Sin

Vivere Sin

Article by Shea Li Dombrowski, art by Isabella Hageman

Content Warning: Religious trauma, infanticide

When Elizabeth was younger, her mother used to tell her that for people like them, to live is to sin. In those days, among the sweet smell of wheat and the wind tugging at the strings of her bonnet—before she bolted to leave it behind in all abandon—those words did not mean much to her. The years of the lord passed, the fruit fields ripened, she married, and eventually, she fell in love—and she found sin.

And the thing, Elizabeth thought, that no one told you about sin was that it felt like benediction.They told you the temptation was great, the fruit on the tree of knowledge looked sweet and ripe, but it was a poison to the Garden of Eden. Sometimes, when she was laying beneath the weight of her husband’s grip, under the full and waning moon—feeling nothing, not fear nor anger nor even sadness—she reflected that there could be no sin in this. There was no debasement, even the violation felt bland and tasteless. And they said that the sting of the switch the same width as her heavy-handed husband’s thumb was cleansing as it sang through the air and into her flesh, but it was nothing to the feather-light touch of a knuckle against her breast. Morning, noon, and night they prayed; but she only felt true worship in those stolen moments when the moon was new and day was almost approaching. 

            They sinned in more ways than she could count under that darkness, so quickly and so many times that the heady pounding of her heart made her head go dizzy with it. Sometimes, she wondered if it was one big sin or many little ones—if every breath she took from the first moment, the first glance on was a sin and she simply had not stopped for a single second. In those days after, when her head had cleared, but the desire grew within her, and her heart tugged at her to steal away again, she thought she understood what her mother had meant. Time wove around her affairs like the slow pull of the needle through the tough fabric of new trousers for her husband, to the quick pull of thread through the hole before the process would start again. Somehow, she never saw an end to the line—perhaps she thought her thread would be cut short before she ever reached it.

            When she was out in the fields, the palms of her hands slowly turned the color of the dirt, dusty and slightly brown, light and dark together. She could feel the particles gathered on her skin, building up layer by layer until they felt like a part of her. When she was dyeing fabric, her hands were stained black from the sumac. It felt wet and slippery but stayed embedded in the layers of her skin for days. When the color faded, she looked at her hands, surprised, as if she expected them to stay that way forever. When she gave birth, her hands clenched the sides of the bed as she screamed, the other women urging her to push, to endure, to bear it, her child—his child. And then the woman washed the blood away, but her hands were rough and calloused and still held the dye and the dirt when she cradled the baby to her breast, allowing her daughter to suckle.

            Her husband named her daughter Leah, and held her duly in his heavy hands before relinquishing her back to her mother as the baby’s tears began to form. Elizabeth called her daughter Abigail when they were alone, murmured it into her soft head, and whispered it as she drifted off to sleep, but never when anyone could hear. She felt her lips crack and break and almost bleed as she placed soft kisses on her daughter’s head and lay awake at night, hating her sins for staying hidden so well in her, only to manifest in her daughter. And she tried to remember the first moment, the original sin, and her legs kicked the sheets that felt slick with blood, blood she knew had been washed clean days ago. But even in the darkness, she thought she saw faint stains of red that would not wash off.

            During the day, she cradled Abigail, Leah, to her chest and fed her. She swaddled her tiny body. It was all at once childish and already marked as woman. She waited for those fragile breaths as her baby-blue eyes sparkled through tears. As she cooked, she watched her daughter’s face screw up into a wail or open up in delight at the smells that must have seemed strong and new to her. Elizabeth imagined which dishes might be her favorite to make in the future. And even in those first days, when she caught a glimpse of the future, as she thought about teaching her daughter how to cook, how to clean, how to live, she felt her heart boil in stew and turn over with the careful mix of the spoon.

            That coming Sunday, she sat in the pews with Abigail cradled to her chest as she listened on an empty stomach to the preacher. When it was time for them to approach the altar, her husband carried her up and whispered to the other man the name that he had chosen, the godparents he had chosen, and she stood and watched as he took her in his hands. The basin of water was so clear and still that the streaked light of the stained-glass window shone clean to its bottom. Her heart clenched as she saw the beginnings of a cry upon her daughter’s face as the water hit her closed eyes. It felt like her ears were bleeding when the priest declared her, Leah, cleansed of sin and welcomed and the congregation dutifully bent their heads. On the walk home, Elizabeth tried not to let her arms shake as she brushed away the droplets of water still on her forehead.

            Later that day, as she was washing Leah, Abigail, in the tub, she felt the warm soapy water that she had left in the sun and saw her daughter’s clean skin and took a breath. The baby’s skin was unblemished and soft, and the water ran in crystal drops from her crown down her breast only to return to the water. And Elizabeth thought of her child, his child too, cleansed in that moment—thought that living is sinning. Elizabeth’s hands were heavy as she cradled her infant’s head back towards the water. They trembled with strength as she began murmuring prayers so fast that the words blurred together into cries.

            She cried, not because she was damning herself, though she was, but because she was not so sure in heaven. It was the massacre of an innocent. But she did not want her, Abigail, to suffer. Elizabeth sinned and she suffered. She cried because she knew that in those moments, when her daughter was washed to the sheet-white of bone, that she would never taste the sun or run through those ripened fruit fields with the sweet, earthy tones wafting across the breeze, on her skin, and through her. But she still cried, still prayed.

She was still crying when her husband, the doctor, and the priest arrived to see her hunched over the basin of water, her hands dripping wet in her lap. The dirt and the dye had loosened. Water flowed from her eyes, and the bloodshot in the whites surrounding her irises made her tears look blood red as they fell to the tips of her fingers and pooled in the palms of her hands. And she prayed for her, for her daughter, as the water cleansed the inside of her lungs, washing them until they were full.  

The Other Girl

The Other Girl

Escaping from him and who I once was

Article by Katie Rowley, art by Emmaline Hawley

Content Warning: Assault, violence

The steam on the window dissipates enough to reveal him leaning against the passenger side door. I pull on my shirt and crawl out of his backseat; it’s awkward. My hand grips the warm metal door handle. The warmth reminds me of being a little kid, sitting in the backseat and being so close to home that I’d impatiently grip the door handle, waiting for the right moment to yank it, jump out of the car and rush into my house. I’d clench the handle for so long that my body would heat up.This is not the case now; I have not been grabbing this handle for long enough. I am not one of the girls who has held onto this exact handle, praying that they could pull open the door and escape from him. I am not one of them. I pull the door open and swing my body toward the open air. I step out of his car, feeling fresh air and a light breeze of relief. His car was so hot. I wish it was windy. Windy enough to drown out his voice. I used to long to hear his voice. I tried so hard to capture it in the fleeting memories of two word conversations I had with him. I longed for conversations with him, to hear him compliment me, or talk about things he loved. Now, I long for the wind to pick up. I’m tired of his compliments and his senseless droning on. I want to drown out his voice. 

He offers to take me back to my car. I answer silently, opening his passenger door and sliding into the seat, trying not to wince. The seat burns the underside of my thighs. I reach for the seatbelt and turn to face him. I expect him to be staring at me, but he’s not.  His head is down, and I follow his glance to his phone screen, where he’s in the middle of returning a text. I don’t look long enough to read the name, nor do I want to. I already know who it’s from. Her. His girlfriend. I know that I have just done a horrible thing. He sends the text and I follow his hands with my eyes. He sets his phone into the mount attached to his air vent. He looks at me and we make eye contact- His eyes are a burnt sienna. I am sure that when the sun shines on him just right, his eyes turn to honey filled with microcosms of details. I want to see his eyes in the sun. They look nice and soft and understanding. I can’t imagine these eyes belonging to the same boy  who ignored the word “no” when it was being screamed at him by my best friend in the back of the Papa John’s where he worked. But one thing I’ve learned this year is that boys are good at keeping girls’ eyes shut. 

He breaks eye contact and pushes the key into the ignition. He places his hand on my left thigh, squeezes, and then quickly removes it. The pressure from his hand feels safe at first; it keeps me in the seat, protecting me from any sudden movements. It’s quick absence reminds me that he is not here to protect me.  He grabs the clutch and thrusts the car into reverse. He’s careful, I don’t feel like I’m being jammed into the seat as he backs up. I don’t feel inertia working as he shifts back into drive. I’m comfortable for a minute. I could get used to this, I think to myself. I like being driven around by him. He navigates out of the parking lot and his hand is back on my thigh. Its presence reminds me of all the things he’s done with that hand. All the girls he’s controlled and hurt. This is the hand he will hold her hand with. She won’t even suspect that it has been on my thigh.

His car is so hot. His hand is still on me. We’ve been sitting in awkward silence for minutes. He keeps trying to make conversation, this time it’s about the song that’s playing. I don’t want to answer him; I want to get back to my car and never speak to him again. He keeps glancing over at me. I keep looking at anything but him. His car is relatively clean. He has two or three kendamas on the passenger side floor, they are tucked neatly in the top left corner. I hadn’t noticed them earlier. He’s so good at packing up his things and hiding them away. There’s no dirt in the floor mats or piled up gas station receipts. I wonder if maybe he cleaned his car for me. But I know that I am not that important to him. 

He breaks the silence again, this time asking me if I want to hang out again. I force out a laugh and reply with the answer that he wants to hear. I’m not sure why I responded, but now that I’ve answered one of his questions, he won’t stop asking them. He asks if I had a good time. I think about all the other girls he’s asked that same question to. I respond with a yes and look down at his hand, still on my thigh. I haven’t tanned a lot this summer, but his hand is still a stark contrast against my skin. He is so pale. His fingernails are clean and cut short. His entire hand looks clean and soft. It spans the entire width of my lower thigh, his fingers spread apart over my skin. It exerts power over me. It is trapping me in his seat. I am unable to move. Unable to wiggle my leg out from under him. 

I look up, breaking the spell. His hand isn’t trapping me, I could jump out of this car if I pleased, if I was in danger, but I’m not. I look at him for the first time this car ride. His left hand is gripping the steering wheel. His knuckles are turning white. All of his strength is going to this hand, trying to keep the car straight while the other one rests on me. His fingers are long and skinny and I can imagine my own fingers intertwining with them. His sweatshirt is pushed up his arm. His arm is also pale, veins visible. I could reach out and pinch one, cutting off the blood supply. He notices my gaze and turns his head to look at me. His features aren’t very distinct if you aren’t staring at him hard. I am though. He has clear skin. His lips are usually thin but right now they are swollen. A fleshy pink that stands out against his skin. Something about his face looks young and boyish, like he couldn’t have done anything wrong. He reminds me of innocence but nothing about him, or what he has done, or what we have done is innocent. He laughs. It’s quiet and I know he isn’t laughing at me. His words break through his laugh. He wants to know what I’m thinking about. I answer with a shrug and a few mumbled words that add up to, “I don’t really know.” He laughs again then turns his head back to the road. 

We are stopped at a light. Silence fills the car. I consider making conversation with him, but I don’t want to open up to him or give him a reason to actually like me. I don’t want him to know me. I am also aware that he is going to find some way to fill the silence, whether it’s turning up the music or asking another one of his questions. I’m right; he goes for the latter. He wants to know that I won’t tell anyone about us. My stomach drops when he says that word.  I wish “us” was never a thing. I reassure him, letting him know I’ll never speak about this or him or us. He lets out a sigh of relief and squeezes my thigh once again, reminding “us” that he is still in control. 

He finally turns onto the street of the Thai place where we met earlier for lunch. I try to mask my relief; I know that I am close to freedom. He pulls into the parking lot and stops his car right by mine. I am ready to jump out of the car and leave him behind, but I hesitate. My hand slowly creeps toward the door handle, preemptively gripping it like I am a child again, waiting to run into safety. We sit in silence. I am ready to pull open the door when he starts to laugh, like earlier, it is soft and quiet. I start to laugh along with him. I wonder if he is as uncomfortable as I am. I shift my body toward the door, preparing to step out, but I still can’t leave. I don’t know if it is due to the lack of a proper goodbye or not wanting to let go. 

A year ago, I would have died to be in this car with this boy. I would fall asleep at night imagining he was with me, imagining he knew who I was. A year ago, I would not have felt guilty. I would have felt overjoyed at the fact that he wanted to talk to me. All the things he has done and the fact that he has a girlfriend would not have been a problem. A year ago, I would not have gotten out of the car. I would not have let him go. 

Really, I do not want to let go of this girl. This girl who believed in unconditional love. This girl who could never imagine getting hurt by people who say “I love you.” This girl who was innocent. I don’t want her to drive away in this car with this boy. I want to grab her hand and pull her out. I want to still be her. But she is intertwined with him. The boy she thought she could change. The boy who she thought would be different with her. The boy who will hurt her. 

I shift back toward him. I will not let him hurt me. He leans in to say goodbye. One last time, I lean in too. Saying goodbye to him and the me that is so connected with him, or the idea of him.  

I pull open the door handle, step out of his car, and watch the two of them drive away. 

The Sky was Yellow

The Sky was Yellow

Article by Hanna Freitas, art by Isabella Hageman

Content Warning: Allusions to sexual assault

Crash into the roof tiles, burgundy shards flitting across your vision, red birds against a yellow sky. Pan to the left and there, many more red roofs are glued together. To the right, your fellow sleuth, with whom you have much history, in a beige trench-coat and much older than you, scrambling down from the ridge, pointing to the courtyard below, finger calling out, “They’re getting away!” Eyes saying, “Hurt?”

You look at your bare feet, which have crashed into the shingles without injury.

There are three white suits, two men and a woman, running across the courtyard. You recall that they had just climbed down from the rooftops, you recall that they carry with them stolen goods, though you cannot recall what exactly they were, except that they were all cumbersome, wrapped in white linen sheets and tied with cartoonish ropes.

You are brave. A leap! And you fly down from the edge of the roof to the floor of stone, and hit the ground running. Your bare feet have feeling but don’t hurt. Running fast, catching up to the woman, a pounce. You are weightless as you both tumble to the ground. She drops what you perceive to be a framed painting, though you cannot see it. It's a cat fight, you fight! You are strong, but not quite strong enough, and soon all of them have come over to you, lifting you up. You are captured. The more you struggle, the stronger they grip you. As they scale the red, steel gate, you scale it with them and for a moment, your vision seems suspended at the very top, and you see her, the captive, slung over one of three shoulders, simple T-shirt and jeans, lithe and seventeen. This is yourself. And the oak trees that fringe the street seem taller and grander than they really are.

Though you are being taken, you can see the man you left behind on the other side of the gate. In the steel of his eyes, mouth ajar, you can tell he is thinking, “Dear God, where are they taking her?”

Back to your own eyes, and they strap you to the top of their car, white as their suits. Strapped with ropes, like luggage. And they get into the van and begin to float down the street. And yet somehow, the ropes do not hold you - you drift out of them. You stand on the car. You raise your head, as you see the street you’ve always known awash in yellow light. But as the van thunders down this street, the world around you becomes unfamiliar, unrecognizable. The buildings become paint blots, and the green leaves of the trees leak into the yellow sky.

The world freezes. Still. You stand. There.

It’s quiet. Hush goes the music. You’ve escaped your captors. You scaled the red gate and returned back to the courtyard. You see your sleuth in the beige trench coat hunched over, studying a map and muttering. You smile and walk up beside him, and say in a transatlantic radio host accent: “I betcha she ain’t gonna make it.”

His head bobs: “That’s what I’m betting too, that’s what I’m worried ‘bout, see, I--” When he finally looks up at you, he realizes. And how beautiful the smile that unfurls on his face. “You’re here!” And then the embrace.

Time slows. The clock continues to roll. How warm. How intimate. Safe. Real.

It feels so real… how do you feel his trench coat so tangibly when you…

You press against him, so hard, knowing what you know.

The afternoon has turned to evening, the yellow sky to pink. You stand alone in the courtyard, watching your partner whip grey blankets into the air and float them down onto the ground. You’re both against a wall.

Two or three women are next to you, and they ask you a question. You cannot grasp what the question is, yet assuredly, you have the answer. A calm smile. 

“Brave, yes, for seventeen… accomplished, deft, chivalrous, honorable. Everything I’ve ever wanted to be, in a simple world, with an enchanting story… yes, that’s who I am. But… do you believe in other lives? In another life...” you see your own face, and your smile ages into a frown. “… I am not brave. I am afraid. Afraid and alone and eighteen. That is why I am here now.” You nod. “That is why.”

Pink has turned to navy, and the stars do not twinkle, replicating real life more than a Hollywood film. The courtyard is vast and empty. You have blankets against a tall concrete wall. You are sitting, and your partner sits besides you. He chuckles as he takes hold of your bare foot and raises it to his face to get a better look, admiring the cracked soot in your sole. He brags to an invisible audience, 

“How daring she is!” He looks at you. You study his face. Light shouldn’t be coming from the right side where the wall stands, yet that side of his face shines.

“Only now can we catch our breath,” he says, “And tomorrow, we’re off again. Forever a chase, aye?” 

You feel yourself smiling.

And in the middle of your smile you feel what you’ve always known. Like you’ve momentarily forgotten but have now just recollected. That you and your partner are lovers.

Quieter now, he comes towards you, and you do not flinch. “Let us finally rest together.” And he wraps his arms around you. You pause and think about what you know that he doesn’t. But his perfect hands do not seize; they cradle. It is in the weakness of your soul, not your body, that you give in.

Your lover’s weight is not burdensome. You kiss him, wrap around him. The air is cold, but not hostile. His clothes are soft as they rustle. He fondles you, yes, you, brave one. Young, seventeen, but his equal.

No noise. No smell. No wet skin. He does not enter you. In fact, in this simple world, there is no such thing.

The navy has turned to black. You don’t see the moon, but a bright teal taints your lover’s hair. Familiar crispy air, and the night noises are uncanny replicas of nights spent in… 

As you have done many times tonight, you study his face in a desperate search to find something fixed, like a groove forever etched across his forehead. But all of his features elude your focus and dart away. It’s a chase - it is an optical illusion.

On one hand, you’re not that surprised, but on the other, your voice has passed from the 20th century into the 21st. You hold his hand. “I need to tell you something.”

His manner delights you, and that is what makes you sad. “Tell me then, this ‘something’. What is it?”

“This is a dream.”

“A dream, ah yes, what a dream, brave one. Wonderful, isn’t it?... Your sad blue eyes tell me otherwise. I suppose then… not the meaning of ‘dream’ I first understood. A dream then.”

“I know it must be hard to, well…”

“Don’t fret, I believe you. Who is the one dreaming, you or I?”

“I am.” 

“I’ll be damned. I don’t know if this is a ‘sorry’ or ‘congratulations!’ sort of occasion. When did you find out all this?”

“Perhaps subconsciously, I knew all along. Funny things would happen. Leaping off tall buildings. Running so fast and hard with bare feet. But when I escaped from those bandits and came to you, you were so happy to see I was alright. And you hugged me. Then and there, it somehow came to me that this wasn’t real.”

Your fellow sleuth does not reply at first. He looks around him. 

You see the two of you now, as a crane pulls your vision up above into the sky, and all around you. He is gazing around, “All this is fiction?”

“Yes. This courtyard, this neighborhood with red roofs… is a much grander version of my real home.”

“Then, this tapestry of yours. It is the finest masterpiece I’ve ever had the honor of seeing.”

“I am sorry.”

“Never be sorry.” Then, “And who is that soul that lies behind those two blue eyes? What is she like?” A chuckle. “Is she even a she?”

You catch some of his mirth for a moment then swallow, “I wouldn’t know how to describe it without knowing who it is you see.”

Warmth. “I see a young woman of much grace and courage, who can do anything she sets her mind to. Who has for all these years, I can hardly believe it sometimes, chosen to accompany an old bumbling fool, a muck of a detective. Together, going on so many adventures… and misadventures for that matter.”

“Wow. It sounds incredible.”

“I understand now. That moment when I embraced you, and… the sky was yellow… the real you awakened inside this dream, and you do not remember the life we have shared.”

“You’re right. I scarcely remember why we were in pursuit.” 

“Or who I am?”

“... I’m so sorry.”

“Never be sorry. Tell me. Who am I? What do you see?”

 “I see my partner. My partner in crime. Witty, sometimes clumsy, but good. A good man. A man much older than me, perhaps twice my age, whom I respect, trust and… love deeply. Who when he embraced me, did it with such kindness. I felt a warmth and safety I’ve never felt before in all my life. And I savored every last drop of you, knowing I’d never see that look in your eyes. When you look at me, you see your equal.”

“To receive such remarks… thank you, brave one. Thank you for this. I suppose, if this is all a dream,” and he holds your hand. You feel knuckles, veins, seams,  tremors. “If it’s all a dream, then… I do not exist. And all that I see around me will fade away. Unless I exist within someone you know?”

“No. You do not. When I look at you, I see no one I know. You’re a kinder version of Julian Craster from The Red Shoes, in the clothes of Humphrey Bogart and with the temperament of Jon Hamm. I don’t particularly find those people interesting in any respect, so in that regard, you do not resemble them at all.”

“Hmph, how funny. I’ll take that as a compliment. So. A complete stranger, then, am I. Makes one think, you know. When you awake, will I go to sleep? Or will I continue on here, a floating figment, waiting for your return?”

“When I wake,” you think aloud. And remember. Joy is replaced with foreboding. Fear. Bitterness. He notices. 

“What is it?”

“When I wake, I’m afraid I will hate you.”

 Blackness. The world silences, in color and in sound. For a moment, a glimpse of the curtain drapes around you, and disappears. You’re scared to wake up, don’t want to wake up, don’t want to. Afraid of what you’ll feel in the morning. Keep dreaming.

Now his voice is different. His voice sounds like yours, and pours out from his eyes and not his mouth. 

Hate me? he says.

“Like all the rest.”

The rest?

“And yet it was different.”

Different?

“You never took off your clothes. I never felt your tongue. You never came in. It wasn’t even there. It was different. Why did I give in? I will hate you even more. But I wanted it! How could I? Oh, again. Again and again, why do you torment me, you desperate men, I am only a girl. How many times this hurried, hot, sticky, skin, legs left cold, wet, stinking, loud… so loud I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. That ugly ugly ugly thing! I haaaate… haaaate…” as a banshee… “... that ugly thing…” 

His voice melds into yours, “... I hate it all! My eyes are not blue, my eyes are not blue, my eyes…”

The world hushes again. All of what you see, smell, taste, and hear, now saturated into beautiful things. 

And you hear his voice again.

“What color are they then?” 

“Somehow I don’t remember.” 

“They are beautiful.”

“... this is another one of those dreams,” you say, “Ever since that night.”

He looks around. Momentarily, as he speaks, the sky returns to its yellow hue. And he asks, simply.

“Were you chased?”

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?”

“He pulled up in his car.” 

You can no longer distinguish your voice from his, whether he asks or you answer. White car. He got out and hands. Hands off! I ran with my bag. School bag. And then? Ran. Ran off and jumped. In the air. Air. For a moment… air. From the top of the stairs to the bottom. Snap. My ankle.

Night returns.

“Then, I am the rapist?”

He says it, and you both look up. Somewhere to the west, music plays. Mother’s morning piano. But you hear a whole orchestra of clouds thunder their symphony. And you bury your face into his jacket.

“You can’t be… can’t be. I will surely hate you. I will surely hate you. You have been so kind to me. So kind. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Never be sorry.”

“It is dark.”

“Yes.” 

“We are flying.” 

“You fly very gracefully.”

“This is my street… I don’t understand. I hear each individual leaf shiver and rustle, and know each one like a shepherd knows her sheep’s bleats. Up here, the air hits my face and streams off as the wind does the nose of an airplane. The dark is a dark I’ve known many nights ago. It is real. It must be real.”

“It is.”

“The sun.”

“Yes.” 

“Streaming through my window. I will wake up soon.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want this dream to end.”

“Why not?”

“I feel so free now. So free.”

“You are free.”

“I am not. And I will hate you. I don’t wish to…”

“This is the first.”

“The first time it was… good.”

“I am you.”

I am you.

If you love me, you know what it means. Never be sorry. This dream sings hope. You’re on a path. Remember the yellow sky. You are brave. Brave one. I am you. If you love me, you know what it means. Never be sorry. This dream sings hope. You’re on a path. Remember the yellow sky. You are brave. Brave one. I am you. If you love me, you know what it means. Never be sorry. This dream sings hope. You’re on a path. Remember the yellow sky. You are brave. Brave one. I am you. If you love--

Desiring Love, Accepting Desire

Desiring Love, Accepting Desire

Why you shouldn’t sleep with a guy who willingly told you he listened to a George Washington biography that was 46 hours long.

Article by Anonymous, art by Tessa DeRose

Content Warning: Allusions to abuse, graphic sexual content

When I had sex for the first time, I was 17 and he was 24. Before we slept together, I asked him if he minded our age difference, and he said he didn’t at all, as long as I was 18. I never told him the truth about my age because it felt good that he was more into me than I was him. I think maybe I enjoyed the scandal, too. Eventually, he wanted to be more serious, so I ended things because I felt bad about how I misled him.

After I turned 18, I was bound for the first time by a 39-year-old. He was a good-looking professor at a university outside the city, and I was seduced by his honeyed words and experience in BDSM. When I got to his place, I felt comfortable in his presence after we had a thorough conversation about what my limits were. Later, blindfolded and with a limb tied to each bed post, I heard him take an object out of a heavy drawer. Paranoia told me it could only be a knife. Devoid of sight in my utterly vulnerable position, I hazily anticipated its cool edge reaching my throat. Not fearful, but rather amused by the cliché I had found myself in: “barely legal”, restrained by an older man I met for the first time, soon to be murdered. But of course the blade never came and I was startled instead by the sudden jab of a vibrator. When he asked to see me again, I never responded. There was something I didn’t like about his plastic-covered furniture.

At 19, I found myself (probably) in love with a 35-year-old. He was intelligent, a music fanatic, and really nice to sleep with. We talked about the anthropologists and historians I loved—ones he had taken classes with at Berkeley—and he would read over and edit my papers for class. He took me to spots all around the Bay (my new home for the year) he’d grown up going to. When he saw something that reminded him of me while thrifting, he would surprise me with it. I was taken by his thoughtfulness and genuine interest in me, more so than the sexual desire he exhibited. Over six months, we got pretty close. Close enough for him to tell me (after we were “close enough” to do anal) he was “still kind of in love” with his ex back in Ireland. Any notion I had about what our relationship could be once I was back at school was shattered (while I knew long-distance was ultimately not for me, I fantasized about him being so infatuated with me that he wanted to try). He never told his friends about me, except eventually his best friend, and only a few days after my birthday—so that he could tell him I was “in my twenties” and not nineteen.

Now, I’m 20, and he’s 43. The first divorcee. The first dad. The first one to make me feel shame. Not really because of anything he said or did. I don’t feel like he did anything wrong. He treated me with the impersonal and hungry manner I was all too familiar with and  had come to expect. I would’ve appreciated it at any other time, witnessing a man so affected by lust at my expense. I should’ve been turned on by how much he was coveting me for my body alone. But instead, I feel shame surrounding my interactions with him for using them to cope with the state I was in. Earlier that week, I found out that my dad had cancer. I was also in an especially bad spell of depression, and feeling particularly unloveable after my recent parting with the 35-year-old. Writing now, I feel the experience all over again. My skin burns from thinking about his eyes on me, but I can’t help but desire his desire again from time to time.

He was messy. I learned he was the dad of a kid that CC students nannied for, a few of whom I knew well. Another good friend of mine had interviewed for the job and had his number, which is how we found out that it was the same man. Nonetheless, I pursued him openly. I found myself wallowing in the pornographic spectacle of it all—a young girl needing the comfort and love of an older man after finding out her dad was sick. A dad that would always tell her he loved her, but would turn a blind eye when her mother abused her. On the night of our meeting, I got ready for my performance starring as the dulcet, submissive girl asking to be fucked by her friend’s boss. I braided my hair back in preparation; I dressed in clothes I normally wouldn’t wear to seem like I was frail and his for the taking; I waxed because I thought he would like it.

I arrive and I feel his eyes take me in. He’s watching a dumb car restoration show. I pretend to be interested in it. As I look back over from the TV screen, he kisses me, still standing by the doorway. The kiss is lukewarm and something about it is tinged with medicine, or maybe more akin to the smell of discarded hairs singed by a warm razor. He tells me I look really good. It’s always the emphasis on really, as if men believe that the insistence in their voice will be the difference between getting laid or not.

He asks me if I want to go to the bedroom. I ask him if anyone lives with him. Your nanny. 

“No,” he says. We walk further. “Wait, what?” he asks. 

I repeat myself. “Oh. Yeah. I have a nanny that lives upstairs.” His casual response annoys me, and I press further and ask if that means he has kids.

“Yup. I’ve got an eight-year-old.” I know. “He’s the best. He’s not here right now, though.” Obviously.

The rifle cabinet should’ve been my first indication to leave. His own glass menagerie, backlit in dusty yellow, a symbol of his vitriolic compensating. But instead, I chalked it up to oddball Civil War buff tendencies (he told me he was really into American history). As we made our way to the bed, I was fascinated by his need to have me. Earlier, he told me I was his first younger girl and it’s funny how that probably turned me on more than it did him. I could sense the pleading in his eyes, silently begging me to down on him. Intoxicated by the power I held in that moment and tempted by the control I would have with him in my mouth, I obliged. His dick was so hard that I wondered if because of his age and the circumstances, he had taken Viagra. 

As we moved onto the bed, it was awkward. He was rough, but not with the control and display of experience that I was used to. He kept asking me to repeat things I said, and I don’t know if that spoke more to his age or to the objectivity with which he saw me. He continued to direct me into one position after another, but save for those commands, he was silent. No grunts, no moans. I hated that, because I fed off of the affirmation that I was behaving exactly how he needed me to. It wasn’t bad sex, but he felt cold inside me and I just wanted him to finish. I asked him if he was close to coming, but he said that he “still had a lot in him.” He took pride in his endurance and as the long minutes passed, I felt more like a doll, limp-bodied and obedient to his desire for playtime. He handled me with little fragility and care, or appreciation, as if our interaction was perfunctory as operating the artillery in his armoire.

Afterwards, he asks me about school. I tell him my major. 

“Huh. That’s sort of unusual, being an Asian girl studying Russian.”

Ugh.

“So, wait. Does that mean you go to CC?”

I say yes. Like it said on my profile. He swears he didn’t see that. His age becomes apparent by the minute, yet I grow annoyed at his increasingly childish retorts. He’s fidgety. I ask him if he would have still met me had he known I went to CC. He nods his head yes, immediately supplemented by, “But I think it’s best we be discreet about this. You’re not gonna go run and tell all your friends about this are you?”

I assure him I’m not (haha). 

“Let’s just say I used to be very affiliated with someone at your school.”

I never asked. And I already know.

“My wife teaches there. Ex-wife.”

“Mm.”

I knew the professor because I had interviewed with her before. I thought she was sweet and pretty. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t imagined a threesome with them after I found out who she was.

We move on to talk about where we grew up and he asks me about my family. I’m unresponsive because I’m sensitive to the topic, and I especially don’t want to think about my dad. Eventually I relent, and I tell him my dad used to be a cop. He immediately proceeds to call the mayor of the city where I grew up, “a nut,” because she wants to defund the police. 

The guns in the room are suddenly the only thing I can see. All the lights in the room are off, except the dim glow of the bathroom where I just rinsed myself of his touch, and then the palpable spotlight from the vitrine, trying and failing to assume inconspicuousness in the corner. The light is the only warmth on my wet body as I lie bare above the covers. That’s when I decide it’s really time to go. As I’m getting dressed, he continues his monologue. I hear “children’s safety,” “protection,” “shitty neighborhoods,” but I’m tuning him out, hyperfocused on not leaving anything behind. I tell him I should be getting home, he shrugs alright. A beat. 

Then, “I was surprised when you asked to meet me,” he says.

“Why?”

“Well, you wouldn’t even give me your number but you were willing to come over.”

“Haha, I guess I’m just not comfortable with giving it out. In case they want to keep contacting me.”

“Oh, I don’t need your number or anything. I just think it’s brave you didn’t want to give it to me but you still came over to my house.”

I couldn’t find any reason for why I met him for the first time at night, alone, in his house. I think part of me fantasizes about tragedy happening to me, surrounding sex and promiscuity. Or maybe I’m proving something to myself, agentic or otherwise, in taking charge of my experiences with older men. I am gratified to see the power that my body holds over white men; the short thrill of their climax is seductive enough that I overlook common sense and safety to get it. At the same time, I often wonder why these men seem so concerned for my well-being. As if they’re really worried about me, when only moments ago they were hitting, spitting on, and fucking a girl half their age.

As I headed towards the door, I asked him to check if his nanny was home, or coming in.

“Wow, you’re really serious about this.” 

I was. I knew them personally, and they probably wouldn’t be happy to find out their boss had sex with a 20-year-old (or that I had sex with their boss).

He checks outside. When there’s no sign of the nanny, I quickly make my way across the living room to the door. As I’m stepping onto the porch, he asks me if he’ll see me again.

“I don’t really do repeats actually.”  A lie. 

“Really? Well, okay.”

I couldn’t tell if he was incredulous at the idea of the girl being less attached, or shaming me for my behavior. Or maybe it was a well-knowing really, certain that I’d renege on my words and ask to see him again. Either way, I matched his emphatic “really” and rushed down the stairs to my car.

When I get home, there’s already a message from him that says I left my necklace there.

Shit. 

I try to be as curt as possible in my response, “I can grab it sometime later.” Naturally, to him, there’s an invisible, “So you can fuck me again,” addendum to my sentence. I knew he thought this, because he responds with, “Anytime, I may want to fuck you again though [insert an emoji unbecoming for his age].” 

A week later when I went to collect the necklace, there was part of me that wanted him to ask me to come inside, so I could feel his desire for me again. But as I approached the porch, I saw his kid eating breakfast through the window and all at once, I felt nauseous, slapped by the realness of his age, family, circumstance. I fumbled for my necklace inside the mailbox and left as quickly and quietly as I could. We haven’t spoken to or seen each other since.

Talking to my therapist, she seems to think I seek these men out because their “love”  is reliable. Older white men will always desire young Asian girls, and as someone who finds herself unlovable, there is solace in that clause of unconditionality. She also calls my sex with them a punishment I dole out to myself, an infliction of self harm. I don’t think she’s right, but I still grapple with finding pleasure in something that other people, and even I see as wrong. Not because of the age difference, but because of how I use these interactions with older men as a means of coping motivated by a fear of never being loved authentically. The act of sex with them is easy validation and an illusion of emotional intimacy, two things absent from my childhood. I found comfort in the fact that these men found me so beautiful and young—someone they wanted to dominate. But someone can easily turn into something. I find myself guilty in facilitating that transition.

Tearing Through Briars

Tearing Through Briars

Grappling with God and sexuality at an all-girls therapeutic boarding school.

Article by Kristen Richards, art by Isabella Hageman

Content Warning: Religious indoctrination, homophobia, and mental illness

Savannah drove us in a white Ford Transit back to hell.

I traced my fingers along the windows of the van, savoring every second away from the brambles of the Greenbrier Academy for Girls. We drove past the Greenbrier River and the Pence Springs Flea Market, and finally up a gentle tree-lined driveway into the view of a towering brick building. 

I attended Greenbrier the summer before my senior year of high school after living at a wilderness therapy program in Colorado. In an attempt to retrieve my failing mental health, Greenbrier claimed to be my safety and preservation. Instead, I learned that safety meant hiding, disguising. Wrapped in my own leaves beneath a paling sugar maple, I began to consider my identity itself as a false belief. 

My therapist’s name was Tanya, and though she did not mention it when I first spoke with her on the phone, Tanya was an unmistakably Christian therapist. As I sat on Greenbrier’s white porch, sobbing into the humid air, Tanya suggested that I find God as a way to heal from my trauma. I howled bitterly for a few moments until she gently, then not so gently, proposed religion for a second, third, fourth time. I barely knew the difference between God and Jesus, even after years of going to church as a child, and I doubted that any god that I didn’t believe in could save me. 

When I arrived at Greenbrier, the staff searched my bags and took away anything sharp. A few days later, I noticed that my gay pride T-shirt was missing. When I inquired about this, Tanya noted that any clothing items deemed “inappropriate”—including my love-is-love shirt—would be stored in the basement until I left. In response, I drew rainbows on the sidewalk with chalk. 

This began my complicated relationship with Tanya, who tried to “fix” me by means of making me girlish. But I was already permanently misshapen by my deviating sexuality. I told Tanya I was gay. She told me she had a friend who was a lesbian. We did not speak of it again. 

I quickly learned that most of the girls at Greenbrier were gay. The staff reluctantly knew this, but while gay was common and tolerated, straight was preferred and favored. Although we all had mental illnesses, only the straight girls could make up for their mental turmoil with their overly accepted heterosexuality. 

On the weekends, a handful of us were put in the back of a pickup truck and driven to a place called The Village. There, a man named Paul spoke sermons to us, though he referred to them as “Journeys.” The Village was meant to give patients time to connect with themselves and their spiritual side. One day, during one of Paul’s talks, as we sat around a fire, Paul spoke of what we needed to keep and what we needed to let go. “Keep those good boyfriends,” he said to us. “And others of you may need to reevaluate how your values align with your sexuality.” All of us around the circle were gay, none had boyfriends. Who was he speaking to? What idealized Greenbrier girl had he envisioned as his audience? 

This patient, the one that Tanya tried to create in me, was the key to special privileges at Greenbrier. Girls who proved themselves to be straight, the prescribed supernormal, were given passes to visit their families, walks to the gas station to buy candy, access to phones and music, and afternoons to spend on their own. It was possible to get these privileges without the heterosexual advantage, but it was a lot harder. The straight girls flaunted their five-dollar bills as they headed towards the single gas station in Pence Springs, as if to say look how easy it is to be me. 

My second day at Greenbrier, I tried to run away. I wondered how far I could get with 32 ounces of lemonade and a body full of want. I was half a mile down the road, sprinting, before two staff members pulled up in the white Ford van and grabbed me by the arms. I cursed the girl who had seen me bolt through the brambles and told the staff. Why not just let me be free? I shook myself loose from their grasp, my shoulders and back burning from running through the briers that surrounded the campus. Were those briers planted intentionally to discourage patients from running away? Or did the briers grow long before Greenbrier got its name? To this day, there are faded lines along my upper arms and shoulders, a symbol of the lasting effects the therapeutic boarding school had on my body and mind. 

The months I spent at wilderness therapy prior to Greenbrier were long and hard, but worthy of the work I did to process trauma. Under the ponderosa pines and beneath the smoky San Juan sky, I poured through trauma and emerged from the forest sturdier in my identity than ever before. The transition from wilderness to Greenbrier felt like peeling back the layers of an onion just to find a rotten core. After only a few days in West Virginia, the culture at Greenbrier Academy had me doubting whether the real me was the real me. Within weeks, Greenbrier had turned me from dirt girl to church girl. 

In Colorado, I walked through enough forests to gain a dozen bruises and scratches, but none amounted to the spidery scars left by Greenbrier’s thorns. The little white lines ran through nightmares of West Virginia through my mind. Your normal is abnormal, they whispered. Find something to fix you. 

After my running away stint, I spent the days making lists of how I could get as far away as possible as quickly as possible. I realized that the quickest way to escape would be to request a pass to join the group of girls who went to church every Sunday. Desperate to spend any time away from campus and unfazed from years of growing up in a church, I doubted that weekly services would do anything but fill my time. But what started as a plan to run away turned to mornings of music that spiked shivers into my soul. I found freedom in the community that surrounded me. This terrified me. Where had I gone? The Kristen that I had grown up to be did not bow her head at any altar. This life is mine. I believed. I created it, I destroyed it, and I will make it new again. 

I was, after all, recovering. I was recovering my authenticity, digging myself from the depths that depression had dragged me into. I found myself swept up with the rejects of the tide, knocking on the door of something that the church community called “the Lord.” In a place where I was meant to be learning how to take care of myself, I only learned how to ask some other being to take care of me. 

I distanced myself from religion for most of my life, unconvinced that anything about myself would be enhanced by believing in God. But at Greenbrier, when my identity became a broken rule, nothing seemed to cure me more than church. 

I grew up going to an Episcopalian church in a town just north of my home in Massachusetts. One of my clearest memories from church was when I served as an acolyte, carrying the candles to the front of the church. During the service, I sat at the front and instead of listening to the sermon, I daydreamed about Monique, a girl with long dark hair and clear green eyes and a name that felt like silk as it slipped off my tongue. Something felt wrong about thinking of a girl and the feelings she evoked while sitting at the front of a church. If it wasn’t Monique, it was somebody else. I knew that the church claimed to be LGBTQ+ affirming, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that for the congregation, affirming meant tolerating. I did not want to be tolerated, I wanted to be loved. It was there, in that tiny church in Topsfield, Massachusetts, that I began to believe that if there was a God, he would love me more if I was straight. 

One Sunday afternoon, Savannah, one of the day staff at Greenbrier, drove us away from the church and the conversation in the car shifted towards sexuality. It had come about after two girls had been caught having sex in one of the yurts where we played drums on Tuesday evenings. For me, drumming was an odd combination of “I love this” and “I actually just love the feeling of getting my hate for this place out through something concrete and accepted .” Most patients, including myself, identified with the LGBTQ+ community, but sexuality was the unspoken and reluctantly accepted reality of an all-girls boarding school for the mentally ill. In the car, Savannah told us of her wife, Angela, and her little boy, Brayden. Savannah was in her late twenties but held her body as though she had lived many decades more. 

“I’m probably going to hell for all these sins,” she said. “Because I know that being gay is a sin, but I can’t help who I am. I was meant to be gay, so I guess I’m going to hell.” Savannah shrugged from the driver’s seat, as if she was indifferently accepting her fate. 

“But why would God want you to go to hell?” Amy, another one of the patients, asked. 

“Because I was born broken,” Savannah answered. 

The van grew uncomfortably quiet. Amy was the only one in the van who was not gay. I wondered who else in the van believed they were going to hell. Amy reached towards the radio to turn up Chris Tomlin’s “Our God.” 

This conversation encompassed much of the dichotomy that I lived in for those months. Were the ideas that existed about religion and sexuality preexisting and passively accepted, or had these beliefs been intentionally brought forward to stop anything new from emerging? The way that Tanya pushed religion into my treatment convinced me that Greenbrier intentionally threw us into the church at our most vulnerable state. My identity stood at a crossroads, and I was unsure how to hold myself in the same physical place but vastly different mental place as Savannah. 

Quickly, and just as Tanya had alluded to, I began to enjoy church in a terrifying and comforting way. Sometimes, when the preacher said, “raise your hand if you surrender to God!” I was tempted to raise my hand. One day I did. My body raised my hand while my mind was lost running around some unknown mountain that God supposedly built. I often cried at the idea that maybe there was a God, because I feared that meant there was also “a hell” and that I would be sent there. Tanya cried because she was so proud that I had finally found Him. 

Something still haunts me about how drawn I was to the church when other parts of my identity were questioned. At the time, it felt so right, and even now I wouldn’t say I was wrong to turn towards religion. The church served me for a time, as I desperately tried to hold onto my identity. Every so often, I find Hillsong United’s “Oceans (where feet may fail),” a song that we listened to on the van ride to church at Greenbrier. In me, a door creaks open. In the sliver of light, I see a shadow. If I were in West Virginia, it would be the shadow of God. Instead, it is the shadow of me. 

Lettitor

Dear Reader,

We are so excited to present you with the first printed issue of Cipher since February 2020! Only one of our staff members was on the Cipher team pre-pandemic. As you can imagine, this made creating this issue a big crunch-time experiment for all of us. There was a lot of sweating involved. We owe a great deal of gratitude to our staff, writers, artists, printer, and faculty advisors for their endless patience.

When we dreamed up the Sin Issue, we thought it could be a spicy introduction to a year back in person after being disconnected from one another for so long. What we received from writers was much more complex. The word “sin” evokes pleasure for some, trauma for others, fear for many. e writers for this issue explore the capacious nature of the word through their stories, dreams, and personal experiences. Anonymous ponders their preference for hooking up with older men. Anna Heimel reacts on her experience at Catholic school and its impact on her relationship with sex and masturbation. Katie Kamio and Hanna Freitas explore how sins influence our dreamscapes.

In our first free-write session, we asked writers where sins come from. Where do they live? Do they come from within or are they reflected onto us? We asked writers to reflect on their first sin, and to ponder how they learned what a sin was, how guilt found its way to them. The pieces in this issue cover a wide spectrum of sin: everything from sex, dreams, masturbation, sexuality, and religion.

We want to provide readers with a blanket trigger warning for the entirety of this issue. Many of the pieces involve themes of violence, assault, religious indoctrination, homophobia, and forms of abuse. We have also marked articles with specific content warnings.

Cipher looks different this year. We’ve reworked our budget in order to pay writers and artists for the work they submit. We now publish bi-blockly, allowing writers, artists, and editors to devote more attention and time to each issue. We hope that these changes give each issue the space to be more complex and polished. Our writers, artists, and staff have put a great deal of time and energy into this issue, and we hope you enjoy indulging in this sensual, intimate, and devilishly devious issue alongside us.

Happy sinning! ;)

Logan, Maya, and the Cipher Team