Joe & ... Jane?

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re British.

I think you said the word “cunt.”

It dripped from your mouth like drool, but I’m craving salt and weaving along the pavement toward a place you promised would sell me fries in the early morning.

Two minutes ago, I told you my name was Annie. Ten minutes before that, I said it was Jane. You believed me both times, and you told me you loved me. 

“Bad memory” prevented the soft-L sound of my real name––which I had told you, so, so many times––from escaping your lips as easily as the word “cunt” did.

I think my name doesn’t feel the way “cunt” does in your mouth.

Tonight, I just wanted salt, a beer, and to fall asleep early. But when we arrived at 11:30, The Lexington was no longer serving food, and was instead booming with A-ha’s “Take On Me.”

You, a bug-eyed boy who had seemingly just discovered hair gel, were much less threatening than the men from the night before.

So when you pushed your way in between Stacy and me and baffled us with how you danced—to you, hips clearly meant knees—it made me laugh more than squirm.

And when you heard my voice, you figured you must have a chance.

You’ve probably read somewhere that an accent like yours makes you appear ten times more attractive than you actually are to someone like me.

I let you believe it and I let you tell me the story of your trip to America, where you saw a baseball game. I let you tell me that your name is Joe. 

Do you actually talk like this? Or are you amping up the British for me? I find it hard to believe that “wanker” and “cheeky” naturally come out of your mouth this often.

You ordered shots until you couldn’t stand up straight. I let you use me as a crutch and wondered if you were this unpleasant in the daytime.

For no reason at all, I now felt responsible for you. I shoveled the shots you incessantly ordered down my throat so you wouldn’t collapse.

Talking to you makes my brain dissolve. I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or your aggression. 

You’re leading me to the nearest McDonald’s. We’re a block away from The Lexington when I think of Stacy, still at the bar with a man twice her age.

Before we left, I watched him zero in on the lips that spilled out a Californian accent and the strands of strawberry blonde she twirled between her fingers. 

Outfitted in jean shorts, he stood three inches shorter than Stacy in her snake-print ankle boots.

When she asked his name, he said, “Mafffeew,” and the fluorescent lights illuminated his projectile-spit droplets like they were bits of glitter. 

Brown brick buildings flank this street, largely blocking the sky from view. At a gap in between buildings, through the knotted branches of a barren tree, I can see hints of a rosy morning. I’m angry that I still haven’t eaten a single fry tonight. 

I thought it was 3 a.m., but it could be 4 or 5, or even 6. In London, the sun comes up early.

Your jacket hangs across my shoulders, reeking of drugstore cologne. It isn’t cold, but you begged me to wear it. Seeing your jacket sleeves look too long on someone else must make you feel bigger than you actually are.

If you weren’t so drunk, you’d probably be doing one of those practiced, self-conscious walks. One where you are aware of how your every limb is moving, aware of how the morning light washes your pale skin out. But now, you stumble with feet turned out and stomach leading the way.

When I realize that you’re leading me to your apartment, I feel a sinking sense of betrayal. We’re in a neighborhood now and the smell of chemically grease is absent from the air. 

“Where the fuck are we going?” 

You stop in front of a brown brick building, grinning. 

“McDonald’s breakfast isn’t open yet anyway.” 

I let the jacket drop onto gritty sidewalk and run the block back to the bar, to Stacy and her snake-print boots. Fry-less, but she won’t be angry that I’m empty-handed. 

“Fat bitch!”

I like that you will never—could never—learn my name.

Bunny and Me

Once upon a time, I won a sex-ed trivia Kahoot! and earned a $75 Seductions gift card. I did all the research (took the Bellesa “What’s Your Vibe” quiz six times) and bought an Evolved Bunny Buddy in purple, my favorite color. 

Imagine a purple alien dick with two little antennae that vibrate in 10 different speeds and patterns, with a nice little grip handle instead of balls. Pretty sweet stuff.

Now, I don’t have that much sex, but I’ve done some stuff. I was pretty well versed in over-the-underwear masturbation techniques, but I was ready to move into something more advanced. I frequently talk the talk, and I wanted to walk the walk. And since I had also just bought a porn subscription, I felt I had to get my money’s worth.

On my first night with my new purchase, I showered, got under the covers, logged into my $3 porn+ account and got to work. I had a mission to accomplish, and if you’re thinking that’s the wrong attitude for a pleasurable experience, you’d be right. My body rejected that Bunny like Elmer Fudd. It simply would not fit. But this isn’t some kind of monster-cock dildo. It’s incredibly average in size. 

I went to sleep frustrated, too tired to address the problem. 

The next few times I got it on with the Bunny, I stuck to those quivering ears, sending their vibrations down to my toes. But I’m stubborn and I was determined to send it down my rabbit hole. 

The opportunity presented itself soon after: my roommates went away for block break and left me an empty house. But I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as last time.

On the big day, I went to Walgreens to buy lube. I honestly would’ve bought a rabbit’s foot for luck if they had it.

After a nice dinner with some wine, I showered and treated myself to a little back patio marijuana. The cool air was piquing my nipples’ interest, and I knew it was time to head toward the main event. 

I pulled up the sliding pay scale porn, clicked over to “Stories” (because who can orgasm without investment in the narrative?) and eased into it. Knowing I was home alone, I didn’t even plug in headphones and just let it strum my drum like the Energizer bunny. When I was sufficiently warmed up, I took out the Astroglide and took a breath. 

This is the part where the story—and I—should climax.

Alas, it still did not fit. 

So, for this Touch Issue, I submit to you reader, a tale of a Bunny Buddy and an unfulfilled, still horny body.

Pink Masc, 2020

This jockstrap was ordered online from an Australian company while I sat on the living room floor of a haunted house.

Many racist ghosts and yard signs and American flags with lynching gazes flooded the crib from each window and screen door. This nigga was near the end of summer and the only nigga.

Genuinely. I saw a nigga at Walmart, and we acknowledged one another (as niggas do sometimes) and kept it moving without care. This wild love common.

But my spot in Billings, Montana didn’t want to fuck. Just wanted this chocolate baby boy to beg for a hate load to chain my heavy chest.

I be a simple monkey that drank whiskey, ate vegan burgers, and mowed the lawn with painted nails like a disguised born sinner.

 “Daddy, you can choke me, but not too hard. No one is allowed to kill me because I have always liked the color pink,” I would say to whoever was listening, maybe the ghost that slept with me at night.

 The morning after I bought this racy thing, the block could hear me rapping Biggie.

 “Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!”

 I was ready to start robbing for myself back as I prepared my morning ice coffee the way twinks do.

 I got some mad love.

 Now I kind of like the idea of being fucked in jockstraps. Actually, I like-like it!

 I didn’t start buying jockstraps until I quit being a jock.

 Isn’t I lovely? Isn’t I wonderful?

 All them balls I’ve played with and dribbled, fondled, held, and slept besides, and shared. Never have I wanted to cherish them in pretty pink nylon.

SOSS Body Image Zine

What to Expect

On the dust of the street a crowd is conversing amiably and holding painstakingly handmade signs:

BABIES ARE MURDERED HERE

Slowing down to make the turn, I stick my tongue out at them like the child they so badly want to believe in, the womb-phantom they fervently want to be real. For a split second afterward there is a bright flash of sympathy, imagining how lost you must be to tether your hopes to unborn fetuses, to spend your few free hours after work beside the dusthot freeway, breathing in the honks and the misguided but self-righteous feeling of Doing the Right Thing.

The security guard hulks in a small, windowless room that is thick with his own cologne. He asks me if I have any firearms or knives. He asks me to open my backpack full of books for him. It feels as intimate as opening my stirruped thighs to the doctors, as inevitable and dreaded as going through security, the routinized intimacy of the x-ray’s sharpened eye, the movement of the mouse, the prying. All of it so sterile, even as my bright pink rubber dildo rides its merry way through the conveyer belt to the other side, waving hello to the technician who squints closely at it for a second, calls over his buddy, wants to make sure its not some kind of weapon. This search for violence turns up nothing but the most fine-haired grains of us. How the pendant hangs. The ring of metal on our hearts and knees.

Inside on the TV, midfielders are sprinting in slow motion through the rain. A jauntybright pamphlet sings out the hepatitis ABC’s. I clutch my backpack close, the zipper hanging half-open, already half-undone.

There is metal jaw prying open soft insides. Eager needle piercing my cervix in threes, the movement of waves through me. I learn my pain is a splash of electricity, a seizing, bright white. The color of aura. A blue stethoscope swings like a prophetic pendulum from the back of the door and I close my eyes against all the tender pink, the blue squirted jelly glistening on the ultrasound probe. Something alien and grotesque moving within.

Sorbet butterflies dance from gold wire to the rhythm of my rolling moans.

I am a baby in this bed, staring up at my useless fucking mobile. I have to let the grown-ups do what they will with tools and sharpness, narrowed eyes and metallic purpose. The doctor is unkind, he predicts the seizing clench and clamp of my body. he wields the needle and tells me when I’ll feel the lightning.

These screams are unsurprising to him, no matter how new they feel to me, how animal in my throat, and that is what scares me more than anything. The blinkblink of the technician who moves the probe and holds my hand but feels nothing of this wrenching.

He can see exactly what the inside of my body looks like but doesn’t know a thing of what it means to occupy it, to care for it every morning, to love it, to cry with it through the pain. I have never been more Alone, I think, never deeper in the ecosystem of my body and so far away from land. There is nothing inside me except metal and the fear of pain. I imagine my uterus, cervix, womb, they’re curling away from the probing tools like blind caterpillars in the soft squelch of their chrysalises.

I think about the time I watched a little girl dig her fingernails into a monarch’s dangling bead. She was desperate to find the butterfly, help it out of its sheath. I still remember the pulpy green all over her helpless toddler fingers as she cried with ugly, mottled cheeks.

In the waiting room after, I feel the gush and bloom of blood. I find two loose Advil in my wallet, their coatings crumbled off, tasting sourly of quarters and other people’s hands.

On the TV, I recognize the men from House Hunters, one of whom is earnestly selling the myth of Forever Homes. He says you’ll have two of everything and too much space to grow into. There are bedrooms for unborn children. I watch from faraway as people decimate their budgets just to prove something to themselves, believing, too, in phantoms, in tying their hopes to unborn things.

We live in the shadow of some unnamable promise, worshipping the space before beginnings, where there is nothing but light

Driving home I pass a turquoise pickup with its nose smashed in, lopsided and helplessly hobbled just over the yellow line. A couple stands beside it, looking bewildered and vacant.

and the loss always comes as a surprise. a startled catch in the throat is what strangles out the sound of birth.

Behind this scene the mountains are stoic as ever. The sky remains straight-faced, refusing its premonitions. My body bleeds in winces and starts and planetrails are ridging the sky like scar tissue, sewing up the wound. the scar as both forgetting and remembering

Probing the wound is both curiosity and tenderness. it is an act of coming to terms with the body. After all, how do you know you know you’ve lost a tooth until you feel the empty space with raw tongue?

Probing is asking: what hurts? Where exactly do these bruises lie?

how can I explain them?

Given

Let’s begin with the slice of hair. Waves of brown interspersed with a few blonde strands and a single copper-red streak contributed by my father’s mother. The stylist—Ashley, the only person who’d ever done my hair in our small town—swept it gently into a black ceramic sink that hurt the back of my neck as I craned my shoulders toward the spout.

Ashley lathered, conditioned, dried. As I perched on her spinning stool, she carefully brushed my hair into five subsections, wrapping a tiny colored band around each. Before she made the cut, she asked me if I was sure. I said yes.

There was a jar of scissors and a curler set on the tabletop of her workspace; she plucked out a thin pair of blades with a black plastic handle. Her hands were gentle on my head. She placed each curl of hair into a clear plastic Ziploc bag and handed it to me when she was done. “Try Locks of Love,” she told me, “I’ve heard they’re good.”

There was no preamble the last time I went: the stylist pulled my hair back with one hand and wielded her scissors with efficiency. Snip snip, ponytail falls.

I read later on the website for Wigs 4 Kids that you lose a few inches of hair if you choose the one-cut way; something to do with the strands that get pulled in from the side of the scalp being shorter. I just remember the shock, like jumping into Payette Lake from a cliffside in summer, cold water closing over my head. No warning: just a sudden lightness, a desire to run my fingers through the ruffle of what was left.

It was mid-July. As I sat on the curb outside, waiting for my mother to emerge from the antique store next door, I took note of the breeze tickling my bare shoulders. I looked through organizations on my phone and decided to send my eight inches to Michigan.

Hair is annual—my hairstyle follows the seasons, short in autumn and getting long enough to send off by spring. Blood, on the other hand, is a bimonthly affair—eight weeks, if you’re being precise.

It used to be irregular. I’d see a blood drive and put my name on the list if I had the time. Walk up to the foldable table in the college commons and fill out my details on an iPad before taking a seat on a portable chair, my punctured arm laid out for any passersby to see.

Then I transitioned to the local donation center. When I arrive for my donation, they take me to a private room with frosted windows and prick my finger to check my iron levels. They have plushy chairs, experienced staff, and snacks. Sometimes I wonder if half the reason I go is for the snacks; I never feel guilty guzzling down a V8 and a half dozen packets of cookies and chips after I’ve proffered my arm for the needle.

The last time I went, I was the final appointment of the day. The staff joked with each other as they finalized paperwork and labeling. I listened as I squeezed the ball that was supposed to help the woman find my vein. I didn’t look when she pierced my arm—not like my first time, at sixteen years old.

Back then, I watched as the needle went in. Maybe to convince myself I was brave enough to see it. It wasn’t as painful as I’d expected; I remember fascination as I watched the sample vials they took before the donation itself fill with red. My red.

But not mine anymore. If the hair I give is already dead, the blood is somnambulant, if severed from me much the same. Sleeping in between hosts before it wakes again.

I get texts after my donations when my blood is used: its arrival at a hospital, its imminent transfusion. I imagine almost a dozen tiny threads sewn between me and anonymous recipients. Lifeblood ties, I’d like to imagine, though I sometimes wonder if my blood has ever gone to someone for whom it wasn’t enough.

A 2014 study showed that blood donors scored higher than non-donors in the area of “impure altruism,” donating both to benefit others and to gain a “warm glow” for themselves. I try to envision how much of my drive to donate comes from a desire for that warm glow. After all, I wear the colorful band the staff uses to patch me up afterward like a badge of honor. Later, I get my text, smile at my phone, and go on with my life.

I’ve only realized recently how alienated my experience is from the recipient. Just like my hair, I never see where my blood ends up.

Hair was fourteen, blood was sixteen, and on the top of my Notes app list for “Things to do when I’m 18,”just below “sign my own permission forms” and above “get ordained online,” was “sign up for the bone marrow registry.” Bone marrow was a step up: I know the needle is bigger, know it digs deeper.

But I’ve also done my research. I know that bone marrow donation is a low-risk procedure. I know it can save a life—leukemia patients are the target, I think. I know that being a match for someone is heavily dependent on ethnic background. Which means the likelihood for someone mixed like me, someone relatively unique on the genetic scale, needing a transplant is low.

Still. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of the aisle, waiting for a match I don’t think will ever come. So on my eighteenth birthday, I registered online. I sent them my cheek swab. My name is still on their list; I keep my contact info updated. Just in case.

Here, we reach my limit.

I thought briefly about donating eggs back in my first year of college. I remember late nights in my lofted twin bed as I scrolled through pages of information about the process, pictures of smiling women with height and heritage and SAT scores listed next to their headshots. I considered myself among them and eventually closed out the web pages, unease twisting in my stomach. I still can’t imagine my face living on in a child I will never get to meet.

After eggs on my self-made scale comes the liver. It was cold and wintry when one of my friends mentioned that you could make a living donation of the organ. He joked that he drank so much he wasn’t sure they’d take his.

You can donate over half your liver and the rest will grow back, for both you and the recipient. Livers are hardy like that, and I know mine’s healthy; I wouldn’t touch alcohol with a ten-foot pole.

But liver donation also entails surgery. A surgery I’m not so sure I’m ready to undergo—not for a stranger.

Kidneys are similar. Is it selfish to want both for myself, just in case one fails? I can always make more hair, more blood, more marrow, even more liver. But once a kidney is gone, nothing fills the space it leaves behind.

If I die young, let’s hope it’s quick and leaves me mostly intact. The little heart at the corner of my driver’s license tells what can be taken: one life, perhaps, for the lives of a few strangers. One body for many organs: heart, lungs, kidneys. Apparently, sometimes they take eyes. I don’t know how that would feel, my eyes in another person’s face.

How far would I let them go? Do my wishes matter if I’m not alive to speak them? I wonder what they’d be able to do someday with my tongue.

We began with the slice of hair. I wonder sometimes about the slice of soul. The severing of myself from my body. I don’t know what follows. But when my time comes, blood cooling and neurons finished firing at last, I can at least let my shell serve the people I leave behind.

Tonight, I can feel the chill of my room through my jacket; I left my window open too long, trying to even out the temperature ratcheted up by my overactive heater. My fingers across my keyboard are hesitant, my thoughts winding down.

But giving is complicated. I know that I am not a wholly altruistic person. (I would argue that nobody is.) This year, I’ve found myself encouraging friends to sign up for blood donation appointments or add their names to the bone marrow registry. I can feel two motivations pulling at me. One says remind them to donate. Look, we are saving lives. Look at how much you can help others to give.

The other says remind them to donate. Won’t they think you’re selfless? Won’t they think you’re kind?

Even this essay feels in some ways like me holding a sign over my head for the reader: OBSERVE MY ALTRUISM, PLEASE. And as much as I’d like to avoid that connotation, I’m afraid it might always taint—or, perhaps, shed light upon—this piece of work.

It’s all so very complicated. How much of giving is a mutual joy, and how much is just a gift to yourself?

Still. Does it matter to the person on the other end? If I consider the long train of donations, I realize that even though my organs might be plucked from my body when I die, the people who receive them will someday meet their end just the same. All we can give each other, ultimately, is time.

A little bit of extra time before that moment comes.

SOSS x Cipher Jamboard

Thoughts on Touch

Image reads:

WHO/WHAT TAUGHT YOU TO FEEL GOOD?

* hiking/working out, feeling my body move

* one night stands (no pressure = freedom)

* my binder

* queer community at cc

* Relations at CC and the vibrator i won from their raffle!

* queer friends having queer conversations

* work (when it feels good)

* my shower head

* parts of porn focused on the clit

* Myself by buying a vibrator

* talking about it !

* disability justice!

* when i learned how to say what i like!

* my mom telling me sex was supposed to feel good

* FEMMES

* Saying no and being respected in that

* the first person i really loved

* my first big CRUSH

* friends !

* learning to throw away my bras

* parts of porn that are lowkey awkward and make me feel a little closer to the actors

* Telling my story and being validated

* the internet

* pleasure activism <3

* the first scenes in the l word

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DESCRIBE HOW HORNY FEELS PHYSICALLY

* validated

* anxious, lustful, tight, overwhelmed, focused

* so distracting

^!!!

*Like putting your hand in sand and letting it go through your fingertips

*wanting to be naked

* dreamlike

* desires

* sweaty

^yes

* something scary/but exciting

* all the time

* Her leg between my thighs

* wet

* vibrations of your whole body

* like a warm hug thats also electric

Image reads:

WHAT TOUCHES YOU/WHAT IS TOUCHING TO YOU? (physical, emotional, sexual touch)

* playing with my clit

* putting on makeup and feeling in my skin

* using she/they

* rain

* head on my shoulder

* her fingers/her tongue/her body

* NOT BEING MISGENDERED

* his fingers

* humidity and kudzu!

* her touch

* music

* its cheesy but roses

* big big hugs!!

* touching my hair

* @gramparents

* kissing cuties

* moving my hand up his thigh or him moving his hand up mine

* reflecting on a relationship i had with someone much older, nonsexual but v ambiguous

* queer people holding hands

* being called sir

* when someone describes me accurately

* swimming in a lake

* going outside and sitting in silence

* when someone is reminded of me

* going to virtual events with my grandma <3

* when my mother sends me pictures of the sky at dusk

* eye contact (can be so sexual)

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what is your euphoria?

* dancing!!!!!! while drunk

* falling in love with the label of disability

* Labeling myself as gay

* sitting outside under the sun and having no responsibilities

* wanting to be and being productive

* a good fire

* Making money from my creative outlet and having people like what I make

* feeling included

* When I get really interested in a topic and get to tell my loved ones all about it

* after working out in a ~cute~ fit

* not being manic

* loving my body (only happens occasionally, but always really exciting)

* long hugs

* that flow state when everything somehow just clicks/makes sense/is good

* flat chest !

* medication

* wearing a big colorful headband for the first time since i was 14

* any slow burn lovers book

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WHAT/WHO DO YOU WANT?

* def to have an overwhelming crush / become infatuated with someone else / to be in awe of them… this year got me feeling pretty lonely

^and for them to like u back (or at least for me)

* Realizing I’m gay

* myself

^hard to feel sometimes but big respect

* respect, being valued and deemed as important

* chemistry between someone

* a hot sweaty stranger in a club/party/concert

* boys :P

* dick

* my crush that i always see on campus

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describe the relationship between your desires and your actions (how does the way you like to be touched relate to the way you like to touch)

* i like to give head more than i like receiving it but maybe thats cos guys can’t get me off as good as myself or my vibe

* my vibrator = my desires + my actions

* I like being the top in a dom way but whenI’m being touched in a very conservative and vanilla (for lack of a better word) way

* I dont like being touched but i like touching her how she wants to be touched

* like please grab my ass

* deepthroating is fun because its so easy to make them cum

* scared to initiate touch/be vulnerable but always grateful when someone else does… learning how to get over this lol

* whispers & breath in my ears

* TOP

* trying to be a major dom, failing, being goofy, having fun w it

* submissive dominant (i can’t explain it but both at the same time)

* i feel strongly and everything is big but like to touch how my partner wants to be touched

* always touching people how I want to be I guess sometimes I should just tell them what I want

* sex in weird places!

Image reads:

WHAT/WHO DO YOU WANT TO TOUCH/FEEL?

* the sweaty walls of my middle school during a dance that haunts my dreams

* all of my friends i haven’t seen in so long

* Last January/February in 2020

* the hand rails on a bus, I want to rise on a busy busy bus with so many people

* hands

* the soil, i want to repot my plants

* ice water

* my fidgets that help me concentrate as a adhd/disabled person

* tongues!!

* all of my friends w whom ive never been able to have physically intimate relationships

* i want to dance w someone and put my hands around their waist :’)

* sweaty strangers

* The younger versions of my cousins and myself, or at least be able to go back to that body I was in, and that time and space when we were together

* your belt loops

* I want to touch the time. I want to crawl around in it and linger and be help by it

* I also want to be able to like physically touch/inhabit time… like be present with it in that way??

* sand

* MOSS

* a nice butt!

* The feeling that the book “song of Achilles” gave me

* all of my friends

* okay but sometimes dick

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WHAT IS THE LACK OF HORNY/TOUCH?

* a friendship breakup

* having withdrawal after forgetting to take my meds

* unwanted attention

* being misgendered

* the feeling i had my first time having sex… w/ a man i didn’t know :(

* period cramps

* quarantined without my vibrator

* realizing i am manic

* instagram posts that don’t get likes (ik I shouldn’t care but I do)

* older man making a gross comment to my friend at the pool. literally disgusting!!!!!

* bad habits

* realizing people are talking about me and not in a nice way

* the R word ! makes me want to go into a ball and leave this universe

* being in a fight over long distance

* when you’re feeling yourself & your fit but no one says anything affirming LOL

* self judgement

* people talking to me when i dont want to talk

* the word “should”, “should have”

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HOW DO YOU BALANCE verbal AND nonverbal TOUCH/COMMUNICATION?

* a verbal yes with eye contact is so hot

* look for enthusiasm

* phone sex, when good, is really good

* checking in!

* i don’t like hugs to talking is more of my love language in a way

* sexii eye contact… and checking in if it doesn’t feel reciprocal in any way!

* verbal communication is hard to initiate sometimes

* i love friendships that are based in mutual presence rather than conversation

^true - always nice when u feel so comfortable to be in silence w/ someone else !!

Image reads:

Who politicized the power of you feeling good?

* adrienne maree brown

* validation and queer podcasts

* no queer role models

* Flower art that is obviously a vulva

* my mom lmao uh oh

* Peggy Orenstein (author of girls and sex)

* Vibrators

* Daria from that 90s cartoon

* dr kumar lmao

* Candace Owens

* attentive partners

* instagram sex education femmes

* intersectional feminism

* being disabled, me being happy is political

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What kind of touch makes you feel grounded in your body

* yummy?

* back rubs

* someone grabbing my MF waist!!!!!

* swimming in a lake and holding your breath underwater

* walking in my combat boots :)

* hands on my waist

* walking barefoot :P

* ASMR

* tight hugs after i cry

* playing with my hair

* Grass

* hugs from grandma

* i feel grounded when dick is inside me lol

* also being fingered (when it’s good)

* fidgeting

* i dont know

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WHAT MAKES YOU HORNY FOR LIFE/WHAT TURNS YOU ON THT ISN’T SEXUAL?

* tiktoks that go into depth on obscure things

* when they empty their pockets … you know they’re ~settling in~

* seeing my little spider plant babies growing under their big ole spider parent

* when a US team wins in the olympics

* SUNSHINE

* when i take my meds

* making a pretty meal

* puppies…? cute agression LOL

* feeling confident in a bomb outfit

* Rain

* standing in freezing water (esp a river) for a long while really connects me to the essence of my being lol

* when i meet other disabled people and feel less alone

* Well my roommate made brownies today and it makes me so grateful for life and people

* car rides with the window down blasting music

* Doing my makeup

* a breazy morning afternoon

* when i eat with friends

* weed

* the ocean

*shrooms

* accessibility!!!!!!!!!!!!

* trader joes flowers

Un Abrazo

I can’t remember the last time I hugged her.

I can only remember the last time I didn’t.

Last summer, we drove the two hours up I-95 to see her before I flew to Colorado for the fall. We lost my abuelo to cancer when I was ten, so she had been living alone for a long time in a brick house in Bethesda, Maryland. She made the beds for us a lot, we drove up a lot.

This year was different. We know how.

Suddenly, she needed to be alone, which was to say she needed to be safe. Isolating was safe. So she sat in her house for over a year, watching telenovelas on a tiny screen from the seventies with rabbit ear antenna and grainy, discolored faces. She ate bread, pasta, empanadas, alfajores, Milano cookies, and the occasional Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar. She sat in the kitchen by her corded telephone with her address book open and called everyone she knew and everyone she loved, just to see how they were doing. Every day. I was one of them.

We went to see her so she could see us. I got in a vicious argument with my dad in the car. My mom begged us to stop. I apologized and he did not. My eyes were puffy, my throat sore, when we arrived. I didn’t feel like talking. I was angry. It was over one hundred degrees. I felt uncomfortably swaddled in the balmy heat and heady weight of the humidity. We sat on her sun-soaked patio, ten feet away from where she set up a chair in her doorway. I sat with my shoulders hunched in the way she did not like. We ate pizza. She liked margherita.

She wasn’t the greatest listener. She got upset that we refused to go inside. She thought our reasons were senseless. She wanted to see our whole faces for the whole time, to fix my frizzy hair and adjust my shirt. My mother and I had been volunteering in Richmond, so we didn’t want to get near her. We were thinking of what we believed to be the worst-case scenario.

Then we had to leave. She didn’t make up the beds this time, to sit and chat and complain and bicker for a few hours. That was all we got, all she got. When we stood, I looked at her and motioned to give her an air hug, whispering, “Un abrazo.” She looked at me, and she looked at my mom. She began to tremble, a choke escaping her in a way that made me lightheaded. I had never seen her cry. It was horrible.

We quickly promised we would come again soon, that I would call her right when my flight landed. We descended the patio steps, rattled by her sudden display of emotion. We waved as we pulled out of the driveway. She had a handkerchief balled up in her hand and I could still see how her face scrunched with the discontentment and inexplicable frustration of this year and its new rules.

My mom and I spoke briefly about how upsetting it all was. How alone she was. How helpless it all felt. How thankful we were that she was healthy, at least. When I would be home for fall break to see her from a distance again. I didn’t want to make my mom more upset by crying. I cry easily – from laughter, from frustration, from the temper that I have and do not like.

But this was different. There was an unspoken fear in our conversation, one that we would not address. It was the don’t-dare-speak-it-into-existence kind of fear, one of the many poisonous what-ifs that accompanied the first months of the pandemic when there was no fathomable end in sight. We tread lightly around it. But my abuela was eighty-three, and I had invasive thoughts. The drive back was long.The flight to Colorado was longer.

We loved her so much. She loved us so much. I wish I could give her a hug now. But that was it. I hadn’t known.

She died in April. Suddenly and unexpectedly.

There’s no resolution now. Just a painful memory and a visceral feeling. Of desired touch. Of abrupt emptiness, insurmountable loss. Grief. Some sort of resolution, I guess, plays out within all of us who knew her. I’m still waiting.

I talked to her on the phone the day before. She complained about the rain and asked me when graduation was. I had talked to her every week since I was little. I didn’t want her to feel alone. Sundays at four p.m. now feel so hollow.

Every time, she asked me when I was coming home. I planned to fly back right after graduation and stay with her for the summer – a fully vaccinated kid finally feeling a bit of hope for her abuela’s situation. 

She was ridiculous and complicated and particular and stubborn. She didn’t want to get vaccinated because she feared doctor’s offices and hospitals. That was where her husband had died. I convinced her by telling her how much I loved and missed her, how much I wanted to see her and hug her. Te quiero, te extraño, y hasta prontito por favor. She was my best friend. She did so much for me, I wanted to give her a fraction of a thank you. I wanted to do anything for her. Except I wouldn’t give her a hug last summer – that could’ve hurt her.

Now we are the ones alone. My veins are filled with a hurt beyond description. An obscene, guttural, never-ending damnation of this horrific year. It closes my throat, rejects food and water, makes my hands shake, my body shudder, and my mind splinter. I can only describe it as away. What am I touching and what am I connected to? What do I even want to be connected to in a place that takes when you need it not to?

I want to lay in a grassy field and feel swallowed by the dew and weight of the weather as I did that last time I saw her. I want to lay there and scream until something feels a little better, or different. Until I get the sense that the universe understands what it has done. That something is sorry. I am angry now as I was on that day. But this anger subsists and seethes more than any argument I’ve ever had. It burns in my chest with the helplessness that death forces upon us.

Her vaccine appointment was scheduled for the day after it happened. I told her over the phone how proud I was. How ready I was to see her so soon.

We tried to do everything right. I didn’t give my abuela a hug because we wanted to keep her safe. So we could hug her again someday.

I wanted to hug her then. I want to hug her now. I can’t remember the last time I did.

Como cada despedida:

Te quiero, te extraño, y hasta prontito.

Lettitor

Dear reader, 

This, our final issue of Cipher for the uniquely strange and often awful 2020-2021 school year, wasn’t supposed to be called Touch. In fact, we voted almost unanimously that the theme should be Horny. Those who have done some digging through the archives lamented that Cipher used to be quite a bit sexier, publishing everything from editors’ diary pages to an Ask Amy style relationship advice column to detailed accounts of the sexual activities of bonobos (an article by Brittin Alfred from 2009’s Climax issue that we’ve republished here). We wanted to capture this sense of nostalgia and fun in a year where pandemic-related isolation has made things hornier for an awful lot of people. But we soon realized that maybe horniness was too narrow, that what we were feeling and wanted to explore was more nebulous, more serious: a general longing for touch in all of its forms. We want to touch the people we love and so many we lost, complete strangers, spaces and surfaces we took for granted. 

We hope that you see —and feel, even from afar— this longing reflected in the contributions to this issue. Some of the pieces embody the horny humor we had originally envisioned, such as an anonymous writers’ vignette about a brand new Bunny vibrator, or a sometimes funny, mostly creepy night at a London pub to which Logan Smith so vividly transports us. Others explore touch in vastly different forms—take two of the 2021 winners of the Adelaide Bender Reville Prize in Creative Nonfiction, Skye Guindon and Tia Vierling, for instance. Skye details a personal and profound experience of a body in deep pain; Tia explores the ethics and implications of donating parts of one’s body to others, starting with pieces of hair.  Another anonymous contributor writes of a pink jockstrap as a window into his history, identity, and home; Lauren Hecht sits with the agony of being unable to express her overwhelming love for her abuela through touch, one last time. And finally, in collaboration with the brilliant people of Colorado College SOSS (follow their work here), we bring you a virtual brainstorm of our collective thoughts on touch and their November Body Image Zine. 

These pieces are beautiful, vulnerable, eclectic. Compiling the Touch Issue felt, even more than usual, like piecing together windows into our community. Maybe it’s because these pieces came in so many different forms from so many different places, maybe because working from Zoom rectangles always feels a bit disjointed, maybe it’s because, in many ways, editing Cipher is like carefully collaging with precious materials. I have learned so much from the parts and the whole, from the experience of reaching across distances great and small to piece together our publication. So in this spirit, I’d like to end with another messy compilation of thoughts that are not my own— what the Cipher staff has most recently touched or been touched by (defined, as always, broadly): 

• My laptop keyboard but that feels like a cop out, before that was a soap dispenser

• My friends— I’ve been giving them lots of hugs these days

• Myself

• Domino’s garlic parmesan bread bites

• Today I touched the earth, the soil, the sun. I repotted my plants and sat with the world and the air in all its beauty and glorious sublimity

Thank you as always to our readers for reading, our writers and artists for your beautiful work, and our staff for your constant care and dedication. As much as I wish we could hold physical copies of our magazine, sing karaoke in the same space, share gel pens and keyboards and takeout containers, I am truly touched by you all. 

Still kinda horny, 
Emma and the Cipher staff