Introspection
Money Close-Up
Relationships facilitated by Seeking Arrangement have an explicit financial agreement built into them, in which an older person pays a younger person to go on dates and sometimes to have sex.
Alien Column image
"One minute, you’re looking into this light, and the next you’re waking up, hours later."
Further Realms: Are We Alone?
Alien encounters are usually written off as far-fetched and unproven. Maybe they are. But I think it’s myopic to call them impossible.
Enrolling in Sugar Baby University
The landing page of the Sugar Baby University website greets me with a “student debt clock,” a live update of the combined total that American students owe.
Breaking and Entering
The ladder was decades old and rusted over. It clung to the side of the building; I had nowhere to fall except the neighbor’s backyard, five stories below.
A Cultural Masquerade
In the 21st century, maybe it’s increasingly impossible for anyone to have a straightforward explanation for where they come from. We toggle between identities, pulling from a jumble of birthplaces and nationalities. When I pretended to be my American roommate Hannah, maybe it wasn’t a lie, so much as one facet of who I am.
If All Space Were Safe Space
I have encountered this feeling in somewhat unconventional spaces: directing a porn film in an artist loft in Oakland, Calif., cheering from the audience as a woman reclaimed her sexuality in orgasm on a New York City stage, and participating in a “sex magic ritual” in a kinky mansion in the heart of New Orleans.
Porn Endpaper Illustration
"It is not the first time I am feeling this way — air light on my shoulders, warmth radiating off the bodies of friends, and a gut sense that my presence, or my humanity, is being realized."
Abandoned House
"In Virginia, my dad found a faulty lock on the door of a run-down, whitewashed church — an easy entrance."
Do You Know What You're Getting Yourself Into?
But spending the money is worth it, because a successful Visitas is imperative for NAHC. We’re a small group, and if we don’t convince enough prefrosh to join as freshmen, our numbers will dwindle. We feel like we have to convince Native prefrosh to commit to Harvard — and once that happens, we have to convince them that we are a community worth investing time in.
Walking Graphic
"Though some of my classmates had lived in America for years, all traces of their American accents were gone. Mine didn’t go away."
Visitas Graphic
"We don’t spend a lot of money all at once during the rest of the year, so that’s probably why the bank deactivated our card on the Sunday afternoon of Visitas."
No More Sixteen Candles
These comedians and I are having a conversation, and we don’t need a big wooden table in a Harvard seminar to talk about diaspora, our parents, and Asianness in America. We don’t have to explain unbelonging to each other.
Taking Off Your Shirt Means Something
With each question, the hookup gains stakes, a momentum of affirmation.
