Introspection
Every Friday Night
Sometimes, I pretend I’m in one of those getting-ready-montage movie scenes, like the songs from Spotify’s latest pop playlist are actually my life’s perfectly-synced backup track.
Reading Pete
I want to root for the kind of person whose prose is occasionally sloppy, whose opinions aren’t just rigid but also rigorous and sometimes even risky, the type of person who doesn’t need to fall back on Yeats to understand the present day, or who fails to read “Ulysses” because they were doing something other than what was assigned for tomorrow’s class.
Makeup Endpaper Design
"First is always the eyeliner — that one’s tricky, for the wings to be sharp enough and long enough and even enough"
To Make a Dumpling
It’s the summer before my freshman year of college, and my mom is trying to teach me as many recipes as she can before I leave for school. One day, she approaches me — she wants me to make dumplings from scratch, all on my own. While I’m usually enthusiastic about cooking together, that day I balk.
That I Can Tell You in One Word
The play is exactly what its pitch promises. Fiddler Afn Dakh. The Fiddler you know, but — to most who are not obscure intellectuals or devout Orthodox Jews — less intelligible. So why is everyone so obsessed with it?
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.
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.
Alien Column image
"One minute, you’re looking into this light, and the next you’re waking up, hours later."
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.
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."
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.
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.
