Durham felt familiar somehow. Neither of us had ever been there before, but the streets weren’t foreign to us. When the light of the setting sun hit a row of brick buildings it felt like a memory, like a painting by Hopper I’d seen long ago and forgotten about. Rand made me run to catch the…
Late last year, Rand and I visited Raleigh, North Carolina, and after reading glowing online reviews for it, I spent an afternoon at the North Carolina Museum of History. I was appalled by it. I’ve heard of revisionist historians, of people who claim the Civil War was about something other than slavery, but I figured…
I nearly forgot to tell you about the pilgrimage we made last summer to Stratford-upon-Avon: the home of that great Bard, of the man who wrote the sonnets and plays that shaped my awkward adolescence and escorted me to an awkward adulthood. I will confess: at first I found the little town kitschy. The endless…
Like most of you, I recently read the Elle article about what Amanda Chantal Bacon, a woman who may just be a low-blood-sugar-induced hallucination of Gwyneth Paltrow’s, eats in a given day. It was a lot like the first time I read Shakespeare or heard an interview with Bob Dylan. I knew it was English, but…
The prescription says “post coital.” It actually says that on the bottle. When the doctor told me my instructions for taking the antibiotic, I sincerely did not think that he would have the nerve to relay that information to the pharmacist. I figured he’d use some sort of vague jargon like, “as needed” which is…
Last week, a dear friend of mine from childhood texted me to let me know that her mother had died. I’d known her – and, by extension, her mother – since I was in the third grade. During our awkward, formative years my friend and I and a cadre of other girls (equally nerdy and well-behaved, for the most…
When you are my age, everyone starts caring about your uterus. Not in a fun way, where they send it text messages or memes featuring shirtless Jeff Goldblum circa Jurassic Park, but in a very critical, “what the fuck is wrong with your downstairs human factory and, by extension, you” kind of way. Because if…
I spend a lot of my waking hours feeling subtle pangs of regret for all the things I should have said but didn’t, for all the tiny little things that I really wish I had done but ultimately did not. I am haunted by the specters of unrealized acts and things unsaid. In my life,…
I don’t like horror movies. I think it’s because I don’t find violence or death to be that entertaining. I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou – I just really, really dislike being scared. It’s probably because I’m scared all the time, anyway (it’s a byproduct of my anxiety. Basically, any time I’m alone and anything…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
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