Water on Stone: A Short Story on Pity

She had been telling me a story for most of our date, a story that seemed half-truth, half-lie. I wasn’t sure how we got on the topic, but I didn’t dislike listening to her speak. The woman was a lover, but she was not a friend. She existed in that hazy space between passion and convenience. She twirled her little brown braid around her index finger — she had pianist hands — and looked at me with her wet, green eyes. Her eyes had a certain blank hopefulness that reminded me of cow eyes.

The Art of Winning (And Losing): On E. Y. Zhao’s Underspin

A few weeks ago, I visited a friend at her family’s house in the Rockaways. The house was painted in the colors of the Sabrett hot dog brand — yellow and blue — and the living room featured a matching bench with a Sabrett umbrella sprouting from the center of the table like a parasitic growth. Children rode their bikes down the street. Mothers walked their little white dogs in synchronized packs. There were about 10 or 11 of us, and we spent the day at the beach reading, drinking, eating. That evening, we gathered on the backyard patio while mosquitoes tore our bare legs to shreds. All conversations eventually funnel into sex or violence or both.

It Wasn’t Real, But It Was Beautiful: On the WWE Holiday Tour Live and Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida

Last year, on the day after Christmas, I went alone to the WWE Holiday Tour Live at Madison Square Garden, where I sat in nosebleed seats. I wore a plaid button-down shirt and black jeans. I listened to “Danza Kuduro” on repeat on the half-hour walk from my apartment. My life was stable for the first time in two years. I was twenty-nine, living in New York after a nearly ten year hiatus, and dating a wonderful medical student at the University of Michigan who loved me very much. Everything was good. But I hadn’t finished writing my book and editors often edged me on whether my short stories would make it into their magazines (Not this story, but maybe the next one? Keep submitting to us!). I loved the medical student, but sometimes worried about our relationship.