All Fours

If 321 was everywhere then every day was Wednesday, and I could always be how I was in the room. Imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed. I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul.

My friends are always obliging me with ephemera like this—screenshots of sexts, emails to their mothers—because I’m forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people. What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course none of these artifacts really amounted to anything; it was like trying to grab smoke by its ha

And sexy clothes. I had worn them without really understanding why, thinking of sexy as one of many styles, not realizing it was the only style. You should always be emerging from a shell if possible.

Twenty years ago I’d been in my twenties; twenty years from now I’d be in my sixties. I was no closer to being sixty-five than twenty-five, but since time moved forward, not backward, sixty-five was tomorrow and twenty-five was moot. I didn’t think a lot about death, but I was getting ready to. I understood that death was coming and that all my cur

I’d thought the two paths were: sex with Davey vs. a life of bitterness and regret But maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising like this night had been. While I didn’t have the narcotic high Davey gave me, there was another kind of elation and it was, among other things, weirder. I felt untether

Jordi had been beside herself. She said I sounded completely different, utterly changed. “I do?” “Yes, the quality of your voice, it’s all opened up.” “Open, open, open,” I said, trying to hear the new quality of my voice. “Test, test.” I asked if she judged me and she said, How could I judge you? For what? It’s brave to feel so much. “Brave? Why?”

a woman’s mental health postmenopause is usually better than it’s been at any other time in the life of that particular woman, other than maybe childhood.” What. “Is that really true? Is it because our periods stop?” “Mm, it’s more that we aren’t cycling anymore between estrogen and progesterone and FSH. And, of course, in a patriarchy your body is

Menopause coinciding with the death of a family member has brought to me the lesson that to live, truly and completely, you have to be willing to let go. Of everything and everyone.

It was always like this in life. No one ever had the right reaction to anything.