The Body
Dorothy Parker loomed large in American letters but, in person, she was a tiny thing (4 feet, 11 inches). From the pictures spanning her life, it’s clear that she neglected her corporal self. In the duality of mind vs. body, she chose the mind and if you did not approve, she did not care. Or so she claimed.* Frankly, we don’t buy it. We all must, at some point, make peace with our body given that it is the vessel that gives us life while also hurtling us to its inevitable dissolution. The fact that women are so often judged by how their bodies look…let’s just say this topic garnered a record number of entries.
*If I'm in bed each night by ten,/I may get back my looks again,/If I abstain from fun and such,/I'll probably amount to much,/But I shall stay the way I am,/Because I do not give a damn.
—Observation by Dorothy Parker
The Smell of Death
Word Count 622
They had us walk into the room where Aunty lay. Her body was rigid, hands crossed, skin yellowed under the cold light. Two nights back she'd texted me that she was feeling unwell—not to worry, she insisted. Now she was arranged in an oak-brown casket. Her eyelids were half-open, as if caught in an unfinished thought.
I pressed my palm against her chest. In an instant, the smell—the thick, chemical-sweet breath of death, sour and intimate, wormed its way up into my throat. I almost gagged. The mortuary and everything in it dissolved, peeled away. Instead, I was standing somewhere else.
The Miscarriage
Word Count 1248
It was evening and I walked along the beach, alone. We’d come to the Dominican Republic to enjoy ourselves, to escape the monotony of our grief and we had, gotten away, temporarily. Massages and pina coladas, sex in the jacuzzi, a flamboyance of flamingos outside our window that made us snort with laughter each time we saw them. But it was our last night, and everything catches up, eventually. We’d argued at dinner, about what, I can’t remember, but I know that we both walked away angry, my husband towards the hotel room and me in the direction of the ocean. I looked up at the moon. I could see its reflection on the water, like a path, and so I followed it, stepping out of my dress and into the soft waves. It was surprisingly warm, on my thighs, my hips, my belly. I clenched and unclenched my fists. I slipped my head under the water and opened my eyes. Heal me, I whispered, to nobody. I could still see the moon, under the surface of the water.
Pissed
Word Count 905
One night, at a suburban nightclub somewhere near Atlanta, two young men appeared and offered an adventure “Want to see the abandoned VA hospital with us?” asked Kenny.
I grew up exploring abandoned or under-construction buildings. The more forbidden or dangerous, the more alluring. I thought of another hospital, St. Joseph’s, my latest architectural exploration. It was scheduled for demolition, but curious about where I’d been born, I’d recently snuck in, strolling the spookily empty long halls and small rooms. What would the VA hospital look like? It had been raining; it was night; this would be a different experience.
Disordered Eating
Word Count 1643
When I was young, my mother took great pride in my appearance. She was especially pleased that I was thin. In this respect, I took after my father’s side of the family. I had their lean build and long limbs.
“You see, there is justice in this world,” my mother often joked with friends. “I was a fat girl and I have a thin daughter.”
From then on my mother’s life and mine became a model of how not to raise your daughter if you want her to have a healthy attitude toward her body.
Flesh Of His Flesh
Word Count 2025
Eighty-seven years ago, my father, a doctor, wanted a son so desperately he read “male” in the speedy tempo of my fetal heart. When I was lifted out, a Caesarian baby, unstressed and unwrinkled, he said, Oh hell, this one’s got the wrong plumbing. All my childhood, that line ate into me. He was still saying it seventeen years later when I left home.
Ten years after that, on Father’s Day, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Hold Still
Word Count 750
I called Rohan for the following reasons. He has the only penis I had ever actually enjoyed, and he was the only ex I was on friendly terms with. I didn't really want to sleep a man, but I had just broken up with my first-ever girlfriend and had zero experience one-night-standing women. The last time I fucked a woman, she didn't leave for three years. Men, on the other hand, I had been exchanging my body for a good meal, a place to sleep, a distraction since I was eighteen. Plus, I figured if I have sex with a man, I might understand now if I am a full lesbian, bi, or just gay for Madeline.
These Hips
Word Count 547
Even though I am not the best dancer, I love my nightly salsa, bachata and cumbia classes in Oaxaca, a place I’ve been living for a few months. Every moment, even when I can’t get my body to do what my eyes see it’s supposed to, I relish trying.
That is, until tonight.
Tonight, the final routine is a bachata sequence. Bachata is famously sensual, and this particular sequence is especially so. My partner Emmanuel is perhaps in his mid-20s and has a gentle smile and dark sparkling eyes. I am 61, with a deep vertical thought crease between my eyebrows and crepey skin more often found on 90-year-old tanning bed addicts.
Skin and Bone
Word Count 1934
All my life, the scale has been a dictator, squatting ominously in the bathroom. I step on, naked, as if a mere stitch could warp the result. I hold my breath, and the number appears. Am I safe from fatness, or does fatness loom? If the result isn’t “right,” it will stamp the whole day, the whole week; it will mark me forever.
Today the number is 99, and the message is safe.
Except that’s not true. I am anything but safe. 99 means that I have lost 20 pounds in the last six months. 99 means that I am bloated in the abdomen, flattened in the breasts, with arms and legs as skinny as a teenage girl’s or ballerina’s. The parts don’t fit together.
Ab Ovo
Word Count 718
A female fetus has 6 million ova. The dwindling starts even before birth, at which point she will have around 2 million eggs. At puberty, the number has dropped to 300,000. By age 39, she’s lucky to have 25,000.
In my case, the reserves were half that. As an embryo, my body only formed one ovary and half a uterus. I was blissfully unaware of this rare anomaly, called a unicornuate uterus, until I gave birth via c-section to my first son. The doctor held up her phone to show me pictures she’d taken. It took me several moments to register that I was seeing a photo of my uterus, sitting atop my torso. The doctor was exhilarated: a full-term pregnancy with this condition is remarkable.
Cunt
Word Count 1207
There are quite a few everyday words for the vulva. I’m not talking about the specific parts of the vulva. Because who ever gave time to the specifics? Certainly not the ones who generally create and deploy these words. BOYS.
There’s TWAT— which never drew me— no real power there. Purposefully, I suspect. That’s the point of TWAT. Also, It’s kind of British.
There’s SNATCH. Which is almost not worth mentioning because it marks only the snatcher. What is snatched is therefore entirely eclipsed by the unwanted and irreverent action of the snatcher.
Burn This
Word Count 1053
My arm has a topography all its own, a map of suffering rendered in flesh. A mottled and discolored amoeba-shaped scar along my bicep, and its companion down the length of my forearm, are souvenirs of a morning that started like any other. I was dressed for breakfast in the blue plaid bell-sleeved shirt, soft like a baby’s bunting. I leaned in to smell fresh ground beans in the cone of the Melitta pot on the gas range. My shirt grazed the gas burner.
Shameless
Word Count 1525
As I stand on the scale at my doctor’s office, I watch the numbers unfold before me. I’m the size of at least two.
Still, I don’t flinch. I don’t self-blame. I don’t fill my mind with shame. I know, as a vegetarian who loves fruits and vegetables, rarely eats sugar, eats three small to regular meals a day, rarely snacks, and whose only real vice is an occasional slice or two of pizza and a couple beers or glasses of wine in the evening, I am fine just the way I am.
Oh sure, I’d love to be slimmer.
Breaking the Ice
Word Count 847
I sat on the edge of Auntie’s pool watching ice chunks bob in the turquoise water, shining silver under the clouds and gold in the sun. When the wind ruffled the surface, crystal nuggets jingled like bells. I dipped the toe of one red rubber boot in the lumpy water, making tiny waves fan outward in circles, clicking the tiny ice cubes together. I leaned over, grabbed one, and held it up to my eye. Tiny veins in the sunlit shard cracked my reflection into pieces. I wanted to show it to Mom, but she was gone from us now. Before, she would have pointed out pictures in the ice. Ever since my baby brother died last Christmas, she never touched me anymore. Maybe she thought since I turned four, I could take care of myself.
Ugly Feet
Word Count 782
My nephew was getting married on the beach.
“You’ll have to walk through the sand,” his mother informed me. “No need to wear shoes.”
No need to wear shoes?
I’m 76 and I’d sooner go topless than barefoot. My boobs aren’t half-bad, but my feet are a misshapen mess.
My toes are curled and slanted and have bumps on the top. My feet sport hammer toes, corns, and calluses, and the only reason they don’t have bunions is because I had them removed in two arduous surgeries a couple of decades ago. I long ago gave up pedicures because of the lipstick-on-a-pig phenomenon. There’s nothing that can make my tootsies presentable.
Weigh Less
Word Count 1224
As everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Bari Weiss was touting the use of GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic, for weight loss, I asked my own doctor to refer me to a specialist so I could get on board. My new doc diagnosed me as a “binge eater.” What?? I’d never been the one to stop at McDonald’s on the way home and gobble down a couple of Big Macs or consume a gallon of ice cream by myself. “Have you ever not been able to stop yourself from eating when you weren’t hungry?” she asked. I thought back to all those secret bites in my life.