Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

Arnold was having an affair. I was going steady. When he told me that he couldn’t see me on New Year’s Eve, I said no big deal, I had plans anyway. Except I didn’t. When a boy and girl went steady, it meant a guaranteed date for New Year’s Eve.

He showed me how tenses were to language what perspective was to painting. Tenses made a story three-dimensional. Had was further back in time than was, and is existed only on the surface. He introduced me to adjectives by calling them language’s colors. Adjectives gave a noun mood, as pigment gave a tone spirit.