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April 15 - May 7, 2022
If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had. Don’t ask what was in their fridge or in their closet. The number of windows says it all. It says everything. If they had none, or maybe one or two, that’s all you need to know.
someone was saying, “I was born a girl, so yeah I definitely want to have a baby of my own eventually.” Where does that come from, though? Does blood coming out of your body make you a woman? A potential mother?
My monolithic expectation of what a woman’s body was supposed to look like had no bearing on what actually happened to my body. The two things were wholly unrelated. I never became the woman I imagined. And what was I expecting? The kind of body that you see in girly magazines. A body that fit the mold of what people describe as “sexy.” A body that provokes sexual fantasy. A source of desire. I guess I could say that I expected my body would have some sort of value. I thought all women grew up to have that kind of body, but that’s not how things played out.
People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally.
But what’s wrong with having strong nipples? Or dark nipples, for that matter? Who wants their nipples to be cute or pretty? You’d think that, in the world of nipples, it’d be the strong, dark, big ones that would reign supreme. Maybe someday they’ll have their moment. But probably not.
In Shobashi, there were a million kinds of bars, including the onabe bars, where the hosts were born as women, but identified as men, and dressed like men, and interacted with their customers as men. The ones who were straight dated women, as guys.
“she really did everything she could.” I started to say that was why she died so young, but kept my mouth shut.
Fourteen. I remember when I was fourteen. The first year I wrote up a CV. I lied and said that I was in high school and got a job at a local factory. On my way to work I put on lipstick at the pharmacy, using a sample tube that had been worn down to the plastic.
When it swung you upside down and started falling, it was like the wind had been knocked out of you. I wonder if that sensation, this whole-body scream, has a name. What part of your body does it come from? What the hell is actually happening? This always makes me think about the people who jump off of buildings. They say it’s only a handful of seconds before they meet the pavement, but I wonder if that scream is the last thing they ever feel.
Think about how great everything would be if none of us were ever born. No happiness, no sadness. Nothing could ever happen to us then. It’s not our fault that we have eggs and sperm, but we can definitely try harder to keep them from meeting.
So I look away and try to rid them from my mind. But that only makes it hard to tell if I’ve escaped my demons or invited them to stay.
Right now, that relationship defined their world—I thought that was a tidy way of putting it. That doesn’t mean that it was puppy love. I mean it really changed the way they saw things, as if the strength of how they felt for one another had produced a sturdy faith in how the world would operate. When they gazed into each other’s eyes, they saw a world replete with promise, strong and soft. The world was there to make their dreams come true, and they could trust without a shred of doubt that it would make good on its promises.
How many more times in my life would I sit back like this and find myself transfixed by the blue of the evening? Is this what it means to live and die alone? That you’ll always be in the same place, no matter where you are?
every writer ends up creating their own language. Your style is an invention.
on in the middle of the empty changing room, I felt like I’d been left behind, trapped inside the weathered skeleton of an enormous creature that had shed its flesh and skin. Then I started to feel as though it was me, that my body had become the empty husk. The feeling was more desolate than anything I’d ever felt, like I was watching myself dying, helpless to fight back, at the hands of someone who was making some kind of a big mistake.
my royalties. I hadn’t dipped into it once. I grew up in a house where there was no such thing as wiggle room. We were barely scraping by. Saving absolutely nothing. Zero. Sometimes we had to take on debt. It wasn’t uncommon for us to live without heat or gas for a while.
Before long I’ll be looking after my mother-in-law, taking care of the house instead of her. Just look at me now, free labor with a pussy, same as my mum.”
Over time, I realized how I felt about him. Hearing from him turned my day around. If I read something or saw some cute animal video, I wanted him to see it, too. I imagined us listening to my favorite songs together. I wanted us to talk about our favorite books and really delve into our thoughts about the world.
living with someone is nothing but friction, the collision of incompatible ideals. It takes trust to make it viable. I mean, love is basically a drug, right? Without love and trust, resentment is all you’ve got. And that’s where we found ourselves, real fast.”
They’re on a pedestal from the second they’re born, only they don’t realize it. Whenever they need something, their mums come running. They’re taught to believe that their penises make them superior, and that women are just there for them to use however they see fit. Then they go out into the world, where everything centers around them and their dicks. And it’s women who have to make it work.
genuinely don’t think I’ve had a bad life. I don’t need anyone’s pity. Whatever it is I’ve had to live through, it’s nothing compared to being born.”
Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that’s what you want for yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense.”
‘People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, creating things and breaking things apart.
