Gaybash: A Review

February 23, 2025

Desi Silverman-Joseph

The invitation arrived as a Google Calendar notice via email: GAYBASH: Sat Nov. 9, 10 pm - 1am. “A party by gay guys, for gay guys” the subheading read. “Bring whoever fits the bill.” My heart leapt as I read the invitation and forwarded it to three friends. This was the party of my high school fantasies, the kind of thing I prayed would await me in college after four years of celibacy, when the jocks who ruled the party scene refused an invitation to any boy outside their varsity-playing, Creatine-crazed circles. The result: Friday nights at home watching TV with my mother and a whole lot of pent-up sexual curiosity. This feeling of desperation, I realize, is a common one for many gay guys who come flocking to Brown from not-so-cosmopolitan high schools, desiring shared experiences, romantic connection, and (let’s just say it) sex. And unlike at their high schools, gay guys at Brown may come to occupy the upper echelon of society, forming friend groups with formidable influence and social capital. My friends and I call such high-status homosexuals “Sirens.” In pop culture, the word denotes a female temptress who leads men on only to squash their hearts in the end. Among my friends, however, the word has come to describe a very particular kind of gay man at Brown. Your average Siren is beautiful, fashionable, and mean. In the summer, he wears baggy jorts and covers his perfectly-proportioned upper body with a scant white wife-beater. In the winter, he wears cargo pants with a knit sweater and a delicate scarf that could have only come from your voguish aunt’s wardrobe. His ears are pierced, his friends are hot, and he makes sure you know he reads in his free time. If you are not on his level, do not try to talk to him—he won’t give you the time of day. When I arrived at the address listed in the invitation at 11 PM that fateful Saturday night, I was disappointed to find practically no Sirens in attendance. The party was filled almost entirely with nerds making awkward conversation and vague attempts at flirtation with people they knew from class. They swayed their bodies back and forth uncomfortably to house music, but few actually danced. I fluttered about looking for an interaction I could enter without worrying about how quickly it would turn stale. At 11:30, the Sirens arrived at once. Everyone seemed relieved; Gaybash was not some lame gathering we had been tricked into attending but a real party with Sirens and all. They stood among us, and this was our chance to associate, to integrate ourselves among their ranks. One Siren whom I had met briefly at a campus event approached me. He grabbed my hand and offered a warm, Sireny hug. I blushed and tried to sustain a conversation without losing composure. Exhausted by the effort, I pretended to get distracted by a friend in the crowd. I bounded away, satisfied that I had been the one to kill the interaction. It’s a good feeling when you make a Siren yearn. It turns out I wasn’t the only one feeling conscious about a perceived divide between the high-status and the humdrum homosexuals. One stranger introduced himself by asking if I was a “scary gay.” It was his intention, he told me, to meet all the scary gays at Brown that night. I laughed and told him that I wasn’t scary—eager to disprove his assumption through warmth and relatability. Secretly, though, I was a bit flattered. I had indeed elevated my self-presentation with the hopes of intimidating the crowd: I had put on my softest, most tight-fitting shirt, my thrifted gold-beaded choker, and my most expensive, gender-neutral scent from Le Labo. Maybe it was something about the influx of Sirens, or the increasingly claustrophobic conditions of the party, or the sight of my ex-boyfriend yukking it up with some friends in the corner, but I began to feel sick to my stomach. People danced around me in a blur of color and commotion. They sang along to the music, which had transitioned from house to pop classics that I embarrassingly didn’t know the lyrics to. The room stank of sweat and alcohol. It was all too much. The Siren from before approached me again. Shit. There was no way I was going to be able to sustain my illusion of coolness this second time around. My best hope was to let him do the talking. I asked him questions. He flirted aggressively. Oh god, he was really hitting on me. I should’ve been happy. This guy was hot shit. I dreamed of befriending guys like him all through freshman year. But the whole thing left me feeling nauseated. I could feel the acid piling up in my throat. My heart was throbbing. I was surely going to puke. “I’m sorry—I think I have to go. I’m not feeling so good,” I panted, making a beeline for the door and bolting out before he could respond. That sucked. But I was relieved to have some fresh air. It felt good to be out of there and in the familiar world of heterosexuality again—where people dressed badly and did not know all the words to Lana del Rey. Here, I could be plain and uninteresting and it wouldn’t matter. After ten minutes of walking around the neighborhood, I felt better and returned to face the gays. Not long after stepping back through the door, I was shuttled out again. It wasn’t just me—every last person at the party had to leave. Word was that the police had arrived. People lined up along the narrow staircase and funnelled through the front door. The crowd was irked that the festivities had been cut short. “If this were a frat, there’s no way the police would have shut this down,” someone yelled out. “Yeah—fuck the police,” someone else responded. “Wow, this is sooo homophobic,” another boy chimed in. I couldn’t totally tell whether people were joking or in earnest. Outside, the officers seemed amused by the sight of us. “Looks like a bunch of RISD kids,” I heard one say, picking up on the alternative, femme aesthetics that everyone was sporting, that perfect nexus between streetwear and sophistication which is sure to boost your rank. A hundred boys gathered outside the house in mixed-up huddles of scary gays and soft gays and nerdy gays and diva gays—all refusing to leave the premises and all united in a sort of performative indignation. “Disperse, disperse,” the police yelled. The crowd stayed put. Everyone seemed bent on goading the police into violent confrontation, as if Gaybash were the next Stonewall. Two boys ran out into the middle of the road and began to perform ballet, spinning and twirling and leaping provocatively on the asphalt in front of the all-male police squad dressed in navy blue and standing with their feet wide apart. “Go home, disperse!” the police yelled again through a megaphone. When there was no movement, they blared their sirens at a deafening volume (as if there weren’t already enough loud Sirens around), and everyone walked off into the darkness. In the end, I had more fun debriefing Gaybash with my mother on the phone than I did attending the party itself. As a highschooler, I anticipated feeling liberated at a function like this—free to dress as I please, talk as I please, flirt as I please. In the end, though, I felt no less uneasy at Gaybash than I did at the parties I attended in high school. But the quality of the anxiety felt fundamentally different. In high school, popularity was unthinkable, and I often felt on the outs. At Gaybash, what I think unnerved me most was the lure of status, the fact that I, too, could slip into the quicksand and become cool and beautiful and scary.

A Few Impressions

Juliet Corwin

November 6, 2025

– CT, left wrist – I drove to Connecticut to get my first tattoo. The studio, smaller than its parking lot, was tucked away in a gray fold of Stamford. It had been a drizzly morning, and clouds sighed as I walked to the entrance. Timidly, I leaned against the door so it wouldn’t slam shut and scanned the space for a pair of eyes to meet mine. It was my first time inside a tattoo studio, and it showed. Two feet in front of me, a woman lay on her side in a shirt, underwear, and Doc Martens. She chatted with her artist, who hunched over a spread of ink covering the woman’s thigh. The walls were covered in overlapping sketches and prints. Sitting by the only other station in the room was a large man with a permanent frown and huge biceps. I gathered that he would be my artist, and moved toward him. His frown deepened when he saw me. He spoke in short sentences, his voice low and quiet. I showed him the tattoo I wanted and presented my wrist to draw on. Opting for a purple marker, he splashed the design onto my skin way too big. I asked if he could make it any smaller. His eyebrows lifted, but he rubbed away the first drawing and drew it again, a bit smaller. I looked at him pleadingly, too nervous to ask him to change it again. He took the hint and resized it once more. It was tiny, barely a quarter of an inch in height and width. I smiled, and his mouth flattened into a straight line. He prepped the ink and the tattoo gun, and didn’t wear gloves. It took about five minutes to ink the design using the thinnest needle he had. He wiped the excess ink and a few drops of blood from my skin, and I could see the little lines now adorning my wrist. It was perfect. He explained to me that he typically asked clients to pay upwards of $100, but for this he wouldn’t charge more than $40. I paid him $60 and thanked him again. He nodded and pressed one of his sketches into my hand. I had been admiring it while the needle dragged along my skin. It was full of color and soft lines, a warm swirl of tones. As I stepped out the door, I saw that the woman getting the leg tattoo was now eating takeout with her artist. I walked back to my car, watching the clouds inch lower. My wrist stung as I spun the steering wheel home. – MA, right ear – For one of my later tattoos, I filled out an online appointment form for a studio in my hometown in Western Massachusetts. I got matched with an artist named Ian. The space was big, with a lower level for tattoos and an upper level for piercings. There was a waiting area with high ceilings and tons of plants. Ian emerged from his studio and greeted me with a warmth I trusted. He was bald with a long, white beard and eyes that crinkled when he spoke. Ushering me into his studio, he told me to hop up on the table and rolled his chair over to join me. The design I had chosen was simple, and I wanted it to sit behind my ear. He used a disposable razor to shave the edge of my hairline. As the blade scraped at my scalp, we chatted about tattoos I’d gotten in the past. We sized down from the first print he had made, and then he carefully peeled a purple outline onto my skin. He handed me a small mirror that reflected into a big mirror on the wall so that I could see the placement. I told him I liked it. He instructed me to stretch one arm out past my head and rest my cheek on it, lying on my side. The tattoo took forty minutes to ink, and he spoke the whole time. He asked me about myself, about school, about the tattoo’s meaning. I tried to answer in a calm and steady voice despite the pulsating needle bouncing against my skull. Several times he praised my composure, saying that most clients who got tattooed behind their ears can’t sit very well. It wasn’t hard to understand why. When he was done, he told me to take my time getting up. I ignored his advice, pushing up fast and immediately regretting my choice. The sudden absence of vibration on my head left my vision blurry, and I felt lightheaded as I walked back to the waiting area to pay. The person at the register was bubbly and asked loudly if I loved my new ink. I did, and told them so, paid and tipped Ian. I walked out onto the streets of my childhood, my new ink still buzzing quietly. – MN, right hip – My favorite tattoo was inked in Minnesota. A cold Thursday night in December, I arrived at a brightly lit studio in Minneapolis. I was a few minutes early, and sat on a very hard bench in the waiting area. My artist was finishing up with another client, so I pored over the design I’d asked for again. The appointment didn’t start for another forty minutes. When my artist finally came over and said she was ready for me, she seemed annoyed. I showed her the design and she scowled at me, snatching up her iPad and scribbling. She asked me if I had drawn it myself, which I had. After some more silent drawing, she held the iPad toward me. She had taken my (admittedly unskilled) design and created a much better tattoo. Her lines were clean, the shape gentle. I thanked her, she sighed. I wanted the tattoo on my hip, but because of the weather I’d worn sweatpants over my shorts. She rolled her eyes as I took off my sweatpants, pointing out that I could keep one of the legs on if I wanted to. I took the suggestion. When we sized the tattoo, she gave me three options. I picked the middle one, and she placed the outline on my hip. I walked, half-sweatpantsed, to the mirror and watched how the design moved with me. I loved it. I got up onto the table, lying on my side as she instructed. She inked in silence, except for a frustrated question about whether I was holding my breath. I had been, without realizing it, and tried to slowly exhale without annoying her further. When it was finished, my new ink looked delicate and natural on my skin. It is still the best tattoo I have. I carefully pulled the leg of my sweatpants back on over the wrapped ink. As I walked back into the Minnesota snow, my hip pinched with each step.

Two-Day Trip Home

Elaine Rand

November 6, 2025

There’s a new fence in the yard where the trellis once kissed the ground, a padlock on the gate in the alley left by an admirer or a forgetful biker. The front door of the house is newly painted navy blue, but the latch still sticks. An assortment of sunscreen bottles, displaced from the back porch, live in the garage alongside the dead dog’s bed, which has been inherited by my parents’ new one. Sunscreen spread on skin, bug spray interrupted by the sound of barking. I throw the puppy a ball, and she runs around the periphery of the yard, still chasing something invisible long after she has caught it in her mouth. Once, we pitched a tent here, but the pea popped up beneath my back. The tent’s been lost for a decade now. Dirt on the lawn chairs, dirt under fingernails, plastic sacks of mulch stacked tall. A smear of Indiana soil on the back steps to be powerwashed come next year. Inside the house, hairballs nestle in the gap between the refrigerator and the linoleum. The countertop is home to packets of tuna, a plastic Brita pitcher covered in hard water film, recalled pistachios yet to be thrown away. On the wall hangs the prim calendar, which still reads “March” in June. On the floor, WD-40 and Clorox wipes share real estate with cans of wet food and salmon dog treats for brain health. I can hear the nettles rattling outside. They’re strewn along the berm so the puppy can’t romp without getting her short legs caught. Through the window, there’s the redbud that sprouted where the garden patch used to be, more tenacious than the tomatoes. It towers over the ghosts of withered vines, the home-farming love fest brief and barely remembered. There is honor in an intact ear, one without the cartilage pierced—my mother said so long ago. But is there honor in an ear that burns? Both of mine turn bright when someone’s grandma asks me if I’m single. She showed my picture to her son. Lucky that breathing fire with a closed mouth leaves the tongue’s flames extinguished. I smile and deflect, teeth thick with ash. Tomorrow, I will drive away, “Wide Open Spaces” on the stereo. No flat land precipice to fall from anymore. The voices haven’t changed. No new timbres, no unexpected inflections, only the occasional quiet indignity. My shadow informs the conversations. Hello to the teenage neighbor I babysat when she was three and I was 12. Hello to my best friend’s brother, who has forgotten my name. Hello to the photo of great-aunts Elaine and Madeline on the mantle. Goodbye to the swimming pool by my elementary school; I used to leap into the water again and again. Goodbye to the cornfield, razed to build a strip mall, and the strip mall, minced and bulldozed to make room for a high rise. Goodbye to the uncertainty that once roiled inside me in the neighborhood where I used to live. I’ve juiced every drop I can from this place. When I take a sip, I taste only the dregs. Two days ago, I boiled soba noodles and cut hot peppers and cilantro for lunch, snapping carrots in half as men sprayed the dead trees outside with red paint and ran the chainsaw. Today, the radio on the porch plays a couple seconds ahead of the one in the living room, the sponsorship message echoing as it sings: “Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”

A Barely Legal Guide to Seasonal Waitressing

On restaurant work and gender relations

October 31, 2025

During your first shift, you will be sentenced to folding silverware into napkins. A test to see if you’re cut out for repetition, the practice will soon become ritual. Take refuge in this menial task on days when your coworkers commit to telling and retelling their recent sexual escapades. There’s no earthly reason why you should know that your middle-aged boss has a penchant for older women. Innocently enough, a bartender at your restaurant may slip you gifts: kombucha, a work of bell hooks, a bracelet—your relationship will meander into allegory. Proceed with caution. When asked how he filled his day, the same bartender might tell you that he “sipped espresso, smoked a cigar, and watched a snail eat a leaf.” When retelling the story to your friends, you will have to insist through giggles that the quotation is direct. Don’t tell them the other things he said. If your manager is acting a little erratic today, he is likely on the come down from an unsavory adventure he took after closing last night. Watch for signs including an increased volume of arguments with the kitchen, palpitating eyelids, and a lowered physical inhibition. He will spill while clumsily showcasing how to pour a margarita with one hand, but beam at his tricks, and he may tip you out of the bartender’s pool. You have precisely one week to get in the good graces of the kitchen staff. Spark conversation in whatever broken Spanish you can eek out. Laugh at the jokes that translate awkwardly into English. Take pride when the head chef calls you “mija.” First uneasy at his kindness, you will soon determine his intentions unsullied. Soldier through incessant teasing along the lines of Hey, remember me? It is best practice to lie and nod. Apparently, the type of men who take their dates to upscale patio bars are also the type to flirt with their barely legal waitresses right in front of them. A hairball sensation will begin to fester in your gut, one that you will fight back into your esophagus when you laugh at his unfunny jokes and nod when he makes no sense. Don’t cough it up. The new 20-year-old chef may slyly pull you aside during rush and ask for a shot of tequila. You will for once find it pathetically endearing—the bartenders will not. He will be fired within three days, and you will feel inexplicably at fault. He wore star patches to cover his pimples, patterning his face with innocence. As the months progress, you will notice a disturbing, albeit useful, pattern. Some days you find yourself crunched for time, hair frizzed from bike rides and lake dips in the summer warmth. Other days, you will bask in the silence of your sun-spotted car—curls tamed, lips painted, cheeks expertly flushed. Take a moment to rehearse a well-placed smile in the rearview mirror. On these evenings, customers will be much more forgiving when the kitchen is running behind. Bat your eyelashes for an extra 5% and don’t think about Gloria Steinem. Whiskey, sugar, bitters, rock, twist. After countless slow hours spent leaning against the bar, you will learn through osmosis to make an Old Fashioned. Carajillo, Sex on the beach, Negroni, Lemon ball: your new party tricks. You never touched the bottle. You never crossed the line. You never would. As the paychecks roll in, guilt will thaw into acquiescence. Exhale your bitterness as the hairball in your stomach softens into the lining. You will exit the summer with an outlook half empty, but a wallet half full.

Buried Alive – Screams of a Stifled Voice

Ava Satterthwaite

October 23, 2025

10:32 AM: drilling, grinding, sawdust coats my tongue. i am watching a film – a monochrome mouth moves in silence. a man shouts through the static, his words foreign, unintelligible. the reel flickers. barbed ribbons of cornflower blue obscure the scene, coiling around cranes and metal hooks, colliding with rubber-gloved hands, cutting between construction men in blue. is this show… interactive? i’m in the viewing room, on the table. back and forth and back again. 10:33 AM: the drill closes in. i am concrete: jaw locked, limbs tethered to the table. unable to move or breathe. unable to scream or flail or convince the construction men i am still alive. an entire orchestra of stars shine above me, humming a metallic shrill and showering me inan ostentatious sterilized haze. the conductor calls, “instruments sterilized… bone saw….” screeching. more shrilling. a sudden stabbing sensation, a teeming mouthful of metallic crimson. i flinch – this band sucks. i smack the cold leather below me; the curtains close on cue. 8:29 AM: “No allergies to medication? No food since 12 AM? OK, good… Well, I recommend a Vidocin waiver… She’ll have some soren— no? Fine. Insurance card, please.” I sink back into a tattered cloth chair, gaze fixed on a 1980s Wheel of Fortune rerun. Between Sajak’s comb-over, the wooden TV stand swelling with matted wires, and the stiff faux cactus in the corner, I feel like I've fallen into some neon-crazed, cobwebbed wrinkle of time. Mom offers the card and sits beside me, muttering under her breath as she scribbles a second, third, fourth signature on various forms. 8:47 AM: I take shallow breaths, clammy hands trembling as I scan the waiting room. Phrase: Five Words, 21 Letters W A _ I N G _ P F R O M A _ A D D R _ A M “Ava, come follow me.” How fitting. I walk toward the nurse and exhale as Sajak’s laugh and the dense smell of mildew dwindle into oblivion. Soon, I’ll be dreaming, then delirious with a mouthful of gauze. Soon – it’ll all be over. 9:00 AM: The door creaks. A man in starch white enters – his tall, refined frame harsh amid cartoonish bunnies and fields of flowers sketched on the walls. His smile is courteous, if stiff. “Morning, Ava. I hear you’re our wisdom teeth case today. Junior in high school?” Still scanning the sallow sunflowers behind him, I nod: “Yeah… starting college visits soon.” “Big milestone! License too, then?” He stretches into some latex gloves with such vehemence I wince. “Hopefully. I keep failing the parallel park.” “Ah, double freedom,” he retorts, voice now muffled behind a creased blue mask, “It’ll come.” I hesitate, then: “Um – one thing. I’m a natural redhead, and I read we sometimes need more anesthesia? I think I do, after all the cavities and root canals I’ve been half-numbed for.” I smile sheepishly, tracking cracks in the tiles beneath my swinging legs. “I don’t want to feel a thing.” More amused than concerned, he snickers; “You want the good stuff, huh? Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.” A feverish flush overtakes me, knuckles whitening as my fresh French manicure claws into the armrests. I purse my lips to nothing but the echo of crinkling paper and suffocating smell of antiseptic; the door slams before I can mumble another word. 9:05 AM: The room is heavier now – harsher. Even the fluorescent overheads seem fiercer, like electrified clouds infested with hail, enshrouded with an acute sense of dread. I half-expect the bunnies to flee the fields and burrow somewhere warmer, somewhere sheltered from the commotion. The storm brews swifter as I look down to two cold hands – mottled with bruises and blue veins like marble – still fastened to the vinyl-covered armchairs. I was Rose in The Titanic: the bitter Atlantic circled on all sides, but by God, I would hold on to that drifting wood, that stiff vinyl. If this room was a hailstorm, these armrests were my wreckage: a connection to the concrete, to solid land – a lifeline averting an ocean of fear from swallowing me whole. “They’re professionals,” I reassure myself, “trained doctors who do this all the time. I’ll be OK.” I’d identified five items I could see (bunnies, sunflowers, Purell hand sanitizer mounted to the wall, some knives and hooks on a steel, cafeteria-esque dish – the scariest school lunch you’ve ever seen) and two of four items I could touch (the torn sleeves of an old, moth-eaten sweater and the vinyl film on the armrests, of course) when a nurse knocks. She heads for the Purell and asks for an arm. I feel a quick prick, intentionally averting my eyes from the needle to resume the senses’ ritual (two more items to touch… could I fiddle with the IV line? brush the ribbed adhesive at the insertion site? no, that’d be weird). She smiles, gaze flickering to my still-trembling hands, “This’ll calm you down a little, sweetie, OK?” I offer a grateful nod. 9:10 AM: 28. In five minutes, I’d watched the monitor sink from 102 to 83 to 65 (Goldilocks’ zone, breath looser and mind mellower) to the headache-inducing 40, mind-bending 34 (when the bunnies stirred and a breeze made the sunflowers dance – ears smothered in the sound of a million little teeth munching on grass), further and further down until 28 BPM. At 28, neon snow bathes the bunnies, the room an old screen obscured in static. I envision the cactus, the Wheel! of! Fortune! theme, a crinkled People magazine (June 2000 edition, Jennifer Aniston on the cover) and mourn the naiveté of 30 minutes earlier. The tiles teeter as the room tornadoes around me; I seize an armchair with such force the whole chair rocks. Screw Rose, I am Jack: watching myself drown from the hail-ridden clouds above. I sob in slow-motion as my frostbitten hands unfetter from the armrests – Jack’s wooden door unreachable. I am desolate. I am defenseless from fate. A handheld mirror lies slanted on the counter beside me. I search its reflection for what seems like hours. I search this ashen face I once knew for some shred of life – a sniffle of the nose, a curl of the mouth – but to no avail. For a second, I wonder if I’ll die in the smeared reflection: a finale akin only to Narcissus’. After all, 28 isn’t so far from flatlined. Then, 28 climbs back to 33, 34, 42, the sacred 65. I’m not sure what time it is now – or whether it’s been hours, weeks, decades, seconds. I sure as hell am not calmer, though. 9:12 AM: The nurse returns. I ask her the time, what’s in the IV, “will I be under soon?”, each word clear and well-articulated. She’s startled – horrified: this, apparently, was not the desired result. “Wow! I’ve never seen someone so lucid on Midazolam. I– I must’ve halved the dose somehow.” Before I can remind her I’m less reactive to sedatives – before I can tell that snobbish doctor I told you so – she rushes over. “Well, I guarantee this one will work. You’ll be knocked until it’s time for home and ice cream.” She hastily injects another needle, “Count from ten for me.” 10… 9… 8… 7…. Curtains close. A POST-OP REPORT: Recorded 10/02/2022, 11:51 AM EST Patient Ava J. Satterthwaite, 16F, experienced intraoperative awareness and partial temporary paralyzation during wisdom teeth extraction. At 10:32 AM, Dr. Smith [real name omitted] observed REM, increased heart rate, breathing rate, and sweating. Additional anaesthesia was administered at 10:33 AM. Prior to operation, patient expressed concern of a potential need for additional anesthesia. Patient reacted unusually to pre-operative conscious sedation, appearing tense and alert rather than lethargic. Patient was administered a typical dose of anesthesia for her size and exhibited anticipated reaction in due time. There is no explanation as to why this dose was not effective throughout the procedure, but patient has not mentioned recollection of said episode – we do not intend to inform her or her mother, to ensure smooth mental recovery post-procedure. Patient exhibited minimal post-procedure reaction, displaying an immediate spatial awareness and producing well-articulated speech. Patient refused a wheelchair and walked to car without swaying or difficulty… indicating provided anesthetic dose may have been insufficient. Quick metabolization of anesthesia was recorded on her chart for future reference. NOV 05, 2022 | 3:02 AM: I am thrust awake, rattled for the third time this week with the acute sensation of suffocation. I feel smooth silk bedsheets crowded in clusters between my clammy hands and exhale. It’s 30℉ outside – bedroom window adorned in chromatic streaks of snowflakes and steam – but I am sweltered. A dense bead falls from my drenched forehead onto the satin. I drink water and stare into the darkness until my shallow breath has thickened. I’ve been buried alive. Again. This ritual started somewhere around mid-October. Initially, I attributed the nightmares to the stacks of wool and fleece and fur I practically drowned myself in every night. So, I switched to silk. For a week, I dozed under one thin linen blanket to the cadence of chattering teeth, waking still at 3AM, smothered, violently shivering. Sometime close to Halloween – when the evening’s installation featured a cornflower blue man and two matted bunnies – I connected the dots. I have lived in fear of doctors since: terrified to miss a stair, catch a cold, drink too much soda – terrified to live.

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