THIS IS US

The NBA post-season ended in July, the Olympics came and went in August, the US Open was over before I knew it in September, so when the football season kicked off last weekend, I was thrilled. Before Covid, I could not have told you the difference between a shortstop and a running back, but as pandemic life crawled forward with no end in sight, I’ve gone from being a casual sports viewer to a total fanatic. …

LIVED THROUGH THIS

In the first week, I broke everything: a $2 plate from Daiso, which I’d loved for its spunky polka-dots. A cylindrical holder for my travel-friendly toothbrush and mini toothpaste. Finally, a precious Royal Albert mug I’d been given as a gift that spring.

Crash.

I looked numbly at the elegant ceramic shards spread across the jaundiced linoleum floor—cracked pieces of beautifully printed lavender and rose, now made useless — and tried to move past my dismay.

“I couldn’t have helped it,” I murmured to myself. Every time I spread my arms, something else topples over.

I wasn’t clumsy. I was…

EXPRESS YOURSELF

The other week I woke up in an absolute, hellfire snit. I had not been that cranky in a long time. (I know you have been there.)

While I was lying there in bed, kvetching out loud and in general making a nuisance of myself, I recalled a creature I’d made years ago. I call him bunt.

Like most of my artwork, bunt is the result of a combination of things: One, I was feeling pretty yuck, because it was the weekend after the 2016 election had been called for D0nald Tr*mp. Two, I was also feeling happy, because we…

THIS IS US

You bring him home from the hospital, in our case so early that you haven’t yet bought him a bed.

You look at him, inscrutable in a quickly assembled bassinet, and set about understanding him.

You hold him.

You hold him until, and while, he learns to walk, then hold out your hands so that he has somewhere to practice walking to.

You hold him only when he wants you to (and perhaps just a little more).

You imagine him in the world, first looming above others, their turning to him; then small, unknown, alone.

You put on his socks…

THIS IS US

I am from America. One Nation, Under God. I don’t live in America anymore though. I live in far-away countries that are sometimes under God, but mostly under skies, clouds, stars, the sun, the moon, and sometimes birds.

I decided to return home after nearly a decade for a road trip — a three-thousand-mile drive with my mother and brother in a Chrysler Seabreeze from Boston, Massachusetts (where I grew up) to L.A.

Sitting in the back of a car for long stretches opens the mind up to a lot of weird thoughts. About three hours after we set out…

LIVED THROUGH THIS

Back when I was in elementary school, there were always kids who were pariahs. Kids with certain kinds of deformities, or speech impediments, or habits of drooling. We knew we were not supposed to mock these kids, and so we didn’t taunt them openly, but we shunned them in subtle ways nonetheless. We would avoid them, or whisper about them, or choose them last for our teams, thinking our behavior would go unnoticed. But of course it was noticed. Noticed by the poor kid herself, noticed by the other students, noticed even by the teachers. …

PLANET SOUL

I go back to my room in my parents’ house and on the bed my mom has laid out a set of dance belts — tiny beige thongs I had to wear under my ballet tights as a kid, designed to support my curious and newly sentient genitals.

A name comes rushing to mind: Adrion Skot.

And I feel that tiny heat of humiliation on behalf of my current and past self, like seeing my picture in the middle school yearbook.

That’s what I insisted on calling myself in third grade: Adrion Skot. (Not, God forbid, “Adrian Scott.”)

For a…