I love referring to my surgery as a boob job because it makes people do a double-take. I see them recalibrate, “What kind of gay are you? Where are you coming from and where are you going?”
Nonfiction
Seule
Ms. Zeller told us, “if you scrunch all your fingers and toes and hold it for about ten seconds and then release, that’s kind of what an orgasm feels like.” Glancing down I saw twenty pairs of feet, all wearing the same green knee high socks and black shoes, lift slightly off the floor as we all clenched our toes.
Figures
When a people are made into numbers, by nature, they become divisible. By design, subtractable.
Frijoles Negros al Indios
But you cannot pick around home. Maybe your home, but not my home. I can throw the doors wide–and often do so with open arms–but to refuse a beam–whether it be a corpulent bird or a hi hat trill–is to cripple such a font to its foundation. For it comes from the depths of my soul, indivisible and not mine, but inherited slowly over time with no recipe to speak of, only a dance rediscovered over and over with folkish steps, a memory recognized when lived out with abandon. I cannot choose what bubbles up from this stew.
Circles and Rectangles
I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he is struck by the Seurat painting, except there’s no John Hughes movie soundtrack in the back, and I fail to fall into the painting the way Cameron does. The pressure to discern meaning increases when other people are nearby. I’m afraid that they see something I can’t.
My Catalina
As I write this, my tastebuds pucker, saliva gathers greedily at the inside corners of my cheeks. In my mind, I see the almost hysterical orange-red color, the slightly greasy surface of Catalina as it oozes out of the little round hole in the white plastic bottle cap. Catalina is a gift my mother gave me before I left home to raise myself at 13 years old and, though it may seem strange, I don’t regret this gift.
Terminal 3
I daydream a lot about floating in the air. A slow, sort of dead man’s float across the sky. This doesn’t make much sense to me because I don’t like planes. Or swimming. I prefer concrete over carpet. Analysis over meditation. So, the floating in the air thing—well that is a little crazy. A contradiction to my nature that feels oddly good.
Powdered Donut Days
“Addiction is all or nothing thinking,” my father told me, “like your battle with depression. You either pull yourself together or completely succumb to the sadness, never leaving your bed. All or nothing thinking, the hardest and most manipulating kind of reasoning.”
Why I don’t drink
I am often asked why I don’t drink. Everyone asks me: people in Pakistan and people in countries that are not Pakistan. I like to joke that I do drink—water, lemonade, coffee, chai. If I didn’t drink, I would likely die. No one ever wants to know why I don’t drink carrot juice or why I don’t eat hard-boiled eggs, but it is of utmost importance for them to know why I don’t drink alcohol.
Seeing is Believing
Is this how it ends? Does she have my face? Am I gonna die? Why is it that a simple thing like going to get food and trying to eat healthy spirals into something where I don’t feel safe? Cops could be involved.