I labored for months with Dr. Ver Eecke as my guide, trying to follow Hegel’s elusive thought through the darkened Teutonic woods. The pursuit exhausted and challenged me in ways my teacher, a European man, could not understand. As a descendant of real slaves, my interest in the topic was instinctively more than academic—I felt it in my bones. More…
Here are some places I thought I’d prefer to work: the art department, where they wore jeans and spent a lot of time messing around with the paper cutter, and even marketing, maybe—Clare once spent a whole day shredding plush bunny rabbits with a letter opener for strategic placement on David Letterman’s desk. But the bathroom, that was my favorite. More…
I lied about my age to get my first job. I guess I figured 12 years old wasn’t a strict cutoff for work as a paperboy, just an indicator, and other, stronger indicators told me I was ready. I doubt the delivery driver I met on a Sunday before dawn to show me the route cared much for such details either. More…
I’ve been to a lot of panel discussions. I know what they’re like. When one hears the phrase panel discussion, one likes to think it’s a discussion that goes somewhere—like Plato’s Symposium. This is not always the case. Panels frequently fail to adhere to the template of dialectical inquiry. Attending a panel discussion is often about schmoozing, bringing your business card, double-dipping cauliflower. More…
PEYMANN:
So who’s that ME:
The Vice Chancellor
a Nazi PEYMANN:
And him over there ME:
The Defense Minister
a Nazi PEYMANN:
And him ME:
The Foreign Minister
an old Nazi PEYMANN:
And him over there ME:
The head of the General Accounting Office
an old Nazi PEYMANN:
And him over there ME:
The head of the General Accounting Office
an old Nazi More…
In 1997 I was twenty years old and had never traveled anywhere where Spanish was not the official language. For reasons that are opaque to me now, I decided to visit China that summer. Most of the trip is unrecoverable at this point, two months full of strange interactions without the benefit of a common language, wherein I tried to interpret inscrutable gestures and failed consistently. More…
En 1997 yo tenía veinte años y jamás había viajado a algún lugar donde el español no fuese la lengua oficial. Por razones que no me vienen a la mente, decidí visitar China el verano de aquel año. Ahora me es difícil recordar la mayor parte del viaje, dos meses plagados de extrañas interacciones sin el beneficio de un idioma común: yo intentaba interpretar signos inescrutables y fallaba consistentemente. More…
I could have studied in college without Adderall, just like I did in high school—I just couldn’t have studied with such ecstasy. Theoretical texts, in particular, were transformed into exercises as conquerable as a Tuesday crossword. I could work out with a Xeroxed packet of Spivak perched on the elliptical machine in front of me, reading and burning calories at the same time. More…
Where I live I try to read. I have time, and there’s a library here, so I go and I look at the books on the shelves. Many of them I’ve heard of and many of them I would want to read, but I don’t seem to have much interest. I’ve read books before, and I’m usually glad when I do, so I start browsing the shelves. Do I want to entertain myself or do I want to improve myself? More…
Unlike the pinball machines of my youth, in arcades, where one was required to insert coins to make them work, here at home in Kreuzberg, as an adult, I can simply stick my hand inside the machine and set it for as many credits as I like. I pump it up to 20 credits at a go. More…
Sassy was riot grrrl without the total opposition to self-adornment and mass media. It’s editors would admit to possibly delusional moments in which they swore Matt Dillon was giving them the eye at CBGB. Every teen magazine of that era swooned over Matt Dillon; only Sassy assumed that you, a teenage girl, knew what CBGB was. More…
One day in Czechoslovakia, not long after I was born, during the gray decade that was the ’70s, my 6-year-old brother came home from school and shared what he’d learned: “Lenin was a kind person. He liked children.” More…
There were always plenty of reasons I could cite for not trying the SLAA. Besides the absurd acronymic affinity with Patty Hearst’s kidnappers, I resented the philosophical sleight of hand that the modern notion of addiction carries: you get assigned the identity of an addict, the emotional equivalent of a criminal record. More…
Today I received my first letter here in LA, from the local court, a citation to the court, bail $114, 6 months in prison or $1000 fine if I don’t appear or pay … to pay one has to use a credit card or a check, which I don’t have. I have two months time to bail myself out, I can’t believe it, I am furious. I don’t feel guilty, I was mistaken, yes, but not guilty. More…
Ten minutes later, he was still sitting in the restaurant booth, scratching his head: Just tell me one more time how this Freud character says a gun is like a man’s penis. I told him one more time, and they took off the cuffs and let me go. The girl behind the counter said, See you in court, freak. More…
