by Maureen—Age 23—New Haven, CT

Five weeks into my third semester at my second attempt at college, I padded down three flights of stairs on a Sunday morning in my slippers and PJs. In one hand I carried a coffee press, full and hot, as well as a coffee mug with a carton of half-and-half precariously balanced inside of it. My other hand clutched a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a copy of Imperfect Science: Gender Ideology in Molecular Biology, by Bonnie Spanier.

Once outside in the gazebo 50 feet away from the back door of the dorm reserved for smokers and other degenerates, I settled myself into something of a routine, quietly sipping my coffee, absorbing myself in this treatise by Spanier on her trials as a molecular biologist. Barely noticing the other kids that came and went, I sat in the gazebo until my ass was numb and the leftover coffee started to get cold. This routine had been repeated on other mornings, in other locales, with the inevitable results that I started a day relaxed, informed and appropriately caffeinated.

In middle school my friends and I would trade off, reading in tandem and racing to the ends of books simply to show that we could. I became the fast reader, finishing the complete unabridged Les Miserables in record time despite having it confiscated for a day for whacking someone in the head with it. In my later years books moved away from being my actual weapons to being figurative ones. My bookshelves, once simply repositories for the weekly “pick up the books off the floor and dig them out of the mattress” sweep, became my allies in the war to be cool, intellectual and attractive. Shakespeare, Plato, Burroughs and Lakoff took the ultra-visible top-shelf positions, proving to the world at large that I was, all at the same time, intellectual, artsy, ultra cool, and politically active.

In public, while I sit outside with my coffee or discuss politics in my living room with the intellectuals that New Haven seems to be constantly teeming with, I am super reading woman. I read Shakespeare, and long complicated political histories. I quote Burroughs in witty bar conversations and coyly reminded guys that I flirt with that I read In Cold Blood before Philip Seymour Hoffman was up for an Oscar. My top shelf is full of books that I feel I should be reading, or am proud of having read, and signify my ever-present devotion to bettering myself, to expanding my mind and vocabulary, and, let’s not forget, to looking cool.

(Image: Steve Keys)

I do this thing my friends call “folding corners.” I didn’t name it. It’s when I take a piece of fabric, usually the edge of a sleeve or that lovely little stitching right where a zipper is sewn on to the coat, or maybe even, OK, I’ll take the tip of the collar if I’m wearing one. So I take it and I gently fold it in half so the fabric has a nice bend, a bend I can feel, something substantial, a crease, a bend, and my fingers begin to itch a little. Then I take the crease, the bend, and I roll it slowly between my fingers, back and forth, rolling, and then fold it the other way and do the same until the whole area feels supple, softer, and then I fold it in half again until I can’t fold it anymore, until the fabric bunches too tight and I let it unravel. I can’t tell you how satisfying this is. The first thing I do when I get a new piece of clothing, sometimes even before I wear it, is find the best corner on it to fold. Some of them are hard to find. Sometimes it takes a while but I find it, I find it, even before I snip off the tag I’ll know the best corner, the crease, and given it a little roll. I have a pair of pants, this one pair of pants, and most of the fabric is too soft already and it doesn’t have many good corners but there’s one, there’s one that’s right exactly in the crotch and I don’t get to fold it much except when I’m sitting on the toilet and then it’s right there and so right as I sit down I’m at it, I’m kneading the stiff seem where the legs come together and rolling it against my thumb and index finger, pinching it gently, and pressing it more firmly, then bending it back. Folding corners. I’ve stopped writing twice to fold the corner of my sleeve; I’m wearing my favorite green shirt; it has so many wonderful corners to fold, it has so many, I’m never going to give this shirt up. Never.

(Repost)

My mother-in-law, a short, wiry bundle of energy with prematurely gray hair, was obsessed with cleanliness. When I sponge-wiped the kitchen table Sadie donned rubber gloves and followed after me, spraying the table with Fantastick and wiping it again with a cloth. I have to admit that when she was finished some of the blemishes I had thought were permanent had disappeared, but instead of being pleased I was angry and worked even harder to keep the table so clean she couldn’t find a spot to work on.

After a meal when I’d loaded the dishwasher and rinsed the sink Sadie took over, washing the faucets with a soapy sponge and drying them with paper towel. Then she scrubbed the sink with Comet and dried it “to get rid of the water spots.” Finally she ran a toothpick along the crevice where the metal base joined the formica countertop, forcing out a thin ribbon of dirt to be wiped up with paper towel. I bought paper towels by the dozen when Sadie was with us.

When my mother-in-law first came to visit I thought she was knocking herself out to show her son what a poor housekeeper he had married. It was the bread crumbs that finally gave me the proper perspective. Every morning after breakfast Sadie would unplug the toaster and shake out the crumbs, then remove the bread from the breadbox and shake out that box too. One day as I watched her perform this ritual I got to thinking…bread crumbs are really quite clean…crumbs on the table or floor are different but I don’t have to feel guilty about leaving a few crumbs in the breadbox. My mother-in-law’s obsession with cleanliness is beyond her control, I decided; she can’t help herself and it has nothing to do with me.

It must be awful, I thought, to be saddled with a compulsion that causes you to expend so much time and energy unnecessarily. On the other hand, if she feels depressed she has only to clean something — an ashtray, silver spoon, or sink — to feel pleased with herself again.

After that, when Sadie came I had my house ready for her — water spots in the sink, a jelly spill on the table, and a breadbox full of crumbs. I knew her eyes would light up when she saw them and she would enjoy her visit.

The face of the pubescent boy changes fast. Previously oblivious that I materially existed, I was alerted in Jr. High by my peers that I was in possession of a large nose. A huge fuckin’ schnoz? A beak? Wasn’t there before. A kid, I was 12, a life-long drawer, pencil and tracing-paper my medium, having worked my way up the ladder from Fred Flintstone to Spider-Man to, finally, my magnum opus, a 12″ x 12″ of Spawn with cape in full regalia. A birthday brought me a book, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Finally, I thought, to learn the rules by which I could create my own characters. Those vivid splash pages in my mind would become a reality, if only I could get these secrets down. Chapter Eight, “Drawing the Human Head!” grabbed me. It was so simple and beautiful, all circles and lines. One line in particular shook me to the core. You see, to draw the profile, one needs to imagine a straight line extending from the chin to the bottom lip to the upper lip to the tip of the nose. Imagining this, it’s simple to get all the features in proportion. I tested this rule on myself. Taking a ruler to my chin, I apply it gently to my lips, making sure that I have it lined-up appropriately. Then I let the ruler creep upwards to my nose, hoping, praying, mind racing, that it will glide past my nose, grazing it ever-so-lightly. No, nothing of the sort. By more than the width of a pencil my nose violated Steve Buscemi’s schematic. Over and over would I, straining my eyeballs so to get a good view of my profile, re-perform this test with different factors, pouting my lips or positing a weakened chin. No, my nose ruined the equation. Flipping though my comics, drawn the Marvel Way, I’d look for the manifestation of this secret in Reed Richards and Frank Castle. Furtively in biology class I’d glance at the popular boys, searching for correlations between their success and fulfillment of the law. Page after page, even those miserable creations of Jack Kirby passed the test. Today I still catch myself, pen sliding up my lips or drawing that dotted line up the profile of a friend, drawing the human head.

I do this thing my friends call “folding corners.” I didn’t name it. It’s when I take a piece of fabric, usually the edge of a sleeve or that lovely little stitching right where a zipper is sewn on to the coat, or maybe even, OK, I’ll take the tip of the collar if I’m wearing one. So I take it and I gently fold it in half so the fabric has a nice bend, a bend I can feel, something substantial, a crease, a bend, and my fingers begin to itch a little. Then I take the crease, the bend, and I roll it slowly between my fingers, back and forth, rolling, and then fold it the other way and do the same until the whole area feels supple, softer, and then I fold it in half again until I can’t fold it anymore, until the fabric bunches too tight and I let it unravel. I can’t tell you how satisfying this is. The first thing I do when I get a new piece of clothing, sometimes even before I wear it, is find the best corner on it to fold. Some of them are hard to find. Sometimes it takes a while but I find it, I find it, even before I snip off the tag I’ll know the best corner, the crease, and given it a little roll. I have a pair of pants, this one pair of pants, and most of the fabric is too soft already and it doesn’t have many good corners but there’s one, there’s one that’s right exactly in the crotch and I don’t get to fold it much except when I’m sitting on the toilet and then it’s right there and so right as I sit down I’m at it, I’m kneading the stiff seem where the legs come together and rolling it against my thumb and index finger, pinching it gently, and pressing it more firmly, then bending it back. Folding corners. I’ve stopped writing twice to fold the corner of my sleeve; I’m wearing my favorite green shirt; it has so many wonderful corners to fold, it has so many, I’m never going to give this shirt up. Never.

-Shya
Age 30
New York City

I had a breakdown once. Years ago — when my wife and I were hooked on heroin. My mom would call once a week to check in, and I’d tell her these stupid lies about how the experimental stream-of-conscious novel I was working on was generating a lot of interest. She’d ask how I was doing with dad’s death, and I’d say I was dealing with it, which was the biggest lie of all. She’d say, “OK. Love you,” and hang up. I’d shoot up to forget the conversation.

Our new friends were second-shelf slime-balls that lied to us and stole from us because they were drug addicts, but we’d lost most of our old top-shelf friends because we started lying to them and stealing from them. You know how it is. You’ve seen the public service announcements”¦ the after school specials. And in the midst of all that I had this breakdown.

I started baking cakes. Constantly. Five, six sometimes seven or eight cakes a day. Coffee cakes, cakes with orange or lemon zest, upside down cakes, right side up cakes, bunt cakes, burnt cakes, spice cakes, space cakes… whatever. I sifted flour endlessly and chopped walnuts and sliced almonds paper thin, and I melted sour cream and chocolate and brown sugar and peanut butter for glazes and sunken glazes and marble tops while my wife shot up, listened to the Pixies and masturbated upstairs. I’d leave the house twice a day to pick up and drop off heroin and shower once or twice a week, but other than that I spent my time in the kitchen. Our crappy new friends would stop by and eat cake on a pretty regular basis, but it was never enough and I’d always end up running out to the dumpster to throw away a bunch of cakes I’d baked only hours before. I don’t remember anyone ever asking, “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Maybe someone did but if so, I don’t remember it. I’m sure our new friends didn’t want to risk interrupting their supply of cake.

One day at the height of the whole cake thing my front door opened and my mother and brother walked in. My mom looked around and immediately began to cry. She said, “My god, what are you doing?”

“Baking a cake,” I said and held up the bowl of batter as proof.

-Jason
Age 32
New York City

I didn’t want to say it but it came out as we were wrestling in bed: “I love you.”
We had only been dating three days and I was trying hard not to say it, no matter how much I wanted to.

I’ve said the same three words millions of times before you came along. I always felt the need to say it when seeing someone; I thought that’s how people in relationships talked to each other. When I said it the first time to my very first girlfriend she replied, “Uhh yeah, okay.”

Every time after that was a disaster. It seemed like every time I said it doomed the relationship I was in. Once was because I cheated, another time because she cheated and a few years after that because she beat the shit out of me and went to jail. “I love you” meant a certain and impending end.

But you just laughed and later, you even said it back. Three years later I have yet to regret it.