Nerve Insider : personal essay

New on Nerve, 5.19.08: “Art Star” by Ryan Britt

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Have you ever dated an artist? However close and loving your relationship might be, it’s always startling to see yourself reflected in their work. Ryan Britt discovered this when he became his girlfriend’s muse:

He's really thin. He's naked. He's two-dimensional. If it weren't for the fact that he's lacking a head, he would be six-foot-one. My height. He looks just like me.
My girlfriend, Gabriela, takes a drag of her cigarette, blows the smoke across her Greenpoint studio, turns to look at the real Ryan and asks,
"Do you like it?"
"It looks like me," I say. But I'm lying just a little bit, because while this painting — entitled "White Bread" — has my chest, arms, legs and neck, his penis is bigger than mine.

The joy, the pain, the sex, the Star Trek: read the entire essay, here.

New on Nerve, 5.15.08: Behind the Scenes (and the Sex Drive) in “Life After Death”

Nicole Ankowski — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:06:00 GMT

"Has anyone hit on you yet?"
My brother asked me this a few months into my grieving. "No," I told him. "Of course not. I have widow cooties."

Today we’re proud to publish Susan Seligson’s personal essay, “Life After Death.” She took time to speak with us about the writing process, love, grief, sex — and what happens when you just want to get hit on, but all you receive are hugs. We'll turn it over to Susan:

“In the months following my husband¹s death, I couldn¹t write much. I resisted some friends’ well-meaning insistence that I write about what I was experiencing. Throughout my career I¹ve told my own stories in a way that — or so I¹m often told — touches a common nerve, makes people laugh, cry, or both. But it takes time to gain the clarity to do this. (Joan Didion wrote nothing for a long time before she began her stunning book The Year of Magical Thinking.) I may never feel compelled to tell the whole story, but this Nerve essay touches on just one aspect of widowhood I find provocative — how recent widows are habitually viewed as asexual — and one I can¹t recall reading much about. I’m eager to see comments from readers, especially those who have lost their partners and can relate to that feeling of ‘otherness.’”

Read the entire essay here.

From the Archives: Your Mother Was A Fish

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:14:00 GMT

A word of warning: this Sunday, May 11, is Mother’s Day. Buy a Hallmark Card, dammit! Or, if you and your mother have a special sort of relationship, I guess you could share these stories with her…

A.M. Homes’ tells the mother of all tales:

“She had a dressmaker split the center seam, separating her so she could walk, and went through life with her legs covered in thick green scales, a brocade, fossilized by the sea into leathery chaps like a cowboy would wear. Men found her scales incredibly attractive; it was considered good luck to rub her thighs. They all wanted only one thing, to get into the space between the scales, the alligator purse that had been perfectly protected. The sweat of their palms stung her skin; she found them repulsive.

She moved to Massachusetts and took a part time job doing women's work sewing tassels on loafers in a shoe factory.”

...read “Your Mother Was a Fish” in its entirety, here.

You’re more into poetry, you say? Check out “My Mother’s Penis” by Carissa Neff. Don’t forget the batteries!

And if you love funny-sad, smart-sexy-strange (who doesn’t?) check out Lisa Carver’s personal essay, “All About My Mother.”

And The Modern Materialist brings you a scary way to put the disembodied voice of your mother inside your refrigerator…

New on Nerve, 5.6.08: “Seeking Aylum” By Rev. Jen Miller

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:24:00 GMT

Reverend Jen is back! If you haven’t had the extreme pleasure, you can get to know her here. Or, just read today’s personal essay, in which the good Reverend recounts how a broken heart led to panic attacks, which led to her trying to find free therapy. Those ads in the back of The Village Voice always help.

But first came the sex. And then the heartbreak:
"It's not about you" is code for, "It is about you." It's code for, "Can we still be friends because I don't think I EVER WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU AGAIN." It's code for, "Remember that awesome blowjob you gave me last week? I don't want one of those EVER AGAIN." It's code for, "You are not good enough for me for whatever reason, so I'm throwing you out like the used condom I filled with seminal fluid after penetrating you last Tuesday."

Read the entire essay here. And for real-life pics of the sexy, elven-eared author…

Visit her website. Or, check out this sampling. Delicious, and I'm not just talking about the cupcake...

From the Archives: The Lengths of My Deception, by Craig Davidson

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:39:00 GMT

Oh, lying – whether you consider it an art form or just a weekend hobby, these little fictions make up a surprisingly large part of interpersonal communication. They’re accepted, they’ll never really have the chance to be questioned. I exist, comfortable in the knowledge that if I stretch. But when it comes to fabrications, you’re bound to be found out. I learned that lesson when I started wearing padded bras. Anatomy is a hard lie to fake – you can finagle your way around it, keep the lights low and the hands strategically placed, but sooner or later, my lack of boobage always came to light – I mean, really, who did I think I was kidding?

Craig Davidson, first man ever to lie about the length of his member, wrote this sly essay for Nerve’s Secrets & Lies Issue about compulsive lying, the importance of honesty, and what happens when you’re less than truthful about your peen.

The evening progressed, as did our drunkenness. We ended up at her place. R. fixed some drinks and we drank them and found ourselves making out on the sofa.

I realized my mistake: I'd told a lie that, if events advanced down their natural line, stood a 100% chance of discovery. It was like telling a podiatrist I had twelve toes before taking my socks off — an expectation I could not possibly fulfill.

New on Nerve, 4.29.08: The Anorexic’s Cookbook, by Rachel Shukert

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:22:00 GMT

We love writer Rachel Shukert, and today we’re proud to publish this excerpt from her upcoming novel, Have You No Shame? Here, Rachel recounts her time spent in an out-patient clinic, being treated for anorexia. Of course, that’s not the entire story. My favorite line? “There was a demon in my vagina.”

Shukert was also kind enough to give us some behind-the-scenes thoughts on this piece. (“Dispersed throughout this harrowing depiction of erection-murdering events are helpful hints for the eating-disordered among you. Enjoy!")

I’ll turn it over to the divine, comedic genius of Ms. Rachel Shukert:
"Before developing the potentially lethal eating disorder, future sufferers of anorexia nervosa often display the tell-tale signs of susceptibility: a controlling nature, a desperate need to please, an uncompromising perfectionism in all things. As I am lazy, contrary, and easy on myself to the point of ludicrousness, no one was more surprised than me when I was diagnosed as anorexic.

My tussle with anorexia lasted for approximately two years, not so coincidentally coinciding with my first two years in New York City, and more aptly, my first two years of drama school. These years were also the first in which I truly discovered the immersive joys of alcohol, and the confluence of the two resulted in all kinds of merry and disgusting adventures, one of which is described here in extensive detail. Like I said, it's pretty disgusting. How disgusting? Well, I don't like to assume things, but it's fair to say that if you had ever considered being even remotely sexually attracted to me prior to reading this excerpt (like even in a drunk, end-of-the-night way), it will never occur to you again by the time you finish reading.

Dispersed throughout this harrowing depiction of erection-murdering events are helpful hints for the eating-disordered among you. Enjoy!"

And here’s a quick excerpt (of, um, the excerpt):

He paused to draw a small circle in the corner of my chart before asking, "Have you been sexually active in the last few months?"

There were vague flashes of memories of men at parties — a hand there, a mouth here, a laundry room. I couldn't be sure how far things had gotten, but given my demographic — a perpetually drunk twenty-year-old student of experimental theater living in New York City with self-esteem issues and no particular religious or moral convictions — a gambler would have no trouble calling the odds.

"I think so," I said.

Read the entire tale here. Enjoy!

New on Nerve, 4.21.08: Behind the Scenes (and the Threeways) in “Triangulation”

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:12:00 GMT

Today in this fabulous new personal essay, author (and fearless Nerve intern) Caitlin MacRae examines why she’s had way more threesomes than dates. Here in the Insider, Caitlin’s given us an inside glimpse of what’s it like to bare all to the world in essay-format (especially when your Dad reads the site!), and includes one threesome offer that didn't quite make it into the final essay. Good reads. I’ll turn it over to Caitlin:

Inside “triangulation,” and the anxieties of Intern Caitlin.
I am notoriously secretive. Some of my family members didn’t know I lived in New York until four months after I’d moved. I keep a blog whose existence I have shared with almost no one, which I guess defeats the purpose. Suffice it to say, my sex life isn’t something I’ve ever shared in great detail.

But sometimes, here in Ye Olde Nerve Offices, we have these “pre-meeting meetings,” which consist of an overly caffeinated crew of surprisingly shy sex writers taking a much needed break in the conference room. It’s like pre-gaming, office style. And in one of those meetings, a certain Nerve employee mentioned an awkward aborted threesome, and like a bolt from the wild blue yonder, it hit me. Threeways! I know those! I’ve been asked into more of them than I’ve ever been asked on dates! That’d be fun, right?

Well.

Some things sound like a great idea at the time. And then the ramifications start to settle in, creepy little anxiety barbs that dig deep into your brain. When our editor, Will Doig, suggested I work this three-way history of mine into an essay, I was super into it. And the more I wrote, the more I realized how incredibly uncomfortable I am closely examining my history, my motivations, my life in general. When I write, I tend to snuggle up in the abstracts; it’s safer there.

So now I get to think about the things I’ve done; people might actually read this little thing. My dad, for example. My dad might end up reading about my threeways. (Hi, dad.)

This slice of my sexual life is now out of my hands like so much pie at a picnic.
Enjoy, y’all.

Here’s a little anecdote that ended up on the cutting room floor…

I am at a bar, and it is a particularly wonderful night, the kind where strangers are putting just the right songs on the jukebox and slow dancing with one another and buying rounds like the world’s ending. A pair of those strangers is a couple, an older man and his inexplicably gorgeous Brazilian wife who cannot be more than a few years older than me. They invite the whole bar over to their house, just down the block, overlooking the sea, and in the spirit of friendship and perfect nights we all accept. At some point in the night, after the leathery-faced men have passed around the weed, and the young women are nursing bottled girly drinks, the man-half of the couple comes up to ask if I’m okay, if I need anything, with his hand on my back. He says, “You know, I think my wife is into women,” the hand on my back now making small circles. Really, I think to myself. Fascinating. “Do you want to stay the night?”

I politely decline.

“You sure?”

I look over at his wife, who is still gorgeous. Then I look at him, and he could be my father.

Yeah, thanks though.

His hand is now resting right above my ass. He asks, again, if I am sure. As though somewhere in the past several seconds I will have decided that the best way to end this night is to be sandwiched between his old skin and her fake tits, while his young son sleeps downstairs. I smile and say, Nah, man, I’m all right, really, take my last few hits from his bong and leave, exhaling smoke as I walk down their fancy staircase and back to my house, where I’ll jack off and go to sleep.

Sometimes it’s just easier that way.

…and here’s the essay.

From the Archives: Bad Education

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:42:00 GMT

I have had sex in a public bathroom, only it happened with my live-in boyfriend in between tequila shots at a local bar. Why didn’t we just run the half a block home for a quickie, you ask? It was probably something to do with the tequila, and something to do with thrill-seeking desire when you’re in a stuck-in-a-rut relationship. Needless to say, we got our thrill, but it was certainly nothing like Stephen Elliot’s...

"Hit me," I said. Or I might have said, "Hurt me" or something else. But whatever I said was lost in the fabric; she didn't hear me right. She thought I said "Choke me" and gripped my throat, squeezing my windpipe shut. My breath was gone and I saw stars as she pulled on me frantically.

Dive into Elliot’s personal essay Bad Education and take a peek into the kind of life all us desk jobbers secretly fantasize about, from living in your car, to wandering the country aimlessly and ending up in a place too perfect-looking to be an accident…

— Alexandra Godfrey

New on Nerve, 4.15.08: Without Ceremony

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:08:00 GMT

Lisa Gabriele takes a moment to reflect on why she’s reached forty without reaching the altar, which is something I think every other single woman I know has done, as well. (Myself totally included.) Is it better to settle than wait for the “Perfect One” who may never show up? And what if it’s you who is running from Mr. Perfect One, Two, and Three?

Part of the problem was that I was drunk for the better part of the two decades most women spend looking for an appropriate partner. I was drawn to increasingly blurry guys: brats and posers, glowering self-loathers, the last ones to leave the party. Since quitting the booze years ago, I have discovered that, with rare exception, real love did whatever it could to avoid getting tangled up with a drunk girl drenched in fear. Lust stuck around for a while — years, even. But true love, the kind that evolves into sturdy amity, took a walk a while ago.

Can you relate? Check out her entire essay here.

From the Archives: Stranger Than Friction

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:51:00 GMT

As a lifelong masturbator and mild hypochondriac, I’ve definitely experienced phases that left me genuinely concerned that my habits might lead to some permanent damage. That said, I can honestly say that my self-love has ever necessitated serious medical intervention — unlike Kevin Keck, Nerve contributor and fellow masturbator, who chronicled the embarrassing results of his solo routine for our Shame Issue. A word from the wise, kiddies: motor oil was designed to lube one thing and one thing only, and it ain’t your junk.

It was what I always wanted to hear: my penis was a marvel fit for serious scholarly research. But it was a bittersweet revelation. My little man would end up in the mason jar reserved for freakish wonders, not the decanter marked "Huge Discovery." It was more likely to wind up in the gawkish halls of a Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum than the Smithsonian.

Read more here...

— Caitlin MacRae

From the Archives: “The One” Is the Loneliest Number

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:56:00 GMT

As a college freshman, determined to find my husband the same way my older sister had — in a dormitory laundry facility — I became an over-zealous, premature seeker of “The One.” Barely eighteen and a few weeks into my first year of college, I thought I had found Him in my first crush. We didn’t meet in the laundry room, but we did meet in a dorm room over orange lines of crushed up Adderall and Natty Light-filled Solo cups, which was good enough for me. It was love at first sight, and we were going to be together forever, just like my big sister and her husband. Until, that is, he dumped me two years later. Apparently, I just wasn’t “The One” for him.

When I read Tobin Levy’s personal essay about being dumped with this exact same line, it spoke to me, as I’m sure it will for many of you, too:
“The number of people I'd slept with could be calculated on the hand of someone who'd lost a few digits to an auger. I wanted to date, experience innocuous trysts and, as much as the phrase now makes me want to walk off a roof, the "sex and the city" lifestyle. For the next five years, I did.”

Although I may not have been pushing thirty when I got served, it was just as painful when my roommate handed me a copy of He's Just Not That Into You in hopes of convincing me to stop sleeping with the idiot….I wish I’d just read Tobin’s essay, instead.

— Alexandra Godfrey

From the Archives: Love Is a Four-Letter Word

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:29:00 GMT

Talking dirty is a tricky proposition…how dirty is too dirty, and when does dirty talk simply turn into a bad B-movie script? Adrian Colesberry used to fear the four-letter words (in bed), until he developed an ingenious formula. Learn from his mistakes...

But as soon as I rolled back on top of her, I started backpedaling. Why hadn't I just said, "I'm sorry. Dirty talk embarrasses me, and I just don't think I can do it." How hard is that? Then I had a happy thought: "Maybe I'll die in the act." For a couple of minutes, I concentrated on f*cking her so fast that I'd give myself a heart attack. But I ran out of air before I ran out of pump capacity.

Read the entire essay, you dirty little toe-sucker, you.

New on Nerve, 2.25.08: Recession Fears

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:47:00 GMT

When I was growing up, my parents had a friend named Gary, a jeweler from Denver. Gary was almost totally bald, and he would visit us in Massachusetts once a year. He would constantly make jokes about his bald head to amuse my brother and me, making a big show of applying sunscreen to his scalp before we went to the beach. He'd have us rub it for luck, and once even let us draw a face up there with a Sharpie.

Today, if you're a balding man with some disposable income, you have to make a choice: Will I be like Gary, admirably self-deprecating and at ease with the completely natural aging process occurring on top of my head? Or will I be desperately vain and narcissistic and try to halt the loss? This essay is about how I chose the latter path and, most of the time, feel pretty damn lame about it.

The worst thing about going bald is not that it indicates aging, or a decline in sexual virility or anything as silly and New Age as that. It's that it's part of the Big Competition. High salary? Add four points. Lame job? Minus one. Big dick? Add two. Going bald? Minus three. Today, the center-front of my hairline remains intact, but the two sides have been ebbing like a beach approaching low tide for nearly a decade.

Read the rest here.

— Will Doig

From the Archives: Truth and Dare

Nicole Ankowski — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:37:00 GMT

As a teenager, all David Amsden knew of sex was “a white flash, a scene from a movie, a mirage. Sex was Sharon Stone's parted thighs and flaxen smudge of pubic hair, paused on the television screen. Sex was Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Michael Douglas, Demi Moore stripping on stage. Sex was me superimposing myself into these scenes while pretending — somewhat pathetically, I know — that these were the phantom women whom I loved, and who loved me back.”

That is, until the first time he watched people actually having sex, the eroticism all the stranger since they were his close friends, and just a few minutes before he’d been in the bed with them…

We all play Truth or Dare a handful of times during adolescence, and for the same reason: a means of saying "let's fuck around" without having to say "let's fuck around." But while other kids used the game to initiate some earnest French kissing and, maybe, to catch a brief flash of bare ass or nipple, we elevated it, I'd like to think, into the realm of high art. The Truth component was eliminated. This was key. Ours was a game of undiluted Dare, forcing the Truth behind our intentions that much closer to the surface. We recognized, at least subconsciously, that all teenagers are amateur submissives, eager to have their vulnerability exposed and exploited. As a result, our dares were both creative and explicit. Some highlights from past sessions: mutual masturbation, boys kissing boys, girls handcuffing boys to trees, and, like a scene straight from one of those Primetime Live pseudo-exposés, one girl going down on two boys at the same time.

Do you dare? Indulge your inner voyeur here.

New on Nerve, 2.4.08: Political Partners

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:37:00 GMT

Does a candidate’s personal relationship affect whom you vote for? Do we need not only a strong leader, but one who makes us (or at least their partner) weak in the knees? Ada Calhoun takes a look at how what happens behind closed doors might affect who makes it through the White House’s doors…

My mother came over the other morning and said, "Well, I'm off Hillary." This was shocking. From the first, she's been a die-hard Hillary supporter. Loved Bill, loved Hillary. Even as my father became an Obama fan, my mother stuck by the Clintons.

Check out all the political partners right here.

From the Archives: The LUG in Winter

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:17:00 GMT

It’s cold outside, but this personal essay will warm you up. In “The LUG in Winter,” writer Sarah Hepola took a look back at her own college days, MTV’s forays, and all the girl-on-girl kissing that Britney and X-tina engaged in, before they were preggers. Things got a little hot on the message boards, as well: there was almost as much heated back-and-forth among readers, as we can imagine there was in Sarah’s dorm room bed…

Things were different when I first kissed a girl. My story is fairly typical: I was twenty years old, and drunk, and at a party, and the tale of how my friend Carolyn went from lying beside me to having her tongue inside my mouth is not the first story lost to Jack Daniel's. She and I had been cuddling and fondling each other's hair on the couch, and the kiss seemed almost a natural extension of that behavior. Later, after I sobered up, it was a little astonishing; I was a good Texas girl with childhood dreams of Johnny Depp and River Phoenix. But the most astonishing part was how good that kiss was — soft and warm and shot full with longing. Ten years later, it is still one of the best kisses I've ever had.

Cuddle up with Sarah: read the entire essay here.

From the Archives: Pregnant with Anticipation

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Do you cringe when you think of pregnant sex? Or are hot mamas like Halle Berry and Jessica Alba making you wish you could put more than just a bun in their ovens? A trip into the Nerve Archives yields some surprisingly steamy results…check out “F*cking His Wife, Four Months Pregnant with Their Third Child,” fiction by Paula Bomer from the 2001 Married Sex Issue:

Her skin seems powdered with stardust, it's moist dammit, and sparkling at him he swears, and her eyes are wet like a healthy cat's, glowing at him in the dark, open now, looking at him while their tongues stroke the insides of their mouths like they've never tasted each other before.

You’ll definitely want to read the entire piece. And in “Nine and a Half Months,” Bernadette Noll relates the sexual surge and wild urges she encountered while pregnant. These ladies will make you see Juno in a whole new light.

New on Nerve: Installment Six of Crying in Restaurants, by Sarah Hepola

Sarah — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:15:00 GMT

As you may remember from previous installments, Sarah cries a lot. But in this installment she doesn’t weep in a restaurant. She cries in other places, but by the end of the story her tears have dried up and been replaced by something else – love, fulfillment, hope; whatever it is, we’d all be lucky to have stories that end like this. Read the essay here, or start from the beginning.

From the Archives: A Personal Essay by Emily DePrang

Sarah — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

In 2005 Ms. Emily DePrang wrote a great essay about being fired for sexual harassment for our Sex at Work issue.

“For the next week, a little voice piped up every few seconds to remind me — you're a pervert. People who knew you were grossed out by you. People you shared cigarettes with were disturbed enough to trot downstairs and report you. However absurd their definition of sexual harassment, I had met it.”

Emily is not the first person who comes to mind when you think of sexual harassment. But she make it through ok, and her professional career didn’t suffer for it.

Read her essay here.

From the Archives: A Personal Essay by David Shields

Sarah — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

"The Rachel Mysteries: A Trilogy" is a personal essay from 1999 by David Shields about his first love. He reads her journal and they have intense, enraptured sex.

“In her journal, she wrote that she had never been kissed like this in her life and that she inevitably had trouble going to sleep after seeing me. She actually said she was afraid she'd go blind when I entered her. Where did she learn these lines, anyway?”

Do you snoop? Are you glad you did?

Read the essay here.

From the Archives: An Essay by Enrique Fernández

Sarah — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Merry day after Christmas! We’re posting a story that explains why some men cat-call women on the street. It's also about desiring people of the cloth and more generally about the sexuality of a lapsed Roman Catholic. But what sticks out in our mind is this explanation of cat-calls, or piropos:

“Theoretically, the ultimate point of the piropo is seduction, but no one actually believes that will come to pass; all enunciators of piropos are sexual agnostics. The real point of the piropo is to make the woman smile, even if only inwardly.”

What a great explanation! We should note that “what differentiates [a piropo] from harassment is, in a word, wit. Say something inappropriate, flat, dull, clumsy, silly or — the horror! — gross, and you're a jerk, a loser, a schlemiel.” How nice, as a woman, to think of witty comments as something apart from harassment.

To read more about piropos and the erect nipples of a female Episcopalian priest, click here.

From the Archives: "Burning Desire," a personal essay by Simone Sidwell

Sarah — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Obsessed with cigarettes? Whether you’re trying to quit, unabashedly love ‘em or indulge an occasional craving, we bet your experience with cigarettes has never reached the intensity of this personal essay by Simone Sidwell, originally published in 2000. Or maybe it has? Read on to find out.

"’Will you burn me with your cigarette?’

He asked with such unabashed and sudden urgency that I found myself pushing my cigarette into the hand coming towards me — it was as if he had startled me into an instinctive response.”

Read the essay here.

New on Nerve: Dating during the writers' strike

Sarah — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

What's really going on in the striking writers' lives?

“Since picketing started a month ago, I've met more writers than I have in seven years working in Hollywood. It's the one bright spot in a truly shitty situation. So it's only logical that while I'm out fighting the power, I might try dating too.”

Readers Respond: Checking in with the Feedbackers

Sarah — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

There have been a lot of comments about James Stegall’s essay “Personal Inventory.”

“I never would have thought that I would read a good article about Land's End catalogs. It was like a combination between Updike and Bukowski. Beautifully insightful with subtle dark humor. Nicely done.”
--HW

Readers are also responding to Lisa Carver’s essay about dating a rich man, “Strange Currencies.”

“That was funny and engaging, but most importantly it descirbed my experiences with love in such vivid detail and simplicity that I can't believe no one has said it to me before: all of a sudden it ends and you find yourself neither what you were before or during the relationship. Well put. “
--hlj

“I really like how it's not solid--like, there's no definitive moral, yet it just makes you ponder.” --ZZ

From the Archives: "My Issues With Becoming a Greenberg," a personal essay by Mara Levy

Sarah — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed that our homepage has some messages about scotch on it. The Insider was thus inspired to search out stories that involve drinking the fabled “brown water,” so dubbed by Mara Levy in her essay, “My Issues Withy Becoming a Greenberg,” in which she discusses marrying a Jew. She’s Jewish, too, so this shouldn’t be a problem, but, as happens with so many problems that shouldn’t matter, it is.

“Is the name Greenberg any more Jewish than Levy? The tiny logical part of my brain does, in fact, know the answer to this question: of course not. So why, then, am I so uncomfortable trying on my new last name? Honest answer: I can't shake the feeling that I'm outing myself to myself, even though, as my best friend, Meta, likes to point out, everyone already knows I'm a Jew.”

For the curious minds out there, the essay has nothing to do with drinking scotch, except that Mara meets her husband when they both order Dewars (really) at a bar in Tel Aviv.

New on Nerve, 11.20.2007: “Personal Inventory,” an essay by James Stegall

Sarah — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:35:00 GMT

In this essay James Stegall writes that Lands’ End catalogue reminds him of his ex. The piece is a sad, powerful rumination about loss and how seemingly innocuous, everyday things can trigger the most painful memories.

“These are images more invasive than any Victoria's Secret spread, because they don't inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes.”

From the Archives: “A Passionate Undertaking” by Marisa de los Santos

Sarah — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Marisa de los Santos’ personal essay describes falling in love with her husband, coming to understand her body and its pleasures and learning that loving and living can happen through the corporeal self, not despite it.

“What began that night was an easing in, a watchful, sometimes tentative process punctuated by bright, ringing moments of pure transubstantiation, the wafer of my body made radiant flesh. And while I use the language of religion here, it would be inaccurate to call it ecstasy. I mean the reverse really, a return to the body, an inhabiting.”

From the Archives: More Jardine Libaire

Sarah — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

“Angels, Ghosts and Strangers,” a personal essay by Jardine Libaire, was originally in our Erogenous Zones issue. It’s an homage to New York and the loves Libaire has had there.

"I once had a short affair with a wannabe thug. We tussled in my bedroom, his chest bare, his jeans black, his beeper on the floor, my nightie pulled up, his mouth between my legs — and the spire of Trinity Church stood in my window, the electric lights of the Financial District casting the spike's spiny shadow on us."

From the Archives: Lisa Carver on her mother and father

Sarah — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Inspired by today’s Lisa essay I dug up some older Lisa pieces.

February, 2006: All About My Mother. She told me everything — the two times she'd tried to masturbate (with a hot dog and a cucumber), the one time she'd tried to give a blowjob (to my father, and she threw up after). All her thoughts and dreams and philosophies. So many times we'd remain sitting in the car listening to the engine click and sigh, still talking as the sky grew dark, reluctant to open our creaky doors and break the spell. "It's you and me against the world," she'd say. From her strained smile, her hand squeezing my thigh, the love-look in her eye, I knew that must be something good, something loving — and I must be so defective, that I wanted to run screaming from her, this person so grateful for my companionship, for my very existence.

April, 2003: Lying with My Father. I never knew when or how he'd be near me. He didn't observe normal patterns of behavior. When I hurt myself and cried, he'd just sit there and laugh. He liked to walk in the bathroom when I was taking a shower. I became perpetually aware of the nakedness just under my clothes and the mental helplessness just under my preternaturally large vocabulary. My senses sharpened. I looked for clues in everything. I was unsure all day long, and all night.

New on Nerve, 11.13.2007: Lisa Carver Dates a Rich Man

Sarah — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:45:00 GMT

Today we have a Lisa Carver personal essay. If you’ve never read Lisa Carver this is a great place to start but beware: after reading it you may want to read everything else she’s written for us and boy, is that a lot! More Lisa links this afternoon.

"He recounted crouching in wait at dawn for a deer, shooting it, stringing it up between two trees, gutting it. I felt like Mata Hari. Here was a hunter, a polluter, the last of the pure heterosexuals. He would be the first, in revolution, to be overthrown. He was as eager a student of me as I was of him. I introduced him to dadaism, hypnosis, black-and-white movies, humane farming, and the fact — yes, fact! — that, when you really, really think about it, you do not ever have to do what you're supposed to. Ever. I took him out on a rowboat, to the beach after dark, to a five-dollar palm reader. I taught him everything that's useless for societal advancement or financial security, or security of any kind. He taught me about status, the significance of seating order, the debtor mentality, messages in watches. He owns eight."