Damaged Goods

S and I walk along the beach. Something feels different.

***

The night before I rode my bike to his house, uninvited. I pedaled thirty miles one way, hoping to meet his mother who was spending the weekend with him. I figured I’d just drop by, make a greeting, and all would be fine.

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memoir, 2013SLMDiane Payne
Sudsy Penguins

You wake up on the toilet staring at your dick. You’re naked but you think that’s not so bad because your roommate usually stays at his girlfriend’s house and, even if he’s not there tonight, he drinks as much as you do. You’ll have to walk into the living room and through the kitchen to get to the stairs of your shitty basement room, but if you do it fast he might not see your naked ass. Even if he does, you’ll only get shit about it for a week or two.

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memoir, 2013SLMSean Davis
Sticks & Stones​

My grandmother, in her Golden years, was a collage artist. I remember the stacks of magazines she kept—Life, Time, Parade. Not to read, but to tear apart. Rip. Shred. Whole pages. Single words. Pictures of whatever caught her eye and would fit together with strokes of paint, watercolor, cotton, wire, and wood. She called it mixed media; I called it art.

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Don’t Underestimate Your Siblings

It was Spring Break during my senior year in college. I’d just flown back from Portland, OR where I spent the week visiting my older brother and sister for the first time since they moved to the West Coast. We did lots of non-Midwest things to celebrate me being out of Chicago traffic for a few days. We went hiking, we climbed mountains.

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The Rise & Fall of Zines

In the late eighties and early nineties, a movement spread across America. Thousands of people pulled all-nighters cutting and pasting materials out of books and magazines, making countless copies, and sending them out all over the country. They worked diligently to write about their lives and interests, from punk rock and politics to lame jobs and boredom.

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memoir, 2012, 2013SLMDaniel Melin