How Deep Is Your Love

The first night we spent in each other’s company, I slid into the passenger seat of his car and flipped through the songs on his stereo. He had one of those screens that was probably standard, but I’d never seen it before, having spent the past six years in the backseat of yellow cabs during […]

#2 The Things They Carried

part 2 of a 10-part series In my junior year of college, I took a literature of war class. I’d been drawn in by the late-80s/early-90s Vietnam movies, Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick, and “war” sounded exciting, high drama. I didn’t know the class would be all boys, but that was a nice bonus. We […]

Someone to Love

I was driving the long solitary highway to Alaska when the guy in the passenger seat asked if I knew Fountains of Wayne. Was that a statue? Was that a waterfall? It was a band, he explained, named after a store in New Jersey. That guy was not my boyfriend, but I hadn’t given up […]

Max, who lived upstairs

In my last year of college, I lived on the lower level of a condo on a side street so quiet it was almost spooky. My two roommates and I spent a lot of our time on the front patio chain-smoking and drinking beer and wine at a bistro table placed there for that purpose. […]

Palm readings, past present and future

I was walking down West 15th in Manhattan when I saw the street fair, and a sign caught my eye: Psychic Readings, $5. The sign was old and maroon and marked by excessive cursive, like a laminated menu that hasn’t been updated since the 80s. The woman in the fold-out chair waved me toward her. […]

“I fear I’m becoming undateable”: Letter to a young sober woman

After my story about dating sober ran in Elle Magazine, I heard from other women also learning to navigate the Tinder era without a glass of wine in their hands. I know many ladies (and gentlemen) struggle with these issues, too, so I asked one of them if I could share our correspondence, and she agreed. (I’ve removed her […]