Silence is my preference. Occasionally the cat whines or pukes directly in my ukulele and that’s about all I have the bandwidth for. I can’t imagine having something to tend to that makes more noise or puke than a cat, and I’ve tried imagining that a lot, probably more than…

As much as I love my brand new nephew, few things have brought me as much joy as watching people’s reactions to my sister openly breastfeeding him. This new parlor trick of my sister’s, clearing a room faster than a landing boot evicts a colony of ants from their home…

It’s Free Real Estate — From a young age people have told me I have an active imagination. It has worked to my advantage, like that time I convinced my mother that my drawing a dotted line in black Sharpie across the length of my bedroom was born out of an interest in pointillist Impressionism…

Dating humans is rough. Dating humans in a pandemic is even worse. If you’re anything like me, you’d sooner attend a 6 am slack meeting with the whole office after a Wednesday-night living room bender than play another game of virtual 20 questions with a stranger off Tinder. Still, one…

For the longest time my sexual fantasies involved me in a long pastel negligee, swanning into a sunny living room where a salt and pepper gentleman caller is awaiting me with a fully charged rabbit pearl in hand. Sometimes I’d swap the generic silver fox for Mr. Burt Reynolds himself…

Partners come in many forms. The ethical and trendy choice lately has been to shop local: seeking out partners organically through friends of friends, in the workplace, or maybe even at Target. Perhaps you are more of an arm chair dater and prefer to slide into a virtual inbox of…

“Do you know who I am?” A man in a white jersey emblazoned with a stitched number seven asks me. Of course I knew who it was. Standing there in the middle of a Target in front of the tampons was the Buffalo Bills starting quarterback from 1998–2000. “You’re Doug…

I sat on the carpet and pretended to be engrossed in the Montel Williams show coming through the giant console television in front of me. But what I was really focused on was behind me: my grandmother—known affectionately as Mother — in her easy chair the same color as a…

I don’t need to set an alarm anymore. My brain’s like, “No. I got you!” And every morning at around 7:50 AM, Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” plays in my head and jerks me out of my sleep. Chapin’s hit song entered my subconscious a few months ago and…