Salon.com > Personal essays

Ten amazing memories: Heartwarming stories of my dog, Brando (2000-2013)

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

When I was in first grade, I wrote my first "published" story, for our school's mimeographed weekly publication. It was a memoir actually. It was the story of our family cat, Puss, who had just passed away. It was only relatively recently that the significance of this first piece of writing came clear to me: This was, at that point in my life, a huge, mysterious event. It read, in its entirety, "My cat died. My cat is dead." I hadn't learned to be sentimental. Later that year, I discovered one of my first favorite books, "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney," by Judith Viorst. It was about a boy whose cat dies, and his mother tells him he should think of 10 good things to say about Barney when they have a funeral in their yard.

Keep your comments off my baby

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:00:00 +0000

I am not pregnant yet, but I am already thinking about what the commenters will say.

When I became an Internet writer three years ago, I didn’t know much about the blogosphere, or the ferocious battles waged between different online representatives of feminism, or the popularity of mommy blogs, or the difference between Gawker and HuffPo. I just wanted someone to read my writing, and I wanted someone else to give me money for it. My first paid gig was at AOL; I did author interviews and wrote personal essays for the women’s site. I didn’t know to be embarrassed that only old people still use AOL. I gave them some dramatic stories, like the account of my cosmetic surgery. My husband’s great uncle called to let him know that when he’d opened his browser before breakfast, he learned all about how much I used to hate the way I looked.

I was embarrassed but determined. So what if people I saw once every few years at an awkward Christmas celebration knew my bra size and the details of my struggle with food-related guilt? I was a writer! I was making it big on AOL!

Never show them your back

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000

I used to flash my bra when I was good and drunk. I didn’t really care. It’s funny how this happens, how some part of your body considered “secret” and “scintillating” just feels like more skin. But my boobs arrived early, and grabbed second helpings on their plate, and so men would saunter up to me with that greedy look: Can I touch? When? Now? Eventually, it got easier not to care. Here, have at it, America: My tits.

But when I flashed my boobs, I kept the back of my shirt down. I did not raise it up entirely, not even when I was zombie-eyed and slipping off bar stools, because to do so would have been to reveal the part of myself that was seriously hidden, raw and vulnerable. It would have been to show you the moles on my back.

I was 7, maybe 8, when I discovered my back did not look like other people’s. Nothing dramatic: Black buckshot on a white canvas. But those things were like hideous scars to me.