FEATURE
New Here
Queer API Health and Feeling Together By Erin Lee Walden Illustrated by Rémy Poisson
I
am walking through a fluorescent hallway. It smells like new air conditioning and pharmacy and bleach. The floor is tiled beige and the sounds of people mumbling behind closed doors drift into the hallway, which looms narrow and empty except for a coffee machine. It is very cold. It is corporate. It is boring. My face is bright red, warmed from the muggy NYC air. My pores are filled with the dirt and grime stirred up by double-decker tour buses displaying the sights of Chinatown for tourists passing through. Inside, I am suddenly freezing. Air vents hum in
the background as I am led to the sole office in this basement hall. I’m following my boss—she has short hair and tells me she is a writer and a rapper and an activist and a friend. I distract myself from the anxiety I feel about my first day by focusing on the way her dress moves. The cotton blends with the linoleum floor; it ripples and snaps into place, holding its own like paper once wet, now dry. She interrupts my trance and says, “I’m so happy you’re here. I already feel like your auntie.” And I wonder what my life would have been if I had grown up around someone like her.
We enter a windowless room lined with cubicles, located down the hall from the pharmacy. About 15 people turn in their swivel chairs as I enter. Everyone smiles. Everyone says hello. They tell me that they think this will be a wonderful summer, that I will like working here, and I am comforted. My boss says we will do introductions later, after I have completed my trainings and orientation assignments. She sits at her desk and hands me a binder that says, “Welcome to Apicha, Erin Walden, Summer Intern.” There is a logo with a rainbow flag below the text and three pieces of paper in the two-inch binder.
Classes Offered Next Semester
Letter from the Editor This week, we have a (mostly) cheery
Thanksgiving is coming and we have only
lineup to help you out of those post-
ONE MONTH OF CLASSES LEFT wigs
daylight savings blues. The days may
you out, don’t worry: There is still plenty
be shortening, but O, to be young, alive,
of time left in the semester for a journey to
and able to fight the cholesterol-induced
self-discovery, or at the very least, one to
shock of a meal at Big King! Young adult
NYC.
Marvel at the fact that when you go home for Thanksgiving, you could still be referred to as a boygenius. If the thought that
Toilets 2. (Victorian) Flesh 3. Fan Fiction 4. Organic Chemistry 5. The Awful German Language
literature technically remains ageappropriate—binge read it while you can!
1. The Private Life of the Privy: A Secret History of
Happy Friday,
Jennifer
editor-in-chief of post-
6. An Introduction to Pain and Suffering 7. Bleeding Heart Libertarianism 8. The Meaning of Life 9. Psychology and Philosophy of Happiness 10. Tobacco, Disease and the Industry: cigs, e-cigs and more
2!post–