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VISUALS GLORIA CAO MODEL NEIKO PITTMAN 02 | EM FALL 21
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ANGER CRACKS. MONOTONY BRUISES.
MY STUDIO IS MY KITCHEN.
I WASH IT ALL DOWN MY SINK.
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F/W 21 STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SERINO NAKAYAMA ASSISTANT EDITOR REAGAN ALLEN MANAGING EDITOR RIDDHIMA DAVE PHOTO DIRECTOR MARIELY TORRES-OJEDA ASST. PHOTO DIRECTOR MAYA SERI EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CARLY MCGOLDRICK ASST. EDITORIAL DIRECTOR SAM GOODMAN VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR QUEENN MCKEND PRINT DESIGN DIRECTOR REAGAN ALLEN DIGITAL DESIGN DIRECTOR HALEY BROWN STYLING DIRECTOR GLORIA CAO MARKETING MANAGER JILLY TOWNSEN EVENTS COORDINATOR EMILY CURTIS ASST. EVENTS COORDINATOR JIAWEN (TIFFANY) NI
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EDITORIAL FAITH BUGENHAGEN JESSICA FERGUSON MOLLY GOODRICH ABIGAIL ROSS CHLOE SHAAR MARY KASSEL SOPHIA KRIEGEL SAM GOODMAN TATUM ADLER CARLY MCGOLDRICK PHOTO YONGZE (CHARLES) WANG MAYA SERI JESS O’DONOGHUE KEELY MARTIN ELAINE TANTRA MARIELY TORRES-OJEDA YUHONG (LEXI) CAI GRAYSEN WINCHESTER TAINA MILLSAP ISAIAH VIVERO VISUAL KAITLYN JOYNER HADLEY BREAULT GRACE HWANG MARGARITA IVANOVA GINA FOLEY NATHAN MANAKER REYGAN SANDOVAL KATERINA VEIL STYLING JIACHEN (ESTHER) LIU LICHEE DAI SIERRA MILES OLIVIA BARTON DESIGN DARIA SHULGA SOCIAL MEDIA VANSHITA AGRAWAL
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SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WORDS SAM GOODMAN
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UNTITLED
VISUALS KATERINA VEIL
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HOLLOW JOY
VISUALS ELAINE TANTRA
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WHAT’S IN THAT PURSE?
WORDS CHLOE SHAAR VISUALS KAITLYN JOYNER
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UNTITLED
VISUALS HADLEY BREAULT
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MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH
VISUALS ISAIAH VIVERO
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UNTITLED
VISUALS GINA FOLEY
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CITY GIRLS [A REVIVAL]
WORDS FAITH BUGENHAGEN
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NO REPENTANCE
VISUALS KAITLYN JOYNER
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AN ANTHOLOGY OF FEAR
WORDS SOPHIA KRIEGEL
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HIGH ART
VISUALS GRAYSEN WINCHESTER
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NANNYING FOR JESUS
WORDS CARLY MCGOLDRICK VISUALS KEELY MARTIN
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ORDINARY HORROR
VISUALS NATHAN MANAKER
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AND THEN IT ALL DISSOLVED
VISUALS MARIELY TORRES
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THE FETISHIZATION OF TRADER JOE’S WORDS MARY KASSEL
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SCOLIOSIS
VISUALS GRACE HWANG
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LEATHER BOYS
VISUALS TAINA MILLSAP
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SUBURBAN NIGHTMARE
VISUALS MAYA SERI
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TWENTY-ONE
WORDS ABIGAIL ROSS
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ON COMING HOME WORDS MOLLY GOODRICH VISUALS YONGZE WANG
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GARBAGE
VISUALS MARGARITA IVANOVA
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THE TRUE HARM OF TRUE CRIME
WORDS JESS FERGUSON
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INVISIBLE DOME VISUALS YUHONG CAI
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SCRAPS OF LIFE, THINKING OF THE FUTURE VISUALS REY SANDOVAL
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PROMISING YOUNG MEN
VISUALS JESS O’DONOGGHUE
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WORDS TATUM JENKINS
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THIS IS DEDICATED TO ALL THE SUFFERING AND TRAGEDIES OF EVERY SECOND OF EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY. SOMETIMES THE ROUTINE OF EVERY DAY IS AS PAINFUL AS 100 DEATHS. LIFE IS NEITHER REAL NOR FAKE. -SERINO NAKAYAMA
SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK 'N' ROLL WORDS SAM GOODMAN
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SEX My body is queer: Adam’s apple, Eve’s hips. Sex is not a taboo within the queer imagination. Fetishism and the erotic are (and should continue to be) upheld and celebrated as touchstones of the liberated, especially within spaces where understandings of gender and sexuality are deliberately warped. To be queer is to be sexually rebellious; when one is repeatedly condemned for their innate physical attractions, they cultivate an intense desire for radical sexuality. However, historically this desire could only be expressed covertly for fear of identity-based discrimination. In the 1970s and ‘80s, LGBTQ+ people secretly communicated sexual preferences through symbolic bandanas: the hanky code. Referring to an underground, universal color code, queer people
wore certain color handkerchiefs in specific spots to communicate their particular kink or fetish. According to Out1, the hanky code was a safe, inconspicuous mode of communication for queer people looking to satiate taboo or socially unacceptable sexual and romantic desires. However, the hanky code, centering around binary understandings of sex, gender, and power, relies on the division and separation of the masculine and the feminine, the dominant and the submissive. Essential to queerness is the merging of these two opposed positions— the ultra-rugged and the hyper-femme. Queer sex is a dialogue between the hard and soft physical bodies and their polar, gendered energies. By accepting this polarity within
ourselves and our partners, we experience true queer intimacy. And yet so often the queer desire is hushed— buried deep, waiting to be dug up. Eventually, we recover what was once at the center, what sat beneath the surface. And when we do, there is gold. Queer sex liberates the body.
DRUGS My mind transcends the earthly plane. I know the space behind my eyes, the empty above my spine. When it fills, it only hallows again and begs for the feeling of when it was full.
Excess is inherent to queerness — the extreme desire for more at any and all cost. It is intensely luxurious, entirely unnecessary, and commonplace in LGBTQ+ spaces. This constant yearning for extravagance is a side effect of prolonged sexual and identity-based repression; queer people who are socialized to believe their identity is linked to depravity will always mature to glut. Queer history is rooted in this excess. As queer nightlife emerged in major cities in the 1970s and ‘80s, so did new party drugs that enhanced physical endurance and, arguably, more importantly, allowed for emotional escape from a potentially traumatic or difficult personal history. According to Vice2, ecstasy, ketamine, and meth-use were
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habitual in queer spaces, particularly throughout the extravagant, queer nightlife scenes slowly blossoming in various urban centers. However, as queer nightlife grew in the ‘90s, drug abuse among gay men skyrocketed and party drugs quickly became the focus of the largest scandal in queer nightlife: the 1996 murder of drug dealer Andre “Angel” Martinez by club kid Michael Alig. Martinez’s murder and Alig’s sentencing to 17 years in prison were the catalysts for the quick fall of queer nightlife; the scene was unequivocally associated with drugs, crime, and depravity. Despite this late ‘90s dip in the club scene, party drugs remain a staple of queer culture, and abuse continues to run rampant in the queer community.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDH)3, LGBT+ people are statistically more likely to use drugs and misuse opioid prescriptions with 9% of queer adults reporting having used opioids in the last year. Additionally, the NIDH found that LGBT+ populations are at higher risk of developing an addiction to drugs and alcohol than their heterosexual or cisgender counterparts. These drugs — recreational, medicinal, illicit— are a means of transcendence and escape, the queer persons’ vessel to personal freedom in celebration of blithe excess. Drugs liberate the queer mind.
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ROCK ‘N’ ROLL My spirit has been released from its steel shackles. Unchained, I am unabashed.
Radical self-expression is not a matter of choice. The queer identity is a resolute Declaration of Self. And it is through queer literature, film, art, and music that LGBTQ+ people connect to one another in the collective desire for unrestricted, unrestrained free expression. Queer culture is punk. It is the underbelly of a vast and diverse community, both under and misrepresented by pop culture and mainstream media. This punk, queer spirit is evident in the work of director John Waters and drag queen Divine. Unavoidable in the
conversation of radical queer expression, Waters and Divine relied on low budgets and limited resources to bring their works of monstrosity to life. Creating true masterpieces— Female Trouble, Serial Mom, Pink Flamingos— Waters and Divine paid homage to the gritty, the grotesque, and the gay. Waters’ work centers around unconventional, over-the-top characters whose stories, while outrageous, filthy, and usually disgusting, were honest, raw, and unfiltered. Waters, Divine, and their pantheon
of monsters represent the most radical form of selfexpression. Unapologetic, these characters stand for that which young queer people may be unable to access. Queer expression— genderbending, performance, the disregard for standards of sexuality— is a statement of presence and power, an assertion of might. Loud, wild, and shameless, this attitude is imperative for survival in a world where our voices can be silenced at any moment. Queer rock ‘n’ roll liberates the soul.
ENDNOTES 1 Thomas, Chris. “Untucking the Queer History of the Colorful Hanky Code.” Out, 19 June 2017, www.out.com/ out-exclusives/2017/6/19/untucking-queer-history-colorful-hanky-code. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020. 2 Daly, Max. “How Gay Clubs Changed the Way We Take Drugs.” Vice, 30 Nov. 2015, www.vice.com/en/article/ avy885/gay-clubbers-early-drug-adopters-720. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020. 3 “Substance Use and SUDs in LGBTQ Populations.” National Institute on Drug Abuse, 25 Aug. 2020, www. drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/substance-use-suds-in-lgbtq-populations. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.
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VISUALS ELAINE TANTRA MODEL EMMA BORIN STYLING JIACHEN LIU
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WHAT'S IN THAT PURSE? WORDS CHLOE SHAAR VISUALS KAITLYN JOYNER
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Y o u see someone on the subway with their new pink bag, or a student walking to class with their comfy tote bag. It’s easy to assume they’d have simple things on them such as keys, a wallet, a lighter, maybe some gum or lip gloss? These are items that could potentially be found in everyday bags or purses. Taking a look inside of someone’s bags allows you to learn more about their identity, through inanimate objects. Hawa Kamara is a full time student with a passion for singing and dancing. Around campus she’s most likely carrying around a Kipling navy blue backpack, or a Flawless Brown tote bag depending on whether or not she needs her laptop. Inside her bag you’d find a speaker, a laptop, forks from the dining hall, a little water bottle to stay hydrated, and her wallet, which is crucial considering she recently ran out of board bucks. Lastly, you’d either find dance shoes or sheet music, the songs she’s working on right now are Climbing Uphill and Never Fall in Love with an Elf. Hawa has felt extremely refreshed and more at ease this semester as she’s transitioned into a more structured in person learning environment. Especially as a performing arts student, being able to practice in a live space is extremely rewarding for her growth not only academically, but as she works towards her career in music. The items in her bag are not only representative of her life as a student at Emerson College, but a symbolic stepping stone because she’s holding these items now and probably will be for the rest of her life and career. One thing that most of us have in common is stuff, no matter how different our day to day lives are. We all have these little items that mean something special to us, that we hold some sort of attachment to. The inside of someone’s bag gives you a little taste of what everyday looks like for them, while also being hidden to everyone else that they are usually perceived by. Caspian Larkins is a model and aspiring actor, currently living in Los Angeles. A day off for him includes getting some coffee, potentially
doing some yoga, a little thrifting, but most importantly making a ‘bombass’ breakfast and dinner. While he may be carrying around a tote, he’s always wearing a silver bracelet he got with his bestie at the Oregon Country Fair. “And it just kind of reminds me of that like fun, amazing little time every time I look at it… it just takes me back to that little moment and always keeps me safe, like keeps me in that safe little space, you know?” He has his wallet on him, with a little bit of cash and ID, his phone, and notoriously a pack of gum. He also is wearing, or carrying, pearls as they represent his birthstone, while he rides around in his favorite place, his car Fergie. Caspian definitely uses fashion to express himself, especially through various colors and patterns. He feels like fashion is
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one of the unique ways that people can express themselves, because it has the ability to show off different moods someone is in at that particular moment, while also having the potential to connect them with someone with similar taste. We collect these items that are meaningful to us, or passed down, and carry them around for our own amusement and security. While inanimate objects are really just stuff, they hold weight in our lives and make up who we are as well as how we are presenting ourselves to the world around us. A bag is also the most perfect place to keep our little tools. Cat Duffstill is a Boston native, with a love for fashion, music, and pop culture. Most days she is carrying around a cream tote, but also loves her mini hot pink Fjallraven backpack. She uses her bags to carry her ‘everyday
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shit’ like her lunch and water bottle, as she works long hours and most days of the week. Her tote would also hold sunglasses, her wallet, a mini makeup bag, headphones, keys and a mask, as well as a lighter using all items for their intended purposes. Her makeup bag holds her deodorant, lip gloss, concealer, giant roaches, and bandaids of course in case of an emergency. Her favorite product would have to be her Fenty lip gloss, because it matches her lip color perfectly. As someone that is prone
to losing items on the T, she doesn’t like to carry around a lot of personal items. Although she considers herself a minimalist, fashion definitely has a big influence on Cats life. With a love for vintage clothing and high end sneakers, as she walks down the street she wants to be remembered. Somebody that people think ‘oh she has a really cute outfit on’ and her bag can certainly not be out of the place. Her whole style clearly correlates with her bags, as she has a simple but
chic style with always just a little fun pop of color. Inanimate objects hold value in everyday lives because although it really is just stuff, it differentiates who we are as people. Purses have the power to add a little extra to an outfit, while also being able to shield things that are most important to us. Taking a look inside a stranger’s bag may just give you an insight to the things they cherish, or just what they use to hold the things that are going to get them through the day.
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VISUALS HADLEY BREAULT
MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH VISUALS ISAIAH VIVERO STYLING OLIVIA BARTON MODELS KALEB HANSON, IZ ENRIGHT, HAILEY FREEDMAN, SULIKO
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VISUALS GINA FOLEY
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CITY GIRLS [A REVIVA WORDS FAITH BUGENHAGEN
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AL]
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We live in the city; we are so pretty. We are the women on ledges, sitting on the edges of bigwindowed apartments. We look out, never in. Time takes on a cost that doesn’t permit this in the budget. We don’t breathe, we gulp for air that’s never clear. Instead, it’s filled with grime and gunk. We are inhaling so many lies. That we will be something. That we can be everything. Our dreams collect like dust on the crown molding of our ceilings. We build this life as brittle as bone.
I have felt suffocated for a while. I guess three years’ time would be the perfect timeline to associate with this feeling. Ever since I arrived in this city my life has felt like it’s been on fast-forward. The whizzing of people around me, mixed with endless background chatter; culminates to create an endless cycle of forced existence. It doesn’t end here. I open my phone just to have the pixelated screen stare back, taunting me. Countless images blur together; perfect faces, exotic places, and missed opportunities. How can expectations be
transformed onto feeds? I am unsure, but social media has mastered this framework. It’s like I can’t step away, can’t silence the noise. If I look up, it’s all around me. If I look down, it’s only a fingertap away. I ask when it will end, but the truth is it never will. Why didn’t I feel this way before? Why didn’t I savor the slow life that I had back home? In order to make sense of this daily disarray, I place attachments to the issues I face. Life in the city is hard, but I have concluded that this is due to my environment.
I am unsure if it is the people. I am unsure if it is the school. I am unsure if it is just me and I am a fish that cannot float. But something’s not right here. Artists, creators, and innovators populate my life. It is evident because we are all great performers. We put on our many acts, to build up the walls further and further. We cloak ourselves in garments that reflect us, yet it takes three times to find the perfect pants to make our statement. Then we look in the mirror and pick our bodies
ISN'T IT EXHA
HOLDING UP THE
OF WHAT IS
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apart. We excavate what we create until there is nothing left. Our plots thicken, they spread to our inner world. We display strung-together personalities of what is “socially-acceptable” because at the end of the day all that really matters is the audiences’ opinions. Everyone reads the reviews. It doesn’t stop and these rituals only grow in necessity. Soon, we are unable to leave our rooms without making sure all our skins are collectively on our bodies. Isn’t it exhausting holding up the weight of
what is fake? I know it is. I am falling under the pressure of people. I am destroyed by the disappointment in myself. Everyone is simply racing out, far ahead of me. This pace of life is unregulated and unnatural. What is emphasized in this culture is completely out of the realm of what is important. I can’t compete and I think it is so funny when people think I try. Every entity of my existence is impromptu. My foundation is cracking, and nobody seems to notice the
AUSTING
E WEIGHT
FAKE?
faulty infrastructure. Their eyes are too focused on what they think they know. They use photos I share, tidbits of things they hear, and otherworldly assumptions to place me in a position of accomplishment. This couldn’t be further from the true location of my being. I am stuck in the knowing. The understanding that life isn’t what meets the eye. Nobody knows the things that matter. We are all playing the same exact game, hiding the same exact things. We are all the greatest performers of a thing called life. We’re writing scripts, tailormade to what displays we must maintain. Remember to make stage directions or you may slip up and reveal a portion of the truth. We may unveil the burdens we hold close to our hearts. The real entities of these pin-up personalities that make us the people we are. How dare I try to challenge a movement towards authenticity? I am fracturing the fabric we work so hard to create. A tiny tear could be too much for the delicate material of these versions of life we fashion to manage. The curtain must go up and the show must go on.
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AN ANTHOLOGY OF FEAR WORDS SOPHIA KRIEGEL
Julia shoves a car key into the stomach of a freshly stolen lighter. Cracks through the soft bone. Here. She says. Now, we are ready. -A skeleton man stands at the front of the classroom. He’s clutching his throat, clamping one side to the other in a tight fist. Telling us all the ways he should have died but didn’t. I wonder what would happen if he loosened his grip and let go. Would the hole in his neck be dark and hollow? Echoing the triumphs of a life that persists long after it’s meant to. Punishing the body with a permanent reminder of its treason. Or would his insides tumble out like stones. Rolling into our laps only to be tossed from one child to the next like a new toy. The class is wide-eyed on Mrs. Arnott’s rainbow rug. We are so young here. And we are too small to remember anything except for how afraid we are of everything. How huge it all feels in comparison to our bodies. He is here to give an anti-smoking PSA to a room full of kids who can’t spell their own names. He holds up a cigarette, unlit, and he calls it a killer. That quiet, thin thing. In a video he puts on the projector there is a pretty girl who could be a princess. She’s got the cigarette in her mouth and her eyes are sunken. And I can see our reflections on the screen. I can see his shadow standing over her. The almost-dead-man has us make a promise to never end up like him. And before I learn to count past twenty, I learn to be afraid of inanimate objects, men with holes in their throat, death. And myself. 54 | EM FALL 21
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-I started teaching little kids gymnastics when I was 16 and technically still a kid myself, only taller. I sat them down on a long line of tape and taught them to wait their turns. To do a forward roll. To keep their hands to themselves. Children say the darndest things, don’t they? Always asking questions I can’t answer. I’m above them while they’re squirming on the line. Looking down, they all seem so small. So gentle and unlearned. Sometimes, if I think too much about them growing up, I get sad. We’re doing duck walks this week. I instruct the kids to crouch down, keeping their knees above the carpet and waddling to the other side. They contort their bodies to mimic my motions, wobbly and barely able to hold themselves up. I watch them inch towards understanding how they have complete control over their own bodies. I ask the class, What does a duck say? And, almost completely in unison, a loud,
squeaking chorus sings quack! At the end of the line, the smallest girl of the group tilts her head with her lips sealed shut. And I recognize her expression as one of complete terror. Unblinking, hairstanding-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck terror. She stays silent. Her mother tells me that she is afraid of making animal noises because she thinks she’ll turn into one. Petrified, she believes she’ll become the beast if she speaks its tongue. -My mother in the backyard, barely visible in the still darkness after we all went to bed. Her smoke ring halo hovering above her head. It was a shocking discovery when I found her out there for the first time. Like treason, the way she casually coughed a cloud of smoke. I made a habit of sneaking into her bedroom and peeking out the window to watch her.
My shadow trailing behind me in the hallway, tiptoeing so she couldn’t hear. So she didn’t know I wasn’t asleep. She looks like God. That golden glow. And she’s alive and her throat is intact. And her skin is soft. Somehow she is everything I love and everything I’m afraid of, all at once. I cry when I see her. The only thing I know about cigarettes is the way they kill you. And there is my mother, smoking a cigarette. I think she’s smiling. I think she doesn’t care about the deadly thing in between her fingers. I convince myself that she must want to die. Why else would she be doing this? Why wasn’t she afraid of dying? Why wasn’t she afraid? When I’m slightly older she’ll tell me that she started when she was sixteen. I just couldn’t stop. I’ve tried, I promise. I wonder if she always knew it would turn out this way. If she felt like a child when she first smoked. If she was afraid of dying, then. Or if she looked fear in the eye and spit an angsty puff of smoke in its face. I wonder if she was ever afraid of anything. And how she survived it all. I promised, for the second time, that I wouldn’t end up like this. -Imagine being so afraid of something unfamiliar, so uncharted and changing, that you can’t say its name. Speak its language. To be so afraid of metamorphosis that you cocoon yourself forever. I want to take the little girl by her shoulders and tell her that her voice is all she has. I want to tell her that a duck is just a duck, not a monster. I want to tell her that even if it is one, we all are. But I don’t want to make her cry. The next week, and the one after that, and so on, she sits in the corner while the rest of the class does bear crawls and crab walks. Even when I tell her that a crab doesn’t make any sound so she’ll be safe here, she doesn’t move. We’re all afraid of the same thing, just in different bodies. Don’t you think? -I don’t know when I stopped being afraid of dying. Or if I was still afraid but just wanted to feel like an adult. Julia and I are sitting on the stoop outside of the Emerson Print and Copy Center, a spot reserved for the edgy and the grown. This is, in itself, a performance. The way all
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FEAR IS NOT
A PLAGUE SO MUCH AS A PROPHECY.
adulthood feels like a performance thus far. We have either just finished crying or we will be on our way to do so after Julia finishes her cigarette. I don’t smoke because I cough too much when I inhale. But I take a drag anyway, swish the burnt air between my teeth for a second and spit it back out. I can see our reflections on the window. Our sunken eyes. I can’t get this lighter to work. It hurts my forefinger but I do not want people to see me struggle so I ask Julia to do it for me. I turn away from the street, cupping my hand around the unlit thing. Julia lights it with one flick. Here, I am still a child. -The little girl stopped showing up to classes without warning. And I wonder if she made it out alive. If she let out a howl and ran off into the woods. Or if she held her breath, waiting for the transformation, only to be stuck in the same body she started with. -When the cigarette I’m holding disintegrates into some city sky and the girl I taught untethers her jaw, twisting into an animalistic roar. Then, I know that fear is not a plague so much as a prophecy. A poem where each line bleeds into the next and the last. We were never meant to escape the things we are afraid of, only absorb their haunted nature until the ghost and the girl are one. Howling at the moon. Which is to say, she was right. That squeal, that surrender, that naming of the beast is to acknowledge that it was there all along. Haunting, hunting, holding our bodies in its palm until we were ready to open our eyes and understand our own reflection.
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HIGH ART
PHOTO GRAYSEN WINCHESTER
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NANNYING FOR JESUS WORDS CARLY MCGOLDRICK VISUALS KEELY MARTIN MODEL CARLY MCGOLDRICK
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1 The Joneses lived in this gorgeous pistachio-green Colonial on the trendy side of my hometown, where they listened to alternative music, formed interesting opinions about international news, and smoked pot on the weekends. They were the sort of people that lived unexpectedly exciting lives; Mr.
Jones, for example, was a gangly, socially-awkward professor of classical music and operatic vocal performance at the community college, but wore shoegaze band tees beneath his button-downs and reread Das Kapital in his free time. Mrs. Jones worked from home as a telemarketer, but spent most of her days foregoing calls and
slogging over a series of massive acrylic nudes that she mounted in the drywall above her dining room table. They moved to Ohio from Baltimore just after having kids, and once my suburb’s old cranks got to know them beyond the exterior of their pistachio-green Colonial, thought of the pair as nonconformist weirdos. Beyond their
white picket fence and sprawling moat of blue and pink hydrangea, I thought of the Joneses as the best people in my sleepy, working-class, predominantly-conservative Midwestern town. I met Mr. and Mrs. Jones at the local Episcopal church while doing service hours in the parish nursery to satisfy a Theology requirement at my all-girls Catholic high school. They came to St. Timothy’s early on Sunday mornings to rehearse their do-re-mis with the choir, while I holed up with their two kids and a box of used Legos in a cinderblock room down the back hallway of the building. At first, their active participation in a religious lifestyle made no sense to me, but I came to realize that if vaguely-communist, AngloSaxon pot-smokers who saw “films” at the “cinema” 64 | EM FALL 21
and kept stacks of zines on their coffee table were to engage with any Christian belief system, it would be Episcopalianism. Catholics were lame, Evangelicals were worse, and Eastern Orthodox were just diet Catholics. But Episcopalians? They believe that women can hold power in the church and that gay people can get married and that priests can fuck. I think that’s amazing. I’m sure the Joneses do too. I can only imagine that when you have a family, and you uproot yourself and them and find yourself in a place you don’t recognize with people who don’t accept you, you’ll cling to just about anything as a way to make yourself feel wanted. You accept comfort and attention from anyone or anything willing to give it to you as a way of cultivating purpose,
because you want your kids to have friends and morals and a place to go on the weekends, and you want a community, and you want to feel like you’re doing something in the present moment that will positively impact your circumstances somewhere down the line. Maybe even after death. Religion gives the Joneses just that. It gives humans just that. It eases our worst fears and convinces us we’re loved, truly or compulsorily, by our God and our congregation. It always has. At the end of my tenure at St. Timothy’s, the Joneses asked me to nanny over the summer vacation. I accepted, but never in my life had I particularly enjoyed spending time around children, especially when I was a kid myself. Regardless, I gave it a shot.
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2 I danced across the highpile of the Joneses’ living room rug and through the mid-morning sun to the east-facing window, dodging rainbows of snapped crayons and stacks of handmade chapter books held together by Elmer’s glue. Craft time typically ended with this dangerous game of hopscotch. As their nanny, I was learning new things about the Joneses’ children every day: how much they liked to play with their iPads, how little they liked to finish the crusts on their peanut butter sandwiches, and how much computer paper they could blow through daily. The way the kids’ waxy crayon scribbles glided under my bare feet and along the living room’s food-stained carpet was often like taking shoes with worn-out soles onto unsalted sidewalks in the wintertime; every moment I remained upright felt like a feat. It was my third day on the job.
The older Jones was six; a talented but neurotic illustrator with a mop of bleach-blonde hair and his dad’s piercing blue eyes. He loved spending his summer afternoons belly-down on the floor of that goddamned living room, feet fluttering in the air, drawing ornate castles and dragons with stumpy crayons. He was so smart, so talkative, and so easily angered whenever I told him it was time to stop watching Pokémon on the television and touch grass for a while. I would always offer to paint his toenails his favorite shade of green after dragging him away from his cartoons, and 68 | EM FALL 21
he would always forgive me. I cracked only one crayon with the pad of my big toe as I crossed the Joneses’ messy play space on my third day there, veering around piles of discarded staples and half-bald pipe cleaners. This living room became their art studio, their race track, their arcade, their Carnegie Hall—and there I was, picking it up every day at five-thirty when Mr. Jones rumbled home from the community college and dumped the family’s beat-up Honda CR-V in the garage. I was always enamored of their bumper stickers, but I could never choose a favorite. It was
a toss-up between the two that read, GOP: Greedy One Percent and I INTERCOURSE, Pennsylvania The younger Jones was four, sweet, softspoken, and deeply anxious in a different sort of way; the Crayola land mines scattered throughout the living room were typically her doing. She was excited by the act of creating a mess, but I secretly suspected that she only liked to throw the crayons around because her favorite playtime activity was cleaning up. When she wasn’t stressed about
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organizing the construction paper by color or arranging the stuffed animals by height, she liked squeezing her pudgy little body into tulle skirts and princess costumes and would sneak frozen French fries from the bag in the freezer whenever I wasn’t looking. She was so innocent. Both of the young Joneses were smart, curious, and completely trusting of the God they learned about at St. Timothy’s. I was a Catholic schoolgirl, and to them, I held the secrets of the universe in the hem of my plaid skirt and penny loafers. They’d draw pictures of Moses and The Apostles for me to hang on
my parents’ refrigerator. I’d inevitably forget to take them out of my car and stash them instead on the dashboard of the Toyota Camry, letting the washable-marker Peters and Pauls fade to ghosts on construction paper in the midday sun. I couldn’t tell them I didn’t believe in God, or that I hated Catholic school, or that I was only caring for them because my teachers forced me to. They couldn’t know any of that. On that third day on the job, through the living room’s sliding glass door, smudged from earlier in the week when the older Jones insisted upon using the
sunlight to trace Garfield comics from the Sunday paper on—you guessed it, computer paper—I saw her, face-down, arms splayed out in the grass. She was a tiny, fidgety Jesus. Her light-up sneakers blinked. I noticed her running her grubby fingers through yesterday’s leftover lawn clippings as the crest of her back filled and hollowed. She took shallow breaths, purposefully discreet. Throughout the summer, I came to learn that she did this often. Pretending to be dead.
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3 I can’t remember the last time I took communion. It must have been in ninth or tenth grade, during one of the mandatory Friday Masses stupidly held in the dim, air-conditioned auditorium of my all-girls high school. Most people were out cold by the second reading, nestled into their uniform sweaters and each other’s shoulders, while I stayed awake. I do remember that once I stopped taking communion, I made sure to listen to every word that the priest and the Scriptures and the Gospel had said during Mass so that I could reject the Host in good conscience. I stopped believing in God a long time ago, but I always let Jesus fight his corner. I’ve been baptized. I went to after-school diocesan classes for years. I’ve done all of the Sacraments as they’ve become available to me and I identify as an Irish Catholic. Before my grandfather died, I promised him that I’d get married in a church. Because I’ve been baptized, I have a shot at Heaven whenever Jesus decides to descend the big glass staircase in the sky I’ve been imagining since I was a kid, but I’m not sure that I deserve it. I’ve been through the motions of religious indoctrination, and that’s all that anyone at St. Timothy’s seemed to care about. How I landed that job remains a mystery. When I painted over the walls of my childhood bedroom for the first time
as a preteen, I asked my mom to take down the small porcelain crucifix that had been hanging over my doorframe for as long as I could remember. She reluctantly agreed, but only because I insisted it didn’t match the rest of my new Walmart decor and that it disrupted the puke green, hot pink, and baby blue color scheme that we had painstakingly chosen over the course of a few visits to Sherwin-Williams. The bedroom was white next, and is now a sensible, adult shade of blue. I’ve spackled over the hole that the nail from which the porcelain crucifix hung left in the wall every time I’ve painted since, but for whatever reason, it won’t stick. The damned hole keeps coming back. I can’t pinpoint the moment I stopped believing in God. I don’t know if there was an exact moment, or if I ever really believed in God, but what I do know is that I must’ve looked insufferably teenaged in that dimly-lit auditorium, crossing my arms and barely scooting my legs to the side as the more pious schoolgirls shuffled past my seat and sleepwalked to the front of the auditorium for their wafers and sips of watereddown pinot noir. I was jaded, which is a hilarious thing to be at sixteen. At twenty-one, I’m not really sure what I am. My Sunday School teacher once told me that all of the people in our
lives who had ever died had flown to Heaven and become our guardian angels. From Heaven, our guardian angels would watch over us and protect us from all of the world’s evils, and this was supposed to be comforting. My dead grandmother, she said, was watching me, and that she loved me. This disturbed me greatly. I used to like picking my nose as I laid in bed and tried to fall asleep, but once I knew that Mom-Mom could see me digging for gold in the wee hours of the morning, I stopped. I didn’t want to do anything that would disappoint Mom-Mom, or anyone. I was an embarrassed, ashamed child. I wanted to be good. To follow the rules. An embarrassed teenager. An ashamed adult. I still don’t know know what I believe in. I’ve tucked religion away in the darkest corner of my brain and have habitually insisted that it has little to do with who I am today, despite the fact that Catholic teachings have informed my earliest, most basic understandings of the world. Something about that childlike ability to believe in things—everything, with no evidence at all—strikes me as a quality I lost somewhere along the way to adulthood. I want it back. Still, I can’t bring myself to pick my nose, even when I’m alone.
4 The older Jones pulled me aside one Sunday in December, long before I started nannying. He was about to go on for the annual nativity play, which the kids put on for the adults in the congregation at the last Mass before Christmas. He struggled for words as he tugged at his half-assed Wiseman costume: a plain white bedsheet pulled taut around his tiny torso and secured with a piece of twine, complete with a gaudy plastic crown. Father Jeff, one of those 72 | EM FALL 21
Episcopalian priests that fucks, bought the crown at Party City sometime the night before and flung it at me from the trunk of his rusted-out Corolla early that morning. The plastic bag sailed far above my head and over the belly of my Camry to the other side of the parking lot, where it eventually crashed to the ground. The crown scuffed, and we had no time to fix it. The nativity play was a chronic afterthought. In the cinderblock room down the back hallway of
the hallway, the younger Jones pieced together his question. “Miss Carly?” “What’s up, kiddo?” “Would Jesus, um. Would Jesus, um...would Jesus think my outfit is stupid?” I didn’t even think to tell him that he shouldn’t call things stupid, that it’s not nice. That, I think, was the last time I felt God.
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VISUALS MARIELY TORRES MODELS RONNIE LOCATION MEGHAN HOCKRIDGE
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THE FETISHIZATION OF TRADER JOE'S WORDS MARY KASSEL
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An important rite of passage in the journey from adolescence to cosplaying adulthood is having to buy your own groceries. We all go through it and experience the pitfalls. We learn that we have to make a list. We can’t shop when we’re hungry. That food is actually ridiculously expensive, and it’s much cheaper to just suffer and starve. This generation, yes I am going to use the word generation, not only experiences these things, but shares them. Far and wide for every corporation to see, and slowly but surely, absorb and capitalize on. Enter Trader Joe’s. A fan favorite to say the least. Cheap, easy, trendy, and, unsurprisingly, all over my For You page on TikTok. Now, this article will not be about TikTok, but a conversation about the rise of “Trader Joe’s Culture” cannot be had without talking about the TikTok takeover in terms of romanticization and documentation of everyday life. But, let’s back up. Let’s remind ourselves that Trader Joe’s is a corporation with the ultimate goal of taking your money. Their goal is not to offset carbon emissions with their new vegan pumpkin ravioli. Their goal is to get you to buy another useless, mediocre item that will sit in your freezer until the end of time, and then do it all over again when the season changes. Once or twice a month, depending on my finances, I will make the trek to the world’s smallest Trader Joe’s on Newbury Street. I am not immune to the mythical pull of Trader Joe’s, and would never claim to be. I am culpable, and, as always, a willing participant in all the worst parts of capitalism. And, this is not to
say that people shouldn’t enjoy Trader Joe’s. Please enjoy Trader Joe’s. Please find something in this horrible, profit-driven, isolating world that makes you happy. Who am I to take that away from anybody. But, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be critical. Especially out of the careers that people have made of literally just reviewing Trader Joe’s products. Making videos, posts, you name it, all solely dedicated to letting everyone know if the next vegan ice cream is worth the hype. Spoiler alert. It’s not. And, it might just be a little counterproductive to make a million different vegan options if they’re all going to be packaged in individual plastic. No grocery store or store at all is innocent by this standard. By some standards Trader, Joe’s is great. It’s affordable, it’s cute, but it’s still a brand. A brand that has built itself into a certain kind of experience. Costco would never try to tell its customers that browsing the aisles of 200 tons of toilet paper is a particularly romantic afternoon. But going to Trader Joe’s? That’s an outing. An event. You get dressed up in your trendiest clothes and stroll down the freezer section, and wait and wonder if one of the young people in round glasses working the cash register or restocking the salt and pepper chips will notice you. The rumors that the employees are trained to flirt with the shoppers have been debunked, but they certainly have fun keeping everyone guessing.
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Hiring young, cute, welldressed Millennials and Gen Z’ers who straddle the line between making you feel bad about yourself and giving you something fun to think about while you pick out what kind of tofu strikes your fancy that day. Going to the grocery store was, and mostly still is a mundane and soulsucking experience. A part of the true existence of adulthood. Buy groceries, carry them home, eat them, do the dishes, repeat until you die. But, lucky for us, capitalism and the corporations it has produced have found the solution. As my dear friend Maggie Sheridan puts it, “the toy grocery store”. Obviously, life is monotonous and unbearable if it’s not being romanticized literally constantly. Due to this, I understand the meteoric rise of TikTok prominence. I love starting my day watching someone in Edinburgh, or somewhere definitely better in theory than in practice, go to a farmer’s market, have their morning tea, and then put on an outfit entirely made of linen. This is beautiful and very special to me. However, I hate starting my day with a video of someone’s Trader Joe’s haul. If I’m going to romanticize my life I’m going to do it the right way. Through my own life. This is not a social media hate account. I doubt that I will ever give it up. But, TikTok, Instagram, and all the socials in between have completely alienated people from their own lives. The gap between reality and what the internet tells me is
reality is widening every day. There is no living life. There are about ten filters between me, my life, me documenting it, me watching other people document what I want it to be, and corporations who have taken advantage of this to sell me not just products, but the experience of buying them. Not even the boring terror of grocery shopping is safe. I have to look a certain way and get some kind of content out of it. God forbid my cashier doesn’t flirt with me, because then I’ll have nothing to Tweet about. Now, this is all coming down a bit harsh on the individual, and I want to be clear, no one is the villain of this piece. Not even dear Dan Bane, the CEO of Trader Joe’s. Not even me. No, the villain of the piece is capitalism. Capitalism and insane American individualism that has convinced us we must have epic and exciting stories when we come home from the grocery store. Unfortunately, my only solution to this is to tear the system down brick by brick. But, until this happens I’m going to try and find ways to embrace, and maybe even enjoy my exceedingly dull reality. I might just even take a walk without headphones on and not take a video of it. Reality is ugly and bad and no fun, but it beats the cheap and empty advertising of a corporation that doesn’t care if you drop dead tomorrow. One thing to be said about reality, it isn’t empty.
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IF I'M GOING TO ROMANTICIZE MY LIFE I'M GOING TO DO IT THE RIGHT WAY.
scoliosis VISUALS GRACE HWANG
I feel like I’m too young to have back pain. I’m twenty, and unfortunately, most people our age do have back pain. It is a symptom of the magic of the internet. Scoliosis, though, is a structural issue. My spine, for whatever reason, decided to lean a little sideways. Adolescent idiopathic thoracic scoliosis, if you want to get technical. As of now, it cannot be cured. It could, but it would require a miracle. So, scoliosis is a type of chronic pain. It is pain that lasts a long time. I was diagnosed when I was twelve, and I will live with this groovy spine for the rest of my life. Pain—pain that lasts a long time—slows you down. It sits at the back of your mind. You end up planning your days around it. You get lonely. Afterall, pain encompasses you. As John Green says, one is in pain. Inside of it. I’ve tried many times to write about scoliosis, and I don’t quite have the words yet. Pain is nearly impossible to communicate. We are either inside of it, or not we are not. And when we are not, we forget. Here are my bare-bone efforts to communicate. 94 | EM FALL 21
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SUBURBAN NIGHTMARE
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VISUALS MAYA SERI MODELS BELLA SERACENO AND EMMA BORIN
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ON COMING HOME WORDS MOLLY GOODRICH VISUALS YONGZE WANG MODEL ALDUS PUYAT
The mountains always look bigger on the drive home from the airport. After months in the northeast, in concrete jungles and Dunkin’ Donuts, I find solace in looking out at something so much bigger than me. One time I asked Dad if I stood on the top of Mt. Rainer, would I be able to touch the sky? He had laughed, but I think he had to think about it for a moment. Considering this theoretical problem as if it were a math equation that neither of us would understand. I’m always quiet during that car ride, taking it all in. I watch the skyline become smaller and smaller as we drive further north. Dad plays Meatloaf and Nirvana and The Beatles. I’ll probably complain about whoever sat next to me on the plane, no matter what they did. Maybe it’ll rain, or maybe it won’t. Either way, he’ll talk about how much we need a good storm, or how sick we are of cloudy skies. “We” he always says, “us.”
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T H I S WA S E V E R Y T H I N G 1 6 - Y E A R - O L D
M E C O U L D H AV E D R E A M E D O F.
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I haven’t lived a full twelve months in Seattle in years, but he always tries to include me in this. Complaining about the weather is in our blood, Dad told me one time. Although he was not born here, he has spent nearly his entire life in Washington. I’ve always loved how fiercely people become a part of this place. Since all my homecomings are temporary now, it’s usually nearing Thanksgiving or Christmas. The leaves on the trees are long dead and the sky looming over is filled with familiar grey clouds. There’s rarely ever snow on the ground, but sometimes it looks as though there was an inkling of such. I’ll miss the mild climate for years to come when I’m walking in negative temperatures, commuting in blizzards, grumbling about how my skin wasn’t made for this. But I chose that life. In high school, I couldn’t wait to be far away. I wanted to do something new, and exciting, and return with experiences that would make me feel taller. I collected these stories like souvenirs, hoarding them in my pockets and stashing them away until I had the perfect opportunity
to spill. But I found myself collecting more memories of the Pacific Northwest than anything else. Little coffee stands and my favorite lakes to hike to, eager to tell anyone I met about my favorite place that I used to want to escape.
felt like they could be. If you squinted with enough conviction, I could be in Bellingham, or Mt. Baker, or a dozen other nameless camping grounds I spent my childhood in. But then I’d blink and I was still thousands of miles away from where I was raised.
That’s not to say I’m not in love with New England. Apple picking and coastal towns and little pockets of history on every street. Broken cobblestone and Ivy Leagues and my favorite museums. Bizarrely, in all my years of grasping for home, I had found comfort in a city that I would also one day have to abandon.
My favorite part about the North West was there was always more a friend’s aunt told me that warm New Hampshire day, over New England IPAS and sticky humidity. I loved the way she phrased that. More. Always another mountain, another island, another set of trees. You never looked out at the ocean and saw nothing, just more, and more, and more.
Sometimes I’d sit in my Boston apartment and realize this was everything 16-yearold me could have dreamed of. Exposed brick walls, a city that felt like mine, found furniture from the heart of the Hill. Eclectic art from thrift stores and slightly warped, wooden floors. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. Once, in New Hampshire, when I was feeling especially homesick, I stood staring at a small lake surrounded by trees, surrounded by a family that wasn’t mine but
* * * On a beach in Nahant, Massachusetts, I told the boy I thought I could fall in love with that this was very PNW. What does that even mean? He had laughed, and I had tried to explain myself, but it didn’t matter, because I knew. It was the fog, and the clouds, and the feeling that it just might rain at any moment, but it won’t. It was the vastness and the fleeting thought that perhaps a vampire could be behind that tree.
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Like Twin Peaks? The boy would ask in the car later that day. I’ve never seen that show. Nor have I seen Grey’s, or Frasier, or many famous Seattle media, but I would nod, anyway. Yeah. Just like Twin Peaks. * * * Dad stops the car in front of the house that I spent my teenage years inside. There were other homes before it, but they’re dull in my memory. The one in front of me now holds five empty bedrooms, and yet I can picture them so clearly now, how full they used to be when all my siblings still lived under one roof. It seems hauntingly empty right now. I close my eyes and see myself in my prom dress, taking photos in the front yard. I see sticky popsicles on the porch in unsuspectingly hot summers and salmon dinners at the picnic table. Christmas mornings with presents spilling out from under the tree. First dates, first fights, first holidays without a family member, the permanent missing spot at the table. Notes my friends left me, immortalizing a time when I was still fifteen. I see the wall that separated my bedroom from my sisters, conversations that I’ll keep forever, even if they’re mindless, nothingness now. My safest place in the world used to be that bedroom. I couldn’t tell you where I feel the calmest these days, constantly torn between two worlds. A past I can no longer get to and a future that feels improbable at best to reach. This place wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. Though I’m not sure how much longer that statement still stands. As graduation looms, I stare at the house that raised me and think about how long it’s been since I wasn’t just a visitor there. I was the last one to leave the nest. My parents will sell it soon, downsize, migrate east towards warmer weather and retirement plans. Coming home will never feel the same when that happens, and maybe it doesn’t feel the same now, either. But I relish in the moments while I still have them. Ready to go in? Dad asks. I nod. I allow myself to go home.
VISUALS MARGARITA IVANOVA
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LEATHER BOYS VISUALS TAINA MILLSAP STYLING GLORIA CAO, SERGIO CANA RODRIGUEZ, O BARTON MODELS ETHAN DENK, TALIA SMITH, SERGIO CANA RODRIGUEZ
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TWENTYWORDS ABIGAIL ROSS
ONE
I had no birthday cake this year. I turned twentyone in August. In the second week, when summer ripened into the mellow sunlit weather and deepest shades of green, blue, and orange, just as promised. The breeze drifted through the warm atmosphere, so salty and pure I knew the ocean was nearby. My family would celebrate along the coastline of southern Maine every year. We often gathered at the beach house or in a shoreside hotel—excited to finally be together again after a long six months. The kids were eager to jump in the pool, geared in floaties and one-piece swimsuits. I sat among my nana and aunt, who never dove in
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the water, but were always able to develop a glowing tan that lasted for days to follow as usual. The perfect little days. It was my mother who made this day special. She would describe how I was born in vivid detail, like thirty-two hours of labor and no epidural. I watched as mother spoke, clutching a single chalice filled to the brim with chardonnay throughout the solemn evening. When dinner hour arrived—we’d travel to the outdoor restaurant down the street, where a pile of buttery lobsters and shiny plastic bibs were to be served on a platter, delivered to everyone. We all smiled and laughed and talked. I was often happy. But by that time,
everyone was usually drunk. My mother would either bring the birthday cake from inside our car and waltz over to the picnic table, light each candle, and have the whole place singing: Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Abby, happy birthday to you. The heat from the fire would lick the sides of my chin above a massive block of ice cream with colored flames. My face would fall to a smirk that reached across one cheek. I would search among the sea of expressions with uncertainty. I just didn’t know how to feel. My mother would mumble: I love you, Abigail. We are so proud of you. The gold liquid glistened
and rippled inside the glass underneath a deep sunset that typically settled among the beautiful mountain range—a testament to another year around the world. This was all for me. She gave me life, but I felt guilty that I was growing up and becoming aware of this truth. A space between youth and adulthood I wasn’t familiar with. Somehow I wanted this year to be different. Although twenty-one was not what I expected. There was a point in time where I was against drinking with my entire being. I feared alcohol abuse like a disease that couldn’t be ridden. Addiction ran free through my lineage without escape. I felt responsible for this trauma, almost
like I needed to keep a secret already untold. Buried in my memory was a girl who was scared of becoming another person who suffered from an illness that never transpired. Every birthday passed—I was 17, then 18, then 19, then 20, and history repeated itself on a time continuum. After every birthday outing, there were arguments and verbal feuds between the people who drank the most that night. When the clock struck twelve, they were usually sleeping or in a bad mood. I was sick of seeing wine bottles and feeling worse about myself. I always wondered what type of person I would be by now, come the time it would be my turn. It’s not me, it’s
FOR MY
you—but I felt the burden, heavy on my shoulders. I searched for the sunshine when sometimes all I felt was rain, but essentially that wasn’t enough to fill this void. I should be happy and grateful, my mother told me. Some people aren’t gifted cakes on their birthday or the presence of everyone they ever loved around them. But that was never what it was about. What could I do to help when there was nothing I could do? I cried for my family members and endured regret in ways I couldn’t explain. For my twenty-first birthday, I am reminded of the sacrifices that come with pain—but still acknowledge how fortunate I’ve been over others.
TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY,
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I AM
REMINDED
SACRIFICES
OF THE THAT
COME WITH
This year, I had no birthday cake; instead, I turned twenty-one at a strip club in South Beach, Miami. Thick marijuana smoke filled the air inside as neon purple, pink, and red lights stretched across the walls and onto the ceiling. The music was so loud, my ears throbbed to the beat. There were people everywhere, all drinking with their friends and dancing on the stage. An overwhelming feeling of loss crowded my mind; I could barely breathe. My mother was upset I wanted to go elsewhere to live it up,
but this is what I chose. I was an adult. I drank shot after shot after midnight. My stomach churned, but the DJ said, if your birthday is tonight, live it up. I was soft and fuzzy and gone. The money men stared at me. I grew up thinking I had to drink alcohol in order to have fun. So that’s what I did. A pit formed at the bottom of my belly. My feet ached in five-inch heels and a fine sparkly dress that felt tighter than I remembered. I wobbled to the bathroom, took off my shoes, and walked into
PAIN
the nearest stall. I sat on the toilet and tried to steady myself. I inhaled and clutched my arms. I thought about my mother and all my family members. My aunt, my nana, the kids— even the beach houses and the shoreside hotels. Everybody in my life came in waves, just like the beach. I wanted to forget about the alcohol, the fights, the pain, and what twenty-one meant to me. A road to healing. I craved the unknown, but knew I could never go back.
INVISIBLE DOME
VISUALS YUHONG CAI ASSISTANT ZHILIN XIANG MODEL JIANG XU
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VISUALS REGAN SANDOVAL
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TRUE HARM WORDS JESS FERGUSON
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OF
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There’s probably a good chance you’ve heard about Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old travel blogger who disappeared and was later murdered in September. After some police-body camera footage was released, the primary subject in the investigation was her boyfriend Brian Laundrie. In this footage, Laundrie and Petito had just gotten into a physical argument shortly before her death. Laundrie has been missing since the middle of September. Petito’s case isn’t exactly what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to discuss people’s reactions to it. Before officials found her body and confirmed she died of strangulation, there was extensive speculation online regarding her disappearance. People shared theories about her whereabouts, her relationship with Laundrie, her last Instagram post, and possible sightings of her. You could argue that some were invested in the case because they liked Petito’s travel content she shared to her 1 million Instagram followers. However, if you were a fan of hers; wouldn’t you want to respect her and her family’s privacy during an incredibly difficult time that has already been plastered all over the media? If the content presented online was framed to help find her by showing her image and last known location, that would show genuine care toward her well-being. However, by using her disappearance and subsequent murder to publicly gossip about her love life, it shows that her best interest may not be the motivating factor driving these theories.
This issue is not exclusive to Petito’s situation. Podcasts, documentaries, and other forms of true crime media have led to the desensitization of real crime, the exploitation of these cases for money or clout, and a romanticized view of crime and its perpetrators. Living in the U.S. has made some desensitized to certain violence, such as shootings, because these events happen so often. And the same thing goes for true crime. If you spend your free time watching documentaries about serial killers, then when you see that someone was kidnapped, it may feel like just an 150 | EM FALL 21
ordinary day. You may lose touch with reality and imagine how your favorite content creators will cover this case. You may even forget to consider how their loved ones must be feeling right now. It’s easy to distance yourself from these cases and forget that these are real people with real lives and families. But, this genre is called true crime for a reason. True crime is a lucrative business. As if watching Tarantino films wasn’t enough, people love hearing about women being raped, kidnapped, killed, and brutalized. And this popularity is substantial.
When the true crime podcast Serial dropped in 2014, it broke iTunes records by becoming the quickest podcast to reach 5 million downloads and streams in the platform’s history, Time reported in 2020. Time also reports that over 1.6 million true-crime books were sold in 2018, compared to just 976,000 two years prior, Time also says. It’s hard not to see some form of true crime content when scrolling through Netflix, searching for podcasts, browsing a bookstore, or looking in your YouTube recommended feed. “It’s really common and normal to enjoy things that involve experiencing
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difficult emotions in safe ways, like rollercoasters and horror movies and sad films,” Emily Dworkin, a University of Washington assistant professor and trauma researcher told UW Medicine. People like Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, hosts of the podcast My Favorite Murder, can make a living off this media because the demand is overwhelmingly there—it gets 35 million downloads per month, Forbes reported in 2020. People profit off of others’ tragedies. The worst moment in someone’s life could be another’s favorite form of entertainment. There’s a
reason why you turn on the news and are bombarded with stories about fires and car accidents: it sells. However, using people’s real-life trauma and tragedies for money or attention can quickly become exploitative. BBC reported in 2019 that family and friends of Hae Min Lee, a woman who was murdered in 1999, said the case’s reignited attention from the Serial podcast “reopened old wounds” for them, but HBO still turned the case into docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed.” How would you feel if people were making money by using a family member’s death for shock value?
While casual consumption of this content is relatively harmless, some cross a line of romanticization. Cameron Herrin, 21, was driving 100mph and was charged with vehicular homicide for killing a 24-year-old and her 20-month-old daughter, Fox 13 reported in May. Instead of lamenting two losses, TikTok users created videos and even entire fan accounts with court footage hashtagged #JusticeForCameron, which has nearly 31 million views. How about #JusticeForJessica, the mother who never got to see her daughter grow up? Or #JusticeForLillia, an
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infant who had her entire life ahead of her? Even Herrin’s mother stepped in, telling the Tampa Bay Times that social media users’ “unhealthy obsession” with her son was “scary” and that she received calls and letters from his ‘fans.’ Millions of people overlook the fact that individuals died because they’re fixated on a mediocrelooking boy they could find anywhere. There are so many people in the world; why choose someone who committed homicide? You can buy cutesy T-shirts with cartoon serial killers printed
on them. People take out their wallets to purchase Ted Bundy tees donned with phrases like “Serial Seducer” and “Ladykiller.” Need I remind you he killed over 30 women? I’m not going to act like I haven’t watched any documentaries based on true crime or that Buzzfeed Unsolved wasn’t a major source of my personality as an adolescent. People are inevitably going to consume this content, and I’m not trying to stop them. However, I will advise you to be mindful of the frequency of this consumption and
give yourself time to think critically about how watching may affect your mental health. Additionally, it is vital to keep the victims and families in mind. Viewers should also understand the impact that watching these—often fictionalized— versions of real life stories will have on their perception of crime. Lastly, creators should ensure that their content isn’t overly salacious and remains sensitive to those close to the case. Remember, true crime is that exactly: true.
PROMISING YOUNG MEN VISUALS JESS O’DONOGHUE MODEL LUKE MORRISON
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KITCHEN SINK WORDS TATUM JENKINS
I stepped onto the dark wood stool and picked up the green and yellow sponge, one side, hard under my fingers, for the mess that clings to dishes and the other, soft and springy, to clean the more surface-level globs. The kitchen was quiet after dinner, the wood table cleared and the chairs pushed back into place. I began to clean, relishing in the warm water dancing and sliding along my hands as I pushed the gunk off every plate and fork. I placed every clean item on the rubber mat beside me, so proud of my achievement in domesticity. But when you’re that young you don’t know that those moments are the beginning of the rest of your life. Especially when you’re a girl. 164 | EM FALL 21
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My sophomore year of college, I spent an entire semester washing dishes. I wasn’t a dishwasher, but I’m sure one would be impressed with me. My roommate and our friends had an entirely different way of coping with the heavy sense of depression that swirled in every space; they smoked weed constantly and I followed their smoky, odorous trail and picked up the fragments of wrappers, the dishes, and the dirt. In between virtual classes, homework, and meetings, I’d find myself scrubbing, sweeping, wiping, or vacuuming. I loved how my apartment transformed under my hand, how I could create more space just by folding some blankets or recycling abandoned mail.
After my work was done, I’d stand in the doorway of my room in an unintentional power pose similar to Wonder Woman and look over my land. As my eyes scanned the room, all I could see was space where there used to be something. The smooth white kitchen counter that used to have slight brown bumps from vegetable stains, the clarity of the mirror in the bathroom where a little fog would cover my right shoulder when I looked into it, the blue chairs placed under the living room table. I was a space that used to be something. I don’t know what I am anymore. If a person has a mom and a dishwasher, I think they probably load a dishwasher the way their mom taught
them. My mom taught me this configuration: on the top shelf, cups to the sides and two column of bowls in the middle; on the bottom shelf, plates inserted into between the small prongs in a row, and if you baked the previous night, your glass bowl inserted somewhere in the mix; either the small shelf above the top shelf or in the holder on the bottom shelf, forks and spoons in there with the handle down and knives with the handle up. Nothing wood, none of the fancy sharp knives, and the occasional superior mug or wine glass don’t go in the dishwasher. I find comfort in that pattern, in the way I know where things go, even when others don’t. My mom also taught me how to use a vacuum, scrub a potato, chop vegetables, clean a window, make my bed, do my laundry, how to pack a suitcase, and every other chore I’m assigned as an adult. She taught me these individual actions, but above all, taught me how to run a home. I feel as though, as she passed down these lessons from her grandmother to her mother to me, she was whispering the unspoken, gendered ways of the world. She wouldn’t call herself a feminist, but only because she thinks they burn bras and hate men. I think she is. But she knew I had to grow up before I knew, and even the staunchest feminist has to teach their child how to load a dishwasher. Allison Daminger, a PhD candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard, did a study on psychological parts of domestic work and which part of a heterosexual couple tends to do more. She broke up domestic work into four parts: anticipate, identify, decide, monitor. For example, soap in a household. Someone “anticipates” that the house will need more soap 166 | EM FALL 21
in the bathroom dispenser, they do the research to “identify” what soap they want, they go to the store and “decide” to buy that soap, and then, once that soap is in the house, they “monitor” the dispenser to see if it needs more soap. Daminger found that women were the main group in charge of anticipating and monitoring, and women and men collaboratively identify and decide. The way my mom taught my family, sometimes unsuccessfully, to anticipate was with “The List.” “The List” is a chalkboard to the right of our fridge where our family writes down foods or products that seem to be low in our inventory. If someone fails to anticipate, she looks in the fridge, notices something is missing, and shouts out to anyone in the house, clasping her hands and shaking from the waist up, “Why did no one add it to The List? Marone a mi!” She doesn’t speak Italian, her grandparents did, but you know she’s really angry when she says “marone a mi.” We fail to help her anticipate so often that she has a personal assistant. In fact, she didn’t hire one and stop at that; there was Josie, Allie, Michelle, Megan, Britney, and, now, Rosie. Most of these women I’ve become close to, whispering our qualms with my mother in the kitchen when my mom was a room over and talking to them about their lives while they attempted to anticipate, identify, and monitor what my mom couldn’t. As I’ve watched all these women come and go, I’ve wondered if it has to be that hard, running a household. I feel a sense of empathy for my mother who has to run her business and worry about her household, and I feel for the women who have attempted to help my mom and then go home and have
to be moms. That semester, I would come home from school, work, and practice and be a silent mom. Wipe the kitchen counter, maybe even vacuum, make myself dinner, put objects back in their place, monitor my roommate and his friends to make sure they were okay as they took hit after hit from the bong. If I cannot have control over the people in my apartment or their underlying substance and mental health issues, I can at least have control over how the place looks. After the chores were done, I would retreat to my room, sit in my bed, and often cry to the view of the city to my right. My cleaning no longer held the intimacy it used to; it was no longer an exchange of love, but an act of survival. I stopped cleaning up their mess on the day the pancakes burned. I wanted to treat my partner to breakfast for dinner – a concept I am a passionate advocate for. After I scooped and swirled the mixture together, I dropped dollops of mix onto the hot pan. Instead of bubbling or sizzling, smoke crawled under the pancakes and around the room, setting off the fire alarms. As my partner and roommate opened the windows and whipped around kitchen towels, I froze in the kitchen with my head in my hands. I ran into my room on the left of the kitchen and threw myself facefirst into bed, sobbing into my purple pillow. “I can’t do this anymore,” I confessed to my partner as I lifted my face from the wet pillow, “I can’t.” And I didn’t. Any dish that wasn’t mine stayed dirty in the sink, sauce stains began to slowly take over the counter, and each burner on our electric stove accumulated a small ring of burned crust from the bottoms of the pans and pots. However, my space was
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I WAS A SPACE THAT USED TO BE SOMETHING. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM ANYMORE.
I STOPPED CLEANING UP THEIR MESS ON THE DAY THE PANCAKES BURNED.
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how I wanted it. Facial products lined up in their shelves in the bathroom like action figures, masks hung on the wall near my door with command hooks, clothes color coded in my closet: domesticity and comfort were in my reach as long as I stayed in my room. I lost close connections I had with some of my friends during that time because I didn’t clean for them. When the intimacy of cleaning became an expectation, I left those relationships. That’s when I started to look at myself and see something in the empty spaces. My relationship with my kitchen sink is ever changing. In high school, I began washing the dishes every night with my brother, Trey; I had washing duty and he had dry duty. Instead of a quiet process of swishing and wiping water, Trey would play music. “Alexa,” he would call out, “Play John Mayer!” Or sometimes it was “Play party hits” or “Play country music” (that one is my least favorite). Cleaning has a rhythm just like a song if you tune into it enough. As we sing a longer note, maybe I’ll swirl the spong around a pan a few times. When a song stops, I’ll shake the excess water off a bowl or hand a damp wooden spoon to Trey. Whenever I fall into a quick feminist despair at the thought of washing dishes for the rest of my life, my brother reminds me that it is possible to find joy in the domestic. That when we take my dogs for a twilight walk and he tells me about his day at school, I want this comfort for my life. I want dogs and a place to live and a favorite plate and a welcome mat. I may spend my life at a kitchen sink, but I hope I’ll be washing dishes for the ones I love.
Copyright © 2021 em Mag. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from em Mag except in the case of crediting both em Mag and the artists. Should you have any questions pertaining to the reproduction of any content in this book, please contact emmagonline@gmail.com. Cover photo by Jess O’Donoghue Book design by Reagan Allen :) First edition printed by Flagship Press in North Andover, MA. 2021. Typeset in Antarctican Mono by Adobe and BN Canteen Bold by Brandon Nickerson. Website: www.em-mag.com Instagram: @emmagazine Issuu: em Magazine 170 | EM FALL 21
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