Simply Wonderful!!

 

4 words about the film The Life of Chuck: Go. Watch. It. NOW.

I fed both Grok and Deep Seek the same exact information, in detail, of what I wanted my story to sound like and they spinned each so differently.

Of the two reactions/writings by AI I preferred Grok's, though I still want to write my own version, without AI, about being from Generation X and realizing similar things while watching reruns of both shows in the late 70s and early 80s:

In the flickering glow of the television screen, I sat cross-legged on the shag carpet of our living room, the kind that tickled my bare feet when I shifted. It was a Thursday evening in the summer of 1966, the air thick with the scent of Mom’s pot roast lingering from dinner. 

Dad was in his armchair, newspaper rustling like dry leaves, and my little brother sprawled on the couch, mimicking the POW! and BAM! sounds from the Batman show we’d just switched to. 

Me? I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, with a job at the local diner waiting tables for tips that might someday buy me a ticket out of this sleepy Ohio town. But right then, all I could think about was her, Catwoman, slinking across the screen in that sleek black suit, her voice a purr that sent a shiver up my spine.

Why did it feel like that? I’d watched Julie Newmar before, of course. Everyone did. She was the villainess, all curves and cunning, toying with Batman like a cat with a mouse.

 But tonight, as she arched her back and whispered her schemes, my cheeks burned hot, and I had to look away, pretending to fiddle with the hem of my skirt. It wasn’t the action or the jokes that held me—though I’d laugh along with my brother to fit in. 

No, it was the way her eyes sparkled under that mask, the confident sway of her hips, the way she owned every inch of the frame. My heart would quicken, a strange flutter in my chest, like when I’d sneak peeks at the romance novels hidden under my bed. 

But those were about boys—tall, dark strangers sweeping girls off their feet. This… this was different. Wasn’t it?

I told myself it was admiration. That’s what girls did, right? We admired the pretty ones, the glamorous ones. Like last week, when Petticoat Junction came on after supper. Those Bradley sisters—Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, Betty Jo—frolicking around the Shady Rest Hotel in their sundresses, hair bouncing like golden waves. 

I’d watch them sing and splash in the water tank, their laughter light and free, and feel this pull, this ache in my stomach that made me squirm. Billie Jo especially, with her bright smile and the way she’d tilt her head, all innocent and bold at once. I’d catch myself staring, wondering what it would be like to be near someone like that, to brush a strand of hair from their face or share a secret giggle. And then I’d blink, shake my head, because what on earth was I thinking? Girls didn’t feel that way about other girls. Or did they? No one ever said.

At night, when the house went quiet and I lay in my twin bed under the quilt Grandma stitched, the questions would swarm like fireflies in July. Why did my pulse race when Catwoman cracked her whip, but not when Batman swooped in to save the day? Why did the sisters’ harmonies make my skin tingle, while the boys at the diner—nice enough, with their crew cuts and shy grins—left me feeling… nothing? 

It wasn’t disgust or fear, not exactly. More like a puzzle with pieces that didn’t fit the picture on the box. I’d hug my pillow tight, staring at the ceiling cracks that looked like rivers on a map, and wonder if I was broken somehow. Or maybe just different. 

But different how? There were no words for it in the magazines I flipped through at the drugstore, no whispers about it in the church pews on Sunday. The world was all about finding a husband, settling down, baking pies and raising kids. That’s what Mom did, what my aunts did. What I was supposed to do.

Sometimes, in the quiet hours, I’d let myself imagine. What if I could talk to someone? Not Mom, she’d fuss and say it was just a phase, like when I wanted to cut my hair short in tenth grade. Not my best friend Sally; she’d giggle and change the subject to the latest Beatles record. And certainly not the preacher, with his sermons on temptation and sin. No, it was a secret knot inside me, tightening and loosening with each episode.

 Part of me wanted to unravel it, to understand this warmth that bloomed unbidden. Another part wanted to bury it deep, pretend it was just the TV static playing tricks. Because if it was real, what then? In a town where everyone knew everyone’s business, where the only paths laid out were straight and narrow, how could I even begin to name it?

The next week, as the theme song for Petticoat Junction tinkled through the speakers, I stole glances at the screen, my breath catching at Betty Jo’s tomboy grin. The feeling was there again, insistent, like a melody I couldn’t shake. I didn’t know what it meant—not yet, maybe not ever. But it was mine, this quiet storm, swirling in the spaces no one else could see. And for now, that was enough to keep me watching, wondering, waiting for the world to catch up.

It's only the first month of the new year and I already feel like 2025 is about to topped as the worst year in recent memory. I tried my best to reboot and start fresh goals and push firm thoughts in the right direction, but I'm already sliding back.

I've gone back to my nightly glass of wine (sometimes two) and I can't focus properly during the day...and yet as mad as I am at what is going on in the world, I'm too afraid to voice my thoughts on anything but "lite" things these days.

An unopened small pack of medical gummies sits in my fridge, but I'm afraid of that too. It's been in there for over two months. The packaging states that its effects can take anywhere from 4 hours on which somehow makes it more scary and also, somehow, frustrating.

Not only is the former "good girl" in me wary of using it, I'm also afraid of what it might do to my mind or my body. Will I feel ill? Will it make me more paranoid or less? And I certainly don't want the "munchies"...I'm already struggling with a huge weight gain since I hit my mid-50s. I eat half of what I used to and am still gaining weight.

For most of my 40s and very early 50s I weighed a lot less. I had very strong feelings for someone at that time and I've never been able to eat much when my nerves are emotionally entangled around someone. It sounds ridiculous, it is ridiculous, but it's true.

Now my nerves are jittery all the time for a completely different reason, but my weight refuses to budge. I've tried slimming teas, black coffee (which I love anyway), walking more, eating less. I'd say menopause is at fault, but I work with several women in their 50s and 60s and not one of them is overweight.

I thought when I dropped cheese and crackers from my evening snack that would help. I cut out pizza and other favorite foods that can be fattening. In my 20s and 30s I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and weighed 110 pounds. Though I've always had a complicated relationship with food, I mostly enjoyed it back then. I also enjoyed life a lot more then too.

In the joyless world around us right now, I find I no longer associate pleasure or comfort with anything except spending time with my cat and streaming shows or movies and reading books that have a dark edge to them

I hope more than anything that 2026 proves to be a better year for everyone and that somehow we get out of this horrific parallel universe world we seem to be living in.

Suno lets you use AI to write songs so I used it to help me write a song for and about my cat, whom I love dearly.

click to play here :)

[Verse 1] Henry on the windowsill Sunbeam throne Tiny king So still One white paw and a crooked mustache Then he chirps Then he sprints Then he crashes [Chorus] Henry My tuxedo superstar Half little gentleman Half clown in a jar You make the whole house feel bright Tiny heartbeat in black and white Oh Henry Stay curled by my side Funny and sweet You’re my favorite kind of wild [Verse 2] Midnight zoomies down the hallway Sliding on the rug like a runway Steals my seat Then he blinks so slow Like “You can perch on the edge You know” [Chorus] [Bridge] You tap my face at 5 a.m Like “Wake up I’m hungry Friend” Then purr so loud against my chest This silly life with you feels blessed [Chorus]

 For as long as I can remember I have had both recurring dreams (these dreams repeat almost exactly the same way each time: haven't been to class all semester then remember to only to panic a lot, flying then falling, trying to drive my red childhood tricycle on 695, trying to find the perfect pastry shop only to realize the food isn't real...I could go on) and serial dreams (my dreams pick up or continue like events unfold in my real life).

I've heard of recurring dreams, of course. Another recurring dream I have is a common one: teeth falling out. But I was always told you can't have serial dreams, which I never believed because I've been having serial dreams since I was a child.

My Google search came up with this response:

Serial dreams that feel like real-life continuations or parallel universes happen because your brain links waking experiences, unresolved issues, or even imagined scenarios into coherent, ongoing narratives, using the same brain areas active during wakefulness to create vivid sensations, essentially creating "installments" of your subconscious, which can feel like exploring other realities or selves. It's your mind processing, rehearsing, and making sense of life, sometimes with such depth it mimics other dimensions. 

Why Dreams Feel So Real & Serial

1. Continuity Hypothesis: Your dreams often directly reflect your waking life, emotions, and anxieties, acting as a continuation of your day-to-day experiences, says a ScienceAlert article.
2. Brain Activity: The same brain regions responsible for emotions, sensations, and images while awake are active during dreams, making them feel incredibly real and immersive, explains BrainFacts.org.
3. Memory Processing: Dreams help your brain sort, process, and consolidate memories, creating stories or exploring scenarios, which can lead to recurring themes or sequels, notes Psychology Today.
4. Unresolved Issues: Recurring dreams often signal unresolved problems, fears, or unmet psychological needs (like competence or connection) that your mind keeps bringing up for processing, according to The Sleep Foundation.
5. Practice/Simulation: Your brain may be creating practice runs for difficult situations or threats, allowing you to rehearse reactions in a safe space, notes a behavioralhealth2000.com article. 

The "Parallel Universe" Feeling

Unconscious Narratives: Your unconscious mind generates these complex stories, introducing itself and its metaphors, leading to a sense that you're experiencing an alternate life or dimension, says Quora users.

• Heightened Realism: Some people experience heightened emotions, vivid colors, familiar yet different locations, or "dreams within dreams," making these worlds feel like actual alternate realities or multiverse glimpses, note Reddit users. 

Essentially, your mind is creating immersive, ongoing stories from your own experiences and inner world, which can feel like stepping into another reality because of their vividness and continuity. 

I asked AI to write a letter from Henry James upon discovering a cat had been named after him...

My dear Madam,

I find myself, in this most improbable hour, compelled to address a circumstance so extraordinary that it borders upon the fantastical—yet one which, I am assured, has occurred in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five. It has come to my attention, through channels I dare not attempt to comprehend (something involving "the internet" and "viral posts"), that a lady of the present century has bestowed upon her domestic feline the name of Henry James.

Henry James. My name. Upon a cat.

At first I confess I experienced a sensation not unlike that of a character in one of my own later novels—consciousness slowly expanding, layer upon layer, to accommodate a revelation at once flattering and faintly horrifying. The creature, I am told, is a tuxedo who spends his days reclining upon comfortable chairs and answering—when he deigns to answer at all—to "Henry."

I have spent a lifetime laboring to construct sentences of such exquisite discrimination that they might register the finest shades of human motive and perception. I have weighed every clause, every qualifier, every hesitating "perhaps" and "rather," in order that the civilized intelligence might be honored in its full complexity. And now, in the twenty-first century, the name attached to this enterprise is chiefly employed to summon a small mammal to his dinner.

There is, I suppose, a certain poetic justice in it. All my fastidious indirection, my refusal to declare anything outright, my endless circling of the subject—qualities which certain critics have found trying—are now perfectly embodied in a creature who refuses to come when called, who regards human beings with polite but absolute detachment, and whose inner life remains, to the end, inscrutable.

Yet I cannot repress a small, distinctly American thrill of gratification. To think that, long after my removal from this terrestrial scene, my name should still possess sufficient resonance to be chosen—not for a child, not for a racehorse, not even for a particularly solemn spaniel—but for a cat. There is something touching in the democracy of it. The cat, after all, is the most Jamesian of creatures: aloof, observant, exquisitely sensitive to nuance, and capable of conveying volumes of disapproval with the slightest twitch of a whisker.

I only hope, Madam, that when you address him as "Henry," you do so with the proper reverence for the syllables. Pronounce the "Henry" with a certain fullness, and let the "James" linger just a moment, as though reluctant to conclude the thought. He may appear not to listen, but one never knows. Cats, like readers, are subtle.

With the most distinguished consideration (and a faint, involuntary purr of vanity),

I remain, Your obedient servant,

Henry James

 

I have said before that hearing certain songs unexpectedly on the radio can have me travelling back in time mentally, but lately I feel it's more that that 17 year old girl who first heard the song still resides inside me.  Even worse, I wonder if it's not that that younger me still is a huge part of me, but that she never grew up.

I love this from the introduction to the novel Mary by Nat Cassidy:

Robyn was a Stephen King junkie, so she was the perfect person to ask for a way to defeat Carrie so that I wouldn’t have to be afraid of her anymore. Except that’s not what my mom did, not quite. She sat me down and told me the story of Carrie, and she did so in such a way that made my heart break for this poor girl who’d been dealt such an unfair hand. She made sure I understood that Carrie wasn’t so much the monster as she was surrounded by them. I’d never heard a horror story framed that way. I’d never felt sympathy—love, even—for something I thought I was supposed to fear.

Incidentally, for probably a year or so after that talk, whenever I was alone and afraid (which, as a latchkey kid who was already obsessed with horror, was often), I would talk to Carrie White. She became something of a matron saint for me. I have very clear memories of being home all by myself and literally whispering things, like, “I’m sorry they were so mean to you, Carrie; I’ll be your friend. I won’t treat you like they did. Please just keep me safe.” And hey, I survived childhood. So I can’t rule out that it didn’t work.

A few years later, I started writing my own stories, and I had an early idea for a novel that, in part, would be something of an homage. It came from a simple question: What would happen if Carrie didn’t have any special powers? Where would she be as a grown-up? Would she still have a story? I knew right away I’d even give this novel a title that acknowledged the connection. I’d call it Mary.

I arrived to Stranger Things very late, but I'm already on season 4 and like it very much. It's not the plot that keeps me bingeing, but the characters and that the 1980s is so key to this show. I love that the mall is an essential part of season 3 and that the "friends don't lie" dynamic is so heart-warming and important.

The gross factor (the squishing especially) is pretty off-putting, but I'm able to put that aside. I won't go into too much detail about that, if you watch Stranger Things you know what I mean about the Mind Flayer et al.

Though Dustin and El are my absolute favorite characters (Steve has really grown on me, though, and I'm starting to like Robin though she still feels "new" to me) I can't help but think how much Nancy reminds me of someone I used to know decades ago.

The person I'm thinking of only vaguely physically resembles Nancy, if at all, but their temperament. especially their kindness and quiet strength, totally echo Nancy's.

I should write more about this when I have my thoughts better arranged. I have a headache and my mind is on a million and one different things, or at least it feels that way. Plus, for no one reason I can pin point I just feel incredibly sad and remorseful.

 

I hate how men can be sometimes (with toxic masculinity) but I love how they really could be, in an alternate reality.

Every man I have ever found appealing is just a character on a TV show and they always seem to care about everyone, even if it's only in the smallest of ways. They can be very manly and tough without being toxic.

In the darkness of my living room, the glow of the tv and the easy way I fall into made up worlds and the facade of a glass of wine or two, I like to pretend I can believe anything.

The lead actor, Aaron Stanford, on the tv show 12 Monkeys, Kirk Acevedo on Fringe (and also on 12 Monkeys) Jason Bateman, but only as the animated Nick Wilde in the movie Zootopia movies. I don't want to be with men intimately, but I like them so much in non-threatening, comfortably distant ways.

Ever since I started realizing what my feelings about girls in high school and later on women, in adult life, meant I have struggled with the fact that I’m attracted to women, even if it’s mostly emotional and romantically.

I pretty much am sure I could live to be 1 million years old and I still wouldn’t fully accept I’m gay.

I want to like men the way I’m supposed to like men, I really, really do.

I'm reading a book right now called The Queer Thing About Sin: Why The West Came to Hate Queer Love and I get the intro so very much:

When I was a teenager, I believed I was going to hell. For centuries, it was almost universally acknowledged that all gay men would. It wasn’t until years later that I asked myself where that idea came from, and why was it that, thousands of years ago when the Bible was written, people decided that queer love was a sin? 

It hadn’t always been a sin to be queer. In many cities across the ancient world, same-sex love was celebrated. So how did homophobia take root? Why did so many societies start executing men and women for the same love once praised by their philosophers and rulers? 

I have personal reasons for wanting to know the answer. My father died when I was two years old and for many years being Christian made me feel whole. Christianity gave me a compass with which to navigate the world and allowed me to commune with the people I’d lost. But that all changed when I fell in love with another boy at school. 

The love that upended my world was clandestine and unrequited. Little girls and boys grow up knowing they will get married; they sketch out the geography of their future relationships long before they even feel physical attraction. For queer people, desire arrives unannounced – it comes as a lightning bolt through a clear-blue sky. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. I had to keep it secret from him, from the world, and at times even from myself. It was what Christianity taught me to do.

Last night I had the strangest dream...but, then, all of my dreams are pretty much strange.

Even so the strangeness was not the bad strange that most of my dreams usually are. 

In it, my grandfather (who I rarely dream about and who died in 1986) says, "Pizza for everyone!" and suddenly there is a big party. But instead of my relatives it's mostly strangers except for my grandfather (oddly and sadly I don't see my grandmother in this dream) and my mom.

Suddenly, Julie Newmar appears and I am so excited!! I always loved her as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman series and in the dream she appears as she is now, in 2025.I want to talk to her but I'm too shy and, to my horror, I realize I have my pajamas on, the very same things I wore to bed in real life.

In that way dream movements have no transitions I am suddenly in a different place at the party and Julie Newmar approaches me and says she heard I was a big fan and did I want have my picture taken with her.

I tell her I would but I'm still in my pajamas, but when I look down I'm suddenly in a pretty beige blazer with white pants and a white top.

"I think I can be in that picture after all," I say and am so happy I'll have a picture, but then I wake up and the dream is over.

I re-watched Netflix's Dark in less than two days, during the holiday four-day weekend I had, then I started 12 Monkeys. Both affect me so deeply I struggle with the words to justify just how much I love them. (It still boggles my mind that a show as good as 12 Monkeys debuted on the SyFy Channel…actually, I take that back because I just remembered that that’s the channel Resident Alien debuted on a few years ago and I love that show too).

I have seen Dark multiple times and 12 Monkeys will be my second re-watch. There are so many similarities between the two but the latter is just so underrated it's almost criminal. I feel Dark is more bleak and emotional than 12 Monkeys  and it hits hard with its themes of generational trauma, eternal recurrence and the futility that pervades it.

Eternal Recurrence has fascinated (and terrified) me since I was rather young. I didn't know it was called that at the time, but I remember randomly thinking one day that maybe we just kept living the same exact life over and over and over again.

But looking back at that memory now, I realize it probably wasn't eternal recurrence that had popped into my mind then. With eternal recurrence, you wouldn't be aware of having previously lived the very same exact life. Everything (down to every last thought you have) would eternally recur so you would never actually know you were living the same life repeatedly.

(Speaking of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence I found myself talking with a customer about him today and it reminded me how much I can have a good day at work and how much I can love my job when I’m with a really nice or engaging customer. We talked for a while and it was just one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. I really really really need to remember how much I used to love my job and how much I still can).

Though I am reluctant to use AI for this part (Grok and Gemini each offered horribly wrong facts about the family trees on Dark) I do find this very helpful:

• Exact Repetition: For the recurrence to be eternal and exact, every single atom, event, and thought must repeat in precisely the same order. The first time you experienced a moment, you did not remember a previous life; therefore, in the recurring life, you would also not have that memory.
• No Mechanism for Memory Transfer: The concept, most notably explored by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is generally presented as a cosmological hypothesis where the universe and all events within it repeat infinitely. It does not involve a soul or consciousness that exists outside of the physical reality of the life cycle, which would be necessary to carry memories from one cycle to the next. Your consciousness is part of the recurring pattern itself.
• The Philosophical Purpose: Nietzsche used the idea as a thought experiment, a "greatest weight" to assess one's affirmation of life. The lack of memory is crucial to this test. If you knew everything was a repeat, you might act differently, which would break the "exact same life" rule. The point is to ask if you would live your current life—with all its joys and sorrows, exactly as it is—over and over again, unknowingly. 

I was helping someone at work today as they needed computer assistance. I was leaning in to show them how to format something when they asked me why I still wear a mask. They hadn't even finished the question before they started coughing so bad it worried me, for both them and me.

"This, this, is why I still wear a mask," I wanted to say, but, thankfully, didn't. I've been sneezed and coughed on and had someone hand me something wet and identifiable. I generally like working with the public but you can run into all kinds of things on a daily basis and as time has moved on I still have a probably more than abnormal fear of germs.

Even so, I don't apologize for wearing a mask.

Before 2020 I used to get colds a lot and that area of my life has seemingly improved since then. I used to catch germs very easily, especially during the winter and when I was most around children (my favorite type of customer, no matter how many germs they might carry)

I found this article recently and feel it says a lot of what I wish more people understood:

https://misfitmentalhealth.substack.com/p/why-are-people-wearing-masks-in-2025

 

Every article in the Sunday, November 9th issue of The New York Times Magazine pulled me in, especially the cover story on Frankenstein. 

I'm pretty sure this will hit a paywall, but just in case not...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/magazine/frankenstein-guillermo-del-toro-shelley.html

There is so much within the article, but I find this of particular merit (not sure why Frankenstein is in quotes instead of italics, but still...) :

“Frankenstein” is a book about the mystery of creation — but what accounts for its own, this strange and desolate work of the imagination? Mary herself addressed this question in the introduction to the 1831 edition; how did she, a teenage girl who never had a day of formal schooling, “dilate upon so very hideous an idea”? And what accounts for its longevity? Byron and Percy Shelley feel like relics, but Mary’s work is still read, recast, passionately debated. Reportedly the most assigned college text in the United States, “Frankenstein” has been hailed as revolutionary and reactionary, feminist and drearily misogynist. It is interpreted as thinly veiled autobiography, a warning against scientific hubris, a critique of the French Revolution. It has been described as a book about fathers and sons but also might be read as the keenest expression of a daughter’s longing for her mother.

The creature appears in at least 400 films, and this season brings another, “Frankenstein,” from Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-winning director of “The Shape of Water.” It is the movie he has been trying to make his entire career. “My Everest,” he calls it. “Every movie I’ve done is the training wheels for this one.”

I'm trying to find the right words to describe the way straight men will look so dismissively (or worse!) at women they find unattractive.

As a woman who is less than pretty I have this seen firsthand and it has cut to the bone, but while I own my un-attractiveness (totally) I also feel that men who think and act this way don't value women for their whole selves and that it is on them, not women, to change.

Here are some of the looks I'm talking about:

A flick of contempt: that quick, involuntary eye-sweep that lands on “not worth my time.”

The dead-eyed scan: registers your presence but refuses to see you.

Dismissive inventory: men take stock of your face and body like a bored customs agent stamping “reject.”

The micro-sneer: a split-second curl of the lip that says ugh, next.

Value subtraction: the way their gaze subtracts personhood the instant attractiveness is ruled out.

The invisible-woman glare: a stare that slides right through you, erasing any humanity that isn’t ornamental.

I used to feel like a non-entity the moment I failed the attractiveness test, but I'm just too tired for that anymore. And as a queer person I find that though women can also be very shallow and dismissive of, it somehow doesn't carry the same weight or hurt or societal impact/value. The male gaze has a history and a context that is completely different and far worse and you don't have to be a straight woman to be affected by it.

I've been in my workplace for over 30 years so I've seen a lot, mostly good, but some bad. I have a lot of happy memories, particularly from the 90s and early 00s.

But, just like in middle school (though then was much, much worse), people have felt the need (compulsion?) to say hurtful things you should never say to another person.

One time a friendly man came up to the desk where I worked and said, "Is _ here? She and I talked on the phone a few minutes ago about a book I'm looking for." When I said I was the person he spoke with, his smile dropped and he said, "That's impossible! You sounded so pretty on the phone."

I agree with the critics that it is absolutely dreadful, but I still can't seem to stop watching All's Fair on Hulu. It's eye-gouging a la Oedipus Rex awful and yet I can't wait to see the next episode. What on on Earth is wrong with me?

The cast is full of amazingly talented women (in other projects, that is) yet that only makes everything seem all the worse. Judith Light has a guest appearance in two of the episodes so far and I will always watch anything she is in because she never disappoints me.

Is this what is called hate-watching?

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

hate-watching

/ˈhātˌwäCHiNG/

noun

noun: hate-watching; noun: hatewatching

1. the activity of watching a television program for the sake of the enjoyment derived from mocking or criticizing it.

   "it was the year that hate-watching became our national pastime"
2. 
   

Time magazine has an interesting article about All's Fair, which can be read here:

https://time.com/7331129/alls-fair-review/

Highlights that speak to me so much they hurt (they especially speak to younger me who would have loved books that reflected my very much hidden identity as a teen):

 from:

The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power

Terry J. Benton-Walker, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Kalynn Bayron, Kendare Blake, H.E. Edgmon, Lamar Giles, Chloe Gong, Alexis Henderson, Tiffany D. Jackson, Adiba Jaigirdar, Naseem Jamnia, Karen Strong, and Mark Oshiro

the first story in the collection: "All Eyes on Me" by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

-She couldn’t remember a time she’d actually enjoyed Asher’s touch, and they’d been together for three years now. All through freshman, sophomore, and junior years. He was her first boyfriend, her only boyfriend. Her first everything really. Was that weird? That she didn’t like the feeling of making out with her boyfriend after all this time? Or holding his hand? Or telling him she loved him? Or doing anything intimate at all?

-This wasn’t the first time Helen had seen a stranger and felt weird, confusing things. Sometimes she felt this way when she was watching a film and some beautiful tall actress would waltz onto the screen; uncomfortable feelings would swirl inside, and she’d be overwhelmed by them all. It was so much easier to switch off a movie when it got to be too much—much harder to switch off a person. That didn’t mean she couldn’t try. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase the unease. She thought of things that made her truly happy. Like the future and what could come of it.

-The film went on, and the crowd was mostly quiet; that is, until Lee Meriwether appeared as Catwoman. There were some jeers from the crowd, people whistling as the feline bombshell sauntered onto the big screen. Helen had watched this movie more than once, and her reaction was the same whenever Lee came on the screen. She’d feel her heart pick up its pace, causing guilt to rise inside her.

-The one that would start with I want to end things and end with so many unanswered questions, like: Why did complete strangers excite her more than her boyfriend of three years? Why did the thought of kissing other boys instead of Asher make her feel just as uneasy as he did? And why was the idea of kissing girls more appealing? Helen squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to delete that last thought permanently from her mind.