Bread and Bread

Michael and I both like black cats and fingerless gloves. Here’s what was missing from yesterday’s roundup of March reading, but it deserves its own post anyway. A White Girl Named Shaquanda: A Chomo Allegory and Trewish Story by Myriam Gurba : This little book is staple-bound, loaded with margin scribbles (one page has a fringe of bangs for no particular reason) and available only on Etsy (that I know of). True to its zine-ish appearance, the story is punky and irreverent—in the realm of simile, things are likely to get compared to body parts and fluids—but it is anything but dashed off. For the teen narrator, coming of age on California’s Central Coast means navigating boys’ probing hands, girls’ gossipy accusations, and teachers’ assholery. These more realistic scenes are juxtaposed with snippets of the Michael Jackson child molestation trial, which are written in a more absurd style—and yes, it is possible to amp up the absurdity of Michael Jackson. Together, the two thr...

I woke up at four a.m. this morning to fly to Houston. In the shower, I realized that the metal ports in my temporary boob implants* would create all sorts of good times at LAX. “Fuck,” I said out loud to the soap. I know that airports are prepared for this kind of things. There are probably all sorts of ADA guidelines in place to minimize my humiliation. But fuck. As I packed my antidepressants and a bag of Lifesavers, I practiced explaining in the simplest way possible. “I’m between reconstructive surgeries for breast cancer, and the temporary implants I have have a metal component.” The good part was that it avoided using the word “breast” except in association with “cancer,” which pretty much de-sex-ifies the word. I could say “breast cancer” to a TSA person, but I would rather not say “breast implant.”** I didn’t like the double “have.” It slowed things down. I also thought that anything short of a body cavity search couldn’t be worse than an average day at t...