I am fulfilling my destiny!” These are the words I heard billowing from a field to my left, as I thumped down a running path in Central Park. Startled, I looked towards the source of the voice; my eyes met a massive, sandstone obelisk, referred to as “Cleopatra’s Needle” by some, and “Central Park’s Dick” by others.
My dad always joked that he encouraged me to play sports because I was supposed to be born a boy (I am the youngest of three girls—his final, failed attempt at contributing a Y chromosome to the world). After trying … Read More
It’s a Thursday night. I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a tormenting problem set, when I hear my door swing open. An eager head pokes in through the doorway. “Yo, Lils,” the head says. “Want to come to a naked party later?”
Losses are lonely. They leave you grasping at the memories of entities that may never grace your fingertips again. Friends may offer “where did you last see it?” or even briefly join your search team. But when the search team tires of trying to undo your mistake, you’re all alone. The consequences of your actions—the shame, the anxiety, the grief—are felt only by you.
“The madame will be joining us soon. Her horse sprained his ankle on the journey down Second Avenue,” my grandpa said in a mock British accent. My grandpa is a writer, and jumps at opportunities to knit fantasy into everyday experience, be it with affected accents or outrageously butchered attempts at Mandarin.
I entered Alexander Hall, heart pounding, clutching a small spiral notebook and an orange ticket. The narrow, rounded hallway bordering the theater was filled with a labyrinth of lines. I frantically weaved through and approached an usher to ask her where I could wait in order to sit in orchestra seats.
Slowly, a faint hissing sound began to rise. The girls let out nervous giggles and looked around, shaking and sweating (in the form of a singular, gigantic sweat drop forming on each of their absurdly tiny anime noses). The hissing became louder, and we saw a yellowish haze rising around them.
It was just one week before that these same sophomores were sitting in my common room, nervously tugging at their hair and preparing themselves for bickering. Some were discussing which outfits to wear for bicker—in the case of some, this meant strategically picking shoes that could withstand intense moisture, snow, and beer spillage, yet still not appear sloppy. Some girls were flipping through bicker guides prepared for them by upperclassmen friends. I overheard two sophomore boys in Frist struggling to come up with five interests to write down on a pre-bicker survey.
