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anhedonia and Hypertext
Editor’s Note: Maddox Pratt’s anhedonia is an extraordinary work of Hypertext Literature. You can experience it here.***I have lived with, in, through depression for most of my life. As a child I was...
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His Greatest Masterpiece
Vampires. Zombies. Werewolves. Horror stories are overflowing with monsters whose mere touch presents their victims with a non-choice: become infected by our evil, or die. Transform into one of us, or...
View ArticleAlbums of Our Lives: Nirvana’s Nevermind
By the time I was fifteen, I’d mastered the art of being a good girl. I wore my uniform skirt to my knees, raised my hand in English, refused to sneak cigarettes before class. I smiled a lot.I was...
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: On Madness and Mad Men
In the episode “The Forecast” from AMC’s Mad Men’s final season, Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) unleashes on her father, Don (Jon Hamm) just prior to boarding a Greyhound bus to embark on her teen tour....
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On Playing Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood
One week last spring I said it out loud for the first time: “Sometimes I play so long, my fingers go numb.”I said it while straddling the man I loved. We were fully clothed, on my bed, in my newly...
View ArticleThe Saturday Rumpus Essay: Heirlooms
These are the things that I choose to remember, more powerful than the things I’ve already forgotten.*My mom once asked if memories are composites of what we build over the years. I told her that...
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: No Wound
Once I wore a Band-Aid on my finger when I did not need it. I imagined that the others could sense a good ache underneath and maybe the Band-Aid and my finger colluded to make a new rubber finger,...
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Voices on Addiction: Dynamite
I was innocent once, shy and quiet. I wrote poetry and kept a locked diary. I drew flowers and rainbows on my bedroom walls. I loved my parents and my pets and all things wild. It’s 2 a.m., and I’m...
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Back to the Places I’ve Left
One Sunday afternoon I take a drive down the spine of California and then cut inland, where I pass through dry brown hills. The landscape is a much hotter, much emptier place. Here, I find a graceless...
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Voices on Addiction: Shame Is a Treble Hook
In the Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “And everything conspires to keep quiet about us,/ half out of shame perhaps, half out of/ some secret hope.” Shame is a treble hook that tells me that...
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Becoming Bodies
During my junior year of high school, I had Spanish class in a room where single-person desks were arranged in an L along two walls, so that our teacher could see all of our faces. I sat near the...
View ArticleENOUGH: He Could Kill Me
ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and...
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Dead Name
In the Parenting Transgender Children support groups I belong to on Facebook, we refer to our previous-gendered child’s birth name as Dead Name. I lurk in these groups with headings like trigger...
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Inborn Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact
You wear the red vest Mom got you for my reception with pleasure, the bolo tie that matches Dad’s tucked under your chin. You put your arm around my shoulders, and I laugh. Behind us, the lake...
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Breaking the Codes
I am there, in the bathroom next door to you, giving my boyfriend head. I’m doing it because that isn’t going all the way, so I might not be called a slut at school. I’m not doing it because I like it....
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Breathing into the Paper Bag: Talking with Jenny Valentish
Slough, England is the setting for the BBC comedy series The Office, and the childhood home of journalist and author Jenny Valentish, who calls it “anhedonia-made-concrete.” It’s in this inauspicious...
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Smoke Screen
At twelve years old, I’m convinced that I’ve elucidated the latest enigma that has crept up on me: I have gradually stopped eating, because food, inexplicably, revolts me. I like to be in control, and...
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Ablutions: A Triptych
SINK He liked scaring me and he was good at it. He did it often. Leaning forward in class, he whispered in my ear. Passed me notes. Caught me in the bathroom between periods, took the stall next to...
View ArticleENOUGH: A Drama Queer Navigates Trauma
ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and...
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Nurture Rupture: On Motherhood, Writing, and Gender Inequality
As soon as Lacy M. Johnson agreed to this project, and we began to think about the ideal audience for it, I realized just how much we need more conversations—and publications—that focus on issues of...
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