Three friends, all working for the same feminist fashion magazine, are trying to Make It in the big city. The preview features a clip of Jane (Katie Stevens), Kat (Aisha Dee), and Sutton (Meghann Fahy) holding hands in a subway station, screaming into a train flying down the tracks — they couldn’t find a void to scream into (New York real estate is expensive). The pilot of the new show is coated in congealed ABC Family, ehhem, Freeform cheese. Expository dialogue, predictable plot twists, and cop-out conflict, you know the drill.

Binge culture made me hit “play next” and I am so grateful for it. The believable characters are a refreshing contrast to their beautiful office and too-cute apartments. Jane, Kat, and Sutton serve up playful, clever dialogue and carefully deliver brutal honesty to each other in a way only best friends can do. Sutton and Kat call their 5’3” friend “tiny Jane,” Kat brags about being emotionally mature (thanks for rubbing it in), and Jane’s first orgasm is celebrated with a toast. Stevens, Dee, and Fahy supply the predictably corny show (you know what you’re getting into on Freeform) with fresh, bouncy movements, real life friendship, and lively dialogue.

The Bold Type was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Look, I’m not a crier. As soon as I think I’m going to shed a tear, I decide that’s stupid, and I immediately try to fall asleep or distract myself. Because bottling emotions is not healthy, this results in a handful of serious breakdowns a year instead of little bouts of crying, but it’s my life, and this is my prerogative. When the nap endeavor fails, which it often does, I open my laptop and scan my plethora of streaming sites for a worthy time dump. Watching romantic comedies when you’re sad is just going to make you feel worse about being alone crying in your room. I do not want to see people in love. I also do not want to see anything about parents or children dying of cancer. I see enough of that in real time. Comedies are often too predictable in plot, and slapstick can only go so far — even Will Ferrell loses me before the last act.

Gore gives me what I need. Psychological thrillers and exorcisms are too dark to keep me going. I want red splotches of blood and guts that will make me cock my head and gape. No creaky floorboard or twinkling kids toys; I crave movement and words. Please, I want a distraction, I want to be captivated by a world I will never see, a world I won’t even try to replicate with words of my own. Take me out of my emotional woes and give me physical nightmares.

I discovered the therapeutic benefits of the Saw movie franchise in high school. My boyfriend at the time was going to break up with me. He sent me a text while I was on family vacation that said we should not talk until I got home. I wanted to know why, but he didn’t answer my texts or calls for a whole week. I was in the dark, and I needed to get my mind off of my impending doom, so I decided it was time to focus on someone else’s.

There are 8 movies in the Saw franchise: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, and the new release, Jigsaw. To be candid, I have no idea which of the Saw movies I have seen all the way through, or just half of, or not seen at all. I can certainly say I have never seen the 3D movie and do not intend to. I know I have seen Saw IV as I am fairly certain there’s a good deal of scalping in that one, and I found that enchanting.

The movies follow a serial killer who captures “morally wayward” victims and constricts them in various contraptions, pits them against each other, and they must beat the clock and win the game to save themselves. They are stuck in metal torture machines that will break their jaws, chop off or snap their limbs, separate their ribs — the works. One movie had a victim fall into a pit of dirty syringes full of poison. I love it.

The plot of these movies only gets more convoluted as the series progresses. I am unsure if it’s my fault that I do not understand why what is happening is happening (as a viewer solely interested in the blood and guts) or if it’s the fault of the storytellers. I’ll give you what I know from memories of the movies and minimal research (for I do not want to spoil my future gore filled pleasure with too much thought).

Storyline is almost irrelevant to viewing pleasure. What you need to know is there are bad people stuck in an abandoned building, a house or warehouse or barn, and they need to move through the maze and beat the games in order to win and live. They always die. The bad people are from all walks of life: poor robbers or corrupt investment bankers, young people who made stupid mistakes, old people jaded by their shitty lives. The men are young and old, hot and frumpy. The women are young and all max out at 120 pounds and have long legs with strategic rips in their stockings from crawling around on concrete floors.

John Kramer, the serial killer, goes by the alias Jigsaw, and cuts a puzzle piece out of his victims after he tortures them to death. Investigators, detectives, and forensic scientists find the bodies, lean down to touch the carved skin, and stand up with their wool blend coats swinging. “Jigsaw,” they declare in raspy voices and return to the lab. Kramer’s reasons behind testing people’s will to survive are complicated, and what I have gathered is that his life was bad and he tried to kill himself but didn’t. I understand whatever bad things happened to him must have been the fault of other people because he fancies himself the moral compass as he tests his heathen victims.

Earlier, I said I liked to avoid movies about people dying of cancer. As is the staple of irony in Saw movies, I happened into a cinematic clusterfuck of a serial killer punishing the wrongdoers as he gradually dies of terminal cancer. None of the people I really know that are dying of cancer are serial killers, though I’ll admit it would make for a interesting twist.

Kramer, dying of cancer, needs an assistant. This business of creating and implementing torture contraptions, finding all these abandoned warehouses and barns, and choosing worthy victims is time consuming, and he only has so much time left. His first assistant is a victim-turned-henchwoman named Amanda. She and Kramer die in Saw IV. Much of the dialogue between police officers and detectives consists of arguments as to how many people need to be involved in an operation so complicated.

If the two of them are dead, how are the games still being played? It takes three more movies to answer the question. In the most recent movie, Jigsaw, they add in another character, some hunky forensic scientist named Nelson, who has apparently been helping Kramer since before Saw. Like I said, clusterfuck.

Jigsaw ’s victims are a young mother who smothered her baby, a young man who sold a stolen motorcycle with faulty brakes, an older guy who caused three deaths in a drunk driving accident when he was younger, and a poor young woman who stole a purse that had the owner’s inhaler in it. They have metal collars around their necks that are attached to a pulley via thick chains. Stuck in a steel room, the chains pull them to the wall of rotating blades. An overhead speaker says Jigsaw only wants an offering of blood. The mother understands she does not have to die, just prick her finger. Her section of the wall rotates and she screams at the others to do as she did.

While she seems to be the one to help the others, and we think will survive to the end, she is the one to pull a gun on the last man standing. Surprise! It was loaded backwards and the gun backfires. She dies trying to save herself. Earlier in the game, when the victims found the first Jigsaw recording, Kramer’s voice tells us this is a game. The others gasp and groan. The mother suggests they better hope it’s a game. Why? She breathes heavy and hot, her pouty lips separated and cheekbones matted with mascara. “Because a game can be won.”

I giggle.

Kramer sets rules for every game. He likes to be blunt. Do not go here, do not press this, pull this lever and you will be saved. Everyone thinks he’s lying, using reverse psychology. The spray painted “DO NOT ENTER” must mean enter. He’s just trying to throw them off, right? Wrong. From the beginning, he leaves notes or recordings that explain the moral reasons behind the game. Play by the rules, and you will win. But the kinds of people who end up in the game are the ones who take shortcuts, who are liars, and they think he must operate the same way.

When I watch the show to distract from real life sadness I find it for free online and wrap myself in my fat comforter. I turn off my phone because getting a text will make me anxious and not getting a text will make me feel unloved. I usually know better, but when I allow myself to be vulnerable I am fragile matter. Pressing play drops me into a head splitting world of gushing bodily fluids and snapping bones, gaping skin, brain mucus and pulled teeth. I laugh, Jesus fuck, can you even imagine?

The past few weeks I made a mistake. I have watched not one, but TWO Saw movies for fun. For fun! Not to soothe me for free and in a way a professional never could. And even worse, I watched them with my current boyfriend. Now the movies are associated with companionship, emotional and physical. What am I supposed to watch if (I really mean when, statistically speaking, but I’m trying to use more positive language nowadays) we break up?

We watched Saw in bed together two weeks ago and I wanted him to come with me to the late showing of Jigsaw this week. After we bought the tickets outside in the newly built shopping center, I opened the door for him and we walked to the one employee taking ticket stubs. When we walked in, he glanced at his coworker at the other entrance and asked accusedly, “Did you lock the door?” She nodded. He looked at us and smiled, “Apparently you all can open locked doors. Incredible.”

We had expensive movie popcorn and soda, and the entire theater to ourselves. The same employee shined a light on us every once and awhile to make sure we were keeping it PG.

I love Saw because it makes me feel good when I don’t already. I never thought about watching it when I already feel good. My heart was pounding, I was smiling, every heavy handed line of expository dialogue made me cackle aloud. It was like I was on crack even though I don’t know anything about crack.

I put a hand to my neck and felt my pounding pulse. I wrapped my hand into a light choke and rotated it to the back. I felt for the vein running blood to my brain. Kramer liked to snap that one. I rubbed my eyes under my glasses and stole a look at my boyfriend. His eyes were squinting at the screen, brow furrowed. The hunky forensic scientist began a villain’s monologue. My boyfriend cocked his head.

Jigsaw IS dead — it was NELSON THE WHOLE TIME? Detective Halloran, the corrupt cop who took bribes and let murderers and rapists walk free, is the last victim. Over-acted, big eyed epiphanies, misplaced props, and cliche costumes burned into my retinas. My throat was in my heart, and my brain and my stomach, too. All the soda and buttery popcorn and refugee candy shot into my arteries. Lasers carved his head from all sides. Apple slice shaped sections of brain and skull opened onto the screen. The body collapsed.

We entered still shopping center darkness. His car was lit under a streetlamp, the only one parked on the block. My fingers spread as far as they could to fit between his. I knew we were both beating and pumping, boots shuffling on white concrete, but I was out of body. I could see us from above, surrounded by shop perimeters and empty pedestrian paths. We were moving.

Puzzle Piece was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My roommate was enchanted by my dirty laptop screen. I rewatched the first couple episodes of Broad City with her last week in hopes of getting her hooked before the season 4 premiere on Wednesday night. We sat in our $5 soccer dad folding chairs and ate cold cookies I keep in the fridge to hide from ants.

So, then Ilana (in the show) pulls some weed out of her “nature’s pocket” and my roommate is all “What?!” and I’m all “Yeah, dude,” and she’s all, “Wait…that’s so funny.”

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer play up caricatured versions of themselves, Abbi Abrams and Ilana Wexler, in their quick-witted, whisper-joke, perfectly-timed-and-underappreciated-slapstick, at-times-self-deprecating comedy. The whole beauty of the show is they do this weird shit, right — like passing smoke over FaceTime, deciding which dogs they’d wanna hump if they were also dogs, Ilana eating shellfish when she could quite literally die from it, and then Abbi carrying her out of the bougie restaurant like an adrenaline-fueled fireman in a blue bodycon cocktail dress — and you are stunned until you see yourself in it.

The sets do not have the clean, stylish and inexplicably expensive decor seen in every other show about post-college, pre-marriage adults. Their jobs aren’t dream jobs, they pay the bills. The costumes are repetitive because real people re-wear their clothing, and, wait a second — I have that exact same bralette!

Season 4 is a treat. The visuals are crisp and bright just like Ilana’s creamsicle wig in the episode “Just the Tips.” She gets a new job as a waitress and starts to spend her hard-earned tip money on expensive acrylic nails decorated with dollar signs and the faces of the Obama family. Meanwhile, Abbi pretends she is not in love with Trey at all (she totally is). At a party, Ilana sees Lincoln and has a gross accident that only he, a sorta doctor who has seen her naked anyway, can help with. I won’t get into the unfortunate details (she has to wipe her ass with a bath towel) but the whole thing was kinda sweet, actually.

Cameos of the season include RuPaul, Shania Twain, Wanda Sykes, Peri Gilpin, Jane Curtin, Marcella Lowery, and even Fran Drescher. The guests blend seamlessly into the Broad City world, most notably RuPaul and his performance as nasty yet inspiring restaurant manager. He tells Ilana her seasonal affective disorder puts her at a whole new level of bitchy — perfect for a New York waitress. Abbi visits her in a storage room and helps her use her S.A.D. lamp to gain the strength to finish her shift or else get fired. The blinding light floods the screen as we wait for our heroes to defeat the mental beast and move to their next adventure.

The show is about two women on screen who truly like each other, no toxic female frenemy bullshit. They make plans and don’t follow through, they eat at their coffee tables, they work jobs they aren’t passionate about, and they aren’t on some Carrie Bradshaw-esque search for love. Abbi and Ilana spill wine, they collect coupons, they get by. Broad City is a triumph of on-screen female camaraderie and laugh-too-loud (wait, rewind it back!) humor.

Broad City was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Reese Witherspoon scrunches her face up in a squeaky, Elle Woods cry and widens her eyes bigger and bigger until a final hard blink when her kids call from outside the bathroom and just like that — the tears are gone. This is not Elle Woods.

Mother Witherspoon babbles about laundry, being up since 5 am, taking the kids to their new school, getting a new job, her new separation, her new live-in trio of 20-something filmmaker hunks who are all a little in love with her and provide 24/h services such as childcare, tech support, and sex. She’s not having sex with all of them, just the hottest one, naturally.

There was so much clean white linen in this movie I kept feeling like I was in Greece. The makeout scenes were fairly steamy, and her kids (Lola Flanery and Eden Grace Redfield) were surprisingly funny, but the drama flopped. It bored me. The only thing that kept me in my seat was the group of 40-something women cackling at every joke meant for their demographic. Well, that and I can’t afford to just walk out of movies. Maybe I didn’t laugh or cry or empathize because I couldn’t relate. I did laugh-out-loud-mom-cackle at the last full minute of Reese Witherspoon smiling at her crowded dinner table, gazing at her family in a giant white sweater…but that was it, a laugh “at.”

Home Again was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like most things, a tweet led me here.

Mayweather v. McGregor was trending on Twitter when I saw this masterpiece. I knew the scene rang a bell. Then I watched the “Dirrty” music video five times. My jaw dropped at the sweaty choreography and grimy costumes. There is so much skin, and skin on skin, and Christina Aguilera hyping the crowd in with her greasy platinum blonde hair with black streaks whipping around. She and her backup dancers gyrate in the ring, on platforms, together in a dance orgy. Aguilera almost made me want to start wearing low rise jeans again. Almost.

“Dirrty” Christina Aguilera was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The air is wet in this tidewater heat. I stumble on wobbly bricks made of that red Virginia clay.

The sun is brighter than I expected, and everything reflects a bit too white. There are wooden benches every 10 feet. This is a pedestrian street, nice and wide, and on the corner, the street signs are meant to look like they were engraved or painted by hand. My first impression of Merchant Square was that it looked like a low budget television set if it weren’t for the uneven brick sidewalk. The lumpy ground turns everything diagonal. A statue of Thomas Jefferson sitting on a bench is a common photo op. Manicured trees line either side of the street. Shade isn’t especially cooling in this humidity.

In the old New World, tourists attach to smartphones and selfie sticks and the little motorized fans/spray bottles, and a man in full colonial garb drives a horse and carriage. A painting of the Governor’s Palace without the tourists looks close enough to the 18th century for someone who does not know what they are looking for. The grass is cut and green, the palace itself built with the same bricks from the ground, and Colonial Williamsburg employees man the sides of the field in their work costumes of bonnets and aprons. Tourists ask the interpreters questions while they clutch Coke bottles and tap on their phones. The customers are unpleasant and anachronistic.

Passersby trip on uneven ground: bricks laid during the founding of Williamsburg, relaid during the restoration, and laid again and again in repair. Landowners had slaves make and lay the original bricks. The warped walkways were laid over stolen native land, Kiskiack, longhouses. Maybe the swelling is due to all the people trying to push out.

The tourists are here and they are tired. And they are sweaty. And they are traveling with mostly old people and mostly young children and those are the kinds of humans with the most needs. The families with both old people and young children have complicated experiences. The elderly want to see everything at the slowest pace, and the children want tricorn hats and toy guns. Kids hide behind barrel trash cans and signposts, trying to use rifles like snipers. They fight but no one can hear each other.

There are the families with only young kids, and they seem to have a game plan. Correction — the mothers seem to have a game plan. The fathers sweat and try to find the closest place to get a beer. The kids bounce and skip until they just cannot get up. They cry. There are many ways this could have been avoided, their mothers say, but the past is in the past, and these three boys want to go home.

The older couples who come visit Williamsburg are perhaps the largest percentage of the tourist population, if it is fair to eyeball a percentage point. The couples have white skin and white hair. They are couples of men and women, sometimes on double dates. They have age spots and shaky hands that will not let go of their maps. They have a lot of questions for the colonial actors. There are so many old people on this mile stretch of the past, perhaps these bricks make them feel young again. Old couples get to experience new sites together, visiting a time that even to them seems ancient, where in the world now they may feel outdated. Aged hands hold each other and pat old backsides. The women have small shoulders, large hips, and hunched backs. The men have hunched shoulders, small hips, and large ears. The tall women hold hands with the tall men, the women in capris hold hands with the men in cargo pants, and everyone is in practical footwear.

The younger, childless people want to be at a catalog shoot. They fan themselves, they thought it would be fall. They tie their sweaters around their waists and shake their heads about the south.

From Merchant Square to the Capitol, Duke of Gloucester Street is lined with colonial stops and shops. A garden, a market square, a blacksmith, an apothecary, and more. The shops look like houses, and colonial actors sit or stand outside, fiddling with a prop, ready to answer questions and greet visitors. The greetings are coated in accents, either southern or British, and I don’t know if this is a reality of the times or a miscommunication among the staff. Two interpreters stand by the wooden stocks. These were historically used to publicly humiliate those who threatened public morality. Children stick their arms in, they laugh. They lower their heads into the slot and slide the wooden framed down. Necks rise, they can get out.

The market is on a field where more activities are held during the peak season. Right now, a 20-something man in his colonial costume tests blow darts. He has darker hair than the rest of the workers, half of his head is shaved and the other half is long and braided. He may represent a Native American. He loads the pole with darts and puffs air. The dart travels 20 yards and lands into the bale of hay. The next dart is short a few feet. Visitors marvel at the interpreter, what a spectacle he is, are his lungs better than ours?

Across the street, three carriages take tourists to their next destination. One man steers each carriage, pulled by two horses. He has a whip in his hand and a tricorn hat on his head. The man shouts out facts and greets people on their feet. Hooves drum against the red brick. The horse pairs match by size and color. Underneath the shade of one of the larger trees, two muscular, dark brown horses bow their heads. There is no conductor, no customers. The couple is still, taxidermied, holding their breaths, not breathing at all. Stopped in the middle of the street, I let families split around me, locked in on these hyper-realistic statues. One of the eight legs kicks, another. Necks rise.

The Capitol building is the last stop on Duke of Gloucester Street. To the right, a path leads to a church meeting house, the Rockefellers’ Basset Hall, and the gunsmith. The gunsmith is ousted from the rest of the shopkeepers, the left neighbors the Capitol while the right is on another busy street, part of the modern world. Doppler effect reminds visitors of the present. An interpreter stitches something red to blue fabric on her embroidery hoop. Her skin looks rough and pink, her light hair is tucked in a bonnet, all of her teeth are the same size, and she could be anywhere from 30 to 50 years old. She got the southern accent memo and talks to me with such timidity she must believe I really am from the future and we really are in the past.

We break the fourth wall. The staff in Colonial Williamsburg are employed by the historic side of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. They all work 8 hour days, some work part-time and some work full-time. Each greeter is a jack-of-all-trades, while the employees inside the shops specialize in whatever it is they’re selling. She has only been working here for five months and has been doing her research and trying to specialize in stitching. She still does not have an official post as a greeter, but rather floats around where she is needed. Today her job is to give three different greeters their breaks.

While visitors meander toward the picket fence entrance of the gunsmith, they turn to make eye contact and nod to their visitors passes. She tells them “Good day” or something similar and clicks her tally counter, a little metal device to keep track of the traffic. The clicks are noisy, she covers the sound with her voice. Keeping the bit going and all that.

The gunsmith is made up of three rooms. The entrance is the main room for the exhibit. Handmade tools, screws, arrowheads, and finished guns of all sizes are all on display. The early afternoon sun backlights the studio set-up, making the firelocks on the windowsill resemble a silhouette I mistake for tiny figurines of motorcyclists standing on their bikes. Above the window antlers display a bow and arrow. Below is a square work table littered with small metal picks, tiny shiny things that look like screws but I learn are not, a mug, blocks of wood. Attached to the side is a bar for different sized screwdrivers.

Variations of saws hang on nails around the room. Lots of rectangular tools and hooked tools, all made of iron or wood. Another, longer work table sits under the other open window in the room. This table is made of a bigger mess. On a rack hangs what could be paint brushes if the iron were replaced with bristles. Worn stools sit by each window. The walls must be moist, the shelter is barely a respite from the heat.

Three men run the show. One in his colonial outfit and rather modern eyeglasses engages the visitors, providing answers for their questions. He stands behind a taller wooden table. A four foot long rifle sits on stop of an animal hide, accompanied by the biggest of the small tools. One of the shelves behind him displays more guns, all different in his explanations yet all the same because they are guns that shoot. The other is lined with more arrowheads and bullets. There is a doorway behind him to another work room not open to the public.

Every single part of the gun is made by hand in the gunsmith. The barrel of the gun comes first. The metalworkers take a four foot long iron stop plank and place it over the coals in a shed outside. They measure the heat by color. When it’s white hot, they take it out and hammer it into a U shape and weld it together. In the third room closest to the shed, the wrought-iron bar is placed into what looks like a spinning wheel contraption with a long plank to hold the bar. This is the boring machine. Gunsmiths crank the thing to make a hole. It takes four days. Once the hole is finished, the grooves on the inside are made. They stick this newly punctured barrel into another wooden simple machine. A visitor notes it looks like a big drill bit. Wrong — it’s like a big reamer. And this is apparently a big difference. While one gunsmith saws back and forth to make the grooves, another stands at the other end of the rifling machine to lubricate the barrel and brush away the chips.

One of these guns costs from $19,000 to $22,000. It takes at least four hundred hours of obsolete manual labor to make one from beginning to end. The waiting list is 8 to 10 years long, plus another year after putting in the order. They will make anything available from the 18th century, completely customized. For the most part, they make swivel guns, rifles, and flintlocks. I wonder if the expensive guns sit like art, hanging on customers’ walls, or is it a waste of money not to put them to use?

The main interpreter with the modern glasses engages the visitors. Another, short, stout, gruff man with white hair grumbles around the studio space. A skinny, tall man with round spectacles and stubble picks at something at a work table. He’s concentrating hard. One visitor with a thick southern accent and thicker mustache asks questions with answers already built in. Didn’t the Italians make great rifles, do you all make left-handed guns? ’Cause I’ll tell you, if you ever shot from the wrong side you’ll never do it again.

The quiet artist at the work table sighs, tired of the incessant commentary. He begins with “If I may,” a polite punch, and goes on to explain just why these guns won’t hurt your arm because the flash goes to the side, not back, and they’ve made lefties before, and there’s one for sale so why don’t you buy it? A $10,000 bargain.

The friendly exhibitor resumes his historic talk. The Colonial Williamsburg Gunsmith is the only place he knows of that makes 18th century guns completely handmade, and sure they’re expensive, but someone’s gotta be the most expensive, so why not us? The main mission is museum presentation. On weekdays like today, visitors can watch whatever stage in the process the gunsmiths are working on for their current order. The barrel takes the longest. Firelocks, the firing mechanism with the trigger and other little parts, have to be forged and fitted. The stock of the gun, the wooden part, is carved and made from maple wood. Four hundred hours of manual labor paid for at a modern labor rate. That’s about 50 days working on one gun.

The finished barrel, grooves and all, is technically called a rifle, I’m told. The finished barrel, no firelock or stock, no nothing else, that’s the rifle right there. The man holds a display barrel up to my eye. The grooves are hard to see. I focus only on the little light at the end of the tunnel, wondering if I could blow a dart through it.

Light in the gunsmith studio is all sun. Heat in the gunsmith studio is part light, part humidity, part bodies. The gunsmiths resume their crafting narrow iron parts with wide calloused fingers. A visitor points to the bow and arrow above the window. The exhibitor looks over his glasses and gestures up to it, “An arrow spins exactly like a bullet does — they knew all about that.”

Unsteady Foundations was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The ghosts started to haunt me in August. At first my roommates said I was crazy, that the door clicked shut by itself because of an air draft. I wanted to believe them, but there were no open windows on our floor and air drafts don’t magically materialize. Walking into our triple, tucked away in the right corner of our room is a two-foot wide door that conceals a Marina Trench deep closet from the rest of the room. If you want to find a sweater that you threw to the back of the cavernous space, you have to use a flashlight. It’s the perfect ghost hideout. Shelia thought that I needed to ask the ghosts why they’re haunting me, or else they would continue to spread sinister vibes throughout the space. I was too scared to bring out the Ouija board but I knew that she was right; Shelia has been cleaning this house for years, and she is well acquainted with every corner and closet and closets in corners. I live in a hundred year old sorority house on the cusp of Colonial Williamsburg. Honestly, I would be surprised if I wasn’t being haunted.

When the sunbeams stream through my window in the morning, the first thing I do is stumble to the bathroom, where Shelia is mopping strands of hair across the white tile or wiping toothpaste out of the sinks. We always smile and exchange good mornings. Shelia drifts in and out of the bathrooms, kitchen, and living rooms throughout the morning hours. She glides silently from room to room, enjoying the peacefulness of the early morning hours, something she doesn’t get much of when she’s at home with her five children. On campus, as an outsider in peoples’ homes, she doesn’t get much human interaction. The outgoing forty-year-old spends her nine-hour days floating around three of the sorority houses on William and Mary’s campus, Cloroxing, Swiffering, and 409-ing the mess generated by twenty-two teenage girls. In the sorority houses, it’s not the subtly searing scent of disinfectant that bothers her, but rather the absence of human connection she occasionally feels inside the brick-armored buildings. Although she insists that the girls who live in the sorority houses are kind for the most part, she still gets the feeling of being “out of place and a little uncomfortable,” which she attributes to “just a part of the job.” She leaves her two little girls with their thirteen-year-old brother at half-past six in the morning, so that the sorority girls, who go to bed with a dirty home, wake up with a sparkling one.

I joined Kappa Kappa Gamma in September of 2016; much to the dismay of my parents, who are anti-Greek life for no apparent reason other than it’s expensive. Recruitment begins the second week of school, when the air in Williamsburg is so thick with heat, you can’t walk outside without glistening with sweat. Pick the girls who you want to be was the advice being passed around the grass quadrant beside sorority court that we all sat on, carefully positioned so we didn’t get grass stains on our freshly ironed white jeans. Recruitment is a well-oiled machine, designed for a maximum amount of judgment in the smallest amount of time. Hopeful girls attend all ten houses in the first two days and are subsequently dropped or let through to another round. Every day, the PNM (potential new member) returns to the houses they are invited back to until the last night, Preference Night, when you have two sororities to choose between, if you’re lucky.

When I was invited into Kappa, everyone was so pretty and nice and wow, they actually wanted to know all about me. They were interested in what I was interested in, they wanted me to know that I had “just gor-ge-ous hair,” and the Lily Pulitzer skirt (that I had borrowed from my roommate Klaire) paired with my flowy white shirt was fashion perfection. I couldn’t believe they actually liked me. These girls were born with confidence. There was no such thing as insecurity around them. That’s who I wanted to be. I felt a pull towards Kappa, even though I assured my friends that, yes don’t worry, I am weighing all the houses the same in this very, very important life decision. On Preference Night, my posture was locked into place, my lipstick was lined meticulously and I was ready to make a decision.

It’s 7am when Shelia steps out of her dirt encrusted, alabaster Ford Expedition that she squeezed into a parking space between a recently waxed Porsche and a Range Rover. The humidity in the air permeates her mossy green polo and khaki pants on the quick walk from her vehicle to the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. Every movement feels like being submerged in mucky pond water and dredged back out onto the bank to dry. The fall equinox was created just to taunt us in Williamsburg, the weather is punishing, and wishing for that crisp, cider-y smell of fall is futile. Shelia seeks refuge in the sorority house, taking a moment to glance at her reflection in the mirror by the door, just to ensure that her dark hair is still slicked back in a professional ponytail.

Thankfully, yesterday was deep clean day so today consists of smaller tasks, like extracting hair clumps from shower drains and plucking out pieces of popcorn from in between the couch cushions. Retrieving her cleaning materials from the closet in the back of the chaotic laundry room, she drifts to the soiled upstairs bathroom, the stairs groaning under the weight of her bucket of soapy water. Particles of dust swept up from Sheila’s mop glimmer in a beam of early morning sunlight as the faint trace of chlorine wafts through the open door. She hears one of the showers turn on as a few girls start to file in one by one, in preparation for their 8 am classes. She cheerily gives out a few “good mornings” and “have a nice day” pleasantries, to the acknowledging nods of the sluggish girls. She would really love to have a conversation, but this morning everyone appears to be running late; there aren’t many occasions for her bubbly, bantering personality to shine through.

“I just don’t understand why people can’t take a couple seconds out of their day to talk to Shelia,” sighed Mikayla Vanhooke, the House Chair for Kappa, who works closely with Shelia to command the house to order. A few days ago, a sister who lives in the house asked Mikayla when the “maid” was coming next. Over the weekend the bathroom had been covered in a muddy sheen, a result of dirty shoes mixing with the stagnant water that had slipped out of the shower, and the girls were impatient for it to be cleaned. Mikayla interrupted to say, “She’s not a maid and she has a name. It’s Shelia. Please use it.” Considering that Shelia is in the house five days a week for multiple hours a day, knowing her name is the least we can do.

It’s 8 am by now and a new wave of sisters are primping in the bathroom so Shelia sets the mops down and takes her leave, retreating to the living room to give them their space. A self-proclaimed “queen of multitasking,” (she is raising five children whose ages range from 5–23) she vacuums the living room with purpose, gliding across the dense, wooly rug that attracts miniscule specks of grime, like a ballerina across a grand stage. While sucking up the dust that has settled into indigo rug, she dives into the story of how she started off as a janitor in One Tribe Place, which reminded her of a creepy, haunted house, and then fought against the janitorial management for a station change to sorority court. Shelia is beyond grateful that she didn’t get assigned to “Frat Row;” she’s heard horror stories from her friends on the janitorial staff about a woman who “had a breakdown” one day because of how trashed and covered in vomit one frat house was.

Moving into the living room, Shelia settles down onto a periwinkle upholstered chair and places a pillow on her lap. She seems apprehensively comfortable in the house, close enough with the girls to sit down holding a pillow as a comforting shield. With multiple promises throughout the day that she understands “you girls have a lot on your plates with midterms and finals,” she still sometimes wishes that she were “more welcome” in a few of her houses. She is on a first name basis with the girls in two of them; however, the third house, which she describes as the one “behind the dumpsters,” makes her feel “uncomfortable because they avoid eye contact with me.” She said that she and her best friend at work Bridget (who popped into the Kappa house to see what was up when Shelia called her to share the news that she was “being interviewed like a celebrity” commiserate over one particular person who always gives them “nasty looks.” When Bridget walked in the door Shelia immediately yelled for her to join the party (a few girls eating breakfast at the table and us) in the living room. They talked about how sometimes “people look at us like we’re disgusting, but just because we have these jobs doesn’t mean that we are below them.” Janitors gossip too, and the management at William and Mary suffers the brunt of it. Shelia feels like the management treats them as invisible, just like a girl who lives in one of her fellow janitor’s designated sorority houses who “avoids eye contact every day.”

The inclusivity that William and Mary wants the student body to embody is sorely undermined by the very existence of the Greek system, which is fundamentally constructed on judging and selecting women based on three to four five-minute conversations. First impressions and preconceived notions determine who makes eye contact with whom when recruitment is over. The images of sisterly love and the “cool girl” style that are circulated around Instagram don’t show the reality of sorority life.

This semester, our chapter council’s decisions (the president and all the sisters who hold leadership positions) have sparked conversation among many sisters. In September, the President of the United States announced that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, would be terminated. Statements were pouring out from other sorority chapters on campus, in support of DACA. Our chapter council debated whether or not we should send one out as well. But instead of having a meaningful discussion based around why DACA should be supported by Kappa, the conversation turned into “what will people on campus think of us if we sign or don’t sign.” It turns out that our sorority is not allowed to make statements unless our National branch writes it. So it was a mute point anyways.

Kappa as a National Organization struggles to have an open conversation about socio-economic differences, race, and sexual/gender orientation. Much of it stemming from Headquarters, where there isn’t a branch dedicated to learning and teaching about diversity at all. However, our chapter is taking small steps. In the past month programming has been implemented on the topics of sexual assault prevention and diversity within our chapter. It’s hard to have 150 girls in a sorority who all have the same views though. Right after we had five sisters who are involved with the Haven, Someone You Know, and HOPE, present on sexual assault prevention, a sister did her senior talk (a tradition for graduating sisters) on working with Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault, as an intern.

When the Fraternity Houses were spray painted with the word Rapists, our sorority president sent out an email to our chapter. She offered her deepest condolences to the fraternities implicated by the event. No offer of support was made for sisters who might have been triggered by the event. Many sisters sent emails to her asking for another email to be sent that detailed the extensive support system we have in Kappa and in other resources on campus. They wanted something that said we have multiple sisters who work at the Haven who would love to talk, or that we all stand in solidarity with the sisters who have been affected by this. In general, we appear to be more concerned with image than standing up for the right beliefs. When image is worth more than doing the right thing, treating people with dignity and justice is cast aside. When Shelia is treated as though she is invisible, it doesn’t come from inherent callousness, but instead is behavior bolstered by the idea that the sorority is above others.

I love my sorority. I love the girls that I’ve met through Kappa. I’ve had so many beautiful experiences here whether it was working on philanthropy or watching ten romantic comedies in a row until 4 am. But none of us are perfect. We just don’t want you to know it. Everyone has ghosts in their closets; sometimes you just have to be brave enough to face them.

During her lunch break at eleven, Shelia moves outside to sit in her Dodge, where she unwraps her slightly melted turkey and cheese sandwich, and reassures herself that her three youngest children have made it to school and are munching on cafeteria food as she eats. During the summer, the college is often short staffed, and she has to work overtime in order to fill vacancies. Unfortunately, her daughters get sick often and she has to leave work to take them to the doctor, meaning she has to work overtime the next week. Her favorite time of the day is when she pulls up to her home in Newport News and opens the door to her “baby girls,” Gabrielle and Alyssa, who are eight and five, sprawled on the Linoleum floor next to their thirteen-year-old brother Tyler. Gabrielle is in third grade and Tyler is in eighth, so every night he helps her with Math and English homework while Alyssa scribbles outside the lines in her Moana coloring book. Shelia admits that she thinks she had an easier time raising her three boys than her daughters because when she was younger she was a tomboy and her daughters are major divas. Typically, her seventeen-year-old son Michael, a senior in high school, heats up dinner that Shelia prepared for them the night before and then gets back to his own homework; she has very studious kids.

Shelia believes she’s suffering from “pre-empty nest syndrome” because her oldest son, Christopher, who works at Lumber Liquidators in Toano, is about to turn twenty-four and is in the midst of planning a worrying move to Canada. At first, she didn’t want to disclose why he was moving to a different country, but when Yasmine, a Kappa who lives in the house questioned it, Shelia finally sighed and said, “He met a girl.” Her name is Vanessa and Christopher met her online. Shelia is worried that he is going to get “catfished” and end up on MTV. While she is apprehensive about his Canadian escapades, she knows that he is an adult and she has to let him make his own mistakes at this point. At the same time, Michael is thinking about joining the Marines, which scares her even more. She knows she has to let him forge his own path, but it isn’t easy letting go of her two oldest boys at the same time.

Shelia says that she doesn’t really do anything for herself, but last year she started to dream about moving to Florida to be closer to her mom and sister, who live in Orlando. When she was thirteen, her parents divorced and she moved with her mom to Williamsburg, a town she says was “ very country compared to now.” However, at eighteen her dad became sick and she moved back to Massachusetts to care for him until he died. Shelia knows what it’s like to lose a parent and she wants to be near her mom for more than their annual family gathering at Christmas.

Joking that she “only has time to watch the news for weather updates,” last week she was horrified to see that Florida has become a hub of natural disaster, with Hurricane Irma raging through, leaving power outages and flooded basements in its wake. Shelia said that during the days of Irma, she was anxious at work all day, frantically cleaning to get her mind off of the direct hit Orlando was expected to take. Shelia’s stepfather has congestive heart failure, and needs to be on oxygen much of the time, so without power and the streets flooded her mother and sister didn’t have many options. Thankfully, a friend who lived on what was once an island in the Florida Keys, had a backup generator and came to stay with the family while his tiny home was battered underwater. The concern and stress have faded away now that she knows her mom is safe, but she’s decided it’s too dangerous to move her family south now.

It’s close to three in the afternoon when Shelia finally finishes her rounds and prepares to head home to her kids, where she will finally get to relax and snuggle with her daughters. Although Shelia is an integral part of sorority life, she still hasn’t been able to transcend the feelings of being a trespasser in someone else’s home. She arrives at work every day with a positive attitude and a dedication to the girls who live in her assigned houses, sometimes without being acknowledged. She makes us a priority in her hectic life. The least we could do is ask, “How are your daughters?”

She Has A Name was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. “New Rules” by Dua Lipa:

It was the tail end of the summer when I finally hopped on board after hearing all the hype about Dua Lipa. I clicked on her video and, excuse me a moment to freak the fuck out over the beautiful gaggle sporting straight hair, waves, curls. And yes! There was one girl with coils! All the girls wore heart soothing pastels in bright sunny California, smoothly reiterating three rules as written in the lyrics, a) don’t pick up the phone when he calls, b) if he knocks, don’t let him in, and c) stop being friendly to him. Sonically, Dua Lipa sung of over a bouncy, electric sounding drum set that had my hips swaying less than twenty seconds into my first listen. Her vocals haunted me, dark but peaceful. “New Rules” was the first fresh, sweet sip of iced tea away from weighty, croaky break up songs. It had me jumping on my bed like I was six again.

2. Lemonade by Beyoncé:

A stroke of genius and beacon of hope, but what else does one expect from Beyoncé. The themes in her album are familiar, but not cliché. So I went back and listened to Bey’s old music and realized, she was hurting this whole time we were just blind! Most notably, her song “If I Was a Boy”, which at its time sounded like a song that flipped the roles in an unhappy relationship and illustrated the double standards faced by women. However, in this new light, the chorus sheds a more personal truth, “If I were a boy/I think I could understand/How it feels to love a girl/I swear I’d be a better man/I’d listen to her/Cause I know how it hurts/When you lose the one you wanted/Cause he’s taken you for granted/And everything you had got destroyed.” Beyoncé I’m sorry I didn’t hear your cries before, I should’ve understood before now.

Lemonade taught me anger needs to be expressed explicitly but at the same time, wrong doings must be forgiven. Be angry, don’t stay angry. The visual story overwhelmed me and I wanted to buy a hair scarf saturated in rich reds, oranges, yellows and blues, tie it around product free hair, not worry about slicking down my baby hairs and walk barefoot in a grassy plain with red poppies, orange tulips and sunflowers. I wanted to lay down in that field and mourn lives lost like Trayvon Martin, Philando Castle, and Sandra Bland. Lemonade allowed me to the angry Black woman without being discredited, with songs like “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, and “Sorry” but also to be carefree, with “Freedom” and “Formation,” because I deserved that complexity as well.

3. Black Panther Trailer:

Yes, yes, wihle the release date for the actual movie is for February 2018, this gives me plenty of time to coordinate the family cookout where ribs, collard greens, potato salad, fried and grilled chicken, mac and cheese, cornbread and sweet tea will be served. Please RSVP by yesterday, sorry for the late notice. But let’s talk about the visuals. Did y’all see the colors? Like really see them? Never mind the action, we all T’Challa can toss people around like wet bread. We all know the Doja Moije are fierce, fervent and unapologetic women who do kick ass and do not take names. But did you see how saturated that trailer was? I’m seeing burgundies, turquoise, magenta, silver, brick reds, forest greens, pitch black. Oh, and Black people, living in their blackness, minding their black business and thriving. I saw lushness and livelihood in my people that have painted in poor light, always starving and in desperate need, or a lost cause. Yes, some places are in trouble, but not everyone. Seeing that life in my people made me roll off my couch to get a better look at the visual of the trailer. I couldn’t get close enough. So, I’ll be booking my flight to Wakanda now. I’ll be sure to send a postcard.

4. The Get Down:

If you’re looking for a show with 70’s soul and funk, that dazzles the eyes, isn’t afraid to layer fantastical elements of escapism with gritty real world problems, if you want to root for a girl with a voice that fills your chest, and hear marvelous but powerful rhymes of a kid’s attempt to be educated and still stay connected to his streets, if you can handle being socked in the chest with the almost lovers trope all inter-spliced with the realities of true events, such as black and white footage of the blackouts in the Bronx, and and feel the massive weight of being stuck between what you’re supposed to do and what you want to do, and if you can handle numerous plots lines that can sometimes feel like a dream within a dream, The Get Down is your man.

5. “Invincible Iron Man”:

Full disclosure: I have not followed every single comic that Marvel has put out. I’m a fraud, my fan status of Marvel is now in the revocation process as we speak. But until it’s fully stripped from me, I will dig my hands into RiRi Williams adventures as Iron Heart and they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers. RiRi embodies brilliance of the young mind, a thirst for independence and justice and the vibrating excitement of being surrounded by real super heroes. She’s humorous, introverted, focused, but grounded. RiRi radiates in this series, even if she does flounder a bit. Seeing super heroes kick ass, flip and twirl in the air, control matter with red glow, and morph into large green boulders is amazing, but there’s a refreshing take when you see the hero be human, but with less of the emotional tear-your-heart-out-facing-death-at-all-times aspect. We witness RiRi fail at aiming her thrusters and she tumbles in the air, plummeting into a river. Even she knows that she’s failing at it.

When RiRi’s story was first announced, I was stoked. More Black superheroes and this one was a young girl already balls deep in STEM. There can never be too many representations of girls in math and science. God had opened the heavens and personally handed out the answer to my prayers. But then, I saw her initial art work. At fifteen, I looked like a miniature Michelin man. I was doughy from my cheeks down to my pancake feet. RiRi looked somewhere near her twenties, breasts and hips that were uncomfortable shapely. I wasn’t shocked about this. Hypersexualization is an unfortunate and frequent truth for young Black girls. However, Marvel, heard the backlash from Twitter and other social media, and corrected that. She is now a tall lanky fifteen-year-old girl, as she should be.

6. Get Out:

If you see a blue and white china tea set, a wall full of a family’s “Almost Achievement’s”, a missing man- who you know for a fact had a closest of baggy jeans and leather jackets, and nothing beige or khaki colored- resurface in a straw hat, and if your phone somehow goes missing or is removed off the charger without you removing it and Rose won’t hand you the keys, run, you’re in the wrong neighborhood. Get Out rotates, illuminates and breaks every rule of a horror film. Chris, a young Black man, does not die first, or at all. It is not gory and veers away from jump scares. Get Out focuses on racists ideals of separation of the races, as illustrated with Roses separation of her cereal and milk; and also a fetishization of black bodies. Sports, like American football and basketball, are dominated by Black men and women. But some only see them for entertainment, only good for their sport- as pointed out with the auctioning of kidnapped Black people for the harvesting of certain body parts in the film. This plot device also rings to America’s history with slavery as well. Even though Chris is beaten and bloodied at the end of the movie, this visual of him driving off with his best friend is a testament to the resilience of Black people.

7. Spider-Man Homecoming:

Peter Parker feels like a brother at this point. His franchise has been rebooted again and again and his story has been told almost to a point where you think another one can only feel like failure, a repetition of same old mistakes. But alas, Marvel shocks me. This Spider-Man feels right. He’s young, sarcastic, and eager and he bubbles with so much determination and to be honest, even if he does overestimate himself in that, he’s-that-younger-brother-who-thinks-he’s invincible- kind of way

Homecoming really did feel like a homecoming. I was greeted by a familiar plot, that didn’t overdo agony or try to tear my heart through my chest too often, didn’t waste time on a dramatic build, but instead gave me a couple tears, and nail biting moments, but a lot of laughs. In the summer of a lot questioning for my personal path enveloped me, Homecoming took me back to my younger years of counseling my younger brother, and transported me to a place where I finally felt in control, even if only for a couple of hours. I understand in a world filled with superheroes, predominately male and white, it seems strange to find a sense of belonging as accounting for my black femaleness. But that’s the beauty in familiarity. You can find a home in just about anything.

8. Rooster Teeth Pride T-shirt:

Pride merchandise never fails to thrill. I’ve been following Rooster Teeth and it’s family of companies for about six years now. Most of Rooster Teeth’s content focuses on video games, and other gaming aspects. While it more common it feels to hear about who anti-LGBT, like Chick-fil-a, The Salvation Army, Exxon, or Cracker Barrel. I am thankful for that though it shows me who to pass by. Having a company release Pride merchandise as a symbol of solidarity is a not-so-subtle middle finger to the man. After unknowingly wrestling with my sexuality for all of too many years, the fight came to an uneventful thud, a simple Yes when questioned if I was bi. I still wrestle with acceptance. Even with, a larger rooster slapped on the front of the rainbow, this shirt reminds me that complexity is humanity, and no matter what, we’re all still valid.

I do look at that rooster and think is there any other way to show the company’s logo. It is pretty distracting right in the middle of the rainbow, but I wasn’t there during the meeting and there’s not much I can do about that. But catch me in a couple weeks, strutting around with that rooster on my chest with my rainbow, I know myself.

Eight Things I’ve Been Obsessed With was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My mom is obsessed with litter in the neighborhood. She keeps track of shattered beer bottles hurled out the windows of cars, cigarette butts, and tiny drug baggies — the one filled with white powder, the one hypodermic needle she found. Also, the rampant dog poop problem. The last one at least she feels she can change. She talks about it constantly with our neighbors, spies on people walking their dogs — do they have a plastic baggie hiding on their person or are they perpetrators or not? She created a post on the Middleford Home Owner’s Association forum dedicated to heightening community awareness of the problem. She is forever researching natural methods to keep dogs off our two lawns — perhaps jointly a square four feet — and has lately roped off the new sod with thin yellow rope drawn across garden stakes. My mother, the activist.

It’s a common misconception that there’s a Springfield in every state. There are only 34. Regardless, I imagine that there is a town like Springfield, Virginia in every state: transitional and piecemeal, made up of many cultures yet without a single unifying characteristic. There are schools, places of religion, houses upon houses. Only the winding I-95 connects Springfield to other towns and counties in the D.C. metro area, chronically constipated with cars driven by people trying to get elsewhere.

June 21, 2017, an article in the Springfield Connection reads: “Murder of Reston Teen: ‘A Deadly Case of Road Rage’ No evidence of hate crime; investigation continues.” In Springfield, things could always be worse. This article, one of the top stories of the week, serves as insight into what Springfield wants to hear. It could have been worse. We don’t always reflect the greater problems of the country. The article covers the vigils held for the seventeen-year-old Muslim girl run down by a car. It talks about harmony and love, and the support that the ADAMS center mosque felt from the interfaith community, and other such acts of solidarity. The Springfield Connection article does not dwell on how the car’s driver, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres chased after the girl with a baseball bat. The message is familiar to me: Springfield is a community.

When I spent the months after my Freshman year of college scrambling to find a summer job anywhere that I wouldn’t run into people that I went to high school with, I argued with my parents about why I wouldn’t apply to work at Chili’s, Bertuccis, or worse still, the Kingstowne movie theater. I applied to Starbucks and Barnes and Noble, what I considered to most closely resemble places of culture in Springfield. I received silence on behalf of my potential employers. Ultimately, swallowing my abhorrence of nepotism, I accepted help from my neighbor and began working reception for the nearby salon she managed inventory for. Before that, several weeks into my listless summer, I lazed on the couch in my parent’s house and wrote the hook to a song I never finished.

“Suburbs and strip malls are killing my brain,

All cement and cellophane.”

Despite its pop-punk styled themes, the song never reached into further understanding beyond my firm, cynical sentiment. Much like my understanding of the only hometown I’ve ever had — a place whose families were small towners who had never left the country, or oft-ignored immigrant families, or rotating cast of military families, like mine, cycling in and out of the Pentagon — the song was all surface, no substance. I hated Springfield. Why did I hate Springfield? There has always been an underlying insidiousness to communities of seemingly happy families.

I marvel at how easy it is to enter the West Springfield High School parking lot. It was always an open campus when I went there, and still is. I remember how in gym class we’d all gawk at the middle-aged men who shared our track for their midday runs. It shocked us then that no helicopter parents had entered complaints to close the campus to protect us from strangers. It surprises me now that I’ve pulled my car into a parking spot perfectly overlooking the football field.

The latest “scandals” I’ve heard of concerning my hometown are primarily related to the growing local presence of the MS-13 gang. A lot of teenagers have gone briefly missing only to turn up weeks later. A couple people have died. And it’s reported just like that in news and gossip alike: isolated incidents perpetrated by “criminals,” dehumanized the second that a teenager fulfills the gangster stereotype.

Unrelated to gang violence, but speculated as such at first, a 22 year old woman — West Springfield High School class of 2011 — turned up dead in the lake a couple years back, the one with the biggest hills next to it where we all used to go sledding when it snowed, where older kids go at night to sit on the fence and smoke pot. Articles reporting her death don’t picture her at all. Not leaping, suspended in midair, about to make a basket in her navy and orange West Springfield Spartan basketball uniform. These articles show Huntsman Lake, its placid water disturbed only by a still flock of paddling geese. The reasons for her death were never released.

Otherwise, it’s been quiet since they arrested my high school band director the week of senior prom.

A brooding selfie. June 12, 2014, 5:14pm. Mr. Einuis had been arrested that morning in Wind Symphony rehearsal. Or, rather, the police had escorted him out of rehearsal and arrested him in the parking lot.

“If anyone thinks they can continue the rehearsal, do so,” he had said as the officers marched him out. Without an explanation, we struggled process his detention, and the gravity of our world wouldn’t shift just yet. A student must have finally reported him for one of his mood swings. He was a large man with a large personality. He ran the band with unorthodox rage and passion, but that improved the band. We practiced as much as heavy homework loads would allow both to avoid disappointing him, and to win his jubilation after a successful rehearsal or concert. If someone had reported him just because he was probably — band members agreed behind his back — undiagnosed bipolar, it was selfish of the student. Our final concert was that night. We had planned to record a selection of songs to use for our application to the National Concert Band Festival. In the photo I grimace. I’m in my mother’s Honda with the seatbelt on in the school parking lot, in my black polyester concert dress and standard issue pearls, a pair of beaded earrings that I still wear. My eyes are deep green. I think I remember thinking while taking that photo that I was witnessing the end of an era. I was even more melodramatic back then. But then, we never did submit that application to the National Concert Band festival.

Mr. Einuis was arrested for propositioning a fourteen-year-old boy. It made sense, said the parents. Happens with a lot of teachers. That’s why they get jobs around children. Everyone was talking about it. The story even broke across the Fox 5 station for the DC Metropolitan area. Everyone had an opinion. Most adults were supportive, hoped the band was coping, offering whatever they could do to make life in the buzzing hallways more tolerable. Others were happy to take the opportunity to unabashedly emphasize one detail of the case, the victim: “boy.” They loved the scandal of the married band teacher, not only being outed as a pedophile, but a gay pedophile to boot. As a whole, Springfield isn’t homophobic. From individual to individual, some Springfielders are, and even those who aren’t don’t bother themselves to understand the nuances of LGBT+ identities or how they’re completely separate from fetishes and mental illnesses. As such, conversation surrounding Einuis’s arrest unflinchingly conflated pedophilia with homosexuality. Of course it was a boy, many said, of course.

Three and a half years later, in the West Springfield Parking lot, I can see that the marching band has grown. I saw in a Facebook video posted by a band mom that the uniforms have been changed from the white pants and shoes of my day to accent our (sometimes) impeccable marching technique — a roll step whose straight-legged stride balanced between the front heel and back toes used to create a triangle of light that you could see all the way down a row of marchers. Now the marchers wear black pants, and all of their legs are bent. Maybe it was the end of my era. But the band is bigger now, and that means that the students are happy.

We weren’t always happy, but we were good. And, as Mr. Einuis used to say, “Getting good is really hard, but being good is really fun.” Even now, years later, I struggle to separate the different identities of Mr. Einuis as we knew him. Every once in a while, I’ll run into someone I was friends with in high school band, and the topic will inevitably come up. On one hand, he was a pedophile, someone who caused real distress and harm to more than one survivor, on the other hand, he was a man struggling with one or many mental illnesses, on still another hand he was our band director and only teacher that knew me all four years of high school. I have a lot of fond memories of his class, and learned a lot about self-discipline from him — ironic, I know. He wrote my college recommendation letter. Yet, as far as reporters were concerned, only one facet of Larry Einuis mattered, and I know that it is the only aspect that anyone in Springfield will remember when he is released under probation in the year 2026.

Over Thanksgiving break, I picked up some groceries at the local Giant. The boy bagging my groceries, after eagerly shaking my hand — an act which did not faze cashier in the slightest — asked me if I went to West Springfield. I told him I used to.

“Did you know Mr. Einuis?” he asked.

I laughed, mostly because I knew that Einuis’ continued legacy could only have one source. “Yeah, I did.”

“He’s in jail now. Twelve years!”

I know I shouldn’t, but I do feel bad for Mr. Einuis. And worse for his wife who has had to continue to face the community following his arrest. She was and is still a middle school band director in the area. I’m sure she’s not free of the lingering rumors either.

As I watch from the parking lot, I note that at least the color guard is good. Our color guard used to be small because anyone who was more involved in dance than band had trouble drinking our militaristic Kool-Aid, and dealing with Einuis’s mood swings. That’s what he used to be famous for, his self-described “highs and lows,” which ranged from euphoria at a successful concert to rage-filled tantrums at one too many missed notes in a rehearsal. Whatever struggles these current students face, it doesn’t keep them from the activities they love, and it doesn’t infiltrate their focus. Their hand-over-hand flag twirling is tight and in sync. When they send their rifles spiraling up in neat circles into the air, most of the rifles snap back down into the hands of their owners instead of hurtling against the rubber track.

What is Springfield? Once farm land, then the small town between more interesting market towns, then the small patch of suburbia outside of D.C. only really notable for its inclusion in the “D.C. Metro Area.” Two streets away from my high school winds a road with two lanes going either direction called Old Keene Mill Rd. named after James Keene’s saw and grist mill which was constructed between 1796 and 1800. With a story like that, you ought to be picturing a rural town, with low buildings and local shops. A coca-cola machine outside a general store. The neighboring Occoquan has that and more. Its quasi-gothic Victorian townhouses squat aside the town’s namesake river, and all up and down one street there are small artisan shops and wine shops and inns that serve Virginia peanut soup and promises of ghosts where the old theater burned down. You can drive to Occoquan in 15 minutes or less, but it’s not part of Springfield.

In Springfield, the road which my old high school lay just off of was Rolling Road, so called, I had been told, because farmers used to roll their hay bales down the long hill toward the market the next town over. When the marching band’s charter buses used to turn the corner onto Rolling Road, our sleepy heads nodding in the late evening/early morning light of evenly spaced streetlamps, our band manager, Gretchen — a hyper-organized student leader who was always packing Lily Pulitzer gear — used to trill every time, without fail:

“We’re rolling onto Rolling!” She was always met by groans, but secretly we loved her for it. We made a community of our own in Springfield, as many do, even when it failed to function as a larger community.

What is Springfield? It was formed officially in 1847 around the Orange and Alexandria Railroad’s Daingerfield Station, named for Henry Daingerfield, whose “Springfield Farm” gave the town its name. After 1851 they built a post office, then another post office in 1877. During the Civil War there was a skirmish and a Confederate raid at post office number one.

Mr. Einuis used to do an impression of a “real” southerner, someone who lived south of Northern Virginia.

“Civil War! Civil war?” He’d exclaim, mocking, shaking his head vigorously, “There was nothing civil about it!”

Within those same four years at West Springfield I got in an argument on Facebook with a bass clarinet player, a heavyset boy with blonde hair and dark eyebrows. He tried to tell me that the KKK, as a modern institution, wasn’t actually racist. It’s about white pride, he informed me.

That argument nearly cost me my leadership position in the marching band. My drum major interview lasted 20 minutes, twice as long as any other candidate, as a panel of sectional instructors and Mr. Einuis interrogated me on my actions.

“Do you think that it’s possible to put back together a feather pillow if you tore it open on top of the Washington Monument?” Mr. Einuis asked me, straight faced. “You may have alienated a member of the band when you started that argument.”

“That single band member was in the process of alienating and threatening a far greater majority of the band.” I objected.

“I don’t disagree with your argument, only your choice of battleground,” he told me. That’s a direct quote. I wrote it down later that night. Facebook, a battleground. I was incredulous then, but in 2017, when activist campaigns are forged with hashtags and presidents threaten nuclear war on Twitter, it makes a lot more sense.

“Do you think that it’s possible to collect all the feathers and rebuild that pillow?” He wanted me to apologize to a racist for calling him out for being a racist.

I swallowed my pride. “I think that with some dedication, you could try.”

I got the position.

In 1970, more than 90% of Springfield was white and middle class.

In 2012, Springfield still acts like it’s 90% white despite paying lip service to diversity. The local paper, the Springfield Connection publishes a web article, “Schools Attract Immigrants to Fairfax.” The author promises that the downsides of new immigrant families who don’t join the neighborhood watch or local committees will fade as their children “assimilate.” It concludes with the promise of better food, asking that for the next “Independence Day potluck picnic, please ask your new neighbors to bring along a special dish from their homeland to share.”

Meanwhile, if you read the Middleford neighborhood Homeowners Association’s online forum, you’d think that “Teenage Angst” was the root of all the neighborhood’s problems. According to the forum site, Nextdoor.com, the average age of users in my neighborhood is 50 years old. It doesn’t surprise me that accusations of trouble on the forum consistently accuse teenagers for stirring it up.

The accusations flash across my screen like headlines. Teens! They speed in BMWs while texting, endangering the toddlers at the playground. They throw bricks at street signs and then bike away before anyone can identify them. One neighbor posts, “Someone played mailbox-baseball with our mailboxes — AGAIN!…Gotta Love Teenagers.” But when another neighbor needs a lawn mowed or pet sat, “it’s the perfect job for a teenager!” As far as Middleford homeowners are concerned, they themselves couldn’t possibly be the problem.

This past September, someone left a series of racist notes on Asha Tahan’s car. The notes, Tahan describes in a Middleford Homeowners Association forum post, ranged from, “go back home monkeys” to “something about cotton collection.” She didn’t tell her children. “I didn’t want my kids to feel bad” she wrote, “but yesterday my daughter found a bag filled with trash in the top of her car…we are not sure where this will end.” Tahan is a linguist working toward her PhD, and Middleford resident of 9 years. The neighborhood responded, vowing vigilance and attesting to the neighborhood’s diversity as a comfort. The general message is this: the person who committed this crime does not represent the neighborhood as a whole.

One neighbor responded, “rest assured these cowards will get caught eventually. Please don’t let these racists affect you…The majority of people in our region are kind and accepting of everyone!”

One said, “We recently felt the need to put a yard sign that says “hate has no home here”. I hope one of your neighbors will come forward.” As though heartfelt signs were lasting solutions and the confessions of a threatening racist neighbor would be comforting.

Another: “Please know that this is not typical of most Americans. Most of us are kind and compassionate.” Still another blames “ignorant white trash.”

One helpfully commented “Do not make too much of these unfortunate incidents. In a country of over 300M, you will find people like the ones who are trying to annoy you. Spend more time thinking about all the good gestures you have encountered over the past nine years”

And then, my personal favorite: “This is likely an immature schoolboy trying to be a tough guy. Nothing to do with racism, imho.” Another neighbor cites the story of an Iranian neighbor who once had his mailbox bashed, a problem shared by many members of the neighborhood thanks to — you guessed it — teens who indiscriminately “get a thrill out of causing mischief,” and offered dismissively, “It may be you are not the only ones experiencing this.”

Several other commenters recommended that the mother report the harassment to the police. One suggests the installation of a “fairly affordable” security camera out front, to catch the perpetrator in the act. All neighbors agree that the crime makes them “sick,” “sorry,” and “saddened.”

The mother thanked the neighbors for their comforting words, saying, “I didn’t expect less…I am really overwhelmed by your kind responses”

In 2012, according to election data, Fairfax County was 57.19% liberal. On my most recent visit, I went for a run through the Middleford neighborhood. The “Hate has no Home Here” sign stuck in one neighbor’s lawn lives on the same street as the bumper of a jacked-up Chevy truck which boasts NRA and “anti-terrorist” bumper stickers.

June 8, 2017, Vernon Miles of the Alexandria Gazette packet interviews an Alexandria community member comments on anti-black and anti-Islamic posters plastered around Springfield’s slightly more liberal neighboring Alexandria. ““The kind of racism that people talk about in the south is a little bit different from what you talk about in Alexandria… a town where nobody wanted to talk about it.” He calls it a “Nice-Nasty town.”

Springfield is middle schools named after white American authors. Irving, Poe, Twain. Nearby High Schools are named for their towns — West Springfield, Annandale South County — or other white men — Thomas Jefferson, Edison, Lee (Robert E.), Key (Francis Scott), J.E.B. Stuart. This past July, the Fairfax County School Board voted to rename the last one by no later than the start of the 2019 school year. So there’s some progress, however slow.

In 1946 the realtor Edward Carr made the real Springfield when he subdivided it for urban development along the newly formed Henry Shirley Highway, AKA I-95, AKA the road you must take to go anywhere other than Springfield. He figured it was the last undeveloped area within 12 miles of Washington D.C.

What is Springfield? A lot of houses made of the same materials but priced differently. Neo-colonial townhouses, normal sized houses and McMansions all with the same beige siding or brick, everything painted fading evergreen or navy, or farmhouse red. 1960s ranch houses. Some new developments for apartment complexes, but mostly neighborhoods of 3–4 bedroom houses packed side by side by side, one manicured lawn shared between two houses, the cement sidewalk stretching on and on.

What is Springfield? A town where the most exciting things to happen were the refurbishment of the mall and the reconstruction of the high school. These are exciting, in a way. The Target parking lot had become notorious for crime, and the cement block of the Macy’s had long turned grey with 40 years’ exposure to dirt and exhaust. For a long time, the manager of the men’s department at Macy’s describes, people would come in, grab an armful of clothing from a rack, and look him in the eye as they walked out the automatic doors without paying. Now the rebuilt mall has valet parking and a farmers’ market on Saturdays. It’s hard to find a parking space, even on a Tuesday in the middle of the day.

Springfield community members discuss crime in soundbites. They dispense “Did you hear?” stories with disgust and forbidden delight, occasionally offering opinions but rarely interrogating them. It reminds me of Donald Trump, when he retweets hearsay as fact one moment, then denounces news sources as fake the next. Everyone enjoys being an authority, but not all will do the necessary homework.

The online nexus for the Middleford Home Owner’s Association features a post by “Certified Crime Prevention Specialist,” Michael who’s advertising “The DEA Drug Take Back Initiative — Saturday October 28th.” He describes a drop off box in the lobby of the West Springfield District Station in which individuals can deposit unused of expired medications. Does Springfield have a prescription drug abuse problem? Your guess is as good as mine.

When towns like Springfield try to claim that they aren’t symptoms of national problems, they delay progress. Where else do national struggles with opioid addiction, race, mental health, fear of LGBT+ identities, the criminalization of individuals, and insufficient education about intersectional issues begin except on the microlevel? If the privileged majority silences challenging conversations, it caters to ego and the fiction of homogeneous normalcy while stunting the growth of a real community which supports all its members and confronts trouble head-on.

I wasn’t a good ally until I interrogated where I was from. As a former military brat, for much of my childhood I had no hometown, and when we settled in Springfield after my father’s retirement, I did not want one. For a long time, I denied that Springfield had any effect on me. At first, I thought that my cosmopolitan, international school education made me better than progressive-presenting Springfield. It delayed my education of local issues. Springfield and I have been made of the same stuff all along.

Later, I had to realize that Springfield was not confined to the serpentine reaches of I-95 — something I could escape by harmonizing with the echo-chamber of my liberal college. When Barack Obama got elected, like many others, I had hopes that we were entering a post-racial America. When Donald Trump got elected I, along with many other liberal students, trudged across my campus to a silent mourning dirge. Meanwhile, my peers of color shouted, “Wake up! Racism never disappeared. We’ve been working hard, where have you been?”

For the privileged of the nation’s many Springfields, it can be tempting to slumber until the next hashtag “wakes” us. It can be tempting to fret about dog poop and teenage angst, and pretend that the government treats us all equally, boasting color-blindness and unity. Or, we can tear down the white picket fence, the walls, and the glass ceilings, and get to work building supportive communities out of the hometowns we actually have.

34 Springfields was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Things my running partner and I say when we run, in no particular order:

“My back feels hot, but my arms are cold. The insides of my elbows are sweating, is that weird?”

“You know, I get a lot more cat calls when I’m with you.”

“I just need one good night’s sleep.”

“Do you ever feel like getting your period is kind of reassuring — ha, not that way! I like knowing that I’m bloated for a reason and it’s not just me.”

“It’s gorgeous out, feel that breeze.”

“You okay?”

“When you say that when you look in the mirror and realize that you’ve ‘gotten fat,’ no one sees that, it’s just you.”

“I hope I don’t lose my arms over winter break. I like being strong.”

“Hydrate! I will send you memes of people drinking water every day if you don’t.”

“I feel great today.”

Much of my earlier memories of exercise are fraught with physical and emotional discomfort — although, let’s be honest, they’re often one and the same. I played soccer for three years in elementary school, until one scrimmage, when my teammates booed me for missing one too many shots as an amateur goalie. I decided not to sign up the following semester. In middle and high school gym class, my lack of athletic ability aside, even the locker room conflated exercise with bodily shame. I remember gingerly hopping out my allotted jumping jacks, and gently scuffing the gym floor with the soles of my sneakers when we jogged for warm-up so that my fifteen-dollar-Target-bra-contained chest wouldn’t shake. Very few of the girls in gym class changed into jog bras in the locker room — to be so naked was to open yourself up to the judgment of your peers.

Tests in gym class were especially miserable. I still have a speck of dirt or gravel embedded in my knee, like a tattoo, from the time some eager middle school classmate shoved me at the starting line for The Mile. I plummeted to the ground, the heels of my hands and my right knee grinding into the gravel track. My hands were scuffed, but fine. Blood poured down my shin and I looked to my gym teacher for permission to skip out and clean my wound. I think she said something like, “Well?” and pointed for me to follow the rest of the jostling herd, already stretching halfway across the track. Sometime around middle school gym class, running became a chore.

Young children cannot be made to stop running. Before anyone told me that I had to run, for how long, and with what intensity, I did so with abandon. Whole categories of games were generated whose primary rule was: to run, to chase, to race, to charge, to retreat. I pedaled my legs with speed I didn’t realize I was capable of, my body focusing in toward its center, my core tightening to fight the centrifugal force that I generated with wheeling limbs, making my vision shake and brain rattle in my skull. The sharp ache of breath in my lungs rushed in alongside the adrenaline. The physical euphoria of running was superior to the rush of any game.

Long distance runners call this feeling of euphoria, “runner’s high.” Researchers used to attribute this feeling to the release of endorphins during exercise. It made sense, even Elle Woods in Legally Blonde knew that exercise gave you endorphins, which made you happy, and unlikely to shoot your husband. What Elle Woods didn’t know was that a 2015 study claims that endocannabinoids, lipids which function much like marijuana when released into the bloodstream, are actually responsible for runner’s high.

I’m not sure if I buy the whole endocannabinoids thing, even though it seems to be backed up by solid research. I’ve only ever felt truly high after running once, when I ran laps at 10pm with my boys, the trumpet section of the marching band. I set the pace with gazelle-worthy strides, and we cantered around the track in step with each other, whooping, howling, and gasping raggedly for the cold night air. When we completed our designated laps — intended as punishment — I felt the spike of joy like a hit, and in my exhilarated state, I loved these boys even more. They were a ragtag crew, most of whom weren’t exactly built for running, but they kept up because we had built our own small community. We were in it together.

Aside from marching band, I usually don’t run with other people. I like the head space of being a lone wolf. With my iPhone strapped to my arm, even as I take my first easy strides, landing on the balls of my feet, my shoulders pulled back, my chest secured in a running bra as unyielding as armor, within moments I check out from my body and it goes on without me. It’s the same state of heightened reflection as showering — I don’t know about you, but I’ve had at least one existential realization, and more than a few essay theses pop into my head while lathering. When I run, once I get going at a steady pace, with music pumping through my earbuds, I can reorganize my life. For this reason, I like to set a slow pace and not feel pressured. I average an 11:30 minute mile when I’m training for distance, a far cry from my 9:45 average when I used to speed through “The Mile” in high school, desperate to exert any amount of effort just to be allowed to stop.

But lately, I’ve been running with a partner, Hannah, who runs at exactly my pace. We’ve been close friends for three years now. She was the one who proposed running together, originally, and I was the one with the distance running experience.

“Can we keep it to an easy 2–3 miles since I haven’t run for over a week?” I texted her earlier today.

“Yes, I was just about to ask for a 2 mile run because of my hip!”

Hannah has been overworking her joints lately. We both have problems with our knees on occasion, thanks to running on Williamsburg bricks, but her joint pains keep cropping up. She had a flare up of her Crohn’s disease over the summer, which can sometimes cause joint inflammation. She’ll do see her doctor over break, she reassures me. I check in on her while we run to make sure she’s not over-exerting herself, and she sets a soft, steady pace for a change.

Some days I push her, some days she pushes me. Early on, our runs would begin something like this: Hannah jogging ahead, her high ponytail of red curls bouncing, face bright with a manic grin, saying,

“I’m feeling great today, lets run fast!” She says ‘fast’ like the whooshing sound of a cartoon jet plane taking off.

I remind her curmudgeonly of the four miles we have to go, and we slow down to a sustainable pace.

She thanks me later.

On her part, Hannah holds me accountable to my workout schedule. She’s a super-organized, type-A, A-plus academic, so if Hannah has a run scheduled, it’s happening. Unless she’s hungover, in which case I text her, reminding her to hydrate and to be ready for our run later that afternoon.

Our partnership operates on the knowledge that we will mutually be strict, yet supportive. with each other on the days that we’re feeling weak. That means that I actually get in my weekly runs, rather than wimping out, as I had done for several years of sporadic attempts to get back into a running schedule after a particularly grueling half marathon, run by marines, which I trained for Freshman year. I’m not even sure I can say I ran that race — maybe 4 hilly miles or so combined out of the total 13.1 — sprinting only until out of sight of the Marines stationed on street corners throughout the course. Mountainous, humid, sweaty, and chafe-ridden though that race may have been, I was not about to show weakness in front of Marines.

Luckily, the routes that Hannah and I take through Williamsburg are reasonably flat. We keep an easy enough pace that we’re not too out of breath to catch each other up on our lives. Along Jamestown road, up Richmond Road, through the ripe, horseshit perfumed air of Colonial Williamsburg, and then back down Jamestown to sprint past the last 0.1 mile leg from Barrett Hall to the crosswalk toward Hannah’s apartment, we unload the baggage from our days. We divulge disagreements with friends and family, homework and professors. We make plans to see concerts, go apple picking, or party-hop over the weekend. We talk about our bodies — why we love them, why we hate them, where we’re at in our personal journey towards that ever-distant finish line called “body love.”

Often Hannah and I discuss, mid-run, whether or not we feel that we could “keep going forever.” This is our runner’s high. On good days, when it’s not too hot or muggy, when we’re not dehydrated or hung over, somewhere around mile 2 or 3 it kicks in and we say, “My legs feel good. I feel great. I think I could just keep going forever.” We say it simply, as fact, as researchers studying our own bodies. Even if it’s not true, in that moment we believe it. We believe that our bodies could work as machines, maintaining our invincible pleasure indefinitely. At our 10k race in Virginia Beach, I joked, “We’ll pick up the car tomorrow, let’s just keep going, we could run back to Williamsburg.”

According to Gretchen Reynolds in her New York Times article, “Homing in on the Source of Runner’s High,” after running, the mice in that 2015 study spent more time in the bright part of their cages, “something that anxious, twitchy animals won’t do.” The researchers believed that because mice will choose to run even when they aren’t being pursued, that means that they do it purely for their own satisfaction. Basically, even mice can achieve a runner’s high.

But the euphoria in the moment isn’t the only pleasure of running. It’s about reaching a state of neutrality within yourself. It’s about contentment. People who hate running can’t find this state, whether it’s because they run so hard and so fast that they can’t ignore the stress they’re putting on their bodies, or because they have preconceived notions that running is a chore. I get it. Before I chose to run — realizing when my dad first talked about how easy it was to train for a marathon, that it was something I could be capable of too — I hated it. But the desire for bragging rights, paired with a fear of my own body, led me to push myself half a mile to a mile further every week, testing my limits. I ran one 10k, then a half marathon, fell off the wagon my first semester of college, gained the Freshman 15, scared myself, got back on the wagon, ran that awful Marine Corps Half Marathon, became a runner of half marathons, plural.

But, as I’ve stated, running isn’t always about pleasure. It’s not even about contentment at the start.

When I don’t exercise, my body is like a hoarder — always saving things for later. When I don’t run, I feel destructive; my thoughts become labyrinthine with the expectations of columned stacks of glossy magazines, though I’d rather pack my beach body away than flaunt it. I consume and store quantities of comfort food. I binge, but never have the guts to purge. I calculate calories. I fixate on every unplanned snack.

I read an article in The Cut sometime last year, in one of those times when I got lost in myself. It was called “Forget Body Positivity: How About Body Neutrality?” In the article, Marisa Meltzer interviews Anne Poirier, director of a Body Neutrality workshop. Describing the pressures of the body positivity movement Poirer explains, “There’s a whole movement talking about loving our bodies. But it’s kind of a long jump to move there from dissatisfaction.” While Meltzer proceeds to draw the conclusion that body neutrality is “a kind of détente, a white flag, a way station between hating oneself and loving oneself,” I disagree. Meltzer assumes that neutrality exists separately from pleasure and happiness. Neutrality is not a way station, it’s nirvana.

I’m more in Autumn Whitefield-Madrano’s camp, author of Face Value: The Hidden Ways Beauty Shapes Women’s Lives. Meltzer interviews her next. She says, “The times I’m happiest are when I’m not thinking about my body at all.” When I first read that, I felt the sympathetic ringing of truth. Being comfortable in your own body is the runner’s high of daily life. Discomfort melts away, and you feel both tranquil and excited as you realize that you could keep going forever, whether it’s true or not.

After Hannah and I completed the Anthem Wicked 10k at Virginia Beach, we took off our shoes and descended onto the beach in pursuit of “free” beer — free is a stretch, we paid $40 each to register for the race. After we redeemed our vouchers for hard cider, we sat in the sand and watched the toddling children of runners revel in discovery of the world and the ways their bodies could interact with it. They reeled about in the waves, stomped thunderously on the sand, and ran and ran and ran, only falling to the ground in protest when their parents told them it was time to go.

“We should make this our thing,” Hannah said to me. “Every year, no matter where we are, we should run a race together. Like, we could be those old ladies who are still running at 70.” I imagined a future with structure; a safety net for when life gets hectic and I lose myself. I imagined our friendship extending out as far as roads and horizons, the two of us becoming the college friends who become lifelong friends — like my dad and his running partner, my godfather Ed, with whom he ran track in college. I envisioned highs and lows, and all the ways my body would thrill me, disgust me, carry me, fight me. I felt euphoric and peaceful.

I agreed that running should be our thing, and we started planning our costumes for the next time we ran a Halloween race. This time we came out woefully underdressed compared to the teams of blind mice (see how they run), Disney Princesses, Dorothys and the Wicked Witches: the tutu-clad hordes. I’m thinking Snoopy and Woodstock, Red Baron style, like in the Great Pumpkin. Hannah wants butterfly wings. As we talk, I realize that the horizon between the ocean and the sky is at eye level, welcoming. The world feels open. I forget that I’m graduating in a few months. The future feels open. Whether it’s feasible or not, I have the feeling that I could go on like this forever.

The Euphoric Forever was originally published in The Attendance Question on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.