Skipping Rocks

Maddie Swenson

The most beautiful moment I had in college (aside from the day I bought myself a vibrator or learned to make poached eggs) was when I went to the lake, picked up a flat stone the size of a driver’s license and threw it. It skipped four times, just like that. I didn’t need CJ to show me how to do it, reveal any special secret to me. In the end, I didn’t need him, didn’t want him, at all.

Why Can’t I Look Like Stevie Nicks?

Mary Rowen

Still, I believed I needed to look good to be happy. I worked out like crazy and tried to hide my bad teeth, which had been further damaged in a bicycle accident. Even after I found a great boyfriend who convinced me to get help for my eating disorder—probably saving my life in the process—I hated looking in mirrors.

Rocks and Cameras

Cassandra Cervi

Then, in a wine soaked haze, I realize what the worst part about this is.We are always on guard against the men in the streets. The ones who whistle while we walk. We guard against the men at the bars, whose smiles turn to snarls upon rejection. We guard against the men online whose thumbs could spell “slut” without help from their eyes. We are almost always on guard. We almost never feel safe.

I Was a Fearless Little Girl

Richard DeFino

I’ll never know if my mother thought that she might have had a cross dressing pre-teen son, or maybe she just thought that I was just a theatrical kid. After a quick costume change out of my denim bugle boys and into her brazier and favorite silver and turquoise jewelry, I was the most fearless little girl on the North Side of the Bronx, and that helped keep me alive.