I’m all about puppies during finals because I never feel like less of human than when I have written the phrase “sociopolitical framework” and wondered whether what I meant was actually “geopolitical,”
The car booms up some road that ends exactly in sky and I think this is the most beautiful thing in America I am not used to feeling golden But I think you are Can you tell I’m terrified … Read More
This summer, I lived at the very northern end of the 1 train, in Riverdale, Bronx, New York, place names I’d unpack one by one like parts of matroyshka doll whenever anyone asked. Obviously, getting anywhere and back was a little bit of a pain but it was really fine, very feasible, and especially once my roommate and I figured out the quick changes, the express trains, and the fastest bus routes, the commute became a challenge, an adventure, a training in swiftness and staying cool.
Metta, you don’t know me, but I know you. And I’ve known you. You were an Indiana Pacer from the time I was 10 to 14 and children in Indiana grow up knowing the names of Pacers the way they know the Pledge of Allegiance. But then when I was in sixth grade you almost strangled a fan at a Detroit Pistons’ game and got yourself traded.
I don’t remember why I started listening to RadioNow 93.1, Indianapolis’ Top 40 radio station, but I know exactly when. I was nine, and it was the summer after third grade. Before this, I had basically stayed away from pop culture. I didn’t really get it, or like it, and there was a girl in my school who told me she was receiving shots to delay puberty because she had watched too much Britney Spears with her older siblings and it had somehow tricked her body into pressing “skip” over the last part of her pre-preteen years.
It was 9 a.m. Awakened, as I often am, by sunlight, I opened my door to go to the bathroom downstairs. Supine, to the side of my door, was a male form, blonde and muscular and naked. His hands were cupped over his genitals, his underwear crumpled by his head. His eyes were closed. I froze in surprise, but I had to pee, and out of some ingrained politeness didn’t want to disturb him. I stepped over him quietly and went downstairs.
Damien* is a frat bro, infamous on the Princeton campus for his trust fund and sexual aggression, and he has something to say. “Write this down,” he says to me. “Damien does not like women.” I ask why not. “Because they’re not cool.” Why not? “Because I can’t relate to them.”
“I could really go for a good burger right now,” my friend says in a tone that conveys that a burger would fill not only her stomach, but her soul. She leans against the wall expectantly. All night, she’s been flirting with another friend, a certain kind of guy who likes a certain kind of girl: thin, glossy-haired, and intelligent enough to be a sparkling conversationalist, quick with a comeback, but not necessarily intellectually aggressive enough to call him on any of his bullshit.
Two recent articles in our campus’ “paper of record” deal with the way said paper is received by its audience; i.e., with derision and hatred. “Snark’s inefficacy” and “On hating the Daily Princetonian,” are two of the most outrageous Opinion … Read More