A collection of personal essays, short stories, and live readings.
I guess you could say I write about “shameful” things: addiction, divorce, cancer, passive suicide, aging. I write about all the ways that shame finds its way onto our tables, but in writing about it, I hope to weaken its power, so I can live and love more fully, and maybe help others do that, too. And then sometimes I write about wandering into empty buildings with a man I just met in a country I just arrived in, because I still struggle to say No even though it’s the same word in so many languages. So hopefully there’s something here for everyone.
Read by topic:
WritersRead.org’s The 10 Best of 2023
WRITER'S READThese Hips
Even though I am not the best dancer, I love my nightly salsa, bachata, and cumbia classes in Oaxaca, a place I’ve been living for a few months. Every moment, even when I can’t get my body to do what my eyes see it’s supposed to, I relish trying. That is until tonight…
Live Reading begins at timestamp 1:38:40.
WRITERS READFive
Asking Jimmy for a divorce had shattered us both. He followed me everywhere, demanding we stay together. Sometimes, I’d wake up to find him sitting next to the bed, just staring at me, hunting me. But what haunted me most, after Jim passed away, succumbing to his own addictions, was that he had died alone, surrounded by his three cats…
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMDriving Under the Influence
“Mom, we’ve been drinking too much. If I send an Uber for you, can you drive us home in my car?” my older son Seamus asked. I was just about to click off the TV and head to bed when my phone rang. Why Seamus had not anticipated drinking too much at an Irish wedding was not for me to harp on, though it was my first thought.
THEMANIFESTSTATION.NETJimmy Five
Every morning, I opened my bedroom door to find him just sitting there. “We have to talk,” he seemed to say. Spine erect, forearms straight under his shoulders, he appeared to want a serious heart to heart. “Oh,” I’d say, “Good morning,” as I’d side step around him, and disappear into the bathroom.
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMA Box of Worms
“Eww, what’s that?” Kids at my middle school cafeteria table never yelled, Yum! or Wanna trade? as I unpacked my lunch. Rather their eyes, simultaneously attracted and repulsed by whatever I had unwrapped from the waxed paper, would tense to a slivered squint. Sometimes the cause was a tofu sandwich with home grown alfalfa…
TWOHAWKSQUARTERLY.COMDancing With Our Muertos
Doll—human and super human-sized Catrinas, playful skeletons, began adorning the sidewalks in front of businesses and homes as Oaxaca filled up with tourists. Dressed in elegant outfits from the turn of the 20th century with elaborately made-up faces, these Catrina ladies and sometimes men, remind us to embrace passionate lives while also…
HERSTRYBLG.COMEverything That Breathes
I’ve never seen the rooster next door that crows at dawn. And during thunderstorms. And during the ubiquitous fireworks—this is Oaxaca, after all. In the afternoon, when he’s tired of scratching at the same dirt hoping to find something different, but it’s just the same fucking dirt, he crows a little louder.
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMRoadside Assistance
My 12-year-old brother taught me how to drive our Volkswagen bus when I was 10. In the 1970s, we always had VW buses since they were one of the few vehicles that could hold all nine family members at once. My brother and I, the two youngest, would drive around our front yard making figure eights, and occasionally cruise up and down…
HERSTRYBLG.COMMy Girls
I have loved my girls ever since I got them, maybe because I don’t have beautiful legs or a JLo butt. I’d like to declare my feelings of femininity come solely from my character, but I am not that evolved. When my girls arrived around the age of thirteen, they felt wonderfully womanly. I’ve loved them ever since.
SADGIRLDIARIES.COMAbout Saying No
I turn 60 and think, Shit, if I want learn Spanish someday, I better get crackin’. So I move to Oaxaca and enroll in language school, but after a few weeks it’s clear that if I want to become fluent, I need more immersion. In addition to a nightly salsa class where I’ve learned adelante and atrás and other useful words, I request an Intercambio…
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMThe Rain in Oaxaca
It is pitch dark and pouring rain when I step out of the Oaxaca airport to look for Laura, the woman my landlord suggested I hire to pick me up and bring me to my new home in a country I’ve never been to. “Laura will meet you by the sculpture of the guitar,” she said, but I don’t see a guitar. I see a giant bug.
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMLa Noche Oscura
Walk down a dark empty street on your way to your Oaxaqueño apartment, oblivious to your surroundings. You’ve done this walk, albeit earlier in the day, many times. Your brain is busy with: Shit, will I ever memorize Spanish conjugations… Is there any oatmeal left? ... Why hasn’t S called me? ... I need a shower, but … no fucking hot water…
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMThe Zumba Hour
Okay, I know I am not JLo or Queen Bey, but right now, I am one of their backup dancers. I am booty rolling and fist pumping and single, single, doubling it, and flipping one hip-hop knee toward the other to the beats of Britney and Pitbull and Enrique. And I am crushing it.
OLDSTER.SUBSTACK.COMThe Extras
Susan and I have signed up for the Turkish bath as an extra during our tour of Jordan. Our group of twelve is greeted, then asked, “Anyone okay with a man?” Four of our group, young Muslim girls who cover, have already let them know they can only be massaged by a woman. I give a resounding YES. I am okay with a man.
REIDEASJOURNAL.COMEmergency Contact
When I left my husband of 20 years, I had no idea I’d also be leaving my dentist. After a temporary separation, I finally moved permanently to a new neighborhood and into an apartment building with a dentist office on the first floor. I noticed the office on moving day, but didn’t consider for a second switching dentists.
DOROTHYPARKERSASHES.COMDying of Thirst
Four gallons of water and packages of beans and tuna weigh down my backpack, and no matter how I adjust them, the straps dig into my shoulders. I dab at the sweat dripping down my temples. My lips hurt. I understand Gatorade now. We come to a cliff and follow a narrow cow path. Because it’s steep, I sit cautiously and scooch down on my butt.
BOOK OF MATCHES ISSUE 3 FALL 2021Secret Spot
My brother Danny and I were looking for arrowheads and old shotgun shells in the woods behind our house when we discovered this vine clinging to a big tree on Suicide Hill. It was hanging in a perfect spot next to the river. Danny tested it out first…
Short story begins on page 84.
DEADMULE.COMAppetite
“In your twenties,” my professor Joseph Epstein is saying during our college writing seminar, “life pretty much revolves around sex.” I am almost 20, sitting very much at attention. My nine classmates and I are in a small, yet unusually comfortable room, tucked away in the library. Professor Epstein is a compact man with a subdued presence…
OLDSTER.SUBSTACK.COMU.T.I. 101
“What color is your urine?” the doctor asks as he unpacks a stethoscope from his leather backpack. When I had asked my Oaxaquena landlady for a doctor recommendation, she sent me his contact info and told me to message him. He messaged back right away. I had been living in Oaxaca for nearly six months immersing…
FEMININECOLLECTIVE.COMOn A Dime
“Ten films?” The X-ray technician looks at my referral while I stand anxiously next to the mammogram machine. “Who ordered this?” She sits down at the little desk against the wall, back to me, flipping my chart pages up and down. “My breast surgeon,” I answer. Ever since my cancer diagnosis four years earlier, I’ve had to get a mammogram…