Notes From a Moab Trailer
Love, loss, and growing up in the Utah desert
Growing Up
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Toxins"
Ailments and cures in a small town.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "People"
Growing up indigenous in Detroit.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "There Is No Baby In This Story"
An antique high chair; the complexities of parenting and growing.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Stone"
A mystical stone guides a woman through her life.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Who Are You"
Sexual and personal growth intertwine.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Chuey and Me"
The life of a troubled childhood friend.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Daddy Thing"
A young girl befriends a vampire bat.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Dead Weight"
The lives of a mortician mother and a wayward veteran stepfather.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Confessions of the Lovestruck"
The rise and fall of a band in public and behind closed doors.
Imagining a Better Boyhood
On the confines of masculinity.
Fiction: "Stakes"
Loneliness and longing at an Arizona Renaissance fair.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Restoration Ecology"
Science work, youth, and middle aged troubles.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "A Short History of Zaka the Zulu"
The downfall of a Jesuit school prefect.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Stick Shift"
A girl's interaction before her Coming Out dance.
"I had no idea about myself, whether I was pretty or different or what. That I had not yet attracted a boyfriend was a failure that weighed on my mind. If I was pretty, I figured, I would have one already. But if I was different, a fresh idea for me, that would explain the problem, for I thought that boys didn’t like girls who weren’t the same as every other girl they knew. I didn’t play varsity sports and look like it, and I wasn’t fey, I didn’t play an instrument or go in for the arts. I was smart, though. “Boys are intimidated by your intellect,” my married sister once told me, meaning it as a compliment. But I didn’t act nearly as smart as I was, so I couldn’t believe that was true."
The Art of French Cooking
A woman bonds with her terminally ill sister over food, memories, and shaky lives.
"When Ava won the middle school election, there was peach cobbler with a filling so warm it burnt my tongue. When I failed chemistry, she silently let me lock myself in my room, but I came down for dinner to lasagna with short ribs that fell apart at the slightest nudge. Mom would only speak to us seriously once our mouths were full; with blueberry-banana pancakes the morning of the SATs, chicken-stuffed bell peppers after soccer games, and over spaghetti carbonara for high school heartaches. We came to interpret her innermost thoughts in meticulous meals culled from Julia Child and the Rombauers. It was like she needed something to distract us when she was fully there."
Light Show
From PANK's Queer issue: a troubled life is explored alongside the life of Nikola Tesla.
"After leaving Edison, Tesla built the first alternating current induction motor in his own laboratory. He decided that at least if no one else believed in him, then he would believe in himself. When George Westinghouse bought his patent, Tesla finally understood that the American dream wasn’t about ideology—just about money. Westinghouse understood that type of power—that owning Tesla’s patent would make him very rich. Tesla didn’t mind Westinghouse becoming richer as long as Tesla had the funds to keep building the myriad of machines still churning in his brain."
Boyd's Enlistment Blues
A young man's story of sexual yearning and a looming military obligation; slightly NSFW.
"And there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, I couldn’t say anything bad about Betty. She was my very best, and only, hope of leaving the ranks of the aging virgins before I joined the ranks of the Air Force."
Boys and Girls and Women and Men
A story about growing up and sexual identity.
"They have contests, about everything — cough syrup as a substance to abuse, swearing accidentally in class, having sex in the parking lot with their girlfriends during passing periods (the record seventeen times in Matt Haney’s truck) — their lives a haze of baby Tylenol, whip cream cans, Ray Bans, pot, beer, Smirnoff ice, Mom’s Vicodin — everything at the ready in the glove compartment."
The Trinity
The rise and fall of a friendship between three Indian women.
"We were goddesses. Meena, Annie, and Nayantara. Even our names were like heroines. Meena and Annie had known each other since they were 5. I met them in seventh standard. Though we never said it aloud, we knew that three beauties had more power than two or one. Like the Hindu gods. Or all those pop groups. Like the Wilson Phillips. We liked the Wilson Phillips. We pretended to like the fat one but heart of hearts we didn’t."
What Is It About 20-Somethings?
A psychological theory emerges to explain why young Americans are taking a while to grow up.
