Tag: Creative Nonfiction

30 Day Writing Challenge, Humor, Prose

What I Did This Summer (Almost the Worst Thing I Can Think Of)

Posted on by M. Vuolenska

I moped around a lot. I saw Dr. Sexy. I told him I moped around a lot. He tinkered with my psych meds. We added more of the one that makes me feel like I have the flu for a few hours—the one that’s supposed to treat Parkinson’s but is not diagnostic, thank all the gods for that. It didn’t help—hasn’t helped. Summer is almost over and I’m still moping around.

I bought a blue lamp to help with my blues. I decided I get summer SAD. If that isn’t a thing, I invented it just now and that’s another thing I did this summer.

I bought a blue lamp to help with my blues because, being albino, all this goddamned sun gives me the blues. I get up in the dark and draw the drapes when the sun comes out because summer sun is brutal even through a window shaded by mock orange and concrete. In other words, I’m in the dark a lot. That’s another thing I did this summer: I was in the dark. A lot.

And my drapes are tinted maroon, so it’s red light all day and, as I am not a bat, red light makes me want to sleep instead of invigorating me to spread my wings and fly away, fly away, fly away. (I went to a Queen concert too this summer. Did you catch the reference, or did it fly away?)

So the blue light is to combat the red light of the no-light room I spend most of my time in, writing writing writing. Plugging away. Doing yarn crafts.

I’m making latch hook stockings for friends for Christmas. I’m making a wall hanging depicting foxes in a forest for a family of Foxes for their collective birthdays in November. I’m making a latch hook draft dodger for a friend’s mother. I’m making a penguin tree skirt. I’m making another wall hanging, this one of cardinals, for another friend for Christmas. I have no idea how to properly finish any of it, especially the round things. I’m going to have to learn to sew. That’s another thing I did this summer: started about twenty new projects and gave myself a reason to learn how to sew.

Of course, there is also iron-on binding and I could have merely given myself twenty reasons to learn how to iron in a straight line, but that’s not nearly as sexy, so let’s stick to the sewing thing.

My mother was in the hospital for a few days which meant I had to be a real grown up adult for a while—a real, grown up adult dealing with geriatric parent issues. I handled it swimmingly. She’s out of the hospital now and, as swimmingly as I handled it, I hope that’s not a stream I have to swim up again any time soon.

I ran for 25 minutes straight for the first time. I started listening to Dianetics. I did those two things at the same time. Abject nonsense takes the mind off how awful running really is and gets you more quickly to the place, post-run, of how wonderful running really was.

I told Dr. Sexy that I was able to run for 25 minutes straight for the first time. He’s a runner. Body body body. He was happy for me, but when I told him I intended to run my blue off, he cautioned me that the mental health benefits of exercise cap at thirty minutes, so I don’t need to run a marathon in order to be a happy human. I told him not to worry. I was never going to be a compulsive exerciser. Body body body. I’m sure he believes it.

I started this 30 day writing challenge. I started this essay for day 2 for which the assignment is to write the worst thing you can think of. This essay didn’t turn out half bad, but it has no proper ending. I could justify that by saying summer isn’t technically over yet and I could yet do more stuff, but I’m not gonna. Not having a proper end isn’t the worst thing I can think of, but it’s a lovely clunk that fulfills the assignment, so clunk. There it is. The end.

-M.

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Memoir, Prose

How Do My Breasts Look? (memoir)

Posted on by M. Vuolenska

go_cougar_womens_tshirtMy first boyfriend and I sweat together in my room with the door closed and his hand under my navy blue “Go Cougars!” T-shirt. I lay on the floor halfway underneath him, one of his creeping hands at the waistband of my white cotton shorts, the other pushing my shirt up. His alien fingers probed their way under the pale pink of my little girls’ bra that had been too tight for months. He didn’t kiss me. He gave me a hickey on my midriff instead and smiled, proud of himself the way he and his friends were often proud of their own farts. He got serious then and tugged at the band of my bra. I lay there bare-chested for the first time with a boy, still wearing my T-shirt that was now rolled up under my chin. He unceremoniously pinched my left nipple, then my right, frowned and announced, “Your boobs look funny.”

I don’t need a whole essay to tell you I never got over that.

In my later teens I’d stand sometimes in front of my mother’s full-length bedroom mirror and pull my Garfield pajama shirt tight over my chest and belly to get a better view of the curve of my breasts in relation to my other curves. I’d shift right and left—diagonal—I’d bounce, look back over one shoulder, turn around with one arm up behind my head, but I couldn’t tell. I’d pull my shirt up and wonder for a while at my nipples. I couldn’t figure them out either. Too big? Too small? Too low? Too pale? I didn’t know.

I once used a French class report on impressionist artists as an excuse to look at a lot of paintings of naked women so I wouldn’t look like a perv for getting close to the page, squinting at them, and comparing. One red-haired woman, all in fading yellow light, a royal blue wrap around her shoulders and her white underthings visible at her waist, appeared to have breasts that went at near right angles at the bottom—her tan nipples pointing this way and that. I thought surely mine weren’t quite as different as that, and even then, some artist found hers beautiful.

When I got older, I got brave once and asked a lover what he thought of the funny-looking breast issue. I should have known I wouldn’t get a straight answer considering his face was between them at the time.

But maybe that’s my problem—thinking “No!” kiss, “Not at all!” nibble, “Absolutely not!” muffled through busy lips—was not a straight answer.

-M.

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