LIFE CHANGES
Make a concerted effort to stop doing the same thing you’ve always done under the guise of doing it better, and instead, do something different.
I’ve been blowing up sections of my life every six months for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, this was less of a tactic for growth and more of series of fuck-ups that only made my life messier. Now in my forties, and for the past five years, I have been starting and ending things with more purpose and vision than before. Still, when I decided to leave Los Angeles in the fall of 2020 and move across the country with my family, it had been over 20 years since I blew up all aspects of…
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Dear Level
A man who acts like a child is the biggest turnoff of all
When I think about unsatisfactory sexual experiences, my mind goes back to one guy in particular. Fred and I had been friends for a little less than a year when I decided to sleep with him. I wasn’t interested in him romantically, but I wondered what he was like between the sheets. So, one night, after dinner and a movie, I told Fred to take me back to his place. Seconds into our coital excursion, I knew I’d made a mistake.
It was my first time in his apartment, and right away everything I thought I knew about him proved…
JOEY + ME
We were clamoring for some kind of stability, even and especially if we had to make it ourselves.
Disclaimer: Joey + Me is based on a true story. Some names have been changed and poetic licenses taken in the interest of privacy, content, and flow.
Missed parts 1 through 3? Catch up here.
When I got home from school that afternoon, all I could think about was Joey. I hesitated over the kitchen sink as I let the hot water run. Looking at his phone number scribbled into my palm, I couldn’t bear the thought of washing his handwriting from my skin. I tried to assure myself it was okay to wash the ink off because I’d written…
MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS
Today, I honor my abusive mother for the few things she did right.
For most of my childhood, until I was fifteen years old, I kept my mother’s abuse a secret. Now, and for the past sixteen years, I have written freely about the abuse I endured and its lifelong effects. She’s the reason I hate Christmas, have crazy anxiety, always find myself in abusive relationships, and why, frankly, I almost hate her. As the eldest of three girls, and the child she seemed to loathe the most, I have a longer negative history with our mother than my siblings. Still, they have come to know my mother much in the way I…
RELATIONSHIPS
When they say a break-up can feel like a death, they’re not kidding, but this one feels more like a straight-up murder.
This break-up has been a long time coming. I didn't see it at the time, but I should have left Everette back in the winter of 2017 when he began showing signs of narcissism and mental illness. But, his mother had just had a medical emergency, and I thought the sudden change in his demeanor was solely due to the stress he was under, which was totally understandable.
After being plutonic friends for a year and a half, I was confident in what I knew about him. He presented himself very well to me and the public. He came across…
JOEY + ME
It didn’t take long for Joey to fall prey to not just the pitfalls of living in the Bronx but of being the son of two addicts.
Disclaimer: Joey + Me is based on a true story. Some names have been changed and poetic licenses taken in the interest of privacy, content, and flow.
Missed Parts 1 and 2? Catch up here.
He was seventeen years old and labeled a “bad kid.” A sophomore, he’d been left back twice in school and was the oldest student in our high’s tenth-grade class. …
JOEY + ME
After all I’d been through, I was so deeply introverted that at a time when most kids were making lifelong friends and memories, I was making neither.
Disclaimer: Joey + Me is based on a true story. Some names have been changed and poetic licenses taken in the interest of privacy, content, and flow.
Missed Part 1? Catch up here.
The afternoon turned into night, and no matter our pleas, the three men wouldn’t allow Margaret and me to leave. Held captive, we were carted against our will from an apartment to an abandoned house to a seedy motel where I was raped by the gang’s eldest. I was only thirteen years old and, naturally, a virgin. So, when my assailant was unable to penetrate me, he…
JOEY + ME
Each generation brought with it another layer of fear, anxiety, depression, addiction, violence, loss, and abandonment, and all of it sat heavily on my petite frame.
Disclaimer: Joey + Me is based on a true story. Some names have been changed and poetic licenses taken in the interest of privacy, content, and flow.
It was 1994, the year after I’d been raped, and I was still reeling. At just fourteen years old, a freshman in high school, I’d known more pain than√Illustration: Adjime/RawPexels, Design: Elisabeth Ovesen most adult women, and as I walked through the halls of my high school, eyes averted, I carried the weight of a million heartbreaks upon my shoulders. Already, I knew I didn’t belong anywhere. I was different, but not in…
RELATIONSHIPS
It’s not his gorgeous penis, his looks, attitude, or success that attracts me most. It’s the idea that it’s not too late for me.
This guy just sent me a picture of his penis — two to be exact — and holy shit, you guys, it’s beautiful. However, as a general rule, I think all penises are ugly unless I’m in love with the man wielding said phallus. Under those circumstances, his dick might as well be made of gold and capable of granting wishes. When with the man I love, I adore his schlong, praising it, and seemingly pray at its alter when on my knees. …
Dear Level
Respect the boundaries of your relationship—monogamous or otherwise—for a drama-free love life
From the onset of my relationships with Darius and Damian — the men who eventually became my first and second husbands — I was forthcoming about my unwillingness to stop dating Dwayne. He was a man I’d met and fallen in love with long before each of my husbands entered my life.
Throughout the dating process and while living with me before our marriages, Darius and Damian respectively accepted that Dwayne’s needs came before theirs. So, when each of them suggested marriage, I was willing — so long as it didn’t alter our polyamorous arrangement. …
