Notes From a Neo-Geisha – Arcangela in the Night City
A steaming noodle stall draped in refugee tents. Surprisingly savory and expensive. The five other stools held cognoscenti; they taught me about what we slurped. It had anti-aging properties, digestive benefits; it would jumpstart potency. I liked it. It was tangy, filling; one’s stomach embraced it, but I couldn’t comprehend the ingredients. We six were caught in a loop–I hadn’t the vocabulary and all their definitions were tautological. I would’ve had to already know the word of the main ingredient to understand the secondary ones. They were derivatives of it.
Hillary Raphael‘s latest column for 3:AM.
Veronica
Her sardonic humour and matter-of-fact attitude clash with her charismatic and compelling allure — a mix that leads one character to describe her as “like Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings combined”. Like Rebecca, her illness and inevitable death is never a bodily tragedy but rather a social one; the ramifications of AIDS are measured against the New York culture of arty, underground communities populated by beauty-driven models and photographers.
Charlotte Stretch reviews Mary Gaitskill‘s New York/AIDS chronicle.
Flash Memoir from Kevin Sampsell: Themes, Pasco, 63 Times, and Yvette
On the back of Pam’s school photo (her hair parted in the middle and wind-swept back, her baby blue sweater with the shoulder pads, her ill-fitting blue jeans) I took a pen and drew a mark. A few days after that, another mark. I’m not sure why but I felt the need to document, to count, the times we did it. I never told Pam I was keeping track. Perhaps I thought I was going to keep track forever, with every girlfriend, every crash-and-burn month-long failure, every one night stand.
By Kevin Sampsell.