2023
Sex Scenes (Peach Mag)
Whenever the English department happy hours stretched past eight, the conversation inevitably turned to the flagrant flaws in student writing. The faculty tried, of course, to avoid the topic of teaching, gossiping instead about their families and vacations and research, but it always came back to teaching, and more specifically students, about whom there was always something a little mean to say.
The students were obsessed with vampires. They were obsessed with dark-haired mysterious women who were a little bit sad. They loved writing about a car crash. They wrote about kidnappings—perhaps because of a Netflix show? They could only write about twenty-somethings, or worse: teenagers. So many scenes took place “after school.” So many scenes took place at “prom.” The students were too reliant on crazy verbs; whatever happened to “walked” or “said” or “thought”? There were too many flashbacks. There were too many flashforwards. They loved their tricks, their puzzle box plots. They loved everything that wasn’t a real story.
Hans drank four white wines—two more than standard—and said, “They are afraid of sex.”
2021
The Opener (Burrow Press)
It’s only outside of Joliet that I wonder if I should establish boundaries with Phil. Employer/employee type shit. For example, should I sit in the backseat when he’s driving so it’s hard for him to, what, grab my thigh? It’s tough to conceive what this would look like, what it’d feel like. Growing up, teachers would use the phrase “compromising situation.” As in: obviously no one should touch anyone else inappropriately, but also don’t put yourself in a compromising situation. This whole thing is a compromising situation.
Perhaps the reason I am not afraid of him is because instead of doing anything to intimidate me, Phil has spent the first forty-five minutes of the drive adjusting the air conditioning. I tell him it’s February. “It’s hot, it’s too hot in here,” he says. It’s not. I zip my jacket up all the way and stuff my hands in my pockets. I think about the layers of waterproof whatever jackets are made of, and the fleece under that, and the sweatshirt under that, and the t-shirt under that. Maybe that’s a boundary.
2019
Auteur Theory (Joyland)
Harper despised Anne the second they’d met the previous afternoon, their similarities limited to both having checked the boxes that read NIGHT OWL and I SNORE INFREQUENTLY on the incoming freshmen roommate survey. Anne was a wispy, watery-eyed theater major who went to an arts high school in Nebraska and loved that she went to an arts high school in Nebraska even though Harper was certain there was no art there. Anne put up photos of her Nebraskan arts high school friends on a newly-purchased bulletin board. When she asked Harper where her photos of her high school friends were, Harper said, I don’t even think about high school. Also Anne snored frequently.