Be The Feast! Sex Work, Genderqueer Bodies, And Chilean Revolution
Dearest PULP-ing humans—
Strangely enough (or not! for all you wonderful sploshers out there who co-mingle food and bodies all the damn time), I’ve been thinking a lot about cooking and touch as we slip slide into the holiday season.
My senses feel alight. My tongue craves unctuous thick stews. I want to curl my tongue around a thick slice of persimmon. I’m painstakingly riffling through stacks of chanterelle mushrooms and gingerly laying them in a tiny white paper sack—my mouth rushing with saliva as I imagine them with toast and butter tonight.
I’m sniffing melons—rubbing their thick rough skins against my nose—I’m sniffing the tendrils of wood-burning fires. I’m thinking about growth and my body being fed on the bodies of other animals, of plants and vegetables and the undeniable cyclicality that governs our lives.
*
I hosted a big friendsgiving feast last night and as I gazed around the room at this humbling bounty, this makeshift meal of traditions—of old and new faces—I thought of the slicing, the dicing, the sautéing, the simmering of sauces, the burnt tips of fingers and roofs of mouths. I thought of all our bodies making food to feed one another and it was a tremendous, if fleeting, feeling of peace.
Because then the forks clatter and the music swells and the wine pours and everything devolves into a gravy-laden mess.
But I hope as we hurtle along during times that many of us find fraught and lonely and exceedingly trying, you find that window of quiet, of love, of being fed.
Ever worth the squeeze,
Katie (+July)
We Are Scared, We Are Hopeful
On Chile’s protests, home, and the heartbreak of revolution
I’ve been sitting on the need to write something for the last month. Repressing it like one does a restless leg, or calming a hyper child, or damming a flood. It has leaked from me, has signaled to others not okay, has made the common November cold feel foreboding. Never have I so thoroughly had to stop myself from maxing out my credit card to go home, to Santiago, a place that has always been cold and complicated for me, but I love the way one loves an expanse of scar tissue.
And then the sexual assaults began. And then I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
I’m A Celibate Sex Worker
Sex work has given me personal agency. Romantic love and dating have often taken it away.
Single-serving intimacy is one of the benefits of being a sex worker, because it’s emotionally safe and contained. It never breaks its promise of cash-for-touch. It’s reliable, honest, and guaranteed money, and it’s the one job where I can show up unannounced with zero dollars and leave with several hundred. It can be emotionally complicated: Sex work is the place where I thrive and feel valued, but my dating life has been a failure and shitshow of broken engagements and nasty breakups. So, recently I decided to try something new.
To My Missing IUD, Wherever You Are
Misadventures in birth control
I leaned back like I was settling in with a cup of coffee and said, at a conversational volume, “My IUD is missing. They’re trying to find it with an X-ray.” The check-in girl’s eyes widened.
“Oh. My. God,” she said.
I laughed and said, “horrifying, right?” because ever since this ordeal started, I’d been waiting for someone to join me in acknowledging the absurdity of it.
Being The Feast
Discovering, and delighting in, the genderqueer body
As a queer, genderfluid person, I’ve found with recent personal partners that they want me to show up as something — butch, femme — and my genderfluidity can be confusing. My partner might not know how to approach me. Are my breasts in play? Am I feeling like a man or a woman or some other gender? Does my clit exist at the moment? Has my phantom penis shown up?
Being Better To Your Fat Friend This Thanksgiving
Amidst all that cooking and eating, we are reminded of the bodies we don’t have, symbols of the lives we don’t lead.
You should start with the salad, said the friend’s aunt. And maybe finish with the salad! Just salad for you. She laughed, taking the bowl from my hands.
At the precise moment of abundance and connection, we focus on lack. We feel pressured to acknowledge that our bodies aren’t what we expected. Our new year’s resolutions came up short. We haven’t shrunk enough, haven’t shown the discipline we think we ought to. These little missives are pleas for forgiveness, preemptive strikes against the silent critiques we expect from those around us.
AND EVER AND ALWAYS OUR WEEKLY PLAYLIST FROM July!
