Rachel R White

It started on a highway in rural Kentucky. We passed an adult superstore in the middle of a cornfield, the kind with a retro name like “The Jewel Box” or “Pure Romance,” I can’t remember which.

I was brimming with it: passion, obsession, all of the highs an extramarital affair can buy. And he… he was playing pillow queen.

The DJ queues the “Jock Jams” hit, “Ya’ll Ready For This?”

It is a depressing realization to come to: The fact that, despite my best efforts, I am straight and will remain in this heterosexual quagmire, needing, lusting, wanting men for the rest of my life.

I’ve been watching the twins hit on girls for hours. At the Soho gallery–where they were part of a group show–one of the twins cozies next to a girl eyelash extensions and a wide-brim hat. He mutters: “I have a crush on you. You’re a rich girl, aren’t you? I’m sayin’…  you’re the type of chick I’d like to impregnate.”

It always ended this way. Late afternoon and again in bed, staring at the wall. 3 pm…it could collapse you, the way the sunlight comes in, angular, moving, to only again disappear.

The red carpet at the annual AVN porn awards is in full swing, even though it looks like a stage still being set. For some reason I’d imagined such an event would take place outdoors: porno-queens gliding by in glittering dresses waving as trade journalists snap photos amidst some palm tree studded backdrop.

The thing with the dead boyfriend is that in my dreams he is there so vividly. We meet in the dreamspace both laughing. Of course you aren’t dead, my dream self thinks. Of course. I knew that somehow all along.

Susan Sontag wrote that to photograph people is to violate them, seeing them never as they see themselves; Amanda Bynes tweeted that she would prefer if press only used her selfies.

“I am only interested if you do it side by side,” I type.

In a story like this, do we assume that because the writer is a woman, she — like all women — has learned that her body is her ultimate value? And that if it doesn’t reach certain standards — is not over exercised, primped, plucked, starved — she becomes unworthy as a human being?

How do I look while taking out the trash? While slumped in a chair at work? While crying during this movie? We watch a celebrity like Jennifer Aniston with the awareness of ourselves being watched.