She took him on a weekend getaway to fuck him for the last time and say goodbye.  She would be married in six days.  Not to him, but he was in love with her anyway.  He was in love with her while she wore another man’s engagement ring.  He was still in love with her when he kissed me and I fell in love with him. 
 
He said I shouldn’t be with him.
 
I told him I could wait until he got over her. 
 
He said, “No.  You shouldn’t wait.”
 
I waited.
 
“This can only be for fun,” he said.
 
I do the opposite of whatever the dating rules are. 
 
Are you emotionally unavailable and wounded?
Let me get in bed with you.
 
Are you chasing a badass fantasy woman that isn’t me?
Let me declare my love for you.
 
He could no longer have her.  She had called it off with him days before her wedding.  So, he had her morph into his very own badass fantasy woman.  Like him, this fantasy woman had wounds.  She took them straight to the Altar of Fun.  At this Altar, you lay down your wounds and you will never feel them again.  In exchange, you receive a pair of pleather leg boots with 6-inch heels.  So fun.  It’s a win-win. 
 
Fucking.  Excellent. 
 
His badass fantasy woman was a pro at fucking.  She could also run a multi-million dollar company, double as a secret agent and shoot 50 rounds without flinching.  He dreamed that she would put him in her calendar, 11pm recurring, Friday nights, weekly.  But usually, it was a last minute text just before 11pm.  The spontaneous, unplanned fuck got him off even more. 
 
He wanted her, so I tried to morph myself to fit into this badass fantasy woman mold. I went to the Altar of Fun. I signed the contract. Fun Only. I surrendered my wounds.  I got the pleather leg boots. So fun.
 
I slept naked next to him for many nights. I watched his eyes flutter with dreams of his badass woman. With each passing night of fun, I became more empty. More forsaken. But I had signed the contract after all, this is how he said it would be. Make no bones about it.  

A long time passed before I decided to make bones about it for when I had surrendered my wounds, I also gave up my power. I returned to the Altar of Fun and demanded my wounds back.  They were hurled at me and I welcomed them.  Contracts signed at the Altar of Fun burn to ashes when you come in like wild fire, blazing in your truth. 
 
I kept my pleather boots.  They are in my closet.  I only put them on for me. 
 
I told him, “I love you.”  That was the way I said goodbye. I knew saying it would cause him to walk away forever.
 
Burning my contract at the Altar of Fun granted me another gift. It allowed me to fully embody the badass woman. In my wound return, she was reborn in me. The true badass woman dances.  She moves into vulnerability.  She opens her wounds in her own sacred ceremony, looks in the mirror, and says, “I love you. Yes.  Even that part.  I love you.”
 
The true badass woman fucks dating rules. She says, "My heart has never known rules and will never heed them.  My heart will only break rules again and again and again.” 
 
The true badass woman is honest. 

She listens to the little girl within her and holds her.  

She plays tag with the kids on the playground. 

She laughs.

​She roars.

She lays on the sand by the shore. She is intentionally without a towel so she can get good and sandy.

The badass woman looks directly in your eyes and shoots 50 rounds of love without flinching. 
 
She’s powerful.  And you’re scared.  I know. 
 
 
 

​He kissed my hand and the spell was broken.  Today’s spell was an encasement of three pasty brown walls.  The first wall read, “You can’t do this.” The second wall read, “You screwed up your life.”  And the last one read, “You aren’t enough.” 
 
From behind the rack of Time and Life and National Geographic magazines, he reached out his hand. I placed mine in his expecting a squeeze, but he led it to his lips. Crumble went the first wall.  Whoosh went the second.  Boom went the third.  I blinked several times in the swirl of debris.  A kiss on the hand is rare these days.  And you do have to be careful because a kiss on the hand has as much likelihood of putting you under a spell as it does waking you up from one. 
 
It was at a newsstand near my school that I first met the Newsstand man.  I walked by everyday on my way to teach.  I would buy gum and the occasional copy of Architectural Digest.  He allowed my students to scavenge the glossy magazines even when they had no intention of buying one.  He praised my teaching skills without knowing them.  Maybe he just knew who I was simply being in the space between my students and me.
 
Every couple of months I’d take students to the newsstand.  I’ve forgotten now what the assignment was exactly.  The Newsstand man would tell them how lucky they were to be in my class.  He’d look out into the distance and say something profound.  “Soon kids won’t know what magazines are.  We’re not here for long.  Just riding the last wave.  It’s coming. Almost at the shore.  The wave is almost gone.”
 
Then one day I noticed the roller doors were pulled down to the sidewalk and locked. The newsstand was closed.  The Newsstand man was gone.  

​Several years passed. 
 
Then, in another part of town, there was another sidewalk I’d been walking on all those several passing years.  And one day there he was! The Newsstand man! He was leaning back on his newsstand, arms crossed with one sneaker heel propped on the other’s toe. My old friend had been found. Print had not died yet.  The covers of hundreds of magazines shined bright behind him. The quirky conspiracy of the universe had set it up for our paths to cross again.  I waved and he remembered me.  I insisted we take a selfie because  that’s how you honor sacred moments.  We struggled  with the selfie.  A passerby offered to take the picture.

The routine, exactly as it had been before, was restored.  I would walk by.  There he would be, reading pages, contemplating the state of humanity and the universe.
 
But today, the Newsstand man took it one step further.  He broke a spell with his kiss.
 
He lowered my hand from his lips.
 
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s really been feeling like a battle lately.”
 
He squinted.  His blue eyes cut through the swirling bits of rubble.  He said:

“If it’s not a battle, you ain’t living.”
 
 
 
 
 
 

I walk in circles around her chair.  Her chest is secured with rope.  I pull out the gauze and cover her lips. As it unravels from my fingertips, I bring it around the back of her head and circle her lips again. Round I go, wrapping her mouth.  Her blue eyes well with tears but she keeps silent.  She knows how.  She’s been through this before.  Many times.  She’s five.  She’s a big girl now. 
 
The masking tape secures the gauze, but I want to make sure, so I take it round her head too.  Once around.  Twice.  Thrice.  Blond strands of hair get stuck to the tape.  Her eyes are angry now.   Her forehead turns red.  But she still does not make noise.  Her little feet that cannot touch the floor swing out from the chair just a little to let me know that if she hadn’t learned better she might throw a tantrum.  But she has learned.  I’ve taught her.
 
In one flash of divine grace, she manages in her silence to tell me that she is me.  She is the little girl in me.  The more I refuse to create, the more I silence her.  I suffocate her.  I inflict the violence simply by not picking up my pen.