Tag: The Rumpus

A writer examines issues of racism he witnessed while growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, and running a grocery store with his father: When I went back for an event for my college fraternity, I introduced myself to one of the new guys, my brother who is the first ‘black guy’ in my fraternity. When I […]

A son attempts to get an unpublished manuscript of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle for his dying mother, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader: Mom is completely nonplussed. I am a little hurt, but then I realize I haven’t seen Mom once the past several weeks with her hands on a paperback or her Kindle. […]

Cheryl Strayed’s collection of advice pieces, ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’, is one of our favorite collections.

A woman confronts memories of abuse: When I was little, I thought the word was ‘rake.’ I imagined a man standing over a woman, in a pile of leaves. He dragged a rake over her naked body. I imagined it happening in my own back yard. Now, as an adult, I’m not sure that this […]

An open conversation with a man who pays for sex, and why he does it: Rumpus: With any other job, it would be “working an extra shift” the doing more in order to buy shoes or pay for a vacation, but you’re also talking about another aspect of sex work: The part where one crosses […]

On Manny Pacquiao and gay marriage: It’s here at this church that Manny Pacquiao comes to pray after his fights. He kneels down and gives thanks. In that same way we knelt with a rosary all day when my kuya died of AIDS. All day for seven days, with lots of food, and lots of […]

On the balance between admiration and friendship. A writer strikes up an email relationship with the author he most admires, Leonard Michaels: In his work Lenny exhibited incisiveness, self-awareness, and control, and yet in life he sometimes appeared to me to be innocently childlike. He was often very emotionally candid. He talked freely and unguardedly […]

Confronting a letter writer who fears he may be too ugly for a romantic relationship: This, sweet pea, is where we must dig. You will never have my permission to close yourself off to love and give up. Never. You must do everything you can to get what you want and need, to find ‘that […]

What it’s like to be a bisexual man in a world that wants you to choose between being either gay or straight: Recently, on OKCupid, a woman messaged me: “Are you truly into ladies, and if so, what type? Finding a truly bi man is like finding a unicorn.” If I’m a unicorn where I […]

Reflecting on the bonds between women, often overlooked or underappreciated, and how these bonds will help the writer in her time of need: I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had […]

This is mostly the truth. It was 1958 and Barbara Jean was 27 years-old. In Seattle, just before midnight she had a fight with my grandfather after returning from a summer party. Her three daughters all less than 8 years-old, were in bed when she retreated into the closet and as my copy of her […]