There is a kind of sexual urgency in the air since human touch became a scarcity. The prospect of a complete lockdown will see single people cooped up with nothing but Netflix and toys purchased from the kind of store you wouldn’t window shop with your grandparents. I can feel it. A glance at the…
A screech of, “GET ME IN THAT FUCKEN POOL!” rattles the oven air. Through the haze of red wine fumes baking off my body and the pain of sticky thongs rubbing on sweating, fluid-filled feet, I see the heavenly azure expanse that is the pool and quicken my hobble towards it.
My friend Ebony and…
“You’d be more attractive if you smoked and were less of a feminist,” he slurs, sloppily, arm slung like a dead weight over my shoulder as I walk him home after yet another drunken escapade.
These words were not those of a nemesis nay, not even an acquaintance. No, instead these words came from someone…
During my stay in Japan, I observed a lot of fortune-telling in Tokyo. I write “observed” because I found it difficult to get my own fortune told given that my Japanese extends no further than, “bīru, kudasai” – one beer, please. I write “difficult” because it is a nice way of saying that I was…
For the first time on this trip, the cocaine looks unappealing.
“I think I’m over it. I’ll just drink.”
My mood is low -- mind and heart somewhere else, with someone else -- and in this brief moment, not even the exotic evening charms of Isla Mujeres can hold me here. I let my mind…
On training wheels, my older sister used to race me. If she won, she would get an orange-flavoured Chupa Chup. If I won, we would both get an orange-flavoured Chupa Chup.
She always let me win.
At four, or some there-about appropriate age, I was hot off training wheels. But I never got back on…
"The game is called Presidents," one of the French girls is saying, gesturing excitedly the way people explaining card games do, her words coming to me through a haze of smoke. "And the aim of the game is..."
But I can't catch what she's saying. Right now, I'm the dumbest, slowest version of myself, my…
“Finding the one” is a concept I am utterly fascinated by, but I also find it deeply puzzling. What is it that fuels peoples’ desire to continue trying after so many failed attempts?
For me, this urge doesn’t exist. At a mere 20 years old, with two failed relationships already behind me, I don’t have…
Like many young women who’ve watched the Abba-inspired Mamma Mia! films, I was recently struck by the urge to relocate to Europe and have unprotected sex with three strapping lads before settling down on a Grecian island to raise a daughter with questionable patrilineage.
As I mark two notches in my Spanish belt, the correlations between…
Sometimes, I’m proud to be an American. When repping my country abroad, I’ll admit to rubbing the domination of the USA Women’s Soccer Team in the faces of cheeky Brits and wine drunk Frenchmen.
But for some other things, aka Trump-related things, an entirely different emotion radiates from within. Shame.
In a time of worldwide…
Prologue
Two lanky gentlemen are standing in a visa application line at the Japanese consulate in Delhi.
Mr Sajjan: “Mr. Sharma, remind me again why we're exporting Indian drivers, of all things? Mr Sharma: Sajjan Ji, it's just another ploy by the opposition to trick the ruling government into embarrassing themselves. A conspiracy, I tell…
I'm mid-flight, well into the notorious Sydney-to-Doha 15-hour leg, and I know it's time to change my menstrual cup. I procrastinate, dreading the tiny cubicle and the terrifying sound of the aeroplane toilet flush.
In retrospect, a bad choice. But, as we know, hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Fast forward a few hours and we've…