I had only a minute while I waited for the doctor to meet my patient. I grabbed a plastic cup and a pregnancy test from the lab and slipped into the bathroom. This is one of the perks of working at an abortion clinic – all the pregnancy tests you can take. My husband Jeff and I had been trying to get pregnant with our second child. But every month when I placed those two ... [Continue Reading]
My Month as a Slut
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My sister clapped her hands and said, “Let’s get dressed up like sluts and go to the Beverly Center!” This is how it started. For my thirteenth birthday, my parents had gotten me tickets to fly down to LA. It was my first plane ride by myself. “I’m sure you’ve done this a thousand times,” the stewardess had said when she shepherded me on the flight early, ... [Continue Reading]
Disappearances Have to Disappear
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Bodies meant nothing to me. When they jammed into me on the metro or the bus, rather than tensing, pushing, or fighting for some tiny symbolic personal space I learned to let all my air out and flatten myself into the crowd, into the wall; to press myself out of my own body. I became good at it, nonchalant like the sweat running down your arm can mix with mine and your ... [Continue Reading]
The Wind’s Keeper
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We smelled the island before we could see it. The pungent, acid scent hit us like a wave. “Oh my God,” I said, scrunching up my nose. “What is that?” It was past midnight, and we were heading to Volcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands blanketed with black, sulfurous ash. In the distance, I could see the faint glow of lights as we motored through the ... [Continue Reading]
A Year of Vela
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Today, September 6, 2012, we at Vela celebrate the first anniversary of the magazine. There is much to come, but before we get to all of that, we offer these six short retrospectives on how and why Vela came to be and what Vela has meant to us, as writers of travel-inpsired creative nonfiction, and as writers who happen to be women. Molly: In her lovely ... [Continue Reading]