Month: May 2025

After eighteen years, I know: what you like to eat (no heavy cream, no frozen food, at least one vegetable in every meal), what you wear (a Patagonia fleece goes with everything, including dress pants), what you’re hiding when you say I have eclectic music tastes (U2 is your favorite band), the noise you’ll make when I say the school called (that’s why I don’t bother to tell you anymore), what you really mean when you say, we should work out together again (I should lose weight).

 

What I know about you (next level): every New Year’s Day, you write your goals on a yellow legal pad, referring to yourself in the third person—Philip will run a marathon, Philip will increase sales by ten percent—and you tear the page out, tape it next to the bathroom mirror. I feel like there’s a page taped next to my face too, Ways for My Wife to Improve. Maybe you see it every time you look at me. Maybe that’s why you never look in my eyes.

 

What I know about you (back from when we used to talk): you’re embarrassed that you’re not circumcised. In high school, they made fun of you in the locker room—it was the nineties, you were small, Phil the freak—and one day they pinned you to the shower wall and wouldn’t let you go until the gym teacher walked in and said knock it off, and at twenty-seven, when we were dating, you confessed you thought about getting the surgery, but you were too shy to talk to your doctor, insurance probably won’t cover it, and I held you closer after you told me this, and assured you it didn’t matter, because it didn’t, of course, not at all. I like you just the way you are, I whispered. In fact, I loved you, but I was waiting for you to say it first.

 

What I know about you from your internet search history: why we haven’t had sex in three years. I’ll never look like those women. Honestly, I can’t blame you. Who would want this? When I change, I go in the bathroom and lock the door. I turn my back to the mirror.

 

What I know about you (as a dad): you never expected to have a son like him. He is supposed to like sports, not anime. He’s supposed to like girls, or if not girls, then boys. What the hell is ace spectrum? He’s supposed to want to get a driver’s license. He’s not supposed to put his head on his desk in English class, refuse to talk, so that he ends up spending half the day in guidance.

You say, I wish I could put my head down every time I don’t feel like doing my work.

It’s not like that.

 And I wish my boss would come along and say, hey, Philip, having a bad day? I’m so sorry to hear that. Why          don’t you leave early?

It’s not just a bad day. It’s different than that.

He’s like me. I saw it in him from the time he was little.

 

The memory I replay: it was early spring, after a rain, the three of us walking by a laundromat. Our son (four years old) stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes wide, that’s the most beautifulest smell, there must be laundry-mats and rain in heaven. He asked if we could sit outside, and you said no, we’re late for a movie, I said, just for a minute, and you said, we’re not hanging out at a laundromat, that’s ridiculous.

You taught him how to be quiet.

And you blame me?

You baby him.

Well. Probably.

But I feel like I’m loving him for the both of us.

 

What I don’t understand: why last night, when I got into bed (after I did the dishes, after I helped with math homework, after I returned work emails), and I rolled over, paperback in hand (Finally! The finish line!), you touched my back (over my pajamas of course), just at the bottom of my spine, where there’s a little divot.

I like this spot, you said.

But it was Book 3 of the Outlander series.

 

What you couldn’t possibly know: there is a flattened part of me that (sometimes, almost) flutters toward you. And another part of me that stamps it down.

This morning, you called across the kitchen to our son, hey it’s a rest day for me (marathon training), want me to take       you to the comic store?

I know you hate the comic store.

He shrugged, eh, put in his earbuds, walked away, and for just a split second, your face looked like a gum wrapper on      the floor.

 I need to shave.

After, alone in the quiet, in the remnants of breakfast and opportunity, I chided myself: why didn’t you touch his hand just now? Why didn’t you face him last night?

 

What I didn’t know until just now (next level): after eighteen years, I don’t know you at all.

I opened the bathroom door. I was going to tell you, thank you for trying, I think he already has plans with friends (not exactly true). But you weren’t shaving at all, you were naked, stepping out of the shower, oh sorry! (I haven’t seen you naked in three years), and that’s when I realized: holy shit, you did it, you actually did it.

You had the surgery.

Your most tender pink skin: sliced by a blade, peeled away.

When?

Last month. I was going to tell you on our anniversary.

But why?

I thought maybe you’d want me again. I thought maybe you’re disgusted by me.

 

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Priscilla Thompson works as a psychotherapist. She has published in South Carolina Review, The Write Launch, and most recently, Lunch Ticket. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, three kids, and two Boston Terriers.

We notice the downy hairs on our legs growing darker. We wonder what we should do. Gretchen’s mom shows her how to shave, so we all walk to the CVS one Saturday and split a package of pink Bic razors, single blade, because we don’t know any better and they’re all we can afford with our dog walking money, our allowances, the coins we scrounged from beneath our recliners.

Alone in our bathtubs, we carve holes in our shins before we learn to be gentle with ourselves, sloughing off baby hairs, leaving a prickly white soap film that lingers on the surface of the water.

When hairs begin to sprout in our armpits, we go for them, too. We lather on deodorant as though hiding a secret. We don’t talk about the changes. We steal glances at each other when we think no one is looking.

Sammy starts to wear a bra, and so we all do, too. We notice, we compare. We begin to measure – who, when, how much, how big?

At first, we compare to convince ourselves we’re normal, we’re just like everyone else.

But then, we begin to compare to convince ourselves we’re better. We’re better than Virginia, whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Better than Courtney, whose breath smells like the water in a vase of dead flowers. Better than Monica, who still plays with dolls (we hear). Better than Katie, on the day a red spot blooms on the back of her white shorts. We snicker, relieved it wasn’t us.

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Originally from Minneapolis, Nicole Desjardins Gowdy now lives in the foothills outside Los Angeles. She studied creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she received a University Book Store Award for Academic Excellence for her senior thesis, a collection of short stories. Her writing has been shortlisted for the WestWord Micro Fiction Prize and has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, West Trade Review, MoonPark Review, Literary Mama, and more. Connect with her on Instagram @nicoledesjardinsgowdy.

In the back of the car, you show me your chest, and I show you mine. We agree that they are both concave and too much alike. We are eight years old, and we are often left to our own in the stifling heat of the old Buick. We pretend to go on errands and stop at the grocery, garden, and liquor stores. We catch the seeds of popped dandelions, the heads remind us of our grandparents, and we wonder when they will pop, and if like generals and presidents, they will be paraded around town in hand-crafted caskets pulled by solemn horses. Until someone dies or calls us in for supper, we hold hands and point out the windows, calling each other darling and sugar, our feet pushing on the pedals, the other looking out the wide windshield, peeking through the dust, hoping for once the car would lurch forward and we’d be on our way, to someplace where we could do more than imagine.

I’m in the backseat, head stuck between the two front seats, watching you paint your toenails. The windows are up, the cranks barely working, so the smell of dust lies under the stiff scent of the polish. Somewhere in the air, you smell of strawberries and kiwi, and I lean closer, my chin resting on your shoulder. We only talk of possibilities now. No more imagined bank robberies or running away to the Everglades. You hide what you can from me in your clothes and talk of other boys, our classmates: their eyes, the curl of the hair on the back of their neck, or the way the sun highlights the muscles of their shoulders. Tell me about your crush, you say. Does she dance? Can she sing? Does she swim laps in the early morning while the rest of us sleep? I can’t answer. My ability to imagine anyone else is lost in the heat of the car. Your turn, you say, blowing on your toes and scrunching your nose. I hold out my hands, afraid to show you my feet. You can’t hide these, she says.

Graduation night, the hats have been thrown, the pictures were taken, and our parents have gone back to their gin and television, to ignoring each other, especially when one mother cries, and another father complains about the cost of tomorrow’s open house. Midnight, and I find you curled up in the backseat, head loose from the two beers you drank to be polite, the hiccups coming like irregular clashes of a cymbal. We hold our breath together, faces plumped like stretching balloons, until you pop, a pause, heightened until my mouth opens, and your tongue slides in, our lips meeting, teeth clashing, sparking until you pull away.

“Now that’s a way to get rid of hiccups,” you say, wiping away our spit.

I lean back in, but your hand is on my chest.

“Let’s just leave it there. Then we’ll always want more,” you say.

You give in first, leaving me in the dark, the windows fogging up, left alone with only the things I could imagine.

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Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. His writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Laurel Review, and elsewhere. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.