The Long Slide
by Bee Sacks

“So she’s basically half your age,” Aren clarified.

Jamie hesitated. From under Aren’s arm, Heather flashed her an apologetic look. “Right,” Jamie said. Why had she thought Aren would be . . . what? Impressed? She pushed around the remnants of orzo on her plate.

Heather rubbed her husband’s shoulder. “Babe,” she said.

But Aren went on. “What do you even talk about with a twenty-six-year-old?”

Jamie decided to keep it light. “Pronouns,” she said. “That’s all they care about, pronouns and consent.”

Aren frowned but Heather laughed.

“Queers today are so sensitive,” Jamie continued.

Heather shook her head. “Just wait until your fifteen-year-old is telling you you’re canceled.”

“Where is Ellie?” Jamie asked. The one-hundred-thousand-dollar parasite, Heather had called the kid back then—back when she and Aren did real IVF, not just a turkey baster and a gay friend’s jizz in Tupperware like the old dykes; back when they were all getting used to finally having money; back when Jamie and her ex could finally marry.

Instead of answering the question, Aren said, “They’re inspiring, this generation.” He glanced at Heather in such a way that Jamie sensed this was part of something larger and ongoing between the couple. “Their freedom makes us more free,” he said. Significant pause. “All of us.”

Jamie envied his authority: how he framed his opinions as facts. How quickly he had taken to manhood. She and Aren used to be one in the same: mascs in white T-shirts, inked in the hearts and knives of American classic. Since he began taking T, Aren was stronger. Also, his hairline was receding.

“Does she work at the shop?” Heather lived for drama.

“Are you insane?” Jamie said.

“What’s her name?” asked Heather.

“Her—actually, their, I’m trying to be good—their name is Avi.”

Jamie knew she was messing up the damn pronoun thing. She, her, they, them. In bed, Avi had asked, “When you talk about me, what pronouns do you use?”

“She,” Jamie said, her hand in Avi’s hair and Avi’s head on her chest. She knew it wasn’t the right answer, but she didn’t want to lie.

Avi picked their head up. “I don’t like that.”

“I’m sorry.” Pause. “Aren’t you they and she, though?”

“Yeah, but can you try to use they for me?”

Avi’s room had dried roses hanging from the wall, dull with dust. Worn postcards were affixed with putty, all of them a little crooked—Nan Goldin, the Lady of Shalott, Saint Sebastian. The lamps were mismatched and the cheap, memory foam mattress had floral sheets. A girl’s room. No matter what pronouns anyone used, this was the room of a girl in her twenties who didn’t bother to clean the L.A. grime off her windowsill tracks. “I’ll try,” Jamie said. Adding, truthfully, “I want you to feel good.” It was tricky, though—like, Jamie was used to “nonbinary” being a word for androgynous dykes who were soft-launching trans masculinity. Hadn’t Aren been they, briefly, before settling on manhood? Avi had long hair and tits. Great tits that spilled over into her—ah, their!—armpits when they/she (Jesus Christ) lay naked in bed. Anyway, Jamie said she’d try: “Just be patient with me, okay? I came of age at a really different time.”

For dessert, Heather brought out lemon and olive oil cake. Jamie asked about Christmas plans, which for Aren’s family involved actual skiing. They talked about the latest war; they talked about that one TV show, that one movie. Eventually, the conversation turned, as it increasingly did, to the next year’s election. “There’s no way he’ll win this time,” Aren said, sounding so assured Jamie almost believed him.

Back at home, Jamie sat on the couch waiting for her painkiller to kick in. She hadn’t even tattooed anyone that day, yet she still felt the radiating ache in her neck, her wrists. Pain, pain, pain, but the dog’s chin nestled onto her thigh, so there was that.

Unbidden, a memory of her first Christmas with the woman who would become her ex-wife, the sad-looking parking lot tree they decorated with strings of popcorn that the dog—still so skittish from the shelter, tentatively sniffing around the house with a snout like a beagle and those too-big bat ears at attention—ate and barfed up all over the rug they’d bought together at a flea market. How her wife had cried not because of the rug but because she was worried about the dog. Bright red lipstick and dark eyes, blubbering. So pretty when she cried. In the end, she’d told Jamie to keep the dog: “I don’t want you to isolate yourself.” But maybe in truth she was glad to get rid of both of them. Was she fucking guys now?

Sick of her own thoughts, Jamie opened the stupid video app. Up first was this poodle who’d been learning to talk. Sort of: the poodle pressed buttons on a floor panel that his owners had trained him to use for simple words. Walk, walk, walk, a woman’s robotic voice intoned. It was one of those huge standard poodles with unsettlingly human proportions. Like a full-grown man on all fours. Walk, walk.

“Time for a walk?” the woman holding the phone cooed.

The poodle stomped on the same button. Walk, walk.

Jamie’s dog snored and yipped in her wordless sleep.

The next time, it was Jamie’s bed that she and Avi destroyed. It was a relief to be in her own home: clean walls decorated with evenly spaced prints—a few by Heather—in plain white frames. Eucalyptus sheets in a soft grey. Wood floors. The dog asleep on the leather couch in the living room, too deaf to be bothered by any fucking. For Jamie, home was an ordered place.

For all their differences, she and Avi were remarkably compatible in sex: secret needs that each could sense without the other articulating. Avi moaned involuntarily when Jamie plunged two fingers into her perfect, soft mouth. “What a good little—”

She stopped herself before saying girl.

“—bottom you are, sucking Daddy off like that.”

Avi nodded with pleading eyes. A recent boyish haircut had them looking like Joan of Arc, delicate as ever. For a part in a friend’s movie, they had said.

Together, Avi and Jamie spun fantasies that opened up parts of themselves hidden maybe from even themselves.

“What do you want?” Jamie asked, rubbing Avi’s clit softly, giving just enough to necessitate more.

“I want, I want,” Avi stuttered.

“Yeah?” Jamie began to take her fingers away.

“No!” Avi whined.

“Tell me what you want.” Jamie liked being stern. She gripped Avi’s chin with the hand not teasing her.

Almost a whisper: “I want you to fuck me.”

God, when Avi said it, Jamie felt every cell in her body align. Like she was thirty again without a thought of carpal tunnel.

“Please,” Avi panted, “I can’t come anymore.”

The covers were twisted, the fitted sheets pulled off from the corners, the pillows on the floor. The whole room smelled like their wetness, commingled.

“Okay, baby,” Jamie said, laying back onto a pillow. Avi rolled over onto her chest. Jamie, as always, had left her sports bra on.

Their breaths were syncopated.

“Do you ever like to, um, receive?” Avi asked tentatively.

“Sometimes,” Jamie said. Avi waited for her to say more, but Jamie didn’t want to explain all the feelings that came up when she let someone inside her—that helpless sense that maybe she really was a woman
—so didn’t. Instead she asked, “Have you fucked a lot of guys?”

Avi seemed to consider this, hesitating before finally saying, “Comp-het was a big part of my coming out journey.”

“Comp-het,” Jamie echoed. She hadn’t heard that phrase in a minute.

“Compulsory heterosexuality.”

She thought, Bitch, I knew that phrase before you were born. But said, “Like, being addicted to fucking?”

“Ha-ha,” Avi said. Her voice—sorry, their, their voice—vibrated on Jamie’s sternum. “Or maybe I mean compulsory cis-ness.” The way Avi was positioned, Jamie’s knee was between their legs. She could feel Avi’s wetness up against her.

“Right,” Jamie said, deciding to let compulsory cis-ness slide. “Right.”

“It’s complicated in my profession,” Avi said. “So much depends on presentation.”

“You mean the nannying jobs?” Jamie had been relieved to hear that Avi actually worked.

“I mean going out for auditions,” Avi said with a certain dignity.

Jamie surprised herself by not rolling her eyes at Avi. A kid with an outsized dream and a stupid day job—that was something she understood. Then again, she really, really, really did not want to hear Avi talk about their “craft,” so instead of saying anything else she kissed the top of Avi’s head, where the herbal scent of shampoo lingered.

Avi filled the silence. “Were you young when you came out?” they asked. “I mean, unless you find the concept of coming out to be like, performing for the straight gaze.”

“There are straight gays now?”

“No I just mean, the concept of coming out is tied to hegemonic—”

“I get it, I get it,” Jamie said. “My stepdad started calling me a bulldyke in middle school after I cut my hair.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Yeah, I moved out pretty young. What were you doing in middle school? Watching Glee?” These conversations made Jamie a little too aware that one not-too-distant day, she’d die.

Avi ignored the Glee joke. “It was hard to know where I fit in gay culture,” they said. “Like, have you read Stone Butch Blues?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jamie perked up. “That book gave me my life.” The relief Jamie felt was profound. Kids still read Leslie!

“Well, I remember feeling like I couldn’t locate myself in it.”

“You literally weren’t born when it came out.” Deflating, deflating.

“But in terms of the femme-butch dynamics.” Avi scooted positions to look up into Jamie’s face. “The roles felt so rigid, and where did I fit?”

“Rigid,” Jamie echoed. Maybe she was actually dead already. “Jesus Christ, I know you grew up with like, Bank of America sponsoring a float at Pride and Target selling Love is Love drones—”

Avi began to protest, saying something about anti-trans legislation, but Jamie barreled on.

“—but back then, we were just trying to survive.”

When Jamie was Avi’s age, a cop broke her arm at a protest. Smack, crack with the baton. The femme that Jamie was seeing at the time had paid the hospital bill. She would never tell Jamie how she’d gotten the money.

“I hear you,” Avi said. “But the way that gender was—”

“Is your name Abby?” Jamie cut in. She knew she shouldn’t ask this, but she was asking anyway. “Like, Abigail? Is that your real name?”

The stunned look on Avi’s face made them look especially young. “Did you just ask my deadname?”

Certain words were brandished like weapons in this generation. Deadname, biphobic, check your privilege, canceled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jamie said, hurrying over the words. “Look, I’m old, but I’m trying, okay?” She touched Avi’s chin. “Do you believe me that I’m trying?”

Avi hesitated.

“You can know my deadname, okay? If that’s what you want to call it.” Jamie felt like the older sibling who’d played too rough with the younger sibling, and now had to make her laugh before Mom came into the room and saw her crying.

“I don’t want you to—”

“Barbara, my name used to be Barbara.”

Avi cocked their head to the side with interest, which encouraged Jamie to keep going.

“My friend Heather named me,” she said. “Back before you were born, when we were living in Portland. It was so seedy then, I loved it.”

“Really?” Avi sounded incredulous.

“Yeah, before tech bros and microbrews,” Jamie said, “when rent was a few hundred bucks a month.”

“When did everything get so expensive?” Avi sighed.

Jamie ignored that. “Heather and I lived on saltine crackers and whatever cheese we could liberate from Fred Meyer.” Heather had an incredible shoplifting technique that involved wearing pantyhose.

“It must have been harder to steal stuff before self-checkout.”

“Oh we shoplifted everything. Well, except for books. We paid for our poetry.”

“I didn’t know you liked poetry.”

“You think cause I didn’t go to college I can’t read?”

Avi looked panicked.

“Canceled!” Jamie exclaimed, in a good humor now. “No, I’m kidding. Anyway, I can’t remember why Heather started calling me Jamie, but it stuck.”

“Did you two ever date?” Avi asked, touching the tips of Jamie’s fingers with the tips of their fingers.

“No, thank God,” Jamie said, almost to herself. Wouldn’t that have meant losing Heather eventually? Then to Avi, “Come here.” She kissed Avi deeply, relieved the deadname thing had passed.

After Avi left for work, Jamie lay in bed on her phone. Her hips grew sore as exhaustion, or maybe it was ancient grief, pooled in her. At times, she felt her body was filled with stagnant water. Too many years spent hunched over clients, needling them new skin. The dog snored.

Jamie scrolled past the cacophony of fear and violence and hate until she reached the talking poodle account. Each day, the freak learned new words. Treat, Later, Now. In the most recent video, it was Gone. The poodle slapped its paw down on its special mat. Gone, a robot voice intoned. “Yes, Dad is gone,” said the woman holding the phone. “Daddy is at work.” Gone, gone, gone.

Jamie wanted to show someone, so she sent a link of the clip to Avi. Have you seen this?

Avi only responded a few hours later, hiiii sorry the kids I nanny for were at a soundbath birthday party. Then, that’s not a bit about L.A. children. Then, but it could be.

That was another thing Jamie liked about Avi: they were from a real place in America, some suburb north of Chicago, not whatever L.A. was.

Avi texted again: i am obsessed with the talking dog!! do you think I could teach my cat to use that speech mat thingy??

Jamie found herself smiling down at her phone. How amazing, that someone so young and enthusiastic wanted to talk to her at all. She responded: Sure. That way, you can finally learn your cat’s pronouns.

They had a word for everything, queers Avi’s age. Demi-sexual, pan-sexual, homo-romantic, top-leaning, masc-presenting. Your entire identity could be dissected into hyphenates.

Imagine the poodle stamping it out: ambi-amorous kink-friendly switch.

Text from Heather: Ellie’s friends keep changing their names.

Jamie: Uh oh, did you deadname a kid?

Heather: Obvs I get changing your name! Like Aren! But maybe like pick one??

Jamie: Canceled!

Heather sent the eye-roll emoji.

At her shop, Jamie and a few veteran artists stood around the new kid’s station to watch her ink. Self-taught, this chick specialized in delicate pieces, no bigger than silver dollars, all made from tiny points—no linework, no shading. A smiling moon, a girl holding a hand-mirror up to herself. She was busy all day, every day. Everyone under forty wanted this now—the finest needle, the softest outline. They were so careful with themselves. Avi had a tattoo in this style, of course she did. A frail-looking snail outline, easy to cover up for auditions.

None of this would have flown when Jamie was coming up. Back then, it was a different world: grouchy blue-collar dudes who thought women belonged on pin-ups, not inking them. You had to be tough. Take no shit. Bold will hold: that was the doctrine. Bold will hold. Thick, true lines, none of this delicately spun girly stuff.

“These new machines are so quiet,” Jamie said, trying to muster something akin to authority.

The new girl, in gym shorts and platform clogs, didn’t look up. “Totally,” she said, making tiny dots that would surely fade in a year or two.

Jamie went to her accountant with all the goddamn paperwork from the shop.

She hated the paperwork. Hated writing out that old name in little boxes: B-A-R-B-A-R-A.

Avi would call that her “deadname.” Avi would call this “dysphoria.” But Avi had gone to college, so.

“Hey, I’m here for Norman,” Jamie said.

The receptionist, leafing through a file, said without looking up, “One second, miss.” Then she did look up, this older woman in a cardigan, and sort of did a double-take at Jamie—with her freshly-
trimmed fade, black hoodie, the tattooed knuckles (dead dyke in almost unreadable gothic letters)—and apologized, “Sorry, I mean,” then paused again, maybe trying to glean through Jamie’s hoodie if she had tits.

“I’ll just take a seat,” Jamie said.

Jamie tried not to think too much about who she’d be had she been born later. In Avi’s generation, for example. Would she have done the titty chop surgery? That wasn’t just for men now. You could be nonbinary, you could be anything you wanted according to these kids who knew no history, only their own freedom.

When Jamie got home, the dog was waiting on the couch, her tail pounding furiously. She struggled briefly to stand before giving up when Jamie came to her. “Hi, old lady.”

Thump, thump, thump went the curtain of her tail. White hairs on her little doggy chin now.

“Hi, old lady,” Jamie repeated, scratching the good girl’s ears.

It was a whole production getting her off the couch and outside to do potty. Bad hips. “Come on, old lady,” Jamie coaxed, helping her gingerly to stand. The vet had said that salmon oil in her food would help, along with pumpkin puree for her tummy.

The dog went on someone else’s lawn, legs shaking as she hunched to shit.

The first time Jamie slapped Avi, she didn’t ask, and right away she knew she’d fucked up. But it had felt so natural! She’d been hovering above Avi, neither of them fully unclothed yet, Avi’s shirt unbuttoned. No bra. Avi was teasing Jamie a little—pulling back from Jamie’s kisses. Jamie grabbed their jaw and Avi laughed in delight. They responded well to a little roughness, Jamie knew. Harmless threats, Are you going to be good for me, whispered into their neck while undressing them could make Avi moan. Jamie was good at this, she thought, hearing what someone wanted, watching how she responded and giving it to her.

Holding Avi’s face still in her hands, Jamie had descended for a kiss, feeling Avi wriggling under her weight. Avi turned her head at the last minute, laughing in delight. “Oh, you’re the boss now?” Jamie asked.

Avi’s pupils were wide with pleasure, blinking with animal alertness. “Maybe I am.” Breathy.

It looked like Avi was about to say something else when Jamie moved her hand back about three inches—really, no more than three inches—and slapped Avi on the face. Nothing crazy. Not super hard! Though the sound was a bit startling. Smack!

But as soon as she did it, Jamie knew something was wrong because Avi stopped squirming and grabbed her wrist. They were strong. Stronger than Jamie by far.

“No,” Avi said. Clearly, firmly.

Jamie still thought she could maybe maneuver the moment back into something sexy. “Oh, you didn’t think I would do it?” she teased.

“This is not a joke,” Avi said. “And this is not sexy.”

The grip on Jamie’s wrist tightened and she almost said, Hey, that hurts, but contextually that felt impossible. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Avi had not let go. “You will never slap me without asking first. Do you understand?”

Jamie considered protesting. Wasn’t sex supposed to flow, wasn’t that the fun of it? She opened her mouth, then closed it, finally saying only, “Yes.”

Avi let go of her wrist. “I like playing with power,” they said, their voice less edged now, “but only consensually.”

Jamie rolled off her so that they lay side by side. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. Maybe she was the fucked up one. “It won’t happen again.”

“I appreciate that,” Avi said. Such composure.

It had struck Jamie then that she really didn’t know them at all. But then Avi didn’t know Jamie, did they? Avi would never understand how happy people had been to see queers die. Never understand what it meant to leave your hometown on a greyhound bus with no real idea of what you would do when you got off—no Google Maps to look up a gay bar, no Internet at all. Avi would never understand what it meant the first time you saw a glimpse of yourself in someone—some tough old dyke in a white tee—not a glimpse of who you were but a version of yourself you wanted to meet. Avi would never understand how much unrecorded history of love and survival had unfurled just so they they they they they they could have this life, this freedom.

At the next dinner, Heather made it almost halfway through the meal before she cracked and asked Jamie, “So, how’s the twenty-six-year-old?”

Another dark, wintery night at Heather and Aren’s. Barely six p.m. and the night felt deep. The table was crowded with steamy soupy things. Heather looked cozy in a fuzzy yellow sweater; Aren’s glasses kept fogging up. Upstairs, Ellie the hundred-thousand-dollar teenager was doing homework.

“Exhausting!” Jamie exclaimed, slurping up soup. She had expected this question and had an answer ready. “It’s all consent this, consent that.”

“Jamie!” Heather chastised with delight.

“‘May I kiss you? May I touch your tit? Would you consent to me spanking you for being a bad girl?’”

Aren coughed.

“Queers used to be tough,” Jamie lamented. “Can you imagine these kids growing up the way we did?” She gestured with a seltzer can. “Once, back when we were all still drinking, some chick punched me in the mouth.” This had been after one poetry reading or another. “Just punched me in the mouth—a real punch! closed fist!—and pushed me into a bathroom stall to make out. Blood all over us.” Swig of seltzer. “My blood, and we’re making out.” What had happened to that girl? What happened to any of them? Dead or sober, dead or rich, dead or parents.

“It was a different time,” Aren said. His voice was deep; his forearms were strong. How naturally he became proprietary. Giving notes on the convo, weighing in, assuming some kind of default authority which must, she knew, serve him well in work meetings. A real man with a real daughter doing homework upstairs. A rich girl. A safe girl. Safer than any of them had ever been.

“I know it wasn’t better.” Jamie tore a piece of bread to mop the rosemary-infused oil off her plate. “But wasn’t it more real? Like, this girl—sorry but she is—this girl Avi wants me to, like, collaborate on some gender-expansive fantasy with her, but, like, is that connected with our history?”

“I thought Avi used they and them pronouns,” said a voice from the stairs.

Everyone looked up to see Ellie on the landing, slim and easeful in loose sweatpants and a tank top. Fifteen.

“Uh oh,” Jamie said, “Gen Z is coming for me.”

Ellie glided down the stairs. Graceful from a childhood of ballet classes, she perched on Heather’s knee. “How old are they? Avi?” She leaned forward to pick a glistening carrot off her father’s plate, bit it daintily.

It was Aren who answered. “Twenty-six.”

The way Heather squeezed her daughter’s arm conveyed, Jamie knew, We’ll talk about it later. When Heather was out in the world with Ellie and Aren, the three of them appeared so straight. There they were—another white family waiting to be seated at the Cheesecake Factory.

Ellie took a sip of her mom’s seltzer. Jamie remembered when she was born. Heather looked so punk in the hospital, her tattooed legs splayed—Karen in gothic letters on one thigh (the name Aren later abandoned), on the other, dogs humping (Jamie had done that one) and a mermaid with tits out (also that one)—these were the gates Ellie emerged from. Now, the girl had a French tutor. “Isn’t that like, if I dated someone in their forties?” Ellie said.

There was a pause, in which suddenly everything felt very delicate. Jamie aware of Aren, a man, and the respect you were supposed to give a man by respecting his daughter—what I do to those other girls I would never do to her, that extension of you. “No,” Jamie said carefully. “Not like that, because that would be illegal.” Pause. “And gross.”

Instead of directly responding, Ellie said, “Have you seen that talking dog?” She was already scrolling through her phone.

Her parents looked at each other confused, but Jamie understood immediately. “The poodle with the buttons!” she exclaimed. “Avi and I are obsessed.”

“Okay but the dog is depressed,” Ellie said.

“Join the club,” Jamie said.

“No, really,” Ellie looked up, her eyebrows arched. What is this insane glamour that all teenagers have? No wrinkles, no tattoos, no indication the world has hurt them. “Harold, that’s the dog, he understands death now.”

“What?”

“He understands that his owners will die,” Ellie said gravely. “And he’s depressed.”

Jamie remembered the barely inflected robotic voice, Gone, gone, gone. “Whoa, because of words.”

“Yeah,” Ellie nodded. “We trapped him in language or something.”

Aren and Heather exchanged a look of sentimental pride—articulate kid.

Ellie continued, “They put him on antidepressants.”

“The dog?”

“Yeah, I guess they can take Prozac.”

“No way.”

“For real. Here, look.” Ellie took out her phone. The four of them hunched over to watch a video of the weirdly proportioned poodle slapping the mat. Gone, gone, gone, the robotic voice was intoning.

The woman behind the phone protested. “But we’re all here,” she said. “Me and you and Daddy, we’re all here.”

Gone, the poodle kept signaling. Gone, gone.

The next time Jamie slapped Avi, she did it Avi’s way. It felt weird asking, but she did it.

It went like this: Jamie was sitting up against the headboard with Avi riding her strap.

“You like that, baby?” Jamie panted.

Avi nodded. Their face was not particularly expressive in this moment, and Jamie worried it wasn’t good for them, that she wasn’t making it good for them.

Without really thinking about it, just trying to find words that might bring Avi pleasure, Jamie said, “You’re just a boy who needs a big cock in them, aren’t you?”

The reaction was immediate. Avi scrunched their eyes closed in pleasure. “Oh God, yes.”

“Is that all you are?”

“Yes!” Avi called out.

“Say it.” Jamie said.

“I’m just a boy who needs your cock,” Avi whined.

It felt good, so good, to be inside them. With the strap-on, sure, but with words, the right words. “That’s right, baby, you milk this cock like a good boy.”

Avi was frantic now, roughly rolling their hips over the harnessed dick Jamie was wearing, each bounce sending zaps of pleasure right to Jamie’s clit.

“Does this good boy need a little slap?”

“Oh fuck.” Avi’s eyebrows were helplessly contorted, mouth open.

“I asked you a question, boy.”

Their eyes shot open. “Yes, please, yes, please smack me, Daddy.”

“In your pretty face? Are you sure you consent, baby?” Jamie teased.

Avi’s answer was a jumble of affirmatives and pleas.

Jamie smiled. She wasn’t thinking about her ex or the talking dog, she wasn’t thinking about who she was or who she could have been, she wasn’t even thinking about Avi, not really. She was thinking about how some moments are so perfect, so aligned, so fleetingly complete, that it feels like all of creation hinges on a single breath, the place where two bodies collide. Her open palm met Avi’s cheek. Firm but not hard, nothing that would leave a mark, not even redness. No trace would be left behind, nobody, nobody in the whole world, in the whole history of the world, would know what Avi and Jamie had done for each other, nobody but them.

Bee Sacks is a trans writer. They are the author of two novels: The Lover and City of a Thousand Gates, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Sacks’s work has been published in Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, Elle, and Electric Literature.