Thing is: that day after Ma’s passing wasn’t our first time. There had been another time, just one. In the Texan desert, high on weed and shrooms, Chuy lay beside me in the back of his pickup truck, and I liked that my body was there, next to his body. I didn’t see colors or any crap like that, and the world didn’t twist and turn the way people tell you it’s gonna be. I was just very hot. My body oozed vapor, warm and sticky. I ran my hand all over my skin as if waking up to it. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t ugly either. It was alright. Alright. What a fucking bitch I’d been all this time, hating on something that didn’t need hating. I touched myself: my stomach, my cheeks, my hands, my arms, my stomach again, then—when I’d gathered a bit of strength—I touched myself there. How weird, to have this thing there. Long and bumpy and hairy. Or not too long, but long enough, and outside, out into the world, taking space. Not that I wanted to not take space, but how strange, too, to take space. Sometimes, I would stand in front of a mirror and cry and hate it and squeeze it like you would squeeze a pimple. I wanted to pop it until it bled, scratch it, erase it like chalk. Why was it stuck on me? What was this thing? What was a body—the limits of it? I looked down, pressing it, then at Chuy, who was also looking down. Down at me. Instead of squeezing it this time, or clawing at it, I took it out for him. He wanted it, right? He placed his hand, cold, on the skin, and he pulled it down and up and down, then rested his chest against mine and kept on pulling. Then he kissed it, and I tried not to turn away, I tried not to, I tried.