The fastest I ever solved a Rubik’s Cube was in fifty-eight seconds.

When I was younger, my brother and I built a drive through restaurant in a spare bedroom out of moving boxes and construction paper called the Coconut Cafe. We sold orange juice and hotdogs. I was in my shop the other day and found that I had unintentionally stocked both ceramic orange juice vases and plastic hotdog hair claws. You can take the girl out of the Coconut Cafe but you can’t take the Coconut Cafe out of the girl.  

I get really angry and upset when a stranger is rude to me and usually after a confrontation I spend the rest of the day thinking about what I would have yelled back at them if I had the guts to fight back, boiling inside. It definitely ruins my day. The rage goes from zero to a hundred, but usually I don’t do anything about it except sulk and then remember that they were probably having a bad day themselves.

Before I lost my virginity as a teenager, I would pray to god every night that I wouldn’t die a virgin. 

I had a dream in college that I was running over a bridge sinking in the water towards the Eiffel Tower, and when I finally reached it, I put my palm flat on it and woke up. The dream made me want to go to Paris, to touch the Eiffel Tower, so for years I tried to learn to speak French, I listened to French music, I ate croissants, I learned the names of the arrondissements, and I convinced my partner of six months to go to France with me. When we got to Paris, we saw the Eiffel Tower, went underneath it, spent time with it. When I got back to New York, I realized that I didn’t even touch it while I was there. I feel stupid every time I think about it. So much of my life spent on a dream that I didn’t even actually fulfill because I forgot. 

Even though it might be the easiest constellation to find, any time I look up at the sky, anywhere I am, I always find Orion’s Belt and think about the time my friend Erin said from the hot tub one Christmas night in Arkansas, “Look, you can see Orion’s Dick.” I’ve been looking at it in the sky for the past fourteen years.

A couple of months ago, I came across a dating profile that said “Olives are disgusting” in its bio and I just can’t stop thinking about it. Like, any time I see or eat or crave olives, I think about this girl hating olives so much that she had to put it in her bio to let her dating prospects know this about her ahead of time. This really bothers me.

I kind of always knew I was queer, but just didn’t have the words for it for a really long time. I also kind of knew that maybe I was poly, too, but again, it took me so long to understand all these things I didn’t know about myself that were deep, deep down. These things feel one in the same, seeing that they were both inside of me the whole time but I didn’t think I was allowed to let them thrive in this world.

My parents got divorced when I was in second grade, so basically my whole life I’ve seen both my parents in and out of failed marriages and relationships. I don’t think it fucked me up really that bad, I think maybe the most important things that I really got out of it was two birthdays every year and an indifference, maybe even an aversion, towards marriage. 

I feel my best when I’m sitting in the sun. 

My first Internet password, in which variations of it are still in use today, was based off of three separate crushes I had all at the same time in middle school. 

The second time I ever full on sexted someone, I got up to use the bathroom before going to bed afterwards and tripped on an ottoman in the dark and nearly passed out. I barfed at two am in our bathroom and then made my partner drive me across the Hudson River to the hospital because the episode triggered my period cramps and I thought I was dying. I fell asleep in the car and woke up as he was pulling back into our driveway after driving across the bridge and then turning around to come home. I felt fine again. The sexting was about a fantasy that took place in a church, I like to think that the whole ordeal that followed was god punishing me.

My first girlfriend was also named Ashley.

A few years ago I really wanted to have a baby, so I began to track everything about my cycle and I learned that for years, since high school even, I’ve been feeling ovulation pain. I feel it most months and I find it fascinating to know what my body is doing and when its doing it. 

As I get older, I have a harder and harder time accepting change. I used to love doing things on a whim, not having a routine. But now a lot of the time when I do that, when I experience change, I get anxiety. A long adjustment period exists now. It’s annoying, its inconvenient. It feels terrible.

A life dream of mine is to be an extra in a high school party scene on tv or in a movie— but I don’t know how much longer I actually have until I can no longer pass as a high schooler on screen. Probably a little bit longer, aren’t most of the high schoolers on tv played by thirty year olds?

I just experienced my first mutual breakup less than a week ago. We didn’t fight and we didn’t yell at each other. It was really sad and really really hard. I’ve never stayed friends with any of my exes, all of my relationships have had pretty terrible endings. It feels weird to feel this way around a breakup minus the anger and resentment, its a new feeling I’m trying to understand and be okay with. 

The first time I felt gay feelings for another girl was at band camp in seventh grade. The girl in line behind us at the talent show started playing her electric guitar on stage and put a photograph of her boyfriend on the pick guard as she played. I felt enraged but I didn’t know why at the time. I didn’t realize until about a year ago that what I was feeling was Gay. 

My favorite color is pink. Its been pink for a long time, maybe since high school, but I don’t remember the first time I started saying it, because at one point in my life, it was blue. 

I’m an Aries. I don’t know a lot about astrology but when I tell people that I’m an Aries, they usually laugh and look at me and say, “Oh that makes sense.” I wonder if they just say that about every sign, or if I am so obviously an Aries that that’s what they were thinking already.

I’ve always wanted to live somewhere out west where its warm, but relationships, and perhaps the comfort of knowing the east keep me from moving there, and I wonder if I’ll ever end up there. 

I have an obsessive personality— if something sparks my interest, I’ll go all in and then fall off when I’ve had my fix. This includes hobbies, foods, tv shows, art projects, learning about something new and probably even people. I absorb the thing I become obsessed with until it becomes me. 

I’ve never had someone who was close to me die before.

I hate Christmas, its my least favorite holiday and I’m always so glad when its over with. 

If I could ditch my life, my dream job would be a production assistant on Survivor.