Holly Brickley

No.” I took too big a gulp of coffee and burned my throat. “I have no talent, just opinions about people who do.”

Columnated ruins domino”

The upright

It was just what I needed as a teenager, even though I had no trauma to speak of beyond a persistent invisibility. (Anyone else have a sports hero for a brother? It takes a surprising amount of family effort to prop up that kind of muscular talent: driving to neighboring counties for
games, quizzing him on the playbook, saving for gear. My thing was academics, which required very little of anyone else.)

That’s, like, the ninth dumb thing I’ve heard you say in twelve years of friendship,” she said. “Divided by four years, that means you’ll probably say three dumb things at college. Not enough to be statistically significant.”

and before I knew it my hip-hop confession had come tumbling out of me: I didn’t get it, I needed melody, I was too distracted by liberal guilt to enjoy the parts of it I did like. This was a more acceptable thing to say back then, but it was still extremely uncool. And I went all the way: all those white boys in my high school dressing in FUBU, I said, calling their cheerleader girlfriends “bitches,” then going home to McMansions bought with inherited wealth from social programs that excluded Black people—it made me cringe, I said.

letting me off the hook

Fight the Power

Rage Against the Machine

Don’t Worry, Be Happy”