Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Confessions.
Chapter 27: Rite of Passage. Content Warning.
I was using the delivery service I knew from my Greenpoint days and was getting coke any time I could scrape together at least 17 or 18 dollars, which was the minimum, I discovered, that these guys would accept for a 20 bag. But I was exhausted from having to earn that 17 dollars, and all the networking and phone calls and texts and follow-ups.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 25: A Solitary Profession. Content Warning.
Not long after I relapsed and had steady work again and was back on my own, and living in a house in Kensington. I had bought a cheap twin mattress and put it on the floor in the corner. The place had ants so I bought ant-killer and sprayed the floor around my bed—that is, when I was lucid enough to notice them approaching.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 21: Businesswoman. Content Warning.
My first explicit deal took place the night of my 26th birthday. I met my dealer at the time – I think his name was Carlos, I have no idea how I met him but it was probably through someone I partied with in Greenpoint, or maybe someone at work, and he ran a delivery service – at some bar in the city. I had no plans that night, no one had asked me to hang out – not even Brian – or even knew or cared that it was my birthday. I might have grieved over this fact it if I stopped and really thought about it, or cared about anything other than getting my shit. So I was convivial and flirtatious, and told him it was my birthday.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 18: Toughening Up. Content Warning.
I had been with Rosemont Publishing, a small academic outfit in bumfuck NJ and my first job out of school, for about a year when my colleague and object of lust, Ben, found a new job. I must have applied for a job with the same company without realizing who they were because one day I came back to my apartment in Highland Park and discovered a message on my answering machine for an Editor position with LexisNexis. It took me a few conversations with Ben to realize it was the same place he was going.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 14: Slut-in-the-Making. Content Warning.
Toward the end of high school, I got a scholarship to go to Adelphi University out in Nassau County. I had also gotten a scholarship to an architecture school in Rhode Island, but Mother and Father pleaded solvency, claimed they couldn’t cover the remaining cost and made too much money to qualify for financial aid—and I was forbidden to take out student loans, and didn’t know that I didn’t need my parents’ permission to do so.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 13: Constellation of Pleasure. Content Warning.
I didn’t notice I had gotten big until that moment I awoke to a new body consciousness; but, once I did, it skyrocketed to the position of my single greatest problem, the biggest looming obstacle to my happiness. Paradoxically, on some level I perceived that the extra weight would render me unattractive, so that men – especially Father – would be deterred from commenting on my form. But eventually I came to realize: It didn’t work.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 3: Betrayed by Biology. Content Warning.
I can’t remember where I was when Father got home that day. Probably, I was somewhere inside the house; maybe I was in the living room? Maybe sitting cross-legged on the dingy, frayed oriental rug that had tufts of cat and dog and probably human hair tangled in its tassels at either end; the rug that, like many of our possessions, was a relic rescued from my great-grandmother’s house when she died, and which had become gruesome, having been relegated from her elegant home that was filled with her art, and her piano, and whatever is the stench of the civilized class – to this ranch-style 3-bedroom set a little too far back from the road in a Suffolk County town that didn’t even have sidewalks. Maybe I was hunched over the old, beat-up chest that was our makeshift coffee table, haplessly engaged and playing with my toy horses and their little dolls, in their little horsey outfits – and just lost in play, constructing little horsey personalities to each doll according to their plastic expressions, making the horses pretend-gallop and race each other and even talk, sometimes.
By DB Maddox6 months ago in Confessions
My Top 3 Best and Worst Money Choices
Let's start with this: I don’t really have regrets with how I’ve used my money. Yes, I definitely consider some of how I’ve spent money to be a mistake, but I’m an optimist. More than that: I’m a lifelong student. I’ve learned from these mistakes.
By Athena Pajer6 months ago in Confessions
From Pennies to Purpose
Part 1: Broke, But Not Broken I graduated in the spring of 2016 with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature, a handful of writing samples, and a student loan statement that read like a horror story. I had \$38,000 in student debt, a used car with an overheating problem, and an unpaid internship at a small publishing house. I lived in a shared apartment where I paid \$650 a month for a room that could barely fit a twin bed.
By noor ul amin6 months ago in Confessions
