Author Archives: Claire Gordon

meet Lacina Coulibaly, dancer, professor choreographer Hometown Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso favorite american music The blues. Jazz. It’s improvised, like African dance. most flexible part of my body My upper body. My lower body grounds me, but then my upper body opens up, like a tree with the roots and the branches. My upper body is »

“Cigarette?” The cab driver extends his pack of Cleopatras. “La Shukran!” I reply — no thank you in Arabic — a phrase I’d already uttered 15 times that day to the kind strangers who offered to “show me Cairo,” “make marriage” and “give me exactly what I’m looking for.” The cab driver, with one hand »

Last Saturday, I was babysitting an old alum. He was in town for the night and presenting a paper at some convention the next morning and wanted to have a good college time because he was creepy. I wanted to be around other people, because I had suspicions that he was creepy. So he left »

Every bro has a story, says BroBible.com. And like the stories of public bathrooms and fallen Disney starlets, they are often tragic, repulsive and frightening parables of contemporary society. BroBible posts include the secret joys of watching girls with good bodies binge eat, advice on how to guesstimate your girl’s “sex number” (add one if »

“Whereeee uuuu?” “Library.” “Kewl. Fun??” “No. Not really.” I have this text exchange several times a day, because my housemate has a social disorder. She cannot miss out on fun, so is forever attached to e-mail, GChat, AIM, Skype, Facebook, her BlackBerry and Twitter, in order to gauge the location and intensity of fun in »

Meet Michael Linares ’09, Altered state specialist, collector of children’s dinosaur paraphenalia Founder of the Yale Chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy hometown Los Angeles, California pipe, bong or jay? Bong. It’s smoother. But jays are so communal. And pipes have their own charm. Just kidding — I don’t do drugs. Senior thesis? »

Meet Kevin Buckley ’62, Author, journalist, contributing editor at Playboy Hometown: Greenwich Village, New York. Style Inspiration: The Wu-Tang Clan. There’s a photo of me with Ghostface Killah. But honestly I haven’t changed my wardrobe in 45 years. Favorite fictional film about the Vietnam War: “Apocalypse Now.” But that’s very close with “Platoon” and “Good »

Happy birthday, column! Usually I’d just post on your Facebook wall something quirky like, “happy birthdayyy” or “BIIIRRRTHDAYYY!!” But my column doesn’t have Facebook. If it did, it would disable its wall anyway, because it believes public displays of friendship (PDF) are tacky and public displays of rejecting PDF are really sweet. So without that »

When the economy suffers, so does love. Merriam-Webster has a lot of definitions for love: “strong affection” (1a.1), “warm attachment” (2) or an “amorous episode” (6). Definition seven: “the sexual embrace.” All of these falter under the stress of hard financial times. Women with Financial-Guy Boyfriends (F.B.F.s) are the worst-hit victims. With their Bergdorf allowances »

Over winter break, my family played many games. First, it was Trivial Pursuit. Correction: First it was Does Bisexuality Exist? My mother and I played it for forty minutes my first night home. I say I won, my mother says she won and if you ask the maitre d’, he’ll say please stop you’re disturbing »

I remember learning in Intro Psych that a baby’s cry is perfectly adaptive. Its pitch is just irritating enough that you pay attention to it, but not so irritating that you feel the urge to crush the baby’s skull. I feel the same way about my future. It’s overwhelmingly scary enough that I think about »

Last week I went to West Haven to do drugs. At the Veterans Hospital. We all support the troops in different ways. My way is taking ketamine with electrodes attached to my scalp. This was the first part of a three-part study. Of course, I had to be screened to ensure I was physically and »