‘The Cure’ by Melissa Febos

The Cure by Melissa Febos, 2021

The magic trick:

Demonstrating a universal life observation through a story about sex

There is a feeling sometimes that no problem ever gets fixed until you somehow manage to turn the problem into the solution. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature,” is a thing people suddenly started saying a couple years ago, right?

I’m never going to get over my fear of flying, for instance, by simply learning to put up with the experience. I need to figure out a way to revel in the fear of flying, or enjoy the rush.

So when you can take a fairly interesting life observation like that and show it through a short story, you’re on the right track. When you can do so in a short story explicitly about that life lesson as applied to sex? You’re really onto something.

And that’s quite a trick on Febos’s part.

The selection:

Her friends were always complaining about the deficit of available women in New York – that was why they kept dating one another, and one another’s exes, and one another’s friends. It had seemed a ridiculous claim when she was younger and had lower standards. It was New York City! How could one run out of lesbians in New York City?

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