Worshipping My Ass Doesn’t Make Me a Goddess; Becoming Amish (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, #487)

Fiction, Short StorySep 15, 2021 Issue No 487 Becoming AmishWritten by Rachel Ephraim Recommended by Erin Bartnett Worshipping My Ass Doesn’t Make Me a GoddessIntroduction by Erin BartnettThe narrator of “Becoming Amish” by Rachel Ephraim is twenty years old and living with her boyfriend, Joey. She used to work at a strip club called The Cha Cha Club, but now all she wants to do is eat egg salad and flip through her New Yorker in peace. But then there’s the way her ass makes men talk to her—she’s a Greek Goddess, a teenager, even heaven. Her ass is saving the world. It’s a secret weapon. It’s not all bad, and if she still lets them press up against her every now and then, she can make enough money to take Rita for a fancy drink and make out with her, too. When Rita asks her when she’s going to stop going around with the men, the narrator responds, “Till my tits give up? Till the whole world stops telling little girls they are beautiful?” These are open questions. “Becoming Amish” is a story written in present tense, which makes every action feel like it’s buzzing and alive with uncertain potential. There’s little time for reflection because life is moving on. So there’s her boyfriend Joey and the egg salad and the Greek Goddess ass and the fancy drinks with Rita, but then there’s also the pressing, confusing desire that surfaces from time to time: “It’s hard to explain my aching to transform into a lamppost or doorknob, so I say, ‘I wish I didn’t have a body.’” At one point in her life, she was told by different adults that language—poetry—was her ticket to becoming someone else. Now, it’s like the language all these men use to describe her makes her want to transform into something else, to jump out of her own body altogether. But then there’s Rita. And so maybe it isn’t so bad to be in a body after all. Where’s the language that communicates both of these feelings at the same time? In her electric, sharp, and hilarious prose, Ephraim is able to balance the conflicting truths about growing up in a body that’s sexualized fast. There’s a flattening horror, and there’s a growing power and pleasure, too. Rita asks her what it is that she wants now. She can’t figure out how to say that out loud. Not yet. Maybe she doesn’t have to. What Ephraim so elegantly suggests in this fast, smart, funny story, is that maybe there are many ways to express ourselves. Sometimes that expression gets frustrated. But how powerful it is to find someone who understands what you can’t say. -Erin BartnettSenior Editor, Recommended Reading