WriteMyPaper4Me.org Review [63/100]

1	EssayMama.com - MA & PhD degree writers - Outstanding customer service	98	Read review Order Now
2	NinjaEssays.com - Wide services' range under the same roof - Several payment methods accepted	93	Read review Order Now
3	AustralianWritings.com - Quality & satisfaction guarantee - Special discounts & bonuses	92	Read review Order Now

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Write my paper 4 me is a writing service and we are here to give you an unbiased review about it. At a first glance, the official website of this company is trustworthy and provides an easy to navigate system, but the section about the company on the main page can take up too much time for the customer to read.

Have a look at the detailed descriptions of the website according to our criteria.

Site	Mark
WriteMyPaper4Me.org    - Range of Writing Services Offered    - Pricing, Discounts & Payment Policy    - Quality Evaluation    - Customer Support    - Customer Reviews

Criteria #1: Range of Writing Services Offered (Mark - 8/20)

This writing site offers writing services for students of all ages, starting from high school students to PhD students. Besides the writing from scratch service, Writemypaper4me also offers proofreading, editing services and power point presentation creations. However, except the information given on these services, this website does not really display the range of writing services provided. A customer cannot tell whether the company offers a particular type of paper besides an essay by looking at their website.

The ordering section gives the opportunity to the client to choose the deadline for the order and the prices go accordingly. Additionally, prices vary by size of the requested essay and the academic level of the client.

The process of ordering is said to be very simple and the company promises strict confidentiality and urgent deadlines, as short as 12 hours. There is an average page of 300 words and a choice of space in writing is offered. However, this choice is limited to only single-space or double-spaced types of documents.

Criteria #2: Pricing, Discounts & Payment Policy (Mark - 13/20)

Write my paper 4 me charges affordable prices on essay writings, starting from as low as $11.50 for high school students with a deadline of over 10 days, with the highest price of $45 for a PhD page with a deadline of 12 hours only. The urgent deadline seems reasonable, but there is no real indication on what the longest deadline may be, so one would have to contact a company representative to discuss this privately. There is no range of quality services offered and this writing service company promises to have all the essays delivered with premium written, proofread and edited content.

Regarding the discounts they offer, there are only two types presented on the official website and these are 10% discount for orders over $300 and a 5% deduction of price for orders that are above $100. There is no discount for first time offers or for long-term customers. Additionally, there is no mention of discount codes and these discounts are also limited in the sense of people not being able to combine them and are non – refundable. However, the company offers several free features that save money such as free title page, plagiarism checks, formatting and revisions.

Criteria #3: Quality Evaluation (Mark - 13/20)

WriteMyPaper4Me.org has a section with writing samples from their professionals. After a thorough review of the essays, we can say that they were 100% clear from any mistakes and written to perfection. They all had nicely arranged structure and were written in academic language suitable for the academic level mentioned. The copyscape programs and the plagiarism check have confirmed that these essays were 100% clear from any mistakes.

The disadvantage we encountered was that all these essays were written for undergraduates, so we were not able to review essays written for a customer of a higher academic level. This is why we decided to place an order and check this out for ourselves. The essay was 100% clear from mistakes and it was not plagiarized, but the results were not as expected and the essay we received was not suitable for a higher academic level.

Criteria #4: Customer Support (Mark - 14/20)

We have used the option for an online chat and it is now confirmed that they are available on a 24/7 hour service. The representative of the company was extremely helpful and professional.

Criteria #5: Customers Reviews (Mark - 15/20)

Rebecca:

“I have used various different sites for purchasing an essay and still have not find the right one. This is a real writing service website and the price was in the most affordable I have paid, but the results for the essay they wrote for me were not satisffactory. I would have to look for yet another writing company.”

Ivan:

“I have to admit that this company have given me better results at University than the ones I have used previously, but I cannot say that I am completely happy with their services. The essay that I got was not correct and had some grammatical errors I had to fix myself. However, the essay story was good.”

Jenny:

“They did deliver the paper on time, but my essay definitely needed a proofreader after the delivery.”

Conlcusion: The abovementioned criteria are pointing out that this company has not taken all necessary measures to become a high-quality writing service provider.

Site	Total Mark
WriteMyPaper4Me.org	63

WriteMyPaper4Me.org Review [63/100]
Written by: Legitimate Writing Services
Service

6.3 / 10

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Will Slattery: Some Opacities on Teaching Koestenbaum

Not too long ago I completed an MFA in the writing of Creative Nonfiction, which is a very fancy, perhaps aspirational way of saying that I have spent much of the past few years dealing with The Workshop—the galvanizing subject of so many hand-wringing think-pieces, that peculiar institution constantly heralded as either the ultimate salvation or the utter perdition of American Letters. But taking up the mantle of a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction (see how silly it sounds when you break the acronym down?) entails not just surviving The Workshop but also (usually) leading or orchestrating or managing or coercing or mangling or herding undergraduate cats through The Workshop. It’s not a thing we, as a literary community, discuss very often, but a huge number of undergraduate introductory-level nonfiction creative writing courses are taught year after year by MFA students. Through some fluke, or perhaps a structural administrative failure, I was allowed to spend 4 academic terms of my MFA life leading students through the critique process while also throwing a series of model essays at them.

Of all the published work I forced on University of Arizona undergrads, the best (or at least the best for teaching) was, I think, the title essay from Wayne Koestenbaum’s My 1980s and Other Essays. It’s a hyper-literate account of Koestenbaum’s personal and artistic development in the era of Reagan, Thatcher, and cocaine. It moves in short, elliptical little chunks like these:

A stranger smooched me during a “Read My Lips” kiss-in near the Jefferson Market Public Library: festive politics. 1985? I stumbled on the ceremony. Traffic stopped.

*

A cute short blond guy named Mason used to brag about sex parties; I was jealous. I didn’t go to sex parties. He ended up dying of AIDS. I’m not pushing a cause-and-effect argument.

*

In 1985 I read Mario Mieli’s Homosexuality and Liberation. I bought, but did not read, an Italian periodical, hefty and intellectually substantial, called Sodoma: Rivista Omosessualle di Cultura. That year I turned to George Bataille for bulletins on the solar anus, for lessons on smart principled obscenity.

It’s a great essay for cracking open assumptions about mimetic and diegetic time in essays. Beginner students are often afraid to experiment with time as an artistic tool. Koestenbaum’s essay, which slinks back and forth through different points all over the 80s, makes for a great teaching tool, a way of giving permission to move associatively rather than chronologically.

*

Koestenbaum’s portrayal of time is, officially speaking, my reason for teaching this essay, but if I am honest I have a perverse, secretive, sub-official reason as well. The essay’s center is the HIV/AIDS crisis, and it encircles this subject by tracing out the sexual motion of a half-dozen recollected gay bodies.

*

Of late I also find myself enamored with Koestenbaum’s opacity. I don’t exactly mean difficulty when I say opacity, though the essay has that in spades too: he tosses out a litany’s worth of queer theorists, refuses to translate his Rimbaud epigraph, and assumes that his readers know the genre distinctions associated with the term écriture.

When I say that I am enamored with Koestenbaum’s opacity I mean that I love his deliberate refusal to resolve neatly. Consider the essay’s ending:

When I look back at the eighties I see myself as a small boat. It is not an important, attractive, or likeable boat, but it has a prow, a sail, and a modest personality. It has no consciousness of the water it moves through. Some days it resembles Rimbaud’s inebriated vessel. Other, clearer days, it is sober and undemonstrative. There are few images or adjectives we could affix to the boat; there are virtually no ways to classify it. Its only business is staying afloat. Thus the boat is amoral. It has been manufactured in a certain style. Any style contains a history. The boat is not conscious of the history shaping its movements. The boat, passive, undramatic, at best pleasant, at worst slapdash, persistently attends to the work of flotation, which takes precedence over responsible navigation. As far as the boat is concerned, it is the only vessel on the body of water. How many times must I repeat the word boat to convince you that in the eighties I was a small boat with a minor mission and a fear of sinking? The boat did not sink.

The essay previously established a huge swathe of intimate, nearly claustrophobic details, e.g., almost everything Koestenbaum read in the 80s, a good chunk of his sexual partners, the minutiae of his wardrobe, and the most memorable meals he cooked. And underneath it all was a palpable, fearful tension. The biographical experience of the HIV crisis is hung thick with trauma. To put it bluntly: this was a time when the author and nearly everyone around him was either afraid of dying, in the process of dying, or dead.

But Koestenbaum refrains from tying that tension up directly or cleanly for the reader, instead reworking the Rimbaud bit he opened with into a metaphor on boats that he deliberately extends until it cracks open, exposing a bevy of chewy interpretative possibilities for the reader to navigate (one might start by considering The Amorality of Particular Boats (a phrase which almost sounds like a Moby-Dick chapter that didn’t quite make it into Melville’s final draft—you know, one of those difficult, boring sections full of obscure facts about whales and knots and stuff)).

*

Almost every time I teach Koestenbaum to a class, a student will privately approach me a week or two later to ask if I’m queer. Usually this is because they identify as queer, and want help in writing queer things. I never quite know how to respond. My politics are queer. My theories are queer. My life (and by some Montaignean principle of textual consubstantiality, my work) isn’t quite queer, but it is really, really, really gay. But I’m always terrified that any advice I give them will shrink the possible boundaries of their work. I don’t want my experiences to over-determine the shape of their art.

*

Disappointingly (at least to my subversive side), I have never had a student be outraged by all the gay sex in this essay. My students generally either love the essay (for its ellipticism and its humor) or hate it (on account of its pretensions, a criticism Koestenbaum would almost certainly find fair), but none have ever expressed moral condemnation.

*

A lot of writing about trauma (including, often, my own) seems to ape the story of Christ and Doubting Thomas. Come, Thomas, take your hand, feel the holes in my palms and the wound in my side, and then believe. Come, Dear Reader, feel the holes in my palms and then understand. Come, Dear Reader, touch the wound in my side and be absolved. Come, Dear Reader, see where the scourge tore open my back and have your catharsis. Come, Dear Reader, enter my flesh and then we will be as one.

But Dear Reader, what if those aren't the roles for us?

*

To rebuff expectations, to avoid the easy slots and the clean fits, to cultivate a veiled intimacy, to require some squinting, to hope that a denial could be a gift, that a refusal could open new doors of thought—those are the moves of the opaque essay. I feel about the queer essay the same way the Supreme Court feels about obscenity: I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. And the opaque essay is a queer essay, through and through.

*

Will Slattery helps curate things here at Essay Daily. He has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona. He tweets on occasion: @wjaslattery.

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CPE 2016 Restaurant Review Sample

Van Gogh Kitchen

I was recently invited to have dinner in one of the best Italian restaurants in Hong Kong:Van Gogh Kitchen, which is situated on the second floor of a multi-storey building in the busy Nathan Road.

What makes this restaurant so special is its unique decoration, inspired on Van Gogh´s works of art. For example, the main room has been styled to resemble “Night Cafe”; the 1888 oil painting which depics a red-walled cosy cafe with a huge billiard table in the middle of the place.

The menu offers a wide range of appetizers and main courses, all italian and mouth-watering.As starters, I chose to eat the“scallop carpaccio crab meat temple” and the“wild mushroom soup”, while my friend ordered “baked polenta” served with spicysausagesand cannellini beans. For the main dishes, we ordered the chef’s specialty “chilled Australia lamb shoulder rack”. The food was delicious and perfect in color, flavor and taste. This superb 5-star-meal was perfectly crowned with Tiramisu and european creme brulee, our all-time favourite desserts.

Equally important is, of course, the service of the restaurant. The waiters and waitresses are hospitable and cordial, and their constant amiable smiles undoubtedly win the hearts of customers. Slight disappoitingwas, however, having to wait a considerable amount of time for the food to arrive.

The price of this Italian cuisine was also reasonably high. Nevertheless, it is worth waiting and paying for such special dishes that can bring us joyful times. With tasty food and good service, I enjoyed a pleasant dining experience with my friend in a comfortable homelike and artisty atmosphere. I therefore strongly recommend going there.

Sent by Julie NG

Hong Kong 

Words: 280

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Seventy or Eighty Times a Minute: Erin Lyndal Martin Essaying the Heart

What does an essay about the heart look like? The easy answer, the easy essay to write is symmetrical. Writing it is as easy as folding a sheet of paper in half and cutting out a half-circle along the edge. This sort of essay suffices if we believe it is that paper symmetry beating peacefully, rhythmically, inside ourselves. If we believe open heart surgery is a matter of scissors and scotch tape, that we can always cut out another heart.

But an essay about the actual human heart is, by nature, asymmetrical. Some parts have more work to do than others. Some tissue is more dense. Some blood has farther to travel. In writing an essay about the human heart, just as in studying the actual human heart, there are anomalies. Elvis’ heart was twice the size of the average human heart. Or take the story of Hannah Clark: born with a weak heart, she had to have a transplant at age two. Rather than replace her heart, surgeons grafted a second heart onto her own, which they removed a decade later. Hannah said she was happy but felt empty, could feel something missing from her chest.

Writing an essay about the human heart lacks the exigence of handling the actual organ. But there’s no doubt it’s just as messy, and every prick into the allegedly familiar muscle of our own hearts is a risk.

I tried to paint mine before I dared write it. Not the metaphor, but the muscle of it. I wanted so badly to paint it, but how do I account for the color, and where does one begin? The instructional book said to start with a circle, then add the pouch that houses the cardiac muscle. There was a lump where the aorta would go, and I remembered the eleventh grade mnemonic: V is for veins that visit the heart; A is for arteries that carry blood away. The aorta is the largest artery in the human body but it is covered with skin, which is the largest organ in the human body.

I have felt so much skin with my own and if it were possible, I would have lain many times with my aorta touching another’s just to see if our heartbeats would comingle or simply syncopate.

When I was a teenager and they said my cat had a heart murmur I mistook it for a death rattle, my hands shaking as I held her crate on my lap while my mother drove us to the vet school for an ultrasound.

They had to shave part of her belly and it was so pink.

I do not like to think about my own heart.

I saw it once, on an x-ray when I had pneumonia and it terrified me how my heart looked like a ghosted fist.

I don’t know what it is I wanted from my heart, but I wanted more.

“The heart is a most incredible pump,” says the children’s book I got at the thrift store. On the facing page is a picture of a torso, and the heart looks like neon cursive.

In 1929, a German surgeon examined his own heart by threading a catheter into an arm vein and plunging it into his heart. This was considered science, not a suicide attempt or madness. What I wonder is if he was surprised by what he found there, merely a pumping muscle?

It was nearly 40 years later that the first heart transplant was performed.

Laura Jo’s baby brother was born with encephalitis and died as a toddler. His heart was given to a young boy who grew up to be a marathon runner. So I’m not the only runner in my family after all, Laura Jo said.

My father had open heart surgery. Consider that phrase. It is all you need to know.

Every day, the heart generates enough energy to drive a truck twenty miles. Which means that in a lifetime, your heart could take you to the moon and back. Literally.

I have not figured out how to harness the energy of my own heart.

Broken Heart Syndrome is a real diagnosis. I learned about it from Ana, how the heart can physically stun from grief, how the syndrome is also called takotsubo after the shapes of octopus traps that a broken heart resembles.

It reminds me of hearts in fetuses. First their hearts are simply tubes like fish hearts, and then their hearts grow to look like frog hearts. The next stage is snake hearts or turtle hearts, and then their hearts become human at last.

The heart and the fist grow at the same rate, so you can estimate the size of your heart by the size of your fist.

I have tiny hands.

I thought this would only be a problem when I played piano and struggled to reach intervals of an octave, but does it mean my heart is small too? Perhaps I am an anomaly: small fist, large heart.

It would be a beautiful corporeal metaphor. A lover, not a fighter.

If my hands grew, there would be no word for that. If my heart grew, it would not be magic. It would just be dilated cardiomyopathy (common in large dog breeds and golden hamsters) and then I would need a heart transplant.

I wonder if I could get a baboon heart like Christian Slater in that movie. On October 26, 1984, Dr. Leonard Bailey put a baboon heart in the chest of infant Stephanie “Baby Fae” Beauclair, who lived for three weeks after the procedure. When asked why he didn’t choose an animal more closely related to humans, Dr. Bailey responded that he didn’t believe in evolution.

I believe in evolution.

As of 1999, scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts were growing heart tissue in a bioreactor which was developed by NASA. The point of the bioreactor is to make cells “think” they are in a body. The bioreactor is kept on a space shuttle (presumably on land), so when the scientists want to check on the heart tissue, they get on the space shuttle. The first photo that appears with the article I read about this is of a barn engulfed by kudzu. Kudzu. Which looks nothing like a heart. There is a paragraph in the article that explains the kudzu. It says the scientists are working to get cells to take on a certain shape, just like the kudzu grew to the shape of the barn.

Jeremy was born with a hole in his heart. He told me this one night when he was already drunk and was mixing screwdrivers for us. “I was born with a hole in my heart,” he said, and picked up a heart-shaped pillow. He never explained the connection.

Then later that night, with more drink in him, he said, “I was born with a hole in my heart,” and picked up the pillow again.

How long was it after that that Jeremy died of a pulmonary embolism? One year? Two? I can’t think of time in relative terms. I know there was a magnolia tree planted in his honor, but nobody has told me what happened to the heart-shaped pillow.

The heart-shaped pillow was easy. I want to write an essay about it, one in which I describe its plaid and its ribbon, one in which I stick to the easy details of an easy artifact. Or I will buy plaid fabric instead of writing an essay, and I will make a heart-shaped pillow just like Jeremy’s, and I will forget it had anything to do with his own heart.

Forget that it had anything to do with the fact that one’s own heart can be not enough.

There is no symmetry here. Elvis and his engorged heart lived ten years longer than Jeremy. Neither of them got a second heart grafted onto their own to be stronger, only to get strong enough to give it back. To be happy but know something’s missing.

*

Erin Lyndal Martin is a creative writer, music journalist, and artist. Her essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Lemon Hound, PANK, So to Speak, and Passages North.

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CPE Exam Sample Article 2016

Question
You are looking through the alumni newsletter of a school that you once attended and you see the following announcement:

What are your best and worst school memories? Write in and tell us and we will publish the most interesting articles in our next newsletter.

Write the article for the editor of the alumni newsletter. (around 280 - 320 words)

The best days of my life

An average person goes to school for at least 13 years. That time gives us a lot from where to choose from. I have myself a never-ending collection ofsad and cheerful school memories. Let me embark in a flashback adventure and share some of them with you:

When I think of my worst memory,the first thing that pops into my mind is the first day of school. I was about five years old and back then children were notsent to kindergartens, so this was my very first time alone. I can still see in my head this image of my parents “abandoning me”, leaving me behind with this stranger fat lady and a bunch of unknown noisy kids. I can vividly remember myself thinking why and wondering if perhaps I had been a bad girl.

Ironically this group of playful kids became a family to me. They filled my days with sunshine, and I think I can say we becamebest friends. Graduating together from school was a poignant moment for us and therefore this is without any doubt my best and happiest memory. I have the photo of that day in my wallet, the boys look incredibly handsome and the girls look splendid.

I still have a very closerelationship with most of my female classmates. We meet often anddine together and talk about the days that went back, but we also look ahead and make plans for the future days.

Both positive or negative memories, make me feel nostalgic aboutmy school years. I can honestly state that those were the best days of my life, and wouldn’t want to change a single thing about them.

Sent by Fatme Güdük

Words: 280

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BuyEssays.us Review [68/100]

1	EssayMama.com - MA & PhD degree writers - Outstanding customer service	98	Read review Order Now
2	NinjaEssays.com - Wide services' range under the same roof - Several payment methods accepted	93	Read review Order Now
3	AustralianWritings.com - Quality & satisfaction guarantee - Special discounts & bonuses	92	Read review Order Now

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When we hear the word essay writing services, the first thing that comes into mind is it legit or probably it’s a scam? In our quest to find the best writing service, we came across BuyEssays.us, an essay writing service that claims to perform exceptionally well as per the client’s requirements.

Well, this was a well-designed website that made me confident that once I placed an order, I would get professional help. The terms and condition were clear and their Q&A sections offer enough information. However, all the testimonials seemed positive in a bid to maintain their reputation which made us want to discover more.

Site	Mark
BuyEssays.us    - Range of Writing Services Offered    - Pricing, Discounts & Payment Policy    - Quality Evaluation    - Customer Support    - Customer Reviews

Criteria #1: Range of Writing Services Offered (Mark - 15/20)

We moved further to find out the services offered by this company. Sure, we did find a list of services. Well, this is quite understandable since this is an essay company and you can order any project you want. The order included essays, business plan, articles, research papers, dissertation etc. To add on this, there is a category labeled “others” which proves that you can place any order at any time.

Since you have the chance to choose your writer of choice, the task of making the right decision depends on you. Quality papers are guaranteed and confidentiality policy, but there is no money back guarantee.

Criteria #2: Pricing, Discounts & Payment Policy (Mark - 13/20)

If you are looking for an essay, you probably want the best prices for it. So, we sought to look at a few payment details on BuyEssays. Some of the services and discount code include: on-time delivery, premium assistance, communication with your writer, unlimited free revisions with no extra payment.

However due to the procedure of ordering and choosing a specific writer to handle your task, the site does not feature a clear pricing chart. You fill the details of the order you want but the price does not show.

Criteria #3: Quality Evaluation (Mark - 13/20)

The site claimed to deliver quality, 100% plagiarism free and on time delivery. We sought to find out the truth of the claim and we purchased a sample and lucky enough we got it but not asper the expectations. The content was not that bad, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I must say the writer did not consider all the instructions as outlined.

Criteria #4: Customer Support (Mark - 14/20)

Customer support is important for any writing service. Though the site claims to have a 24/7 customer support, there lack a support representative who would be accessible throughout. Though our questions were fully answered, it took some time to get answers for what we needed. We can say we were fortunate to have a writer who was collaborative though not all customers will be lucky. This may have contributed to an unsatisfactory assignment.

Criteria #5: Customers Reviews (Mark - 13/20)

Danny:

“I love essay writing and bidding sites, but this one seemed friendly at first but the writer seemed to delay in responses which was a problem. The prices were not bad, though the task was not cost-effective. When a customer puts their money on something, they expect good results at a friendly price. The customer support is not available all the time making it hard for effective communication.”

Peter:

“All writing services say they will deliver work on time. I am sorry but my experience with this site proved this wrong. I missed my deadline and I got no compensation for it!!”

Gary:

“I ordered for a draft assignment for my work and I think you people would charge an amount for the draft but there were no charges. I received a good write dissertation drat that was absolutely free. The paper looked perfect and my instructor was contented with it.”

Conlcusion: Overall, BuyEssays is an average quality bidding site and the essays is not that bad. But, there is a problem with paraphrasing content which is not worth the price given.

Site	Total Mark
BuyEssays.us	68

BuyEssays.us Review

Written by: Legitimate Writing Services

Service

Date published: 05/24/2016

6.8 / 10 stars

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The "Not Having Fun Sucks" Tour

Brian, Jackson, Drew and Brittany 

Oh man, I don't even know where to start! If you are an avid reader of my blog, you already know about two of my best friends, Brian and Jackson, and the true meaning of friendship. I blogged about them last year when they were on the Ellen Show. Ellen ended by saying that if the boys could ever make it out to LA, she'd see them on her show. On today's show, she was a woman of her word! Have a look at this video from Monday's episode here.

I got the chance to join Brian and his family at the show's taping last week and I'd like to first say that the people affiliated with the Ellen Show are some of the kindest, most compassionate and wonderful people I have ever met. They treated Jackson and Brian like royalty. The kindness and warmth you get watching Ellen (she always says "be kind to one another") is essentially the mantra that everyone connected to the show lives by. So to Ed, Courtney, Jeannie, Ellen R., Bianca: you guys are incredible people, through and through. The show gave Brian the courage he needed (and the transportation!) to leave Salt Lake City for the first time since he was admitted to the hospital there nine months ago.

Now that you have seen the video, I wanted to take you behind the scenes to see some more photos of the show and the taping. Brian is famous for saying that "not having fun sucks," which is why so much of his life is focused on being positive, despite the challenges he faces every day. And what better person to share that optimism with than Ellen? Ellen was born and raised in New Orleans and is a big Tulane fan (did you know we're the only graduation speech she's ever given?) and her mom even worked here at Tulane for years. She really is our hometown hero.

Speaking of hometown heroes... Drew Brees. Drew is a hero to nearly every single resident of the city of New Orleans and when you hear about him doing things like he did for Brian and Jackson, you know exactly why. After the show was over, he and his wife invited us all to dinner! Talk about one of the coolest experiences ever. I know Brian and Jackson really loved getting a chance to get to know them and share their stories.

Basically, New Orleans + Jackson + Brian + Ellen + Drew + Tulane = the most positive, uplifting and wonderful story you'll hear all day.

You can see more photos below and donate to Brian's GoFundMe page here.

Before the show, we had to get Brian to hair and makeup. Hence me doing this. 

The whole crew getting ready to head to the show.

Team Tulane in the dressing room

The moment Drew Brees came out and surprised everyone. You'll note I could not possibly be smiling any bigger

Brian and his family, including his brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Caroline, both Tulane grads! 

When the show was over, Blake Shelton came to say hi to Brian

And so did Ellen! Swoon! 

And then, we GOT TO GO OUT TO DINNER WITH DREW. This man is probably the kindest and most genuine person I have come in contact with and will ever for the rest of my life. Period. 

The next morning. Brian is all smiles. What an experience! 

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T Clutch Fleischmann: A Ninja Turtle Theory of a Trans Essay

When I was a kid I had a lot of Ninja Turtles, that Ninja Turtle sewer playset, and my sister in her room across the hall had Barbies. I would go across the hall and get the Barbies and they would play with the Ninja Turtles. They rarely went on action adventures but instead I scripted elaborate emotional and social dynamics that they then had to navigate, often shot through with vaguely romantic or sexual tensions. Turtles and Barbies pining for Turtles and Barbies. The playset wasn’t very large so they were always kind of crowded together anyway, and the inside of it was too small for a Barbie so they were always on the street above. I think of this as the first instance of writing in my life.

Barbies are significantly taller than Ninja Turtles, and the Ninja Turtles were pretty much all guys and the Barbies were pretty much all girls. In Brooklyn a year ago I was standing on a street with some friends and there was a sewer beneath us. I was with the guy I love, who has some Ninja Turtle tattoos and sometimes puts on a Ninja Turtle costume to go get groceries and run errands and that sort of thing, just because he does stuff like that. All the guys were short and all the girls were tall and we had an elaborate emotional and social dynamic, often shot through with romantic and sexual tensions. I remembered that I imagined this a long time ago, in my first instance of writing. Time felt very unstable in a way that gave me pleasure.

From what is available to us in our immediate surroundings we can begin to imagine. Imagination can then become the movement between those immediate surroundings and a future immediacy that could not have been reached without departing into fancy. Was I playing with (writing) the Turtles and Barbies in this way because it was the most available outlet for me to imagine a trans sociality and romantic community, not yet having those ideas or words but still having the forms for them within me? Did the repetitive act of writing these Turtles and Barbies, almost by coincidence, open up a space of familiarity and tenderness through which I could then enter the real space twenty-five years later, trans people I love standing above a sewer? What I want to focus on, regardless, is that the imagination touches each of these moments and complicates them both.

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I’m rebranding this blog series away from the queer essay and into the trans essay. In part this is because I stopped identifying as queer some time ago and so curating a queer series feels a bit awkward. In part this is because the way I understand queer no longer feels useful or accurate to my own trans body, sexuality, and imagination, which is a commentary on my self and not on the word or the identity or being of queerness, which I still love. I like a thing if it takes me somewhere.

I want to have the conversation about trans essays for simple and selfish reasons, that I think about being trans a lot and I think about essays a lot and I want to better think of those two things together. This is not a simple overlap, however, placing trans on top of essay or essay on top of trans. I think of Joy Ladin’s ideas about poetry—she says “Trans poetics aren’t a matter of poetic content. Poems that describe or refer to trans experience may not utilize trans poetics—and poems that are not about the trans experience may.” I think of what makes the essay interesting to me as an art form, which is time, desire, longing, repetition, honesty, embodiment, the self, and the world outside of the self. I think of what is important to me about being trans, which is time, desire, longing, repetition, honesty, embodiment, the self, and the world outside of the self. I don’t think the sameness of those lists is a coincidence.

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A lot of people have asked me recently for suggestions of trans writers. This is great, I want to give them suggestions, I want more people to read us. Please keep asking me. What I don’t understand is why everyone isn’t already reading a giant pile of trans writers. The trans writers are my favorites and there are so many of us. If I only read trans writers for the rest of my life I wouldn’t get through everyone I wanted to. Trans writers are doing so much for essays even if most people in essay world are willfully ignoring that fact.

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I’m still trying to talk about that thing with my Ninja Turtles. We have the self, we have the world around us, and we have our imagination. The world around us tells us many things about itself or about us that are not true. This is the case for all people, and also these lies might take very specific and even deadly forms for trans people. The truths in the world are often concealed or not quite truths yet. The imagination is the thing that moves us into those truths, by which I mean the imagination is one of the most powerful forms of truth. This is the motion of the essay. It is also the motion of my body.

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Jamie Berrout’s Incomplete Short Stories and Essays. Sandy Stone’s performance lectures. Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolboom’s You Only Live Twice. The play between all the kinds of writing Trish Salah does. Oli Rodriguez and the Papi Project. Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay’s Gender Troublemakers. I still don’t understand why Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw isn’t considered a seminal text when we talk about genre and hybridity in nonfiction. Everything manuel arturo abreu is doing in different forms. Everything Michá Cardenas is doing in different forms. Some of niv Acosta’s dance. Some of Wu Tsang’s videos. Torrey Peters is writing for trans girls and her writing changed beautifully for that. Ralph Werner’s 1918 Autobiography of an Androgyne is a memoir and it is radically disruptive and weird. The way Qwo-Li Driskill writes history. Old Vaginal Davis zines. Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities. The games and texts of Merritt Kopas. I read Kazim Ali’s Wind Instrument in a car and then read it again. Chloe Dzubilo’s work. Susan Stryker talking to Frankenstein.

This is some of what has moved my thinking into imagination lately, when thinking about all of these things.

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Over in literary nonfiction MFA world we tend to only look at a few things, or in a few small directions. It’s making us boring. It’s making us miss a lot of what is happening. We still need our imaginations.

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Essays move from one question not to an answer but to a new question. I forget who said that to me first but it is a thing I repeat quite often. My embodiment and lived experiences do not provide me with answers, but deeper and more complex ways to think questions.

I am not interested, not really, in trying to figure out what a trans essay is, no more than I am interested in figuring out what an essay is or what trans is. If we try to define what those things are we are doing ourselves a disservice. We cannot hurt the trans essay, but we can limit our own thinking in such a way that we prevent ourselves from experiencing what the trans essay might do, which is both everything and anything. We can limit this thinking by stopping it at genre, at identity, at truth, or we can expand that thinking by allowing genre, identity, and truth to play their mischievous roles alongside all the rest of it, the words and the pages and the stages and the bodies and the other people who have read those books and the books we haven’t read yet. The trans essay isn’t about figuring out the relationship between my Ninja Turtles and this guy I love, the trans essay is the pleasure of the movement from plastic to body, which is a sort of time-travelling stumble of a dance. Stumbling on.

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Mainstream publishing has largely limited itself to memoirs by trans people. This is assumedly born out of an interest in the titillation of looking at trans people’s lives and saying, Oh, isn’t that so unique. I used to have no interest whatsoever in memoir and now I understand it as radical, important, capable of changing both the way I think about writing and the way I think in general.

I used to be very tired of all the asterisks in all the essays. Right now they are helping me move my body.

I used to try to figure out what writing did instead of trying to figure out ways for writing to do.

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How do we move from here? There isn’t much of an established theory, nor really authorities, in trans essays. We should preserve that. We should talk to as many people as we can. We should talk about being trans and writing and trans writing and we should talk about everything but those things too. We should move, but not toward anything we know. We should maybe not even know how we are moving when we do, just that within us is an impulse to move.

I want to hear from trans writers who are interested in this. I hope you will email me and say hello. I want to get some toys from across the hall and then find ourselves, as if by magic, one day standing atop a sewer together.



T Clutch Fleischmann is the author of Syzygy, Beauty and the curator of Body Forms: Queerness and the Essay. They really do hope you will email them: tee.fleischmann [at] gmail.

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