*Our paying subscribers can now listen to full audio versions of some of Juke’s most-loved essays. First was “Driving Lessons: The Audio Version.” Last month was Paul Vlachos’ “The Witching Hour,” . This month, our subscribers can hear the full-length version of “When I Disappeared,” originally published last July. Free subscribers and everyone else can hit play for a short preview. And check out the original piece, linked below, if you haven’t read it before…TM*
“The next day, through two flights and a layover to California, my left thumb returned to my ring finger. It slid against the skin—that naked half inch where the finger met my palm. ‘I’m getting divorced,’ I told the airport shuttle driver, when he asked me whether I was looking forward to seeing my family for Christmas. ‘I’m getting divorced,’ I told the girl next to me on the flight. I held up my empty hand when I said it, like, isn’t this just the strangest thing? It felt strange. The words sounded insane coming out of my mouth. I just kept repeating them. I felt like a caricature, or like some character I’d seen in a movie once, though I couldn’t say what movie. I was crying at the gate in the Denver airport; when I wasn’t crying, I was laughing at myself for the messy scene I was making. It was all so unlike me. I didn’t take off my dark sunglasses until I reached the safety of my mother’s car in Oakland.
I realized that all the stories of the evaporated were told by the people they had left behind. Distraught families and confused lovers. Private Detectives on the trail. No story I’d read had described what it was like to disappear.
I can tell you what it’s like.”
Read the full piece here…
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Tonya Morton is the publisher of Juke.
