Dorothy Chan
Dorothy Chan (she/they) is the author of BABE (Diode Editions 2021), Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). Chan is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Editor Emeritus of Hobart, Book Reviews Co-Editor of Pleiades, and Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Honey Literary Inc., a 501(c)(3) literary arts organization.
Ode to Sitting Courtside at a Lakers Game
The ideal relationship is courtside at a Lakers Game
chowing on three hotdogs: extra relish and mustard,
because life is about seeing and being seen, taking me
back to an MTV childhood when Carmen Electra
was voted Most Pauseworthy Female, and the language
was all wrong, but she was so right in declaring life
wasn’t worth living unless there was a camera around—
how La La Anthony called her a smart girl, and who would
ever be in denial. I could be your attention whore, your
millennial cam girl, your straight no chaser brat, your
ideal when the waterfall hits my nipples, the wet hair
look, and I read stories about women showering ahead
of time, throwing on enough eyeliner and mascara—
the camera trick—the narrative we set in our sex lives—
we all want to look beautiful on command, but what
about connection. I’m extra wet in bed in this moment. V
is for very very sexy. V is for video burned to
DVD burned to Blu-Ray burned to a streaming
service near you, and it’s strange to live through
more than one decade. V is for verde, the color of
celebrity kitchens nowadays, and I dream of getting
pounded right on the counter next to a bowl of fruits,
or how in college, we’d stare at Cezanne and call it
very very sexy attention to detail—these fruits—
those oranges—that attention to detail, and undress
me like a peach because V is the letter Mad Men once
were most afraid of, questioning if women would ever fly
Virgin Air or buy products that started with letter V,
when we all know now virginity is a social construct,
and the question isn’t When did she lose her virginity
but When did she gain her sexuality or When did her
sexuality come into full play? It’s vulva not vagina that
gives pleasure. According to blonde women, a candle can
smell like a vagina. According to brunette women,
the modifier for le vagine shouldn’t be masculine
but feminine. But I like to be called bro is what
I’d say back. A man tells me I’m not very butch
after I tell him I’m into feminine women. Vacant.
V is for versatility and serving up some realness.
Every day is the beauty pageant of the Monopoly
game. V is for vendetta or the comic book you’d draw
me in, or how kink queen Violet Chachki once said
drag was the art of not looking like a woman but
a drawing of a woman. V is for Vanessa Williams
playing woman Wilhelmina Slater on Ugly Betty having
hot sex with her hunk of a bodyguard right before
her wedding to the old white man. If you were sitting
courtside at the Lakers would your bodyguard block
everyone else’s view? I sure hope not. Pass me a hotdog.