We will open with admitting that this is a bit of a low effort email. I ate something (french fries) in quantities (many) that were ninety nine percent likely to make me ill and what do you know—I did in fact get ill. When I was eating the french fries this possibility, making myself sick, occurred to me. It felt at the time unimportant. I was like, is the future even real? Yes. Anyway. My doctor at Mt. Sinai told me once it takes the pancreas time to recover from “the insult,” a term that I assume has some technical significance but which I’ve treasured ever since. The insult.1
Opening lines. I was thinking about them because my next column for The Point will be about Vonda McIntyre’s “Aztecs” (1977) which has one of my favorite switch-ups:
She gave up her heart quite willingly.
After the operation.…
But also, as I’ve mentioned before (here), Joanna Russ’s sig…
