A PUZZLE by RACHEL A.G. GILMAN
Dick Pic
ACROSS3. Bourbon, or the drink you poured yourself from my bar cart the night we hooked up; the holiday present from my boss that I was saving for something more special than you
5. Vehicle that touches the ground with only one wheel; club of which you were president in undergrad that you kept insisting was totally punk but is more closely associated with the circus
7. The mode of transportation depicted on the front of your credit card that—despite working for Google—insisted on splitting every single dinner with me (choo choo, I don’t like you)
8. School from which you were earning your PhD in computer science; the one most bullied in the Ivy League Facebook meme group
12. Thing about me you didn’t bother to learn before taking me to bed; one half of my identifier
13. Website spelling of the newspaper where you dreamt of having a crossword published that would likely never take this one, though hopefully it would bring them a laugh
16. Our age difference in years, or what you typically turn in the first grade; supposedly lucky
17. Your middle name; ironic given your decision to dump me via text was pretty weak
20. Clarification I requested about your penis after I finished you on your stomach and you told me I was good at that; applies to approximately 19% of males born in the United States
25. Drizzly city where Frasier Crane lives that also played home to you before New York; where you won PowerPoint Karaoke but failed at stand-up because nobody likes math jokes
26. What you claimed was your best feature when it got wet in the rain that you then tried to fix over dinner before taking a selfie and asking me if it would be good on your Tinder profile
28. First person I ever kissed with one of these; a staple of hipster culture
29. Response to your preference of boobs or butts, and what I’ve been told is the wrong answer
32. Complaint about your body that led to your buying a customized belt with which my thunder thighs could not sympathize
33. 2 words, preceded by ‘the’; American band known for highly literate lyrics and lo-fi recordings; only artists from whom you owned a t-shirt; least great of all-time hook-up music
35. Wordplay and your idea of humor; rhymes with fun but not actually
36. Warm whiskey drinks we had at the Warhol-themed bar before you shoved your skinny hand up my skirt in the street; you pretended to be nervous and the alcohol told me it was true
37. Cart serving these traditional Mexican dishes in Madison Square Park where we got breakfast even though everything contained eggs and I told you umpteen times I was allergic; where I had to pay for something I couldn’t eat despite you having a full loyalty card stamped for a free one
DOWN1. Color that patches of your facial hair was turning so you called yourself an old man, making things somehow more exciting for me
2. New York airport code that you dressed up as for Halloween in undergrad the year your girlfriend dumped you and neglected to accompany you as a sexy stewardess
4. 2 words; national day of remembrance that you once ‘commemorated’ by taking your only ever nude photo involving a toy airplane from the above Halloween costume, a water bottle, and your aforementioned uncut dick; the thing you made jokes about to undergrads in Ithaca bars pre-pandemic to determine whether or not they were old enough to hook up
6. City known as Porkopolis in 1860 for its mass slaughter of hogs; you were the second loser I brought up to mine who hailed from this Midwestern metropolis, and hopefully the last
7. 2 words; your last concert, which knowing you attended as a 30-year-old man left me happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time
9. Your moniker that makes the name of this puzzle particularly appropriate
10. Sexual climax; you did, I didn’t
11. Futile, impractical, vain—the word my best friend used to describe you when I was worried about you canceling dinner because it might rain
14. Astrological sign that we share and you told me I was silly and (appropriately) bullheaded for believing in
15. Pompous sport you went to the state championship for in high school that required too much space to continue to air out the gear in New York
18. Primary, nose-related characteristic of your voice that I lied and said wasn’t annoying because, well, I guess… I guess I was a little desperate
19. 2 words; type of song you wrote about Star Trek that is usually sung by sea captains, not Captain Kirk
21. Name you told me you wanted to one day give a cat as we drank overpriced coffee and listened to a construction crew insert metal road plates on 27th Street, trying to establish why we had spent the night together in the first place; also related to Star Trek
22. Post-World War II residential development on Manhattan’s east side that you walked me through during our third date whilst joking about throwing me in the East River to which I could only think to reply, ‘Not tonight, I’m wearing suede’; shortened
23. Article of clothing you asked me to help you shop for instead of going to my 25th birthday party because you were tired of walking around wearing purpose-built elbow patches
24. Brooklyn neighborhood you were moving to, full of pierogis, where you told me I could take the ferry to see you; a sentence that seemed impossible to get out and even harder to believe
27. Disgusting way you made me feel when you smiled once my hands were around your cock that only got worse as your breathing grew heavy and I realized I was getting nothing out of this
30. Style of music the band played at that bar we went to in the Lower East Side for after dinner drinks; when the bass player went around with a fedora to collect tips, you made a so-so joke about how it was appropriate that he hailed from Utah
31. Fleshy body part that can attach to the neck or dangle freely depending on genetics that you knew not to neglect when making out under the awning of my building; knowledge that earned you more brownie points than it ever should
34. Fluid-filled sac on your neck that I wanted to stroke Friday evening under the false security of your arm on my shoulders then pop on Saturday when you knocked me out of my own bed
35. Mixture of red and blue, like a bruise; your favorite color, although—as was the case with many things—you were never quite deep enough to sort it out and tell me why
Rachel A.G. Gilman is the creator of the femme-focused zine The Rational Creature and was Editor-in-Chief of Columbia Journal, Issue 58. She also created and hosted the award-winning talk show "The Write Stuff" on WNYU-FM and wrote the Shelf Life column for No Contact Mag. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and an MSt from the University of Oxford. Currently based in New York, she spends her days on the Marketing/Sales team at Grove Atlantic and her nights writing love and lust stories of all sorts. More at rachelaggilman.com.