It all started with Hemingway. Scratch that. It all started 17 years prior with a handful of lies and one night of no after no after no after no into tears into silence. It hadn’t started with Hemingway at all; he just broke it wide open. We left on a Saturday morning with a loose agenda and high hopes. My girlfriends and I stuffed ourselves and our strong feminist leanings into an SUV and headed north. It feels good to head north. We were Hemingway hunting. Michigan natives, we had the good fortune of easy access to the upper reaches of the Lower Peninsula where the rolling hills and pine forests bleed into the cool of a Great Lake, a place that gives space to dreams and fears and harsh realities, a Hemingway haunt.

I drink whiskey because I like how it sounds, rolling out of my mouth and onto the bar. The burning sweet bite at the close of each swallow has grown on me over the years, and where I once had to brace the back of my tongue for the awaited burn, that same tongue now salivates when I near the well. This behavior is learned, imprinted. I’ve adapted to the thick warmth it brings. What I can’t accustom myself to, what I should not have to accustom myself to, is the side-eye glance, the blazing double standard that follows in its wake.

I am 20 years old. I am perched on a stool staring out across rolling greens, straining to see incoming dots on the horizon. Golf carts buzzing along the paved path toward my outpost for the day - a halfway house nestled in the hardwood forests and carpets of grass, lily pad ponds with the croak of frogs and heron calls. I am bored with flipping burgers and moving sausages from warming pot to grill face, freshening them up, bringing them back to life for the next customer. I hear the cart approach before I see it. Four golfers stroll up and peer through the open window. Men. Always men. I get down from my perch and stand there as they size me up. Eyes scan my body, tip of my head to tennis shoes. They move from shock of blonde, blue eyes and matching polo, khaki shorts mid-thigh. I shift my weight from left to right, smile, ask what I can get for them.