Bosom Buddies

Inside my bedroom closet, lit by a bare bulb, my best friend, Priscilla, and I survey our “boobies,” astonished at our longed-for markers of womanhood. We Scotch-tape All the Way with LBJ campaign buttons onto our nipples and pretend to be exotic dancers, gyrating, hip-thrusting for an imaginary nightclub full of adoring men. Later, while playing strip poker with the neighborhood boys, we stand up, circle slowly around, eyes lowered.  

Deborah Sosin is a writer, editor, therapist, and GrubStreet instructor. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Salon, Cognoscenti, Brevity Blog, Oldster Magazine, The Manifest-Station, JMWW, The Writer’s Chronicle, and two anthologies. Deborah also wrote the award-winning picture book Charlotte and the Quiet Place and a clinical workbook, Sober Starting Today. She has an MFA from Lesley University and an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. You can find Deborah on Substack at Write It Like It Is: Everyday Observations and Existential Musings, or visit www.deborahsosin.com. “Bosom Buddies” is drawn from “This Is 70: A Life in Micro-Memoirs,” a linked set of seventy mini essays of exactly seventy words each, written to mark the author’s seventieth birthday.

This essay is a Short Reads original.