PRAISE FOR GIRLFRIENDS

“Girlfriends sounds a loud bell announcing the change of guard: a generational arrival. Here is a writer who can scrap with the likes of Ann Beattie or Richard Ford but attends parties to which those boomers (or for that matter, we millennials) would never get invited.”

—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby`

“Emily Zhou’s stories remind me of late night phone conversations with a dear friend — a space that always feels fresh, no matter how many social triumphs and dysfunctions are nursed and examined — and where despite impossible ambiguities and distances, love strikes.”

—Dodie Bellamy, author of The Letters of Mina Harker

“Emily Zhou is a writer that doesn't let you take sides. These exquisite and discomforting stories are untidy, hilarious, heartbreaking, and always satisfying. Zhou is a true witness. This is the fiction we've been waiting for.”

—Corinne Manning, author of We Had No Rules

“Reading these pages immersed me in the slow transformative thrill of refusal. Emily Zhou knows how to arrive at an ending. Her stories capture the texture of those moments in which we turn away, not yet knowing what we're turning towards, but certain whatever we’ve become used to is over.”

—H Felix Chau Bradley, author of Personal Attention Roleplay

“Soaked in melancholy and the easy rhythm of café hangs, ad hoc photoshoots, and cutting remarks, these seven sharply observed stories navigate identities, fraying relationships, and the parties and mores of today's transsexual demimonde. Here Emily Zhou comes fully into her own terrifying powers: a writer to watch, just as she's watching all of us.”

—Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun

Copyright © 2023 by Emily Zhou
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means — graphic, electronic, or mechanical — without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review.

Published by LittlePuss Press, Brooklyn, NY

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

A version of “Affection” was previously published in Joyland, 2023.

Cover image by Liu Xiaodong

Three Transsexuals, 2001

200x200cm Oil on Canvas

© Liu Xiaodong, Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Cover design by Zoe Norvell

Edited by Casey Plett

ISBN 978-1-7367168-4-7 (print)

ISBN 978-1-7367168-5-4 (e-book)

Table of Contents

Affection

Performance

Means to an End

Separate Ways

Do-over

Ponytail

Gap Year

girlfriends

Emily Zhou

Affection

Affection

After Sylvie found out that Marina was dropping out of graduate school, she sent her a long, philosophical email that ended with an invitation to her new girlfriend’s housewarming party at the end of the week, with the implication that they’d talk it all out there.