you stupid slut

Nat Raum

"you stupid slut" is a hybrid memoir that started as an ode to nat raum’s carefree early 20s and slowly turned into a reckoning with who the fuck they thought they were. diving deep into a pool of memories from (loosely) 2014-2019 that they had (almost entirely) tried to forget about, raum grapples with the role that their own reckless behavior played in the immense amount of harm this period of their life caused them. it's about reckoning with a loss of faith in love and humanity, but also so much about the ways they so desperately needed to prove they were lovable—as well as the gender confusion created by indulging in a pattern of self-destructive hypersexuality and substance abuse, both of which were born as coping mechanisms for unresolved emotional trauma. "you stupid slut" functions as almost an unrated version to raum’s previous work in "eventually i will learn to stop saying sorry," recollecting their destructively performative femininity through poetry, prose, form experiments, scraps of paper they probably shouldn’t have saved, and forgotten disposable camera snapshots.