MAXINE

From 1995 through 1999 Martha Bayne, Anne Bruns, and I published a zine, a “literate companion for churlish girls and rakish women.” We put out five issues in five years, each with a theme: Female friendship, The Body, Crime and Punishment, and Travel. The contents of Maxine were never online, but here’s a sampling:

first maxine cover

Me and the V, by Zoe Zolbrod

“There are a dozen things a day I want to whisper to my V, or howl with her about. Sometimes I’m very glad to be by myself, but want to smell the incense that means she was just near. A cloud will settle that the clank of her keys, the door, her bracelets, her hello kiss, could have transformed. There is not magic other now, to change my mood. We have to plan to see each other. But when we do, although it jerks my heart to feel it, we are almost as strong as ever. Which wasn’t strong enough. Which makes me question all the more.”

maxinecover#3 White Money, by Zoe Zolbrod

“Would you pay 5$ to spend the whole night with a beautiful Vietnamese boy? To get whatever you wanted: massage, sex, a better understanding of the menu and a taste of the country? If you hadn’t had sex in months and were used to a fairly steady flow of if? If you had absolutely no desire for the song and dance of flirting, for using your female winsome ways? Suddenly, and for the first time in your life in this way, you’re an economic force. Would you ride the exchange rate astride some paid-for-hips? Given the impossible, or course. Assuming it was safe.

Maxine #5 While Life Do Us Part, by Dara Greenwald

“One of the last conversations I had with her was about her then-current boyfriend. She told me she disliked him, but enjoyed the sex. At 5′ 3″ and over 200 pounds, with a debilitating disease, she still managed to find pleasure in sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. In a country that manages to place moral value on anything you use your body for, she was a transgressive basdass. Witha body that gave her mostly pain, she found a way around it and found joy in her marginalized existence.”