[vc_row row_height_percent=”50″ override_padding=”yes” h_padding=”2″ top_padding=”3″ bottom_padding=”3″ back_image=”56863″ back_position=”center top” overlay_alpha=”0″ gutter_size=”3″ shift_y=”0″][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ position_vertical=”bottom” style=”dark” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ zoom_width=”0″ zoom_height=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_custom_heading heading_semantic=”h1″ text_size=”fontsize-338686″ text_height=”fontheight-179065″ text_space=”fontspace-111509″ text_font=”font-762333″ text_weight=”700″ text_color=”color-xsdn” sub_reduced=”yes” subheading=”by Danielle Shorr”]Hardware[/vc_custom_heading][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space empty_h=”2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Men never asked how old I was.
Instead, they wanted to know how
young I was, and whether it was enough.
Of course, I didn’t know that then,
and why would I? The product was
attention and it was free. The origins
and their ethics did not concern me.
I was there for dinner and opportunity,
neither of which ever made it onto the plate.
I was a teenager, and the city could have
buried me with the right gust of wind.
Now, I sit with students the same age I was
and call them what they are: kids.
The legal age for buying cigarettes is now
twenty-one but it wasn’t then. The question is
what does a forty-year old have in common
with an eighteen-year-old, and the answer is
nothing. The question is not a why, but how.
How do they learn our secrets and sell
them back to us? Young girls speak in a
dialect old men swear they understand.
It’s a language their daughters are in
the process of learning. I never got asked
for my ID at the bar until I was twenty-five
and then it was every time after[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_center” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space][vc_separator sep_color=”color-184322″ el_width=”30%”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_right” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”60111″ media_width_percent=”100″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Danielle (she/her) is a professor of disability rhetoric and creative writing. A finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction and nominee for The Pushcart Prize in Creative Non-Fiction and Best of the Net 2022, her work has appeared in Driftwood Press, The Florida Review, The New Orleans Review and others. @danielleshorr[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]