And the Heart Says Whatever [Paperback]

Essays by former editor of Gawker.com—and the new female voice of her generation.  InAnd the Heart Says Whatever,Emily Gould tells the truth about becoming an adult in New York City in the first decade of the twenty-first century, alongside bartenders, bounty hunters, bloggers, bohemians, socialites, and bankers. These are essays about failing at pet parenthood, suspending lust during the long moment in which a dude selects the perfect soundtrack from his iTunes library, and leaving one life behind to begin a new one (but still taking the G train back to visit the old one sometimes).  

For everyone who has ever had a job she wishes she didn't, felt inchoate ambition sour into resentment, ended a relationship, regretted a decision, or told a secret to exactly the wrong person, these stories will be achingly familiar.   At once a road map of what not to do and a document of what's possible, this book heralds the arrival of a writer who decodes the new challenges of our post-private lives, and the age-old intricacies of the human heart.6

Off-Leash

Lee is the first thing I notice when I wake up in the morning, a heavy warmth in the bed next to me, almost like a person. Since I’ve been sleeping next to a person for the last few years, her presence isn’t uncomfortable, except at the moment when I realize she is a dog, not a person. Then it’s like I’m feeling around for the place where pain will be—poking at a blister and finding that the stretched skin is a little bit sore but mostly just tautly menacing, full of the threat of popping.

Lee observes the change in my breathing and immediately gets that I’m awake and starts barking and whining and wagging her tail, begging to be taken to the park. She is a beautiful, endearingly stupid pit bull mix with a brown spot on her yellow back that’s like a button you can press to make her happy. She likes to have the l“<