Raina July was the heiress of a tech giant who married a hedge fund yoga instructor. Her mom was protestant and raised their wealthy family on a dude ranch in Idaho. Raina had six older brothers and everyone but the father worked on the ranch. Their life was only secretly lavish— sort of. Her parents supplied copious amounts of music, books, and laptops, but not without days of manual labor to coincide with their imaginative play. They worked hard albeit always with an underlying sense of security. Raina was airlifted once for a broken leg and world class doctors would fly in for monthly check ups. All of their food was organic, home grown, their private tutors world class. 

Raina’s dad would land his private jet nearby dipping in and out of their lives. He would bring cookie dough ice cream and play tickle monster at night past their bedtime. He was full of fun, free of parenting, liberal but traditionally rooted in the gender roles he had grown up with. He was harder on the boys, but it was clear always that all of the July kids would have to make it on their own at some point. Then Mom and Dad would sell the ranch and travel the world.

Raina dreamed of cities, of New York and Paris and London. She dreamed of revolutionaries, of women who came alive at 16 as all the characters in her books did. The July kids would go away in the summer to different camps learning the social lessons they couldn’t get at home. Raina oscillated between Ivy summer programs and volleyball sleepaway camp. Some summers went better than others, but normally, especially after she turned 16, Raina went looking for the adventure she couldn’t get in Idaho— the kind found in alleyways and corner gas stations and Rigoberto’s 3am nachos. 

In New York Raina met an art student named Mariposa. Mariposa would draw on Raina’s face teaching her all about makeup, contour, and the glory of bright eyeshadows. Mariposa would spend almost all day designing Raina’s face while they discussed the books they were reading and which nightclubs they could sneak into. Raina started to feel like the makeup was good luck. Every time she went out with Mariposa the night would turn magical. Raina got free drinks and free food and met men who’d take the girls to their penthouse apartments. Raina and Mariposa never left each other’s side. Mariposa would say “You can skip a lot of steps being nice to men, that’s just facts, but don’t skip the wrong steps”. Raina didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t forget it either. 

Almost all of Raina’s siblings went to Stanford, and by the time she arrived, Raina was well aware that most people knew who her dad was. Raina saved the makeup pallet Mariposa gave her for college and spent orientation layering her face with gold and amber. The girls in the bay didn’t like to wear makeup, to look like they were trying to be feminine. To want to be beautiful wasn’t cool even though it still mattered. It still made people like you or assume things about you. It still got you places in life even if the girls pretended like it didn’t. A lot of the Stanford girls subconsciously wanted to be more like the boys. Being girly was seen as less serious, less intelligent so to be smart in one way or another was to act more masculine. Raina wasn’t interested in that. She wanted Mariposa to come and take her back to New York.

Raina got into a good sorority. She wasn’t bad at making friends to be honest. She hadn’t had “sisters” before and as silly as it sounded she treasured being around so many women. She put them first. She only met guys when they were drinking at frat parties, and even when she tried it was hard to make friends with them. She felt like she never really got to know the boys but rather would meet their drunk egos, their untapped emotions as they poured over her at night and in bed. There were some soft and sweet emotions, some angry ones, and sometimes it didn’t feel like emotion spilling out of their bodies but pressure: tense, tight, boiling pressure. There was one boy who fingered her so hard she bled all over the place. She wasn’t on her period, but he didn’t notice— too drunk. He wasn’t hooking up with her but something he couldn’t get past, something he hadn’t worked out, some frustrated pressure having to do with who he was supposed to be or what he supposed to get out of being in bed with her. 

Raina was 18, but an infant when it came to romance, sexuality, even if she had read quit a few graphic romance novels. At Raina’s first party, a frat boy grabbed her hips. She thought the whole things was pretty strange. In her books, they kissed first. That’s naive she thought. She hated feeling naive.

Senior winter 2020, Raina was a awarded a scholarship to work on the genocide trials in Rwanda. She wanted to be a revolutionary like the heroines in her story but also wasn’t sure if her pale white skin tone made the choice to volunteer abroad cringey… at best. She mulled over these thoughts in quarantine but didn’t have any conclusions that satisfied her. She read more books. She was good at asking questions. She didn’t trust her perspective often but if she had a superpower, it would be an extraordinary sense of self awareness. She evaluated her position on earth constantly: who she was, what that meant, what she should do about it. 

Raina spent her spring quarter online during the pandemic and then the summer as well. Context was pulled from her life and her identity. Without school or a job to ground her, her self awareness caved in on itself. She didn’t know what to evaluate anymore. She felt more like a blob of energy floating through the meadows, blending in with the background— an evolving landscape up against that frozen society. She would spend hours laying in the sunlight, feeling like its energy might just melt her into the earth. She never loved the sunlight like she did in quarantine. Sunlight and sunsets and then sunlight and sunsets again.

Of course she was antsy, desperate to live on her own. She wanted to go to New York and try and make something serious of herself. Something people might pay attention to even if she new their attention didn’t actually matter beyond a superficial sense. Idaho was beautiful but being trapped anywhere beautiful is sickening, especially when people are actually, terribly sick. 

There are many stories about Raina, big ones and little ones, through the course of her strange, idyllic, constrained but luxurious adolescent life, but this one starts in New York. It starts in 2021 shortly after the summer. She’s a young 23, programming for a startup and writing the plaques on the walls at the New York art museums. 

And here’s the thing. Raina could tell you a lot of stories that are not about a boy, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to start here, to show you what he made her question and how he changed her for the better and in some ways for the worse. She wants to talk about the way their love grew so small at first, and then how it spread out in the corners of moments in time. 

Her love for him would feel like ivy separate in the beginning before circling in and growing together, like little moments building on top and into. Still, she was afraid of love, truly, of being a women in love, of being a cliché. More than that even, she was afraid to feel feminine (because her brain still connotated femininity with something less than). She was afraid of how she would wrestle with it, of what it did to her desire for him. She was afraid of how she felt to live inside of desire, how it woke her up. 

She’d later learn that there are two kinds of loneliness: one is flat and constant and bearable (if unsettling), and the other kind is all wrapped up in missing someone. That one is oceans deep— knocking and unforgettable. 

Before New York, before the little moments of one specific person wormed their way into her identity, she was at home, in the dark in Idaho imagining a little love larger than the “things” she had in college, but there by herself she couldn’t understand what it would feel like to lay, skin to skin, sober with someone, the feeling, not the imagination of the feeling as you think of it now, but the feeling itself. 

Raina July was the heiress of a tech giant who married a hedge fund yoga instructor. Her mom was protestant and raised their wealthy family on a dude ranch in Idaho. Raina had six older brothers and everyone but the father worked on the ranch. Their life was only secretly lavish— sort of. Her parents supplied copious amounts of music, books, and laptops, but not without days of manual labor to coincide with their imaginative play. They worked hard albeit always with an underlying sense of security. Raina was airlifted once for a broken leg and world class doctors would fly in for monthly check ups. All of their food was organic, home grown, their private tutors world class. 

Raina’s dad would land his private jet nearby dipping in and out of their lives. He would bring cookie dough ice cream and play tickle monster at night past their bedtime. He was full of fun, free of parenting, liberal but traditionally rooted in the gender roles he had grown up with. He was harder on the boys, but it was clear always that all of the July kids would have to make it on their own at some point. Then Mom and Dad would sell the ranch and travel the world.

Raina dreamed of cities, of New York and Paris and London. She dreamed of revolutionaries, of women who came alive at 16 as all the characters in her books did. The July kids would go away in the summer to different camps learning the social lessons they couldn’t get at home. Raina oscillated between Ivy summer programs and volleyball sleepaway camp. Some summers went better than others, but normally, especially after she turned 16, Raina went looking for the adventure she couldn’t get in Idaho— the kind found in alleyways and corner gas stations and Rigoberto’s 3am nachos. 

In New York Raina met an art student named Mariposa. Mariposa would draw on Raina’s face teaching her all about makeup, contour, and the glory of bright eyeshadows. Mariposa would spend almost all day designing Raina’s face while they discussed the books they were reading and which nightclubs they could sneak into. Raina started to feel like the makeup was good luck. Every time she went out with Mariposa the night would turn magical. Raina got free drinks and free food and met men who’d take the girls to their penthouse apartments. Raina and Mariposa never left each other’s side. Mariposa would say “You can skip a lot of steps being nice to men, that’s just facts, but don’t skip the wrong steps”. Raina didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t forget it either. 

Almost all of Raina’s siblings went to Stanford, and by the time she arrived, Raina was well aware that most people knew who her dad was. Raina saved the makeup pallet Mariposa gave her for college and spent orientation layering her face with gold and amber. The girls in the bay didn’t like to wear makeup, to look like they were trying to be feminine. To want to be beautiful wasn’t cool even though it still mattered. It still made people like you or assume things about you. It still got you places in life even if the girls pretended like it didn’t. A lot of the Stanford girls subconsciously wanted to be more like the boys. Being girly was seen as less serious, less intelligent so to be smart in one way or another was to act more masculine. Raina wasn’t interested in that. She wanted Mariposa to come and take her back to New York.

Raina got into a good sorority. She wasn’t bad at making friends to be honest. She hadn’t had “sisters” before and as silly as it sounded she treasured being around so many women. She put them first. She only met guys when they were drinking at frat parties, and even when she tried it was hard to make friends with them. She felt like she never really got to know the boys but rather would meet their drunk egos, their untapped emotions as they poured over her at night and in bed. There were some soft and sweet emotions, some angry ones, and sometimes it didn’t feel like emotion spilling out of their bodies but pressure: tense, tight, boiling pressure. There was one boy who fingered her so hard she bled all over the place. She wasn’t on her period, but he didn’t notice— too drunk. He wasn’t hooking up with her but something he couldn’t get past, something he hadn’t worked out, some frustrated pressure having to do with who he was supposed to be or what he supposed to get out of being in bed with her. 

Raina was 18, but an infant when it came to romance, sexuality, even if she had read quit a few graphic romance novels. At Raina’s first party, a frat boy grabbed her hips. She thought the whole things was pretty strange. In her books, they kissed first. That’s naive she thought. She hated feeling naive.

Senior winter 2020, Raina was a awarded a scholarship to work on the genocide trials in Rwanda. She wanted to be a revolutionary like the heroines in her story but also wasn’t sure if her pale white skin tone made the choice to volunteer abroad cringey… at best. She mulled over these thoughts in quarantine but didn’t have any conclusions that satisfied her. She read more books. She was good at asking questions. She didn’t trust her perspective often but if she had a superpower, it would be an extraordinary sense of self awareness. She evaluated her position on earth constantly: who she was, what that meant, what she should do about it. 

Raina spent her spring quarter online during the pandemic and then the summer as well. Context was pulled from her life and her identity. Without school or a job to ground her, her self awareness caved in on itself. She didn’t know what to evaluate anymore. She felt more like a blob of energy floating through the meadows, blending in with the background— an evolving landscape up against that frozen society. She would spend hours laying in the sunlight, feeling like its energy might just melt her into the earth. She never loved the sunlight like she did in quarantine. Sunlight and sunsets and then sunlight and sunsets again.

Of course she was antsy, desperate to live on her own. She wanted to go to New York and try and make something serious of herself. Something people might pay attention to even if she new their attention didn’t actually matter beyond a superficial sense. Idaho was beautiful but being trapped anywhere beautiful is sickening, especially when people are actually, terribly sick. 

There are many stories about Raina, big ones and little ones, through the course of her strange, idyllic, constrained but luxurious adolescent life, but this one starts in New York. It starts in 2021 shortly after the summer. She’s a young 23, programming for a startup and writing the plaques on the walls at the New York art museums. 

And here’s the thing. Raina could tell you a lot of stories that are not about a boy, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to start here, to show you what he made her question and how he changed her for the better and in some ways for the worse. She wants to talk about the way their love grew so small at first, and then how it spread out in the corners of moments in time. 

Her love for him would feel like ivy separate in the beginning before circling in and growing together, like little moments building on top and into. Still, she was afraid of love, truly, of being a women in love, of being a cliché. More than that even, she was afraid to feel feminine (because her brain still connotated femininity with something less than). She was afraid of how she would wrestle with it, of what it did to her desire for him. She was afraid of how she felt to live inside of desire, how it woke her up. 

She’d later learn that there are two kinds of loneliness: one is flat and constant and bearable (if unsettling), and the other kind is all wrapped up in missing someone. That one is oceans deep— knocking and unforgettable. 

Before New York, before the little moments of one specific person wormed their way into her identity, she was at home, in the dark in Idaho imagining a little love larger than the “things” she had in college, but there by herself she couldn’t understand what it would feel like to lay, skin to skin, sober with someone, the feeling, not the imagination of the feeling as you think of it now, but the feeling itself.