Natalie Lima

Natalie Lima, a 2016 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and VONA/Voices alum, is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of Arizona. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Longreads, Catapult, Brevity, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a collection of humor essays about the absurdities of living in a body. You can read more about her work at her website or follow her messy thoughts on Twitter.

Men Paid Me To Eat

The first time was in college. A boyfriend, or something between a boyfriend and a hookup, asked me if he could eat some peanut butter off my stomach. “You mean, off my boobs?” I said. And he said, “No, I really want to eat it off your belly while I squeeze it.”