Intimacies Volume 1
Dara Idris
intimacieszine.bigcartel.com
Intimacies Volume 1 is a black and white half-fold zine about a personal journey with physical intimacy, sex, and expectations told through a collection of short essays.
By and large, I experience zines within the realms of zines that tell me things and zines that share things with me. It’s a delicate distinction and one that may only make sense to me (and I love both types). The difference is telling zines come across as ‘this is an experience, and this is what I take from it’ whereas sharing zines run more along the lines of ‘this is an experience – make what you will of it’.
With the exception of the introduction, Intimacies Volume 1 is a zine that shared experiences.
Over the course of various short pieces, Dara shares experiences from the view of someone who desires things like physical intimacy but questions those desires and the timeline in which to have them imposed by the world and society. Through these experiences you get a picture of what it’s like from the view of someone who explores everything from sex fantasies to the gravity of one’s first kiss – all with the same thought and respect.
Aesthetically, this is a text-heavy zine, with essays broken up by quotes in larger fonts and ‘new section’ tables of contents. I feel like this is a zine you need to sit down and devote your full attention to.
The writing can get a bit confusing as people are named as letters, and the only people who seem to be consistent are Dara and ‘you’. I did get confused in the first piece as to who was speaking with whom and who Dara really was in the context of that piece.
The ‘background’ details got confusing for me at other times, too, but at those points I was so engaged on the thoughts about sex and intimacy being written about that it didn’t stop me.
This zine also had single lines that really stuck out to me:
‘And who knows what I want, except me?’
‘…we were taught to take care of so much, not least our bodies which were never, ever ours.’
Though the first line in the copyright note on the back was more about the laugh it gave me:
‘Don’t be a dick is a good rule, isn’t it!’
By and large, the writing is incredibly vulnerable and open about such intimate things like sexual fantasy and self-pleasure that it gives the zine as a whole its own kind of beauty. It’s a zine of exploring thoughts but not presenting you with conclusions.
If you think that sounds like the zine for you, then check out Intimacies Volume 1.
