Vox Inaudica

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Rind
Literary
Magazine
Issue 4
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Rind Literary Magazine
Issue 4
September 2013
rindliterarymagazine.com
All Works © Respective Authors, 2013
Original Cover Art By:
Ashley Williams
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Editor in Chief: Stephen Williams
Fiction Editors: Johnathan Etchart
Jenny Lin
Melinda Smith
Shaymaa Mahmoud
Nonfiction Editors: Collette Curran
Owen Torres
William Ellars
Anastasia Zamora
Webmaster: Omar Masri
Blog Manager: Dylan Gascon

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Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Contributors 78
Fiction:

Reptiles/David Howard 6

Two Women/Nomi Liron 14

Talos/John Grochalski 18

Life Under the Sex Tree/Marie curran 39

Esta Noche/Kathleen Alcala 53

The Texas Range/Adrian m. Ortiz 55

My Hundred Years/Allen kopp 69

Nonfiction:
On Taking Good hits/Jeffrey Graessley 76

Cool 55:

Passersby/Kenneth Valencich 77
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all of our contributors, past and present, for helping us get this
thing moving. Thank you to the creative writing faculty of the University of
California-Riverside, Mount San Antonio College, Rio Hondo College and Riverside
Community College for your continued support of this magazine.
Rind is proud to announce Stephen Williams is now Editor-in-Chief. We look
forward to the great and boundless things to come.
RLM is on the look out for original artwork and photography for our upcoming
issues. If you or someone you know might be interested in contributing, send us an
inquiry for more details.
Please support the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival; find them at
http://www.sgvlitfest.com. We’ll be there, and so should you.
Check out our listing on Duotrope. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter.
Regular updates on RLM and other fun and interesting things can be found at our
affiliated blog site: http://www.thegrovebyrind.wordpress.com. If you would like to
contribute to Rind, send your manuscript to rindliterarymagazine@gmail.com.
Cheers!
–The Rind Staff
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Reptiles David Howard
Cal turned from lying on his side facing Lori to his back, his better position to sleep. She
adjusted her body to his and placed a hand on his soft penis, stroking it idly. Light was
seeping through the cracks in the blinds, but he wanted a few more hours of sleep. He placed
his hand on top of hers, as it reached the head of the shaft.
“Am I hurting you?” she loosened her grip.
“No. I need sleep.”
“It’s Saturday. We haven’t stayed in bed all day for a while. I thought you liked that.”
She moved closer and he could feel a breast against his arm. “You’re not going to work are
you?”
There were pre-sex questions (Do you love me?) and its variations and post sex ones,
(You don’t have to get up early do you?) or the even tougher one Lori had just posed.
The post sex questions were the most dangerous because of the fine line between sex
and commitment. The wrong answer and the rest of the time in bed would either be over, or
considerably strained. So you’ve either got to lie, and then back up that lie with a good hardon, or come up with an answer that allows her to still feel desirable and you to go to sleep, or
get up and on with your day.
“I have to go look at reptiles,” he said, turning back to face her and caress her shoulder,
though he felt like a politician pressing the flesh of a potential voter.
“What?” His hand was left as the only one on his cock. “You hate snakes, Cal.” Her
body straightened out. “You told me you couldn’t have pets in this apartment. That’s why
what’s her name, the blonde, had to take your cat.” She paused. “I hate snakes.”
Wrong answer. Lightly squeezing his cock, he moved closer, but felt it shrinking.
Muscles had been the cat. Donna, the blonde. They all had lived together for a year. Almost
immediately after the split he’d missed Muscles more than Donna. The cat was special,
especially since he had wanted to get a dog instead. “Thirty-eight years old it’s time to stop
playing Frisbee with dogs,” Donna had said. They’d been in bed when she proposed getting
Muscles. The question theory tested, but the right answer then: “Sure, I’d love a cat.” And he
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had.
“Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.” He rubbed Lori’s stomach, maybe the wrong thing
to do and he thought about pulling his hand away, but that would be worse. Lori moved
closer to him, placing his hand between her legs. “We can eat later,” she said.
Not that much later, he realized as he rolled off her after a few minutes. “You just tired
me out last night. Whew! I’m going to have to take some ginseng.” Isn’t that what Ruby,
another ex-girlfriend had said to him when he couldn’t get it up. “Take ginseng” or was it
Ginkgo biloba? He hoped he had the right herb. Ruby lived on the things. She even fed her
golden retriever, Frank, B complex vitamins.
This was another sign the relationship with Lori was headed for trouble. It’s usually
harder to keep it up at the start of things, because you want to show off. You’re putting a lot
of pressure on yourself. At the end of one it’s like a retirement party; you’re glad things are
over, but you want to go out happy.” He was sure he didn’t want to get married again, which
is likely why his relationships reached a point and then spiraled downhill. Like the
impotence, splitting up was happening more frequently. The penis has a mind of its own,
he’d read somewhere, though in this case he wasn’t sure he agreed.
“It’s OK, hon,” she leaned close for a mouth-closed, avoid-morning-breath kiss.
Returning it, he disengaged himself quickly, searching under the sheets for his
underwear. “I’ll make us some French toast, or would you rather have eggs?”
“Hmm, French toast sounds good,” she said, pulling the bed covers up to her breasts, but
not covering them.
The grocery store brochure advertising a half price subscription to the magazine Reptiles
was on the counter near the sink. A scale-covered gecko dominated the cover. Did he really
want a lizard? There were only five slices of bread left. He rummaged through the
refrigerator and found an aging English muffin, hopefully not so hard that it wouldn’t soak
up the egg mixture. Politeness dictated it would have to be for him. He tried to remember
what Mora had told him about using the microwave to soften stale baked goods. She’d stand
in her kitchen wearing his oxford blue dress shirt, unbuttoned, holding the little chihuahua he
called a “rat dog” behind her back, long before Taco Bell made the breed famous. Mora felt
he always favored the cat, Sophie, over the “rat dog”, which was true. But when she left him,
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she took them both, telling him that if pets were children, you wouldn’t separate them. “Fidel
needs Sophie,” she’d added.
Lori padded into the kitchen wearing his Red Sox T-shirt. It reached just below her
navel. She stood there, almost posing. He thought the blue shirt coordinated nicely with her
thick black pubic hair. “Lots of my friends shave real close,” she said the first time they’d
had sex. “Not me. I like the way this feels.” When do women talk about these things? he’d
wondered.
Lori picked up the Reptiles ad. “Ugh. You’re not getting one of these?” She pointed to
the lizard.
He was stirring the egg mix, adding some cinnamon. “I’m thinking about it. They are
supposed to be very clean and actually affectionate. I’ve heard they like to be held more than
cats.” He had a hard time imagining himself cradling any lizard.
“Who tells you these things? The blonde, I bet.”
“I don’t talk to the blonde any more. I think I heard it on Pet Time, on the radio driving
to work last week.”
“Why don’t you get a cat. Go get Muscles. You said you loved him.”
“I told you no dogs or cats allowed here. They are very serious about that.”
She sat down at the table, waiting to be served, her bare bottom making a squishing
sound on the vinyl chair covering. If this were The Egg Hut, there’d be no service for Lori.
“No Panties, No Eggs”, the sign would read. Lori usually made breakfast when they had what
she called sleepovers, enjoying waiting on him. That could be another sign. “But you knew
that before you moved here,” she continued.
He tested the frying pan with a dab of butter and placed the first slice of soaked bread in
it. “I felt I needed a break from responsibility. I’ve had pets since I left home at seventeen.
Even in college I had a dog. Ogo, a retired racing greyhound, the school mascot, stayed in my
house until he had a heart attack running around the football field at half time. I always felt it
was because he heard the crowd, thought he was chasing that stuffed rabbit again. The male
cheerleader holding his leash didn’t know Ogo had died and he dragged him the last eighth of
a mile. People in the stands were screaming in horror. I leaped from my seat and grabbed the
leash from the guy and shoved him away, cradling the dog in my arms. It was awful.” He
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turned the bread over. Lori was reading the Reptiles ad again. Mora had cried when she heard
that lie. Maybe he’d already told it to Lori.
“I don’t think I could be in the same room with a lizard. Certainly not a snake. I
wouldn’t be able to sleep over with you, if I could be here at all. My cousin Allan was bitten
by a snake at Boy Scout camp and I’ve been petrified of them ever since he told me about it.”
He placed the first slice on her plate. “Go ahead and start so it doesn’t get cold. What
kind of snake was it?”
“Can I have some syrup?”
He did a quick mental inventory of his cabinets even though he knew he used the last of
the syrup two weeks ago. But he had to look, for effect. He made typical searching noises,
rummaging, mumbling. Finally, “Lori, I’m sorry, I don’t have any. I thought I did. But I have
butter.”
“Sure.” She moved a bit back from the table as he approached with the butter dish. Like
a magnet he felt his eyes drawn to her legs. There was something erotic about nakedness on
vinyl and he started to wonder if he was hurrying this break-up along too fast. Maybe the
penis does have a mind of its own. He placed a second piece of toast on her plate too, and
went back to the stove to dip the split English muffin in the eggs. He felt a sudden sadness,
perhaps thinking about the pets in his life – Muscles, Sophie, even the fictitious Ogo. Or it
could be because this seemed the end of things with Lori. Not just the sex. The sameness of
their times. He really needed a pet, just to serve as a buffer. People had children for the same
reason. It was him, he knew. He enjoyed Lori’s round body, her full breasts, or at least he had
up until last night when she suddenly seemed more chubby than lush. He heard a squish,
combined with sort of sticking sound as Lori got up from the chair and came toward him. She
looked over his shoulder at the frying pan.
“I bet French muffins are good, too, or do you call them French English muffins?” She
leaned against him, her hand brushing his thigh. Six months ago he would have willed such a
scene to take place in his kitchen. Now he was more interested in the egg absorption
properties of a stale English muffin or whether he wanted a gecko or not. He faced her,
placing a quick kiss on her nose, then reached for the spatula. “Do you want the muffin?” he
asked, testing its hardness.
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“OK.”
Lori was looking at the calendar on the back door. Three orange kittens were frolicking
in a wicker basket. “They use stuffed cats for these pictures,” Donna had told him when he
had brought home a cat calendar.
“More work for the taxidermists of the world,” he’d cracked, a comment not appreciated,
as the blonde hugged Muscles to her chest as if to ward off the same fate for him. That cat
loved being held and had even been known to leap into the arms of strangers. The day Cal
left, carrying a suitcase and portable radio on his last trip, the cat sat on the sofa the three of
them had shared so many times over the past year, watching him parade by with possessions
Muscles had surely felt were partly his. He swore he heard a soft meow as he walked out the
door, but the sound could have come from his own throat as well.
“These kitties are so cute.”
“They are stuffed, you know. Here’s your muffin.”
After breakfast he dressed and was in his spare bedroom connecting to the internet. Lori
came in and sat on the bed. She was still in his Sox shirt, but was wearing the blue panties
he’d removed last night as they watched a horror film on TBS. It seemed a long time ago. She
didn’t say anything, which was one of her most endearing qualities. Lori could go for long
periods of time without talking, content to watch TV, read or listen to music on her
headphones. After the almost non-stop babble of Donna, it was a welcome trait. He called up
a site dedicated to reptiles as pets, and a gecko, similar to the one in the advertisement, filled
the screen. Maybe it was the same one, assuming all lizards looked alike. This one could
probably be stuffed much more easily than a cat.
“You know, Cal, they don’t stuff cats for calendars. They may use stuffed animals, but
they are not real cats. They’re stuffed. For someone who likes animals, that wasn’t a nice
thing to say.” She stopped, as if winded from a long speech.
“I hope you’re right. Donna told me they stuffed them. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“The blonde.” Lori went into a defensive posture when Donna or any other part of his
past was mentioned, crossing her legs, which was not always an easy job for her when sitting
on a soft surface like the bed. “You’re serious about the lizard stuff, aren’t you?”
Lying was always easier after a meal. You and the lie recipient are full. Part of your
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body’s power is being used to digest the meal. Chemically, it’s the most relaxed time. More
lies are accepted at mealtime than any other time. When you were a kid, you were always
able to lie much more easily to your parents at the dinner table. “I don’t know what it is, Lori,
but I have always wanted a lizard, but seemed to end up with dogs and cats. It seems the
perfect pet for me right now.”
“What about me?” The legs were uncrossed, a bit apart. Unconsciously, she pulled the Tshirt down. The team logo was almost dead center between her breasts. The Sox could sell a
lot of tickets with that shot.
“You said you don’t like them, but I’m sure you could learn to.” As much as he liked
dogs, he’d never grown to like a rat dog. Mora would sit in her chair by the sliding glass door
to her yard and say, in a high pitched voice, “Come here Fidel, look at all the little birdies
outside.” And the dog would come mincing in and sit in front of the glass. Sophie, above it
all, would sit with him on the sofa watching TV, out of loyalty, he was sure, because she
loved to watch the birds too, much like a boa constrictor watched mice at play in his cage.
“How about a bird? They are nice, pretty. Some even talk.” she said.
There were times he wondered if Lori could read his mind. As soon as he remembered
Fidel and the birds, he thought about having his own. Was the chemistry still right for telling
lies? Was there a time limit? He pointed to the lizard on the monitor. “Birds are nice. I had
one a while back, but they tend to smell a little.” There was no reaction from Lori. It had been
right after college. Joannie and he both worked at the advertising agency, entry level copy
writers, hitting it off pretty good, and deciding to save money by living together. “I have a
bird,” she’d said. “Ringo. You know how I love the Beatles.” Ringo was a monk parakeet,
almost as big as a parrot. He escaped out the window one day, and it was guessed he became
part of a colony of the birds that lived in the wild, building condo-like nests in utility poles in
a neighborhood near the bay. Joannie would often drive down to where the birds, over a
hundred of them, lived, open the car window and call “Ringo. Oh, Ringo, Come here.”
Neither Ringo nor any member of his new family ever came, though you could hear them
chirping. “He probably can’t hear you with all that noise,” Cal’d say. “Besides, he’s free,
with his own kind, now.” She’d drive home in tears.
Cal clicked on an article called “Keeping Reptiles.” Lori, as she often did, looked at the
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screen from over his shoulder. He didn’t feel her breasts against his back as he usually did.
Maybe she was withdrawing too. It had been a nice feeling. The article talked about dishes
and cages for various lizards and snakes, along with food: “Large snakes eat their food live,
so a supply of small rodents is essential, along with the proper housing and food for their
prey.”
“Prey. Prey! Do you see that?” Lori bounced against him, then took a step back. “You
want to have prey in your apartment!”
“I’m not thinking of a snake, Lori. At least not a large one. I don’t think I could do the
rodent thing. I’m thinking more about an iguana, or one of these cute little geckos.” A
subhead: “The Dangers of Keeping Reptiles” leapt from the page. “Salmonella poisoning is a
real concern for pet owners…” the paragraph began. He could feel Lori’s breath on his neck.
“…use care in keeping turtles, lizards and snakes,” the article continued, “as they all carry
salmonella bacteria, and it becomes part of their ecosystem. Make sure to clean their habitats
each day and that whenever your pet is touched, to wash your hands promptly…” He wanted
to click to the next page, but she was a fast reader.
“Oh that’s just great. Salmonella. Do you know what that can do to a person?” Lori was
a receptionist for a doctor. She knew. “Even the rodents you need to feed to your snake
would be better than this.”
“There are problems in caring for every kind of pet.” He clicked back to the gecko,
staring at the salmonella breeding monster. “We need to study this more, but I’m not scared
off. They have to warn you of these things, Lori. Product liability.”
“If you are doing this because you don’t want me around Cal, just say so, because I don’t
think I want to be here if I have to share space with that thing!” She pointed to the screen.
“What? I can’t consider having a pet? Millions of people have lizards and I don’t recall
hearing of any salmonella epidemic.” He leaned closer to the screen, wishing he could climb
inside. This was always the crucial moment in a break-up. Like having ten feet left to reach
the summit of a mountain, only to find it was solid ice on all sides. He wished he had a pet
now. It would make things easier, because there would be something which had been shared
between the two of them. Sometimes Muscles had hid in the closet when he and the blonde
fought near the end. “I think I have a right to a lizard; I also think…” he had to be careful
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here… “that you, we, could get to love this little guy…or gal.” He looked toward the screen.
“For the past couple of weeks, Cal, I’ve felt something different. That’s OK, people
change. Things change. Maybe it’s me. But you don’t have to get a lizard to get rid of me.”
Lori took a breath and he thought she was going to cry, but all she did was move further away
from him. “We aren’t living together. Heck, we aren’t even having that much sex.”
“I don’t want this lizard thing to pull us apart.” He hit the back button on the menu to get
rid of the gecko. “But I really want one…”
“Cal you can get all the lizards you want. They aren’t going to make your life any
better.” She moved closer to the door. “You don’t want to really share your life with anyone,
not even your pets, as much as you say you love them. At least you never said you loved me.
For that I thank you.”
“Look, Lori…” It was time to climb the icy part.
“No Cal, you look. Don’t bother with this lizard stuff. I know your heart’s not in it. Get
yourself a ferret. Just one ferret, Cal. The perfect pet for you.”
He felt the ice melting even before he took a step. But all he could think of saying was
“Why a ferret?”
She was in the doorway now, almost filling the space, hands on her hips. “Ferrets are
usually kept in pairs because if they are alone, they usually die from sheer loneliness. So get
one ferret. Maybe you can save each other’s life.” She pulled off his Red Sox T, folding it as
she marched one steady step after another to the bed, where she placed it on the pillow,
turning away from his last look at her beautiful breasts walk from the room.
He stayed by the computer, listening to the sounds of her in the bathroom and his
bedroom, and then, finally, the closing of the living room door, he clicked back to a search
engine and typed in f-e-r-r-e-t.
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TWO WOMEN Nomi Liron
“It’s time for you to find another doctor, Ms. Jacobs,” Dr. Burns said, trying to hide
his impatience. “None of your skin infections have responded to the drugs I’ve prescribed.
The fever, headaches, and nausea you report suggest that your illness is systemic. An internist
should assess you.” He paused as if a thought had just struck him. “Better yet, you should see
Dr. Thompson. He’s not an internist but he’s a very understanding man.”
“What about NORD? Shouldn’t I contact NORD?” Angela ran her hand through her
limp hair and pulled at her split ends. Dr. Burns looked at her. She was a slender woman in
her thirties who would have been pretty if not for her dull, lackluster hair and the yellow tone
to her skin.
“The National Organization for Rare Diseases is actually a clearing house,” he said.
“They gather information on rare diseases, but don’t treat patients.”
Angela swallowed hard. “But these dripping scabs are so awful. I know people think
I’m repulsive and worry that I might be contagious.”
“Dr. Thompson can help you with those feelings.”
Angela’s voice cracked. “I’m the only caretaker for my frail eighty-three year old
mother. She has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t recognize me anymore. Angela scratched at a scab
on her upper arm. “It’s hard,” she whispered. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” he nodded as he typed into his computer. ‘Reoccurring lesions of
unknown etiology. Psych consult.’ He studied Angela. “Continue applying the anti-bacterial
ointment I prescribed and leave your wounds open to air.”
Angela left, got in her car, and pushed her infected palms firmly against the steering
wheel. She smiled. By the time she got home her lesions would be more inflamed then than
when she first left to see the doctor.
She drove up the driveway as quietly as she could, hoping to get to her computer
before her mother saw her. There might be email from her chronic pain support group. She
needed to tell them about her latest outbreak of painful lesions and get back to George and
Nancy’s introductory email. Both suffered from unpredictable, sporadic bouts of diarrhea
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while driving.
“Thank God you’re finally home!” Angela’s mother called, hearing her. “My blood
pressure shot up so high while you were gone I almost had a stroke. I could feel blood
pounding in my temples and my vision got blurry. I wanted to call 911 but waited knowing
you’d rather take care of me.” She let go of her walker and tottered toward her daughter.
“What are you doing?” Angela grabbed her mother by the shoulders. “Do you want to
break your hip again? Don’t be so selfish. I can’t take care of you anymore, Mom. I’m sick.
The doctor can’t find a cure for me.”
Angela’s mother started to cry. “You hate me, don’t you? You wouldn’t care if you
came home one day to find me lying dead by the bird bath in the backyard.”
Angela put her arm around her mother’s waist and lowered her on to the sofa. She
brushed her lips across her mother’s cheek. “Of course I don’t hate you.” She leaned forward
and placing her foot across her mother’s toes, pushed down hard. Her mother screamed in
pain.
“I’m sorry! How clumsy of me. Did I break a bone?”
“All of them! You know how easily my bones crack. Within an hour they’ll collapse
and dissolve into powder.” Her mother’s voice quavered and tears rolled her cheeks.
“I don’t see any swelling, cracking, or powder” Angela picked at a lesion on her chin.
Her mother shrieked. “I haven’t hurt this bad since I spent twenty-three long,
agonizing hours pushing you out of my womb. It was painful, Angela, like pushing a
basketball through a paper straw. I did that for you.” Her shoulders shook and she began to
cry bitterly. “You’d never suffer that much for me.”
“At least you don’t have people see pus weeping out of every pore of your body,”
Angela yelled. “You can stay home and count the quail in the backyard or pretend to be busy
in the garden. I’m the one with the real problems. Call 911. They’ll take you to the ER and
someone will look at your foot. It takes nine minutes and eight seconds for them to arrive.”
Angela strode down the hallway, grabbed the syringes she had picked up at the
medical supply store, and went into her bathroom. She pulled down two specimen cups she
had filled that morning, drew urine and feces from them into her syringe, and slowly injected
the concoction into several places under her skin. She looked in the mirror and practiced the

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wan smile she would use with the new doctor. She felt powerful. Up to now she had only
injected mucous and spit but these new injections would have a far greater effect. Some
fledgling dermatologist would make his career off her. His research about her mysterious skin
condition would be published in reputable medical journals, and Dr. Burns would regret
passing her off to another doctor. He’d probably wish he had asked her out. The ring on his
left hand had vanished six months ago. Angela had been in his office every week for
emergency sessions but he never seemed interested in her.
She flicked a drop of urine from her syringe. His loss.
Angela mother’s pulled herself up from the sofa and pushed her walker toward the
kitchen. She opened the cupboard below the sink, pulled out a bottle of Lysol, and
swallowed half of it. She gasped and grabbing her stomach by both hands and screamed,
“Angela! Help! My stomach is on fire!” she retched. “I’m dying!”
In her room Angela stood at her closet, selecting the clothes she was going to wear to
her next doctor’s appointment. She’d need an off white blouse to bring out the color of the
pus to its fullest extent.
“Angela! Help me!”
Angela sighed, “Stop faking it mom. You’ll do anything to get attention.”
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Feeding Ego Sweets
By
Jenna Mason
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Talos John Grochalski
I was sitting in the living room of my girl’s house reading Dostoevsky because I’d
been told that all the great ones read Dostoevsky, and I was tired of being mediocre. I wanted
to be a god. I wanted to be golden. I’d called off from the job because another day of
hauling windows and doors with certifiable lunatics just wasn’t on the top of my list of things
to do that day. I certainly didn’t want to haul anything after a night mixing whisky and wine,
and watching another one of those doctor or drama shows that my girl loved, while
intermittently telling her kid to go back to bed. I didn’t mind her kid so much. He had a bad
name. Simon. But he was pretty well-behaved with his video games and comic books. Still,
who named a kid Simon in twenty-first century America, unless you wanted to submit him to
ritual torture? My girl said that it was a family name on his old man’s side, as if that were
some kind of justification for the treachery of being named Simon.
I tried with the kid. I’ve been trying with the kid for months. I took him out to throw
the ball around even though he showed no interest in it and, to be honest, no promise. What I
mean is he put the glove on the wrong hand, and put the wrong hand on top when he bats. I
took him to art museums, and didn’t get mad when he found the gift shop more enlightening
than those masters up on the wall. We went to movies and to lunch. I’d spent a lot of hardearned warehouse money trying to show Simon what a good guy old Rand Wyndham was for
him and his mom. And while he might’ve accepted those movies, all of those greasy
hamburgers, and even the awkward hours spent tossing the ball back and forth, I could tell
that the kid didn’t like me very much. He was on to me, and he knew that I was most likely a
freeloader who’d be taking up residency on his mom’s couch, until she became wise to my
tired act. My act was tired. Women had been telling me that for years, and it explained why
I dated so infrequently. But like anyone else who’d kicked around on this ball of gas for too
long, I had no desire to change my ways.
There was some screaming or something outside. This was screaming apart from the
normal kind of screaming in this neighborhood, usually some asshole yelling at the
neighborhood kids for dinging his car with a goddamned wiffleball of all things, or two
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chuckleheads shouting back and forth over every mundane detail of their day while the rest of
us sat inside, a movie on pause, some Dostoyevsky on hold, waiting for the fuckers to shut
the hell up. No, this was a different kind of noise, a different kind of screaming. There was a
hunger to it; a desperation. I took a look out the window but I couldn’t see anything. Well, I
needed another beer anyway, so I got my fat ass off the couch. I went outside and stood on
the porch in the way that I’d seen many of my girl’s hapless neighbors do when they had
nothing else going on. It really didn’t do much for me just standing there. I didn’t like the
neighborhood and I didn’t like nature. But the screaming got louder, and I was curious.
Then Simon came racing up the street faster than I’d ever seen the boy run. He was being
chased by four kids in torn jeans and black t-shirts. They all had long hair, which made them
look like a renegade hair-band that had somehow traveled forward in time.
“What the hell?” I asked Simon as he darted passed me.
“Talos,” he said, before running upstairs and slamming his bedroom door.
“What in the hell is a Talo?” I shot back. No answer. But the word made the pack of
long-hairs stop at the edge of my girl’s driveway. We glared back and forth. I wished I’d
gotten that beer before I came outside.
“Help you kids with something?”
The longhairs all looked amongst themselves, before the taller one stepped forward to
speak. Dude looked like a lost member of the Ramones, only he was a tad bit more oliveskinned. In my head I started calling him Joey Ramone. “Tell your faggot kid to come
outside and do that to us now.”
“He ain’t my kid,” I said. I always liked to establish that fact whenever I was out with
my girl and Simon. For whatever reason I wanted the world to know that I, Rand Wyndham,
was in no way responsible for the upbringing of the child that they were looking at, or
hopefully, one-half of the parentage of any child walking the cold confines of this planet
earth. Call it my contribution to the environment by not having a kid. Call it what you want.
“And his name is Simon.”
That raised some laughter amongst this shaggy group of goons. I wished my girl was
there to hear it, so that I could prove my point about that goddamned name.
“Well go and get Simon,” one of the others said. He had a mop of hair and looked like
20
Jimmy Paige. So Jimmy Paige he’d be.
“What do you kids want with him?”
“Just to talk.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” I said.
“He gave us the bread basket,” Joey Ramone said.
“What’s a bread basket?”
The group of scholars shrugged. “Can you just go and get him?”
“Yeah, get Simon,” another member of the quartet added. I called him Ted Nugent
because he looked like a close-minded asshole.
I looked inside. Simon was still in seclusion in his room. “Afraid I can’t do that.”
“We’ll wait,” the last of the longhairs said. I decided to call this one, Bon Jovi, even
though there was no literary resemblance between this punk and the Jersey hair God. I’d just
hated Bon Jovi since middle school. Bon Jovi looked at Joey Ramone. Joey nodded his
approval.
“Can’t let you do that either,” I said.
“You gonna to stop us?”
I hated when kids pulled that crap. They knew damned well that an adult, especially
one not genetically bound to them, couldn’t do anything to stop them from doing whatever
they wanted to do. It didn’t used to be like this, especially when I was a kid. Neighbors used
to kick my ass if I did wrong. One of my buddy’s dads slapped the shit out of me on his own
front porch for swearing once. But this country had become so kid-centric that if you
complained about some noisy bastard in the movies they kicked you out. You certainly
couldn’t lay a hand on some arrogant little brat. Kids had more protections on them than
goddamned heads of state. Now I couldn’t do a thing but plead with these kids until I was
blue in the face, or they grew bored with the sound of my voice. Or I could be a bitch and
threaten to call the cops but these Talos would be gone way before 5-0 arrived. Plus I hated
the cops myself and didn’t really feel like breaking the bliss of beer and 19th century Russian
fiction for a pow-wow with Officer Friendly that wasn’t going to go anywhere. Me and these
kids, we were at an impasse before we even got started.
It was then that my girl’s car pulled up the street. Against their breeding the longhairs
21
moved out of the way and allowed her to pull into the driveway. They looked at me and
smirked. Keep smirking you douche bags, I thought. My Abby was a tough bitch. She was
a lawyer for some corporation downtown. She didn’t put up with shit. I’d watched her make
grown men cry in the courtroom. I’d seen her ex break down into incurable sobs. Hell, even
I was on my best around her. The only reason she put up with me was because she was a bit
of a bum magnet. Abby loved the loveable losers. She thought she could save us; cure us
from whatever had sent us down our shaky, stinking paths. It was her one weakness. Too
bad those Talos weren’t twelve years older. They’d be right up her alley.
“What’s going on?” she said, by way of a hello.
“Just hanging out with some of Simon’s new friends,” I said.
“We ain’t that homo’s friends,” Joey Ramone said.
“Excuse me?” Abby said.
“Apparently I was wrong about their relationships,” I said. “Kids are so hard to gauge
these days.”
“I know you,” Abby said to Joey Ramone. She went over to the lot of them and
started pointing fingers. Only women could do this. Like I said, if I would’ve gone down
there it would’ve turned into a John Woo film, and then, for me at least, the afternoon
would’ve morphed into some prison drama. “I know almost all of you. And your mothers.”
“So,” Jimmy Paige said.
“So you get off this street right now, before I call some of them. And your principal.”
“He started it.” The longhairs pointed in unison toward my girl’s house.
“Your kid gave us a bread basket,” Joey Ramone said.
Abby looked up at me. “What in the hell is a bread basket?”
“Beats me,” I said. “It’s something these punks made up.”
“I ain’t no punk, you bum,” Bon Jovi said.
Sadly I had no retort. I was kind of a bum. I’d chased my fair share of Simons in my
day.
“It’s an obscene gesture,” Nugent said. Frankly I was surprised that any of them knew
the word obscene.
“Show me,” Abby said to the pack. But they demurred and crowded into one another.
22
“Look, if I’m going to talk to my son about this then I should know what he did to call on the
firing squad.”
Not a purposeful allusion to Dostoevsky, but I liked her style.
“He did this,” Paige finally said. He spread his legs a little bit and put both hands in
front of his crotch before pumping back and forth like he was a quarterback or a had a dick
with two feet of width.
“A bread basket,” Abby said to me
“Who knew they called it that?” I said.
She turned to the Talos. “And he did this to you?”
“Yeah,” Joey Ramone said. “We were on our school bus and when we passed him
walking home he gave us the bread basket.”
“And you did nothing to provoke him?”
“We shout things at them all the time,” Bon Jovi said. Them being the group of
catholic school kids that walk home every day. “But we don’t give no one the bread basket.”
“On a moving bus the physics alone would be daunting,” I said.
“Rand.” Abby said.
That was my cue to leave the porch while dear Abby schooled the little burnouts.
When I got inside I could hear the TV blaring from Simon’s room, laser fire and shit, another
shoot them up game meant to kill the brain cells. Simon could probably do well with a little
real violence in his life. I mean the buzz cut and big glasses his old lady made him wear had
to piss him off. I went to the fridge and got myself that beer that I’d been craving before all
of this madness started, and then went back to my place on the couch. I picked up the
Dostoevsky but I wasn’t feeling so great at the moment. I was sort of awash in mediocrity.
So I put the book down and turned on Sports Center. A couple of minutes later I heard the
pack of longhairs, Talos as Simon had called them, cat call and shout their goodbyes. Then
Abby came inside and threw her bag on the loveseat.
“Can I have some of that?” she said, letting her auburn hair out of her tight, sexy
lawyer ponytail. I sometimes thought she kept it tight to stay on point and pissed. I handed
her the beer. She took it down in a gulp, which was kind of how I fell in love with her in the
first place. “Do you know what that short little prick called me?”
23
“Bon Jovi?”
“No.” Abby sighed. “A cunt. He called me a cunt.”
“I meant he’s Bon Jovi.”
Abby gave me a queer look then went over to her bag and took out her cell phone.
“I’m calling the school.”
“Now?” I said.
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to get anyone but the janitor.”
Abby took the phone away from her ear and her eyes started welling up. “They’re just
going to do this to him tomorrow.”
“No they won’t,” I said. “They’ll get bored. In an hour they’ll be Facebooking with
their idiot friends, or slobbering over some video game.”
“Rand, do you even remember being a kid?”
“I’ve blocked it from my memory.” Which was true. It was mostly a horror of bullies
and vicious neighborhood dogs, an absentee father, my mother crying, bills not getting paid,
and playing unpadded football in the park just to inflict pain upon myself and others, etc. etc.
“Trust me; those kids will keep this up. They have nothing else to do with their time.
Plus Simon is an easy target.”
“I thought you knew their moms or something,” I said.
“I was lying,” Abby said. “I’ve never seen those kids before. They go to public
school.”
“Explains the drool and the monosyllabic banter,” I said.
“I should go talk to Simon.”
“Let me do it,” I said. “You probably had a long day, and I’m probably calling off
from work again tomorrow. Let me go and see what happened.”
“Thank you,” Abby said. Then she went and called the school anyway.
I knocked on Simon’s door but there was no answer, just more lasers blasts and
gunshots, the occasional triumphant “yes,” hissed from the kid’s mouth. I had no choice but
to fling open the door, which I hated doing. I respected people’s privacy, even junior high
kids. One of my mother’s old boyfriends used to fling open my door without warning. It
24
was no big deal most of the time when I was just listening to music or watching TV. But a
couple of times he almost caught me stroking it to some Madonna or Janet Jackson video on
MTV or, if I had to get low rent, one of those make-up infomercials where all of those aging
models sat around in short skirts and gave each other facials. When I semi-moved in with
Abby I made it a point to never barge in on Simon. It was for both us. He needed the privacy
and I needed to not walk in on him tugging away at it to some video game harlot or barbarian.
But desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Hey, Kid,” I said. Nothing, just BLAST BLAST at the video screen. “Simon.”
“What?”
“Can you put that damned game on pause for a second, man?”
“Can I just finish this level?”
“We need to talk now, dude,” I said. Dude. Man. I never called people dude or man,
but I’d started doing it with Simon when we hung out. I felt like dude, or man, made the kid
seem cooler than a Simon, and made me seem cooler than some jackass putting it to his mom.
Plus it kept things between us casual, never too paternal.
“Fiiiine.” Simon put his game on pause then turned to look at me as if I were some
kind or beer-soaked alien.
“First things first. Are you all right?” Simon shrugged. “You wanna tell me your
side of what all of that was about outside?”
“With the Talos?”
“Yeah, the Talos.”
“What about them?” Simon said.
“For starters, why were they chasing you up the street?”
“Because they’re assholes.”
“Maybe so,” I said. I let asshole slide. Another one of my buddy/buddy affectations,
not too dad-like tricks, was to let Simon swear when he and I were alone. “But even assholes
have reasons for what they do. Except bosses. Those assholes do things randomly and
callously.”
“They shout at us kids every day when we walk home,” Simon said. “And they give
us the finger.”
25
“Okay,” I said. “So you got tired of taking it.”
“I guess.”
“And you stood up for yourself and the other little Catholic school kids walking
home.”
“I gave them the bread basket,” Simon said.
“So I heard.”
“Can I go back to playing my game now?”
“Not yet,” I said. “We’re kind of in a mess, buddy. Those Talos called your mom a
name.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“And she’s calling their school right now,” I said.
“She can’t do that,” Simon said. The kid looked shaken, his baby blues blinked
rapidly behind his big glasses. He knew and I knew that sometimes telling an adult was
actually worse. “They’ll just come after me again.”
“I think they might do that anyway, man.”
“Great.” The kid slouched. Great, he said. Like he was already defeated, like he had
no choice but to accept the wrath of these Talos until they got bored and moved on to
someone else. “Can I go back to my game now, Rand?”
“I guess.”
I sat there for a moment as the kid turned back and slapped the pause button on his
game to start up the intergalactic carnage again. I tried to think of something to say, but we’d
all been there. We’d all had our bullies and this misery was just a rite of passage. I wanted
to tell Simon that it would be all right, but I knew that was a lie. He’d probably get pushed
around and maybe beat on a bit by these kids. And then after them there’d be other bullies,
only he’d call them names like girlfriend, wife, or boss. There’d be lines of women to break
his heart, and lines of bosses to break his spirit. There’d be life and death and everything in
between to make him wonder what was the point of it all. Simon had a long hard road ahead
of him; the hazard of being human. The Talos weren’t even the worst of what he’d face in
this life. They were a cakewalk. But who in the fuck was I to tell this kid anything? I wasn’t
his mom. I sure as hell didn’t want to be his dad. If I was anything I was an adult version of
26
those Talos. Maybe I’d be a good life lesson for Simon when he got older. If you’re going to
be anything, don’t be like Rand Wyndham. Be anything but Rand Wyndham.
“I got through to their school,” Abby said when I got downstairs.
“By the way Simon is fine,” I said. I went into the kitchen and grabbed two beers.
“I was going to ask that, Rand. Don’t go getting all haughty and paternal now.”
“Sorry. I’m in a mood.” And I was. Thinking about one’s miserable lifespan always
put me in a mood. “What’s the principal’s opinion?”
“He said he knows the boys,” Abby said. I handed her a beer.
“Not too shabby for you not even having any names to go with the faces,” I said.
“He described the olive-skinned one to a T.”
“Joey Ramone?”
“Is that what you’re calling him?” Abby said. We both had long pulls on our beers. “I
was calling him Iggy Stooge.”
“In size order: Joey Ramone, Jimmy Paige, Ted Nugent, and Bon Jovi.”
“All right I’ll stick with those.”
“It’s all bad music,” I said. “Those Talos must get around at that public school.”
“Talos?”
“Simon called them that.”
“I wonder if that’s a gang name,” Abby said.
“This ain’t The Warriors dear,” I said. “Anyway what was Principal Shithead’s
solution to our little dilemma?”
“He said he’d talk with them.”
“A lot of good that’ll do.”
“It’s the best I can go on now. If they start again we’ll take it from there.”
I had another pull on my beer. Simon’s video game was blaring through the ceiling.
“All the same maybe I should meet Simon on the walk home tomorrow, or pick him up or
something.”
“What’s he going to do when you stop playing hooky from work?”
“We could get him a bus pass,” I said.
“Rand,” Abby said. She had some of her beer. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to baby
27
Simon. Let’s just see what happens tomorrow.”
“Hey, you’re the mom,” I said. “I’m just the boyfriend.”
“I know you are,” Abby said. But I didn’t like the way she said it.
The next afternoon I was watching the television when Simon came screaming up the
street again. I’d given up on the Dostoevsky because there was only so much spiritual
mysticism a man could take. Of course I was off the job again. When I called it in the
warehouse manager alluded to the number of days that I’d missed over the past six months,
and not-so-subtlety suggested that if I didn’t come in the next day there might not be a job
waiting for me. Warehouse managers had no conception of a man’s thirst for his own
freedom. And that’s what I was thinking while lying there watching TV when Simon and the
Talos came roaring up the street. The bullied and his bullies, I thought. It sounded like a
Dostoevsky title. There was no freedom in that system of sticks and stones either.
I got off the couch just as Simon came roaring through the front door, taking the steps
two at a time to get to his room. So I headed for the front door to greet his tormentors. I
remembered to bring a beer this time.
“Fancy meeting you boys again,” I said. The Talos didn’t say anything. They just
huffed and puffed their little burnout chests, and glared at my girl’s modest duplex. “How
much longer we gonna keep doing this?”
“That little shit gave us the bread basket again,” Bon Jovi said. He must’ve drawn the
short cigarette and it was his turn to speak.
“Completely unprovoked, right?”
“He’s messing with the wrong people,” Joey Ramone added.
“You’re not people,” I said. “You’re kids. You don’t count until you pay taxes. If
you don’t believe me go find the bars your old men drink in and ask them.”
“Screw you, dude.”
“Truth hurts, Joey.”
“We’re gonna fix Simon’s ass tomorrow,” Ted Nugent said.
“Why don’t you guys just leave each other alone?” None of the Talos had an answer
for that. They looked from one another with the same slack-jawed, clueless expression. It
was a look only their mothers or their math teachers could love. “Go back to finding new
28
things to burn with matches.”
“You ain’t so smart yourself,” Jimmy Paige said.
“Actually I have a master’s degree,” I said. Oddly enough it was true. It was a
master’s degree in Library Science, which was the equivalent of finding a degree in a box of
Cracker Jacks. All the same I had the defaulted student loan debt to prove it.
The Talos started to back away at the mention of advanced degrees. “Tell Simon his
ass is grass tomorrow….and we’re the lawnmowers,” Bon Jovi said.
“All right, now I’m convinced you guys came here via time machine,” I said. “Ass is
grass? Who still talks like that? Or are you boys being ironic?”
“Huh?” Joey Ramone said.
“Exactly. Look, what’ll it take to end this?”
“Making Simon my bitch,” Paige said.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time for that kind of stuff once the penal system gets
you boys,” I said. “I’m talking about now.”
None of the scholars had an answer. Neither did I, until I noticed Simon’s wiffleball
bat prostrate on the lawn.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Me and Simon play you boys in a wiffleball game.
We win you leave Simon alone. You win and we’ll let nature take its course.” Obviously I
wasn’t going to let these punks continue to pick on Simon if they somehow won the game,
but I wanted them to think that they had a fighting chance at something other than making
ashtrays in metal shop or whatever it was kids made these days in metal shop.
“That’s bullshit,” Joey Ramone said.
“Afraid you’d lose?” The Talos laughed in unison. They were afraid to lose for sure.
“Come on. You pick on Simon and act like he’s some kind of wimp. I’d be willing to bet
not a single one of you is coordinated enough to play a sport.” The Talos stopped laughing.
“What did you call Simon? A faggot? Yeah, I’ll bet you’re all pretty big fags too.”
That got them. Boys were easy. Hell, men were easy. All you had to do was
challenge our manhood and we’d fight until we had nothing left. The military had this
figured out for decades. Women still hadn’t figured this out. They continued to work on the
precepts that guilt and reason worked with men. Reason never worked and guilt only carried
29
a man so far. If women learned to challenge our manhood on a daily basis, say, call their
boyfriends, sons, or husbands fags if they didn’t take out the garbage or help clean the house,
society would’ve evolved into a matriarchy millenniums ago.
“Go and get the little homo,” Joey Ramone said.
“Takes one to know one, ladies,” I said. I went inside to get the boy.
“No,” Simon said when I told him my plan. He didn’t even look up from his video
game. I knew he’d be a tough sell but I didn’t expect to be shunned in such a manner.
“You want these kids off your back?” I said. Simon shrugged. Of course he wanted
them off of his back. We all wanted people off of our backs. I wanted warehouse managers
and bill collectors off my back. Other people wanted their spouses and kids off of their
backs. Simon had to want these Talos off of his back. “Or would you rather they chased you
home every day?”
“It’s good exercise,” Simon said.
“Your mom ever tell you not to be smart?”
The boy paused his game, looked back at me as if I were a piece of shit. “She told me
to respect my elders.” Then he turned back to his game.
“So old Rand is just some bum?” I said.
“You said it not me.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“You’re trying to cause me further embarrassment.” Further embarrassment. The kid
actually talked like that. “I’m already good at doing that myself.”
I sat on the edge of Simon’s bed in stunned silence. The kid was eleven or twelve or
some age like that and he was already a defeatist. Imagine the kid at twenty? Thirty? He’d
be some cruel slave driver’s wet dream. The first woman who made him bust a nut would
own the poor kid. Simon needed a good shot of confidence. He needed it before it was too
late and he’d become swallowed by the Talos of the world, or by some corner cubicle in
some florescent hell of an office. At least that was my opinion on the boy.
“One lousy game of wiffleball,” I said. “And you’ll have these dumb fuckers out of
your life.”
“How do you know?” Simon said. He didn’t look back but he put his game on pause
30
again.
“Because I’m Randall fucking Wyndham.”
“What if we lose, Randall fucking Wyndham?”
“We won’t.” Simon looked back at me. “Come on.”
“I stink at wiffleball.”
I pointed toward the window. “You think those dudes are any better? They’ll
probably get hair caught in their eyes or break a nail and quit.”
Simon laughed. I had him. He shut the game off and got up. “One game to rule them
all,” he said.
“Just keep the nerd talk to a minimum, son,” I said. We both laughed. Imagine that,
me calling someone son.
I couldn’t find my sneakers so I put on my work boots. Not the best choice but when
in Rome…. The Talos were sitting on the landscaped brick of my neighbor’s driveway,
smoking their old man’s stolen cigarettes, and trying to act tough when Simon and I came
outside. They got up in unison and started that whole shuffling and bobbing around their
shoulders like they were gearing up for a street fight. What a bunch of poseurs. If only you
could hit a kid, I mused for the second time that week. I mean we should all get one pass at
striking a child. Not a little kid, of course, but one of these smart-alecky tweens or teens who
talk in movie theaters or park their asses on our manicured lawns, lean on our cars when we
stop at the convenience store for milk. It would be like a free pass. You go to some clinic
with the kid of your choice and your yearly ticket, turn it in, and get to take your best shot. If
the kid cries you get to hit them again. But alas.
“You bitches, ready?” I asked.
“What did you say, dude?” Jimmy Paige said. He started walking toward me. Then
he stopped. He knew better. But then he pointed down at my feet. “Look, dude’s wearing
combat boots.”
That caused all the Talos to laugh. They tossed their smokes and started chanting.
“Combat Boots! Combat Boots!” I hadn’t been made fun of in twenty years. As I
remembered it, it was a miserable feeling being singled out like that. The feeling hadn’t
changed these many years later. I looked at Simon. He frowned and shook his head because
31
he knew. But I had something up my sleeve. It was called the bold, dumb ego of being an
adult in the presence of children.
“You ladies are making fun of me?” I said. “Why don’t you girls get haircuts before
the boys start asking you for dates?”
“Fuck you, Combat Boots,” Joey Ramone said. “I’ll get my dad.”
“Good. Go get him. Drag him out of whatever watering hole he’s avoiding your mom
in. He can watch us kick your ass in wiffleball, and then you can watch me kick his ass.”
“Rand,” Simon said. He tugged on my sleeve but I was in the zone.
“In fact, go get all of your dads, you fucking Talos.”
That got the Talos. “Oooooh,” they said in unison.
Then they started chanting and yelling. It was enough for some of the good neighbors
to look outside their windows and doors. I didn’t give a shit. The neighbors didn’t like me
and I didn’t like them. Plus I was kind of in my glory. I was going to be a god. I was going
to be golden. Those little burnouts ceased being Simon’s enemies and they became mine.
They weren’t Talos with funny little rock star names anymore. They were years and years of
kids picking on yours truly in school. They were my old man running off on me and my
mom. They were a succession of shitty bosses, and that prick that I head butted at the library,
the one who got me fired from the only decent job that I had. Those Talos were bill
collectors and chatty jerks in the bar when all you wanted was to get drunk alone. They were
every goddamned woman who told me that I was no good; from my first girlfriend to that
little writer twat that left me high and dry in Brooklyn. Those Talos were years of abuse that
had been heaped on my back, and they didn’t even realize it. They had no clue. And it was
time to settle the score.
“We playing ball or what, ladies?” I said. Ladies. Girls. I knew how to anger dudes.
“Batter up, Combat Boots,” Ted Nugent said. He kicked the wiffleball bat toward
Simon, and then the Talos took the field with Joey Ramone pitching.
I tried giving the bat to Simon but he wouldn’t take it. “I don’t want to bat first.”
“You have to, buddy,” I said. “There are two of us. That way I can bat clean-up if
one of us gets on.”
“This is a dumb idea.”
32
I leaned over and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder. “This is you standing up for
yourself and don’t you forget it. This is your golden moment. This is you telling the Talos of
the world that you aren’t taking any more of their shit.”
Simon took the bat from me and started walking toward the rock the Talos put down to
signify home plate. “This is me going to make an ass out of myself.”
“Have confidence, dude.”
“Right.”
Simon struck out in the three pitches. Of course he did. The first two were high and
tight, and the kid swung because he thought Joey Ramone was going to hit him. The third
pitch was lobbed in underhanded just to dig the knife in deeper. Simon slammed the wiffle
bat down and then slumped into a pile of grass while the Talos all laughed. But he didn’t go
inside, which was a positive. Then it was my turn to bat, which I did to a chorus of “Combat
Boots! Combat Boots!” Their chants only served to enrage me, feed me. I thought for sure
I’d get a pitch and ram it right down Joey Ramone’s throat. But I whiffed on the first two
pitches. On the third I swung and my ankle gave because of those fucking boots. I fell to the
ground in blinding pain, and crawled away as Simon came up to bat. He didn’t even try to
help me up. He went down in three pitches, all underhand, as I somehow managed to get
back up on two feet. Then it was the Talos turn to bat.
“Did you have a nice trip in the fall, Combat Boots,” Nugent said to me.
“Seriously, kid, go buy an insult book or something,” I said.
Nugent concurred by giving me the finger.
“We’re all right,” I said to Simon, as he did a perp-walk toward the middle infield. I
walked around the mound to try and get my ankle straight, but it was killing me to no end.
Hey, at least I had an honest excuse for missing work for a third day. “I’m going to throw
them some smoke.”
“Sure you are,” Simon said. He put his head down.
It was then that Abby’s car came up the street. Simon moved out of the way for my
girl to get her ride into the driveway. But Abby stopped the car on the street for a second. I
nodded and waved, didn’t move because I didn’t want to clue her in on my unfortunate
injury. Abby surveyed the scene from her perch of white leather interior. She looked none
33
too pleased to see her son and boyfriend fraternizing with the enemy. Actually she shook her
head at me then pulled into the driveway. It was disappointment all the way around. If we
didn’t win this game it was going to be a lonely night for Rand Wyndham.
“What’s going on here?” Abby said, slamming her car door.
“A battle of wills,” I said.
She looked at her son. “Simon?”
The boy shook his head. Mother and son, two peas in the pod, man. “Rand’s idea.”
“We playin’ ball or what?” Bon Jovi yelled. He was batting lead-off.
“Keep your pants on, Mary,” I said.
Thankfully Abby walked over to me. “What is this about?”
“A gentlemen’s bet. We beat these Talos and they leave Simon alone.”
“And if you lose?”
I shrugged. “We won’t.”
“Play…Ball…Combat Boots!” Nugent yelled.
Abby looked down at my shoes. “Fitting name.”
“Duty calls, babe.”
Abby backed away but didn’t go into the house. She hung around the driveway,
learning on the car. Our fan. The Talos didn’t have a fan. Simon and me, we had
momentum now. I went back to the mound. I could tell that the ankle was swelling. I
wouldn’t have as much on the ball as I’d like, but judging by those Talos a little heat could go
a long way. Or so I thought. Bon Jovi took my first pitch, a nasty little slider, and knocked it
behind a silver Ford Focus in the next neighbor’s yard. It was a ground rule double because
Simon had to get on all fours to retrieve the ball. Still, not an auspicious start. The next
batter, Nugent, drilled one that Simon misplayed at second. There were two on, no out, and
Jimmy Paige coming to bat.
I hobbled over to Simon. “It’s all right, son,” I said.
“I’m not your son,” Simon said. He sighed. “Couldn’t we, like, pay these kids off or
something?”
“You don’t have enough money,” Bon Jovi said from his perch on second.
“Shut up, kid,” I said to him. I turned back to Simon. “We got this.”
34
“Rand, what’s wrong with your ankle?” Abby shouted.
“War injury, dear,” I said.
“Yeah, from ‘Nam,” Nugent said from first base.
“My old man was in ‘Nam,” I said. “He used to throw kids like you out of airplanes
for fun.”
“Bite me.”
I went back to the mound. I got into one of those bent over and pensive stances. I
stared down Jimmy Paige. Then I leaned back, stretched like Nolan Ryan, and let a slippery
one go. Thankfully the kid missed it. I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked at Abby and I
winked. She rolled her eyes. I turned to Simon to let him know we had this. His head had
perked up a little on that pitch. He got into a stance, which was good, because Paige knocked
the next pitch right up Simon’s nose. The ball smacked off the poor boy’s face. Everyone
was safe. The bases were loaded with no outs for Joey Ramone.
“You sure you played this game before, Combat Boots?” he said, swinging away like
he thought he was Babe Ruth or something.
“Before you were born,” I said.
“Must’ve been picked last.”
“We probably have that in common, huh?”
“Just pitch.”
So I did. I got Joey with a fast ball. I got him with a second fastball, and the goon
Talo looked like he was going to cry. Three men on and no outs was obviously too much
pressure for him. Speaking of pressure, my ankle felt like it had a ton of steel resting on the
flesh and bone. I couldn’t keep throwing the heat. So I figured I’d throw a change-up and be
done with Joey. I leaned in. I did my Nolan Ryan. The next two pitches were for balls. I
leaned in again, a little less pressure on the ankle. It was just me and Joey Ramone in the
moment. I eyed the douche bag and he eyed me. I needed to bring the heat. So I did. And
Joey drove that pitch so far down the street that it seemed destined to take up residence in the
next neighborhood. Simon stopped running for it after he looked back and noticed that all
four Talos were celebrating at home plate.
“Four to nothing, Combat Boots!” Joey said.
35
“I’m not stupid,” I said.
“Could’ve fooled us.”
“Hey!” Abby shouted. “That’s not nice.”
“There is no nice in wiffleball,” Nugent said. Silently I agreed with him. This was
blood sport.
It took Simon forever to bring me the ball. Once I had it things didn’t go much better
for the two of us. I managed to strike Bon Jovi out, the only bright spot of the game, in
retrospect. After that it was three singles in a row, all in that goddamned driveway with the
Focus. I had a blind hatred for that Focus. I saw key scratches and smeared egg massages in
that car’s future. Then it was back to Bon Jovi, and his turn to pelt one down the street.
Simon didn’t even attempt to chase it. In no time it was Talos, eight, and me and Simon with
a big old goose egg.
“You give up yet?” Jimmy Paige asked.
“Did Custer?”
“Custer died, dude,” Joey Ramone added.
“What street corner did you learn that on?” I said.
“History class, asshole.”
Then it was just me and Nugent and my guilt over Simon, and my throbbing, swollen
ankle. I leaned in. But, in truth, Nugent had all the sway and swagger in his direction. When
he belted a double underneath that ever-loving Focus, even I wanted to quit. I wanted to do
as Simon said, and pay the Talos off and just have that be that. I figured they could stop by
monthly for their bribe money. You couldn’t win with bullies, even if you tried to do it
honestly, just like you couldn’t win with bosses or the asshole on the bus playing his music
too loud. This was their world and we just lived in it.
“Winning run at the plate, Combat Boots,” Jimmy Paige said.
“Winning run, my ass,” I said.
“They both score and we ten-run rule you,” Joey Ramone said. He was sitting on my
other neighbors sculpted brick landscape, smoking a cigarette.
“We’re not playing ten-run rule.”
“Yeah we are,” Jimmy Paige said from the batter’s box. “I got homework to do.”
36
“Remedial reading?”
“He’s in honors,” Bon Jovi said.
“Yeah, in public school.”
“Rand just pitch the damned ball!” Abby shouted from the driveway. Then she gave a
cursory clap to let Simon and I know she was still with us.
So…you know the drill. I leaned down like I was studying Jimmy Paige. I kept the
kid waiting a long time, trying to psyche him out. Then I got into my position. I gave a nice,
long and purposeful stretch to really get him on edge. Then came the pitch. I did that trick
where you make like you’re going to fire it in but then you change it up and lob it. I had him,
or so I thought. But Jimmy Paige managed to get a bit on the wiffleball. It came right at me.
But because of my little trick my equilibrium was off. I stumbled toward the ball. My ankle
cried out in pain. Then I lost my balance and started toward the concrete. I hit it hard,
twisting the other motherfucking ankle. I laid there in blind, shattering pain as Talos
screamed and shouted and circled the bases. When I came to Abby was shouting and
jumping, and Simon had the ball in his hands. He tossed it at Jimmy Paige as he rounded
third. The ball missed and sailed into a gutter. Paige scored and the Talos had us ten to
nothing.
“Best of three,” I said from the concrete. But I didn’t think I’d ever get up.
The Talos didn’t hear me because they were too busy celebrating. I turned to Simon.
He was just standing there. The tears were on the verge of coming.
“Game over, Combat Boots,” Joey Ramone said. He began to lead his pack down our
street. They stopped before Simon. “See you tomorrow, kid.”
“I’ll call the school,” Abby shouted at them. “I’ll call your parents!”
But the Talos didn’t care. They were above principals and parents. They all lit their
smokes and sauntered down the street like the big champions that they were. They chanted
“Combat Boots! Combat Boots!” until they were out of sight.
“We’ll get ‘em next time,” I said. I was still on the concrete, but I’d managed to roll
on my side.
“Screw you, Rand,” Simon said. Then he gave me the bread basket, before walking
over to his mom. The two of them glared at me and then headed for the house. Abby
37
slammed the door pretty good.
“A little help here,” I said, to no one in particular.
Then I lay on the street for a few minutes, thinking. Not about much. Just life and
things like that, like if I could really use these injuries to call off the job. I wondered what in
the hell was a Talo anyway? They probably were a gang. A knitting circle. I’d tell Simon
and Abby that one for sure. Then I started crawling back toward the house, hoping they’d
eventually let me back inside.
38
Original Photo
By
Stina Stjernkvist
39
Life Under the Sex Tree Marie Curran
I know you couldn’t afford a real wedding because you were going to go off and be a
missionary with your new wife. But really, I think you could have done better than the lawn
next to the science department. Because dates apparently weren’t in the budget, I sat alone in
a white plastic chair which on one side sagged into the mud. You were waiting for your
angel-sent-from-God against a backdrop of cacti.
Along with the ever-present spring smell of the Sex Tree’s blossoms drifting around
campus, could you smell the formaldehyde cadavers in the white building to your left? My
mother would not have been pleased, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t the one walking down the
aisle. One time I was looking through a reference book in the back of the library, which faced
the science building, when I heard this loud crash. Out of the big windows, I could see that
the movers had almost dropped one of the bodies, draped in black, laid out on a stretcher in a
routine delivery. The librarians were all crowded by the glass door giggling about the
corpses. Let me tell you, what wasn’t running through my mind was, I have to have my
wedding here!
I am at a party in the luxury apartments down the street now, waiting for Garrett (yes I
have moved on, thank you) to come and pick me up so we can ride bikes to the canyon and
try to see stars. I am sitting on the big porch with skinny English major girls, juniors, telling
them about your stinky procession, and they love it. Under the warm light-polluted night sky,
we swat the mosquitoes away and drink Blue Moons from yellowed jelly jars, ringed orange
slices bobbing on top. I see them mentally recording the nostalgia of this perfect college
moment, pretending that they are somewhere beautiful and holy, maybe somewhere more
important than this suffocating corner of Los Angeles County.
“Not that I care,” I tell them again because I have had a little too much to drink by this
time, “but I just think it’s ironic that people would start a life together when you can
seriously smell death. Isn’t that some portal into a dark future?” and they give each other
these smug looks like, I love how she perfectly pinpoints the moronic behavior at this school,
or maybe, God, she still talks about him. I may be older, but as an upcoming fifth-year senior,
40
I’m new to their elitist crowd.
What I did not tell them was how unaffected you were. You did not seem to care about
the drawers and drawers of pickled people only a wall away as the “bridal chorus” began.
You turned this gray-white color, but for different reasons I’m sure. A single glistening,
perfect-for-wedding tear rolled down your cheek. We all stood up. Kelsey looked nice and I
saw she’d gotten the appropriate tan for the white dress. A row in front of me, John Ulver
whispered something to Brandon North; I couldn’t hear it all, but I got out “doing it…
tonight… finally.” Unless they were referring to the “Letters-to-My-Husband” I heard Kelsey
had been writing and keeping in a pink shoe box since junior high, your friends were telling
sex jokes during your ceremony. Brandon, leader of both wildly popular Facebook clubs “A
Heart for Darfur” and “Cut Down the Sex Tree,” continued to chuckle.
This copper-haired girl, Reyna, takes an amateur drag of her cigarette and comments
that “Maybe we, as strong women, should just be thankful that loser guys surround us
because, we can only grow stronger without them anyway.”
Across the table, Bree, who is always single, quickly agrees. Another girl rolls her
eyes, mumbles, “Boys,” and picks at the pulp in her soggy orange slice.
Finishing off my drink, I check my phone for missed calls two more times as they
keep up their boy-bashing. This place is starting to get annoying, the girls’ voices steadily
elevating with every sip, while inside the thoughtful boys from the religious studies
department lean over the kitchen counter with their four, five, and six craft beers, not yet
drunk enough to dance with girls even though the music is blaring. And by the middle of the
night, I suppose girls like Reyna, when they wake up on some couch or perennially open and
musty bed, groggily recalling ale-flavored kisses, tangled together with someone as an old
Bright Eyes album drones on for the eighth time, won’t be any stronger for their endurance of
“silly boys.”
Don’t think that you and your type, girls and boys that only publicly touch if the
chapel is too squished, are any less dysfunctional, with all your talk of perfect wedding nights
and chopping down the Sex Tree. I guess you, safe in your African marriage bed, have beaten
41
our disdained Bradford Pear. Such a harmless looking tree, rooted right in the middle of our
tiny campus, flowers into something so awful every March that no overdue virgin can avoid
it. When I had finally learned its popular title, I stood under it late one night, intentionally
inhaling over and over. I could sort of compare it to a women’s restroom drizzled in honey
and maybe the sweet pungent dove weed that grows in Northern California’s yellow
countryside. Yet at first I had wondered why a group of boys, and you were one of them in
your faded red t-shirt, were yelling and throwing things at this innocent tree right when its
first white buds debuted. The high-heel girls on my hall explained to me that the tree smelled
like sex. Smelled like sex? I just nodded, Oh of course it smells like sex ha ha ha. I think I
joined the club. I didn’t know what a boy’s saliva smelled like.
People squirm under this tree, this tower of forbidden fruit, tempting us with the
pleasures of holy matrimony, turning our stomachs with such a perverse odor. Well, back and
forth under this unfortunate Pyrus calleryana I trudged on through my first couple years with
my virginal lips and chapel-born principles: Don’t give backrubs. Guard your heart. Don’t
touch arms. Don’t bend down too low in a v-neck. Don’t wear too many v-necks. And the
doozy, Don’t casually kiss. Anything beyond this sinful kiss was inconceivable to all of us
real Christians, except in our infuriated nostrils every spring. So when you asked me out to
Starbucks on a blistering April morning sophomore year, I was excited to go. I wore my
favorite I-care-about-Jesus-more-than-my-looks-but-I’m-naturally-pretty outfit, but kept
reminding myself that I’d just have to be careful.
But then only a few hours ago, you slid right in to holy matrimony and, diving into
that envied kingdom of unbridled bliss, forever escaped from the tree’s evil offers. And let
me tell you, your two top-rate friends really could not seem to let this go. Once I even
imagined flicking Brandon, as he chortled about your impending deflowering, right on the
back of the neck where his skin folds kept lapping up a tiny Hebrew tattoo that I’m sure read
Shalom or Savior. I hated hearing these jokes about your happy future and seeing these
people and feeling so out of place. It’s not that people tiptoed around me or anything—I
mean, nobody ever really knew about us—but I wanted Garrett to be there, to shake hands
with you, to touch my back with people looking, to dance with me in front of all these friends
I used to know.
42
Friends I used to know when we were close. But now I have a semester of art projects
to go, and you having graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Biblical studies, made the
appropriate unending-love declarations, secured the ring, and kissed the kiss. Your first kiss
with Kelsey, your first kiss that mattered, wow, I can’t believe I’d gotten to see it, you
Deacon of Purity. I looked to see if your hands were shaking before it happened. They were.
Once, near the beginning of junior year, when we were still “hanging out,” my statecollege, sorority-girl cousin Gina and I met in Fullerton for coffee. After telling me about her
latest interest/hook-up, she asked me what was going on with us. I told her I still saw a
promising future. “Okay, I know you’re doing the whole virgin-til-marriage thing, but is he at
least a good kisser?”
“Oh no, we don’t do that,” I told her, for the first time wondering if there was
something wrong with me. Gina sort of laughed. So I tried to justify myself. “We’ve only
officially liked each other for four months. It’s more important that we build up our
friendship.”
“What?” Gina gawked, swirling her chewed-up straw in her iced chai. While she’d
always said, politely at least, that I was crazy for not having sex like every other college
student in the world, it was my kissing policy that most enraged her. I had no Bible verses or
really anything else for explanation, and eventually Gina looked straight at me without
smiling. She explained that even Christian-college boys are guided by one thing, if I didn’t
get kissed soon, it was just not going to happen.
Of course I didn’t believe her, and insisted that we’d held hands twice, but as the
weeks rolled on with minor Define-The-Relationship talks (“I just want to make sure that it’s
okay how we’re spending uncommitted time together,” you said a lot) and whole weekends
that you wouldn’t call me, I decided that something needed to change. I wanted the kiss. I
started touching your arm, whispering a little too close.
Most at the party are starting to dance while a few not-quite-Christian girls, I think
anthropology majors, clumsy in their skirt-over-jeans look, stand by the porch door having
impassioned, tipsy discussions about Los Angeles’ lack of public transportation, their gritty
43
oversees internships, and of course, their failing romantic relationships. Yet I’m getting up
slowly, to teeter away, because I just don’t want to hear it anymore. I think I will call Garrett,
to see if he’s on his way.
“Hey! Watch out!” they shout now, but it is too late; right as my nose makes contact
with a bloody crunch, I see myself, still pretty in my wedding outfit, hit the sliding-glass door
and slump to the dirty concrete. “Oh my gosh! Are you okay? Talk to us!” I hear echoing
around my crumpled body. I moan a little, but moving my mouth muscles just intensifies the
burning throbbing in my nose. When I open my eyes, Reyna is sitting on the ground with me.
She is careful nonetheless, not to soil her new dress, which she explained earlier, is organic
cotton. She is examining my smeared bloody face to see how much damage I have caused.
“It’s okay, you’ve had a long day,” she says, patting my shoulder. I am un-graduated, drunk,
bloody and technically single on this day of my old love’s marriage. Some of the girls, the
intuitive English majors, have started to make inferences. I see it in their bespectacled eyes as
they help me to my feet.
I am insisting that I’m fine, I’ll just go to the bathroom and clean myself off, have
some water after that. And Garrett will be there soon and he’ll tell me I’m beautiful and
everything will be fine. He will kiss me. I lumber into the bathroom. “Poor thing!” I hear
outside the door. My nose looks awful and I’m only getting dizzier.
In my discomfort, I actually laugh a little to myself, thinking back to your ceremony.
“You may now kiss the bride,” our campus pastor had said, and you cocked your head in that
signature way I’d memorized, longed for, and you touched the side of her face. I’d once been
there too, my jaw resting in your hand, my eyes waiting for yours to close. Yet this time the
promise was fulfilled in a gentler way; you kissed, not inhaled or smashed, her lips and
smiled. As I remembered from our own experience, I thought it would look like my nose-first
crash into the glass. It didn’t. That kiss looked so damn good.
When I started listening to Gina, you often looked at my lips, which I had read
somewhere was a sign that a boy wants to kiss a girl. You couldn’t get your eyes off my lips
one evening in the campus garden. I thought you were going to kiss me in the photo lab,
which we’d stumbled into (I kept grabbing your elbow) just to see if it was haunted like
44
everyone said it was. And then there was the time in your car as campus safety walked
around with self-righteous flashlights and your eclectic worship soundtrack rolled on through
our talking. So many places we wandered with some sexual hopes. Like in the theology
library’s narrow halls of archaic Bibles, or the old bench near the apple-filled pond at dusk,
purposefully accidentally sitting close enough that our thighs touched. And we kept on not
kissing, even though you touched my head, and my eyes said yes and our lips were tense.
You didn’t, and I didn’t, and we never talked about it.
As I sat there today (by the way, you should know, everyone was nervous for you),
really not very heartbroken like you might have thought, I still couldn’t help but wonder what
we, I mean an out-in-the-open, happy-to-be-making-out, we would have been like. You
started playing your guitar then, howling these words about how you spent night after night
in the prayer chapel, seeking God’s will about your proposal. It sounded grueling. I wondered
if there would be champagne at the reception.
It was in the prayer chapel when we were praying about our “more-than-friends”
status again when the final almost-kiss came. I looked great. And I knew you wouldn’t
overlook the unintended openings between the buttonholes of my modest shirt (you didn’t).
For that we held sweaty hands. “Lord, we just wanna ask for wisdom on forming a… God—I
mean, a You-centered relationship,” you said I don’t know how many times, trying to keep
your eyes squeezed shut so you wouldn’t see that Godforsaken corner of my light green bra.
Finally, when we stopped praying, you didn’t let go of my hand. We sat a little closer. You
told me I was your best friend.
And then we almost kissed. You looked down and then back up, and your face was
closer. I strained my neck so that I’d be closer too. I wanted to scream because it was finally
coming, but instead I just watched your eyelids start to quiver close as you prepared for your
task. But then, as our noses bumped the second before lip contact, two freshman girls
bounded in, crying. They stumbled to the altar at the front, knelt down, and kept bawling. We
didn’t kiss. Your hand dropped dead from where it had wanted to tangle my hair. A sign from
God that smooching was the wrong path? Well, hallelujah, your prayer was answered Mr.
Groom. So we didn’t do it. We never got close to this gentle pecking again.
45
Back in the life of the party, I’m thinking about how I should get some more water,
but I’m also feeling lonely, so instead opt for a Red Stripe. I shift from group to group, my
eyes always wafting past conversations to opening doors that I hope Garrett will come
through. I wonder if you’d get along with him. He’s nothing like you, thankfully. He is
twenty-five, an actual man, and works at a nonprofit in town. It was a sweaty Sunday this last
March, and after I’d spent the week considering atheism (I heard you’d gone through it too
the previous semester; learning about Historical Jesus mixed with a little global warming
always gets people), I rode my bike to the local Catholic Church. I was sitting in a back pew
with my unnecessarily personalized Zondervan NIV, and I couldn’t follow along with the
mass because I’d failed to pick up a missal on the way in. But then a guy (whom I hadn’t
really noticed) also sitting alone down the same pew, moved next to me to share his.
After mass we stood outside and talked. It just felt good to be attractive to someone.
And, as distracted as I was in my existential crisis, I liked his directness and conversational
skills, if not his long black hair and smudgy glasses. He kept me talking for an hour, asking
me questions about my life. I rode my bike home humming and hopeful. Though I only went
back to the church to see Garrett, I wasn’t too concerned about God’s nonexistence.
By the end of the month, my professor had critiqued Modernism, it rained enough to
clear the smog, and I was happy not only that I sort of believed in God again but that I’d sat
by Garrett at mass two more times. I had given him my phone number and found him more
attractive than you. He liked me a lot, I figured out one night when we were stealing citrus
from the shady, hilly neighborhoods on the east side of town. As I was counting the fruit in
my bulging satchel, telling him that my roommates had a juicer we could use, I noticed
Garrett sitting still on his blue bike. He was watching me and smiling in this way I think I’d
always looked at you.
“What?” I said, starting to giggle a little, but I knew what it was. And then only a
week ago, after watching a movie together on his couch (something you always stayed clear
of, of course), he kissed me. It was such a nice first kiss, and we eased into making out, until
he pulled away and we were both a little breathless. “I should take you home,” he said, and I
nodded and brought my lips right under his ear. So we kissed some more and he eventually
mumbled that it was really time to take me home. I agreed as I touched where his thigh
46
joined his knee, and fifteen minutes later we were out the door, then in his car, then I was
back home safe. No damage done.
When Garrett still doesn’t arrive, I start feeling antisocial. An open door reveals an
unoccupied bedroom, and I disappear into the hallway, then to the room without anyone’s
intoxicated notice. When we were in our exclusive-non-dating state, you always commented
on how I could do that. Drift away without letting anyone know. Like a small child
constantly getting lost in an art museum. I don’t know if you noticed, since now you had
other things to think about, but I slipped away from your reception early. After taking part in
the toast (which I should have guessed would be Martinellis) and meal, I told the few who
asked that I had to go to work on an art project because I was taking May term. I didn’t want
to say I was actually going to the party, as even I get a little embarrassed of these rebellious
and too-artsy Christian-fringe get-togethers.
Walking home, the campus was dead; everyone had taken off for summer vacation.
Yet the school year’s residue was still around, as lemon, lime and magenta Spring Break
Mexico Missions, Tanya Thompson: Senior Recital, and Support Summer Team Djibouti
fliers lined the beige walls. On the Djibouti flier there was a tracing of the African continent,
with a Courier New “Micah 6:8” typed above a tiny heart dotting the east coast. Like we
always had reacted to this stuff, I actually laughed aloud, but I felt a little guilty this time. As
if I was actually laughing at an old woman stumbling. It seemed more okay when both of us
thought the fliers were silly.
That reminds me, newlywed, are you going to be sustainably saving souls and
empowering termite-ridden huts in the Congo or Angola? And please, promise me you’ll hire
the local women to make indigenous-looking t-shirts to sell to wander lusted freshmen at the
Fair Trade Missions Fair on our campus. It just confuses me because I remember sophomore
year, you saying that the Christian Missions to Africa Industry, with all its fashionable
tragedies and rubber bracelets, was way too status-quo for you. As if going there was no
better than driving down with some nails and hammers to Mexico for one of those weekend
charity fixes. Let the trendy Christians go those places, you’d say. As for us, we’d concern
ourselves with Chechnya, Tajikistan, and NGO’s addressing chemical problems in
47
Northeastern Russia. We were both studying Christian ministries then, before I made the art
switch and you changed to Biblical Studies.
But then I started drinking the beers I had said were stupid and you, in the same
fashion, went on a short-term mission trip to Africa. And I heard you fell in love with her on
this trip, to Uganda or Ethiopia or wherever, doing some Vacation Bible School program.
You were still in the village church after everyone else had cleaned up the art supplies. If the
story is true, then you were sitting there, holding one of your desperate African children on
your lap, swatting the flies away. Then through a doorway, and then through another
doorway—and maybe I’m getting the story wrong here but I think there was possibly another
doorway (how does a building work this way?)—sat the girl, the woman God told you to
marry! She was sitting there I hear, with not one but two desperate African children on her
lap, with gentle motherly blue eyes and a meek spirit that shone for the Lord. She was so
unassuming that she did not even look up to meet your enamored gaze. But maybe these three
crucial children smiled at each other to celebrate their successful matchmaking.
I started walking home faster, thinking I’ve held desperate children too, but never
through doorways!
Not that I wanted to be seen through doorways, not that I wanted my right hand to see
what my left hand was doing, a biblical concept you’d explained in depth to me as you
praised my humility that first night we linked our fingers together and then had another
theological DTR.
I sit butterfly-style in the bedroom, touching my tender nose, cradling my dark brown
bottle. I am very drunk. I curl up on the dirty carpet, which smells like cat, in the fetal
position. Garrett doesn’t answer his phone when I call, so I look at a picture of him and me I
saved on my phone. We are such a cute couple, even if we’re not official yet. And though
technically you are the only real boyfriend I’ve ever had, Garrett and I look way better in
pictures than we ever did. Your weird surfer blonde hair, tanned face, and dark eyes just
always washed me out. Honestly, you hardly even counted as a boyfriend anyway.
But now I’ve learned things about dating. I hope you have too. For one thing, I will
never let a boy ask me out and throw in Kierkegaard in the same sentence. Especially when it
48
is ambiguous who is Søren and who is Regina. A week after the prayer chapel scare, we went
to San Onofre to do homework. You hadn’t really wanted to go, but I gave you a million
dumb reasons why it was a good idea even though I knew we never got anything done
together. We were all alone on the beach, sprawled out on this itchy Mexican blanket,
shivering as the sun approached the water. I looked you over as you were highlighting lines
of Fear and Trembling and eating a tuna sandwich. You seemed really wrapped up in the
book and when you turned a page you dropped the sandwich on the blanket, and even though
it got a little dirty, you were trying to eat around the sand. There was a twig in your hair, and
I scooted over to you, stretched my hand out to your head. Then right as I was about to
remove the twig, you looked up and flinched. My hand dropped.
“I was just getting something out….” I trailed off. You looked like you were aching
for me, but I wasn’t sure if it was out of desire or pity. I began to cry.
You shoved your chin into your hand in that way you always did when you were
nervous and apologized. I started talking about how I just couldn’t do this anymore.
“I know, I know, I can’t either,” you said, although it was muffled because your hands
were over your mouth. And although I was bracing myself for you to tell me we should just
forget about our friendship and everything else, you instead said, “Look, this has been going
on so long so let’s just be together. I’m afraid we’ll regret it—like Kierkegaard, you know—
if we don’t just try.” We both now know that was an easy save, but I wanted to believe in us.
So I agreed. “This will be good,” you kept reassuring yourself, sitting closer to me now, your
nervous hand on my shoulder, barely making contact with my sleeve. It was like you didn’t
want to touch me hard enough so that I’d know you meant it. Yet you kept your hand tense
there for a long time and neither of us wanted to move. I kept trying to feel the difference,
feel what having a boyfriend, being a girlfriend was like. You would smile at me sometimes.
This suspension felt like forever and it was getting darker and the seagulls were screaming.
You got this look you usually did when I thought you were going to pray for the
relationship. But instead, without any face-caressing or eye-shutting, you rammed your face
into mine. Your tongue scraped my mouth with salt and sand. After the shock of this first
kiss, we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. “Is that okay?” you whispered. I
nodded. You kept kissing me, and I figured out how to kiss back without crunching too many
49
sand granules or tasting too much tuna. Then your hands began moving, first to Christianenough places, then elsewhere. This wasn’t the slow and smooth reclining of lovers that we
see in movies, which I had always imagined in my own life. Instead you rushed into a hard
fall to the blanket, lending no careful, supporting fingers behind my head to stroke the bottom
curve of my skull. My neck stuck out over the edge of the blanket, causing sand to gather in
my hair, the harder you imprinted our bodies into the shifting earth. As this rapid and clumsy
dance continued, it became more rhythmic. I sunk further into the sand, and you sunk closer
and closer into me—exploring, nudging—converging with the heartbeat under my clothes.
Besides occasional misaimed kisses and awkward inhalations, the whole thing was like a
hand pushing itself into one of those nail-impression toys they have in dentist offices; your
ravenous mouth and body found me somewhere in the space between the hand’s pricking
nerves and the unfeeling, agile nail bed. Droplets of sweat dripped from your hair onto my
face. One hit my eye. And when you could barely speak or breathe or even touch me, you
took my hand, which did not protest like it knew it should, and showed it how to do what
needed to be done.
Imagining being hugged, I sort of fell asleep on the floor. At first I think of Garrett,
but it’s hard for me not to feel your arms during that beach sunset, first sucking me in before
spitting me out cold and weak. Someone new has entered the party I can tell in my halfconsciousness, and although the music is loud, I can discern Garrett’s voice. Yet sleep is so
enticing. It is dark and quiet and only mine. I hear Garrett asking about me, but I do not
move. I’ll make him come to me.
After four hours, when we were done making out, messing around, or whatever it was,
the hunger on your face turned to disgust. You kept brushing your hand against your mouth
as if to get away the sand and my taste. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” you said over and over as you
zipped up your pants and I buttoned my shirt, which stuck to my stomach where it was wet. I
wasn’t sure who you were apologizing to so I wouldn’t look you in the eye. With my hands
around my knees, I scrunched myself up and stared at a sand crab’s flaky, evacuated shell.
On the drive home the 5 was backed up so we sat in traffic for almost two hours. “Look,” you
said eventually with your hand over your mouth. “I can’t do this.” I counted semis.
In the following days, the trickle of gossip through my friends reported that you found
50
me “too aggressive, not very pursuable.” As I sniffled over fish tacos with a good friend, she
suggested maybe I needed to be more careful about guarding my heart, like we had learned in
our Bible study group.
“She’s in there,” I hear, and I open my eyes. Through the doorway I see someone
handing Garrett a beer. He is looking at me. I give him a wobbly wave, and starting to wish I
was not quite so drunk, I turn around to lie on my back. The ceiling is sparkly. He comes in
and sits next to me and his right knee brushes my side. Putting his hand on my stomach, he
starts humming this song that I recognize but can’t name. That always bugged me when you
did that, and I almost want to tell him to stop. He doesn’t say anything for awhile and he
definitely doesn’t kiss me or anything.
“Finally you’re here,” I snap at him. “I hate sitting at these stupid parties alone.”
Garrett apologizes quickly. I think I’ve caught him off guard because he’s staring at me. And
then he keeps staring, but not into my eyes. “Oh!” I shout, remembering my nose, picking at
the crusty blood gathered above my lip. “Don’t look at it, it’s just bruised!”
“Yeah, I heard,” he says, patting my stomach. I curl away from his gesture and then sit
up. “How about I walk you home now?”
“What about our bike ride?”
“You’re drunk. Your nose is blue. I really think it would be better for you to go home
and sleep.”
“Whatever,” I say, as I try to stand up too fast.
As we are leaving the party and almost out the door, I see Reyna and her literary
cronies at the kitchen table. “Hey!” I yell across the room to them, rushing over to them,
hanging on to Garrett’s reluctant sleeve. I watch them size him up and I exclaim that this is
the “man” I’m dating now. “He has an amazing heart, and all he does is help poor people in
his job!” I go on, shushing him when he tries to stop my rambling. Reyna cuts me off and
asks how my nose is feeling. Then Bree bursts out in giggles until she can’t stop snorting.
“It’s fine,” I say in a much calmer voice. Garrett looks kind of sad.
Finally we’re out the door, and taking my hand, he leads me off the porch into the
purple-orange sky. He walks quietly the two blocks to my apartment, not letting go of my
51
hand and steadying me over broken or narrow parts of the sidewalk and up my stairs. And I
understand how nice Garrett is, but I can’t ignore his pimply forehead or weak, vein streaked
hands and it’s clear that he’s not the man I’d ever want to fall in love with. He doesn’t get my
art and I don’t want to say another word to him because I don’t want to give him any more
access to my vulnerable heart.
When we reach my doorstep, Garrett, who is rubbing my hand in this nice way, gives
me a soft kiss on the cheek. He asks if I’d like him to come in, maybe to talk for a bit. “Do
you just want to make out with me?” I ask, even though that’s what I kind of want to happen.
And I like the way he’s rubbing my hand, so when he stops I’m a little hurt.
“What?” he says, gentle but offended, averting his eyes from my body, lessening his
grip on my hand but still holding on by the fingers. “I’m not like that. I would never take
advantage of you like that.”
“Ha! Of course you would, you’re a guy,” I say, throwing my head back laughing. I
whip my hand from his and his shoulders slump. “Aren’t all men like that? Just really want
us for one reason?”
He opens his mouth but nothing comes out at first. Yet I can see it on his face
somewhere between his slack eyelids and lowered chin. A wound I have inflicted, a wound
that suddenly opens a sore of evocative dread in me. “I’m going home,” he finally says,
backing away from me. Because I’m not quite ready to be alone yet, I’m beginning to regret
things. So I lean against the door, leaning in the way a girl does when she’s waiting for a kiss.
This used to drive you crazy, the shift in body language, the slow parting of lips, the soft
sleepy gaze. But this does nothing and he’s three feet away at the stairwell now, foot resting
on the second step down. With only a tiny “Bye,” Garrett vanishes.
Through my window, I watch him slump away into the starless night. I realize that
even though I always love watching Garrett look back up and squint into the light of my
window, he is not going to this time. You never looked back up. I always just told myself it
was because you were so in love with me and you were afraid to let it show too much. Now it
seems silly that I ever estimated love. Now it seems certain no matter what I did, I could
never have been your medium between a mind to talk at and a body to touch. But Kelsey is, I
guess, and then it hits me. It’s your wedding night, and thinking about you and Kelsey
52
fumbling in the hotel sheets, I want to gag and laugh at once.
Leaning my head and arms against the window sill, I close my eyes. It is your future in
my mind, and while I’m long past wanting you, I think I am jealous. At the table in your willbe dirt-floor house, while breakfasting on mango and tea, kicking away one of the house rats,
you simply talk about the lately rainy weather with the person you love.
I hear footsteps approaching, and grateful that Garrett has come back, I open my eyes.
But Garrett has turned the corner and is just out of view; the footsteps belong to an older
Mexican woman carrying her laundry in a white bag over her shoulder. Even though I just
want to pass out on my bed, I wait at my window a little more for Garrett to come back, but
he does not. The complex is still except for the small woman’s steps toward the laundry
room, a tree’s rustling, and the moon-colored ripples making their way across the pool. I sit
staring, massaging my earlobe over and over again, playing with the small, hard ball where
the piercing is. A new sadness is rippling its way through me. In my blurry reflection in the
glass, I see in myself something of your face, when it fell forlorn on the beach after you’d
realized your sin, the terrible mess you’d made.
53
Esta noche Kathleen Alcalá
After esta noche, there will be time to laugh, to remember better times.
For now, there are tamales to make, rice to cook, red thread to embroider on a
turquoise shirt, jeans to iron to a knife’s edge.
The mole has been ground, but not cooked. The vegetables have been washed, but not
chopped. Bring me cebolla, a tomatillo, sweet yellow chilies that grow in the masetón in the
courtyard. Bring me cilantro, comino, oregano. And yes, we will put acetunas in the tamales,
raisins in the sweet ones.
As always, we will sing. My mother, who taught herself to play, will bring the guitar.
She holds the low strings by wrapping her thumb over the top of the neck. The old songs will
spill out like vintage jewelry, clunky and colorful and tarnished with archaic turns of phrase.
My aunts will remember their childhoods, but only the good parts. No one ever
mentions the bad, except for my uncle’s pet lamb that ended up on the Easter table.
When the food is gone, the tablecloth stained, the essence consumed by the spirits. We
will laugh again, but only after we cry.
54
Original Photo
By
Ashley Williams
55
The Texas Range Adrian M. Ortiz
I never claimed to be a suicide prevention advocate extraordinaire. I never had enough
practice. J.M., my editor at the school newspaper, needed me to scope things out, write a
story about what it’s like to be an advocate. It seemed easy enough: Ask, Care, and Escort is
the mantra of the advocate. The acronym for that is ACE. When you think about suicide
prevention in terms of acronyms, fighting suicide is supposed to make sense: ACE. When
Cassidy Lee leapt off the university’s student government’s balcony last year it all became a
big deal. She claimed that life was meaningless and grades, people, school, and becoming a
lawyer didn’t matter; don’t matter. “What matters is freedom,” she wrote. In the paper, her
story ran as “Local School Girl Commits Suicide,” which was underneath the bolder cover
story: “RAAF Reports of Aliens in Roswell Resurface!” That was last year, and I was too
young to understand what she meant, or what anything meant for that matter. Even now, a bit
older, a bit wiser, when I walk into a story, I’m not sure I know how to tell it right…
When stories get personal, they become difficult to tell. So let me tell you, what
happened to Donald Chau caught everyone by surprise. Not just by surprise, but we were all
shocked and confused. I was put on trial. But it in the end it all worked out. There were
certain things we knew. For one, I wasn’t a murder. Secondly, he was the type of guy to sit
on rocks, Indian style, holding his feet, afraid they would fall off, meditation or something.
He was Zen–that’s it–Zen, and people would look and smile. And third, he was my best
friend. He knew what to say and he did what nobody else could ever do: he listened. He was
there since we were bowl headed kids, when our mothers cut our hair to save money so we
could camp in the dunes of the Texas range roasting marshmallows and sitting in the poison
oak. That was when we first met. He asked me, “Hey, what’s your name?”
My name? It was the first time I was ever asked such a question from a person who
meant it sincerely. Most of the time, I was just the kid they called boy, or that kid, or hey you.
“Marco,” I said.
He scooted a little bit closer to me and he said kindly, “You might not want to be
sitting on that poison ivy.” I looked down, and lo and behold, I was sitting directly on a vine
56
growing slyly from the roots of the tree I was sitting on. Thankfully, his mother packed some
kind of Chinese herb for such an occasion. While it didn’t help much, the terrible smell
distracted me from the itch until the trip was over. “Hey thanks,” I said. “Thanks for not
letting the other cub scouts know about this.”
“It’s alright, Marco.” He returned.
“What was your name?” I asked, as though I should have done so earlier, but my
manners were unrefined and I was still a young kid then.
“Donald,” he said, “but my Dad calls me Donnie, and I like that.” So that was the start
of our friendship.
Together, we peeked at Candice and Madeline through a hole in the wall at Middleton
Jr. High. We smoked weed and got caught by my dad. Since Donnie was with me, he let us
go with wrist slaps—which were like thirty lashes for anyone else. Donald was the first to
smash me in the face with a clenched fist. “Get your head out of the clouds!” He told me,
“You said yourself that you don’t care that the scout master hates and demoted you. So stop
caring, or start listening to yourself.” Now that he’s gone, I don’t have much to say anyway.
By the time we outgrew our bowl haircuts, left the scouts, I found a niche in reporting.
I was a well dressed son of a lowly Filipino family, and my mother tried to hide our poverty
by dressing me nicely. I did the most decent thing I could do, and hide behind the power of
my words on paper. Donnie, on the other hand grew to be a superstar genius. Had he been
with us until graduation, he would have been voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” Which was an
understatement, he was already a success.
Julius Santisakul was jealous of him; a little Asian rivalry didn’t hurt anyone, but
when mistakes happen people can get bitter. Julius kept his hair in short spikes with the help
of globs of gel and hairspray. They were both part of the swim team at school, and they swam
in lanes next to each other in heated water and with large crowds watching them. Julius was
clearly the better swimmer, placing first most of the time, but that wasn’t the problem. Apart
from consistently winning third in freestyle for the swim meets, Donald earned the
Presidential Volunteer Service Award by raising tens of thousands of dollars in donations
through benefit concerts he setup. Bands loved the idea of working the philanthropy circuit,
and Donald even showed them how they could get tax write-offs by playing. He was brilliant.
57
The Kinks came; there were animal-free hotdogs. Donald was the project lead and Julius
worked alongside him, but thank bureaucracy for not recognizing an equal partner. A golden
eagle was planted on his white collared shirt by the guy at the White House, the guy. From
the seats below, past the men-in-black, and the suited snobs, I cheered him on. Julius was
jealous. Donald offered him the eagle after the ceremony, but it wasn’t the same.
Competition and jealousy are best friends, I guess, and those two knew Julius. For half
a year he threw tater tots at Donald, tater tots with hot sauce. At first it was a onetime thing at
lunch. All the guys sitting at the lunch table gave Julius the stink-eye. Some called him
immature under their breaths, like I did, and some ignored it. The ignoring part became easier
as Julius did it a second time. Then a third time. And when the cafeteria ran out of tots, Julius
had some anyway because his parents ran a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and what’s worse than
flinging tots is flinging potato wedges. It’s the boomerang shape of the potato that makes it
look as though you don’t know how to put food in your mouth. If being caught in the
crossfire means learning this firsthand, what’s worse is that I have the dirty laundry to prove
it. Julius made it up to me with a bucket of chicken later. I don’t hold grudges; I also like
chicken.
At first Donald tried catching some in his mouth. Julius aimed for his eyes and Donald
smiled and waved. Julius threw so hard that the crisped fried potatoes exploded like meteors
crashing into a planet with dinosaurs. Then he would smile and wave back. Julius liked red
sauces, so Donald stopped wearing white.
The same day after the tots started flying, I had the guts to ask Genevieve out for the
first time (after math class, silky strands of hair draped around her face and floated over her
chest; I’m doing interviews for elections and since you’re running for council president, can I
have a minute, and by the way, let’s do this over dinner? I won’t probe you. I’m not an alien.)
She of course said yes before she could realize that we were going out on a date. It’s one of
those techniques, I learned in training, which translates over to other parts of life. Never let
the client–we call the suicidals clients–fixate on the act of killing themselves, or in this case,
don’t let the girl think you’re desperate about having dinner. Skirt the idea and insert
something else. In this case elections and dinner; it’s no different than the bait and switch.
The elections stay in view—and that’s important because changing the subject can be fatal.
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Stay realistic and keep the client’s wants within reach. I can be slick like that. “Look,
Marco,” Genevieve said, “I’ll be honest, I think you’re cute. That jittery charm of yours is
irresistible. So let’s just have dinner and forget the interview.” I brushed the hair off my
forehead and smiled a dumb little smile. A little luck also helps.
At lunch, Donald didn’t have to raise his tray over his face as a shield. His eyebrows
furrowed as he asked me what happened to him, to Julius. He had conjunctivitis I said, pink
eye, it was contagious; the tater tots, don’t worry, I said, they’ll be back. After swim practice,
Donald stopped by Julius’ house and gave him a get-well card. Julius didn’t say a thing about
the card, but we knew the situation took a turn when the tater tots stopped flying. But that’s
not the weird part.
Friday night. I took Genevieve to a little restaurant. We had to order up front and they
brought the food over to a vinyl booth. The booth was smooth, so that when you sat on it for
moments at a time, your butt would slide around and every so often you’d have to sit back up.
I ordered the chicken soup. She got the fish. Long hooped earrings and thick eyeliner told me
she was looking forward to the evening. As the waiter brought the food over I took the spoon
and stirred the lemon colored broth, the carrots bouncing like buoys. “Nervous?” she said. I
smashed some saltines into the soup and smiled.
“You know the soup here is great.” I said. “Want to try a bite?”
“I’m alright. I don’t eat chicken.” She saw the expression on my face and she had the
need to explain herself. “I’m a pescatarian, veggies and fish only.”
“Oh.” I took a spoonful of soup. There was no steam coming off it, I could raise the
bowl to my face and just drink it. It was cold. She took a couple bites of her fish and excused
herself to the ladies’ room. The waiter came by. His name was Fernando and he asked me if
I’d like water.
“No gracias,” I said with an accent like something from a Mexican soap opera because
that’s all I knew about Spanish. Fernando raised an eyebrow.
“Alright, just checking,” Fernando said and walked away, a small towel sticking out
his back pocket.
Genevieve was still in the bathroom and I didn’t want to eat until she got back. There
59
was a stand with some pamphlets. Horseback Riding, Texas Eats, Cheap Hotels, Marfa
Lights, Join the Army. I picked up Marfa Lights and returned to the booth. A tourist
attraction that lies sixty miles out in the desert nestled in between the dust of the earth, the
cacti, and the dusk of night. Sounded romantic. The Marfa Lights are believed to be
supernatural, extraterrestrial, or the consequence of swamp gas and light pollution. The
pamphlet goes on to say that scientists have offered a variety of reasons for the manifestation
of lights in the Texan skyline, but the reasons aren’t definitive. “Still,” the pamphlet reads,
“the lights are an impressive view to see whether or not extraterrestrial life has any
connection to this phenomenon.” Genevieve’s heels click on the tile and I put the pamphlet
down. “Miss me?” she said. I smiled and pointed to the pamphlet.
“I had some entertainment.”
The weirdness fully came about three weeks after finishing my suicide awareness
training. It wasn’t a presidential award, but I got a certificate saying that people could come
to me in case they wanted to kill themselves. “It’s about damn time,” J.M. said. The thing is,
as a writer, he wouldn’t know that I had to endure two hours of talk-exercises, term papers on
the importance of compassion, and courses on kindness. In some way, I felt like I was being
held captive on Dr. Phil. Ask, Care, and Escort. It was a hellish experience. But J.M. wasn’t
sitting in these classes, he was a stuffy editor who only had to wait. Now that I was done, I
was an ACE, I could actually act. As a personal celebration, I asked Genevieve out again,
since we hit it off okay. It was our third date and I drove sixty miles out to the Texas range to
see the Marfa Lights. I chose Marfa because she said, “Surprise me,” and I did. The most
surprising part of the evening were the throngs of old bearded conspiracy theorists and alien
watchers filled up on energy drinks looking out telescopes they got their grandkids two
Christmases ago.
When we got there, the sun was still out across the horizon, thick and orange like a
piece of candy in the sky. A skinny guy in a trucker hat with Fat Mack stitched into the front,
held up a jar to Genevieve’s face. Inside was a monkey fetus in pickle grime to make it look
like an off-world life form. “Check it out y’all! Preserved alien bodies! Two hundred
dollars.” With his other hand he reached into a tub of caramel popcorn and chewed with his
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mouth open.
When she realized what was in front of her face, it took her a moment, then she
screamed. It was one of those blood curdling screams that travel up and down your spine like
an army of ants are deciding where to dissect you. “I’m staying in the car, Marco. I’m not
staying out here.”
“Wait, Gen,” as I got used to calling her, “we should at least stay for the lights to come
out.” Her smooth jaw was tight and clenched. Her fingers unhooked the keychain from my
belt loop.
“Really Marco,” her bottom lip twitching in disgust, “I thought you were making jokes
about this alien business this whole time. I’ll be waiting in the car when you’re done with
your supernatural fetish.” And she turned around and walked.
Defeated, I stood there watching her beautiful behind leave me in the red dustiness of
the Texas range. “Aw too bad, so sad.” Fat Mack said.
“It’s all your fault.” I said. A well of anger balled up inside of me then shot out like a
geyser I didn’t know was there. Pffsshh. “You don’t do crazy things like that!”
“Look,” Fat Mack started while lip smacking the popcorn kernels from the sides of his
teeth, “she’s out of your league anyway. I mean, if you meant anything to her, she would be
right next to you, right now, and a creepy old guy like me would have no bearing on a
relationship that strong.” There was silence for a good moment. Beyond, the sun slowly
dipped down and I had an itch on my nose and scratched it. Then I took a step toward Fat
Mack and reached into his tub of caramel popcorn. I ate a handful, then another.
“Are the lights worth looking at?”
“Nothing more beautiful,” he said. He pulled out a fold up chair from out of his trailer
and offered me a seat. “More popcorn?”
“Sure.” I reached in and had another handful. “Is that really what I think it is?”
“Rubber, neoprene mesh, pickle jar, and my daughter’s old dolls.”
“Then, you don’t believe in aliens?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Fat Mack said, “but I do believe in selling bizarre
paraphernalia.”
I wanted to choke Fat Mack, but somehow I felt like I had this coming, somehow. The
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geyser of emotion within began to subside. It wasn’t bound to work out anyway. Genevieve
got back together with her French fashion designer boyfriend a few weeks later. They had
been talking while we had our dates. “This popcorn isn’t bad.” I said. The candy-like sun slid
down the horizon. Fat Mack nodded. “Hey,” I said, “I have to write about the lights, can you
tell me anything about them?”
Fat Mack laughed. “Kid, I don’t know if they’re aliens or some redneck’s roastin’
fire.” He took a handful of popcorn into his mouth and chewed, “all’s I know is that they’re
out there, and they ain’t bad to look at.”
The worst part about the date that night was the drive back: her sitting asleep, curled
up against the passenger door while I listened to a bunch of Beatles songs turned down low.
So I had Genevieve, the nine out of ten, the frontrunner for next year’s council presidency,
the brunette queen of the school, every man’s dream, in my car but I managed to screw it up.
I didn’t mean to let it slip that the Scout Master was making out with Arnie Ju’s mom, I guess
you were just made to screw it up. Right Scout Master Kevin? I’m nearly eighteen, I should
know by now.
Anyway, the Marfa Lights, a clone copy of Orion’s Belt, a worn out tale of
extraterrestrial life, space ships on the range, but moreover a romantic dimly lit evening was
the answer. Instead I ended up with material for my next editorial in the school newspaper:
“The Marfa Lights, Hoax; Date-killer.” I told Donald afterward, “I want to kill myself.”
“Ask, Care, and Escort?” He said.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“There’s really not much to it. I don’t know why it takes so long to get certified.” He
laughed. “Sorry.” He said.
Donald Chau listened to me rant about what a bust the date was, how stupid I was, but
how cosmically alluring those three alien lights were. How they glimmered sadly, how lonely
they were, whatever they were.
Expecting his usual, “That sucks man, but that’s life, tell me about it,” Donald instead
said: “That sucks man, here’s a present.” And that’s how I knew he was suicidal. Donnie led
a very well to-do life, full of textbooks, swim practice, and paperwork. He didn’t own very
62
much, much less have any money for gifts. For him, presents were more like cards with
cartoon dogs and dry puns on the inside flaps. I should have known.
When I opened up that newspaper wrapped box, uneven and lazily taped, I found
jewels of legend within. The entire “Dark Skies” limited print comic books slept within that
cracked cardboard housing. These were his relics of childhood. He looked on at them, sleepy
eyed and mystical. This was how Donald was saying goodbye, and I didn’t know how to say
anything back. “Thanks,” I said.
“Hey, enjoy them,” he said.
I learned from Julius the next day that he had received an equally awesome present in
an equally shoddy box. Julius pointed out that the newspaper wrapping idea came straight
from one of my “Save a Penny” pieces, and I felt bad for not remembering. He asked me how
my date with Genevieve went and I said I didn’t want to talk about it. “So what did you get?”
I asked.
“I thought you had her in the bag. Well let’s see: signed art books, Don’s air rifle, and
his Mexico jersey from the world cup. Pretty damn good.” He raised his eyebrows, “What did
you get?”
“‘Dark Skies’ limited print comics and Donald is suicidal,” I said.
“Didn’t get to fuck her?” Julius laughed, “We were rooting for you Marco, but come
on, it was Genevieve. I thought I stood a chance, but you? Ha! Well at least ‘Dark Skies’ will
keep you busy! Now do you think I should ask her to prom? Are you cool with that?”
I said nothing, started walking.
“Where are you going?” his voice reached after me, “Marco?”
I was a trained Suicide Prevention Advocate ready for a soul to save; I could make
homemade egg-rolls, play Spanish guitar on ladders and rooftops. I thought I had enough
time to work on Donald until he cleared out his locker and picked up writing as an
extracurricular. I read some of his quote-unquote poetry—it wasn’t bad, it was his will: “I
will give away my love / to stand on the stars.” That’s what he wrote.
Julius couldn’t be counted on; he didn’t know what was going to go down. I had to
move fast; I stalked Donald on the way home after swim practice late that night. I pulled a
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black sweater over my chest and pretended that I spent six weeks doing ninja stealth training.
In one hand I carried a bunch of photos and memories we had together. Establishing a link
with the client is important. They need to know you care. I just needed to show him.
Tracking him didn’t matter much because Donald lived a mile away from school. It was the
house where we could crawl outside his window onto the roof and watch the stars fall from
up high. Below, there were vines that crawled up the stone wall that reached toward his
perpetually open screen window. It was too easy.
I was ready. I had pamphlets and photos of Boy Scout outings out on the range lodged
in my armpits, memories of skating down hills and learning to love life speeches right on the
tip of my tongue, and thanks, thanks in my heart. So when I climbed up to the second story I
saw Donald open a book. He was reading. I don’t know for how long, but I just needed to
make sure he wasn’t going to do it tonight.
So there I was waiting, standing guard, making sure that our protector was protected.
My back against the wall, I sat with my knees up to my chin waiting for the right moment to
burst into his room and give him a life inspiring speech. But he kept on reading, and reading,
and reading, and reading…
When I woke up, I wiped the drool off my face and bolted upright. His lights were still
on, but he wasn’t reading. He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed, and I wondered if I was
too late, and down went all my pamphlets, into the bushes.
I put my face up against the cold glass and shook it away from the gutter, scraped my
sneakers against those sandpaper shingles, and crawled in, fumbling stupid over myself.
Donald sat up, like Dracula as if he had been waiting for me this whole time. In his calm
voice he said, “Oh man, Marco, what the hell?”
And I said, “Don, Donnie, Donald!” Catching my breath from the climb and brushing
away pointy thorns onto the blue carpet, I recalled all five weeks of that stupid Suicide
Prevention Advocate Course and summoned wise words: “Don’t kill yourself!”
“Oh man,” Donald said, “Is this a good time? I mean it’s three A.M., dude.”
“But Don, Donnie! The gifts, the date, the shitty newspaper wrapping, I remember it
had to do with sustainability! The terrible poetry!” I cried. “Don’t kill yourself!”
“I appreciate the concern Marco,” he said, sitting Indian style. “What was it again?
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Ask, Care, and Escort?”
“Yeah, you remember.” I said.
“You’re a good friend. I can always count on you to do the right thing.” He smiled,
stood up and squeezed my shoulder the same way he did when I was demoted from troupe
captain so many years ago. “Get out of here man,” he said slapping my back, “I’ll see you
soon.” And that’s how I knew he was fine.
My head peeked out the window down at the vines below, cold air filling my heated
lungs. I climbed down the vines, about halfway, before I heard the window shut as a blinding
light shot across the sky. It was as bright as lightning, but as slow as a plane flying up into the
sky. Before I knew it, I was dropping ass-numb into the garden where my pamphlets and
pictures collected dew. The light faded out from where I took Genevieve the night before,
from Marfa, and I knew something was up. I picked myself off the ground and scrambled
upward to find Donald gone. I jiggled the window open to find his clothes lying where his
body should have been, flat, and empty of his flesh. Gone like the rapture. He wasn’t at
school the next day, and his parents didn’t know where he went.
“He’s gone!” I yelled running downstairs and upstairs, acting like a crazed maniac.
The lights in his parents’ room flickered on and Donnie’s dad began yelling at me in a
language I barely recognized. When the baseball bat lowered and he recognized me, he called
out for Donnie’s mom. She was wearing a pink bathrobe with kittens on it with matching
slippers to boot.
“Marco?” his mom said, “What’s going on?” His dad didn’t want to sit through the
bullshit.
“I’m going to bed Margaret. I’m calling the police. You talk to them. Marco I can’t
believe this nonsense. He better not be missing swim practice tomorrow.”
“Mr. Chau,” I said, “I swear to God, he’s alright, he…he has to be!” But he didn’t so
much as turn around as he walked toward his room.
“I’m going to bed,” he said before he slammed the door.
I was apprehended and missed a day and a half of school while I was interrogated. His
mother probably sat behind the double sided mirror and heard every bit of what I had to say.
Julius sat at the police station with me as he was considered one of Donald’s closest friends;
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as such we were both possible suspects—for something. We both didn’t know what
happened. I told him what happened that night and we just sat there quiet, in those
uncomfortable plastic chairs. National News was playing on the televisions overhead,
something about flying saucers over the USSR. Then Julius broke the silence and said, “If
there were aliens, they picked the perfect specimen to represent the human race.”
I crunched my eyebrows at this, then started busting up laughing. He was right. Then
he laughed. There would be nobody better. And we laughed in the police station, filled it with
the din of Donald’s life that he shared with us. Talking about Donald’s burnt candy in
cChemistry class brought tears to my eyes when I tried eating that garbage. Julius reminded
me when he saved me from falling off a ravine while racing bikes at the quarry. “Damn man,
if he wasn’t there to grab your handle bars, you would have flown right off and snapped your
neck!”
“He did that with one hand didn’t he?” I said.
“Haha, he might have been an alien himself! I saw his stupid crunched up face trying
to hold you from going over the edge,” Julius raised his arms up, “God he looked so stupid!”
“Dude, he made that face at his birthday party right before he started puking during the
buffalo chicken wing eating contest.”
“Oh, you’re right, it was that same ugly face. But fuck, I don’t blame him, those wings
were spicier than the Devil’s balls. That fucking sauce.”
“You and your hot sauces.” I said, “They were good on the food, but not on my shirt.”
“Man, I was armed to the farm! Those were good times. Looking back, I know I was
pissed, but you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. I took a breath. “Julius, I don’t know where he could have gone.”
“Gone home!” He smacked my shoulder and I bounced in my seat a bit. “Shit, Marco.
He’s goddamn E.T.!” And we laughed so hard I thought I was going to start throwing up the
mashed potatoes and chewy chicken nuggets the detectives gave us for lunch. Every time I
looked at him we laughed even harder and I could feel my gut wrench partly because I
missed him and partly because I couldn’t control myself. Tears formed at the corners of my
eyes from laughing so hard, and if I wasn’t laughing, I might as well have been crying. The
stocky detective came in and separated us for being too loud. He put Julius in an empty
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cubicle and I could hear him giggle to himself.
After all the evidence was tallied up, the stocky detective with his suspenders
unhooked around his fat waist brought both of us together in one of the questioning rooms.
There was nothing else to say. He had enough of us and our stupid laughter. The file had to
be labeled as unsolved.
When I got back to class on that second day, J.M., my editor knew this story had to
run. He asked me a bunch of questions before I started writing. He said there had to be an
answer. I told him no. There was no answer. He asked if he was suicidal. And I said no.
Weeks had passed and I had still written nothing. The Chau family never spoke to me
again, or even Julius for that matter. Occasionally I would walk around the student
government building, where Cassidy Lee hit the pavement, and I would see Genevieve
standing up on the balcony, looking out. She would pretend not to see me, looking past me,
or through me, whichever it seemed. Even when I caught her gaze with my own, she turned
around and walked back inside, which was fine. Her French supermodel boyfriend broke up
with her for the umpteenth time, and I heard Julius asked her out to prom. He seemed to have
moved on fast; the world shut me out, and was it because I was the last one to see him alive?
Nobody seemed to look at me in the eyes anymore, there were just soft whispers of
“oh it’s that alien guy,” or “Donald Chau’s friend is the extraterrestrial. He ray gunned him in
his sleep!” Nobody seemed to acknowledge me anymore, except for one guy.
Later, I ran into J.M., who was the first person to approach me in a while. “Marco, you
gotta get me that article done. We’ll call it the Case of Donald Chau and you have all the
answers; you were right in the middle of it. This even ties into that suicide prevention stuff, it
runs the gamut of a powerful op-ed; the next print is going to be big!” I nodded.
At home, I sat at my desk, scrap after scrap of paper and wrote nothing. My mom
brought me tea, and my dad just patted me on the shoulder, as if there were no words to be
said.
“What did it matter, my boy?” Dad asked.
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll find him soon,” Mom said.
“Who cares?” my sister asked, which wasn’t so much of a question than it was a
statement.
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I found myself driving out to the middle of nowhere. The dusty dunes of the Texas
highways surrounded by an expanse of red fervor that stretched out toward the sun left me
with wanting. Wanting to go somewhere, to drive out toward the sun, not chained to the Earth
by gravity, but to literally drive off the blackened road and into the lustrous obsidian sky
where I perhaps would meet Donald Chau, and he would merely tell me that things were as
how they were supposed to be.
My eyes turned heavy and the wheel felt soft beneath my fingers as I listened to my
Beatles mix tapes on repeat. Again, I couldn’t explain it what had happened but there was a
flash of light and I was wide awake. The car wasn’t moving, it was stopped dead center of the
road to Marfa where I had met Fat Mack. The trailer was gone, there were no fake alien
bodies in pickle jars, but there was certainly a crowd of people. Maybe not the same people,
but people nonetheless who were out watching the skies, waiting for the lights of Marfa to
shine hope onto their weary souls. Perhaps they were so weary of watching themselves in
their mirrors day in and day out, that there was nothing left but to look beyond.
Jiggling the door handle of my sister’s station wagon, I stepped outside and wiped the
grogginess off my face. The lights glittered in the distance, they were a series of lights that
moved ever so slightly, less than an airplane, but definitely more active than any star I’ve
seen. I sat atop the hood of that station wagon until I could feel the dew build up on the
windshield and seep into my shirt. I guess this wasn’t my greatest moment either, but as the
dew built up around my eyes they acted like a lens; I could see the Marfa Lights shimmer
through the lens, like a kaleidoscope distorting my vision of everything around me. The lights
were always moving, darting back and forth, rotating, but always there, as long as I kept my
eyes open.
Eventually I wrote J.M. a draft: A Tribute to Donald Chau, which had no answers
about aliens, or flying saucers, or stories about bad dates or old grudges. Julius didn’t know. I
didn’t know. The detective didn’t know. His parents didn’t know. Nobody knew. Even the
advocate teachers shrugged at me when I asked for an interview. The article was short and
asserted my lack of certainty. As for certainty, there was one thing I wrote that ended the
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piece: “He was the sanest person I ever knew. He was kind and regulated. He was empathetic
and Zen. He was a good friend to everyone. He was my best friend. And that’s all you need to
know.”
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My Hundred Years Allen Kopp
The Home for the Elderly was an old-fashioned four-story brick building, not unlike
the building in which Billie St. John went to school. She had never been inside but had seen it
many times, passing it in the car when she was riding with her mother. She stood on the
sidewalk in front of the building, looking up at the windows on the top floor which were just
then reflecting the afternoon sun. She took a deep breath and went inside.
Across the lobby from the front door was the reception desk. She went up to it and
stood there politely. “Ahem,” she said when the woman sitting there didn’t look at her.
“Yes?” the woman said, barely looking at her. “If you’re selling something, we don’t
allow it here.”
“I’m not selling anything,” Billie said. “I’m here to interview a centenarian for a
human interest story for my school paper.”
“Name?”
“Billie St. John.”
“We don’t have anybody here by that name.”
“I thought you meant my name.”
“What is the name of the centenarian to whom you wish to speak?”
“I don’t have a name. Just anybody over one hundred years old will do.”
“We have three residents over a hundred. Mrs. Milligan is a hundred and three, Mrs.
Oglethorpe is a hundred and one, and Mr. Wellington just turned one hundred.”
“Any of those will do.”
“Mrs. Milligan doesn’t speak, she only babbles. Mrs. Oglethorpe is so blind and deaf
she wouldn’t even know you were there. That leaves Mr. Wellington.”
“He’ll do.”
“Go up one flight of stairs and take the hallway to your right and go all the way to the
end. Mr. Wellington’s room is 210. You’ll see it.”
“What if he doesn’t want to see me?”
“Just tap lightly on the door. If he wants you to come in, he’ll say so. If he doesn’t
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invite you in, you’ll know he’s indisposed and you can try again another day.”
She found the room easily enough but suddenly she was afraid. One hundred was
terribly old. She had never even seen a person that old before, let alone expect something
from them. She wanted to turn around and leave and forget the whole thing, but it would
cause her no end of trouble if she did. She would hate having to explain to everybody that she
lost her nerve and wasn’t able to go through with it.
The door was partway opened. Through the crack she could see into the room, the
corner of a bed and a picture on the wall. She knocked lightly, not wanting to wake up
anybody who might be sleeping.
“Yes?” came a voice from behind the door, a voice from which she was able to read
nothing.
She gathered her courage, pushed the door open and entered. She saw a withered old
man sitting on a chair in front of the window. He was hardly bigger than a twelve-year-old.
“Are you Mr. Wellington?” she asked.
“Who are you?” he asked. “I didn’t send for anybody.”
“I’m Billie St. John. The lady downstairs said you might talk to me.”
“About what?”
“I’m writing a human interest piece for my school paper about a centenarian.”
“About a what?”
“About a person a hundred years old or more.”
“Who said I’m a hundred?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, but that’s no reason for everybody in the world to know my private
business.”
“Do you want me to go away?”
“No, no, no. If I want you to go away, I’ll say so.”
“Is it all right if I sit down.?”
“Oh, by all means! Mi casa es su casa.”
She thought it too familiar somehow to sit on the bed, so she pulled out the chair to the
writing desk and sat on it. She cleared her throat and fumbled with her pad and pencil, pulled
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her skirt down over her knees and looked levelly at Mr. Wellington.
To be so old, he had hardly any wrinkles at all. His skin, which was the color of old
paper, was shiny and seemed pulled too tight over the bones of his face and head, as if made
of rubber. His head was small and round and reminded Billie of a cat’s head.
“Now, let me see,” she said, looking at her notes. “To what do you attribute your long
life?”
“Never getting shot in the head.”
“What has been your greatest satisfaction in life?”
“Outlasting my enemies.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
“Yes. Allowing you to ask me these inane questions.”
“What does it feel like to be a hundred years old?”
“Wait about eighty-five years and you’ll know.”
She looked at him and smiled, thinking that maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad. “But
what if I wanted to know now?” she asked. “If you were going to tell me what it feels like to
be a hundred, what would you say?”
“Think about a small boat on the ocean,” he said. “It goes the vast distance from point
A to point B so slowly that you can’t even tell it’s moving. When it reaches point B, finally,
that’s when you are where you are supposed to be. That’s when you’re home.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about it but she wrote it all down anyway.
“Now let me ask you a question,” he said.
“What?”
“What does it feel like to be you?”
When she realized she couldn’t answer, she squirmed and blushed. “I don’t know,”
she said.
“Not so easy to answer, is it? Not so easy to put into words. You have a stomach ache
or a headache. You can say you have those aches but you can’t really put them into words,
can you?”
“Yes, I suppose it’s a silly question that doesn’t have an answer,” she said.
“Like so many other questions. Questions that don’t have answers.” His attention
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drifted to a spot on the floor and for a moment he seemed to forget she was there.
“Ahem,” she said. “Did you have brothers and sisters and do you remember much
about your childhood?”
“I had three sisters and two brothers. They’re all dead now. I’m the only one left. I
don’t know why.”
“Where did you live?”
“We lived on a farm until I was ten years old. My father gave up farming and we
moved to town. He worked in a furniture factory. One of my brothers was killed in a car
accident when he was eighteen and one of my sisters gassed herself at twenty-four. The man
she wanted to marry was already married to somebody else. Am I going too fast for you?”
“No, just give me a minute to catch up. I never took shorthand.”
“After I finished high school I needed to learn a trade of some kind so I could make a
living, so I went to mortuary school to become a mortician. Do you know what a mortician
is?”
“An undertaker?”
“I didn’t especially want to be a mortician, but I couldn’t think of anything else. In
nearly forty years as a mortician I saw the ugliest side of life. I saw wives killing husbands,
husbands killing wives, children killed in every conceivable way including at the hands of
their parents, men torn to shreds in factory and farming accidents, drowning victims, shooting
victims, knifing victims, suicides by poison, suicides by hanging and just about every other
way you can imagine. And in all that time I learned one thing: there has to be a God or all the
terrible things that people go through are without meaning. I bet you won’t print that in the
school paper, will you?”
“After you stopped being a mortician, what did you do then?”
“I don’t remember. I traveled some, read a lot of books, took a lot of naps.”
“How long have you lived here in the home?”
“Longer than I can remember. The squirrels and birds I watch out this window are
several generations removed from the first ones I watched. One day soon they’re going to
carry me out of here feet first and some other poor old man will take my place in this chair,
but I don’t mind.”
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“Do you get many visitors?”
“None. That’s the bad thing about living for a hundred years. Everybody you ever
knew in your life is dead.”
“Don’t you have any family?”
“I’ve had four wives. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, would you? Not one of
them left me or divorced me. They all died on me. I had two sons but they’re dead too. Even
my grandchildren are dead. Now why does that happen? Why does everybody die and leave
you behind?”
“That’s another one of those questions,” Billie said, stopping her writing and looking
at him. “Would you like me to come and visit you sometime?”
He smiled, showing his jagged teeth. “I’m sure you have much better things to do with
your time.”
“I could read to you from the newspaper.”
“That’s okay. Visitors are one thing I can do without. I have my squirrels and my birds
and a hundred years of stuff going on in my head. And I haven’t forgotten a thing. It’s all
right here.” He tapped the side of his head with his fingertip. “My life is nothing now but I
don’t mind. I’m tired of the world and of people and I’m looking forward to what comes
next. I know you don’t know what I’m talking about but you will someday if you live long
enough.”
She closed her pad and stood up and put her coat back on. “Well, I believe that was all
I wanted to ask you. I Tthank you for allowing me to talk to you.”
“Can you use any of that stuff?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I think it’s more than adequate.”
“Will I be able to read the piece that you write for your school paper?”
“Yes, I’ll come by one day and bring you a copy.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“It’s been awfully interesting talking to you,” she said. “I hope we may meet again.”
She left the room quickly, suddenly embarrassed, before the old man had a chance to
say anything else.
As she was passing the receptionist’s desk to leave, the woman called to her.
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“Did you get what you wanted from Mr. Wellington, dear?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I hope he didn’t give you a bad time.”
“No, it went fine.”
“They pretend to be annoyed, but they love talking about themselves. They don’t get
much attention, you see.”
She went outside and paused on the top step of the Home for the Elderly. She would
have something to tell her mother at dinnertime, and together they would write her piece for
the school paper. She was certain they would come up with a story so good it would keep her
from failing English class.
With the sun going down, the air seemed much colder than before. She pulled her
scarf around her neck, put on her gloves, and headed for home in the gathering winter
twilight. She didn’t know it, but Mr. Wellington was watching her from his window on the
second floor.
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Original Photo
By
Ashley Williams
76
On Taking Good Hits Jeffrey Graessley
Disgusted, I smack the round knob on my dash and it spits out the CD with her writing
in cramped, neat circles.
“This really doesn’t need to be in here,” I tell the empty car, and take the right on Joan
Bridge, two and half wheels skidding– then ease it into my usual spot at the bar.
A cloud of smoke streams in lazy plumes to my right. I can smell it, pot. One of my
uncles smiles a wide turn, holding a glass piece. Wet coughs drip his lips, low-rider eyes,
happy content living; I see it in the lines on his forehead.
“Where you been, young blood?” he asks, wrapping his free hand around my shoulder,
pulling me into a hug; a blue collar at-work-all-day smell, sweat and intoxication.
“I’m about an inch from running, unc. I don’t give a fuck anymore. She’s gone.” My
eyes search the cracks in the parking lot for answers, but find none– his rough hand grips my
shoulder, flint and steel eyes boil into mine.
“You’re fucking WHAT? How you gonna talk like that?” And, like the Heisman
trophy stance, he stiff-arms me, I feel the pressure on my shoulder– a stare, like a cop’s light
signaling me down.
And the asphalt still doesn’t have any answers.
“The house is so empty,” I finally manage. Her shape asleep in our- my bed.
Memories dance through my head, a slow Spanish number. Mountains of wrapped blankets, a
sheaf of almost-black hair poking through. My fingers can still taste the sweat drip from her
body, working.
A shake on my shoulder, little like an earthquake, rattles me back.
“Listen to me,” he says in a cloud of bliss out his lips. “A woman has everything she
needs to break a man. You can’t let them. She’s gone? Then let her go.”
He smiles, wide, passes the piece to me, lighter follows directly after. “They’re just like birds,
you gotta let them go, and if they every come back, then they’re yours.”
I laugh– breaking into a smile.
“Hit that, young blood.”
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Passersby Kenneth Valencich
Caitlin walked down the stairs at Kanda station, Tokyo, with me. A man, eighty years
old, in a three-piece suit and fedora walked by. He stuck out his lower jaw, teeth bared as we
passed.
I stopped and turned around. He was smiling at me from above, before entering his
train.
Caitlin saw nothing.
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Contributors

David Howard has published recently in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Blue
Lake Review, Crack the Spine and Apollo’s Lyre.

Nomi Liron lives in the Bay Area. She writes flash fiction but is also writing a
novel. Twenty-five of her stories have been published.
John Grochalski is a published writer whose fiction has appeared in many
online and print publications including: Retort, Bartleby Snopes, The Big Stupid
Review, In Between Altered States, The Battered Suitcase, and Pequin. His column
The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer (www.newyinzer.com), and he
also contributes a column to Carbon-Based Lifeform Blues
(http://www.carbonbasedlifeformblues.com/). He has two books of poetry The Noose
Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008) Glass City
(Low Ghost Press 2010), and a novel, The Librarian, forthcoming.
Previously Marie Curran had two short nonfiction pieces published in Geez
Magazine. In 2007, she graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a BA in English
(emphasis Creative Writing) and also received first place in the Azusa Pacific Short
Fiction Contest. Currently, she is a therapeutic preschool teacher with Talitha Koum
Institute in Waco, Texas. She works with children who have suffered emotional
trauma and whose families have historically been marginalized/in poverty. Also, she is
approximately half finished writing a short story collection, and has recently begun
studying in Northern Michigan University’s MFA program.
Kathleen Alcala grew up surrounded by stories. The author of five books set
in Mexico and the SW, she was born in Compton and grew up in San Bernardino,
California. Now she teaches creative writing at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts
in Washington State. Her work has received a number of awards, including the
Governors Writers Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the Western
States Book Award. Her recent work appears in the Jack Straw Writers Anthology and
a short short as part of “Chair Stories” installation art at Jack Straw.

Adrian M. Ortiz is a corn beef-fed Filipino-American born in the heart of
Southern California, Orange County. He has traveled around the world in search of
something he can’t quite find, though no matter where he has been he has written about
it. From the planned city-scape of his alma mater, UC Irvine, to the mountainous
terrain of Afghanistan, he has seen quite a bit. As a writer, soldier, and a philosopher
of sorts, he hopes to someday become enlightened so that he may walk on water.

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Allen Kopp lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, with his two cats. He has had over
seventy stories appearing in such diverse publications as Santa Fe Writers’ Project
Journal, Danse Macabre, A Twist of Noir, Skive Magazine, Midwest Literary
Magazine, Short Story America, Midwestern Gothic Literary Journal, Planetary
Stories, Best Genre Short Stories Anthology #1, ISFN Anthology #1, Superstition
Review, Quail Bell Magazine, State of Imagination, Dew on the Kudzu, ThunderDome
Magazine, Spasm Valley Magazine, The Medulla Review, Subtext Magazine, and many
others. He welcomes visitors to his website at: http://www.literaryfictions.com

Jeffrey Graessley is a writer from La Puente, CA. His latest works can be
found in the forthcoming Summer Anthology of Silver Birch Press; as well as Electric
Windmill Press, and The Pomona Valley Review. His recent discovery of the BEAT
generation has prompted loving and longing thoughts for that simple, drunken, fargone time in American history.
Kenneth Valencich studied Creative Writing and Japanese at UC Riverside.
He’s staying active in the literary world to keep away the, “You should become a
teacher,” ghosts.
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