Monthly Archives: September 2017

September 1, 2017

When School Is in Session

By Polypsyches

Everyone always wonders what Professor McKinley does when school is out. It’s not just the students, either. Even the teachers don’t know. He won’t tell them.

Patrick McKinley is known as one of those confirmed bachelors who really just keeps to himself. He goes to faculty meetings, of course, and his opinions are respected, usually heeded, almost always met with the closest thing to universal support that can be expected from a faculty meeting. But does he ever go to the faculty parties? Only when his life is threatened, but it’s been a few years since that was the case.

“He’s a robot,” some students have decided.

“But like, a kindly robot,” others chip in, “Like a robot who’s friendly and only here to actually help—“

“But doesn’t actually have any real human emotions.”

During the break, his office is empty. Not completely empty, of course. Just as empty as a college professor’s office usually is during breaks. Or at night. Or just when the professor isn’t there. This gives the lie, one must assume, to the collegiate myth that Professor McKinley literally lives in his office. Unless he takes his vacations somewhere truly remote, but no one has ever heard him talk about taking vacations.

No, his office is empty, but only during the breaks. On the very first day of school, at somewhere around eight in the morning, he materializes next to his window, having appeared out of thin air, usually holding a cup of tea. He usually materializes mid-sip. Where did he come from?

This is usually the same position he is in at the end of the term. On the last day, and really even on Fridays, actually at the end of every day of school, every day that there is evidence he exists at all, Patrick McKinley makes himself a cup of tea and looks out the window and at about six PM, he vanishes, without so much as the common decency to become a puff of smoke. Because men like Patrick McKinley only really exist during the actual school year.

Leave a comment | posted in Shories

September 1, 2017

Withering Violet

By Polypsyches

JORDAN: I just had the weirdest fucking thing happen.

MALLORY: You and your weird-ass fucking things.

JORDAN: Can I talk about it? You got time to kinda…

MALLORY: Perform emotional labor?

JORDAN: Now why you gotta be like that? I do the same for you.

MALLORY: I do. Fine. What’s up.

JORDAN: OK, so… Oh, God. So, like.

MALLORY: Take your time, white boy.

JORDAN: So like a week ago, I’m at this party, right?

MALLORY: That party I told you not to go to ‘cause it’d be skeezy as shit?

JORDAN: Fuck. You did tell me that.

MALLORY: M-hm.

JORDAN: Well, it actually wasn’t that bad.

MALLORY: Mmm-hm.

JORDAN: At least, I didn’t think so at the time.

MALLORY: What happened?

JORDAN: OK, so there was this girl there.

MALLORY: All right, now I’m gonna stop you right there. Did you have sex with this girl at this dank-ass party?

JORDAN: You know exactly how long it has been since I’ve had sex.

MALLORY: That is not an excuse.

JORDAN: That wasn’t—that’s not what I meant: no, I did not have sex with the girl at the party.

MALLORY: OK, please continue.

JORDAN: I was a perfect gentleman at that party.

MALLORY: You were not a perfect gentleman at that dank-ass rave.

JORDAN: I was, I—

MALLORY: Jordan? I know you. You were polite and considerate. Polite and considerate people do not go to these dank-ass raves. Were you polite and considerate?

JORDAN: Well, I was trying to be!

MALLORY: And those bitch-ass dankheads wouldn’t let you, would they?

JORDAN: God dammit, Mallory.

MALLORY: You watch your language, boy, you in the South.

JORDAN: Sorry.

MALLORY: They thought you were punk-ass bitch, didn’t they?

JORDAN: A lot of them did, but this one girl…

MALLORY: Was she “different”, Jordan?

JORDAN: Well, that’s what I thought, anyway.

MALLORY: What did she do?

JORDAN: Laughed at my jokes?

MALLORY: Lawdy, lawdy.

JORDAN: Come on, you know how hard it can be to laugh at my jokes—I mean, to find people who’ll laugh at my jokes.

MALLORY: Remind me, you did not have sex with this girl?

JORDAN: She was really drunk.

MALLORY: Mm-hm.

JORDAN: But my God, was she hitting on me!

MALLORY: You at least get her number?

JORDAN: Got her name. Added her on Facebook. She didn’t get me back.

MALLORY: You try Instagram? You know nobody uses damn Facebook anymore.

JORDAN: You know I’m not good with technology.

MALLORY: Well, you best good with technology. You know how folks always saying you gots to get good with the Lord? Well, you know technology’s the Lord now!

JORDAN: Yeah, thanks.

MALLORY: So what did happen with this girl?

JORDAN: She pulled me into a room, a bedroom, not sure whose, don’t think it was hers, though. She kept trying to get me to make out, she took off her clothes, I kinda like, you know, looked away and stuff.

MALLORY: And stuff?

JORDAN: And shit. Sorry.

MALLORY: So you just looked away and shit?

JORDAN: That’s about when she threw up.

MALLORY: So you high-tailed it?

JORDAN: Well, I helped her clean up first.

MALLORY: You did not.

JORDAN: Should I have not?

MALLORY: Lawdy, lawdy.

JORDAN: Anyway, so yeah, I kinda tucked her in, what was left of her, and… well, I debated about turning the light on, but I didn’t.

MALLORY: That’s it? That’s the whole story?

JORDAN: No, that’s the part of the story that happened a week ago.

MALLORY: That’s what I thought. You see her again?

JORDAN: Oh my God, it was awkward.

MALLORY: M-hm.

JORDAN: Yeah, we did this thing where, like, I was looking at her, ‘cause like, I recognized her, but then she didn’t recognize me, so then I looked away, but then she did look at me and she did recognize me, so she came up to me all like—

MALLORY: “Why the fuck did you leave me alone and unconscious at a dank-ass rave?”

JORDAN: That was not the first thing she said.

MALLORY: M-hm.

JORDAN: The first thing was trying to remember who the fuck I was. She needed some, like, well, some, you know.

MALLORY: Needed some help with that one?

JORDAN: Yeah, so like, I told her and she remembered and she was all like “That’s right! Didn’t we have sex at that party?”

MALLORY: But you did not have sex with her at that party. Right?

JORDAN: Like I keep saying, no, I did not have sex with the… skank? Can I say skank? I probably shouldn’t—

MALLORY: Sounds pretty damn fair, though.

JORDAN: Anyway, no, I did not have sex with her, and I told her that, and she wouldn’t believe me!

MALLORY: Just ain’t enough gentlemen in the world, is there?

JORDAN: Right?

MALLORY: So was that the end of the story?

JORDAN: … No.

MALLORY: Oh, boy.

JORDAN: Because then the next thing was her being like “But then who the fuck did have sex with me at that party?”

MALLORY: Lawdy, lawdy.

JORDAN: So that’s when I put all the pieces together and I realize, holy shit, I’m not some gentleman, I’m the asshole who put her in a dark room, where she could be…

MALLORY: You gonna say it?

JORDAN: No, I’m not.

MALLORY: You’re not gonna even say it.

JORDAN: No, I’m not, and I’m gonna tell you why.

MALLORY: Uh-oh.

JORDAN: ‘Cause the next thing was, I start apologizing, and then she starts being like “Bitch, what the hell you apologizing to me for?” And so I explain, like, what’s upsetting me, and what I assume must be upsetting her? And she goes “Nuh-uh, you missed the fuck you, playa!”

MALLORY: She did not say that.

JORDAN: I don’t remember the words, but she was, like, she was angry with me for trying to apologize for leaving her in a dark room to be—and that’s when she said it, but then all like angry and shit.

MALLORY: Angry at you?

JORDAN: Angry at me, yeah, for apologizing. For thinking that I needed to, like…

MALLORY: Angry that you thought she needed protecting.

JORDAN: Angry that it hadn’t been me in that room.

MALLORY: Is that what she said?

JORDAN: I don’t know if she meant it, she was too charged up by that point, but yeah, that’s pretty much what she said. “Why wasn’t it you?” Why’d it have to be a stranger in the middle of the night and not the guy she’d been flirting with all evening? Like, am I missing something here? Like, it sounded like I should’ve stayed, right?

MALLORY: Probably shoulda called her a cab. Unless it was her place?

JORDAN: I couldn’t get a straight answer out of her on that count by that point, let alone an address. She seemed pretty confident in that room, though, that’s probably why I… well… Excuses.

MALLORY: You definitely should not have had sex with her.

JORDAN: Why would she have wanted me to?

MALLORY: She didn’t.

JORDAN: Are you sure, ‘cause, like, it really sounded like—

MALLORY: White boy, stop. You said she was unconscious?

JORDAN: Not that unconscious, she knew something happened later on.

MALLORY: She was unconscious.

JORDAN: Yeah, I wasn’t gonna… I wasn’t ever gonna.

MALLORY: Did you tell anybody about her?

JORDAN: … No.

MALLORY: Why not?

JORDAN: I didn’t really know anybody at the party. At least not anybody I…

MALLORY: Trusted?

JORDAN: I should’ve done more. I could’ve… maybe… But what could I do?

MALLORY: Hooked her up with a friend? A girl?

JORDAN: Right, ‘cause a girl couldn’t… It’s just, it sounded like… She made it sound like she wanted it to happen.

MALLORY: Don’t even go there.

JORDAN: I’m not, but like—

MALLORY: No, listen to yourself. What are you trying to justify?

JORDAN: I’m not trying to justify anything. I’m not saying how I would have done things differently, I don’t know what I should have done differently, other than, yeah, maybe trying to find someone who knew her before I left the party. But mainly, I’m just trying to understand… did she want something to happen?

MALLORY: No.

JORDAN: Are you sure, ‘cause she made it sound like—

MALLORY: No. She did not want something to happen. That’s how you gotta see it, white boy. There are two possibilties here: either she had some kind of abusive pattern making her want things she shouldn’t, things that are gonna be bad for her in the long run, right? In which case, giving her those things she thinks she wants but doesn’t, that just makes you complicit in her derangement. That’s wrong from the get.

JORDAN: Right.

MALLORY: So what’s the other possibility? Well, the other possibility, however far-fetched it may be, was that she actually did genuinely want somebody to fuck her while she was unconscious in that dank-ass room. So let me ask you this: did you want to be the guy to fuck her in that dank-ass room while she was unconscious?

JORDAN: No.

MALLORY: You didn’t? Well, why the hell not? Was it because you didn’t want to run the risk of it being the first option and you being the asshole who added to her self-destructive behavior?

JORDAN: I guess that’s part of it, maybe.

MALLORY: What’s the other part? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, you just didn’t want to be the guy having sex with an unconscious woman you just met at some dank-ass bitch of a house party?

JORDAN: Yeah, that just… I don’t think of that as… I just wouldn’t even think of that.

MALLORY: You would be uncomfortable. Sex should not be uncomfortable, though, so why would you even ask if that’s what you should’ve done?

JORDAN: Because I’m a pathetic shithead?

MALLORY: Is that why it didn’t even occur to you that it was the right thing to do until she brought it up?

JORDAN: I don’t know what the right answer is here.

MALLORY: You should’ve found someone there who knew her. Told enough people she was there they could’ve policed each other. Women, especially. Gone from there.

JORDAN: … Should I have gotten her number?

MALLORY: Girl didn’t remember who you were and thought she’d had sex with you. No, you should not have gotten her number.

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

September 1, 2017

“School’s Out”

By Polypsyches

Graduation means different things to different people. Did I just blow your mind? Probably not. You probably knew that, because you’re a smart person. (I assume that stupid people don’t read—this, or anything else.)

Typical graduations come in three flavors, depending on how you felt about school. Either it’s a relief knowing that you don’t have to go back there anymore, or it’s an overwhelming achievement that will make everyone who knows you proud, or it’s a stepping stone to something else.

For Kyle, graduation was miserable all around. It was miserable even though he knew he’d be going to college, he knew he’d be studying music and going on to bigger and better things, but think of everything he left behind. Not just the Elk, he’d always kinda known in his heart of hearts that the Elk (Strings, Chords, whatever) was a shitty band, a garage band with nothing really going for it. But those guys… he kind of loved them. And by the time graduation had come around, he’d manage to completely alienate them.

“The band doesn’t suck!” Tommy kept trying to tell him.

“Tommy,” Kyle would reply, and then he’d just look at him, as though pleading with his eyes for Tommy to accept the truth that should have been obvious.

And Mickey. Mickey knew that it sucked. Mickey knew that he sucked. He’d accepted it. Kyle couldn’t help but feel guilty about that, too.

At prom, my sister had finally managed to convince him to have sex with her. It was one of those awkward moments where you get what you want and then real quickly you realize it has nothing to do with what you actually wanted. It wasn’t so much disappointing as… I don’t know, closure? They didn’t speak. They didn’t have to. At least, they thought they wouldn’t. But once they’d committed to silence, they both realized they weren’t on the same page. Their reasons for fucking each other were different and neither was doing it for the right ones. She was doing it to fulfill some, I don’t know, teenage dream? He was using her to rebound.

That was the other thing that sucked about graduation.

Now Declan’s graduation is kind of bittersweet. I guess that’s pretty much par for the course. It’s great to be getting out there, out into the world, he’s taking Raven with him to UNC-Trinity. He has one relatively (for a high school garage band) successful band under his belt by now, he’s confident he could have another if he decides that’s what he wants, if college rock bands are even a thing—

“They must be, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” his girlfriend shrugs at him, “I don’t know from college.”

He will be leaving Jasper, of course, and Jasper’s graduation barely even registers on his radar. “Sweet,” he figures, “Got that high school diploma out of the way, that mean I can get a real job?” And the answer is yes, of course. Gotta have a real job if you’re gonna be raising a kid.

For Raven, it is an unqualified relief. Not so much graduation, I guess, that’s kind of just the cherry on top. By the time she actually walks across the stage, Raven has already turned 18. She’s flipped her old life the bird, showed it her cooch for the last time and now she’s shaking that ass extra hard so it knows she’s not coming back. Not that she’s moving that far. They’re spending their first year at college in the dorms, separate rooms obviously, because only gay couples get to live together on campus in college, but they’re on the same floor and they manage to break their way into the arrangement-cascade where everyone’s roommate has a significant other—or another bed to sleep on when they break up. That’s another story, though.

That’s as far as we’ve gotten. As far as you’ve gotten, anyway.

I, of course, have gotten further.

My graduation will be tense. I can’t say how yet, I can’t tell why. I can just feel it looming right now, looming with almost some kind of trepidation. Is that vague enough for you? There are some things that I know, some things I can sort of make out and derive. I know that Lucy will be happy. Not that that’s a real surprise, but fine, I’ll take it. I know that Isabella Millar will be a wreck.

And I feel some sense of urgency surrounding Trevor. Like I want to talk to him, need to talk him. But he won’t look me in the eye. He hates me. Sometime in the three years between the end of my freshman year and our graduation, Trevor will come to hate me. Does it have something to do with him being gay? Why does it always have to be that? Did I steal his boyfriend or something? Wow. Original. I don’t know. But there’s something else.

There’s something else and I’m not sure about it. I can’t quite get there, you know?

There’s something else, if I could only…

Leave a comment | posted in Angst