September 8, 2017

Romeo and Juliet Reunited

By Polypsyches

JULIET: Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou come? Whither hast thou taken me? Were we not dead, before?

ROMEO: I had thought we were. I thought you dead—

JULIET: I thought you banishèd—

ROMEO: Banished were as good as dead, to be parted from your side—

JULIET: Nay, say not so.

ROMEO: That is quite enough said, methinks. Indeed, we cannot say too little in this paradise.

JULIET: Yet how can this paradise be? Romeo, my husband, you took poison—

ROMEO: And you did die of a broken heart.

JULIET: No, I didn’t. Romeo… Friar Lawrence ought to have sent out a letter.

ROMEO: What letter?

JULIET: I was to be married to Paris.

ROMEO: That villain. I slew him, too.

JULIET: Slew Paris?

ROMEO: Ay, he was a rogue and arrant knave and a fool to boot.

JULIET: Why?

ROMEO: He was guarding your tomb.

JULIET: They knew that you would come back. Romeo, I drank no poison. The draught Friar Lawrence brought me was a sleeping cure that forged death before tempering it with dreamless sleep. Yet perhaps I did dream. Perhaps we’re dreaming still.

ROMEO: It matters little now, my Juliet, my wife. Whatever place this is, do you detect the torment of our houses’ war? Do you hear your mother’s painful drone, your father’s tirades, or my father’s woes?

JULIET: I do not. And yet methinks I saw Tybalt here.

ROMEO: The prince of cats.

JULIET: My cousin, husband, and yours.

ROMEO: I came with nothing but love and yet he killed my friend. My friend and the prince’s cousin. And therefore am I banished.

JULIET: Didst not slay him?

ROMEO: He killed Mercutio.

JULIET: Didst not kill thyself?

ROMEO: You were dead. How was I to go on?

JULIET: I, too, killed myself for thee. You left me no poison, yet you left me with a bare bodkin to make my quietus. The untrod depths of hell, I suppose, held no more terror for me than the world I live in. A world where my husband could die after killing my cousin. A world so unjust, where my own father would force me to marry a man I did not love because the man I did… And what of this world? Is this world as cruel? I saw a fool over yonder who spoke of an English King and his tragedy. I’ve seen Romans and Greeks. Oh, Romeo. My sweet, sweet, Romeo…

ROMEO: Perhaps we’ve made it after all, our stars un-cross’d, our lives uninterrupted by the spectre of—

JULIET: Don’t speak. Oh, my Romeo. Methinks there’s yet more to this mystery.

Leave a comment | posted in The Race of Myths

September 7, 2017

“Harder Better Faster Stronger”

By Polypsyches

Being a rockstar doesn’t exactly pay the bills. I mean, really, what does these days, right? Or if it does pay the bills, it pays all of them at once. But that’s a pipe dream and Jasper Llywelyn had given up smoking.

He had a daughter now, I had a niece. He had to take care of her. Mom had a new baby of her own on the way by the time they left high school. She could only help so much, and especially after Jasper made the (ironically) educated decision not to go to college, to go to work instead, the pressure was on him from all sides to actually get a job, to get a trade, some certification that could turn skills into money, or at least skills that could turn said certification into a solid credit report.

When he finally found something, he wouldn’t tell us what it was, exactly. I knew it wasn’t anything sketchy (at least not in the legal sense), some kind of steel mill forty miles out of town. Nine to five, he woke up at seven and didn’t get back till after six, holding up dinner. Two hours a day, if that, barely, with his kid, to make ends meet, no wonder fathers are so cold. They never get the warmth of family.

Do I remember how much time our father spent with me?

Do I even remember who he was, by now?

It was some kind of steel mill. Heavy machinery, lots of moving parts, factory work, too fast in my visions for my eyes to track, and he never talked about it. Sometimes I would catch him using terms, we’d be talking about something unrelated, he’d draw a parallel. But then he’d realize and he’d shut down. “No, go on,” we’d say.

“Nah,” he said, “I don’t even wanna think about that.”

Because of course, he was miserable. If he’d still had a wife, if Ellen hadn’t died in childbirth, maybe things would have been different. Someone to come home to who wasn’t related. Someone to help blow off steam. I’d like to thnk she’d have been more to him, I’m just not sure what. He still had so much driving him. So much passion. So much obsession.

Every day, he’d have two hours in the car to listen to music. Other people’s music. He’d whack the steering wheel in time to the beat, sing along, even change it up a bit like was singing a cover, make it more interesting to himself.

He never talked about anybody that he worked with. Made me wonder if he talked to anyone. My brother, the chatterbox. What did he do? Was he really that miserable?

After a few months, he got a raise. A little while after that, it was some kind of promotion.

“Sweetie, why didn’t you tell me?” But I already knew ‘cause of how he looked. He looked worse. He looked more depressed. Any praise he got, any form of recognition, only drew him further into that world and it was a world he didn’t want to be in, a world that wasn’t him. 

But his world didn’t want him. There was no room for him there. So he made his bed every morning and his little girl got up and played on it.

Leave a comment | posted in Angst

September 6, 2017

Nature

By Polypsyches

I want to tell this story from the perspective of a single character, one who realizes, maybe, the dangers and evils inherent in our current way of life, and changes his ways. But that’s not how this is going to work. That isn’t the nature of this story.

We have always been at war with our mother. Perhaps this is in part, at least, because she refuses to coddle us. The temperatures range from boiling to frozen and every other animal, more or less, would kill us, in one way or another, if we didn’t them first. The Earth is not a safe place. That is not her nature.

But we have built a life here. A society. We have proven ourselves capable of great things. We have tamed or broken every beast we’ve encountered and we have turned almost every natural product into a resource for maintaining our own safety and ultimately comfort.

It is in our nature. We have been suckling at the Earth’s teat, teething on her fingers and wrapping ourselves up in her hair for as long as our species can remember or derive. Anything that was hers, we have taken, not just from her but from each other.

Now there is one of us who owns it all. A single human (actually a small group, but what are numbers?) has amassed almost everything that can be considered wealth and now he is drinking her blood.

He will choke on it.

Some of us are already choking on it. As I sit here writing, there is smoke outside clogging the sky, hiding the sun behidn a veil as though she were modest—or we were. There has been so little rain in this part of the country for so long—a part of the country classified as rainforest, mind you—that there are wildfires along the entire coast, and stretching inland.

“Only you can prevent forest fires!” But I wasn’t even there. Does that make it my fault?

On the other side of the country, they have the opposite trouble. The house that my sister lived in last year ended up under three feet of water. Billions upon billions in property damage, with more still looming. Another hurricane that reads like an earthquake is gathering on the sea, the strongest ever measured, strong enough to level cities if it reaches us. How do we use what nature’s given us to protect us from her wrath?

We have been abusing our power. It is up to us to change it—but what can we do? What can I do? What can one person do to save us from the havoc that mother Nature hath wrought? Is there some savior who can stand in the path of the hurricane? Who can divert the winds and rains to where they are needed? We have no such powers at this time.

It will do us no good to flog the seas for their impetuous tempests. We can scream at the winds all we want to stop stoking the fires, it will still draw them in. But though we are helpless in the face of the cataclysm, yet we are not without blame.

We have been shaping Mother Nature like a sculpture in the rock, but we have delved too deep and she is crashing down on us.

I don’t know who that one man is who ordered this. I don’t even know if he knew what he was ordering. Maybe he unwittingly made a mistake. That would be fine, if he stopped making it. But he keeps making it over and over again. We can blame that man. We should blame that man. He is driven by greed and sheltered by ignorance. But must we not also blame our own complacency?

We, too, have been ignorant. Or perhaps not ignorant. But we have been comfortable in our shells. We have felt safe, we have profited from our safety, even though that safety has come at the highest cost ever measured. We still drive our SUVs. We still use our televisions and computers, powered by fossil fuel plants. We still indulge in plastically manufactured trinkets that we don’t need. If we could only stop, if we could only show that man in his concrete palace that we do not approve, maybe he’d get the message. Maybe he’d stop what he was doing. Or maybe we could divert all our funds, raise someone else up, crown another king of industry—but no. It is too late for that. There is not enough left to go around the old king’s reputation.

What can I do to stop the hurricane? I can’t.

But maybe we can. One man did not cause this. One family did not set this disaster in motion. We did this together and it took centuries of deforestation and fossil fuel burning. We need to fight this together, not with personal sacrifice, not with elimination, not with demonization of the old way of doing things, but with new solutions. Cleaner solutions.

Solutions that he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want them because he cannot control them. He cannot control them because they are too easy for us to construct and manufacture on our own.

Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we work together towards a solution, a rope that will pull us back away from this ledge? Why must we be so selfish that we must blame ourselves and each other, each of us individually, for not choosing to be vegan, for having too many children, for driving to work, for living in the wrong country?

Is it in our Nature?

No. Because we are not Nature. We are Art and we are better than this. Together.

Leave a comment | posted in Our Modern Pantheon

September 6, 2017

“Lose Yourself”

By Polypsyches

By the time I actually did fall in love, I wasn’t sure that I wanted it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want it. And looking back, I guess I can’t really blame myself. I had horrible taste in men. Man. Singular. Fate had horrible taste in him for me. I mean, sure, all I really had to go on was the red hair when it came to Angus George, but I knew that I had seen him in my infamous prophetic dreams and I knew that he was the one for me, the one that I would end up with.

Would I have even given him a second glance, if not for all that? Would I have even…

I guess it doesn’t really matter now. He’s where he is, and I’m here writing this all down, so I guess we can call it what it is.

Something changed at that show. I don’t know whether it was actually him that changed, or if it was just the first time it really occurred to me.

It started off in a pretty standard mosh-pit. It developed kind of spontaneously, as only the best ones do, and actually it was a guy and a girl who started it off together. Rough-housing. Pleasantly matched, not exactly erotic, it didn’t seem like they had quite that kind of relationship. It seemed more like the male pushing and shoving and pressing of buttons that they seem to find so appealing, except that one of them was a woman. I don’t know. But then it changed. Shifted. Other people started bumping in, intruding, and finally it spread over to where we had been standing, to where I had been looking into Angus’s eyes.

What is it about crowds? That you can be around so many people and still feel perfectly alone. More so. I guess you start to go “But if there are so many people…” So it means more. If you’re alone and you’re lonely, it’s the question “How can I be lonely with this many people?” Like they can’t be an excuse. And if you’re alone with someone, it turns into something more intimate, like a secret in the middle of the chaos. An emphasis. Look at all the people and none of them can stop us from looking at each other.

Until he gets distracted.

The smile on his face was different after whoever it was bumped into him. Whoever it was said “Sorry,” like you do on the fringes if you’re polite and not too drunk yet and bumped into someone who was not (yet) part of the mosh. But then you see that smile. He hadn’t been smiling at me a moment before. We’d been in a place where we didn’t need smiles, but now he wasn’t there anymore. He was in another space with another process in mind and he was itching to hit something. That’s what that smile meant.

And then he misunderstood. Not all mosh pits are the same, and this one was rough-housing on a level that he wasn’t used to because he hung out with the wrong crowd. You beat your arms and bump into each other, crash and settle and throw yourself around. It’s not an actual boxing match. Sometimes it is. But not this one. And with that smile on his face, he happily dashed after the stranger who’d broken our intimate seal, who thought he’d roped someone into the party and instead ended up getting punched in the neck and the shoulder with a strength that in context and contrast must have felt supernatural. Surreal. Out of place.

The mosh changed around him, slowly I guess, maybe, bit by bit, as the immediate crowd realized what was going on and got uncomfortable.

I know what you’re thinking: it’s a mosh-pit, it’s not supposed to be comfortable. But there’s a code you follow, more like a contract, any time you start one. You know you’re not “safe”, but safety is relative, and this guy is fucking off his shit.

That was the beginning. Not for him, I’m sure. I mean, maybe, but I mean, come on, let’s be real. He is who he is. It didn’t look like a moment of great revelation for him, not from where I was standing. He beat a guy up, and then immediately, he turned around and blamed them all for dishing it out and not being able to take it.

Maybe he was just used to a rougher crowd, I told myself. Maybe that’s all it was. But it didn’t seem like it. Even if that was all there was to it, he still wasn’t paying attention. He still wasn’t taking cues, and that meant something.

I started paying closer attention to the fights he was having in school. To what he was saying about them. To what other people were saying about them. To discrepancies, and also similarities. To the different versions.

By the time he was arrested, I found I couldn’t be surprised. I was disappointed, but couldn’t convince myself I hadn’t seen it coming.

I know I’m phrasing that in a way that’s confusing, so let me put it differently. I knew he was going to be arrested. I knew it three days after I met him. I even tried to tell him a couple of times, tried to warn him, but my name is Kassandra and no one is ever going to take me seriously about things like this.

And I guess I can’t really blame them. I don’t really take myself seriously, either. I mean, look at me. I get a vision of this guy. I know I’m going to fall in love with him, so I do. Then I get a vision of him being an asshole, getting arrested. And what do I do? I stay. For what? Did I think that I was going to change him? Did I think that he could?

Leave a comment | posted in Angst

September 5, 2017

Vanishing Acts

By Polypsyches

I can remember the exact moment when I realized something was seriously wrong with me. It was the day I pushed Jonathan Samuels off the jungle-gym and he fractured his clavicle. I remember he was screaming and screaming for at least five minutes before they finally had him settled down enough that someone thought to ask him some questions.

Now, understand going into this that I had good reason for pushing Jonathan off the jungle gym, because he was, at that time, my Worst Enemy. There was no love lost between us. That was why, from the moment I had watched him fall, I knew I was going to be in terrible trouble. I decided to stick around because having done what I did, I knew that getting into trouble was the right thing to do, and there was no way out of it. He would tell on me, and I wouldn’t get to go to Cassidy David’s birthday party like I wanted to, which he must have known would have been a death blow.

But no. He said something really pathetic about “not knowing” and how “he must have slipped.”

It was ridiculous. My first reaction was that he must have capitulated, that this was Jonathan Samuels, throwing his hat in and saying: “You win. You broke my clavicle and I’m burying the hatchet.” But no. No, that would have been too easy on me, and perhaps he knew that. Jonathan was far too worthy an opponent for anything that… chicken.

There had to be something else, right? Was it because he knew it would make me crazy like this? I couldn’t stand it! I just couldn’t stand the idea that… well, that I had done something that bad and gotten away with it.

Suffice it to say that this notion that I’d “gotten away with it” didn’t last too long.

My mother didn’t speak to me on the way home. That was my first indication—no, scratch that, second indication, I guess—that something bad was going to happen to me. Or was already happening to me. I thought at the time that maybe she knew, she knew I’d pushed him. She’d seen it and she’d covered for me because I was her son, but ultimately she had to punish me in her own way, because I had done something wrong. So I got the silent treatment.

Stupid, naïve, self-centered kid. Should have known it was so much worse than that.

That part became obvious once I got home. My little sister, Joanna, was a real pain in the neck. Still is, I suppose, to other people. But not to me. At least, no more than anyone else is, I suppose.

Now, my mother giving me the silent treatment is one thing, but my four-year-old sister? She doesn’t understand this. She couldn’t. To have the kind of mental sophistication to execute that amount of psychological torture, you have to be way, way, way beyond the Tele-Tubby phase.

But I couldn’t get through to her, either. I waved my hand in front of her face and she just gave me that look, that look a younger sister gives an older brother when she can tell he’s acting like a dork. Even if she is four. That look. But she still didn’t actually say anything.

So I took extreme measures, took her food and hid it away. She started screaming for mom. Not screaming that I had taken it away, just screaming that it was gone. Mom came in and took it off the top shelf, gave it back to her with a smile, told her it was all right. She didn’t even glance in my direction.

I just couldn’t get through. No matter how hard I screamed, no matter how much I pounded my fists into the walls, it’s like they couldn’t hear me. Now and then I’d crack their slim defenses a little; I’d sneak in with a direct question that would prove they were ignoring me if they didn’t answer, but then they would. They wouldn’t do anything drastic like, say, look me in the eye or anything, but they would answer the question. In a way.

“Hey, mom?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Why do you keep ignoring me?”

“I’m not ignoring you, sweetie.”

But would she look me in the eye? No.

I guess you can’t really even call that an answer, can you?

I went to school the next day after the accident, or incident, or event, and I saw my pal Valentine Kazinski walking by, frowning. I bumped into him. “What’s up, man?”

“I don’t know. Stuff.” He didn’t look me in the eye.

“Weird what happened to Jonathan yesterday, hunh?” He had been there. He had seen me do it. He must have something to say about it. Some sarcastic comment. Some roll of the eyes. Possibly congratulations?

“Yeah,” he said, completely nonplussed. “That was pretty weird.”

I couldn’t believe it. My best friend. Siding with my mother against me.

It got worse over time. Need I even say all my supposed friends at school started acting the same way? Teachers wouldn’t call on me in class. No one would talk to me or answer me if I talked to them, at least not for anything more than to brush me off.

New people would come and I’d introduce myself and for one tantalizingly brief moment, they would look me in the eye, but then I’d say my name. Or I’d shake their hand. Or something. Anything else. And it would be too much. They wouldn’t remember me next time they saw me.

I did end up going to Cassidy David’s birthday party. I guess I can’t really be sure why my mom even remembered to bring me there. I guess just ‘cause it was something she’d promised to do for me before I was fool enough to break Jonathan’s clavicle. But yeah, I went.

And I’d hoped… I mean, I’d really hoped, I had hoped beyond hope that somehow, somehow, Cassidy would have stayed magically immune to all this. But she was the worst of all.

I’d loved Cassidy from the moment I saw her. It was fifth grade, the first day of school, yeah, I now that that’s really young and ridiculous for a freaking ten-year-old to claim to be in love, but I know what I felt and it was unmistakable.

She was a tomboy. Even then. I guess she’d always been a tomboy and it started to show more and more in the way that she just didn’t act like other girls, you know, it was like, here’s a girl with some imagination, some real passion, who doesn’t want to be the Disney princess, who wants to be the… I don’t know, Xena Warrior Princess. This is the girl who, no matter how much she supposedly grows up, shows off on the jungle-gym, completely devoid of shame. Who never blushes. Who smiles, but I’ll be damned if I have ever seen her giggle.

But when I wished her a happy birthday, she turned to Shirley O’Connell and asked her how the play was going and if she’ll get to kiss that cute guy on stage.

The question flashes through my head: “Am I invisible?” And a voice that by then was completely dispassionate answered: “Yes.”

So why was this happening to me? Why, after more than five years, is this still happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?

All day long, my mother just goes through the motions of being a mother, minus the affection and attention. She still buys groceries enough for me, sure, but forget ever making me dinner. Setting the table for me. Celebrating or even acknowledging my birthday. Hell, that’s not even going through the motions anymore, is it? That’s neglect.

So one time, when I was old enough to actually think clearly about things and realize I was in serious trouble, I tried to go to Child Services to get them to rectify the situation. I won’t tell the rest of the story, though. For fear of repeating myself. It is a dull tale for me.

Every now and then, I throw a temper tantrum. My invisibility gets to my head. I started shoplifting. Playing tricks on people. They wouldn’t know it was me, right?

I would tie people’s shoelaces together.

I would stand at the front of the class doing everything the teacher did, making fun of her, but answered only by blank stares.

I broke into the school once and stole all the chalk. There wasn’t even an investigation.

So I took all the chalk I’d stolen, ground it into dust and coated the main hall with it. Never head a word.

I learned potassium gets violently unstable when it interacts with water, so I stole a block of it and threw it down a flushing toilet, half hoping the blast would take me with it. They’d never know it was me. But it just fizzled. They called the plumber. Called it faulty installation.

Every time, the joke was still on me. Because ultimately if you’re laughing, even if you’re laughing at someone else’s misfortunes, it’s really only fun if you have someone to laugh with. A practical joke isn’t funny until you can brag about it. And it got to the point where no one noticed if I tripped them in the hall.

Do you have any idea what it’s like? Not to be noticed at all? Don’t you know how that feels? What that does to a man? It’s one thing to say the words and realize that nobody’s listening. It’s one thing to make the gesture and realize that nobody cares. That much I can live with.

But not existing?

I’ve often wondered if I died that day, and this is hell. Did I pass away in the night? Or maybe I’m remembering wrong and I was the one who fell from the jungle-gym and broke my neck, so that Jonathan won.

That would surely explain why nowadays, I can break something one day and have it turn up mended the next, how I can walk through an opened door in an abandoned building, close it behind me and have myself scared half to death to return to find the door magically opened again, so that I’m left with the thought “Is this building haunted?”

But then I remember the only ghost is me. Perhaps that’s why I can walk through a field of unmowed grass and find myself unable to retrace my steps because even on closest inspection, it always seems as though in my passage not a single blade has been broken by my footfall.

This is also why, in writing this, I dare not put these papers down, for fear the words I’ve written may already be fading on the pages I’ve let go. Why have I even written this? Since no one will ever read it, or if they do, they’ll read it and instantly forget all about it.

But if you do, somehow, somewhere, manage to find a copy of this letter, if it somehow gets out of my hands, and if you understand and don’t forget, I would ask you to please remember me. Please? If only in your dreams? If only so my name is not forgotten? Please…

My name is —— ——.

Please don’t forget me.

Leave a comment | posted in Shories

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

August 30, 2017

The Unveiling

By Polypsyches

ETHAN: Hey, don’t I know you?

FATIMA: I don’t think so.

ETHAN: Sorry, I mean to freak you out.

FATIMA: You don’t freak me out. Do I freak you out?

ETHAN: Why would you freak me out? Weren’t you at the market today?

FATIMA: You noticed me?

ETHAN: Of course I did. Sorry. Am I embarrassing you? I guess it’s a bit of a faux pas to compliment a woman wearing a veil.

FATIMA: Is it?

ETHAN: Well, isn’t it?

FATIMA: Is that what you’re doing? Complimenting?

ETHAN: It’s what I meant. Beauty like yours is hard to miss. Wow, now I sound cheesy on top of being a creep. I’m sorry.

FATIMA: Why is that creepy? Because you don’t know me?

ETHAN: Because you don’t know me.

FATIMA: Who are you?

ETHAN: Um. My name’s Ethan.

FATIMA: Hello, Ethan. I am Fatima. Pleased to meet you.

ETHAN: Hi.

FATIMA: Now we are not strangers. Is it still creepy?

ETHAN: … Little bit, yeah.

FATIMA: Are you freaked out? Do you think I’m creepy?

ETHAN: No!

FATIMA: Are you sure?

ETHAN: I’m just nervous about how you think of me.

FATIMA: Then why did you come over here to talk?

ETHAN: I don’t know.

FATIMA: You don’t?

ETHAN: I noticed you because… you were walking alone and you turned around real suddenly, and your eyes… I’d never seen eyes like that. Not angry, just… strong.

FATIMA: You liked my eyes?

ETHAN: I know. Like I said. Cheesy.

FATIMA: Why do you think that I wear this?

ETHAN: I mean I know it’s traditional. For muslims.

FATIMA: You assume I am muslim?

ETHAN: Aren’t you?

FATIMA: I am. But that’s not why I wear the Veil. In Saudi Arabia, it’s the law, but I’m not in Saudi Arabia. I’m in America. I don’t have to wear it—in fact, I’m arguably in more danger when I do.

ETHAN: So why do you wear it? Oh, you want me to guess? Are you flirting with me?

FATIMA: What do you think the Veil is for?

ETHAN: I’ve always been told headscarves are to hide your hair because the sight of a woman’s hair drives a man wild—but of course that didn’t stop me.

FATIMA: Which is why you were so awkward.

ETHAN: So is that it? You want to weed out advances from men who are only after your hair?

FATIMA: My hair is really not that impressive.

ETHAN: No, you’re tougher than that. You don’t have to wear the Veil, but if you do… if you do, people will know who you are. What you are. And if they judge you for it—

FATIMA: Now I know who they are. Would you like to have a drink, Ethan?

ETHAN: With you?

FATIMA: I thought that was obvious.

ETHAN: Don’t you have a brother or an uncle or cousin who’ll beat me up if I do.

FATIMA: My brother has bigger things to worry about. And besides, why would they worry? Do you intend to behave shamefully? Or to make me behave shamefully?

ETHAN: Do you want me to be honest? I just feel like honesty is the best defense in a situation like this.

FATIMA: Do you feel under attack?

ETHAN: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel…

FATIMA: Threatened?

ETHAN: Uneasy. More like… threatening. And not wanting to be.

FATIMA: I don’t feel threatened.

ETHAN: Maybe you should.

FATIMA: Why? What will you do to me?

ETHAN: Is that your only concern? What I will do?

FATIMA: Why be concerned with anything less? What do you intend to do to me? You promised to be honest.

ETHAN: I wouldn’t say it was my “intentions” I wanted to be honest about.

FATIMA: You want to be dishonest about those?

ETHAN: I don’t intend anything harmful or shameful, so honesty’s not really a factor.

FATIMA: I’m afraid you’ve lost me. Where does the honesty fit in?

ETHAN: Feelings. It’s not about what I will do or in intend to do. It’s about what I want to do.

FATIMA: You want to ravage me—

ETHAN: No—

FATIMA: You want to rip this Veil off my head—

ETHAN: Jeez—

FATIMA: You want to liberate me from my bonds and grant me your Western Freedoms.

ETHAN: Oh, come on.

FATIMA: Then what? What do you want to do to me?

ETHAN: I want to woo you. I want to woo you the way no woman has been woo’d here in the West for fifty years. I want to make you swoon. I want to spin you up in a web of honest truths and make you dizzy. I want those flashing eyes of yours on me and I want to be worthy of their devotion. I want… you. Not for simple carnal purposes. I crave idolatry. What I want is your devotion. There. Have I shocked you yet?

FATIMA: Was that your intention?

ETHAN: I just told you my intention. What is yours?

FATIMA: You spoke of idolatry.

ETHAN: I tend to wax poetic.

FATIMA: Was that because you wanted to shock me? To scare me off? Test my muslim sensibilities?

ETHAN: Have I scared you off?

FATIMA: No. No, I think you have fascinated me. So how about that drink?

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

August 29, 2017

It Ain’t Cheatin’ If The’e Ain’t No Rules

By Polypsyches

PETE: Dude, use the cheats.

HARRY: Why they call ‘em cheats anyway?

PETE: Are you high?

HARRY: Ain’t no rules in a game like this.

PETE: Fuck you talking about? Course there’s rules.

HARRY: What? Like how fast you run? How high you jump? How hard you wreck a bitch? Those ain’t rules. That’s straight-up mechanics. So a cheat’s not a cheat, dog. That’s some straight-up magic.

PETE: Why don’t you use it?

HARRY: Bitch, do I look like a motherfucking wizard to you? Aw, fuck.

DICK: I gotta talk to you.

HARRY: I ain’t listening to that shit.

PETE: The fuck? What’s going on?

DICK: This here idioting hairball—

HARRY: The fuck you just call me?

DICK: Just broke up with his girlfriend.

PETE: Aw, shit.

HARRY: Yeah, I dumped her cheatin’ ass.

PETE: She was cheating on you?

DICK: Like shit she was.

PETE: With who?

HARRY: Motherfucking Boris.

PETE: What? Nuh-uh.

DICK: You don’t believe it? Good, ‘cause it’s bullshit.

HARRY: I know what I know.

DICK: I am telling you, she is a virgin, for fuck’s sake!

HARRY: And how the fuck you know that? Huh? Oh, wait, wait, wait, no. Oh, no, I know this one. Your girlfriend told you, right? Right? Her cousin told him, see? And it’s not like Trish would lie, right? Not like Claudette would lie to her, right? About being a ho, about how she let some fucking Russian fuck get in and plow—

DICK: What the fuck is your problem?

HARRY: You don’t think I should have a problem with my girlfriend cheating on me?

DICK: I don’t think your girlfriend is cheating on you!

HARRY: Hey, man, weren’t you the one like five minutes ago telling me I shouldn’t be hooking up with bitches only want my money?

PETE: Dude has a point. That was two days ago.

HARRY: Oh, but see now you’re actually out there getting some pussy. Now things is different, huh? Now you’re all nice. See, before, you weren’t out there, so you were all “bitches be hoes”, but now? You got yourself whipped, son.

PETE: How’d you find out, though?

HARRY: Who’s at the damn door?

DICK: Trish.

PETE: Hey, Trish. What’s happening?

TRISH: She’s dead.

HARRY: The fuck?

TRISH: You killed her. Do you hear me, motherfucker? You killed her!

HARRY: Hey, hey! I didn’t do shit!

TRISH: What the fuck did she ever do to you?

HARRY: You know damn well what that bitch did to me—

TRISH: Don’t you dare talk about her that way. I have known that—I knew… that girl… You son of a lying whore.

HARRY: Dick, you best get your bitch outta my face, or I swear to pretty blonde Jesus—

PETE: Uh… Jesus was black?

HARRY: You shut your whore mouth, Pete!

TRISH: No, you listen to me. That girl loved you with all her soul. She lived for you. And then she died for you. And for what? ‘Cause you wanted some booty?

HARRY: I ain’t the only one chasing tail.

TRISH: But you were the only one who caught her. Or you could have.

HARRY: Tell that to motherfucking Boris.

TRISH: Dude, would you stop with the Boris—

HARRY: Hey, look, I’m not saying it ain’t sad she’s dead. But she wasn’t no saint.

TRISH: Why the fuck do you think she slept with Boris? Did Boris tell you?

HARRY: No, man, Johnny told me.

PETE: Hold on, Johnny told you?

HARRY: I mean, yeah.

PETE: And you believed him?

TRISH: You stupid fucking piece of shit.

HARRY: What? He said he caught them!

PETE: Johnny’s just trying to start some shit.

HARRY: Why would Johnny want to start shit?

PETE: ‘Cause he’s a asshole. He’s my brother, I should know.

HARRY: So hold up… you’re sayin’…

PETE: We’re saying you got played, dipshit. And now that poor girl’s dead.

HARRY: But how do you know?

PETE: Bitch, are you oxygen deprived? Holy shit, y’all, this motherfucker—

HARRY: What?

TRISH: Now you want proof she was innocent all along, but did you ask Johnny for proof she was guilty?

HARRY: Aw, shit.

DICK: You’re damn right, aw shit.

HARRY: I killed her. I killed my baby. Claudette… aw, shit, Claudette. No! No! Why? She was my girl, Dick. My girl… what did I do?

DICK: Fucking killed her, Harry.

PETE: Like you handed her the knife yourself.

HARRY: I didn’t want her to do! Shit… my angel… didn’t do nothing wrong, but then… Claudette… Claudette! I’m sorry. I’m so… so sorry…

PETE: How did it happen?

TRISH: How’d what happen?

PETE: Did she kill herself?

TRISH: Oh, no, she’s fine.

HARRY: What?

DICK: Hold on—

PETE: I’m sorry—

TRISH: Yeah, no, she started crying, we started talking shit—

HARRY: Motherfucker!

TRISH: Set up a little dart-board for her with your face on it, face is all full of holes now.

HARRY: The fuck you do that for?

PETE: Girl, that is some fucked up shit.

TRISH: You wanna talk fucked up shit? Get your ass in line. I told this motherfucker his ex girlfriend killed herself, less than twenty-four damn hours after he dumped her on her birthday and dude’s like “Not my problem”. Fuck me? Fuck you! And the hotrod motorcycle you rode in on. Hey, Dick, you coming?

DICK: Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming. I’m coming with you, how ‘bout that?

HARRY: Pete?

PETE: Shut the fuck up, Harry.

HARRY: But how was I supposed to—

PETE: Harry? Shut the fuck up.

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing