Home Nonfiction

The Ashtray Heist
or
How to Come Out to Your Fourth-Best Friend

by Kyle Mustain



We hit the sweet spot of the song right as Zorro’s Brother took Henderson, the busiest street in town. The subwoofer in the back rattled the aluminum frame all the way up to the blockheaded hood of the van, reverberated through the front console, coursed back through the floor to then collide with the next wave of bass emitting from the subwoofer, and they crashed into each other somewhere in the middle, exploding all over Zorro’s Brother, but especially through the springs of the bucket seats and onto our backs.

“Feeelssss liiiike aaaa maaaassaaaagggge chaaaaairrrr, doooesssn’tttt iiiiit?!” I yelled through the sound barrier between us.

 “Yeeeaaah, brrrroooothhhherrrrr!” Skutch yelled back, the unharnessed rage of the bass taking him by surprise. I saw him nearly drop the white cylinder of tobacco he held between his double-jointed fingers like my subwoofer had given him early onset arthritis. Regaining the grip on the square and placing it into his mouth, he turned his muzzle to me and beamed, “When in Rome, brother! Yeah!”

This calling people ‘brother’ business and punctuating his statements with ‘Yeah!’ was a recent development. He was trying to sound like his favorite pro wrestlers from TV, tossing out idioms regardless of whether they fit the situation. He now dressed in snowboarder outfits that he ordered out of catalogues (We lived in the central plains of Illinois, nowhere even near a ski resort). He didn’t dress or talk like that two years before. Skutch was more buttoned-up like me back when we used to hang out.

Before the unspeakable night of the duct tape.

This forced hangout of ours was starting off well enough, so I went on and did what came naturally whenever I listened to my favorite band: I gave myself absolutely over to the music. Zorro’s Brother was the perfect vehicle for driving around listening to music. Its steering wheel was loose as hell. I could drum on it with my fingers with no fear of accidentally making the converted box on wheels careen all over the road. There was so much leg room I could practically do a jig from Riverdance. I displayed all of my driver’s seat choreography for Skutch, even doing little turntable glides with my hands along to those points in the remix, gleaming at him with a Kamel Red Light roasting in the corner of my mouth. Seeing how much this cracked him up helped untangle my nerves, just a little.

Then came the part of the song that I knew was coming, but he didn’t. The music halts and a deep voice drops in and says the word, “Annihilate,” but it’s stretched out and modulated, so it sounds like a bad guy from a cartoon like Transformers or G.I. Joe. It’s not just “Annihilate,” it’s “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!” and who knows what it’s supposed to mean other than to drop in from out of nowhere and be fucking awesome.

Skutch cried out, “Oh my God! I love this shit!”

“Dude . . . right?!!!”

Then in some kind of boy-instinct, we whipped our heads to look each other in the eye and shouted in unison,  “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!”

We laughed and that felt awesome but the moment passed and it got awkward again. We turned back toward the windshield, back to puffing on our squares. He probably thought this was going well enough, without any idea what my ulterior motive was that afternoon.

If I could only get over that night of the duct tape.

The smoking half of Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream was empty all but for one table with two gray-haired women indulging in post-meal, or perhaps even mid-meal, cigarettes. The nonsmoking half of the restaurant was teeming with marinara-spattered children and their helicoptering parents. Most important to us: The staff was focused on keeping the kids entertained and the parents feeling like they were getting their money’s worth. We stood at the first of the two long tables at the front of the parlor. The premise we came up with back in Zorro’s Brother was that we would pantomime like we were looking for the right spot for the imaginary party we had coming. First we rubbed our chins, then we pointed, spread our arms, shook our heads, “No,” nodded in agreement, and started toward the next table. But before we left, I reached and pocketed the first ashtray from the table and Skutch grabbed the other one.

Skutch started up some nonchalant chatter to accompany the petty larceny we were in the midst of perpetrating: “So I heard you finally quit wrestling.”

“Yeah, I mean, technically I didn’t quit,” I gave a quick look back to the kitchen. A hundred feet away was Allen the manager moving around behind the counter with the black, crescent phone handset tucked between his ear and shoulder while he slid a freshly baked pizza pie off a wooden peel onto the stainless steel cutting table. Allen had a policy of preemptive hostility when it came to teens: A cuss word spoken too loudly or wearing clothes he deemed too baggy was enough to get a whole table full of teens tossed out of his establishment. Preoccupied for the time being, his peering eyes wouldn’t be a problem until we reached the jukebox and salad bar in the middle of the dining room. Trying to maintain a Sunday morning easiness about me, I continued, “It’s not like I walked into Coach Bull’s office, gave him the finger, and told him I quit. I just didn’t show up to practice.”

I nodded him the go-ahead. We smoothly retrieved the next two ashtrays from the second of the two front party tables. Now we started moving along the smaller, four-seater tables set with one ashtray each. At each station we idled for a minute, continuing our pantomime of indecision of where best to seat our forthcoming flood of friends and family, then whoever was closest to an ashtray, gave the eye, and the other turned to give a lookout for Allen.

Skutch continued as if we were doing nothing to arouse concern, “Dude, a lot of wrestlers quit before they hit varsity. I’m glad you figured it out, man,” which was nice of him to offer some friendly reassurance, but he ruined it by adding, “You know what my stance has always been on that sport anyway.” I put on a face like I wasn’t agitated by Skutch’s comment and swiped the closest ashtray.

Skutch always talked trash about the one sport I excelled in. All through junior high, if he was around, I could never brag about my wrestling achievements. While I was spending my nights and weekends busting my ass on the mat, Skutch acted as if none of it counted. He made hacky comments like, Who cares that you won first place at the dry-humping tournament? followed by his mocking laughter, Ahahaha! and looking around the room until he got everyone laughing along with him.

When he made this newest insinuation, I considered making a run for Zorro’s Brother and stranding him there. However, I had a promise to keep with T.J., so I steered us away from this topic. “How’s it been with your parents since you quit football?”

We made our way smoothly now, leapfrogging from table to table, swooping up our little prizes faster than the human eye could see.

“You know my parents, man. What do you think? Not being buddy-buddy with the football team like I used to be annoys the hell out of them. Hanging out at skate parks has opened me up to ‘less than savory folks’ these days. I come home smelling like squares. I even, on occasion, smoke a little reefer.” He said that last part under his breath. Even if there was no one on our side of the restaurant, one had to be careful when mentioning that stuff. He finished, “I’m telling ya, dude, things have definitely changed with me and my folks. ”

Apparently none of our parents were singing our highest praises those days, except for T.J., whose parents pretty much let him raise himself.

“What about your folks?” Skutch cordially passed the question back to me.

“My parents’ve seen too many Disney movies. Every night they make me hold different exotic artifacts and try out different chants in foreign tongues. They’re betting that one of these times I’ll magically switch places with one of my mom’s miscarriages.”

Skutch bent himself in half to slap the table at the booth he was standing next to. This was a sight because he was six-foot-three and cloaked in a double-XL, magenta-colored snowboarding jacket that stuck out like a sore thumb for a region where most men kept their wardrobes to a dull palette. It pissed me off that he could dress as ostentatiously as he wanted while I maintained a strict Gap-and-Abercrombie wardrobe to assert my hetero public persona. When he came up, his hand was over his mouth and he looked at me with watering eyes. Sure, making him lose it like that put the mission at risk, but that was part of the fun of doing things like this.

He stood up straight, heaving, “Oh, woah, ohhhh,” and when he caught his breath he went, “Man, you don’t know how much I missed hearing you say messed up shit like that.”

Missed me? You know who I miss? My best fucking friend! But you turned him against me on the night of the duct tape.

“How do you come up with shit like that?” Skutch asked, still climbing out of his barrel of laughs.

I shrugged that I wouldn’t reveal my secret. Broadly funny guys like Skutch always think that cynically funny guys like me get our jokes from some private source that we hoard away from them. The truth is it comes from years of hating ourselves for not being like normal boys, laying in the dark of our bedrooms, listening to sad and angry music, and learning to metabolize our feelings into twisted phrases that convey the dysfunctions in the world that we fixate on. But you just didn’t share things like that with your fourth-best friend.

“Shit!” I said with urgency, “The manager just looked right at us!”

“Yo, dude, let’s just sit for a minute. That manager will get busy again and quit looking at us in no time.”

I darted over to the last booth before the jukebox and took a seat. Happy Joe’s was a counter service style restaurant. They didn’t have waiters, only food-runners. This was why the night before, T.J., Skutch, and I picked it as the perfect place to hit. Hypothetically, Skutch and I could sit at the booth as long as we wanted. Which meant that, also, this was a good time to talk. Moisture was already accumulating under my arms.

Wiping the water from his eyes, Skutch took the seat across from me. He gave me an honest look like I had rarely seen him use before, like that comment about missing me was something he planned on addressing that afternoon. “So, T.J. said that besides getting ashtrays there was something you wanted to talk to me about?” I mentally cursed T.J. for setting me up like that. He never stuck his neck out for anything. He couldn’t fathom coming out to anyone, let alone what a struggle it was going to be for me to come out to Skutch. I was getting so annoyed with growing up and having to deal with shit that I didn’t want to.

But T.J. and the antidepressant kept urging me that I had to.

“Listen brother, I know it’s been a while since we’ve really hung out and you probably don’t want to get all serious with me right off the bat. Now that I’m coming up on two weeks of being in a committed relationship, I can honestly say that hearing a woman’s perspective has really opened my eyes to things. What I’m saying is I’m a changed man, brother.”

I looked around for something to distract me. Ashtray #8 was set in front of the napkin dispenser. I slid it in front of me, looked around—Allen had gone back to work and nobody in the restaurant was paying attention to us.

You know how at the end of The Crow he puts his hands on the villain’s head and gives him the 30 hours of pain his wife suffered as she died in trauma surgery? I wished I could do that with Skutch. Just flick Ashtray #8 at him, then reach across the table and clench onto his scalp. First, I’d send him to my kitchen, my mother addressing me without looking up from the newspaper: I haven’t seen much of Judd lately. Then just like me, he would have to make up different answers on the spot, over and over again, when put in this exact same scenario with my mother for several months, to not be able to say the real reason: Judd and Skutch quit hanging out with me because they think I’m gay, Mom. For every bullshit answer I gave her, I received that look of disappointment, her assumption that I must have done something stupid to push my friends away. I would like Skutch to see that, because of him, I receded from my parents, receded from everything, and then had the most awkward talk with my father of my whole life: Son, do you think you would like to . . . talk to someone . . . a professional?

I had both hands on Ashtray #8 now, gripping it like I wanted to grip Skutch’s head and send him more memories. My parents were just the tip of the iceberg. Next, I would send him to that night at Judd’s house, when it all went down. How it felt to hear my own friends accusing me of despicable things, with all their stupid jokes about strapping on duct tape to protect themselves from me. I wanted him to cry out in agony as I showed him how it felt to lay there all night, paralyzed with confusion and fear while the two closest friends I ever had cackled at my expense. It wasn’t even funny, but they laughed like it was the funniest shit ever, which made it sting even worse.

The antidepressant was supposed to help me not dwell on all of this anymore.

Okay, just one more memory I’d like Skutch to see: The weekend after the night of the duct tape. Judd and I in his basement standing on either side of his pool table, where we always went to talk about things we didn’t want his parents to hear. Me, spinning a ball in place on the pool table, not able to look up at him.

Can’t we just leave this alone?

Come on, Kyle. Something’s going on. Just tell me.

Nothing’s ‘going on,’ Judd. I like girls! Okay?

. . . Okay.

He quit calling me.

I quit calling him.

Five years of best friendship over, just like that.

All because of Skutch’s bad joke about duct tape.

I wanted to get him back.

So bad.

But T.J. and the antidepressant were in my ear telling me otherwise, that coming out could be the key to bringing all of us back together again.

“You think you got enough ashtrays, man? The closer we get to the back the more we’re risking that manager catching onto us. We could call the mission a success, get out of here and maybe drive around for a while listening to more of that badass Nine Inch Nails remix CD you got. Or we could go someplace quiet and talk . . .”

I put my fingers to my temples.

Yep, my hair was getting sweaty.

Damn antidepressant.

I slid Ashtray #8 off the table and into the right pocket of my leather jacket, making sure that it locked in place with the other three in there. I got up so abruptly Skutch’s eyes bulged. This was the stupidest idea ever. I was going to ream T.J. as soon as it was over.

“Thanks for the offer, but we’re not leaving til we get all of the ashtrays that aren’t currently in use in this place. You ready to finish this, man?”

“When in Rome!”

I was getting seriously sick of him saying that.

We got moving again. There were five more to get, not including the one the two elderly women were flicking their long-stemmed cigarettes into. Five more. No big deal. Then make it out the door without Allen detecting us and we were home free. For now I was done thinking about coming out, quitting wrestling, and my parents.

Skutch leaned over the first booth past the jukebox to grab the ashtray all the way against the wall while I idled at the salad bar—of course this looked ridiculously suspicious. Just as it was within his grasp, I saw him snap his hand back and look up with Uh oh! on his face. A squelching sound quaked across the restaurant. The jukebox stopped playing and the whole place became aware of it. The horde of children and their parents on the smoke-free side of the restaurant froze in place. Skutch took a wide step to join me back at the salad bar.

Everyone in the pizza parlor was just now noticing us.

Two teens not accompanied by adults.

In this moment with the entire restaurant directing their confusion at us, Skutch looked down at me. I looked up at him, wondering what he could possibly want to say right then. He leaned down to my ear and under his breath he said: “Annihilate?”

I tried to hold the laughter down but couldn’t. I flashed him a look that meant: You fucking dick! and simultaneously: You deserve a fist in the shoulder right now! but also: Good one. Totally got me back for the body-swap-with-a-miscarriage joke.

I nodded reluctantly, went ahead and said, “Okay, I missed you too, you big fucking Wookiee.”

To which he replied, “When in Rome, brother.” 

This didn’t mean I was ready to forgive him.

Right then, bubblegum sirens attached at several points along the ceiling started that fire truck winding-up sound and circling red lights gave off a dizzying visual sensation throughout the dimly-lit dining room. The door to the kitchen swung open and a person in a Dalmatian costume came running out, waving its arms at the children. Next came a young woman dressed in a white-and-black-striped referee polo. She was honking an old-timey circular brass horn that, against the blaring siren, gave off a cacophony of sounds mimicking prehistoric birds of prey that even after eons of evolution still activated our caveman fear response.

The referee girl began yelling, “Ladies and Gentleman, may I have your attention, please?! Today we have a very special birthday!” and so on, as the employee in the furry costume encouraged the kid of honor to stand up on his chair. The referee honked the goose horn some more, then asked that everyone join in song to wish the clearly terrified child a happy birthday.

Creeping away from the salad bar to the booths at the unattended side of the restaurant, Skutch and I muttered the whole song, ending on: “Happy Birthday . . . dear . . . Kev–? . . . er . . . Ry–an!” During the commotion we took advantage and jacked the ashtrays off the booths and tables on the other side of the jukebox. Once the song was over the referee was busy handing out ice cream, and the Dalmatian retired to the back to take his head off and redeem his well-earned smoke break.

Now we were in the quadrant of the restaurant closest to the counter, with just one more ashtray to go, not at a booth, but at a table out in the wide-open, and still not counting the ashtray being used by the two chatting elderly women. This was the most sensitive zone as you could practically see yellow beams coming out of Allen the manager’s eyeballs. Whenever there was a bad guy with scanning eyeballs in video games, I never got it right on the first try. I tried not to think about that, but let’s be serious, my constant failure at those scenarios in nearly every video game I had ever played in my life was all I could think about as I crept toward the table at the smack-dab center of which was that final ashtray.

A light cast down on it from Nicotine Heaven.

Right as I was reaching for that final ashtray, I looked up and met the eyeballs encased under Allen’s Cro-Magnon brow. I reeled my hand back in and nodded at him. He nodded right back at me. Recognizably. I walked in the direction of the counter as he pulled me in with his tractor beam. As I was doing this, I half-turned my head to Skutch to communicate to him to chill out and watch whatever was about to happen.

“Hey, Allen!” I said as I neared the counter. I stopped at a safe distance and became hyper-sensitively aware of the six stolen items inside the pockets of my leather jacket.

 “Hey, I know you!” Allen said, stopping what he was doing behind the counter. Cocking his head as if to call up a recollection, he said as a question: “Tyler?” He had for years called me by names that sounded slightly like mine, but I never bothered correcting him because he always looked so impressed with himself for believing he remembered all of my parents’ kids’ names.

Our names all started with K’s. Why would my name be Tyler?

“Yes, Allen,” I started by boasting my solid recall of his own given name, then finished with, “It is I, Tyler Mustain!”

“Your folks on their way?”

 “What? Uhhhh . . . ” then his eyes darted behind me, toward Skutch, my accomplice, who I hoped wasn’t in the action of pocketing anything that didn’t belong to him.

Allen the manager had that permanently pissed-off look in his eyes that middle-aged men trapped in restaurant management always seem to have. Clearly a former athlete, he was daunting in his burliness with thick arms and above-average height. The man had kicked untold denizens of delinquents out of his pizza parlor. Men like him have some kind of carnal instinct they aren’t fully aware of; men whose own once-lofty dreams had over the years been slowly smothered with mozzarella. Once they are drowned so deep beneath the marinara and dough, they grow into being dead-set to ruin the dreams of others. That day, before he recognized me, he looked at me with the same suspecting look he gave every nameless teenager who entered his parlor.

 Looking me dead in the eye, he said, “Your folks don’t normally start dinner til seven, six-thirty at the earliest. What brings you here this afternoon?”

I blurted out the following words as placeholders while I teetered on what to say next. “You—know—what—I—came—in—here—for—Allen?”

If I lied to Allen and got away with the ashtrays, then in just a few minutes Skutch and I would be back inside Zorro’s Brother. What if Skutch presses me again about what I wanted to talk about?

So, what if I slip? Give myself and Skutch away to Allen?

We’d spend the rest of the evening with our parents and the cops, going over everything that happened here. For the next few months, Skutch and I would be grounded and doing community service. T.J. would get off my case about telling Skutch at least until all of that was over.

This scenario even contained a secret ingredient: Payback.

The time between Allen’s query and my response stretched like a personal size portion of dough over an extra-large pan . . .

Seth McHenry was the first to go.

By junior high he didn’t have any boy friends because no boy wanted to be his friend anymore. No boy wanted to stay the night at his house. No boy wanted to go to his birthday party, either. From then on, he only talked to girls, only sat with girls, only walked the halls with them. His parents started letting him have girls over to stay the night when they realized it wasn’t girls they needed to worry about leaving him alone with.

Jonah Simmons was next.

In seventh grade, Jonah confided to his girlfriend that he found boys attractive in addition to girls. He must have liked her a lot to have shared that with her, which was too bad because she freaked out and told her friends. Then they spread it around school that Jonah was a fag. For the rest of our school days, Jonah walked to classes alone, sat at lunch alone. The school smartasses coined him a nickname which you could hear whenever he walked by.

Ross McIntyre was never included from the beginning.

Ross was the rare breed who never even tried to cover up. He let his flame burn bright, as they say. Most high school students are excited at the end of the school day, but Ross dreaded it. Whenever I went out to the parking lot, I hopped right into Zorro’s Brother and started it up without it ever occurring to me that someone could have fucked with it. Ross, on the other hand, had to walk around his car to make sure nobody slashed his tires, tossed their garbage onto his hood, stuffed a sock in his tailpipe.

There was no such thing as a gay, bisexual, or even questioning male either coming out or being found out and his group of straight male friends keeping him around. If it’s one thing I wished my straight friends could have known back then, it was that despite their casual jokes about gay men’s insatiable desire to rape straight men and that the only sport I ever excelled at was a smokescreen for gay sex, the reality was that I had more to fear from them than they had to fear from me.

Exponentially more.

All of the other queer boys could tell that I was like them. All guys who are like us look at each other a certain way. When you see it, you run through the gamut of feelings: At first it is mystifying (How can he tell?), then it’s titillating (Does he like me?), but ultimately you fall into a state of paranoia (Is he going to out me?). When you can tell they clocked you, you get the fear that because they were outed, they want justice by outing the boys they can tell are hiding in the closet. When you are in the closet there is nothing more terrifying than an openly queer person.

I didn’t know until much later what the looks I got from the likes of Seth, Jonah, and Ross really meant: They were mournful. They wanted to know what made me so special that my friends kept me around when theirs threw them out. They wished they still had what I had, which was a normal boy’s life of being included in boy things with my boy friends. In the long run, it turned out that I was just better at covering up than they were.

Do I get a prize? No?

How about all the things I lost because of it? My identity, for starters.

Early photos and videos of me portray a child who was not masculine by any measure. Nor could I be described as feminine, either. In one photo I’ll be wearing a clip-on tie and suspenders, in another I’m posing in my grandmother’s jewelry and nail polish. I was my own entity back then, not yet tethered to any gender, and one hell of a happy kid. It wasn’t until adolescence that I learned to cover up my natural way of being with more masculine traits that I picked up from older boys and men and television and movies. By the time I was in high school I had perfected this public image of myself: Captain of the wrestling team, a sweet-ass conversion van with a prominently-displayed NIИ sticker on it.

I snuck out.

I raised hell.

I got bruises.

I got black eyes.

I proved myself.

I learned that I loved being a boy;

The brotherhood of my group of friends.

How much of it was covering up and how much was blending in?

Was there a way to combine these two spirits within myself?

Kyle Mustain’s time came freshman year.

I made the mistake of describing one of our male classmates as “cute.” That was it. All the wallpaper tumbled down in that instant. To Skutch, I may as well have just confessed to murder. He called up several years of mounting evidence before Judd, my best friend. They talked like I wasn’t even in the room. I got the strong feeling this was not the first discussion they’d had on the subject.

I seemed like a guy, but some things about me sure weren’t. For instance, I didn’t like watching pro sports on TV, but I wrestled, which was highly suspect. Most of the jokes I told and retold over the years were about gay sex. By the age of 14, it got to the point that whenever I told yet another gay joke, the guys didn’t laugh anymore, they just looked at me funny. I lost interest in looking at Playboy magazines years before, which I thought I argued pretty convincingly was because I had developed a taste for more hardcore stuff. Skutch countered that the real reason was because I wanted to see dick.

Finally: Don’t you see how he cowers when we talk about catalytic converters?!!!

For Skutch this all translated not just to me being gay, but a gay man who infiltrated the group in order to violate them, one overnight at a time. As if this was something I could have plotted. In Skutch’s mind, all the way back at the age of eight I was rubbing my palms together, going: Just wait until we have all entered this period known as “puberty”—That is when I will strike!

After the night of the duct tape I got used to my phone not ringing anymore. Reclusivity suited me pretty well, actually. I found ways to pass the time. I tried playing video games but they weren’t as fun without my friends. Want to know what I did? I went to the library. I checked out nonfiction books on topics I wanted to know more about.

Then one night my dad came into my room and asked me if I wanted to see a psychologist. I couldn’t fault my parents for that. They were used to me traveling in a pack of boys all the time, then without explanation I was all alone on nights and weekends. Granted, my father found me on the floor with a deck of cards playing an archaic form of solitaire while listening to a recording of my own voice attempting self-hypnosis.[1]

It did look like I was turning into a weirdo.

Sophomore year, T.J. Timmerman and I had English class together and we partnered up on some projects. Naturally, we talked about old times and I asked him what Judd and Skutch were up to those days. T.J., being so close with Skutch, had a lot to get off his chest about him. I became his confidante, the person he could go to to bitch about his best friend. That’s how I became his other best friend.

At the end of sophomore year I took an after-school class to become a lifeguard, got hired by the city, and became friends with the kids who worked there. The summer between sophomore and junior year I started throwing parties at the old family farmhouse.

The parties were how I came back.

The goal was: Host awesome parties, and once I was popular, nobody would question if I was straight anymore. Only that didn’t really pan out. When I got drunk I slipped again. Way worse than calling a boy cute, when I didn’t have the inhibitions of sobriety safeguarding me, everyone saw that happy little kid from my home movies: gesturing wildly, giving sass, twirling, flirting. Eight years of bottled up flamboyance and lust came out to play. I loved being a boy but those first experiences with alcohol revealed that letting that other side of me out was, well, intoxicating.

I didn’t really know if those other queer boys were sadder than me.

I hadn’t been winning at all. I had been lying.

People were talking. The wallpaper was peeling down all around me. The duct tape would not hold. T.J. said it was time to rip the duct tape. So I declared that I would start making changes to try and live out this new way of life. The first step was quitting wrestling, where I knew I was not going to be welcome anymore. T.J. prodded me: What if coming clean to Skutch would set things right?

But I still really wanted revenge.

Wasn’t that the man thing to do?

Allen had his hands on the opposite side of the red counter. It was the kind with the hinged trapdoor so he could rush out of the kitchen to tackle teenagers. Beads of antidepressant-sweat were coming down from places where sweat normally didn’t come out of that were really freaking me out. As we stared each other down, perhaps the longest we had ever maintained eye contact, not just with each other, but with anyone, I had to make my impossible choice.

Some birthday kids ran past. We all had birthday parties there when we were kids, ran around with tokens for games and tickets for prizes. Happy Joe’s used to be my favorite place and yet I hadn’t felt welcome there in years. Funny how its business thrived on children’s birthday parties, then was so hostile towards those same children once we outgrew its fun and games and had to come up with our own.

Man, adults sure are fucked up.

We teens really needed to stick together.

Wait a minute!

My friends weren’t the ones vandalizing Ross McIntyre’s car! I would have known about it. As for Seth McHenry, were we all supposed to pretend we liked listening to girly music just to be nice to him? And I’m sorry, but regardless of Jonah Simmons’s sexual orientation, he was just plain fucking weird.

I finally figured out what the night of the duct tape was really about!

I was such a fool.

In the nick of time, I shouted at Allen’s face, “I would like a job application!”

Don’t ever count me out.

Remember, my whole life up to this point was a lie—and I was damn good at it.

Allen’s expression went from glowering, protectful proprietor and rose up to smiling, prospective employer. He beamed, “Why, sure! Of course, Tyler!” I could see the possible future forming on the bald spot of his head: He and me in the back of the house after the dinner rush, blowing off some steam by having pepperoni and sausage fights; the day I earn the privilege of donning the Dalmatian costume; me gladly accepting it, and then for the rest of this daydream sequence: me in the Dalmatian costume doing an epic breakdance routine against a blue screen projection of pizza-themed graphics.

Teenagers could be okay, as long as we were kept in line.

Allen crouched under the counter. I took the brief opportunity to check that the ashtrays in my pockets were not sticking out. Surely back at the table Skutch was smooth enough to snag the last one, although it sucked that I didn’t get it. Allen came back up with a pad of red-and-white job applications, ripped one off, and handed it to me. “You need a pen? You can fill that out here.”

“What? Oh no, I’ll fill this out at home. I just wanted to pick one up,” then feeling so impressed with myself, I added, “My mom would just love it if I worked here. She thinks you are so cool!

“Oh, she does? Well, tell her I think she and your dad are pretty cool, too. Go ahead and drop that off whenever you want, Tyler.” He said it with such glee it was hard not to feel sorry for robbing him.

Then I shrugged it cuz I needed those ashtrays more than he did.

I turned fast. Skutch looked flabbergasted at whatever happened that he couldn’t hear over the noise of the birthday party. I shot him a look that said we were safe for now, but to get moving. Then from behind we heard, “Hold on a minute!” and even though it came from seven feet behind me, Allen’s exclamation point was stabbing right into the back of my neck.

Sweat glands opened up into waterfalls all over my body. I turned back around. Allen looked at me sternly. I thought maybe he was searching for signs that I could have been on some kind of drug. I actually was on some kind of drug. Through something like a sound-tunnel I could just barely make out: “Does your friend need one too?”

My own voice was trembling: “W-w-what d-d-did you s-s-say, Allen?”

“You heard me,” he said. His look was mean. I started to cower. Here comes the part where he drowns my dreams in mozzarella. Allen repeated what he had originally said, “Does your friend need an ashtray?

The jukebox kicked back on. It was playing a song from an animated film. Shit like that was on heavy-rotation at Happy Joe’s because it was a family joint. Another epiphany struck me: I could suck a thousand dicks and take just as many in the ass and I would never like this neutered Disney Channel shit. That made me feel infinitely better about myself.

I digress.

Allen was looking at me like I must be stupid or something. He repeated himself once more, “I said: Does your friend want an application, too?”

“Ohhh! Nooo! H-h-he’s just along for the ride. Y-y-you’ll be hearing from me, Allen!”

Allen shrugged and went back to work.

The job application was now ruined with palm sweat. It flapped against my leg as I walked toward Skutch. He had his hands at the sides of his legs to obscure all the items he’d stuffed down his deep Jnco pockets. Keeping my hand in front of me so Allen couldn’t see it, I waved for Skutch to start moving toward the door.

Now at our mission’s end, I knew just the thing to say to him: “Yippee kay-yay, <Mister Fowlicker!>”

Skutch’s eyes shot wide. “You remember?” he said.

“Of course I do.”

“Well then, the only proper response to that is: Smile, you son of a <shark!>”

It’s an inside joke we’ve had since fifth grade.[2] He came up with the first part, I came up with the second. I always thought mine was funnier, but they work better together than they do apart. I see that now.

“Annihilate, good buddy.”

“Annihilate, brother.”

The birthday party kids were now at the front of the restaurant, blocking the exit. With suckers sticking out of their mouths, they were crowded around the turn-of-the-century love testing machine and the booth that showed shitty Hanna-Barbera cartoons for a quarter. One, then the rest, tilted their heads up and took in the sight of the two of us: One, a gangly giant with shaggy hair, wearing a snowboarding jacket and jeans both two sizes too big for him; The other with colorless, prickly facial hair perforating out of the sides of his face, unnatural hair color that looked more orange than platinum because it came out of a home dye kit. The kids registered our personal attempts to appear as our own interpretations of “cool,” which had only resulted in the tragedy of appearing strained and obvious. They zoomed in to see the red and white, painful-looking little mounds that covered both of our faces. What little skin of ours was unblemished was covered in a layer of glaze that looked like the grease from the paper they wrap around fast food burgers. In their eyes was the shock of realization that the freakish figures standing above them were what they were hurtling toward on this runaway train they hadn’t bought tickets for. It’s how Gregor Samsa must have gotten a little prickle in the back of his neck every time he encountered a dung beetle.

I started to exit through the plate glass door, but before I was out I noticed Skutch, towering colossus that he is, still standing in front of the children. Slowly he leaned over them, allowing their stares to come into focus. He sprawled open his double-jointed fingers, which look more arthropodal than human when spread out. Posturing himself like one of those pro-wrestlers he so admired, he roared the word of the day: “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!” and the children went scurrying in every direction across the restaurant. Straightening up, he turned to me, motioned at the exit, and added, “When in Rome, brother.” Now I caught on that the idiom not fitting the situation was intentional. That’s what made it funny.

We had just made off with every single ashtray that had been sitting on a table that afternoon—save for one. As we were about to exit, I stopped, looked all the way back to the women up at the table nearest the counter. “You know? Only one of them is smoking right now . . . and they’re old. When she picks up her cigarette again, I could swoop in and lift the ashtray.”

“That would be killer, but we’re almost out the door, man. Besides, you already had a close call with the manager back there. Best to err on the side of caution, brother.”

“I know, but Skutch, just picture it: When we’re telling this story to all of our friends at the next party, or someday when we’re sitting by a roasting fire, telling our fucking grandchildren about this day, do we want to say we got all but one, or that we went the distance and got every single ashtray, including one that was being used at the time?”

We had arrived at that free-falling sensation between one friend proposing the improbable, and the other looking him in the eye with the corner of his mouth sprung into anticipatory grin, anxious to see if he’s actually going to go for it. We had been in this situation so many times, at the threshold of an idea we both knew was crazy, but also totally fucking awesome, then waiting to see which of us was going to take the plunge and show the other that it, and practically anything we set our minds to, can be done.



BIO

Essays by Kyle Mustain have appeared at Slate, The Writing Disorder, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and his parents’ refrigerator. This piece is a chapter in the forthcoming memoir, You’re Supposed to Be Somebody: Biting Beer Cans, Banging Soda Bottles, and Smashing Funyuns in the Rural Midwest. He works as a substitute teacher and a waiter in Central Illinois. 








[1] To try to make myself not be gay anymore. Okay, and to try to unlock any dormant superpowers I may have had.

[2] To do this joke, when you say the words in brackets you want to make your voice sound like it’s a completely different voice than the one that said all of the words that came before it, just like how some TV stations opt to dub different words over cuss words instead of bleeping them out.







Botox Bitch Fairy

by Katarina Keča


I met a woman yesterday like no other. So unlike anyone I’d ever met, I was shocked and somewhat scared when she opened the door. The biggest lips I had ever seen greeted me. Thin bleach blond pigtails and apple cheeks accentuated the bruising around her eyes where the concealer wasn’t doing its job. I was concerned for a moment; had this woman been beaten?

I knew I was there to help her because she’d had surgery and wasn’t able to move well. Was this a side effect?

But then I remembered—I was in Laguna Beach. My first time visiting the place L.A. folk escape to when they need a vacation or reset. This was “rich people land” and her face must be a botched Botox job. I recovered myself and followed her into the white white white house. I suddenly felt incredibly filthy. I looked down at my clothes as if seeing them for the first time and saw the sandy brown marks of my dusty roadside camp spot all over my green cargo pants and baggy T-shirt. I wore the one with the bald eagle on it—hoping I’d seem more American.

Even my cleaning tote was filthy.  She must think I’m an awful cleaning lady to show up so dirty. She spoke as I followed behind her and her trail of perfume, thinking how unpresentable I felt. I walked into what looked like a tween princess room with white sheets, white furniture and pink fluffy accents. There were things everywhere. It looked as if a spoiled kid had just brought all their presents into their bedroom the day after Christmas. Bright boxes and bags everywhere, clothes, jewelry, gadgets, makeup, etc., etc., etc. She brought me into the small walk-in closet where clothes were bursting and over-explained the job I was to do.

I’d posted an ad on Craigslist offering cleaning services. She was the second person to respond. The first needed a same-day clean and I knew the four-hour drive wouldn’t be worth the gas money. Lynda had texted a long paragraph with emojis and called me babe. She seemed sweet over text—maybe creepy. I was wary pulling up to the bungalow and even kept a small can of dog maize in my pocket.

She was sweet in person though, and talked nonstop. She wanted to make it clear to me that she didn’t think she was better than me, even though I’d be the one picking up her clothes off the floor. I was to organize her closet and put her laundry away, help her make the bed and do some light cleaning. She told me she was moving out in a month, so it didn’t make much sense to me to be organizing everything when she’d start packing it away in under 3 weeks. But I’ve learned that a lot of things that make sense to others don’t make sense to me and I’ll drive myself crazy trying to find the logic in it. I was just happy to have work.

She sat on her bed, massive purplish lips in a perpetual purse and told me about herself. I probably could have said nothing all day and she would have continued to unfold her life to me as I folded her clothes. I didn’t mind though. The hours passed quickly and it was interesting to hear about her experiences.

Like how she moved to Puerto Rico for a man. When it didn’t work out, she found herself without money and almost homeless. She got creative and said what she had to to stay in a women’s shelter. She got free accommodations for six months until she met another man and moved in with him. Both men—the one she moved for and the one she met later—turned out to be awful narcissists. While she pulled out different dresses and tops from her closet, she told me about her current man. She’d been evicted from her rental room without reason and could not afford the current rental prices in Laguna Beach. Although she’d only been dating the new guy for two months, she decided to move in with him. I wanted to scrutinize, but I’d moved into an ex’s bus after only two weeks. Needless to say, it didn’t work out.

Lynda was an esthetician and accountant. One was more surprising than the other. “Oh and if you see any needles lying around it’s just for the Botox!” She laughed. She also apologized for many other things that weren’t necessary—the mess, watching me work, her language. The conversation flowed easily and I started to open up a bit about my own life. We discovered we were both empaths and hadn’t had much luck in past relationships. “I can see it in your eyes, you’ve been through a lot.” Lynda said. I looked at her, trying not to change my expression. Had I? I felt both defensive and seen. I had been through a lot—a sentiment I rarely afforded myself. But, I’m good, I’m fine! Everything’s always fine—I’m a tough girl.

Throughout the hours I organized and cleaned, we became friends. She told me she was 60, I told her I couldn’t tell. Which was true; I had no idea with her unmoving face and bruised under eyes. My judgment greeted me as I looked at all her unnecessary belongings, the rejection of her appearance and age, her dating history. And yet, was I any different? Sure, I lived in my van—but I still had too many clothes. I’d been googling Botox for myself and what I believed to be premature creases between my eyebrows. I had handfuls of failed relationships with narcissists and had definitely stayed too long out of what felt like need instead of choice. Lynda was just a different version of myself—stuck in her own cycles and trying to make the best of it. “You know that’s right bitch-“ She cut herself off “Sorry, I call all my friends bitch” I shrugged “I don’t mind.” And it was mostly true, as long as it wasn’t a man calling me a bitch. “These men don’t deserve us! We’re willing to do soooo much for them and what do they do? Bang me until I need surgery!” She scoffed. I wasn’t sure what to make of the information—how could she let him do that? Though it was easier to boggle at her lack of boundaries than my own. 

As night fell, I had a pile of clothes and shoes forming that she no longer wanted and gave to me. Some designer, some knockoffs. The best was a vintage Giorgio Armani blazer. Some I knew I wouldn’t wear, some I knew I could sell. As I was finishing scrubbing the bathroom, she started putting a goodie bag together: facemasks, hand cream, body wash, collagen cleanser and expensive moisturizers, makeup and face scrubbers. She even gave me the basics like Q-tips and soap, wet wipes and paper towels. She wanted to help me out, and she did. And she needed someone to listen, and I did.

After loading my things in my van, I followed her in her white BMW with her rhinestone license plate to the bank. She withdrew cash for me and gave me a huge tip. We hugged goodbye with promises of more work. I just made $250 USD. I was starving and could barely move about my 19 square-foot van with all the new clothes, shoes and cleaning supplies everywhere. I made a veggie burger and climbed into the driver’s seat next to my dog. I sat down, bit into my burger and started crying. I made money. I could breathe. A wave of gratitude washed over me. This kind woman had given me so much: clothes, snacks, soaps and makeup, a job, a big tip and a friendship.

When I’d left my camp spot to show up at some random house of a woman on Craigslist—I asked the universe that she’d be kind and offer abundance. It felt like it had been answered. While I sat in the bank parking lot, watching cars pull in and out, a deep knowing settled in my chest. It would all work out. Not even two weeks post-breakup, driving 2,000 miles west and being on my last few dollars, here I was—cash in hand, feeling accomplished. Maybe it was only $250, but to me, it felt like everything. It was hope. It was proof that I’d be okay, that I could do it on my own.

It reminded me that I was always okay. And that we often have more in common with the strangers we meet than we first think. You never know when a fairy godmother will appear and grant your wishes.



BIO

Katarina is a writer, artist, and digital creator who lives on the road full-time in her van, traveling alongside her rescue dog, Manuka. Once an award-winning actress, Katarina stepped away from the film industry to embrace a more authentic, nomadic life. Her journey has taken her from crossing Canada on horseback to living in a cave in southern Spain, and solo backpacking through Mexico and Costa Rica. Her writing offers a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the people, places, and experiences that shape her, and her travels—each story an exploration of the unexpected beauty and truths found along the way.







A Review of Teresa Carmody’s
A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others

by Anne Osmer



Stories within stories. Threads that start, stop and pick back up again. Intriguing characters and lots of gossip. Teresa Carmody’s latest work of autofiction, A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others, is profound and playful, complementing her earlier works, The Reconception of Marie and Maison Femme.

In this latest narrative we follow Marie across twenty-five years, beginning in her twenties with her self-discovery as a writer and realization of queerness. Marie is finding her way in California, returning home occasionally to Michigan where she must grapple with her identity. There are tensions between her smalltown, Midwest roots and newfound communities in Los Angeles, yet there is comfort in the familiarity of home and while mind-opening at first, L.A. proves to be close-minded in its own ways. Through Marie’s ever-curious and precise lens, we undergo conflicts and events that are philosophical and existential as well as mundane and petty.

True to its autofiction designation, A Healthy Interest defies easy categorization and encompasses elements beyond simple narrative. Illustrations accompany the beginning of each chapter, depicting the stories in symbols and shapes. The paratext plays a role: The cover is pleasing in terms of colors and design but look more closely and you’ll see a book cover within a book cover within a book cover—a never-ending funhouse mirror of images, literally the embodiment of the narrative we are about to experience. Pastel-colored letters in the title of each book cover spell out the word “STORY.” The reader is alerted up front that this novel is a puzzle, with meaning to be found within and without.

But I’m making it sound serious and academic. A Healthy Interest, while deep with multiple meanings, is fun and funny—even hilarious at times. We see Marie and the characters as they navigate the insular world of their chosen literary community that at times borders on precious. This is where the theme of gossip is especially strong. A panoply of characters populate the novel. Frederick is grandiose and likely a narcissist, sitting in judgement of everyone he encounters and offering up opinions vast and humorous. (He writes literary pamphlets on acid-free paper so they will last long into the future.) Joel is new to the literary scene, outwardly confident and obnoxious and also judgmental of others; we learn he hasn’t dealt with some serious family stuff that has left him damaged and, quite frankly, unbearable. Michele, a longstanding friend of Marie’s, chooses to write about the fictive death of her father as Marie undergoes the actual death of her own father (yes, writers steal material but the timing here is insensitive at best). We watch as Marie scrambles to understand why a friend will no longer talk to her, polling her friends for their opinions on the matter. Communities and friendships form and break apart, sometimes with no discernible reason. The anecdotes are comical and true-to-life: who hasn’t experienced similar moments and wondered if we ever really grow up?

Interspersed in the loosely-related chapters of stories are unnamed and unpage-numbered mini “chapters” featuring a childhood Marie and a character name Monette. Sandwiched between ampersands, these tender vignettes depict Marie’s burgeoning sexual awakening. She later will have boyfriends and girlfriends, and eventually a wife (a questionable character who simply must take a trip to Paris just as Marie begins a first round of chemo for breast cancer). The Monette interludes harken back to a less complicated, yet foundational, time in Marie’s life, where the discoveries of childhood are free of the detritus and prejudices of adulthood. These interludes serve as a refreshing counterbalance to the more fraught adult chapters.

Intentionality is everywhere in this narrative. The language is precise and compact: every word matters. Carmody likes working under self and externally-imposed constraints, and while I don’t profess to have identified all (or even most) of them, constraints figure throughout the novel, including the shifting points of view, the Marie/Monette interludes, and the various rules of the chapters,  for example one that describes a literary event where spectators participate in an animal theme. Another chapter features seven days of finding trash and an inverse of the seven deadly sins as structural elements.

Gossip is also everywhere. I couldn’t help wondering how events in the narrative “really” played out, and whether the characters are identifiable in real life, either by others or themselves, and what their reactions might be. This dynamic—of conjecture, and even embarrassment for the characters-as-real-people, plays into the omnipresent theme of gossip, one that serves as a throughline for the novel. The effect is one of depth and surface all at once, which are, of course, fascinating attributes of gossip itself.

While I’m sure I don’t understand all the nuanced meanings in this novel, here is what I do know: A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others is captivating, replete with writing and characters that feel vulnerable and true.



BIO



Anne Osmer is an MFA in Writing candidate at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her writing has appeared in Promethean and Peninsula Writers.







BOOK REVIEW: The Story of Art Without Men
by Katy Hessel

London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022. 512 pp.; 120 color ills. $49
Hardcover. ISBN 978-1529151145.


Reviewed by Mahshid Gorjian


Abstract

This review examines Katy Hessel’s book The Story of Art Without Men, which is a revisionist work of art history that focuses on the artistic achievements of women over five hundred years. While Hessel’s work is an important addition to female art history, the review talks about how much the book adds to the canon instead of taking it apart. The review looks at how Hessel deals with gender, Eurocentrism, and structural critiques of art history by putting her work in the context of important feminist art historical texts. In the end, this review places Hessel’s work in the context of larger discussions about how art history is being rewritten and what that means for how research is done.

Keywords: feminist art history, art historiography, canon, intersectionality, institutional critique

Introduction: A Necessary Corrective to the Canon?

Western art history has long been seen as the story of male genius, with the contributions of women and other minority creators being actively hidden. The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel tries to fill this gap by showing women’s artistic achievements over five hundred years from a different point of view. The book investigates the institutional structures that determine the value of art and questions the structural barriers that have historically kept women from achieving consideration.

Hessel’s work is meant to be read in contrast to classics like E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950), an important work that didn’t include any women artists at first and only had one by the sixteenth version. Hessel says that this lack is not a mistake but rather a normal part of a field that has valued male-centered stories over more diverse historiography. In this way, her work is like the early feminist contributions to art history made by Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, and Whitney Chadwick. But it stands out because it has a bigger effect and is easier for most people to understand.

The Story of Art Without Men is an important addition to the history of female art, but its methods, length, and main ideas need to be carefully thought through. Is Hessel’s way of looking at things revisionist, or is it still limited by the rules of standard art history? Does the book take gender into account, or does it support the Eurocentrism it criticizes? This review looks at Hessel’s work in the bigger picture of female art history, pointing out both its positive and negative points.

Methodological Interventions: Feminist Art History and the Canon

Hessel’s main point that women aren’t included in the canon of art history because of systematic discrimination, not a lack of artistic ability, is like Nochlin’s famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971). Nochlin asserted that societal factors such as training, funding, and institutional support shape creative greatness. Hessel emphasizes this concept by providing a timeline of female artists excluded from conventional art histories.

But her method is different from that of researchers like Griselda Pollock, whose book Differencing the Canon (1999) calls for a basic breakdown of the ideologies that define creative talent. Hessel, on the other hand, holds to the structure of traditional art history, which is based on events and movements. It’s unclear whether she is destroying the canon by putting artists in known times like the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, and Modernism or whether she is just adding female figures to make it better.

Hessel acknowledges the unfair treatment of women in art schools, but she fails to fully address the philosophical reasons for this. So, Rozsika Parker’s 1984 book The Subversive Stitch looks at how “craft” and “decorative arts” were seen as activities for women, which kept male lines in the industry. Hessel talks about these past events, but she doesn’t talk about how feminist studies today are still challenging these differences. For a more radical method, they might have investigated how economic and imperial forces have shaped the value of art, considering both who is included and how art’s worth is established.

Modernism and Gender: Participation or Confinement?

One of the most intriguing parts of the book is Hessel’s look at modernism. She disagrees with the idea that modernist artists were only creative when it came to new ideas. To show this, she talks about the work of early modernist artists like Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Suzanne Valadon. But a lot of the time, she talks about these artists as if they were responding to modernist style instead of creating it.

For example, when she talks about Impressionism, she talks about how gender roles kept women painting domestic scenes. But she doesn’t go into detail about how female artists changed the movement’s visual language. In her 1998 book Bodies of Modernity, Tamar Garb says that women Impressionists came up with new ways to show things that were different from traditional cultural standards and didn’t just reflect their limited circumstances. In the same way, Hessel recognizes how important women were in Surrealism, but she doesn’t say enough about how sexist the movement was. Leonora Carrington, Claude Cahun, and Lee Miller are known as important people, but more research is needed to fully understand how their gender, power, and self-representation affected each other.

Conclusion: Expanding but Not Dismantling the Canon

The Story of Art Without Men is an important addition to feminist art history because it expands the standard and brings to light the works of women artists who were not previously known. Hessel’s work is very different from the strict rules of art history. She can put together a lot of different kinds of information into a story that makes sense and is enjoyable to read. This is a great resource for both experts and regular people.

The book does succeed in adding to the standard, but it fails to destroy it. Hessel’s reliance on standard periods and movement-based analysis makes me wonder if she is offering a new way of writing history or just adding to what is already there. Also, the fact that she is Eurocentric and doesn’t think about racism, colonialism, or intersectionality shows that there is still a lot of work to be done to make art history truly varied.

Ultimately, we should view The Story of Art Without Men as a starting point rather than a comprehensive solution. Even as the field changes, the question still stands: can we picture an art history that is fundamentally different from the one we know today, rather than just one “without men”?

Endnotes

  1. Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
  2. Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London: Routledge, 1999).
  3. Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: Women’s Press, 1984).
  4. Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men (London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022), 157.
  5. Tamar Garb, Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998).
  6. Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, 412.

Bibliography (Selected Works Mentioned in the Review)

Garb, Tamar. Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998.
Jones, Amelia. Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: Women’s Press, 1984.
Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. London: Routledge, 1999.



BIO

Mahshid Gorjian is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Denver. As a Book Reviewer for Leonardo Journal (MIT Press), she provides critical and insightful analyses of art history publications. Her expertise spans fine arts, digital media, and urban studies, bridging traditional and emerging artistic methodologies.







Do the Dead Choose Their Biographers?

by Scott Bane


                  The New York Times has given me many good things in life.  There is my partner (later husband) of 30 years, David, who retired from the Times at the end of 2017 after 42 years of service, although he continues to work as a part-time curator of an in-house museum of New York Times history.  And then there is the American literary critic F. O. Matthiessen (1902-1950).  A 2003 book review in the Times introduced me to Matthiessen’s most famous book, American Renaissance:  Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), describing it as a love letter to his life-partner, the painter Russell Cheney.  September 2024 marked the 100th anniversary of Matthiessen and Cheney’s fateful meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris that set sail from Pier 55 at the foot of West 15th Street bound for Le Havre by way of Plymouth.  From that day, the two men became a couple, later settling in Kittery, Maine from 1930 to 1945, when Cheney died.  Kittery is a small town along the Maine coast, right over the New Hampshire border, next to York, where I grew up.

                  A native of Pasadena and later based at Harvard, Matthiessen was a luminary in early-to-mid-20th century literary studies, who helped establish American Studies, an interdisciplinary field that draws on and integrates diverse disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, especially history and literature.  Given the range of his public and private writing, Matthiessen could be described as an early creative nonfiction writer, publishing nine books that included literary criticism and biographies; a monograph devoted to Cheney’s painting soon after his death; and an unusual work best characterized as a hybrid political essay, travelogue, and memoir.  Matthiessen wrote roughly seventy-five articles and essays that included book reviews and advocacy journalism, often focused on organized labor’s struggles.  On top of all of this he edited five additional books and made numerous contributions to anthologies and collaborative works.

                  Contemporary scholars have wrestled with Matthiessen’s legacy in three books and numerous articles.  Beginning in the 1980s, his work came under increasing scrutiny, reassessment, and criticism from academics who argued that his literary judgments were too narrow, because they slanted white and male, although not entirely heterosexual.  Others pointed out that Matthiessen never fully reconciled his literary and political positions, and that he skimmed the surface of divisions in American life, notably with his inadequate treatment of the U. S. Civil War in American Renaissance.

                  Then there is Matthiessen’s life and death by suicide, which continue to fascinate.  Matthiessen’s story and his relationship with Cheney have given rise to three novels.  These include:  Faithful Are the Wounds (1955) about the Matthiessen-like character Edward Cavan, who takes his own life purportedly over his thwarted progressive political ideals; American Studies (1994) in which the first person narrator recounts his relationship with faculty advisor Tom Slater, a Matthiessen-like character who dies by suicide; and most recently American Scholar (2023), where Matthiessen and Cheney hover as intellectual and emotional inspiration for the novel’s main character James Fitzgerald.

                  Over the summer of 2003 after reading the Times book review, I would take American Renaissance and a number two pencil to a quiet hill in Central Park to read of a summer afternoon.  American Renaissance quickly became one of those books that I wished I could eat.  I know that sounds loopy, but there have been books that I so strongly wanted to incorporate into my being that I have imagined eating them.  I chewed on my number two pencil instead, as I took notes in the margins.

                  American Renaissance considers the work of five writers in the period of 1850-1855, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.  Matthiessen didn’t stop at literature; he tapped painting and sculpture in an attempt to form a cohesive narrative of cultural history.  Matthiessen asks:  Why does this moment of collective expression occur when it does?  What do the works of these writers and artists say about life in America?  For example, Matthiessen wrote about Moby Dick:  “The strong-willed individuals who seized the land and gutted the forests and built the railroads were no longer troubled by Ahab’s obsessive sense of evil, since theology had receded even farther into their backgrounds.  But their drives were as relentless as his, and they were to prove like him in many other ways also, as they went on to become the empire builders of the post-Civil War world.”

                  In the book, Matthiessen also began to articulate a nascent queer literary and artistic canon in his focus on Whitman’s poetry, Melville’s novella Billy Budd, and Thomas Eakins’s The Swimming Hole among others.  As I dug into Matthiessen life and work, often a personal association anchored his scholarship:  Cheney had suggested Matthiessen begin reading Whitman’s poetry.  Matthiessen shared with Cheney a photo of himself standing naked on Sea Point Beach in Kittery with a big piece of seaweed draped around his neck and providing just enough modesty.  Like the men in The Swimming Hole, Matthiessen appreciated the pleasures of skinny-dipping.  That Matthiessen did all of this, while living long before gay rights movement or even the civil rights movement, fascinated me.  If personal associations could be Matthiessen’s starting point, maybe they could be mine, too?  Transcending time, I connected to a queer lineage through this place that had been so critical in shaping who I became.

                  American Renaissance spoke to me for other personal reasons, too.  In my freshman year at Sarah Lawrence College, I had taken a history seminar with about 15 students entitled The Individual and Society in Antiquity and the Renaissance.  The course introduced me to the idea that literary works, in addition to their artistic merits, could also reveal something of the time in which they were created.  A book could be like a geological cross-section of soil and sediment that discloses different stages of the earth’s crust age.  The idea captivated me.  When I read American Renaissance nearly 20 years had passed since my freshman history course.  But reading the book, I felt as though I were recapturing part of myself that I had unconsciously dropped along the way to adulthood and earning a living.

                  I also discovered Rat and the Devil:  The Journal Letters of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney, an edited selection from Matthiessen and Cheney’s nearly 3,100 letters that they exchanged with each other between meeting in 1924 and Cheney’s death.  Cheney was Rat, and Matthiessen was Devil.  Cheney’s nickname originated from his family, while Matthiessen picked-up his nickname in Skull and Bones, the elite senior society at Yale, to which both he and Cheney belonged.  The letters meant so much to Matthiessen that early on he bought a strong box, in which to store them for safe keeping.  Matthiessen’s letters are articulate, perceptive, and searching:  “Of course this life of ours is entirely new – neither of us know of a parallel course.  We stand in the middle of an uncharted, uninhabited country.  That there have been other unions like ours is obvious, but we are unable to draw on their experience.  We must create everything ourselves.  And creation is never easy.”  For Matthiessen his relationship with Cheney illuminated both his life and literary studies.  “My union with you during those seven weeks [in Italy] brought me to a state where I thought that for the first time I knew the meaning of love, and perhaps felt some ability to express this white sacred flame in my life and work.”

                  After the publication of Rat & the Devil in 1978, commentators on Matthiessen’s life and work noted how much he would have hated having his personal life exposed in public.  His former student and later colleague at Harvard, Harry Levin, rather unceremoniously trashed Rat and the Devil in The New York Review of Books.  “As for the violation of his privacy, I have little doubt that Matthiessen would have hated it, and Cheney was even more self-conscious about the stigmata of homosexuality.”  Levin’s assessment of his former teacher and colleague was probably true; he knew Matthiessen well.  But in 1945, when Matthiessen wrote his Last Will and Testament, he specifically singled out the letters and left them to a Skull and Bones brother, suggesting that he appreciated their significance.  Even if he never could have imagined the letters being published, he wanted what was contained in them – the expression of love – to live on.  In 2024, the letters may well be Matthiessen’s most important contribution, if not to literature, then to history.

                  I set off an expedition to learn as much as I could about Matthiessen and his work, Cheney and his painting, their backgrounds, and their life together.  I visited the Beinecke Library at Yale to read the originals of Matthiessen and Cheney’s letters.  In connection with a 2009 exhibition of Cheney’s paintings, I took a tour of the couple’s former home in Kittery, which seemed idyllic, sitting on the rocky coast overlooking the ever-changing blue, green, and gray ocean.  Eventually, I created a timeline of all my notes about Matthiessen and Cheney’s life together, as captured in their letters, Matthiessen’s books and reviews, and Cheney’s paintings.  Nearly two decades later this had grown into A Union Like Ours:  The Love Story of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney, which was published in 2022 by the University of Massachusetts Press.  The book was a finalist in 2023 for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle.

                  It was uncanny the way it all happened:  stumbling across Matthiessen in the pages of the New York Times, being reminded of a moment of my own early intellectual flowering, Matthiessen and Cheney’s connection with southern coastal Maine, and then writing their story.  It was almost as if Matthiessen and Cheney had chosen me rather than the other way around.



BIO

Scott Bane grew up not ten miles from where F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney made their home in Maine.  A Union Like Ours:  The Love Story of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney is Scott’s first book and was a finalist in 2023 for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction made by the Publishing Triangle.  Scott’s essays have appeared in Down East Magazine, The New England Journal of History, and The Gay and Lesbian Review.  The Boston Globe, HuffPost, and Poets & Writers among others have published his journalism.  Into the Void and Christopher Street have brought out Scott’s fiction.  Learn more at www.scott-bane.com.





Revenge of the Ocean: On the Legacy of Jaws

by Lauren Gallagher


Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws is the seventh highest grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation). In addition to this, the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue since its establishment. In fact, according to Christopher Neff, Australian social scientist and shark researcher, there is no other animal (on land or in water) that generates the entertainment income that sharks do. There are a myriad of shark films that have been released since 1975, both high and low budget, and all of which echo tropes which originated from Jaws. Deep Blue Sea, Sharknado, The Meg, The Shallows, Open Water, The Reef, Bait, Shark Lake, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, Ice Sharks, Dinoshark, Shark Night, Malibu Shark Attack, Avalanche Sharks, Snow Shark, Frenzy, Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark, Ghost Shark, 47 Meters Down, 3-Headed Shark Attack, Sand Sharks, Megalodon, Sharktopus, Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus and countless franchise sequels. These are all post-Jaws releases. And I have only listed the ones I have personally watched. I don’t want to think of how many hours of my life have been consumed by watching Sharktopus sequels and spinoffs. Interestingly, if you try to find a shark film made before Jaws, you will get very few results. The few that did exist didn’t quite make it to the mainstream, and only featured sharks as an afterthought, such as the 1969 film Shark!, which was actually about a treasure hunting expedition.

The plot of Jaws follows the newly hired police chief Brody Martin, as he deals with apparent shark attacks off the coast of the fictional Amity Island in New England. Brody must deal with public pressures from the families of the attack victims and marine biologists who want him to close the beaches until the rogue shark is caught, but also with locals who fear the town’s economy will suffer if they close the beaches during tourist season. What follows is an action packed adventure in which Brody, a shark hunter, and an oceanographer attempt to catch and kill the blood-thirsty shark before it can take any more lives. The film sparked three sequels, major attractions in Florida and Osaka, a video game, a musical and an extensive line of merchandise.

It wasn’t until Jaws that sharks were really given much thought, or at least were not perceived as genuine threats. There are three lasting perceptions of sharks that began with Jaws; the attribution of intentionality and near-human intelligence, the perception that human-shark interactions will inevitably lead to fatality (usually of the human variety) and finally, the notion that the threat the shark poses can only be eliminated by the killing of the shark, each of which is explored in more contemporary shark films to varying degrees.It is undeniable that media representations of sharks inform public perception of the animals, and more crucially, a fear of them. The shark is a relative newcomer to the media, existing at the periphery of Western interest until the 1970s. Humans rarely interacted with sharks and they were scarcely written about or photographed, and then they suddenly skyrocketed to celebrity status.

Jaws’ success created a media frenzy, which in turn stimulated news coverage of shark encounters. The immensely popular shark documentary genre often deals with the aftermath of Jaws; the sensationalised nature of shark representations and the dramatised accounts of shark encounters which aim to meet the demand for blood-thirsty shark narratives that Jaws created. These documentaries denounce the dramatisation of shark attacks in the media, believing that they feed into public desire for spectacle with heavy music, clever word play and dramatic narration, which ultimately create a sense of danger for audiences. This fear unfortunately translates to a real life fear of sharks and a misunderstanding of them outside of the media. The mass media frequently covers stories that involve low-incidence, high-consequence events, submitting to the public demand for shark-human interactions. The news media often utilises fear-laden language when reporting on these occurrences, describing the animals as ‘monsters’ and ‘mindless killers.’ Or my personal favourite, when water is described as ‘shark infested.’ They live there. Is the land human infested? Well, with current debates around overpopulation, maybe that is a question for another time. The author of the novel Jaws, Peter Benchley, which was released just the year before the film adaptation, was interviewed by the Guardian regarding Jaws’ effect on the public psyche which led to widespread culling of sharks in Australia. he said:

‘I plead with the people of Australia – who live with, understand and, in general, respect sharks more than any other nation on earth – to refrain from slaughtering this magnificent ocean predator in the hope of achieving some catharsis, some fleeting satisfaction, from wreaking vengeance on one of nature’s most exquisite creations. [There is no such thing as] a rogue shark, tantalised by the taste of human flesh and bound now to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you might have derived from Jaws.’

Peter Benchley’s quote recognises Jaws’ legacy of depicting killer sharks and the part shark films play in legislative practices. Benchley touches on the idea of revenge often associated with sharks seeking vengeance against those who have shown no regard for ocean creatures or their habitat, although this quote subverts this concept, as it is the humans perpetrating violence against nature. Despite the highly publicised plea from Benchley, as well as shark conservationists around Australia, the sensationalised news coverage and shark culling continued. It is undeniable that sharks have cemented their place in popular culture, with shark films in particular being the source. It is also undeniable that policies regarding sharks have been heavily influenced by news coverage and shark cinema. Although Jaws is most often the text which is used to demonstrate this, it is not the only shark film which has had an effect on policy. Andrew Traucki’s 2010 film The Reef is yet another example of this. The Reef is set in the waters surrounding Australia’s Turtle Island and depicts the Great Barrier Reef as the hunting ground for killer great white sharks. The film opens with the words ‘The Reef: based on true events’, reportedly the survival story of Ray Boundy, who was the sole survivor of a shipwreck in which two of his friends were eaten by tiger sharks.

This marketing strategy antagonised the chief executive of Tourism Tropical North Queensland, Rob Gaison, who feared that the film could negatively impact Australian tourism. Additionally, Col McKenzie, the CEO of the Association of Marine Park Operators was quoted saying ‘any kind of shark attack or what they air in the Jaws movies and things like that, there’s a drop off in inquiries within the marine tourism industry,’ expressing a similar concern. Tourism and shark cinema have been linked since Jaws, with much of the horror in the film occurring after Amity island officials refuse to shut down the beaches, as they are more concerned for the island’s economy, which is largely funded by tourism, than public safety. Clearly, there is an anxiety surrounding shark films and their possible negative effects on tourism, but interestingly, shark films often tackle themes of tourism and trespass, and so a cycle continues.

While Jaws may have been one of the first notable shark centred films, it was most definitely not the last. Malibu Shark Attack follows a group of delinquents who are hunted by prehistoric goblin sharks after a tsunami occurs. The main themes that are repeated in shark films are that of tourism, but also natural disasters/wildlife conservation concerns, both of which Malibu Shark Attack includes. Similarly, Frenzy tells the story of a group of friends who run a popular travel vlog that helps fund their adventures, the next of which is a scuba diving trip to an isolated cove. Frenzy plays on the idea of exploitative tourism and the use of sharks as a commodity and their homes as an entertainment source, rather than a living creature deserving of respect and space. 47 Metres Down is essentially a cautionary tale about cage diving, a tourist activity that has increased in popularity as years have passed. With cage diving, the water is ‘chummed’ (meat and blood are thrown into the water to attract sharks) and then the tourists in a cage are lowered into the water where the shark is feeding in order to observe it; a decidedly dangerous activity. Shark Night is a slightly more distinctive take, revolving around a group of college students on a trip to a remote lake for Spring Break. While there, they are hunted by a variety of sharks, including hammerheads, cookiecutters and great whites; all sharks which would not ordinarily be found in a lake. When one of the sharks washes up on the sand, the group find a camera attached to the shark and come to the realisation that someone purposefully brought the sharks to the lake and is filming the attacks. Towards the end of the film, the remaining members of the group are abducted by those responsible for the shark’s presence and question their motives. One of the culprits monologues;

‘What is cable television’s longest running programming event? Last year alone, it was watched by over twenty million viewers. Shark Week, Loser! And a few of those twenty million want to watch the real hardcore shit that you can’t get on basic cable. And we’re willing to bet that they’ll pay top dollar for it.’

While many shark films criticise the exploitative nature of shark media, playing on ideas of shark attack films furthering public fear of the animals, which in turn leads to shark culling and harsh legislations, these films are doing the same thing. Shark Night condemns shark media, but it also did exactly what it criticised, portraying sensationalised attacks by an animal that rarely interacts with humans at all, all while pulling in over $40 million dollars at the box office. Other shark films that fit into this category include Deep Blue Sea and 3-Headed Shark Attack, which call into question the ethics of animal testing, ocean pollution and habitat destruction. Bait and the Sharknado franchise use dramatised fictional narratives to examine a genuine fear of natural disasters and global threats, such as climate change (with one Sharknado going as far as to be titled Sharknado 5: Global Swarming). I believe Craig Detweiler summed up the reason for so much interest in shark media when he wrote, ‘when we attempt to rule over every living creature […], we also undercut our place within a fragile ecosystem. Scary sharks […] remind us to steward creation with humility rather than bluster. Those attempting to dominate may end up mastered by the beasts they seek to capture, kill, and exploit for selfish gain.’

Jaws may be one of the most highly regarded films of all time, being hailed as the first ‘summer blockbuster’ and has inspired many horror films since, including non-shark related horrors, with even Ridley Scott’s Alien being pitched as ‘Jaws in space.’ As an avid horror watcher, and a massive fan of animal attack narratives, it is hard to condemn a film that is responsible for the subsequent production of so many of my favourite films. But it is also hard to ignore that 71% of the world’s shark population has steeply declined since 1975. Was it really worth it?



BIO

Lauren Gallagher is an Irish writer, specialising in film and literary criticism. She holds a B.A. in English, Media and Cultural Studies and currently resides on the English South Coast. Her work focuses primarily on exploring horror from a feminist perspective and reviewing the newest literary titles. Her writing has been featured in Anfa Collective, Off Chance Magazine, Certified Forgotten, Sleaze Magazine and Offcultured. You can find her short-form reviews at @laurrensthoughts on Instagram and @cosmopoiis on Letterboxd.







Fields   

by Alan Crowe


For a moment, it didn’t quite register, in spite of my mental preparation. I had been informed the moniker was now in general use, and by showing no reaction, had just given it my tacit approval. That being said, I was a bit surprised that its initial pronouncement resurrected a long-forgotten childhood memory of disturbing sights and sounds. The menacing laughter and coal-black eyes of a towering creation of calico, denim and straw. Even more pronounced was the irrational pinpoint of fear it produced. Reason enough to let it stand.

Most would say it’s just a spin off my last name, but in truth, they know I’m called Scarecrow because that’s what I am. I spend my days in this world behind walls protecting the good things that grow from the bad things that would feed upon them.  Those black-hearted creatures with beady eyes that use cunning and audacity to steal what others have grown. Who not only seek to satisfy their physical hunger, but also the hunger for pleasure that comes from grappling one another for the choicest most tender morsels the fields provide. Merciless creatures that squawk and cackle at the impotent warders who man the walls and sow their fields with an endless supply of seed. Liveried minions who lord over the fields yet are unable to divert the chaotic flocks away from their handiwork. 

When I came to these fields, I had no intention of becoming the Scarecrow. In fact, I had no idea that such a being could exist. My intention was to build a strong enclosure around my little plot and assure my own survival. This I did. But in my shelter other seedlings found root as well, and soon my retreat was overgrown.

As that simple refuge was never designed for such pressure, the inevitable collapse exposed all to the beady eyes that covet the new growth. In response to raw vulnerability, long-dormant instincts resurface and my inescapable metamorphosis occurs. Reprising a role now refined by evolution and adapted to life in the fields, I became the Scarecrow.

In the uneasy détente that followed engagement, friendship and mutual benefit was offered, and declined. Wanting neither membership nor recognition, and never having imagined fields of my own, what was this Scarecrow to do? Couldn’t just stand by and watch them feed. Vulnerable seedlings took shelter under my outstretched arms, while others perished having no one to watch over them. In such a precarious existence, even a Scarecrow is vulnerable. A ravenous flock could pick one apart if hunger-driven. Flocks must feed. This I accept…just not in my fields.

Regardless of what the overlords may believe, life in the fields is dictated by the flocks. Their leaders are those smart enough or strong enough that others will follow where they lead. They have survived the battles for dominance, and demand and enforce loyal adherence to their will. With them, the unwritten, mostly unspoken agreements of mutual tolerance must be made. And this isn’t Oz. Here, Scarecrows must have brains, courage and heart if they hope to make it home again. 

Not yet halfway through, it’s been a long season already. While fewer losses occur as consequence of the ravenous flocks, not all predation is seen. Many of those new to the fields see proximity to these menacing bands as offering protection, but nothing grows under their roosts. Not drenched in the shower of pain-killing droppings they dispense to provide the dupes a haze over their hopeless existence in the fields. As their roots burn and shrivel in the acidic layers deposited beneath those murky cabals, young plants wither and slowly decompose. So flocks can’t roost near my fields. Not the Scarecrow’s fields. 

Without question, the most dangerous times for a Scarecrow are when the storms roll in. Tensions grow as you watch them building in the distance. If you’re lucky, they pass you by as they sweep the flocks along and wreak havoc in neighboring fields. Though some loss is inevitable, good comes from this as well. As it culls the weak, it makes those remaining stronger. It creates a little more wood in the stems of those who endure, making them better able to survive subsequent storms. But they take their toll on a Scarecrow, standing above his fields as he does. Weathers and tears his edges, exposing little bits of his insides. Each time making it a little more difficult to push the stuffing back in. But he does, producing ever more ominous versions, each more menacing than the last.

For the Scarecrow, it’s been a long season. Cool mornings seem so distant. He longs for quiet days and frosty nights. That peaceful rest as autumn turns to winter. He keeps telling himself that he won’t look back on this season, that he’ll just move on to the rest of his life. But he knows that won’t be. The season has been too long, and there are too many small pieces of him scattered in his fields.  



BIO

Alan Crowe is a freelance writer from southern Arizona. His writings have been published in Cowboy Poetry Press Anthology “Unbridled”, High Country News “Writers on the Range”, the Rokslide Sporting Journal and local Tucson print media.








A Different Kind of Music

by Erin Moine


There are few times where one experiences pure panic. It’s the kind of panic that grips you so hard, your muscles tighten like freezing water. The feeling of confidence initially enveloped me as I made my way through the second movement of Miklós Rózsa’s clarinet Sonata. The movement was slow and somber, the mood of my clarinet studio Final beginning calmly. My clammy hands betrayed my confidence. The pads of my fingers were greasy and slippery against the keys.

The five woodwind professors overseeing the Final for Studio class, dubbed a “jury” in musician speech, sat quietly from their offices, watching me perform via Zoom. The year was 2021 and mostly everyone in the department had received their rounds of Covid vaccines, yet uncertainty still lined everyone’s minds. It had been decided at the beginning of the quarter that all students would perform their juries through Zoom.

As I continued to play, my left arm stubbornly began to tremble. I focused on my piece, pretending the professors weren’t even there. If I pretended that I was alone, perhaps my body would obey.

Out of nowhere, like the snap of a rubber band stretched to its limits, Panic bared its teeth in a brutal smile. My clammy hands grew cold, my head spinning with lightheadedness and the sudden dread of an oncoming freight train of anxiety. Then, my soft palate collapsed, the sound similar to a snort of a pig.

I had been struggling with this phenomenon quite recently (I’d experienced it a bit back in high school during solo performances, but it usually came on after hours of playing my instrument). I had spoken with my clarinet professor about it, but he explained that he wasn’t very educated on the topic. It is physically impossible to continue playing my instrument when this happens.

It occurred during the most important exam of my journey through the Bachelor of Arts in Music. My heart rate spiked, my whole body filled with sweat and goosebumps, trembling like an autumn leaf. I hurriedly explained what was happening, certain that I had already failed the exam. A lump constricting my throat, I apologized over and over.

The woodwind faculty didn’t chastise or jump to any conclusions. The bassoon professor gently urged me to drink some water, explaining the soft palate collapse sometimes happens because of dehydration. I gulped down water, drinking half of my 16-ounce glass in a span of seconds.

My own clarinet professor asked if I felt all right to try and continue. He told me if so, I can continue when I was ready. “We’ll see what happens. If it happens again, we can stop. It’s not your fault.”

After some deep breaths, I positioned my instrument and continued to play. I finished off the movement, now only playing with a certainty that I had failed the exam and would only be playing for comments. I continued on to the next movement, this one faster-paced.

I filled my lungs with air, mentally counting the beats per minute. I began to play, later I would learn the fastest I’d played the movement (my professor and I had been working to get it this quick the entire quarter). My adrenaline-filled fingers flew over the keys. The beating of my heart put the speed of a galloping Thoroughbred to shame. I prayed every second that my soft palate wouldn’t collapse.

Finally, I reached the end of the movement. The movement is set up so that the performer rarely has a second to catch a breath; breaths must be strategically marked into the piece. The last passages flew from my fingers, and the last dramatic note greeted me.

Thankfully, my soft palate waited until I’d finished that last note to collapse one more time.

When I finished, I took my bow and awaited comments from the professors. They gave me quick feedback since my time slot was almost up. More comments would be written on the adjudicators’ sheet that I would receive at the next lesson with my professor. Still trembling from adrenaline, relief filled me when the saxophone professor mentioned that she had experienced the issue of the soft palate collapse with some of her students. I finally felt understood by another woodwind musician.

A couple days later, I received an email from my professor announcing that I had passed the exam. Shock filled me. I was certain I’d failed because I’d had to stop midway through my performance. But, in the end, my performance in general and the amount of improvement I showcased with it were the deciding factors in the grading scale.

Despite the excellent news, something within my academic—and career—path was not going in the right direction. This one performance forced me to do some reflection.

After much thought, I made the decision to change from Music to Creative Writing. This change felt like a weight heavier than lead had been lifted from my shoulders.

Because of what happened in that performance, it forced me to ask myself: why am I doing music? Do I love it? Do I want to do music as a career? The answers to all of these questions were the catalyst to why I needed to change majors.

After making the big change, my anxiety lessened as I signed up for English classes. Happiness filled me again, and my attitude towards school improved. I had always enjoyed parts of being a musician, but it never brought me as much joy and happiness as writing. Writing is just a different kind of music—one that I felt comfortable expressing myself through and sharing with others. Writing brought me inspiration, whereas being a musician often felt like a chore. I would switch to a writing degree and embark on a new quest—a quest where I would do what I had loved to do since I was twelve: write.



BIO

Erin Moine writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She received her BA in English: Professional & Creative Writing from Central Washington University. She is currently a Graduate student in the English MA: Professional & Creative Writing program at Central Washington University and is set to complete the program during Winter of 2025. Outside of writing, Erin enjoys hiking, drawing, and reading (of course). She lives in the Pacific Northwest. 







Howl

Jeffrey Wengrofsky, The Wolfboy of Rego Park (Far West Press, 2023).

Reviewed by Michael Weingrad


Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s collection of autobiographical vignettes The Wolfboy of Rego Park is a little 88-page memorial to . . . what? To friends who died young, to the 1980s New York punk scene he participated in as a zine-writing teen, to his youth. But, more than anything, to a pre-internet way of being, when esoterica needed to be stored in the brain, to be shared face-to-face with other aficionados of the band or book you loved; when rebels didn’t have Instagram accounts and their “influence” was the stuff of urban legend and personal stories told at the bar.

The trajectory of Wengrofsky’s youth runs from working-class Jewish Queens (“After decades of coating the ships of the Brooklyn Navy Yard with lead-infused paint, grandpa came down with cancer”) and its public school childhood of comic books and neighborhood freaks and classroom bullies, to the semi-united tribes of early ’80s punk and CBGBs slam dancing, to teenage Marxism and a jail booking after a protest, to where a lot of us wound up: pomo theory and grad school.

Wolfboy’s chapters are a mix of deft reticence and unflinching revelation, the latter especially in the understated yet queasy portrait of one early punk mentor and his sexual predations. Though he writes in first-person and everything is suffused with personal meaning, Wengrofsky is always focused on other people, the conspirators and musicians and gurus and menaces, their codes and habits. Of one departed punk/dandy friend, a band frontsman and at times pianist, switchboard operator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and bartender near St. Marks Place, Wengrofsky recalls:

then in the twilight of youth, Peter already had an ethic of sorts, and people were invited into his life along axes of common interest: he liked wine and liquor, pre-war and pre-TV culture and style (he’d grab my tie and say “we are little gentlemen”), meat, and, sadly, cocaine (a big-league taboo nostalgic to the 1920s and certainly non-fattening).

From Tompkins Square Park or the roof of a LES walk-up, they would “howl into the deep inky still of the starless Manhattan sky.” 

The howls of Wolfboy join what seems to me a growing number of books by us Gen-Xers figuring out how to articulate the vanishing sense of our youth in the 1980s and thereabouts. Reviewing my own 1980s novel in verse, Jonathan Geltner (himself the author of a beautiful 1980s-facing novel) put my Gen X spin on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in this context of “a new kind of nostalgia.” Geltner says:

We are the last generation to recall life in the Analog World. We remember the Cold War, and first love . . . before the Internet. We remember how the world felt before it was mediated (even Dungeons & Dragons!) by screens. And we are doing everything in our power to get that world down on paper—or, indeed, on a screen—before the chance and the memory is lost (like tears in rain?).

Subtle, brutal, Wengrofsky’s Wolfboy is a worthy, punk-infused little entry in this race to chronicle not only our memories, but how we remembered.

Wengrofsky continues to swim the outré currents of New York creativity: acting, teaching at places like the New School, working for various art and theory mags, hosting podcasts, making short documentaries, and organizing an annual film festival connected with a production collective. Does something of punk then still live? Perhaps in spirit, though Wolfboy demonstrates that Wengrofsky knows when an elegy is called for. It seems fitting that the final chapter leaves us uneasily with Wengrofsky on the subway, but in 2019, smartphone in hand.



BIO

Michael Weingrad is the author of Eugene Nadelman: A Tale of the 1980s in Verse (Paul Dry Books, 2024). He is currently writing a book about Jews and fantasy literature.









BOOK REVIEW

Bright-Eyed by Sarah Sarai


Review by Ed Go


The title of the first poem in Sarah Sarai’s new collection Bright-Eyed is a complete sentence and a bold statement: “Things always work out.” It is an assurance and a promise reinforced toward the end of the poem when the speaker assures the reader that “With the East now behind you, / the lush of you spreads” and promises that you, your “lush,” will flip “the pages of religion” and thumb “through in search of / a promised earthly garden / of ethereal delight.” The speaker is offering comfort here, while the poet takes you on this journey in space (toward the West—“the East now behind you”) and time, as the poems in the following pages unfold revealing growth through adolescence to adulthood.

From “a girl, twelve and studying / the ambient inhalation of family” in “Souls in the Penalty of Flesh” to “This thirteen-year-old / Balancing on crabgrass” in “Two-Story Bldg, on Vernon,” the poems in the first half of Bright-Eyed give us insight into the child the speaker once was: “She is young: a fact which proves nothing” she tells us in “The Crooked Road Without Improvement,” before instructing us:

            To offset appetites for urban nostalgia,

            think: rats: scurrying: ivy’s sprinklered

            banks before the house, before as in:

            I trembled before the hanging judge, so

            trembled ivy before the squatting house.

The poet does not want to indulge in nostalgia, nor does her speaker seek such a simplistic ploy at empathy. The flow of the verses here is from not simply how lines break from phrase to phrase; it flows from colon to colon, reinforced by the repetition of “before”—a word steeped in nostalgia but, as a preposition, functions as a means of positioning the reader, situating them in the present only to view the past. The rapid fire use of colons supports this position: a colon is used to introduce a list or expand on an idea, or both: “think: rats: scurrying: ivy’s sprinklered”—expand your nostalgic thoughts to include rats, and expand that to include scurrying, and then to the sprinklered ivy enjambed onto everything that came before. No, this isn’t mere nostalgia—it’s the establishment of how a life is lived.

Sarai’s command and control of the line is what gives these poems their flourish. Both in her use of enjambment, such as “a girl, twelve and studying / the ambient inhalation of family” and in powerful end-stopped lines, exemplified in “Not Me, It Cries”:

            My past doesn’t haunt me.

            I haunt my past.

            In the middle of the night, it jerks ‘wake:

            “Shit. Now what are you gonna blame me for?”

Unlike enjambed verses, the end-stopped line is a matter of fact statement: “My past doesn’t haunt me” has more power as a statement than the image of the girl studying because we don’t know what she’s studying until the next line when we learn she’s not studying at all; she’s lost in a contemplation of family. The speaker now haunts her past, she tells us in another end-stopped line, and she’s not going to be blamed now. She is no longer the girl, she is the woman who, in the second half of the book, looks back at all the girls now grown: “weirdo girl, prom girl, high-IQ girl, / neutral girl” as well as “nerdy girl, abused girl / abused girl, abused girl, pot-dealing / girl, acid-dropping girl” in “No One’s in High School These Days”—girls “who in / seventy years will be not-so-bitter / girl.” Nostalgia is for the weak, the poet reminds us; the “immovable past girl” is the “future girl”—she has come full circle, come into her own self, alluding back to rats and ivy in “Some Mysteries of Youth Unsolved (Where I lived When I was 13)”:

            rats lay low in ivy,

            a wet bank of it,

            the leveling up of a slope

            straining for your house

            wrapped in scrim.

The girl is a woman now looking back, not nostalgically but understanding poetic “reenactment being / a distortion, a cry, and /even now, a question.”

Sarai’s control of poetic structures is not only demonstrated in enjambed and end-stops verses; it is present in the collection’s prose pieces as well. Prose poems remove the necessary distraction of verse’s line breaks and focuses readers on imagery and ideas. Sarai’s prose runs counter to the rhythms of her verse by creating a more flowing cascade of imagery, as exemplified in the title poem which begins with the reminder “The past is over” before immersing us in the images of the past: “The pain center was a tumor crazy for your right ovary”; “It’s malleable, not like ducklings, more like wet clay shivering in anticipation of thumbs”; “Zero in on the bright-eyed and hopping with more.” Each of these images is connected by ideas: “Memory is unreliable”; “Look to your future”; “Unreliable memory is understudy for sublimity.” All of this grounds the reader in a certain stability that is required when reenacting the past in poetry, and it takes a true practitioner of the art and master of the craft to pull together a collection this vibrant and stunning.

Moving without being sentimental, structured while feeling organic, Sarah Sarai’s Bright-Eyed skillfully displays her command of language to focus the experience of the past into a foundation for the present in order to connect the personal to the universal.



BIO



Ed Go is a Chinese-Filipino-Portuguese-English-Scottish-Irish American writer raised in Massachusetts, Virginia, Alaska, Hawaii and Connecticut. His writings have been published in various online and print journals and anthologies, and his chapbook Deleted Scenes from the Autobiography of Ed Go as told by Napoleon Id was published in 2014 by Other Rooms Press, and “new machines,” a sequence of twenty-one prose poems in the anthology Urgent Bards in 2016 by Urbantgarde Press.







Grandma Ward

by Jon Woolley



     One evening, after a dinner of whatever fast food chain was offering two sandwiches for three dollars, I retreated to my jail cell sized room for a time of forced self-reflection. I opened my Bible to the book of James, and read a verse that said religion is visiting orphans or widows. I didn’t know any widows. There was a dearth of orphans since the inventions of vaccines and organized agriculture. Seems if you give little kids shots and food, they tend to stay alive.

     The next day my roommate said he was going to visit Grandma Ward.

     “I didn’t know you had a grandma nearby?”

      “Oh, everyone calls her that. She is an old widow I visit.”

      Prayers answered. Time for some real religion. I shall minister to a widow.

      We drove to where our town was called “old” and was once a separate village before being swallowed up by suburban sprawl. We pulled into the driveway of a ranch house with a huge picture window. It was across the from the library and a strip mall. The house predated all of them, as did its owner.

      As we advanced up the walk, I could hear panting like a marathon runner nearing the end of the race, or his life. My roommate opened the front door to reveal an obese yellow lab. It was as though Winnie the Pooh were a dog.

      We stepped into a living room with wall to wall faded light blue carpet. The fat yellow lab was trying to jump up on me, but unable to get her front paws more than an inch off the floor.

      “Oh, am I happy to see you,” said an old woman sitting on a dark blue sofa. Lot of blue. Her hair was black and perfectly permed. She was wearing a dark brown skirt and a turquoise blouse. A sitting garage sale. At what point do people decide they are done updating their wardrobe? For my parents, it was forty-six. Hers was also forty-six. 1946.

      “This is Jon,” Dan yelled, “He’s a teacher.”

      Grandma Ward had perfect hearing. Much like a two-year-old being told to go to bed, if she didn’t like what you said, she just pretended not to hear it. This caused pretty much everyone to raise their voice around her. Like one does with a little kid.

      Grandma Ward threw her head back and laughed. The exact laugh I had been missing in my life.

      “I was a teacher for thirty years! You know, I had a fella that was sweet on me, back a hundred years ago. He asked me to marry him, but I knew he’d never let me teach, so I had to let him go.”

     She patted the sofa next to her. And I went over and sat down on a blue sofa with a sheen of yellow lab hair.  She leaned forward.

     “Now, what grade do you teach?”

     “Seventh.”

      One eyebrow raised. There was a spark in her eyes. She reached to the coffee table to her left to snatch a glass bowl.

      “You need a piece of chocolate,” she whispered.

      And she was right, I did need a piece of chocolate.

      She proceeded to ask me all about my job and boring life, hanging on every word.

      A few days later, I was back at the corner of Main Street and Water Street, at the ranch of dark brown brick with the picture window. I grabbed her mail protruding out of the black metal box next to the door. It was addressed to Aida Ward. I didn’t need to knock, the dog having a seizure gave my presence away.

      “Hello Mrs. Aida Ward,” I said while reading the name on her the mail.

      “Oh, Aida is my given name, but I’ve always gone by Vareena.”

      “You traded one civil war widow name for another?”

      She laughed long and hard while extending her candy bowl toward me.

     “So, Jon, are you sweet on some young lady?” she asked while I sat down next to her.

     “I’m sweet on a lot of young ladies.”

      She started laughing so hard she almost tumbled off the sofa. Her dog, Honey, got all excited and started panting, sending golden hair into the sunlight pouring through the picture window. I saw a leash hanging by the door.

     “How about I take this dog for a walk?”

     Grandma Ward clapped at the idea and Honey nearly went into an asthmatic fit with excitement while I grabbed the leash and clipped it to her collar. I stepped into her Brady Bunch kitchen. I pulled open drawers until I found a plastic bag to stuff into my back pocket. Honey and I took off down the sidewalk. Well, I took off. Honey waddled after me.

     The neighborhood consisted of tiny ranch houses built on a cement block with single car garages. They were built in a totally different era. Just like grandma Ward. I knew this type of neighborhood. I grew up in one. In the 50’s and 60’s, these houses were the dream. Now they were homes for the permanently poor. Everyone owned three vehicles, two in the drive and one on the street, with the goal of keeping two cars running. People stood between houses and smoked. Everything had changed in this neighborhood. Everything but Grandma Ward.

     Two blocks away, Honey drags me into a perfectly manicured yard. Her girth equal to that of a compact car. No sniffing around or pacing. She lets lose a steamy turd. I want to turn away, but I can’t. This must be what it’s like when a sumo wrestler drops a constitutional. I wrap the plastic bag around my hand, hoping against hope that this thin piece of plastic holds as I pick up a turd the size of adjoined softballs.

     We walk a block back towards the house. The bag of steaming dog poop keeping time, swinging like a pendulum in my right hand. Honey lurches toward another yard.

     “No! No! I don’t have another bag!” I yell as an epic tug of war begins.  Honey strains forward like a plow horse. I dig in my heels, to no avail.

     Honey arches her back and plops out another. Bigger than the first. She turns to me and smiles.

     I look down at her business, glance right and left, not a soul in sight. I decide to use up any spiritual goodwill gained from walking Grandma Ward’s dog.

     “We gotta run.”

     Occasionally, in professional football, an overweight defensive lineman, a player who in the course of a season should never touch the football, ends up with the ball and has an opportunity to progress the ball with other large people chasing him. He will huff and puff and flail about in a comical manner. This player will finally collapse after running about ten yards and strain to stand again. This is Honey running back to Grandma Ward’s house.

     Her exuberance over her once in a lifetime exertion extinguished, she lay in the center of the sidewalk half a block from home.

     “Come on!” I chant while pulling. She responds with a raised eyebrow that says “Just choke me out with the leash.”

     I drag the cement bag back home. As soon as I pull her over the threshold, she jumps up and starts panting all over the place. Grandma Ward gets up and disappears into her Brady Bunch kitchen.  She emerges with a 1970 orange Tupperware full of leftover pot roast. She dumps it in the dog bowl and Honey goes to town like Winnie to Pooh on the honey pot. Then Honey pauses, lifts her head, looks at me, and winks.

     “She worked up an appetite,” says Grandma Ward, not realizing I’m the work horse.

     We both turn toward the picture window as a late model Honda Accord pulls up. A couple I have seen at church comes walking up the driveway. I hug Grandma Ward and prepare to excuse myself.

     “Dale and Charlotte are taking me out to dinner. And you are coming,” she states, as though choosing dinner over the first drive though I see is a tough choice. Honey looks at me and smiles.

     “We’re nothing alike,” I whisper to Honey.

     Soon I am sitting at a local restaurant. Grandma Ward chooses where she eats based on the special for that day of the week. Tonight’s choice was based on potato soup. Grandma Ward made me sit close to her so she could whisper to me and wink. Charlotte was quite a bit older than Dale, which caused quite a stir in the church circles when they married. Charlotte was pretty, college educated, and smart, and I’m sure she had plenty of suiters in her day, but had turned them all away. Now she was forced to double back and scoop up Dale, a day laborer with square hands and an “aw shucks” grin.

     Grandma Ward pats me on the back as I order saying I worked up quite an appetite walking Honey.

     “I’ll have the pot roast,” I say to the waitress.

     “Why don’t you have any kids yet?” asks Grandma Ward while staring at Charlotte, who is near forty, and near the end of fertility, “Something wrong with your pipes?”

     Awkward silence. Grandma Ward turns toward me and whispers in an unusually loud voice that conceals nothing.

     “Must be her pipes. My pipes are so old, I’m not even sure I could get a man interested in these pipes anymore.”

     I sit perfectly still. Mortified. Charlotte giggles a little. Dale chuckles and soon everyone is laughing as Grandma Ward smiles, like a two-year-old who has a hang nail on her middle finger and goes around flicking everyone off, old ladies get to say whatever they want. I love Grandma Ward.

     When the bill comes, Grandma Ward hoists a black leather purse that could easily encapsulate a bowling ball, up on the table. She pulls out a wad of cash that could choke a mule.

     She walks out gripping my arm and I gently lower her into the backseat, hop around the car and sit in the backseat next to her. She winks at me and leans forward.

     “Dale, I sure could use some ice cream.”

     Dale and Charlotte turned to see the eyes of a little girl asking her daddy for a frozen treat. They’d have better luck kicking a kitten. Grandma Ward turned to me and smiled, her eyes sparkling. And I loved her even more.

     The ice cream place was the type of establishment open only for the summer. A shack with a sliding window and four teenage girls in matching T-shirts, all sprinting around for minimum wage. I try to decide which of the 50 flavors to choose for my single scoop sugar cone. I order blackberry chip and step aside. Grandma Ward, black purse swinging, dressed like she just stepped out of a USO dance, fog of rose perfume, saunters up to the window.

     At the bottom of the sign listing all the flavors, is the Atomic Bomb. A fifteen-dollar concoction of the ten most popular flavors, dumped into a waffle cone the size of a mixing bowl. Like the $100 bottle of wine at a pizza place, no one orders this.

     “I’ll have that A-bomb,” states Grandma Ward.

     The shocked teeny bopper starts stretching out the ligaments in her forearm. Grandma Ward pulls on my arm so I am forced to lean down to hear her whisper.

     “Life is short. Always get the big cone.”

     When the A-Bomb comes out, they have to turn it sideways to get it out of the window. Grandma Ward takes it with a grin. I grab a handful of napkins and she takes my arm as we walk to the car. She’s getting ice cream on everything. A glob lands in her hair, dribbles down her USO dress and onto my arm. She’s oblivious. She smiles and takes a big lick.

     Back home, I help her into the house. She’s eaten a tenth of this monstrosity. She walks into her Brady Bunch kitchen, stands over Honey’s dog bowl, and drops it in.

      “Done,” she deadpans.

      Honey trots past me. Smiling. I have a feeling this is not the first Atomic Bomb for Honey.

      It was getting late. I hug Grandma Ward, breathing in the rose perfume that has become comforting. It’s been a month since I’ve hugged anyone.

     I’m back in the driveway. I can see Grandma Ward’s excitement through the picture window, I can almost hear Honey wheezing, and have rose perfume assault my nostrils. She is wearing a navy-blue pleated skirt with a matching top.

      We decide, or rather she decides, to head to an Amish restaurant famous for fried chicken and peanut butter pie. She digs her keys out of the black leather purse that could easily fit a bowling ball, pinching the ignition key between her thumb and pointer finger.

     “We’re taking my car,” she says.

     “Fine, but I’m driving,” I answer.

     “Don’t try to run away with me,” she says, teasing.

     “With what? A 1989 Chrysler with eight hundred miles on it, and an untold fortune in your giant purse?”

     “You’re lucky I’m not sixty years younger, or you’d think about it,” she answers, with one raised eyebrow.

     At the restaurant, she struggles to get out of the car. I lift her and get her steady between the open door and frame of the car. Grandma Ward is slightly plump but weighs almost nothing. Whenever I help her up, she always takes that as an opportunity to hug me or give my arms a little squeeze. I turn and lean in to the car to get her purse.

     It is autumn and the maple trees are a beautiful shade of orange. The seeds are aptly nicknamed helicopters.  I turn around with her Brinks truck of a purse and she has a handful of helicopter seeds. The Cadillac next to us left their driver’s side window down a bit. She is dropping them in like letters in a mail slot.

     “What are you doing? Where did you even get those?”

      “This man will be glad in fifty years when he has a maple tree in his yard. He’ll thank me. You need to plant more seeds,” she says with a slight indignant tone.

     “I’m sure he will thank you on your 130th birthday. Bring you firewood or something.”

     She uncurls her fingers like a kid who has been caught with a hand in the cookie jar. She has two left. I glance around.

     “Put ‘em in,” I sigh.

      “You’re going to be a good dad one day,” she whispers as we walk across the restaurant parking lot.

      The lobby is a sea of people. I have to breast stroke to get to the seating station. A taller Danny DeVito with a Secret Service earpiece is barking orders at a pair of teenage girls. He glances up at me.

      “Wait is going to be over an hour,” he snaps.

      Grandma Ward peeks around my arm.

     “Tommy?”

      He grins and barks “Table four” at one of the girls. She leads us to a circular table set for six people. Six people who are not us.

     “You going to get married? Have some fun? Have some kids?” she asks without looking up from the menu, knowing we were both getting fried chicken and peanut butter pie.

     “I’m already having fun,”

     But I wasn’t. I was all alone in life. And so was she.

     After dinner, we drive back to the ranch on the corner of Water and Main with the blue carpet, massive red brick fireplace, and fat yellow lab. We chat, count cars out the picture window, and eat all the chocolate out her crystal candy bowl.

     “We’re a good team,” she says as I stand to leave.

     “You get one of those handicapped parking passes and we’ll be unstoppable.”

     “It was in the glove compartment.”

     “You’re lucky you’re not sixty years younger.”

     I drove home thinking about old Vereena, who goes by Aida, and why I liked being with her so much.  Overpowering rose perfume?  June Cleaver fashion sense?  The fact that she probably slept in a formal dress? The ability to get a seat in a crowded restaurant? The ability to say whatever she wanted? Definite selling points.

     I had mostly avoided the elderly. My own grandparents lived far away and I never saw them much. One grandma was cranky, the other was a hoarder. I didn’t think I was missing much on the old lady front. Mostly old people scared me. I was scared that I would end up just like them. Unable to stand without pulling a table over. Smelly. Wearing sweatpants and white New Balance shoes. I shuddered at the thought.

     Grandma Ward was mostly the opposite of these things. She was witty, dressed nice, and literally smelled like roses. But that wasn’t why I loved her.

     A few months later, I brought my new girlfriend, Julie, to the corner of Water and Main. I’m not sure if our relationship would have continued had Grandma Ward not extended her candy dish with her left hand and glanced at me and winked.

     Soon we visited and Julie extended her left hand to Grandma Ward, palm down. We were engaged. Grandma Ward was so happy for me.

     Julie had a wedding shower at the house we bought together. Neither of us lived in the house yet. We were going to do things “old fashioned” like Grandma Ward would want. I entered the living room with steel folding chairs and Julie’s college friends and ladies from church were sitting in a circle. Julie was wearing a black cocktail dress and she looked really beautiful. Grandma Ward gave me the most evil grin, like a four-year-old just waiting for dad to figure out she ate all the cake. My future wife pulls me out to the kitchen and cups her hand to tell me a secret. I lean down, looking at Grandma Ward.

     “Everything was good. Everyone got me really nice gifts. But one person got me the skimpiest lingerie. It’s barely there.”

     Grandma Ward just smiles and nods.

     At our wedding, Julie had her grandma on her side, and I had Grandma Ward on mine. We got her this big flower to wear. We hugged on the way out of the church and some more at the reception. She was so happy for me.

     Turns out, when you marry a corporate lawyer, they are responsible for this thing called “billable hours”. I’m still not sure what it is, but it meant I rarely saw the new wife. March came and I was staring down a wife working sixty hours and my own teacher spring break. Back to sad and lonely. That Sunday, at church, another old lady asked me if I knew that Grandma Ward had fallen at her home and was in a nearby nursing home. I did not know. And now I knew what I was going to do with my spring break.

     I park in the side lot of Arlington Court Nursing and Rehabilitation Center next to the only other car. I haven’t seen her in six months. I walk into a lobby of overstuffed couches, brass lamps, and coffee tables. It looks like an abandoned furniture store.

     There is an old lady staring out at the courtyard. She has perfectly permed hair, a green dress, and I can smell the rose perfume. I sneak up behind her and perch next to her on the couch. It takes a second, but she recognizes me. I get the biggest smile.

     “I am so happy to see you! I was hoping you would come. But I would understand if you didn’t. You’re married now,” she says.

      “Yeah, to a lawyer. it means I see her about as much as I see you. I am off all week. She is not,”

     “What are you going to do with yourself?”

     “Hang out with you. We make a good team. I like this place. I think I’ll move her too.”

     “You can have my spot.”

     We both laugh and then sit quiet for a good long while. I have missed her. Missed her a great deal.

     “Did you drive here?” she asks as though I walked, “Sneak me out. Take me back home.  They make me wake up too early. I miss my house. I miss Honey.

     We talked for a long time. Neither of us had anywhere else to be. We both had empty houses waiting for us somewhere else. Mostly, she made sly innuendos about sex and me being newly married. She always threw in a smirk and a wink. I laughed until my side hurt.

     It was nearing lunch time. I stood and helped her stand. I walked her back to her room, which was no easy process. I walked backwards with my arms extended. She had hold of my hands and I was talking her through every step of the way.

     “Five more steps.  You got this,” I said as she ambled down the hallway, “Don’t run home on us tonight, Mrs. Jackrabbit.”

     “When does that wife of your get home? So you can have some fun,” she fired back.

     “With your bridal shower gift?”

     I have more faults than can be listed. One of my biggest is that generally don’t like other people. There’s seven billion people on the planet and if I met them all, I would like seven of them. This wears on a person.

     On the couch, sneaking up beside her, Grandma Ward’s eyes focused and her smile was magical. She had recognized me as her person. She was my type. I thought I’d never see a smile as pure as that again in my life. Never.

     “Do you think you could come back tomorrow?” she asked as I walked toward the door of her nursing home room.

     “Let me check my calendar,” I said pretending to flip an invisible day planner. She thought this uproariously funny.

     I went to that nursing home every day that week. When you find someone who really sees you, who smiles from deep in their soul at you, you return. Best spring break I ever had.

     Soon enough, Grandma Ward’s shower gift returned dividends. Julie was pregnant with a little girl. I was excited. Nervous. All the feelings at once. Grandma Ward was thrilled for me.

     “You will be the best daddy ever,” she would say. When I would ask her how she knew she would smile at me. As though it were one of our shared jokes.

     Twenty weeks into the pregnancy, we starting having problems. They were serious enough that Julie had to go on bedrest at home, and then in the hospital. We had to have a baby shower in the hospital, and Grandma Ward came, despite her distaste for hospitals. Another sentiment we shared.

     Weeks inched by. Then a month. Tough time. I went to work, and then straight to the hospital, every single day. It was depressing. One day, my wife was entertaining one of her many visitors while I sulked in the corner. I overheard them say “Grandma Ward fainted at home.  She’s here now too.”

     I walked out. Took the elevator to the welcome desk in the lobby. Some sixteen-year-old candy striper boy was manning the desk. He smiled at me with this “I’m going to be an Eagle scout someday” grin.

     “I need to see Grandma Ward.”

     Blank stare.

     “Aida Ward.”

     He pecks the name into his keyboard while I spell it. Blank stare again. Dang civil war widow names mixing me all up.

     “Vareena Ward,” I say like we are trying to guess an email password.

     “Bingo. Room 512,” he says while taking out an over photocopied hospital map and a highlighter.

     Old Vareena would listen to him patiently. Smile at him and wink at me. Maybe in another fifty years I’ll be as saintly as her.

     “I don’t need a map. I live here,” I snapped.

     The hospital had two gleaming towers. My wife was in one, trying to keep a life from entering this world.  Grandma Ward was in the other one, maybe leaving this world. I took the elevator to the fifth floor. The door to her room was ajar, and I could hear her and her daughter talking. I lightly rapped, slowly pushed the door open, and had to hold back tears.

     Her hair was permed on one side, but mashed down on the other. No make-up. No rose perfume. Just the disgusting hospital disinfectant that permeated my life. This was the first time I had ever seen her not wearing a dress. They stuffed her in one of those white off green hospital gowns. It had blue polka dots, like the designer was thinking, “what this needs is some dots, that way when you’re dying with your naked rear end falling out, you’ll have that fashion going for you”.

     She turned and her eyes focused. Her whole face brightened and she got a big smile.

     “My boy! My boy is here!”

     I saw the same smile as I did on the couch at the nursing home, as every time she saw me walking up the sidewalk through her big picture widow, and as she handed me a chocolate out of the glass candy dish while asking all about my hopeless life.

     Her daughter graciously stood so I could have a seat next to her. She reached over to take my hand and the inside of her arm was all purple and green.

     “What happened?”

     “Young girl was trying to draw my blood. She was trying hard,” she said with a wink. I knew exactly what she meant. Learn on someone else.

     “Your wife still here?”

     “Yeah, I don’t think they’ll let us go home,” I said.

     “I don’t think they’ll let me go home either.”

     We talked. Laughed. Smiled. She reminded me of what a great dad I would be. I missed being with someone who really got me. One of my people.

      Time flew. Unlike when I was in the other tower. One tower to bring you in this world and one tower to take you out. A life lived between the two. I heard two nurses whispering in the hallway. I knew they wanted in. I knew this hospital. Time for vitals.  Then some water and ice chips. Lights out, until a midnight blood draw, or the janitorial staff strolls in to empty the trash at two in the morning. Time for me to get out or be chased out.

     I stood and hugged Grandma Ward. Walked toward the door, but paused.

     “Come see me again, come see me.”

     “I will,” I promised.

     But I didn’t. I never saw Grandma Ward alive again.

     Because I was a self-centered jerk. Who learned nothing from her while she was alive.

      I returned to my wife, thirty weeks pregnant. I was staring down ten more weeks of going to work all day, spending my evenings sitting in a 1979 pleather recliner in her room, and my nights in a big empty house. But that didn’t happen. We had a premature baby. Well, she had her. I just mostly stood around and freaked out at the whole process. Two and half months early. Due date was April Fools and we had her on MLK Day. Welcome to your tower, baby Hannah. Live a good life before you get to other gleaming glass monstrosity.

     I went on paternity leave for six weeks. Which is exactly how long Hannah spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU. Her mother and I were there every day. This was largely because of her mother. Hannah wasn’t really my person. She was just a strange little creature who lived in a plastic aquarium. Then a plastic bin. Then my bed.

    I was at church, when some unknown soul came and expressed regret to me that Grandma Ward had just passed. I felt nothing. “Well, can’t live forever.  I hope to live as long.” I tried to put it out of my mind.

     Julie made me go to the viewing. Funerals are out of the question. No one has to go to my funeral. I won’t be offended. They have no choice but to be a morbid affair. I expect the same gracious offer in return. There she was, laid out in a casket. She looked like a makeup covered mannequin. I leaned over the coffin and squeezed her hand. It was like a piece of wax. At least they doused her with rose perfume.

     “Just so you know, I’d have put you in pants,” I whispered, half expecting her to open her eyes, smile, and wink at me.

      I fell into a deep sadness. I did not want to be a dad. I was failing at the one thing Grandma Ward was sure I’d be good at. I didn’t care about baby Hannah. I cared about me. I wasn’t sleeping. I was having nightmares about rolling over on Hannah at night. Finally, my wife had mercy on me and took the little hand grenade to the guest bedroom.

      I woke up, alone, at six in the morning. Drunk on depression. I wandered in to the guest bedroom to say good bye. Julie rolled over and baby Hannah, who formerly had the facial expressions of a Barbie doll, popped her head up. Then it happened. The thing that changed my life.

     Hannah looked at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes registered me as her dad. She got the biggest smile on her face. It was exactly the smile that Grandma Ward made when she would see me through the picture window. The smile Grandma Ward had when I snuck up beside her at the nursing home. The smile I got in her hospital room when I saw her for the last time. My daughter was one of my people.

     Everything changed. I would help her walk, encouraging every step. Go get too big ice cream cones. She’d go to school, and I would promise to be there when she was done. A promise I kept. I bought a glass candy dish. Because sometimes you just need a piece of chocolate. We’d feed the dog all kinds of people food. Hannah loved her dog. Mostly we just held hands and talked. Because in a world of seven billion people. I probably like seven. Grandma Ward was one. My daughter was another.

     Sometimes I still think about that verse in the book of James. It said religion was simple. Find a widow. It was simple, just not in the way I thought. By keeping company with Grandma Ward, I didn’t help her.

     She saved me.



BIO

Jon Woolley has been published in the literary journal Come on Georgia, and his humorous essay “Record Low” was published in The Columbus Dispatch. Jon is a public school teacher. He thought he knew all about children. Then he had two of his own. Jon Woolley lives in Dublin, Ohio with his lawyer wife. He is often the primary caregiver for his two daughters and they are the reason he writes. They are also why he has gotten into collecting bourbon. Jon is a former Division 1 basketball player. Now he is exactly 80 inches tall for no good reason.

Website: jonwoolleyauthor.com

Facebook: Carseat Conversations

Instagram: @carseatconversations

Podcast: Writing in Progress







Sam

by Rachel Moncada



My son would have turned 12 this month. The only evidence of his existence are a birth certificate and a death certificate with the same date on them. I remember I was alone. For hours I tried to get his father on the phone. I sent emails, I sent texts. There are just far too many ways for people to ignore us nowadays. Eventually I had to give up because I had to push.

Sam was born April 4th at exactly two minutes after two in the afternoon. The sun was bright outside, so he got to feel the warmth from the window for a few moments in his short life. Exactly 11 minutes later he was gone. 

His heart was too weak. I’d known he would have trouble from previous appointments, but there was always a chance he might make it. I did everything I was told, from bed rest to eating disgusting food and vitamins. He was desperately wanted. I’d had three miscarriages before with the most recent only getting as far along as six months. But now, with Sam, I held out and even prayed sometimes despite my disdain for the practice. Watching his last cry sucked all the air out of my lungs.  I’m pretty sure my blood stopped moving through my body at that moment, and I just froze, watching him, waiting for any movement or sound. I didn’t want to miss it.

There was nothing to miss. He was tiny and limp, still covered in afterbirth and attached to me through his umbilical cord. I couldn’t talk and I don’t think I uttered another word for the rest of the day. Still alone with the nurses and my dead son, they asked me if I wanted to hold him. I did. Then they asked if I wanted a picture of us. I couldn’t. I felt very defensive of his little body at this point, and the idea made me ill. Selfishly I also wanted to be one of only a few who got to see him. No one else deserved him. A line from a poem pushed into my mind, and all I could think of was the future we’d never have.

I could feel pity staring at me from every direction. Nurses had taken off their masks and were looking at me, their faces twisted in pain. My doctor just kept saying he was sorry. He asked if I wanted to be alone for a minute because they would have to take Sam away. My eyes burned, my jaw ached, and oddly nothing below my waist felt anything. I hadn’t even had an epidural. I was just in as much pain as I was numb. I asked if he would stay with me for a few minutes. He pulled up a chair.

The nurses walked out looking back at me or at Sam, I couldn’t really tell which as they disappeared behind the door. Then there was silence.

Suddenly, my doctor grabbed my hand and began his own venting session. He knew how hard I had worked and what I’d sacrificed to have Sam to try to give him a chance. He’d been in constant communication with my oncologist since the first day I came to him. Everyone did everything they could, and no one was to blame.

He was a specialist in an already specialized field. My oncologist referred me to him as soon as I found out I was pregnant. At the time, I was on chemotherapy and radiation for leukemia. Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, to be more exact. By the time I had an inkling I was pregnant, I was already three months along and had been putting poison and radiation into my body the entire time. My oncologist recommended I terminate the pregnancy not only because I’d been on chemo to that point, but I couldn’t continue if I held on to the pregnancy. I would have to stop immediately to give the baby any chance. But that would hurt me. I needed my treatment, as I’d fallen out of remission months earlier like a brick from a building top. From stage 0 to stage 4 in only a couple of months. I barely had to think about it: I wanted my child. Treatment stopped and I went to the OBGYN he recommended who has seen many women with cancer through their pregnancies.

It wasn’t going to be pretty, he said. The treatment had already wracked the baby’s body, which was undersized and not developing properly. I would have to make a lot of changes and assess the risks. Again, another man asking if I wanted to terminate. I realized they were looking out for me. But it left a bitter iron flavor in my mouth every time I’d tell another medical professional I wasn’t getting an abortion. Not because I didn’t “believe” in them, but I didn’t want one. Hence, choice. I made mine. And now I was living with it.

After sitting silently while my OB rattled on, I’m sure as a means of comfort, a nurse came in the room to take Sam. I let her. But I didn’t offer him up. She had to dig into my arms to take him, but I admired her gentle touch. She had even gotten a different, softer blanket than those blue and white stiff towel blankets every hospital has for babies. He was safe with her.

I asked the doctor if Sam had suffered at all. Was there pain? Fear? Panic?

He said he doubted all those things very much. But he said Sam would have felt my touch. Which makes me dubious about his previous response. If he felt my touch, he had to feel other stuff.

Everything went very fast after that moment. Once Sam was out of the room, nurses and administrators and other people who I have no idea what they did were bustling in and out. Nurses tended to my body while administrators asked me what his name would be on the birth certificate. They asked me to verify my information. Then they asked if I was putting dad on the form. I don’t think he knows to this day that I left him off Sam’s birth certificate. Sam was mine.

I was in a wheelchair before I knew it. I hadn’t suffered much physically from the birth, so I was safe to leave that same day. They asked if I had someone coming to pick me up, and I lied. As soon as they left me alone, I abandoned the wheelchair and walked to my car. When I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat, I got this feeling of déjà vu. It was in reverse, though. Just hours before I’d been in that seat, driving myself to the hospital after my water broke. I had messaged him the second my water broke and kept trying to call Sam’s dad on the way there. Even now I don’t know where he was or what he was doing in all that time.

I drove home with no memory of doing it. I must have because I ended up at home on my couch staring at my ceiling. At this point I’d given up on getting a call back.

Sleep took me. I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t get a choice. It was after nine that night before I woke to a touch on my arm. It was him. I was too sad to be angry.

The next day came too fast. Sam’s dad was behind me, playing big spoon like he had a hundred times before. Occasionally, I would be big spoon. I’d struggle to put my arm over his wide shoulders, so instead I’d have to loop my arm between his chest and his arm as best I could. I welcomed his touch and was reviled by it all at once. My indecision left me frozen, staring at the wall, wondering if the events of the last 24 hours had actually transpired or been a cruel nightmare. Pain in my stomach and loins shot me out of the bed towards the bathroom, and the spots of blood and pain in my crotch brought me back to reality.

I stumbled back to the room after cleaning myself. My legs were weak and shaking, and I kept grabbing surfaces to steady myself until I reached the edge of my bed. He appeared in the doorway with a look of concern, asking if I needed something to eat. I didn’t answer: I just stared at him, holding his gaze as I fell towards my pillow and curled into a fetal position. My expression must have been grim. He retreated towards the kitchen, and I heard the fridge doors open and shut and the slight click of my stove turning on.

He was making fried eggs and rice. I knew somehow. It was my comfort meal even before my pregnancy. A couple over easy eggs, fried with avocado oil, put over a bowl of rice and sliced. The yolk would turn the rice a slight yellow. Imagining the color right then made my stomach turn.

I scootched up a bit towards my headboard so I could watch him. He always moved fluidly, quietly, as if he knew my kitchen better than his own. Which was likely true since he spent more time with me than at home. That thought sparked anger in me. He was usually with me, usually at my home. Where the hell was he when I needed him the most? I squirmed in my bed, trying to relax, as the sudden flare of fury brought about a boiling hot pain in my groin. I wasn’t allowed to be mad; I wasn’t allowed to be sad. I was trapped.

He finished in the kitchen, turned quickly, and walked towards me with a steaming bowl in his hand. I inspected him. I wondered if Sam would have looked like him or like me. Maybe he would have looked like one of his grandfathers or uncles. Would he have had that winning smile like his dad’s that engaged me the first time I met him? Who would he have been?

I named him Sam for many reasons. The least important being it was a name his dad and I could settle on. The most important being how many wonderful Sam’s there are. When I was filling out his birth certificate, it was difficult for me to write Samuel instead of Samwise. It’s not as if his dad was there to stop me. I could have done it. Samwise Gamgee was one of my favorite literary characters. He still is. There was no one braver, more loyal, or more self-sacrificing. Would my son have been like that? Could he have lived up to his name?

He never got the chance and I will never know. I do dream on occasion of a boy. Brown hair, deep brown eyes, quick witted with a devilish grin. But also kind. So kind and good. No matter what happens in those dreams, as soon as Sam arrives, it’s never a nightmare.

The steaming bowl of rice and eggs was placed gently on the side table in front of me. The clank drove me out of my thoughts and back to where I was. Where I didn’t want to be.

Don’t ask me now what I was thinking. I have no idea, I only have regret. Despite my condition and knowing how bad it was, we made love just then. It hurt worse than when I lost my virginity. But I needed the connection. I was falling apart. Part of me tries to blame him for that moment, wondering why he would care more about sex than how delicate I was. Stupid as it was, it was my decision. Afterwards we laid there, and I’m reasonably sure he was talking to me.  I wasn’t listening to him. I didn’t care what he had to say. I wanted to keep thinking about Sam.

I fell in and out of love in a 24-hour period. I’d never look at Sam’s dad the same, and I loved someone who I would never see again more than I could express. I was as full as I was empty. I barely spoke a word to his dad the entire time he was with me. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask where he’d been while I gave birth and watched our child die alone. Part of me didn’t want to know the answer. He was a love I always knew would go wrong one day. I hadn’t realized how horribly wrong.

It’s been 12 years, and I still dream of Sam. I like to fantasize about how wonderful and smart he would be, how adorable. Even how at 12, he would likely be giving me a hard time like any tween. Sam and I were robbed. I keep him to myself, rarely telling anyone about my ordeal. I can’t stand looks like the one the nurses in the hospital gave me. I didn’t want to give birth alone. I didn’t want to leave his dad. I don’t want pity. I just want my son. I have his ashes in a tiny ceramic urn, blue, with his name written in gold. Two small praying bears sit around him at all times. Fuzzy sentinels.

I’m not typically triggered by events. I can see a movie that discusses child loss without automatically equating it to my experience. For some reason, though, a poem makes me think of Sam. It’s titled, “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me”. Fortunately for me, this isn’t a particularly well known or repeated piece of poetry, so I can go months or years without the words making me fail. I feel like a failure still, like I should have and could have done more to save him. When I researched what more I could have done I found nothing, but I did find research that states he might have saved me. According to research I stumbled upon, the stem cells creating him might have healed my damaged organs and stopped the cancer from killing me. My baby, my love, likely saved my life even when I couldn’t save his.



BIO

Rachel Moncada was born in Portland, OR, and currently lives in Vancouver, WA. After 18 years working in the medical field, she is now a student at Washington State University pursuing a BA in English and Communications. She hopes to write grants for non-profit organizations along with her own personal work. Her writing is predominantly non-fiction pieces about her life and those around her. “Sam” is her first published work. 







D-Day at Eighty

by Nadine Revheim



            My dad, Frank Revheim, landed on Normandy Beach on the second day. I guess that is why he survived. I always wondered if his job was to pick up the bodies left behind from that first day of carnage. Or perhaps he hauled supplies to replenish those depleted by the survivors who scaled the cliffs.

            I wonder how the troops were divided. Who was selected for the first day? The young? The unmarried? And who were the remaining souls that were thought to be worth saving for the long fight ahead?

            I always pondered.

            But I never asked.

            Not even after we went to see the movie The Longest Day with his friend from work, who asked him at the end of the movie, “Was it really like that, Frank?”

            “Yes,” Dad replied.

            I guess his response was enough for me. Maybe I really didn’t want to know anything more than that.

            But if he were alive today, watching the memorial services for the 80th anniversary of the epic battle that would liberate France, then Europe, I’d ask many questions so that he’d share some of his memories. The memories of his pounding heart as he raced forward over the beach and towards the escarpment with his equipment and weapons weighing him down. The sense of dread as he saw the fallen and wondered if he might be next. The reflection on meeting his brother Reidar in England. Reidar, who was serving in the Norwegian Navy, sought him out because he heard the 99th Battalion of Norwegian-Americans serving in the US Army were on the base awaiting orders. I imagine he would remember the hope he had in his heart because they went to a photographer’s studio to take a photo together. They marked the occasion they saw each other after 11 years apart; my dad left for America at 19 years old and his brother was only 10. I wondered if he remembered the song and lyrics to the Vera Lynn classic, “We’ll Meet Again”, not knowing where or when, but repeating those words over and over like a mantra to bolster his courage. I wonder if he thought about whether he’d see his 30th birthday in October 1944. Or whether he’d see his wife, Jenny, again in Brooklyn, his new home so far away from Haugesund, Norway. And I would ask how he prayed, not if he prayed. I would ask if he cried as he remembered what he saw in Normandy.

            My father cried. I saw him cry when he listened to music. When he left for work because he’d be away for two weeks. When he wrote a letter to his family in Norway. When we sang along with Mitch Miller. When he played the accordion. Or the organ. He cried when the doctors told him he needed brain surgery. When the biopsy showed it was mesothelioma. When I told him it metastasized from the lungs. He cried when the ambulance got him home because he knew I had saved him from dying in the hospital.

            “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” he said, as I pulled the nasal-gastric tube from his nose. The hospital hadn’t removed it even though they knew he was entering home hospice.

            He said it was okay when I got angry that he didn’t eat. When I had to remove thick mucus from his larynx because he was too weak to cough it out, I swiped and wiped in the back of his throat with a sponge on a stick.

         “I’m glad you taught me how to fish in the fjords of Norway,” I said, remembering how we reeled in the red cod we caught. He laughed.

            I remember how special it was to have my father home for the week he was off from working on the tugboat. I remember how he vacuumed and dusted to help my working mom. How he cooked his specialty, fried mackerel, first dredging it in flour tossed with salt and pepper, then placing it carefully into the melted butter until crisp.

            I remember chopping down trees in the woods on the property in Pennsylvania before the country house was built and asking him if he was trying to turn me into the son he never had. The son that was stillborn six years before I was born. I remember how he told me he sang You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” to me. I remember the pink and floral alarm clock he gave me that played Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

            I remember his smile. How he always broke into a dance when he was feeling happy. Or sad. How we did the two-step and the polka. How he waltzed with me standing on top of his feet.           

            I will never forget his feet. His tender and soft soles that carried him through seventy-six years of life. Over the beach at Normandy and through western Europe. I remember the feet that he said hurt from time to time and that when they ached, everything else ached too.

            “Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you,” he said to me, many times.

            My dad did not get to see the 50th anniversary reunion of veterans returning to Normandy in 1994. I watched the TV broadcast alone and cried as I thought about missing him since his death in 1991. I didn’t know that my Uncle Reidar was there with the other Norwegian sailors who survived the battle and were honored by the Norwegian government. I would like to imagine that they would have been together, once again, to take another photo to celebrate the lives they returned to after the war. They would tell their favorite story of how Reidar knocked on the door where my dad’s troops were located, and how he almost walked away after my father kept saying it couldn’t be his brother who was just a little boy. But they were both men facing the biggest challenge in their lives, two men who recognized the grace they had to survive.

            Those feelings are present now and are even stronger since the American veterans present at the ceremony on June 6th, 2024 are in their late 90s and even 100s. My dad wouldn’t be there; he would have been 113 years old. But hopefully I will get to Normandy someday to visit the memorial that pays tribute to all who crossed the beach and have crossed to the other side. For my dad, and for the brave, with prayers and hope that our world will always remember the ‘war to end all wars’ so that tyranny will not have the final word, once again.

ACTIVITY DURING WWII

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS. SERVED OCTOBER 30, 1942 TO DECEMBER 21, 1945. ENTERED SERVICE WITH THE 99TH BATTALION, A SPECIAL UNIT OF NORWEGIAN NATIONALS AND TRAINED AT CAMP RIPLEY, MINNESOTA AND CAMP HALE IN COLORADO. SERVED IN CENTRAL EUROPE, NORTHERN FRANCE ON D-DAY PLUS 2, IN THE NORMANDY INVASION AND RHINELAND. PERFORMED VARIOUS DUTIES IN CONNECTION WITH THE STORAGE AND HANDLING OF ALL TYPES OF AMMUNITION FOR THE 95TH BOMB SQUAD, ARMY AIR FORCE. SAW ACTIVE DUTY AS A RIFLEMAN WITH THE 99TH INFANTRY BATTALION. AWARDED DISTINGUISHED UNIT BADGE, EUROPEAN-AMERICAN-MIDDLE EASTERN SERVICE MEDAL, GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL AND THE WWII VICTORY MEDAL.



BIO

Nadine Revheim, PhD, a licensed psychologist, occupational therapist, and author. Her forty-year career in mental health was primarily focused on research and clinical programs for individuals with schizophrenia with various professional publications. She is currently self-employed as a private practitioner in behavioral health for individuals and couples. Her memoir, Woven Together: Finding Me in Memories of You, is in press with Cape House Books. She has written an ad hoc blog, “Beacon Bits” – A Bite of the Hudson River Valley (beaconnybits.blogspot.com) for over ten years. Other recent published works have appeared in The Highlands Current and The Keepthings.







The Writing Disorder Interview

Deborah Holt Larkin



Deborah Holt Larkin grew up in the small coastal town of Ventura, CA. In the 1950s, her father, Bob Holt, was a newspaper journalist and columnist for the Ventura County Star-Free Press. Beginning in 1958, her father covered one of the most famous criminal cases in Ventura County history. When Deborah was only a child, her father attended the trial on a daily basis, following it through from opening statements to the verdict and punishment phases. As her father came home at night, Deborah would ask him for details about the case and the courtroom proceedings. Deborah recently wrote an exceptional and detailed account of the famous case of Elizabeth Duncan (A Lovely Girl, 2022), the woman who was convicted of murdering the pregnant wife of her son, Frank Duncan. Elizabeth Duncan was the last woman put to death by the state of California. Like the case itself, the memories of this period in her young, impressionable life haunted Deborah throughout her life—until it finally came out in book form.

*

I met Deborah recently at a local book festival in Carpinteria, just north of Ventura. As we sat down to talk, a train, the Surfliner, was passing by.

The Writing Disorder: Have you been to Carpinteria lately?

Deborah Holt Larkin: I haven’t been here since I was a little girl. A friend’s grandmother used to live here. We’d come up here and stay with her family. We would sometimes camp out in her backyard, and we would hear the trains pass by at night. My family lived on Alameda Avenue in Montalvo, and our house was right near the railroad tracks. So, we heard the trains going by all the time.

TWD: What about Ventura?

DHL: A local historian, Glenda Jackson, used to give tours of the Ventura courthouse (built in 1926). She would take groups up to the old court room and tell them all about the infamous trial of Elizabeth Duncan. It’s a beautiful old building. I actually spoke there last year about my book. My sister still lives in Ventura — in the same house where we grew up.

TWD: My friend, Susan, who grew up in Ventura and worked at the courthouse, said they used to display a large photo of Elizabeth (aka Ma) Duncan up in the window upstairs. So, when you looked up from the street below you would see her face in the window.

DHL: When I was in college, I got a summer job as a student intern at Camarillo State Hospital. I got it through my mother who worked there as a psychiatric social worker. I was an intern in the school there and I remember that they seemed to treat children with mental illness as if it were some kind of parenting error. And I remember sitting out front on the lawn and watching the parents who would come visit. It wasn’t because of bad parenting. My mother was a big influence on me too, as far as some of her experiences working there at the hospital. I put this in the book, and I remember my mother saying, “I just hope I live long enough for there to be a cure for mental illness.”

TWD: The things your parents exposed you to as a child were quite provocative.

DHL: It was a different family. It was very unusual at the time for my mother to be working. She was the only married mom I knew who held a job. For the most part, women didn’t work when they were married.

TWD: And there weren’t a lot of divorced parents back then either.

DHL: No. There were some that had lost their husbands during the war.

TWD: How did the book come about? Was it through your writing class?

DHL: First of all, the story of the trial shadowed me my whole life. And I wanted to be a writer. It was something I always had a dream of becoming. When I first went away to college, I didn’t have the confidence. Even though my teachers always commented on how good my writing was. I would get comments on my papers like, very well written. So, I went into education. When I graduated from college in the 1970s, a lot of women were going into education. That was something we all did. And then thirty years later I started taking writing classes at UC San Diego, because I wanted to be able to do it right. I wanted to write a fictionalized account of the Duncan case. That was my goal. I was going to write a novel and fictionalize the story.

TWD: You know your book feels like fiction. It reads like a story.

DHL: I’ll tell you a little more about that. But I started to fictionalize the story. But the more chapters I wrote—I would just end up tearing them up, because the case is stranger than fiction. It doesn’t sound believable. And for fiction, it does need to have a certain quality. Even if it really happened, it might be hard to believe as fiction. And people in my writing class used to say that, that it wasn’t believable. Even after I started writing the book as nonfiction, people would still say it to me that it was unbelievable. And I would say, I’m sorry, but that’s what actually happened. It’s actually right there in the trial transcripts.

So as soon as my youngest son went off to college, I started taking writing classes. That’s when I first had the idea to write it as a novel. And then I got into a writer’s group, with reading critiques. It was at that point that I realized fictionalizing the case wasn’t going to work. So, I would bring in ten pages every week to the group and the other writers in the group would comment and critique my pages. I didn’t actually have a book I was working on at the time. Sometimes I would bring in personal essays, and it would be about my family and about my dad. And other times I would bring in something that was more like a police procedural, writing about this true murder case. One night I brought in something about my dad and the murder, and his reporting about the trial. Mark, the teacher/leader of the group, said, you know, Deborah, I think you have a book here. He suggested I write both my memoir about my dad and family, and about investigation and trial, and also some of the actual court proceedings, and weave it all together as one book. I thought about it, and I decided that it was a really great idea. So that was Mark’s idea. I gave him credit at the end of the book.

TWD: The structure works really well. You get really involved with the case, but you also welcome the relief with your own personal story about family and life growing up.

DHL: And then a very fortunate thing happened. After I had written most of the book, I had met with an agent who was interested in it. I sent her the whole manuscript, and when she finally got back to me, she said she really loved it, but she thought there was a problem with the pace of the book. She thought the family chapters were slowing down the pace. She wanted me to work on it and then she would take another look. So, I did. And I realized that as the trial approaches, there needed to be more true crime chapters and less personal chapters about my family to rev up the tension of the crime story.

I wrote it as literary nonfiction. And in literary nonfiction, all the facts are true, but you can write scenes where they’re drinking a cup of coffee, or you can describe the weather, or how someone might sit or walk down the street. I actually looked up the weather at the time. But there are little details like brushing your hand through your hair or sitting in a chair. So, all that is part of literary nonfiction.And I wanted to write it like I was telling a story.

When I started the book, I got 5,000 pages of the trial transcripts from the courts. When I was reading that, it felt like I was there in the courtroom. When the people testified, they were very candid. And they tell what they did. And the fact that the two men had already confessed to the crime. I had Newspaper articles from four newspapers, my father’s files and all that testimony. I had the grand jury testimony of all the witnesses. I just couldn’t put all that in the book. So, what I did was to create scenes. When you’re reading the interview of the landlady by the detective, those words are exactly said told the grand jury. When I read those transcripts, I felt like I was really there. It all turned black and white in my mind. I felt that I was there in that public gallery when everyone was gasping at the outrageous testimony of the killers. So, I wanted readers to be able to experience it that way. There’s much more of an intimacy when you’re writing in the literary nonfiction style than a journalistic style. So that’s how I wrote it.

There aren’t any things about the case in the book that aren’t true. I can tell you where every fact came from, either the trial transcripts, or multiple newspapers interviews  or my father’s files. I also was able to read the unpublished memoir of the DA who prosecuted the case. I got a lot of insight into his thinking and could be in his head in the court scenes.

TWD: Tell me more about that.

I was staying with this couple in Ojai, and she was getting married about halfway through writing the book. And she said one of her high school friends, Bob, was coming to the wedding and he had a lot of information about the Duncan case. He’s the one that found the transcripts that were said to be lost. That story is in the back of the book. So, when I met him, we talked about the case. I told him about my book. And he said he would send me the trial transcripts. I was missing of the original transcript, like Frank Duncan’s testimony, which was pretty important. And he said he had something else I might be interested in. He said, “I have Roy Gustafson’s (the prosecutor in the case) unpublished memoir.” Bob had worked in the same law firm that Roy worked in after he left the District Attorney’s office. Roy had already passed away when Bob started working there. So, in the early 2000s, the law firm was going out of business, and Bob was in the law library cleaning it out and up on the top shelf he discovered the lost transcripts of the Duncan case, and this unpublished memoir. The D.A.’s office wouldn’t have even had the transcripts at the time I came looking for them. So, Bob gave the transcripts back to the city, but he held onto to the memoir. And Roy didn’t have any children. So, he just left it there in the law firm.

I got the story from one of the lawyers that was still there at the time, and he said that Roy brought the transcripts over to the law office because he wanted to write the memoir. After he wrote it, he contacted one publisher and the publisher said no. It wasn’t written very well; it was more of a matter-of-fact style. But what I did get out of it when I read it were his thoughts on the proceedings, when he was prosecuting the case. His worries and concerns. So, when he thinks he’s ruined his own case, and what happened in that little room — I read all that in his memoir. So, I had all that information.

Elizabeth Duncan and her son, Frank

TWD: Everything just fell into place for you.

DHL: Yes, it did. And there were other things he wrote in his memoir. He gave his opinion on some of the witnesses, and their backgrounds. There were a couple of witnesses who were very credible. And those were his opinions. So, I got opinions of good and bad witnesses and why.

TWD: How did you get your book published?

DHL: While I was writing the book, I was hearing that publishers didn’t like books with mixed genres, and this was a dual genre book of memoir and true crime. And that publishers don’t necessarily like older authors. They like authors that write multiple books or series because the audience grows. And I had no platform, especially for a memoir. But I thought that this was what I wanted to write and I just kept writing and did the best I could. And in the end, it didn’t really matter. They say if you write a good enough book, none of the other stuff will matter. That’s what I was hoping for.

I had been working on it for nine years. And my youngest son said, mom you’re going to have to stop writing this. And I think I had eleven or twelve drafts. I. wanted to get it right. And I thought I could tell a good book; I read and write so much. I read true crime and everything else. So, I thought I could do this, since I read those kinds of book and I would know when it was right.

My son told me about the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. This was in 2019. He suggested I take it up there, since it was a Santa Barbara and Ventura County case. At this conference they have something called Advanced Readings. For an extra $50, you can pay to have an agent there read ten pages of your book. And they’ll come back to you with some feedback. I signed up for three agents. And I had done this before the book was even ready to be published, just to get some feedback. You can do it with editors or agents. So, I did that. And all I was expecting was to get a little more direction. And the agent I met with, we sat down and chatted. And she said she wanted to read the whole manuscript, that she loved it. And she’s only seen ten pages. She was the first agent I pitched. And she’s the one who suggested that I work on and improve the pace of the book. So, after that, it still took a while. We needed to make a book proposal. And she started pitching it to publishers. And she is a good agent. I looked her up and she has represented a lot of great books. She even represented one that was nominated for the National Book Award a few years ago. I could tell she would always send me the email that the editors would send her. And she knew these people personally. The first couple of rejections said that they didn’t know how to market the book. It’s true crime and it’s memoir. We don’t know how to market that type of book. So, we just kept going. It took about eight months. And towards the end — she was pitching this to good traditional publishers that I recognized — I told her to perhaps go with a lesser-known publisher. I don’t need a big advance and she said, oh no, you’re going to get an advance. We’re almost there. And sure enough, Pegasus Books offered me a contract a few weeks after we had that discussion. It didn’t take that long once I signed the publishing agreement. It only took about a year for the book to come out. It had already been well edited. They didn’t ask me to change hardly anything. The title, they chose that. My title was The Remarkable Duncan Case. That’s what my dad used to call it. That was my working title. I did have A Lovely Girl as one of my choices. But they added the subtitle. Everything went smoothly after that. The other thing that my agent said, is that publishers expect their authors to publicize the book. And they did have a publicist that they assigned me. But they still wanted me to do a lot of things to help promote the book. So my agent told them that I was a very experienced public speaker. And I thought, well, sure, at my school where I taught, and did training for teachers. I had been a school principal for a while. And then the book came out. And Pegasus Books was great. They set up a lot of speaking events for me at the beginning.

I’m going to be on a panel at the San Diego Book Festival. And I’ve done other book festivals in California.

TWD: Has there been any talk of turning this book into a movie or series?

DHL: I’ve already sold an option. My agent sold an option just before the Writers’ strike happened. And it’s a good company. They have a developmental production company. So, they want to develop it as a limited series on a streaming platform. They have something they did for Netflix. I’ve been told there are a lot of film options for authors and their books out there, but very few of them make it into production.

TWD: There are writers who make a living optioning the film rights to their books but are never made into anything.

DHL: It’s a two-year option. So, we’ll see what happens.

TWD: What are you working on now?

DHL: Not too much. I get overwhelmed by all the things that have happened since the book came out. It’s a lot of work. I would like to write some short stories. And I would also like to write a book for a younger audience, a mystery of some kind. I have a lot of experience with children, being a teacher. I have a good ear for children’s voices. So, I would like to write a young adult mystery of some kind. Based on my experiences as a child, children are interested in those kinds of things. Not necessarily the graphic, gruesome details, but they’re interested in learning about a lot of things. I’m not sure if they involve murder though. Maybe they have to be rescued.

TWD: You could be a character as a child. You can’t really go into the minds of your two main characters, the mother and son, but how do you read them. What is your take on their lives?

DHL: I tried to read them from their testimony. I think Elizabeth Duncan was probably what they call a malignant narcissist. One thing that I didn’t get into the book was when she plotted a jail escape, when she was in the county jail. It was so preposterous. I don’t think the woman ever thought one step ahead. She was in the moment, and she came up with all these plots, told lies, and moved on. I’m not even sure she even thought about what would happen to Olga, Frank’s wife. She just wanted to get rid of her, and she hired those guys to do it. I don’t think she ever thought it through. I think Frank Duncan was just trying to save his mother from the gas chamber. I think he knew, at some point, that she was guilty. A lot of people thought that he was in on the plot. But I don’t believe that was the case at all. It would have never been solved if he hadn’t dragged his mother down to the Santa Barbara Police Station to report this phony extortion case she’d made up to cover-up why she needed money to pay off the killers. Frank said something at the end, when he was testifying during the penalty phase of the trial. He said, when asked about his mother and about marrying all these different men, he said, “You know some people like to think about or dwell on their problems, but that’s not me.” He just didn’t want to think about it. What’s in the past is in the past.

The D.A., Roy Gustafson, talks about Frank Duncan in his memoir. He hated Frank Duncan. He despised him.

I remember I tried to get in touch with her son, Frank Duncan, and he hung up on me. He still had a law office in Los Angeles. He answered the phone. As soon as I started talking, he hung up. Bob, the man who found the trial transcripts, said he had seen Frank Duncan appear in his court room. He was representing an old client and was still practicing law. He said he was very cordial and polite, almost like a southern gentleman. He was in 80s at the time and seemed very sharp and knew the law. He was still practicing well into his 80s. His wife had passed away. I believe later that he lived in an assisted living facility. He had one child, a daughter. I think she still lives in Ventura County. But I decided not to contact her. I didn’t think it would be reliable information.

TWD: I found some old newspaper articles where they printed large sections of the transcripts from the trial right on the front page.

DHL: It was unusual that they would print the grand jury transcripts in the newspaper. Mrs. Duncan’s attorney complained about that. It was some like series from a true crime mystery. He felt it would poison the jury pool because everyone had read that.

There was a Lifetime movie made about the case several years ago. But they changed everyone’s name so they wouldn’t get sued by Frank Duncan.

You know how in the book I describe what everyone was wearing. I didn’t make that up. There was a Los Angeles newspaper, The Herald Examiner, they described everything about the witnesses—their clothes, their movements, and their emotions. It was all in the newspaper reports. They even covered—there was a lot of drama going on during the recesses at the court, and before the trial started. Mrs. Duncan would call people names during the recesses. It was all in the newspaper.

TWD: Some of the buildings—the school and churches—you visited as a child are still there in Ventura.

DHL: Yes, the elementary school I went to is still there, and some of the churches I went to with my friends. Judy and I liked to go to the vacation Bible schools.

TWD: Ventura has the oldest pier in the state of California, built in 1872. It’s being repaired now from recent storm damage. But it’s supposed to reopen this summer.

DHL: My parents have a bench on the pier. It’s just before the gates. So, whenever I go to Ventura, I like to sit on their bench. They liked to walk on the beach there. The newspaper offices where my dad worked are gone now. It must’ve been nice to work downtown. Ventura was such a small area at the time. Everything was walkable from his office. It was just a little town by the ocean.

TWD: Your dad was quite a character. He expressed himself freely.

DHL: Yes, he was very original. I don’t know where all that came from.

TWD: How did you end up in San Diego?

DHL: I went to graduate school there. That’s how I ended up living down there now.

TWD: From one beach community to another. I love all the history you put into the book about the city of Ventura.

DHL: I’ve been told that my book is a true crime book for readers who don’t usually read true crime books.

TWD: That’s true, because I usually don’t. Does anyone call you Deborah?

DHL: No, everyone calls me Debby. I just hope I live long enough to see the book made into a series. I get to be a Consultant Producer. Since this book is about me and my family, I was worried about how we would be portrayed. So, I told the producers that I would like to know their thoughts about my family. My agent thought Annette Bening would be good as Elizabeth Duncan. But we’ll see. No one ever wrote a definitive book about this notorious crime, until I wrote mine.

TWD: Thank you very much. It was great to meet you and talk about your amazing book.

DHL: Thank you.



Don’t Judge a Book by Its Happily Ever After

by Hannah Ackerman



There’s very little writing advice I’m willing to take as unarguable. Almost as long as I’ve been able to read, I’ve been trying to write, and as long as I’ve been trying to write, I’ve been trying to crack the code on what it means to be a writer. As it turns out, wanting to be a writer comes with an onslaught of suggestions and guidelines that are offered as helpful but more often seem to confuse and conflate the simple desire I started off with— I just want to write good stories. I struggle with common suggestions like “write what we know,”— if we all wrote what we knew, sci-fi would cease to exist as we know it. “Show don’t tell” is often useful, yet sometimes I find myself reading a book that is so overly descriptive, I want to throw it at a wall. “Write every day” is advice I should probably take to heart, yet I go days without opening a notebook or Word document, exchanging that writing time for binge watching reality TV. The only advice that I have always felt is most important, is that to write well, you have to read lots.

When 2020 came around and the world started to shut down, I was caught between an endless cycle of frequent doom-scrolling and scouring scholarly articles as I prepared myself to graduate university. In the midst of endless literary essays and widespread bleakness, I found myself in a predicament that I hadn’t expected given the state of the world— there was nothing I wanted to read anymore.

Finding myself in a situation where none of the books I had access to were appealing made the feeling of being locked down just that much more unnerving. I couldn’t stomach the dystopian novels I had grown to love in a post-Hunger Games world when I could barely handle the dystopia my own world seemed to be turning into. Gothic fiction had gone from something I was forced to read in an English class, to a favourite genre, to something I didn’t even bother to open. Books had gone from a comfort to another way to experience death, where characters’ lives were dependent on their circumstances, and the circumstances of the books I had loved previously all led the characters down dark paths I could no longer stomach. But still, I wanted to find ways to write and in order to do that I needed to find ways to read, or else I feared I would fade away into nothing more than a shell of the writer I one day hoped to become. At this overly dramatic point, romance books entered the scene.

My understanding of “romance” novels at the time involved front covers featuring men wearing ripped open billowing white blouses while swooning women in tight corsets draped themselves over them. I assumed there was always a pirate ship or grand manor involved and the only name I associated with the genre was “Fabio.” My idea of the romance genre was limited to the kind of romance books you saw at doctors’ offices or on spinning book racks at airports, ready to be picked up by bored travelers who needed something to pass the time. I’d eagerly signed up for a Jane Austen class during my undergrad, yet I would walk past the adult romance section in bookstores as if it didn’t exist. I had, at some point, allowed pre-conceived ideas of what romance novels were overshadow what the genre could bring me. It was as if I, an adult woman, could not read stories about adult women, lest I be caught admitting to wanting to read stories where women were safe and cared for, and loved most reverently by their significant other.

I bought my first romance book during those first long few weeks of the pandemic, when the news was overwhelmed by tragedy and unhappiness. The book was called The Unhoneymooners, written by author Christina Lauren, the combined name of writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. The bright yellow front cover promised me “heartfelt and funny,” two things I desperately wanted more of during a global pandemic. The book arrived late one afternoon, and just a few hours later, I had completely devoured it. Not once did I stop to refresh the online counter that showed how many people had passed from Covid already or open the app formerly known as Twitter to see the vitriol that was being spewed between people who had differing opinions on how protocol around the pandemic should go. The book was a reprieve from all things tragic and by the end of the day, I’d ordered 4 more.

Drastically different from the preconceived ideas I’d had of what constituted a romance novel, the book didn’t advertise any distressed damsel who needed an overly muscular man to swoop in and save the day by offering to marry her. Instead, The Unhoneymooners told the story of the realistic frustration of a woman named Olive who had been let go from her job in the biomedical sciences. She struggled with the fact her twin sister was seemingly more successful, and hated a man who had a habit of making her feel bad about her weight. She was sometimes funny and sometimes sad, and always close to a realistic idea of what a woman was when I thought of the women in my own life. The book concluded with the expected Happily Ever After, but by the time the story was coming to a close, it felt only right that Olive had figured out her dream career and met her perfect match. The plot had been full of common tropes and what may be considered cliché but instead of feeling trite or repetitive, it was comforting and left me feeling hopeful. I may not have been able to go outside, but I could cheer on this other girl as her life moved forward. 

As a genre commonly targeted specifically towards women, romance novels are often belittled, considered lacking in substance, or focusing too much on topics deemed “not literary enough” for the consumption of the general public. Yet romance novels currently make up the biggest category of fiction sold in stores as well as the highest earning genre, coming in at approximately $1.5 billion dollars’ worth of sales in 2022[1]. The number of romance novels sold per year has seen a steady incline since 2020, with sales almost doubling between 2020 and 2021. It seems, just as I had, many others had turned towards a genre that promised Happily Ever Afters when the real world seemed to be offering anything but.

Freelance journalist and YA romance writer Jennifer Chen had a similar experience. A popular romance book had been gifted to her from a friend, she wrote[2], but had sat on her shelf collecting dust until a few days into her lockdown experience. In the book she found the sense of comfort she was lacking in her own pandemic-affected life. She found that there “was safety in the routine of knowing that every story I read ended happily; I didn’t have to wonder if the people I read about were hurting.” This was a sentiment I found echoed many of my own reasons for finding comfort in books like this. During a time when it felt dangerous to go to even the grocery store, surrounding myself in stories where the main character’s suffering was only ever temporary was the perfect antidote, even if it only lasted between the covers of a book.

Chen cites a second reason for feeling connected to romance books, as these books provide characters in which she was able to find her own emotions and struggles validated. Self, the website Chen writes under, recommends an article titled “19 Books That Have Helped People Through Some Seriously Tough Times[3]” as the follow-up to Chen’s article. Instead of a slew of self-help books, the article instead recommends everything from YA series Percy Jackson to fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. The key similarity between the books listed in that article and the ones Chen lists in her article is that all provide an escape for their readers. Chen cites specific memories alongside the romance books she mentions— one is the book that got her through her dog’s cancer diagnosis, the other got her through acting as caretaker for her family during hard times.

 While the pandemic familiarized me with new phrases such as “endemic,” romance novels gave me new phrases like “fake dating” and “forced proximity.” These new terms were used to label romance novels to tell the readers what they could expect to find happening between the two protagonists. Instead of leaning away from “clichés,” a word I had been told to stay away from as a writer, the romance authors I was reading were leaning right into them. To be labeled under a certain cliché, or trope, was like waving a bright flag at romance readers. You want a story of forbidden love? Julieta and the Romeos by Maria E. Andreu was there waiting to tell you a modern-day Romeo and Juliet tale. Ali Hazelwood, author of The Love Hypothesis and holder of a PhD in neuroscience, became known as the master of one of my favourite categories, “enemies to lovers.” The best example of this trope? Literary classic Pride and Prejudice.

Written in 1813 by British icon Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice exists somewhere in the overlap between genre fiction and literary fiction. Years before phrases like “enemies to lovers” would have existed, Austen wrote a story that encapsulates so much of what people seem to love about the modern romance. Austen created the perfect female protagonist in Elizabeth Bennet. She’s tough but lovable, unwilling to settle down with someone she doesn’t love, nor with someone who is rude to her the way that Mr. Darcy, the wealthy handsome new neighbor, is. Elizabeth rejects a perfectly fine proposal from the dopey Mr. Collins in wait of something better. She makes the radical point that a woman might be more content to be alone than end up with someone who sees her first and foremost as a future mother, caregiver, and housewife. While Mr. Darcy blows his first chances with her, his grumpy demeanor provides the perfect setting for their “enemies to lovers” arc. Mr. Darcy’s icy behavior melts away to allow him to become the perfect match for Elizabeth; it is, without a doubt, a happily ever after.

Originally titled First Impressions, the reputation of Pride and Prejudice as a romance novel offersitself as an excellent example of the gap between literary romance and genre romance, as well as the stereotypes surrounding both. While Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy walk the fine line between love and hate, Pride and Prejudice walks the fine line between “acceptable” romance novels and genre romance novels that have their literary worth called into question. Yet both fall into the same category of being written by women for women. First Impressions may not have stuck as the title for the novel, but I’ve always liked it for the book and for the way I seemed to interact with romance novels before I gave them a proper chance. The first impressions of romance novels seemed to be one that puts these stories down, that shamed the idea of a Happily Ever After.

 My copy of Pride and Prejudice is shelved right above my copy of a book called Icebreaker, originally released in 2022 on Amazon by debut author Hannah Grace. Icebreaker is a college romcom that became so popular through Amazon’s self-publishing platform that it was picked up by a traditional publisher and rereleased in bookstores almost a year after its original release. The story follows college hockey player Nathan and college ice dancing star Anastasia. Similar to Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Nathan and Anastasia fight back and forth through the book between love and hate. Similar to Jane Austen when she originally published Pride and Prejudice, Icebreaker author Hannah Grace was never expected her book to reach a such wide audience. It was one of the 1.4 million books that are self-published through Amazon’s Kindle platform every year[4]. With numbers like that, how could any self-publishing author expect to find themselves selling mass numbers of their book, let alone ending up with a book deal? Yet this enemies to lovers romance book has now ended up selling over one hundred thousand copies in the UK alone. Even in the vast world of self-publishing, romance novels hold the crown as the most successful genre. Everyone, it seems, is attracted to a happy ending.

Four years later and a multitude of romance novels lining my shelves, I proudly consider myself a lover of romantic fiction. Romance novels were what swept in to save the day when love and joy had seemed to take a backseat to tragedy and loss. The brightly coloured spines stand out against the stark white and neutral browns that are more likely to make up the covers of the literary fiction books I’ve stacked with them. While I don’t see either genre as better or more valuable than the other, the days of jumping to defend why I’ve taken up reading romance novels is gone. In the early days of my newfound love, when I explained the plot of a romance book I willingly stayed up all night to finish, I found myself needing to prove why it was worth my time or energy. I would claim it was nice to take a break from the heavy classics I was reading for school, that these books were quicker and easier to read, like candy for my brain. While some of these things were true— I finished romance novel Beach Read much quicker than I finished Paradise Lost— the most consistent truth of my new reading habits was that I simply enjoyed reading these books.

Beach Read, written by author Emily Henry, uses its own main character to address the questions of why romance novels are so quick to be written off as simple or unliterary. Main character January Andrews is a romance writer experiencing serious writer’s block for the first time in her career. She’s broke, forced to live in the house her now deceased father bought with his mistress, and finds herself living next to a literary fiction writer who gives off the impression that he doesn’t understand why she would write romance. January, frustrated by the difference in treatment she experiences compared to that of her neighbor, speaks to the validity of her own genre, stating that “if you swapped out all of [her] Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I’ve eliminated half the Earth’s population from my potential readers.” Beach Read itself is shelved as romance but contains a story that reflects on memories of families of former cult members and discusses the grief of losing a parent who let you down, yet is still looked down upon for existing within a genre that is given less merit for every bubble- gum pink book cover it releases.

In the midst of all her writer’s block, there’s a moment where January looks out her kitchen window to find that she can see her neighbour, a fellow writer, pacing in front of his open laptop. She’s able to see the frustration lining in his face and is reminded that once genre is put to the side, “when it came down to it [he] was still pacing in the dark, making shit up like the rest of us.” It’s a statement that gets me through my own writing and one that seems to fit my readings habits too. When it all comes down to it, I’m still sitting with a book, looking to feel a little better, just like everyone else.



BIO

Hannah Ackerman is a writer from Calgary, Alberta. She has a degree in English literature and will graduate with an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan this upcoming fall. She is currently working on her first book, a gothic novel about art, grief, and ghosts. 






Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics. 1996.

Brenza, Amber. “19 Books That Have Helped People Through Some Seriously Tough Times.” SELF, January 18, 2018. https://www.self.com/gallery/read-these-books-when-things-get-tough

Chen, Jennifer. “I Highly Recommend Romance Novels if You’re Really Going Through it Right Now.” SELF, November 16, 2022. https://www.self.com/story/romance-novels-mental-health-essay

Curcic, Dimitrije. “Romance Novel Sales Statistics.” Words Rated, October 9, 2022. https://wordsrated.com/romance-novel-sales-statistics/

Henry, Emily. Beach Read. Berkley. 2020.

Lauren, Christina. The Unhoneymooners. Gallery Books. 2019.


[1] https://wordsrated.com/romance-novel-sales-statistics/

[2] https://www.self.com/story/romance-novels-mental-health-essay

[3] https://www.self.com/gallery/read-these-books-when-things-get-tough

[4] https://wordsrated.com/amazon-publishing-statistics/#:~:text=Self%2Dpublishing%20on%20Amazon&text=Amazon%20releases%20over%201.4%20million,publishing%20figures%20is%20much%20higher.







Ben Fox created a website for people who love to read books. It’s called Shepherd. Its primary goal is to help readers discover new books. It also helps authors find new readers. It’s the perfect setting for book lovers across the globe. I interviewed Ben recently to understand how Shepherd works and where it is heading.

For people who don’t know, tell us what Shepherd.com is all about?

Shepherd helps readers discover books in fun ways. I wanted to create something that captured the magical feeling of wandering my local bookstore but reimagined for the online world.

I’ve worked with over 10,000 authors to share five of their favorite books around a topic, theme, or mood and why they love each book. Then, we connect the books and book lists in unique ways so that readers can follow their curiosity until something sparks. It creates an enjoyable browsing experience where you get to meet books through the eyes of someone who loves that book.

How is it beneficial to readers and writers?

We give readers fun ways to meet books while helping them meet a wider array of books.

They might search for a book they love, like Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, and from that page, they can browse book recommendation lists that include his book or browse books like his book that humans picked. Or they can jump to topics and genres in his book.

Or they might go to our science fiction bookshelf and filter to see only the most recommended sci-fi books with AI. These are just a few fun ways we help readers find books. We have a lot more planned!

We also help authors. Authors face a massive battle to get their books in front of interested readers. We want to make that easier. We do that by helping them get their passion, expertise, and book in front of the most likely readers.

Our primary format to do that is we work with authors to share five books they love around a central topic, theme, or mood. That central topic, theme, or mood should attract an audience that will also be interested in the author’s book. Then, we feature the author and their book at the top of the list.

For example, author Spencer Wild shared a fantastic book list on the best science fiction books about survival that even non-sci-fi fans will love. We help readers to meet him and his book. Our format is designed to show off his passion/expertise and get more readers interested in him (which drives interest in his book).

Or, check out this list on the life and times of Theodore Roosevelt by author Clay Risen. Clay wrote the book The Crowded Hour and is an expert on Teddy Roosevelt. It is an excellent way for him to share other books he loves while getting in front of the best readers for his book.

I tell authors I am not Oprah. But we do provide slow and steady exposure from the most likely readers to be interested in your book. And we do that month after month and year after year. We just added a second format for authors and I am working on more as we grow.

Talk about where Shepherd is now and what your goals are for the future.

Shepherd launched in April 2021, and we turn 3 years old this year. We are bootstrapped and we are funded through affiliate revenue, display ads, and our Founding Member program. We are currently meeting about 50% of our costs and by the end of 2024 I will get that to 80%.

As you browse Shepherd, remember that we only have one part-time developer compared to Goodreads, who has 300+ people listed on LinkedIn and has done nothing new for readers or authors since Amazon bought it.

My tactical goal is to make enough money so that we can hire one full-time developer. That would allow us to continue building new features for readers and authors.

Strategically, I want to create a book discovery platform that helps readers find excellent books and widens the range of authors they bump into. The book market has shifted into a winner-takes-all market, and we need to work harder to flatten that trend. I want to help more up-and-coming authors get the exposure they deserve.

How do you attract authors to your site?

We get a lot of referrals from authors who have already taken part. And we email authors who we love or who readers ask us to reach out to.

I also work hard to improve specific categories. So, if I notice that we don’t have any recommendations around “Armenia,” I might find some authors who write about different aspects of that country and reach out to them to see if they want to recommend some books.

How do you attract readers to your site?

We had over 5 million visitors in 2023, and I am working hard to increase that number.

We attract readers through search engines, website mentions, and social media. If authors are curious, I have a big breakdown on our marketing plan here. We are working toward email as a channel now.

Who are some of your favorite authors today?

So many! I shared my favorite 3 reads of 2023 as part of the big event we launched last year, and that is probably a good place to start.

Christian Cameron is one of my favorite authors! I loved his book Killer of Men, and it hit me at a perfect time in my 30s when I needed a bit of a life reboot. His Tom Swan book series was my top read in 2023, and it was extra magical as I read it while biking through Italy on a pilgrimage route (the main character is a 15th-century Indiana Jones wandering the Mediterranean during a very interesting historical period).

Who else? Brian Klingborg for his debut crime series about a small-town Chinese police officer. And I also love Peter F. Hamilton, Michael Connelly, Richard Osman, David Baldacci, Andy Weir, John Connoly, and many more.  

What were some of your favorite books growing up?

I remember the specific moment when I started reading. I was learning to read and going word by word through The Snow Baby by Margaret Hillert. There was this magical moment when the words came alive and everything just clicked. I could read.

I loved the Hardy Boys, Boxcar children, My Side Of The Mountain, King Arthur, and Greek myth when I was little. My dream is to one day buy an old box car to fix up if I ever have the space.

As I got older some of the most powerful books that shaped my youth were Native Son, The Jungle, the Dragonlance universe, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Breaking Open The Head, From The Holy Mountain, Down and Out in Paris and London, Snow Crash, Catch 22, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, the the Dirk Pitt series.

I am playing with a feature that lets readers share their “Book DNA” so I’ve been thinking a lot about the books that redirected my life or shaped large aspects of my worldview.

Talk about your background, family, education. Where did you grow up?

I was born in Texas but my family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas when I was pretty little. I had a fantastic childhood full of friends, tree forts, hole digging, and wild independence. There were some tough spots as well but I managed to get through them with only small dings due to the support of my family. Plus, my family got a lot bigger as my parents divorced and remarried. So I get twice as much as love and support!

I went to school at the University of Arkansas. I ended up with a BA in history, political science, and international relations. Plus minors in anthropology and religoius studies. I probably enjoyed taking the interesting classes with amazing professors a bit too much. Luckily it wasn’t an expensive “mistake” back then.

Where are you living now? What is the book community like there?

I live in Northern Portugal along with my wife and 7-year-old son. I am pretty introverted and with my focus being almost 100% on building Shepherd and my family I haven’t built a community. My book community is mostly just a few friends who love sci-fi and trade book recommendations via Whatsapp (plus all the amazing authors at Shepherd who consistently destroy my book budget).

How many books do you read in a year?

I read over 100 books a year, my highest was 193. I’ve been able to read really fast ever since I was a kid.

Can bookstores participate in Shepherd?

They can! I haven’t emailed any, but if they wanted to take part I can adapt the format to feature their bookstore. I’ve done similar with a few non-profits, companies, podcasters, Youtubers, and others to create really fun unique lists.

Are you interested in writing yourself – fiction, poetry, nonfiction?

I’d love to write a book one day and I jot down ideas I get from time to time. I’d want to do a middle-grade chapter book that is a bit weird, heavy on adventure, and has a lot of laughs.

Were you parents, or anyone in your family, readers and/or writers?

My parents were both huge readers and I grew up with walls of books in our house. My mom would read us books every night. My dad made a lot of great book recommendations as I grew up that heavily influenced my reading.

My brother is an amazing writer and writes movie/tv scripts right now. He is working on a nonfiction book and I am looking forward to seeing that published.

Is there a way for readers to comment or interact with authors on the site?

No, to keep our costs low we don’t even have any type of user-account setup. It is something I am starting to look at and see what the first steps in that direction might be.

How many books are on the site now? How many authors?

We have 40,000 recommended books on the website. And so far 10,000 authors have taken part.

Is advertising space available on your site?

We just added a book launch program as a perk for our Founding Members. It allows them to advertise one of their books for 60 days on the website to the most likely readers for it.

It is one of our ways we give thanks to our financial supporters. 100% of what we raise from Founding Members goes directly to new features (and improving existing ones).

What books are you looking forward to reading this year?

Treason of Sparta by Christian Cameron. It is the 7th book in the Long War series which I love! The series is historical adventure and set in Ancient Greece.

Do you collect books? If so, what are some of your most prized acquisitions?

I don’t although I have a fascination with James Bruce of Kinnaird and have a very old set of his books on “Travels to discover the source of the Nile.” He was a really interesting character and when I got my first job I saved up enough to buy the set. And I have ended up with several old maps he made.

How do comic books and graphic novels, or small independent writers and publishers, fit in with Shepherd?

We welcome all authors to take part. I think authors make great readers and I think our recommendations shows that. We have sections for comic books and graphic novels.

We do work with a few small and large publishers. They send their authors to us if they are interested in taking part in Shepherd. I have talked to a number of small and large publishers about ideas on how we could help them in other ways. But most are not comfortable in the digital world and seem stuck with the old models.

What’s the best advice you can give to new writers?

Decide if you are writing because you want to get your story into the world or if you want to be a professional author. That might not sound different, but there is a world of nuance in those two approaches. Both are equally fantastic approaches.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Website: https://shepherd.com/

Website For Authors: https://forauthors.shepherd.com/

Link to why I am building this: https://support.shepherd.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406512278417-Who-are-you-and-why-are-you-doing-this

For Jack and the Eagle

by D.S. Liggett



OF ALL THE TIME that we spent in Alabama, very little was actually spent in Huntsville. It’s easy to forget this, considering the trip is almost exclusively called Huntsville among my family, when we think of the weekend that we spent just outside Decatur.

We drove all through the day, and arrived at a little hotel just after dark. Then began the show of unpacking the car, and repacking the bellman’s cart with our luggage, which we lugged into the elevator. The woman at the front desk was cordial and toothless, and she gave my father our keys without hassle. We thanked her quietly and shuffled up to our room, which was situated one floor up, and bordered on both sides by a dim stairwell, and the steadily chuffing elevator. 

The room was not a thing of beauty or convenience; the curtains were shredded from the middle, as though someone had extended an arm straight outward and raked the strips to the floor, and the doors were beset with scratches at their bottom lips. I was to take the fold-out bed, which sprang from the graying blue couch along the room’s furthest-right wall, and my parents were to divide the two beds in the room’s set-away bedroom between themselves, their luggage, and the dog. That night, as I tucked into my fold-out bed, I discovered that the door to the bedroom would not close if the fold-out bed was extended. Keeping silent, I rolled over and offset their unending television with a pillow to the ear. 

*

On the first day of our trip, my mother and I went to see the Space & Rocket Center, while my father left our room in Decatur for a Doubletree hotel in Huntsville proper, where he was to play in a dart tournament. This arrangement came as a result of the Huntsville hotel’s No-Dogs policy. Rather than leave our dog at home, we opted for the hotel in Decatur, although I could not yet decide, on that morning, whether the dog would really think our choice was worth it, as she was alone in the room for most of the day. 

We took turns planting kisses on her black, clefted head, and took her outside the hotel, to the fields of dead winter-grass bordered by parking lots. I slipped off her lead and gave her a signal which meant, without question, go!, at the sight of which she took off in massive circles around the fields, kicking up fistfuls of strawlike grass and little hunks of dry Earth as she ran.

On that morning, the sky was radiantly blue, and the Tennessee river was full-up nearly to the shore. With the dog packed away in the hotel, and my father gone over to Huntsville for the day, my mother and I were driving out in search of rockets. 

Just before we left for Alabama, I’d promised a friend, an English boy called Jack, who loved military history certainly more than I did, to get pictures of all the great rockets, tanks and aircraft for him. Our friendship had always been a strange one; lacking greatly in any real sense of certainty or stability, and so I was more than willing to impress — I could stand good graces.

*

The second-youngest president elected, John F. Kennedy, sometimes called Jack, was a Massachusetts Democrat. Compared to his predecessors, he was a handsome man, with a full head of hair and a presidential smile.

The other day, I stumbled across a picture of him on the campaign trail, standing outside a house in West Virginia and talking with who I take to be a young father and his daughters. Kennedy’s standing on the ground, jacketless, and looking up at the family, who stand relaxed on their patio. The father seems to have his hands in his pockets. The row of identical, small houses seems to stretch on forever, and the sky seems artificially gloomy and dark from the film decay. 

Today, I found another picture. It was almost definitely taken minutes later; Kennedy is shaking hands with an older man, likely the first man’s father. The children, now joined by a boy, appear unphased.  There’s something strange, looking at the pictures. Knowing that Kennedy won the presidency — and West Virginia itself, by a landslide — part of me wanted to exalt, to take a little joy in seeing such a tidy prelude. But there is another, far more sinister, part of me that cannot so easily examine the picture. I looked at the father, standing in his doorway, face caught by the shadow of the door, white tee-shirt dirty, presumably with coal, and I couldn’t be rid of the face of Lee Harvey Oswald; his dark hair, white shirt, unrepentant stare.  I drew a sharp breath and closed the tab. 

*

The Space & Rocket Center was ill-maintained, but, in its disrepair, it was charming. I took my mother’s picture under the Space Camp sign, and we made a quick entrance to the center itself; there were no lines. We made our way through the first dim rooms; a small minefield of shuttles, Mars-rock recreations, and displays joyfully announcing the advent of 3D-printed walls, inviting us to admire the black, wavy wall they’d fashioned from concentric plastic rings, after which, we filed into the high-ceilinged halls at the edge of the center.

The hall I remember best was a long one, fitted on all sides with large windows, and sectioned into the shape of a horseshoe by the rocket which lay lengthwise down the middle of the floor. Each wall was covered to eye-level with infographics, booths and children’s activity stations, and we wandered slowly down our aisle, taking in the place. In folding chairs, scattered throughout the hall at wide intervals, was a small gallery of white-haired, gray-suited men clutching clipboards, and fitted with lanyard IDs. I thought for a moment that they must be scientists, but we didn’t stop for long enough to ask. Secretly, I hoped that they weren’t bookending a life of scientific service providing simplified explanations of space travel to the slow procession of mothers and children passing them. 

Eventually, when we’d followed the horseshoe back to the mouth of the hall, we took a turn down a cement staircase out to the Rocket Garden. Hearing the name, a small, near-imperceptible part of me had been expecting rows of flowerbeds, giving way to the noses of rockets, poking through the mulch and dirt as though they’d grown miraculously and immaculately from the Earth. Of course, the Rocket Garden was not a garden by any literal means, but a series of cement pathways and platforms, home to hundreds of retired government vehicles, laid bare and docile as animals in a petting-zoo. I cooed their names and peered inside them; leaned forward for better pictures — Little John, Cheyenne.  

The rocket I remember best was a truly massive thing; I stood beside it, dwarfed, and looked up at a piece of long pneumatic piping, branded in tall red letters, UNITED STATES, in a hand that was unmistakably human. My mother called to me, for what must’ve been the second time, “Look over here!” I looked back and smiled. She snapped the picture on her phone, and, having had our fill, we left for Decatur. 

*

When I think of the American presidents, perhaps more often than I ought to, there is always a defining event of each presidency; something that I can point to and say, “that’s what he did.” — Lincoln won the Civil War, Washington pioneered the position, Taft did/didn’t get stuck in his bathtub, and Kennedy put a man on the moon (So I’ve been told.) 

I suppose I always did know that Kennedy himself couldn’t have been around for Apollo 11. Growing up, I was told, above all else about him, that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963. Still, his legacy of spaceflight was almost inescapable.

 I spent a week in Florida very recently, almost a year after seeing Huntsville. My parents and I came to stay with my Aunt and Uncle in Sebastian, which is a town so flat that it seems to stretch forever. We spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center, dusted by spitting rain; grumpy and displeased. It seemed to me a sort of amusement park — Each building was a similar series of rooms; we’d wait in a line to get inside, before being led through a series of rooms, all of which played similar videos, covering Kennedy, the Apollo missions, and the invention, testing and success of rockets. Then, we were released into the galleries, — the part I liked best — where displays of all varieties peered back at us through glass cases. I took my mother’s picture next to portraits of Mark and Scott Kelly, and my father pointed out the patches of missing thermal tiles on the displayed rockets. 

When I left the Kennedy Space Center, I was struck by a strange thought. Regardless of my longstanding fascination with John F. Kennedy and the minutiae of spaceflight, I had preferred the Huntsville Space & Rocket Center greatly. I wasn’t sure why. 

*

The next day, my mother and I went back to Huntsville for the dart tournament. The tournament crowd was one I had been familiar with for most of a decade; a loose and extended network of kindly men and women with a habit of clapping me on the back and saying, “Your daddy’s on a real winning streak over there!”, or “You know, I’ve still got one of your stories in my office.”

Finding a place to sit was easy; my father was loosed on a winning streak, and the trading of seats was unquestionably in favor of his family. I made myself content with a can of coke and a bag of plain Lays — a preference my father has always mocked — and watched. 

My mother and I had come to the Doubletree from a long hike on the edge of Huntsville. We had taken the dog, who, itching for adventure beyond our hotel room, had jumped eagerly into the hills. I had, ignorantly, expected that the hike would be flat and easy. Rather, it began to rain bitterly halfway through, and after a certain point, my mother suggested we cut across the remaining loop back to the parking lot. This measure only worsened things, as we climbed successive rows of wet rockface, stepping tenuously side-to-side in search of a clear footpath up, back to the parking lot. We arrived back to the car damp and unsteady on our feet, and so we climbed back into the car and sat in the lot, sipping from clinking metal water-bottles, and waiting for the dog to dry enough to return to the Decatur room, where we dropped her off on the way back to the Doubletree. It was strange, huffing back; we were seasoned hikers, competent and prepared for the hike we’d expected. And yet, somehow, we’d been bested. I didn’t want to think about it. 

My hair was still drying as we watched my father in the Doubletree ballroom; he was jolly and light on his feet, and his winning streak did not let up. The evening was drawing to a close, and pointing towards a final match. Most were finishing up their games, and the room’s crowd was thinning at a steady pace. Those who stayed were largely in the same position as my mother and I; watching their friends, family members, spouses, who had not yet been eliminated. 

My father was to finish the evening with the tournament’s penultimate event; a match against a friend. Then again, there are very few matches in a regional dart tournament that are not played between friends. The atmosphere was at once tense and slack; those of us still watching had grown hungry and restless, and the sun had gone down outside. The room’s good spirits still remained, but in smaller pockets, and in hushed tones. The movement had slowed, and then stilled near-entirely; there were no more bellowed greetings between friends, or five-man news crews wheeling cameras around to cover the event. Breath was drawn taught and shallow. My father took his place at the board beside his evening’s final opponent. They each shot for the cork, and then began. 

*

A dart moves through the air so quickly that it is near-invisible until it reaches a target. It shoots forward, embeds its needlelike tip in the felt of a board, and twangs back and forth upon impact, creaking. When I watched the tournament in Huntsville, I hadn’t seen a rocket launch in person yet, but if I had, I might’ve drawn a parallel. I might’ve thought about the sound that they both make. Almost a year after I saw Huntsville, I stood in my uncle’s backyard in Florida, and watched a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral hours after we left the Kennedy Space Center. I never believed what people told me about feeling a rocket; I was wrong. 

It was a few days after Christmas, and the sky had just fallen to full-dark. It was almost cold. I was barefoot, staring up through a sparse canopy at the little patch of sky beside the moon. My uncle pointed out the first signs of the rocket to us, and my mother oohed quietly from beside me. My father looked up silently, and my little cousin tugged at my hand, calling out in chorus with her father. The rocket cut a clear path through the sky and came to rest just beside the moon, framed between two branches of an old, leafless tree at the edge of their yard. It hung there for a moment, before the sound began — my aunt and uncle chuckled quietly, the dogs perked up their heads and cocked them, and the rest of us were silent, smiling despite our slack jaws. The sound buzzed all around us, bordered in by the tall backyard fence, and catching inside my chest. The air was alive and thrumming; I squeezed my cousin’s hand. 

For a few moments longer the rocket remained, as the sound dissipated to a quiet hum. It was a little burning circle in the sky, stripping off its boosters and piercing into the darkness. It burned for a few seconds more, and then was gone. 

*

My father won the last game. Of the three legs, he won the last two without ever seeming to lose his edge. He was calm and methodical; an unrelenting force. After the second game, he fired the chalker — a younger man entering scores on the iPad hanging beside the boards — with a fatherly pat on the shoulder and a muttered “I’ve got it, you go on and sit down.” The chalker had mistakenly marked his second leg as a loss, and took a seat to my immediate right, grumbling indistinctly, smelling of marijuana. My father’s opponent, a round man with a neat crew-cut, seemed to accept his loss well, and shook my father’s hand with a jolly smile. The game had been won quickly and decisively, and the room’s mood was that of joy and relief. My father made his rounds saying goodbye and patting the backs of his friends, and then we all loaded back into the car, and returned to Decatur. 

The next morning, my father played in a final tournament event, while my mother and I sat reading books in the Doubletree lounge with our traveling bags by our feet. The dog slept fitfully in the car, ventilated by the half-opened windows and cool weather, curled up in her traveling crate. My father got done playing in the midafternoon, and we were all glad to pack ourselves into the car once again. I spent most of the drive with my head stuck out the window, swallowed by the falling dark, and blown about happily by the wind wicking down the river. It was a joyful drive; quiet, yet underpinned by a sense of triumph. There was something very strange about riding along, late into the night, on a Sunday evening, but I didn’t mind it. I was happy to be windblown, and to watch the shadows stretch themselves out over the long, pale highway; I was very, very happy.                  

*

I asked my father, just the other day, about the presidents he grew up under — ten years too young to have seen the Kennedy administration, he told me, “Jimmy Carter was a good man. They say he was just a one-term president, but…” He trailed off and tossed a dart at his practice board, “… No president has done so much after his presidency.” 

John F. Kennedy was president for just under three years. In fact, he came in only forty-nine days short of the mark. He served less than a term in office, which continues to surprise me, although I’ve known that since elementary school. He was followed by Lyndon B. Johnson, a man I know very little about, who was followed by Richard Nixon, a man that I know mainly for his scandals and misgivings. Until only days ago, I didn’t know that Nixon had been in office during the Apollo 11 mission. That, technically speaking, he’d put a man on the moon. 

Like most people, Kennedy’s goals were not as straightforward as they are represented. By 1963, he was suggesting a joint American-Soviet space mission to the United Nations; the Soviets weren’t nearly as eager. It’s strange to imagine, Ivanov and Sixpack on the moon. To me, the Space Race was an opportunity for blind, exalting Us-vs-Them patriotism; Hell yeah, those are our guys, and they’re kicking the Russians’ asses. I’m from the same country as the men on the moon; they brought all of us up with them, when they brought our flag. It’s strange to think how easily it might have, instead, been a gesture of national unity; friendship, my usual politic.

 I think I understand, now, why it is that the Kennedy Space Center seemed so strange to me. I suppose it might have been anyone’s, but it was Kennedy’s. A living mausoleum, a testimony to the great things which came only after his death; a Pharaoh buried in wait of his riches. O, King of America, accept our offerings. O, King, O King Almighty…

*

Jack didn’t care for the pictures nearly as much as I’d hoped. His good graces were delicate. They wore thin before the summer began in earnest. Sometimes, when I look back on the last of our the good times; Huntsville, Easter Sunday, and the rest of our fun, I can’t resist looking back in anger; my current frustrations make me forget the point of remembering. I was happy then; times were good; I had a friend. For a short time, all that mattered was the joy of having a friend, of my father winning the game, of my mother and I making it back to the car, of the dog running free, kicking up clods of dirt and dead winter grass, of the handsome young president, of his black-and-white campaign trail, of his rockets launching, of his man on the moon. I tell myself that I cannot define all that comes before disaster by suffering. I tell myself that to do so would undermine all that there is to be said about living. 

For that drive, on the way home from Huntsville,  I was surrounded by whipping wind and darkness and music and a churning, frothing river and endless endless endless road. I had a friend, and I had no reason to believe that anything might ever change. There was joy in the infinite; the moving statically; the going nowhere and going quickly. There were thousands of tiny triumphs seeded in the river and mountains and cold night air; I wanted for nothing, and took as much.  

*

The ending irony of John F. Kennedy is not lost on me. When he died, the Space Race became not a living man’s passion, but a dead one’s; the moon, the world’s greatest memorial. I live now in an age in which people from 21 separate countries have visited the International Space Station, an age in which a colonized moon is not a possibility, but an inevitability. Rockets launch so frequently that my Aunt and Uncle have become accustomed to watching launches from their backyard, and retired rockets are placed in centers like the Huntsville Space & Rocket Center and the Kennedy Space Center for the public’s viewing pleasure; made docile; domesticated. 

In this age, I sometimes wonder about a world in which John F. Kennedy was never assassinated; in which Lee Harvey Oswald stayed in the USSR, and Jack Ruby never went to prison, perhaps in which the first men to walk the moon’s surface were a Soviet-American pair, forced into camaraderie by their proximity and shared goal. Would the moon be any less American, were it shared? Would I still feel as though I’d been brought with, on the backs of the toiling few, and placed upon the moon alongside the American flag? I don’t know. I don’t know whether John F. Kennedy put a man on the moon, or Lyndon B. Johnson, or Richard Nixon. I don’t know whether, had Kennedy survived his presidency, the moon would’ve been nearly as important to the American public. I don’t know whether the Soviets would’ve ever agreed to a joint space flight. No one does. I do know one thing, though. I know that, when John F. Kennedy died, his American people loved him. They still do.

On July 20th, 1969, an anonymous American left a bouquet of flowers on Kennedy’s grave with an attached note, reading ‘Mr. President, The Eagle has landed.’ 



          

BIO

D.S. Liggett is a student of creative writing at the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, South Carolina, with a vested interest in expressing the joys, hardships and little intimacies of the world through the written word. He plans to continue having great fun reading, writing and seeking publication.







Sleep Lab

by Joseph Bardin



Sleep lab and staged readings are two dates I cannot control and they end up falling on the same night.  The reading goes great—strong turnout, good actors, positive responses, plus some useful critiques. I’m pretty high on it all as I drive around this dark office park area looking for the sleep lab place. My GPS is confused, or I am, and I circle the block a couple times before finding the right building.

I still feel dramatic buzzing on a call box, as instructed, looking in the window of an empty office lobby in shadows, as if on some clandestine mission. A technician in scrubs appears and leads me through an unmarked door to the sleep lab, passing a heavy-set guy in a sleep gown covered in wires flowing down from his head and face over his substantial belly walking to the bathroom. He looks like a high-tech Lord of the Rings dwarf with hair and beard replaced by wires.

The creepy simulated bedroom is like a stage set with a king bed, bedside lamps, and a TV mounted on the wall opposite, and a camera in one corner of the ceiling trained on me, and I suddenly feel as if I’m staying in one of those Moscow hotels the Russians use to trap VIPs. Like the kind that likely rendered Donald Trump an asset of Russian intelligence. Except this camera is in plain view.  

Horror is not my genre, but walking that fluorescent lit hallway to this ersatz bedroom in this office park at night with high tech dwarves going to pee seems like a pretty good setup.

Still, I have to do something. My sleep has become a listing vessel, constantly tilting me overboard into unwanted wakefulness. I toss and turn, not just in the second part of the night, but an hour after turning out the light. I roll left, I roll right, waking up to pee, not once but three times, sometimes four, and in the morning I hardly feel rested, much less ready to write. 

Our most difficult times with Bernie’s breast cancer have come in the night when her emotional defenses are down. Egoless in receiving encouragement, she often slips right back into sleep, leaving me awake, my mind racing with arguments for her life.

And I grew up a bad sleeper, waking in the night as a kid and staring out at streetlights, smelling the cold, dusty glass. The night’s emptiness spoke to something missing in me, and left me scanning its depths for some kind of solace, until I was exhausted enough to give up the search and sleep. Bernie had cured me of that nocturnal searching, and remedies like melatonin, gava, and theanine had helped me receive sleep’s arrival with less resistance.

But now sleep struggle is back like a malicious companion showed up uninvited out of the past.  The internet readily serves up convincing evidence of whatever illness you suspect is creeping up on you, and sure enough, I have all the symptoms of sleep apnea. I also discovered that bruxism, which is teeth grinding, can be caused by sleep apnea. Well, I’ve been grinding my teeth and sleeping with a night guard in my mouth for years.

Apparently, no one is sleeping because I had to schedule an appointment with a sleep doctor three months out. When I finally spoke with him he prescribed a sleep lab. I thought he could just give me some gear to plug in at home in my own bed, but he said it wouldn’t be definitive, so here I am two months after that appointment, which was the next available opening. They say sleep apnea is a serious medical condition but make me wait months to find out if I have it.

The tech in scrubs is friendly enough as he wires me up. Electrodes are stuck to my scalp in several places and attached to wires that drape down my chest and back. I’m shaggy with wires, and the play reading is still thrumming through me, and I’ve forgotten my book. I read before sleep, I always read before going to sleep.

I try watching TV instead, but it’s not the same, and the commercials feel more than usually moronic, so I just turn it off and try to sleep, but a bright band of light blazes in under the door from the horror film hallway, and I’m bound up in wires. There is nothing restful about sleep lab.

I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all when the tech walks in a few hours later with a CPAP machine—a motor about the size of a shoe box, with an air hose and nose attachment. Chipper earlier, we’re both grumpy now. I protest that I’ve hardly slept, and he chuckles dismissively, saying they got plenty of data on me. I complain about the wires and the light and that I don’t have my book to help me fall asleep, but the problem is, when the CPAP starts pumping air into me, I immediately relax and fall into a much more satisfying sleep; if the cure for the condition cures you, you probably have the condition.

Apnea literally means a pause in breathing. Sleep apnea increases risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and all the bad things that come with not enough sleep, which is probably every ailment in existence. Good sleep may be the single best thing you can do for your health and longevity, and I’m not getting it.

Obstructive sleep apnea is the more common variety, which happens when the muscles in the throat relax too much, narrowing the airway until breathing is momentarily cut off; your brain wakes you up to start breathing again. Central sleep apnea, the other kind, happens when the brain fails to signal the body to breath. This can be caused by heart failure and stroke, neurological disorders and opioids and other drugs.

But I don’t do those drugs or have those conditions. I’m not overweight and I and don’t even drink much alcohol, so why the do I have sleep apnea?

I realize this is what Bernie must feel about breast cancer a thousand times over. Why the hell do I have this?  There is no definitive answer for either of us, just our own speculations. In my case, I read sleep apnea can affect people with big necks, and my neck is sort of big.

I don’t want to sleep attached to a CPAP machine every night forever, but some of the alternatives sound much worse, like a tracheostomy, which is surgically creating a wider opening in the throat to allow for breathing. I learn my former dentist, now retired, makes oral appliances for sleep apnea. I imagine some elaborate metallic gadgetry, like the old orthodontic headgear, to hold my airways open—don’t ask me how—but it sounds better than a CPAP or surgery.

The retired dentist, a talker, used to go on and on about adventurous fishing trips he’d taken and his enthusiasm for his Christian afterlife. Now he tells me how his best friend died of a sleep apnea event, and he wants to help make sure that doesn’t happen to others. How his will to save others from death jives with his blissful belief in meeting Jesus in heaven after death is a narrative I don’t have time to invite upon myself, so I try to keep it about the oral appliance.

But in reviewing the report from the sleep lab, he questions the data on some statistical grounds I don’t follow, and wants me to get a sleep evaluation from a different doc.

Another sleep lab?

The recommended sleep doctor is busy too, and schedules me for seven weeks out, and I feel myself starting to waver. I’m trying to do the responsible thing by getting myself diagnosed and treated for an apparent sleep disorder, but I may be losing interest.

I come from a long line of ailment ignorers and was raised on the assumption that discounting the problem is often the best way to make it go away, at least from your awareness. I’m trying to evolve to a more proactive posture—I have ambitious longevity goals my family doesn’t hold—but being reactive is looking better and better now.

Meanwhile, Bernie begins using this ultrasound at night that’s supposed to support her overall wellness and maybe it’s helping me sleep better too. I mean I’m asleep, so I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’m tossing and turning as much. This is how ailment ignoring works—you start to downplay the condition, not all at once, but incrementally, step by step, so that it can dwindle in your consciousness over time, as you either get used to it, and the discomfort feels less acute, or in fact, it goes away.  

But I’m not entirely committed to complacency either. I start this thing called myofunctional therapy, which works on your face, mouth and tongue, that is supposed to help with sleep apnea by keeping your airways clear. I meet with the myo therapist online, and she gives me truly strange exercises to do with my tongue and mouth, difficult to coordinate but easy to practice, if you don’t mind looking idiotic to yourself in the mirror.

I’m supposed to do like two reps of each exercise, but that hardly seems enough to me, so I repeat them over and over throughout the day, until my jaw starts popping, and I can’t bite down on food without feeling like I’m cracking something essential inside my mouth. So I have another condition to downplay or ignore, which in a weird way confirms my inclination to downplay or ignore the alleged sleep apnea, because if I engaged fully with that problem, and this jaw thing now, whatever it is, that would be a lot.

Sure enough the myo therapist helps me correct the clicking, and almost another month into not doing another sleep lab, I seem to be sleeping better. The good news is that they scheduled me so far out I’ve got plenty of time to keep downplaying what I may or may not have. But unlike my ailment ignoring forebearers, I’m living in the era of data, so I stop researching sleep apnea and start researching biometric devices to tell me how well I am sleeping.

The Apple Watch is supposedly really good, but I have enough Apple in my life, and really don’t want to get emails on my arm. So I buy this device called a Whoop. You wear it on your wrist and it collects biometric data. It knows if you’re awake or asleep, and calculates how much REM sleep you get, and deep sleep and light sleep, and your respiratory rate, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, etc.

You can’t fake sleep and you can’t force it. Begging for it like Macbeth after murdering Duncan won’t do any good either. The sleep drugs apparently add very little actual sleep per night and leave people drowsy in the morning. Michael Jackson died trying to manipulate himself to sleep with stronger stuff, a drug used for anesthesia procured from a crooked doctor,— so you can’t buy sleep either.

Truth is you don’t conquer sleep, sleep conquers you and you let it. Sleep is surrender, but consciousness won’t let go, or can’t, without the nervous system’s say so. The brain may be the interpreter of life, but however much it might seek to rationalize and reign it in, the nervous system mediates life itself washing over and through us. I suppose that’s the real sleep lab every single night. 

I start tracking my sleep. I don’t always get a perfect night’s sleep, but it hardly amounts to a sleep disorder—more like sometimes disordered sleep. But most nights my sleep stats are good. Good numbers of hours asleep. Good amount of REM and deep sleep. Good oxygen levels.

My reactive self feels more justified than ever. What should you do to address what looks like sleep apnea? Nothing, as always, may be your best bet. I realize this is not very responsible advice to share with others, but the data speaks for itself.



BIO

Joe Bardin is an essayist and playwright based in Arizona by way of Trenton, NJ, Washington DC, and Tel Aviv. He is the author of the essay collection Outlier Heart, (IFERS Press). His essays have appeared in numerous publications including Interim, Louisville Review, Superstition Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Rock & Sling, and been anthologized in the Transhumanism Handbook (Springer). His plays have been performed both domestically and abroad. A scholarship alumni of the Valley Community of Writers, he is a member of the Dramatists Guild. (http://www.josephbardin.com) / (www.josephbardin.com). @joebardin.







Sandra Niemi, author of Glamour Ghoul

THE INTERVIEW

I’m a longtime fan of Maila Nurmi’s, the woman who created and played the legendary Vampira on TV and in movies. Although I don’t remember, my mom once told me that she took me to see Vampira in person when I was a little kid. I guess Maila did public appearances—in costume? Maila Nurmi was the host of The Vampira Show on ABC-TV back in 1954 in Los Angeles. Countless imitators followed her, borrowing and stealing from her unique look and style.

After reading the excellent book, Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi, that examines the extraordinary life of Maila Nurmi (1922-2008), the legendary TV host, actress and artist, I was curious to know more about the author. Sandra Niemi is Maila’s niece. When Maila Nurmi passed away in 2008, Sandra took control of Maila Nurmi’s writings and possessions. Ten years later, she penned a loving tribute to her famous fabulous Finnish aunt.

I was able to contact Sandra recently and she agreed to be interviewed for The Writing Disorder.

Tell us about yourself. Where are you living now?

Where the weather is mostly gray and cloudy. November is my least favorite month of the year. It’s dark and rainy and cold and the days are short. I live in Salem, Oregon, which is the capital. It’s a fairly good-sized town. I don’t know the population, but it’s a lot bigger than my hometown of Astoria that I lived in for sixty years. I sure do miss it, but the rain keeps me away.

How far is it from Salem?

Astoria is about two and a half hours north. I was up there recently for a Vampira celebration. It was a big success. They screened Plan 9 from Outer Space and they’re celebrating Maila because she graduated from Astoria high school in 1940. So the town is claiming her as an Astorian.

You grew up in Astoria, as well as your father, who was Maila’s brother?

Yes, my dad was Maila’s brother. He was 17 months older.

Did you know Maila growing up?

Not really. I met her when I was too young to remember. But I remember this, I must have been five or six at the time. My family went down to Los Angeles, and I saw her for the first time—and I was sure she was my own private Cinderella, because she was so beautiful. I had never seen such a beautiful human being in my life. It was in the daytime, I can still see her, she had blonde hair and she had blue eye shadow from her lashes to her brows, and bright red lipstick, a gold lame dress, and transparent shoes—which reminded me of Cinderella’s glass slippers. Then I didn’t see her again until her mother, my grandma, died when I was ten. And we went down to L.A. where they lived. Maila lived with her mother on Carlton Way. We were there for the funeral and Maila scared me. She reenacted how she found her mother dead in the chair that I was sitting in. But I didn’t know that, and she gave out this blood curdling scream that she was known for as Vampira and scared me to death. I ran out of the house. So, I thought that this was kind of a weird place to be, you know, it wasn’t like my little house in Astoria. And the strange thing is how Maila wore a black shift dress and dirty white slacks for two days. And then on the day of the funeral, or the day before the funeral, she asked my mother what she was going to wear to the funeral and my mother told her. And she thought, oh good, Maila’s going to change her clothes. But she didn’t, she just wore the same clothes again, and an old raggedy men’s navy-blue cardigan sweater inside out. Very odd.

She was a very independent and unique person—in her taste, her style, and with everything she did.

She was never afraid to display her different outlook on life, or to talk about it. She was very brave. And she just went about her life as she chose.

I read your book and it’s a really great story. It’s very well written. I kept asking myself, who wrote this book? I wanted to know more about you because I assumed you had written many other books, because it’s so good.

When I was younger in my 20s, I went to and graduated from Oregon State University, in 1969 when I was 22, and I majored in English. I always kind of fantasized about writing because I really enjoyed it. I received a lot of compliments from my professors, and good grades. And then life got in the way, and I worked my entire life as a minimum wage waitress, cannery worker, bartender, or house cleaner. I started out at 99 cents an hour and I think I ended at 8 or 10 dollars an hour. Oh, I worked 18 years at this job, the best job I ever had at the end. I worked 18 years as a medical lab courier. I went to clinics and hospitals and picked up specimens and delivered them to the laboratory. I never did anything with my love of writing until I got Maila’s writings. She didn’t have a typewriter, and this was before computers. She was a prolific writer, and it was all done in long hand. She wrote and wrote, and I gathered all of her papers together. And I thought, well, here is Maila’s story. I’m the only one who can write it. Maila and I had talked about it, when we were writing back and forth for three or four years, before we lost contact again. She said that she and I should do a coffee table book. Since she had been a house cleaner and I had been a house cleaner, she said, we’ll talk about the famous toilets that I cleaned, and you can talk about the rich timber barons and fishermen that you worked for. We never got around to it, but wherever she is, she is not mad at me.

It’s a great book. I would read it again because I enjoyed it so much.

It always shocks me, because we always put our own work down, you know, and have great doubts. Thank you.

Did she ever plan to write an autobiography?

Three times that I know of. I picked up in her apartment, after she passed, an old reel to reel tape and my friend got a player so we could hear what she said. She had spoken the words as a biography, and she had a friend there who was taping it. That was in 1966, so she was planning it then. And then she was planning it with another author, his name is Warren Beath, and he wrote a book about James Dean. He thought he was in contact with Maila, and then as Maila would sometimes do, she would erase the person from her life forever. She would not trust them, and she thought he was trying to steal her story and write her story himself. And then at the end I met this man, Stuart Timmons, he was the man who was with Maila day in and day out during the Elvira trial. He did everything for her, Maila never drove, of course, so Stuart drove her around wherever she needed to be, and he did a lot of the legal work that she needed done, because anything, like the clerical stuff, she had to do and he was also an author. She was telling him stories about what had happened in her life and he was taking notes and typing them up. And then she got to where she didn’t trust him, so she erased him from her life.

Now Stuart and I got together right after Maila passed away. We had lunch together, and we also were together every day. He helped me clean out Maila’s apartment. And, in fact, I found a box that Maila had written: To Stuart Timmons. And I said, Stewart, here is a box just for you. And he said, oh my gosh, and he got teary eyed. Inside was some jewelry that she had made for him. He was so thrilled to get it. And then we went to Maila’s storage unit with Dana Gould, another friend of Maila’s. Dana is the one who paid for her storage unit. And it was a big storage unit — it was packed to the rafters. You couldn’t put a hair pin in there it was perfectly packed to the door, to the ceiling, to the wall. And Dana said, oh my God, this is going to be a chore to go through, and I said, yes. He had a key and I had a key, and because I had to go back to Astoria to work, I gave my key to Stuart, because I totally trusted him. He was a wonderful man. In fact, I called him Uncle Stuart, because he told me he was my aunt Maila’s last gay husband. So, I called him Uncle Stuart.

Dana gave his key to a woman named Gabrielle Geiselman, who at the time had a boyfriend who was a bass player for Rob Zombie’s rock band. And he is still famous, he’s Matt Montgomery or Piggy D, is his professional name. Anyway, they broke up and Gabrielle moved to New Orleans. Stewart called me one day, and I have documentation of this. Stuart called me on the 26th of January 2008. I was in Astoria. And he told me, I think I found THE dress, Maila’s, and I found some hip pads and a waist cincher, and he says I’ll put them aside for you. I thought, oh, that’s wonderful because I’m coming back to L.A. for Maila’s memorial in February. So as luck would have it, five days later, Stewart suffered a massive stroke. He couldn’t speak. They didn’t expect him to live. He was hospitalized for over two years before he was able to come out. He has since passed away, but his brain was fine, but he could no longer walk. He had to be in a wheelchair, and you couldn’t understand what he said. But he was still writing books when he passed away. But when I went back to the storage unit in February, it had been ransacked and everything was gone all the way to one stack of boxes at the very back. So, I called Dana right away and said what happened to the storage unit? He said, Gabriel was there but you know she saved everything for you. There’s a box there for you and I rented another storage unit there that you put all the garbage in that you didn’t want. I said, Stuart, there’s one box here with a hat in it and that’s all. I was furious. And I couldn’t make Dana understand. I blame Dana for ransacking it, and there was a rift with Dana and me. And we didn’t speak for 10-12 years. We’ve made-up now. We’re friendly now, but now he realizes that Gabrielle was a thief. She took all Maila’s stuff, oh gosh—her bat sunglasses, her waist cincher, the dress, black wigs, her makeup, and all kinds of writings. Her marriage proposal from Marlon Brando — all the pictures, and she sold them to Jonny coffin. Jonny Coffin now owns them and the trademark. I get no money; the family gets no money from anything that Maila sells. Not a penny.

You know anything with Maila Nurmi on it that sells, Jonny Coffin gets it all because he owns the trademark. But he went and got it behind my back while I was still grieving my aunt and so yeah, he’s the owner of the trademark. Maila’s family gets nothing. In fact, he tried to stop the publishing of my book. He sent his lawyer to me. His lawyer threatened me and so I turned it into my publisher’s lawyer, and they got rid of him. But then Johnny turns around and says that he helped me write the book. Oh no, which is obviously a big lie. He contributed nothing except a letter from his lawyer saying that they were going to stop the publishing of Glamour Ghoul and that you owe him $30,000. For what, I don’t know.

His real name is John Edwards, and he’s married to a woman named Linda Kay who is an actress and singer. Jonny is a big goth fan, and he hosts parties where he wears a Cape and a weird top hat. He has hair down to his waist and he has some kind of shop where he sells coffin-shaped guitar cases. He has girls dressed in bikinis and things advertising his guitar cases. And he sells a bunch of other stuff — plus all the Vampira stuff, of course, he sells now, and he makes pretty good money.

I think I saw him on YouTube. He was talking at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

That’s where Maila is buried. Maila had her 100th birthday celebration last December in L.A. And I was there, and Jonny coffin, of course, wasn’t. He was terrified of me, so he didn’t even make an appearance.

I’m so sorry that all this happened to you.

We were very close for a while, Jonny, and me. He would call me a couple times a week, always professing to be my friend and asking me advice—what color should I put in this advertisement, and what do you think about this? I guess he was just trying to get information from me. I don’t know. And then when I told him one day, after many years we had talked, in fact. I’ve met Jonny several times. I’ve had lunch with him and his wife in L.A. And we were friendly, but one night he called me in Salem, and I said to him, you know Jonny I have in my possession from when Maila was alive, a cease and desist letter from her attorney to you, because you were proposing to introduce a new Vampira doll and Maila wasn’t going to have anything to do with that. And she told him in the letter, she said she never wanted Jonny coffin to have anything to do with Vampira, and he hung up on me. He never talked to me again because he knew the jig was up. Maila hated him in life.

I think that book The Vampire Diaries was put out by him.

Yes. It’s mostly newspaper clippings, I think. When I went back to his shop in 2009, he showed me a three-ring binder with all these newspaper clippings of Maila’s career that he had bought from a man named Chad, and he had paid $300 for it. A lot of those articles were in that book. I haven’t bought the book, but a friend of mine in California did buy the book, and I leafed through it. I wasn’t going to read it. I don’t know how many of Maila’s writings were in there, but they were all stolen property that Gabrielle stole. If Maila knew this was going she’d be so mad. I know she’d be on my side. So, I don’t know where it’s all going to end but that’s where it is now. And Jonny has no family. He has his wife, but his mother, father and sister have all passed away. And he and his wife have no children, whereas I have a daughter and two grandchildren that I have to live for. And then I have also met Maila’s son, David Putter.

Yes! Are you still you still in touch with him?

Oh, yes! I just called him. He left me a text message last week. He’s learning how to message. He’s going to be 80 in March, and I’m 76. I’m going to be 77 in May, and he’ll be 80 in March. So, we’re all Oldtimers. Yes, I’ve met him, and he’s got his mother’s eyes, exactly the same color and everything—that brilliant blue. We got along really well. He was an esteemed attorney for 50 years. It was celebrated with a lifetime achievement at the ACLU. He was at one time the assistant attorney general of Vermont. He has some things that he changed in the courtroom that are still law today in Vermont. He’s a very esteemed attorney. Maila would be very, very proud to know that.

Has he ever tried to reach out to the other side of the family?

Well, he’s looking to see who his dad is. He asked Orson Welles’ daughter for DNA, but he hasn’t heard back yet. But he’s trying to find out for sure. We don’t know for sure. We just know what Maila said. We weren’t there so we don’t know for sure. But I put it in the book because that’s what Maila said. Everything she said was put in italics in the book. You know she was a brilliant writer herself.

I remember her writings in your book. I liked the way she always used an ampersand.

Yes. I was really impressed by how she expressed herself, and I thought this is too good to paraphrase, I need to put her words down word for word so she can tell her story right. So that’s how it all happened.

You spent a lot of time researching this book.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that in 1989 I spent a week with her in Los Angeles and that’s the last time I saw her. We had a great time, we got along together. We dined out every single day and we got drunk together.

Those were the good old days — 1989 in Los Angeles.

It was August, the last week of August of 1989.

She was living in East Hollywood.

She was living at a place on Hudson Ave. and it’s no longer there. They raised the house and the garage that she lived in. There’s an apartment house there now. She was evicted but she got $5,000 to move, so that helped her.

And she had a store on Melrose Ave.?

Yes, she had a store. She went to garage sales and bought things and brought them back to her store and resold them. And also when she was on Melrose—she was a great seamstress—she made clothes for rock stars, during the hippie age, when they liked pantaloons and feathers and sequins and things like that. She would make costumes and people bought them. And she made jewelry. I still have many pieces of her jewelry, many pins that are signed Vampira on the back.

She also did some painting and artwork?

Yes, she did, and they were stolen—every single one. I know for a fact that when I looked at the storage unit before it had been ransacked, there were many paintings and they were covered with paper and they were propped on either side of the door. And when I came back, they were all gone. A year later I picked up a copy of Spin magazine. I don’t think it’s in print anymore, and there was a two-page color layout of Rob Zombie displaying his favorite things, and two of them were Maila’s, two of her paintings. He said he bought them from Maila’s estate. And I thought, no, you bought them from Gabrielle Geiselman, who’s the girlfriend of your guitarist Matt Montgomery aka Piggy D. So, she sold at least two paintings that I know of to Rob, and he has money, so she probably sold them for $1,000 each. They’re probably worth more now.

I’m assuming they’re worth a lot more.

I own one of her paintings that’s small. I got it is from a friend of Maila’s. They were very good friend towards the end of her life. His named is Greg and he connected with me, and I connected with him, and we talked. He sent me one of his paintings of Maila’s for free. It’s on my wall. It’s very nice. I love it. I had it professionally framed.

Beyond her personal diaries and her own writings, what other research did you do?

I interviewed Hilda, she was the woman who found Maila when she passed away. And I, of course, interviewed Dana, and the man who wrote Vampira and Me, R.H. Greene. And also, her second husband. His name was Farbrizio Mioni, he lived in Calabasas. When I was in Los Angeles, I just dropped in on him on a Sunday morning. He came to the door in a bathrobe, and he graciously invited me in the house. So, I got to visit with him. His last name was Mioni, and he and Maila were married in 1961 and divorced in 1964. He was 79 years old at the time and he has since passed away. I got the impression that it was just a marriage of convenience. He was gay. Maila wanted so much money a month to stay married to him and he could afford it and so it worked out. They stayed married for three years. And there were other people that knew her. I can’t think of anyone now right off the top of my head, but people that knew her. I would contact them about Maila and take notes. That’s after I had decided to write the book. I didn’t think that at the beginning, you know, and then I thought I have to, I have to. I can’t let Maila be a sad footnote in horror history, right? She deserved so much more.

How long did it take you to write the book?

12 years. I was plagued by self-doubt. Who am I? You know I’m 70 years old and trying to write a book, my first one, and then I would write a couple more chapters and put it away for six months and think, well I’ve come this far. And I’d write a little more, and it just went like that. In fact, I didn’t write the entire book, I was on the last chapter, when I came home from the grocery store and my daughter said to me, who lives with me. She said, I know who Maila’s son is. I know his name. I know where he lives. and I know his phone number. And I said, you do not—come on, that’s not even funny. She said, it’s true, here it is here. His name is David Putter, he lives in Vermont. What happened was, a couple years before for a Christmas present, I had sent my daughter, you know that ancestry.com? I sent her that and she had sent it in, and so had David. And they matched them as first cousins once removed. Oh my God, give me his phone number right this minute, I said. And I called right then and there. I didn’t even have my coat off and David answered the phone. I never dared to dream I could find my cousin; Let alone talk to him. Because I have a very, very small family, and every family member is extremely precious to me. David has no children, and he was adopted, so he has a very, very small family too. So, the first question he asked me is, do you do I know who my mother is? And I said, do I know who your mother is? I’m writing her biography right now, and I’m on the last chapter. You couldn’t be talking to anybody else on earth who knows her better than I do. It’s Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira. And he goes, Oh my God! I waited 75 years to find out who my mother is, and she’s a vampire? He didn’t know who she was, so he immediately went on the internet and looked her up. I said, you can see your mother, you can go on YouTube, and you hear her talk. You can find out everything you want to know just by going on Google. And he was excited about that. He said, I never dreamed of this. And you know those Vampira statues that Maila had commissioned back in the 1980s? They are very, very rare now. I had one for me and I had an extra one. And I said to myself, all these years that I have been packing it around original in the box, never opened, I always said to myself, someday I’m going to find the perfect person to give this to. And I’ll be darned if I didn’t. I sent it to David, and he has it proudly displayed in his living room. Whoever comes over to visit him, he always says that’s my mom out there, and they go, no? and he goes oh yes, that’s my mother! I saw her statue when I was at his house. I went there a year ago in August and I saw Aunt Maila there in David’s living room. He says he feels her around him all the time. And I say well if Maila could be anywhere, it would be with David. And then I said, I thought I was almost done with this book, and I had one more chapter because I had just met David. So that was the final chapter of the book.

Yes. He is the last chapter in the book.

I mean, I was there, I had just gotten to the end. Well now it’s over, just a few more paragraphs. And then I met David. And so, it was just my Maila. I keep saying, you know 12 years it took me to write this book, and I’m saying well Maila said you’re not going to finish this book until you meet my friend. And the minute, the minute I met him, the book was finished. It’s just bizarre, isn’t it, how things work out?

How did you find a publisher? Did you have one from the beginning or did you find one at the end?

When I first started writing the book, I learned that Feral House published the book on Ed Wood, A Nightmare of Ecstasy, that the movie was based on. So, I thought, well Maila was in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Ed Wood—she knew him. I wondered if they’d be interested. So, in 2009 I called up Feral House and I talked to a man Adam Parfrey, he was the owner. And I simply asked him, I told him I was Maila’s niece, she had passed away, and I was going to write a book. Would he be interested in a biography of Vampira? And he said, oh absolutely. I said, okay, thank you. And so fast forward 10-11 years. I called him up again and Adam had passed away, but his sister Jessica was running the business, so I talked to her. And she said, yes, send me the manuscript. So that’s where it went, that’s how that worked out. They took it right away.

Were you involved with the cover design and or any other aspect of the book?

No. I’m not thrilled with the cover, it was not my choice. That was all the publishers. The Passion and Pain of Vampira or whatever the cover says, that was the publisher too. I just wanted to say Glamour Ghoul. So, I didn’t have much input on any of that. No input, I should say. And now these Finnish filmmakers, ICS Nordic, that are in Finland, they’re just in love with the whole concept. They’ve had a contract for going on two years now. They’ve been working on a six-part documentary of the book, and they’re looking for money. They’ve been looking for money for a while, and apparently, they don’t have the money yet, but that’s where that is.

Did they get the rights to your book?

They have a contract. The first time it was for 18 months and that expired. Now they have another six-month contract and Jessica Parfrey has been through this situation with her books many times. She said this is normal for the course, when people try to find money. She’s giving them a lot of leeway.

They’re a company from Finland?

Yes. They’re from there, and because Maila’s from Finland—we’re 100% Finnish all of us. Her parents spoke Finnish at home, and my mother’s parents spoke Finnish at home, so we’re Finnish. I think there are a lot of blondes in Finland, but there are brunettes too. You can usually tell by their faces. They have small eyes and round faces and blonde hair. But Maila and I are similar, we don’t have a round face. We have the cheekbones. I can usually tell Finnish people by looking at their faces. Yeah, they’re Finnish.

Do you have any family in Finland?

I have lots of family in Finland, but I’ve never met them on my mother’s side. My mother was in contact with them briefly. And they sent pictures of our cousins and lots and lots of cemetery pictures. Fins are big on cemeteries. They visit the graves 12 months out of the year—they’re decorated. I laughed when I got the photos, I said, oh there’s the cemetery, grandma said, yes, we’re big on cemeteries. My grandmother on my mother’s side was the oldest of nine children. She came to America on one ship after the Titanic. She missed the boat. She had a ticket for the Titanic, but she was late, and missed the boat. So she had to take the next boat over in 1912. My grandfather was already here from Finland. They got married and my grandmother never got to go back home. On the other side, on Maila’s side, her father was born here but she had one sibling who was 20 years older, and he was born in Finland. When he was a child his parents moved to America. And Sofie was born here in Boston. She was born in Boston. She was a Fin with a Boston accent. She talked like the Kennedys. My grandfather came over here when he was 21. Maila’s dad.

Who were some of your favorite writers?

To tell the truth, in college I had to read so many books as an English major. I even took French. I had to read books written in French, which I couldn’t do now to save my soul. But when I got out of college, I said I never wanted to see another book as long as I live. Never. And I did not read a book for many years. I was sick of reading, and now I can’t live without having a book to read. I like biographies. So, I read a lot of biographies, but I also like true crime like John Grisham, John Sandford, and Lee Child. I’m reading Grisham now. I’m reading something about an island in Florida.

When you were a kid or a teenager, who were some of your favorite writers?

When I was a kid, I read all the Nancy Drew books. Carolyn Keene, I think she’s the one who wrote those books. I can remember sitting in the car when my mom and dad were working during the summer, and just avidly reading those books one after another. I had a collection of Nancy Drew books. All of them were a dollar a piece in those days. And I went to the library quite often and just randomly picked out books to read. I was always a good reader, you know, right from the get-go. I could read very well. I didn’t read much in high school because I had schoolwork to do, and I had to read schoolbooks. The only thing that comes to mind now is Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys (Franklin Dixon) books. I might have read some of The Bobbsey Twins. I read a lot when I was a kid.

What about television — what did you watch when you were growing up?

We lived way out in the sticks, so we had to get an antenna. We didn’t get a television until 1958. But I can remember watching a Miss America pageant, and Bourbon Street Beat. I remember watching Bourbon Street Beat and the writer was Dean Riesner. And I said, oh mom look—we called him Dink—Dink wrote this episode of Bourbon Street Beep. (He was Maila’s husband at the time.) And my mom just said, Oh well, good. But I remember Chet Huntley and David Brinkley news, and I remember the original Mickey Mouse Club.

Dan Riesner was her husband?

Yes, we all called him Dink. I met him when I was a little kid. I remember sitting on his lap. I remember men in those days would flick the ashes from their cigarettes into the cuff of their pants. At the time that I met Dink he had on tan pants and a pink shirt. I remember he took us to a movie set where they were filming. We sat in the back, and they were filming a western. I think it was Amanda Blake or someone like that. There was a girl in a saloon. Then a production guy came around, I was standing by my mother, and the guy said, come on you’re on next, to me, and he grabbed my hand and took off. And my mother said, no, no, wrong kid, wrong kid. I told my mother years later that she had ruined my chance to be a star. We all went and played miniature golf after that, and I got to wear my Aunt Maila’s Cinderella shoes.

Dean was a successful TV writer?

A very, very successful writer. He wrote Play Misty for Me for Clint Eastwood. He wrote the movie for him and he was very involved with Clint Eastwood’s, The Enforcer. Remember all those movies he made in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. He even wrote the words, “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you? Why don’t you make my day?” That’s Dean Riesner. He was very well known, and he was a script doctor. If somebody didn’t like a script, they called him to come in and fix it. Rich Man, Poor Man, the mini-series, he wrote that. He was very famous. He had no children, and he married a woman named Marie, and she passed away before he did. He didn’t have a family either.

How long was he married to Maila?

It was a common law marriage. They were together from 1949 until the first part of 1955. Dean was a hopeless alcoholic when Maila met him. And his career was down the drain, but Maila got him to quit—and his career took off again.

How many times was Maila married?

Twice. I never put the third husband in because I was never sure that they were actually married. She was married sort of married to Dean, I mean common law. And then she was married to Mioni. That’s the name that she went by legally. That’s how she got her Social Security checks, Maila Mioni. Supposedly she was married to John somebody. And I’ve heard there was a marriage license somewhere. But I never saw it, so I didn’t include it in the book. I think Maila and this John guy were just very good friends. So I didn’t include him. I think she was only married twice. And I’ve never been married, so I always say Maila was never really married, and neither was I. And we both have one child. I see a lot of parallels with my life and Maila’s.

Does your daughter or grandchildren have any resemblance to Maila?

No. My daughter is half Hispanic. As she found out with her genealogy. She always says, I’m 61% Finnish. I’m more Finnish than Hispanic. And it came back that her father was 10% Finnish. We never would have guessed. So, she’s 55% Finnish today, and her half-brother is 5% Finnish from his dad, from their mutual father. She’s 47 years old now. And I have two grandchildrenboth living in the Hawaii on differentislands. My granddaughter, she kind of resembles Maila. She would make a perfect new Vampira. She’s five feet, six inches, long dark hair, light colored eyes—very pretty girl. She would make a beautiful Vampira. She’s a bartender in Maui. She’s 27, my grandson is 24, and he works on the Big Island, Hawaii. I don’t ever get to see them because I can’t afford a ticket to get to Hawaii. That makes me sad. If I had the trademark for Vampira, I could afford to go see them. But I don’t.

So, you can’t use the name Vampira for anything because he got the trademark?

I guess I’m not supposed to. It’s okay to write a story about her because you know biographies happen all the time without trademarks. But I can’t sell any anything. I can’t go and have coffee mugs made with Vampira’s name or picture on it, something like that. I can’t do any manufacturing. I can sell things that I found in her house, because that’s like a gift you know. I can sell those, but I can’t manufacture anything and sell it like T-shirts. I can’t even do that.

That’s not right.

No, it isn’t. There’s nothing I can do about it, it would cost lots of money for an attorney, which I do not have the money for. Jonny was counting on that, I’m sure.

Maybe the publisher or someone like that could help.

We’ve had talks. Maybe in the future. I told them, well, you better hurry, because I’m 76, and you know I’d like to see it in my lifetime. But there isn’t anything yet. They have an attorney. The one who wrote the letter in the first place, when they threatened to not get the book published. I’ve met him, he’s very nice. I met him in Astoria this last weekend. He’s a very nice man. So, you don’t know. He kept telling me how important it was for me to attend the Maila celebration in Astoria. He said it was important and I don’t know why. I signed books. There was a Q&A. I have participated in that. I also participated in the signing of books and a Q&A in Los Angeles for Maila’s 100th birthday. So, I’ve done this twice.

When was that?

It was December 11th last year in Los Angeles (2022). I can’t remember the name of theater. It was at a perfect theater. It was supposed to rain like crazy that day, but it was beautiful sunshine on her day. It was in Hollywood. The American Cinematheque—that’s where it was, in Hollywood. It’s the old Egyptian Theater. That’s where we were.

I wish I would’ve known. I would have attended.

They declared it Vampira Day. It was officially named Vampira Day in Los Angeles. And now my biggest wish, my biggest wish, is for Maila to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I can’t believe she doesn’t have one.

I know. I want to start a crowdfunding effort to raise the money. It’s around $55,000 to have a star. And then they have to vote on who gets to have a star that year, because not everyone does. But I think, for Maila, because it was officially called Vampira Day, that it really boosts her chances.

That would be great!

I keep saying that Maila walked the streets of Hollywood for 60 years, because she never drove a car. And for 38 years of those she walked with a cane because she had pernicious anemia. She had walked with a cane. And she walked a lot.

Later in her career, Maila was still appearing in movies.

Yes, she was doing movies, but was still being billed as Vampira. She was never billed as Maila Nurmi. Even though she wasn’t in a Vampira costume, she was still Vampira. As she got older, Maila liked being remembered as Vampira. For a while she tried to get rid of that image, you know like, I’m Maila Nurmi. And then she sort of became like a hermit, a recluse, and moved to the very, very east part of Melrose Ave. She moved from the west part, clear over to the east part. And she never told anyone that she was Vampira. In fact, in the book it says that Hilda knew her as Helen Heaven. And even when I was having lunch with Hilda, she always referred to Maila as Helen. And she knows that her name was Maila, but she always referred to her as Helen. That’s who Maila introduced herself as, Helen.

She lived on Melrose when it was like becoming trendy and popular with punks and new wave music in the 1970s?

She was there when the hippies came out. That’s when she lived there. I’ve gone past the house that she lived in. It’s still there. It looks like a two-story duplex. It might be four apartment units. That’s where she had her shop, in her living room. She didn’t rent a separate place. It had a big window in front. And it was her living room, so she just had that part as her shop. I just saw it in December again. I had some friends from Sacramento that drove down, so they were my wheels while I was there. And they’re interested in Maila too. They have a goth rock band called Ashes Fallen, and they have a song called Vampira that has over 10,000 hits. They’re big Vampira fans. They wanted to go to all the places where Maila lived, and we took pictures. It’s still there, and the little crappy apartment she lived in on east Melrose is also there. When we were there, it was a beauty shop. And, of course, the one where my grandma died, where Maila and grandma lived, It’s still there. It looks almost the exactly the same one. There’s a little fence built around it. A short little fence, and the apartment house next door has been torn down and a new apartment house has been built. And the fence that separated the properties is gone. That’s the same. I recognize that street so well. And then she lived on Gateway. I went up there and looked at that place. And then she died on Serrano and of course, they’ve completely torn down that and rebuilt it so it’s nice and new now. I remember Gabrielle had the key to Maila’s last house, and she did not want me to go back in there. And I couldn’t find her. I called her on the phone she wouldn’t answer. So, I called the managers, and they knew who I was by then. And I said I don’t have a key to Maila’s apartment, and I want to go in, and they said go ahead and break in. And I said really? They said how they were going to tear the place down anyway, so it’s okay—just break in the door. And I said, okay. Kind of funny. So, I was at the front door, and I was shouldering the door, and shouldering the door, and the guy next door opened his window and said, hey, do you need a hammer? Yes. I said, what kind of neighborhood is this where I’m breaking in and they’re offering me help? But Gabrielle had been there, and she had set aside a bunch of stuff on the floor that she wanted to take from Maila’s apartment. And I know she was there because she had left a satchel, an umbrella, and a hat of hers there, which I took. And the couch that Mila had died on, she had ripped open the back of it looking for money. That’s how she thought of Maila. It’s just sickening. And I have pictures of that.

Since you’ve written the book, have you learned anything more about Maila that wasn’t in the book? Are there any stories about her that didn’t get in the book?

There’s probably a couple. When I finished the book, the publisher wanted me to remove about 5,000 words. They wanted it to be shorter. So, I had to take some material out. And somebody said, now you have enough to write a second book. I don’t think I have enough for a second book. I have enough for a fiction book, but it wouldn’t be Maila. It would be some other name. I’ve messed around with the thought of me and Maila being in a book, but fictionalized. It would have Jonny and Elvira. I’ve pictured it. They would be the enemies of the book. Jonny would be running around Los Angeles, but instead of that costume that he wears now, he would be wearing one of those bird heads that doctors wore back in the day, when it looked like a crows head, when they had the plague, and they had to take care of people with the plague. They were those things that looked like a bird heads. That’s what Jonny would wear around Los Angeles, you know, and we get them in the end. I don’t know if it would sell. That’s the whole thing it’s just kind of a comedy, and not really, but I could put my personality in it.

It sounds like it would be make a good graphic novel. You’re not into the Goth scene, are you?

No, I’m not Goth. But I have friends who are Goth. They never wear anything but black. And my friend is the best Gothic baker you ever saw. She can bake anything. She can make a cake look like anything. I like the Goth scene. A lot of the people who came out for the Astoria Maila Nurmi show and the Los Angeles Vampira show were Goths. Very, very interesting outfits that they wear. And I like it. Maila is the original Goth creator—the mother of Goth. When she got older, she would say I’m the grandmama of Goth. She was the pioneer. And I had no idea when Maila passed away that she had so many fans. They’re all over the place. And I had no clue because to me whenever I saw Vampira, I would just say, oh there’s Aunt Maila in a black dress with a wig on. It was just my Aunt Maila in costume. I couldn’t separate them. It was all just one person. When I was with her in 1989, I didn’t ask her one question about Vampira. I just wanted to know her as a person. What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite food? What do you like to do? What do you do with your days? How do you take care of your dog? What are you interested? Do you like to read? What’s your favorite TV show—things like that. Who is this person, my aunt? I didn’t ask about James Dean. I was here to find out who Aunt Maila was.

What was her favorite food?

Her favorite food was banana cream pie. Her favorite color was jewel tones. I assume she liked Ruby, sapphire, emerald—that kind of thing.

Who are her favorite performers?

I know that she hated Madonna and loved Cher. And I said, there we agree. I can’t stand Madonna, and I love Cher. And she hated in those days, at the newsstands, The Inquirer and The Star. She said all the photographs were terrible. They all had shiny faces. I remember that. She liked the TV shows, Three’s Company and Remington Steele. And if she could get an old movie on her TV, she’d like to watch that. She had a tiny little TV up on top of an armoire. That was her entertainment. I had sent her a little boom box that was my daughter’s. It was light blue, and I sent her some tapes. My father had been dead for 12 years, and I had a tape recording of his voice taken at a Christmas celebration. I sent her that and she really enjoyed that she got to hear her brother’s voice again. He sang the Finnish national anthem. He whistled and he talked, so I know Maila enjoyed that. And I still had a couple of letters that her dad had sent to my dad. They were written in Finnish and Maila could understand it. She could read it. So, I sent her copies of those letters. And I sent her a case of salmon, tuna and sturgeon, and a can opener. And a bottle of wine and a bottle opener one year for Christmas. So, I hope she liked that. I know she couldn’t cook. I think she had a heating plate to make coffee on. So, I sent her something that didn’t have to be cooked, and I know she liked fish. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience visiting with her. If I could live my life over again, I wouldn’t have come back in a week. I would’ve stayed and asked a lot more questions. Anyway, that was my time with Maila.

The photographs in the book, those were your photographs — or the did the publisher have to secure the rights to them?

I don’t know much about that. Some of them were my pictures, but I didn’t have much input on that aspect of the book either. I have a friend in Tennessee, who is a young man. He’s a huge Vampira fan that I befriended. In 2009, when I was in Los Angeles and met Jonny coffin at his place, Clint, and his mother, from Tennessee, flew out. So, I got to spend some time with them too. And Clint is a huge collector of Vampira memorabilia. He has lots of pictures. So he gave the pictures he had to the publisher. That worked out really well. I’m not that organized, and I have some pictures, but I don’t know where they are. The one that makes me the maddest of all, the one that I can’t find, is an 8×10 photo of Marlon Brando and Maila. It’s just the two of them. Maila is all decked out like she’s going to a party, in black dress, and Marlon is dressed like the movie, Desiree. He was a sea captain, or a military guy, and he’s dressed in costume and they’re together. I had looked for that picture for years, but I can’t find it. I think it still might be in the garage, and I’m hoping so. But I’m afraid to look anymore for fear I won’t find it. And so, there’s a lot of pictures in there—my most important pictures, and the letter from my grandmother is in there, too. The last letter she ever wrote before she died that I wrote about in the book. It’s in a three-ring black binder with a lot of Maila’s writings. I have not been able to find it. In fact, all the letters that she wrote to me, I had them when I wrote the book because I quoted from them, right, but I can’t find them now. Like I said, I’m not organized, I see something, and I just put it aside. And I’m not going to change at this age.

Who were the photographers who photographed Maila Nurmi?

Well, we know some of the photographers who took pictures of Maila in the 1950s. But we have no way of knowing who all the photographers were. I have no clue. There are family pictures of Maila, and her mom and dad, that I don’t have—and Jonny’s hanging on to it. That makes me mad. That’s my grandma and grandpa and my aunt. He has nothing to do with them.

Perhaps you could use some help organizing.

That’s why I have that friend in Sacramento. She is the most organized person I’ve ever met. She is really my archivist. I gave her all the stuff I had. She came up to Salem and I gave her everything I had. And she has cataloged and filed and put everything together and filed everything on the computer. She said this is all important Hollywood history, we have to preserve this. And she has. I’m really happy about that. Now everything is organized. Before everything was just in boxes. Everything works out. Maila found me, the archivist, and Maila made sure that I met her son. Maila is still working her Vampira magic. We don’t know for sure, but it seems that way.

She still has a presence in your life.

Yes. I still feel her around me. Once in a great while, not a lot, but once in a while, it feels like Maila is here with me. I think she spends a lot of time in Vermont now with her son. But she’s still working weird things. I mean, when my friend was here in Salem, and we were going through part of the garage looking for Maila’s stuff. It was September, I think. The garage door was open, and we were talking about Maila, and all sudden there was a huge cacophony of crows across the way. You couldn’t hear yourself talk. There had to be fifty of them in one tree. I’ve lived here for eight years, and it’s never happened before. And we both stopped talking, like what?! And we looked out and there’s all these crows. And my friend said, that’s a murder of crows. And I said yes. And then her husband showed up and we told him about the murder of crows. About a week later, I told you they have a Goth band. So a week later they were called up and asked to perform in New York City at a festival called Murder of Crows. See stuff like that is happening all the time. They went and performed this year in September, and now they have lots of new fans. They were number two on the Goth music list for their new album. They’re called Ashes Fallen. Michelle, my friend, plays keyboards, and her husband, James, is lead singer. The other guy in the band is named Jason. James and Jason have been friends for 30 years. They’ve played in the same band.

Thank you very much for your time. It’s been a pleasure talking with you. I wish you good health and happiness—and the rights to Vampira someday. I hope you get the rights back.

Thank you. It was nice meeting you too.

GLAMOUR GHOUL BOOK IS AVAILABLE HERE:








Sometimes it Takes Fifty Years to Repair a Friendship

by Kelsey Berryman


            I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Babcia, growing up. We would swim in her pool, she’d make delicious food, and I’d dress up in her old clothing- she even let me wear her high heels. But what I loved most was when she told me stories.

            Sometimes she would tell me about being a little girl in Poland. Usually, she would gloss over her teenaged years. Sometimes she would talk about her time in Chicago as a single woman in the fifties. But then other times she would talk about the time that she was happiest; as a married woman and later young mother in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she lived in a little apartment building with a bunch of other parents with young kids.

            My grandparents had only dated for a few months before they got married and left Chicago for Cincinnati and then Erie. Babcia hated Ohio. It was too dirty for her. But she loved Pennsylvania.

            She told me about the one neighbor with the bum husband and told me about the one with too many kids, but her favorite neighbor was her best friend Cathy and her husband Fred. They had two kids: Cathie Lu and Mary. Cathie Lu had arthritis. Everyday Mary would knock of her door saying that it was Halloween and ask for some candy.

            When Babcia went into labor with my mother, Cathy and Fred took her to the  hospital. It was a different hospital than my grandparents had planned on going to and my grandfather, Grandpere, didn’t know where to find Babcia until he talked to Fred. It turned out that Cathy and Fred had taken Babcia to the Catholic hospital.

            When my mother was born Cathy told my grandparents to name her Deirdre. My grandparents liked that it was a name that you could yell. But they wanted to change it slightly and named her Daedre.

            Cathy wanted to be godmother to my mother and sent over to my grandparents a Catholic priest to facilitate matters. Though both my grandparents were raised Catholic, they had become disillusioned with the church. Grandpere was called the son of the devil and expelled from Catholic school because he kept asking “how do we know” when ever religion was brought up. Babcia lost her faith during childhood her family was poor and the priest kept telling them to give more to the Church. They didn’t even marry in the Catholic church because the priest demanded that they promise to have as many children as they could. Anyway, a new Catholic priest came over to the apartment to discuss a baptism and when he found out that my grandparents were married in the Episcopal church, he screamed that they were living in sin and had to get remarried. My grandmother sent him packing.

            Babcia said Cathy was a large woman with dark, Italian skin. Once when my infant mother wouldn’t stop crying and Cathy put her on her breasts and rocked her. She knew how to help with a baby because she had so many kids. She would buy her kids clothes rather than wash the dirty ones. But as soon as her husband came home she made him watch the kids and she’d go out to see the same movie twice just to be away from them.

            Eventually, my grandparents moved to California because my grandmother wanted to grow oranges. Since Babcia was a girl in Poland she had hated the cold climate and dreamed of living somewhere warm. Florida had too much mildew so they chose California.

            Cathy and her husband moved to Texas. But both couples all still kept in touch. My grandparents even drove to see them in Houston when my mother was in elementary school. My grandparents saw that Cathy and Fred had a big house with a swimming pool and had had three more kids: Deirdre, Ralph, and Florence.

            Cathy decided to come to California and visit my grandparents. They took her all around Los Angeles, especially Beverly Hills. Cathy wanted to be discovered. She was mad about Rock Hudson and thought that if he would just see her he’d fall in love with her. My grandmother bought her some diet cookies. As soon as Cathy heard that they were diet she ate the whole box.

            My mom said that she had been waiting to meet “Auntie” Cathy. She had heard so many good things about her but didn’t end up liking her. Everything that Cathy said was a patronizing, “Honey” this or “Sweetie” that.

            Cathy talked about to my grandparent about moving out to California. Babcia told her that it was so expensive. Cathy could have a much nicer house in Texas.

            Finally, one night Cathy told my grandparents the real reason she came. She was going to divorce Fred and needed their help. She wanted to punish her husband and wanted my grandparents to hide their children from him. My grandfather immediately said no. Fred loved those kids. It was also illegal to take them over state line.s Cathy was insulted and kept saying that if they were divorcing she would hide my mother for one of them.

            Babcia and Grandpere didn’t hear from her again.  I always wondered what it would have been like if my grandparents had taken her five kids.

            To me Cathy was just a character from my childhood. She was as safe and real as Peter Rabbit. Part of me never thought of her as a real person but a figure of stories that I was told.

            During spring break of my junior year of college, I went to visit Babcia. She was sitting in her maroon recliner and sipping coffee. Babcia had already grilled me about school (“Are you getting A’s?”, “I hope that you will go to grad school” and “Kelsey, education is something that no one can ever take away from you.”) I had given my pat answers. Then we got to an interesting part of the conversation. I lying about my friendships (“Oh, I have really great friends, we hang out all the time.”)

            When Babcia said, “It’s so important to have friends. You know like I had Cathy Xxxyz….” She took a sip of her coffee before adding, “I wonder what she is doing now.”

            Back in college and lonely, I decided to find out what happened to Cathy. I knew that she had lived in Texas and googled her daughter’s name and found a workplace that advocated for the disabled. Given that Cathie Lu had had arthritis that seemed to make sense that she would in a capacity for the disabled.

From: Kelsey Berryman
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 9:08 PM
To: Cathie Lu
Subject: old friendship

Hello,

I know that this might seem kind of random but I might as well ask. My grandmother is named Anna Cottrell and she used to live in Erie, Pennsylvania, and was great friends with Cathy Xxxyz and her husband, Fred. She was wondering what ever happened to them and I told her that I that would look on the internet for them. I assume that you are their daughter Cathie Lu. I hope that this is not too much of an intrusion but if you are so inclined please email me back. My grandmother would be really happy to know what happened to her old friends.

Thanks so much,
Kelsey Berryman

Ten days later I got

From: Cathie Lu
Subject: RE: old friendship
Date: March 26, 2012 12:34:40 PM EDT
To: Kelsey Berryman

Hello Kelsey,

Yes, I am the oldest daughter of Fred and Cathie Lu and we did live for a short time in Erie, PA when I was a child. My mother lives in a Dallas suburb and my dad and his second wife live in Houston. If your grandmother is interested, we can exchange phone numbers so she can call and speak with my mom and dad.

Cathy  A. XXXYZ

            We exchanged a few more emails and on my normal Sunday call I said, “Babcia, I’ve found Cathy XXXYZ for you.”

            “What?”

            “In Texas, I’ve got her phone number for you.”

            “Why on earth would you do that? What if she is still angry at me for not taking her kids.”

            I rolled my eyes because that was so typical Babcia.

            A few weeks later, when I called Babcia she said, “Cathy called me.” She found out that Christine had two kids and Florence worked in design and that Deirdre had a dog that was like her kid and that Cathie Lu had never gotten married. She had forgotten to ask about Ralph. She also talked about Mom. Cathy wasn’t still angry.

From: Cathie Lu
Subject: Sad News
Date: June 20, 2012 8:40:04 PM EDT
To: Kelsey Berryman

Good Evening Kelsey,

I wanted to let you and your grandmother know that my mom died unexpectedly on May 26. My brother will be spreading her ashes in New York City (her hometown) next month.

Cathie Lu XXXXYZ 

Your Mom, my grandmother and my Mom in front of their house in Pacific Palisades before Mom’s ballet recital.






BIO

Kelsey Berryman grew up in California and has been writing since she was twelve years old. She attended the University of Iowa to study writing. She currently works as a teacher and is working on her latest book.




STAY IN TOUCH