Fiction
IN SPITE OF THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE, MAYBE IT WAS LONELINESS THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS by Tyler Fleser
The first day at Triassic Land, my Spinosaurus tail got torn off in the door of my dead grandad’s old Camry. I left home because I was sick of Mom babying me. I was single. Grown up. I was like a twenty-four-year-old boo-boo she wouldn’t let heal. I’d typed up a fake acceptance letter and showed it to her a month ago. Told her I was starting at Central Michigan University’s summer business program early and that a buddy I used to play video games with had a room. She gave me a hundred dollars, a kiss on the cheek, and said she was proud.I could see all the coasters I’d grown up riding over the barbed-wire security fence. Mad Meteor, Cretaceous Coroner, Chicxulub Impactor—Quivering Timbers had always been my favorite though. No loops, but the wood shook your head like a speed bag. It held all that thrill without any worry of slipping through the harness and falling into the inevitable. I was considering how long it would take to hit the ground when a giant red Silverado pulled up next to me.“Well guy,” the old driver said, hobbling out of his 4x4 chariot, “that tail’s dangling like a dingleberry.” He looked like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino if Clint Eastwood had been addicted to Diet Coke. When he squinted, he looked older instead of meaner. “I—”“I’ll fix y’up don’t worry. I should’ave some duct tape…somewhere ‘n here.” He heaved his duffel bag out and dropped it on the cracked pavement like a treasure.“It’s really okay, I’ll fix it later,” I said.He pulled out some duct tape and shoved it in my face like a trophy.“Only’ll be a minute and you’ll thank me,” he said.It was easier to let him do it in the end. Last thing I wanted was a fight with a geriatric Dirty Harry on my first day. When he was finished, he slapped my pleather ass and fondled the Camry to stand back up.“Name’s Pat. You Gordy’s replacement?” I’d seen it on the news with Mom one morning. Mom’d said, How is anyone supposed to feel safe anymore? and I’d said, you can do that for a living? The posting online had read: Dinosaurs wanted! 12/hr + meals!“Yeah. I’m Mortimer.” “Jordan?”“Mor-tih-mur!” He reached out and squeezed my hand, like he was trying to juice me.“Or Mort. Either’s fine.” I’ve never had a good talking voice either. I mumble or I feel like I’m yelling.“Suit yerself,” Pat nodded towards the park, “Welp, we don’t want to keep the ‘missus’ waitin’ do we?” His back bent under the weight of his tool bag. I thought to offer help, but I could tell Pat had that old man syndrome where he didn’t let anyone help him, even if it meant he was going to hurt himself.
***
I remember taking photos with Sal the Spinosaurus as a kid. There was a photograph I’d left at home of me crossing my legs thinking it made me look cool only to realize I looked like I had to piss, Mom oblivious, grandad tight-lipped because of his broken teeth, my older brother and his perfect smile. Besides those memories, I knew next to nothing about being a dinosaur. They’d given me no training, just the rule that I couldn’t let people see me with the suit off, which was fine. I was a solid 5, on a good day. On a bad day? Captain Neckbeard. Sal the Spinosaurus suited me.There was a yellowed, stained fridge in the break room with a picture of someone’s family and shitty motivational posters. Plastic employee of the week plaques littered one wall, each staff member holding up some gift card to Chili’s or Olive Garden. I saw a man with my outfit, the Spinosaurus head roaring under his arm. He didn’t smile. When I saw Pat on my route, I asked him if that was Gordy.“Scalies used to be able to get away with stuff. Pouncing on people. Gnawing on their bags. People came here to feel something. To get an experience. Now you so much as tap someone with yer tail and you’ll get a bunch of lawyers bearing down on us, again.” A hammer jangled at Pat’s side like a big iron, sweat collecting in the wrinkles of his gray uniform and forehead.“Guy, the world’s gone soft.”Someone next us on the Pterodactyl Terror Shot screamed—a bungee type thing over the pond filled with swan boats in the middle of the park. You sign a contract for “liability” sake and pay extra for it. I’d never done it, but I’d watched my brother launch over the pond. Saw the worry on mom’s face as he soared.“So you fix things?” I asked Pat, really quiet and real close, my plastic teeth scraping his waxy ear. I waved at kids like I’d seen people do on the floats for the 4th of July parade back home. “Fix things? Guy!” He swatted at my maw. “If you’re being simple about it, sure, but I notice things. Things no one else notices.” In front of us, a little girl tugged her dad’s arm. Mad Meteor careened in a corkscrew above.“Some stupid soccer mom bust the turnstile? My job. Plank hanging low on a coaster? My job. The freezer in the Dippin’ Dots cart overheats? My job. If there’s too much shit for me to do? I tell the ne'er do wells mannin’ the rides what needs fixin’. And customer-staff relations? Oh, I track that too Martin.”“Um, what’s—it’s Mortimer—”“Yup, I’ve been around long enough to know how people are. See her?” he pointed at the little girl and the two men holding her hands. “She’s only been listening to her uncle and her dad hates that.”“How do you know they’re brothers?”“What else would they be?”I didn’t respond.“Them three come here a lot, yeah. The girl loves it when yuh scalies fall over. Saw Gordy faceplant last year and that little girl laughed so hard she almost gave me an ulcer.” I could fall. Did it all the time. Tripping over nothing. Hesitating whenever I rounded a corner or stopped at a 4-way. I was an expert at making mistakes for no good reason, and now I had one.I ran out in front of the family and stumbled into a trash can. Melted ice cream and soiled paper bowls full of crusty chili like dry blood spilled all over the baked concrete. The men glared. The little girl shrieked. For some reason the Peanuts theme song was playing over the speakers. “Stupid stupid! Isn’t he stupid?”“Come on Olivia,” one man said.“We don’t call people stupid,” said the other. He whispered, “...in front of them.” I remembered how I felt when I was a kid. How I knew there was someone in the suit but how it was more fun to imagine something else was making them stomp and roar and make their way through the world.“Stupid, stuuuupid!” The girl pointed.I wriggled on the ground until the girl’s giggles were out of earshot, then stood up, cotton candy stuck to my mesh eye holes so it was hard to see. Pat came over and wiped it off. “You’re a natch-u-ral Mikey!” Everything is a bit when you’re wearing a dinosaur suit. No matter what stupid shit I did, someone would want me.***
Home feels different when you get back after a new job, and my studio apartment in Mt. Pleasant didn’t feel like much of a home to begin with. I had a lawn chair in front of the TV, a mattress I’d spent an hour contorting to fit in the Camry for the drive from the west side, a bunch of Faygo varieties in the vegetable tray of the fridge, and a series of Stouffer's frozen casseroles.It didn't make any sense why the city I was in was called Mt. Pleasant either. There aren’t any real mountains in Michigan, and all the best parts, all the big lakes were about as far away as they could be. The only water in walking distance was a tiny stream behind my apartment complex flanked by two golf courses and a strip mall containing a Subway, a Family Fare, and a pole-dancing studio. The walls of the apartment were thin, but sometimes that made life more exciting. Guessing that banging sound next door gave me something else to do besides playing Halo and watching Jurassic Park—you gotta enmesh yourself in your life in the character, or at least, that’s what people like Daniel Day Lewis do, right? He’s a good actor, I’d heard. It was a small space, but that was okay. Too much space and you start to feel like you should have more stuff, or even moreso, someone to share that space with.After I’d get back every day, I’d shed my suit and drape it on the lawn chair in the living room. I’d crack open a cold Red Pop Faygo and sit down. Boot up my Xbox. My brother always gave me shit for the living room lawn chair at Mom’s house. I say having cupholders is important, and I couldn’t afford a full-ass recliner on a dino salary.During the first few weeks Mom texted me a lot. Eventually, because she kept asking the same questions, I started calling her instead of texting back.“Hey.”“So, how'd today go?”“It went fine.”“...and?”“That’s it. Nothing to report.”“The apartment okay?”“It’s alright. Kinda small, but you know, I like that.”“How’re classes?”“Couldn’t tell you Mom. Still feeling them out.”“Are you looking for a job? You know your brother says he has a job in a warehouse over there he could get you, right?”“I know Mom.”“I’m just saying, it pays good.”“I’ll figure it out.”“I know. I know. I just hate, y’know, seeing you…y’know.”That’s how most of our conversations went. Tip-toeing around each other until either of us had the stomach to bear our grievances, then backing down anyway. Our family was easy that way. Life was easier that way.***
By the end of the first month, I was the Mickey Fucking Mouse of dinosaurs, stalking people on all fours, bobbing my floppy muzzle like a bird. I became a skilled practitioner of Cretaceous Cardio, started looking at myself naked in the busted bathroom mirror, watching those little love handles I’d earned doing nothing with my life and dating no one melt away. Even better, they announced a year-round initiative. They’d have a winter carnival in the off months and build an event space to make up lost revenue from the Gordy incident. I’d have a stable gig where I didn’t have to man a register and put on a face. No one would have to see my crooked smile. My yellow teeth.Once my routes became ritual, I realized everything at Triassic from when I was a kid was still there. The horses-dressed-as-ankylosaurs. The viking-boat-turned-megalodon. A random Harley Davidson they still had on display, because why not. The park proved that time doesn’t actually change everything like Mom was telling me more and more every year. I kept pictures saved of every ride for when I was ready to tell her what I was really doing in Mt. Pleasant. Once I’d proven I could make it here on my own. Maybe, once I’d found someone to share the apartment with.Besides Pat, none of the other staff talked to me, so I didn’t talk to them. From the conversations I overheard in the break room or behind the rides, they treated the place like it was just a stepping stone on the way to their next big thing. As if everyone can have the next big thing. You know what was a big thing? Dinosaurs. To be a dinosaur is to embrace nostalgia for a time we can’t be sure even existed the way we imagine. What’s wrong with that? With Pat’s tips about regulars, and late nights watching every dinosaur movie I could get my hands on, I started pulling five-star reviews. I broke in the hard plastic of the claws. Figured out how to piss without taking it off. By June, the break room was littered with pictures of Sal the Spinosaurus holding Chili’s and Olive Garden gift cards. People asked why I kept the suit on. “You don’t get anywhere without some extra commitment,” I said. Pat had told me that one day.There was this one girl though. She started the month after me. A new “scalie” called Rachel Raptor. I told Mom about her over the phone. Told her Rachel was in a class on entrepreneurship, or whatever business classes were called.Rachel and I weren’t supposed to be in the same place at the same time, but sometimes we’d cross paths in front of Coroner, right under the loop. I studied her. Waited for her to say something. She didn’t walk with the weight of her life in each step like I did. She didn’t hesitate before she did anything. She was gentle to the concrete and knelt down to let kids pet her. I wondered what she looked like underneath. I hoped she hadn’t noticed me watching. Whenever people notice me looking at them, I feel like I’ve been shot. Like one of those dreams where you’re naked and you don’t know how you ended up where or why you even are.***
Mom called to offer a trip to Florida my brother and his fiancé were going on. I held the phone to my ear while I was playing Halo, some kid shouting about how gay I was in the background. Telling me to touch grass. That I probably had no bitches.“I don’t like the beach, Mom.”“What are you doing instead?”“I told you, I’m in the campus cafeteria.” I wondered what the most convincing job was. Burrito wrapper? Sandwich crafter? Everything seemed perfectly menial.“The warehouse job pays pretty good Mort. I could talk to your broth—”“I’m good at this and I’m paid enough Mom.”“I know…what about that girl?”“I’ll keep you updated. I’m going to ask her to get coffee soon.”***
By the middle of sweat-bucket-summer, the park had spent a lot of money prepping for the new winter initiative, but numbers were down. They made some cuts to the maintenance team. Pat was busy trying to figure out what was wrong with the bolts in Quivering Timbers, whining about how he used to have a whole army of guys with tools at his disposal. I looked up at him from the ground, waiting for some other guests to walk by me. I liked watching him when I could. There’s something about a guy fixing a massive roller coaster that seems divine. The knowledge of what bolt to use, the deftness with a wrench or a drill. I dreamed of the day someone would witness me like that.Pat was asking me for a socket wrench when I heard a group of high-school kids staring at me and whispering evil teenager type shit to each other. I didn’t know what the fuck a socket wrench looked like. Just another thing I felt like I should have learned before Grandad died. I looked through the duffel bag, hoping some manly instinct would kick in. I heard the teenagers hee-haw from behind. “Losersaurus Rex,” one shouted standing in line for the Mammoth Ears.“Pervert.” another said. Despite being far shorter, squatter, and, from what I understood, better at the job than Gordy, people occasionally thought I was the same guy. Some creep. A prehistoric peeper.Pat ignored me asking him what the wrench looked like, climbed down the coaster stairs, and stuck his hand in the duffel bag.“Don’t worry Mort, most of em’ probably won’t stop sucking their mom’s teet till they’re thirty. I tell you, when I was a teenager I wasn’t hanging out at a theme park. I was in a war.” Pat shook his head, patted his hammer on his hip, “I could make an accident happen to em y’know. Rig a ride to go a little too fast when they get on.” He winked.That’s when I felt something hit my back. I’d stopped wearing anything but underwear underneath to cool off; I could feel things better that way anyway. Whatever hit me was damp. Cold. Smelled like the color blue. They’d thrown a fucking slushie at me.I stood still, boiling in my suit. Literally and metaphorically. The ice packs under my armpits had gone lukewarm. I turned to face the teens, careful to maintain my signature Spinosaurus poise; me, Poiseasaurus Rex. I saw a bush the same green-brown as my suit between the teenagers and the corner of the Mammoth Ear stand as an opportunity. All my time spent watching dinosaur movies, being patient playing Halo, listening to Pat and practicing—I had a skill. I could get payback.While the teenagers were ogling some girls coming from the waterpark, I huddled behind the bush. Waited for about three minutes. I was Saunasaurus Rex stalking his prey. When they came up to order, I sprang out and swatted at them with my rubber arms. One fell over so hard it looked like he might have shattered his elbow. He started crying. I squeezed the sound box from Ebay I’d programmed with roar sounds—a fucking steal for $10 plus shipping—over and over, standing above him making eye contact through the mesh in my mouth.The teenager reeled back to punch me, but instead he started crying. I looked back at Pat heh-heh-heh-ing and wheezing, one crooked, hairy thumb up. They ran away. I thought I would feel better.What I hadn’t noticed was the American dream-type family behind the teenagers. One with a girl and a boy and two parents that looked like they ran together at 5 in the morning before work and posted pictures of the sunrise.One of the kids, the little boy, was crying. Scared. Blonde bowl cut like I’d had. Chunky fingers despite the rest of him being a fucking twig. Looks like he’d get bullied. Like he’d play trumpet in middle school and get so angry he can’t hit high notes like the rest of the boys that he’d smash the instrument into his bed post and make his mom pay $200 to fix the rental.I tried to play stupid and ran into a wall. Being stupid’s only funny because I shouldn’t be stupid. A dinosaur should have some instinct that defends against stupidity. Some feeling of where to go and what not to do. An instinct for a successful life. No one wants someone who can’t decide what to do. The kid kept sobbing and the parents pulled him away, looking at everything but me. When I looked back, Pat shrugged. It was as good a time as any to cool down, so I went to the break room to swap out the ice packs. On the way back, I watched the ticketers at the turnstile. Saw the look of death on their faces. One swiped on their phone. I’d thought about getting on a dating app, but that meant I needed pictures. Maybe the suit would be a funny gag.When I pried the screen door open, Rachel Raptor—the girl who played her—was at the lunch table. I still had a little bit of adrenaline left from my ambush, so I sat next to her. She had this short purple hair and freckles I’d never seen on anyone before. She shifted a seat away and put the bottom half of her costume between her and me.She was drawing a cow skull adorned with snapdragons, like the one’s mom kept in her garden. Little flowers I’d spent time sticking my pudgy fingers in, imagining them coming to life. I’d make fire-breathing noises and tell mom each dragon bulb’s name, which ones was mom, dad, and the kids. I’d fabricated a whole family. A comfortable family. “Snapdragons! Right?” I blurted out, forgetting to breathe.She jumped.“Um, yeah. That’s right?”“I’m Mortimer.” I stuck out my hand.“Nice to meet you?” she didn’t grab it.Questions, right, I thought. Grandad always told me to ask questions. People are supposed to enjoy talking about themselves.“So are you doing skulls to say you’re not afraid of death or something?” I tried to mask how I’d forgotten to breathe. I did my best to stay still. To be still was to be stoic. Prehistoically-inclined.“Uh, no. I just think cow skulls are cool.”“They are pretty cool.” I caught my reflection in a mirror, stared at the inhuman eyes. My floppy mouth. Rachel stopped drawing.“So you’re…” she asked, pointing at the employee of the week pictures adorning the walls.“That’s me, yeah.” For the first time since I’d arrived, I wasn’t proud of the pictures.“You really never take off the suit, do you?”“I heard about this thing called method acting. Daniel-Day Lewis did it for—”“Yeah, I know about that. Everyone on set called him an asshole.” She looked at the door across from us for a few seconds. I felt like I was talking to an alien and no one had given me the briefing on first-contact engagement.“Do you uh, what do you do?” I asked.“I’m in art school.”“That’s cool.”“What do you do? Outside of here?”“Uhhh…well I….” I couldn’t tell her I played video games. That was too unimpressive. I thought about telling her I played music, but then she might ask to hear something. Maybe writing?“Sooo, I actually have a specific question for you. Maybe it’s a little personal.”I leaned in, terrified and excited to answer a question. Smelled her coconut shampoo. Felt too close to her. Leaned back.“I’ve got an assignment. Like an art project. I’ve gotta ask people what they’re in awe of and draw something inspired by it.”“Oh. That’s cool.”“Honestly, since you’re a total stranger,” I ground my teeth at the word stranger, “I think this is more interesting. Everyone else here is giving me normal answers.”“Well. I dunno. The ankylosaurus-horses. Pretty cool right?”“No no no, anywhere else but here. Like, you’ve never seen something or thought of someone and you just go, wow?” I thought about the last time I was home, driving on the S-shaped highway that cuts through the city, coming back from the mall movie theater to see Zombieland 2. I’d been swimming through that post-movie existentialism, blasting the jazzy theme song to Halo: ODST, pretending I was in a destroyed civilization, the one living person left behind, a hoard of invading aliens oblivious to me in the camry, swerving left and right with one hand on the wheel like I actually knew what I was doing. I got chills thinking about it. Or maybe that was just my sweat getting cold. I wondered if I smelled.“I really don’t know. Guess I never thought about it.” I said.“That’s kind of sad. I mean—sorry,’ her mouth hung open, “Uh, you should do something! Go somewhere. Everyone should have something.”I thought I was doing something. I had gone somewhere. Bumfuck nowhere.“I’ll let you know when I think of something,” I said. “Cool.” She shrugged.I’d never been so disappointed in myself that I wanted to cry before. I stood up, swapped my ice packs out for the new ones, stashed the sweaty ones next to Pat's brown bag in the fridge, and walked towards the door before Rachel had a chance to leave first. Moments like this were why I kept the suit on.***
Approaching fall, the park was getting slower. This was normal, Pat told me, like how the dips and peaks of climate change are normal. I spent my free time thinking of something to tell Rachel. Something that would show her I wasn’t just a loser in a suit. I wasn’t artsy. I considered the few times I’d gone camping with my family, watching a storm roll over Lake Michigan from the height of a dune, the view looking down from my first skyscraper in Chicago, the first time I’d nailed a trumpet solo. They all felt too normal or too lame for me to be in awe of. I avoided the break room so that I wouldn’t bump into her before I had the answer. But, when I stopped running into her under Coroner’s loop, I asked Pat if he’d seen her lately.“The weird one with the purple hair? Guy she no-call no-showed twice. No surprise there. No one wants to work any more.”***
Pat was wrong about the normal dip in park numbers. We were tanking. Management sent an email with the subject line: “WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SAVE THE DINOSAURS?”. It seemed that no amount of good reviews could make up for the worry that staff, that people like me, might be a total creep like Gordy. Not in the age of internet memes and Twitter.Pat and I spent more time by the central pond. He said he’d planted fish in it fifteen years ago to give himself something to do on lunch break.“Ain’t got no mercury poisonin’ in them like the big lakes neither.” All I knew about mercury was that it’s the stuff that they put in thermometers. Did someone dump a bunch of thermometers in the great lakes? People call things like that accidents all the time. Like they’re pretending it isn’t anyone’s fault. But you have to try hard to fuck something up that bad. I suspected a conspiracy somewhere, like how people said Obama turned the frogs gay.“So why are you actually here, Mort?” “I don’t know. I like it. I’m good at it.”“That’s right.” I watched him catch a couple bluegills, or at least, that’s what he called them. I didn’t think their gills looked blue. I never understood catch-and-release. It seemed cruel, especially in a place like this. As if the fish stuck in the theme park pond hadn’t had enough. As if they weren’t doing the best they could with the pond they were stuck in.***
I stuck with Pat by the pond instead of my routes after the third round of layoffs. A bunch of empty swan boats where normal people who loved each other used to fill up bobbled. Pat had a bouquet of pink work orders tucked in his belt. “Guy, hasn’t been this bad since a guy’s safety belt came loose on Chix—, Chic… Chaclub, oh fuck whatever it’s called.”“Chicxulub?”“Yeah, that one.”He spat on the ground.“You know what Mort? You could be Donald Duck. Go on down to Florida and make them Disney bucks, but you’re here. Doing work that matters in a place that people forgot was good to them.”“I’m too old for Disney Pat.”“Guy, too old like the ocean’s too blue.”“What?”“I was younger ‘n you in ‘n Vietnam.”“I know.”Next to us, one of the few mothers left and her two sons were petting an Ankylosaurus-horse while the handler explained how their tails were clubs. One kid reached for the horse’s exposed leg and his mom yanked him so hard the kid dropped his Dippin’ Dots. He watched them melt. The mom said, “I told you to be careful!” and they walked away, her son reaching back towards his coveted, disposable plastic bowl. The kid started crying. His brother looked up at the sun stupidly. It was Sal’s time to shine.I ran to the ice cream stand and got some more. I stomped over and handed him the cup, holding on with both of my stubby plastic claws. His mom went, “Oh that’s not necessary. Oh, thank you so much.” I pretended to gobble the ice cream the boy had dropped like a predator gnashing at its prey, shoving my face into the concrete and smashing my roar button over and over, like pressing harder would make it sound any different.The kid stopped crying. He pointed and looked at his mom while his older brother fried his eyeballs in the sun. The younger one looked like he had something important to say, like he’d just had an epiphany.Maybe that was it—that look on that kid’s face. The way you can fabricate a good memory out of nothing for someone. That was the closest I’d ever come to being in awe of anything.***
In early fall—that fake fall where you know it’s going to get muggy and shitty again but you try to enjoy the little time you have left anyway, hoping this time it will be different—Pat was fixing the Chicxulub Impactor, arguing with himself about how to pronounce it. The asteroid that was supposed to smash into the plastic-mold crater was broken. It was going too fast. Crashing into the crater with a real force over and over again. No safety breaks.“What happened to the guy who’s harness came off on the coaster?”“Splat,” Pat said, not taking his eyes off the electric panel.“I mean what happened to the park? When did things get better?”“I ever tell you the story about the kid in the rice patty, Mort?”“What?” “We were up in Da Nang.” Pat leaned against a fake stone wall with plastic vines hanging down, wiping the sweat from his stubble with an already-dirty rag. I knew how these war stories went. Those memories had swelled up inside Grandad until he was bloated with them. Told me all about it on his deathbed. Dead friends. Dead kids. Dead dreams. He sent my grandmother a letter and told her to start finding someone else because he didn’t think he’d survive.“Little kid missing half his hair comes up to us asking for candy every single day while we’re working on a bridge over a patty. Even has this little pet monkey who follows him around. Asks if he can sit with us in the jeep.” Pat turned and smacked the meteor so hard it fell off the metal spring. I reached down and picked the plastic rock up as he talked. It was heavier than I expected.“One day, kid walks up and says his monkey has a present for us. Has this thing wrapped in flimsy paper. I thought it was a gift.” Pat took the asteroid out of my hand, held it up to the sun like an offering. “Turns out, it’s one of our grenades. I threw it back in the kid’s direction. Didn’t mean to. Just instinct.” He twisted the asteroid back on the pole. Every problem I had seemed infinitely small. I imagined a young version of Pat. Him and a wife swigging Diet Coke in their kitchen dancing to oldies. Them in a swan boat.“That’s fucked up.”“Guy, that ain’t the worst that happened. Wanna know what’s really funny?”I knew that wasn’t really a question.“The monkey got away. Not a scratch on ‘em.” Pat laughed, and whacked the asteroid again for good measure. That fixed it. We sat there and watched it, the fate of the dinosaurs playing over and over again the way it always had, like a cautionary tale told too many times to mean anything anymore.***
When I was a kid, my birthday being in early September was good because it’s pretty far from Christmas and I’d get gifts in the middle of the year-ish. Now I was just excited for Labor Day. Despite me not responding to her for a few weeks, Mom had sent me a Visa gift card. We called. She asked about Rachel and I told her she was gone and she’d said something in that Mom voice that made me feel like a boy in the worst way possible. I put on the button-up Mom had gotten me. Took out all the pins and needles knowing I’d never be able to fold it back the way it came. I’d lost weight so the clothes didn’t fit me right. I tried to tuck the shirt in, but it made me look like an old man or one of those churchy kids you knew would turn out to be a sicko one day. I went to the coffee shop I’d planned on going to with Rachel, hoping that I might see her. Argue for why our shared vocation was something deserving of awe.When I got there, the coffee shop was busy. There was a line with people who had the money for good-fitted clothes and who knew how to wear them, but no Rachel. I thought about leaving, but I pictured someone noticing me leaving after walking in—like someone would see a squirrely guy who can’t decide what to do and go what’s his problem?I ordered a mocha latte because I knew mocha means chocolate. I sat down in a cubby. When a woman walked into the cubby, I felt like I was intruding on her space, so I moved to the bar against the wall where people usually set up their laptops, next to a little library. I grabbed a book about dinosaurs—Triassic infected the whole town. There was a chapter listing alternative theories to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs: an ice age, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, all perfectly reasonable things to stop something from living to its full potential. I wondered, who would I hold onto if the world ended like that tomorrow? What would I do? I looked at everyone in the coffee shop. The smiles. The focus. The contentment and normality they exuded. How comfortable they were in their own skin.Rachel hadn’t even been her real name.***
The nail in the coffin for Triassic was the kid that died on Timbers, just an hour before closing on one of the last days we were going to keep the coasters open. Right when it was getting cool enough for me to stop wearing ice packs. After one of the guys running the coaster saw the bloody body in the cab, he called the ambulance. From what I could overhear, it was a plank that had been dangling too low. Our boss sent a group text saying we can’t talk to anyone, not that I wanted to, reminding us of the NDA we signed. They also mentioned the winter festival was on hold indefinitely. I went back to the swan pond and found Pat fishing like I thought I would. Nothing we could do but wait for the paramedics to get here and pronounce the kid dead. To pronounce the park dead.“I’m a damn good repairman, but I’m not God,” he said. The few guests on the other side were being shooed away, confused and complaining that they’d paid for their tickets, that they’d planned these couple days months in advance, just to bring their families here. “Management cutting my team killed that kid. Not me.”By the time the paramedics had left and the few remaining customers had been ushered out, it was getting dark. The inside of the park looked like a level in a video game without any NPCs walking around. Triassic was going to be one of those abandoned places you see on TruTV with a poorly reenacted story about that kid who died haunting it, or something like that. “You afraid Pat?”“Afraid of living long enough I want to die, maybe.”We could see the reflection of Coroner and Timbers in the pond. It was beautiful. Like two contorted snake-fish water dinosaur things in a mating ritual. I think Rachel would have dug that. I wished she were here so I could tell her about it. She’d probably noticed already, but it’d be something to say.“You ever thought about building one of your own?” I asked. It was a stupid question but anything not about the dead kid was better than nothing.“My own what, Mort?”“Roller coaster.”“Haven’t,” he said. Then he gulped. The coasters wriggled in the pond water. “Fixing things is a helluva lot different than building them.”“It’s getting cold,” I said.“Starting to think I should have worn a suit like you right now,” Pat said, laughed, then coughed.“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, Pat.”“Well, guy, I don’t know either. Guess I could do something with the old swingset in my backyard now.”“You have grandkids?”“No.”I stared.“Guy! Something wrong with a grown man having a swingset?”“No. I guess not.”“You could help me fix it up if yuh want.”“Not good with my hands,” I said, flopping my pleather arms.“Just need someone to hammer nails.”“I’d probably break it.”“I’ll pay you a fair wage.”How? I thought, but I didn’t say it.“I’m going to the top of Timbers,” he said. You wanna come?”“Not really.”“Gonna pussy out the last time you could ever do this? Regret’s a bitch Mortimer, trust me.”“Fine.”I followed Pat to the Timbers entrance, to the open air and narrow stairs bolted along the coaster’s track. There was a sign that said “AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY”. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was trespassing.“You gunna keep gawking at me or are you gunna grow some dino-gonads to match yer skin?”I followed him to the stairs.“Told you you wasn’t a loser.” He grinned.Our weight bent the steps. I kept my muzzle pointed up. The costume broke the wind for me mostly, but I could see Pat’s arms shaking as he grasped the splintered handrail. He looked brittle for the first time since I’d met him in the parking lot.When we reached the top Pat was squinting so hard it seemed like the creases would stick together. We sat in the two-by-four box at the top of the first peak, the highest peak, the Triassic Park flag waving wicked beside them. A cartoon version of Sal—of me—flailing next to us. Pat sat down so his legs hung over the side, the swan boats swirling below. It almost looked like they were alive, celebrating their freedom. I pointed my snout at Pat and waited for him to say something, but nothing came out besides guttural sighs and the occasional “yup” or “guy”. I mulled over options for conversation until a question busted out of me like an alien.“You ever been in awe of anything Pat?” I said it so stupidly. Pat didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not. “I mean, have you ever seen something and just gone, like, wow, this is impossible and I can’t explain wh—”“I heard yuh.” Pat looked up, almost shocked, smiling. “Whaddabout this view, eh?” Before us was a sea of trees that surrounded the park grounds. Blinking lights above Chicxulub and Coroner. Headlamps from the final cars blinking through the slants of the trees all around the park. In the corner of my eye, I caught a stray dog pissing on a tree.“Gotta be honest with you Mort.”“What?”“The kid and the monkey,” Pat’s face was a rock, “there was no damn monkey.” He took the hammer off his belt and started tapping it on a loose nail sticking out of the wood posts, then hammering it. He kept hammering after the nail had all but disappeared into the dry, rotted wood. “I just shot that kid cuz he scared me.”We just heard the wind for a while.“It’s a nice view, yeah,” I said. In twilight, the cracks in the parking lot looked like a face. Like it was watching and waiting for us to realize something together. I stood up and crossed my arms. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. Stared at the plunge down.“Welp.” Pat slapped his knees and groaned as he stood back up. “S’pose it’s time to retire.” He looked at the water below too. The sun dipping behind a cloud was making it harder to see the reflections.“So you’ll come around to help with the swingset?” he asked.“Sure,” I said.I turned and walked down the stairs expecting him to follow me. I heard his tools jangling, then nothing. I didn’t look back. I was too worried he wouldn’t be there. On the way down the steps, I imagined holding Rachel’s hand. When I reached the turnstiles, I stopped. Looked around. Took off the suit and draped it over a ticketing station. I walked back to the camry in nothing but my underwear, keys jangling in my hand. I texted mom that I was coming home. I got in the car, and pretended Rachel was in the passenger seat. Told her everything I was in awe of. July 24, 2024
Interviews & Reviews
TRANSMISSIONS: nathan’s nook
Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles book podcasts and youtubers.Nathan is an aries who spends his time avoiding real life responsibilities with literary fiction and foreign films, having existential crises in dressing rooms, and drinking too much coffee. Hailing from Los Angeles, he currently lives in Korea where he tries to embody Joan Didion by day and Eve Babitz by night. His novella, Adolescence Leaves explores loss and love in memories of a relationship ripped apart between Los Angeles and Tokyo. You can find Nathan on Instagram or Youtube. Or at any of the links here.Rebecca Gransden: How would you describe the channel to someone who is unfamiliar with what you do?Nathan Truong: Tiny bags, big brain books, cold brews, and clubbing.RG: Does the channel have a mission or manifesto?NT: I make it known that: “I read because reading is sexy, and if you’re not reading, you’re not sexy.” I demand you pick up a book.RG: How long has the channel been in existence, and how have you seen it grow over that time?NT: The channel is a little over a year old now heading to year two in March 2024. Growth has been gradual, and it has been such an incredible experience discovering different booktubers. In the lit fic niche, everyone is so kind, smart, and wonderful. I’ve made such incredible friendships that I felt I’ve been missing my entire bookish life.RG: Where did the idea for the channel come from?NT: I originally started the channel because I never had a physical place or person to talk books with. Reading is such a solitary act, but when you come out of it, you desperately want to connect because the world that you encompassed yourself in after however many pages has ended. There is a reaching. So, I reached out online and it’s been incredible to talk about books with so many people now.RG: How did you decide upon a title for the channel?NT: I wanted alliteration out of the channel name with my own. Something easy, something simple. RG: Are there any channels that influenced or encouraged you to start the project?NT: I have to pay thanks to @rebeccaeatsbooks for giving me the jumpstart in starting booktube. She only filmed from her phone and I thought, why not? I also have to thank @cjreads for showing me the lit fic world and allowing myself to find a personal brand within how I wanted to present books and myself.My last thanks goes to @whatpageareyouon for his review of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous for speaking so thoughtfully of the book when I had no one around me to talk to about it. His video appeared first in the Youtube search engine and validated a lot of feelings I had about the book. It also made me realize Youtube as a space to talk about books.RG: Which of your videos would you recommend to someone who is new to what you do?NT: It would have to be the Book Recommendation Tag Video as it’s a pretty good look at some of the books I read if you’re curious about my reading tastes.Another good video is this LA Vlog capturing bits and bobs of Sula, Breasts and Eggs, and my general life and vibe. It’s short, non-committal. So, a very good appetizer to the channel.RG: How do you go about selecting what to feature on each video?NT: I’m in the camp of long-form content, so whatever I have as backlog footage, I try to piece together to make a 30-40 minute video that is somewhat coherent. Otherwise, if there’s a specific book I want to feature, I will do a singular vlog on the book.RG: If your channel features guests, how do you go about finding them?NT: Location location location! I had the chance to meet Modern Ajumma (@yenasung) when I was home in LA because we live quite close to each other. And I had the chance to meet @bibliosophie because she lives in New York and I was there when I was on vacation. Meeting booktubers in person has been such a pleasure and I hope to meet many more in the near future.RG: If you are a writer, has the channel impacted your writing life? and conversely, has a writerly disposition influenced the channel?NT: I am indeed a writer! The books I read for the channel have lent an eye into what kind of fiction I want to create and has helped me with my proofreading and edits. What to keep, what to cut. Naturally, more reading calls for better writing.In the near future, I want to feature more writing/reading vlogs because, whether I like it or not, I’m a brand. And the brand has got to be branding!RG: Do you watch videos about books?NT: Being part of booktube ultimately means involving yourself in the worlds of other booktubers. It’s community I’m after. Watching booktube has also put incredible books on my never-ending tbr.RG: What do you dislike about book videos?NT: Hot Take: I HATE when people read the back of books (though I am sometimes guilty of this) but I don’t care for the synopses of books. I’d rather hear how a booktuber emotionally resonates with the book. The mood, the vibe, what it reminds them of. I think those emotional ties with the book are what connects me a lot better with the video and the book.RG: Who is your dream guest?NT: I hope to feature more casual chit chats with booktubers with Youtube Lives or Zoom calls. Would love to have a fireside chat with @alsopato about books, movies, music, etc.RG: Is there a theme, subject or book you are burning to cover?NT: I’m hoping to do a Clarice Lispector tier list video as I am a Lispector stan. We worship her!RG: Is there a lit channel that doesn’t exist, but you wish did?NT: I love watching vlogs. Combining the everyday with lit fic is something I want to see more of in the booktube-sphere. RG: Is there a lit channel that exists, but you wish didn’t?NT: The lit fic niche is so small. There are so many other genres of fiction that get a lot of love, but lit fic is incredibly important in how we navigate through the world and interlink our lives with others. We need more lit fic stans.RG: For techheads, which single item of kit do you consider essential for the production of the channel, and what would you say are the basics needed for those new to videos?NT: I think the big question is always camera-centric. The channel started out with an iPhone 12 Mini and is now filmed with an iPhone 13 Pro Max. In my opinion, Apple is the best in terms of sound, video, and stabilization for daytime and nighttime filming.RG: If someone would like to support independent creators, what are the best ways to do this?NT: The best way to support is to connect. You can do this with a comment, a follow, a like, a share. Because the booktube community is so interlinked, we’re all bound to be talking of each other, bouncing ideas back and forth, and, essentially, reading the same books.RG: Looking back on the channel, are there favorite videos, videos that stand out to you, or videos that didn’t go as you would’ve liked?NT: Yes, I play favorites. Everything is a work in progress, but I do consider "we just want to make our mistakes" vlog a shift in the way I read books and read a bit closer to the text by the line of life. The video is mostly about Parade by Rachel Cusk, but also about Heti's recent Alphabetical Diaries, and how autofiction is working between the two.Another video that I cherish a lot is my All Fours | Miranda July vlog. It's a special book with special times that capture the whimsy of the entire book. It's who I am.RG: What are your plans for the future?NT: More books, more coffee, more clubbing, and more honest, open, and compelling conversations around books. And I demand there be more sexy readers.RG: If you liked that, you may also like this. Are there any lit channels on a similar wavelength to your own that you would recommend to a viewer who appreciates what you do?NT: The best influencers are your friends. So check out all my friends. Love them as much as I do.@kiranreader @thelefthandedreader6632 @benjaminjournal @soireadthisbook @TheBarandtheBookcase @batumanslittleidiot @MatthewSciarappa @katsfieldnotes @DogEaredMusings @pleasuresofthetext @Grandpasbookclub @rebareads@benreadsgood@TheDiscoKingOfficial @lucyrutherford @nadsluvs2read @noorsbookshelf @jameskatie @savidgereadsnathan’s nook can be found on YouTube.
July 23, 2024
Fiction
GO TO HELL by Katherine Plumhoff
I thought I knew what hot was. Humidity I could swallow. The wings of dead fish flies going translucent in the sun. Sprinkles melting off my ice cream cone the second I walk out of the shop. There is no ice cream here. There are plenty of dead things, but they are not stiff and quiet. They buzz. Shake. Scream. If I think about them for too long they’re all I can see. All I can hear. I like to imagine it’s a particularly exotic vacation. A desired hot — one I spent money on and rolled up all my clothes into small balls for.Before, vacations felt like something being done to me. It didn’t matter if I filled every hour with an activity, pinballing from tasting room to walking tour to theater, or if I sprawled on a towel and tried to doze. The time away had the texture, rough and abrasive, of an exfoliating mitt. I never knew what it would reveal in me. My last vacation ruined me.
***
D runs the paddle brush down one side of her hair and then the other. She presses argan oil into each side until it’s a glossy, nutty brown that reminds me of the wood inlays of my dad’s old car. The heat protectant goes on as a spray. The straightener sizzles as D runs it down her hair.D is soft textures and shiny surfaces — thigh-high suede boots, slinky paisley skirt — except for her earrings, two waning moons whose points cut into her rosy cheeks when she turns her head. Her rings glint in the low light and she shrugs on a canvas blazer. "I've never done this," she says, her dark eyes glancing down as she drags her finger over the thread that keeps the blazer’s pockets shut. "I've been saving it for now."I want her to break it. I want her to mar her smooth lines of her own volition. “Do it,” I whisper. She doesn’t hear me.She rips the pocket open and smiles. “That’s it for now!” she says. “I’ll be going live again from the top of the Duomo later today, so make sure your notifications are on!”I put my phone away. I open up the album I’ve made of screenshots from her Lives, in which I can see different corners of her apartment. I soothe myself with what now looks familiar: the skylight, stamped into the sloping roof above her bed; the once-white enamel hotplate that is her only kitchen appliance; the wardrobe cabinet distinguishable from the storage cabinet by the candy-colored Anthropologie table runner that hangs down it. These wisps of knowledge give structure to the scenes I invent for when I confront her. I will be adult about it, thoughtful. I’ll bring over food that doesn’t have to be heated up. An abundance of cold dips. Baba ganoush, maybe. She served it once when her friends from America came to visit. I scroll to the screenshots from that dinner, see heaps of pallid mush on daisy plates she brought over in one of her five giant duffels when she moved from London to Milan. She’d wrapped them on a Live, swaddling them in wide-legged twill trousers that looked too thin to be effective cushioning. I watched her stack them, one on top of the other, oblivious to how easily they break.***
I’ve come to Italy to see D. I’ve followed her since last year, when Paul stopped fucking me in order to fuck her. She moved here six months ago. I held out till now to come, though I put a flight tracker on as soon as she announced the move. Two hours to get to Gatwick, a two-hour flight to Malpensa, a 40-minute bus drive down flat, gray roads papered with flat, gray billboards in front of flat, gray buildings. Five hours of travel and an hour of milling around in the airport, avoiding the food court and swiping £180 eye serums across the patch of skin above my mask and underneath my glasses. Six hours, maybe, in total. Six hours is nothing. I’m used to American distances. I’ve driven that long to saw through thick steak and push it around a plate in a chain restaurant — a neutral place my parents’ and grandparents’ propriety wouldn’t let them scream in — before turning around and driving home.***
Paul didn’t tell me her name but I found her easily enough. I told myself I wouldn’t look him up after he told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore, but I got around that by looking up his friends, and I saw her tagged in a poorly-framed shot someone on his rugby team had posted of the team and their various hangers-on at a pub in Camden. She was standing in front of big foggy windows and was the best dressed of anyone present, wearing an embroidered denim Free People suit. She had mussed lips and a red chin I recognized as courtesy of Paul’s beard burn. It looked different on her complexion than it did on mine, but I could tell, and two weeks later, it was confirmed by a video his school friend posted of a gallery opening in Shoreditch, where Paul’s hand, pale and finely scarred like old vellum, rested on the back of her delicate neck. The two of them stood in front of an oil painting of drying laundry strung across a dusty balcony in Andalucia. Their bodies stayed touching from shoulders to hip until the camera panned away.***
I started watching D’s get-ready-with-me Lives. I followed her antique shopping. Her trips to poetry readings in members’ clubs where her friends read unstructured pieces about fertility treatments. Sometimes I saw Paul, glowing like he’d been professionally lit, smiling the half-smile he prefers because it hides his small teeth. Then D went dark for an entire month. Nothing new came up, no matter how often I refreshed, and I worried she’d blocked me. I started checking on her from the account I manage for the gallery I work for. She reappeared there a few weeks later, announcing her move to Italy. She’d stream to us as she walked to Pilates, to therapy, to the Italian lessons she was taking to “reconnect with her heritage.” She walked everywhere. I told the gallery I needed to work remotely for health reasons. I watched her in bed, blinds drawn, my phone growing hot in my hand.***
I get dressed for the Duomo from the top down. Tortoiseshell sunglasses. My thick blue sweater and loose brown corduroys, though little of my outfit will be visible under my coat. When I get the notification that D’s gone live again, this time from the Cathedral’s entrance, I slip on brown Chelsea boots and walk to the elevator, where I tap through Stories as I get sucked down to the lobby.***
I want thousands of people to witness every moment of my life and I want those moments to be perfect tableaux of wealth and good taste, each carousel soaked in contentment: hand-thrown pottery in cornflower blues transitioning to a rainy city street strewn with streetlamp light transitioning to me in a billowy blouse, open-mouthed and laughing. I want the people who witness me living well to be famous in their own chosen careers, blue-ticked and beautiful. I want to see and be seen at London Fashion Week and go straight to Milan Fashion Week after having RSVP’d no to New York Fashion Week because I needed some time to rest, some time to nest, some time to walk barefoot over the underfloor heating of my three-story townhouse where I host parties and serve artisanal bread and eight kinds of cheese to people who don’t eat.I want to be the one they all watch.***
I thought the shift in the tone of D’s Lives meant Paul had dumped her when she moved. I would still see her one day, I knew, but my daydreams of our time together changed. I’d be magnanimous, the hatchet fully buried, and invite her to aperitivos. We’d sit across a small metal table and our voices would rise with every round, until we’d be walking down a cobblestone road with our arms around each other, laughing at stories about the man who didn’t love us, wrapping ourselves in solidarity.Then Paul posted from Milan. (I’d seen this upon checking his profile a few weeks into sleeping with a man who was in the ensemble of the Oklahoma! revival, when I thought I was over Paul and wanted to confirm that hypothesis. I should have known better. You can only ever get over a man with a better one, and this one shouted “Yee-haw!” in an American accent when he came.) Paul had said he was too busy to go to Paris with me when the gallery sent me to cover the first international show of an Irish artist they’d signed. The artist cross-stitched portraits of male politicians in drag, and I stood in front of them, alone, pouring drinks for the balding would-be buyers and the waifs that accompanied them. While D wasn’t in his pictures from his trip to Milan, he posted a story at the natural wine bar I knew was D’s favorite. In it, a dismembered female hand poured opaque pink wine from a labelless bottle.***
I’m climbing to the top of the Duomo. I saw in D’s Live that she and the German girl she’s been hanging out with since she moved are sitting on the roof, answering questions from her followers and showing them the view.The roof isn’t as corded-off as I thought it would be. Nothing could be that high and that gothically depressive in America without chin-high fences to discourage jumpers. The Madonnina, gold-leafed and gleaming, is looking up into her crown of stairs, as if she’s already interceding on behalf of the faithful swarming her.On my phone, D is talking into the camera about how this is her first time at the top of the Cathedral even though she’s lived here for months. “We didn’t go to bed until four but we weren’t going to miss this,” she says. “We pre-bought the tickets!”In front of me, D and her friend are sitting atop a marble ledge in the wan winter sun, D’s face tilted down into her front camera. They’re framed between columns capped with gargoyles. It looks like they’re floating between graves. I make my way over to them.Two little kids in puffy jackets dart in front of me and line up behind one of the slats that make up the roof. They climb up it, then scoot down gingerly, half a foot at a time, before scampering back into line to do it again. I close out of D’s Live and watch as a little girl in a toggle-front coat and a fan of dark hair lands at the bottom of the slide. Her shoes thwack against the marble and she waves in my direction. I turn and see, between D and me, a woman sitting against a column. She has a scarf tucked around her face and over the shape of a bun. She’s not encouraging the girl’s fun but she’s not discouraging it, either. On another day, D and I could have laughed at how cute these little European kids and their little European grandmother are, how much joy there is to go around; we could have taken turns on the makeshift slide, inching towards the saw-toothed city below. Today, here, now, on the roof, I open my camera and start filming as I walk closer to D. “Remember to put the 1st of March in your diary,” I hear D say. “I’m going to the season premiere of The Mandalorian and I’m bringing you all with me!”“Did I ever tell you how I gave my first handjob to Star Wars?” the German girl says.“You’re so lucky I just turned off Live,” says D. “Otherwise your DMs would be absolutely flooded with filth.”The girls start laughing and I’m there, I’m right next to them, the sun is shining and we’re all laughing at the joke, and I go up to D and her friend and stick out my hand to introduce myself.“Hello!” I say, already laughing.D squints at me. “Do I know you?” she asks politely. I take off my sunglasses and D’s face goes slack. “Hi, D.”“Shit!” she says. I wait for her to calm down.“This is Paul’s crazy ex,” she says to her friend. She turns back to me. “Why are you here?” she asks, shirking away from where I’m standing.I didn’t think D would recognize me. I follow her, but she doesn’t follow me. She has hundreds of thousands of followers and Paul deleted the two pictures he’d had up of us after he left me. I thought I’d have to explain to her who I was, tell her details about Paul — the acne scars scattered across his shoulders in pencil-eraser pink — for her to believe me.This isn’t how I wanted it to begin. I can hear the kids screaming and I want to start over. “I just—” I start, stammering a bit.“Have you not bothered me enough?” D says. She turns to the German girl. Her cheeks go pallid under her bronzer and her eyes rake across the people behind us, all of whom are consumed in their own moments of communion with the church or with their cameras. “She’s the one who messaged me saying that Paul was cheating on me, who called me 15 times a day until I changed my number.”My stomach starts to roil. I was meant to have the upper hand here. I breathe deep, counting one, two, three. I pitch my voice low: “I only want to talk. I thought you should know—”“Wait, this is the freak who sent copies of your nudes to your house?” asks the German, stepping closer to me.Ever since Paul had left his Google profile logged into my work laptop, I reviewed his emails with my morning coffee. In August, D sent him a series of shots from her vacation in Biarritz. I’d simply printed them out and sent them to the address I found on his Amazon receipt for a women's rash guard. I did write “slut” across them before sending, but considering the content, that seemed irrefutable.“Yes! I literally moved to get away from her!” D’s arm flails between us. “You emailed my mum and told her I was sleeping with my primary school teacher!” “Okay, but—” I say, reaching out to D.D scrambles farther back on the marble ledge. There’s not much space left, and she loses her balance. As she falls backwards, her legs fly up in a tangle of knees. She looks graceful even now, windmilling into nothing. “Jesus fucking Christ!” shouts the German, running to D. “Get the fuck away from us!” she screams at me, her loose blonde hair sparkling in the light. “Aiuto! Aiuto!”It’s all gone wrong. I don’t want D to die, not really; it would get her out of Paul’s life but it wouldn’t get me back in. I run to the ledge, German girl’s imperatives ignored. I see her there, balanced on a thin ledge, centimeters away from a catastrophic fall. The city below her looks tiny, the people too petite to be real.I reach my hand down to where the German girl has already been reaching. My arms are longer, and I’m stronger, and together, we haul D up one fistful of fabric at a time, fishermen bringing in the catch. D’s feet touch the ground and I try to pull her towards me. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”“Go to hell,” she spits.And so I do. The hallowed ground yawns open and swallows me down, depositing me in a slump at the gates of hell. When I can bear looking upwards, I find the gates’ inscription: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. It would make for a good caption, I think. Back on earth, on the roof of the Duomo under a blue-flame sky, my phone clatters onto the slanted marble where I just stood, still recording. July 22, 2024
Micros
STUMP REMOVAL by Andrew Graham Martin
I saw a sign for stump removal and found myself wishing I had a stump that needed removing.Or, more exactly, I wished that should I ever have a stump that needed removing I’d see a sign like that one. Or, put yet another way, I wished that in my life I could see the things I need to see right when I need to see them. Not before, and not after.
July 21, 2024
Micros
DAD FIGHTS by Matt Rowan
“Sometimes dads fight,” Dad says. “It’s just a thing we have to do sometimes.” That’s how Dad explained it to me the first time, and he hasn’t bothered explaining it in any greater depth since. Every spring my dad starts preparing to fight again. He spends long hours in the garage with his misshapen Everlast heavy bag he bought from DICK’S Sporting Goods many years ago. “It does the trick,” he says, bareknuckling it with even more gusto. He’s fighting the same fight he’s been fighting since I was born, something about some kind of disagreement that nobody really remembers the details of, but my dad has never forgotten, and is not willing to let go. It’s not totally clear who he thinks he’s fighting, either. He only ever referred to them as his “adversaries,” adding that they “need to be taught a lesson,” and “soon we’ll all know who’s the better man.” Then beginning on June 21st at dusk, he sets off to go fight. He might not be home till morning, he tells us. He might be a little bruised when he gets back, but he insists I’m not to worry about him too much. This is all simply what he must do.Mom has said it’s best to let him have this. “Try not to make a big deal out of it,” she has said. “It’ll only fuel his will to fight all the more if you do.” But it’s not as though Dad can be stopped even if we all wanted to stop him. He becomes a living rampage. I just go about hugging him every night, the same as always, wishing him luck. I always remind him I’ll be there to dab his wounds in the morning.
July 20, 2024
Creative Nonfiction
DEALBREAKERS by Rachel Dorn
Would you date a dying girl I type in the message box. My thumb hovers over the send button. I hit delete.What are ur dealbreakers I type instead.
****************
We don’t say terminal anymore, Janessa, my support group leader, says on one of our monthly Zoom calls. We say incurable. Because, you know, people can live a long time with this now. What doesn’t need to be said is that not all of us will.****************
In the months after I find out I have an incurable heart and lung disease, I spend a lot of time thinking about a man. All my journal entries mention him. I spend pages dissecting our FaceTime calls, the look he gives me when I say I have to go, his insistence that I call him right back, trying to mine for proof that he really loves me. That I am still lovable, despite this.*****************
When I met T, a few months before I got sick, I Googled his name. The first result was a missing person report from several years earlier, accompanied by a thumbnail photo of him smiling in a black sweatshirt. Last seen in the Pine Bluff area on October 31st, the caption said, anyone with information about his whereabouts please contact the Pine Bluff Police Department. I took a screenshot and sent it to my friend: is this a red flag*****************
The heat in my apartment went out for three days the winter I met him. It was as cold as a Minnesota February gets; I’d been sleeping in my heavy-duty down coat and two pairs of pants, creating a ring of space heaters around my bed. He lived an hour away, across the Wisconsin state line, but he told me he’d come lift my spirits and he did. It was snowing; we ate takeout tacos in bed, drank bubbly from the bottle, curled together under the covers watching The Sopranos on my broken laptop. My bedroom was all windows—nine of them—and I always said it would be the worst place to be if a tornado struck in the night. It was the best place to be when it snowed.*****************
T made it clear from the start that he was someone who could never be pinned down. The attraction was undeniable, but it was our conversations that thrilled me–a nonstop game of verbal ping pong. I remember thinking I could banter with him for the rest of my life and never get sick of it. At the end of a weekend together, I found a little baggy of mystery pills in the drawer of my nightstand—Valium, maybe, left there by another man—and offered them to him. He swallowed a handful all at once and left. A couple hours later he called me. I’m fucking floatingggg, he said. And that’s how I felt too. Like I was floating.*****************
T FaceTimes me from a hotel in Los Angeles. He FaceTimes me from a hotel outside of Ruston, Louisiana. He FaceTimes me while driving a Benz through Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In the wake of a breakup with another man, too sick to do much of anything, I’ve moved in with my retired parents. I answer his calls in my childhood bedroom with its teal walls that my sister and I painted when we were kids and our mom never painted back. I live my entire life between these walls now. You gotta get better, he says, so you can run around with me.*****************
Out of boredom I download a dating app, then delete, then redownload. I’m swiping past people who are doing everything I can’t do; looking for a woman who can be someone I’ll never be again. An adventure partner, a travel buddy, someone to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with. How do I tell them that the most adventurous thing I’ll ever do with them is meet them in person?*****************
I match with a cardiologist on one of the apps and when he messages me I say I wish my cardiologist looked as good as you and he says lol do you actually have one and I say yeah and he says oh dang do you have an arrhythmia or something and I say nah, pulmonary hypertension and he unmatches me. Relax, I want to say, it’s not contagious.*****************
I have to call an ambulance one afternoon in July, after the diagnosis but before the meds start working, because my heart is going berserk. 180 beats per minute and I’m struggling to breathe. Four EMTs show up to my parents’ house and one of them is the hottest man I’ve ever seen. In the back of the ambulance I accidentally flash my tits to all four of them while they’re hooking me up to the heart monitor. It’s SVT, one of them says to the others and then the hot one hands me a syringe and tells me to blow into it. We’re gonna go fast, the driver says, turning on the siren as we bolt through the streets of Saint Paul and I’m on a stretcher, blowing into the syringe, over and over, and the hot one tells me I’m doing great and squeezes my hand and I’m thinking am I going to die in the back of this ambulance and I’m thinking this is the most humiliating moment of my entire life and I’m thinking I wonder if he’s single.*****************
When I tell the men from the apps that I have pulmonary hypertension, after a perfunctory that sucks, I’m sorry their responses depend on whether or not they’ve heard of the disease. If they have, and they know a little bit about it, they invariably ask if I take Viagra (yes, three times a day) and if it you know…does anything (no, not in women). If they don’t know anything and I explain that it’s a pretty debilitating heart disease, they want to know if I can still engage in, um, activities (maybe, not with you).*****************
I read a New York Times article about dating with chronic illness and then I read all 277 comments. I’m looking for recognition, some confirmation that I’m not alone. In the midst of people proclaiming that essential oils cured their husband’s chronic Lyme and others arguing over the right time to reveal a disability, a woman with a rare blood cancer shares a story about a date she went on. When she mentioned to her date that sex was risky because an infection could kill her, he was convinced she was exaggerating. He told me he felt so sorry for me that sex could prove problematic, but never mentioned that he felt sorry for me because I had terminal cancer...it soon became apparent that he would rather have incurable cancer than not be able to have sex.*****************
I wonder if it’s best to play my cards up front, to let them know what they’re getting into before we even match. In my bio I write I have a terminal illness, looking for my A Walk To Remember arc. Then I wonder if this defeats the purpose; anyone who's seen it knows that in that movie Mandy Moore’s character doesn’t reveal she has leukemia until the boy has already professed his love for her.*****************
Over text, T and I reminisce about the bad emo music of our youth. He was a star football player in his small Louisiana town, I was a bookish Catholic school girl, shivering in my uniform skirt through long Midwestern winters, but our short-lived emo phases somehow synced up. Remember this one? He sends me a voice note, serenading me, screeching the words to Your Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: I will never let you fall / I’ll stand up with you foreverrr / I’ll be there with you through it allllll*****************
We all have our baggage, my therapist tells me. I don’t think it makes you undateable. I’ve put on makeup, for the first time in weeks, to meet her in the portal. She starts talking at length about her husband’s struggle with addiction, about how you never really know what you’re getting into with someone anyway, because things change. I look past her, fixating on the unmade bed in the corner of her screen. If you don’t know, you don’t know, but if you do know, you can avoid it, right?*****************
I ask the girls in my support group what they do about dating. A lot of them are married and I secretly resent them, but a few of them are single. I don’t, K says with a laugh. She’s the one I relate with most: we’re both in our early 30s, both had to move back in with our parents, both got broken up with by our boyfriends when we got too sick. Maybe it’s possible to have a partner that sticks it out with you, if they love you enough, but getting someone to sign up for this, well, it’s just a whole different thing. Everyone agrees.*****************
T slipped out of my life as quickly as he slid into it, that first winter. By the time I heard from him again I had a new boyfriend and a mystery illness. I told him about both. Our friendship rekindled, but I kept him at an arm’s length, trying to dim the switch on that light that came on inside me whenever we talked. He was moving out east soon and wanted to see me before he left. I said no, I can’t, I’m with someone. When I started to feel the cracks in my relationship deepen, I told him that too. I don’t think he loves me, I said. Well I love you, he replied.*****************
In the aftermath of my diagnosis, I tell T that it’s been proven that women who become seriously ill are more likely to be left by their male partners than the other way around. That’s bullshit, he says, most divorces are filed by women. Not in this specific scenario, I say. Men don’t like to be caregivers. I sent him a link to an article about it; there's a picture of the baseball player Albert Pujols, who left his wife after she had brain surgery. That doesn’t count because he’s famous, he says. I say okay and send him another article about women with terminal cancer being left by their partners. You don’t have no cancer man, he says.*****************
Months earlier, while still searching for answers, I read Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom, which chronicles her own diagnostic journey with a complex chronic illness. She talked about the shame, as an ill person, of needing other people so much, both in concrete, material ways, and in the need for recognition. I felt a profound sense of betrayal that he did not seem to feel the urgency of my suffering, she wrote of her husband, who rarely accompanied her to doctors’ appointments. It is hard to be the partner of someone ill, at once close to the problem and permanently on the other side of the glass from it. I read these words at night, next to my boyfriend, B, who was trying to understand, but who would always be on the other side of the glass.*****************
A month and a half before I got diagnosed, when I was too weak to walk up the stairs to my apartment and didn’t know why yet, B dumped me. It sounds bad, to say it like that, because by then I didn’t blame him. It was my idea. I could tell he felt trapped but was afraid to abandon me, so I gave him permission to and he took it. I was already sick when we met a year earlier and had spent a good chunk of our year together searching for answers—in the fluorescent light of dozens of exam rooms, in the test results tab of my MyChart app, in the archives of niche Reddit forums. Our whole relationship felt like a series of things I wanted to do, but couldn’t, while he hung around on the sidelines of my pain feeling helpless. We might have been right for each other if we’d met under different circumstances, if I’d gotten better instead of worse. But we didn’t, I didn’t. I was heartbroken for a week, and then I was too sick to care.*****************
In the week between when we decided to break up and when he moved all of his things out of my place, we had sex one last time. For closure. The whole time I wondered if it would be the last time I ever would.*****************
The thing that nobody warns you about having a heart disease is that it makes it impossible to **** ***, I tweet. I consider bringing this up with my cardiologist, but decide I would rather die horny than tell a 75-year-old man what my heart does when I get aroused.*****************
A popular Instagram fashion brand is advertising a tiny brass pill canister embossed with the word Viagra. The algorithm shows it to me over and over until eventually I buy it. Beautiful women take Viagra has become my little motto, my bit with friends and family whenever I pop one in their presence. If I’m going to be taking it for the rest of my life, I might as well own it.*****************
T tells me that before we can have sex again he needs to see me run a mile. Or do a power clean. Your choice, he says, but I’d go with the mile. Less blood pressure action. I know he’s joking, but I know there’s a deeper part of him that’s a little serious. Okay coach, I say. I don’t want to tell him that these things still feel so out of reach.*****************
Maybe, I think, the reason T is so important to me is because he was the last person to meet me when I was still healthy, the last person who would ever get to know the version of me that could pop a bottle of champagne after midnight and drink the rest on a lazy Saturday morning, the version with energy and verve and dreams for the future, that could plan a trip to Palm Springs on a whim, that didn’t have to take supplemental oxygen on the plane, that didn’t have to take pills four times a day just to stay alive. The version that could get high without sending my heart into overdrive, that could fuck without sending my heart into overdrive. That could do a power clean, or run a mile, and not think twice about it.*****************
By late August, the meds are starting to work. I can go on walks again, slowly, in the sticky heat. Senator Amy Klobuchar tweets a picture of herself at the Minnesota State Fair, posing with four shirtless firefighters. State Fair pro tip: You don’t want to miss the Minnesota firefighters. The post has millions of views. One of the men in the picture is my EMT, the hot one. I send it to my group chat and nobody can agree who the hot one is. I think it’s obvious.*****************
In the fall, I suggest to T that he visit me. I haven’t seen him in well over a year, but lately we’ve been talking all the time. He hems and haws and eventually gives me a half-hearted excuse about feeling as if I’m only talking to him because I’m bored, because of my situation, and that if my life hadn’t slowed down like this I wouldn’t even look his way anymore. I can see through it, and I press him, until eventually he admits that my lack of mobility isn’t compatible with his lifestyle of spontaneity and constant travel, that we could never be together because of it. I’m gutted, angry, ashamed. Most of all, as much as I want to believe he’s wrong, to change his mind, I know there’s some truth to his words.*****************
T was there; when I knew I was sick but everyone else was starting to suspect I might just be crazy, he had a plan for me, an investment in my recovery. Stop eating this, start eating this, everything from scratch, spring water only. You don’t have room to slack, he told me. I rolled my eyes. Deep down, though, I was grateful that someone cared enough to want to help, to not just shrug their shoulders like my doctors had been doing for months. And when my MRI report said myocardial fibrosis and right ventricular hypertrophy and I landed in the hospital, when I lied flat on an operating table with a catheter in my heart and saw the grave expressions on my doctors’ faces, when he texted me how did today go lil mama, when he called me immediately after I told him, when he looked like he might cry on my phone screen, I felt it. But there’s a limit, I’m learning, to what some people can bear.*****************
I long for a love that is not contingent on how well my body is working, one that understands how this illness makes both spontaneity and planning ahead more difficult, that celebrates the wins and grieves the losses alongside me. In one of my pulmonary hypertension groups, a man is posting updates about his wife’s double lung transplant recovery. She’s up walking today! or Well, we had a bit of a setback. I wonder about my future, if I’ll ever need one. I wonder what it would be like to go through it alone.
July 17, 2024
by Benjamin Niespodziany
Perfect bound | 100 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 6×6″
Read a page before sleep and thou shalt dream insanely.
–Alex van Warmerdam
Director of Palme d’Or nominated film ‘Borgman’
