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EXCERPTS FROM ‘AMERICAN AIR’ by Mike Topp, featuring art by William Wegman

August 19, 2024
BUY A COPY OF 'AMERICAN AIR' HERE   SPOKESPERSON FOR MELLINGER CO., LOS ANGELES, CALIF., DEPT. 54Friends, you've heard me speak before in praise of Barns for Nobles. Well I'm no longer with that company. I'm here today to tell you about a new product I'm even more enthusiastic about called Count Branula. It's a new cereal that tastes like bran. In fact I can't even tell the difference. THE EARLIEST SALADSProbably the earliest salads were nothing more than some greens dumped in a bowl. VASEI was at Mom's and I dropped this vase. I was upset cuz it was her favorite and there was no way to replace it. I remembered I was playing a record when I dropped it. So I just played the record backwards until the broken vase came together again on the floor and hopped up to my hands.  SIMPLERWhat could be simpler than the gift of a solid gold baby? STRAY DIALOGUEA tooth fairy so much as touches my kid I'll blow his head off. MOSQUITODid you know that a mosquito in really bad storms can hang onto a raindrop and ride safely toward the ground?  A PLAY"Do you want to give the babysitter a ride home, honey?""I let Freddie Kruger drive her home.""Oh, no!" TOP TIPI read somewhere that the female praying mantis always cannibalizes the head of her mate post-coitus. Take it from me, fellas, my wife tried this stunt when we were on our honeymoon and it seemed to take FOREVER!! NEW YORKERSNew Yorkers have always had trouble with those idle low-lives called poor people. Ever since NYC was built, poor people have been plaguing it--sitting on park benches, buying fruits and vegetables from the farmers market & so on. You can hear them at night sometimes playing the piano. BUY A COPY OF 'AMERICAN AIR' HERE  
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TAKE HEART by Sean Craypo

August 14, 2024
The human heart on the street wasn’t mine. It came from the crumpled body thirty feet away. Another thirty feet behind the body was a pair of boots, which may or may not have had feet in them. Just behind the boots was the sedan. The bumper was barely dented from where it had struck the man.A severed vein sticking out of the heart looked big enough to stick my thumb into. Black skid marks streaked the fat on the lower part, as if someone had plucked out the heart and skipped it like a stone across the street. A few flecks of goo dotted the concrete around it and there was a smear where it slid to a stop. Somehow the heart had sailed all that distance and stayed intact.We hadn’t slept at all that night. There’d been one medical call after another, and fire watch from three to five A.M. (Fire watch is one of the cruelest assignments an engine can get. We sat around making sure a fire that other crews had put out didn’t rekindle). After that, the heart called me here.“Mantis,” said a voice.It startled me. “What?” I looked up. “This mess isn’t going to sweep up itself. Get the kitty litter.” The voice came from behind me. My driver, Jimmy.I got the absorbent from the fire engine and dumped it on the pools and streams of car juice. “How did it stay in one piece? I can make out the vena cava,” Jimmy said as he started spreading out the absorbent with a push broom brush-side up so the absorbent could be ground into the street with the flat wooden bar. I picked up the other broom. I wished every person who’d ever written a song about a broken heart could see this. A heart doesn’t break. Everything around it mangles and disintegrates until the heart lies alone on starless asphalt.“The heart is one tough muscle,” I said.“I want to take it and put it in a jar. Do you think anyone would notice?” Jimmy said.“The owner might want it back,” I said.“I doubt it.” Jimmy flipped his broom and used the bristle side to push the used absorbent into a pile. I got the shovel and industrial trash bag.“How did it get out?” I said when I got back.“I don’t know. I tried to check. But it’s like the guy is missing half his bones. He’s just a pile of meat.” Jimmy grabbed the trash bag and I started shoveling the absorbent into it.“You’re not really going to take it, are you?” I asked.It was gross. It wasn’t his. Someone would notice it missing. The saint of lost hearts would come for us both.“I’ve got to.”“No, you don’t got to.” Sometimes it could be hard to know if Jimmy said something because he believed it or because he was worming me. Not this time; I could tell he wanted it by the way he didn’t pause to enjoy my outrage. I wasn’t going to let him have the heart. “How badass would that be,” he said as he tied up the bag.I put the shovel and brooms back on the engine and then came back to Jimmy, who stood by the heart.“It would make the best conversation piece. Maybe I could put it in a lava lamp. I’m gonna get a bag.”“You can’t take the heart.”“Why not?”“Because it’s wrong.” Because it wasn’t his. Because it had done its part.“It’s not like he needs it. I’ll be putting it to good use. Reduce, re-use, recycle.” He made for the engine. Everything was cleaned up and we were ready to go but he didn’t pull the chock blocks from the tires. Instead, he opened a compartment.I had one last moment to listen to what the heart had to tell me. Maybe it would tell me what to do, tell me how to save it. As I waited for instruction, I started to become one with the wrecked car, the deflated body, the grief of those who knew him, the sorrow of the person who’d struck the man and tore his heart from his chest. The heart had grown and I’d stepped inside it.The sound of two paramedics and a cop talking pulled me from this vision. Jimmy took a bag from the engine and came towards me. “Y’all aren’t going to believe this,” I shouted to the paramedics as I waved them over. The cop and the paramedics were standing by the body. They looked at me but didn’t move. If Jimmy could have shot lasers out of his eyes, he would have torched me right there. He walked faster. If he could get to the heart before they did, he knew I wouldn’t proactively rat him out. “It’s the dude’s heart!” I shouted. That got their attention. They trotted over, arriving just after Jimmy did. There was no way for Jimmy to get it now and I was sure that no one else was going to trap it in a lava lamp. There wasn’t anything more I could do for it. Although it would remain free a little longer, the heart would soon be incinerated. Back to ash. After a lifetime of service, that seemed a better fate. Dawn came and sunlight fell on the heart for the first time.
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CHASING THE MONSTER: An Interview with Matt Lee

August 13, 2024
Where lives the creature? The Backwards Hand: A Memoir (Curbstone Books, 2024) chronicles Matt Lee’s experience of growing up and into adulthood. Matt’s hand marked him out as different, and it is the nature of this difference, where it resides, that comes to the fore. Out from the unconscious arises the monster, but once unleashed, even a monster must live in the world. As the monster is seen, is reflected, perhaps even reconciled with, it remains powerful but also hard to pin down. In whose eyes, in what skin, does the monster live? I asked Matt if he’s any closer to finding out.Rebecca Gransden: Fear THE CLAW! Near the start of the book you describe a game of The Claw that you played with your dad. This obviously put me in mind of the Jim Carey film Liar Liar, where Jim’s character uses The Claw as a way to jokily terrify and bond with his son. What prompted you to venture into the domain of memoir?Matt Lee: You just unearthed a long-buried childhood memory of renting that movie and watching it with my father. We’ve been estranged for many years, but I will give him credit for letting me check out all sorts of bawdy, violent films when I was (probably) too young.I consider myself a failed poet. Writing creative nonfiction, much less a memoir, had never crossed my mind. I wanted to be a teacher, so I went to grad school (add failed professor to the list). My adviser suggested I enroll in a creative nonfiction course, and I figured it would allow me to get outside my creative wheelhouse. I was soon so enamored that I repeated the class.One of my assignments was to write the first chapter of a memoir, which became the genesis of The Backwards Hand. At that stage of my life, I was cagey about discussing my disability, and I wanted to figure out why, so the memoir served as a vessel of self-interrogation. When I began framing my story within the larger tapestry of disability studies, I felt even more compelled to share it, to move beyond mere solipsism and invite others along for the ride, a collective investigation into a topic which many prefer to sweep under the rug—our attitudes surrounding the disabled body. RG: Facts From Hell! You intercut passages on films with factual historical accounts. Your personal history and experience is recounted alongside cold, hard statistics. How did you go about choosing the structure for the book?ML: The “literary collage” style is something I adopted and developed while working on my first book, Crisis Actor. The subject of disability is so vast and mercurial that a fragmentary approach felt natural, and  it formally mimics the organized chaos of my mind. Throwing this onslaught of information at the reader likewise invokes one of the book’s central concerns: abjection. My intention is for the book to overload one’s sense of being, the same way you might react to seeing a corpse (or a cripple). I use the personal narrative as a ballast—I tell my story in a linear fashion to help ground the erratic miasma of references surrounding it.RG: You Won’t Believe Your Eyes! The book draws from many sources. What did the research process look like? Were there discoveries that made an impact on you, or the direction of the book itself?ML: I started with a few key touchstones. Tod Browning’s Freaks, Diane Arbus, Julia Kristeva, etc. Once I went looking for it, though, I began seeing representations of disability everywhere, and the research started to balloon. I had to be diligent about what outside references best complemented the autobiographical portions. The final bibliography includes more than two hundred sources, and there were loads of other “unofficial” sources not directly referenced in the book. What’s ironic is that, despite having been born disabled, I was grossly ignorant about the history of disability, so the journey was rife with discovery, much of which turned my stomach. Learning about eugenics and the mass killing of disabled people in Nazi Germany, for instance, was much more frightening than any horror film and presented opportunities to juxtapose real-world monsters with their fictitious counterparts. It was important to keep the process organic. I let the research lead me.RG: Behold, the Monster! The book confronts and examines the concept of the monster head on. Physical deformities and abnormalities are understood via the lens of the fantastical, the mythic, Hollywood monsters. The tension of the book lies in the point at which the monster exists in the eye of the beholder and as a universal idea. Did your view of the monster morph over your time spent writing the book?ML: The monster is a strange conundrum because it is a universal concept, as you mention, but everyone’s criteria of what constitutes a monster is unique. A central question from the book is What makes a monster? The more I considered this question, the less confident I felt in my answer. Ultimately, I think the only fair way to define the monster is by action (the Latin root of the word means “to show,” but do we show by doing or purely by the facade we display?). After all, you can look perfectly ordinary on the surface and still be capable of committing a heinous act. What I most struggled with were notions of culpability and condemnation. Does a single monstrous deed classify someone as a monster in perpetuity? When does the scale of monstrosity remit any chance of redemption? Does even the foulest monster deserve forgiveness, whether or not they ask for it? I continue to wrestle with these questions.RG:  You’ll Die Laughing!People I know have told me they attempted to go a day without turning their hands and found it utterly impossible. They cannot help themselves. Neither can I.Humor, sometimes wry, often dark, plays a large part in the memoir. How did you decide upon the tone for the book? ML: When cripples aren’t an object of fear, they are often instead the butt of a joke, so it felt right to mix comedy and horror. I can also personally attest that many disabled people develop gallows humor simply from existing within a society that is frequently keen on our exclusion (or demise). Laughing in the face of ableism is a form of resistance. Humor is also an excellent tool for disarming the reader. It lulls you into a false sense of security. One line might have you chuckling, the next recoiling in shock. It’s my way of saying, Don’t get too comfortable.RG: Don’t Look in the Mirror! A recurring theme is that of the mirror. Mirrors are sometimes absent, a source of discomfort, of not wanting to see the reflection. There is projection onto deformity, that a person with a physical disability reflects ideas of decay and disease, uselessness: a mirror showing uncomfortable truths or imagined futures filled with aging or incapacity. Film is also a type of mirror, potentially a cracked or funhouse one. Is The Backwards Hand a mirror?ML: There’s a strong argument to be made that all art is a mirror, and The Backwards Hand is no exception. My intention is to force the reader to examine their own capacity for monstrosity, to wrestle with their prejudices and biases. That’s certainly what I was doing while writing the book, and I think it’s a healthy exercise to confront the monster within us all. Disability itself is like a window into the realm of possibility—it reveals the human body’s potential, the limits of mortality, which is why it triggers such a strong response. It simultaneously attracts and repels. I hope my book has a similar effect.RG: Movie Mayhem! One of the great joys of the book is the impressive array of films you cover. Are there films that stand out to you? Any discoveries you made in the gatheration of titles that you’d recommend? ML: Many of these films surprised me upon revisiting them after a number of years, namely Cronenberg’s The Brood, Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Medak’s The Changeling, and Cohen’s It’s Alive. Their emotional intensity profoundly resonates with me—I actually found myself crying at the end of It’s Alive during my rewatch. I realized, of course, all these films deal with parenthood and children, so with my being a new father, I was especially sensitive.In terms of discoveries, I would point to Browning’s The Unknown, a silent-era precursor to Freaks, which boasts an astonishing performance by Lon Chaney. For horror fans, I’d recommend Eric Red’s Body Parts. It’s one I don’t see discussed too often. There’s an incredible sequence of on-screen vehicular carnage, and the whole movie is a lot of fun, with Brad Dourif in peak, deranged form.RG: A Stage Set for Damnation! Make a choice. Is the cripple an object of pity or a source of inspiration? Shall you exploit or glorify the invalid? Are you entertained? Disgusted? Amused? You have a history in the acting world, and have taken on the parts of disabled characters, as unflinchingly implied in the book, a cripple playing a cripple. How is the concept of the mask addressed in The Backwards Hand?ML: Drama is a philosophically compelling medium because of its paradoxical nature. The actor strives to behave truthfully under imaginary circumstances, but a genuine performance is still a performance, the illusion of something real. I’ve known many actors who say that they “come alive” onstage, as if the artifice gives license to tap into ways of being we might otherwise suppress. Masks can have a similar effect—when the outer self is hidden, the inner self seeps to the surface. The monster, like the actor, often adopts a mask, and this new face gives him courage to act in a new light, typically with grisly consequences. I’m reminded of a character like Leatherface, who dons different masks (in his case, literal faces) for certain occasions.Is the memoir itself a type of mask? Nonfiction is only a representation of reality and, being limited to the author’s memories and point of view, is inherently fallible. Still, this layer of removal, this distillation of experience into a form, gave me a certain level of courage to be explicit in the way I try to portray myself. Perhaps wearing a “literary mask” can reveal something authentic. In the end, The Backwards Hand is my attempt to strip bare, an unmasking.RG: The Nightmare of Reality! The stats you include are at once hair-raising and bleakly illuminating. Looking back at the book, at some of the hard truths it presents, what is your personal relationship to these generalized facts?ML: The scope of something like 300,000 people with disabilities were executed in Nazi Germany is almost incomprehensible, which is why I tend to give statistics in the book a standalone line. Unadorned, they are quite staggering, but I also want the information to not just be numbers on a page. The individual stories illustrate the examples and, most importantly, humanize the cold, hard facts. One of those 300,000 was a little boy named Richard Jenne, whose photograph appears toward the book’s end. It’s a painful reminder that we mustn’t reduce people to data, to abstractions, especially within the context of disability, when logic and science are often used as tools to dehumanize people, and thus provide justification for atrocities.RG: You Won’t See Them Coming! Invisible disabilities are those that are not immediately apparent. An estimated 10 percent of Americans fall into this category, myself included. One area I found compelling is the book’s attempt to grapple with the idea of categorisation. Where does condition end and anomaly or disability start? Where do the terms cripple and invalid come into play? How did you set out to approach language for The Backwards Hand?ML: This fits into the debate of essentialism versus constructivism, the former arguing that disability is a diagnosed, medical condition, the latter positing that disability is a social construct. Some theorists might suggest that disability does not exist, others that everyone is disabled. And the spectrum is so wide and multifaceted that it resists easy categorization. I do think it’s important to remember that disability imposes very real material conditions on a person, but that no two people experience a disability the same way.Co-opting outdated and offensive terms like “cripple” and “invalid,” for me at least, is a way to reclaim these hateful words and flip the script. I choose to wear “cripple” as a badge of pride. At the same time, it’s a way to challenge readers to consider the implications of ableist language, much of which is bandied about in everyday conversation without a second thought.I use pretty plain and straightforward language in The Backwards Hand. The approach I’m going for is understatement. I try to employ an even-keeled tone that belies the often disturbing nature of the subject matter, so the prose sneaks up on you.RG: Pity the Freak! The American artist John Callahan was twenty-one when he became a quadriplegic. He’d spent the day barhopping with a buddy, who was driving Callahan’s car when they wrecked. After the accident, Callahan decided to become a cartoonist, gripping a pen between both hands to produce crude but clever one-panel gags. His macabre sense of humor and his tendency to deal in taboo subjects, most frequently disability and disease, landed him a fair share of critics, who decried Callahan’s work as tasteless.Callahan said his only compass was the reaction from people in wheelchairs or those who have hooks for hands, people like himself who were sick of being pitied and patronized. The truly detestable ones, he said, presume to speak for the freaks themselves. Assholery is a recurring theme. At the extreme end is assholery of the homicidal and genocidal variety, and at its most mundane it manifests in everyday thoughtlessness and casual bigotry. You don’t spare yourself when it comes to assholery. What place does the asshole have in The Backwards Hand?ML: Anyone can be an asshole, just like anyone can become disabled. I write about both able-bodied and disabled people who have done bad things, some of which are minor transgressions, others unspeakable acts of evil. I do believe that disabled people have to put up with an immense amount of assholery in our day-to-day lives. There is so much open hostility toward people with disabilities. And what is our crime? Spoiling the scenery. Needing accommodation. Requiring care and time and effort and money. How dare we have the gall to demand such resources without lifting a finger to contribute to the altar of capital! What is most sinister is when bigotry masquerades as mercy. The Nazi doctors described their extermination campaign as an act of benevolence.But of all the assholes in the book, and there are many, I’m chief among them. If I draw the conclusion that actions define the monster, it would be hypocritical not to put my own bad behavior on full display. There’s a tendency to deny and deflect accusations of wrongdoing, especially with men, and I wanted to take ownership of all the times in my life that have made me feel like a monster. I’m attempting to reconcile with my regrets—a reformation of the asshole, if you will.RG: The Monster Must Die! The eternal truth that death is the great leveler visits the book in myriad ways, and this concept seems especially pertinent to The Backwards Hand. As you put the book to rest, the writing of it behind you, what is your view of the project as a whole?ML: Progress has been made, and I believe there are more people than ever fighting for a just, equitable world, but disability advocacy still seems somewhat relegated to the sidelines. There are so many misconceptions, so much discomfort surrounding disability, despite it being a phenomenon that we are all guaranteed to experience at some point. Disability is not something we must overcome or erase. If The Backwards Hand achieves anything, I hope it offers a new perspective and provides space to broaden conversations about disability. I encourage readers to lean into their discomfort and work through it to find acceptance, just as I have done.RG: Back From the Dead! A monster with charm is the most frightening of all.Does the icon of the monster dazzle with its own mythology? What does the future hold for the monster? Where does Matt Lee go next?ML: Monsters are an inextricable aspect of mythology, and people will always be drawn to their stories—there’s a reason horror is such a beloved genre. The monster will continue to evolve with the times, reflecting contemporary ills and anxieties. Monster as AI. Monster as microplastics. Monster as ecological collapse. Monster as militarized cop.As for me, I’m still deciding on my next move. I’m mulling over a couple concepts for novels, or I might put together an essay collection. The ideas need to marinate. A few long walks and several months of late night writing sessions ought to do it. If I can find the time, I’d love to get back onstage or do some film work. Maybe I’ll direct a horror movie!
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AN ELEGY FOR COACH by Ravi Mangla

August 12, 2024
We shook on it.If we won the final game of the season, Coach would run fifty laps around the gym. Some time around the eighth lap he collapsed and died.Some of us cried. Others stood in monastic silence. McClusky threw up in the Gatorade cooler. Coach’s death was relayed on the morning announcements after news that the cafeteria was out of waffle fries. This was not, we believed, the memorial Coach would have wanted. He loved waffle fries.We felt an obligation then, a hefty responsibility, to give Coach the send-off he would have wanted. After all, Coach made us who we are. He taught us you could beat a breathalyzer by swallowing a roll full of quarters. That any bowel troubles could be remedied with an egg cream in the morning. And that laws proscribing gambling on youth sports were antiquated and in need of legislative reform.Baumiller proposed planting a ficus tree. Coach was partial to the natural world. He often referred to the forest as earth’s dampest of pleasures. Many of us knew him to steal away to the woods after a particularly stinging loss. Once, after going missing for three days, a jogger found him at the forest’s edge, naked and covered in sheep’s blood.There were rumors that Coach had children of his own. Connelly, who worked at the mall food court, once saw what looked like Coach with a child in tow berating a Smoothie King employee. But for all practical purposes, we were his children, and we wouldn’t let his memory perish in the crucible of time. Coach wasn’t perfect, but he was our coach.Chakravarti said we should set a dove loose in the gym rafters. But where does one even acquire a dove? Someone suggested wrangling a pigeon from the parking lot, but we felt that a pigeon lacked commensurate gravitas.We were drinking our egg creams when Roskowick proposed burning an effigy. No objections were raised.Shapiro nicked a set of Coach’s clothes from his office. Ramirez found a mesh bag of half-deflated volleyballs. We filled Coach’s trademark polo and khakis to a generous girth. In the cold light of dawn, we propped his body against the visitor’s goal post.Markelson took out his clarinet and played a beautiful rendition of a Brahms sonata. Stuart-Byrd read a sestina by the English poet W. H. Auden.We tried to hang his beloved orange whistle from his shoulders, finally losing patience and stuffing it in his shirt pocket.Roskowick doused the effigy with rubbing alcohol from the team manager’s first aid kit, then set it alight.We watched the flames consume his body, smoke filling the air. It spread to the rest of the field: a great orange blaze that turned seedling to ash.Markelson quietly uncoupled his clarinet and packed it in its case.The flames rose, swallowing the equipment shed and bleachers, lapping at the painted scoreboard with our school crest.When we heard the sirens behind us, the voices calling our names, we didn’t turn our heads. We didn’t run or flee. We knew we’d done nothing wrong.
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A HOLE TO DIE IN by Sarah Butler

August 7, 2024
The Yucca Valley had plenty of pool cleaners, but none as good as him. Jeb started cleaning pools because he didn’t want to sell meth like his cousins Rob, Kyle, Tyler, and Clay. He liked the roteness of skimming the surface of the water with his net, the reading of pH strips, and the satisfaction of a job well done. He’d cleaned some of the most beautiful pools in the desert – he even did the one at Sinatra’s house once. But what he really wanted to do was own a vintage cowboy boot store. He was born and raised in the sand. He knew there was demand from city-slicking Angelenos who came to bake in the sun and dip in his pristine pools. Jeb’s dad had skin like leather. He’d raised Jeb in several different RV parks across the valley – Apache Mobile Park was the one they lived in the longest. Jeb suspected this was because his father was always something of a ladies man, and the girls had been prettiest at Apache.  The year Jeb was set to graduate from high school there had been at least three “desert tens” who lived there with emotionally absent or physically abusive boyfriends. This was also the year that the prettiest of them all, Winnie Lynn, helped Jeb realize his dream of small business ownership. She was tattoo artist and unofficial babysitter to the park’s families. She was 19 and loved being her own boss. “If I worked in some gay-ass office, I’d have to cover all my tats, dye my hair brown, use an ashtray… I’d be miserable! And for what? $11.50 an hour? Please.”She held a Michelob Ultra and a menthol in her decorated hands, which were illuminated by the small campfire Jeb had taken to building between their neighboring trailers on Thursday nights. When she saw the fire, she’d come out and chill with him before her boyfriend – this asshole Kyle – came to pick her up and take her away for the weekend. This week, he was running particularly late. So they kept talking.“You could do it too, Jeb,” she’d said. “Why give anyone the right to tell you what to do? Let them tell you how much you're worth? Fuckin’... yeah, right. It’s your time! It’s your life! It’s the most valuable thing you got. You’re so much better than that.” She meant better than his father, who was always getting fired from one hard labor gig or another for showing up drunk or fucking the boss’ girlfriend. She took another swig and stared into the flames.“Thanks, Winn,” he’d finally said, distracted by the shadow her plump upper lip cast below her perfect little nose. “I love you.”She took his virginity on one of the dilapidated lawn chairs by the park pool shortly thereafter. To this day, nothing got him harder than the smell of chlorine and Camels.Winnie moved to LA to do tattoos on TV and Jeb stayed with his father at Apache, in a trailer of his own. Inspired by recent events, De-Luxe Pool Maintenance was born.At night he would ride his black with lime green dirt bike out to where he wanted to put the store, between Oasis Dentistry and the Eagle Club on route 60, cutting across wide swaths of desert, past the nice houses that multiplied every year. He never got too close. He was just trying to stay sober. Going fast helped with that. 

***

Valerie went to the hot tub every night while Liam talked shop, doing lines or smoking Js with Micheal, Mike, and Wesley. On these desert trips, she preferred a glass of vino and the company of her own womanly thoughts to talking to the boys all in a group. It was just the 5 of them, for miles. The guys had no wives or serious girlfriends, probably on account of their emotional immaturity and erectile dysfunction from the Adderall dependency that had originally bonded them at Berkeley. Their group had met while ironically attending a Communist Society meeting to find bisexual young women with unnaturally colored hair – something Liam had playfully admitted to Valerie while describing his “best bros”  on their second date. Sometimes the other men brought OnlyFans models they were dating, or baristas they were toying with, but never anything real. Being the only constant feminine presence had felt unsafe in an exciting way, but after Liam proposed, that changed. It was fun to be the hot girlfriend. She could be gone tomorrow. She could be a house mother to all the boys, maybe even get in a drunken flirt here and there.. She was embarrassed and bored as the hot fiancé. Judging by the number of times Liam had accidentally knocked her up premaritally, she’d probably be pregnant soon after the wedding, and then all this really had to stop. In the intoxicating heat of the tub, she willed her stream of consciousness to slow to a dribble and sipped her wine. It would be dark soon. She surveyed her beige legs floating passively, waving against the jets. Her phone dinged.  Liam had texted her from inside. “b-storming again tonight before investor meeting tomo, wanna hit the slopes with us?”“All good babe plz don’t go too crazy tho lol. Don’t u leave for Vegas lowkey early?”“So fucking annoying fucking cocksucking loser” she whispered into the water. It didn’t matter that their little fraternity were the majority stakeholders and founders of Bossi, the third-most utilized AI-powered KPI measuring application on the market or whatever. She was a beautiful mermaid with long black hair that floated like she was on an album cover in the clear, steamy water that held every inch of her body. And so no, she wasn’t going to get fucked up with her husband-to-be and his boys. Every time they did coke, Wesley did a Jamaican accent for the rest of the night. She could be pregnant, for fucks sake. She looked up to the stars and searched for constellations. The wine and heat made her dizzy, possibly hallucinatory, and she was seeing ones she hadn’t before. She heard a dirtbike in the distance and got the sudden urge to show her tits to whoever was driving it.

***

“Nice boots,” said a man’s voice behind her.She turned from her place in the checkout line to face a young man – he couldn’t have been older than 30 – holding a six-pack of double zero Heinekens. He had thick eyebrows, sun-damaged skin, and a buzzcut that made his nose look extra pointy. “Oh! Thanks,” Valerie said, looking down and planting the toe of her old leather cowboy boots into the tile, extending her leg and twisting it ever so slightly to show off the custom embroidery. “They were my moms. Her feet got too big when she was pregnant with me. I guess I wanted them for myself even then,” she said with a polite laugh. The severity of his features had caused her to overshare. He smiled.“Jeb,” he said, using his free hand to point his thumb at his chest. Like a monkey. Jesus Christ. You’re a goddamn moron, he thought.“Layla,” Valerie lied, for no reason other than vanity.“Pretty,” Jeb said.“Next!” the clerk demanded. Valerie dutifully unloaded her cart full of chicken breast, white wine, and bagged Cesar salad. She felt the man’s eyes on her backside as she bent over into the cart to retrieve her items for scanning. He knew that she felt him looking, his pupils boring a hole into the ass off her denim cutoffs, but he refused to avert his gaze. Her burning face twisted into a smile. He liked how her earrings moved with her center of gravity. He liked making her nervous.“Have a goodun’,” the clerk sighed, waving Jeb up the queue. He paid for his six-pack with a ten dollar bill, watching Valerie wrangle her plastic bags of booze and raw meat. “Want a hand with those?” 

***

Pretty blonde women and men in distressed jeans lauded Valley Boots for their “Silverlake cowboy aesthetic”, which brought more entitled clients, which brought more psychological pain. Jeb still rode his dirtbike late at night, even though Valerie was pregnant and she wanted him to hold her, and tell her she was as beautiful as the day they met. Her boots – her mother’s boots – didn’t fit anymore. She kept them behind the counter and denied their sale to women who were younger and smaller than her as a way of taking back her power.Valerie was better with the clients at Valley Boots. They were obnoxious like her dead fiancé. He, Michael, Mike, and Wesley had been drunk driving the Cybertruck back to California from Vegas, which would’ve been fine had they not been struck by a regular, drunker truck driver. She treated everyone that walked through the beaded curtain off route 60 with kindness, mostly out of guilt. Had Jeb not brought her to orgasm on the ledge of the hot tub that day, would God have willed Liam to live? Would he have been pulled from the twisted aluminum, battered, but still as beautiful as he was? The paramedics said the metal had turned molten in the resulting fire, their melted skin had to be carefully separated from the seats and their caskets welded shut, for their mothers’ sakes. One month later, Jeb’s father got drunk and drowned in the Apache pool. Jeb had just cleaned it, too. 
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TRANSMISSIONS: Writing The Rapids

August 6, 2024
Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles podcasts.Joe bielecki is the host of the podcast Writing the Rapids, the author of the novel Tired from Alien Buddha Press, as well as several pieces of flash fiction that may or may not still be on the internet. He currently lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Writing the Rapids can be found at the website, Spotify, Patreon, Instagram, Youtube and X.Rebecca Gransden: How would you describe the podcast to someone who is unfamiliar with what you do?Joe bielecki: Writing the Rapids is a podcast where I talk to writers about writing. I’m not really clear from one day to another exactly what that means, however. I try to have conversations rather than interviews. I tend to warn my guests that I may simply muse about their writing without asking a question, for example. RG: Does the podcast have a mission or manifesto? JB: Not particularly a manifesto. I pick my guests based on the recommendations of past guests. Some of my goals when starting the show was to read more indie lit, meet new people, and see how people are connected. RG: How long has the podcast been in existence, and how have you seen it grow over that time?JB: My first episode was posted on February 13, 2018. I went from being a guy with a few pieces of flash fiction floating around, to a guy with a podcast. It is clear there are people who are capital F Fans of the show. Based on my Spotify metrics, the show is growing pretty steadily. When I tell people at work my follower count, how many average listens an episode gets, they seem impressed. It’s a niche subject, so I don’t expect it to get huge, but I’d like to think that I’ve helped a few books get sold.RG: Where did the idea for the podcast come from?JB: I wanted to talk to some of the indie writers I was reading that didn’t have lots of interviews available. I’m pretty shy, but wanted to make friends in a so-called scene that I enjoyed reading from. I wanted to explore publishers putting out books I like, etc. It’s hard for me to walk into a room of people, so to speak, and insert myself into a conversation. Creating a podcast seemed like a good way to give people a reason to talk to me.RG: How did you decide upon a title for the podcast?JB: The name came from a segment I did a few times for the morning show of the local NPR member station, I work for. I live in Grand Rapids, Writing the Rapids sounds like Riding the Rapids. When I decided to do the show on my own, and in a different way, I kept the name. Thinking of names is hard.RG: Are there any podcasts that influenced or encouraged you to start the project?JB: Not particularly. I’m a long time fan of Scott Johnson and the Frogpants Studios family of podcasts. I started listening to The Instance back in middle school or so and found the podcast format fascinating. Beyond that, I spent a lot of time in college watching late night talk show interviews with writers like David Foster Wallace and Harlan Ellison. RG: What episode of the podcast would you recommend to someone who is new to what you do?JB: My most listened to episodes are with B. R. Yeager, Sam Pink, and Jackie Ess, so probably one of those. RG: How do you go about selecting what to feature on each episode? If your podcast features guests, how do you go about finding them?JB: As noted above, I have a list of people provided by previous guests. From that list I look for someone who seems like they would say yes, and is writing something that seems immediately interesting to me at the time.RG: If you are a writer, has the podcast impacted your writing life? and conversely, has a writerly disposition influenced the podcast? JB: Having a writerly disposition is kind of the whole reason the podcast exists as it does. I wasn’t even sending my novel, Tired, out when I started. You hear me on the show mention my writing, ask about editing, ask about the publishing process. I ask this not only because I think it’s interesting inside baseball that people might want to hear, but because I largely still feel like an outsider as a writer and am trying to figure out how to get inside.RG: Do you listen to podcasts?JB: Not as much these days as I’d like. My listening time in general is lower than ever due to life circumstances, and what time I do have has largely been spent listening to the Horus Heresy audio books and music.RG: What is the best podcast out there at the moment, the one you are excited for when each new episode drops?JB: When I was listening to podcasts more regularly my favorite was Film Sack, by the aforementioned Scott Johnson. RG: What do you dislike about podcasts?JB: The low barrier to entry allows for a lot of saturation, so a lot of bad podcasts, which seems to have caused a lot of people to write off the medium entirely, which is a shame.RG: Who is your dream guest?JB: Someone very famous who would make the show blow up. Beyond that I’ve had a lot of people say yes who I thought would say no. I’m actually very content.RG: Is there a theme or subject you are burning to cover?JB: More ARGs, more Hypertext Lit, that type of thing. TTRPG guide as literature seems to be a creeping idea, I should look into that more.RG: Is there a podcast that doesn’t exist, but you wish did?JB: I have a couple ideas I’ve wanted to do for a while. That’s not in the spirit of the question, I understand. But it is my most honest answer.RG: Is there a podcast that exists, but you wish didn’t?JB: Yes, for sure. I won’t name them because I don’t want to draw people to them.RG: For techheads, which single item of kit do you consider essential for the production of the podcast, and what would you say are the basics needed for those new to podcasting?JB: Get a decent mic, get one with an XLR connection, not a USB. Get a mixer and learn signal chains. It’s much better to have more control rather than less. Maybe google meeting or zoom will record for you, I’d rather take the sound coming out of my mic and computer, and mix it myself. I also record into a Zoom H4N rather than my computer. That feels safer. RG: If someone would like to support independent podcasts, what are the best ways to do this?JB: As I say every intro, Patreon, Paypal, buy the host’s book. Or just talk about it. Spend more time talking about the things you love rather than hate. People remember what you talk about, so talk about things you want people to pay attention to, please.RG: Looking back on the podcast, are there favorite episodes, episodes that stand out to you, or episodes that didn’t go as you would’ve liked?JB: I just did an episode with Stacy Hardy, she was amazing. Jackie Ess was such a great guest. M Kitchell was so patient with me and informative. I really love talking to guys like Mike Corrao, Mike Klein, B. R. Yeager, John Trefry. A few episodes are out there where I feel like I could have done a better job. That’s life.RG: What are your plans for the future?JB: I plan to just keep going. I really like the show the way it is, and I don’t plan to change it. I’ve been threatening to make a YouTube channel for a while, and I’m really close to actually doing that.RG: If you liked that, you may also like this. Are there any podcasts on a similar wavelength to your own that you would recommend to a listener who appreciates what you do?JB: Wake Island Pod seems to have a lot of crossover fans with me. I’m not sure if they’re making new episodes or not though. I was recently on the Not Worth Living podcast, and I really like the conceit of that one.Writing the Rapids can be found at the website, Spotify, Patreon, Instagram, Youtube and X.
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FRUIT AND FRACTIONS by Taleen V.

August 5, 2024
On the table apricots blush, sliced to their stony seeds. A faded bowl of walnut brains sits untouched and long wet spears of cucumber sweat beside them. Goods grown right here in Fresno, just like you. The professor picks you up by the waist and sets you next to the spread.His beard is silver spangled and his brows touch. He resembles your uncle Varouj who plays the piano at Christmastime, except this man doesn’t smile as much. Until his grab, it had not crossed your mind to be afraid.“You can always trust Armenians, they’re family,” your mom once promised. “But Turks and Azeris, you must never speak to. They cut your great grandfather in half. In. Half.” That was third grade.The man rips free the hard pit and holds a piece of apricot in his fingers, where hair sprouts above the knuckle. “The mother tree is from Hayastan,” he tells you, so you’re aware it is special. His wife, who is tutoring you in pre-algebra so you can earn a scholarship to a private high school, so you can get into an elite American university, so you can break the barrier into sky-high economic mobility, is supposed to be home. She ran out when she got a call that her son broke his leg on the parallel bars. Her husband, the history professor, stepped in and said he could tutor you instead—how hard could pre-algebra be? First though, he insists, we must nourish the stomach before we can nourish the mind. He sounded so fobby with his accent that you dismissed him.“Eat,” he demands, and pushes the orange pink flesh into your mouth. You expect summer sweet, but the apricot is sour and tough and you feel like a fool, knowing you’ll never be able to swallow it. When his finger broaches your lips, fingernail scraping your tongue, you are thankful there is no extra taste but the apricot. Perhaps a light salting. Your eyes fix upon a thickly framed painting of Khor Virap Monastery, the peaks of Medz Masis and Pokr Masis looming above the lone cloister. You remember seeing the real thing two years ago on that charity religious trip to Armenia. Wandering the fruit market, your mother bought carton after carton with a moneyed hunger, collecting fragrant raspberries from a pail, larval mulberries in black and beige, and a pound of the treasured golden orbs. This is what a real apricot tastes like, she said, mouth full, eyes half closed. You weren’t sure what to make of the foreign fruit. Flavorful, sure, but so soft your mind feared rot. Picked too close to the beginning of death. Americans were terrified of letting anything spoil and you’ve grown accustomed to eating produce before its prime.That afternoon in Yerevan, you and your mother gorged yourselves in the art-less hotel room save for the window giving you a full view of biblical Mount Ararat. You had washed the fruits with tap water, so the following day you developed a fever and vomited every sweet thing you’d eaten. Your mother screamed at you for wasting her hard earned cash.Paused, awaiting your reaction, the man stares past his finger into your split mouth. He seems to be giving you a choice. You are too ugly to have been kissed before. You are, honestly, equal parts frightened and flattered. With your tongue, you roll his sandpapery digit to your teeth and chew to test, like a puppy. He appears delighted. Last month, your class watched The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, and you forgot most of it except the little boy who was stretched apart on the bed, then the clink of Talaat Pasha’s belt unbuckling. A traitorous part of your heart always wondered if the horrors of the genocide were exaggerated, but today you realize, they weren’t. Few believed them, none will believe you. His finger swims against your budding wisdom teeth, expectant, moving toward an answer. The apricot mush sags in your cheeks.You vaguely wonder if your great-grandfather died quick enough not to feel anything. He did not have the option to run away and pretend to forget. This man who moments ago squeezed his hands into your nonexistent hips and lifted you up, his ancestors were also tortured or killed or escaped. Every Armenian has a similar sad story. Even when you are betrayed, you are lucky.Your eyes wander again to the eternally icy caps of Ararat. Miss Froonjian’s Tuesday pop quiz may have revealed you do not understand fractions, but now you feel you have received new insight.Fruit is meant to be picked at, taken apart: halved, quartered, devoured. You reassure yourself, that’s the only way a new seed can grow. Still, like the math problems on paper, you cannot solve this one.
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