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THE FUNHOUSE by Matt Lee

July 28, 2021

My first and only job during a disastrous year in New York was at the DVD Funhouse. Little storefront on 6th avenue between 21st and 22nd street. Flatiron District. 

The place sold bootleg DVDs, Canadian imports mostly, with the ISBN barcodes scratched off. The first floor was for walk-in customers, people coming off the street to peruse the racks.

I worked in the basement. The place stretched on forever. Pallets and pallets of junk. Crates of old Blockbuster rentals. Books on tape. Useless novelties galore.

I was in charge of online sales. I turned the place around. When Victor hired me, there were two sales a week. By the time I finished, we were selling hundreds of units daily. 

Every day I took the J train from Bed-Stuy into Manhattan. I’d buy a coffee at a corner stall for a dollar. I’d get to the Funhouse, print packing slips, pull the orders, stuff them into envelopes, and cart everything to the post office around the corner.

I got pretty friendly with the old guy who worked the dock at the post office. Thirty years with USPS, he told me. A few more years and he could retire. Wonder if he made good on his word.

I had a few guys working for me. Eli was a wannabe stand-up comedian. He’d practice his routine. “My buddy’s wife had a miscarriage after they baby-proofed the house. It worked. A baby didn’t get in.” I started wearing headphones.

Then there was Eric. He had a beard. He was a die hard Giants fan. All I remember.

A kid named Jose ran the register upstairs. “New York City is the greatest place on earth,” he’d say. “Cleanest tap water in America.”

Victor’s older brother Mike was the manager. He never did much besides sit in the bathroom playing games on his BlackBerry.

I worked with another guy named Mark Kamins. His apartment had been leveled during 9/11. He got a big settlement check from the government. The money ran out. So he worked for me at the DVD Funhouse.

Victor told me Mark used to be a bigshot in the music industry. I didn’t buy it until I googled his name. Turned out Mark produced Madonna’s first single, “Everybody.” Launched her to fame. The two even used to be a couple.

I asked Mark about Madonna while we were shelving DVDs one day. I wanted to know what she was like in bed. He thought about it for a minute. “Her pussy hairs were like a brillo pad.”

Mark was a terrible employee. Couldn’t do anything right. Didn’t know how to work a computer. He kept fucking up so much I demanded Victor fire him or I’d quit.

I got what I wanted.

I never knew what happened to Mark until I started writing this. He moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. Started teaching. Died 2013. Heart attack. Fifty-seven years old.

In Mark’s obituary, Madonna says, “If it weren't for him, I might not have had a singing career. He was the first DJ to play my demos before I had a record deal. He believed in me before anyone else did. I owe him a lot.”

The Funhouse was full of rats and roaches. Biggest roaches I’ve ever seen. We’d set glue traps and sprinkle green poison pellets along holes in the walls. It got to be like a game, killing roaches. We’d fling discs that were too scratched for sale trying to slice the pests in two. I got pretty good after a while. Joey was the best.

Joey was the only guy I worked with who I had any respect for. He used to make fun of my shoes, a pair of boots that clacked when I walked. He’d laugh and say, “You sound like a chick.”

Joey and I were the same age, about twenty. That’s where the similarities ended. He was an ex-con who’d served time for dealing coke. Nearly died after some punks he’d robbed decided to get even. They jumped him, bashed Joey’s head in with an aluminum baseball bat. He showed me the dent in his shaved head.

He lived in Queens with his father, who was a bus driver. Joey had to share a room with his sister. I always thought that was weird, but Joey didn’t mind. When he wasn’t at the Funhouse, Joey was at the gym. He was always giving me tips about weight lifting. I never listened.

Joey’s dream was to join the Navy. We both knew with his criminal record there was no chance in hell of Joey becoming a sailor. The dream kept him going.

On our lunch break, Joey and I would go to McDonald’s across the street. He loved putting BBQ sauce on his McChicken. “I’m a fast food connoisseur,” he’d say, lips smeared deep red.

Joey was so strong. He’d move whole pallets single-handedly, carry hundred-pound boxes on his shoulders like it was nothing. Sometimes we’d take our rolly chairs from the desks and send each other rocketing down the endless concrete floor. If Joey was the one pushing, you’d always win the race.

I remember his biceps bulging with veins. I remember him chugging protein shakes and energy drinks. I remember him encouraging me to quit smoking. I remember him breaking wooden boards with his bare hands.

I don’t remember Joey’s last name. I can’t look him up, see what he’s done with himself this past decade. I like to imagine he’s on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Pacific, off the coast of Polynesia maybe, or the Port of Siam. He’s got a chest full of medals and a girl waiting for him back home. He’s asleep in his bunk, dreaming about a ten-story funhouse mirror. He smashes the massive glass monolith with his fist. He laughs, cracks his knuckles, and says, “Punk ass bitch.”

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YOUR HOUSE ON ZILLOW by Stephanie King

July 26, 2021

You died on a Wednesday. In the years since, when the anniversary falls on a different day of the week, everything feels off somehow. That dreamy, floaty feeling of a day, like trying to describe what it is to have loved – but not like that – a man who is gone. They say men and women can’t be friends, but it was never a problem.

Now your wife has put the house up for sale. I guess the mortgage was too much to handle on her own. I scroll through the real estate listing like playing the world’s worst first-person shooter game. Click. There’s the accent wall I helped you paint, back before accent walls were passé, the rich maroon color reminds me of your mother’s homemade cranberry sauce on all those Thanksgivings, or Manischewitz at the seders I spent with your family after mine moved away. Click. The nursery I helped fill with absurd baby gifts, retro toys that you already had tattoos of. Click. The rose trellis in the backyard where we snuck out to smoke weed and your wife pretended not to notice, because she didn’t allow smoking in the house, but when we came back in, she had put out a cheese tray or just-microwaved popcorn.

We’d been a pair since you moved down the street from me in the summer of our twelfth year. Our hijinks progressed from slipping salami through the locker slats of our enemies in middle school to the fall break when we were both home from college and took your grandma’s mobility scooter “mountain biking” up on the trails up behind your house. We took nips from a ­­­­­­­­­­pint of Wild Turkey you’d stolen because we weren’t old enough to buy one. We had to push the scooter home after the battery died, laughing so hard we almost pissed our pants. Your grown-up house is all the way on the other side of town. Someday, whoever buys it might discover the Halloween plastic severed foot we hid between studs when we replaced the drywall after a leak in the upstairs bathroom.

The house pictures don’t capture the sound of your laughter, bouncing off the walls. The living room looks staged, not like the place where I spent the night on the sofa whenever I got too drunk or it snowed too much to go home. The guest room doesn’t mention that it’s the room you died in, downstairs because you got too weak to make it up to your own room, the hospice nurses discussing your care in hushed voices in the hallway while we sat around the kitchen table poking at sandwich trays we were too disheartened to eat. I see you everywhere in the house, looking for your shadow lurking behind the ornate standing lamp in the living room or in ceiling corners like a spirit in a horror movie. Now I am your haunted house, everywhere I go.

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DIVORCED by Amy Barnes

July 21, 2021

A car the size of a house rams our house that’s the size of a house. Thunder from a 1986 Thunderbird shakes me out of my canopy bed to the window to the street. It’s the moment I know my mother is a liar, a big one. She lays there lazy for too long or maybe not long enough, in her satin-sheeted bed and satin-matching lingerie with a man who isn’t her husband or my father. Her lipstick is smeared and our house is too, a brick mouth opened up on one side. When the red lights encircle our house with the car-shaped hole in it, Mama staggers out wearing this not-father-man as a blanket. It’s not enough to hide him or her. The neighborhood sees extra glimpses that should have been kept secret -- breast tops, upper thigh thunder, rumpled bedroom hair. My brother and sister and I all stand in the cul-de-sac all in our night clothes, clothed by midnight, staring at the full moon-shaped hole that has appeared in our house galaxy, stars guiding insurance adjusters and curious neighbors who watch papers float out, folded blowing into the sky. My mother and father’s signatures land in front of our house when the papers settle. We argue over who gets what name or what parent but it’s late and we have school and cold feet so everyone goes back to sleep, except me. I follow the policemen until they find my father a sidewalk away drunk on moon and moonshine next to the battering ram car that we used to take together to the beach and back. The muscle car isn’t parked next to oceanside muscle men anymore, just idling on the curb by a curbed man sobbing into his I went to Virginia Beach and all I got was this t-shirt t-shirt. There are hangers full of my father piled in the back seat next to fast food robe wrappers and receipt pillows and balled-up Kleenex and lawyer lists of divisions of property and parents. I stand by him in bare feet and bare anger, pat his bent shoulders and ask if he needs directions home.

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THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) by Anthony Sabourin

July 19, 2021
1.There’s Navy SEAL training where they put a bag over your head and you are on the floor and when they take the bag off you need to react to whatever situation is in front of you, like the bag comes off and it’s 4 people kicking the shit out of you, or the bag comes off and it’s one guy kicking the shit out of you then you have to go into some room and find a gun and shoot at things. Or the bag comes off and you are shoved into a tank of water. If you don’t drown you get to keep on being a Navy SEAL.I think it’s supposed to be the culmination of all of your previous training. Complete improvisation under duress. Free-flowing and jazz-like violence.I can run 50 metres before I’m out of breath. I can take a shower without crying. I can wake up with the sun creeping through the slats in the blinds, tired of being alive, and I can slump down the stairs after three hours to eat microwaved oats and look at the grey and sunless sky floating past dead tree branches, and despite this I can still go on with the act of being alive.It’s night and I am lying down on a couch in a room where a box of pizza is pressing grease into the coffee table and I eat another slice not bothering to get up and I watch the TV as Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans do…something…and consciousness escapes me. 2.I’m straining against the inevitable. I’m going to great lengths to lose an argument. I have a bad haircut. I’m shirking responsibility. I am looking to find a one armed man.I’m a fugitive. 3.I’m on a garbage island with all these billionaires. They have white hair and unbothered faces. An auctioneer is calling out a number that only goes up.A worker from a sweatshop is combing the beach for rubber bullets.I’m here by accident. I’m just a millionaire. I yearn for the Tuscan countryside, where I can lay about striking poses with this really cool sword I bought. I miss getting drunk and playing the piano beautifully.I hear one billionaire asking another “How much would you pay for a pill that turned you into a dog?”“Like 12 dollars.”I interrupt their conversation to say,“How sweet to think that Nature is solvency,that something empirically truelies just under the dead leavesthat will make us anchorites in the dark.”Which is something I stole from a poem.They turn back to each other.“What if when you changed back from being a dog there was a 10% chance you were different?”“10 dollars.”I see the worker pluck a bullet from the sand and put it in his pocket. 4.There is no longer darkness. Harsh light off the snow outside makes the room look bright and cold. I see the same room as before. There are three foot-long cylinders of aluminum foil that I know to be deli submarines. One is on the floor, one is on the coffee table, one is in the hallway that leads to the door. I react fast. I unwrap the sandwich on the floor and start eating. Loose bits of lettuce fall to the floor. I’m done with the first sandwich. I unwrap the sandwich on the coffee table and I eat that one, chewing chewing chewing, swallowing in big gulps, etc. I have not moved from the couch. I am doing great at eating the sandwiches. I have been training my whole life for this. A good deli meat sandwich should have a cross section where you can see like three types of deli meat, and ideally one of those meats is cured, and you need some good mustard and mayonnaise, and shredded lettuce and tomato, and you want a bun that is soft sure, but with a good crust too, but also not too crusty. My brain is a fog of black plastic bags being picked at by gulls. I leap off the couch (I stand up fast and feel a rush of blood to my head and see spots) and I pounce on the hallway sandwich (walk over to it too quickly and almost stumble), and I eat the last sandwich (slowly I am not hungry anymore).I stand up in the hallway, still in my sleep clothes, and see the door to the outside. I open it and feel the invigorating shock of cold air, and I run outside in my slippers, and I keep running.I’m the best Navy SEAL there ever was. 
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BABY ON BOARD by Natalie Warther

July 16, 2021

It’s not a lie. It’s just a sticker. A sticker that says there’s a baby on board, when technically there is not. Can you blame me? You’ve seen how careful people are around a new mother. Otherwise, they are reckless. Besides, people lie about much worse. And there is no sticker that says “Be careful, please, I have a lot of student debt.”

Plus, it’s not like there aren’t important things in my backseat. The screenplay I’m writing about a boy who wants to play major league baseball, for example, and a pile of towels from my mother’s garage.

Why should I want a baby anyway? My sister and her husband had a baby. They sent me a picture in the mail. Everyone looked scared.

Last week there was a whole list of specials at Vons because the 4th of July was coming and people needed beef and various dips. I grabbed my coupons and my grocery bags. On the 1, an SUV to my left matched my speed. We traveled together for too many seconds. I accelerated, but so did the SUV. The driver was looking at me, I could feel it, he was burning holes into my profile. I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road, but our windows were up, and I was trying to keep my eyes on the road.

I sneaked a glance. It was a woman. She was motioning at me to roll down my window, so I did. What else can one do? The freeway blew into our cars. She was shouting at me, we were both pushing 80, she was shouting, “WHERE’S YOUR CAR SEAT?” I got a better look at her. 40s. Three kids in the back. “YOU NEED A CARSEAT FOR YOUR BABY!” The kids were staring at me: their first criminal. This woman is crazy, I thought, and then I remembered the sticker.

“I DON’T HAVE A BABY!” I yelled, but she didn’t hear me over the traffic.

“I’VE GOT YOUR PLATES. I’M CALLING 911.” She passed her purse back to one of the children to get her phone. All of them looked in horror at the pile of towels in the back.

I panicked and shouted louder, “THERE’S NO BABY ON BOARD! I DON’T HAVE A BABY! I DON’T HAVE ANYONE!” She heard me this time.

The SUV accelerated and I switched lanes, tetrising myself deeper into the system of cars who handled me with care. I am a fake mother, and a bad writer, and a common liar, and maybe a fraud, but the freeway forgave me. They made room for me. They indicated before turning and allowed me to merge. The Volvos, the Mazdas, they flanked me, escorting me, and before I knew it, I was where I needed to be, parked in a good spot right by the doors.

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ORAL HISTORY FROM THE WINSTONS OF RHYOLITE by Nicholas Russell

July 15, 2021

We all started out in boxes because we don’t actually count as people.

They’re clones so, yes, they are technically people.

Though it was more like a vat, suspended animation sort of. It’s really weird if he lets you see a new one. Anyway. He moved us into the warehouse not long after we could crawl.

Not at the same time. They weren’t all born together. Also, I’ve never prohibited any of them from seeing where they came from. They exaggerate a lot.

Yeah, but he doesn’t let us leave the compound.

For your safety.

Whatever. Anyway. We’re based off this guy Winston Moore.

My dad.

And we live out in the desert, in this warehouse here, tucked into the side of a mountain above a ghost town called Rhyolite. There’s an old mining shaft that we use to come to the surface, but only on special occasions.

Mostly at night and on days when I can get the county sheriff to grant me a No Access permit so tourists can’t come through.

Yeah, Leroy!

He’s been very gracious about the whole thing.

This may not surprise you, but we’ve never actually met Leroy. He comes by in his cruiser and we crowd up around the mine entrance trying to listen to whatever the hell it is they talk about.

Which could get us in serious trouble one day, mind.

The thing that’s so annoying about all this is that he still hasn’t explained to us why there are us. Why more than one. I mean, we’re not stupid. OG Winston died, like, thirty years ago now. If you’re gonna break off a piece of your old man…

Guys, please one at a time.

I’ll go. Hi, I’m Grinston, I’m turning 15 next month. I think he just misses his dad, but he felt weird about not being able to clone his dad into an adult because then he’d lose him all over again.

Not neces-

Okay, hi, Jinston here. 18. No one believes me, but I actually think he’s been cloning his mom too and he’s going to try to make us have sex with her clones so we make another one of him!

But if I can clone you, why wouldn’t I just-

Blinston, 27. As far as I know, I’m the oldest. At least, the oldest one still alive. I understand there were some abortive trials where defects were noted ahead of time.

No actual abortions.

I mean, I didn’t escape unscathed because I was born without a toe. The left one, and I’m pretty sure Winston had all ten of his. 

Oh my god.

But, based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s unlikely that he even knows why he’s doing all this. Winston died in a construction accident back in the city when his son was still fairly young. All this technology was nascent then, but I don’t think he had a clear idea as to why he’d use it. Two or three years passed before the first trials. The government was selling off a bunch of land, even some of the historic monuments, which is why we’re in Rhyolite.

Used to be a gold rush town, now it’s a ghost town. Decent tourist interest, which is why they wouldn’t let me own the whole area outright.

He had no idea what he was doing. He brought his mom, his dad’s widow, technically our wife, to come and help set up the educational unit and babysit while he was getting the rest of the facility set up.

She was understanding, all things considered.

She used to tell me stories about Winston. Sometimes, she’d say “you” instead of “he”, but they were mostly harmless, probably on purpose.

She didn’t want to get too attached to you guys.

Didn’t matter. You’re our dad now. Sometimes, when we come out from the mining shaft and the sun is just setting, I look around at this tiny place that’s been claimed by the wind and the dry air, where thousands of people used to live, with all these semi-demolished buildings and rusted tin cans everywhere, and the mountains where they form this natural cul-de-sac, and all of us, different ages and sizes but all basically the same person. And we wander around, some of us split off into little groups to go and sneak some liquor, and some of us stay by your side checking the power lines and the septic tank and the heli-pod, and some of us take your car over to the next town and have dinner at the taco truck wearing wigs or fake tattoos so no one recognizes them. I look around and sometimes the moon shines down on us and for a brief moment, we all look up, dozens of us, this colony of lost boys just staring at the sky, pairs and pairs of the exact same eyes. Then we look at you standing there and we all wonder the same, wonder if this is actually a dream, and if so, why do we keep waking up in the same place.

Sometimes, it feels like I dreamt you all.

And then we remember that, apart from the occasional scold, there’s nothing keeping us from leaving. There’s too many of us now. We’re keeping the lights on. We have nothing but each other because you made sure of it. And more than anything, we feel sorry for you because you still haven’t figured us out. Before long, you’ll be alone again.

I know, I know.

But we do love you. Don’t we, guys?

I love you too.

Anyway. What was the question, again?

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THE CELEBRATION by Zac Smith

July 14, 2021

Usually, when my week was shitty, I liked to order Thai food... I was the only one in the family who liked Thai food, which meant I didn’t get to order it much... But since I was getting divorced and living alone in a shitty apartment, I got to order it as much as I wanted... I was getting into it in a big way, basically... Since most weeks were shitty, I ordered Thai food most weekends... And I never got sick of it... Thai food is varied and complex... It can be very exciting, but also comforting... A perfect cuisine... I like Thai basil, which is a special kind of basil... I like the other flavors, too, but you know what I mean... Thai basil is especially good... So basically, in most ways, Thai food is perfect, is how I feel... And most of my weeks were shitty... So I wanted something perfect to level things out... I ordered Thai food to celebrate my shitty week, basically... I called it “celebrating” my shitty week because I thought that if I called it “celebrating” my shitty week, it’d feel good, like my week wasn’t actually shitty for shitty reasons, but just that I had accomplished something by getting through it—whatever it was—that made the week shitty... And the “celebration” thing usually worked... It made me feel like I had accomplished something by having a shitty week... Plus my cat came back... That was actually good... I liked my cat... That deserved an actual celebration, I thought, looking at the online menu system... And Thai food is good for a celebration... And that milk tea with the little tapioca balls is good for a celebration... Most people call it bubble tea and I liked it a lot... I liked the bubbles... I liked the tea... The whole fuckin’ she-bang, you know... The whole tea-ball game... Heh... So I ordered some bubble tea to go with my celebratory noodles and soup and those fried tofu things... I went all out, basically... I even ordered it for delivery instead of takeout... Oh yeah... Since I was really celebrating, I was really celebrating, you know... I was kicking back in a big fucking way... I told my cat to hold onto his ass, you know, because we were about to go nuts... And then it arrived and I laid out the food on my table... A little of this, a little of that... I put on some music... I gave my cat one of the triangle tofu things and he was like oh yeah, daddy... But I was most looking forward to the bubble tea to get things going... The fireworks that signified the start of the celebration... The bubble tea from that Thai place comes in a plastic cup with a plastic film/lid on top... You have to jab this special, thick straw that comes with it into the film/lid on top... And you suck up the bubbles and milk tea through the big fat straw... It’s, like, the best part of the celebration... The pop of the straw through the film/lid, I mean... It’s like a starting pistol or some shit... Like, ready, set, go motherfucker...  So when I heard that pop, I was pretty excited... Like, basically, peak excitement... I was ready...  I was set... I was going...  To suck up those little bubbles... That first suck was the cherry on top of the firework sundae to celebrate another shitty week crossed off the calendar or whatever... I opened up the paper bag that everything had come in, you know, looking to get that special, fat straw... Rifling around, you know, getting good and excited... But I’m sure by now you’ve guessed that this is where we find out there was no straw... And you’re guessing right... (There was no straw)... So I thought, Shit... Basically, I was like, My celebration is ruined... I had the bubble tea... But no way to drink it... It’s like... Shit, man... I was so fucking down about it... I’m sure you can think of something to compare it to... It was like a Twilight Zone kind of twist... I had all this bubble tea but no way to drink it... It sucked (heh)... Everything was starting to suck... But I didn’t want it to suck... And I didn’t want my food to get cold... And time was running out... The suck was starting to creep in... That creep-suck... So I started eating, just to get the party going... I figured I could come up with something... I figured I could get the bubble tea popping off just right if I was calm and patient... I wanted it to be a good night in spite of the flaws and challenges, you know... I wanted to drink and enjoy my bubble tea, of course, but there was the food, too... I ate some, you know... But I was distracted... I mean, I was actually pretty pissed off... I was getting stressed out... Chewing and slurping and feeling real upset, basically... I thought about calling back the Thai place but that was stupid... They weren’t gonna send a guy back out to my shitty apartment just to give me a straw... And I didn’t want that to happen... The delivery driver would feel like shit... And I’d feel like shit... I ate my tofu triangle things, but instead of thinking about how good they tasted, I was still thinking about the missing straw... Like, instead of thinking, Yummy yummy, I just thought, Fuck this, fuck this... Just that, over and over... Or sometimes I thought, Fucking straw... All the triangles were gone and I hadn’t even enjoyed them... I still didn’t have a plan... But I wanted to persevere... I wanted to win... That felt good, thinking about it in terms of winning... Because at that moment, I was losing... And I’ll admit that I considered giving up... But then I decided, No, you know what, fuck that, I’m gonna win... I had to figure out how to drink the bubble tea without the thick straw... It was simply a have to kind of situation... I thought about how stupid I had been...  I had been too dependent on the random whims and mistakes of other people... I was never really in control, basically... Maybe even my entire life, just pissing my pants and hoping for someone to come and change me... (I’m not sure that makes any sense, but, whatever)... So I thought about it while I started eating my pad see ewe, you know, those fat noodles with the Thai basil in it... I was in planning mode... I needed some ideas... So my first thought was that I could use a normal (skinny) straw and a spoon... Root beer float style... The old suck and scoop, you know... Yeah, that seemed good... I walked over to the Takeout Condiments and Other Bullshit drawer... There were a couple (skinny) straws in there because you never know... And there I was, in search of a straw... So, it’s like, maybe I did know, you know... I felt good about my Takeout Condiments and Other Bullshit drawer, basically... My friend Big Bruiser Dope Boy turned me onto this kind of drawer, but that’s not really relevant to the story... Then I opened my normal silverware drawer and got a good spoon... One of the small spoons that fit nicely in my mouth... You know the kind... Like a teaspoon, I guess... A good spoon for the old suck and scoop lifestyle... I went back and ripped off the plastic film/lid of the bubble tea all the way off... It felt like I was about to do some real raw dog shit to this bubble tea... I didn’t like seeing the tea that way, you know...  But I had to persevere... I stuck the straw in and readied the spoon... I sucked up some tea... The old suck part of the suck and scoop... And it tasted great... I was like, Oh yeah, good tea, just missing one thing: some motherfucking bubbles... So I scooped up some of the motherfuckers (bubbles)... Moving onto the scoop part of the old suck and scoop, now... But there was ice in the cup... I hadn’t really planned on that...  The ice was small, but still large, kind of... They crowded out the bubbles... So I had a spoonful of bubbles and ice cubes... Not ideal... Not good to be honest... I tried to slurp up a bubble with my lips with the tea still in my mouth... You know, trying to get the balance right... But I accidentally slurped up some of the ice, too... And like, oh man, the ice just ruined it all... Tea, bubbles, and ice?... No thank you... It sucked... Like, I didn’t want to crunch the cubes while trying to enjoy those little squishy motherfuckers and milky tea... So I tried spitting out the ice but it was hard to do... Try to imagine it, you know, juggling all that shit in your mouth... So the tea dribbled out of my mouth... And there was still some ice in there... Total opposite of the goal... Just full-on failure... But I figured I just had to power through, crunch up the ice in my mouth... I crunched away, man... And it was a bad experience overall... I didn’t like it very much at all... So I had to try something else... I ate some pad see ewe noodles and thought about it again... I figured I could suck up some tea with the skinny straw, but then use the straw to latch onto one of the bubbles, like, use the suction to pick up one bubble at a time... I remembered doing that shit with, like, uh... No idea, actually... But I knew I could do it... And then somehow leverage the bubble into my mouth... I thought, Alright, yeah... That seemed possible... So I sucked up some tea... I cornered one of the bubbles with my straw... I sucked on the straw... The suction worked... I was like, nice, hell yeah... I took the straw out of my mouth and put my finger over the hole... I lifted the straw... I was getting somewhere... But all the bubbles, like, it was weird... They all stuck together... It was insane... Like as soon as one bubble left the tea, it turned into a bubble magnet... All these other bubbles were along for the ride... And, all together like that, the bubble frenzy got too heavy, I guess... And the suction through the straw couldn’t hold them all up... They all plopped back into the tea... I was like, What the fuck... Maybe it was a fluke... So I tried it again... You know, suck, slurp, suck, grab, lift... Come on, man... But then... Plop... And I thought, God fucking dammit... It just wasn’t working... I ate some more pad see ewe... I just chewed it all up without thinking about the Thai basil, the skinny little caramelized onions, the little bits of egg... I was just thinking about the tea and the bubbles and the way that physics kept fucking me over... I was just chewing and scheming, basically... I had to get the bubbles individually... That was clear to me... The root beer float approach seemed good for that, but then there was the ice problem... So, yeah, there it is, I had to get rid of the ice... So I went and got a bowl... I poured the tea and bubbles and ice into the bowl, soup style... Fuck the straw, you know... Just go at it with the spoon... Bubble tea soup, basically... But that fucking ice was still causing problems... I scooped out a cube with my teaspoon... And it was pretty difficult... Surprisingly difficult, actually... But I got one out, you know, because I was persevering... I had removed one, but it was only one of many... One of, like, thirty little ice cubes... I went for some more but they danced away from my spoon... I thought, Little piece of shit ice cubes... It was obvious that it was gonna take forever... One cube at a time was just, ugh... I needed a better approach... So I decided to get the ice out with my fingers... Yeah, I know, but I figured I could corral all the cubes together and then scoop them out with my hand... A man’s hands, you know, they can do a lot of things... Beautiful instruments, basically... My hands could do almost anything... I put my fingers into the tea soup... And, you know, it didn’t feel great... Like, my dirty fingers just sloshing around in my tea... But I got most of the ice cubes out... Which was progress... It was what I wanted, you know... And then I figured I could finally go back to eating it like soup... No more straw, just full-on spoon time... But the fucking bubbles... I don’t know what it was about them, but every time I tried to scoop a few out, every bubble would stick into the bubble mass again... It was that fucking magnet shit all over again... I couldn’t separate them at all... And the tea was getting warmer because all the ice was gone... And it wasn’t really appetizing anymore, like, knowing I had fingered it all up... Thinking back on my beautiful man hands and all the dumb shit we had done together before eating... Thinking back on when the last time I washed them was... So I was feeling really defeated, basically... And the more I thought about it, I was getting more and more grossed out by the room-temperature, dirty-ass bubble tea soup I had made... So you know what... And it hurts to say this... But I just gave up... I dumped the whole fucking mess into sink... And like, you know, frosting on the cake kinda shit, the bubble mass clogged the sink hole... And I was, like, ugh, just, so fucking, ugh... So, you know, I stuck my fingers in and plucked out the gooey mass... I was feeling pretty grossed out and sad... I put the gooey mass into the garbage... I washed my hands... I sat down at the table... I looked at the rest of my pad see ewe... And this hurts to say, too, but I didn’t feel like eating it anymore... It didn’t look like food anymore... It just looked like garbage... Like, I mean, I had this epiphany, I guess... In less than a minute, probably, all this food would just be sitting in the trashcan along with the gooey ball mess and the egg shells and coffee grounds and broken glass and whatever else was in there from earlier in the week... And I was stuck with this thought about how food turns into garbage, just really ruminating on it... Thinking, like, Man, there’s almost no difference... I reasoned that maybe there was no difference... Food, garbage, food, garbage... I was looking at my food, but also looking at garbage... That’s all it was... And I thought about what a celebration was supposed to be... I thought about how maybe celebrations are a time when we distract ourselves from recognizing that everything around us is either made of garbage or slowly turning into garbage... And this celebration had failed... I saw everything for what it was: garbage, garbage, garbage... And I even felt myself decomposing... My skin flaking off... My blood turning cold and gooey... My bones buckling under the weight... I was garbage, too... What are people but walking corpses, I thought... What are corpses but special garbage, I thought... I looked at all the garbage on the table... I looked at my place in the world, my place as human, as corpse, as garbage... My place in the giant landfill... And then I realized that everything was normal... This was just how everything always is... I just hadn’t been paying attention... So I cleaned it all up... I put the garbage into the garbage... I rinsed the dishes... I took a long, sad shit... I washed my hands... I fed my cat... I went to bed... I was so fucking depressed... And I had to prepare for the next week... I thought about the week coming up... All the shit I’d have to get through just to make it to the next celebration... I thought maybe I’d try pizza... Or maybe just some Arby’s or something... I didn’t fucking know... I just wanted it all to end.

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THE LAST INTERVIEW: Blake Middleton vs. The New Guy at XRAY

July 13, 2021

Blake Middleton is an actual person. A Floridian. An American. The co-worker of your bartender friend who you immediately like better than your bartender friend after just a few conversations. And a poet. The kind of poet who just wants everybody to feel less fucked. Writing concise, concrete lines that once piled together form a sort-of meditation, a smirking mantra of “Fuck You” in the face of an absurd world.

What follows is a conversation/battle of wits between he and I, revolving around his new book “An Actual Person in a Concrete Historical Situation”—out now from CLASH Books.

 

Part 1: The Weigh-In

 

Hey dude. Have you done any 

interviews for your book?

 Whaddup broJust did one w Zac but tryna do more 

Nice. Well, I’m now “The Executioner” at X-Ray 

(self-appointed title) and was thinking about interviewing you

 Oh yeah damn I saw that earlier, congrats manI’m down for whatever, would love to do one w youI’ll send u pdf 

Hell yeah

 Just sentIt’s a small boy 

Nice, I like the small boys. 

Just sent a message to Jenn

 Jenn rocks thank u man 

Yeah she does

You rock too. 

But also fuck you I was playing you this entire time

 Fuck u idiot 

This was a test. Interview is back on

 Good, looking forward to our interview 

Me too buddy.

Fuck you and your extended family

 Gonna respond to all your interview questionswith ‘fuck you’ 

I’ve already planned ahead for this. 

May the best man win

 Damn it appears I have poked the bear 

Interview devolves into goal-less competition, morphing finally

into a ten-part doc investigating the death of one or both of us

 One of us. You, to be specific 

I started this, and I’ll be finishing it as well

 (Thumbs down emoji) 

Part Two: The Interview

 

Alright, first question. When I read that excerpt of your book on Neutral Spaces, I told you it felt meditative. Not just the space between lines but the space between images/ideas. A lot of writing feels immediately congested to me, or like a scam, something “not real” hiding in those paragraphs. But your book moved quick. Each sentence had its own purpose. And that created a soothing effect on my brain. What’s up with that bruh?

BM: I’m glad it created a soothing effect. Everything feels kind of overwhelming right now, our attention spans are getting worse, and we’re constantly distracted. So the problem is, I want normal people to read my book, but normal people don’t really read books. They purchase books sometimes, but I don’t think they finish them that often. I wanted to write a book people would read. So I wanted to make something spacious and minimal. A book where each line can breathe and stand on its own. A little book that is sparse, direct, no bullshit.

 

I think the white space does a lot of work in helping the poem feel meditative. It kind of reflects real life, in that there are a lot of gaps and juxtapositions between thoughts and experiences. But ultimately it’s all tied together because the lines are coming from one person, experiencing the world from a singular point of view/moment in time. So the lines aren’t as disparate as they might seem. And hopefully they’re also tied together by tone.

I’ve read the book a few times now. And the first go around, I felt like I was reading the thoughts and observations and memories of a person living in the middle of the pandemic. Then for the second read through, it felt more ubiquitous, just a person coping with and thinking about being a person, and bouncing between many time periods. Was the “life during covid” vibe something you set out to do, at least at first anyway? 

BM: Went through a rough draft and i lie in the sun and laugh at my bank account was the only line written during the pandemic that I used in the final version, which seems fitting. I think I felt like the disconnect between lines written before and during the pandemic would have been too jarring; I didn’t want to write about two totally different worlds from two totally different headspaces in a poem that was already so far outside of how I was used to writing. Also I didn’t feel equipped to write about that time period while it was happening—I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Was also probably just more focused on securing groceries and booze and trying not to die. So it felt like a good endpoint. Before the pandemic I viewed ‘an actual person…’ as a poem that could essentially go on forever, but when the pandemic started that didn’t feel like the case. The poem is radically nonlinear but that’s mostly because the days felt interchangeable to me back then, and the pandemic definitely changed that. Jenna and I were drinking margaritas/wine nightly at the very start of Covid and I wasn’t writing at all. Pretty quickly I realized that I couldn’t be drunk for the entire pandemic and shifted what little focus I had toward editing the book. So I edited the book right when Covid hit through around July. It’s weird to think back to early 2020. Seems almost unreal to me now.

I had something similar where I was writing a longish thing during the pandemic. My girlfriend and I had just moved in to our first apartment together at the end of February. So while I was still asking the leasing office for a working fridge shelf, COVID hit. I thought that was a good/funny start. But I abandoned it once things got worse, seemed impossible to write about it. Anyway your book made me think of this, so I am asking if you think we’ll ever get a good Covid novel? 

BM: Yeah, probably. I don’t think I would want to read a Covid novel for a long time though. Would read a book that takes place during Covid for sure, but not one that is totally centered around it. Would have to be really good for me to want to think about that time period again. Does that make sense?

Perfect sense. I’m most interested in stories of people being people. And it depresses me when I see movies/books that are just about a marketable thing, and the main character is just a device, like morally superior, something the audience can project themselves onto. Which brings me to the thing you said about writing for normal people, even though normal people don’t really read books. Do you think that’s dying, with most readers (of indie books) also being writers? Or is it the same as it was ten years ago. Just putting something out all for the slim chance a depressed kid somewhere stumbles into it? 

BM: I feel you on that one. I think sometimes portrayals of life get so far away from what life is actually like, what it actually feels like to be a person just trying to navigate existence. I like books where I feel like the author just paid attention to their life and then wrote about it, instead of following some narrative template or whatever to try to appeal to some imaginary group of people so that they can make one million dollars. But instead of getting depressed thinking about things I don’t like, I just ignore them, and focus on the stuff I do like instead. 

I think, for me, it helps to take more of a long-view, to stay focused and keep writing regardless of what happens with it. Because even if nothing happens immediately, the books will still exist, maybe they will get noticed eventually and I will make a million dollars and quit my job. But I’m also okay with nothing happening (more likely). I write because I enjoy it. Writing enhances my life and my experience in the world. And if other people enjoy what I write, then that’s good. I haven’t had any real success, as far as book sales go. But writing has improved my life/made it more interesting in ways I couldn’t have even imagined when I was just starting out. I think it’s better just to focus on becoming a better writer as opposed to thinking too much about the unpredictable, uncontrollable things that could happen with the writing once it’s out in the world. 

Another thing that I love is getting offline and venturing out into the real world to travel and to do readings. I don’t really promote my stuff online much. I don’t think anyone is really paying attention. It feels much more normal, fulfilling, life-affirming to get out there and read in front of and talk with people. It feels more real, and it’s a lot more fun. I would rather some depressed kid come to a reading and get drunk and have fun as opposed to finding one of my books on the internet. Oh and also, fuck you.

Point—Middleton. Alright. What do you think about a lightning round now? Phase three. Higher stakes. Even more intimate.

BM: Hell yeah, let’s do it.

 

Phase Three: Lightning Round

 

What book do you pick up most, when you feel anxious or shitty?

BM: The Collected Works of Alberto Caeiro by Fernando Pessoa.

Jackie Chan or Arnie Schwarzenegger? And why?

BM: Jackie Chan. Out of all the movies they've been in I think I've only seen Rush Hour and Twins. So I don't have strong feelings about either. Feel like I would rather hang out with Jackie Chan. Seems more chill/isn't a politician. But I don’t know though. This was a bad question.

From what you’ve said about both your books, I get the impression you write and write and write and write, then cut away at huge chunks afterward. Am I correct in this assumption?

BM: For sure. I ended up cutting about 80% of the words from College Novel, and about the same for this one. I like having a lot to work with.

Do you have a favorite memory from your readings?

BM: The first couple times I did readings I didn’t enjoy them. Was nervous and my voice was shaky. The third time I felt comfortable and was even having fun, felt in the moment and good, was a little drunk and surrounded by friends. Afterwards we had a little dance party at my friend’s neighbor's house. Or maybe that was after another reading. Either way, I cherish that memory/both of those memories a lot. Was the start of something nice. People always say this, but it's good to do things that make you nervous.

If it doesn’t put you in any danger, could you talk a little about your alter-ego Dough Mahoney?

BM: Went over to a friend's apartment and was drinking out of a glass that had ‘Dough Mahoney’ written on it in sharpie. I asked him why his beer mug had ‘Dough Mahoney’ written on it and he said it was his pen name. I thought that was stupid and funny and used that bit in College Novel. One day I wanted to publish something on the internet under a different name and Dough Mahoney was the first one that came to mind. Felt kind of good. A little freeing. I started feeling like a Dough Mahoney. I ate some potato salad after the Dough Mahoney story came out, and eating potato felt like something a Dough Mahoney would do. I thought maybe I really am Dough Mahoney. I changed my twitter handle to Dough Mahoney. It felt right. So I legally changed my name to Dough Mahoney. I bought a little name plate for my desk that said Dough Mahoney because that was my name. I submitted An Actual Person... to Clash and they said they’d publish it. But Leza did not like the name Dough Mahoney. I changed my twitter name and legal name back to Blake Middleton, but kept the desk plate.

‘An actual person…’ has a calm rhythm to it even when describing the most absurd images. Is there an album you feel ‘pairs well’ with it—or did you listen to a certain type of music while writing it?

 

BM: I listen to a lot of Destroyer when trying to write. I don’t sit down at a computer anymore. I ride my bike or sit by the river or go for a walk. I need to be out moving through the world. I need to feel different than I normally do. I don't know how to describe the state I get in but when you're there you just know. I think on average I probably wrote one or two lines a day. But Dan Bejar can get me in that state sometimes. I like his song writing because it’s calm, detached, world-weary, deadpan, dream-like, not hysterical or overwrought. Eerily good. Like it shouldn’t exist on this earth.  Even when he’s singing about the apocalypse it’s beautiful. You can tell he has so much love for life and that he’s also completely horrified/disgusted by the world. There’s nothing better. “Sing the least poetic thing you can think of, and try to make it sound beautiful.” It feels pointless to write poetry while listening to Destroyer and I like that for some reason.

Love Destroyer. Nice. Very nice. So, what kind of vaping rig you working with?

BM: (demands we strike question from the record, citing: “you’re an idiot”) 

Fuck you.

 

Round Four: The Last Question

 

There are some philosophical lines in your book. life should reveal itself as an increasingly moving series of recognitions. But are followed with one-liners or blunt statements of confusion. i know that i know things, but it feels like i don’t know anything. Which for me, gives it this endless looping feeling of introspection. Were you inspired/influenced by any philosophers/big-brain thinkers? Or was there any specific reading experience that sparked the idea for this book?

BM: Reading $50,000 by Andrew Weatherhead definitely sparked it. I loved the tone of that poem. The space between lines. It’s really funny and direct in a way that most poetry isn’t. Then I read The Rejection of Closure, an essay by Lyn Hejinian, which I won’t go into here because I did that in the interview I did with Zac and ended up rambling way too much. The combination of those two back to back really jolted me away from linear narratives and I felt much more excited by nonlinear, fragmented, aphoristic, non sequitur type stuff. Right after reading those I started writing An Actual Person...without really even thinking about it. It just felt natural and good, which is rare for me, so I kept adding lines. 

As far as big-brain stuff goes, when I was like 22-25 I read a lot of Sartre, Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Nietzche. Sartre was the big one for me. I remember coming across his essay Existentialism is a Humanism in college, feeling failed by public education for never having been forced to read it, then getting into all his other books. Lol. I almost don’t even want to think about it because I almost went insane reading all of that shit. I read so much of it that I’m sure there’s some influence there, but I don’t think I can pin-point anything. I don’t know why I stuck with it for so long. I thought I would find something that would make sense of things I guess. But nothing ever really did that for me. Lately I’ve just been really into E.M. Cioran. He’s an extremely emotional and unintentionally funny philosopher. He writes in aphorisms which I always enjoy. Like, I think this kind of shit is hilarious: “In the days when I set off on month-long bicycle trips across France, my greatest pleasure was to stop in country cemeteries, to stretch out between two graves, and to smoke for hours on end. I think of those days as the most active period of my life.” I keep talking about this excerpt from The Trouble With Being Born by Cioran in all the interviews I’ve done for this book so far because I think it kind of changed how I viewed things, almost put me at ease or something: “We cannot elude existence by explanations, we can only endure it, love or hate it, adore or dread it…” It seems so obvious and I’m sure I’ve read similar iterations of that same sentiment, but it really hit me. I think after reading that I felt kind of freed from trying to get at anything, and my writing got more playful. There’s really nothing to say. Or I’m just comfortable not really saying anything. I’m happy to just paint a little picture of the world/reveal things about the world and being a person on it that I think are funny or confusing or exciting. I don’t care to sound smart or like I know what I’m talking about. But I can look at things and describe them, articulate how I’m feeling, write about stuff I think sucks and stuff I think is good and hopefully do it in a way that feels new and hopefully say some things that other people also think but haven’t articulated. I’m still figuring things out. Or maybe I’m realizing that there isn’t all too much to figure out. 

And that’s match, Middleton. Well done. Anything else you want to add?

I’ll be reading in NYC at KGB bar with GG Roland, Shy Watson, Graham Irvin, Peter BD, Theo Thimo, and Alex Otte on July 22 if anyone wants to come hang. Also doing a reading with GG and other Clash Books people at the NYC Poetry Fest on Governors Island July 25th if that sounds like fun to anyone. *gif of that Miami beach dude in joker face-paint waving an American flag around while standing on a cop car*

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