Katie McMahon - Awake

People are saying things that I can’t decipher. I have my headphones on and I keep thinking that the guy across the room is saying, “hot dogs,” when really he says, “hot sauce,” as he slams a bottle of Tabasco on the table.

Everyone is talking and talking and smiling with wide-eyes and laughing like everything is so funny.

“I can’t believe how big your salad is!”

“I can’t believe I’m eating this cookie!”

Ten people are writing screenplays. One guy is just telling a woman that he’s writing a screenplay, but he’s not actually writing it. He doesn’t know that she wouldn’t care either way.

And the red bus drives by and the sun reflects off the bus, making everything inside red and rosy. The walls are red. The chalkboard menu is red. That lady's salad is red and the tomatoes are still red too (the Tabasco from the hot dog guy is still red, maybe just redder now). Everything red. People’s faces are red. People's hands are red. Then it drives away, but his shirt is still red and your eyes are bloodshot from overexposure to the red, red, red bus.

I wonder how much coffee I can drink. I should really know by now that drinking coffee leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The best part of my day today was this chocolate chip muffin I ate. The top was all crunchy and sugary and I could taste the butter in every buttery bite. There was this boy sitting across from me outside wearing this weird hat and I kept wondering, “Why does he wear that hat? Really, why?” It was big with a flat all-around brim. All around his head there was a brim and then more brim. And he drinks water and Pepsi and even though the brim is so wide, he gets sun in his eyes as he tries to fit his straw between the clumps of ice. It sits in the cup, poking out awkwardly through the plastic lid. He looks around to see who’s watching and it’s me. So he goes away.

He walks away with that cup, but I can still see it in my head. I think about you and how you do not use straws. And then I think about you and how I always wake up first before you, and you smile with your eyes closed, pretending that you’re sleeping. I like that. The look on your face while you pretend to sleep is my second favorite look for you. I like how your hair falls when you sleep. It falls the opposite way from how it falls during the day when you’re awake. I like how you never wear glasses to bed because no one wears glasses to bed unless they’re drunk or so tired or sleeping on an airplane sitting up. They only accidentally fell asleep. You're sleeping on purpose. Fake sleeping.

I like it so much that you pretend to be sleeping because I can pretend that I’m awake, when really I’m sleeping right next to you.

I used to like listening to you talk. Very much.

But now sometimes I ask you questions, like, “Why did you leave me out here?” And you pretend like you don’t hear me or that I’m just talking to myself. What are you doing in there without me anyway? Maybe you are right.

Before, I used to take bites of you and pieces of your voice with me inside my head. I liked that very much.

The chocolate chips on the muffin form a chocolate chip mouth that laughs at me. Eat us and we’ll make you fat. It’s December and I want to be soft and fat, even though no one will love me when I’m fat. Right now I don’t want to be a lover and it feels nice to not be thought of or heard. Sometimes I think my phone is not working because no one is calling me, but nope; it is working just fine.

Sometimes I like to take baths at night and eat ice cream in the bath. The water warms me on the outside and a little in the middle, and the ice cream makes my insides cold. My teeth hard and shivering, feeling like they might fall out of my head, like cartoon teeth, onto the snowy ground, where kids can pick up the icy teeth and use them as bricks to make igloos.

Sometimes I don’t feel this way at all. I don’t want to eat ice cream in the bath or eat chocolate chips. I don’t even think about things like that at all. If I am not the person who thinks those thoughts or wants those things, why do I keep her thoughts? Why does that person stay with me?

Sometimes I think things that I would never think. When I cross the street, I talk quietly to any cars in my head, “Please do not hit me. Please do not smush me and make my bones crack into many pieces.” If I get hit by a car, I will be very angry for a minute before I die. I will be angry at that car that crushes me and angry at me for not being fast enough.

Someday, when I am crushed and dead, it will not matter how many things I ate or who I was pretending to sleep with. And we will be strangers and you will show up early in the morning to sit out in the cold with me again. Someday, you will stop looking at me like I'm someone I'm not.

Katie McMahon is a lady who lives in the North Hollywood area. She has a bachelor's degree that she keeps on her bookcase and looks at sometimes. She is getting a master's degree to put on her nightstand. Sometimes she takes pictures which you can look at here, but you don't have to if you're busy right now.

Coco Higgins - The Self-Indulgent Whines of a Total Weenie

April 29, 2011

Tonight I was at my usual coffee shop haunt with a stack of 75 undergrad papers to grade. A friend and fellow grad student shared my table. She pointed out that one of her students was sitting on one of the couches, and unfortunately this student may possibly be dumber than a box of hair. She wasn’t in my view so I stood up and performed the most obvious ruse to disguise my true intentions of having a look at this supposed dunce: I pretended to stretch. Upon doing so, I looked over and I saw a super cute girl.

Sure, she was looking slouchy in some weird sweatpants. This reminded me of George Costanza from Seinfeld. Did she give up on life and the world? Who wears sweatpants in public? Okay, they weren’t thick cotton drawstring sweatpants. They were black, of a thin fabric. But still – these aren’t pants that one would normally wear in public.

But she had short brown hair and a pouty face kind of like Kristen Stewart. Yes, go ahead, judge and psychoanalyze me all you want, but I like that angsty look. And of course it belonged on this girl. She’s an undergrad and probably at least eight years younger than me. (Good god, I feel old.) So despite the pants, I became a little smitten. Not twitterpated or anything, but you know, enough to get distracted from the monotony of grading endless papers about Egyptian sculpture. (“This sculpture was made by a human,” wrote one student. My comment: “as opposed to aliens???” True story. Okay, if you were an art historian you might haughtily say, “Maybe she meant that it was an acheiropoietos,” but I highly doubt that she even knows what that is, and this line of thinking should be saved for my term paper, and not this blog.)

The night went on and I continued to read the thoughtless, never-ending essays. The kid came over to our table to talk to my friend to ask something about the upcoming test for their class. They talked a bit, and my friend (god bless her heart), introduced me to Kristen Stewart. We shook hands, I smiled. Then she left.

As a side note, this is the same gregarious friend who, after the Lady Gaga concert, kept asking strangers, “Hey do you know any lesbians???” She was drunk and did this for me, to my embarrassment (not really). The point is, she looks out for me, in amusing ways, and I appreciate it.

Anyway, Kristen went back to the couch and I continued to grade my papers.

Then another girl came into the crowded coffee shop and got in line to order. (Not even gonna go into detail about the hot barista.) She was probably about fifteen feet away from me. Short girl, short brown hair. Totally adorbs. She sat outside, and eventually my friend and I went out there to smoke. We had eye contact for half a second and that’s about it.

Friend and I went back inside and continued to work. Eventually both girls left. Nothing happened. Outside-girl was probably straight, so I’m not feeling any sense of loss. But the other girl was slightly more promising.

What prevented me from going up to her and talking to her more? I constructed the following reasons, which ultimately paralyzed me:

1. I haven’t done laundry in 5 trillion years and I don’t like the clothes I’m wearing.
2. I’m a grad student and she’s an undergrad, and we were explicitly forbidden to have friendly interactions with these plebeians.
3. She’s apparently not the brightest crayon in the box.
4. I’m a weenie.

Let’s think about these again and why they’re irrelevant:

1. Who cares? My hair is still cute. She was wearing sweatpants for Chrissakes, so what if I’m wearing a ratty old shrunken flannel shirt and hole-y jeans?
2. Who cares? Not like I’m the one grading her (less-then-stellar) papers and tests. Besides, the department doesn’t need to know, right?
3. Who cares? I’m not looking for a life partner, just some fun.

So really it all boils down to this:

I’m a weenie.

I’ve lost all sense of game, if I ever had any to begin with. IF I ever approach girls, I’m usually drunk. Or it’s a gradual process that involves introduction by mutual friends. In a shared social situation, I can be funny and endearing. But as a first approach, I absolutely fail.

What the hell happened? I got out of my long-term relationship two years ago. I haven’t dated anyone the whole time I’ve been in grad school, and that’s approaching the one-year mark. My excuse is that academic life precludes me from having a social life outside my small circle of colleagues in the department. And I have very little time to devote to such endeavors because I’m too busy researching, reading, writing and grading student exams and essays.

But the truth is: I have all kinds of time to sit on my ass and watch tennis matches and follow all kinds of useless information on the internet. Okay, most of all this is done in the wee hours of the night/morning, so being an inverted creature forces the misanthropic behavior. But hey, Kristen Stewart likes vampires right? And I’m a vampire dandy!

But if I have all that time to do useless things, why can’t I get off my ass and do laundry, go to lesbian bars and hit on girls and get laid? This is really quite pathetic.

One of my friends has managed to date a few guys and is now in somewhat of a serious relationship. Granted, she went and looked for it, and clearly wants one. But if she can make time for it, why can’t I? I’ve been telling myself that I don’t want to be in a relationship, yet I am now beginning to question that line of reasoning.

I certainly don’t want a suffocating 24/7 relationship like the last one I had. Yes, true. But not all relationships are like that. I can casually date, or find a better relationship, a better person. But then I tell myself that I can barely take care of myself and my cat, and I’m too used to being single – set in my ways of being a slob who doesn’t do the dishes or vacuum, keeping erratic sleeping patterns revolving around class times and tennis matches, and engaging in pointless internet behavior.

No I wasn’t always like this. When I was in my last relationship, I was completely domesticated. Kept a job during normal business hours, ate healthier, made enough money to hire a maid, and stayed away from the internet. I seriously only discovered Facebook and YouTube in 2007, I think. But then while that all seems like a healthy lifestyle, I felt like a caged animal.

But is my life that much better now? I get to do what I want, certainly, and that makes me happy. But shouldn’t I want something more? The truth is, I enjoy being a nocturnal slob who trolls around the internets, lives in the land of art historical theoretica, drinks and smokes with friends and watches sports. Is that so wrong?

You want to know the ironic part of all of this coffee shop missed connection shit? The barista (not the hot girl) dude has become pretty friendly with me. He gives me free pastries in the middle of the night when there aren’t too many customers around. He also got my friend a shot of whiskey when I told him it was said friend’s birthday. One night I even got him to play the Xanadu song in the coffee shop. He’s been kind of flirty with me and went so far as to say “this better be worth my while,” before playing the dumb song. He’s also called me “so darned cute” and engaged in really childish flirting by consciously and openly trying to annoy me. I don’t think he knows I’m a lesbian. (Moral question: should I tell him, or just continue getting free pastries? Is that a soft-core form of prostitution???)

What the hell, MAN!!!!!!

I really need to get out more.

Shannon McIntyre - Again

I should have known. Really, what else could I possibly have expected?

“Expect people to be who they are,” my mother told me. She’d told me at least a thousand times.

And still…

I stare blankly at the note on the table. I want to be angry. I want to

• tear it
• shred it
• set it on fire

– at least throw it away. But I can’t feel angry. I can’t feel anything.

I’m stuck. Frozen. Staring at those words.

Again.

My mind lurches back two months to the last time he’d said them.

~~~

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

I’d had the same frozen feeling then. Like a horrible re-run.

“What? Why? What do you mean?” I fumbled for my glasses on the nightstand, squinting at the blurry hands already buckling his belt. “Are you leaving right now?”

“It’s better if I do.”

“Not for me.” I pushed my glasses up my nose and studied his face.

Blank. Nothing. Complete system shutdown.

Again.

He looked away, mechanically gathering his bits and pieces into his pockets.

• wallet, back right
• keys, front right
• loose change, front left
• gum –

He gestured toward me with the pack. “Gum?”

“Stop. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I made a mistake.” He bent to tie his shoes.

“Two days ago you said breaking up with me was a mistake. You said – “

“I know. I’m sorry. I hafta go.”

As he started for the door, I grabbed his hand. His big, beautiful hand. So many memories in those five fingers:

• lighting my cigarette as he introduced himself
• cupping my breast as he fell asleep
• wiping tears from my face the night my mother died
• sneaking under my skirt on the long drive to his sister’s house
• waving goodbye to me five months before

I remembered that wave, long and slow, fingers spread. Casual.

+++

The casualness of that wave – it was so incongruous. Nothing in that moment had fit together at all –

• the casual wave
• his blank eyes
• my tears

– these were scraps of separate moments, not a single event. I had felt so surely that moment was wrong, didn’t fit, wasn’t supposed to happen.

+++

That moment hadn’t fit. Nothing had fit since. Nothing until he showed up, five months later, and that hand held mine. Tears opened his dark eyes and I glimpsed once again the glorious depths of his soul as he said “I made a mistake.”

And last night, in my bed, when that hand cupped my breast, everything fit.

Again.

• our bodies
• our hearts
• our souls

My eyes dragged up from his hand to those blank eyes. I felt a chill where his soul no longer pressed against mine. A squeezing in my heart as it struggled to pump alone. He had left me already.

Again.

I dropped his hand, laid back in bed and rolled over.

Staring at the wall I heard

• footsteps
• door opening
• door closing

As tears soaked my pillow, I wondered if he waved.

~~~

I pick the note up and stick it to the fridge with the magnet that reads “Boys are Stupid”.

I should’ve known. I won’t forget.

Not again.

Luke Lagraff - Things I Should Know by Now

The things I should know by now I should know by now I should know
The things I should know by now!
The things I should know by now I should know by now
I should know the things I know by now

It takes living to make the life the life I should live by now by living the life
It takes living to make the life!
It takes living to make the life I should be living by living
I should be living the life

With the thoughts I've thought I think about what to think about thoughts
With the thoughts I've thought!
With the thoughts I've thought I thought I had thought
I shouldn't bethink so many thoughts

I don't really know, if I should know, the things I should know by now
I don't really know!
I don't really know if things I should know I should ever know
I shouldn't know the things I know until, now

Luke LaGraff is a lover of sandwiches, egg nog, and one of a kind days. He used to forget them, but now has realized he shouldn't; they have more meaning than ever at this point of his life. He enjoys the sun in LA and watches hockey and funny things whenever he can. He listens to people. He's from Tennessee.

Barbi Beckett - Peace and Carrots

In the early nineties I found an unlikely friend in my mechanic. Al was one of those guys who could have been 40 or 60, a handsome black man with a varied past. I trusted him wholly with my darling Pontiac Grand Am. Shug got me to Seattle from El Paso, packed to the roof, only stopping for fuel.

Al contributed when my dad was raising funds for his barbershop chorus and he sent a request to Pop in Texas when he was soliciting pledges for his church. Al was deep into his Baptist church. In his tiny waiting area I was usually in the company of a pointy shoed deacon whose car was too long to fit comfortably in the garage.

Al let me dig around in the junk pile next to the shop for rusty things. Despite his confusion, he would help me load giant chains or broken pulleys into my trunk. Sometimes he’d come over and show me some shiny piece of metal, still recognizable as a strainer or a bike lock. I’d shake my head and drag out an old carburetor part or brake rotor. He could not fathom how any of his junk translated to candle holders.

I didn’t see Al for a while after my brother died because I holed up. Finally, I went to visit him and, for several weeks after that, out of concern, he gently suggested I come to his church and talk to the preacher. I gently declined. He continued to invite me and I continued to shudder at the thought.

Al knew that I wanted to hear from my brother. You hear stories of dead people showing up at bedsides. I deserved a vision, or something. Hearing a kind pastor say that Ken was in Heaven would do nothing for my heart. What I really wanted was an amazing talk show psychic to contact him and relay a message, undeniably from Ken, that assured me he was peaceful and way better now. That’s all.

Eventually though, out of a desperate, Why the fuck not, I found myself at Sunday morning service in the Central District. The building was small and nondescript from the outside but, inside, there were wood floors, pews and a pulpit. Simple. Churchy, with preaching, singing and a lot of testifying. The way some young men talked about this God they’d found and the gutters of their past, made it feel like an addiction replacement program. Not such a bad thing though, maybe.

About three years later, the service ended. I swear to God it went on for a good portion of my life. And then I found myself in the preacher’s chambers, which Al had arranged. I sat on a low couch before that wide, sweaty man, his teeth flashing quick shards of light into my eyes. The golder the mouth, the closer to God, I guess.

After hearing this gentleman speak in tongues and lay hands on quivering, collapsing members of his congregation, I wasn’t precisely thrilled to be alone with him. I was dead inside though so I didn’t exactly care either. That Man of God had some smelling salts for my inner corpse, though. He told me that, not only was my brother damned to Hell for taking his own life, I was likely to be joining him because of the fornication I had experienced.

When I left his dank little room, I found Al outside, all alone, leaning on his car. I do hope my friend wasn’t waiting for a pat on the back.

Preacher man left me deeper in despair than ever. What if there was some truth to it that I didn’t know about? A living brother of mine had, unknowingly, given me a book that suggested a horrible purgatory for souls who’d committed suicide. They were to spend eternity following around their devastated, living loved ones begging forgiveness but never being heard. So much for comforting reading material.

I needed a second opinion and still had no line on the psychic of my dreams. I remembered that the theatre company I was part of had done a play featuring Carmelite nuns. These sisters take a vow of enclosure. They live in cloistered convents and rarely go out into the world. In doing research for the show, we learned that there was a Carmelite convent in north Seattle, just a few blocks from my apartment. I figured it was time to introduce myself to the neighbors.

I pulled my car over and parked across the street from the convent in the middle of this suburban neighborhood. My approach was tentative, to say the least. I had this condition at the time where no problem of mine felt deserving of serious attention. The overriding feeling I’d get when faced with a therapist or, now, these women of God was This is a place for people who really need help. Don’t waist their time! Still, I opened a door and stepped into a small vestibule. In front of me was a closed, convex, metal window with a white button doorbell next to it. I stood looking at the walls, then the button, the ceiling, the button, and then I left. The building next door was the church. Inside, it was quiet and dated – not in a good ancient way but in a sad beige way. I sat for a while, gathering the courage to return to the vestibule. I did go back and I stared at the white button some more before I finally pushed it. The bell that sounded was way off in the distance. I waited. Nothing. Should I ring it again? No. Obnoxious. Then I heard soft footsteps far far away, and what sounded like a concrete door opening, then, closing. The footsteps came closer until a woman’s voice, from the other side of the convex metal window, asked how she could help me today. Now what? I had no idea what to say. I heard my voice tell her, “My brother killed himself and I was wondering where he might be.” What a dork.

The nun continued to talk to me through the metal. I figured out that not only does the vow of enclosure keep them inside the convent walls, it also means they aren’t seen by civilian eyes, if they can help it. It was Tuesday and Sister Rose told me that I could meet with the Mother Superior Thursday at ten.

Ummm. oh. kay. That sounded good, actually. She has both “superior” and “mother” in her title. She might have a line on something.

Before I left, the Sister asked if I wouldn’t mind waiting there for a few minutes because she had something she wanted to show me. Her soft little footsteps faded back into the echoing vastness of the joint, the massive (sounding) door scraped along the floor, opening, closing, faint footsteps. Silence. Footsteps, concrete door, louder steps.

The convex metal thing between us started to move. It spun around in a way that kept the sister concealed and turned out to be a Lazy Susan of sorts. Now it was concave; I looked down to see a photograph of a young family – a mom, dad and two small kids posing in a park. The dad was Sister Rose’s nephew who’d killed himself two months before. She told me his story and I relaxed, started feeling like it was alright for me to be there. I returned the photo on the Lazy Susan and when it went around, full circle, there was an article about death that she’d made a copy of for me. I remember feeling a little less untethered. I pictured this nun back there fetching a picture from her cell and making photocopies. It was nice.

At ten on Thursday morning I entered a room that was divided by a two foot high wall. There was an empty chair facing the barrier and, on the other side, sat Mother Michael. She was small in her brown habit and sat straight but relaxed, with her legs crossed and hands resting on her lap. I nervously jabbered about the Baptist preacher and my need to know things. When the Mother Superior spoke she was even and clear, not cold, but nothing extraneous. She told me that my brother was there with me. She said he was peaceful and (she wasn’t afraid of clichés) watching over me.

I left the convent and had a pretty good day, a temporary break from crushing pain. I did not believe my brother was with me, watching over me, nor did I want to. That sounded, some parts creepy, some parts embarrassing. But, he’d also been plucked out of hell. I was back to neutral-not-knowing.

A few weeks later, I met Al for lunch at Subway and we went for a walk. I asked him what he thought of people in other cultures, other parts of the world, who believed in a different God, not the one from his bible. He said, “They’re sinners, worshipping false idols.”

That was some pompous business. At least he didn’t sound entirely confident. I was glad about that. “You don’t hear how crazy that is?” I asked.

We walked along quietly for a while, then I asked Al, “So, if I were to find peace, some day, just general, consistent peace, but it wasn’t with your God, what would you think of that?”

“That’s all I want for you, my dear.” Al did sound confident then. It didn’t matter to either of us that he was contradicting himself or was simply OK with me being a peaceful sinner. Either way, we were both off the hook – me from buying the stories that worked for him and him from trying to sell them.

The distraction of searching for a place to put my brother gave way to other stages of grief. For a long time though, when I’d meet someone who knew a great psychic, my pulse would quicken as I wondered if they could make Ken talk so I’d believe it. But, short of trying to squeeze some personal meaning into a couple tarot readings, I didn’t venture down that path. I suspected that all of these truths were just best guesses or gut feelings and I would have to wait for my own gut to make a best guess.