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contents «
alia volz
n IGHTFISHING 8
first published in The First Line
bucky sinister
jonathan siegel
ian tuttle
ali liebegott
kim addonizio
s TOLEN m OMENTS
58
b LUES f OR r OBERT j OHNSON 59
andrew o. dugas
lauren becker
l AUGHTER 72
first published in Wigleaf
m AGPIES 76
first published in Emprise Review
charlie anders
a LAMEDA 80
charlie getter
t HE a PE p OEM 90
« 8
Alia Volz
9»
mutants—out of our apartment and down the stairs
at the back of the building. “God is punishing me, I
know it. I know I am not perfect, but I try to raise
good boys.” Mom always went on like this, when we
acted up.
A door banged above us. An old lady with a
shower cap on her head leaned over the rail.
“Shhhhh!” she said. “You disturb whole building!”
“See this cochino?” yelled Mom. “Ten years-
old, he wants to be a pervert!”
The old lady shook her head. “Throw him in
garbage,” she said. “Maybe teach lesson.” She went
back inside.
Twenty million hours later, we reached a red
door at the bottom. Mom poked my back with her
fingernail. I held the magazines between my arms
and chin and turned the handle. Heat blasted into
the stairwell.
We stepped into the passage separating our
building from the next one over. Here was the big
green dumpster, so I knew we were three floors
below my window. Mom made me throw all of the
Playboys into the trash.
« 10
Alia Volz
11 »
“Yeah screw you!”
A chopper passed overhead. Some neighbors
argued in a language I didn’t know. I leaned out into
the passage. I could see sunlight flash like a death
ray off the cars passing by.
The next-door building was taller than ours. I
didn’t know anybody who lived there. I turned over.
The crystal blue sky ran like a river above the
buildings. Pigeons knocked heads to look at me
from the rooftops. One jumped up and flapped down
to the dumpster for a trash snack.
I grabbed the fishing pole. The line was way
too short. I cut it and tied the hook to a super long
piece of kite string, which I threaded through the
loop at the tip of the pole. I kept the other end in my
hand, so I could feed the line out or pull it in.
I let the line out the window, all the way down
to the dumpster. I waved the pole slowly, until the
hook snagged.
I reeled in a take-out box dripping white sauce
and had to throw it back. Next try, I got a balled-up
diaper. I jerked the pole up and down until it fell off.
« 12
Alia Volz
13 »
She only talked about it late at night, while I was
between dreams. It was my real place, even if I
hadn’t been there yet.
Mom’s body tensed. “Ya. Get back to bed. And
don’t think this means you can come out tomorrow,
Señor. I’m still mad at you.”
I couldn’t relax in bed. My sheets felt scratchy
and hot like wool blankets. I got onto my knees at
the window and positioned my pole for fishing.
The fat moon hung right above the gap, like it
was strung-up between the buildings. Flashlight
bright, it shone into the fishing hole. Something
glittered down there, like an eye. Like an eye
belonging to a cat or a rat or a fox. I wanted it,
whatever it was.
I swung the line past my prey then dragged
the hook along the ground. The sparkle didn’t
budge. After a few tries, I managed to hook and reel
it in carefully. It twinkled all the way up to my
window. I’d caught a shiny silver watch. It even
ticked.
« 14
Alia Volz
15 »
ingredients. At warp speed, I grabbed the watch and
fishing pole from my room. Under the cover of
crackling oil, I snuck out the front door.
I flew down the stairs, jumping the last four of
each flight, and hit the street. I was a convict on the
loose.
The cars chugged in place on Wilshire. I
weaved between fenders and crossed to the shady
side. The after-work crowd was out. I dodged
through a forest of suits and high heels. When I ran
past the upstairs lady, she flattened against the
wall.
“Slow down crazy boy!” she yelled.
I ran on—past the fish-stinky restaurant where
they kept crabs in a tank by the door and the three
fingernail shops that smelled like Mom’s remover;
past PK’s Liquor, Happy O Donut and the dirty
bookstore; past a bum with flags flapping all over
his shopping cart and sticking up from his hair; past
a fat lady wearing a skirt so short I could see her red
chones—right up to the Royal Pawn.
I rang the bell. The door buzzed and I pushed
inside. I was blind. Then I saw a hundred TV’s, all
piled-up on a shelf. There were mini TV’s, TV’s as
big as cars, a TV that was all red and one with a
busted-in screen.
“Fishing pole, three dollars,” said a rough
voice. I jumped. An old man sat behind a glass case
in the back of the shop. His round glasses flashed
like a cat’s eyes. “Not a big item in L.A.”
“No way I’m selling it.”
“I got a Viking hat for you. Special deal, five
dollars.”
« 16
Alia Volz
17 »
Royal Pawn was much bigger than it seemed. We
passed rows of microwaves, DVD players, clocks,
guitars. The air grew cooler and smellier. It tasted
nasty in my throat.
We reached a green door marked CITY OF LOS
ANGELES, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Right through here,” said the old man. He
opened the door and shoved me through. “Have
fun,” he said, as the door clicked shut between us.
Everything turned black. I beat on the door
and yelled, but he didn’t answer. I heard water
dripping, farther down the tunnel. I followed the
sound, feeling my way along the wall.
My eyes slowly adjusted. The passage I was in
had a low ceiling and narrow concrete walls. Where
the concrete was busted overhead, I could see
metal pipes, like guts.
There were scratching sounds all around. I’d
seen rats the size of cats down by the dumpster.
There was nothing to do, but walk on.
Suddenly, everything shook and rumbled. I
screamed. It stopped. I heard a man’s voice that
seemed to come from above say, “Yo bring the
jackhammer over here, man! You’re in the goddamn
wrong spot. Jesus, we’re supposed to fix the street
not tear it up.”
“Aw shit, I don’t believe it,” said someone
else.
The voices came through a chunked-up hole
in the ceiling.
“Help!” I yelled. No answer. The shaking and
« 18
Alia Volz
19 »
boats. No fish, for sure. How could this be a river?
As far as I could see, it was a paper-bag-
colored trickle, not even knee deep. Clumped-up
cans and paper cups cluttered the mud. Trash all
over.
Where the riverbanks should have been,
concrete walls cut into the sky. Tags covered both
sides, up and down, saying: PHAT PHUCKER, MI13,
WASTELAND, CHATA Y EUGENE 4-EVER. Most of it
was too mixed-up to read.
I threw my pole spear-style up onto the bank
and scrambled out, using cracks in the wall for grip.
I sat on top with the sun pounding my back
and drew up my knees so I could hide my face
behind them.
The river I dreamed about probably didn’t
even exist—not in the real world. All I wanted was
somewhere sweet-smelling and cool and full of
living things. That was just a baby-ass fantasy.
« 20
t HE g RAY s IDE o F t HE m
OON
1
Dorothy walks into Rainbow Grocery
wearing her ruby red Doc Martens.
Everyone
raises her hand
or points to someone.
2
I watched The Wizard of Oz on a black and white TV
when I was young.
I had no idea Dorothy's world became color once
she landed in Oz.
3
At the age of fifteen,
I knew what Uzi fire sounded like,
but I had no idea what it was like to kiss a girl.
« 22
Bucky Sinister
Crack
turned the streets
into a pinball game of teenagers running for cover.
Glass broke and people screamed
like the city went on multiball mode.
You wouldn't always see who was shooting,
you just ran in the direction everyone else did.
I wanted out.
I wanted to leave Boston,
go back home to Arkansas
where my friends
were building hot rods one piece at a time,
and dating girls who liked fast cars and drank wine
coolers.
23 »
4
I made it back to Arkansas.
I was shell-shocked
from years of street evangelism
and the violence that came with it.
None of it made sense anymore.
5
I heard Dark Side of the Moon
for the first time on cassette.
Same goes for The Wall and
Wish You Were Here.
6
They say
if you put on a DVD of The Wizard of Oz and turn the
« 24
Bucky Sinister
sound down,
and put on a CD of Dark Side of the Moon at the
same time,
they totally sync up.
They say
that if you look in the trees in the enchanted forest,
you can see one of the stagehands
who hung himself from one of the prop trees.
They say
that Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the tin man
but he was allergic to the makeup.
They say
if you tattoo your face
you automatically get a GA check.
They say
if you smoke heroin instead of shooting it
you won't get a habit
They say
live fast die young
leave a good looking corpse.
7
The tornado set me down in California,
a world of color compared to my monotone
childhood.
25 »
Jr. College was grad school for young drug addicts,
an accelerated program for learning multiple ways
of getting fucked up.
I found poets
who shot dope in the bathrooms,
smoked speed in the alley,
and smoked pot like it was legal.
« 26
Bucky Sinister
Laying in my bed
coming down off coke,
my heart beating like a bat's wing trapped inside
me,
the euphoria gone,
I comforted myself in the idea
that I was too far from home to go back.
8
Every summer,
the American Tornado dropped Dorothies into San
Francisco.
We were the unwashed and faded-gray version of
the Lollipop Guild,
greeting them upon arrival.
27 »
This is for every little boy and girl
who stood between home and a tornado,
weighed the options,
and took a chance on the twister.
9
AIDs took the first friends I made,
in a synchronized fashion,
one after the other,
diving into nowhere like Busby Berkley swimmers.
From there it was a variety show of ODs, suicides,
and freak accidents
10
The lion wanted courage
The scarecrow wanted a brain
The tin man wanted a heart
« 28
Bucky Sinister
11
Fake Tit Haiku #1
Silicone fakies
Saline packets too fancy
I'll take frozen pea bags
12
The room spun above me.
I was back in the tornado,
spun by the winds of whiskey and bad decisions.
Above me
29 »
I could see the bottom of the bottle through the
glass of the coffee table top.
All the bourbon that remained was one halo
mockingly over my head.
13
Rachel told me to leave the house
I trusted her
I trusted those fake tits
They were at once,
a lie and the truth.
A perfect duality.
14
« 30
Bucky Sinister
15
The first AA meeting I went to
I saw all these people from my past
you were there
and you were there
and you and you and you
16
Dorothy's sick
kicking dope by candlelight
in the squat.
Her arms
31 »
are a mess of in pick-marks
and homemade tattoos.
An abscess stands in the crook of her arm
like a leaning barn by the side of the road
she wants to get it checked out
but is afraid they'll amputate it.
« 32
t HE s EVEN(teen) d EADLY a
MERICAN s INS
The SEARCH
Accumulation
The Incessant Gathering Of Information
The Gluttonous Hoarding Of Horrors & Elation
The Waiting
The Prayers
The Fruitless Expectations Of Reason
The Visions
Impregnated With Divisive Delusions
The Treasonous Road Of Virtue
Hell-bent To Send The Mind Astray From The Soul
The Physical World, The Body, The Manipulation
The Endurance Of Pain, Piercing, Fasting, Yoga,
The Sexual Stimulation
« 34
Jonathan Siegel
Nightmares Within
Of Ne'r Fulfilling Response To Question
And Leave Too Much Unanswered Of Him
And Her
And You
Before The End?
35 »
And Males The Same Do Grow Insane
With Girth & Length In Dream To Gain
The Balding Wimp Has No Appeal
So Hit The Gym, The Mass With Zeal
« 36
Jonathan Siegel
Well Whoop-Dee-FFFuckin'-Doo!
The Same For Me, The Same For You
We All Have Pain, We All Know Strife
We All Know What It's Like To Go Through Life
So Spare The Speech, Give Up The Preach
And Stop Digging For Oil, On Somebody Else’s Beach
Freedom
Is A Commodity
Traded In The Market Of American Propaganda
A Monopolization Of A Fictitious Product
The Democratic Ideal Has Fallen Victim To Pride
And Through Caricature Emboldens The Other Side
Who Ironically Have There Point & Pointless Views
Because We All Know It Tis “The Victor”
Who Will, Eventually, Choose
Which History Will Be Told, What Story Will Unfold
Which Papers Will Be Sold To The Highest Bidder
And It Leaves A Bitter Taste In The Mouth
37 »
As We Ingest Lie After Lie After Lie
And Keep Telling Ourselves
“It’s OK It’s OK It’s OK
JESUS Told Us To Do It”
AND
[ 2] “My Designer Jeans Won’t Make Themselves!
And If You Think I’m Gonna Risk Chipping A Nail
Doing Hard Labor, You’re Outta Ya Mind, Honey
I’m Sure… Some… Children Welcome The
Opportunity
To Work Long Hours For A Half A Bowl Of Rice”
AND
[3] “Ooooooieeeeee!!!
Is That Gucci?
Shiiitt… I Want That!!!
Who Cares If It’s Fenced, Who Cares If Someone Had
To Pay
With Their Innocence
& Sense Of Fairness, At Gunpoint
That Jacket Is Going For $60 On eBay
And I’ll Be Damn If I’m Gonna Pass THAT Up!”
« 38
Jonathan Siegel
39 »
Maybe We’ve Just Gone Through Our Mid-Life Crisis
As
A Country, And
Acted Out A Little With Our Fast Cars, & Even Faster
Guys & Dolls?
Showboated Around A Little Too Much Our
Extremely Itchy Trigger-Fingers?
Reached The Pinnacle Of Our Childish Ways
And That It’s, NOW, Time
To Put The Cowboy Hats & Holsters Aside And
Start Behaving With A Bit More…
Couth?
« 40
d EATH v ALLEY (p ARTS 1-3)
1
To Death Valley! To North America’s tattered gash!
To strewn boulders and cloud-stirring peaks. To
palms and sand dunes and beds without lakes. To
gouged canyons and steady inclines, waterless
plateaus and abandoned castles. To highways and
tourists and spiders and scorpions. To the sun, blank
as a wall. To oases bristling with nudists and RV
antennae. To teakettles and washboards, telescopes
and payphones. To flash floods and disconnect. To
visions clear of cataracts. To dreams. To
hallucinations. To Death Valley, my dusty muse, my
hot exhaling oracle. Death Valley, I’m coming!
Death Valley, here I come!
« 42
Ian Tuttle
43 »
Moving slow enough to seem dead still.
« 44
Ian Tuttle
Talk to him and you’ll hear his slur, you’ll see his
stubby fingers. You’ll watch him sway, stout-bodied
and grizzled, and wonder what it takes to erode a
man like that.
“See that wire frame trailer out front? The one with
the winch? But first I had to free it from the
mountain! And roll it down a thousand feet!”
45 »
He tilts his Nascar Number 5 hat, adjusts the brim.
« 46
from the novel c HA-c HING!
My jerk-face boss called everyone and every thing,
“You. Fucking. Faggot.”
The faggot could be his brother, a pen, or the
price a vendor quoted him. My job was to sit alone
in a windowless room and catch the rainfall of faxes
he dropped through a hole cut in the wall that
separated my office from his. The faxes were pages
of numerical codes for semi-conductors and their
prices. I entered their codes and prices into a
prehistoric computer where only an archaic green
cursor flashed despondently. My desk was covered
in stacks of these faxes, thick like phone books, and
all day I’d move through them. Whatever I didn’t
finish by day’s end would be thrown out, my work
obsolete because the price for semi-conductors
changed daily.
I started to keep a list of how many times I
heard my boss say, “You Fucking Faggot” and filled
a pad with tiny hash marks. The only good thing
about my job was I had my very own ashtray and
could smoke in my windowless office. I pretended to
be Nawal El Saadawi, or any prison memoirist for
that matter, and penned my ground-breaking poem
called, “How Data Entry Can Make You an Alcoholic”
while chain-smoking, scrawling down the details of
my grim existence as a data entry clerk.
The only other good thing that happened at
this job was once a week a sales rep would bring a
pink box of donuts to our office, and I’d sneak into
the break room after a trip to the bathroom, hunch
« 48
Ali Liebegott
49 »
year-old coworkers how to count back change.
Rorschach was a puppy and after each
workday, I’d take her to the park for extended
walks. Her legs were growing faster than her body
and she was starting to look like one of those jacked
up pick up trucks. One night when we were out for
our last walk of the night, a man stepped suddenly
out from the shadows and blocked the path in front
of us. It’s hard to know if he was going to attack but
she barked twice firmly, warning him. Even though
she was still a puppy, the man turned quickly away,
afraid, and walked in the other direction. I
understood more deeply after that night why my
female friends wanted to borrow Rorschach
whenever they went running at night.
*
A person gets sick of being robbed or attacked, just
like they get sick of anything else. Right before I
moved to New York, I had the terrible luck of being
in two restaurant robberies in the same month and
having some kids throw a beer bottle at my head as
I walked down the street holding hands with my
girlfriend.
*
I’d lived in Yonkers a few months when some girls
I’d been arrested with in San Francisco invited me to
a potluck. I was so happy to go into the city and out
of my house where I was starting to find out why my
room only cost $300. The lease-holder was an
unemployed mooch who increased the price of all
the rooms in the house until her part of the rent was
covered. I think her small room off the kitchen with
only a curtain for a door was originally a pantry that
« 50
Ali Liebegott
51 »
into the apartment building I had the feeling
someone was behind me. When I turned around a
short junkie was pointing a knife at my stomach.
“Give me your money or I’m going to stab
you,” the junkie said.
“Money?” I said incredulously.
I had three dollars in my pocket and a brown
bag with a six-dollar bottle of wine.
I heard myself repeat, “Money?”
Talk about picking the wrong person to rob.
The last three months of going on dates with guys
from the dog park and eating thirty-cent rolls from
the supermarket flipped through my brain. I could
help the junkie get elected President more easily
than give him money. He stepped closer and
touched the point of the knife blade to my stomach.
“Give me your money or I’m going to stab
you,” he said, this time his voice quieter.
Despite all this, something told me he was an
amateur by the way he held the knife flimsily like
the edge of a Frisbee. My adrenaline turned to
outrage when I realized I’d found myself in the
middle of another robbery, and I wrapped my
fingers around the neck of the wine bottle and
began to swing it at his head.
You can kill a person by hitting them in the
head with a bottle. You can smash their skull. And
even though I was fed up with being robbed, sub-
consciously I knew I didn’t want to hurt him.
Everything happened so quickly yet in memory it’s
covered in a haze of slow motion. Did the bottle slip
out of the bag? Or did I intentionally miss his head
and smash it into the tile wall behind him? I think
« 52
Ali Liebegott
53 »
liveliness of a party in a movie. I didn’t want to be
histrionic and ruin the party, but my knees were still
shaking in fear.
“How are you?” everyone said.
I said it casually, “I just got held up by
knifepoint in the lobby.”
“What????” they screamed.
“I swung a bottle at some junkie’s head.”
Then some people ran downstairs to see if he
was still there while someone sat me down in a
kitchen chair and someone handed me a cigarette
after cigarette.
In the lobby, the junkie was long gone of
course, and the only thing that remained was the
bright tile wall streaked with red wine, and the
brown paper bag and shattered glass lying in a
puddle on the ground. After awhile, the party turned
back into a party and I tried to listen to their stories
and jokes, but I felt so fragile. Everyone kept
offering me wine, but I refused.
“I’m not drinking,” I said.
The whole night at the party no one could
believe I lived in Yonkers.
“You have to get out of there,” my jail friends
said. “You can stay in our spare room until you find
a place.”
“I know of a temporary job until you find a
permanent one,” one girl said.
After the party, they escorted me to my truck,
I locked the doors and drove back to Yonkers. When
I got home I was still shaken from being held up and
I walked Rorschach, terrified of every shadow. As we
walked around the neighborhood, I tried to
« 54
Ali Liebegott
55 »
« 56
s TOLEN m OMENTS
What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.
« 58
Kim Addonizio
b LUES f OR r OBERT j
OHNSON
Give me a pint of whiskey with a broken seal
Give me one more hour with a broken feel
I can’t sleep again and a black dog’s on my trail
59 »
« 60
s LEEPWALKING i N
from the novel
p ARADISE
For the first few years that Tommy lived on Cole
Street, Blind Johnny Ray never hit him up for spare
change. It didn't matter that his favorite bench was
just two doors down from Tommy's place, or that
Tommy passed him, sitting there, at least twice a
day.
Tommy began to wonder if it were him.
Johnny always seemed to be chatting with
other neighborhood folks, smiling and laughing, his
teeth flashing in the San Francisco sunlight. In his
trademark sheepskin coat, he lounged upon that
bench like a mountain man making a guest
appearance on the Tonight Show, a silver-maned
Grizzly Adams with dark glasses and cane.
And if anyone offered him coins or doggy-bag
leftovers, he didn't seem to mind.
But he never asked Tommy for anything, not
even a quarter.
« 62
Andrew O. Dugas
63 »
age at least. He wondered what they thought of all
the action figures arriving like clockwork year after
year. Of course, it was more likely that his wife had
long since moved and the toys were piling up in the
Albuquerque Post Office. Johnny didn't exactly have
a return address.
“No problem, Johnny,” he told him. “No
problem at all.”
The next year, right after Thanksgiving,
Johnny stopped Tommy on the corner and, touching
his wrist as lightly as a butterfly, asked if he could
help him wrap and send the presents again.
“And maybe write out the card for me? Since
you're a bona fide journalist and all.”
Tommy laughed and said yes, the same way
he said yes every year after that.
« 64
Andrew O. Dugas
65 »
The occasional mercy burrito was about as far
as Tommy's financial generosity stretched. Being a
struggling hedonist with no real job, he had little to
offer, cash-wise. He tried to make up for it in other
ways, with leftovers or little gifts. Tommy
supplemented his meager newspaper paycheck with
catering gigs, so he often brought home leftovers.
Mini-quiche hors d'ouvres and slab-ends of brisket.
But the most memorable thing he ever gave
Johnny wasn't food but an improbable Playboy
magazine in Braille that he'd found in Aardvark
Books. Two dollars. It was just a thick sheaf of
brown burlap riddled with punched out dots and the
famous bunny logo stamped on the cover in black
ink.
“Can you read Braille, Johnny?”
“Sure, man, whatcha got?”
Tommy handed it to him and waited as his
fingers danced across the cover. Then Johnny
chuckled and solemnly promised to only read the
articles.
« 66
Andrew O. Dugas
67 »
Tommy knew that not so many years before, Baba
Ram Paul would've let Johnny ride it out, as long as
someone vouched for him.
But times had changed. The city had changed.
The New Economy was driving rents into the
stratosphere, and Cole Valley had quiet tree-lined
streets and charming shops and cafes. People like
Katherine or William the Lawyer on the third floor
were happy to pay a premium to live there. Every
time someone like Tommy moved out, Baba Ram
Paul did a quick remodel and moved in the
Katherines and the Williams at three times the rent.
There was no room for the Johnnies in the new
equation. Not even in the garage.
At least Johnny had gotten through the worst
of the storm. Tommy bought him some coffee at
Spinelli's and apologized for the way things had
gone down.
Johnny clapped him on the shoulder. “No
worries, Tommy. You probably saved my life, man.”
Tommy went to work and that was the last
time he saw Johnny.
« 68
Andrew O. Dugas
69 »
« 70
l AUGHTER
Daniel shows me his new apartment. Its empty
rooms and drapeless windows. He smiles with teeth
only, offering me cheer in this bare cheerlessness. I
know Daniel better than that. Our mutual friends
accept his offer of superficial contentment.
Relieved, they look forward to his housewarming
party.
« 72
Lauren Becker
73 »
He walks me to my car. We laugh at small things –
the old woman flirting with him at the bar, his naked
neighbor, my near-fall when my boot catches the
sidewalk. We hug for more than a moment. He is 6
and a half feet, solid. I concentrate very hard on
transferring some comfort to him. We stick to our
quiet agreement. I step back. I need to conserve
what is left for myself. For when I return to my
house, filled with furniture, filled with things.
« 74
m AGPIES
He had an older sister whose face reminded Lydia of
a cartoon magpie from her childhood. Now that
Lydia thought of it, she realized that the cartoon
had featured two birds, twins. How fitting, she
thought. He was enmeshed with his sister in a way
just this side of pathological. The family had always
pushed the myth—he'd insisted it was a myth—of
the two siblings as practically twins; they were just
that close, claimed the mother.
Lydia had seen photographs of the two in
Halloween costumes, dressed up as Raggedy Ann
and Andy. How humiliating, she'd thought, to have
to have been Raggedy Andy. She'd stared at the
boy in the photos and tried to discern something
behind the lipstick-enhanced red smile.
The sister's appearance costumed as Raggedy
Ann was an improvement; she actually looked like a
little girl you could love. When Lydia first met the
sister, she was struck by how unappealing she was,
her flat face, sharp nose, and thin lips, something
Lydia hadn't expected from the talk of her. He and
his mother, for example, had often referred to her
fondly as a "pixie."
Now Lydia listened to him speak on the phone
to his sister, occasional words of comfort he slipped
in. His sister evidently was going on and on. Her
litanies of problems. One of her usual modes of
operation; the other was to give a lengthy list of all
that she'd recently purchased or was about to,
including a few expensive trips for variety's sake.
« 76
Peg Alford Pursell
77 »
« 78
a LAMEDA
A week after Mary moved out, she called to find out
when Audrey was moving out too. Because Mary's
name was on the lease—because they'd been giddy
in love and thrilled to be living together—and now
the landlord needed to start showing the place.
Audrey had no intention of staying in the
apartment, even if she could have afforded to. The
space was too giant for one person by herself, and
impossible to share with someone you weren't
dating. The privacy-destroying donut layout had
contributed to the failure of Audrey and Mary.
The lease was just the latest in a long chain of
promises Audrey and Mary had wrecked, starting
with "We'll only eat candy we make ourselves," the
first week they were dating.
With Mary's hand-crafted Nordic furniture
gone, and her herbal tea and floral sachets no
longer lacing the air, the apartment's dust
suffocated Audrey. The house slanted more and
more, as if the creatures burrowing under the
baseboards were getting braver without Mary there
to alarm them.
Whenever Audrey went online to look at
roommate listings, she kept finding herself on the
collared slave sites and bondage personals sites
instead. Women transfigured into objects that
weren’t even person-shaped any more, like human
flower arrangements, and every woman's eyes wide
and bright. Ball-gags made their nostrils flare, and
they looked twice as alive as everybody Audrey
« 80
Charlie Anders
knew.
Mary was so vanilla, she went epileptic if
Audrey even mentioned spankings. But now Audrey
was free to explore, and this was the only thing that
felt like a future she hadn't already seen. Audrey
would sit down to research apartments at six, and
then she'd look up from a breath-play tutorial, to
realize it was midnight and she hadn't even had
dinner.
That was how Audrey found Master Doug and
Lady Bee, and everything fell right into place.
"I've found the perfect living situation,"
Audrey told Mary when she called to check on her
progress. "I'll be moved in a couple days." Audrey
told Mary all about Master Doug and Lady Bee, who
were looking for a live-in French Maid, sex slave and
part-time nanny. "I get free room and board, as long
as I submit totally," Audrey said.
Audrey should have known Mary wouldn't
understand. "Maybe you should, I don't know, go to
a munch or an etiquette class or something first. I
like etiquette. Etiquette is always a good start to
anything." This was just like Mary: always trying to
hold Audrey back, always wanting to constrain her
horizons, and people who strand people in donut-
shaped houses full of plaster dust shouldn't give
advice. When Audrey explained this, Mary hung up.
Sure, it was an atypical arrangement, but that
just meant Audrey was a pioneer. Somebody had to
have been the first person to invent heterosexual
monogamy, scores of centuries ago, and that
81 »
person probably got no end of shit for it. What do
you mean, you're not just in-breeding with the
clanleader like everyone else? What kind of perv are
you?
Master Doug and Lady Bee lived in Alameda,
in one of those cul-de-sacs with a sidewalk that's all
ramp and no curb, for kids on tricycles. Their house
had a main floor, a loft that was the master
bedroom, and a basement. Audrey would sleep in
the basement, or else chained at the foot of their
bed. She showed up with a little U-Haul full of boxes,
and Lady Bee frowned.
"We didn't think you would have so much
stuff." Lady Bee had an acrylic French manicure, a
really pointy nose with a little piercing, a lime-green
halter top and capri jeans. Her voice sounded
huskier than it had on the phone. "I hope we can fit
it all in your hutch." She showed Audrey where they
were going to put her: a converted storage area
that Master Doug had tried to turn into a rec room
at some point. He'd gotten as far as carpeting the
walls and floor, and putting a strip of black light
along one ceiling edge.
Lady Bee asked Audrey what she'd be doing
during her days, and she explained about her job at
the Literacy Foundation. She was spearheading a
project to evaluate how cultural assumptions
hamper most literacy programs from addressing the
needs of non-white target populations. Lady Bee
nodded. "Just as long as you're home in time to
make dinner."
They had one maid uniform, which had come
from a Halloween store, hanging in their front
« 82
Charlie Anders
83 »
They didn't talk the rest of the way back to
Master Doug's place, and then finally Audrey was
ready to take off her street clothes, to shed all of
the cares, all the neediness, she'd been carrying
around all this time. Audrey thought maybe there
would be a ritual or something, but it was just like
changing into another outfit.
The maid's uniform was too small in the hips
and too big in the chest, and the high-heeled shoes
pinched Audrey's feet. She couldn't see a mirror, so
she was stuck with her mental self-image: gawky,
wobbly, worse than naked. She waited for the
humiliation to start feeling sexy. Any minute now.
Lady Bee barely glanced Audrey over before
putting her to work. Shrimp needed peeling, peas
had to soak, whiskey sours weren't going to blender
themselves. Audrey turned off all her doubting
voices, pushed all of it into the work. The work
would make sense of everything, if she only opened
herself up to it. The stove was one of those antique
World War II ones, with the burners that can turn
into a frying surface. It had decades of grease
stains, which Audrey spent an hour or two trying to
lift, until her fingers throbbed.
Master Doug and Lady Bee hardly spoke to
Audrey, except to give her directions. By the time
she'd finished cooking and cleaning, she was too
exhausted to take a whipping, and her whiskey
sours were too good to let her masters give one.
Audrey slept in her nook, in a tiny space she carved
out between all of her boxes, with an old quilt and a
pillow.
After a couple days, Audrey washed the wrong
« 84
Charlie Anders
85 »
begged and bribed them to get to bed because if
Steve and Mitzi stayed up past their bedtime, it
would be Audrey who got punished.
Sunday afternoon, Audrey watched Steve and
Mitzi climb into the back of their mother's Yaris, and
then she went back indoors to change back into her
maid's uniform, which she'd washed and set aside.
Except she couldn't bear to put on the shoes again,
her feet already pulsated from standing up all
weekend. So she put on plimsoles over her fishnets,
and stepped out into late-afternoon blindness.
She wondered what Mary was doing now. Was
Mary reading in bed? Was Mary at the Vegan co-op,
sampling a cube of cantaloupe on a toothpick, all
cool and tart, crisp and then fragile in her mouth?
Did Mary wonder about her ex, or was Audrey too
sore a subject to think about? Audrey prayed Mary
would speak to her again one day.
Audrey left the cul-de-sac, plimsoles slapping,
and kept walking, onto the big two-lane street. Lady
Bee was calling her name, but Audrey kept walking
and didn't look back. She walked past the Magic
Wok and the Tire & Auto Centers, out along the
parkway, Oakland shimmering gray across the
harbor. The breeze made her maid skirt flutter. The
Sunday evening shoppers kept checking out her
maid uniform, and one guy at the Tire & Auto
Center tried to wolf whistle but choked on it. Audrey
walked almost to the Naval Base, arms spreadeagle,
like they were tied to a cross or bedposts, like
Audrey was surrendering at last.
« 86
Charlie Anders
87 »
Charlie Getter
t HE a PE p OEM
all of the apes, who live in the tree
want to be me, want to be me
all the apes want to be
charming Charlie
89 »
around to my sound
« 90
Charlie Getter
and there she stood with her skirt and her eyes
so i reached out and ‘oo oo’d” quite charming-wise!
91 »
but the bars intervene
as they always do
when a human and ape
fall in love at the zoo
free! free!
come and see me!
when the day sees the end of my captivity!
but now all you’ll see are the apes in the tree
and if one is quite charming
the charmer is me
« 92
Charlie Getter
93 »
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