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mojo 17 Contributor Bios

Mikko Harvey is the author of Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit (House of Anansi, 2018). He currently lives in Ithaca, New York.

Amanda Hays is from Allen, Texas, but currently lives and writes in Oklahoma City. She works as an Associate Editor of the Cimarron Review. Her work has appeared in Cheat River Review, Lost Balloon, and Little Patuxent Review and is forthcoming from The Indianapolis Review.

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Online, The Forge Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Argot Magazine, and other venues. Avra won the 2019 Bacopa Literary Review prize for fiction. You can find her on twitter @avramargariti.

Mehvish is a writer and a filmmaker from Kashmir. Her films have been well received all over the world and they have also won awards. But she considers herself a writer first. She draws most of her inspiration from Kashmir and Jhelum – for her poems, her stories and her films. She firmly believes that any art form sculpted from pain has the power to save us from despair.

Stephen Mruzik is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. His work can be found on Drunk Monkeys. He is originally from O’Fallon, Illinois and used to work at a pet store. His parents have a Basset Hound.

Christopher X. Ryan is the author of the novel BOGORE, forthcoming in 2020 from J.New Books. In the past year his stories appeared in over twenty journals, and he earned second place in the 2019 Baltimore Review winter contest. Born on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, he now lives in Helsinki, Finland, where he works as a writer, editor, and ghostwriter. He can be found at www.christopherXryan.com.

Emily Townsend is a recent graduate from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her works have appeared in cream city review, Superstition Review, The Account, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Santa Clara Review, Slippery Elm and others. A nominee for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she is currently tinkering with essays and poems in Eugene, Oregon.

Chloe Tsolakoglou is a Greek poet who grew up in Athens, Greece. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in Creative Writing. Currently, Chloe serves as the Anselm Hollo Fellow at Naropa University’s MFA Program. She has worked for a variety of publications, such as Catamaran Literary Magazine, and is presently the Managing Editor for Bombay Gin. Her writing explores the transactional natures of love and violence under late capitalism.

Lee Wilder was raised on the outskirts of Nashville. She attended the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for Creative Writing. Besides
indulging in the latest short story collections, she enjoys inventing craft cocktails and cooking dinner for her friends.

Margaret Yapp lives and works in Minneapolis. Her work has been featured in Apartment Poetry, the minnesota review, Whiskey Island, and elsewhere.

Categories
Blog Fiction for mojo 17

“Notwithstanding the Climax” – Lee Wilder

After a five-year relationship with a man who mirrored your every desire, the seven-o’clock date you set with Brad from the next cubicle over seems desperate. Nashville’s drunken hollers of bachelorettes and waspy plights of emotionally stunted singer-songwriters seep past Broadway, trickling their way towards you as you light a second joint in the parking garage off Church Street. You greet this commotion as a foreshadowing of your imminent demise. Consider that perhaps you’re just high.

Entering the restaurant, a glimmer of hope crosses your mind. It’s time, you think. You met Brad when you were three years into your relationship. In his late twenties, Brad suffered from a strong brow and a weak chin. Being half-Jewish and half-Turkish without the complications of a religious affiliation, your European ass thought it might be love. Recognize that you have low standards early on, it’s easier that way.

“So, Sky, tell me, where do you see yourself in five years?” Brad begins to interrogate you as he swishes and sniffs at his glass of Chardonnay. Silently hope he chokes.

“Where do I see myself?” you repeat, half-expecting for Brad to realize he sounds like your middle school therapist.

Brad nods before spitting his wine back into its glass. Seizing your waiter’s arm for the third time, he questions if his lamb chop will come out medium-rare as the last time he dined with them it had certainly not.“Burnt to a crisp,” he cries out.

You were a server for three years in college. Fantasize about burning Brad to a crisp. Brad orders another Chardonnay– “One that doesn’t taste like the Sahara going down,” he says, chuckling at his own joke.

Excuse yourself to the bathroom. Know he probably prefers the term, “ladies’ room.” You reach the side exit and navigate around to the staff entrance. Slump to the cement sidewalk as your back grates against the brick exterior, reminding you what it’s like to feel something for once. Pull out a vaporizer from your purse, freshly packed, and take three hits of whatever strain your junior-year dealer just sold you. Laugh at the thought of how long you’re taking, and how Brad is probably horrified at the thought of you excusing yourself to take a shit on your first date. A cute waiter saunters outside and asks you for a light. Wish you were a smoker and offer him some of your weed instead. He takes a hit. He has green eyes and a five-o’clock shadow. Feel overwhelmed with the tantalizing prospect of leaving Brad alone at the table with his overcooked lamb and dry wine while you shag the cute waiter in his car.

Decide being whorish is better than being lonely.

Exchange names and numbers. After that’s over, say, “Nice meeting you,” and bite your lower lip for effect.

“Sky,” the waiter says, letting out a small exhale, “Has anyone ever told you that you kind of have a sexy Steve Jobs thing going on?”

Look down at your black turtleneck. Adjusting your glasses, return inside and toss the waiter’s number in the trash. You seriously doubt your ability to live up to Steve Jobs in bed. Walking over, you see that Brad has sent his lamb back.

You’re lying there with your head propped up on three pillows as you wipe at the dried mascara speckled underneath your lash line. Feel as if you’re wasting away. Sprawl the abrasive blanket your dead grandmother knitted for communion across your lap. Flick your toes together and then apart to lessen the sweat between them, while your shoulders shrink from the morning frost leaking in through the threadbare walls.

Relax your jaw. Say, “I’m going to be an artist.” Let these words comfort you, relieve you of the panic you felt last night while you dread returning to work in twenty-one hours. Flip onto your stomach and shove your face into the pillows. Wish you’d never accepted Brad’s offer, that you’d said you had the flu or preferred the labia majora.

Mutter, “I’m never going to be an artist,” into your pillows. Lift yourself up. Braless and pantless, throw on a faux fur coat before shuffling over to the sink. Wash your face and comb your hair. It’s too tangled for your comb to get through. Put it up in a bun.

Say hello to your cat. He ignores you. Feed him and fill his water anyway. Flip the ON switch on your Mr. Coffee. Throw open the refrigerator door too hard, hitting the wall, knocking your mason jar of charcoal and brushes onto the floor. Glare at the glass shards and scattered brushes. Think they’re mocking you. The brushes are brittle and unkempt, without having water or paint on them in eight months. Your cat mews and prances towards the glass. Cart him away and fetch a broom. Kneel down and sweep at the shards. Strands of your hair free themselves from the elastic, and you glance into the floor-length mirror crookedly hanging from the wall. Observe a gray hair as it flickers in and out of your focus, the sunlight penetrating through the wavering blinds. Understand you are your seven-year-old self’s worst nightmare. Decide at twenty-two you are Cruella de Vil.

Your phone violently buzzes on the kitchen counter. Hurriedly sweep up the remaining glass and dispose of it. Your phone shatters on the floor to the left of the strewn brushes.

Exclaim shit, shit, shit, shit. It’s your mother.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Define ‘okay.’”

She tells you that she’s worried about you, that you look “sick and too pale” in your latest profile picture on Facebook.

Say, “It’s February.”

“Well, you need to eat something,” she says.

Ask if eating something will remedy your paleness.

She queries if you’ve been seeing any men.

 Lie and say no. The date with Brad is still too fresh of a memory to be amusing.

She asks if you’ve gone from being bisexual to a lesbian now. She says, “I’m sixty-two. I don’t know how these things work.” Inform her that you have a migraine and need to go. She ignores you and inquires how your painting is going.

Swipe your badge so the tiny arm lifts, and park your car in your designated parking garage. You make fifteen dollars an hour, so your designated parking garage is the economy lot. Spend your mornings envying the bastards who are on salary and park in the 401k parking garage. Hate that at twenty-two your goals revolve around which parking garage you get to park in.

Exit your car and take a swig from your SimplyInsurancethermos. The cap isn’t screwed on, so your organic blonde roast with almond milk hurls itself against your sheer blouse. Bellow profanities across the economy parking garage. The other hourly employees regard you with fear and confusion as they hurry out of their cars and huddle into the elevator past its maximum capacity.

Despite the awkward date, Brad seems unaffected by it at work. He smiles when you come in and brings you a coffee after you recount the thermos nightmare. Worry you’re always demanding on first dates, how you’ve been told you expect too much. Brad isn’t an entirely dreadful man. Let it register that he can see through your shirt.

“Did you do anything fun this weekend?” your co-worker Janis asks you, leaning over the walls of your cubicle, infecting your area with the vacant smell of children and RedBull. Fake it, just like you do every day. Notify Janis that you had a great weekend and offer no specific details. She adores your vague and positive response. She says she’d love to see one of your “art things sometime.

Hear the words, “Sure thing,” escape your mouth, and bury yourself in short-term disability claims.

Someone else microwaves and consumes your six-dollar organic pesto tortellini lunch. Remember that episode from Friends where Ross’ boss eats his turkey sandwich. Think of having a mental breakdown like Ross– the pros being that you would get a paid leave-of-absence and a Valium, the cons being that no one wants to be a Ross. Venture down to the cafeteria and pay ten dollars for a protein bar and some almonds.

It’s one fifty-three, and your boss Megan, “without an ‘h,’” mentions to you that it’s fine to make mistakes, but mistakes must be remedied in a timely manner. Megan remarks that you should really smile more. Suspect that bitch of microwaving your pesto tortellini.

Arrive home and hug your cat. He purrs. Think at least someone missed you.

Pour two shots of gin and slump on the sofa your ex purchased four years into the relationship. Think about how you tried to return it, the same way you struggled to return all of the things you’d bought together a month after he ended things. Leave your drink on the floor untouched since you returned the coffee table seven months ago. Wander around your two-bedroom apartment. The Christmas lights you strung around the living room together in the second year hang motionless. Their shadows never change, the spiral pattern you centered on the main wall now reads as childish, or perhaps just stale. Old canvases your figure painting professor determined held, “little room for potential,” lay stacked against the corner.

Contemplate calling him. Don’t think of how long it’s been since the last time you talked to him, let alone since the last time you guys had sex. Call someone else. You need moral support. Try your sister. Voicemail. Say, “What about Brad?” Don’t allow yourself such liberties.

Pick up your gin and muster a swig. Your cat hops onto the sofa and stretches beside you. He kneads biscuits on your thighs, purring complacently, unaware of what a troubled life you lead. Think of your neighbor, Claire. Think, maybe I’ll have more luck with a woman. But, Claire doesn’t know your name, and you’ve only seen men exit Claire’s door. Assess the fact that you’ve never even been with a woman. Some bisexual you are.

Try to read a book. It’s a mystery novel. You’re not in the mood for mysteries. Decide that if Barnes and Noble isn’t bankrupted by the weekend, you’ll go browse their Self-Help section– consider crying at the thought.

Your phone vibrates.

Forty-five minutes later, Brad arrives at your door, wearing a fitted cashmere sweater and Doc Martens. You let him in anyway. He removes a copy of Infinite Jest from his satchel and places it next to him. This strikes you as odd. Wonder whether Brad thinks you invited him over for book club, or if reading David Foster Wallace aloud is simply his idea of foreplay. He notices your paintings in the corner and rattles off the Wiki entry for Ignacio Zuloaga, about how he was a true Spanish painter unlike the “silly little pieces” from Picasso or Dali.

Regret every decision that led you to this point. Realize that kissing Brad may be the only option to get him to shut the fuck up.

The sex isn’t bad, but good wouldn’t be the proper word to describe it. Realize after he finishes that he’s going to bring this up at the office tomorrow, that he has probably already told your coworkers about the date, how now you’re going to be referred to as the SimplyInsurance slut, or worse, as Brad’s girlfriend. Revel in your masochistic tendencies. Perhaps, they will build up your character. In the name of artistic suffering, you allow Brad to stay another hour so you can have sex again.

Brad leaves at eleven-thirty. He gives you a smoldering kiss at the door, then says, “God, I just want to eat you alive.”

Lock your door and fasten the deadbolt. Bask in the scalding heat of a forty-minute shower. Scrub the Brad off of you. Ignore that there’s a drought in Tennessee right now. You didn’t finish either time, but you’re too exhausted to use your vibrator.

Consider calling your ex. Know it’s too late.

Make eye contact with the box on the bookshelf. The “Box of Memories,” he’d deemed it. It was a cigar box that you’d given him on your fourth Christmas together after he was hospitalized for a stroke, when you decided to drop out of art school. You typed out all of the tragic and coincidental moments you shared together, placing the slips of paper and a Bukowski poem into the cigar box.

Remember how he pretended not to hear you when you asked the first time if he wanted to take it with him when he moved out, about how when you asked him the second time, he turned towards you with the stature of a man you couldn’t recall having ever met.

Turn off the lights. Lay in bed. Flip from one side to the other, hoping to perish in your sleep. Wake up disappointed. Get out of bed; turn on the lights. Remove the box off the shelf and rifle through each one: The homeless woman in Haight-Ashbury who accused you of being a Confederate soldier. When you ran into the freezer door, and I thought you were dead. That time we didn’t think the cocaine was enough …

Carefully place each memory back in the box as the last remains of hope leftover from your adolescence disintegrate. Think about the high school guidance counselor who left you with the false promise that you could be anything you wanted to be.

Categories
Blog Nonfiction for mojo 17

“The Fundamentals of Non-Exceptionals” – Emily Townsend

Date: Whenever You Opened This

RESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSE

YOU ARE HERE

SOME COUNTRY THAT IS A SOCIETAL CONSTRUCT

Dear Resident of the Universe,

We are conducting a short survey that is the first step in understanding more about people in the universe and we need your help.

Because you were randomly selected to participate in our poll, your responses are important and we cannot replace you with anyone else [four births per second, but ignore that fact, please]. Your responses will represent millions of people just like you who were not selected to participate. Please read each question carefully and answer each one honestly—there are no right or wrong answers. It is your opinion that counts. Your individual responses will remain confidential and we will never release any of your personal information. We have enclosed $1.00 [we truly wish it was more than a dollar bill that seems to only be able to purchase a 30-minute time stamp at airports or can be broken into four quarters and inserted into trolleys and will then lock the wheels again when you redeem your change, but given that the company is solely run by a 23-year-old who barely has fifty dollars left over from her GA stipend every month, we apologize that she cannot also feed you as a token of our appreciation.

Thank you in advance for helping us achieve our mission of “Freaking People the Fuck Out that They’re Not as Special as They Think.”

Sincerely,

Another Prosaic Company®

Insignificant Being ™ is a trademark of Another Prosaic Company®, and though we have not purchased a patent for this because anyone can superscript letters and symbols, we semi-own the properties of these names. Copyright © 2018-2019 Another Prosaic Company®. All rights reserved.

Categories
Blog Nonfiction for mojo 17

“A Letter of Resignation” – Stephen Mruzik

As of the end of May, I am resigning my position with the company. The resignation is voluntarily given on my part.

I am resigning for the following reasons:

1.

A searching and fearless moral inventory. Step four. The scary one, according to AA.

2.

I don’t actually follow AA. Dad did, and it saved his life. He recommended I attend a meeting the day I called him and Mom. The day I admitted maybe too much to them. The day I watched the Blues lose to the Avalanche on that old Vizio in the pit of the Boulder County jail. The only day I ever missed a shift.

3.

The meetings weren’t for me. I quit going after a month.

4.

I quit drinking over a year ago, and I realize I have yet to find an adequate substitute for dealing with the company.

5.

Eight years. Eight Black Fridays. Eight summer vacations. Eight inventories. And if I’m going to take this particular inventory more seriously, perhaps I should begin with the Belleville store.

6.

I was still an undergrad and needed money. I had plans to visit my girlfriend in Minnesota that following summer.

7.

I liked Belleville for the most part. First job. First real money I didn’t have to steal from Dad’s coin jar. First work crush. First work party. I hadn’t yet seen behind the curtain. Pre-management. I still remember the naïveté. I asked questions. I wanted to know how many fish I could theoretically fit into a thirty-six gallon tank. I wanted to know the ideal brand of food to buy for Buster, our family’s Basset Hound. I persuaded Mom to stop feeding him grocery-brand kibble and instead switch over to something with an actual protein source. 

8.

Belleville was where I met L. He replaced the manager who hired me and became something of a mentor and rival. He’s been with the company for centuries. To this day, he claims to be the manager who hired me. I don’t have the heart to tell him he wasn’t.

9.

I began working 3:00 a.m. shifts. I didn’t mind at first. Gave me an opportunity to listen to my iPod.

10.

The cleaning guy and I developed a bit of a friendship over time. Called me Little Man. I helped him compose a breakup message to his girlfriend the morning after he caught her cheating on him.

11.

My second year at the company coincided with the year my friend group discovered drinking. I prided myself on my ability to balance both. I showed up to my 3:00 a.m. shifts still buzzed from the shitty plastic-bottle vodka we asked our twenty-one-year-old friends to buy. I developed a perfect rhythm around working carts of dog food and boxes of collars and leashes in-between the retching. 

12.

I left my iPod in the break room during lunch. When I remembered, the iPod was gone. They blamed the cleaning guy. Maybe. If he did, he must have hated figuring out how to delete the obscene amount of Hans Zimmer and anime openings.

13.

I accrued enough hours the following July to afford a week-long vacation to Minnesota, where I met my girlfriend for the first time. The day I came back, the management made me apologize for taking a vacation during such a busy time.

14.

Nobody ever shopped down the aisle with the expensive cat food, so that was where I’d fight with my girlfriend over text.

15.

Mom bought Josie, our new Basset Hound, some grocery-brand food. I guilt-tripped her. The family’s low on money, she said. Told her we could do better than Pedigree.

16.

L got a transfer to the Brentwood store. Part of the process of advancing in the company, he said.

17.

M replaced L. I liked M. We worked the early shifts together over a year and complained about management, about distribution centers, about the pointless shit they sent us on trucks.

18.

When my girlfriend and I broke up, I went on a few dates with a co-worker. She was fine, but this isn’t that kind of story.

19.

My first letter of resignation was written before grad school. M was sad to see me go, but wanted to take me out for a drink before my last day. I made an excuse. Not that I didn’t want to drink, and not that I didn’t like M, but I knew I needed to keep my real and company lives separate.

20.

The store manager asked if I wanted to stay for a few hours a week. To help with trucks. I liked M, and figured the extra money would be good.

21.

Not long after, M left the store. Handed me his keys halfway through his shift and told me to lock the door behind him. At the time, I thought it was funny, but also thought he was kind of an idiot for quitting on his people without notice. What happens if he ever needs this place in the future?

22.

The eternal balance: if the company isn’t a problem, my real life is, but if my real life’s fine, the company isn’t.

23.

M had the same name as my best friend, M. My best friend M and I were feuding over the affections of a girl. A love triangle gone wrong, fueled by addiction and death threats. I used to spend my 3:00 a.m. shifts texting the girl about M, fantasizing revenge schemes that would turn her against M, hating myself for letting them both get the best of me. I blamed the lack of sleep for my oversights.

24.

My second letter of resignation was when I moved to Brentwood, to be closer to school. The management asked if I wanted to transfer to the Brentwood store.

25.

I reunited with L. Demoted, he said. They keep screwing me over, he said.

26.

Third shift at the new store, T caught me throwing up in a trash can. You can go home man, he said, truck’s almost done. He assumed I was actually sick. We just met, so obviously he wouldn’t know about the fishbowl the night before.

27.

When Mom called to tell me Dad brought home Charlie, a new Basset Hound, she asked for food recommendations. All dog food’s the same, Mom.

28.

I used to like people.

29.

I used to like dogs, too.

30.

I handed in my third letter of resignation when I had an opportunity to study in the Czech Republic with two friends from school. The store manager told me that if I wanted to come back, there’d be a job waiting for me. Just give us a call, he said.

31.

The eternal balance. No pet stores to piss me off, but I spent all my money that summer on Czech alcohol.

32.

I let myself call back.

33.

Still tried to balance late nights with early mornings. Mixed results.

34.

I found a new iPod, except it was an old iPod and the screen was broken and the wheel was broken and I could only play music in alphabetical order.

35.

I came in four hours late one morning after returning home two hours before my shift started. My bad, I accidentally overslept, I said. Which, in a way, was true. School four nights a week. Work five. I had to squeeze my Friday nights somewhere.

36.

After graduation came the slew of job rejections. But management offered me a promotion. Easy money to keep me occupied until I found a real job.

37.

When Dad quit drinking, he worked retail for the next twenty years. There’s good money if you’re high up enough, he said. Our family saw it while he worked his way up the ladder, but I would go days without seeing him. He quit one afternoon without warning. I must have been no older than thirteen. I asked him why he’d turn down such an easy six-figure job, and I used to blame him for our financial problems growing up.

38.

I was placed in charge of trucks. The guy they got for my old position was my old next-door neighbor and former bully. He was so cool when I was in second grade because he was a sixth grader. But years later he was a mediocre stocker who kept putting product in the wrong spot.  

39.

My first closing shift as manager of the company began with a literal dumpster fire. I took one look at the flames and returned to my office. Texted my friend Doug to see if he wanted to grab a drink later that night.

40.

Once enough families brought their five-year-old kids into the store ten minutes before we closed, I learned to hate the sound of a child’s laugh. 

41.

L and I had a long conversation about the election.

42.

When that dog knocked the elderly customer on the floor and broke her arm, my first thought was Motherfuck. More paperwork.

43.

While I was on hold with the company’s critical incident line to report the fall, my assistant store manager helped me through the process. She said the on-hold music sounded like something out of a porno film. Asked me what kind of pornography I was into.

44.

When Doug asked me if I wanted to go drinking with him and Sage, I refused. I gotta be up early, I told him. I didn’t fall asleep that night because I knew it’d just be me and the assistant store manager in the morning.

45.

I began to see behind the curtain. To memorize the phone number for the store’s critical incident line. To watch sexual harassment be swept under the rug. To criticize L’s job performance. To take hour-long lunches at the Culver’s down the road. To see myself, with an assist from my store manager, force the assistant store manager out of the company with Machiavellian mind games.

46.

Management. Part-timer. Whose side was I on?

47.

I hated calling people to come in on Sundays because someone else called off. I began to hate people who called off. I began to hate the management for making me bother people on their days off.

48.

A new promotion. More money. L’s old job. He said he was happy for me. We became co-workers.

49.

I got the sense that L wasn’t all that happy for me.

50.

Can you please not bring your pet raccoon into the fucking break room?

51.

I had to have a long conversation with my old next-door neighbor and former bully—a coaching session, rather—about bag-handling standards. I had to explain to him that while speed and efficiency are definitely important for unloading a truck, he doesn’t need to lift three forty-pound bags of dog food at once. He quit to join the army the following week. 

52.

After him came the next protégé. A quiet kid who moved from Indiana with his girlfriend. He didn’t last. Stopped coming to work after a fight with her.

53.

More proteges, more future versions of me. None stayed long. All unable to rise to the occasion. Or perhaps more capable than I ever was.

54.

Games of cat and mouse with L.

55.

D became more of a mentor than L. I reminded her of a kid who used to work with her at Walgreens.

56.

I kept forgetting to upload new music to my old iPod, so I was more than tired of Panic! At the Disco by mid-2017.

57.

Mom and Dad sent me pics of Lily, their new Basset Hound. What’s a good food for weight management?

58.

D and I became the only people we could trust.

59.

I spent a long time pacing back and forth before I handed D my fourth letter of resignation. I was moving to Colorado. Graduate school, part two. She asked if I wanted to transfer. A new store was opening in Broomfield. I wondered if that might make the transition easier.

60.

Before I moved, the store manager in Broomfield said I’d have to step down if I didn’t have open availability. I worried how that would affect my pay, but D called him personally and put in a good word for me.

61.

It seemed too good to be true. Same pay, but no longer management? I was thankful for D. The eternal balance seemed off: the company hooking me up the same time as real-life?

62.

D and L and the team threw me a surprise going-away party that reminded me, however briefly, that it’s not the people who are the problem.

63.

It’s not the people who are the problem.

64.

First week at Broomfield. I stepped down from management. R became the new me. I became the cleaning guy.

65.

Something about no longer seeing behind the curtain after being able to for so long.

66.

I shouldn’t have even complained. I was a cleaning guy making management money.

67.

R got mad if I was ever too thorough with my cleaning because that meant I wouldn’t be able to do his morning stocking for him.

68.

I had a hard time deciding if I liked my new store manager or not. Broomfield isn’t the same as Brentwood and it’s foolish to compare the two, despite the company’s insistence that all stores are interchangeable.

69.

Soon, my title as cleaning guy became my title in name only once the management realized I’m better than R at his job.

70.

I didn’t know anyone here. I drank to get to know people.

71.

There’s a bar in Boulder that sells blue drinks. I wouldn’t recommend drinking them when you have to re-do the entire cat toy section the following morning.

72.

I have permanent scars on my fingertips from box cuts and pallet splinters.

73.

Remember that elderly lady who got knocked over by the dog? Her son-in-law tried to sue the company. Pretty cool, huh? The corporate legal team wanted me to testify on behalf of the company. Why me? I asked. The company’s corporate liaison sighed over the phone. Told me I was the only person from the date of the incident still with the company.

74.

L.

75.

R left the store at 5:00 a.m. because that was when the Starbucks down the street opened. I need coffee, he said, if I’m going to be able to finish this truck. I wanted to tell him that we were on a time crunch, to tell him to just invest in a coffee machine at home in order to save time and money.

76.

I liked to embellish my role as a witness in the case of elderly lady’s son-in-law versus the company. I joked that I held the fate of the company between my permanently-scarred fingertips.

77.

Dude, the paperwork shouldn’t be taking you more than thirty minutes. What are you doing in the office from 3:00 to 7:00? Stop going to fucking Starbucks when you’ve got shit to do.

78.

When R admitted to me he was written up by the store manager and was desperate for advice, I couldn’t even get mad at him directly. He had my old job and I understood. I’ve felt his frustration before.

79.

Don’t take out the trash four times per truck. Just wait until the truck’s done and we can take out the trash together.

80.

I vented in the store’s backroom in ways that made me thankful the company has always been too cheap to invest in cameras. 

81.

I had a fifth plan in place to resign with the company. It was the day before I called Mom and Dad. Even had a couple interviews lined up, and a good friend from school who put in a good word for me at the new place. But then I remembered the eternal balance. 

82.

I didn’t have to spend the entire day in jail. All I had to do was call someone to pick me up. I could have even made it to work that day. I didn’t want to call anyone. I waited until I was sober.

83.

I thought about a lot of things that day. I thought about Mom and Dad, but mostly Dad. I thought about his stories growing up—the ones about him, his mother, the ones he told me well before I learned that alcoholism is hereditary. I thought about my best friend who was no longer my best friend and about the girl we fought over, but mostly my best friend, and how much pleasure he’d have gotten if he could have seen me. I thought about how much I hated the police officer, how I could overhear him laughing at how badly I failed the field sobriety test as he filled out his third arrest report of the night. I thought about killing myself. I tried focusing on the Blues game to stifle the thought. It didn’t work, and I flirted with plans all day. But I didn’t think about any of that as much as I thought about how I’d have to explain to the management why I was going to no-call, no-show my shift that afternoon.

84.

I had to tell the assistant store manager about the arrest. She had a right to know why I missed my shift. She understood and was thankful for my honesty, but all that did was make me feel guilty. I told her I’d step it up from here.

85.

The interview my friend helped me get went well, but I didn’t show up for the second interview. Broomfield offered me the position I had in Brentwood. It’d keep me comfortable in a time of so much uncertainty, I reasoned. More money, too.

86.

The job is fine when the people are fine.

87.

One of the distribution center’s delivery drivers threatened to kick my ass while I tried unloading freight from the truck. When I asked him to leave the store, he refused. He said he can do whatever he wants as his Jesus necklace bounced against his chest. We have no idea what he’s been through, he said, and we’re just as bad as all the other pet stores.

88.

It’s not the people who are the problem. It’s not the people who are the problem.

89.

Every time Reddit or Twitter or any other social media platform has a post about drunk drivers, I check it out, primarily out of some sick, deep-seated perversion. I want to know how much the hivemind hates people like us and how much they demonize us without realizing it’s probably a symptom of something far deeper. But me, I’ve always empathized with assholes, with fuck-ups, with douchebags, with people who avoid hard truths about themselves.

90.

Once I hit a year of sobriety, Dad asked if I planned on starting again. I dodged the question. He told me the story of the elevator—something he probably learned during his program. How alcoholics can get off the elevator at any level, but if they try to get back on, it only continues going in one direction.

91.

They don’t tell you that sobriety kind of sucks. Not the not-drinking, necessarily, but everything else that surfaces.

92.

The nearest Culver’s is in fucking Thornton.

93.

I’ve let myself become the pet store guy at school.

94.

I don’t mind being the pet store guy. The drinking, the family history, the best friend, the girl, the arrest, the police officer, the therapy, the money, the sobriety—they’re all working together to create a very real fear that this is the one thing I’m good at, a very real paranoia that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. I should mind being the pet store guy.

95.

The sixth plan for a letter of resignation began when Dad called me asking for help with his resume. Looking for a higher-paying job, he said.

96.

I recognize the patterns now. To the point where I hate everyone else in the company because they don’t.

97.

I haven’t had alcohol in over a year and I still want to vomit.

98.

Insomnia.

99.

When I do sleep, I dream I’m stocking shelves.

100.

Jobless, the possibility of crippling debt, fear of the unknown, turning into Dad. None of them seem that bad—given the alternative.

101.

You’re going to ask me to stay, aren’t you?

102.

I keep imagining the conversation we’ll have when the store manager finds out I’m leaving, and I keep imagining the ways in which I’ll sugar-coat the truth.

103.

Dad says his job search is going slow. He’s rationalizing that he only has a few more years at his current job until he can retire.

104.

My dad, too, quits in fits and starts.

105.

I don’t have anything against AA. I’ve seen what it’s done for Dad. But during my last meeting, I sat next to someone who told me I’d have to give up all of my friends and start from scratch if I really wanted to move forward. It came from pure intentions, I’m sure, but I still have a hard time deciding how I feel about that statement.

106.

We can’t keep having this conversation. I’m just not a good fit anymore. It’s not you, it’s me, but it’s also you, but it’s mostly me.

107.

I’m not that important to the company.

108.

I quit drinking for over a year. Without even a second thought. I just knew I had to stop. For the time being, at least.

I understand that I must return all company property in my possession on or before my last day of employment.

Resigning associate signature: _______________________ Date: ____________

Categories
Blog Fiction for mojo 17

“THINK OF ME AS A RAINBOW” – Christopher X. Ryan

In college I wore giant black T-shirts and spent Friday nights wandering around campus, taking photos of gutter debris and poorly lit obelisks. I was too cowardly to photograph people, such as the staggering sorority pledges with mascara streaming down their necks or the gamers hunched over their computers in the basement of the Student Union. One time I stumbled across a flock of Lambda Theta frat boys abducting construction barriers for a party, but all I did was crouch behind a dumpster and watch.

In truth I wasn’t a photographer at all. I’d grown up on a sparsely populated island in the Pacific Northwest, and with my bad skin and hard gaze, I wasn’t the type of person to confront a live subject. The camera simply allowed me to edge closer to something while shielding my face from their inevitable scrutiny.

My photos never came out right either. They were either oddly blurry or completely static, as if the subjects were imprisoned in a mold-covered museum. I blamed my cheap camera with its scratched lens, but I in fact had no idea how to use the settings. I just kept opening and closing the shutter and hoped something would stick.

Still, I developed the film, almost out of spite, and whenever I finished a roll I got on my bike and rode to the nearest Rite Aid, crossing the border between the university and the neighboring paper mill town. I would stick the film in the slot, ride back to my dorm, then pedal back 48 hours later to collect it.

Toward the middle of the first semester my sophomore year, the woman who was ringing up my order said, “The shots of the trees are real nice.”

I didn’t think the clerks were supposed to admit that they looked at your pictures, and she was lying anyway, but it was the first praise I’d ever received for my artistic endeavors. I was standing there wondering if I should file a complaint or just run away when she went on saying that her father had once been a foreman at the paper plant.

“Let me show you some real trees sometime,” she said, “the big ones.”

My disbelief must have been obvious and should have embarrassed her, but her behavior was unhurried, her mannerisms clinical. Her name tag read Eileen. “I got your number right here,” she said, tapping on the form with a long, robin’s-egg-blue fingernail.

The person behind me coughed impatiently. I took my overexposed photos and left. I was pretty sure I was being put on.

She did call though, a couple days later.

“Just wondering, but how old are you?” I asked her on the phone, my heart halfway up my throat.

“Thirty-seven years young,” she said, which surprised me. I’d assumed she was in her mid-forties.

“I’m twenty,” I said, rounding up ten months.

She coughed and said, “That’s the best age, doll.”

I wasn’t a virgin, but my experiences had been limited to a few bumbling dalliances with a chubby, equally terrified freshman the year prior. Eileen was eighteen years older than me.

I agreed to go. Not because I liked Eileen, but because she’d seen my face—and had still called. I wasn’t vaccinated as a child, and chicken pox and years of acne had ravaged my skin, leaving behind a topography of divots and pockmarks. Add to it my prodigious brow and large, wide-set eyes, and I was aware that I had slightly manic bearing.

Eileen offered to pick me up outside my dorm. I wasn’t sure if the sight of me climbing into a battered silver Lumina driven by a woman almost twice my age would titillate my dorm-mates or merely give them more fodder, but I opted for the latter. I said we could meet at the gas station just beyond campus.

We didn’t check out any trees on our date though. Instead Eileen took me to a gray-market complex of slapdash eateries, unsanctioned events, and a slew of random enterprises. It was situated in a former factory surrounded by abandoned potato fields in which barns sat wilting and huge insects bounded across the field in long noisy arcs. A rickety freight elevator with a gaping hole in the floor carried us to the top level. By the time we’d arrived, Eileen’s arm was hooked through mine. A few more minutes and my hand was against the small of her back. All the while my camera slapped against my chest like a massive, misshapen pendant.

We moved from booth to booth to see what “her people” were hawking: crafts, antiques, cranberry this, lobster that. It was interesting, but I couldn’t focus. My hand somehow ended up in Eileen’s back pocket, her tight little ass pumping against my palm.

“Starting to feel like spring,” she said.

Though I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, the slant in her smile made it clear. 

We then made our way to the basement level where, she claimed, the best food was sold. We sat at a poorly constructed picnic table and had some slushy fruit drinks and vegetable fritters while her friends cooed and teased us from afar. They were a different breed of townies, bereft of teeth, wearing auto repair jumpsuits and cleaning uniforms, sallow and weary-looking. One woman was pushing a wheelchair with a doll on the seat; Eileen gave her a hug, then asked the doll, Clarabelle, how she was feeling today.

“She wants ice cream,” the woman said on the doll’s behalf, “but she had some yesterday.”

Back at the table Eileen said to me, “She had three miscarriages before her uterus simply quit and walked off. And then her man Carl Robert up and walked off too.” Eileen gave me a sympathetic look and squeezed my hand. “I know, I know.”

I thought her friends would eventually grow bored and venture off, but they stood there transfixed, commenting in loud whispers about our every move.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I said, sweating.

“Do whatcha gotta,” Eileen said, winking.

***

In the bathroom I wiped my forehead dry and fixed up my hair. What did people see when they saw Eileen and I together? Me in my black attire and low-wattage scowl, and Eileen with her concomitant youthfulness and decay, her scarred-up knuckles, her hair bleached such a bright yellow it glowed under fluorescent lights, her long legs working furiously within those tubelike jeans.

I was finishing up at the urinal when a guy on a motorized scooter crept up behind me. His girth spread beyond the cart’s wheelbase, but his smile was shrewd—photogenic, even. 

“You with Eileen?” he said.

“We came together, if that’s what you mean.”

“Woah, woah. No need to get angry.”

I zipped up but remained facing the wall, hoping he’d leave. “Who’s angry?”

“I’m just saying. You probably don’t know her. We do. Know what I mean?”

The stink of sour feet and rotting food hovered, but I couldn’t be sure if it was the bathroom or the man. “I don’t. Eileen’s just showing me some of the local haunts.”

“During the fireworks one summer,” he said, lost in reverie, “her hair caught fire. What a sight. Know who put it out?” The guy jerked his thumb toward a small fire extinguisher strapped to his bumper and laughed. “She was white as a clown afterwards and couldn’t breathe right, but she’s still with us, thank the Lord.”

I gave my hands a swipe on my shirt and was about to breeze past when the guy saw my camera.

“You gonna take my picture or what?” he said.

“I, uh—yes. Ok.”

He twisted in his seat to present a full set of dentures. “Just make sure you get my good side.”

I flipped off the lens cap. “Say ‘Aw jeez.’”

The guy laughed so hard his glasses tumbled off his face and into his lap.

When I was done capturing him, he extended a small, soft hand for a shake. “Nice to meet you,” I said, and perhaps for the first time in my life meant it.

When I found Eileen, I leaned in and kissed her. She gave it a moment, then pulled away.

“You can use one of my toothbrushes,” she said. “I get them free at work.”

***

Back at her modular unit, the bedside lamp was already on and a bottle of lubricant sat at the ready. Eileen tossed aside the heart-shaped pillow and peeled back the pale-yellow sheets, faded from years of drying in the sun.

What we did was not lovemaking. It was fucking—not animalistic but coldly recreational. Eileen, for her part, was patient if not pandering, though at times it was creepily instructional. “Crawl closer,” she said in round one. “Smaller circles,” she muttered at one point. “Think of me as a rainbow.”

And while Eileen didn’t need the lube, by ten o’clock I’d been rubbed raw and just wanted to go home and sleep. Eileen slipped into a pink bathrobe, then put on a cassette tape of all-time-best country hits and settled onto her scratchy brown couch with a gin and tonic—though when I asked for one, she refused.

“You’re underage,” she said. “Now let me relax a moment, hon’, and then we’ll get you home to hit the books.”

As I dressed, I stole glances at the décor. Her home had no photos, paintings, or bits of art, save for four taxidermied crows and some ceramic blobs that were probably supposed to be angels. I assumed I’d never seen her again, that this was some sort of one-off conquest for her, and got out my camera and started documenting it all.

I badly wanted to photograph Eileen too—something to carry with me from city to city over the years. I’d ensconce it in a secret spot so that every once in a while I’d stumble across it and think, Holy shit—Eileen. I’d be reacquainted with those dark eyes in ponds of blue eye shadow, the pale lip gloss, the scars where a man had broken her wrist for reasons unexplained. But whenever I pointed my camera at her, Eileen blocked the lens and her face clouded over.

“This ain’t for us,” she said. “I’m not going in time.”

“What?”

“Get dressed. I gotta work in the ay-em.”

***

That wasn’t our last date, however. Our second was a movie followed by pancakes at a 24-hour truck stop followed by sex in her car. On our third date, she took me to meet the matriarchs.

“Now listen, William,” Eileen said on the drive there, “you go right ahead and get used to the fact that Ma’s got a big old spirit of hate inside her. You can call her June or Mrs. Farwell but don’t call her Junie. That’s for close folks. And don’t say nothing about the wars, because Junie loves the troops defending our freedoms overseas.”

I’d originally balked at the absurdity of lunch at her mother’s house, but that sick new photographer’s curiosity welled up in me—except she demanded I leave the camera in the car.

“I—I can’t. I need it for—an assignment.”

At this she snorted, then stuck her gum in the pink wad already weighing down the ashtray. “I’ll write your teacher a note. Ok, hon’?”

Her mother’s obesity blotted out telltale signs of aging, making her and Eileen seem more like sisters. Mrs. Farwell worked as an administrator at the university I attended, which was troublesome. After welcoming us at the threshold, she waddled over to her thronelike armchair, pulled her TV tray closer, and commenced eating while taking in the latest college hockey game.

Eileen’s grandmother, a sweetly smiling woman, sat unspeaking in a much-smaller armchair in the corner. As I shook her hand, I don’t think I’d ever felt so disembodied from my own past.

“Burgers are done,” Eileen’s mother said, jutting her chin toward the kitchen.

“We brought our own.”

Eileen went off to prepare our turkey burgers. Her grandmother and I stared at the television and listened to Eileen’s mother chewing.

“This putz just can’t get off his backside,” her mother said while jabbing her fork at the TV. “Why is he even playing?”

“King is injured,” I said. I knew nothing about hockey but had seen the headline a few days earlier while eating alone in the dining hall.

“That’s right,” she said. “No wonder.”

She set her tray aside when the game heated up. “Our” team came close to scoring, but it was a near miss. I joined her in bemoaning their fate. 

“Their skates are too sharp,” I said. I had no idea what I was talking about, but she laughed.

“You got that right. Where did you say you work?”

“I’m at the university, Mrs. Farwell.”

“Which department?”

“Oh, uh, Liberal Arts.”

“What’s your title?”

“Title?”

“He’s a student, Ma,” Eileen said as she returned.

In the corner, Eileen’s grandmother smiled and wrung her hands together. Her skin was magnificently textured, and I briefly considered fetching my camera and risking offense.

“Ah,” her mother said. “Eileen’s robbing the cradle again.”

“Ma, come on.”

Her mother shrugged, picked up a large green tub, and held it toward me. “You do pudding?”

“No thank you, Mrs. Farwell.”

“Oh, stop it. Call me Junie.”

Eileen scoffed. I shrugged, reaching for the spoon, but that wasn’t what she had in mind: she was feeding me. I leaned over, and Eileen’s mother slid a spoonful of goop into my mouth.

When the game was over, Eileen got up to clear the trays and her mother leaned over the edge of her armchair and said, “What’re you doing with someone like her?”

“It just sort of happened.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

Eileen’s grandmother grunted with displeasure in the corner.

I shrugged again. “She’s fun to be with.”

“She makes you feel like a man, huh? I get it. I was with an older guy when I was young. That’s how Eileen came along.”

I nodded, unsure if any suitable response existed.

“Think about it,” she continued. “She doesn’t have skills for anything other than crap jobs. Young ones like you are her only excitement. You make her youth flow, if you know what I mean.”

Eileen’s grandmother shook her head and moaned quietly.

“She’s affable,” I said, “and has a lot of friends and—”

“Those losers are mostly former coworkers and classmates. Nah. If they were drowning, she’d be too worried about chipping a nail to throw them a life ring. Listen to me, hon, you—”

We heard Eileen’s heels transition from the kitchen linoleum to the carpeted living room.

“Is she chewing your ear off?” Eileen asked.

“Just getting to know one another,” I said, standing.

Eileen gave her grandmother a kiss on the cheek, then her mother.

“It’s been a real pleasure,” Eileen said and dragged me out of there.

***

In the days after that date, I called her trailer, but with no answering machine, the phone just rang and rang. Her neighbors probably could have heard it; it was likely something they heard often.

From then on I took my film to Shop ‘n Save, which had a better lab anyways. I was locking up my bicycle outside the store a couple weeks later when I spotted Eileen crossing the parking lot with her arm around some guy. By then I could have recognized her strut through a telescope—a nasty cock of the hips as each foot hit the pavement, a noticeable give in her lower back from two decades in high heels, legs as thin a model’s but stiffer and slightly bowed. The guy looked older, clearly an upperclassman. A bit fat, he was wearing a flannel shirt tucked into Carhartts—practically the fraternity uniform—and his thick brown hair caught the breeze. They stopped beside his red Jeep, kissed a while, then climbed in and drove off in a puff of blue exhaust.

I might have cried as I pedaled back to my dorm room, but it could have been the wind. I lay on my bed the rest of the day wondering if a leap from the fourth story would be enough to kill a person. The feeling was quickly usurped by relief, however. I wondered if I should get an STD test.

The phone rang in the middle of the night—Eileen was an insomniac—and I caught it on the first ring.

“Whatcha doing this weekend?” she asked.

“Are you serious? I saw you with some slick-haired rapist from one of the fraternities.”

“Oh, hon’.”

“Which one was it? Sigma Nu? Kappa Zappa Lambda?”

“Yes, I see other people.”

“Why? I thought we were a thing.”

I think she snickered. “Look, hon’, I’m a modern lady and—”

“Modern? You?”

I heard her sip something. I pictured her clutching a gin and tonic. Her curlers would be clamped to her bangs, her jeans and heels in a pile beside the couch, the crows watching over her shoulder. “What does that mean?” she said.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Say it or be a coward.”

I turned on the light and sat at my desk. “You really shouldn’t look at other people’s photos at work, you know. They’re private.”

“Don’t be foolish. You’re always sticking that camera in people’s faces and clicking away. You’re practically begging for someone to look at them.” She sipped, coughed. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Some are for show and some aren’t. I have to pick the good ones. It’s art.”

“Don’t you worry about that, youngster. Take lots of bad ones before you get the good ones. It’s just like love.” She laughed, coughed. “Now tell me your last name so that down the road I can find your pictures.”

I told her my full name.

“Fine. That’s a real rememberer of a name. You should be proud of it.” She took another sip, said, “Well, William Byars, I hope one day to see you among my people.”

She hung up.

“Your people?” I said to the dead phoneline.

It took me days to realize she meant the magazine.