For the generation that wrote these stories, New Order was something that needed an introduction. For me it was my dad, who’d crank this ancient sounding dance music through the system of the family van. It had a certain air of mystery – legitimate, popular, and catchy sure – but consistently off-kilter. Power Corruption & Lies is a record that became more important as you grew with it, when “Age of Consent” stopped being about the bass and started being about the longing. –Luke Winkie
Feature artwork by Cap Blackard
Click the arrow to continue to the first story…
“Age of Consent”
by JAMIESON COX
Tom leaned over the platform, peeking at the streetcar whose light was just rounding the bend into the station. “I don’t know, it’s really hard to describe — I guess it’s like I’m feeling way more physical, like, sexual, than emotional right know. Do you know what I mean?” He kicked a pebble, watched it skitter over and down into the track.
I stood up, grabbed a seat on the car, rolled my eyes. “Yeah, you said it earlier, I get it.” Tom had mentioned something very similar just a few hours earlier, tracing a finger idly down my chest as we laid on his couch listening to Washed Out. We had met a few weeks earlier via Grindr, that gateway to modern romance: his haircut was cooler than mine, angular and arty-looking, and he struck up a conversation by commenting on the Dirty Projectors T-shirt I was wearing in my profile picture. He studied urban planning at a school downtown, the major I pined for while stuck in engineering; he wrote indie pop songs in his spare time; his body was gymnastic, compact, and tightly wound. He was shorter than I was. I had already told myself several times that he was the first real boy I’d met, the first one who could turn the others into footnotes, laps on the track before a race.
We rolled down the track together, bound for a Kensington Market bar tucked above a second-rate tattoo parlor, the sort of place where they serve your beer in ancient plastic patio glasses and there are tiny mountains of melted wax on top of the bar and scattered mantles. The DJ was spinning typical homo party fare, clubby remixes of Top 40 hits and R&B diva vocal stems laid over thumping four-on-the-floors. I grabbed a drink out of one of those ancient glasses, waved to a few nearby friends, and made for the center of the dance floor with Tom, pulling him tight against me. He snuck into an open space after just a few songs and headed for the stairwell, saying something about fresh air.
Time acquires a certain malleability when you’re dancing, minutes and seconds compressing and stretching depending on the night and the beat. The songs I had with Tom raced by, over in a matter of seconds while I focused on the way our bodies fit together, sending signals and messages with varying levels of urgency. The minutes he spent outside each contained eons, libraries full of assumptions and projections and hypothetical scenarios. I took my own leave from the floor and found him outside, sitting on the curb and smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, are you alright?”
“I’m OK. It’s just, like, I don’t really know what’s going on right now, I don’t know how I feel, it’s stupid.”
“I think you should just try to let go of it for now. Come back up, dance with me, have a drink. You don’t have to think about anything.”
“Yeah, just give me a second.”
He ground out the butt of his cigarette and stood up, adjusting his Blue Jays cap, and we moved back into the bar. Stepping into the bathroom while he grabbed a pair of drinks, I felt satisfied with myself: I had managed to capture Tom’s attention, even if just for the night, and his nascent waffling bullshit could be dealt with later, perhaps post-coitally. Coming out back onto the floor, I looked for the blue brim of his cap and found him talking to another guy, a tan twig with beautifully shaped eyebrows in a pink tank. Operating under the naive assumption that he had seen a friend, I began to swim through the dancing hordes, grinning widely.
And then slowly discrete pieces of the interaction began clicking into place, forming a disconcerting whole. A light touch on the arm, finger lingering on a muscled ridge; a devastatingly effective head tilt-lip bite combination move, something I recognized from my own time with Tom; the piece de resistance, phones swapped back and forth with newly keyed numbers and names. An awful vacuum occupies your brain and chest in the instant you learn you aren’t enough for someone. A friend standing nearby leaned into my somehow upright husk and spoke into my ear.
“That guy’s a jerk, it sucks. You have two choices now: you can say ‘fuck him’ and move on and have fun with us, or you can break that shit up and try to get an answer.”
I somehow put together enough neurons to move in the direction of the latter, stepping into the middle of their conversation.
“Look, I don’t know what the deal is here or what you’re doing or where you’re staying tonight, or whatever, but my bag’s at your place, and I really don’t want to get it in the morning, so I want to go get it now. And then you can do whatever you want.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him down the stairs, hailing a cab and climbing in. We sped through five minutes’ worth of leafy residential streets before either of us said anything.
“So, um, are you alright?” I loosed a drawn-out sigh and rubbed my forehead.
“I’m just so disappointed. I’m disappointed, and I’m tired, and I thought you were going to be different and you aren’t.” I cracked the window, let in a little fresh air. “It’s just… this whole thing is bullshit and I don’t get it. I don’t understand why I’m not enough. We went out together! Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t think… that’s what I was talking about beforehand, at the station, about feeling more physical and stuff — I just thought we were going to do our own thing but, like, still hang out and do stuff.” We were pulled up outside of his midtown house. I moved to take out money for the cab; he brushed my hand away. “You might need that to get home.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s clear to me you didn’t think.” I could feel heat rising off my skin, my temples throbbing in the cool air, the ends of my fingers shaking. “Can we go somewhere? I’m… I’m not done.”
The next half hour was an exorcism of every early demon I’d collected, a period of renewal like shedding layer upon layer of calloused skin. I was naive, lonely, horny, hurt; I yelled, cried, laughed with malice, whispered. Tom mostly sat there and took it. And when I told him that I had to stay the night, even if it was on his floor, because I couldn’t imagine anything more pitiful than going home alone in this state, I didn’t yet understand that the only decision that was truly more pitiful than that was the one I had just made. And when I slept with him that night and left the next morning and cried on the subway home, weeping into a soggy Subway sandwich, I still couldn’t quite figure out why, exactly, I had made the choices I had the night before.
Tom was educational in the same way all boys that fly foul are educational: he taught me something about myself. You can share interests with someone and experience mutual physical attraction, and there are still thousands of ways for it to go wrong. You will find points and values on which compromise is simply not an option. You might need to blow it up and watch it burn to reach something better. I’m still learning from Tom, too. We’re guided by the ghosts of everything we’ve ever done before, and one of them is him, and the tiny part of me that’s haunted by it isn’t leaving anytime soon.
“We All Stand”
by PAULA MEJIA
Ted was from Tampa, he’d told her, as soon as she had put her purse down on the wraparound couch. She had lied and said “Missoula” when asked about her upbringing.
“Wow. So how big is Montana’s Big Sky?” he asked, while untying his leather shoes.
Montana’s big sky – she’d never seen it, but the thrill was probably that no one cared enough to find you there. Yet more people find solace surrounded by skyscrapers than mountains. It’s the same urgent tranquility that spurs rosary-clinging worshippers to throw themselves at the feet of the altar. The skyscrapers’ alternating heights give the illusion of a glittering upward mobility, if you choose to look up.
“It’s…well, it almost hurts to breathe in all at once.”
Pausing, he had come near her. Slowly he brought a fingertip up to her face. She stepped back, wincing involuntarily. He smiled, brushed the hair out of her face while inhaling her in.
She had been used to men being forceful – more so than two years ago when she had begun working in the industry. The breed of men she catered to now was needy. They craved romance, had the money to buy a girlfriend for an evening, and paid extra for them to occupy the spaces between the sheets of their king beds. Money, more than anything, purchases an illusion.
She had taken it as the cue to begin undressing. He stopped and took her shirt in his hands. “Allow me.”
“You know, this is business.”
“Yes,” he said, while peeling the skirt from her hips. “But feeling your skin against loose fabric makes it real.” He slipped $100 from his pocket and brushed it against her bare stomach.
“Half now.”
Right after greeting the customer, she always takes in a room’s surroundings with the precision of a forensic detective at a homicide scene. Men think they hide their secrets well. Some do, better than others, but most rely heavily on another’s lack of perception. They rarely conceal well.
Last night she had located, mentally, the nearest exit (backdoor), the closest blunt object in her proximity (the cerulean vase on the oak table near the bed), and the safe (behind the stippled painting of a man’s profile on the left-most wall). She’d long since abandoned the habit of her early days — picking men’s slumped pants pockets for watches and stray cash as they lay prostrate right next to her, snoring soundly after a toe-curling blowjob. The safe’s location was always valuable to know. In the occasional hostile scenario, leverage is necessary.
Deep one February morning she’d felt a horrible hollowness after taking one politician’s wedding band, which had been in the right pocket of his pressed khakis. While standing in line to pawn the ring, she took it out of her clutch, weighing it carefully in her palm. Then she noticed the slight inscription cut in the stainless silver, “Sylvia” – incidentally, the same name as her cousin who had passed in childbirth two months before. For once the $1,200 hadn’t been worth the shame. Since then, she’d refrained from exploring men’s pockets, instead adjusting to the comfort of high-rise floors and no less than $5,000 a night, and that was relatively slow.
Last night’s customer weighed in at $7,500. He had even agreed to pay extra for the “inconvenience” of his request — the basket of roses and the massage candles lining the tables. The romanticism convenience fee was $500. Today she noticed the roses wilted in the wicker.
The Saturday sun seeped in residually, through floor-to-ceiling windows. Far beneath her, Spring Street was littered with statuesque women and pastel-printed men, flitting out of specialty boutiques and into bistros for brunch. Ted had vanished.
She lay still in the sheets, satisfied. For a moment she forgot where she was. She forgot the money she’ll immediately be returning back to the bank for the small business loan and student debt. She even forgot Ina’s building home care.
When she first began working, she couldn’t understand why cleft-chinned men like Ted, the urbane sort, paid for comfort when they could pick up women easily at places like The Standard. It had taken her a while to realize that what they were shelling out for wasn’t really sex, but the convenience of companionship, without the commitment. As for the sex, they wanted a woman who would take the drapes herself and pin them down with it.
Abstract sketches, framed in gold arches, lined the room. Across from her, a thin bookshelf spilled over with books. For a moment she’s surprised; these kinds of men usually have nothing on the walls, no indications of a presence. Some men collect books in order to seem more articulate than they actually are.
She runs her fingers over the tops of the novels, to see when her fingers stop collecting dust. Infinite Jest, A Hundred Years of Solitude, The Sun Also Rises. All untouched for years, at least evidenced by the gray fluff lining her fingernails. Her finger comes up clean when she reaches The Prince. She snorts. These Wall Street wigs, all trying to be Machiavellian men. It’s likely a relic from yellowing collegiate days, maybe. She flips through the pages. Many of them are carefully outlined and annotated with a spidery script.
Just then Ted returned with a tray. Two plates of poached eggs, smoked gouda, kale salad, and Bloody Marys.
“Ted. What is this?”
“Please. It’s just something I made us. Common courtesy.”
She smiled without teeth. Seeing his beaming smile, she nibbled politely on the cheese, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. Her hands reached for her demure lace lingerie.
“This is a transaction,” she said, pulling her shirt over her heard. Then she cleared her throat.
“Right. Of course.” He slinked into the walk-in closet and returned with a thin stack of bills. Silently she counted the remainder of her fare.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, dear. You’re spectacular.”
Nodding, she refrained from saying anything. The room feels brighter.
“Do you like my apartment?”
She nodded silently. “It’s tasteful.”
“It’s the visual representation of Mark Rothko’s Earth & Green,” he explained. “Tones of green, red drapes, and blue pops in the furnishings. Very organic. Have you heard of Rothko?”
“The abstract painter.”
“You’re well-bred,” he cut in.
She chuckled. “A cane teaches you good manners.”
“No, you’re educated. You have good posture and speak more eloquently than most girls I’ve met,” he shakes his head. “What got you into this?”
“Why does anyone do what they do? Necessity. Why do you do what you do?”
“You don’t know what I do.”
“No, but I can guess. You work in finance and make more money than you know what to do with. The paintings on the wall – the stipples, the abstractions – they’re all some representation of your likeness. So, you’re vain. You also buy things like “earth-toned vases” to distract yourself from the inevitability of your pitiful existence – also, The Prince? Seriously? In what capacity do you practice practicality in your industry?” She bit her tongue then.
Ted gazed at her for a long moment. His lip quivered, and his shoulders began shaking. Tears welled in his eyes.
“Oh…”
The shaking quickly became violent. He lost control of his limbs, and the tears became sobs. He tried to sound out words, but they became gurgled under the crying. Mucus dripped from his nose and splattered onto the pristine polished wood floor.
She stared at Ted. Teary, turbulent Ted. She then picked up her purse from the couch and closed the oak door behind her, leaving behind a man in the center of a large, lonely room, surrounded by everything and no one.
“The Village”
by ANDREW WINISTORFER
January 3: New Year’s Eve Party-m4w-(Dinkytown)
Never posted anything like this before. I am hoping beyond hope that you are the type of girl who checks these Missed Connections, even though part of me hopes that you are NOT the type of girl who looks at these because it’s hard enough dealing with guys like me in the flesh, nonetheless on a computer. I’m hoping we can reconnect.
I think you know my friend Stephen. We met at his New Year’s Eve party hanging out in his bedroom before my band started playing. You were wearing a flannel shirt you had tied up in the back. I think you’ve got blue eyes. Or maybe you’ve got gray eyes. You had long brown hair.
We talked about how you are a finance major and I made a joke about how you are “the kind of person who could really fuck shit up for the rest of us.” I assumed you were there to talk to Stephen–and he told me today you guys had “a thing” at one point, and I have no idea what that means–so I wrote off the idea that you’d be interested in me in any other capacity than I was the drummer of this band that was about to play the party you were at.
You touched my arm and asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I used that stupid line from Breakfast Club I always use when someone asks this and I am embarrassed to answer no: “I have girls I consider my girlfriend and girls I just consider.” You laughed and mentioned that you were worried about finding someone to kiss when midnight came. I said good luck with that. You touched my arm again.
My band played, and we finished at 11:40. I went to the bathroom to throw up—a combination of 10 Newcastles and the fact that we played a show to 200 people, despite being terrible at making and performing music—and when I came out, you were there. “There you are,” you said, hugging me. I was surprised. You said we were “awesome,” and you said we were going to kiss at midnight.
All I remember after that is we counted down to midnight together, and we kissed, and not to sound like a romantic comedy cliché or anything, but it was like the world stopped. I don’t know what happened next, but you left sometime after midnight, and I am told that I spent till 4 a.m. trying to find you, and I apparently managed to never learn your name. I am not sure what happened between that Earth rotation-defying kiss, but I imagine I did something stupid. I am so sorry. I think your name is Lauren?
Look, I’m still here, two days later. If you want to get together in the next couple days, I’ll be here until the 5th. I have to go back to school. Stephen doesn’t have your phone number and thinks it’s funny I forgot your name. I think maybe he’s purposefully not giving me your number because of whatever I did. E-mail me. Please.
January 4: New Year’s Eve Party-m4w-(Dinkytown)
It’s me again. Your name is Katy, and we kissed at my friend Stephen’s New Year’s Eve Party.
Stephen and his roommates found out about my last post and told me it was “too long” and “too weird” and that you’d never reach out. That I come off as desperate.
They said I was a “disaster” at the party, and that you left after basically throwing yourself at me, and I blew it. They won’t tell me specifics, but I bet it was pretty dumb. They still won’t give me your number. I am sorry.
I’m stuck here for another day. E-mail me.
January 5: New Year’s Eve Party-m4w-(Dinkytown)
Katy, I am here for 12 more hours. We kissed at midnight at my friend Stephen’s New Year’s Eve party.
Stephen’s other roommate, Adam, filled me in on what happened. Apparently everyone saw us kiss at midnight, and when your friends asked who I was, I said, “I’m the guy she decided to kiss because no one hotter was available.” And when you got offended, I said, “No, it’s not a value judgment on you. It’s just that girls who look like you don’t talk to me, ever.” And then you said I was an asshole. Then I tried to kiss you again, and your friend with the snapback pushed me. You guys stormed out, and I apparently spent the next two hours drinking 14 High Lifes and throwing up into a full potato chip bag.
Then I got up, took my shirt off, and went out into the Minneapolis night looking for you. I threw a punch at Travis when he dragged me back in the house. I guess I cried at one point. Stephen didn’t want to tell me because I had no idea that any of that happened.
I don’t know why I told you all this. I guess I’d like the opportunity to make it up to you. I am hoping apologizing can recapture whatever we had for that blessed three hours on New Year’s Eve. I am terrible at this. E-mail me.
October 11: New Year’s Eve Party-m4w-(Dinkytown)
Katy. I am drunk in Minneapolis. I’m visiting Stephen, and I heard you graduated and work at some bank in St. Paul. Stephen says he saw on Facebook that you met some other finance major and you guys both work at the bank and you guys are “probably engaged,” which in Stephen-speak means that you are probably just happy being monogamous with some boring guy who drives an Aztek. And that’s fine. I swear I haven’t thought of you until now, while sitting here in Stephen’s shitty living room, listening to him and Gina go at it again. I really blew it with you.
Or maybe I didn’t, and I don’t really remember what happened, and I am conveniently rearranging our brief and possibly hardly existent history in my mind because I am lonely and the last girl I loved moved to Chicago without telling me where we stand. I am sorry I ever bothered you on here.
December 31: New Year’s Eve Party-m4w-(Dinkytown)
Katy. In town again. You doing anything tonight?
“5 8 6”
by CAROLINE RAYNER
a room made of cerulean metal and mirrors. television screens tile the ceiling and broadcast flashes of geometry, cascading sequins, and elliptical galaxies colliding. tiny bubbles hover and accumulate. iridescence and abstracted sex.
s enters through a jagged space. too tall, s is built from angles, radio wire, and loose nerves. he has yet to master the art of fading, of holding his breath and pressing his body into a corner and dematerializing. an avant-glam perfectionist, he wears midnight tones. velvet and studs and ripped tights. he is bright-eyed, radiating neon.
z enters through the same jagged space. too thin, z knows how to shatter when she senses obsession or feels a synthetic breeze or hears a sudden electronic burst. her glittered boots catch light and scatter glints shaped like silhouetted skylines. ringed planets dot her cheeks, and lightning rods line her shoulders. she is a drifter, and she keeps secrets.
others enter. figures. shadows. androids.
they release crushed pearls. shimmering powder across the floor.
the room vibrates to post-pop.
erratic.
anxious.
dark.
s observes motion as it swells and recedes like the ocean.
z imagines self-destruction through energy and invisibility.
do you remember recording insomnia in a bedroom with one window overlooking the highway? all night dismantling transistor radios and painting the pieces blue. all night tracing the trajectories of meteors across the walls in ink and letting the colors drip down slow. all night musing on acrobatic potential and testing the water.
do you remember nights spent wandering a city populated by visionaries? hyperactive and ecstatic, dressed in opalescent materials. shades of indigo and citrine and vermillion. do you remember sheer connection, simultaneously infinitesimal and cosmic?
do you remember the slight shock of crystalized stillness? a sudden shiver, then static. do you remember the continued chill in spite of physical proximity, maybe like laced silver closing in on us or an instantaneous storm too quick for either of us to see?
we became nocturnal.
can you still feel it?
others breathe dissolved salt, trembling.
s leaves through the jagged space. still too tall.
z leaves through the same jagged space. still too thin.
the cerulean room lights up, then bursts.
silence.
“Your Silent Face”
by LAURA STUDARUS
You’ve fallen out of love and out of life.
The art commune seemed like such a good idea. Sure your rent shifted 50 dollars in either direction each month depending on the whims of the owners, and the smell of turpentine wafted indiscriminately down the asylum-yellow halls. But you are living among peers. The painter. The photographer. The dancer. And you. Meant to bring with you the words to describe it all. The master of language, which you cart around with you in the form of a half-finished novel and a contrarian’s flair for piping up at exactly the wrong moment.
But anyone can manipulate words on a Craigslist page; they didn’t need you to cast a poetic veneer of daily existence. Creative, they were. But their art was their life—large gesture paintings comprised exclusively of daytime television reruns, traffic tickets, and the deft exclusion of anyone marked as an outsider.
Moving boxes lined against the wall, you dig into the next chapter in earnest. You sit sweating at your desk, the summer light streaming through the window, turning your closet-size room into golden lava around you. Waiting. Quietly. It’s finally time to justify those childhood diaries, filled with all the promises you made to yourself. It’s in your head, begging to be transferred to the page.
It’s time to start.
The time is now.
To start.
Just start.
Inhale and -
At the scratched kitchen table outside your door, life marches forward at all hours of the night and day. A girlish squeal, the flash of a ring, the pop of a cork. Cheers and congratulations. In your room, you write about illicit kisses, stolen so long ago the memory no longer brings a blush to your cheek. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.
It’s never completely dark. Your room looks out onto a back driveway. The security light streams through the thin lace curtains the last inhabitant left behind. It’s louder than you might have expected. Even when the last of the warlike chanting from the living room dies away, the generator grinds away a half a floor below you. Even over the pneumatic wheeze you can hear a roommate weeping quietly.
You reach for your pen and notebook, attempting to capture the moment. The auxiliary sadness of another, the stillness of the air around you, the still pulsing nightlife somewhere beyond that. You manage to scribble the words “pregnant with possibility” before your better sense takes over and you rip out the page, crumpling the paper and tossing it across the room into a pile of dust-caked unopened boxes.
You’ll delete your Facebook profile and leave the house from time to time, just to take in the city. Your absences grow longer; the “gone fishing” notes you leave behind tapering off before stopping completely. When you return each night, they never ask where you’ve been or why.
One inquires after your work. “Your craft,” she says, her eyes glistening with sincerity. You tell her of jobs you did not get, of the rent you’re no longer sure you can pay. Your internal monologue adds another item: the life you’re no longer sure you want to lead.
Too scared to cut, and too prissy to purge, you take to recording video of yourself crying. You have mastered the art of driving, holding your phone out in front of you as the tears streak gracefully down your face. Hunched in a cramped mall bathroom stall, you’ll press your face against the scratched metallic door, turning your eyes theatrically to meet the screen. You’ll pray, fervently, that something can be made from this digital daisy chain of your sadness that you’ve been meticulously crafting. (Years later, you’ll learn that artistic alchemy does not exist, and whatever music, no matter how fast the cut, a snot-filled nose and wrinkled red face is just that—no more.)
The summer will turn to fall. The hot winds will blow through the street, stirring the few leaves in the gutter. At long last, you’ll concede defeat. This is not special. The magic does not exist here. You’ll pack your belongings and prepare to hit ready to try again. Your friends will appear, magically stirred out from behind their Facebook profiles to, once again, help with the transition process. Your roommates will appear as well to see you off. They’ll carry your childhood stuffed animals and boxes crammed with magazines and old clothes, arms trembling with the strain as though holding out olive branches.
You’ll try to thank them. You do not deserve this. You’ll try to explain the gravity of these simple gestures. It is not that easy. One by one you’ll turn to face them, blink back the frustration still hot behind your eyes, and, after a few false starts, simply mutter what’s on your heart.
“Sorry you’ve caught me at a bad time. So why don’t you piss off?”
“Ultraviolence”
by ANDY O”CONNOR
Busch. The only beer named after the sound when you open one. This genius, though, was lost on us, congregated in the living room of my parents’ house creating colonies of empty Busch cans on the coffee table. Most of us never sought the brilliance in the first place. Instead, we were reliving “the good old days,” where “old” is from 2-3 years ago. Small minds talk about people, they say? Everyone in the assembly is in college. Conversation kept the television off.
“Man, you remember when Blake fell off your roof, Tom?” Paul asked me, giving a wild-eyed stare at me when it should have been towards the star.
“I was the cameraman, how could I not remember it?” I replied.
“TOM, TURN IT OFF!” Paul waved his hand around his face, a crippled millionaire fighting off vulture photographers with what little strength remained.
“Fuck you!” Blake said, with anger in his face and cheer in his voice.
“You still have that video?” Paul asked me.
“Could never keep track of all those tapes.”
“Go find it!”
“I’m drinking.”
“You can do two things at once, can’t you?”
“Spill my beer on tapes, potentially threatening the value of the archive? I think not.”
“Lazy ass.”
This was but one of the many topics brought up throughout the night. Ken fucking Valerie in the ass so hard her glass eye fell out. Busch.
“I need to take a piss.” I get up and head to my bathroom. As soon as I close the door and unzip my pants, I notice a dip in volume. Something’s not right. Just seconds ago, people were abuzz with laughs and words. Could my need to urinate really be that much of a drag? That can’t be possible, shut up dude. Flush toilet. Run hands over water in sink. I gotta know what’s up.
“Shit, man, can’t believe he had to go out like that.” I hear Paul say.
“Who are we even talking about?”
“Derek.”
“Derek White?” I knew he died a few months ago, but I never heard why.
“Derek White Derek White.”
“Well, what happened?”
“OD’ed on heroin.”
“FUCK. Really? Fuck.” I mean, what else could I say?
“Yeah, man. Not surprised, but still sucks.”
I sat down lightly, but my body felt like a monument collapsing. Man, he died like a junkie?
Derek and I had a bit of a complicated relationship with each other. He was a super bright guy, real good with computers. Spent a lot of time building levels to the games we’d play. I mean, I was good at the games, but he understood them far better than I did or ever will. Wasn’t bad at baseball either. Somehow nerds and jocks fuse and the idea of cliques becomes silly. He could have easily went to Caltech or MIT or Harvard or somewhere that real geniuses-on-the-verge go to. Instead, he went to some state school on a baseball scholarship. Seemed to be a bit below his potential. Then again, free money is free money. Perhaps that’s why he was smarter than most of us. Even after I sat down and talk moved elsewhere, I kept thinking about him the whole night. He was with us, even though his mortal body wasn’t around any longer.
I respected him, but he was also kind of an asshole.
When I was 17, we had a party at my house. Typical teenager shit. Parents weren’t home. My turn to host the Saturday Night Special. Joints were passed around. Creepy older kid who was 21 bought us booze in exchange for an extension of youth (or that’s what I presumed anyhow – maybe he was the Samaritan of us getting fucked up). Our tastes? Budweiser, vodka, and Bacardi Hurricane. We had a lot to learn. Someone stole money and some of my mom’s jewelry that night. I suspected it was Derek. Saw him and a girl go in there, but I didn’t assume much other than passions running ablaze. Told him to strap one on, as if a teenage hosting an illegal party was a saint. Maybe it was her that stole it, but I didn’t see that bracelet on her at school. He thought I was a fool for accusing him and hadn’t talked to me after the incident. Really, graduation might have been the last time I saw him before his death.
Just a couple nights before that party, he had consoled me about this girl who dumped me. Move on. Fish in the sea. How teenagers inspire each other. Beth, her name was? Whatever, she has a kid now. I won.
Two-faced son of a bitch.
Why would a smart kid like that steal? Maybe I had my answer. Maybe I just had a handful of accusations worth didily shit.
But he had to overdose on heroin? I thought we all learned from grunge that that shit doesn’t get you anywhere. People function on coke and booze. Weed never killed anybody. X, from what I hear, pairs well with techno. I thought he was smart.
I’d say fuck him, but you know, I knew the guy. He wasn’t all good or all bad.
Busch.
“Ecstasy”
by LUKE WINKIE
Pop a molly on the zeitgeist.
Pop a molly on a can of worms.
Pop a molly in my window.
Pop a molly where the sun don’t shine.
Pop a molly in the glove compartment.
Pop a molly when the wind blows.
Pop a molly you’re feeling something.
Pop a molly when you’re feeling nothing.
Pop a molly on an old sudan.
Pop a molly in South Sudan.
Pop a molly like Evel Knievel.
Pop a molly like George Gervin.
Pop a molly like Kanye West.
Pop a molly on the family crest.
Pop a molly all day and night.
Pop a molly like Day & Nite.
Pop a molly on the Antique’s Roadshow.
Pop a molly with my hangnail.
Pop a molly like a zit.
Pop a molly like Starry Starry Night.
Pop a molly like Too Legit 2 Quit.
Pop a molly when the sun goes down.
Pop a molly when the party’s over.
Pop a molly on the walk home.
Pop a molly in the bedroom.
“Leave Me Alone”
by TATYAHNA CAMERON
Every person in this club is with someone they probably love, and I’m hoping that you don’t show up. Last night, rather than chase after me, you let me leave because you were with someone when we agreed that we would keep things separate when we were both in the same city. Flecks of silver light bounce off drunk twosomes while I try to decipher who is happy and who feels the same way that I do. Not being able to tell if it’s the condensation from my cocktail glass or anxiety that’s making my hands clammy, I get nervous when I see you walk toward me, in a much different way than I used to. You clipped the wings of the butterflies inside me, so now they’re slowly dying instead of thriving.
You come up to me, obviously, and tell me how you’re so glad to see me. Saying how you knew I would be here and how well you know me, so I smile even though knowing what bands I like is something even a stranger on the Internet would know. Repetitive guitar riffs from mop tops in oversized patterned shirts play droney love songs while we stand two inches apart because making physical contact with each other in public is just something we don’t do anymore. Drinks three dollars more than the ones at home flow freely into my bloodstream since I can’t seem to stay sober and keep half-smiling in naivety.
A girl taller than me starts talking to you four feet in front of me. She’s pretty, and your face shows that you think so, too. Last night is repeating itself quicker than I thought, so I go outside and light three quarters of a cigarette I stopped smoking earlier to kiss you.
After last call you keep asking me to tell you what I want out of this, rephrasing what I say into what you want to hear. I tell you to tell me every rule you broke, so you do right before saying to me that we should just relax, let’s just have some ice cream and forget all of this. I cut the part of skin between my thumb and index finger by throwing the striped bowl at you.
The combination of dizziness and tears swirling around my head make it so I can’t see straight, but since I started dating you, when have I ever seen anything how it actually is? You’re standing across the room saying something I’m not listening to because I’m replaying every single moment that I’m going to wish had lasted longer because I know this needs to be over. It won’t be, though, because we are stuck in a rut of loving each other when we’re together and pretending not to notice how each of us is together with someone else when we’re apart.
So you say you’re sorry without meaning it and I say something about how it’s okay and I probably overreacted and the taste of dark liquor pushes our teeth together and you’re on top of me and it feels the same as it does every time you touch me and you know everything that I want because we’ve been doing this for so long and you’re breathing and I’m breathing and my hand is still sort of bleeding and we’re both trying to remember why we started seeing each other in the first place and what happened from the first time we decided we were in love to right now when we’re back to just fucking each other and your hands are on my thighs and I’m not paying attention when you look in my eyes because I’m thinking about the bowl that’s still broken on your kitchen floor.
All I want to do is get dressed and fly home, but you remind me of some business meeting that doesn’t seem so important to me anymore. Still sort of breathless from the last twenty-six minutes, you’re apologizing at my back repeatedly as I’m staring at a spider crawling down your wall. Blinking back tears. “For these last few days leave me alone,” I half-whisper at the spider, and I hear your mouth open to say something, but then it goes silent.