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A MONTHLY ROUNDUP OF OUR FAVORITE POSTS FROM CLUBHAUS, BLOCK CLUB’S BLOG OF INSPIRATION, STORIES, DESIGN AND BUSINESS SMARTS. PERFECT FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN HOW WE WORK, AND WHY WE WORK.
1 2 4 MARCH ON! PRIDE 2014
We invited our friend Elisabeth Samuels, of Indigo Art in Allentown, to curate a special art collection for the launch of Issue 35: Better/Worse. Samuels invited eight noteworthy local artists to interpret the theme in their work, the result of which was a stunning collection full of variety, depth, color and introspection. Once again, our friends at Community Beer Works and ABCDJ helped us throw another explosive party. We can’t wait for the next one!
Block Club had an amazing day marching with our friends in Buffalo’s Pride Parade on a perfectly beautiful Sunday.
OUR INTERNS ROCK!
8
BLOCK CLUB LAUNCHES “BETTER/WORSE” WITH ART OPENING
EVALUATING PROGRESS: EXPANDED PHOTO GALLERY
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MAKING CUSTOM PATTERNS
3 6
TOP TO BOTTOM, INSIDE AND OUT
SMALL PRESS, BIG TALENT
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TIM ILLUSTRATES THE UPS AND DOWNS
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Tim helped develop an exciting brand re-launch for Inside Sales Team, including a responsive website.
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MAPPING BUFFALO’S FUTURE WITH 43 NORTH CLUBHAUS.TUMBLR.COM
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 36 SHHH
CONNECT
14 Issue Contributors
ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION advertising@blockclubonline.com
17 Letter from the Editor
SUBSCRIPTIONS blockclubonline.com/subscribe
18
The Conversationalists Interview by Ben Siegel Holding onto secrets is a dangerous game. Deborah Lockwood talks about the reasons why we tell, and re-write, our own stories.
BRANDING & MARKETING blockclubonline.com
22
Run, Jump, Play Case Study by Laura Sikes A University of Rochester study spends more than 25 years monitoring the affects of abuse on children—at summer camp.
24 Sympathy for the Devil Essay by Kevin Purdy The inside-secrets of an advice columnist. 28
Second Opinion By Laura Zorch Photos by Clifton Page Having been deemed the country’s “Most Livable City” by Forbes, Pittsburghers answer with a critical retort: Are we?
38 Shhh Illustrations by Block Club Secrets submitted by Our Readers We asked readers to tell us their secrets. And then we shared them. 46
Hand to God By Ben Siegel Photos by Steve Soroka Mikey Rizzo grew up the prodigal son of his family’s church. Until one day, when he was kicked out for having told the truth.
EDITORIAL & CONTENT ben@blockclubonline.com
DESIGN & OFFICE BLOG clubhaus.tumblr.com FACEBOOK, TWITTER, VIMEO and INSTAGRAM @blockclub #blockclub #BCM36 PRINTED SUSTAINABLY. This magazine is printed on FSC®-certified post-consumer and post-industrial recycled paper. Production of this brand of paper consumes five times less water than the industry average, reduces air emissions, frees up landfill space, and saves the world’s mature trees. 731 Main St. Buffalo, NY 14203 716.507.4474 blockclubonline.com ©2014 BLOCK CLUB INC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported License. This work may be reproduced and shared for personal or educational use only, and must be credited to Block Club magazine. Such use for commerical purposes is strictly prohibited.
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Please recycle this issue and pass it along to a friend.
56 The Siege Short fiction by Shasti O’Leary Soudant Damn rat! 61 Me Likes You Comic by Lauren Barnett
ABOUT BLOCK CLUB Block Club is a branding and marketing agency founded in 2007 in Buffalo, NY. We work to build and strengthen brands for forward-thinking businesses and organizations. In Block Club magazine, we tell stories about a better Rust Belt. Learn more at blockclubonline.com. BCM 36 13
ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS
Lauren Barnett pg. 61 Lauren Barnett is a comic artist from Buffalo who currently lives in Denver, Colorado. Her first book, Me Likes You Very Much (Hic & Hoc Publications) was nominated for a 2012 Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent. melikesyou.com laurenmbarnett.com Clifton Page pg. 28 Clif Page lives in Pittsburgh and attempts to create a viable life between walking a dog and driving “Dad’s Taxi.” He has worked as a photographer, photo editor and designer for several newspapers. He writes a daily email called “Dog of the Day.” Kevin Purdy pg. 24 Kevin Purdy is a freelance writer. He has written for ITworld, Fast Company, Fortune, The Magazine, and many WNY publications. He is also a co-founder of CoworkBuffalo, founder of TEDxBuffalo and Ignite Buffalo, and opinionated drinker of quality coffee. Laura Sikes
pg. 22 Laura Sikes is a doctoral candidate in American history at the University of Rochester. Her dissertation is about rock music criticism in the 1960s. Laura once lost on “Jeopardy!”.
Shasti O’Leary Soudant
pg. 56 Shasti O’Leary Soudant is a multimedia artist, designer, writer and teacher. She has one child, one spouse, one business and no pets. She has travelled extensively, published sporadically, exhibited internationally, and speaks fluent second-grade French.
Laura Zorch
pg. 28 Laura Zorch lives in Pittsburgh, within walking distance of no fewer than five bakeries. She is the co-author of two books, Food Lovers’ Guide to Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Chef’s Table. Her next project will need to include exercise or fasting. 14 BCM 36
BLOCK CLUB MAGAZINE EDITORIAL STAFF
PUBLISHER PATRICK FINAN patrick@blockclubonline.com
EDITOR BEN SIEGEL ben@blockclubonline.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRANDON DAVIS brandon@blockclubonline.com
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SOROKA steve@blockclubonline.com
DESIGNER JULIE MOLLOY julie@blockclubonline.com
DESIGNER TIM STASZAK tim@blockclubonline.com
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER MAX COLLINS
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER PATRICK SIMONS
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Shhh
Secrets are our best friends. They know more about us than childhood besties, workplace confidants or doodledupon journals. Secrets give us power, a built-in trust to secure our safety and address our fear. They don’t fight back, they don’t argue, they don’t shame. When held closer and dear, a secret can be the only thing on which we can count. It sounds comforting, to know that you’re never alone. A lie, however, will ruin you. It will betray your trust in anything you hold dear. A lie will promise to keep you safe, shield you from pain, make you look better, or better off, than you are. They follow you around, wherever you go, leading you astray, off onto paths you never planned on traversing. It sounds horrible, to know that you’re never alone. Both put off the inevitable. Both sponsor our escape. We silence truth too easily, though. In doing so, we steal truth’s chance to be heard, to be witnessed. We ruin freedom because we’re afraid of what we’ll do with it—empower too carelessly, love too easily, create too beautifully. But the truth always breathes, it always sings. It is braver than any momentary leap into security. These are deeply intimate expressions. But we transfer this defensiveness to other relationships, too. There’s shame on these streets, still, on this day, as we welcome a new era; in the blight we ignore and intimidation we accept. There’s shame in the hearts of those who choose embarrassment instead of confidence. There’s guilt on the desks of those who ignore fairness, equality, justice, who continue to purport a cleaner picture, the one that came in the frame. There’s fear whenever we ignore who we are.
We tell stories here to help chip away at these falsities, wherever their origin. We strive to come closer to the facts that have cushioned us over the years, decades, generations. Some of those stories come from you. This spring, we asked you to submit your secret, lie, confession or taboo to us, on a simple website knowing they would be submitted anonymously and potentially shared on these pages. Your responses were far-reaching, diverse and thoughtful. Some were incoherent and a few questioned our intent. Some were disheartening, and some, in comparison, were lighthearted. We chose to trust all submissions—save for those few quoted lyrics or movie lines—and accept that they may or may not be cathartic, and they may or may not even be truthful. All were valid. Our experiment was not about our assessment of your fears, but with your fearlessness of our assessment. It was about choosing courage. Trusting the results of honesty. We explore the stories in this issue with a theory: that in demanding fact over fiction, documentation over manipulation, the future over the past, our potential will be more apparent to us than ever, more welcoming, more inviting, more secure. That it matters to just be who you are. That you’re not alone.
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THE CONVERSATIONALISTS
THE REPETITION
COMPULSION EVERYONE HAS SECRETS; EVERYONE TELLS LIES. CHILDREN DO IT; ADULTS DO IT. IT’S TIME TO CONFESS. DEBORAH LOCKWOOD IS LISTENING.
D
Interview by BEN SIEGEL
eborah Lockwood wants to know your secret, to hear your confession, to unlock your barricaded door; she wants in. But it’s not about her curiosity; it’s about your freedom. Lockwood is a psychotherapist who works with individuals, couples, children and families at the Healing Arts Association on Buffalo’s West Side, an alternative health center which she shares with a homeopath. Secrets, lies and confessions are a constant part of her work here. Working with such a range of ages, each step of which brings its own unique ability to identify, process and manage one’s inner monologue, it’s not uncommon for her to be on the receiving end of someone’s untold tales. Some are life-affirming, some feel life-ending. Some involve crime and some involve long-held resentment. All of these reveals signal a point of no return, when lives change and move forward, painful and embarrassing as it may be. Lockwood’s role is to help find holistic, healthy, healing ways of dealing with the barriers that keep us from moving forward with truth. BS Why do we lie? DL If we’re talking about lying, in particular, there are a couple reasons. One is a defense system that keeps us from being truthful, which is different than lying. Because often we don’t know where our defenses are, and we live on a story that we’ve altered some kind of reality so that, [for instance] our childhood is more palatable. Lying to ourselves, to a certain degree, falls under that category.
one about dad’s drinking problem,” whatever it is, it sets up a pattern that says don’t be honest with people, it’s not safe. Which is a really damaging pattern. So sometimes lying is to protect. We don’t want someone to be hurt by information. Sometimes it’s to protect ourselves. But often it’s really to protect or perpetuate a behavior that we’re doing. If someone is having an affair, they’re going to lie about it because once they stop lying about it, it has to stop. An alcoholic lies about their drinking so that they can continue the drinking. Once they state the truth, the behavior has to stop. BS Is there a difference in the way children lie and the way adults lie? DL I think for young children, it’s make believe. They’ll have fantasy playmates, or a whole fantasy life that may seem like lying, but it’s much more fantasy. Then there are lies that are much more pathological in children, or maybe in adolescents, where it’s an adaptive response. That to get attention, they say, “Oh my gosh, my teacher hit me today,” and the parent goes, “Oh my goodness!” you get a tremendous amount of attention for that. You may lie to get attention, and that’s an adaptation. And then as you grow up, that becomes your story, and then it becomes a maladaption. BS Are there healthy lies? DL I think there are benign lies. And that may be a selfprotective thing, that I see a neighbor on the street and I
Now, outright lying, where we really hide things, that’s usually based in shame and guilt. It’s interesting to think “People are often afraid, you know?” says Lockwood, about how people have been trained to lie. In family systems, who counts her most daring clients as inspirational. where we’re told, “Don’t tell anyone this,” “Don’t tell any- “I’m safe,” she says. “I’m just here to be empathic.” 18 BCM 36
photo by MA X COLLINS
BCM 36 19
don’t want to say, “I was up crying all night and I feel like crap today,” because I don’t want to get into it, so that’s just self-protective of my privacy or personal space. BS We’re all guilty of telling little white lies, but even short tales can turn into bigger sagas. DL When you have a family lie, it bleeds out. It becomes the
way you respond to the world. It really does become much more pervasive. BS The fantasies that we write for ourselves, even as adults, we know the truth in the situation and the outcome that we want, and we create this hypothetical world and believe it as truth. It’s so easy to do. DL That’s often what counseling is about, to bring con-
sciousness in, so you can really evaluate something, and it’s not a habitual response or perspective. People will look at behaviors and say, “What was I thinking? What was that?” BS How do you handle the secretive nature of your professional obligation to confidentiality? Is that difficult? DL I’m very secretive. If I have clients who [I’m aware] know
each other, I’ll let them know that they may run into someone they know. I can’t even acknowledge who is it, and they probably already know because they referred the person. But I have to be extremely careful about that. If I run into you in public, I will not acknowledge that I know you. If you want to approach me, that’s fine, but I’ll never approach you. And I’ll pretend like I don’t know people. Again, that’s where it’s really protective and about allowing a space that you have real control over. You get to choose who comes in and who doesn’t, who knows and who doesn’t. That in that safety, the reason that it’s such a crucial thing, is so that people get so comfortable enough and held enough that they can begin to tell their secrets, and know that it’s not going anywhere that they don’t have control over, or that they still have management of it. BS Do you feel that this is the only safe place for some of your clients to share?
me about a time when she was molested when she was 11. She had never told anyone. That, to me, is so inspirational. That she would try to build a relationship, find a place to finally say this thing that just lived in her, with such weight for so long. I think it’s tremendously courageous. People are often afraid, you know? And they’ll say, “Oh I don’t want to say this. I don’t know how to tell you this. You’re going to hate me.” And you see people so tortured by holding onto things. I also feel very honored that they trust me, and to know that, you know, I’m safe, that I won’t judge them, that I’m just here to be empathic. BS Is it difficult to maintain that space of trust? DL No, not at this point. There’s a population that I don’t work with—I don’t work with perpetrators of abuse, and only because at a certain point I had to decide if I was going to work with victims or perpetrators, and it felt like too much of a conflict to try to manage both, for me. And so I made a choice to work with victims. BS Is it typical that a therapist would have to choose? DL There are therapists who would see both. For me, it just felt like I would be betraying both of them, and both absolutely have a right to have a safe place. Perpetrators are not monsters. They’ve got their own demons. BS Can you talk more about that? DL You know, we really do all have our demons. I don’t believe people are born bad. There’s some damage there; there’s something off.
I remember talking to a father in a family session once, and he’d had a long history of a sexual relationship with his daughter, and he said, “I wanted her experiences to be with someone who really loved her.” Now, that’s obviously really distorted, but it wasn’t evil. He came from a place where it was so distorted in him, that he felt like, okay, this would be a good thing, because I love you so much and if your first sexual experience is with me then it’ll be a good thing. BS Addressing someone’s truth doesn’t make it healthy.
DL To a tremendous degree, absolutely.
DL It’s ill and neurotic, but it’s not evil.
BS And how do you take that on? You’re a professional, you have a job to do, but you’re a person, too, you [have] your own curiosities and securities. How is that on you?
BS It’s interesting the way we use the word “truth.” Everyone has his or her own version of the truth, indisputable as it may seem. Is there an objective truth or do we all just carry our own stories around?
DL It’s pretty inspirational. I can think of a woman who was into her late 70s. She was a client for a while. She told
20 BCM 36
DL Hmm. Is there an objective truth. No. I don’t think so.
You know, we all have our demons. I don’t believe people are born bad. With this father and daughter, her experience was that she really loved her father and was distraught that he was being kept from her—it was a Child Protective Services situation. But she was furious at the mother, because she felt like the mother wasn’t really attending to the father the way that she should have, and if they’d had a more loving relationship then the father wouldn’t have been so desperate to do this. So that’s her version of this. The mother felt like there was a special bond between the father and daughter and she felt very excluded and very rejected. So what’s the objective truth here? I guess when you just boil it down, there’s incest in this family and neither of the responsible parties dealt with that in a way that was legal or appropriate, I guess that would be the objective truth. But that’s kind of like this much [pinches her fingers] of the story. The objective truth is pretty minimal. The truth, as it lives, is much more colorful, much more subjective. BS We hear about how many muscles it takes to smile, which makes me wonder how much energy it takes to lie. DL Not only does it take energy to lie and to carry that—
like this woman, who for 60-some years carried this secret which just weighed on her—but your energy goes down when you lie; it saps energy. Even if you don’t know it’s a lie, it saps energy from the person receiving it and the person saying it. It’s remarkable. It’s very scientific and way beyond my scope, but very interesting. It’s also so isolating. If you think communally—if we don’t trust our politicians, if we feel that we’re lied to, we feel so ostracized and alienated; if we don’t trust our spouse, if we feel that there are lies being told, it really is very divisive and isolating. People who start to lie often have a lot of difficulty in relationships. They don’t know how to be intimate, they don’t know how to really let someone connect and know them.
DL We probably all have some story, some compensation that we’ve made—My father wasn’t affectionate because I was flawed—this transfer of responsibility, right? And then we go into the world and we perpetuate that, and we find people who will reaffirm that for us. This is called The Repetition Compulsion. We will find people who are critical, or who make us feel that we aren’t worth much. That truth gets reinforced over and over again. We hang out with friends who don’t treat us with respect because they’re still our best friend, because they fit our belief system. BS That takes a lot of stamina. DL Defenses are a system that keep that “truth” in tact, even though it’s not objective truth. People start to feel safe enough to let their defenses come down a little bit, and we start to get behind our defenses and make it safe enough to look at what the truth is. What would devastate a child— that, oh my god, these [parental] gods that I rely on for everything are not perfect—that’s just too terrifying. As adults, we can look at that and say, Look, my dad was a jerk, he wasn’t the greatest. We can look at that now, but we don’t have the tools as children. BS At the root of this conversation is not really the verbal lies that we tell, but the point of living with the goal of truth. It’s a much bigger picture. Do you think there are many people who find this truth within them? DL I think increasingly, it’s become a kind of focus. There’s a lot of talk about being authentic, about living your truth, and those words and phrases are pretty popular. They’re in people’s consciousness in a different way.
I see a population that I think is exceptional. Those are the people who are trying to find their truth. When I said I’m inspired, I meant that they’re willing to go through difficulty and pain and discomfort to do that. They’re willing to trust somebody.
BS Is this common among your clients?
I never can impose that on anyone. It’s not up to me to decide if they should tell their truth to anyone or not. Sometimes they want to tell their truth and can’t do it directly, and they’ll write letters. I’ll often offer for them to write a letter for no one else to read. It’s just to say the things you never get to say. Sometimes they come in and want to read it.
DL Absolutely.
BS I love the correlation between writing and freedom.
BS What’s the threshold between being in denial and believing it?
DL Someway, somehow, you get to say your truth. It’s profound. BCM 36 21
CASE STUDY
Run, jump, play ROCHESTER SUMMER CAMP STUDIED CHILD ABUSE FOR 26 YEARS.
I
by LAURA SIKES
n Rochester, as in many cities, the number of child abuse complaints referred to the Department of Human Services every year numbers in the thousands. As some of the least visible members of society, many of these children disappear back into their lives with limited attention given to their development after the resolution of their DHS complaints. These victims face higher rates than the general population of incarceration, teen pregnancy, and a greater risk of becoming abusers themselves. Up to 80 percent of childhood abuse victims will show signs of psychological disorders by age 21. For more than three decades, the University of Rochester has worked with local victims of childhood maltreatment through the Mt. Hope Family Center, seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of abusive situations. Their aim is to positively affect the future progress of at-risk youth by both providing individual support to victims and their families, and by collecting data that can further understandings of the effects of abuse on personal development. Both share the goal to help maltreated children become more resilient and improve their chances at having healthy, productive lives. Their studies take a wider perspective, including family dynamics, community situations, neighborhoods, peer relationships and biological processes. Rochester became a national leader for this type of holistic research with the Mt. Hope Family Center, founded in 1978. In 1984, Dante Cicchetti, a University of Rochester professor, was brought on as the director of the institution. He watched as the number of local children who were being abused and neglected rose year by year. He proposed a project at the Center that would last nearly three decades, help change the way psychologists understand the nature of child abuse, and radically expand way they approached its treatment. While providing services to the community in the form of free, long-term psychological care for maltreated children, the Mt. Hope facility in turn gives researchers access to subjects for their scientific inquiries on the effects of childhood abuse and neglect. 22 BCM 36
A summer camp program for local youths that ran from 1986 to 2012 has provided a veritable mountain of scientific data that has helped to change the way professionals understand and treat child abuse victims. The children who attended this camp were referred to the Mt. Hope Family Center by local child protective agencies. Some of the camp’s attendees were the victims of neglect, while others were abused. With their parents or guardians’ consent, these children were provided with a fun camp experience free of charge, while agreeing to participate in the studies conducted at the Center. Camp counselors led the children in games and activities, which were punctuated by brief, regular meetings with psychologists who collected data on them. The nature of these data varied widely, which is one of the reasons the information collected there has been so valuable. The children would answer questionnaires, with questions including such serious queries as whether the children had ever witnessed assaults, drug use and even whether they’d seen dead bodies. In many cases, the answers were yes. (The camp offered free, professional psychological analysis to the children.) The information accumulated during the program has proved invaluable to researchers, leading to hundreds of studies that have expanded knowledge of the effects of child abuse, its treatment, and the development of psychopathologies. Though the summer camp project ended in 2012, Mt. Hope Family Center continues to serve the community by putting into practice some of the advancements they helped initiate in the therapeutic treatment of maltreated children. They publish a top psychology journal, Development and Psychopathology. Meanwhile, the results of the summer camp project are still being analyzed and addressed by developmental psychologists, and likely will prove useful for years to come. Science and community serve each other at the Mt. Hope Family Center, creating the hope of a better future for some of society’s most vulnerable citizens, and generations of children have gotten the help they need.
photo illustration by TIM STASZAK
BCM 36 23
VIEWS
Sympathy for the devil ADVICE IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE. by KEVIN PURDY
I
am an experienced tradesman in the advice business, and let me tell you: business is good, but it hurts. Advice as a product, once relegated to syndicated columns, has exploded. It has grown exponentially across the web, into newspapers and magazines, atop your email, and even in text messages you sign up to receive. Nobody today lacks for links, lists, Top 10 Reasons and infographics on how to behave in meetings, what refrigerator to purchase, which to-do app really helps organize your life, and how you absolutely must learn to get better sleep (by reducing, with a minimum of irony, your screen time before bed). Advice feels less guilty than celebrity gossip, more affirming than news, and, every so often, like a shot of search-optimized grace for a frustrated Googler. I am one of those people who give advice and get paid for it. It is not all that I do, but it is lucrative. I would like to confess something: none of us are living up to all the advice we are pushing out, because humans are an ambitious but self-defeating species. Please go easy on us—or better yet, on yourselves. We know, and I often disclaim in writing, that nobody is perfect, and your mileage may vary. But due to the extremely long memory of Google and the web itself, and through the viral genius of Twitter and Facebook and whatever comes next, both amateur and paid advice-dispensers will forever be reminded of just how short we fall of our lightly sworn best practices. During more than three years at Lifehacker, a technology and productivity blog, I wrote approximately 5,883 posts. I offered tips and links to free software, tweaks for your computer or work routines, and advice on organizing, motivating, and improving yourself. After Lifehacker, I began writing similar fare for any editor who would take my pitches. Across this half-decade career, I have seen the headline economy create a bad exchange between myself and the reader. Publications and their traffic experts oversell, overgeneralize, and shock browsers into clicking just one more 24 BCM 36
article. It turns the reader into a cynical but compulsive consumer of rote propaganda. Guides are “Ultimate,” “Definitive,” or “Complete,” for “Beginners” or “Humans,” and contain “Everything You Need to Know” about “The Future of ” this, or “Why You Should” that. The headline hyperbole works because we hold strangers on the Internet to different standards than ourselves. Psychologist Robert Kurzban details the phenomenon in his book, “Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite,” as does economist and prediction market blogger Dr. Robert Hanson (according to two browser tabs I have open at this moment). We are biologically wired, as a function of psychology and evolution, to expect advice-givers to live up to their own words, while we dispense advice and assume people to take it with a grain of salt. Samantha Maziarz Christmann, a.k.a. The Buffalo News’ “Discount Diva,” is one of those people who feel that incongruity. She is honest and self-effacing in her work as a consumer columnist. But she also feels compelled to sneak her fast-food meals into work, sometimes going so far as to tuck milkshakes into her purse. “Here I am telling people to brew your coffee at home and eat rice and beans to save money, yet I’m spending $4 on Starbucks and (sometimes) eating takeout twice a day— idling in a drive-thru, burning through gas money to boot!” Christmann wrote me in an email. She has headed off some of the guilt with preemptive measures. She writes “Consider trying” instead of “You should.” She goes out of her way to be helpful, not judgmental; the “anti-Miss Manners.” Her social media habits tend toward the modest and self-aware. Still, she has been recognized at the grocery store, and felt her every move being scrutinized. “Why isn’t she using a coupon?” Christmann writes. “Why is she buying namebrand peanut butter?” My personal milkshake-in-the-purse moments come from a post I wrote in August 2012: “What Successful People Do with the First Hour of Their Work Day.” I stayed up late one night and searched for things that notable types had said about their morning routines: the CEOs of Tumblr and Craigslist, Tony Robbins, career experts and, of course, Steve Jobs. It was less work than almost any day I can remember at a newspaper. That post is perhaps the most trafficked thing I have written on the web. It has garnered more than 30,000 interactions on Facebook so far, and close to that number on both Twitter and LinkedIn. I have to block the phrases “successful people” and “first hour” on Twitter, or else the retweets
illustration by TIM STASZAK
I am constantly reminded that I can supposedly tell you about the work habits of successful people. So why can’t I be more like them? and robo-links block out actual humans. I am constantly reminded that I can supposedly tell you about successful people. So why can’t I be more like them? Those reminders that do get through often come as I am lying in bed, being a non-successful person doing next to nothing with the first hour of my work day. I grab my phone, put it a few inches from my newly opened eyes, and immediately start filling my psyche with the problems and open questions of email, other peoples’ amazing marathon finishes on Facebook, and deep time-sink links on Twitter and Tumblr. I have lately taken to keeping my phone in airplane mode overnight and letting the battery drain, hoping nervous charging habits can beat willpower. But the pings do get through. One reached me on a recent Saturday morning. An English-language foreign newspaper invited me to tell them, in just 150 words, about “the best way to start your day for emotional, personal, and professional happiness.” Looking past that deity-like task, I wrote a small, honest blurb about my mornings. The editor then asked me to add five additional “points”—for free, of course—and I was left with no response and a profound question of how exactly I got here. Someone recently tweeted at me about my post on how to “Create a two-minute meditation routine and stick to it” (my
mat and bench are currently beneath the Christmas lights in the attic). And during the recent recession, I was asked by more than one media outlet to dispense advice for jobseekers (I haven’t filled out a W-2 since before Obama took office). Being the confused tradesman I am, I respond by just offering more free advice. For you, dear reader, I must offer these Top Five Definitive Things Everyone Should Know About Mass-Market Advice: • Everybody writing advice is as hypocritical as you are, so don’t feel guilty. • Everybody writing advice is as hypocritical as you are, so have some sympathy. • Web servers count “How can they live with themselves?” views the same as “Just what I needed!” views, so just don’t look if you don’t really need it (you probably don’t). • Our parents, and every parent before them, got by with mostly the advice of their parents, their town, and maybe their teachers, and they were, with some notable exceptions, mostly functional. • “Experts” have intensive experience in a particular field. Ask yourself whether you’re really learning something from what you’re seeing, or if the real expert is the publication that got you to click, skim, and share. BCM 36 25
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Second Opinion Story by LAURA ZORCH
Photos by CLIFTON PAGE
As Pittsburgh’s quality of life has improved, so have the headlines. But when outsiders deemed it the “Most Livable City,” some locals spoke up with a different point of view.
“Are we really most livable?” shouts artist Christiane D. into her megaphone. The crowds passing by give inquisitive looks into our tent where Christiane and I wear fancy dresses and crowns. We reel folks in who are the most curious to offer up criticisms about our city. Christiane, a multi-media artist who has been a staple in the Pittsburgh arts scene for years and is, in essence, a rock star, was charged with creating a song about Pittsburgh composed entirely of citizen complaints. Her Complaints N’at Choir will have performed every day of the Three Rivers Arts Festival this June, singing the complaint lyrics over a beautifully composed score. On a rainy Friday spring evening, we anticipate and hope for a flurry of eager complainers with deep insights on the ’Burgh’s shortcomings: What is there to complain about? Pittsburgh is great. I can’t think of anything I would change. Potholes! Potholes! Potholes!
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Our prediction misses the mark a bit. While plenty of participants joined in the fun, the overwhelming majority gave feedback on our car-sized road imperfections and the parkway traffic—valid concerns, sure, but not hardhitting. Then there is the other camp of city-dwellers who cannot complain at all. I actually fall into the latter group; I cannot think of a bad thing about my city beyond the minor. (Give it a rest, terrible weather!) Perhaps Pittsburgh is truly that amazing. It certainly isn’t short on accolades. The city was named the Most Livable by Forbes in 2010; ranked highest for U.S. cities in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s World’s Most Livable Cities rankings in 2005, 2009 and 2010; and has received a host of other distinctions by national press including this short sample of awesome: The Atlantic’s Best Places to Pursue the American Dream; Sterling’s 2012 No. 1 city on the Best Places to Relocate To; Business Insider’s one of the Hottest American Cities of the Future; and Movoto’s Smartest City in America. Most recently, Pittsburgh garnered top bill on the Demographic International Affordability Survey as the most affordable city in America. And perhaps the most gratifying display of Pittsburgh affection belonged to The Washington Post in 2012 when it declared Portland “out” and Pittsburgh “in.” The article’s author Maura Judkis offers this about the newest in hip: Pittsburgh is poised to offer a new type of lifestyle. And the Steel City has its own bike routes, microbreweries, organic food markets, art and lush scenery. Pittsburgh was named one of the world’s 20 must-see destinations by National Geographic Traveler in 2011...and with its dramatic merging of two rivers, it has one of the best skylines in America. And don’t forget that it has one of the country’s weirdest and most delicious sandwiches. In January, the Chicago Tribune’s Josh Noel continued the Pittsburgh love fest: I’ve never been to a city that loves itself more than Pittsburgh. This is not a criticism. After three days, I also loved Pittsburgh, a quaint, pretty city with interesting people doing interesting things, and a healthy dash of Old World, working-class charm. But—and this is where Pittsburgh won me over—it is not a city impressed with itself. New York, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., are wonderful cities that can’t resist preening when passing mirrors to remind themselves just how wonderful they are. Pittsburgh is a wonderful city that doesn’t even see the mirror. It just turns to its buddies and says, “Hey, yinz guys, let’s go have a beer.” 30 BCM 36
These days every journalist in the land is scrambling to pen the next article that proclaims: “The secret is out— Pittsburgh is the place to be!” Yes, Pittsburgh, the once downtrodden town of smoke, is now seen by insiders and many outsiders as the Queen of the Rust Belt Prom. Pittsburghers know it; and we embrace it. Thus the pulling of teeth in our quest for complaints. Christiane D. continues her call-outs to the wanderers on Penn Avenue: “Pittsburgh has a ‘D’ in diversity! Come complain! Women only earn 74 cents to the dollar here! Men earn more! How do you feel about this?” I know from my education that a ‘D’ does not equal excellence. And I know for sure, without employing a calculator, that 74 cents is less than one dollar. What could this mean, then? Perhaps there is more to Pittsburgh’s story than meets the eye. Dressed as royalty in the complaints tent, encouraging others to voice their dissatisfaction with a town that I love, I have to wonder if we are really the most livable city for everyone, and are we, indeed, the next big thing. Or, are we just lying to ourselves? Has all of the media attention given us a big head? Is it time to remove the crown? Pittsburgh makes an excellent first impression. If the city had a profile on Tinder, you would absolutely right swipe. The cityscape is magnificent. Driving through the Fort Pitt tunnels, the tunnels that usher you in from the airport, the city hits you right in the face with its sparkling skyline and the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers merging into the grand Ohio. It is a sight to behold, just a touch sexy. You will keep your fingers crossed that this knockout city will like you back, and then you can start a flirtatious chat. My courtship with Pittsburgh began five years ago. I had always lived near the city, about an hour away, but was not a true resident, inside the city limits, until 2009. Being a peripheral Pittsburgher for most of my life, I knew the important things about the ’Burgh: Steelers and fries on sandwiches. Moving to town provided excellent opportunities for discovery just in time for the bestowments that would follow. Forbes based their ruling of Most Livable City on cost of living, unemployment, crime, income growth and arts and cultural activity. Pittsburgh earned this award the past several years, at least on the surface, with all of the qualities of a city that you’d want to take home to mom.
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I know and love the new Pittsburgh, this shiny city of opportunity and rebirth. The Pittsburgh of today bounced back from the 1980s and ’90s when the city was decidedly rough. The demise of the steel industry decimated the population and forced the city to redefine its identity. Persistence and patience paid off in a big way for a place once described by 19th century author James Parton after a visit as “hell with the lid off.” No longer a smoky city defined by manufacturing and grime, Pittsburgh has done an aboutface. Doug Heuck is director of PittsburghTODAY, a research institute that studies the city’s livability. It determines livability indicators and quality-of-life categories and benchmarks against similar metropolitan regions. “Pittsburgh gets a lot of recognition, justifiably, for the transition it has made in the last several decades,” says Heuck. Heuck started the program in the mid-1990s as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It was to help inform citizens and policy-makers of the city’s growing needs in the wake of its transformation. PittsburghTODAY continues to produce reports with the help of the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR) at the University of Pittsburgh. “There are many groups who devise indexes to measure livability, and while they can differ, they tend to try and measure a couple of aspects. These can include cost of living, safety, economic vitality, transportation, cultural and arts vitality, and environmental quality,” says Heuck. “Regarding Pittsburgh’s quality of life, we tend to be very strong comparatively in cost of living, safety, and cultural and arts vitality. We tend to be in the middle of the pack in terms of economic vitality and transportation. And we tend to fare worse in environmental quality because of our air-quality rankings, which typically are among the worst in the nation. Overall, however, Pittsburgh continues to get high marks for livability.” High marks and the endless of stream of accolades. This praise has to be affecting the psyche of the city, according to psychologist Dr. Lawrence Ian Reed, a Harvard College Fellow. Reed contends that the collective mind of the city is altered, and the general population’s perception is changed about the city as well. “When told repeatedly that Pittsburgh is most livable, two good things happen,” says Reed. “The first is that the people of Pittsburgh will want to cement that role and adopt the persona of the Most Livable. So thinking 32 BCM 36
Pittsburgh is the most livable city will in essence make the city more livable. Second, people who come to Pittsburgh will have a more open mind about the city. Visitors will hypothesize that the city is great and give the area the benefit of the doubt.” The general population has an unwillingness to complain, because we believe what we hear and try to live it. Pittsburgh is collectively exuding success and embracing the high marks. Mirroring Heuck’s research, the city receives good grades in cost of living, safety, and cultural activity. The city is also economically stable, which is a vast improvement of results from years prior. Pittsburgh boasts a cost of living that’s 6.4 percent lower than the national average, according to Forbes. Housing prices are on the rise here, but it is still quite manageable for the average citizen to live well. The average price of a home in Pittsburgh, according to Sperling’s Best Places is $116,000, compared to a national average of $171,000. In 2013, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Tim Grant reported that the average rent in Pittsburgh is also much lower than major cities. Rent in Pittsburgh averaged $838 with averages in Chicago at $1,045, in San Francisco at $1,970, and New York City at $2,985. Public safety in the Pittsburgh region, along with the reasonable living costs, tends to be fairly favorable. PittsburghTODAY statistics from 2012 show the region beating the majority of comparable cities in violent crimes, robberies and murder rate per 100,000 residents. With basic needs like safety and cost of living addressed, the cultural life of Pittsburgh is able to thrive. In fact, downtown, once laden with adult video stores and empty storefronts, is in the midst of a full-on renaissance due in large part to cultural offerings. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust launched in the 1980s, when Pittsburgh was truly down on its luck, to rehab old theaters for the performing arts and adult retail into visual art galleries. Downtown is also home to more than 100 public artworks from the likes of Sol LeWitt, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer and Romare Bearden. The arts scene thrives and is bolstered incredibly by the tradition of philanthropy instilled in the city’s fabric from the late-19th century industry tycoons like Heinz, Mellon and Carnegie. “Philanthropy is part of the culture here. If you are a successful person, giving is just something you do,” says Heuck. “Pittsburgh actually held the distinction of hav-
“Inclusion, equity and diversity for all,” says Christiane D. of Pittsburgh’s uphill battles. “A vision as unique as the topography and as gritty and hardworking as the people.”
ing the most philanthropic dollars per capita until Seattle disasters. For example, a broken stop light can be the cause topped us this last year.” of many accidents, unless someone notices and complains During the past decade and a half of Heuck’s research, to have it fixed.” Pittsburgh has become economically stronger. “When we As the choir warms up, and piano pounds out the first started, the economic factors were really weak, but it is strong, funky notes, it is clear “The Pittsburgh Complaints much better now,” says Heuck. Song” will be a hit. Choir members have a hard time sing The economy came back in a big way with a shift from ing without giggling through the first run and nodding in steel to healthcare, technology and education as the in- affirmation of shared grievances. In between the refrain of dustry titans when the steel industry fell. The University “potholes, potholes, potholes,” deeper wounds come to the of Pittsburgh Medical Center is now the largest employer surface. in the region. Google has set up shop here, and Carnegie “I hope that in the midst of all this positive press about Mellon University is seemingly hoping to take over the Pittsburgh being most livable that we are able to throw a world with robotics. Six universities call the city home: dose of reality into the mix,” says Christiane. “That our University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, city will refuse to rest on newly achieved laurels, become Chatham University, Duquesne University, Point Park aware of some of its deeply rooted flaws and have the vision University, and Carlow University. to work towards becoming an even better city by resolving This diversification of industry has kept the unemploy- some of the issues laid out in the song.” ment rate in the city below the national average of 6.8 The lyrics expose several of Pittsburgh’s more pressing percent. As of March 2014, Pittsburgh had an overall issues. The choir breathes in deeply, and lets out a long exunemployment rate of 6.1% according to the Bureau of hale. Breathing deeply and breathing in air that is subpar. Labor Statistics. Pittsburgh even played the part of a sym- Ahhhhh... Pittsburgh... bol of economic growth when President Obama brought The air quality in Pittsburgh, even with the mass exothe G20 summit here in 2009. dus of steel and smog, has remained unclean. According to The low cost of living, safety, a growing economy, art the Breathe Project, a coalition in southwestern Pennsyland philanthropy—Pittsburgh has plenty to celebrate. vania dedicated to cleaner air, Allegheny County ranks in How do we continue to meet or exceed the hype? the top 1 percent of the country for cancer risk due to air quality and pollution. While the air has improved, it still I caught up with Christiane D. weeks after the lags way behind most metropolitan areas. initial complaint session on the street, where the Com- “The air quality has not changed enough to significantplaints N’at Choir has started rehearsing their song for ly change our ranking behind other cities,” says Heuck. the Three Rivers Arts Festival, compiled by the artist The choir sings at a fast staccato. and her collaborators, Phat Man Dee, Reverend Deryck Lack of good jobs for black women and men Tines and Andrew Lasswell. The jazzy, gospel-infused The message of racial divide rings through the room. In tune has been set to music composed by pianist Douglas 2010, the U.S. Census determined that about 65 percent Levine. Christiane, through in-person and online collec- of Pittsburgh’s population is white and 26 percent black. tion, managed to round up more than 100 complaints to As part of PittsburghTODAY’s research, Heuck and develop her score. The end result is a fun, funny and also company found that the difference between the Africanpoignant one-two punch to Pittsburgh’s sparkly exterior. American community’s quality of life in Pittsburgh and But why complain? the rest of the population is great. “Complain, in its many definitions, includes a form of “A big part of the problem is jobs and access to jobs. The civic protest,” says Christiane. “It’s one of the first steps unemployment rate is roughly double, and then health in moving towards change. It’s also a way of preventing there are big discrepancies across the board,” says Heuck. BCM 36 33
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But job access is not the only area in which a sizable powerful comrade, to make the city more livable through chasm exists. While cost of living in Pittsburgh is below job improvement. the national average and favorable, home ownership is not “If things continue as is, soon there will be no middle an attainable goal for all. class and poor people [will be] pushed out,” says Oursler. Jeffrey Fraser, for Pittsburgh Quarterly, reported in “Jobs are the most important to raise the tax base and supwinter 2013: port transportation, education, and improve the quality of “When looking at who in Greater Pittsburgh achieves life here.” that milestone, race is clearly a factor. The gap in home The choir slowly fades out like a veritable alarm clock, ownership among the races is wide. About 41 percent of waking the city to the grievances that still need corrected. African Americans report living in a home they or a fam- Beeping and beeping and beeping and ily member own—about half the homeownership rate that Beeping and beeping and beeping and whites and residents of other races report.” Beeping and beeping and beeping and Heuck agrees that in order to improve quality of life in Pre-dawn truck the city, “we will need to have better success integrating Christiane D. is hopeful for the future, but knows there the African-American disparities.” is a hill to climb. Women make 74 cents “Inclusion, equity and diversity for all, ranging from To his dollar in this city unemployment, healthcare, housing,” says Christiane. “A The choir dazzles in a call and response between women vision as unique as the topography and as gritty and hardand men. Fair pay for women, although mandating by working as the people. Mitigated development to mainthe Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to even wages for women and tain the soul of Pittsburgh and not just sell it off to the men, is not the standard in Pittsburgh. The Bayer Center high bidder... and I could go on and on and on.” for Nonprofit Management, at Robert Morris University, The hard work of Pittsburgh UNITED and similar found that women do make 74 cents to the dollar comorganizations will continue to propel the visions of pared to men in the nonprofit arena. citizens like Christiane D. and the choir of complainers Barney Oursler, director of Pittsburgh UNITED, forward. would argue that fair pay is an issue across the board for “The best part about the work we have done is the the jobs in the city. Pittsburgh UNITED is a coalition of collaboration,” says Oursler. “We get unions to trust more than a dozen organizations, from unions to churches community organizations, [and] community organizato community groups, advocating for a better Pittsburgh. tions to trust church congregations, [and so on]. We are The organization was founded in 2007, in the midst of working together to make Pittsburgh a better place to be.” Pittsburgh’s renaissance, to influence the rapid develop All who bashed the city for years are now hyping it all ment happening in the area. Pittsburgh UNITED advoover the world. cates for clean rivers, community development, and now, It is true that the secret is out about Pittsburgh: it is a mainly jobs. “A lot of the new jobs in Pittsburgh are in eds and meds, city worth watching. Pittsburgh is different than it was 20 with employees making 12 to 14 dollars per hour, which years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago. Work is incomplete, is not a sustaining career,” says Barney. “There needs to be but in many practical ways, this is what civic work looks jobs that support humans. Pittsburgh may have a lot of like. Pittsburgh, however, different than those cities not jobs currently, but worse jobs than what the city has had earning attention, wherever it may come from, is primed to hike up its sleeves and do that work. historically.” Oursler and company have been pushing for better jobs “The fact that the area is not perfect does not take away and gained a powerful partner in the city’s new mayor, Bill from this drastic positive change,” says Heuck. “Pittsburgh is now in the position to build from its strengths.” Peduto. “The mayor actually has one of our signs right inside As Dr. Reed noted, Pittsburghers will and should of his office,” says Oursler. “He wants the people to know embrace the successes of the city, and “it will be awesome!” The Complaints N’at Choir sings its song: who he is working for.” And Pittsburgh UNITED is working hard, with its Most livable for whom most livable, what? BCM 36 35
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Hand to God Story by BEN SIEGEL
It began and ended with a knock on the door. Michael Rizzo hadn’t been anticipating this particular visit, though he knew what it meant. He knew what it suggested. He knew the rules. “It’s called an encouragement call,” says Rizzo, some 13 years after the fact. He recounts this particular visit with some unequal amount of closure, reflection and perhaps, some resentment. “We sat down at the table and said a prayer with the elder—the presiding overseer,” says Rizzo. “The head elder.” These are figureheads of his family’s church, the spiritual home for which they had worked tirelessly, without hesitation or question, to serve. They were as much part of the Rizzos’ family as those on a proverbial tree, the branches of which could be mistaken for a flowchart of the American judicial system. These aren’t just trusted figures in the Rizzo family’s religious home. They are rulers of a social code, and on this day, they have come to gather evidence to make their ruling. Rizzo is descriptive recounting this on a recent spring afternoon, following a late-night conversation during 46 BCM 35
Photos by STEVE SOROKA
which these hushed-about (though previously written about) memories pored out about this particular meeting in his past. We were discussing the transitioning, transformative nature of our own religious identities today; how environment affects our ability and desire to pray communally; what praying looks, sounds and feels like, both practically and in the abstract; how our congregational families accept us or deny us; how the activity of our intimate spiritual beliefs puts us on display in unintentional ways—the privacy of our own securities. We were together grappling the nature of being a postreligious millennial in 2014, each of us from vastly different landscapes. Both of us, with a perspective on community from a religious institution’s influence. In our follow-up conversation, Mikey—as he’s been known in adulthood—recants the prelude to his epilogue, the life he lives now. It is drastically different from the stories he tells me, some of which he has shared in his professional writing as editor, columnist and founder of Loop magazine, Buffalo’s only current LGBTQ publication of record, and previously at The Record, the student publica-
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tion at Buffalo State College. Sharing is important, Rizzo his homosexuality. And despite their quiet tone, this was believes, both journalistically and as a principle of social emphatically an accusation and not a conversation starter. progressivism, though this is still a part of his past that Michael “Mikey” Rizzo, the precocious blond prince bears no resemblance to his life today. It comes up when it of the Lancaster Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, comes up, and he gives without hesitation. beloved young leader and academic all-star, the cared-for Yet he describes that fateful meeting with the urgency son of two devout parents, was being outed against his will as though it happened yesterday. and shamed in his own home. “I knew something was up immediately,” says Rizzo. “The tone was so very much: ‘We know you’ve been “Obviously, it was not an ‘encouragement call.’” The head lying to us—gotcha! And we have the proof.’” elder spoke. “All I could say was, ‘I feel like I’ve been tricked,’” says “He was going on this whole spiel about how this was Rizzo. not ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ this was not ‘The Matrix,’” “It doesn’t matter,” the head elder responded. references to a kind of interpretive, creative thought not “I was so overwhelmed with guilt, surprise, absolute allowed in his church’s theology, both epic stories with horror,” says Rizzo. their own philosophical, pseudo-spiritual, readings. A private conversation at his kitchen table might have “This is reality,” Rizzo quotes the elder’s point. “This is been invasive enough, but what was to follow would dig The Truth. We are talking about a war between righteous- even deeper into Rizzo’s closet—the privacy of his own ness and evil. Satan and Jehovah.” beliefs. “This is the really intense speech that he started with,” says Rizzo. If his eyes weren’t rolling a bit with this sum- Rizzo speaks of his faithful upbringing fluently, mary, then his tone of voice gave away how little of this he even though he’s been out of its grasp for a little less than was buying. He was about to be outed, persecution-style. half of his life. At 30, he is years beyond the post-pubes With his parents sitting dutifully, the head elder, and cent teen on the verge of legal adulthood, confronted in yet another, at the helm of this conversation, Rizzo was his home by governing elders. That’s in his past emotionbeing confronted about something he knew would not ally, intellectually and certainly spiritually. bode well for him. Deep down, he knew what this was And yet, there are times when language tips back the about, even if the evidence he thought they had hadn’t scales. been shoved in his face. “We don’t,” he says a couple times, catching himself: “I got lost a little bit, trying to figure out what was go- “—they don’t…” These corrections of his past, a quick fix. ing on. The next thing you know, he pulls out this stack of Rizzo’s roots were planted more firmly than other kids his papers, and says, ‘Is there anything you want to tell us?’,” age. Where he’s from is forever entwined with how he was says Rizzo. “I look at it, and it’s my writing, all of these raised there. emails, everything.” He was raised in a devout household, by two parents The emails exchanged with the high school senior— whose own lives were turned around by their introducwho elders of the church, including those paying him a tion into the church. They are each the only Jehovah’s visit this day, had appointed as a role model for his peers— Witnesses in their respective families, his father one and other teenage boys his age, looking for an outlet to of 10, his mother one of two. Their own troubles in life discover and express their perceived differences. were pushing the couple toward a breaking point; that’s This is in contrast to the boy the elders thought they when the Jehovah’s Witnesses came into their lives. Rizzo knew. The boy they would hand over the pulpit to, giving considers it a blessing. him the range to preach and educate even sermonize. This “My father was very opposed at first, I’m told, but evenwas not a young man who chased or welcomed trouble. tually their marriage was crumbling and falling apart. As This was not a young man who received calls. He was one a last-minute saving grace, he decided to begin studying,” who made them. says Rizzo. “It saved their marriage, the fact that they both Yet here sat a stack of printed emails, provided by his became Jehovah’s Witnesses.” parents to church leadership, who had been tipped off by His mother was baptized first, the year Mikey was an acquaintance of their son’s, as empirical evidence of born, and his father followed two years later. The family 48 BCM 36
The Rizzos attended meetings, fulfilling the mission door to door, with little blond Mikey in tow, doing God’s work. Life was in order, the family was happy and God was pleased. celebrated one Christmas and one Easter together before committing full-fledge to the church—before they found “the Truth.” They attended meetings, fulfilling the mission door to door, little blond Mikey in tow, doing God’s work. Life was in order, the family was happy and God was pleased. That’s when Mikey, a natural-born performer (who’d find in his later-teen years fulfilling work on dance teams and theme park stages), took the reigns. “I used to love going door to door. I was four years old. Most of the time when you’re that young, obviously, you’re not going to do the talking. But by the time I was four, my mother had let me start the conversation at the door on Saturday morning. I knocked. I started speaking first. I was so proud of myself,” says Rizzo. He was entertaining and precocious, but more than that, he was prodigious in this persuasive role. “It was always just in my nature to be an overachiever, but an overachiever because I wanted to please my parents,” says Rizzo. “I wanted the accolade. I wanted the ‘good job.’ In many areas, in school, in lots of things, and I was definitely an overachiever in the religion. I loved going on door-to-door field service. For whatever reason, when I started school in kindergarten, I could not wait to tell my teacher that I couldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day because it was against my religion.” Bringing The Truth to the secular: a big plus. “By the time I was six years old, I was enrolled in the Theocratic Ministry School,” a preparatory curriculum for future Publishers. “Most kids wouldn’t join the school until they were maybe 10. I was going up on stage in front of a congregation of 70 people, doing my five-minute talk, my bible reading. They would then come down and assess me.” He passed the biggest test. Michael Rizzo was baptized at the young age of eight. He was years ahead of his classmates for this distinction, and in some ways, more natural than his adult peers. He was just too good at this. “I remember I was so mad, because I was scheduled to get baptized on, I think it was, March 12; I would have been seven years old.” He’s smiling as he’s telling this part. “But there was a snow storm, and so it got postponed until after my eighth birthday, and I was so mad that I wasn’t to
be seven years old: the youngest ever.” While Rizzo’s natural fit for baptismal responsibility was self-evident, questions about the appropriateness of its rushed maturation were raised. “I don’t think it was something that was totally encouraged. There was probably some understanding that, you know, let him go through puberty, let him come into his teenage years, and make all his mistakes. I mean, how many young kids—12, 13, 14—are going to want to be fully invested in their religion?” Expectations could be adjusted, if it became necessary. His parents and elders wanted to protect both his ability to perform and his well being. “There was the understanding that if your young teenager was starting to show that they didn’t want to go out for service, and they didn’t want to go to meetings anymore, don’t worry, they’re probably just going through a tough time. But with me, between my parents or with my elders, there was no concern that my intentions were 100 percent true.” “I loved Jehovah and I was out in service all the time. I loved commenting at the meetings. I loved doing all that stuff,” says Rizzo. “There was no worry I would stray from my duty or expectations. I was an example in the congregation to look up to. Other parents that had children younger than me wanted me to spend time with their kid.” Life as a Jehovah’s Witness would seem to confirm an outsider’s first impression. Rizzo describes the organization as businesslike, while using the word “cult” to describe the effects of the church’s many social restrictions, institutional standards and judicial review. (That there is even a judicial review, for instance.) “Socially speaking, Jehovah’s Witnesses purposely do everything they can to set themselves apart from every other Christian organization,” says Rizzo. “They believe that they need to stand out in this world as very clean, as very honorable. They don’t swear. They don’t do anything bad at all.” “Bad” is relative, however. “In areas of personal behavior, there are some [instances] that they call ‘conscious matters,’ which means it’s not really clear what you’re supposed to do,” says Rizzo. BCM 36 49
Judicial oversight handles those decisions in a court of religious law. What they say goes, and though there is an appeal process in place, the very nature of such a review process would suggest it’s merely ornamental. Rizzo, once obedient of the elders’ rules, even a proponent of their social governance for him and his young peers, is today critical of the standards to which they keep their congregants. “There are gray areas, but when it comes to letter of the law, they always believe that they’ve got it,” says Rizzo. “They have a higher moral standard compared to the rest of the world.” It is with these morals that they set out for door-to-door service, ringing doorbells on Saturday mornings to many a deaf ear. For many, that ring says everything of their first and only impression of Jehovah’s Witnesses: sales calls for Jesus. In essence, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that modern life—the one that includes, is responsible for and perpetuates crime, violence, sickness, death and disobedience to God’s word—will end as we know it, with Earth-shattering consequences akin to a world war and environmental destitute. At that at that time 144,000 humans will be admitted to heaven, closer to distinction as Jesus’s priests and kings. The rest of God’s followers will live on Earth in a kingdom of paradise, which will be free of human sin and destruction. Those who do not follow God’s written doctrine, as interpreted and enforced by the beliefs of the church, will perish. Liturgically, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the Holy Trinity, nor the religious iconography of the cross. They do not celebrate Christmas, Easter, birthdays or nationalistic holidays, nor do they vote in elections, serve in armies, salute flags or sing national anthems, smoke tobacco (at all) or drink alcohol (excessively), have sex outside of heterosexual marriage, or receive or donate blood. On the whole, secular life is informed by a religious doctrine; or, rather, secular life doesn’t exist. “It was a structured lifestyle,” says Rizzo. “We went to church three times a week—twice for two-hour meetings, once for a one-hour meeting. You’re expected to prepare for those meetings, read all of the literature. You’re expected to raise your hand and answer questions.” This is to prepare for door-to-door field service. Their members feel at home on other people’s porches, and not in a church setting, though they do meet regularly in their congregational building, the 50 BCM 36
Kingdom Hall. But door-to-door mission work is how they truly fulfill their spirituality, selling, in one way or another, a concept of collective redemption, of purpose-driven community. It is a pursuit of a truth, believed by its members to be indisputable and binding. It is a sales model, through and through. Inside the Kingdom Hall, members engage in meetings in which elders and elevated members of the congregation, some of whom are known as Publishers, lead sermons and bible study. Members are baptized in their teen years, typically, though anybody considered ready and worthy of leadership and its many responsibilities, including monthly, door-to-door mission work, is eligible. Everything is recorded. “There’s amazing record keeping,” says Rizzo. “Every month, every publisher keeps track of how many hours they go out into service, how many magazines they’ve given out to people, how many books, how many return visits they’ve made, attendance at all meetings—every single number of everything is tracked. They release an annual report that they publish for everybody.” The church publishes its own books, magazines, brochures, audiobooks, documentaries, even software—its primary text, The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, and magazines The Watchtower and Awake!, which are distributed on door-to-door work—in its own publishing house, located in Brooklyn, which Rizzo describes as a kind of compound. “It’s called Bethel, a series of six or seven really large buildings. All of their workers live there, they eat every meal together, they go over a daily text together,” says Rizzo. “They have their own grocery store; everybody pays cost. It’s über-JW there,” the acronym used casually here and at other points in Rizzo’s description, sometimes in a lower register, chin down and eyes at a glare. It feels deliberately casual the way he describes this particularly thorough infrastructure. Every level of the church, from the written word, to the printing press, to the tens of thousands of Kingdom Halls, to local leadership, to your front door, is ordained to choreographic precision. Everything has its place; if something goes out of place, it is fixed. And different from the organizational models of other religious groups, those very small and very large, these operations are paid for by existing congregants, not by potential converts; they sell ideas, not materials. “It’s all donation-funded. We don’t—they don’t—
charge for any of their literature, they only pitch that they accept donations for it. And then it’s the people in the congregations who give donations.” “Well,” Rizzo adds, his voice lowered: “They don’t pay taxes.” “It’s just so weird looking back,” says Rizzo. “We didn’t do anything. We didn’t kiss. It’s not like we were getting hard or jerking each other off, or anything like that. It was all done under the guise of us falling asleep.” This is the part of Rizzo’s story that is remarkably like everyone else’s. The part where he was an eager young boy, with parents asleep upstairs, with his own computer and his own internet password, who had reasonable, understandable house rules of conduct for such sexualized activity. In this part of the story, he was not prodigal, not brilliantly talented, not ahead of the curve. As a teenage boy, he was horny. Rizzo would host sleepovers with other boys in his congregation, a typical social activity for children his age. There was one boy in particular who he had felt some kind of way about. “When I would have people over to spend the night, I would only have boys over; I couldn’t have girls over. We would spend the night at each other’s houses every once in a while. Sure enough, I thought he was cute,” says Rizzo. “He looked like Leonardo DiCaprio.” When it was time for sleep, Rizzo inched closer. “I do have to say the advances were all me, but they weren’t fought. I would find some way to put my arm around him, and you know, touch him, and I mean, that was it,” says Rizzo. It’s hard to believe his candor today marks the actions of yesterday; he sounds absolute in his assessment. “I have a hard time imagining that he truly was sleeping, but that has remained his side of the story forever, and we never talked about it. This was something I looked forward to. I couldn’t wait to have Jason over.” It felt comforting to Rizzo, this ability to explore, perceivably in a consensual manner, the things that had piqued his interest in the privacy of his own bedroom. These opportunities would emancipate a greater desire, however, that had nothing to do with sensuality, or even sexuality; in these overnight exchanges, Rizzo’s truth was finding its light, even if he was partly responsible for casting over it a shadow of silence. “That’s when I started actively keeping a secret,” says
Rizzo. “I knew all the words to describe what I was, and what I was doing. I didn’t want people to know, and I wanted to fix it. That’s what I was praying to Jehovah about every night and every day. I would do my own side research on homosexuality and masturbation, read all the old Watchtower and Awake articles, reading the Questions Young People Ask [column], and doing all of this without my parents knowing. I was doing this late at night, while I was ‘asleep,’ trying to fix my relationship with God.” Still, his internal monologue, offering a different kind of sales pitch, gained volume. “It wasn’t like I was going on dates with guys and kissing them. Every time I would masturbate, I would have this horrible, immense guilt. I would cry sometimes, because I had just let myself do this. A moment of pleasure followed by feeling immense guilt for not fighting that.” Rizzo was charged with “pornea,” the Greek word for “fornication.” But he had not had sex. As far as they knew, from those emails and his admission during the encouragement call at home, he was guilty of behaving in a homosexual way—of being homosexual. The acts, or discussion about wanting to engage in them, were mere loopholes. The formal hearing took place in the Kingdom Hall, at which a panel of judicial reviewers, all elders, would hear his plea for redemption. If Rizzo were to denounce his actions, apologize to the church and offered repentance, he might not be disfellowshipped, a kind of censure and disowning. “It was complete and utter conflict in my mind. I felt every emotion, and I didn’t know which one to settle on,” says Rizzo. Rizzo was undeniably gay, and unapologetically a Jehovah’s Witness, and not sure which, if either, should come first in the sentence of his biography. This hearing, unfairly confrontational as it was, in his view, was nonetheless opening the door to catharsis. It was a confusing interaction. “Here I am, balling, crawling around on the floor, punching the ground, crawling into a corner. And here [the elders] are, responding to all of this, somewhat lovingly. They would help me up into my chair, have their arm around me, pat me on the shoulder, share these words of encouragement. We would read scriptures all about repentance, and how I can return to God, and how Jehovah BCM 36 51
will welcome me back if I’m sorry, to try and calm me,” says Rizzo, “or something.” The idea, which Rizzo was still on board with, was that he could will himself out of this identity, and be allowed to stay in the church. He tried to make that work. “I was breathing so easily. I had just gotten everything in the world off of my chest. I felt like I had totally come clean. I thought like this was my new beginning, like it’s finally out there, I can deal with it. I can get the help that I need. Everything is going to be ok.” When the elders returned to the room, they gave Rizzo their ruling: he had been formally disfellowshipped. From that moment forward, he would have no relations whatsoever with members of the church, who in turn would effectively ignore him, and he would be stripped of his ability to serve in mission work. Rizzo could still attend meetings, though, to show repentance in an appeal for reconsideration. He could be visible, just silent. But at this moment, he was no longer one of them. “I feel like they were disappointed that I hadn’t had sex, because it wasn’t cut and dry. I believe that they had already made up their mind before I went up there. They had already decided they were going to disfellowship me,” says Rizzo. Rizzo was officially disfellowshipped in February 2002 and turned 18 in June, at which point he boarded a plane and moved to Oklahoma. He had met and began a relationship with a man there, who paid Rizzo’s way and got him out of an environment that he found to be a roadblock. Life at home had fallen to a quiet roar. Communication with his parents was limited to daily necessity, and though he maintained a censured relationship with his congregation, he was eager to move on. “I did not present it to my parents as an option. This is what I’m doing. I’m turning 18; I’m gonna go,” says Rizzo. “They kind of had to accept it.” His parents, being parents, were perhaps hesitantly present for this move, though they showed no support for the decision. Their son, however, was leaving them. “They took me to the airport. They were sad parents losing their son, but they were not supporting my decision. They had let me know that they were not going to give me any money, not be supportive of whatever I did,” says Rizzo. “But—and this is still where I’m at with my relation52 BCM 36
ship with my parents today—this dual, very conflicting message that they somehow are able to justify existed: we love you, but we think you’re going to die in Armageddon.” Rizzo, for what it’s worth in his strained but not altogether erased relationship with them today, understands their position. “I think the world view that my parents have is what keeps them going. It saved their marriage, back in the beginning. It’s probably saved their marriage since then again. Their lifestyle before the religion was not necessarily healthy. They were drinkers, they were partiers; they were normal. They did their drugs, and were smokers and drinkers and gamblers,” says Rizzo. “I think that for them, being part of this religion has made them much happier because it has helped them live healthier lives, more meaningful lives, ultimately because it’s conducive to their happiness. They’re not gay so they don’t have this one thing that’s in utter and complete conflict with that way of life. For them, it’s doing all good things for them, and making their life better.” Rizzo, in return, is better for it, too. Maybe not for the theological principles that entail the church’s agenda, but perhaps for the closed doors that it opened for him. There’s an odd balance to this: his parents are living their truth, and Rizzo is living his. That they don’t align is another discussion for another afternoon. “Is it fair to say that they’re choosing their religion over me? No. If they had to give up their religion, where would they be? Would they be able to handle their world anymore? I don’t know. But they’re certainly entrenched in it now, and it’s brought them X amount of happiness. They don’t have a son anymore, but I don’t know where that sits with them,” says Rizzo. His life today is still in service. Loop magazine is one part of a consortium of LGBT-related projects, including MyBuffaloPride, an online and retail store specializing in pride merchandise and philanthropic causes. To date, the company has raised funds for many local organizations, including Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the Queen City Softball League, and the Jamey T. Rodemeyer Scholarship Fund, named for the Williamsville teen who committed suicide in 2011. There’s work to be done, and Rizzo, the four-year-old boy who could sell God to strangers, is working hard. “I got to a point where I’m not angry,” says Rizzo. “I think I got to the point where I realized, maybe everybody thinks Jehovah’s Witnesses are crazy. I don’t need to prove
that to anybody. It’s about me playing my part in raising up the LGBTQ community. Rather than writing bad things about Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m just going to write so much good stuff about homosexuals.” He is at his most contemplative when he ponders the old Michael Rizzo with the new Mikey Rizzo, considering the vastness of their differences and the nearness of their goals. “It’s like there was such a breaking point in my life,” says Rizzo. “I don’t remember thinking the way I used to think, or that I used to talk like that and think like that and rationalize like that. I can barely even remember that person.”
“It’s not that I miss something, but there’s an incongruity between the first half of my life, the second half of my life, and my identity as a person in all of that.” “I didn’t miss out on my childhood, but I look at people my age, and I just don’t reflect on the times of my adolescence, or teenage life the way that other people my age do. To me that was a whole different person. I don’t think of having grown from that person; I think of having left that person behind. I started a new one,” says Rizzo before tilting his chin and speaking in his inside voice. “Are you sure you want to do a story, or do you want to do a book?” BCM 36 53
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SHORT FICTION
The Siege In an awful repeat of the previous night, shrieking cuts our sleep short and I go down with him this time. I’m not going to make him do the dirty deed twice. I will share the ratricidal burden. by SHASTI O’LEARY SOUDANT
I
an!” I yell. “What?” from upstairs. “We have a rat!” “WHAT?” The sounds of scrambling. Toilet flushing. Ian rushes down the creaky stairs, a one-man herd of buffalo. He stops short at the spectacle. And shrinks ever so slightly. “Are you sure it’s a rat? It could have been a mouse…?” So hopeful. I look at him, steel myself, close my eyes, and pull open the grains drawer, right next to the baking drawer. Ian’s gagging confirms my worst fears. This is too much carnage for a mere mouse, and the little black turds it has left behind are larger than a grain of rice. Several are almost the size of kidney beans. We have been invaded. I want to throw up. I want to burn the chest of drawers. I really like this chest of drawers. It came with the house. It was the subject of a long and intense negotiation with the previous owners. I normally don’t form attachments to objects, but this array of 12 glass-fronted drawers housed in a sturdy wooden frame topped with a butcher block is about as close as I come to an emotional bond with furniture. I don’t want to lose it. I just want it cleansed. By fire. Ian sighs heavily. “Any idea how they got in?” 56 BCM 36
I look at him, eyebrow askance. Seriously? This house is 123 years old. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. We’ve been here 10 years. Ten blissful, innocent, hopeful years. What children we were. What sweet, trusting babies. “Do we know anyone with a flame thrower?” I ask. Ian shrugs his very big shoulders and his mouth forms a perfect upside-down unhappy little U. He looks like Grumpy Cat. I giggle for a moment. And then revert to grim pragmatism. We need bleach. Lots and lots of bleach. And gloves. And a face mask. Preferably with a HEPA filter. You know, Hanta Virus. And sponges. Oh, God, so many sponges. Normally, Ian hates amateur hour at Home Depot. Sundays are his least favorite day to even approach the place, but this is an emergency. He heads out into the tundra. I start looking for The Hole. Houses this old are a relationship. They’re not a simple transaction. A house this old has moods. Throws tantrums. Sulks, cracks, mutters and groans. This house in particular has developed a peculiar sort of passive-aggressive and manipulative demeanor. While we have been vigilant about buttoning her up, making sure that her bones are fortified and protected, we’ve maaaaybe neglected her inner cosmetics just a little. She looks fabulous from the outside. A true Queen Anne Victorian Painted Lady. New roof, fresh paint job, almost a hussy on our block, but not quite. If we’d
illustrations by JULIE MOLLOY painted her red, it would have been a different story. Purple is eccentric, but respectable. Inside, she’s still kind of a mess. And I think she resents it. Hence her failure to protect us from vermin. Poking around our ancient kitchen yields nothing obvious. I haven’t started moving major appliances yet, but I’m starting to suspect a degree of cleverness that makes me uncomfortable. Just how smart do these things get, anyway? As it turns out, pretty frickin’ smart. I attack the chest of drawers with a religious fervor. Get thee behind me Satan! I throw out a prepper’s proper hoard of boxed and bagged foods. The dates on some of the items cause me to scowl in embarrassed acknowledgement of our terrible hatred of spring cleaning. I scour, spray and scrub until my hands sweat puddles inside the rubber gloves. The fumes from the bleach are a little heady, but I manage to disinfect the entire thing in less than three hours before I finally crawl out of the kitchen to collapse on the living room rug, gulping for air like an escaped goldfish. Ian stands over me, gratitude oozing from every orifice. He may be built like a sequoia, and formidable in many other respects, but he does not tolerate this kind of thing well. His love for me was demonstrated most endearingly when he cleaned out the bathroom heat register after the Great Turkey Pot Pie Food Poisoning Incident of 2009. I owe him. “Are you okay?” I nod. We climb the stairs with a heavy gait. He massages my pruned fingers in bed. We agree not to tell Zoë. We don’t want her to freak out. Or to tell anyone. “I feel like we’ve just discovered we have an STD,” I say, nibbling on a cuticle. “House herpes,” Ian mutters. That night, through my dreams, I think I hear the sounds of chewing. The regular-sized mousetraps Ian bought in a bid for optimism are a sad and immediate triumph. The creature is not nearly as big as I’d thought, and it was a quick death. I’d go as far to say painless. The debate as to whether to leave the other traps in place is a short one. He was pretty small. There was a lot of damage. And those turds, well… best to leave them just to make sure. The next day, we bag two. Two! The same size. I start to feel sick again. Three. Jesus. Okay, now I understand the scene in the drawers. It was a party. A rager. They were wilding like a feverish little gang of hormone-addled teenagers hopped up on meth and molly. Our drawer pantry was a paradise. Who could blame them? I need to re-think our food-storage situation. Mason jars. We’ll need big mason jars. It’ll be pretty! Like something out of Martha Stewart! Over the next few days, our strategic positionings of
cracker boxes, potato chip bags, fruit, cereal and, yes, onions on the highest, assumedly unreachable spots in the kitchen are revealed for the pathetic and entirely inadequate gambits they are. For that matter, so now are the regular-sized traps, which they’re avoiding. We upgrade to glue. A week into the ordeal, we awaken to horrifying squeals at two in the morning. Ian runs downstairs, there’s a loud thump and the panicked squeaks come to an abrupt halt. I hear the kitchen door lock turn, the chime as the back door is opened, and the sound of the garbage bin lid slamming shut. Ian reappears in the bedroom doorway, a little out of breath, looking sick. I open my mouth to ask if he’s okay, and he holds up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.” That’s four. Something falls in the kitchen. Great. Five and counting. “I feel like we’re under siege.” My voice is tremulous and small. It’s a full two hours before sleep comes for either of us. Ian comes back from CrossFit late the next morning carrying a plastic True Value Hardware bag. The rat traps are a full order of magnitude larger than the mousetraps. The wood is a good half-inch thick. They look mean and powerful enough to shatter a human finger. In an awful repeat of the previous night, shrieking cuts our sleep short and I go down with him this time. I’m not going to make him do the dirty deed twice. I will share the ratricidal burden. We find the tip of what appears to be a rather large tail stuck in one trap, and what looks like an equally large toe in the other sitting right next to it (we deployed them in tandem). We have maimed it, and very possibly angered it. And now, the worst thought in a long history of bad thoughts smacks me upside the head: Oh, God. We killed its family. Ian and I exchange worried looks. I feel cold. We still haven’t figured out how the hell they’re getting in. Over the next couple of days, we plug every single crack in the entire house with steel wool and spray foam, no matter how small. There is no sign of anything for two days. Then, from his regular station on the living room couch, Ian sees the little bastard running across the dining room in broad daylight. He gives chase and loses sight of it in the kitchen. We are stunned to discover a rodent superhighway runs underneath the kitchen sink, through a cabinet door that won’t close properly, and into the gap where the water pipes come in. More steel wool. More spray foam. Spray foam is expensive. We are well into can number four. The next three weeks are something from a nightmare. Holes begin to appear. Everywhere. The guest room. The closet under the stairs. The bathroom. The rat manages to BCM 36 57
find every single last piece of leftover Halloween candy and forgotten chocolate stash in the entire house. It is now officially living in the walls. When we plug one hole, it just claws another one, right next to it. The one that really bothers me is the one in the bathroom, right next to the bathtub. It’s bigger than all the others. But, there is no food in the bathroom. Why the bathroom? Starting at two in the morning, every night, without fail, It chews, scratches and claws its way through the foam, the steel wool, the plaster and the wood lathe. It’s so loud that I am awakened by the sound, and I stomp into the bathroom, haul a vicious kick into the bathtub, and fight nausea as I hear it scurry back downstairs. Why the bathroom? What does it want with the bathroom? We attempt camouflage and congratulate ourselves for our cleverness only to find the traps triggered, surrounded by small debris fields, and no rat. It’s learning from us. It’s getting smarter. And worse, I am starting to think “It” is a “She.” And, she is angry. We have killed her children. She wants us to pay. I awake for the umpteenth helpless, frustrating night in a row to discover that the entire corner of the wall abutting the bathtub has been chewed away. Bits of plaster are everywhere. She was in a frenzy this time. I’m shaking my head in wonder when dread pours over me like cold syrup. Oh, sweet Christ. I know what she’s doing. “Ian!” I’m trying not to wake Zoë, so it comes out a loud hiss. Ian lurches upright, eyes bulging. “Jesus! What! You just gave me a fucking heart attack!” “I know what’s she doing! In the bathroom! I know what she’s doing!” I sound unhinged. The calm part of me is locked away in my brain and shaking her head, tsking. Ian looks even more startled. “She wants us dead! She’s eating away the floor under the bathtub! She’s trying to kill us!” Ian’s face slackens. He cocks his head, furrows his brows, squints his eyes at me. He reaches for my face. “Okay. I know that sounds crazy.” I slap his hand away, annoyed. “But hear me out. Rats are smart. Like really smart. And they can do some crazy shit. Like, there’s this one video on YouTube? The rat is pressing buttons to make the food come! And animals! They feel emotion! They hug and love and everything! Ian! We killed her whole family! She wants REVENGE!” My fingers are curled in the air in front of me, shaking with dramatic emphasis. “Sweetie. You haven’t slept a whole night in almost three weeks. You’re exhausted. The rat is not trying to kill us. It’s just hungry. There’s nothing left in the kitchen. The bathroom tiles are cracked. The wood in the wall behind the 58 BCM 36 34
bathtub is wet and probably rotting, and it’s just trying to survive. We’ll get it. I promise.” “But I feel so bad for her. We killed her whole family. She must be so sad and lonely and angry.” I’m like a child. Ian kisses my forehead, opens the covers, and envelops me. I close my eyes and try not to see her forlorn furry little face. I think about what I would feel if Zoë—oh, God. I muffle my sob in the pillow. Ian squeezes me and tightens his spooning. We fall asleep to the sound of the early birds. I’m like a zombie mixing Zoë’s breakfast shake when I hear her yelp. I run into the living room still holding the milk. Zoë points to her knapsack on the carpet. There are little bits of plastic and tinfoil and Hershey’s Kiss banners everywhere: her secret stash of Valentine’s Day candy. I open the bag and it’s Apocalypse Now. “That’s IT!!! I’m FUCKING DONE!!! I want it FUCKING DEAD!! I want ALL of them FUCKING DEAD!!” Zoë’s eyes are wide and her pupils are dilated in fear. I curse all the time, but I don’t scream often. Ian’s downstairs in a flash, takes the bag out of my trembling hands and disappears into the mudroom. We manage to dig up Zoë’s old backpack and barely get her out the door in time for her bus. We’re still standing on the porch shivering in the brutal cold, not wanting to face the mess in the living room, when Ian says “Poison,” in a flat, dead voice. Something inside me cringes, but he’s right. It has to be done. If the rat dies in the walls, so be it. It’ll only stink for a few days. A week, tops. I nod my grudging assent. He gets in the car without saying another word. The trays are small and black, full of little blue pellets that look like they were extruded from Play-Doh. We put one in every room that’s got a hole, plus the kitchen. I’m dubious. After everything we’ve been through, I think the Rat is just too smart. They sit untouched for three days. The hole in the bathroom gets bigger. I simply close the door now so I can sleep through the chilling sounds of her scratching. On the fourth day, Ian tells me the tray in the kitchen is completely empty. We wait. Three days pass without a sound. Ian is the first to dare say it out loud: “I think it’s dead.” I think he’s wrong. I think she’s just screwing with us. A week goes by. No bad smell. No noise. Nothing. The house is almost too quiet. I wake up at odd times, certain I’ve heard something, but it’s just the bubbling of Zoë’s fish tank. After a few more days, I deliberately leave an open bag of pita chips on the counter, overnight. They were her favorite. I find it untouched the next morning. The rigid knot in my stomach starts to uncoil. But I remain wary. We have yet to find her body.
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BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Me Likes You by LAUREN BARNETT
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SINCERELY YOURS: TREASURES OF THE QUEEN CITY
J U LY 5 – S E P T E M B E R 1 4 , 2 0 1 4 This exhibition is made possible, in part, through the generous support of D-B Trust.
Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997). Head—Red and Yellow, 1962. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1962. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein