Chronotope Magazine: Issue Three

issue three

Chronotope

CHRONOTOPE

Dear Reader— We are always creating towards some end. Often that end is simple: to release what’s inside, or to communicate or commiserate. Other times we create towards The End, whether that be the conclusion of a story or in the direction of the end of the world. Technically speaking, we’re always creating towards the end of the world, because the world is always spinning in that trajectory. Some days we feel that more than others.

Queer artists also create towards the fringes of things. Queer artists create toward an end and then peek over to see what waits on the other side. To understand queerness is to know that an end is necessarily arbitrary — to know we’ll never reach it, not really, because doing so would mean it’s not really the end at all. And then to work on towards it nonetheless, headfirst, brash, and maybe even hopeful.

The eleven queer artists featured in these pages speak for themselves. They have taken an end and made it their means.

As always, I am humbled by their work and proud to share it with you all.

Matt Wille Editor

Cover photo: Hanky Code by James Turowski. 2018, cotton fabric, denim, cotton embroidery floss, metal rings, 6” diameter.

Working in craft mediums such as textiles and ceramics, James works to challenge the expected traditions and pick up on the queer issues surrounding craft mediums and identity. He utilizes text, symbolism, and queer history to provide a record of queer experiences.

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Contents Poetry Dear Sid, Michael Bennett.........................................................................................................6 Chinese Characters: Lesson 1, Yuan Changming......................................................................7 Planet Lor, Stephen Jackson.....................................................................................................10 Of Course, I Cry, Aimee Cando..............................................................................................11 moonrise, Taryn Allen............................................................................................................12

Prose Two Hundred Bucks, Max Kruger-Dull................................................................................16 HARD // WALL, Judy Halle................................................................................................25 Articles of Faith, Philip Ellis...................................................................................................32

Visual Art Butcher’s Chart, Tucker Lieberman...........................................................................................8 Ouija Board, Tucker Lieberman................................................................................................9 Wading, Christian Banez........................................................................................................30 Robe, Christian Banez............................................................................................................31

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POETRY

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Dear Sid Michael Bennett I wake thinking of you, my favorite sissy skating circles in your youth on a freshly glazed Nova Scotian pond wanting so badly to be a beauty, a star, not like other boys fantasizing their fancy cars or supermodel wives. Keep grinding kid, dream of the thousand goals you’ll sneak through five-holes, the natural hat tricks you’re destined to turn.

I rise & burn thinking of your sweat-soaked thigh pads, wet as my pillows, thick butt shimmying behind the net, sharp skates edging away from helpless defense, stick at the mercy of your cunning wrists, every flick & flip & slip & tip, a quick & gorgeous gift.

Oh Sid, the quiet kid who still can’t grow a beard, looking like the second coming of Bobby Kendall with your pale dark hair, virgin smile hiding behind a shield of glass, your private life. I slide through my feed, liking snapshots of you around town with your crew of boys on rooftops, kissing Stanley’s cup, girls treading around you, trying to melt your frozen lips & icy eyes, polarized, retreating to the sky, wishing you could skate back to those chaste maples of your youth, back when life was all sport, when all the neighborhood boys played for the same team.

I’m beginning to remember this dream from last night of you and I. We met on one of those virile apps, you know, you said you were too discrete & couldn’t show your face yet, maybe we could chat, meet in person, face-off head-to-head, hit me hard with the sports clichés. The theater was sold out for two, just us inside. No one would tell me why. We had a real blast watching Mighty Ducks 3 with our legs up on the seats munching jujufruits, playing Fuck, Marry, Kill with Gordon & the Bash 6

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Brothers. As the credits rolled you kissed me like your cup, not knowing if we’d ever meet again, told me you wished we could never leave these warm stadium seats & I couldn’t tell anyone we’d met. You’d escape out the back after I left.

I never told a single soul until I woke, thinking of you, dear Sid, captain Sid, my hockey jock, my favorite sissy.

Michael Bennett is a 28-year-old writer and teacher, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city and subject he may never escape. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Chatham University and teaches teen and adult writers at the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham’s Words Without Walls program.

Chinese Characters: Lesson 1 Yuan Changming 思: thought takes place In the field of heart 闷: depressed when your heart is Shut behind a door 忍：tolerate with a knife Right above your heart Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving his native country.

Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among nearly 1,600 others across 43 countries.

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Butcher’s Chart Tucker Lieberman 2018, pen and watercolor marker, light digital filter.

We compartmentalize our feelings and our dreams. It puts us at risk.

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Tucker Lieberman, the author of Painting Dragons, has walked on fire. His photos are in Crack the Spine, L’Éphémère, and Impossible Task. He lives in Bogotá, Colombia with his husband. www.tuckerlieberman.com Twitter: @tuckerlieberman

Ouija Board Tucker Lieberman 2019, pen and watercolor marker.

The tool prompts us to seek the answers within ourselves. We string letters together, which is a long way to come home to something we already know.

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Planet Lor Stephen Jackson Caught between the rock— —paper—scissors decision of the hard place between his legs or the prospect of dreaming, knowing his sister is still awake in the room next door, Lor strips himself down to the core of his very being, measures out his breathing as curls spill onto the bed then, stretches his body taut in a sheen of summer sweat, as he runs a spit-wet hand up and down the length of his axis, imagines he’s shooting off in the vastness of outer space.

Face a flush of crimson, Lor cocks his head to listen — his chest heaves still, in silence his breath returns in waves.

His sister, a lesser moon in orbit around his room.

Stephen Jackson lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest, where he divides his time between Washington and Oregon. His poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, The Fictional Café, Grey Sparrow Journal, HelloHorror, and Impossible Archetype. You can find him on Twittter: @fortyoddcrows 10

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Of Course, I Cry Aimee Cando often because of anger only sometimes because of sadness most often because things have run out such as time and a moment for apology I don't remember the last time I forgave only that I swallowed and waited until I was alone when it was safe to nurture and sow by now, it is a whole garden spite and regret grow fondly together under daylight then curl into themselves with the reckless weeds when it rains I would be embarrassed to be autopsied for a coroner to lift to the light my heart still covered in petals and weeping blood and say what’s this old mangled thing? before driving a scalpel into it and locking it a way in a box made of rock and steel all out of mercy what is it called to hold onto joyless things? cobwebs break like a flag for the forgotten in my waking life, I am surrounded by other people’s happiness I’ve grown suspicious of all of them where do they hide their tender nights? would they braid into their hair as I do monuments and photographs of things that have made them sob? waiting to be found like my rows of horned lilacs and peonies and I mean sob like the day they were born with abandon enough to wreck their own mother’s heart I can’t help but search for them combing through their strands hoping the tangles would catch and cut my skin another thing that begs to bleed and blossom not alone while I cry and garden but to be nursed into wellness anything as gentle as a bulldozer will do I wonder—if all my wounds had been mended with a layer of cement that I’d be strong enough to build and build on my shoulders until it was a city of tin where laughter rings out bright like pebbles thrown on the floor how they scatter away without the lasting flurry of marbles tumbling in their return to soil Aimee is a Filipino writer who grew up on the Internet, and they are a bisexual and non-binary person. Their work has appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Hypertrophic Literary, and Scum. They are currently living in Cubao and working on their Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

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moonrise Taryn Allen Eyes coated with ceiling And Darkness writes In type or calligraphy or tattoos Mostly illegible, but of course you Taryn Allen is from Canandaigua, NY and is a recent college graduate from the University of Denver. She identifies as gay and (mostly) female, and so much of her poetry is influenced by her girlfriend and their long distance relationship.

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PROSE

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Two Hundred Bucks Max Kruger-Dull Hank licked his lips for the man next to him at the bar.

“What’s your name? Your real name,” the man asked.

“Hank.”

“Wow. Really? I’m impressed you give it out. Hank,” he repeated, “Hank.”

Hank scooted to the edge of the bar stool. He wished he had a chair with a back to sit against, or a wall to lean into, or something to make him feel sturdy. First meetings still tended to make him feel antsy. Desperate.

The man next to him was supposedly named Dee, although Hank now suspected it was some sort of initial or alter ego. Dee ordered them each a drink that Hank didn’t catch the name of. He took a sip. The foamy mixture seeped down his throat; it burned as if it could cause him more damage than Dee could. Certainly, it couldn’t do him as much good.

“I actually really like the name Hank,” Dee said.

“I don’t.” He focused on Dee’s right eye, morose yet unmistakably sexual, and forced himself to take in another sip. “It’s an awful name. Hank. It doesn’t fit me at all. It’s too athletic, basebally.” He switched his focus to Dee’s other eye, somehow even more gloomy.

With a meaningful kiss, however, Hank was sure he could enliven it. “You really like the name Hank? Don’t you think it should be something plain, something like Matt or Jim or Mike or Pete or…Well, I guess I’m not plain. But maybe I am. I don’t know.”

None of this rambling seemed to bother Dee. Hank’s frank indecisiveness never really seemed to scare away any of the men he met up with. They would laugh at what they thought were jokes, they would smile as Hank pressed his meaty thighs against theirs, they would pretend that there was a possibility that perhaps they wouldn’t end up at Hank’s apartment before the night was over.

Hank had been careful to pick a bar where neither of them would know anybody, yet still Dee looked over his shoulder, more nervous than ashamed.

“You look just like your picture,” Dee said. His gaze fell onto Hank’s tank top, which split his broad chest, then shifted to his pointed jaw, then to the sunny hair that was buzzed short for summer.

Hank watched the man examine him. Dee’s lip curled between his teeth, increasingly horny. How would the night end, Hank wondered, apart from the obvious sex that would occur and the subsequent payment from Dee? Hopefully in a knotted cuddle. That would be lovely. The morning after he lost his virginity three years ago, after watching a mediocre production of Macbeth his junior year of college, he had created a detailed PowerPoint to index all of the men with whom he would ever sleep. He already had an idea of what Dee’s 16

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entry would look like.

Number: 147 Name: Dee (Possible Fake Name) Age: Between 40 and 50 Date: May 13, 2018 Location: My apt. in Hartford, CT Attractiveness: 5.3 Amount Paid: $300 Notes: Sweet guy. Ordered me a drink at the bar. Asked me about my life on drive home; I told him the truth. Fucked me as hard as he could. Told me he would call me soon so he could see me again. We sat around for an hour and watched a movie after we fucked. Didn’t let him spend the night.

“So,” Dee said, “You seem like a really sweet guy. I can’t imagine you’ve been doing this a lot.

Am I right?”

Hank had done this a lot. Out of the 146 men with whom he’d already slept, 140 were for money. Hank inserted an image of a shattered piggy bank next to the “Amount Paid” section for the remaining six on his Index of Men. Still, he didn’t consider himself a prostitute. He hadn’t sought out any of the men, and he didn’t have a profile on some sleazy website detailing his rate or boasting that he had a firm butt from years of gymnastics. His Grindr profile was all he needed; the two-and-a-half-year-old picture of him smiling sweetly after his sister Caroline’s office party was all it took for the men to say, “Hey cutie, you looking for someone generous?” Hank would say, “sure,” then most would ask for more pictures, and whether he was prompted to or not, Hank would send the photo of himself bent over the bathroom sink with pink underwear bunched around his thighs. It had been a very difficult photo to take. The money helped a great deal in his delaying any efforts to get a more conventional job. With his mother paying for rent and his father paying for food, Hank had brought in over $25,000 a year to use for yoga classes, movie tickets, haircuts, body waxes, the occasional art class, and the infrequent bottle of rosé.

And besides the money, he enjoyed the time with his men—at least for a few hours. The big hands pulling him safe into a warm pocket of flesh. The lips kissing and blowing and complementing. His men had the gift of distraction. Hank had once spent hours in his apartment after Number 77 left him musing on what he had meant by “Hank, you’re the most unique twink in the world.” He had also spent hours and hours preparing for them.

Hank leaned forward and crawled his fingers under the cuff of Dee’s plaid shirt. “We should go back to my place, yeah?” Hank asked.

“I’d love that.” Dee scanned the bar—a woman drunk from cheap wine, a couple snorting 17

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at each other’s jokes, a businessman buried in an Excel spreadsheet. “Sorry, just making sure the coast’s clear. I’m not embarrassed. Not at all. I’m just—” Hank brushed his thumb up and down the angry vein on Dee’s forearm. “I completely understand. Let’s get back to my place.” He slid off the bar stool as Dee chugged the rest of Hank’s drink and then his own. All that was left in the glass was the remnant of an ice cube, begging to be chewed up and slurped down. *** “Just sit on the bed or something. I need a few minutes to get ready,” Hank said.

Hank closed his bedroom door, leaving Dee alone to prepare, possibly to snoop. Number 147, he thought. Similar to numbers 33 and 49 and 82 and 104 and most of the rest.

Different from 62, who slapped him twice on the face and once on the ass, and from 100, who requested that Hank snuggle with his childhood Raggedy Ann doll as his body was explored.

Hank didn’t really need time to prepare, although he wished he did. When he first started to meet up with these men, he had needed a moment to pace around the coffee table, to double check the door was locked, to pick at his teeth in the mirror. He would gulp down a shot of vodka, although he quickly realized that to keep his Index of Men accurate he would need to remain sober for these encounters. Now, he thought it best to give the impression that he needed time for preparation; he imagined that this performance had some role in making his men feel important.

To waste time, he sat on the arm of the sofa, then the right cushion, then the left. He threw out a Chobani yogurt so close to its expiration date that he knew he wouldn’t eat it in time.

He walked down the hall, collected the mail, walked back. He checked Grindr, the app presenting him with profile pictures of skin without pimples, faces without smiles, eyes dimmed with aloofness, hair coiffed, all the photos crammed next to each other in an emotionless grid, competing. After a few minutes, he pressed his ear against the bedroom door and listened for Dee inside. All he could make out was a crinkling sound—receipt from the bar, the crisp sheets, condom wrapper?

Before entering the bedroom, Hank stripped off his tank top and sent his standard text message to his sister, Caroline: If I don’t text you within four hours I’m probably dead. Send help!

But if I die, I die. *** Dee slid off Hank onto the floor. What had started in the bedroom had shifted to an awkward pressed-against-the-doorframe position, then after a brief pause had finished on the sofa. Hank had dragged a towel to place under them in each new location.

“You’re incredible,” Dee said. “I haven’t…fucked, you know, like that since I was…not since I was your age, truthfully.”

Hank rolled to the edge of the sofa, the towel twisting beneath him. He had not yet seen 18

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Dee from this angle, from behind. Sweat clustered on the base of Dee’s back hairs, which clung to his skin like strange sinewy fern leaves. A black birthmark, perfectly circular, lay below his right shoulder blade. Hank wanted to kiss it. He was thankful he still had sappy urges like that.

“Do you wanna watch a movie?” Hank asked. “I have Cast Away recorded.”

“Cast Away? With Tom…? Tom…?”

“Tom Hanks. He lives alone on an island. Extremely romantic.”

Dee flipped onto his back and looked up at Hank. “Is that normal?” Dee asked. “A movie is what comes next?”

“A lot of the time. A movie is what comes next. At least with me. I don’t know about the other Grindr boys you meet up with.” They both chuckled. He reached forward for the remote, but Dee intercepted his hand. Baby oil still clung to the grooves of Dee’s fingers.

“You should come up to my country home sometime,” Dee said.

“Where is it?” The offer filled him with a familiar contentment that he received only when his men cradled him for a minute longer than he expected. Still, it was better not to get too attached to a sole man. He had learned that from Number 3.

Dee crawled to the bedroom and reappeared wearing polka dot boxers, clutching his phone.

He tried to wipe the excess baby oil onto the underwear but missed and coated his thighs. He nudged Hank into the crevice of the sofa and pressed his ear against Hank’s chest. “What town is this again?” Dee asked.

“Hartford.” Hank often thought that if men like Dee – tender, thoughtful, average – moved to a metropolis where scads of young cuteish boys occupy each block, they wouldn’t have to pay for sex. They barely had to pay for it with him in Connecticut.

A moment later, Dee held the phone above their heads. Google Maps opened. A yellow line connected the center of Hartford to somewhere more northwest, although the screen was too dim for Hank to make out the specifics.

“And the great part of it,” Dee said, “is that it’s close to New York City. There’ll be plenty of guys there you can ditch me for. I also have a pool.”

“Sorry,” Hank said. “But I couldn’t travel to the house with you. I’ve found it best not to…get too intimate.” He kissed Dee with dry lips. “Do you wanna watch the movie?”

“Isn’t a movie pretty intimate?”

“Yes,” Hank said, staring at the TV. He wriggled closer towards Dee and grabbed the remote. *** Halfway through the film, about when Tom Hanks’ fish-spearing skills had improved greatly, Dee started to fall asleep. His sun-spotted eyelids fluttered in Hank’s direction before shutting completely. Hank muted the film, but left it playing; the blues and oranges of the island highlighted the divots on Dee’s face—five on each side of his mouth like the brittle 19

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whiskers of a kitten. Should he wake him up, let him sleep, or doze off too, nuzzling against him at the risk of Dee remarking again at the hypocrisy of Hank’s intimacy clause?

“You fell asleep,” Hank whispered when the island turned stormy. “Hey. Dee.” He stroked his back, then climbed over him. Hank gathered Dee’s folded button-down from the bedroom, his socks and Converse, two twisted condoms off the floor, the keys that had slid out of his pocket, and the pants with his wallet stuffed down the back.

“It’s time to get up,” Hank whispered into his ear. He stuffed Dee’s belongings beside his head, then cupped Dee’s face between his hands.

“What?”

“I’ve got to get to bed.” Hank’s fingertips began to tingle. He felt a mounting urge to be paid and sleep. Although Dee did look incredibly comfy. But a sleepover took an effortless hookup and transformed it into some serious thing.

“Sorry,” Dee said. He pulled on his clothes and sat on the edge of the sofa. Dee stared around the room as Hank stared at him.

“You have a nice place,” Dee said, running his fingers over the cushion.

“Thanks.” Hank sat down and pressed his knee against Dee. He leaned in and kissed him on one of his whisker marks. “I’ve really gotta clean up and go to sleep,” he whispered.

“Right…So now I…I just…I pay you, huh?”

“I suppose. You’re the one who offered.”

“Right.” Dee fished the wallet out of his back pocket. A quarter fell out and landed on the used towel, now jammed into the crack of the sofa. One by one, he plucked out twenty-dollar bills with rigid fingers. Fifteen, Hank counted. Correct. Dee leaned forward and placed them on the area rug. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” Hank repeated.

“Will I get to see you again?”

“I’d love that.” And he would’ve. Although his men seemed to lose interest after the third or fourth meeting, sometimes sooner, rarely longer.

The moment after Dee left his apartment, Hank grabbed his phone and sent a text to Caroline: Not dead. This time. *** The baby oil had spilled onto the bed and now coated his sheets and the bottom of his pillowcase. Hank tugged them off and threw them to the corner of the room. He got the towel, which had since dried to the sofa, and flung it on top of the sheets. The used condoms were dropped into the garbage can, the empty baby oil bottle was dropped into the garbage can, then the quarter that fell out of Dee’s wallet was dropped into the garbage can too—he didn’t feel like typing $300.25 into his Index of Men. Too sloppy.

The credits of Cast Away rolled. Hank figured he’d be good at that job, designing the credits. Although it probably wouldn’t drag him any closer to fulfillment. His men gave him 20

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enough comfort. They gave him a crowd. And if he couldn’t bring himself to type an extra .25 after the $300 into his index, then credits creator or whatever they were called was not the right job for him.

Hank grabbed the stack of mail off the kitchen table. Most of it ended up in the garbage, torn and cemented to the baby oil bottle: the electric bill, the Wi-Fi bill, the cable bill, all of which had already been paid by his mother. But at the bottom of the stack was a blue envelope. It looked too crisp to have been handled by the U.S. Postal Service. To H, it read, with Hank’s address penned below in messy slashes. In the same lettering on the top left of the envelope was Larry Rye, no address.

Larry Rye, Hank thought. Entry Number 3. *** Two thousand dollars, in twenty hundred-dollar bills. They were cold, jammed into the envelope as if Larry had happened upon the bills and in a moment of recklessness decided that they should belong to Hank. Two short notes accompanied the money, one for Larry’s wife and one for Hank.

The first, written on a blue index card, read: Sharon. Deliver this envelope and the money enclosed to the address written on the front. It is for HIM. He deserves it and it is pointless for you to interfere now. Bring it by hand, Sharon. I don’t trust anyone else to do it but you. Thank you. I love you.

The second was scribbled on a sheet of stationary and folded obsessively, secretively, unfurling as soon as Hank plucked it from the envelope. It read: Dear H, I hope this note and the two thousand dollars have found their way to you. Please accept this money, although you deserve more. When you left my house for the last time, what was it, two years ago, I feared it would be the last time I would ever see you. Unfortunately for me, I was right. You looked so beautiful. Maybe I told you that too much. This letter is being sent to you now that I am dead. I haven’t decided how to do it yet. I hope this doesn’t upset you, I don’t mean to be glib about it all. I’m sure your sister already told you everything. All I need from you is to take the money and view it as another investment in your future. You’re a survivor. You made my life much happier. And one day you will be able to forgive me. Love, Larry.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Hank mumbled. The note slipped from his fingers but he caught it before it landed on the metal cover of the trash bin. I hope this doesn’t upset you, he reread. The tone upset him, the secrecy of it acted as an irritant. Another investment in your future— counterfeit faith. I don’t mean to be glib—such bullshit. He tried to recall the last time Larry held his hand to Hank’s cheek; the memory was obscured by the 144 men who had come after, who had traipsed around his apartment, using the furniture as their own, rubbing him, pulling him close, most of them calming him, most awarding him comfort. The bad ones at least distracted. Larry had never even been in this apartment; it seemed impossible to Hank, although when he had known Larry he was still sheltered by the hills and the cows and the poor cell reception of the UConn campus.

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Hank tossed the letter aside, then the money, and stumbled to bed. He wished Dee had forced him to drink more at the bar. Or was still there to care for him. It was stupid to send him away, someone so willing to cuddle and invite him into his life.

If Caroline had known about his and Larry’s relationship, he would have called her. He would have sobbed at her. She knew everything else about him, the money, the PowerPoint, the number of men he had amassed. Everything except Larry. She had known Larry too directly. Hank had known Larry too intimately.

“Go to sleep,” Hank whispered to himself. “Sleep.” And he did. After counting to three hundred and back. After dragging sheep after sheep, goat after goat, pig after pig over a rustic fence. After envisioning himself gliding down an escalator in the mall, at the movies, in Grand Central Terminal. After traversing a very slow-moving sidewalk until the image softened into a dream. *** “How long have you known?” Hank asked Caroline the next morning. He exhaled slowly, holding his voice as steady as he could. Through the other end of the phone there was a whistling and what sounded like a car horn as he waited for his sister to answer.

“What? Sorry, I’m late for work.” Hank was never out of his house early enough to see the morning workers scramble for their keys and drop their coffees on the pavement.

“How long have you known about Larry?” Hank peeled himself off the mattress. A shimmery outline had been transferred from his body to the bed; it looked too small to belong to his wide frame.

“Two or three days,” she said.

“It would’ve been nice to know. And…how did he die?” Hank slid open the curtains until a rectangular spot shone onto his torso. The sun burned. He closed them.

“Why is that important?”

It wasn’t really and that’s what he replied to his sister. Although, he would make use of the information to update Larry’s file. None of his 147 men had ever given him a reason to make an addition or even to edit out a few words. He preferred to remember them exactly as they had been the first night they had met, with all their nervousness and with all the gentleness most of them used to stroke his hand.

“It was pretty gruesome. Well, according to the police, so who really knows. Eh, it doesn’t matter.” Her voice shook as she ran down the sidewalk.

“How did it happen?” He opened Larry’s file, slide three, and typed in Death: at the bottom. Caroline briefed him about the grisly suicide in time to the tapping of her heels on the pavement.

Number: 3 Name: Larry Rye 22

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Age: 58 (Died at 60) Date: December 12, 2015 Location: His office at law firm Attractiveness: 8 Amount Paid: $200 Notes: Met him tonight at Caroline’s office Christmas party. Lawyer. Caroline’s boss. Fucked me in his office. Told me I was smart. Told me I was gorgeous. Paid me, which was strange. Will probably use money for yoga.

Death: According to Caroline, walked into traffic and was run over. Minivan crushed his chest.

April 17, 2018.

Hank closed the slide, then wondered if he should create more columns to add in accuracy.

Maybe one for how much he loved Larry—9, no 9.4—or a rating of how much they had fucked up each other’s lives—7.5, or 9, or maybe a 3. He exhaled. A piece of dust dropped from the computer screen. Larry had been the first man to pay him, $200 in the guise of cab fare. Hank had refused the money at first, then again the next time they fucked, and the next, proposing a kiss each time as payment instead.

“It actually has been working out great for me, Larry’s death,” Caroline said, “however morbid it may be to say something like that. His wife Sharon took over most of his clients.

She’s been moving fast, taking up Larry’s responsibilities, dividing some of them up and giving a few to me. She must think I’m talented or something. Don’t you think she does? Do you remember her?”

Hank slammed the laptop shut, the file saved. The death began to feel real. He searched for the note. It lay half under the refrigerator with the money scattered around it, chaotic. He picked it up while mhmm-ing to his sister’s ramblings.

“She’s been letting me look over more and more contracts. The other day I found a mistake in one that two other lawyers missed. I think she’s starting to believe in me. I actually worked with this hot client a few days ago. If Sharon still needs me to work with him, I’ll give him your number. And then if you died, I’d really know who killed you.”

A white, veiny crease formed in the middle of the note as he bent and re-bent it. It tore first at the top, then split seamlessly down the middle like it had been unzipped. Hank told himself that this didn’t matter, then affirmed the spurious notion as he tossed the two halves into the trash.

“Glad you’re still alive, speaking of your love life,” Caroline said. “How was your guy last night? Did you make him watch a movie?”

“Yes.” 23

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“Which one?”

“Cast Away.”

“And did that put him in the mood?”

“No, it took him out of it.” Hank listened to Caroline’s breaths speed up through the phone’s speaker. Then a chhhh, chhhh, chhhhhhhh from her hair as she twisted it into a bun.

“Let’s not talk about this now. I don’t want to make you late.”

“I’m always late, but everyone else is too…Are you okay?” More chhhh-ing and a wheeze came through the phone, then a joke from Caroline about her bra costing more than her pantsuit had. In case she ever knew to ask, he began to formulate a response to such questions as How are you dealing with the death of your former lover? Is it affecting you? If he planned on responding with honesty, he would’ve replied that he was tremendously confused.

He felt so much love, then so much nothing, then hate and anger and pain and nostalgia.

Although Caroline would never know to ask.

He picked up the twenties off the floor. The money, crisp and blemish-free, fit flat on his palm in a neat stack; the top bill shifted out of line, but Hank nudged it back into its place.

His former profits, except for the Dee money he made last night, had all been promptly deposited into his bank account. He didn’t quite know how it worked but was always suspicious the random amounts of money would flag the bank tellers. The Dee money would end up there within the next few days and then spent on a monthly yoga pass a few days after that. And the Larry money? Spent on sneakers perhaps, or potted plants, or a new ring?

Maybe Chipotle burritos, movie tickets, art supplies? He wouldn’t know how to use it as Larry had instructed, as an investment in his future. He hadn’t known before.

Hank lined up the two thousand dollars next to Dee’s three hundred on the counter. But Larry’s stack felt too exceptional beside the sloppy pile of twenties. He lay his cheek on the granite. The bills all smelled fresh, Dee’s and Larry’s. His eyes closed. He saw Larry: gelled hair, ink stains on fingertips, semi-hard as he usually was, softened skin, lips and teeth and tongue forming countenances of exhilaration, of satisfaction. For a moment, he eclipsed all other men.

As Caroline announced she was walking into her office, he took Larry’s cash and stowed it in his wallet. It was an act in memoriam. Perhaps an act of frustration too. Two thousand dollars, cradled by a debit card, a recently renewed driver’s license, and worn faux leather.

“Talk to you later,” Caroline said. “I love you.”

“Love you more,” he said. She hung up. The tapping and the wheezing and the car horns stopped. Eight Grindr messages popped up on his phone.

Max Kruger-Dull is a writer living in New York City. Currently, he is pursuing an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. This is Max’s first publication.

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ISSUE THREE

HARD // WALL Judy Halle TW: sexual assault 1

Trauma doesn’t like to be touched and neither do I. But that’s not true. But most anyone touches me and my whole body goes cold.

2

I miss you. I miss you so much. I miss you pulling my hair and the impossible positions we slept in together. I want to melt into you. I want to disappear.

1

I meet strangers in the middle of the night and I know I’m soon gonna hate myself for it. I know I’m gonna feel like cheap plastic under whoever’s insensitive hands. I want to scream at them YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO TOUCH MY SKIN but it’s my fault for being here in the first place and it’s my fault for downloading the app and

2

I laugh. My whole body laughs. And then I cry cause I can’t have this when I

1

All the time I look in the mirror wondering who my body belongs to.

Couldn’t be me. Why can’t I cry? I look at lights to try to make it happen but my head hurts and

2

I cast a spell—asking for this to last

1

Hoping this just ends fast

2

So soon? You have to go?

1

My body betrays me. My wetness is misplaced. You dumbass, I say to myself. Don’t you know what’s best for you? Don’t you know you

2

Make me crumble. And I fall apart and I don’t wanna be put together I

1

Just decompose, dissociate, this is not my own, I don’t belong to me 25

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2

Belong just to you. Love me, hold me

1

Use me already so I can go

2

I could say nothing and you

1

Open the door and speaking no words you throw me throw me hard against the wall, you

2

Pull my pull my hair please

1

Never say when anything hurts cause shouldn’t it hurt at least a little?

2

You can pull harder

1

My words seize up, my mouth is dry and now I’m

2

Thinking for some reason about my grandmother massaging me and teaching me what feels good and how to ask for more and I’m

1

Thinking about dinner or Twitter or anything besides right now

2

Right now you could do anything you wanted with me. Please own me, take me

1

Save me, save me, thinking to no one to talk to no one to

2

Talk to me talk to me talk to me

1

On the couch back at home crying and of course NOW the tears start to come, my body has the most useless possible timing the most useless

2

Look at me

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1

Just look at me

2

Make me worth something

1

Cheap plastic

2

But then I get bored of being touched pull my hair harder I want to be hit, slapped around, but you lay there and say something else you’ve already said before and sleeping in the same position makes it feel cheap and you love it, you love me and you smile and I feel so dull my body unchallenged, in paralysis, and I knew this was the moment when things changed and everything changed

1

And then my roommate gets home and the tears start again because it’s been so many years since I have cried in front of someone—I’m ignored, and so I play it up a little, boo hoo

2

A body laying somewhere could be anyone’s could be anywhere but just not here.

Something’s not working, not you, it’s me, my fault cause what have you done besides love me and love me

1

And embellish the details of what they did to me, multiple men, twenty years older than me and neither condoms nor consent but

2

It’s my fault for not knowing how to say yes to what’s really good for me

1

And so I just took it, told my roommate I just took it and he says nothing

2

You’re saying nothing

1

And so I stop the boo hoo-ing and regret saying a word and know that I HAVE been playing it up to feel more

2

Bad for doing this. And I know it’s out of nowhere, but my

1

Straight white male roommate, not that it matters (ahem, it matters)

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2

Want to be anywhere but here. And I accept that I’m the villain, you’re the victim, and I know six months from now six years from now I’ll be the boy in your memory who took your heart and out of nowhere broke it but

1

Six months from now and you still haven’t mentioned it to me and we see each other less and you invite me to fewer and you talk to me never, to give me space I guess, but

2

Six months from now maybe we can get a drink and things won’t be so heated. It’s hard for me to articulate what I’m feeling while I’m feeling it and I know that’s unfair to you, but

1

Six months from now he’s sitting on the couch with OTHER straight male roommate watching Woody Allen and discussing how IF what he’s accused of is actually even TRUE then

2

My grandmother who massaged me and who taught me how to ask for what feels good has passed away.

1

Telling me it could be worse, he’s not a Harvey Weinstein he’s a

2

Haven’t cried yet. My own grandmother. I feel guilty

1

And you have to separate the art from the artist, cause

2

I have no one to talk to about it. She was everything to me, and touched my

1

Roommates shut me down when I suggest that um maybe other movies from other people deserve to be watched instead of excusing but they scoff

2

Which is fine because I’m good at being alone. I’m

1

Good at shutting down before I feel things

2

And I

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1

Gonna download my apps again, just give it a shot, not looking for a partner I’m just

2

Retreat into my room and look at my phone and see a message from my ex who doesn’t know this even happened

1

I’m just looking for a man who’s not so sensitive, who thinks

2

This ex says I really hurt him, says that

1

Sex is just for fun, not anything I want to get trapped in

2

He hopes my useless face is fucking happy

1

And I’m good at being alone. I’m safe that way but sometimes

2

So I don’t respond and I block his number

1

I just want

2

And open an app and look for a man who will

1

My hair to be pulled and

2

Throw my empty body hard against the wall.

Judy is a Brooklyn-based performer, playwright, pansy and self-identified Jewfag. Judy has performed at venues including La MaMa ETC and Joe’s Pub. Judy’s playwriting has been performed around New York and Off-Broadway. Find Judy throwing extravagant fits on Twitter @judith_ism.

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Christian Banez is a first-generation immigrant, born in Cebu City, Philippines and then moving to a small rural town in Northeast Missouri. Growing up, he found a lot of ways to keep himself distracted from quiet country life by reading books, drawing, and listening to music. He is currently residing in St. Joseph, MO and pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Art in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting. He can usually be found painting, and if not, he’s reviewing all the local coffee shops in Kansas City.

Wading Christian Banez

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Robe Christian Banez 31

CHRONOTOPE

Articles of Faith Philip Ellis The first person you masturbate to is sacred. They stay with you forever, like a guardian angel or spirit guide.

This is just one of life’s truths, I reckon. The face of your patron saint might be unique, but every generation has its iconography. That Farrah Fawcett poster, Eva Herzigová greeting the boys of the world in her bra, Billy Idol pouting wantonly from the cover of Rolling Stone.

Mementos of that red-faced baptism which ushers us out of childhood and into our next life.

For me, it was Braxton Blake. I’ll never forget the first time I saw him on-screen. The floppy hair, those dreamy yet serious blue eyes, and the shirt which was unbuttoned just enough to reveal his collarbone and the slightest suggestion of a nipple.

I was twelve. Until that moment, my crushes had been tame, wholesome things, more to do with admiration than genuine attraction. Sex was like gravity; I knew it existed, but would struggle if called upon to explain the concept.

But that spring evening in the mid-Nineties, when the first episode of Lake Hope aired, something shifted. A sudden pressure in the air. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this new feeling, wound up tightly inside me like a coil of copper wire. I just knew I wanted Braxton Blake to pick me up, preferably while it was raining. It was a scenario which I plucked directly from that episode, a cliché that played on repeat in my head. Braxton would carry me through a downpour to the shelter of his porch, and then…and then what?

The summer I turned thirteen, Seventeen published an interview with Braxton Blake. My sister left the magazine lying around the house and I snuck off to my room with it the first chance I got, later telling her I threw it out by mistake. Why this petty familial larceny? The photo shoot that accompanied the interview.

Braxton was wearing blue jeans and an open white cotton shirt. He looked like the boy next door, if you happened to live next door to an Abercrombie store. And in one shot, perhaps the most singularly important image of my sexual awakening, the top button of those jeans was undone; the dusting of hair that started at Braxton’s navel darkened ever so slightly as it vanished into the shadow cast by the denim.

Those adolescent desires crystallised, the nebulous froth of my twelve year old daydreams boiling down to diamond-hard want. I understood what I wanted to happen on that rainy porch. These days my response to that picture would be called “thirsty” but what I remember feeling was more like a deep hunger.

I slept with that issue of Seventeen under my pillow. I read that interview over and over until the pages were as thin and soft as tissue and I could have recited his answers off by heart, my eyes flitting repeatedly to that picture, my thumb caressing the corner of the page lest my 32

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mother walk in and see the unconcealed gloss of desire in my eyes. It was as if its very presence in my life acted as an accelerant. The more I poured over it, the more powerful that image’s effect on me seemed to be.

Until one Saturday afternoon, when it became too much to bear, and I took that sacred text into the bathroom and locked the door.

People are always talking about their first time, meaning their first time with somebody else.

But my first time with myself was just as much a revelation, one of those blissfully transgressive moments that can only happen when you’re alone. When it was over, the blood rushed to my cheeks and my deep, panting breaths quickly turned to laughter. Giggles soon racked my half-dressed body, not because I was embarrassed or ashamed of what I had just done, but because I felt I had uncovered some secret, important knowledge, and the notion made me giddy. Like any secret, it filled me up and cast my entire world in a new light.

In Braxton Blake, I had learned two things. First, that I felt for him and his open shirt and unbuttoned Calvin Klein jeans the way my friends felt about Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson. And second…now my body knew what to do about that feeling.

The following Monday at school, I wanted to share what I’d learned with my best friend in much the same manner that we shared every other passing thought, but something stopped me. I knew, instinctively, that this secret was different, something that could never be taken back once given away. Previously elated, I was suddenly terrified by how people might react.

In the harsh light of the schoolday, far from the grace of that bathroom communion, I learned shame.

Braxton Blake and I entered a private covenant. It would last two more years, until a boy from the next town over kissed me and put his hands down my jeans in the back of his dad’s Ford Orion, and I walked through another door, leaving behind unrequited crushes and teen magazines and other childish things.

But even though I grew up, trained myself over the years to ape sophistication, and told people I wouldn’t be caught dead watching Lake Hope, I never forgot Braxton Blake. You always remember your first. Deep down, in some corner of one of the chambers of my heart, I imagined a tiny shrine still dedicated to him, complete with that picture, torn from the pages of Seventeen.

They show that same picture of him on the news now, side by side with a more recent paparazzi photograph. He is older in that photo, ruddier. The years have filled in his features, colouring outside the lines so that he appears transformed, a bloated, uncanny version of the Adonis that I remember.

The headlines all tell the same story, of a man who played the angel but was really a monster, a teenage dream turned nightmare. A host of mixed and laboured metaphors that add up to one thing: the boy next door is a rapist.

“It’s like when you find out Santa isn’t real,” my sister says when she calls. “Remember when we used to watch him in that show? God, I had such a crush on him.”

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I say “yeah,’”and “mmm,” and tell her I’ll call her back. I wonder whatever happened to that tattered magazine I used to carry around like a talisman. I wonder how many other people my age are standing by their televisions right now.

I had assumed those memories were immutable, that how I thought of Braxton Blake and that time in my life would remain untouched. But it’s a particularly dark kind of miracle that occurs when you’re confronted with your first love. Time itself is undone. I am at once thirteen again and not, it is both then and now, and I am forced to finally read the story that has always been there, between the lines and behind closed doors.

The gods are just men, and perhaps nothing is sacred after all.

Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom. His non-fiction writing has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Men’s Health, and i-D.

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Thank you for reading Issue Three.

In literary theory, the chronotope is how a moment in time and space collide through language.

to be continued

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