CCLaP Weekender, November 20th 2015

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

November 20, 2015

New Fiction by Oliver Serang Photography by Katherine Squier Chicago Literary Events Calendar November 20, 2015 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21

11am 2015 Chicago Book Expo

Columbia College Chicago / 1104 S. Wabash / Free https://www.facebook.com/events/904730259564035/

The Chicago Book Expo is a free celebration of Chicago’s literary community, featuring dozens of local authors speaking at events about poetry, memoir, genre fiction, and much more, plus almost 100 exhibitors selling books from local presses, writers, and literary organizations. This year’s Chicago Book Expo will also feature the Chicago literacy organization Open Books selling used books and running a book drive, with visitors encouraged to bring in used books to donate, especially children’s books.

This year’s speakers include Joe Meno, Rebecca Makkai, Angela Jackson, Parneshia Jones, Doug Sohn, Ina Pinkney, Re'Lynn Hansen, Christian Piccollini, Jarrett Neal, Don Share, Richard Thomas, Susanna Calkins, Charles Finch, and many more! Stay tuned for a full announcement of our schedule 8pm Blackout Diaries

High Hat Club / 1920 East Irving Park / $10, 21+ blackoutdiaries.info

A comedy show about drinking stories, a “critic’s pick” at Red Eye, MetroMix, and Time Out Chicago. Comedians share the mic with “regular” people, such as cops, firefighters, and teachers, all recounting real-life tales about getting wasted. Hosted by Sean Flannery.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 10am

Sunday Morning Stories Donny's Skybox Studio Theatre / 1608 North Wells / Free

We performers are pre-booked. We feature novice as well as seasoned storytellers. On or off paper.

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

enter.com/chicagocalendar] 7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $6, 21+ greenmilljazz.com

Featuring open mike, special guests, and end-of-the-night competition.

7pm Asylum

Le Fleur de Lis / 301 E. 43rd / $10

lefleurdelischicago.com

A weekly poetry showcase with live accompaniment by the band Verzatile.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23 8:30pm Kafein Espresso Bar

Kafein Espresso Bar / 1621 Chicago Ave., Evanston kafeincoffee.com

Open mic with hosts Chris and Kirill.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 6pm Lyricist Loft

Harold Washington Library / 400 South State / Free youmediachicago.org

“Open mic for open minds,” presented by Remix Spoken Word.

Hosted by Dimi D, Mr. Diversity, and Fatimah.

9pm

In One Ear Heartland Cafe / 7000 N Glenwood https://www.facebook.com/pages/In-One-Ear/210844945622380

Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.

To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line cclapcenter@gmail.com November 20, 2015 | 3

w I’d told myself that the last time was going to be the last time. I actually said that. No more. Even though that was almost three years ago, I remember it perfectly because I’d just finished cleaning out Noah’s messages on my phone, the pictures of him and me on my camera, every picture or note on my computer, my work computer, erasing and remaking backups of both computers, cleaning my Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, everything, and then emptying the trash can or recycle bin, and clicking yes when a window popped to ask, “Are you sure?”

The parts of my own identity that had become entwined with his were also scrubbed away: The two of us holding hands at a church picnic, his hair neatly combed, eyes smiling behind glasses, and me in a blue gingham dress, my long, brown hair flat-ironed straight. Linking arms in puffy down coats while hiking through the Appalachians.

Warm autumn in a pumpkin patch. Sandy beach blanket.

Ferris wheel. All of it gone.

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ORIGINAL FICTION

“French Inhale” by Ashley Harrigan [flickr.com/ashleyharrigan]. Used under the terms of her Creative Commons license.

ND SMOKER

BY OLIVER SERANG

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I burned anything tangible. I was always careful to stand upwind of the smoke so that it couldn’t touch me, like there was a spirit living inside those things that could potentially be freed by the flame and would try to get inside me and take me over.

And while I hosed the ashes out of my dorm trashcan, I said, “The next time is gonna be the last one.”

But now you’re gone, and here I am standing outside a bar alone, or almost alone, and I’ve become a secondhand smoker.

After you left my apartment the last time, the murky smell of your sweatshirt hung in the air for a day or two before it was finally overwhelmed by the pungent garlic smell from my downstairs neighbor. I went out and walked down 36th Street, past the dive bar where we had split nachos and a pitcher of beer on our first date. When we left, you bought us two powdered sugar Entenmann’s donuts from behind the bar. My head was buzzing, and when I told you that I didn’t know that bars sold donuts, you looked back at me with snowflakes of sugar on your nose and smiled.

Walking down 36th Street alone, I saw a guy outside that bar who looked a bit like you. He was smoking your brand, American Spirits, and for a moment, I thought it was you out of the corner of my eye and I stopped walking. It wasn’t you, of course, but the smell reminded me of your sweatshirt, and I stood outside the bar, pretending to fiddle with my phone so that I could drink it in. After he went back inside, I went home. But the next night, I found myself walking by the bars again. I stood close to a small group who talked in a small circle and didn’t notice me at all. A minute or two after they went inside, a pair of chubby and apple-cheeked university girls came to replace them. Their smell was different, but standing in their little cloud still reminded me of you, even if only vaguely.

Going to stand in the smoke outside the bars became a nightly ritual. I would move up and down the street, searching for somewhere busy, and then would spend the night searching for the smoke plume that smelled most like you. Sometimes, I would step inside to buy a drink to keep warm (though it doesn’t actually warm you up, but at least it makes you feel warm), but I would always drink it quickly and return to wherever the smokers are. Every once in a while, a stranger would ask me for a cigarette, which of course, I wouldn’t have.

At work, I started taking a few short secondhand cigarette breaks during the day, stepping out to find someone smoking and following them as they walked downtown. I sometimes pretended that I’m a spy, that I have to get as close as possible without getting caught. On one cold day, I followed a guy for two blocks before realizing that he was only drinking coffee, and that I’d mistaken the steam coming out of his mouth for smoke. I couldn’t figure 6 | CCLaP Weekender

out how I’d made such a careless mistake because smoke and water vapor look almost nothing alike. For instance, you cannot blow a smoke ring with steam—I’ve tried several times and am convinced that this cannot be done.

On Christmas, the bars were either closed or empty, and so I spent the night wandering the aisles of a grocery store, looking for—I don’t know what.

Grocery stores have this way of forcing us to plan and to move forward—in short, to do things that I was having trouble doing. Also, I’m not sure if it was the nicotine I’d gotten from secondhand smoking, but my appetite has been dead. The next night, I was craving a secondhand cigarette, and I went out early to wander the strip, standing awkwardly close to the first couple of smokers that I found, trying to inconspicuously sniff the air in their direction.

One looked at me sideways the way you’d look at a stray cat who’s rubbing its face against your leg, and then he asked me if I wanted something.

“No, I don’t mean to bother you. Please, just keep smoking,” I said, looking at his cigarette and smiling. “I don’t mind.”

Not long after that, he dropped the cigarette without stamping it out, and walked away. I squatted down near it as it died and tried to breathe it in, but for some reason, it wasn’t the same without a person attached to it.

Countless guys tried to buy me shots and get in my pants, but it was rare that any of them thought about me long enough to ever wonder why I was standing outside the whole night even though I never lit up and never really talked to anyone. I went home with the first one who asked me why I was standing out in the cold. At some point, while we were sitting next to each other on his bed, staring at the wall, I asked him if he’d ever gotten donuts from behind the bar, and when he kept looking at the wall and responded by shrugging without intensity, I said that I had to go.

The first time I learned that you smoked was after we made love one night. Except for your age, pictures, location, and the fact that you’re single, your profile was basically empty, and I didn’t know until you lit a cigarette in my bed. I remember it so clearly, because you’d been really fired up. I think it was the most attractive I’ve ever felt. You’d been drinking shots of whiskey, and while you were inside me, you leaned down and whispered something that you wanted me to say to you right then, something that you found really sexy. I don’t remember it, because it was in a language that I don’t know, and you had to repeat it several times to me before I was sure that I could say it back. But when I repeated the string of phonemes back to you, it drove you wild. I must have said it only twice before I felt you finish. I still wonder what it meant, what language it was. German? Icelandic? Old English? The language that the elves spoke in The Lord of the Rings? I asked you what it meant afterward, but you said that it was very personal, that you didn’t know me well enough to tell me that yet. I asked you when you would know me November 20, 2015 | 7

well enough, and you said that if we ever got to that point, you’d be sure to let me know.

The following evening, we’d biked along the canal, and when our pedals synchronized, I thought, ‘We’re married,’ like children say when they’re swinging in unison on the playground. When we cut through the pedestrians and had to go single-file, I could smell the contrail of smoke as I pedaled close behind you. It was like the glow behind a comet, and one time, I saw you turn ever so slightly to check that I was still behind you, because I saw the orange glow of the cigarette in your mouth peek out to your left, and I breathed in the smell like I was swimming in your love.

Tonight, I’m standing outside the Gorge. There’s a lo-fi college band playing, and there are a lot of kids coming and going outside to smoke, so I’ll probably stay outside here for most of the night. It still isn’t warm enough for a skirt, but I bought a cute pair of faux thigh-high stocking tights, so I’ll stay warm. I’m sure you’re surprised reading all of this. I know that I was always really shy, and it must seem strange to see me drinking whiskey and standing outside these sorts of bars in a short skirt and stockings, and walking home with random guys. I wonder if you’d even recognize me. But in the months since I saw you, this is who I’ve become. I’ve become this bad girl that I didn’t even see in myself before—I’ve practically started smoking. But I know that I should give it up, that I should stay in and watch Netflix and drink cocoa.

Smoking is really bad for you. You really should quit smoking too. I know it’s annoying, but I’m only telling you because I love you.

Oliver Serang was born in Philadelphia in 1984 and is the author of the novel Stay Close, Little Ghost. He holds a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Washington, has been a research fellow at Harvard Medical School in the neurobiology department of Boston Children’s Hospital, a lecturer in the department of computer science at Universität Bremen, and is a professor of computer science and mathematics at Freie Universität Berlin and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. He hopes that if he ever won a stage of the Tour de France, he would buck the social pressure and shake hands with the podium girls instead of getting kisses, and that he would save the flowers for someone who really loves him. It isn’t easy breaking convention, but after setting all those records climbing l’Alpe d’Huez, maybe the people of France would forgive him this one small eccentricity.

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CCLaP Publishing

THE PUBLISHING EVENT NINE YEARS IN THE MAKING. In 2006, celebrated author Ben Tanzer began working on a series of short stories all set in the fictional upstate New York town of Two Rivers, most of them published in various literary journals over the years and eventually collected into the three small volumes Repetition Patterns (2008), So Different Now (2011), and After the Flood (2014). Now for the first time, all 33 of these stories have been put together into one paperback edition, highlighting the long-term planning of themes and motifs that Tanzer has been building into these pieces the entire time. Featuring dark character studies of childhood, middle age, and (lack of) grace under pressure, these stories are considered by many to be among the best work of Tanzer’s career, and voracious fans of his short work will surely be pleased and satisfied to have these small masterpieces collected together into one easy-to-read volume. So take a stool at Thirsty’s, order another Yuengling, and be prepared to be transported into the black heart of the American small-town soul, as one of our nation’s best contemporary authors takes us on a journey across space and time that will not be soon forgotten.

Download for free at November 20, 2015 | 9 cclapcenter.com/nystories

Katherin

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PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE November 20, 2015 | 11

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www.katherinesquier.com http://katherinesquier.tumblr.com Instagram @katherinesquier www.facebook.com/katherinesquierphotography www.twitter.com/squierkatherine 32 | CCLaP Weekender

Know thyself and nothing in excess. Just as the doomed sailors of Homer’s Odyssey fail to heed one or the other of these maxims, and end up getting turned to swine or lured to their peril by the singing sirens, so too do the doomed characters in Joseph G. Peterson’s new collection of stories fail idiotically in one way or another and end up, like those ancient sailors, facing the prospect of their own mortal twilight. Set mostly in Chicago and by turns gruesome, violent, comic, lurid and perverse, these stories are suffused with a metaphorical light that lends beauty and joy to the experience of reading them.

CCLaP Publishing

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/twilightidiots

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The CCLaP Weekender is published in electronic form only, every Friday for free download at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com]. Copyright 2015, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Behnam Riahi. Photo Editor: Jennifer Yu. Layout Editor: Wyatt Robinette.

Calendar Editor: Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

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