Method Magazine Issue V by Method Magazine

Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, OPERATION. Examine the word. Dissect it, cut in, peel away. In Method Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fifth issue we pose a question: how do you operate? The peculiar query is at once abstract and precise. We explore function and dysfunction. How do you forge an identity, how do you survive? What does it mean to make art, to grow up, or to mess with a Craigslist scammer who is trying to steal your car? Three words of advice: turn the page.

With Love, The Method Editors

Editors: Ariel Jacobson, Alice Severs; Designer: Giorgia Sage

Innards PLASTY

Katie Deane 6 DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL

Hannah Bahedry 14 CARNIVAL 20

Morgan Darkes Hill

CHOPPED 25

Raphael Linden

THOUGHTS IN POTS

Kai Wilson 27

AFTERLIFE INTERVIEWS 29 LINDSAY KEYS 31 CHRIS MCNABB 32 TIMOTHY LEE 35 OPERATION CRAIGLIST SCAMMER 38

Michael Vaughn

THIS WEEK WAS EXCEPTIONALLY COLD FOR LATE APRIL 47

Mariah Rachel Burke

Plasty KATIE DEANE

Don’t Touch That Dial WESU 88.1 FM, A HISTORY Hanna Bahedry

The walls of WESU’s boardroom are plastered with a jumble of eclectic ephemera accumulated over its 75-year history, a pleasing assault on the senses that captures the restless spirit of a radio station that resists easy definition. Slightly stained t-shirts, scrawled-on concert posters from visiting musicians, a plaintive missive in stickers on the radiator (“THE MEETING IS TOO LONG… STOP TALKING”), filing cabinets covered in peeling irreverent bumper stickers, an empty Smirnoff ice bottle and a lava lamp—listed as $70 but not for sale—fill the cluttered but inviting space. As a board member at the station, I’ve spent many afternoons in the overheated room pretending to listen to my fellow board members while my eyes scour the walls, though it would probably take me another couple lifetimes to take mental inventory of everything. A beloved mainstay of the busy room is a scrawled dial on the whiteboard featuring a moveable arrow, a half-moon that reads “corporate” on one side and “renegade” on the other: the WESU-OMETER. As the board debates and discusses radio business in its weekly meetings, whoever is closest to the dial has the liberty to shift the arrow as they see fit: towards renegade if we’re sticking to our non-commercial values, towards corporate if we think we’re crossing a line we’ve set for ourselves as an alternative voice.

through various social and economic upheavals at the university. The makeshift meter on the boardroom wall makes visible the tension that characterizes WESU’s various incarnations over the years, as movement towards greater freedom and diversity conflicts with the need to address financial realities. In many ways the WESU story is a microcosm of Wesleyan’s own story, an institution caught between its values and its pocketbook. Though the arrow has dipped into the corporate waters before, the station walks the walk in its commitment to the unique, the freeform, the alternative, and the miscellaneous, forever attune to making sure that the station doesn’t end up on the wrong side of the dial. WESU was founded in 1939 by two bold (some might say renegade) students who hooked a transmitter up to the plumbing system in Clark Hall’s basement: “literally underground radio,” as current general manager Ben Michael described it. Students would attach their radio antennae to the radiator in order to tune in, and while the short and inconsistent broadcast was only accessible in Clark, its quickly growing popularity led its founders to run more wires throughout Wesleyan’s tunnels to meet listeners’ demand. Only in 1941 did the students approach the President in order to become officially recognized by Wesleyan, partly because the fraternities on High Street wanted access to the signal but weren’t on the university’s grid. The following anecdote drives home just how different a place Wesleyan was back in WESU’s infancy: “One of the major issues to confront WESU was a proposed ban which would have forbidden broadcasting hours after 7:30 pm. The suggestion had been made that evening broadcast violated a dormitory rule which forbade musical instruments (here including radio) from being played. Broadcasts might interfere with work or studies at such an hour.”

WESU’s unique position as one of the oldest noncommercial college radio stations in America is a guiding force in the station’s daily life. The station prides itself on being a source for those who aren’t finding what they’re looking for on commercial and mainstream radio stations, a place for the weird and the wild to find their people. Currently WESU centers itself around three pillars: alternative music, community involvement, and public affairs. However, WESU has undergone multiple transformations over its seventy-five years, shifting chimeralike between personas as it fought to stay alive

alternative music that didn’t get play on mainstream airwaves. The station styled itself in opposition to corporate values and expressed this, most notably, by igniting the 1980 boycott of Arista Records.

While WESU’s founding was about as DIY as you can get, the station was still a product of its context, making this one of the less radical eras in WESU history. During these early years, the student body was decidedly male and white, and WESU’s content reflected this; their most popular broadcasts were Wesleyan and high school football games. Early WESU had a more corporate bent, thanks to the advertising and underwriting that played an important part in its funding. Freeform radio was still a twinkle in the station’s eye; back then it operated using uncomplicated block programming: a few hours of classical, a few hours of jazz, a few of folk, neatly laid out and repeated over the week.

Like most record companies, Arista had traditionally provided free copies of its new music to stations that could give them airplay, but after it announced that it would now be charging hundreds of dollars for the service for non-commercial stations, WESU led the march to boycott the playing of any and all Arista artists on their airwaves. Other college stations soon followed suit, and though Arista threatened its boycotters that calls to action were illegal on air, scaring most of them out of it, eventually they reversed their policy. This small but satisfying win against mighty corporate forces had WESU sacrificing large swaths of its library for almost a year in order to honor its commitment to its non-commercial mission. As the station moved into the ‘80s and ‘90s, the dial crept deeper into the renegade side—almost, in the end, to the point of its own destruction. This was the era of the reign of the freeform, and the station began to get much looser. By 1988, WESU had completely abandoned block programming in favor of freeform, a style of broadcasting which is exactly what it sounds like: instead of playing one genre for several hours, a DJ has an hour or two to spin whatever they’d like. Shows began proliferating madly as student participation grew, and show names and descriptions got progressively weirder and more abstract. A quick random sampling of show names and descriptions from program guides of this time yields the following: “If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother,” “50-Foot Beaver,” “Student Grant and the Sesame Street Hour,” “Moist Slacks,” “Swearing Postman’s Zoo,” “Glue Snuff Party, “Ren and Stimpy are Dead (Hallucinations are better than TV),” “Stuff I

Unsurprisingly, the ‘60s and ‘70s were a period of great change for both Wesleyan and WESU, and the dial ticked closer to “Renegade.” During the 60s Wesleyan began to actively recruit students of color, and by the end of the decade women joined Wesleyan’s ranks as well (for the first time since 1909, when the school’s fledging experiment to admit women was squashed by angry alumni). WESU switched over from AM to FM in 1967, a move that increased its listenership and ended commercials on the station for good. It also began negotiations with the Board of Trustees to become an independent entity, which led to the creation of the Wesleyan Broadcaster’s Association (WBA), a student– run non-profit entity that controlled the station’s license and equipment. The WBA allowed WESU to operate as an independent station between 1967 and 1990, leading to an era of burgeoning freedom for the station. Once independent, WESU began the transition to the community-oriented station we know it as today, incorporating community volunteers as a growing force within the station first as DJs and eventually as board members. As the station’s members grew more diverse, so did its tastes and interests. By the end of the ‘70s, Wesleyan had firmly established itself as the “enemy of the top 40,” a place to find underground and 16

nature of the station’s leadership meant that by 1995, nobody at WESU even knew that it was technically operating illegally, and was owned by no one: truly renegade.

Like,” “Ass Meets Thigh,” “Valley of the Dope Beats,” “19 Jams in a Row,” and the emotive “AAARRRGGGHHH!!!” In 1991, Youthful undergrad Lisa Dombrowski even had a show of her own; the description asked its audience, “Why get punched when you can get fully blasted?” (As a ’91 baby, I’m hoping I was somehow conceived to this hot mess.)

Business went on as usual until 2000, another transitional year for WESU, as the station moved from its original space in the Clark basement to its current location on Broad Street, above the bookstore. This meant the station was much farther from the heart of campus but closer to Middletown’s Main Street, allowing the space to feel more genuinely connected to the community. However, this decision was made by the university quickly and without input from the station members themselves, resulting in a fair amount of hurt feelings and confusion at the station. A huge amount of music was lost or damaged in the move, a blow from which the station still hasn’t recovered.

At the same time, money and organizational issues were plaguing the station, eventually leading to the dissolving of the WBA and a period of lawlessness. WESU’s leadership had always been tricky and spotty; as a student-run organization, the four-year turnover meant that longterm projects had a way of falling through the cracks. At the same time, the WBA had been forced to borrow money to replace the faltering transmitter in 1986, and by 1990 the organization had collapsed under the weight of unrecoupable debt. However, the dysfunctional

However, the real showdown between the station and the administration came with the arrival of President Doug Bennett in 2003. The station—ownerless, disorganized, and broke— was approached by Bennett in order for the university to acquire their license, allowing them to operate legally once again as well as providing them with a source of much-needed cash flow. The station agreed to the buy-out on the condition that WESU, while owned by the university, could still operate independently. However, by 2004 President Bennett was already proposing a new business model, one that would devote 12 hours of airtime a day not to WESU DJs but to NPR broadcasts outsourced from local NPR affiliate WSHU. (Perhaps relevant here is the fact that Doug Bennett came to Wesleyan from his job as President of NPR.) His plan would generate big bucks, finally making the station economically viable; at the same time, such a move would drastically restrict airtime for station members, as well as jeopardize the involvement of community volunteers in the station, who had by now become an integral part of its mission and operation. Many students viewed the plan

harshly as a corporate takeover, and the campuswide reaction was strong even from those who weren’t involved with WESU. Some saw it as just another part of Bennett’s problematic goals for the university, and the rallying cry to Free WESU contributed to boisterous sit-ins at his office. `In response, the general manager of the station at the time, Jesse Sommer ’05, and another WESU DJ, Lukas Snelling ’05, set to work writing an alternative proposal in the three days Bennett allotted them to figure something else out. The plan was called “The Future of WESU” and made some surprising concessions—namely, nixing the freeform model—in order to try and retain its airtime and community volunteers. Despite its thoroughness, the document was rejected by Bennett; his own plan was instated instead, dipping the dial dipped dangerously into the “Corporate” side. The only thing both Bennett’s and Sommer’s plans had in common was the shared understanding that WESU needed a full-time 18

staff member, someone who could guide the station and take care of longterm projects that the four-year student turnover prohibited. WESU’s board unanimously selected Ben Michael, a volunteer who had grown up in Middletown and dedicated much of his time to serving the community, and with Michael at the helm the station began aggressive fundraising campaigns for the first time in its history. Slowly but surely, the station raised enough money over the next few years to start lessening the number of hours dedicated to NPR programming, opening up more slots for student and community DJs. In 2006, through negotiations with the university, community volunteers were once again allowed to serve as board members. Improbably, the dial swung its way back to the “Renegade” side: the station had weathered the corporate storm and come out the other side stronger than ever.

one of its most valuable facets; shows like the Middletown Youth Radio Project get local kids into the station to share their thoughts and art with listeners across Connecticut. Now in its 75th year, a veritable senior citizen, WESU’s future is unclear. What is certain is that WESU isn’t about to settle into an easy routine anytime soon. Debates about the direction of WESU have remained central to the station no matter its iteration. Notes from a board meeting in 1998 give an example of this daily deliberation: “A debate ensues over the ontology and genealogy of WESU. Rob thinks that WESU is not a Wesleyan radio station. For example, Derrick serves the Caribbean community— outside Wesleyan. By pre-empting his show with football games, we please football listeners but alienate Derrick’s listeners. Markie argues that WESU is more of a Wesleyan entity – it is undeniably part of Wesleyan. We need to accept that and deal with that. Now some people are talking about the philosophy of WESU shows. Do we want more acts that students like and know or do we want to expose people to new music that we believe in? There is no consensus and everyone is getting tired.”

Currently, NPR only occupies the timeslot from 5am-12pm, not very desirable real estate, and a drastic improvement from Bennet’s original intentions. WESU has been steadily growing throughout this past decade, and in 2013 it was crowned “Best College Radio Station” by the Hartford Advocate’s Annual Reader’s Poll. Michael has been the steady hand at the wheel for the past decade, attuned to both very real financial needs and the centrality of the station’s heart to its purpose. He has accomplished the seemingly impossible task of making WESU economically stable without sacrificing its creative and radical ethos, even being called “the soul of 88.1 FM” at a recent alumni open house.

University-centered or community-oriented, playing to the listener or challenging them with new music, following the money or striving for greater independence: these questions have defined WESU throughout its history, and there’s no easy solution to any of them. The arrow on the WESU-O-METER will never remain static as it tries to balance its “Corporate” and “Renegade” halves through a constantly changing landscape, but more often than not the station strives towards the right side of the dial, charting a renegade course as it “paddles up the mainstream.”

The WESU of today balances its corporate needs and renegade wishes well; far out music and personalities still find their place on the air, even as the station mobilizes its listenership for ever-growing donations each semester. The station’s community presence continues to be

Eve On Her Way Out of the Garden Morgan Darkes Hill I was going to be the cheerful recluse of a wood-floor flat on the outskirts of town. In my imagination, it was always October. The skeletal leaves would brush around the steps, muffling the clicky ticks of typing, because that’s what I would spend myself on, a brand of interpretive fiction or loosely prosaic epiphanies wrought by my series of fantasies I thought the season would bring. It was about the saying of it, the fiction of producing fiction that would, in the end, produce me. I had imagined the place for months, making small constructions and corrections in the feel of my bedroom or the paintings in the gallery windows downtown. Anyone’s garden I passed would be where I staked out to watch, I, a hungry young thing hunting for things to write down, to make mine. Places, moments that might forge some rightful belonging between the dusty cape shoal and me and the town full of poets and their lovers. Mary Jane’s attic apartment hanging over the garage, decks flush with sand, steps dipped down from friction, the long walk to town, mine. Mary and Marilyn’s solarium and baking bread, and their naked underwater photographs, and the scratched white paint, mine. Mel and Molly’s waterfront house and graying shingles and small sons, mine. The breakwater, Alice’s early mornings, the cold raw whitecaps, mine. I arrived with a trunk in my mother’s silver station wagon. A month earlier, I had still been in high school, taking the weekend off to drive five hours into the forearm of the cape, lighting up before a cellar rave at the tavern, playing for the quiet local radio’s open-mic on a blue afternoon. At a restaurant in May, a clean and skinny man with well-cut hair offered me a summer room with six others in a two-floor apartment above a jewelry shop. It had an alleyway to the coronary center of town. The entire street was audible. Time was told in volume levels, decibels seeping in through the windows, the louder, the more important the hour. In July we found condoms in the gravel. The allure of elaborate summer evenings in a town like this was the happily looming threat of costumes and travel: feigning a walk toward the Boat Slip for Tea Dance1 and instead spending midnight at a girl-club called Vixen, and later eavesdropping on the stage of the Crown & Anchor, and finding ourselves splayed across the docks by two. The affair with Alice had begun in January. I had meant to go to Montreal that weekend to take a different girl, Sofia, to a concert. Boarding school in Vermont had offered us a short-lived eternity, and then I never saw her again. By that January weekend, Sofia had returned home, needing treatment for her relentless anorexia. Just before the holiday, a friend between classes in the hallway told me that she had been hospitalized. I promptly forged a note to excuse myself from school and take the station wagon to search for her in the blank halls. I never found her and instead was found truant and just as promptly grounded. Her grandfather came from Mexico City to collect her. The show in Montreal would go on without us.

A traditional 2pm cocktail party with a dripped in club music 20

My life now over, I stayed in Vermont and, leaving everything to chance, visited my dear friend James who had a mutual affinity for indie-soul and a sister in her mid-twenties. Alice bounded down the stairs. I was wearing a green sweatshirt with a marker-drawn octopus. I played her a song cross-legged from a landing in the house. I used the landline to call my mother. We went to a small party and watched each other dance. Things smelled like lavender in the shower. In the attic, I slept in her old bed. Low shelves full of shells lined the walls, the roof slanting inward like a knotted boarded cave. I lived a few hours away from their house, still in high school, still in winter. Weeks after that, we met in a lot a few blocks from the theater. Watching our breath freeze, feeding the meter, making out in the car. We would sip hot liquids slowly in a cafe where we would talk about our brothers and she would hand me notated paperbacks of prose. She was writing a novel about spending years unable to eat. Her poems were about water. I took her shirt in my bag to India. It was a trip to build a school, the kind of trip I’ve since unlearned to love. We in fact did no building, some painting, and much eating. I took a black backpack of books on the plane, lined them up on the tile under the white netted bamboo bed in Tranquebar. I wrote to her every day in a black journal. That journal is gone, somewhere with her. I wrote another journal, which I handed back to my English teacher in lieu of assignments. I wrote about grinning through the windows of the van. I wrote about colors. I wrote about being in love, about talking about it, about talking about talking about it, talking about it becoming my being, being consumed, being incessant. When I came home, I kept her shirt. I called her when our school bus crossed the frozen border into Vermont. I met her outside an auditorium. It was still winter. Her brother was putting on a concert. She locked her keys in her car. I watched her rub her face, puzzled, fidgeting around the lot, making sounds. I fell out of love with her right there on the gritty snowpack. Out with her boots, with her voice, with her green laces. I kept the shirt. I still have it. March passed on. I drove to Provincetown again in April, having drawn the whole thing out. That was when I played for the radio, having stamped out the lyrics on her typewriter, smelling the roof in her bayside sublet. We slept deeply together, but I woke up in fits of crying, having replaced the facts of love with the wrenching feeling of uncertainty and the fear of loss. I knew that sex was pink and yellow. She read me one of Mel’s poems about drinking electric lemonade and smoking pot all day. It felt like the beach to me, smoking, skewing for the first time my sense of progression, distance, and the absoluteness of recent memory. The poem did all that, too. We walked the breakwater with Matthew, her friend. He sewed clothing. He was from Canada. Now, years later, she’s dating his aunt who plays the violin somewhere in Ontario. The breakwater is cold. I left my shoes home and it hurt. I told him some version of myself: I didn’t love her “like that” “anymore.” He told her, I imagine. He liked but didn’t trust me. Years later, I imagine I’m liked, but still confusing the facts of love with the uncertain fear of loss. The breakwater is still long and it still hurts2.

By May, I’d found a job. I’d graduated. I’d slept over and over with a new girl, Emily. It was a different kind of affair. We’d gone camping. We’d left our shoes by the river and doused ourselves around its mediumseized rocks. We’d cooked with tinfoil and wine. We’d found ticks. We’d worn out our hips between showers. We’d exchanged two hundred and eighty-four emails. These included one hundred and twentyseven attachments. Two-thirds of these were audio files. One sixth were published prose of varying degrees of acclaim, the rest were personal flings with poiesis. She was from New York. This was my first of a few completely complex love-triangles. Quadrangles? Kate picked me up in high school. Rachel had left Kate for a boy. Kate picked up Emily. Kate sent Emily to me. Emily slept with Rachel. Rachel left Emily with me. Emily left me regardless. I went to New York for the parade. I saw Kate, I slept with Emily. Actually, I didn’t sleep. She didn’t love me “like that” “anymore.” I stayed and stayed awake, grieving at the entirety, as if I’d locked my keys in the car. She’d faked the pleasure and kept my whiskey. At five a.m. I left for Provincetown from her bed in the East Village. It was June. Something off of St. Mark’s smelled awful and I began to cry. I had buses to take, a cab fare, hours of heat and the intermittent swelling of the air conditioner. I was crying, effusing salt and water all the while. The night before, I had stalled in the basement bathroom of a bar, tucking my shirt in and out. I remained desperately underage. I had never seen so many people that I wanted, not really, but theoretically. The girl in the serious vest, the boy with a shirt that fit too tight. It was humid. Androgyny was everywhere. It was a Peter Pan bus out of the city. I sat on the left by a window. It stopped in Hyannis. I wandered out to the pillars in the waiting area with a clove cigarette and continued the cry. I watched people as they watched me. I would imagine how they didn’t know this girl shedding her pent-up grief in the sunlight. By nine, the tears were a consumption. I was back to that sexless lonesome. Only, my lips were raw, and my hips, because it had just happened, and I was just leaving, just now. My collarbone sweating and unresolved. Exhausted by an awful romantic hangover. Juvenile and snotty and wrecked, and due at work. For the four o’clock shift that night at the restaurant, I was supposed to be a barker. The job of the barker at a restaurant on Commercial Street in Provincetown is to stand on the street corner or curb and holler at the crowd about the price of lobster or live music. The design is to entice them. It is a largely theatrical position. On the Fourth of July, I would watch a Mountie’s horse drop its shit in the street and I would warn people about it as a trick to offer refuge at a well-waited table. But in June, I arrived to my job on time. Only, I was still crying. My reflection looked like pulp. That day was early enough in the summer that I hadn’t cut my hair short. Still, the mop of grizzly blonde was useless. So were glasses. So were sunglasses. My eyes were silly open sores. Liz said, go home. I fled to the jewelry apartment. I’m sure I cried a while, or vomited, or slept. The Lithuanians were out working in restaurants. I was eaten by my bed, adjacent to the cage of a dog named Absinthe3. David, the slender man, had sheets over everything. We shared the room. He owned a blue plaid suit from his job at

2 Years later, I walked far out on the breakwater again to tell another girl I didn’t love her “like that” “anymore.” And again, I had forgotten my shoes. 3 Absinthe’s companion was a dog named Jameson, who belonged to a semi-alcoholic girlcouple down the hall. 22

Marc Jacobs, which he had quit to drive a taxi and wear a t-shirt. Better pay for a lithe guy in the cabs. A scripty tattoo across his chest said “Providence.” Not only was he from Providence, Rhode Island, but as he graciously explained to me sitting in the dunes one day near Herring Cove, his father was a Christian minister who believed in the protective divinity of fortune. I believed his dog had chewed the orange corner of my Rubik’s cube. The next day was opaque like the rest. Provincetown was dappled with middle-aged savants. The center’s passing crowds were ripe with variation, and the street view was not unlike a gallery of small gatherings, families, flatlanders, people come to see us in our “natural habitat,” as we said. Mostly, of course, the visitors were versions of us. Cruise Boys descending in packs with rolling suitcases and Bears4 hovering over Harleys with their handkerchiefs. The air was ample and carnivorous. Bulgarian chefs and pedicab riders hit a straight club called Purgatory. I went there once to dance softly with a handsome cop. Each day, a tatted thirty-something rode her fixie to work at Marc Jacobs. Once, I went to ask them for a job, but I had showered too recently and lacked the conviction of a thin hipster. She rode twice a day with the same expression on her face. Like boredom had been cruel to her. Another dour pixie with sleeves sometimes held her hand; I presume either sister or girlfriend. I couldn’t tell. The town was a healthy confusion. I used my curb as a small pulpit. I honed my quips. I bought arch supports. Once, a man came rollerblading down the street with little white fists of music clamped on his head, wearing a tank top, dancing with the maniacal grace of freedom. I mouthed to him. “I love you.” His dance was mere whisper to the rest of the street, something interesting and unintelligible. He stopped, floated over to me. We talked until Liz came out to nag me. A few days later, we rode bikes to Race Point. Walking our wheels up the hills in the dunes and then later just ourselves down the beach, he rattled off the last thirty years. He used to tape himself while walking flatly and record his voice into a microphone, checking the playback of each for too-soft consonants and extra undulations in his elbows. Years of analysis, paranoia, and a furtive career in jewelry. At thirty-five, he had decided he would kill himself or leave it all behind and be in love. Getting sunburned, I was eighteen, he was fifty-two. Later we had lunch with his dermatologist friend Brian, who described the calcium in my pores as “benign.” I ordered tuna. A former gallery artist turned provocateur had settled for waiting tables to feed his spiteful mother, now long dead. A photographer no longer needing needles worked with us too, he mixed acidic Cape Codders for us on the porch after closing. We stole a dinghy and rowed nowhere. I took some slackening drug and fell laughing into the water. A girl came into the restaurant once, looking for someone else. The girl was Suzy, a name from another of Mel’s poems that reminds me of boats and dying in September. Suzy lived with the Bearded Lady. The Bearded Lady was enormous and performed expensive piercings. I didn’t love Suzy, but she let me ride her skateboard. We spent the rest of the summer happening upon lesbian drum circles on the beach and lesbian afternoon kickball games, followed by the increasingly serious lesbian football league staged at the field in the bell tower’s shadow. By the time Liz let me bus tables for extra cash, I had taken a second job working in an underground “toy store.” It was actually below street level, which felt like a metaphor. The toys – dildos, vibrators – were from Swedish and Japanese companies, all synthetic, dishwasher-safe. I carded kids my own age. Couples

Large and bearded gentlemen, generally keen for leather accouterment. 23

came in with hundreds of dollars. The bookshelf had an Amy Bloom novel and a series of butch films that wouldn’t work on my computer. Mostly, it was air-conditioned and I could read for hours at a time, morose erotic fiction and manuals for anomalous sex. In July, my severed golden ringlets lay still for the broom on the floor of a Provincetown salon. My hair has since been growing out for years, through slow months when I would have serial dreams that it had lengthened fully only to be cut again, and I would wake up in anxious squirms. With a girl who never called again I went to cut my hair completely, the stylist’s withered wincing in a whisper when I said, “go on.” Us both too afraid to go all-out at once, she took me through the step-by-step of shortening. I thought about tourniquets. The place was warm with sun and near the jetty, with some jiving little name around the corner from the Town Hall. Snip, I think, a funny name in its subtle allusion to sterility or excision or reformation. Funny because if sterility is the anti-sex, this cut was for the opposite effect. I couldn’t hide desire after that; in this culture of visibility, hair is a formal announcement. Young people desire the obvious. Fauxhawks are obvious. By August, I’d seen Alice a handful of times on the street. Emily’s file attachments persisted masochistically. A Russian girl named Daria left me flowers at the restaurant, and that was the last I saw of her. I had first met her smoking cigarettes outside the library. The library is a building with a ship inside of it. It has long, narrow steps that go down to the gallery district. All I could say in Russian was Hello, and My name is and I live in, but from what I gathered, it’s just hard to be gay in Russia. Later, she would walk me along the pier, wordlessly, and we would sit at the end and have Marlboros and watch the skate boys with their crew cuts dance the promenade with bikes. She fell asleep with me at the end of the summer. After I woke up, there were the flowers at the restaurant. I left before the end of August. Full of providence, I had quit my jobs and packed when David was screwing a girl a few feet from me on the other side of the dog cage. Nothing in the manuals for that. The Bearded Lady made me eggs and sausage while I said goodbye to Suzy. I told her about David’s fecklessness, and he called me afterward for weeks, slobbering and screaming that I had slandered him. Small towns. Everyone had left me too, if not with a bidding then with a blessing. It is not that we want abandonment, but that with it sometimes comes the dark kindness of forgiveness that lets a breaking turn to blossom.5 I sped out of the bay full of some bright desire, if not for falling in love, then for something I wanted more. For taking buses and kissing in parking lots and crying between floors in the library. For some slowness to rise up from the floor and become me. For the loose fabric we allow ourselves at night. For choosing myself, this time, alone. For fall breaking open all around me, turning red, softening the clicks.

A Blessing that still affects me. 24

Chopped Raphael Linden I wonder sometimes if rabbis dream of their long lost foreskins. Where do they go, those wrinkled little shrapnels of skin? The trash? Could you see yourself throwing a piece of your body in the trash? Maybe, to them, it’s like the wrapping paper for your penis. I always throw away my wrapping paper. I feel like wrapping paper isn’t as much of a thing amongst Jews—although, in this day and age, who knows, given the ubiquitous nature of Christmas. I can’t remember ever receiving any wrapped Hanukah gifts—it seems like such an unnecessary waste given the considerable length of the holiday. I think people should really consider letting go of wrapping paper as a thing. Its purpose of concealment is fleeting at best, and the patterns are so often gaudy and tacky. I guess every single country should remove wrapping paper from its cultural fabric, except for maybe Japan, where it’s considered a legitimate craft. That must be pretty sad, to spend your days skillfully fashioning something that you know will eventually get torn to shreds by the greedy hands of a child. My parents never buy wrapping paper, but they did let me hold on to my foreskin. They get really political about it sometimes. There are a lot of nerve endings that get chopped off when you circumcise someone, and it dulls their sexual pleasure. A friend of my parents told me that my father had once considered foreskin restoration, where you attach a series of weights to your penis and wait for the skin to slowly droop its way down the shaft. “It’ll never be the same, though,” the friend said with a faint melancholy, as if he were recalling the death of a close relative. Given my parents’ fervent anti-circumcision politics, it’s somewhat ironic that I ended up with phimosis. See, if a part of your genitalia doesn’t get chopped off at birth, your foreskin conceals the head of your penis through childhood. When you hit puberty, the skin naturally loosens and becomes retractable—think of a flower in bloom, opening its petals to the world. Phimosis is when, instead, the foreskin tightens its grip around the head and the whole thing starts to look like a deflated balloon. I didn’t see the head of my penis until I was 14 years old. I first noticed that my genitalia really didn’t look like anyone else’s in the locker room. I panicked, so my parents took me to a doctor. She grabbed my dick and pulled on the skin as hard as she could—it hurt like nothing ever had before, and she barely got the head to crown. “Honey,” she told me, “you’re gonna have to get circumcised.” I Googled circumcision. Eleven year old boys in Ethiopia are circumcised as part of a religious rite of passage. According to the New York Post, Ben Affleck “hates!” circumcision. Jesus’ foreskin is known as

the “Holy Prepuce.” Multiple archaeological digs claim to have discovered it. Famed Hollywood director Frank Capra once referred to the doctor who performed his circumcision as “wanting to make a Jew out of me.” There’s a reason people circumcise their kids when they’re infants—they don’t remember the horrible, excruciating pain that comes with it. My parents, of course, refused to allow the procedure, and instead drove me for eight hours to go see a doctor in Los Angeles who specialized in foreskin preservation (as though it were an endangered species). He was an older man, easily in his 70s. I tried to imagine what his foreskin looked like—how many more wrinkles can an already really wrinkly thing have? He sat me down in his office and spoke with a soft sincerity. “You know, your penis is completely normal just as it is,” he said. “Okay,” I said, stopping myself before I could disagree. “Nature didn’t intend for your penis to rub against your jeans all day long. That’s why you have a foreskin, because it’s a very sensitive part of your body that’s only meant to come into contact with soft and gentle things.” “Okay,” I said. “Think of it as a helmet. Every soldier needs his helmet!” he said, punctuating his words with a shit-eating grin. “I’m going to give you this cream, and I want you to apply it to the circumference of the foreskin every day and then pull it back as much as you can.” “Okay,” I said. Thus began the world’s longest unwrapping of a gift. Oh, but what a gift it was—a boner released from its shackles, ready to take on the many soft and gentle things that awaited.

Thoughts in Pots Kai Wilson She thought about her father as she washed the large pot. Upon placing the dirty pot into the sink, she quickly saw that the volume of water it would come to hold in the process of washing was far too much water for the drain to withdraw from the sink efficiently. To avoid inundating the drain, she determined that the pot must be in constant motion. This ended up being quiet a physical job, requiring all parts of each arm to rotate the soapy pot onto its round corners without splashing dirty water or making so much banging noise that the whole endeavor became an inevitably cathartic event; one which she had not intended for—as one does not when just trying to wash a dirty dish. But before all this—before her forearms were hugging the pot, turning its belly upside-down and spinning it around in the overflowing sink—there was the thought of vher father. The pot was light and the aluminum metal was thin. There was a large dent developing on the base that breathed each time she massaged it with her palm or punctured it with her finger. She thought about how a pot does not become dented when it is being used; we are gentle with the things we hold our meals in. It is the movement from cupboard to stove, or stove to sink, or in the sink itself, as it twirls around in its own excrement, that the pot becomes dented. The thought of her father remained somewhere in the thought of dentations, and it was summoned back as the pot panged against the sides of the sink and hummed metallically in the basin. But, even while they can never truly be separate events, the sound of the pot being washed is a much different thing than the washing of it. The washing, of course, gathered all the memories of the girl’s mother. All of her mother’s distinct touches—holding, carrying, bathing, dressing—were somewhere in way she moved her hands along the metal. When she had finally managed to turn the pot upside down, so that its base was facing up and it’s mouth was sucking at the drain, the rumbling and punctuating pangs ceased and, without curl or bend in transition, the thought of the girls father was distinctly replaced by the thought of her mother. She reached around the curves of the pot, her whole forearm embracing its body, and felt the surface for stubborn oils and food scraps. But she also understood that she would, once again, have to turn it back or the pot’s suction would hold the dirty water from draining. She became melancholy as she gently tugged, so as to make no noise at all, at the lip of the pot until it popped and released itself from the drain. She held the pot midair, not knowing what she wanted from it, and watched the dirty water gulp back into the drain.

Afterlife

interviews

Lindsay Keys STUDIO ART ‘11 Photographer / Filmmaker EXPLAIN YOUR LATEST PROJECT: Most recently I worked as an associate producer for a feature film, while also acting in it. During my downtime on set I took photographs to ground myself, as cameras are what I know best at the moment. It is important to wear many hats - you’ll never be bored. Now I’m trying to find a balance between these roles and it is proving to be difficult but very exciting. WHERE DO YOU LIVE AND WHY? At the moment Brooklyn is “home.” I use quotations because this changes often. The artist’s life encourages, and sometimes forces, flexibility, which I have definitely exhausted over the past three years. These days it isn’t so much about the place but the people. Brooklyn is a nice home-base because of my New York City network. WHAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT LIFE-AFTER-WESLEYAN? Life after Wesleyan was sad and disorienting... for about a year. I had become accustomed to constantly engaging with the best and brightest, so the aftermath felt a bit dull in comparison. Eventually the sense of loss faded, especially upon realizing I’m still surrounded by many of those stars. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A PART OF ANY COMMUNITY OR NETWORK, ARTISTIC OR OTHERWISE? I consider myself to be part of a community that is my close friends who I feel safe sharing my artistic process with. It is a very personal and complicated relationship that I usually don’t feel comfortable talking about, most of the time stirring up fears, hopes and other overwhelming thoughts. These are for the people I trust most. WHAT’S NEXT? That is always the question. I keep asking and haven’t found the answer… yet. Each day is a step.

Chris McNabb FILM STUDIES ‘13 Freelance Film Production EXPLAIN YOUR LATEST PROJECT: Talking about my latest project is difficult because I’ve worked on a few things that I hopped on for as just a helping hand, but had little to do with artistically or creatively. Most of the freelance work I’ve done has been in the Grip & Electric department on short films or features, but again I’ve mostly done it for people I’m just meeting for the first time. The most recent thing I’ve actually had a hand in from the start is producing, shooting, and editing documentary and promotional footage for a program called Actively Caring for People, or AC4P, a movement started after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. I have a personal connection to the story, so I brought on my two roommates to help shoot and record sound for the project. The story is ongoing, and what we’ve already shot is in the very early stages of post-production, so it’s hard to say where that is going or what it will become. I think once I get my act together and start cutting the footage, we might reassess and consider getting extra funding to continue filming. In the mean time, I’m just hopping from set to set doing G&E work either for friends or complete strangers for little (or no) pay. WHERE DO YOU LIVE AND WHY? I decided to take the path less traveled and move to Brooklyn, New York. I really wanted to do something that no other Wesleyan grad had ever done before, so Brooklyn seemed like the best place for me after graduation. But in all seriousness, I had worked in Brooklyn over the summer and made a few connections on film sets that I thought would be helpful just starting out. That, coupled with the fact that my current two roommates, Misters Sam Barth ‘13 and Stefan Skripak ‘13 who I had worked with on a couple of projects, were also looking for a place to settle at the same time. We kind of all just made the collective decision to live together and decided on Brooklyn when we found a pretty nice apartment for a great price. We learned why our apartment was such a good price after the first day, but that’s a story for another time.

WHAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT LIFE-AFTER-WESLEYAN? What surprised me most about life-after-Wesleyan was the lack of structure. I’m not sure why it surprised me, because it shouldn’t have, but I think working freelance right out of the gate was a weird experience. Suddenly it was on me to find a new job every month, and sometimes every week. Searching for jobs is hard enough, as I’m sure anyone from my graduating class can attest to, but doing it every week gets tiresome. I’m currently on the hunt for a part-time job so I can regain some of that structure but still have the freedom to work on other artistic projects that I want to do (and perhaps turn down those that I don’t). DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A PART OF ANY COMMUNITY OR NETWORK, ARTISTIC OR OTHERWISE? There is definitely a New York-based community of Wesleyan grads both in and out of the entertainment business that I feel connected to. It helps that both of my roommates do similar work as I do, so we can jump on each other’s projects or pass them on to one another. I’m not necessarily part of an official, tangible network or collective of people, but being surrounded by my peers with similar interests both directly and indirectly influences me artistically. WHAT’S NEXT? What’s next is kind of more of the same. I’m just going to be building up experience and making connections for a while. I’m currently in the very early stages of developing a documentary idea that I’d really like to explore once I have a little bit more money and time. I would love for that to be the next project that I lead, although I’m not sure how feasible it will be within the next year. I never thought I’d be one to produce/direct documentaries, but somehow I’ve kind of drifted in that direction. I don’t think it will be permanent, though; narrative fiction is still the most attractive framework to me. What’s great is that I don’t have to stick to one or the other—I can always jump around!

Timmy Lee

NEUROSCIENCE & BEHAVIOR, BIOLOGY, STUDIO ART ‘12 Artist / Teacher EXPLAIN YOUR LATEST PROJECT. I’ve been doing a lot of freelance projects since graduating Wesleyan. Though I teach high school students art on Saturdays (to pay the rent), I’ve worked as a scenic artist for a (Wesleyan) friend’s film in Western Massachusetts, which was an amazing experience. I’ve also had the fortune to assist a renown performing artist with the scenic painting for an upcoming performance at the Whitney Museum of Art. In terms of my own art, I’ve been very busy since graduating Wesleyan and my works have developed considerably. My current project is a both an extension and a departure from the works created for my solo exhibition last spring titled “Traces.” Whereas those pieces utilized a cell-like motif to investigate the neurotic patterns of obsessive-compulsiveness, my current works explore psychological disorders overall, and use the self-portrait as a vector for the representation of the varying facets of these disorders. My works have become more fragmented, and my use of saturated watercolors more aggressive. I’m very excited and interested in the resulting pieces, and will continue to challenge this technique to create more novel solutions for rendering my concepts into realization.

WHERE DO YOU LIVE AND WHY? I currently live with my parents all the way in Hicksville, Long Island, but it’s actually pretty great because it allows me to afford my own private studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I spend roughly 18 hours of my day, every day. Surprisingly, I snagged the place not because of its location (which is a great plus), but because it was the most affordable space from all the studios I visited when I was on a studio hunt the summer after graduating Wesleyan. It’s a great space with high ceilings that flood my place with light in the afternoon. I just built a wall to give myself more space for my works, and may even build a loft to utilize the high ceiling space next spring. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF PART OF A COMMUNITY OR NETWORK, ARTISTIC OR OTHERWISE? I don’t think I really belong in any “community.” unless you consider my close group of friends to be a certain community. A lot of the friends I hang out with are Wesleyan students, but surprisingly I had never met many of them during my time as a student - it’s funny how that works out. I’m not immersed in the New York art scene, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse. And as for the “Williamsburg community,” the most I’ve explore my neighborhood is through seamless, so there’s that. WHAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT LIFE-AFTER-WESLEYAN? What surprised me about life post-wes? Hm.. a lot of stuff I guess. For example, I realized that a lot of the things I stressed over while I was a student at Wesleyan, such as getting a high GPA, receiving high honors,...etc. really mattered for shit when I was trying to establish myself as an artist. I actually enjoy life post-Wesleyan, and while I occasionally miss the college atmosphere, I love being able to schedule my own life and working whenever I want. WHAT’S NEXT? I’m honestly not sure what’s going to happen in the coming weeks, let alone in the coming months. A lot of projects and opportunities spring up unexpectedly for me, so I’m always excited for what the future holds. I’m having a few studio visits in the coming weeks, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be interviewed for a few art blogs and magazines, and many of them are expected to be published in the coming months. I’m currently talking with the director of the gallery that represents me about potentially being included in a group show at the Pink Art Fair in Seoul, South Korea, as well as a group exchange show with her partner gallery in Milan, but those are still in the works and nowhere near confirmed. I don’t have a solo show planned as of now, but my projects seem to constantly shift and change, so who knows what will present itself to me.

Operation Craigslist Scammer Michael Vaughn

In June of 2012, I listed a car on Craiglist. It was a hand-me-down from my dad that I had decided to sell after learning that it had a $4,000 oil leaking problem lurking under the hood. I took a few pictures and posted. “2003 Infiniti G35- Arlington” Within an hour, my inbox was inundated with emails, and it was in these first inquiries that I encountered Jason. He contacted me inquiring about my typo price of $1,000 (I was aiming to price it at $10,000 but forgot one of the zeros). Jason’s emails were littered with lengthy stories about why he couldn’t come see the car, and were so poorly composed that it looked like they had been transcribed in Arabic by a second grader then fed through Google translate. Fucked up, uncapitalized word soup. At first, I was frustrated by Jason and other scammers with unknown motives but recognizably deceitful methods, emailing me with greasy smiles from dusty computer banks somewhere in Africa. But eventually a light bulb went off. If Jason could try to dupe me, I could try to dupe him. Why not? I would respond to Jason’s emails with elaborate mockeries and convoluted reasons to delay the sale. I would keep the bait in front of him and break him down psychologically. I would fuck with him in as many ways possible. Here’s the story of how I pranked a scammer.

EMAIL 1: JASON Thanks! Happy with the Price Hi thanks for mailing back. actually, the i am interested in the car but i am not going to drive it now due to the nature of my work. i work in an oil rig in the sea. so i would pay you and send my agent to come do the pick it up for me. but first i think you need to send me your PayPal email so i can make payments. and any other additional information i would need to know. thanks for the prompt reply. i hope to hear from you soon thanks.

EMAIL 2: ME hello there jason I just wanted to I’m very happy with that email that you sent me however I have some bad news jason the price that I previously offered you 1000 dollars will not be able to work I have to sellthe car for 1400 dollars to make up for all of the money I spent upgrading it. It was my daughter and shes in bed now so I have to make up for the lost in terms of economics also I’m curious to see how you will be driving your car on an oil rig as their is very limited space also where do you live because I’m planning on taking a road trip and maybe I could drop the car off on my way to the trip

I wanted to respond with something equally as ridiculous as Jasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first email. Vague references to familial problems and inconvenient business suggestions seemed appropriate. Judging by Jasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s response, these tactics seemed to resonate with him.

EMAIL 3: JASON Hello Micheal i am so sorry to hear about your daughter. please it is some how unheard of for the price of a commodity to ascend after negotiation. how ever due to the fact that you said your daughter is not fine, i would be very willing to help by paying the money (1400) there is no problem with that. all u need do now is to send me your paypal email so i can make payment as soon as possible. as for me driving the car, i would when i am back from the sea. i would get home very soon on vacation.when i am true with the payment my pickup agent would come claim the car. with much warmth regards,

EMAIL 4: ME Jason, that is very kind of you to pay the new price. Once again I am terribly sorry for the raise in price. You see, I am a devout Christian and I firmly believe in honesty in the eyes of the lord, so I feel terrible for putting my burden upon you. I hope you’ll accept this poem as a form of an apology: With wilted burrows dangling from the grass Erica, my love, my child, did pass From wretched arms, your body released Into a festering vat of feces And abuse and molest you as I did, You never once accused The good lord of wronging you

So pray we must As in times of sorrow My faith, In you, Lord, we trust. I wrote that poem for Erica. As I told you, she is still laying in her bed, upstairs. We couldn’t afford a casket, so I’m selling this vehicle to pay for her removal and burial. I hope you bless her, and wish her the best in the afterlife. As for the account, I’m currently working with the good people at Paypal to unfreeze it. There was an unusually large amount of pornographic material charged to the account by my wife. They believed my login information had been stolen. Weather is beautiful here though, so not many complaints save the unsavory smell coming from Erica’s room. I hope everything is going well in your life. Blessed be our lord and savior, Michael “Adolf” V

It was my entire arsenal at once. Heart-wrenching and ludicrous. I thought it was so over-the-top that it would end my entire correspondence with Jason. And in a way, I was right. That was the last email in that conversation. Jason would not reply. Fuck. I had scared him off. The next morning, I sat down at my computer with a sad, Eeyore stare, sipping my coffee and yearning for Jasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s response. Inbox (0). I wondered about him. What was Jason doing? Who was he writing to at that very moment? Was he all alone, without any company in that computer bank high atop a sand dune? I chain-smoked a few cigarettes and looked out the window at the polished maroon Infiniti still sitting at the curb, unsold and untouched. I nearly gave up hope. Then, a fucking miracle. Inbox (1).

EMAIL 5: JASON Jesus the Comforter is with You Hello Mr. Micheal, how are you doing today? it is very nice to hear from you today. once again it is very sad to hear of your daughters passing away. i am so very sorry for all the things you are going through now. please know that the lord is with you all round. because of your daughters passing away, i have decided to help once more by paying you 2000. so the 600 am adding to it is a gift from me. we are all one in Christ, so we should always help ourselves. as for the PayPal email please if you know you it is going to take much time for them to resolve the problem then i would advice you open a new account and send me the details as i am highly willing to pay for this car and also this is the only payment method available to me now. i wish for your prompt response. thank and God Bless You. Jason

It was the best thing I could have asked for. Jason not only believed my story, but was now emotionally invested. He had searched the Internet for a picture of Jesus just so he could send it to me. To me! He would even pay more money out of the goodness of his slimy scammer heart. And in a weird way, his Jesus-laden wishes actually did bring me a kind of warmth. I felt bad for the poor guy, probably gulping down his last sip of Poland Spring water under the harsh glow of a Windows 2000 desktop screen. There he was, clinging to a drip of a hope that I might bring a bit of food to his morally ambiguous table. There he was, looking at my misleading emails as though they were real. Maybe he began to feel bad about Fictional Michael. Maybe he thought about Erica’s unfortunate fate as he treaded for miles over the parched ground on his way home in the evenings. He might have felt bad, but probably not, because he was still a fucking scammer trying to fucking scam me. I received another email that day. It was from my dad, and it said that if I didn’t sell the car soon he was going to take it back, leaving me without a ride and without cash. Time to stop fucking around. In true Jason fashion, I sent some emails to some people I didn’t know, trying to persuade them to buy the car with every tool at my disposal, trying to turn typed words into money.

THIS WEEK WAS EXCEPTIONALLY COLD FOR LATE APRIL AFTER GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ & RUBIN “HURRICANE” CARTER

Mariah Rachel Burke When the Colonel first smelled ice, he said the death of water Years later, firing squad provokes the memory of distant afternoon with father to discover before Carter was a hurricane, he sold ice Obituaries are crates sans shadow but the blind man sees color too and so it goes like this— Here comes the story, Breathe into a fire and it grows.