MR. MA'AM 2018

Copyright @ 2018 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without written permission from authors and artists.

Cover Art: Josh Oberlander Interior Design: Bria Goeller and Josh Oberlander Printed in the United States of America.

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E D I T O R S’ ​

N O T E

READER, MR. MA’AM began as a labor of love and a product of necessity, a whim that became a drive because we wanted to do something that we thought should exist in our local community, but didn’t. At the height of our community’s optimism, sometime around the legalization of gay marriage in the US, we believed widely that the lives of LGBTQIA+ people were finally on a broader trajectory leading toward achieving a civil dignity owed to all members of society and MR. MA’AM celebrated that utopian optimism.

However, 2018 proved to not only further systemic issues the LGBTQIA+ community was already facing, but the current administration and its constituents have actively encouraged and cultivated a culture of hatred against many marginalized groups in America, including the LGBTQIA+ community and especially its trans citizens.

Compounding this with the administration’s animosity towards POC, particularly black and latinx citizens, the current political establishment ultimately serves to make life harder for queer POC in a society that has come to realize its hatred for the non-white, the non-cisgendered, the non-straight in startling ways: In this country, almost all queer people can be fired for who they are, be denied housing, face homelessness, be sent to conversion therapy, be restricted from creating families. Instead of fighting these battles and seeking wide-reaching civil protections, we find ourselves going to the courts to fight for basic visibility, to fight to maintain the few civil victories we’ve secured.

This is not even mentioning the way LGBTQIA+ citizens are denied even more basic civil liberties in other regions such as Iran, Cameroon, Uganda, and Russia, where queer citizens face systemic suppression, anti-gay purges (such as Chechnya’s 2017 purges), or capital punishment. Annals could be written on the subject, and it is encouraged that every diligent reader consider pursuing further literature on the various manifestations of queer persecution in the US and abroad, but this, our sophomore issue of MR. MA’AM, seeks to answer the wave of queer erasure, censorship, and silencing by continuing our mission: the celebration of the queer voice, in its many forms. This issue is on the theme of erasure, censorship, and suppression it has always faced but has come to face more profoundly in the current socio-political environment; the perceived sentiment that queer work is some form of contraband that needs to be systematically controlled. The content of our issue ranges from sunny portraits of smiling faces and budding romance to meditations on death, violence and depression, and this issue rebuts the censorship impulse by displaying a large volume of queer work in all its vibrancy and interests. The breadth of subject, style, genre, and craft should serve to assure you that the literary and artistic faculties of our community are alive and well. Adversity has given us the uneasy inheritance of rigorous strength and vitality in the face of the darkest moments. That is something that no institution can silence.

This is all to say that this year has also brought distinct moments of hope. Our midterm elections saw a record-breaking number of LGBTQIA+ candidates run for elected office, among others. These historic moments are profound steps toward positive change, and we should hold onto them for solace when solace is most needed. When things are bleak and hopeless, we hope that those moments and this collection of spirited queer voices will inspire you to have hope, but more importantly, act in the interest of wide-reaching justice.

Sincerely, The editors at MR. MA’AM

STAFF

> CO-EDITORS JOSH OBERLANDER JESSIKA BOUVIER

> PUBLISHER JUSTIN FOGG

> DESIGN EDITOR BRIA GOELLER

> COPY EDITOR LIZ RIVERA

> OUTREACH CHAIRS LISA ZHANG BRADY GOODMAN-WILLIAMS

> SUPPORT STAFF lam tsamyi SCOTT CHOI yunqiao xu MAGGIE HIGGiNBOTHAM PAULA QUEZADA TALIA GREEN

JULIA BYRNE

CONTENTS CONTENTS

3 3 4 4 6 7 8 10 10 17 29 30 30 31 33 35 37 43 44 47 56 57 59 62

ASHLEY COLLINS JULIA BYRNE MIKE MCCLELLAND ALEX FALLON BARBARA MONTANO LEAH DY MATT ALBINO MADELEINE CALVI KATIE MURPHY GABRIEL G. TORRES GRACE JINNAH BRIA GOELLER JEM ZERO JAN BRUGGER REBECCA LIPPS LYDIA NEWMAN-HEGGIE LAURA ZAMBELLI + FRANCESCO PIRAINO FIONA JONES TSAILING TSENG EVAN GRAHAM BRITTANY GILLILAND ALEXA ABURTO ALAINA SYMANOVICH THOMASINA ROGERS

POETRY + DRAMA POETRY + DRAMA

3 REMEMBER EVERYTHING The Italian sun beats at your back, takes you in its hands like a child with putty and molds you, lets your creamsicle muscles slither through its fingers. If Michelangelo shaped you, intent on your figure becoming everlasting, why is this moment: supple skin and the haphazard, golden waves of your hair rippling in the wind, the rise and fall of your Pompeian chest, your silence, ephemeral?

Cautiously, I track your movements, the languid crinkle of your laugh lines as you smirk, seeming to know more than I could ever grasp.

Grazing the peach fuzz of your cheek, only beginning to bloom, I am scared of the day when flight seduces you. My body reacts accordingly, tentatively grips against Zephyrus’ cradling arms, and I know your presence is on loan; your compass always pointing west, towards home as though home for us two has not been irrevocably renamed.

I have always sensed your absence, the depression left behind in the sand, the hole you have dug in my chest. The peach ripens even as it risks bruises from the fall, and I am falling on my knees to savor this harvest. There is a peach pit in my stomach, and I am an anchor desperate to keep you on my foreign shores.

If you were Judas, I would gladly bathe your feet – to no one else would I relinquish the power of renouncing me.

ASHLEY COLLINS KISSING Kissing a boy feels like daaamn Feels like clutching a collar while he squeezes your waist. It feels like proving yourself.

Like a game. Like staring up and out and around at the great bright terrain.

It starts in your puffed-out chest, up and arched back, And shoots to your light head in the clouds, Decked with batting lashes.

Kissing a girl feels like a hushed oh shit Linking necks Like crushing a rose in your hand Some original shape lost forever, Traded for the abandon, the texture of the crumpled softness, Magenta stain under fingernails It feels like bending down to her, back bowed so you look nowhere but in, us, we.

It starts in your gut and works its way in.

Pulling instead of being pulled.

Breathing instead of being breathed.

JULIA BYRNE two local boys AFTER CECILIA WOLLOCH’S “Bareback Pantoum” After running free like wild horses, two local boys stick together, bodies slick, for this one night.

To local boys they were different, outcasts, but for this one night they had each other.

4 They were different outcasts, though; they were unashamed; voracious.

They’d had each other and now they wanted more.

They were unashamed, voracious, and they wouldn’t stick together; they wanted more, and who wouldn’t, after running free like wild horses?

MIKE MCCLELLAND

PICK ONE Are you a son or a daughter?

I am someone’s child.

Pick. One. Are you a sister or a brother?

I am a sibling.

Pick. One. Are you a Mr. or Ma’am?

Funny enough, I am a Mx. No. Pick. One. I could pick either, though both would be a lie. mI try not to lie, not anymore.

Lying suffocated me by my own skin.

My hips jut out in odd angles, my spine an obvious fixture to be stabbed.

No, I try not to lie.

Impossible. Scientifically unfounded.

Please tell me the science that gave you religion.

Tell me the science that started from Mendel.

Can you not? Were you not yet practiced when you asked for mine?

Without the formulas and hypotheses, are these beliefs false?

Assigned female at birth.

That’s the answer you wanted, yes?

A designation, a box.

You seek an answer that allows your mind to sleep.

I beg you, let your mind stay awake.

Make it do the work that was falsely attributed to the organ in your chest.

What am I? I am happy.

I am content in this gray-area that encompasses my body.

Is that not enough?

So much that it is worth taking mine?

I hope not.

ALEX FALLON

5 A BLUR IN THE BINARY Yawning—Stretching—standing proud for the day.

Warm sunlight trickles through the window as condensation fogs the mirror.

Stepping out, a cloud of steam follows like a wedding dress.

They dry their feet on the rough mat, lean forward, run the towel to catch the drips that journey down their spine.

Walking to the mirror, they use the towel to free their face from the glass cage.

Squared jaw, thick brows, the lips of ancient gods.

Following the mirror down with their eyes, the body is blurred.

It is there, standing—real in every regard.

But no details shine through.

Does today bring a chest of supple mounds, The nourishment of mankind?

Or would the day be one of endless fields, sharp angles, and broad lines?

The fog melted down their neck.

Would their voice reach the submarines signals deep beneath the ocean blue?

Or would it fly high with the delicate birds in the clear blue sky?

Bringing their hand up to run through wet hair— would it flow long, a twirl of braids and intricate patterns?

Or would it be twisted tight into a strong knot under their hat?

Maybe neither.

Maybe today they would exist in the blur.

The blur which still permeated the image they faced.

Maybe their hair would flow long and their nails shine bright, with their chest a flat as a frozen lake and a voice that could make mountains tremble.

Maybe today they would be neither.

Maybe today they would be both.

And maybe that would be okay.

ALEX FALLON A LOVE LIKE AND When you say I am in love you have no idea how long I have been here.

How I have bedded down and made love my home.

How I have delighted in the features of her face.

Even if I have not said it – it has always been this way.

“You’re in love,” and what do you mean when you say that for me?

Can you see the garden of love I have planted around me and the way inside its gates?

Do you know that I dance around the garden with my love,

6 that I disguise my dances as circles so that he or they cannot see, cannot know?

But yes, I am in love.

And love comes naturally, and it flows easily inside me like an and, an and that moves without restrictions and her smile and her voice and I want you to meet her and she is traveling today and I love her.

And do you know, at all, what I am feeling? Or do my feelings put a stop to things?

Do they crowd out your own?

And you might think that this is just another love poem that you are writing about me, just another voice to fill the chorus, already deafening, deafening even these words of love as I speak them to you that have for so long told me what my love is.

That have for so long destroyed the love within me.

And I want to speak back “I love her,” and I love her and I love her and I want to feel my fingers in her hand, her warmth migrating to me, and for everyone to know.

But our brown bodies, intertwined by our hands, our women’s bodies, our like meeting like – I know this cannot be loved.

When you say I am in love, remember this: my body.

Its multitude of colors its curved lines and sharp edges its hairs and nails and its presence.

I am in love – that is what I want you to tell the language and the poetry and all the ballads from long ago.

I have bedded down and made love my own.

Shout it out with each breath – with each word of this poem – and take these words from me.

BARbARA MONTANO

7 NOT YOURS When did romance become the lines of my body and the space between my legs, the opening of the deep blue sea where the gentle clouds of tomorrow meet the setting sun of yesterday. When did you see love as a body to be consumed? Was it when I was beneath you?

Perhaps.

I am the land.

Beneath your feet.

That the curve of my spine is the next trail you pass or the stiffness in my joints is just a cluster of mountains to be moved.

But I am not the rocky cliffs of the coastline, nor the snow-covered tree line in the distance, Rather, I am the raging sea, I brew angrily at the thought of you, letting the salty brine of the sea floor rise and fill me up, for you are the man who assumed I was here for your entertainment; skipping rocks on the bridge of my nose In the dewy breath of the morning I can barely make out your figure from the waters I wade in; a place where my feet cannot dream of reaching the cool sands beneath it Yet, from here I can taste that metallic iron rich privilege you’ve steeped your nets in It creeps towards me, undetected like an afterthought until it rushes up all at once and hits me, Like

a heavy-handed slap,

harder than any wind current I carry on my back.

And despite the tears that pool in my tides, you continue casting them out again and again, reaching further into me each time You aim your nets high

You want me to be your harbor, but I am not yours to claim.

For I love the sea beyond your gaze, the one who will meet beaches of unknown lands. She is my galaxy; my radiant sun and my gleaming moon. We are lovers lost between planets, drifting out on the faint glimmer of a star. She is a ray of moonlight that shows my tide pools how to move like a quiet whisper in the wind. And she is a tsunami swallowing up islands along the way. She is reckless and she is kind and she is love.

Yet somehow from your lowly vantage point from the sinking sands below your sunburnt toes all you can see is your hope of a harbor to separate the sea.

You say you love the ocean, You say you love That you love love

You said you loved the ocean, but she isn’t yours to take.

Oh child, it seems you’ve forgotten how much you don’t understand. How could you, when you don’t see love as the quiet drop of from an olive tree that lays upon the palm of the universe.

LEAH DY

8 ANOTHER STRAIGHT PERSON SMILED & SAID I NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE MYSELF the cedar tree sapling sits surrounded by desert sand, another cactus says my dude, why aren’t you growing?

for a bombshell.

I found a liminal space in a space-ship deep in the outer where I can be as metallic as my mind wants to read.

I approached the speed of light when I took off my flight suit my body bending in time like gymnasts who bend in spaces constructed for them & I was born in the infernos of sunspots naked in galactic gestation, transplanted to a planet never meant

that cactus hocks a loogie as it looks at the cedar sapling & he says this sand was my father’s before he gifted it to me

jupiter didn’t see this baby coming

when I slapped him across his fat face

I need to think I was sent here for a reason.

I’M DRIVING AT NIGHT AND WANT TO STREAK I want to build a door that goes into a field that’s never been touched by tires where my feet can feel the grass and warm wind can wash over everything smaller than giants

in the house my father built there are photos

of my naked baby body crawling on the hard-wood floor

and my mother is smiling in the background

she drove us upstate and waited for me to fall asleep

before she smoked her cigarettes outside the window

then the smell woke me and I watched smoke trail past

to be queer is a constant state of re-exposure re-erasure and I painted my nails for the Christmas party when I was seven but scrubbed them clean before anyone but my mother could see them

she worked nights and my father would take me to the front yard

to look at the moon and watch lightning bugs

and I would wonder if she gets lonely driving home at night

since the car accident I drive her to PT

and she turns the music down soft

and I watch as she drifts to sleep in the passenger seat

I want to be as naked as the moon when it is only clothed by a dappled star stream and I want to be surrounded by lightning bugs MATT ALBINO

9 SHOULDN’T BE A REVELATION It probably should have startled you when your cis friend told you that she didn’t think the legal advocacy club at your infamously liberal university needed a conversation on gender neutral pronouns.

You told her one of her board members sent the Queer Student Union an email addressed: “Dear Sir or Ma’am.”

She responded: “Oh, that’s kind of funny.”

She sees a mistake where you see anything but, where you see yourself as forgotten as ever in an appeal for your community’s help and her irony is your pain as you flash on all the people who don’t even realize they’re buying respectability by not being as freakish as you.

And though you’re just typing out texts, you know her well enough to hear the slight confusion in her voice, to see her smile crackling around the edges and trying not break and you fidget your fingers on the keypad as you try to figure out how direct you should be about the fact that she’s laughing and that she’s wrong.

She’s queer but not trans, queer but not community-involved, and you’re not naïve enough to wonder what the hell ever gave her the impression that she had the right to hear your erasure and laugh.

Here’s the truth, in popular imagination: You’re almost always forgotten.

You’re a footnote, An asterisk, The little star telling you “stop what you’re doing, flick your eyes down to the bottom of the page, remember to read about the exception, the extra details you needed specified because you weren’t going to know or remember on your own.”

You’re the little asterisk at the end of the word trans, as if the word shouldn’t include you already, the “they” at the end of “he or she” rarely included, because after all, the word trans might as well be a footnote to most an asterisk on an asterisk feels redundant.

She’s not trans, so she doesn’t have to listen to her friends mess up her pronouns over and over, to listen to complete strangers asking about hormone regimens that she’s not even on, to listen to her Gender Studies professor forget trans people exist, to listen to the silence of going days without a hearing a single pronoun for herself because all of her friends are too afraid of slipping up to gender her correctly.

10 She doesn’t have to wonder if she’s wrong wonder if she’s imagining things, too afraid of rejection, as she realizes that her friends hesitate and then refer to her only by name refer to her less, period, because even her friends can’t talk about her without being afraid they’ll hurt her, as if the silence doesn’t hurt more.

She smiles and laughs, because in her world knowing trans people exist means she’s done well.

It’s good enough.

In your world, you know it’s not.

MADELEINE CALVI

JUST A GAME Katie murphy Lights up on three chairs, equidistant from each other. In the chairs on either side sit WILL and MEL. The chair in the middle is empty save for a gaming headset, but still lit, as if someone should be sitting there but isn’t.

WILL and MEL both hold controllers and use them as if playing a video game.

The “screens” they are supposedly watching are the fourth wall, between them and the audience.

WILL Oh, for the love of sin. What are you doing? Get over here and heal me!

Cool your jets, I’m coming as fast as I can.

Not fast enough, I’m about to be troll food.

MEL WILL

MEL I have to finish healing our Thief first or none of this will matter anyway. Chill.

That’s it, you’ve doomed us all!

Oh, don’t be such a drama queen.

WILL MEL

Both tap violently on their controllers for a moment as the “battle” escalates. They deflate simultaneously and lower their controllers, defeated.

Aaand we’re dead. Told you.

WILL

MEL Seriously? There was nothing I could’ve done. One Cleric isn’t enough for a fight like that, we have to recruit.

We’ve talked about this.

WILL

MEL Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to actually win. My bad.

We’re not recruiting. End of discussion.

Ugh. Who died and put you in charge?

WILL MEL

11 Jesus, Mel.

WILL

MEL Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.

(Beat.)

It’s just, the guild’s suffering. And I know we needed the time off, but it’s been a week since we started raiding again and we’re still getting slaughtered out there. If we don’t do something soon, we’re gonna lose even more members. Is that what you want?

I just don’t feel right replacing him, that’s all.

WILL

MEL We’re not replacing him, we’re just. You know. Expanding. He would want us to recruit.

How do you know?

WILL

MEL Look, you go on enough 12-hour raids with a guy, you get to know him pretty well. Ty would’ve wanted us to keep going.

You don’t feel weird about this at all?

WILL

MEL I didn’t say that. Yeah, I feel weird, I just don’t think it makes sense for us to keep getting our virtual asses kicked over it.

Listen, I’ve been thinking.

Uh-oh.

WILL MEL

WILL Ha ha, very funny. I’m serious. I know it’s late there, but can I Skype you?

MEL Psh, late? It’s 3 AM, the night is young. Gimme a sec.

They both take off their headsets, put down their controllers, and turn their chairs to face each other. The Skype ringtone sounds. They see each other. Now they can talk face to face.

Hey there, handsome.

I think I might leave The Game.

Like, take a hiatus?

Yeah.

MEL WILL MEL WILL

MEL Well, okay. We can probably manage without you for a little while. You’re a sucky Knight, anyway.

Skype glitches, causing WILL to lag.

A permanent hiatus.

What? Hold on, you’re lagging.

WILL MEL

12 MEL adjusts her settings, and WILL is back to normal.

Better?

WILL

MEL Better, but for the love of god please fix your Wi-Fi before the Mount Marana campaign next month. What were you saying?

I’m quitting, Mel. Wait. What? Is this because of Ty?

WILL MEL

WILL Yes and no. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I need to get my life together. My real life.

And the guild isn’t real? I’m not real?

MEL

WILL You know what I mean. My dad’s been on my case about college.

Again? I thought you decided not to go back.

MEL

WILL No, I decided to take a year off, which turned into two years... which turned into eight. But he’s really pushing it lately, I think it’s his subtle way of saying ‘your mom and I want to retire and move to Boca, so you have to move out of our basement’. And honestly, I’m kind of warming up to the idea. I mean, don’t you ever regret not getting a degree?

MEL Let’s see, do I ever regret not wasting four years of my life drinking liquor that comes in a plastic two-liter and digging myself into a McMansion-sized student debt hole? Yeah, no.

WILL Okay, point taken, but I’m not like you. I can’t just teach myself to be a mechanical engineer.

You hated engineering.

MEL

WILL I didn’t hate it. Okay, I didn’t love it, but I was good at it. And I’d be able to get a really good job right away.

MEL I make six figures, and my most impressive credential is a GED from the state of Massachusetts.

You don’t need college to get a good job.

WILL Look, we can’t all be genius freelance software developers. If I’m ever gonna move out and live on my own, I need a degree. I need to get serious.

MEL That’s not what you want. I mean, what you really want.

How would you know?

WILL

MEL I know you. I used to listen to you talk about how shitty college was all the time. For hours. Also, your nostrils flare when you lie.

(Beat.)

13 And besides, what about us? What about the guild? Everything we’ve worked for?

It’s just a game, Mel. It’s not to me. And it wasn’t to Ty, either.

It’s just not the same without him.

I miss him too, you know.

WILL MEL WILL MEL

WILL We all do. Hell, I don’t play half as good when I don’t have that dumb scratchy voice of his yelling in my ear.

MEL “Goddammit, Willard! Use your axe! YOUR OTHER AXE!” Willard.

Did you ever tell him it’s actually William?

WILL MEL

WILL Didn’t have the heart. Besides, it kinda grew on me.

I still can’t believe it.

I know. Me, neither.

MEL WILL

MEL One day we’re raiding goblin mines, and the next...

He’s gone.

Just like that.

Never even got to say goodbye.

I wish he’d told us.

He told me.

What?

WILL MEL WILL MEL WILL MEL

WILL He told me. Kind of. About a week before it happened. I mean, he didn’t come right out and say it, but. I should’ve known.

Told you what? What did he say?

MEL

WILL Nothing really. He DM’d me one night when people started going to bed. It was pretty late, you know? And he asked if he could talk to me about something.

14 And?

MEL

WILL And he told me he’d been feeling really down lately.

Oh, god. Will.

MEL

WILL He said he didn’t want to do this anymore. I thought he was talking about The Game.

MEL Listen to me, this is not your fault. There was nothing you could’ve done.

WILL I could’ve said something. Anything. Hell, I could’ve just shut up and listened for five seconds.

But all I could think about was the stupid game.

MEL hesitates.

Can I ask you something?

Yeah.

Why didn’t you ever tell him?

MEL WILL MEL

WILL Come on, it’s Ty. He could’ve done so much better than, you know. Me. I can cope with rejection, but god, not from him. It would’ve killed me. And what if I’d lost him as a friend just ‘cause I couldn’t keep my big dumb mouth shut?

A moment.

I need to tell you something.

MEL

WILL Oh, god. Please don’t. I think I’ve already demonstrated that I’m really not good at these conversations.

It’s about Ty. What about him?

Promise you won’t hate me. Pinky swear.

Seriously?

MEL WILL MEL WILL

She holds up her pinky. After a moment, he gives in and does the same. They pantomime a pinky swear.

Okay. Look, um. Ty really liked you, Will.

Yeah. I really liked him, too.

MEL WILL MEL

15 No, I mean. He liked you. He had feelings for you. I’m sorry. Please believe me, I’m so sorry.

WILL And you decide to tell me this now? Two months, Mel. It’s been two months. I mean, what were you waiting for, the perfect moment? How about before he died, huh? How about when it would’ve actually mattered?

MEL I wanted to tell you, I really did. He made me promise not to, said he was waiting ‘til after he came out to his family, you know? And you made me promise not to say anything to him, and I just. I figured eventually you two would work it out on your own. I thought––I thought there was time. And then there wasn’t.

WILL Just shut up, okay? We could’ve saved him. I could’ve saved him. God, what if––? I mean, what do you want me to say? “It’s not your fault”? I can’t. ‘Cause you know what? It kind of is.

MEL I know! Okay? I know. I messed up. And now you’re quitting The Game, and––and what’s even the point anymore? What’s the point if your two best friends are gone?

It’s just a game, Mel.

WILL

MEL How can you say that? How can you say that, when it’s the only reason I even know you? When it’s the only reason you ever met Ty? It might be a virtual world, but the PEOPLE are real. So don’t try and tell me it’s “just a game.” I don’t play for the game. I play because that’s where my friends are, because I don’t have people like you and Ty in my real life. I can’t. I’m literally at my computer all day, every day. You see where I’m going with this? The Game, you guys, the guild –– that’s all I have.

WILL I get it, okay? I do. You guys were all I had too, you and Ty. And now, it’s like. It’s like half of me’s just gone. I can’t even get online without thinking about him. I just can’t do it anymore.

We could take him off our roster.

MEL

WILL I could never bring myself to do that. Could you? And even if we did, it’s like. I still have his texts, I still have him on all my social media. I still have his DMs. MEL And I don’t? God. Do you know what his last message to me said? “Stay gold, Mel.” Stay gold. Some fucking––some S.E. Hinton bullshit. Jesus, he was trying to tell me, wasn’t he? And you know what I said? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. It was late, and I was tired, and it’s been like a thousand years since I read The Outsiders. So I said nothing.

WILL I should have told him. I should have just told him.

MEL Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known, nobody could have.

WILL Yeah, except he tried to tell me, and I didn’t listen. And now he’s gone. But his stupid, purple-pantswearing avatar is still there, staring me in the face every time I log on. I mean, Christ. I’m being haunted by an Elf Mage.

Don’t quit. Please.

Give me one good reason to stay.

MEL WILL

MEL The guild needs you, you’re our only melee fighter right now. You’re our Knight, you can’t just give up on us.

16 WILL You’re gonna recruit anyway, you’ll find another one.

MEL

I need you.

WILL We’ll still talk all the time, I promise. We can Skype whenever you want.

MEL It’s not the same. Besides, quitting The Game won’t change anything. Do you really think you’re gonna miss him any less just because you’re not seeing his avatar every day?

WILL

I don’t know.

MEL Don’t quit. We’ll retire his character, we’ll start recruiting, we’ll rebuild. It won’t make this right, but it’s better than nothing. It’s better than quitting. At least this way, we can work through it together. Just stick with me. Please. I don’t want to lose you, too.

WILL

You won’t.

MEL Your nostrils are flaring. Don’t you dare log off on me, Will.

WILL

Calm down.

MEL You’ll be on tomorrow, right? Promise me you’ll be on tomorrow.

Skype starts to glitch again. WILL lags.

Sure.

Pinky swear?

WILL MEL

She holds up her pinky. A moment. He hangs up the call. Lights out on WILL. MEL is left alone for a beat. Lights out on MEL. Only the empty chair is lit.

BLACKOUT. END OF PLAY --Glossary: CAMPAIGN - A series of in-game quests, often with its own story arc and unique rewards.

CLERIC (pronounced ‘clair-ick’) - Character class within The Game, a healer or priest(ess).

ELF MAGE (pronounced like ‘cage’) - Character class within The Game, an elf wizard or sorcerer.

KNIGHT - Character class within The Game, a warrior/fighter.

MELEE (pronounced ‘may-lay’) - Close combat fighting style, as opposed to long-range. MOUNT MARANA (pronounced like ‘piranha’) - A geographical location in-game.

THE GAME - A fictional MMORPG in the same vein as World of Warcraft or League of Legends.

RAID - A type of quest in which a (often large) group of players battles NPCs (Non- Playable Characters) to collect in-game rewards. Typically last 3-4 hours, can last indefinitely.

17 DREAMLESS OR THE SERGIO URREGO PHENOMENON GABRIEL G. TORRES CHARACTERS: Sergio Urrego School Principal / Abuela / Mother The Puppet Gabrielle AV: A documental shall be presented through the performance in the shape of audiovisuals. It must be about LGBTI youth suicidal rate at the moment, and it must co relate to the case of Sergio Urrego Bogota Colombia, 2017.

The following action is inspired by the events happened on Bogota, Colombia, August of 2014.

On your honor Sergio, Rest in Peace.

- Gabriel G Torres REVERIE I ACT

The curtains are open before the show begins.

There’s a bright yellow light coming out of the window placed in the background of the stage, it blinds the audience.

The Light dims down as the space is revealed.

It is divided in three sections, each section will be categorized as its own space, with a different atmosphere.

The three sections are: Interviewing section: An interviewing room that conveys the sterility of a surgery room. A chair, and a video camera on a tripod. A three point lighting set up.

The Arena section: UPSTAGE LEFT, a turntables hanging from the ceiling, next to the turntables, a human size dusty PUPPET resting as if he was crucified.

DOWNSTAGE LEFT, a gigantic wardrobe laying on its right side - it has a sketch of the universe painted on it DOWNSTAGE CENTER, a two steps ladder placed.

MID-STAGE RIGHT, a computer and an ancient cellphone hanging from the ceiling.

DOWNSTAGE RIGHT, a gigantic cylinder made of shower curtains, a hanging bulb perfectly falling on the center of the cylinder, three inches from touching an old ugly single bed.

The Projections Section: The back-wall made into a window, where the projections are showcased, and where the moon rests in between audiovisuals.

AT RISE: Sergio is resting on this single bed.

Sergio wakes up.

He is saturated by his mother’s plasma.

Leaves the bed slowly.

Tiresome...

Sights then Lights the bulb.

(Thanks to the bulb) We can see Sergio’s Shadow. He hyperventilates. Moves like a baby about to be born; a compulsive dance.

The Pajama he is wearing breaks.

I/E. CLOSE UP OF EYES.

Eyes, tired eyes, lost eyes, plane and cold.

FADE TO MOONLIGHT. SERGIO Mother! I had the strangest dream... I was in the darkest room and they were staring at me like if... they were waiting for me to do something. Mother, is oblivion worse than rancor? The water is cold... eyes in different shapes... is this a prognostication? These eyes didn’t blink, they were liquid and direct... waiting... walking on my thoughts. Where are you?... Where am...?

18

A military camp alarm rings.

Sergio gets out of the cylinder.

Sergio is sopping, Sergio is petrified.

Sergio is in his underwear only.

Sergio is on his fluffy underwear, Looks like a cloth diaper.

SERGIO (To the audience) It rings twice in the mornings and once before bed. Three times total.

The first to remind me of the bitter dawn, the second, to remind me I have to be silent on my sleep, and the third one is just a repetitive rumble in my head.

The Alarm stops Enjoy. The. Most. Precious. Sound.

SERGIO

Silence.

SERGIO Hope is the most atrocious of all sins, it prolongs human torment. (Silence) Mother used to tell me decisions cause effects. Mother used to comb my hair and give me a diminutive cup of tea. Life has always move between tiny... minuets... (Beat) Where am I?

Silence Sergio notices the audience staring.

Sergio tries to leave the stage through them.

Sergio can not.

Sergio is stopped by an invisible veil that stretches but won’t be penetrated.

SERGIO (To the audience) Who are you all?

(To himself) Am I a shadow?

(To the audience) I think I recognize you... You were there, scary eyes, shaking eyes,morbid eyes.

(To himself) The first time he saw me...

Sergio runs to take a Math book out of the wardrobe. He sits on the floor.

Sergio hides himself in the book.

SERGIO It is a sunny day, everybody is desperate to get out of class, no mo math! I have seen him by the clock that ticks nonstop, he looks at me, I look back, the clock ticks... (Smiles) He saw me.

The alarm rings! I try to put everything in my bag as fast as I can so I can go home to enjoy Pink Floyd and Bukowski... suddenly...

Sergio Becomes a stone.

I/E. CLOSE UP OF A HAND

A hand placed on Sergio’s Shoulder.

SERGIO He places his hand on my shoulder and says: “Would you help me with this equation I did not understand?”

Sergio turns around.

Sergio stares at the window.

Sergio sighs.

FADE TO MOONLIGHT. SERGIO (To the audience) (No Pauses) (Crescendo) He had a movie star face, he smiled at me.

I felt as if a thunder started to raise slowly from...

The tip of my big toe to my thigh to my... crotch!

(Serenely) The thunder switched softly to the “Other side” Tickling me on the stomach.

(Agitated) It was lightly getting to my heart.

Like if he could enter freely into my thoughts.

19

A Flash... warm? My throat was burning.

(Hyperventilating) A knot in my tongue, my hands shook, Like a speaker rumbling at a certain precise rhythm, A monotone in my soul. Mozart in my guts! It raised to my face...

(Calmed) One by one, all my features started to distort.

I felt the pressure, the movement, the vibration, the containment of my...

What is this sensation?

Like the rain arriving on a green field or a rainbow.

How do they call it?

Sergio notices someone in the audience.

Sergio walks downstage.

Sergio stumbles with the invisible wall.

Sergio flirts with the person he notices.

You stare at me.

I stare at you.

I miss you.

You do not understand.

I love you.

No...

I feel love for you..

SERGIO

Sergio makes out with himself...

Sergio walks towards the other side of the stage, something tickles him.

(Melodramatic) Oh, please, stop, no!

Please, stop, I can’t do this anymore!

SERGIO

(Laughing) I adore you.

Your eyes, Your smell.

What are you doing? No! Oh... don’t touch me there.

Stupid! Don’t get angry.

Kiss me.

Pretty thing, you look like a teddy bear, You never know when t is the last time... Feel me.

Don’t leave me.

Call me.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Call me.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Call me.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Call me.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Call me.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

You first.

Bye. No. Bye. No. You first.

20

No. You first.

(Shouting angrily) I said BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Sergio turns to stone for thirty seconds.

Sergio stares at the audience.

Sergio tries to find a way to get out again.

(To the audience) What do you see?

SERGIO

A naked body do you see?

Look at me again, nothing?

What do you want me to do?

I am just a mediocre idea made to confront you all. You judge me... (Smiles) you can not attack me.

What is dividing us?

I am at your service right now. Your insecurities and your lies. I am the one you say hello to on the streets, the one you apologize to or ask “How I am doing” when you didn’t care at all. You say: “Thank you, and good night, and you first, and it’s getting better” (Like a child) Don’t speak to the bus driver! Behave!

IF I AM TO BE A HOMO (Laughing out loud) Better to become an ARTIST! There is always a more sophisticated and elegant way to tell the truth.

The explicit is cheap, just like sex!

You know, I am just trying to be smart and let you know something you already figured out.

(Sweet) Do not. Stare at. Me. Ever. Again.

Sergio covers himself.

I am real.

SERGIO

A camera operator dressed in Doctor’s clothes enters. He turns on the camera. Sergio’s mother enters and seats on the chair in front of the camera. - It is important to know her back is facing the audience, we shall never see the face of whoever is sitting on that chair, but their reflection onto the projection area- The camera operator turns the three point lighting setting on.

A Projection of her face lights up on the other side.

INT. DAY

Interview to Sergio’s Mother. (This will be a dramatization of an actual interview done to the Mother made on 2018 by Gabriel Torres, for future productions, if the footage is not available or lost, it will be at the director’s discretion to imagine it) The mother leaves the stage, The camera operator stays, he sits down, he falls asleep.

The cellphone rings.

SERGIO Alo? Mama!

(Relieved) I am good. Si... Abuela? Making breakfast.

I miss you... hey... what about school? Can I go back?

Not yet... Have you talked to his parents...? What?

I understand... You know me!

21

(Wilting) Oh mom! You know I am not capable...

I don’t care at all right now.

(Abstracted) Don’t worry, I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Sergio hangs up.

Sergio turns to stone.

I/E. MIDDLE CLOSE UP

Homophobic stereotypes smiling crudely.

The School principal comes into the interview space, she notices the camera operator is asleep, she wakes him up, and sits down just as the mother did.

The School principal smiles till the end of the video.

SERGIO (To the School Principal) (About to break) My age has a very defined issue. I am too old for video games but too young for responsibilities. It is stupidity to think of my right to education as an option dependent on your moral ideologies.

Stop smiling!

Listen to me!

Imbecile!

Stop Staring!

You look like concrete.

Plain.

Stunned.

Imbecile!

One dimensional!

They teach us.

They instruct us.

The school principal leaves, The camera operator goes back to sleep.

FADE TO MOONLIGHT.

Sergio goes to the wardrobe, He gets a pair of square reading glasses And a reporter’s hat. He pretends to be so.

SERGIO Hello Carmen Sofia, yes I am where it happened. This is Titan Plaza Shopping Mall... where a sixteen year old male is...

Something Falls SERGIO Hello, do you hear me?

Carmen Sofia!...

I am walking to where the sound came from...

God! Forgive us.

Look at it.

Look at it.

Benito, zoom into the corpse, they need to see how it shattered.

The body exploded into a thousand pieces.

I/E. CLOSE UP OF BODY

A shattered body, pieces of it.

22

FADE TO MOONLIGHT.

Sergio is quiet.

He looks at the window.

He takes out the hat and the glasses.

The body exploded into a thousand pieces.

No! Dios mio!

SERGIO

Thunders.

(Shouting) Move. Don’t touch him.

Where is the police? Where is the family?

Nobody noticed he was about to jump?

It is a shopping mall! Blind People.

Nobody noticed.

Nobody saw.

SERGIO

Silence (Looking at the time) I am naked!

SERGIO

Sergio goes to the wardrobe.

Puts on school pants, socks and shoes.

Ties his shoes when...

A Skype call comes.

Goes to the computer.

Answers.

Sergio takes a pillow and squeezes it hard.

Sergio’s face shines.

He smiles.

SERGIO How are you? I am good... hey hum... my mom told... yeah. What do you think?

Nothing?

Sergio squeezes harder.

SERGIO Nothing... but... what do you mean? I understand... Can you let me speak?

Sergio squeezes harder.

It is not easy...

But it isn’t impossible.

I don’t believe it either

SERGIO

(Crying) I miss you.

I dream of you even when I don’t want to.

I think of you even when I am thoughtless.

I had this weird dream today, You were crying and I was...

Surrounded by... eyes...

Staring for so long.

I woke up after that and I can’t sleep right now. Don’t go! Send me a kiss! Just one...

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

23

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Oh well...

Bye, no.

Sergio smiles.

SERGIO

Take care.

Sergio stands up.

Enthusiastically he recites: SERGIO

I love you like I love my eyes, From my eyes I love you.

But I love my eyes more, Forgive the innocence.

Forgive the inability to know, Please let me find the core of my first love.

If it is in your lethal eyes and by looking I die, You are the most beautiful death, Your eyes are my sky.

Gabrielle’s hand enters holding a letter.

Sergio goes to it.

He takes the letter and opens it.

(The letter says he can go back to school) He jumps, screams and dances.

Sergio, are you ready?

The shirt Abuela!

Come downstairs for it.

ABUELA (V.O.) SERGIO ABUELA (V.O.)

Sergio goes to the wardrobe.

Sergio enters it.

DOCUMENTAL: Short documental of similar cases. We shall never get to the part where they explicitly talk about the suicide, focus on when they describe the subjects and how they behaved.

FADE TO MOONLIGHT.

Sergio leaves the wardrobe.

He is putting on the school shirt, Sergio looks at the window as if it was a mirror.

SERGIO I wonder if something has changed while I was absent in school. What is the philosophy teacher going to tell me now? Romeo and Juliet finally die together. Liar rests. Hamlet takes responsibility.

Sergio runs to the wardrobe.

He gets a bag full of books.

The school principal comes into the interviewing space again, she wakes up the camera operator by slapping him.

I/E. MIDDLE CLOSE UP

The school principal has a cellphone on her hands. Her voice sounds oddly slow. Her expressions are extravagant, an eye closes before the other, as if she had some type of mental disease.

SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

24

Mister...

Sergiouuuuuuu Urrrrrrrreeeeegouuuuuuu Mister...

Mister...

Sergioiiiiii Urregoaaa....

Good morning!

Sergio turns to stone.

SCHOOL PRINCIPAL I wanted to inform you in this beautiful morning... the school has determined your psychological tests to be insufficient for your reentry into eleventh grade. We wish you the best possible rehab. Have a good day.

Hangs up.

The school principal leaves.

The camera operator gestures bye to the audience and leaves after taking its gloves out.

FADE TO MOONLIGHT. THE MOON GETS CLOUDY. It wasn’t intentional...

I was leaving the room... he... asked me....

I... We just... kissed.

SERGIO

Yes. We kissed several times!

(To the audience) (Trying to escape from the stage) We hate what we find when we meet ourselves, we reflect it in others. We have gotten to be forgotten, we have found disgust in love, we’ve found morals and cordiality, and we are just opaque. Mrs! Times are changing...

(Shouting) If being a faggot is my punishment then...

I gladly accept this divine torture!

Sergio Falls He rips his clothes.

He stands up.

He goes to the cylinder taciturnly.

SERGIO (Like a ghost) Even in my own room I pretend to be someone else. I look around, I pretend to see eyes. I pretend to have slept and feel good. He is not here anymore, nobody. Life gives you a tiny minuet of enlightenment, don’t waste it. I look at myself, I pretend to speak with imaginary people, fantasize, hide in the privacy of my own games, play to be in better times. Is hope a punishment? Left without education, left without love. Pointed.

Humiliated. Who cares? (Laughs) For eternity...

Sergio turns the bulb off.

He gets out of the cylinder.

Stands just in front of the two step ladder.

SERGIO (To the audience) I dreamed yesterday that this space was nothing more than a lie.

I dreamed I masturbated till I came on every one of your faces.

My past was erased and day after day I lived the same minuet, The same eyes, the same sensations, the same liberation till...

I stopped feeling. The water was perpetually cold, tried to dry it...

Like an average worker, waiting and dreaming.

Yesterday I dreamed I died while strange eyes stared at me...

Odd...

To Die...

To Rest...

25 Sergio goes to the turntables.

He plays: “Good bye Cruel World by Pink Floyd” first chords and the puppet turns alive in a taciturn way.

The following actions are developed as a ritual.

The character will act as a somber ghost while humming the song.

Sergio takes his clothes.

He puts them on.

He combs himself.

He puts on his shoes.

He takes the bag full of books.

He climbs one of the steps.

SERGIO Abue! I am going to school now... if you talk to Mama, tell her I love her, I love you too.

Long Silence SERGIO I want a water drop on my hair, To desire a future and watch my children grow.

A bachelors degree then a Masters.

Watch Grandma get very old.

I want to help an empty soul, Change how my society thinks, At least, the minds of those surrounding me, an ice cream at 3:00 PM while a smile on my smile.

An opportunity to invent, An opportunity to struggle, An opportunity to repent.

I want to be a perpetual memory of transformation, A minuet of illumination.

He climbs the second step.

SERGIO (Trying to throw himself from the ladder) (Speaking as if falling) You all wrote me as a facade, You all turned me into a shadow, A curfew.

You all brought me to this stage to make you uncomfortable.

You all victimized me, You all tormented me, You all antagonized me.

Gave me a life which didn’t correspond to me.

Took it from me every night after the play finished.

Called me Persona and not a person.

You all destroyed my soul, Forced me to live the same reality again and again...

Do you all feel attacked or alluded?

Silence SERGIO I had the strangest dream yesterday...

It was August fourth of two thousand fourteen... Night.

I showed my grandma my new school uniform, Left a couple letters in odd places of my house.

I got out of my house and walked to...

Titan Plaza shopping mall.

I took the elevator to the last floor, Sent my friends a good bye, then one to him... my love.

I stood right in the border of the look out at the mall.

My body was shaking...

26

(Aside) I will miss grandma, her hands, the depth of her eyes, the way she dreamed and the way she missed her youth.

(To the audience) In a minuet... I was flying!

(Scared) (Whispering) Five.

Four.

An uproar on the floor...

(Terrorized) (Whispering) Three.

Two...

Eyes staring at me, cold like water...

No expression whatsoever!

Strange!

Sergio balances on the step.

I couldn’t sleep ever again!

Never again!

SERGIO

I was dreamless...

Dreamless...

Less than a dream.

Sergio falls from the stage.

THE MOONLIGHT FADES TO BLACK. END OF FIRST ACT.

VISUAL ART VISUAL ART VIS

VISUAL ART SUAL ART VISU-

29

GRACE JINNAH (Counter-clockwise) ALONE, BLIND, EVE

30

bria goeller ^ HEAL 2 JEM ZERO < REST IN PARADISE, LEELAH

31 JAN BRUGGER This is an ongoing series of digital collages that use photographs from my recent trip to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece to depict (cis) male celebrities that have recently been accused of sexual abuse as piles of stone. They are derived from the concept of Medusa as a feminist symbol who reverses â&#x20AC;&#x153;the gazeâ&#x20AC;? from male to female. It is believed that the gazer (historically male) holds power, but Medusa shifts that power.

Turning these abusers into stone began as a therapeutic process during periods when I felt triggered and overwhelmed by the amount of stories that arose from the #metoo movement.

(Counter-clockwise to center) Headstone #9 (Terry Richardson at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #6 (Jeffrey Tambor at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #2 (Ben Affleck at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #4 (Stephen Collins at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #8 (David Blaine at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #10 (James Franco at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #5 (Kevin Spacey at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #3 (Brett Ratner at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #1 (Louis CK at pile of rocks), 2018 Headstone #7 (Oliver Stone at pile of rocks), 2018

33

rebecca lipps SMALL SCULPTURES 1 - 4

34

35

LYDIA NEWMAN-HEGGIE “PUNK QUILTS: SUBVERTING GENDER NORMS

36

JEM ZERO SUNSHINE HAS NO GENDER

37 Francesco Piraino + Laura Zambelli QUEERING A MARY ICON: A PHOTOGRAPHIC TOUR OF A RELIGIOUS PILGRIMAGE IN SOUTHERN ITALY The sanctuary of Montevergine.

Winter. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cold, and old yet clean snow lies on the ground while low clouds hide the top of Mount Partenio, near Avellino, Southern Italy. February 2nd is the day of Candlemas, or, for the Catholic Church, the day of presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In the past century, people climbed to the sanctuary of Montevergine during the night to attend the morning service. Now, a shuttle service allows the believers from all over Southern Italy to attend the celebration.

38 Mamma Schiavona, the icon of Mary of Montevergine.

The icon is object of veneration of many believers, who come from all around Southern Italy to worship it on 2nd February and 12th September (the Feast of the name of Mary). Mamma Schiavona is a black Madonna, and the base of the statue bears the words “Nigra sum sed formosa” [I am black, but beautiful] (Song of Songs). Different founding myths focus around this Madonna, as well as the place hosting it. The icon is said to come from Constantinople, and to be painted by none other than Saint Luke. Also, following the legend, worshippers of Cybele were said to live on Mount Partenio; they were mostly men who, sometimes castrated, used to venerate the goddess while wearing female garments. Nowadays, among the believers, a remarkable place is occupied by femminielli, who we would describe as queer, homosexuals, or transgender people, depending on the aspect we highlight – be it gender identity or sexual orientation.

39

“We are the femminielli”

“We are the femminielli”, sings Marcello Colasurdo [center], a well known figure in the local context, who sings a song dedicated to Mamma Schiavona in honour of Bruno and Orlando. Bruno and Orlando have been awarded the honorary citizenship from the municipality of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo for their struggle for LGBT rights, and as symbolic recognition of the discriminations faced by Orlando as young inhabitant of Ospedaletto.

Femminielli did not use to claim equal rights or a recognition from institutions, such as the State of the Church; they held a specific role in the local Neapolitan community: they were said to bring luck, given small commissions such as tending children, etc.

Recently, Mamma Schiavona has become part of LGBT and queer claims for equal rights. These groups are well aware of the founding myths surrounding Mamma Schiavona, and themselves contributed to this narrative. They claim that Mamma Schiavona has been protecting femminielli since the 17th century, when she saved from certain death two young male lovers who sought shelter on Mount Partenio, running away from the crowd, hostile to their bond.

The media frenzy.

40

Outside the sanctuary of Montevergine, VIPs, media representatives [i.e. the man with the raised arm works for a national television channel], femminielli, paranze and believers are celebrating Mamma Schiavona by dancing, drinking, and eating together.

February 2nd is a religious celebration and a popular and traditional event, which underlines the end of the Winter and the arrival of the Spring (Candlemas). Popular, religious, and traditional elements mix in the celebration of this day, the feast of light and the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. This occasion gathers believers, femminielli, LGBT groups, and popular music lovers.

February 2nd is also an occasion for the civil authorities and the citizens of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo to focus the attention on the social and legal struggles for LGBT and queer rights, due to the link between femminielli, LGBT movements and Mamma Schiavona. Also, the importance of media and the visibility they provide is a constituting element which contributes to the spectacularisation of the phenomenon of Mamma Schiavona.

VIPs, media, the press.

Vladimir Luxuria [4th from the left], a former member of the Italian parliament, attends the inauguration of the plate against homo and queer transphobia and gender violence provided by the municipality of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo and of the (allegedly) first “no gender” public restroom in Italy. Several figures among media representatives and civil authorities, such as the mayor of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo [2nd from the left], attend the event.

41 Popular celebrations: climbing the stairs for Mamma Schiavona.

Marcello Colasurdo [not visible because kneeled down] sings a traditional song dedicated to Mary of Montevergine while climbing the stairs to the sanctuary surrounded by photographers and believers. This is a topical moment for the celebration, as the singerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effort in climbing the stairs while kneeling down and singing is intended as an offer to Mamma Schiavona.

Popular celebrations and dances.

To dance together, especially in circles and with drums, is a popular way to celebrate Mamma Schiavona. Throughout the morning, at the same time of the mass celebration, outside the sanctuary, where the snow has been swept to make room for the cars, the coaches, and the stands, many believers dance.

42

A femminiello [centre] takes part in a tammurriata (traditional dance from southern Italy involving drums). The femminielli and the local population of any age gather to the sanctuary to celebrate Mamma Schiavona.

43

FIONA JONES CARESS (I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN)^

DOWNPOUR (I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN)

44

TSAILING TSENG BUTTERFLY^

FISHER MAN AND HIS FISHES

PROSE FICTION ATIVE NON FIC. PROSE FICTION + CREATIVE NON FIC. ROSE FICTION TIVE NON FIC.

47 DEPRESSION: AN ESSAY ON BAS JAN ADER EVAN GRAHAm

This is an attempt to write depression. This is an attempt to write how depression creates understanding. This is an attempt to write how creating an understanding of art can create an understanding of depression. This is an attempt to write about survival through understanding.

I am writing only what I know.

I am writing through a void. ___ Understanding

I have depression. I am what depression allows. Everything that I see is through the lens of depression. The only way that I create understanding is filtered through depression.

The cause of my depression can never be known, not because it is impossible but because I don’t want it to be known. Why this is the case is also unanswerable. These unknowns have haunted me as much as the engulfing void that I name my depression. Poignantly, these questions are inseparable from my depression. These questions both spiral out and constitute a void.

Skirting any questions of cause--it is here and it is not going away--I focus on the symptoms of the void, the ways that I continually create my own void, the ways that it has always been in existence. I am overwhelmed. What is important is a tacit understanding that depression can be worked with. It is an aspect of my nature, of our natures, that I, we, can separate from ourselves; understand that our psychic beings, being able to be conceptualized as an object in and of themselves, can be kept in check in some peculiar way. This careful type of dissociation is why I am alive today. Separating from my depression, wholly in a superficial way, ignoring the fact that I am depression and my depression is me, I drag myself from the void in order to look back. I attempt to understand it at a moment, with varying degrees of success. Through temporary understanding I am able to wrest temporary control. It is therapeutic to know, even for a moment.

I survive.

Through understanding I change: change perspective, change medication, regain a grounding in what doesn’t send me spiraling. For example, in the past I became obsessed that I was the object of everyone’s negative judgement; the entire world’s negative judgement. It caused me to stay indoors. It caused me to stay in bed. I went to therapy. Slowly I emerged from that void. With help I was able to look back. I was able to understand that this obsession was a symptom: a symptom of many things but most importantly it was a symptom of my own gaze and my own judgement. I needed to be empathetic, I needed to be sympathetic, I needed to embrace the unknown of all the others that pass, I needed to realize that they were not as unknown as I rendered them. I changed my perspective, I became all the things that are promoted as good virtues in this world, I was happy.

I survived.

Then, in the process of life, time goes on and I transform and I’m in a different place and I’m in a different situation and I’m losing control over my depression. But I am depression. I am losing control over my very being. I am confused and I am cold but the void is there and stronger than ever.

It’s comforting to have a constant. It’s comforting to be close to death. The cycle starts over. I forget the good and remember the bad and enter a void that has no beginning or end. I seek help, if I need.

I emerge. I look back. I change what is in my control.

I survive.

I am waiting for the day that my life ends by natural causes. That’s the correct way to die right? For me, yes. This is why I love sleep. Sleep allows me to turn from the real. A real that is monstrous. A real that I allow to be monstrous. But that is beyond my control. I look back only if I can. Dying is a sleep where there is no awakening into a real. Dying is relief from the monstrous.

Dying is an awakening.

I survive only to die. ___

Understanding is wedded to the visual in that they’re indivisible from the process in which they’re embedded. But I don’t need to say that. What I need to say is what I gain from vision passes through depression into understanding. Or does it enter depression and stay there festering creating a bloated, gaping understanding? I don’t know.

At any rate, depression colors my vision therefore depression colors my understanding.

As I said before, in order to survive I need to consciously dissociate in order to understand how I understand. One way that I can do this is through looking at art and attempting to understand art. Art is an object, a concept that I can contemplate. It is discrete from me, walled off from me, unable to be fully understood by me. But this doesn’t bother me. It comforts me to know that a piece of art is wholly made of my understanding at a moment in time. Some moments are longer than others. The moment I am writing is long.

Bas Jan Ader’s art helps me understand my depression. Through looking, through

48 contemplating, it helps me perform the essential dissociation that allows me to survive. ___ Meaning

The obvious is a good place to start. I am too sad to tell you. By writing that phrase on postcard after postcard, flipping it over to see your own tear stained face, Bas Jan Ader’s tear stained face, there are no words that are necessary other than I am too sad to tell you.

Depression escapes words. This is partly due to the fact that depression is my psychic being which is necessarily unknowable (it’s quite the claim to ask oneself to fully know oneself).

But what I can do is write my depression. Once I write it it is no longer mine but that of the past.

I change, my depression changes, the void changes, and the words are emptied. But there is one phrase that returns precisely because it refers to nothing but the undeniable fact of one’s emotions and the inability to properly say them. I am too sad to tell you.

This phrase is annoying to others because it signals the limits of knowing the other. Does this mark an undeniable fact of existence, a rupture in the screen that is the Symbolic? Does this rupture come forth as a subtle anxiety, one that is not evident to the subject of that anxiety?

Does this symptom emerge as a way to protect your own self from the void? I don’t know. What I do know is it alienates. It blocks any attempt of help from another human being, any attempt at comfort. The other leaves, moves on, annoyed at the empty proposition that you conveyed. What remains is that overwhelming feeling and its failure. I am too sad to tell you.

Transforming the postcards into a short film, two short films, but one lost, Bas Jan Ader faces the camera and cries. No sound. No color. But what is attached to this sobbing face is a title, that annoying floating enigma once attached to a real person but now condemned to haunt through time and space. This dual monster of a tear drenched face that silently insists I am too sad to tell you.

This specter both mocks and comforts. It throws in my face the inescapable fact that depression is meaningless insofar as meaning comes from words. Depression is a void and a void is necessarily void of meaning. A void of meaning is immune to words: written or spoken or thought. They all fester in a bloated understanding of the self. But what the void allows is the visual. It allows an animated face stained with tears. It allows a slightly open mouth to leak emotion and tears and anger and sadness and confusion and finally emptiness. It allows phrases so general in their meaning that they open to the general that is existence. This is related to projection--only depressives can come close to knowing other depressives. Depression is confusing. Depression is productive. What I am left with is a reflection of my face obscured by tears. I am disgusted. I am comforted. I am too sad to tell you.

I enter a continually altering matrix through the process of controlled dissociation. I attempt to understand why I am sad. I’m exhausted by the process but I proceed out of necessity.

I am sad because I feel alone. I am sad because I feel worthless. I am sad because I feel aimless. I am sad because I long for something that I cannot know. I am sad because I see a crying face. I am sad because I feel sad. I am sad because I cannot explain why.

Once Bas Jan Ader finishes his film, sends off his postcards, they enter the real. Severed from the imaginary that is his sadness, the sadness that issues only from his mind, held in his mind. They no longer hold a personal meaning. They go through iterations of interpretations at the hands of people that have no hope of knowing why or how. One says in a passing statement Bas Jan Ader plays the Man of Sorrows. I quote Isaiah:

He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured.

We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, But he was pierced with our sins, crushed for our iniquity.

He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.

We all had gone astray like sheep, all following our own way;

49 But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.

Though harshly treated, he submitted and did not open his mouth; Like a lamb being led to slaughter or the sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his mouth.

Seized and condemned, he was taken away.

Who would have thought any more of his destiny?

For he was cut off from the land of the living, struck for the sins of his people.

He was given a grave among the wicked, a burial place with evildoers, Though he had done no wrong, nor was deceit found in his mouth.

But it was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain.

By making his life as a reparation offering, he shall see his offspring, shall lengthen his days, and the Lord’s will shall be accomplished through him.

Because of his anguish he shall see the light; because of his knowledge he shall be content; My servant, the just one, shall justify the many, their iniquity he shall bear.

Therefore I will give him his portion among the many, and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty, Because he surrendered himself to death, was counted among the transgressors, Bore the sins of many, and interceded for the transgressors

Bas Jan Ader is not Christ, he will never be Christ, and therefore comparing him to Christ is an gesture that should provoke condemnation. The only thing that matters is the screen that cries. The screen whose mouth holds no deceit by screaming the impossibility of its utterance. The mouth that is silent. A representation of sadness, of fear. And, of course, that floating phrase I am too sad to tell you.

This screen will not be the source of my, or your eternal salvation but it will be the source of my piecemeal survival. Read: Because of his anguish he shall see the light; / because of his knowledge he shall be content. A man of suffering, a man of sorrows, be it Christ or Bas Jan Ader, or you or me, is marked by a crying face. Knowledge needs nothing more than that crying face to know, but that knowledge is imperfect because it can never be complete. That knowledge does not wholly belong to me. Is it this imperfect knowledge of not knowing the other’s pain or is it the knowledge that this pain can never be known but it can still nevertheless be transferred?

Transferred from human being to human being because of the undeniable fact that everyone can know pain and everyone does know pain. This transference is through art. This art is in the field of vision. Seeing allows one to approach understanding, in this context more than the most specific words could ever do.

Words fail but I look. I stare. I make it a point to watch the cycle again and again. I am left empty. I witness the sadness of one human being who though the slightly open mouth, the falling tears, the all too present silence, whispers I am too sad to tell you. I feel a shudder. I wish that I could cry in order to create the same meaning, to also be able to so beautifully signal the void.

Instead I’m left with my own evocation. I am too sad to tell you. I quote the Bible because I try.

But meaning is made within oneself and does not need tears or words. Transference from one to another needs words and tears and most importantly the stuff of seeing. The knowledge created by the transference is imperfect so that necessarily means that the transference is imperfect. I find perfection in saying human beings are eternally imperfect. Our alienation, created by imperfect transference is nothing but perfect because it is ours. We spit tears and vomit words and the meanings that emerge are as much yours as they are mine.

Watching this virtual man sobbing, wrenching from a sadness that neither I nor him can fully know is enough. I am comforted by the sadness that breaks through the screen. The historical

50 facts so precious to the meaning of art drop away. I can no longer decipher their importance. They are swallowed by the void. What I’m left with is a man who once cried into a camera and gave it to the world. In this gesture, he had the confidence to say the only thing that he knew at that moment. I am too sad to tell you. This gesture gives me the words to say the same. Its aim to give even a semblance of form to the gaping void of meaning comforts me even for a moment. I repeat the words.

I am too sad to tell you ___ Being

Depression gains meaning through actions. The understanding I gain of another person, the understanding that I gain of their depression, colors my depression. Nothing cuts as close to meaning as do actions. Seeing a crying face, seeing a silent mouth slightly agape, seeing a body falling, transfers meaning that is felt rather than reasoned.

In my body, depression is unavoidable. In my body, depression is all that is. For some it comes and goes but I am condemned with this mindset. I am condemned to embody depression.

If I struggle, it comes to nothing but an endless battle than can never be won. Therefore, I embody depression gladly. It is me as much as my tears, my gaping mouth, my falling body.

My body is a prison.

In my own body, the tension of muscles caused by anxiety gives way to fatigue, that absolute tiredness whose response can be nothing but sleep. Sleep is a trap. Science tells me that anxiety and depression are chemically intertwined, only markedly different in their symptoms. In terms of their causes, I am uninterested. I am more interested in their situational embodiment, how they are experienced in the here and now. Here is where I find the most rewarding discussion.

Depression being a void and that void being engulfing, it necessarily has a narrow future.

The future is nothing but the perpetuation of the void and the feeding of depression. It is a black and broken future where hate and fear fester. This is my unavoidable embodiment. In order to survive I have to force different futures. It is not natural for me to force. This forcing comes in the form of repetitions entirely within my Imaginary. I think my futures so I write my futures. But I want to also feel my futures. By writing them I will them into existence. The futures I write are ones where fear is no longer consuming. The futures I write are ones of love. Love is a feeling of being wanted by myself and by others. I have to repeat the mantra that I am wanted tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

My body takes me to the future.

Depression is insistent of a present congealed from the past. This past is not remembered as it fully was (what past is fully remembered?) but instead it is also black and broken. I remember only failure. I remember only fear. Fear is a failure of love. Fear is love shattered, unrecognizably broken, begging to be assembled anew. Broken remembrances congeal into a present void, the void of depression. The only way to escape what is unavoidable is to acknowledge the inevitable and perform that conscious dissociation. The begging remnants of love allow for the conscious, careful dissociation. I love art, I love Bas Jan Ader, I love myself, therefore I look.

Is there a look to love?

I watch Fall 1, Los Angeles. I watch it again. I see Ader sitting on a chair on the roof of his house. I see Ader tipping to the right. I see Ader falling and rolling and shifting and falling. I see his shoe fly off his foot. I see him land in a bush. This is all filmed in slow motion so I see in slow motion. I find this fitting as I want to see it in no other way than in slow motion.

In his first falling film I find Ader’s action neither tragic nor comical, as many have written. I find his fall small. All I see is a man that falls and rolls off a roof in one simple action of embodying the inevitable. This is not a crying face trying to let someone know how to feel depression, this is a limp, calculating body trying to let someone know how to embody depression. Because gravity exists, bodies falls. Because alienation exists, minds fall.

Falling is as much an act of Ader as it is of gravity. The inevitability of the action involves the two in equal measure. He tips in the chair, already precariously placed on the peak of his roof.

His body awkwardly creates the off-balance whereby he rolls down the roof. He gets stuck halfway and awkwardly shifts his body in order to fall in the bush. A mattress is softly waiting for the inevitable embrace.

I watch as Ader’s shoe separates from his body. It’s fall forms a sad arch. Frailty is spoken by this natural utterance. But it is only a shoe, a shoe in midair. Why does this shoe make me feel?

Why does this shoe emerge from the void in order to bite me in the gut. This shoe is a rejection of the body as much as that tears that flow from the face. This shoe accepts the foot in a warm embrace. The foot throws the show off. It is perfect in its rejection. It is graceful in its fall.

Shoes fall.

I watch Fall 2, Amsterdam. I watch it again. I see an Amsterdam street and an Amsterdam canal. I see Ader emerge from a background that is void of any humanity but his own. I see Ader

51 riding a bike. I see Ader ride down the street. I see Ader shift his weight and his path towards the canal. I see Ader careen into the water. Splash. This film is not in slow motion. But my vision is wants to be in slow motion.

I read that Ader is holding a bouquet of flowers in his right hand. I read that when he falls into the canal, the flowers float on the water’s surface. I cannot see the flowers but nevertheless I believe that they are there. Their existence makes the fall poetic. Poetic in its abjection, bearable in its unavoidable bodily failure. The beauty of flowers, the beauty of a perfect arch made by a shoe, tempers the ugly real of perpetual bodily failure.

Flowers fall.

As Ader careens towards the canal, I try to find the place where the decision to fall takes place. Before or during the film? As he passes the tree or before he emerges into view? Does he not want to fall but finds himself within the situation where falling is the only impulse? I choose to believe the latter. Comfortable enough within nature to let the fall happen when nature allows, he nevertheless puts himself in the position to fall. So is it gravity or Ader himself that makes the decision to fall? I’m back at the beginning. I create a rupture in my logical task. Ader and gravity are inseparable in this question. Body and nature are inseparable. A body is walled off from nature but nevertheless immersed within nature.

Similar to depression, a fall is an action that I have already determined will take place. It is a failure of the body to stand upright. It is the a failure of the body to break through the void. But it is not that easy. The feeling of failure begets more failure, and the feeling of depression begets more depression. When I see Ader fall into the canal I don’t see him making a conscious decision to fall into water, instead a see a man that is left with the unavoidable condition that he must fall into water. Gravity does the work but his conscious decision to place himself in the embrace of gravity’s harshest consequences is something that is beyond decision.

Splash.

I watch Broken Fall (organic). I watch it again. I see a tree that is either growing leaves or is letting its leaves fall. I see Ader hanging from a branch on that tree. I see Ader swinging his body as he hangs. I see Ader falling into a small canal below. Splash. His fall is marked broken. His broken fall is marked organic.

I see that Ader is again left with that inevitable decision of body falling into water. Can it even be called a decision? Yes he can climb back down the tree safely, yes he could have not climbed the tree in the first place, but this film shows that this man, Bas Jan Ader, felt an allconsuming feeling that he must climb this tree, he must swing erratically, and he must fall into water. In these feelings of musts, the poetics of depression is found.

But this time the fall is broken. What makes this different from the first two falls? Aren’t all falls broken? It is broken because he writes that it is broken. I believe Ader’s claim. The fall is bearable because it is broken. He lands in water that allows him to continue with body intact. But he is more daring. He falls from a greater height. He lands in shallow water--the canal can only be a couple feet deep. I feel the landing. I feel ankles snapping. I feel cold water splashing. This transference of bodily sensation makes this fall broken. Falls break when body meets Earth.

Splash.

Snap.

I watch Broken Fall (geometric). I watch it again. I see a lighthouse, what I read is an old church tower with a light on top. I see Bas Jan Ader aping the lighthouse. I see Bas Jan Ader in the wind. I see him standing next to a sawhorse. I see him precariously tipping as if his body is caught in the wind. I see him falling into the sawhorse. His fall is marked broken. His broken fall is marked geometric.

I feel the pain of body meeting wood. I feel the pain of body meeting Earth. I feel the pain in the anticipation of the fall, a drawn out drama where there is nothing but the meeting of body and nature, the swaying of the body by the wind. I feel the pain in the failure that the body can never be outside of nature, outside of gravity. I understand through pain, through the unavoidable abjection of the body being consumed in pain. Depression is a quiet, dim pain. It is a pain that does not announce but consumes, does not proudly display the fruits of its labor but instead festers in a black void.

I dissociate.

I watch them all over again. They are inexplicable because they are inaccessible. They are inaccessible because they are not part of me.My words are at the limit of what Ader’s art conveys.

Words to do not conscribe as to why a fall so perfectly expresses depression. The affect of the visual and the affect of words are fundamentally different. Words only let you know how I see. I want to know how you see.

I sleep. ___

A scholar tells me that Ader transcribed in one of his notebooks a line from John Milton’s Paradise Lost: “The Lord speaks: ‘I made him just and right, sufficient to have stood, though free to

52 fall.” Falling takes on new meaning, one that can only be connected to Ader’s Calvinist upbringing.

Like Ader, I transcribe a section of John Milton’s Paradise Lost: a prayer to light as from one who cannot see.

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heav’n, first-born, Or of th’ Eternal co-eternal beam May I express the unblamed? Since God is light And never but in unapproachèd light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, Before the heavens thou wert and at the voice Of God as with a mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. …

Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers as the wakeful bird Sings darkling and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn Or sight of vernal bloom or summer’s rose Or flocks or herds or human face divine But clouds instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off and, for the book of knowledge fair, Presented with a universal blank Of nature’s works to me expunged and razed And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward and the mind through all her powers Irradiate. There plant eyes. All mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight!

Light allows for vision, vision allows for transference. Milton could not see but he cherished light. There is a vision that does not involve eyes. There is a vision where one gives from to things invisible to mortal sight, things that Milton gave form through words. I use words in a similar manner. Bas Jan Ader uses the visual, for mortal eyes, to give form to his inner. Through seeing his vision, I see my vision. By writing my vision, I want to give it to you. I want to know your vision. I want to reach the limits of alienation and understand you. I act through love, this is the only way to allow this to happen. ___ Loving

Bas Jan Ader is a master of the narrative. The narratives that he creates are simple, but they are powerful in their simplicity. They are as simple as poems. They are complex as poems.

These narratives are ones that contain meaning through emotions.They contain meaning through emotions because they are visual. In Search of the Miraculous (One Night in Los Angeles), the first of a proposed trilogy In Search of the Miraculous, is one of his visual poems that contains a piece of his heart.

Time keeps moving on, Friends they turn away, Well, I keep moving on But I never found out why I keep pushing so hard a dream, I keep trying to make it right Through another lonely day

I was in Metro Pictures, New York City. That is where I first saw the work; a sequence of photographs. He is in all of them. Los Angeles is in all of them. In scrawling white script (I imagine

53 Ader writing the words) are lyrics of a song that I do not know. yeh I’ve been searchin’. Bas Jan Ader is walking down a highway. There is the light of day that lights his path. He is an unassuming creature in a world void of creatures. He is alone in Los Angeles.

The sequence creates the narrative. His body moves through the photographs, the setting changes, the words change, but one thing does not change: something that I cannot name. Bas Jan Ader is searchin’. For what? The song states he is searching for her. I hold this meaning in the distance, it is from a song that is not Bas Jan Ader’s. But he uses the lyrics anyways. It is a puzzling choice. It is part of the narrative. I’ve been searchin’. In next photograph Ader’s body is melding into darkness. But it is still there. His body is within this darkness, but he is holding a light that illuminates the center.

Don’t, expect any answers, dear, Well, I know that they don’t come with age, no, no, I ain’t never gonna love you any better baby I’m never gonna love you right So you better take it now, right now, ohh

This narrative is one where illumination is the center, figuratively and literally. Los Angeles is both darkness and light. Bas Jan Ader is in darkness, literally, but he is holding light, literally.

But, of course, these are all figurative. My turn to literary phrases is peculiar to me, but I can find no other way to explain it. Metaphorical imagery is something that makes this puzzling narrative easier to understand. These photographs are as enigmatic as a poem, as straightforward as the song he scratches onto their surface. Metaphors only point to what the art conveys.

The final photograph in the sequence is of Ader standing at the seaside, the lights of the city in the background. you know I’ll bring her in someday. Loss, loneliness, searching for something that has no discernible form. It can only be hinted: through the literal light that turns figurative in my mind, through the literal darkness that turns figurative in my mind, and through that floating signifier her. He has lost her, wants to find her, and vows to bring her back. This word is not Ader’s word, it is external to him. He nevertheless finds personal worth in its signification.

I said you, you’re always gonna hurt me, I said you’re always gonna let me down, I said everywhere, every day, every day And every way, every way Ah honey won’t you hold on to what’s gonna move I said it’s gonna disappear when you turn your back I said you know it ain’t gonna be there When you wanna reach out and grab on

This central loss is depression. This unnamable loss is depression. It is all the more powerful because it is another body that he has lost, another body that he is going to find. Another human being. Alienation seeps through these photographs, it covers my body and my mind in the sticky substance of the void. There is an almost irretrievable loss -- the piece ends without finding her -- that is fundamental in the making and sustaining of the alienation that surrounds each and every one of us, like a veil.

I look at these photographs and I am left in darkness.

There is no central knowledge that I can gain from them, they are confusing. They use other’s words. They signal nothing other than the search for the unnamable. I am left more depressed than when I walked into the gallery. People brush past these photographs with merely a glance. I am sad that I am stuck while they look and leave.

Art is in the field of vision, that is evident. Presumably this field of vision leads to an understanding. But it can also lead in a million different directions. Just as fear shatters love into pieces, In Search of the Miraculous (One Night in Los Angeles) shatters any hope at my knowing into oblivion. The simplicity is enticing, making me hold onto the hope of knowing. But after looking and looking and looking I only come to the conclusion that this is an unnamable loss that is surrounding by a dim light in a sea of darkness. Is this what depression feels like? At this moment I can say yes.

But nevertheless, there is hope.

It don’t make no difference baby, I know that I could always try There’s a fire inside of every one of us You’d better need it now, I get to hold it yeah, I’m gonna use it till the day I die

54

I use Janis Joplin’s words because they aid in what I am trying to say. Is this the same reason Bas Jan Ader wrote on his photographs? I presume so. But it does not make a difference whether I know or do not know, Janis Joplin tells me that. But she also says that I can always try.

I’m left with the hope that I can someday understand. Today I don’t.

Looking at this last photograph in the beautiful narrative of never finding what one wants, or needs, I see a black speck of a man. I see this black mark on the photograph, surrounding by a the all consuming gray of the sea, the beach, the sky, and the white lights of the city shining in the distance. I read the words: you know I’ll bring her in someday. That is all I see, that is all I know. But this black speck is not defeated, he has approached the immense scale of nature with the words that someday the loss will be remedied.

I am left with the hope of finding the unnamable.

This unnamable, named only through the signifer her, must be the miraculous.

I hope

Don’t make no difference, babe, yeah, Ah honey, I’d hate to be the one I said you’re gonna live your life And you better love your life Or babe, someday you’re gonna have to cry.

Yes indeed, yes indeed, yes indeed, Ah baby, yes indeed.

And you better love your life, or babe, someday you’re gonna have to cry.

I am too sad to tell you.

Art is important insofar as it is illuminating. Resisting the romanticized connotations of the word, I see it as an perspective that allows one to see in a new way. Depression, being a void and consuming me completely, is caused in part by alienation. Not simple alienation, but instead the alienation where walls are built by myself and reinforce that fact that my body is separate from yours. I separate myself from nature, from the people around me. I am left only with my own thoughts and the void that consumes any joy or happiness or sadness in my world. I am left feeling dead.

I sleep.

By being entirely in my own being, not listening to others, not allowing myself to connect with others, I create my own depression. Breaking down the walls that are so easy to keep in place, seeing the Other and having a desire to know them and thus know myself better, depression is lessened. It is a chore to keep this desire intact. Art makes this chore easier. Art is a object, a concept, a space where transference of meaning is enabled. Art is a transference of what? Of passion, of emotions, of thoughts, of visual material. But the most important transference that art can allow is the opening up of one’s world. Alienation creates a world that is small and frail, and your problems are all-consuming problems. They are all-consuming because focused through the microscopic world that is one person’s immediate surroundings, one person’s own mind, they take on the form of raging fury. Art shows that there are others, those other create, those others feel, and those others see importance in the fact that every human being has the capacity for creativity.

Bas Jan Ader’s art is pure passion, pure emotions, the evocation of one’s own personal world that is wrenched open in a lovingly violent manner. When Bas Jan Ader creates, poses for the camera, falls, cries, disappears in the darkness of black, he is opening up the world that is his own mind. This action of broadening the scope of one’s perspective is an action of radical love. It is not packaged as easy to understand, it is packaged as cold, calculating, conceptual, silently tragic insofar that everyone lives a life of simple alienation. I have to look and think for long periods of time before I see what is beyond the surface.

In the second part of this unfinished trilogy In Search of the Miraculous, Bas Jan Ader decides to depart from his previous practice and perform an action with no immediate record: sail from America to England in a small boat. What was intended to survive as record is postcards-of him in his sailboat--a choir performing sea shanties, the score of the shanty Life on the Ocean Wave, and the boat named Ocean Wave.

Ocean Wave.

The boat was found almost a year later off the coast of Ireland. Bas Jan Ader was never found.

This is a continuation of the narrative started by the photographs. The narrative of earlier loss-- maybe even loss before one even knew what loss was--and subsequent searching. To be continued. Never finished. Searching for what? Her. The miraculous. The unnamable center of the photograph on which Bas Jan Ader, the representation of Bas Jan Ader, shines a light. So this is a narrative without an end. There is no literal end, the trilogy was never finished. But more importantly there was possibly never to be an end. The unnamable center can never be found. It

55 don’t make no difference baby, but I can always try. Bas Jan Ader tries to find what he lost. I cannot explain what he lost, I can only explain how he tries to find it. This is what is conveyed through his art. And this is what I convey through my writing.

A life on the ocean wave! A home on the rolling deep!

Where the scattered waters rave, and the winds the revels keep!

The winds, the winds, the winds their revels keep!

The winds, the winds, the winds their revels keep!

Bas Jan Ader sailed from Cape Cod on July 9th, 1975. His mother, after having what she describes as a premonition of her son’s death, wrote a poem on October 12th of the same year.

She, being a Calvinist minister and a mother, knew very well the important questions that surround love and life and death. Incidentally, there is no surprise that art is often written about is religious terms. It is not because of the structures that surround the two worlds but because they both have the capacity to signal the answers to the endless search that is life--what Bas Jan Ader asks. What is living? What is dying? What is depression? Why do I have depression? And most importantly how can I live with my depression?

I quote the poem in its entirety:

From the deep waters of sleep I wake up to consciousness.

In the distance I hear a train rumbling in the early morning.

It is going East and passes the border. Then it will stop.

I feel my heart beating. It will go on beating for some time.

Then it will stop.

I wonder if the little heart that has beaten with mine, has stopped.

When he passed the border of birth, I laid him at my breast, Rocked him in my arms.

He was very small then.

A white body of a man, rocked in the arms of the waves, Is very small too.

What are we in the infinity of the ocean and the sky?

A small baby in the breast of eternity.

Have you heard of happiness Springing from the deep well of sorrow?

Of love, springing from pain and despondency, agony and death?

Such is mine.

Laurie Anderson, in her laconic voice (similar to what I imagine Ader’s mother’s voice to be like), tells me a truth that I will never forget: death is the release of love.

Bas Jan Ader died in the art piece that was, in part, him sailing across the Atlantic. This is a fact. It is now part of the piece, the two can never be separated. Death is done. But it is not complete. In Search of the Miraculous is something that scholars and critics tell me is unfinished.

Ader’s death prematurely finished a piece that was to be finished in the future. This is the product of complete and overwhelming sadness. In Search of the Miraculous was never meant to be finished, to be finite, but to continually reproduce the effects of its own creation. Death is the release of love. Ader dying, and therefore making that death into Art, is the release of love. And what is love other than further creation?

His mother, her poem, is bursting with love. She loves him. He loves her. I love them both.

And I love you. I would not be able to say this if Bas Jan Ader’s mother didn’t give birth to him, if he didn’t create, and if she didn’t write that poem. Despite being told that the films, the postcards, the ephemera, and Ader’s death are what makes up the object we call his art, I instead know that his art is the endless creation the springs from the fact that he created and gave it to the world.

Death is the release of love.

Depression is a sort of death. It is the death of passion, of emotions, of knowledge, of the will to live. In my own personal search for overcoming the all-consuming effects of the void, love is where I find the best answer. Love is what fills the unnamable loss. Alienation wounds, being entirely consumed in my own mind, my own world, wounds. Love, instead, is the radical act of connecting with another person in the face of the insurmountable obstacle that the other can never be fully known. I do not know you, I do not know my depression, and I do not know myself, but we can always try. That is love.

Art is a space where love is transferred. As I stated, Bas Jan Ader’s art helps me

56 understand my own depression, and therefore my own self, to greater extent. Alternately, this allows me to understand Bas Jan Ader’s art and one instance of another human being living in the face of infinity, to a greater extent. Art is a tool of knowledge. Art is love.

Lacan identified what he called the ecstatic limit of the phrase ‘Thou art that.’ I look at Bas Jan Ader crying, Bas Jan Ader falling, Bas Jan Ader on his Ocean Wave, and I can get ever closer to that limit where I can more easily say I am that. I am depression. I am alienation. I am sadness. I am unable to connect with other people. But I am also love.

Have you heard of happiness / Springing from the deep well of sorrow? Of love springing from pain and despondency, agony and death? / Such is mine. I love my depression because I love myself. I love your depression because I love you.

Thank you Bas Jan Ader. Thanks to you, your mother, and everyone that has allowed me to be placed in front of your art, I know that love is both unanswerable but an action so necessary for survival.

Without love, depression wins. That is the ultimate act of injustice.

Allow yourself to give and accept love, in all of its forms. Sadness is love, agony is love, happiness is love, saying goodbye is love and most importantly death is the release of love. I conceive of this writing as an act of love. Please treat it with care.

I survive.

GIBBOUS BRITTANY GILLILAND

My worn out binder sagged against my skin. The white of it was now a washed out beige, stained with sweat and dysphoria. The sides of my chest shrugged themselves from the arm holes and beneath the stretched band that wrapped around my ribs. I needed a new one.

The package came today. I’d gotten the Amazon notification during work and had excitedly tuned out the rest of the day. It was here and nothing else mattered.

This morning I had looked into my full length mirror and everything that looked back seemed wrong. Nothing fit right: there was too much bulging up top, too little beneath the waist line, my hips were too round, my jaw too narrowed and I desperately needed a haircut.

After work, I walked through Kroger with solid determination, getting only what I needed and heading to the checkout lines. A palm sized tub of Vaseline because I’d chewed through my lips at work and picked at the skin of my knuckles, resulting in choleric blisters. My co-workers kept pointing out how much it seemed like I’d had a growth spurt and how much my voice crackled like a cat toy lately. I also dumped a week’s worth of Lean Cuisine’s microwavable meals into my basket: Chicken Enchilada Suiza, Alfredo Pasta, Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes. I hated cooking and I could bear to lose a few pounds. The toddlers just down the aisle were working on choosing an ice cream flavor at the dismissive request of their mother. They chose cookie dough, clearly a choking hazard.

I shuffled quickly passed them as the mom put the tub into her cart. She eyed me as I walked by her children. I chose the express line, the self checkouts were backed up and all other lines were filled by soccer moms and their children, businessmen with six packs in hand and gaggles of college kids carrying handles of banana flavored vodka.

An entire rack of brightly colored candy bars was topped with hairs in shades of bottled blondes and reds as the youth peered their eyes over into my aisle.

“How are you today, ma’am?”

My teeth ground together. I ducked my head, avoiding eye contact. Somewhere beneath my navel a seeping pain creeped in. The register beeped as the cashier, tall and balding, continued packed my groceries into my reusable bags.

“Is that all I can do for you today?”

Yes. I just nodded.

I grabbed my bags, leaving the receipt behind as I went towards my car. I pushed my old Honda through the hills towards my apartment and it groaned at the speed. The package was waiting at the front door of my apartment. It looked how I felt. It was seemingly beaten and weary from its travels, there were holes ripped in the sides which revealed an inner layer of bubble wrap.

I cradled my groceries as I picked it up and struggled to unlock the door. I dumped things quickly into the freezer and fridge, leaving behind the non-perishables on the floor, still in their respective bags.

I tore into the abused package and ripped the tags from the black fabric that emerged. I stretched it over my head, the fat of my back rolling up the fabric before I could pull it down all the way. I stumbled around as I twisted my arms backwards to unroll it and pull it into it’s rightful positioning. Once it was unrolled, I moved the shoulder straps and the threading back to center.

The binding coaxed my ribs together and they battled like toddlers in a bathtub. It pleasantly constricted my breath and my chest. Some fat bubbled up underneath my armpits but other than that no skin peered from beneath the fabric.

I moved back towards the full length mirror. There was a string dangling from the back of

57 the binder that I ignored. I inhaled sharply. My hips were still too round. I still needed a haircut.

Nothing bulged beneath my waist line. Buttoning up a shirt over the binder, nothing swelled beneath it, only I knew what was there.

HARVEST BRITTANY GILLILAND

I stood barefoot in my yard, the muddy clay clinging to the skin of my feet. As if to make a new layer of itself, it asked to sculpt me. The moon was a jack-o-lantern in the late August sky and the cicadas whirred nearby in the trees.

I did not call myself priest or priestess in this circle. I would not take the binary title of a nonbinary religion.

Here, I was a child of the moon.

I welcomed the directions. I thought back to the congregations of people my father used to preach to.

I called upon the Goddess. I listed to the hymns from the church I grew up in.

I lay in the grass between the ash trees and candlelight, the mud and grass tickling my back. I prepared to speak in tongues, like we used to do between the pews. I made soppy angels in the mud.

I sipped the wine from my chalice and the small cake I’d prepared, a communion.

I wore my Sunday best: “boy” short underwear that let my tampon string hang loose from the side and a matching binder on my chest. I wore mustard yellow nail polish and my hair buzzed to just fuzz. I wore one dangling earring with nothing in my other ear.

I listened for the Holy. The response came from my body as my stomach and the skin of my stomach bloated out, the air bubbling around my intestines. The Holy was hungry.

AT A NEW YORK BAR ALEXa ABURTO

I have a slight lisp and a stutter that flows through small lips. Topped off with the cream that is a high-pitched voice. These truths cause chaos across the folds of my pink brain as I wait at the café, continuously glancing at the door. I am waiting for her but I am thinking of my words.

Seated at the bar of the café—white granite tabletop and matching white high barstools—my fingernails click against the table as I feel my mouth getting dry. The words I will say to her. And how I will say them. With this slight lisp and stutter coming out of small lips.

I wait and wait and wait. I am 30 minutes early but it feels like I am 10 minutes too late.

The coffee shop is buzzing with strange people and their even stranger thoughts. I look around and wonder what they could possibly be working on during a beautiful summer Wednesday afternoon in New York. I know what I am responsible for today but what are they responsible for? I continue to wait and wait and wait. ___

Just like how I waited for my turn to get a slice of the sheet cake at my cousin’s 11th birthday party. David. The goofy never-grows-out-of-the-playing-with-Legos-phase graduate student.

Every family has a David. Well before David was a graduate student studying Latin dictatorships, he was 11 years old. And my 10-year-old self was patiently waiting to get a slice of his sheet cake. It was a pitiful thing, that cake: a slow fascinating show of crumbling white flakes coming down and undone.

My American-born cousins are mostly boys. Then there’s the three girls—Xochitl, Callie, and I. All American-born. David’s mom, my Tía Gilda, handed out the crumbling cake slices to all the boys first. We girls waited. My Tía’s plumpness squished against us as she moved, her skin warm and sticky and pink with sweat. The Mexican-born first and then the American-born boys. I did not ask, “May I have a slice too?” Did not say, “I would like a slice, please.” My lisp did not matter because all I said was silence. I waited and waited, like the good girl my mama raised me to be. ___ I looked around the café to see if anyone is biting into a sheet cake. Coffee cakes. Banana bread slices. Red velvet cupcakes. But no sheet cakes. Against my better judgement, I glance at the double glass doors again. No white woman with a forearm tattoo in sight. I bite my lip and think of my words again. How they come out a bit distorted. Just a little bit, though. ___

When I was really little, my family and I lived in government housing. One small bathroom that could only comfortably hold one body at a time, a rundown kitchen with a broken sink, and a “living room” that was actually the bedroom. In our living/bed room, there was a twin-size mattress

58 where my mom, my older brother and I slept on; my dad slept on towels on the wooden floor next to us. In this home where we could not even afford a bed frame, I got lead poisoning. I was two years old. What followed was a blur of things that I do not remember but was told: child welfare services, endless doctor visits and appointments, confusion flavored tears. The lead in my body caused irreversible damage: minor lesions in the parts of my brain that control speech.

An imperfect scattered voice that no one could take seriously, especially since it was coming out of a body that had two breasts and a vagina. I kept getting older: 18 and getting fat with knowledge and carbs as a college freshman. I was at the wrong table. It was a family gathering—a graduation, an anniversary, a birthday, an anything. I sat at the table with my Tíos and cousins, both the Mexican-born and the American-born boys. I would try to speak, really speak— my intellectual fatness could actually be worth something despite all these beer cans—but my slight lisp and stutter were too much for my small lips. My voice shook with hot simmering intent: I mispronounced words, clumped others together, and some Spanglish accidently slipped out. By their linguistic standards, my attempt to speak had been a mess. Like that sheet cake. Too much for the boys. Too much even for myself. I looked away, interrupted and hurt, and closed my mouth to count the different colors of celebration streamers in my head. ___

There isn’t much color in this café. There isn’t anyone sitting next to me to interrupt me either. I think of the woman that I am waiting for, how she is the daughter of Italian immigrants and how I am the daughter of Mexican ones. How will we speak to each other after saying what we said two nights ago in secret? How will we speak to each other when our words are heavy with everything we became after that night? ___

When I was 16, my oldest American-born cousin, Xochitl, cornered me and went on and on about white men. Stay far from them. Never get near them. But. Neither of us knew that in a year, in high school, I would disobey—I would get close—to a white woman though, not a white man— and be forever known as BISEXUAL. A beautiful word that wrecked confusion across my skin and heart. 21 years old and waiting at a café for yet another woman to fall in love with me.

And Xochitl? Beautifully named after a Toltec Queen, the first of my American and Mexican born cousins to earn both an undergraduate and graduate degree in the United States, would be reduced, flattened like the mashed potatoes she was expected to serve to the men in our family during those graduations, anniversaries, birthdays, the anythings. She had her supposed dating rules and intelligence. But. Now also a fiancé. A white man whose last name I still do not know after all these years. ___

I rehearse my words in my head again. Taste their shapes in my mouth. Take a sip of my watery iced chai latte. The café is slowly emptying. I am no longer entirely sure of my courage. It is fading quickly, like cotton candy when it touches the saliva in your mouth. I gulp the rest of my drink, hoping my imperfect voice will finally be enough. ___

When I returned to Mexico years ago, ‘domestic violence’ stopped existing in the abstract.

All my Mexican-born tías and my mom, with their thick accents and even thicker skins, huddled by the only phone in my grandmother’s house. Strong sturdy brown women with cigarettes. All defiance and red fingernails. I let my eyes trail down their bodies, absorbed the beautiful rolls of skin, their impeccably clean heels, and their wild black curls. Because we are women, we are waiting in the silence the men have created for us.

My Tía Mia is married to one of those men. The kind that beat the love out of a woman’s body because they do not know how to coax it from her. My mama and my Tías have always told her to leave him. She always says she will. Solamente estoy esperando un poco, she says. What are you waiting for though? we ask in reply. She never answers. But. That day. That day, Tía Mia called in the morning and said she no longer wanted to bleed for a man who did not know how to love her. No. More. So, my mom, my tías, my primas, and I descended on my grandma’s house to await Mia’s call letting us know she had officially left him. We sat and waited. In the silence we existed and so my lisp and my stutter did not matter for the second time in my life.

In the silence, we were left waiting. The call never came. Tía Mia stayed with that man who did not know how to love her and in turn, she became the woman who loved herself less. ___

Why is that women are always the ones left waiting and wanting? After seeing it all, I swore, I swore I would never be like the women in my family. No more marrying the wrong person.

No more silence. No more having babies. I even designed my own tattoo—a woman alone in her

59 house, as inspired by Sandra Cisneros’s “A House of My Own”—so that my own skin could never be claimed by anyone.

And. Yet. I was at Safeway a few weeks ago examining all the cheeses beautifully displayed behind the polished glass counter. Pepper Jack. Feta. Brie. Mozzarella. There was no ticket machine set up—you had to walk up to the counter and flag down one of the employees.

But. I was standing too far back. “You’re going to have to get up closer, honey, if you want anyone to notice you.” I turned towards the voice. An older woman gently smiled at me. I did not smile back because my mind was whirring with the various colors of my thoughts. How ingrained was my silence, my wanting, my penchant for waiting? How good have I become that good little girl my mama raised me to be.

Quietly waiting for a slice of sheet cake. Watching my sad and tired Tías slowly shuffle out of the room with the only telephone. Knowing that somewhere, the Toltec Queen bends over to serve her white fiancé whose-last-name-I-still-do-not-know some mashed potatoes. And I. Not enough of one thing or maybe too much of something else to approach a mere cheese counter.

Because I am not just queer. I am also brown. And a woman. A first-generation college student.

The daughter of immigrants. Able-bodied. I am me. Not enough of one thing or maybe too much of something else. ___

It is a beautiful Wednesday summer afternoon and I am seated on a tall barstool inside a humid café. I am waiting for an Italian college woman whom I kissed a couple of days ago. And then. I see her walk through the glass doors, her brown eyes on me. And in that moment, as I stare back at her, tasting both my lisp and the memory of her lips, I suddenly remember the taste of David’s sheet cake. It was shit.

LUCAS AND LEO ALAINA SYMANOVICH

With a cringe, accept Lucas’ Valentine’s Day gift: a candy-filled baton festooned with streamers of pink, red, and white. Pretend not to notice Lucas giving the same gift to Leo. Every other second-grader is judging Lucas for giving another boy a valentine—and not even a normal card-and-lollipop duo from CVS, but an actual gift that cost actual money—yet Lucas is oblivious to their scorn. Lucas is the definition of social suicide.

Lucas is also one of your best friends; you and he and Leo have a favorite pine tree under which you congregate every recess, and the three of you brave the humiliation of P.E. together, and Lucas makes you feel like all your jokes are gold.

But none of that makes Lucas any less of a loser, and the extravagant Valentine’s Day gift is but the tiniest taste of his loserdom. Lucas wears a lot of clingy turtlenecks in questionable colors—mauve, scarlet—and in P.E. he jogs like he’s got jelly for joints. One time he even cried.

In class.

Not that you and Leo are spectacularly popular—you’re about to size out of the juniors’ department, and Leo’s a target because he’s a figure skater—but at least neither of you were caught picking your noses during SSR or shrieking at the sight of a Daddy Longleg on the spiral slide. You and Leo have your heads on straight, so you two are relieved—grateful, even—when Lucas’ family moves to California at the end of the school year. By the following September, Lucas fades to a lisping, sharp-elbowed memory, and you and Leo are better poised to begin the social climb. ___

By ninth grade, you’ve made some progress: you’ve learned to cover the zits that made a Rorsach Inkblot of your face, you’ve whittled down to a respectable size eight, and you’ve almost completed orthodontic purgatory. Leo hasn’t made as much progress. Leo’s blond hair resembles an unkempt sheepdog’s, and he still fields a lot of gay jokes despite having ditched the figure-skater act years ago. He orbits a semi-popular girl clique, which is a pro because he never seems lonely, but a con because it only fuels the gay speculation. When you and Leo reunite in health class, you choose seats in the back row and survive by mocking everyone else: the jocks with their gelled hair, the girls with their straightened hair, the teacher with his thinning hair.

When the hair jokes grow old, you and Leo turn to the Internet for entertainment. You stumble upon a website dedicated to embarrassing stories, and together you laugh and gasp and debate the veracity of these tales. (The most outrageous story, “Caught in women’s panties,” features a 16-year-old protagonist who is beat up, pantsed, called a fag, spanked, and whose flaccid penis is flicked…all by a group of petite female classmates. (Yeah, you and Leo call veracity into question quite often.)

Maybe you wouldn’t have survived health class without Leo. After all, the teacher— whom two dub Mr. Ratface—is rumored to be a little too fond of his female charges, and the

60 sophomore who sits next to you always casts protracted stares at your nonexistent breasts as if he thinks they’ll just explode into being, airbag-style. So maybe—sort of, a little bit—you owe Leo for getting you through. But you don’t owe Leo for letting his hair get so ragged and greasy, or for texting you nonstop—like, nonstop—or for babbling so loudly in Study Hall that you both get reprimanded.

Ultimately, you decide you don’t owe Leo anything, and you rant to your friends about how clingy he is. He hears of your insults, as you expected he would, and that’s that. He moves to a different seat in health class and you deal with the boob-ogling sophomore alone. And you’re fine with it, you really are, because Leo could’ve avoided the whole situation if he’d just relaxed and let you breathe, for God’s sake. ___

During your first week at Penn State, you and Leo latch onto one another like middle-school girls on their way to the bathroom. Who knows how you two reconnect—it might have been in a dining hall, outside a classroom, on your way out of the gym; the point is, once again, you’re all the other has. You linger over dinner moaning about your roommates, your calc professors, your utter friendlessness. You text one another during the suffocating silence before a class begins. You study side-by-side in the library.

So, when Leo suddenly and unceremoniously exits your life, you text him frantically. When those texts go unanswered, you call. When those calls go unreturned, you resort to Facebook Messenger like the desperate dolt you are.

10/06/2011 10:04 P.M.

ALAINA: Are you ignoring me on purpose? I’ve been sending you texts and voicemails…for a few

weeks…if our friendship’s over then why don’t you just say it? This whole pretending-I

don’t-exist thing isn’t exactly classy.

11/09/2011 8:00 A.M.

ALAINA: Hey, I’m worried about you. How are things going? Is school okay?

04/04/2012 4:41 P.M.

ALAINA: Are you avoiding me because you dropped out of PSU? Maybe you haven’t, but I never

see you around and you’ve been M.I.A. for months.

Next school year, try not to show how excited you really are when Leo deigns to send you a response. Read his story—even the bits that worry you, the bits like withdrawing from classes and small mental breakdown—with a cool, appraising eye. Remember that even though you were diagnosed with clinical depression and had to start popping Prozac with your morning Cheerios, you didn’t withdraw. (You wanted to, though—you asked your dad how he’d feel if you worked at Olive Garden for the rest of your life—but you don’t admit that to Leo.) As you read the final paragraph of Leo’s apology, try not to pity him more than you pity yourself.

09/23/2012 12:36 A.M.

Speaking of feeling... I really did feel bad for just falling off the face of the earth with you last year.

You were like my only support at school and knowing you were having some troubles

adjusting to things and having doubts made me feel a little better while I was there. But I

just didn’t know how to handle it, much less try at the time to explain it to you when I didn’t

even know how to explain it to myself. I hope you can forgive me. I’m sorry and I know I

was a bad friend when you just wanted to help me and were concerned for me. So really

thank you and I appreciate having someone that I know cares about what happens to me

and all that.

Wait a year before you let things go totally back to normal with Leo. Once you’ve started your Masters coursework and made enough friends so you aren’t constantly flirting with social bankruptcy, trust Leo again with your full friendship. Let yourself feel comfortable— oddly comfortable—and happy, and secure—with him. Enjoy how things are smooth for a solid millisecond.

And then, go gaga over a girl in your Master’s program and bask in the infatuation that feels like two gallons of Sprite in your stomach. Hide your feelings from everyone except Leo. Hide your feelings meticulously; don’t even let on that you know who Macklemore is (“Same Love” what?), and be sure to claim the treadmill at the Y that faces the Fox News TV. Hide, hide, hide, and then regurgitate all your pent-up gayness on Leo and let him walk you through the coming-out process.

61 (Feel irked, though, when he doesn’t reciprocally come out to you. (Let’s be honest: you suspected he might. You secretly thought his schoolyard bullies’ hunches were spot-on.))

(Im)patiently wait the weeks it takes for Leo to come out to you. When he finally admits that, yes, he’s gay, and no, he didn’t feel it was necessary to tell you before, feel justifiably scandalized. After all, you and Leo were best friends in second grade and (for a few weeks in) ninth grade and (for a month in) freshman year! You can’t believe Leo wouldn’t bare his soul to you.

After all, whom else did he have?

Recover speedily from this affront, since, let’s face it, Leo is your first and only wingman on the gay scene. Appreciate how he talks you through all your anxieties and rarely interrupts your monologues with pesky details about his own thoughts or feelings. He’s the best friend in your personal rom-com: his sole reason for existing is you. And as you grow closer to your crush, Renee, and her best friend, Perry, Leo is never farther away than a text message. He hears about the time Renee kisses your cheek, the time you two fall asleep hand-in-hand on your bedroom carpet, the time she yells herself hoarse about how she’ll never really like you back, the time she apologizes and assures you you’re her best friend. Leo learns so many details about Renee, he could probably write her biography.

But then Leo does something inexcusable, something no rom-com sidekick would dare to do: he falls in love.

And his crush has the decency to like him back.

Never in the history of rom-coms has such misfortune befallen the heroine. You sulk as Leo talks about his new love, a chiseled swimmer with richer-than-rich parents. You listen to the story of how Leo and Swimmer Boy’s flirtation evolved from study sessions to drunken hookups.

Leo thinks this guy might be the real deal, and you’re so jealous you could sweat blood.

Swimmer Boy promptly breaks Leo’s heart, though, which tempers your rage. But what doesn’t temper your rage is Leo’s sudden need to rant about his broken heart. You’re patient for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, but, geez Louise, Leo won’t lay off the moping! The obsessing! For as long as you’ve known Leo, he’s been secretive and aloof, and you’re praying to the sun and stars that he’ll stumble across that old personality soon. You’re supposed to be the obsessive one in the relationship, and you’ve got plenty to obsess over as your friendship with Renee and Perry takes off. You’re partying with them every weekend, and you’re starting to feel as if you really are Renee’s “best friend,” and one night Perry even smiles at you and says you’re “just a really, like really, good person,” and then he reminds you that he’s just complimented your soul and that you should feel pretty grateful. And you do feel grateful, you truly do.

So amidst all this Renee-and-Perry magic, Leo can’t reasonably expect you to have time to mourn Swimmer Boy again. He just can’t. So, when he texts you in the middle of a boozy Cards Against Humanity game at Renee’s apartment, indulge your irritation. You can’t be blamed for groaning at the sight of Leo’s name on your iPhone again. You can’t be blamed for calling him a clingy stalker; for goodness’ sake, you’d tell Christ and his Second Coming to get lost if they interrupted one of your Friday nights with Renee!

You can’t be blamed, either, for the black look in Perry’s eyes when he tells you he’ll “take care of” Leo. You can’t be blamed for how sexy Renee looks when you hand her your phone and tell her the four-digit passcode. You can’t be blamed for not listening when your sober friend tugs your arm and asks if you’re sure you want to surrender your phone to Perry and Renee. You can’t be blamed for any of this because you’re not you when Renee’s around—you’re better than you.

You’re the laughing, tattooed, friends-with-the-cool-kids girl you always wanted to be.

So, drunk and smiling, (blamelessly) read what Perry has sent Leo:

I imagine you ten years from now, a hundred pounds heavier and sticky with your own cum in a

shitty duplex, friendless and depressed. You turn my stomach, you failure. I hope your

mommy will still love you. ___

The next morning, through a hangover and sleep-crusted eyes, reread Perry’s texts. Even in Renee’s tiny bedroom—the bedroom with Christmas lights you helped hang, the bedroom with the handpainted TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES poster, the bedroom where in a few weeks Renee will invite you to sleep—even there, you can’t wave away your nausea about Perry’s words. You don’t deserve to. You aren’t badass, you aren’t special, you aren’t titillated by your newfound coolness. Who are you? (Someone who’ll never be Leo’s friend again, that’s who.)

Listen to Renee crack open a beer. Let the metal yawning jerk you back to 11:00 a.m., January, gray-sky Saturday. Let Renee and Perry shepherd you to lunch at Chili’s, then to a convenience store where Renee points out a glittery green beanie you should buy. Buy it swiftly.

Back at Renee’s, pose with her and Perry for a photo. Watch her don oversized aviators, pop her collar, and sneer at the camera. Try to look like you belong next to her. Smile gratefully when she uses the picture as her Facebook profile photo. Accept the deluge of new friend requests you get, and, more importantly, accept that being Renee’s lackey means something—not just to you, but to

62 the world—and that “something” is better than Leo. It has to be.

Stop thinking of Leo. Thinking of Leo makes you remember Lucas, blue-eyed Lucas, extending that expensive Valentine’s Day gift to you. Makes you remember coughing, blushing, barely mumbling a “thanks” because you were so convinced that the whole class was judging you.

(You were so convinced that if Lucas could stop being so soft, so kind, if he’d just toughen up and buy some manlier clothes, then he wouldn’t attract so many stares and jeers and “what are you, gay?”s. But he couldn’t toughen up. Or maybe he just wouldn’t.)

Does Lucas even remember you, after all these years?

In a few years, will Leo? (Do you want him to?)

Feel perversely relieved when Renee and Perry terminate your friendship. Naturally, Renee sends your official dismissal via text:

Alaina, because I know myself to be more than you ever will be, I’ll say: I think you deserve the

worst the world can give you. I think you’re crazy.

Perry simply disappears. You aren’t sure what happened—did he tire of you? Did Renee make him ditch you? Or had you been, to use your signature insult, just too clingy?

Diligently fight to regain Perry’s affection. (Don’t fight for Leo’s; don’t even think about Leo. Swaddle your memories of Leo with caution tape and avoid them.) Text Perry, call Perry, even make a pathetic Hail Mary to Perry via Facebook. Don’t be surprised when Perry gives you the ending you sincerely deserve.

05/04/14 5:31 P.M.

ALAINA: You called me twice today. Butt dial?

PERRY: THE GAY AGENDA THOMASINA ROGERS Monday

You walk into the Spy Store across the street from Nordstrom Rack. You spend a few minutes pretending like you’re a casual shopper, but you’re actually there to buy the most upto-date listening device. As you hold one that’s still in its rather large box, you consider that this might not be the most practical of choices. Then again, you read the label and learn that it picks up conversations up to 300 feet away and is recommended for children six years of age and older, so you couldn’t possibly fuck it up. You also decide it’s smart to have some variety in your spy gear. You pick up a $119.95 spy pen, for all the times you can’t inconspicuously point your oversized listening device in the general direction of She-Who-Might-Be-Gay.

On the walk back to your car that you parked a couple blocks away (just in case someone saw you), you think about spending more time outside. Then you think about how you actually hate that idea because honestly the sun is a little brighter than it should be. You drive home and rewatch the gayest episodes of Lost Girl (i.e. all of them).

Tuesday

Today is the day to test your new equipment. You hunker down in your black SUV, parked across the street from The Caffeinated Moon, your local coffee shop. You fumble a little bit with the giant hunk of metal that is your very expensive listening device. The manual said all you had to do was push the button on the handle and point the half sphere disk thingy in the direction of the conversation. You push and squeeze every part of the machine, utterly failing to find the button.

Eventually, you realize it’s on the part of the handle you’ve been holding. Embarrassed, you pretend to nobody but yourself that you did all of that on purpose. Then you wait. You wait long enough to completely space out, staring at the man in the polka dot shirt who is sharing his scone with his pit bull. Why would he think his dog wants his scone? Do dogs like pastries? Is there any food a dog doesn’t like?

You jolt back into reality at the sound of I’m the Only One by Melissa Etheridge playing on someone’s radio. Gaydar never rests. You watch as the driver exits the car: platinum pixie cut, pleather jacket, rosy cheeks. Easily one of the gayest women in town. Then, the passenger door opens and the target appears. She-Who-Might-Be-Gay steps out of the light blue hybrid wearing a white lace dress, Birkenstock knock offs, and pink lip-gloss. Your gaydar has never been able to separate hope from surety when it comes to femme lesbians. The wind blows her chestnut hair into her lip gloss and she has to pull the strands free, but it’s the really sticky kind of gloss so you

63 know it’ll be in her hair until she showers. She shrugs it off and laughs, and makes what’s probably both a hilarious and deeply insightful comment to She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay.

You realize you should have heard that holy comment because you’re holding the listening device after all, you just have to press the button. You press the button, and hear snorting and munching sounds. At first you wonder if the machine is possessed, but then you notice that you’re pointing it at the pit bull scarfing down another scone, courtesy of polka dot man.

She-Who-Might-Be-Gay rests her hand on the car while She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay fumbles through her purse, looking for something. The device catches them mid conversation.

“I’m dead serious Karen,” She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay says.

“That’s crazy. At least it’s good for the community, right?” Karen replies. Her voice is a little raspier than you expected, and you thought she looked more like a Cheryl, but you dig it.

“Yeah, but definitely excessive. It’s not like any of us bar hop. Even Tina doesn’t do it anymore.”

Ah, Tina. You know Tina. And if they’re talking about Crazy Tina, then they’re talking about the surge in gay bars. They’ve been popping up all over the city for a while now, in ridiculous quantities. Though you’re really not the right person to comment, as you’ve never been to one.

You’re more of a gay coffee shop kind of person, if there ever was one.

The two of them head inside the coffee shop. You set the listening device down in the footwell of the passenger seat and double check to make sure the spy pen and its remote and earbuds are still in your back pocket. When you surge forward to exit your car, you get slammed back against your seat. You huff, and then actually unbuckle your seatbelt. You try to leave your SUV with some dignity as you walk towards the coffee shop.

There’s one person standing in line between you, Karen, and She-Who-Is-Most-CertainlyGay. The distance makes it seem less like you came there to investigate, which is good. Karen and company laugh at something you don’t catch, and Karen touches She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay’s arm. Hmm. You replay their previous conversation in your head—Karen said “the community” not “our community,” which doesn’t necessarily mean anything—but then again, could mean everything.

Karen orders. “I’ll have a medium French roast with a shot of almond.”

Medium French roast. Almond. So intriguing. How did she figure out she likes almond in her coffee? Why would she ever test those waters? Who genuinely likes change? Does she skydive too? God, that would be a lot to handle.

“Miss,” the barista says. “Your order.”

You’re next in line. Crap. How long has it been? Do you even want coffee? Are people waiting for you to order already?

You try to think of something to say, but then word vomit “Medium French roast with a shot of almond” and immediately hate yourself. You sit yourself down at a table in shame and pray you didn’t blow your cover.

Karen and She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay sit a couple tables away from you. Karen is relaxed, her shoulders loose and her head resting on her left hand. This could be a date. Pros of it being a date: confirmed gayness. Cons: unavailability. You shudder at the thought. You find new purpose in somehow getting your spy pen in Karen’s purse.

Your drink is called, or maybe it’s Karen’s drink. This is your opportunity. You pretend to read the book you brought with and not notice Karen walk up. After she passes, you follow her. You open your purse and shuffle through it, trying to find the spy pen. It’s hidden in a sea of too many goddamn travel sized tissues. You bash around all the clutter in your purse, making more of a scene than you should. Then, you get knocked over.

You try to grab on to a chair on your way down, but you’re not fast enough. So here you are, on the floor, the contents of your purse spilled everywhere. Looking up, you see Karen, who fell on top of a table, holding her coffee away from her so it doesn’t spill on her dress. You note that she has better reflexes than you.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m such a klutz,” Karen says. “Here, let me help.” She sets her coffee on the table, kneels down and starts picking up all your packages of tissues.

“Ah yeah, no worries homie,” you blurt. HOMIE? You fool. Karen cocks her head and smiles at you, a response much kinder than what you deserve.

This is the prime time for the spy pen. It’s the closest you’ll get to her all day. You look on the floor for it. Shit. There are two black pens. How are there two black pens? Only one is spy worthy, the other just a stupid writing utensil. You panic and grab the pen on the left. It feels heavy, so you think you made the right choice.

“So,” you say. “You like almond too?” A master of the art of conversation.

Karen glances up at her drink on the table—this is your opportunity. You desperately look for somewhere to slip the spy pen. There’s literally nowhere to put it, and now you’re crouched on the floor, arm outstretched, holding a pen. “Yeah, I just decided to go for it one day. Haven’t gone back since,” Karen says, turning her eyes to you. She stares as you hold the pen out to her. She’s confused, and you’re paralyzed.

64

“Uh,” you say. You’re remarkable with words. “A pen for you troubles?”

Karen laughs. “I don’t really need a pen,” she says, handing you all of your tissues and the other pen. You sheepishly accept them and put them in your purse.

“Okay, cool. Yeah. No, it’s just like, I already have two, and you’re on the floor for me, so, you know. But yeah, no worries. We’re good.” Sometimes, you hate yourself and the things you say.

“Okay,” Karen says, taking pity on your sad existence. “How about I take the pen, and walk with you to grab your drink?”

You shrug, but then remember that you’re not an asshole. “Yeah I’d love that.” Oh no. You said the l word. What kind of stereotypical lesbian are you, throwing around the l word? “No, it’d be nice. It would be nice.” Karen grabs the pen and the two of you stand, heading to the counter for your drink. Maybe you should watch The L Word later.

Karen is trying not to smile, clearly amused by your horrendous awkwardness. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Alana,” you say, picking up your drink. “With an A, not an I.”

“I’m Karen,” she says. You have to stop yourself from saying “I know.”

She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay gives Karen a look from across the room. You don’t know what kind of look it is, but you know it means something. Karen starts to head back to her table, and you follow her. You realize halfway through that you probably shouldn’t be following her but now it’s too late to turn around and you’re mildly panicking. Karen glances back at you. She’s still smiling, and her lip-gloss is perfectly applied.

“Sorry for taking so long,” Karen says to She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay. She sits down and sets the pen on the table. “I completely knocked Alana over.”

“Alana, huh?” She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay looks you up and down. You’re glad you wore your clean pair of jeans today.

“Yeah,” you say. Are you supposed to ask her for her name? You don’t.

“Thanks for buying me the coffee,” She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay says to Karen. “The newest shit is just so expensive.”

Newest shit? Even the holy grail of all coffee doesn’t go over five dollars.

“No, I totally get it,” Karen says. She turns to you. “She just bought some spy gear a couple days ago. You know how it is in the gay community.”

Now that you understand. “Yeah, no I totally do. Not that I’ve bought anything from the store,” you quickly add. “But like…I’m gay.” You didn’t need to say that. You’re wearing a men’s button down shirt, sleeves rolled, for god’s sake.

She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay almost rolls her eyes. She leans back in her chair, waiting for you to leave.

“Well this was nice,” you say. “Thanks for, uh, you know.” You tap the table once, and make your exit.

“Nice meeting you!” Karen calls back. You glance back to smile and end up walking into a table. Ow. You quickly head back to your seat, ready for the day to be over. Karen has been your admire-from-a-distance crush for a little while now. You see her around sometimes, mostly at The Caffeinated Moon. Usually you panic and keep a solid distance away. This was your first interaction with her, and you are not pleased.

You re-open the book you left at your table, then you take the spy pen’s remote from your back pocket. You plug in the accompanying earbuds. Supposedly, the pen is voice activated, and the information is sent to the remote.

“So, have you started watching The Bold Type?” Karen asks. “I’m telling you, it’s so good.”

You picked the right pen! The audio is coming through clearly. Congratulations on not entirely messing this up. You chuckle at your victory.

“Don’t kill me, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

You spend the next hour sitting at that table, listening about how cute of a couple Kat and Adena from The Bold Type are, and how She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay likes to listen to feminist audio books while she works out at the gym, which she does “because I care about my body, and the world we live in, you know?” Gross. Having a mildly successful day, you sip your almond coffee with the satisfaction you’ve earned. You almost spit it out cause it’s kind of disgusting, but you manage to stop yourself.

Wednesday

While waiting for your Straight Best Friend to come over for your weekly movie night, you find yourself talking to the bird on your windowsill. “What a pretty red bird,” you say. “Have a tortilla chip.” You reach into the chip bag to find you’ve absentmindedly eaten them all. “Shit,” you say, severely disappointed. You grab a black pen from your purse and write CHIPS GODDAMMIT on a post-it note. You stick it on your fridge. “Gotta get more chips!” you tell the bird. “I can’t watch Wynonna Earp on Friday without any. That would be a cardinal sin.” You laugh at your own pun.

The doorbell rings and you promptly answer. As soon as she walks in the door, tell your

65 Straight Best Friend all of the juicy details from Tuesday. She stares at you for a moment, and then says that’s such a waste of money. Says, “Alana, you could’ve found out all of that information from, you know, talking to her.” And you murmur under your breath, “Straight Best Friend wouldn’t understand,” because she’s never had to kill a man before. And by that, you mean she’s never had to figure out if a woman is gay.

“Did you just call me Straight Best Friend again?” she says, staring you down. Her auburn hair is gently curled, and she’s sitting on your kitchen counter. She looks cute when she’s annoyed, brow slightly furrowed. Angry Straight Best Friend is terrifying, but annoyed her is endearing.

“No,” you lie. Straight Best Friend doesn’t like her title. But if you don’t call her that, then you might forget she’s straight and you’ll fall madly in love with her and drunkenly confess your love and she’ll be like no and then you’ll be sad and best friend-less.

“Sometimes I feel like that’s just how you think of me. Like, is that what you call me in your head?” Straight Best Friend—er, Monica, asks. Her arms are crossed and she’s got that disappointed look on her face.

“Of course not,” you lie again. “I always think of you as Monica.” Your voice becomes slightly higher pitched when you lie.

Straight…Monica (Straight Monica? Is that a compromise? You don’t have a Gay Monica in your life though). Anyway, she doesn’t quite believe you.

“I’m sorry,” you say, popping up next to her on the counter. You rest your head on her shoulder. “I’ll let you pick the snack.”

She tilts her head to look at you and quirks her eyebrow. “Not the show?”

“You don’t trust me and my fantastic taste?” You rest your hand on her thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze.

She rolls her eyes but can’t help to smile. “Alright, but I’m picking kettle corn.”

Relenting, you put your hands up in the air. Secretly you crave the cheesy goodness that is mozzarella sticks, but you watch Monica go to the cabinets and grab the popcorn without saying anything.

She smells wonderful today, lightly of grapefruit. You like grapefruit. Or, at least, you like it covered in brown sugar. Monica plops down on the couch, slipping off her shoes and resting her feet on the table. Her socks have little monkeys on them—the ones you bought her last week. You had to get them, turquoise is her color. And she loves monkeys. And you love surprising her like that.

“Earth to Alana,” Monica says. “Are you coming?”

“Oh, yeah,” you say, snapping out of it. You jump down from the counter and sit next to Monica. She grabs your periwinkle blanket your great aunt hand knit for you (your aunt had a lot of time on her hands), and the two of you curl up underneath it. “I already pulled up the episodes.”

“Solid,” Monica says, grabbing the remote. Her other hand finds yours under the blanket, and she laces your fingers together. Monica presses play, and the show begins.

Thursday

You sit in your room and obsess over Karen’s raspy voice, lace dresses and brilliant taste in television. The full package. Probably. You don’t really know her, like, you’ve talked once, and there’s a tiny little logical voice in your head that’s saying that, but whatever. It’s not like you’ve got anything else going on. You try to stop thinking about Karen by going on Tumblr and obsessing over Clexa—the soul mates of all soul mates, the sky and the ground meeting in a fiery world of passion and danger only to have such a brief yet wondrous love—and after that wears off, switching to Doccubus, a much less intense affair and perhaps not the most cultured lesbian ship, but fuck the haters, you like it anyway.

You get a little bored, and start doodling on your hand with your black pen. “There should be a Lost Girl movie,” you say. It feels important enough to say aloud, like you’re calling it into the universe.

Eventually, you go back to Karen. You’re infatuated. You find her Facebook and accidentally work your way to her first post. She’s fourteen years old, wearing a bob with slightly crooked bangs, standing at the Washington Monument. Her bright blue braces are hard to ignore, but she’s adorably awkward. You realize that it’s unhealthy how far back you’ve gone and close your computer. One deep breath. You open your computer back up because who are you kidding, you have very little shame. You try to find her Instagram. You succeed.

That’s it. That’s literally it. You’ve spent the whole day in bed, your only company being your Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy poster staring at you from across the room. They don’t get to judge.

They’d do the same as you if they weren’t already a badass couple.

Friday

Monica won’t stop pushing this whole “for fuck’s sake if you like the girl you actually have

66 to talk to her you idiot” thing she’s got going on. It’s a little annoying, like she doesn’t understand your process at all. Finally, she at least persuades you to go near one of the gay bars. Not in. You’ll walk past it.

You put on your going out outfit. You walk to the door of your apartment where Monica is waiting, and do a little twirl for her. “Are you trying to join a convent?” she asks. “Stop dressing like my grandmother.”

“This is my best outfit,” you protest. Yes, it’s flare jeans and a high neck embroidered shirt, but the style is making a comeback.

Monica rolls her eyes, grabs your hand, and drags you back to your closet. You end up wearing a floral bralette, skinny jeans, and an army green bomber jacket. You try to zip the jacket up all the way when she’s out of the room. “I hear that!” she calls. “Unzip it and get your ass over here. I’m trying to get you laid dipshit.”

You begrudgingly follow. Monica is standing by your door, phone out. She’s calling a Lyft.

“We could always not go,” you say.

“Do you like Karen?” she asks. “Because if you don’t like Karen, then we can stay in.” She stares intently at you, waiting for an answer.

You dramatically sigh. You know that going out and trying for something that could actually happen is better than staying in. “I like Karen.”

“Fine,” Monica says. Her eyes move to her phone, watching the little car move closer to the pickup location. “Then let’s head out.”

You silently panic on the ride to the bar while Monica talks about New Boy At Work. “He’s got a lot of freckles, but I might be into it.”

When you get out of the Lyft, you take her hand. You lace your fingers through hers and breathe. “I can’t,” you say.

“We don’t have to yet,” she soothes. “We’ll do a couple walks around the block, then we’ll go in, order two rum and cokes, and be out of there in fifteen. Okay?”

You nod, and grip her tighter. As you two start walking, Monica smiles and continues talking about New Boy At Work. “He always buys me a coffee before our shift.” As the streets go by and your breathing evens out, you lean your head on her shoulder, and you run the hand that isn’t holding hers up and down her arm.

You turn the corner where the bar is, but you’re looking at Monica. “Who knows, maybe I’m in love,” she jokes, gently bumping you. It’s an inside joke from the time you both were in eighth grade, and you said that exact thing when you read Soon-To-Be-Sorority-Girl’s name right next to yours on the honor roll list. You roll your eyes, but you can’t stop the smile forming on your face.

When you look up, you see Karen and She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay standing by the entrance of the bar, looking at you. “Fuck,” you whisper to Monica. “Fuck fuck fuck. That’s her.”

“That’s her?” she whispers back. “Alana, she’s so clearly gay, what are you talking about?”

“No! The other one!”

“Oohh, got it,” Monica says. She straightens her back and walks with a little more flair.

“Play it cool. Remember, you’re confident, you’re sexy, you’re a fucking catch.”

You repeat that in your head as you approach Karen. She smiles, but She-Who-Is-MostCertainly-Gay seems distant. “Coming in?” Karen asks, with a twinkle in her eye.

“No,” you say. Monica shoots you a what-the-fuck-Alana-we-literally-just-talked-about-thisyou’re-going-in-there-or-so-help-me-god-I-will-drag-you-to-the-bar look.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Wynonna Earp can wait until Saturday,” Karen teases.

“Yes it can. We’re going in. Come sit with us at the bar if you’d like,” Monica says, dragging you through the door.

The bar is lit with purpley-blue lights. There’s a crowd of people dancing in one area, and some more at the bar itself. Luckily, there are seats left, which you and your entourage (if you can call it that) take. Monica orders and introduces herself to the others. She says your name and you politely nod and shake hands with She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay, but you’re too anxious to hear anything she’s saying. “We already met,” Karen’s voice breaks the silence in your mind. “I accidentally bulldozed into you at the coffee shop.”

“I remember,” you say. “ And we both like almonds!” You need to quit it with the almonds.

Karen laughs a little too loudly, and then she and her friend order Peach Ciroc over ice. You do the same. “Yeah, you might as well go balls in with copying her, Ms. Almond,” Monica whispers to you.

You hit her arm and pretend like it’s playful.

“So what shows do you watch?” Karen asks.

Oh no. Do NOT rant. Rein it in. “I’m into a lot of different shows,” you say. Mostly the gay ones.

“You know,” Karen says, “I always thought there should be a Lost Girl movie.”

“Oh my god me too!” the sentence explodes out of you.

“That show was trash,” says She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay. Monica snorts.

You proceed to drink way too much, and defend Lost Girl with all of your heart. Suddenly, you feel a dancing jig flow through your bones as the next bass-filled song comes on. You grab

67 Monica’s hand and pull her to the dance floor, shouting back to Karen, “Come join us!”

You’re not a good dancer, but you’re a fun dancer. You flail your arms while you tap dance on the floor. “Dear god,” Monica says. “Let me help you.” She pulls you in closer, hands on your hips. “Okay, slow down. Smoother.” You jerk a little slower. “Uh, better,” she says. “But like this.” Her hands are soft but firm, guiding your hips back and forth. You start to get the hang of it. Your hands are in the air, waving. Monica gently places them around her waist. “Yeah, try this instead,” she says. The two of you are dancing in the middle of the floor, completely engulfed in the music. The little logical voice in your head is telling you to stop before you catch feelings, but the vodka has done a good job of keeping her quiet. You stay with Monica.

Turning your head to your right, you notice She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay leading Karen toward the exit. “Hey, wait up!” you call. Karen looks back but the two of them keep walking. You make eye contact with Monica and she nods, looking a little annoyed. You rush over to Karen while Monica keeps dancing. You catch them right at the door. “Leaving so soon? But this is actually fun! Who knew?” you say.

“I’ll wait outside for the Lyft,” She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay says to Karen.

“But you’re staying to par-tay, am I right?” you ask Karen, lightly punching her shoulder.

“Actually, we’re about to head out,” she says. Karen sounds a little apologetic, and a little sad. “But I hope you have a good time with your girlfriend.”

Girlfriend? Shit, when did you get a girlfriend? Score one for you. You glance back at the dance floor. Oh. No. Not a real girlfriend. “You mean her?” you say, pointing to where Monica is still jiving. “She’s my Straight Best Friend.”

“Alana, we’re at a gay bar,” she says, putting her hand on the door.

“Yeah but she’s only here for me,” you say, placing one of your hands against the wall so you don’t fall over.

“Well, yeah,” Karen replies. “I can tell.”

Her nose scrunches and her eyes are soft. Karen has great eyes, this cornflower blue with little yellow flecks. You didn’t know eyes could have yellow flecks. Also, your head feels kind of heavy. Is that normal?

“Alana?” Karen asks.

“Oh, shit, yeah,” you say, coming back to reality. “What was the question?”

The door swings open and She-Who-Is-Most-Certainly-Gay stands outside. “Karen, you ready?”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Karen says. “I’ll see you around Alana.”

The door closes behind her.

Saturday

Miserable. You feel miserable, a horrid concoction of hangover and heartbreak. Monica tells you that if you really love someone, you have to get over the fear of rejection and go for it.

“That sounds terrible,” you say, laying on your couch and clutching your red throw pillow. “Do you do that?”

She arranges yellow acacias, newly cut from her garden, in a vase on your mantle.

“No. Not really. But it’s what you’re supposed to do. And it’s better than watching her move on.”

You groan. A long, heavy groan, filled with the begrudging acceptance of the wisdom Monica gives you. Leaning down, you open your purse and grab one of the many travel-sized tissues you have. You blow your nose with the grace of Donald Duck.

“I need coffee,” you say. “Want anything?” Monica shrugs and plops down on the couch as you get up to leave. “Okedoke. I’ll be back.”

The drive to The Caffeinated Moon is pretty short. You head into the coffee shop the moment Karen is walking out. Synchronicity in action. “Oh, hey,” you say.

“Hey,” she replies, continuing to walk past you. Ouch. You follow her.

“How’d you sleep?” you ask. You try to walk next to her, but Karen is moving slightly too fast.

“Alright.” She pulls her tan cardigan a little closer with the hand that isn’t holding her coffee.

“Me too,” you say. Karen nods, and there’s an awkward silence.

“I have to say something.” You put your hand on her arm to stop her. Karen stands, waiting. “Last night I got way too drunk. Honestly, I don’t even remember everything I said.”

68 A lie. Every moment of your encounter is seared into your memory. “But I know I’m awkward and dumb and I probably did something stupid.” The truth. You start picking at your nails.

Karen stares at you expectantly. “And?”

“And, uh…” The harder part. You try to form words but have zero idea what to say. You notice an alley right behind Karen. Taking her free hand, you lead her there, to a spot right next to the dumpster. Her back is against a wall. You stand face to face with her, inches apart. You freeze.

“Alana?” Karen asks. A vague smile is forming on her face. You stare back at her, wide eyed.

Karen smirks, and sets her coffee down on the dumpster. “Let me try,” she says. She pulls you close and kisses you, tasting like almond with a hint of peach. Her fingers get lost in your hair, scratching against your skull, as she bites your bottom lip. She is much better at this than you are.

You don’t know how long you’ve been in the alley when you pull away, but your lips are kind of numb and your heart is fluttering. “Maybe somewhere other than an alley,” you say.

“You don’t like this dumpster chic aesthetic?” Karen laughs. She shortens the distance between you, reaching around your back. Her hand glides down your skin as she grabs your phone from your back pocket. “I’ll put in my number. Maybe I’ll see you soon.” Karen hands back your phone, winks, and struts out of the alley. You stand there dumbfounded.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Karen returns. That was quick. “Can I see your purse?” You hand her your once brown purse that is now black in places it shouldn’t be. “This was expensive.”

She takes your pen and wiggles it in her fingers. Confused, you look at the black pen she’s holding more closely. It looks exactly like your spy pen, but you don’t remember taking that back from Karen.

“That looks like a spy pen,” you hesitantly say.

“Well, duh,” Karen says. “I had to figure out if you were into other women. What else was I supposed to do?”

You feel tears of community forming as Karen makes her final exit.

Sunday

“So she’s a good kisser?” Monica asks. You both are cuddling on your couch under your periwinkle blanket.

“Way better than I am,” you say, popping a cheese puff into your mouth.

“I don’t believe it,” she replies. “You’re pretty good.” Sometimes, when the two of you get really drunk, you kiss. But it’s only happened a couple times, and you usually just joke about it in the morning.

You snort. “In my dreams. Anyway, how’s New Boy At Work?”

Monica rolls her eyes and lays her head down on your lap. You play with her hair. “He’s pretty dumb. His only move is to bring me coffee before work. So I have a great morning shit but like, there’s no substance to our relationship past that.”

You understand completely. “Coffee always makes me poop too.”

Monica breaks out into a smile, staring up at you. “I wish he were more like you. You always get me.” Now it’s your turn to playfully roll your eyes. “No, I’m serious,” she says. “You mean the world to me.”

“Oh yeah?” you tease.

“Yeah. More…more than I say,” Monica replies.

“What’s that mean?” you ask.

She turns her head to look at the wall. “Nothing. Just…no, nothing. I can always count on you, is all.”

“That’s my job description,” you say, beginning to braid a section of her hair. “It comes with being your best friend.”

“Right.” She still doesn’t look at you.

You feel your phone vibrate. You pick it up from the other end of the couch, having to smoosh Monica’s head a little to get it. Karen texted—she wants to “hang out ;)” You stare at the text for a couple of seconds, tapping your index finger on the back of your phone. You think about the excitement of being with Karen, fresh but bumbling. New boundaries to find and conversations to be had that will probably mention almonds. But then you remember all of the times you and Monica played truth or dare in the indoor mall, going up to strangers and pretending that you were long lost friends. And how every time you go into your local ramen shop, the owner’s face falls because you both laugh too loudly and disturb the other customers. And that time when it was the middle of the night, and neither of you could sleep,

69 so you both chugged three energy drinks and choreographed dances to Abba’s greatest hits.

“Alana? Who texted you?” Monica asks.

You reply to Karen’s text: “I’m busy today, but I’ll call you tomorrow.” You set your phone down, and go back to running your fingers through her hair, thick and silky. “Karen, but I’ll talk to her later. I’ve got to figure something out first. Do you want to watch something?”

Monica smiles, hazel eyes looking up at you. “I’d love to.”

GAL PALS THOMASINA ROGERS

On Friday nights my best friend Katie and I drink shitty margaritas, made of waterdowned Minute Maid Limeade and Jose Cuervo tequila, in the movie room of her basement.

We like to lowball it, rebel against the oppressive J. Crew bubble of a town we’re from. I fidget with my new opal ring—my birthstone—as we lay back in her fluffy beanbag chair, discussing our latest horoscopes.

“Oh god,” Katie laughs. It sounds like wind chimes. Her element is air, after all.

“Buzzfeed is calling you superficial, Jackie.”

“What?” I snatch the phone from her. “Screw Buzzfeed. What do they know about Libras anyway? I bet, like, a Cancer wrote this.”

Katie turns on her side to face me, giggling. The weight shift causes me to sink deeper into the beanbag. “Look, not that I’m agreeing with them, but you did throw a fit yesterday at lunch when you spilled coffee on your shirt.”

I’m about to defend myself, but she grabs her phone back and starts scrolling through Instagram. Her feed is filled with all the girls we hate but pretend to like, wearing bikinis in Mexico while drinking some sort of fruity cocktail. The caption is usually a sun emoji, because they’re as creative as they are rich.

I get lost staring at how Katie’s nose crinkles whenever a picture of Caroline Bischoff—or rather, Bitch Off—pops up. I can pretty much always tell who’s in the photo Katie’s looking just by watching her, and I almost always know what she’s gonna say about it.

But I’m pretty predicable too. I do the same thing every school day. At 6:30 in the morning the latest Taylor Swift song blares, and I roll on my side to see a picture of me and Katie eating lunch, sitting under the largest oak tree at school. Lunch, the only memorable part of school: Katie and I talking shit about how Stefan Gilson still can’t balance a chemistry equation, even if the answer is already written on the board and the teacher is just waiting for him to repeat it. Everything before and after isn’t as interesting.

Margot Robbie posted a selfie on Twitter. Katie sighs. “Damn,” she says. “Margot Robbie is so hot. I have such a girl crush on her. Like, who wouldn’t die for her?”

“Yes! People who don’t love her don’t understand what true beauty is,” I say. Female celebrities are my favorite topic. I can call them beautiful without it being gay.

Katie pauses to stare at me. “You know, you look like Margot.”

“Really?” I feel my stomach rising. It would mean the world if she says yes.

“Yeah, definitely.” Katie’s eyes move back to her phone, but she’s not really looking at it. Her finger runs along the scratch on her case, the one her youngest sister made when she dropped it while playing some random app. Katie has two younger sisters, and they’re probably upstairs screaming at each other, but we can’t hear them. The movie room blocks out all noise.

“Wonder when her new movie is gonna come out?” Katie breaks the silence.

“Yeah,” I say. I wonder when she’s gonna come out.

When we were in fifth grade, we became friends over Megan Fox. We’d sit in my basement, cuddled up under the covers we brought to the couch. To this day, we still call it “aggressive cuddling”: it’s gotta be impossible to free yourselves, otherwise you’re not doing it right. Legs intertwined and then locked, torsos pushed up against each other and arms linked. The popcorn sat in Katie’s lap. I liked the white cheddar seasoning you could buy at the grocery store; Katie let me put it on the popcorn, but would blow the powder off each individual piece before eating it.

Jennifer’s Body had been released that September, and we watched it every weekend.

Every. Weekend. It was insane. We could quote the movie on the spot—“you’re lime green jello and you can’t even admit it to yourself”—and we did it often, with pride. We came up with subplots and character motivations, read into every little detail. A casual watcher might have viewed Jennifer, the teenage girl turned succubus, as a simplistic demon bent on ruining the life of Needy, her best friend from childhood. But if they knew the movie like we did, they would know that really Jennifer was madly in love with Needy and so she killed everyone Needy loved so Needy would be all hers and if Needy had just realized this and accepted that

70 she loved Jennifer too it would have been a beautiful love story and they could have murdered people together and lived happily ever after. But Needy was scared and in love with Chip, her dumb boyfriend who died in the end anyway. She didn’t get it until after Jennifer died.

We vowed never to make the same mistake as Needy while I helped Katie dust off the white cheddar seasoning on the popcorn.

On Wednesdays my parents go to book club, so I’m home alone for a few hours. I usually sit at the kitchen table and finish my homework, but I can’t focus today. I keep staring at the picture hanging on the fridge, the one of my family and uncle George’s at our shared Michigan summer home.

I hate going up the first week of every July. Uncle George is just off enough for it to be weird. He never buttons his shirt up all the way, and he has this really thick chest hair.

And his hugs last for a second too long, and his back is always sweaty. He talks about fishing nonstop, but not before he asks if I have a boyfriend. He always asks that. I always say no.

I wish Katie could come on that trip, but it’s “family only.” Once, I jokingly told her that if we started dating my mom would let her go on the trip too, and she said we should do that.

But we never talked about it again.

I’ve been trying to say it for weeks: “Hey, Katie. I like you—like that.” But I can never do it. I get so close and there are plenty of times I could but I don’t. I think of the look on her face if she said “Me too,” but then it’s immediately followed by the look of “What? Gross, no.”

So I choke up.

“Why is Turnabout even a thing?” Katie asks, flopping on her bed. “It’s our freshman year of high school and oh, yeah, the first dance is one where the girls have to ask. What kind of cruelty is that?”

I sit on her leather chair by the desk, elbows on my knees, hands dangling. “I mean, it’s kind of feminist, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Katie doesn’t sound convinced. She’s staring up at her ceiling, limbs splayed out on her bed.

“Look, let’s brainstorm. I could ask Alex Rosenthal, the guy from English. He’s pretty cute. I’m kinda into the whole ripped jeans and Ray Bans look.” I prefer it on girls, but at least I like it.

Katie props herself up on her bed to glare at me. “Yeah, and how about the cigarettes he smokes after school? You really want to taste that when you kiss him?”

I hadn’t thought about that. Making out with him does sound disgusting. Actually, making out with any of the boys from my school does. “Alright. Jake Steinberg. There’s no way he’s ever smoked, and he’s one of the best artists in glass blowing class.” Plus, he’s way too awkward to make a move.

Katie lies back down on the bed, but I can feel her rolling her eyes. “Where is that going to get you in ten years? There’s no way you can make it in this world creating glass flowers for living.”

“Katie, it’s a school dance, not a marriage proposal.” She’s being ridiculous.

“I’m just saying. Best to think long-term investments here,” she says, waving her arms in the air to emphasize her point.

“Fine. Then who should I go to the dance with?”

She sits up and shrugs, pulling her phone out of her back pocket. Her pink case has another scratch from dropping it in math yesterday.

“Come on. You have to have someone in mind.” Work with me here, Katie.

“Nope.”

I fall back on her chair, staring up at the dark purple ceiling. I know what she wants to say, but she’s so stubborn. I should just say it. This is when I’m supposed to say it. I can do this. I look back at her, almond hair slightly curled around her face and turquoise nails freshly painted. I choke up.

Maybe I am superficial. Maybe I want prom style photos with the captain of the football team so I can show all my friends how I got the hottest guy in school and when my uncle asks at Fourth of July family dinner “got a boyfriend yet?” I can say “yeah, actually, and he’s the most popular boy in school” and everyone will be impressed. But maybe I don’t actually want that.

Maybe I want soft skin, bad movie nights and turquoise nails. Maybe I’m not as brave as I’d like to be.

“Did you read today’s horoscope?” she asks. I shake my head. Katie clears her throat and begins to read. “This month will be one of unexpected love for Libra. Through work and play, that special someone will reveal themselves. Look out for Aquarius, Aries, and Leo as potential mates.”

71

“Aquarius, huh? Guess that means it could be you,” I tease. “What do you say Katie?

Anything you’d like to tell me?” Please say it for me, Katie.

“Well,” she says, putting on her best Jennifer voice. “We do always share your bed when we have slumber parties.”

“I’m not gonna bite you,” I finish the quote, biting the air at her.

Katie throws a feather filled pillow at me as our laughter fills the room. I grab it, and jump on the bed, ready to hit her with it, but she pulls the one from under her head to block.

“Damn, you’re a ninja!” I say.

“Oh, you know it.” The light reflects in her eye, creating a bright spot. Suddenly I’m aware of how close we are, how I’m on top of her and she hasn’t asked me to move.

I set the pillow down on the bed, and sit crisscross applesauce next to her. Lacing my fingers together, I move my thumbs in a circle around each other. It’s time to try. Start slow.

“You know what’s ultra feminist?” I ask. I hope she can’t hear my heart beat.

“What?” Katie lies on her side, propping her head up on her hand.

My throat swells. “You know, friendship. Like female friendship. Gal pals, or whatever.”

“Yeah, and?” She doesn’t get it. I even said gal pals.

I look at Katie’s forehead, because making eye contact feels too real. She plucked her eyebrows recently. They look nice. “And we’re feminists, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Why do you think my laptop background is Mila Kunis? Supporting the sisterhood.”

“Right.” I start moving my toes up and down. “So if we were really going to take a stand against the annoying school board who made dances a thing in the first place and all the dumb boys at our school and really the patriarchy in general what we should do for turnabout is go together.”

That was it. I did it, sort of. Holy crap. I kind of did it. I stare at Katie, desperately waiting for a reaction. She’s wide eyed and her mouth is slightly parted. She sits up, cocks her head to the left. Her lips slowly turn up into a smile.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

I exhale. I didn’t realize I wasn’t breathing.

“Me too.”

2

CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS ALAINA SYMANOVICH earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University and her MA in Creative Writing from Penn State University. Her work has most recently appeared in Lavender Review, Rubbertop Review, and The Tusk. To read more of her published work, visit alainasymanovich.com.

Born and raised in Atlanta, ALEX FALLON has published their work in Voices and Visions, The Onyx Review, and The Mighty. Currently working on their BA, Alex studies English Literature and Education Studies with a focus on minority voices. As a queer, nonbinary person, Alex uses writing to process the struggles of Southern discrimination, the joys of their chosen family, and the complex and winding nature of gender identity.

ALEXA ABURTO graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with honors. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature with a Minor in Creative Writing. As a Mellon Mays Research Fellow, she conducted literary qualitative analysis research centered on how contemporary novels describe and frame the human body and its natural occurring fluids through the literary Gothic framework. She has participated in research programs at UC Berkeley and at the University of Chicago and has presented at academic conferences at Stanford and the University of Southern California. Alexa plans to attend graduate school next fall and continue her research, relating her work on the body to disability studies and activism. She will always continue to write creatively.

ASHLEY COLLINS is a rising senior at the College of Charleston studying English Literature and Creative Writing. When she’s not writing, she loves reading and dreaming of being an editor who helps bring diverse works into existence.

BARBARA MONTANO is a student and writer living in Berkeley, CA. For the last few years, she has been writing, both creatively and academically, about bodies and their relationship to place. She has recently returned to poetry as a way to explore those interests, while still at work on two long-standing novel projects. A senior at the University of California, Berkeley, Barbara is uncertain about her future plans, but hopes to always be at work on her creative writing.

BRIA GOELLER is an undergraduate at Emory University majoring in Creative Writing and Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in art, social justice, empathy, and the articulation of identity. An avid writer/artist/photographer/filmmaker/graphic designer/musician, a collection of her work can be found at briagoeller.com.

BRITTANY GILLILAND is a queer pagan writer hailing from South Carolina, whose recent work focuses on the queer body. They are a graduate of Agnes Scott College where they received a B.A. in English: Creative Writing (with additional noted interests in Religion and Gender Studies). You can find them spending most of their time doing witchy things, worrying about their future, and listening to the same song(s) over and over.

EVAN GRAHAM holds a BA in Art History from the University of Notre Dame and a MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Evan’s writing is often centered around how art can provide clarifying and mental relief for those who are experiencing a troubling period in their life. He writes mostly about American art and literature ranging from the end of the nineteenth-century up into the second half of the twentieth-century. If you would like to contact Evan with questions, concerns, comments, or just to talk, feel free to email him at egraham2792@ gmail.com.

FIONA JONES is a current Asian-American studio artist and computer science who resides in Rochester, New York. She focuses on a variety of artwork, mostly based in both digital photography as well as digital illustration. She can be contacted at fjones5@u.rochester.edu or her personal email, vinceisnotace@gmail.com. She would like to thank her family and friends for their endless support. Dedication (with love) to Jess.

Francesco Piraino obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2016 at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at KU Leuven. He is the responsible for the “Centre of Comparative Studies on Spiritualties and Civilisations” at the Cini Foundation in Venice. He has recently published on Religiologiques, Social Compass, Critical Research on Religion.

Gabriel G Torres is a multidisciplinary artist from Colombia currently residing in New York. His play dreamless will be first seen at The Clemente Soto Theater in November, directed by Marina Montesanti. His essays have been published in Eleven and a half Journal Magazine. As an artist, Gabriel’s mission is to showcase human contradictions and the violence behind every act of kindness. To learn more about him as a director, or performer, please visit: http://gabrielgtorres.com/ .

GRACE JINNAH is currently living in New Orleans working towards her BFA at Loyola University.

Jinnah was born on a farm in Virginia where she grew up in the rich landscape around her and became deeply affected by it. As a child, Jinnah spent summers in Covington, Louisiana where her mother’s family lives. During this time Jinnah was able to experience new plant species fed by brown bayou water and beautiful southern sunsets. The privilege of these summer trips made

Jinnah fall in love with the rich southern culture and eventually move to New Orleans to pursue her art studies. The environment of New Orleans has acts as a catalyst for her work, which is rooted in a combination of atmospheric perspective, organic growth and decay. Jinnah has exhibited work in New Orleans recently at 5 press gallery and the Danna Center Gallery at Loyola University.

JAN BRUGGER received an MFA from the University of Chicago and a BFA with a Certificate in Dance from the University of Wisconsin. Her work has recently been shown at Aggregate Space Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL and Jersey City, NJ), and the Feminist Media Studio at Concordia University (Montreal, QC). She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, a Post-MFA Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago, and lecturer at Purdue Northwest University.

JEM ZERO is a disabled queer person with a heart of gold and balls of brass. despite living in a greek tragicomedy, ze managed to trick a college into awarding zir an art degree, which ze uses alongside zir writing skills to survive the capitalist hellhole in which ze resides. to distract zirself from the existential horror of space and sea, jem focuses on zir love of graphic novels, greyhounds, and dreams that one day ze will have a queer porn empire.

JULIA BYRNE is a sophomore at Emory University studying Creative Writing as well as theatre and social sciences in conjunction to learn more about why theatre matters and how stories reflect and inform culture. Most of my plays, short stories, or poetry circle themes of mental health, sexuality, and feminism, and I hope to write, act, and create professionally after college. Hit me up for collaboration!

KATIE MURPHY is a young playwright and screenwriter currently based in Athens, GA. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2017 with a BA in English and will receive her BA in Screenwriting in May 2018. Her work has been performed at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Mesa, AZ, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in Las Vegas, NV, and M.T. Pockets Theatre in Morgantown, WV. Laura Zambelli obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2015 at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy). She is currently affiliated researcher at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) of KU Leuven in Belgium. She published on Sexuality & Culture, Gender/Sexuality/Italy and Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia.

LEAH DY: I am from Orange County, California and I am currently a senior Economics major at Bates College. During my time at Bates College, I have involved myself in clubs and organizations that prioritize intersectionality of its students, faculty and staff, and our overall well-being. I am an advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, mental illness, creative writing as a form of self-care and the continued success of people of color. On campus, I am an active member of OutFront, a queer and ally focused organization on campus that discusses issues the LGBTQIA+ community faces while creating a safe space for its members. Upon graduation, I will be moving to Chicago, Illinois to join Morningstar Inc. as a Client Support Representative.

My name is LYDIA NEWMAN-HEGGIE and I recently graduated from Oberlin College with a studio art degree. In my art practice I work with textiles, particularly quilting, to investigate and redefine traditional gender norms. My work merges the historically male-dominated sphere of painting with the historically female-dominated sphere of quilting. I seek to validate the quilt as a form of discourse by using it to investigate historical, current, and personal issues.

MADELEINE CALVI is a senior English major at UC Berkeley, on the verge of graduation and currently pursuing a career as an editor. They spend their time reading, writing, road tripping, yelling about science fiction, trying to figure out how exactly this gender thing works anyway, and wishing their cats werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t all the way in their native Los Angeles.

MATT ALBINO is a student at Hamilton College who loves queer comic books and outer space.

When he is not eating tater tots or watching drag shows, he can be found on twitter @albino_ matt.

Like Sharon Stone and the zipper, MIKE MCCLELLAND hails from Meadville, Pennsylvania. He has lived on five different continents but now resides in Georgia with his husband, his (new!) son, and a menagerie of rescue dogs. His short fiction collection, Gay Zoo Day, was released by Beautiful Dreamer Press in September 2017, and other recent work has appeared in the Boston Review, Queen Mobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Teahouse, and Permafrost. He is a graduate of Allegheny College, the London School of Economics, and the MFA program at Georgia College, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.

CONTRIBUTORS The artist and educator REBECCA LIPPS, is dedicated to her practice. She is an MFA student at Winthrop University and she teaches students art within the Fort Mill School District. The dynamics of human relationships drives her art. She explores concepts of contemporary dating trends among society. The experience her viewers have while interacting with the installations, starts a conversation on social changes and the consequence of being vulnerable. The process of her work starts with an installation and then she creates digital video and performance with the art.

The balancing act of educating others and maintaining her own artistic practice is a committed lifestyle choice.

THOMASINA ROGERS studies creative writing at Oberlin College. One of her dreams is to live in a world where there is more LGBT representation in media, which is what she tells people when they ask why every story she writes is queer. Fun quirks include knowing all the lyrics to the songs on Vanessa Carlton’s first album, and a strong belief that root beer is the best soda. When she’s not at college, she’s living her best life in the Chicago area.

TSAILING TSENG: Tseng thinks of painting as decoding her life onto canvas.

At the beginning of a painting, Tseng starts with few colors, spray paints or flashes on canvas.

Playing with the paints and mediums: whipping, adding, flipping.

In other words, she puts chaos on blank canvas at the beginning.

Then she sits back and looks, finding lights from colors interacting with one another.

Brushstrokes become wind and force.

Forms become animals and my friends.

Images come and go.

She waits for the subconscious impulse to add on, erase, flip again.

She trusts her subconscious decisions while constructing a painting.

She trusts her conscious decisions to deconstruct a painting.

She is fighting for the balance between her conscious critical self and subconscious impulsive action.

She is finding the moment when painting itself surprises her, instead of her trying to surprise the viewers or herself.

2 2018

EMORYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S QUEER LIT/ART JOURNAL