Pour Vida Zine 1.4 (Summer Issue)

Table of Contents “"I've been going around, meeting my new neighbors. I think that it is important to know one's neighbors. To say 'hello!' to them."

As interpreted by: Samuel Juárez (klosx)…………………………………………………….“Hello klosx” p. 2 Caitlin Flores……………………………………..…………………“Talks to Strangers” p. 3 Alyssa Contreras……………………………………………………………..“Said Henry” p. 4 Danny De Maio + Johnathan Gilcrest + Adam Martinez………………………….“Exquisite Corpse: Rick Turnings” p. 5-13 Anna Escher…………………………………………“House on Park and Victoria” p. 14 Tatiana Servin……………………….“The Babysitter” p. 15-17 Rosemary Donahue….. “Lights” p. 18 Nicole Lavoie………………………………………..“The World Didn’t Stop” p. 19-20 John Carlo Encarnacion…. “Last One Out Turn Off the Lights” p. 21-24 For any inquiries or if you wish to contribute to future issues of Pour Vida, feel free to contact us at: pourvidazine@gmail.com

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Talking to Strangers This is what lights me on fire This is how I commit arson of the soul This is a sugar rush of blood to the heart Collecting strangers in a private public conversation Like porcelain figurines on the shelf of my night Like the way some people inexplicably collect spoons I like strangers, the stranger the better Because I need to know, I think that it is important to know To know every little thing inside the head of the person next to me Crack that mind open like an egg Pour the runny mess out until it is something we can all digest The flickering flame in my eyes The way everything I say sounds like champagne and cotton candy It makes them all lean in to listen to the smiled whispers Makes them move a little closer Because aren’t strangers only neighbors you haven’t moved yet?

I get the feeling this one hasn’t talked about The Royal Tenenbaums And suicide with even his best of friends And here I am, telling everyone not to cry over spilled whiskey When we can laugh about spilled secrets, because as they say Secrets don't make friends But friends make secrets And aren't strangers only friends you haven't made yet?

And I am here to make them Talk, to open up, buzzing The need to share is an aching The need to touch thoughts is a stinging deep inside them Is a mouthful of bumblebees Humming their most favorite song And letting it all out, excruciating pleasure, a confession

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Said Henry

I would go to Crystal Line Café every evening after work and dwell on why I enjoyed Sangria more than beer and why I enjoyed pornography more than sex I never really found a reason for either so I would grab my blueberry muffin and my blistering black coffee and leave the questions for the next evening Instead I’d sit by the ladies bathroom fixated on the shadows of their feet from beneath the door and ask myself “Why do they move around so much?” or “What size shoe is that?” but mostly “Why are they here?”

As they finished and exited I would look at them and they would glance back at me and in every second of these brief moments of visual contact - I was seen as the creep that sat near the ladies room every evening Nothing more than what is seen but we have questions and more wonders for tomorrow

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Exquisite Corpse: Rick Turnings The fucking bells. They aren’t even real bells. They are replicated foley bings broadcasting through loudspeakers. It’s not even noon yet, but to ship people, nine is the equivalent of sleeping in late. We as passengers were informed no less than ten times that the bells mean we are pulling into harbor, and we have no more than one hour to report to the gangway to disembark. I suppose this is fine because I promised myself I would wake up early to see what Acapulco has to offer. I just wish they would choose something more tasteful to play. What do they listen to in Acapulco, anyway, Vincente Fernandez?

I’m pretty sure I drank too much last night when I look into the toilet as I pee. Cold burns in my chest. What did I say to that woman? Did I really call her a hooker?

I need coffee. Without it I will be a grouch. To the point where I might slap an ice cube out of a stranger’s hand because I know she is going to start crunching on it. I need coffee, but I can’t get it because a Shapiro, or Shrapnel or Moses...was standing at the back of the line.

I had to literally run away from him in mid conversation last night at the bar. The man could find something relatable in anything said and left no dead space in the conversation to let me excuse myself for the night, or even another drink. I tried inventing some things, like the 1999 genocide in northern Germany, and he told me about how he went to London for a high school senior trip and fingered a cheerleader that had managed to chug half a bottle of vodka from the shelf in a liquor store before getting kicked out. I talked about real things too, like the Michigan Militia and Tim McVeigh and he connected these to his uncle’s friend’s construction business that thrived from the memorial they built in place of the Murrah building. When I asked what it was he did he told me about his entrepreneurial enterprise as a print shop owner, but business had been excessively slow, as in one teenage band a week would order 250 two by twos. Thankfully, he said, he had been gifted with an inheritance that was bolstering him through the recession, and he had met some folks from Capitol that wanted to contract him just that night at the bar. I was nearly sober at this point, and the realization that everyone at this bar thought I was with him caused my face to heat up so I shouted, “God damnit. No, the Jews did not have it coming,” and ran away to my cabin.

The sun down here is bullshit, and I forgave applying sun block because I didn’t shower, and I didn’t want to add another layer of filth to my skin. I can feel a sunburn already on my arms as I lie atop my sheets. They’re crinkled with yellowish stains and I have a suspicion that doesn’t feel misplaced that I’m lying in a year’s worth of someone’s love

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juices. Regularly I’d hop to my feet and cry foul (hell, I might have even fired the flare gun I’d packed right through the goddamn wall), but it was far too humid in the room. I had to stay here. I certainly couldn’t show my face back in the ship’s bar after that scene I made. Running out of the tragically elegant place like a child with his hair aflame? I most definitely could have executed a more subversive exit, but the man might as well have been chewing my fucking ear off.

I start to realize I hate everything about this ship. Why in the name of everything holy did I choose a cruise to Mexico? I don’t remember making the transaction. I think to myself that I’ve been drinking bourbon more than usual and I knowingly blackout on it, but that’s usually because I pass out. There’s a narrow window of opportunity for me to pull any shit. It’s precisely the reason why I had switched to bourbon more often than not. Vodka made me weird. Tequila made me angry. Gin made me horny. Beer made me worthless and lazy. Bourbon, on the other hand, gave me all of these attributes at once, but before I was able to act on a single one, I’d blackout. Then about ten minutes after that I’d pass out. It was the perfect drink. Somehow that ten-minute window has led to the misstep that got me here on filth-encrusted sheets destined for a seven-day voyage to the beach resorts of Mexico. Paralyzed with sweat and the stink emanating from the sheets, I silently cursed the whiskey that had imprisoned me.

The sound of kids’ feet rambunctiously tearing up and down the hall begins. Low and faint like faraway thunder, at first, and then clapping, flapping, clomping the closer they get to my door. The little bastards stop just beyond my door, which lay near the end of the hall.

“Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Catch me!”

Then the other would laugh hysterically. Presumably Bobby. It was a unisex cackle. Tough to pinpoint. Definitely prepubescent, but entirely fucking hideous and soul-killing.

“Bobby! Bobby! I said…CATCH ME!” Bobby said nothing and then both sets of feet charged up and down the hall again. I was far too shithouse for nonsense like this. I suddenly wished I had brought a straight bourbon back to the cabin as opposed to sipping on this rum. Tropical and aimless, rum never did the trick. I can’t stand humidity and I sure as a good goddamn don’t enjoy my booze to sit around waiting to fuck me up. That’s what I drink for.

“Catch me catch me catch me catch me catch me catch me cat—“ But before the little shit could antagonize poor Bobby anymore, I erupted in a swift move from the bed to my feet to the door to the hallway.

“Ya lil’ cunt, shut up before I toss you to the Great Whites!”

There stood a little boy, no older than six, and his mother. In a haze of a rum-soaked brain and the six-year old’s lisp, I had mistaken “Mommy” for “Bobby.”

The mother looked terrified and vengeful at once and I felt my face, no doubt a drunk’s red, inflate to a maroon mess of embarrassment. We

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stared one another down for a second before I drove my eyes to the floor and closed my cabin door.

I stumbled over to the window overlooking the nighttime sea and thought, God, fucking kill me. Knowing damn well what I deserve makes me feel at peace in my useless body. I stared at the moonlight that streaked down the ocean until I could no longer distinguish the stygian water from the twilight sky had it not been for that giant glowing star that started the whole conversation. The moon was fucking the Pacific. Plunging its never ending rays through time and space and at any given thrust, there was some vaguely apathetic soul like myself feeling sorry for himself because he wasn’t fucking something. It looked like a lowercase I, and I knew God was real, he just maybe didn’t give a shit about me, and rightfully so. This image held my attention firmly until I arrived at some Emersonian ideal in which I could become a part of the rape that I was witnessing. I could be the All-Seeing Eye. I could disrupt the narrative. I thought about grabbing the first heavy object I could get my hands on to smash the cabin window so that I could squeeze my sunburnt hide through and become a rogue wave from the inside out. I could jump into the I. I could become the All-Seeing Eye in one cold breath. All I have are these fucking sheets, filled with salt and semen, and this bottle of rum. I took a swig and made the decision to take an evening stroll to the top deck to add myself to the conversation. I walked to my door and as I slowly opened it, I peered out from left to right to see if “Bobby” and her son were anywhere to be found. I wasn’t about to take shit from anyone but God. He didn’t even seem to bother with me, so with an empty hallway, I was in the clear. I had just five decks to ascend in order to reach the pinnacle, then it would be just me, my bottle, the moon, and that slut of an ocean; several cogs in a fuck-machine. As I made my way into the elevator I put my bottle into my suit pocket, the glass wasn’t by any means cold, but I was wearing the jacket with no shirt underneath, and the smoothness against my sunburnt skin was soothing, sensual, made me want to be in something. I closed my eyes and imagined my body inside of that water, sinking deeper and deeper until I become the All-Seeing Eye. The ding of the elevator door interrupted my fantasy and as the door opened, I stood in front of the mother, presumably, she immediately recognized me and looked like she either wanted to kill me, or fuck me, Maybe she could become another cog in the fuck-machine with me, but then what would become of her bratty little kid?

“Sorry about this morning.” I step inside and she hits me with this look I’ve been getting since I started noticing people give looks. It’s as if her brows are cocked claws, extended and ready to grab my throat. Her eyes though--her eyes are worse--they are the opposite. Her eyes are these nearly exhausted wells of forgiveness, but the only thing left in them is something dark and sludge filled. Pity. Maybe disgust. I can’t tell. All I know is I need to run away, but the elevator is closed now.

“You know. About calling your kid a cunt.”

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“I remember.”

Jesus Christ. Only her mouth moves. Those eyes stay the same.

Maybe it’s love. Maybe that is the look people get when they fall in love.

I’ve been missing out. This calls for a drink.

I wonder what the back of her neck feels like. There must be feathers back there. Soft, ruby bright, down feathers that fill your mouth and choke you so your nose is the only way to breathe. And then you breathe her in.

The smell of perfume would be first, but something deeper would be under it, something earthen, like freshly watered grass.

“This is a family cruise.”

“Oh?” I say. A family cruise. That’s good. That’s what I want to hear. So where is your fucking husband or your ring for that matter? Oh my God, her hands are like claws, too. Long piano playing claws without scales.

“So where’s your husband, then?”

And something breaks free. A bolt loosens. A laugh, patronizing, echoing in her own throat. Rolled eyes. Teeth, not sharp, slightly spaced apart like graves.

“Does this whole not wearing a shirt thing work for me? I did, like, forty sit ups a day for a week.”

She turns away to see the floor we are near, then settles on staring at the door. We both want out. She wants to never see me again, and I want to be by myself to think about what I should have done while we were together.

There is a moment when an ascending elevator slows down and you lose a few pounds. Everything becomes dizzy just long enough to feel but not enough to make you catch yourself. It’s the feeling of arrival. I don’t feel like arriving yet, so I switch the emergency stop like they do in the movies.

Alarms never go off in the movies. Ever.

“Oh. My. God.” She tears through her purse and pulls out a pink glitter, pen-sized canister.

“Wait. Stop. Wait, wait, wait. Don’t!”

Only someone who has never used pepper spray would use pepper spray in a space as tight as an elevator. I duck and she misses my face but starts coughing because the flavor of the air is now spiced. Breathing is a forced maneuver, as the aerated oils needle their way into our bronchioles.

The alarm is one solid ring, a never tiring arm beating against brass. I can’t open my eyes to find the switch to get the elevator started again. Bobby is sitting on the floor kicking my shins. I’m screaming for her to help me, but she just keeps kicking.

People must be running down halls and grabbing life jackets.

Thinking of ships and bodies and treasure buried under the weight of the ocean. I remember one time a fire alarm went off in a hotel I was staying at in Milwaukee. I just stayed in bed as the fire licked its way through floors four and five. The smell of burning beds, linen and linoleum seeping up

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seven floors to find me felt reminiscent. I had smelled that before. Death smelled like that. People melted into their car seats smelled like that. I remember I wanted to be melted into my bed, too. It would have made more sense that way. But the fire department came. They put it out. A few hours later during the inspection they found me watching Face/Off on HBO and couldn’t handle the fact that I had stayed. I couldn’t handle the fact they wouldn’t leave.

Eyes watering, I start slapping everything on the control panel and hit the switch to get the elevator moving again, only it doesn’t start moving.

The mom has decided to stop kicking and just cough in the corner. She really held that trigger down, must have emptied the whole thing. She really wanted to spray me. It was like she bought that thing just for the occasion.

“Well. You certainly fucked us.”

“You stopped the elevator! What do you think, this is a movie?”

I pull out my little bottle and hand it to her. I want to kiss her, but I’m pretty sure attempted rape charges are a possibility.

“Think they are gonna arrest me?”

“I hope so.”

They don’t arrest me though. The elevator doors eventually open, but I only know because I hear them squeak before the ‘ding’ sounds. I can’t see a goddam thing through the constant burning, watering, and itching. I wish I could call her a bitch, or tell her I am going to eat her kid at dinner tonight.

“Sir” comes a questioning voice. Before I can answer he ditches me.

“Oh, ma’am, are you okay,” and I can feel him brush up against me as he rushes in to help her to her feet and escort her out.

They talk in the hall for a few moments and she assures him that all she needs is water to wash out the pepper spray. The entire time I wait for her to cry about how I tried to rape her or how I should be cuffed and tossed overboard like some pirate. Real pirates didn’t come to Mexico; they went to the Caribbean because everyone with half a brain knows that rum always trounces tequila. Especially here. What a piss-poor excuse for booze. A couple shots of the shit they have here and it’s like trying to apologize to this woman; a face-full of pepper spray and a headache. I still have every intention of being thrown in the onboard cell. I practically have my hands behind my back, held in a position that welcomes handcuffs.

But she says nothing. Did I just hallucinate all of the events in the elevator? The glare, the wounded eyes, the shellacking of alien venom, and her even-toned hopefulness that I be arrested…

One of the captain’s minions pulls me to my feet and I half-expect he will club me. We are on the ocean. Maybe he’s learned how to club a seal or two.

“Allow me to take you to your cabin, sir. Which room is it?”

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“Thanks,” I say, but not for leading me to my cabin. He’s left me conscious and out of jail. He leads me to my room that’s only a bit bigger than I imagine the holding cell that’s aboard.

He opens the door, leads me to the shower, and I hear the water trickle out at a low pressure. I thank him again, and he insists that I call the help if I need anything at all. His reluctance to ask me about what happened in the elevator creeps me out. I’m no mariner but maybe we’re out far enough to where laws need not apply. I hear of those gambling ships constantly. My dumbass friends call me three times a year to go with them.

Why? We live three hours from Vegas and five hours away from the nearest port that takes those ships out.

I hear the door shut and I undress, blind still, and soak in the shower for nearly forty-five -minutes. I only get out of the shower when I can see, so I use the time on my watch as a barometer. It’s 6:47pm, just in time for the dinner buffet. As I dress I realize how hungry I am. I haven’t eaten a solid meal since the first day I got aboard the Touro Heroi. The “Bull Hero”, whatever the hell that means to them. An American cruiseline that travels exclusively to Mexico that is named in Portuguese.

I get to the line and it’s crowded. A herd of cattle head-to-tail waiting their turn to shovel all the chicken-fried steak, ribs, macaroni and cheese, week-old shrimp, and pudding cups they could eat. Maybe the name of the ship has some relevance after all.

While everyone is shitting themselves over the faux-Chinese food, I cut around them to snatch up as many snow crab legs I can get my hands on. Kids don’t like that type of shit anyway. Right next to them are shrimp, and they’re full-bodied. Eyes and all. I know they’ve probably been sitting in a wooden box on ice for longer than I’d care to verify, but they’re still sitting on ice out in the buffet, and that’s good enough for me. I pile two full plates of each, three-inches high. I get smirks and whispers as I pass some of the families, but I imagine they’re admiring me. A worldclass eater. A connoisseur of the fine art of cuisine and digestion. All hail me!

I look for a nook in the corner to eat undisturbed and fill my gut with seafood and booze, but all the families over five people have snaked those tables. I give up searching solely because the four plates are feeling heavy on my wrists. A four-top sits in the middle of the dining room and I feel that’s the best I can do for now. The plates come down with a chaotic clank, rattle round on their edges, and come to a stop when a waitress catches two of them with her hands while I corral the other two.

“Drink, sir?”

I’m caught off-guard by the question and her eyes seem to exude irritation rather than hospitality.

“Uh, yes, I’ll take three Tecates and three shots of whiskey.”

“Oh, more guests joining you tonight, sir?”

“No, just me,” I say, not engaging her stare. She walks away and returns in less than a minute.

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“I’m very sorry, sir, but we’re actually all out of whiskey on this floor of the ship.”

Well, go to another floor, I think, but I feel like I’m already skating on thin ice.

“Is there anything else I can get for you besides the beers.”

I realize I haven’t looked at her since she gave me the glare, so I engage her question and look at her. She’s actually borderline gorgeous. Her eyes are caked with black liner, but otherwise she’s soft in the cheeks and her smile, whether or not she wants to break the beer bottle across my face, glows with a warmth I haven’t seen in months.

“Tequila is fine,” I answer, “since I already have the Tecates.”

She looks confused by the second part of my answer, but she obviously doesn’t know that Mexican beer only chases well with tequila. Rum is too sweet, vodka is always awful, and Jager never ends well.

While she’s away, I sip my beer and get myself worked up about having to drink tequila. I can’t control my irritation, which irritates me more. I look down at the company on my plate. It’s time, little bastards, I think, and grab one of the shrimp off the plate. He’s cold and fat. There’s a treasure trove of goddamned goodness in his belly. As I work on opening his gut I catch his beady black eye staring at me. They’re lifeless and have no visible pupil, but I’m sure he hates me. I imagine him wiggling in my sweaty hands. He’s not a lobster, so he can’t snap my fingers off, but his eyes are a big enough “fuck you” to make me question going any further.

But only for a second. I hate that he judges me or that I could even think he is judging me.

I grab my beer and take a joyous swig, knowing I’m on my way to defeating all fifty of these scrumptious little bastards. I work meticulously through the first five, digging through their shells with my fingers. Their guts are cold and they fight the humidity in the room.

The waitress returns with my three shots of tequila, but I’m too far gone. Too focused on destroying these treacherous crustaceans of the deep. I take two shots successively and a swig of the red-labeled beer before going back to work. I work through a plate in five-minutes. Twenty or so empty-shelled casualties of my waged war. I’m pleased, but still have an appetite for victory.

“Two more shots and two more beers,” I shout to no one in particular.

The tequila is getting into my system and the coolness from the shrimp that tasted so good only a few minutes before is gone. The Mexican liquor is warming me up again and the humidity is again allencompassing. I keep jabbing at the shells and the drunker I get the harder it is to tell how much meat I’m actually getting.

In losing track of time, I pile-drive my way through fifty shrimp and turn my attention to the snow crab. I’m feeling like my limit has been

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reached, but I push through. Suddenly the waitress plops two more beers and shots on the table.

“What’s this?”

“The drinks you ordered, sir,” she says, obviously startled by my directness.

“I didn’t order drinks, honey, I ordered booze,” a wry grin coming over my face.

She finds this humorous and creepy in equal measure and wanders off to the next table. I can care less, and go back to work. The Snow crabs are far more difficult to extract meat from. At first I think I’m too drunk, but the sons ‘a bitches are slippery and I find that I dig and dig and dig only to end up having to slurp the meat out like some hooker turning a trick.

Screw this. No more lollygagging around. I will take no prisoners and will leave no crab behind.

I toss the shell-cracker aside and begin banging the crabs on the edge of the table. Sometimes they crack right away and I’m able to get their tender treasures right off, but sometimes they don’t. I sit there for three whole minutes focused and banging away. I feel a tap.

“Sir, can I help you?” the waitress asks, not grasping the warfare at hand.

“Two more beers, please,” but the “please” is only out of manners.

I know she wants to clarify that she means the crabs, but she wouldn’t dare in a battlefield like this.

Finally the bastard cracks open, but my hand comes back with so much force that it tosses the meat to the table next to me and slaps against a mother’s bare leg. I hear her make a noise that approximates “yuck,” but I don’t look up. There’s no sympathy for those who test their guts standing on the frontlines.

Before I know it I have four plates completely empty of crab and shrimp, the remnants strewn about the tabletop. The two beers arrive, and she stands in front of me for a second. She’s given up on me though. Why try to reason with a man who’s seen the atrocities of war and lived to tell the tale. I slam the two beers and walk to the exit, my hands dripping in the entrails of my enemy.

It was a last meal of sorts. If I’d dropped dead then and there, it’d have been a glorious death. The culmination of a violent rampage at sea. I should be so lucky. My pulse still raced, the sweat on my forehead began to dry with the salty ocean air, and I had an itch on my nose. As I scratched, I could smell the death beneath my fingertips, I was at once repulsed and pleased with myself. It was around 8:30 when I had left the herd and all I could think was, I should have ordered oysters on the side, or seaweed… — I missed the intense feeling of being hot-blooded and ready to stick something. At what point had I lost human connection? I mean, why hadn’t I just kissed the little brat’s mom in the elevator? Why was it that non-human things seemed to get me going? The moon penetrating the ocean, the cool booze bottle on my bare chest, the thought of death. Things

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that could never speak to me and tell me what a worthless being I’d become. Things that could just listen to the silence with me and engulf me in a perpetual orgasm. That was my life, in one way or another I was fucking something up or being fucked. All the time. And I’m still alive so obviously I’m okay with it. At this rate I’ll never reach my pinnacle, maybe not everyone is meant to. Or maybe it came and went long ago and I never saw it coming or going. As I looked out at the ocean once again, I was reminded of the All-seeing Eye, only the sea and sky were darker, and the moon looked larger and brighter and I knew I could never compete. I give. You win, God. I’m doomed to see this voyage through on the Touro Heroi. I was the hero of shit, and I was going to live up to the name. I was drunk and I always wanted more, but I was too damned tired. I decided to retire to my cabin and figure out a way to find more rum in the morning. Maybe I hadn’t seen it all, I sure as hell hadn’t done it all. Maybe there was more to Mexico than just tequila. As I fiddled through my jacket pocket for my cabin key, I heard the mom.

“Do you like rum?” she asked shyly with those forgiving eyes. Only this time, they looked like they were asking for absolution for someone who was in no condition to be doling out any judgment from an asshole that had called her kid a cunt. “It’s called, Flor de Cana Centenario. It’s Nicaraguan, aged twelve years. My husband had brought it with us. Said it was to celebrate the time he’d first fallen in love. He wasn’t talking about me though. He brought my son and me on this trip, and when we docked yesterday he never came back. Left a note with one of the cruise ship attendants. I guess there’s more to Mexico than tequila, huh?”

“I guess so,” I said as I took my jacket off, placed it around her shoulders, and took the bottle from her hand.

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The House on Park and Victoria Nobody lives in the house on the corner of Park and Victoria Pass the realtor whose face is melting off Into a puddle of Clinique Age Defying Concealer And onto her sunburned silicon chest She tells you, “What a cute couple you are!”

When it’s late afternoon and you’re wine drunk And patiently waiting for 325 mg of Norco to set in, What better place to be than a home tour of Floral Park?

A knight in rusting armor guards the living room Oil paintings of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette Clash against blood red walls Towering indoor plants hide the dust in the corners of the room Narrow floorboards creak in objection to your footsteps The previous owners were medieval criminals With a house of stolen heirlooms Their children slept in rickety wooden beds Must have awoken trembling from nightmares Staring at oval paintings of pale-faced French royalty Kept up by the ticking of a hand-carved grandfather clock Reminding you that you’re still Not Sleeping Kitchen counter with a collection of unmarked liquors Iron fleur-de-lis figures hang nervously above marble surfaces We tell ourselves we’d never in one million years buy this house As we wave goodbye to the smiling, hollow royalty, The insomniacs and nauseous pill poppers But we fit right in

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The Babysitter We stand inside the entryway laughing as custom. I wave as they walk out the front door of their three-story home tucked in the center of the cul de sac. They wave back to me, to the neighbor, to the boy riding his bike along the imaginary line his dad set as a boundary. I recall my dad’s words: “If you can’t see me, you’ve gone too far.” This family owns the best house on the block, as the mom is quick to point it out; I am standing inside the beating heart of the neighborhood.

The kids sit one-by-one on wrought iron barstools eating food from plastic plates molded with designated spots for vegetables, chicken, and a dessert, a few marshmallows. I grab a marshmallow from one of the plates, only to be reprimanded by a five year old. “Those are for after dinner,” he says with a scold.

Once the kids fall asleep, I dance the babysitter dance: flip through an array of channels, review their choices for a movie collection, and raid their refrigerator. I head to the garage where they keep extra drinks in a separate fridge. I take account of the cluttered rectangular space and all of its surreptitious glory sucking down a Capri Sun. Makeshift shelving lined with boxes chockfull of ancient artifacts shield the bare walls.

Inside, the house is neat and tidy, too neat and too tidy. The house is a gaudery masquerading with expensive white taut couches stitched in abhorrent flowers, an aroma of artificial clean laundry scents a la Glade plug-ins, and a dusty display of books with bindings showing no sign of wear. The living room keeps in the antiseptic air while the curtains keep out all the light. It’s Mrs. Dalloway’s retreat on a bad day once the party is over.

Red, blue, green, or—maybe yellow. No, no definitely, red, blue, green festive lights slop over the edge of a plastic bin next to a cardboard box with an off-white piece of tape in the center labeled “Records, Sweaters, Misc.” Misc? Another box labeled: “Posters & Art Supp.” I consider opening the brown dog-eared mythical box thinking I might sequester more insight into their time, pre-adult epoch, but the evidence of my indiscretion would have shown with even the slightest of misplacements. No one had opened the boxes in a while. I push the box aside, knocking over the first, and spilling the contents of another. A few salt and pepper composition notebooks, yellowed letters, an old photo, and a pair of glasses form a crime scene-like picture on the cement floor. The notebooks beg to be opened, but

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even at fourteen, I’ve got a sense of decency. I put the notebooks back curbing my Nancy Drew sensibilities, but grab the remaining records that survived the tumble.

“The Graduate” in all caps snags my attention. I’d seen the film in college, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it was about seduction until I laid eyes on the cover. Though faded and brown, the cover features a picture of a young Dustin Hoffman equipped with floppy brown hair, a light-blue dress shirt, dark pants, and tan blazer. I remembered then that he was barefoot, like the woman’s foot—the only part of her—stretched across the front of the cover. I notice the door in the background. The door with two locks, both unlocked, makes more sense now than it did then. I recall the film, as it exists for me now. I consider the energy of Hoffman’s character as he lived his life action by action, never thinking too far into the future. I consider his timid and formal nature in the beginning of the film and how he rather unravels at the end. The image of his character Ben and Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine on the bus at the end of the film flickers into my mind.

Their stare alone whispers, “What now?” It’s then that Paul Simon’s “Sound of Silence,” begins to play, getting louder at the second verse.

My shoulders crouch in and slip into the memory of this verse. I had a dream about this song once when I was living off campus as a sophomore at Cal State. It was one of those Murphy’s Law days; every moment had gone wrong.

That night that song was the only sound playing in my dream. I am watching myself—in what I can only describe theatrically as a tracking shot—in a grassy open field walking toward a stadium in the distance. I finally reach the gates, and the stadium cowers over me. In the shot of what I assume is myself, I see a crowd in a gaze on the field. This rush of tense anxiety washes over me. On the ground, on the other side of the gate, are at least a fifty dogs lying down in front of the gates. I feel tense, but proceed anyway.

I tug at the gates and manage to shake the lock loose and slide through the two doors. At that moment the lyrics “In restless dreams I walked alone” start playing. I start running and a feeling of joy washes over my body. I never felt so happy, so safe, so content. The feeling was deeply warm embedded with an uncanny-like familiar. A crowd of people greets me as if they had been expecting my arrival. At that moment the song plays at “Where my eyes, were stabbed by a neon light.” The woman—me or whoever it is—stretches out her arms exposing her heart. They are dancing with giant colorful sheets that are blowing in the wind. There are people sitting down on blankets of similar neon fabric: red, orange, and pink.

16

Sometimes I feel like the dream came to me so that I would be able to harbor those feelings of utter contentment and joy when I forget that the feeling exists. How could I forget when I know what it feels like to be utterly rest assured?

I find it strange that the first real time I encountered the song was at fourteen while babysitting for a couple whose house could only conjure up analogies to a hospital or an unvisited, badly lit store. I knew more about them from the discarded goods in their garage, which felt like some Freudian notion of repressed space. I can remember their fridge. It stands smaller than the ones families usually used for their kitchens. It displays a batch of worthy insignias on the door while keeping the bottles of yellow pharmacon cool inside. I graze over each sticker with my right index finger and trace the names with my mind: Yosemite, Zion, UC Santa Barbara. I conjure up vivid images of myself, of them, in places like these free from their newly constructed confines. Confines in rows made up of little boxes and little families and little cars on little driveways next to little lawns, groomed and green, where dogs rest after walks, walks where neighbors pass each other by comparing, comparing themselves to others, othering themselves from themselves. Inside the home is a public space for unsolicited opinions while the garage is a private space, and I wonder how far the private spaces burrow and dwindle into nothing.

Freud reminds us that psychological repression is an attempt to suppress one’s own desires from consciousness. As a result, the repressed desires stay buried, but often take the form of depression or anxiety. Now it may be too far to analogize the home and the garage with a Freudian framework, but it all bares a striking resemblance.

Containers of instances stack one-by-one. A hesitant screeching noise creeps in from the garage door. It opens as the curtains pull back from my eyes. I am packing boxes and writing down labels in black sharpie on masking tape. I consider the contents, careful not to pack too much of myself away in a place I will not remember in the future, but not before I smile at the man walking his dog while my bare feet collect the soot from the floor.

17

Lights My alarm buzzed too early this morning.

I drove through town to work in that grey-orange light that could either be dusk or dawn.

I peered into others’ houses— saw the lights they left on strategically overnight to say, “We’re home!” and discourage invaders.

I shook off my dreams from the night before and began dreaming, instead, of coffee hoping it would say the same about me.

18

The World Didn’t Stop His friends had coerced him to go out one Friday evening.

"It's the Smiths karaoke night, c'mon man, you haven't hung out in forever."

They were right. "Yeah, okay, you're right."

Alcohol was something he knew to avoid, or rather, something he knew he should avoid. All five of his medications were labeled with the same warning notice: DO NOT CONSUME ALCOHOL OR GRAPEFRUIT WHILE TAKING THIS MEDICATION. Truth was, he couldn't see his friends without a drink or two. Platitudinous conversations bored him. "How's work/school/love/life/blah-fucking-blah" triggered an immediate internal response of "if we were fucking friends, we wouldn't have only this to talk about." He hated it. A congenial gesture of another to make conversation interpreted as a demonstration of how alone he really was. So he tried to be amicable, tried to be the one asking the questions he avoided being asked.

Because, isn't everyone's favorite conversation themselves? A whiskey.

Two. Maybe three. He'd ask and be able to pretend he gave a shit about their ballads of dissatisfaction.

Number of friends who had come to visit him since he moved to Los Angeles: 3. Number of friends who kept in at least bi-weekly contact with him: 0. His family and so called friends claimed they knew how busy he was and didn't want to bother him/didn't know when would be a good time to get ahold of him. Admittedly, as introverted as he was, he liked his alone time. The general rule was 2 hours alone for every hour socially spent. But that didn't stop him from wondering why nobody phoned or even bothered to text or send an email.

He moved around at least once a year most of his life. He shared a post office box in his hometown with his mother - the only consistency and address he could remember throughout the years. This was his permanent residence - on his driver's license, bank account info, anything school related, etc. His mother would send the important mail to his apartment, and his father sent letters from prison every month or so. Neither of them had been to visit. Other than that, as far as documents or anyone else knew, he lived at the post office box.

About five years ago, he was diagnosed with depression, general anxiety, and a multitude of other subcategories falling beneath these two.

At some point in his early twenties he quit protesting the medication that had so often been offered to him by various psychiatrists and therapists.

He found a whole new world - one where he could eat, sleep, focus - live

19

mostly like a person who had enough GABA receptors, serotonin, and norepinephrine levels. He'd accepted he would be taking the medication for the rest of his life and was happy with it - thank God or the pharmaceutical industry. Trials and errors of such cases were not without turbulence, there were so many options to figure out what cocktail worked most efficiently. And by this time he'd found it. He had all of his bases coveredSSRI's, SNRI's, tranquilizers, anti-anxiolytics, benzodiazepines.

There were, of course, downside. Your body develops a tolerance to benzos. Most of which are prescribed "as needed", though a minimum dosage was required to abstain from withdrawal. You determine how much is "as needed" by watching how badly your hands shake, how serious your digestive failure is, the headaches, dehydration, confusion, the tingling feeling of wanting to jump out of your skin. He took a doses that would put any normal person in virtually a coma for days. Just to stay normal. It's easy to forget how much of it you have in your bloodstream, even if you don't feel it.

He finished his drinks and platitudinous conversations. Went home.

Set his alarm for work the next day. Took his nightly doses. In the morning, he'd slept through the alarm so many times that it finally gave up. He slept through the texts and missed calles of irritated bosses and coworkers. One day, two days, three days. Messages and missed calls piled up. Voice Mailbox was full and could no longer take messages he'd never hear anyway. Texts and calls from the mother, and single serving friends who probably didn't expect a response back anyway. Seven days. Emails accrued from professors letting him know he had missed too many classes without forewarning. 14 days. More missed calls. Texts warranting no response and the sender shrugging it off with "he's probably really busy," emails stating that he had missed paper deadlines, exams, and would either have the choice to fail the class or take an incomplete until his work was finished. 21 days. His neighbors were friendly enough, he'd chatted with them while passing by. The girl from across the hall knocked on his door to ask if he had smelled the terrible odor filling the hallway. No answer. Stench was getting worse. Tenants complained. Email was sent to him letting him know they'd be coming in the apartment before the end of the day, with or without him there, to figure out where the smell was coming from.

Before 5pm on that day, they found him. There he was, lying in a fetal position, facing the westward window, staring right into the 4:30ish sunlight he dutifully avoided everyday. His face was half exposed, his body was covered in bed sheets as if he'd tried to make the matter as convenient as possible. Police. Ambulance. Autopsy. Identification. Some people had their phone calls finally returned.

20

Last One Out Turn Off the Lights Three men were in the room, two standing and one on the ground and dead. There was a table and chair and a couch and a TV with a static face. The dead man lay on his side, facing the couch and huddled up next to it, and his backside faced the other two men. It was winter and all the lights in the house were on.

"The neighbor found him," the police officer said.

"Which one?" the man in the suit asked.

"Across the street. That house." The police officer pointed beyond the living room window. The man in the suit looked and spotted a house across the street. The light from inside the house casted a thin shadow behind the curtains, watching and waiting. "Noticed the lights were on and the garage was open for a few days straight."

"What did he do?"

"She." "What did she do?"

"She went through the garage and looked around the house and found him on the floor. He was already in a bad way when she found him." The police officer looked at the body and saw something and then took out a notepad and wrote something down. "How long you think he's been like that?"

The man in the suit walked to the body on the floor. He squatted down and looked closer. He considered everything. The body was of an old man, wearing a white tank top and green boxers, both now stained by the decaying skin. Sections of his body were pale white, but other parts were green and purple and bruised. Dark liquid had formed and congealed in a small pool around the head. He couldn't see the face of the body and he didn't want to turn him over just yet. There were flies lingering around the hair, some strands crusted with blood. The smell reminded him of the alley behind that Chinese restaurant with the good BBQ pork. It was a sweet and sour smell, but more sour than sweet. The body had already started liquefying and was partly glued to the wood floor. The man in the suit then imagined peeling off a scab.

"I'd say," he paused and then stood up, "two weeks." He then noticed a faint blowing of air through the house. He listened; it was coming from the vents.

"Was the heater on when you got in?" he asked.

"It's been on and off. But yeah, it was on when I got in."

"And when the neighbor came in?"

"Probably."

The man wrote something in his own notepad. The police officer leaned forward to get a look and saw the names and addresses of other dead people. The man wrote down heater was on next to one name.

"Never mind. One week. Week and a half tops."

21

"That's a week and a half?"

"Probably, with the heater going on the whole time. But it's just a guess." He sat down at the table, took out a sheet of paper that was covered in blank lines, and started filling it out. It was the legal stuff of the matter, the things that follow after the dead.

The police officer nodded and walked around the room. He went over to the TV and turned it off. Then he looked at the walls of the room. There were a few pictures here and there, generic paintings of scenery, placeholders for nothing. He went to the other rooms of the house. His muffled footsteps could be heard through the walls as he walked around the rooms. He came back into the living room. "The man has no family," he said.

"What makes you say that?"

"No pictures."

The man looked up and around the room and nodded. "Lucky the neighbor found him."

"Lucky that."

Both men stayed quiet for a while. The house was still. The police officer picked some lint off his uniform. The man filling out paperwork sneezed and the officer said bless you and the man said thank you and the room was quiet again, with the heater's low hum going in the background.

"What do you think would have happened?" asked the police officer.

"With what?"

"If the neighbor hadn't found him."

"Someone would have noticed eventually. Mail piling up. Garage open for days. We see a lot of this going on. Old loners. No one to depend on except their neighbors." He tapped his pen on the desk because the ink was running out and tested it and then continued writing.

"Funny thing is, that lady didn't know him all that well."

"What?"

"Yeah. Said she barely talked to him and the one time she tried inviting him over for dinner, he refused and cussed at her." The police officer cleared his throat and coughed. "So he was saved by someone he didn't even like."

"If you call this saving."

"As close to saving as possible."

The man in the suit put his pen down. He held the paper up to eye level and in the light of the room, and read through it, checking to see if everything was in order. He nodded to himself and put the paper between some pages in his notepad. He stood up and asked, "Mind helping me bag this guy?"

"I thought you guys do this in twos."

"My partner had an emergency call out in the hills and they only needed one. You don't have to. Just that asking never hurt."

"Got extra gloves?"

"Always."

22

The man went to his van and pulled the gurney from the back. He went to the side compartment in the trunk and took two pairs of latex gloves from a box. He wheeled the gurney through the front door and placed it next to the body.

"This would be easier if he was on a bed, but oh well," he said. He lowered the gurney to the floor and unfolded a white sheet and draped it over the gurney like a table cloth. He then handed the police officer a pair of gloves. Both men slipped on their gloves, but the man in the suit liked the sound of the latex hitting his skin so, as he put them on, he stretched them out and let the latex slap against his skin. The police officer put on his gloves quietly and without gesture.

"You ever touch a body before?"

"Once."

"Crime scene?"

"My dad's funeral."

The man nodded and his mouth opened, about to say something, but he decided against it. He went over to the head of the body and then he motioned the police officer to get near the feet and so he did.

"I'll grab his wrists and you grab his heels."

The man in the suit undid a button on his shirt and slipped his tie through. He bent down and the police officer mimicked his movements. He then grabbed the shoulder of the body and flattened it down and that's when they saw the face. The eyes were gone of life and light and the cheeks were bloated. The side of the face that was closer to the ground was purple and dark and while the side that was closer to the ceiling was a pale greenish-white. Dark fluid spilled out of the mouth and nose and there was a gurgling from the throat, choked and painful sounding, as if the last bit of suffering. The police officer scrunched his face in disgust while the man in the suit laughed a little. They both grabbed the limbs, heaved and held their breaths, and lifted the body onto the gurney. As they lifted there was a faint sound of something peeling away from the wood floor. It sounded wet and rubbery.

"He's cold and wet," the police officer said.

"Yeah."

"Some of the skin peeled."

"Yeah."

"Can you fix that?"

"Not really. Can't do a whole lot for a body this far gone."

The man wrapped the body in the white sheet and already the oozy moisture of the body was already seeping through the sheet with gray spots forming. He buckled the body and raised the gurney and covered the whole thing with a thicker and heavier cloth cover, like a blanket but not as comfortable.

The officer sighed. It sounded like it was of relief more than anything else. He took off his gloves, balled them up, and put them in his back pocket. Then he started, "I can't stop thinking about it."

23

"About what?"

"The lady across the street."

"It happens all the time. Guys like him get found because of concerned people."

"But just the thought of it: she happened on this because she saw the garage and lights."

"People concern themselves with things that aren't their concern."

"And then when would we have found this guy?"

"Longer than a week and a half, I suppose. Listen, don't dwell on the possibilities. It'll screw with your sleep."

Both men looked at the floor There was a stain in the shape of the dead man's limbs and mass and the color suggested time had passed and was still passing, enduring and ancient-like. One man nodded to the other as if to say, we're done here.

"You got the lights?" the man in the suit asked, while pushing out the gurney.

"Yeah".

The man slid the gurney into his van and closed the trunk and looked to his right and saw in the windows that the lights were turning off, one by one, the insides of the house darkening. He looked to his left and still standing at the window was the thin shadow from earlier, but now the curtains were parted and revealed the woman she was. He waved to her and smiled and she waved back but didn't smile. Then she turned around and disappeared from the window and the light in that room also went dark, just as the day went dark.

24