ISSUE #54 by Submissions Magazine

S U B MAG

SUBMISSIONS MAGAZINE MAGAZINE SUBMISSIONS iSSUE #54 FEBRUARY / MARCH 2014

Sean Henry Posila Letter from the Editor

Brielle Schiavone Pharmacy Reflection

Sydney Dupree Untitled

Lauryn Serrano Push Me

FEATURE The Stanley Steel words: Lucas Tromblee & Krystalina Tom art: Stanley Ortega

Danielle Leggard Afro

Rachel Schaming Film Still from “Outbreak”

Gina Mingione Party of One

Lauren Britton Droop Big Grey Dick-typh

Nora Einbender-Luks Einbender Reunion, pages 1-6 Beth and William and Caroline

FEATURE Dancing in the Public Eye words: Ryan Schnackenberg art: Ryan Galloway

Jasmyn Crawford Mama’s Marks

David Zheng Untitled

Hayley Dayis Brain in Water

Riley A. Dixon Legacy

Megan Manowitz January 3, 2014 ROmance Baby Boy

Kaitlin Giustiniani Untitled

Daniel Grjonko Saw Mill Poem

COVER Nora Einbender-Luks Beth and William and Caroline

FACEBOOK.COM/SUBMISSIONSMAG S U B M I S S I O N S M A G . T U M B L R . C O M SUBMISSIONSMAGAZINE @ PURCHASE.EDU

Dear Panthers,

Sincerely,

Sean Henry Posila Editor-in-Chief

SYDNEY DUPREE

PUSH ME

LAURYN SERRANO

Push me

Push me up against up against a wall

the anger and sorrow

so I can pull you

until it bursts forth and

pull you

d Pull you to me.

i e

Push me to the brink

to the edge of self control so I can pull you

Push me up against

pull you

the memories pull you.

Pull you deeper to me.

of you and I and every moment that I never loved you.

Push me. Push me till I feel it in my bones in my toes in the corners of my soul.

Let it fill me deeper yet deeper still until the depths are so deep they are somewhere you can’t reach.

Push me up against the wall where we first kissed and ask me, once more.

But try still. Try to reach them until your bones break, Push me up against the wall.

DANIELLE LEGGARD

PARTY OF ONE GINA MINGIONE

Bang After watching a particularly racy episode of The Golden Girls at the age of seven, I prance into the kitchen and ask my mother, “Do you have a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” I have no clue what it means. She curls her lip and tells me to never, ever say something like that again. I feel like I am always doing coat check at the party that is life.

You’re a liar, Chrissy Goldstein. I am in sixth grade. All the girls are gathered in the auditorium to learn about our bodies for a meeting called “Girl Power!” None of us know the extent to which the secrets of our genitals are going to be revealed. All of the female teachers are standing in the aisles, making me feel, for the first time, that we are all strangely connected. How can my Teacher have a Vagina? It just doesn’t make sense. The auditorium, usually a colorless beige smear, becomes electric with the nervous chatter of pre-pubescent girls, spreading rumors that make me clamp my legs tightly shut. Chrissy, a petite, blond haired girl with horse-like features and teeth too large for her face, squeals “I heard that one time, a girl put in a tampon wrong, couldn’t get it out, turned blue and now she’s like, totally paralyzed from the waist down.” Man-children I am sixteen years old and fully immersed in Jack Nicholson. I read his biographies, I collect news clippings, and I send him a love letter. I hang a particular issue of Parade in my room, the one where he peers over a black pair of sunglasses and says, “I make my own rules.” I cite this quote in the love letter. I am positive he would love me, if we had lunch together one day, if he knew me.

Do I need an oil can? A woman in a burgundy pantsuit walks across the stage, the sound of her high-heeled shoes click-clack against the polyurethane. She taps on the microphone and asks, “Is this thing on? Great.” She introduces herself as Kathy, and she wants us to know that we can ask her anything. Kathy wants to appear relatable; she sits on the edge of the stage and lets her high-heeled feet dangle. A picture of a vagina is projected onto the screen, jolting me into the present. I stare in horror. It is the kind of picture one would find in a health class textbook, not quite a photograph, but an anatomically correct illustration. Kathy retrieves a red laser pointer from her breast pocket and points out the fallopian tubes, which lead to the ovaries. She goes into great length about periods, and goes so far as to what each shade of red can indicate, “So if your blood’s a little brown, don’t worry girls, you’re not rusting!” Kathy laughs, but as I look around, I hear girls ask, “Did you even have your period yet?” “No, did you?” “No.” Take it from me I’m sitting in Pizzeria Uno with my sister, Julie. Sara, my sister’s friend, is outside, speaking on the phone. I am ten years old, they are twenty-two. My sister has just recently met Ian, who is now her husband, and I am secretly jealous because this means I don’t get to hang out with her as much. I can see Sara is speaking animatedly outside, it’s clear she’s fighting with somebody. She comes back inside, sits down. “Gina,” she says, “take it from me, become a nun.” Thunder Road My dad gets a new car, a Cobalt blue Highlander. It has a CD player, something our previous cars never had. We went for a ride together and brought a bunch of Bruce Springsteen albums, namely, Born to Run. I put on the song Thunder Road. It is our favorite. We race down the Grand Central Expressway, screaming. When Bruce sings, “roll down the window and let the wind roll back your hair,” my dad rolls down his window, sticks his bald head out, and pretends to run his hands through imaginary locks of hair.

Love, Jonathan I go to hear Jonathan Ames read from his new collection of fiction and personal essays, The Double Life is Twice as Good. He is wearing his seersucker jacket and hummingbird tie. He signs books after the reading. I present my book; he asks me if I thought his reading was too weird. I say “Of course not,” but then I blurt: “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I love you, and I’m in love with you.” I have ruined my once chance at meeting my favorite writer by seeming disturbed and overzealous. I walk away, looking straight down at my feet. I check the first page of my book. It says: “Gina, Thanks for coming. And thank you for being so vulnerable. Love, Jonathan.” Years later My dad and I see Bruce perform at Madison Square Garden. My dad has never heard Thunder Road live before. Bruce takes out his harmonica. He saves it for last. We hear the opening lyrics “Screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves…” “I can die happy,” my father says. I want to die My father’s mother, my grandmother, is ninetythree and says she wants to die. She says this, but she doesn’t mean it, because whenever she feels the slightest ache or pain, she demands immediate medical attention. The tests are always negative; there is never anything wrong with her. A voicemail from my mother at Jones Beach: “Gina, I feel like I’m in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. These birds are so aggressive—it’s scary. This big ass seagull crashed into my head and stole my hot dog right out of my hand. I could feel the weight of his body on my head. I think something weird is happening with these birds. I can’t catch a break. First it was my sandwich, now it’s my hot dog. Anyway, how’re you doing? Call me back.”

Somebody help me It is Labor Day and my grandmother is acting particularly loopy. Her lipstick is painted crookedly. She is whiter than usual and her jaw appears slackened. We are sitting in my uncle’s backyard in New Jersey. My uncle asks what she would like to drink. “Wine,” she says. I have never seen her consume an alcoholic beverage in my life. “I might as well get drunk, what else is there to do?” she says. I look at her in shock. She looks right back. “Grandma!” I say, “Why would you say that?” “It’s just something to say,” she shrugs. I remember When I mastered the art of floating face up in water without sinking, getting the water level just above my eardrums, so all sounds were muted. This was crucial in order to feel completely and totally submerged. I remember thinking, Yes. Grace, subtlety, and resilience: me I’m at a New Year’s Eve party. I find New Year’s Eve to be overrated and stressful, but regardless, I’m having a decent time. A girl I have never met before says, with complete frankness, “Your tights are falling down.” I am wearing a short dress, which allows the crotch of the tights to peek from beneath the hem. “Oh, thanks,” I reply with equal frankness. I adjust myself accordingly and wait for the ball to drop.

NORA EINBENDER-LUKS

MAMA’S MARKS JASMYN CRAWFORD

My mother didn’t love me because no one loved her. She didn’t know what love was nor did she know how to give it. Love was a luxury she couldn’t afford, a god she couldn’t believe in, a joke told at a dinner party. She knew spite, she knew hatred, she knew anger and oftentimes would mistake these things for love. She’s a pistol, that woman. She’ll spit bullets through your heart with no remorse and a sharp cackling encore. She’s seen enough bullshit in her life that nothing fazes her. In fact, she believes laughter is the appropriate response in any situation, there is always a punchline. “Every hardship is a test,” she’d say, “life’s a game.” “When it kicks me in the ass I get up and say ‘Ha! Is that all you’ve got?’ The worst that can happen is that I die, actually that’s probably the best thing that could happen. Amen. Let me write that down.” She was on suicide watch for some time, three times in her life. She’d give herself bloody tattoos on her wrist every now and again, but she’s a survivor. She survives in her journal, this little blue book that she always carries with her recording her life. I’ll be mid-sentence and she’ll have this look on her face, a sneaky smirk and curious eyes. That’s when the book comes out and she starts jotting things down. I’ve always hated that book, it was the only thing she held so close to her, the only thing she was excited for and I envied it. Not a soul has set their eyes in that book and the day I tried was the day she burned a hole in my skin with her joint, left a perfect little circle stamped on the back of my hand. It hurt like hell but it was a beautiful mark. I often catch myself tracing the dark border of my scar, a tattoo my mama left me. In some twisted way, that was the way she loved me. She left her marks on me. I had a dream once that I tried to burn the little blue book but as I held it to the flame it was my skin that began burning to ashes. I burned myself to death.

BRAIN IN WATER HAYLEY DAYIS

You are a burning man. No, I am a burning man. You are a cat. Your tongue is a cat’s indecision. It reminds me of a velvet ocean. Scream with all your teeth! We are enormous. I want nothing to do with smallness. We shake angry jazz hands. Like trees in a vicious dream. Avalanches must begin with mantras like when something small gains momentum. Try looking at a snowball, it becomes huge once you are close. Let it be known that I am big. A fucking volcano. But I can’t deal with reality. My brain is a plastic bag of gray noodles. A cup of tapioca pudding. No, a banana with no peel. But I’m thinking of you, the non-cat. How does it feel to be dreaded by dog lovers? Like you’re becoming extinct? Would you ever consider making love to a dog? Don’t answer that. Consider yourself a mysterious pond. Consider yourself off the hook. Wading.

MEGAN MANOWITZ

SAW MILL POEM DANIEL GRJONKO

Help me cannibalize myself Saw Mill Parkway: Crucifixes and construction sites being bragged on by Kids who can climb and almost nothing else here It’s a dirty road abused by everyone and myself for the sake of New York City Twisting through after-disco and cement dust is rough driving myself insane thinking broken everything alternating between chanting optimism about sunrises and grieving… there is always an ambulance in mourning outside the brown glass hotel on the northbound side and I figure it’s elders but who knows?… No green light or any, just heavy to drive like cement thinking too much coffee and this road is sick and I feel sick but I am stuffing myself of myself, consuming mile after mile of something difficult like crucifixes and construction broken everything grieving but still chanting the sun comes up each day the sun comes up each day the sun comes up each day

BRIELLE SCHIAVONE

THE THE STANLEY STANLEY STEEL STEEL 19

interview by Lucas Tromblee & Krystalina Tom art by Stanley Ortega

The first time I ever heard of “The Stanley Steel”, some VA friends were contentiously blurting out his name over dinner at Terra Ve. Having missed the general context of the conversation, I vaguely assumed the name was associated with kitchen appliance brands or professional wrestling. But it wasn’t. “Stanley Steel” is the pseudonym for student artist, Stanley Ortega. Intrigued by his submissions, Krystalina and I arranged to have an interview with Stanley in his studio in hopes of getting to know the mysterious man behind the brand. Sunday, 16 February: Interview with Stanley Ortega (The Stanley Steel) S = Stanley, L = Lucas, K = Krystalina K: Tell us something about yourself first. It can be anything. S: I really love seltzer water. It’s like that’s my shit. If you look at the nutrition facts there’s like nothing in it, but it’s the feeling you get from it. It’s almost like the advertisements out there right now, they trigger something in your head: “I got to eat something right now” …either the color combinations or the way something is composed in the advertisement you know?

L: Right. S: Should I just like bombard you guys? So basically the whole idea with this thing was that I made these show cancellation notices in the [VA] hallway…I don’t want to give the school a bad light, but that’s how these pieces started. I got denied a solo show, so then I got upset because I’m a senior and I’m about to graduate in May…and I felt I should at least have a space to show my work that I’ve done in the last three years. And I got a little angry, but since I’m an artist, I focused my anger in another way. So I made the red bull, because it’s like a steaming hot red bull, like god damn, because I’m upset you know? I posted these cancellation notices around the hallway, and they’re big prints, they’re like 20-by-17-inch [prints]. I got a good response from the other kids. They’d ask, “Oh, do you have a show or not?” and I was like, “Nah, it was for fun.” I was in Photoshop one day and I was playing around with the images, I had a lot of layers of text, and I deleted all the layers of text because text triggers you directly…you know, it’s like you read it and that’s it. But if you take out the text, you’re free to make your own idea of what you’re looking at. I do a lot of image appropriation and stuff.

[Takes out a piece of collage work] I wanted to see where I could take it without the text. I was really hungry at the time, so it’s like that feeling when you finally eat, when you finally have that burger or that piece of food that you crave so much? It’s like this correlation between the colors of advertisement with the feeling that you get when you take in the product. Then also, it’s like…it’s kind of like a Windows 98 aesthetic, that whole pixelation, that whole noise of the image and stuff. Because then I’m a nineties baby, I was born in ’91 and I really appreciate that time in space. L: Sure! S: It’s that whole advertisement shit. I was bombarded with that stuff growing up. I’m from the Bronx and there’s always these posters everywhere advertising restaurants and shit. And you look at it and you don’t think of it as art, and some people don’t appreciate it as art, but I appreciate things like that.

K: Have you always considered appropriation as something integral to your work? Even before you started making these posters? S: Basically. Like my real name is Stanley Ortega, but my artist’s name is The Stanley Steel. Because I can use either ‘steal’ or ‘steel’ and even the name, it’s like the hardware brand, that’s a well-trusted brand; whenever you buy a product from them, you’re guaranteed that it’ll last a lifetime. And that’s the same image I want to use by appropriating my name to ‘The’ Stanley Steel. L: Does the photography also fall under “The Stanley Steel?” S: Like Stanley Ortega might be later, when I want to reinvent the brand, wear all leather, and rock motorcycles. Right now, I’m still this grimy city kid, peeling stickers and putting them on storefronts…I was lying earlier when I said [my work] had no correlation. The images that I produce for my fine art work, it falls under this nostalgic thing with the poster aesthetic, with being there versus not being there. I don’t know, it’s all layered, and falls under a different direction than this whole generated thing that I do.

K: Going back to an earlier point, could you explain the process behind the red bull? S: Well, basically, I was sitting in my studio one day and I had [an Elmer’s glue bottle] in front of me. And that whole idea, that I was upset at the moment, I saw potential in the logo of the Elmer’s glue company. I researched it and I found out that it was based on this whole comic strip with Elise the Cow – it’s like a dairy product, where whenever you buy shredded cheese, you’re going to see that cow. It was like Elise and Elmer had a family, but then corporate America came out of no where, took this family story and expanded it, and turned them into these familiar faces you see today. Like who doesn’t own…who never ate glue? K: Who ever had it on a school supplies list in first grade? S: Right, and then you wanted to be cool sometimes, so you got the blue-sparkled one. That was something…there are different kids, like there were kids who used to eat glue opposed to the ones who didn’t want to get their hands dirty. It’s like something maybe for the kids who ate glue. Like I don’t remember eating glue but…I was probably one of those kids where if my friend did it, I would’ve taken some.

L: I have to say that I saw this stuff and after looking at it two or three times…It reminded me of being in second grade in the computer lab and messing around with like Microsoft Paint and Word texts. And it was cool because I felt like I had lost a lot of these memories; maybe these early programs had a similar effect on other kids in our generation. But I also wanted to ask more about your personal experience with people’s criticism for your art.

S: I mean even my friends criticized it when they first saw it. Like this kid, I don’t even know what major he is, but he’s everywhere that he’s not supposed to be, just all the time. He’s in the wood shop, the print shop…but he’s like someone who saw the work at its early stages and he was like, “Dude, that’s totally pixelated, you should do this and that,” but I was like, “Dude, I like that.” Quality is of your perspective. Everyone has a different perspective on everything. You might be conditioned a little bit to think pixels are bad because you’re in graphic design... In the future, nothing is going to be pixelated anymore; it’ll be all retina displays. But the criticism part of it, you know… I told you earlier that I put out these posters around the school…I don’t know who it was, but someone from the school put a Visiting Artist poster over the red bull at the front of the school. L: Oh shit. S: The criticism, it’s there, and you just have to embrace it. Like no criticism is bad, and people are talking, “No publicity is bad publicity.” K: Do you feel like the criticism makes you want to keep going with this aesthetic, to prove yourself? S: It’s not even to prove myself. If I was just doing this to prove myself, then I wouldn’t even be doing it anymore. I had a teacher come up to me and tell me to tell the class about what I did with my posters and I told them; he was trying to motivate the other kids as an example. And I find that cool, but I would want other people to pick it up without other people having to be told. I would love a conversation on all the bulletins. Last semester, I had someone appropriate one of my logos and they drew one of their characters punching another, named Stanley Steel, in the face. I don’t know if someone threw it away or if they kept it, but it was like, they must be hungry for more. You just got to have fun, you know?

L: Do you want to talk more about your brand? S: So I come from the Bronx, the five boroughs and stuff, and out there a lot of people like representing themselves. I’m a product of my environment. I was brought up on graffiti and a whole bunch of graffiti is just writing your name repeatedly over and over again and it’s like the same things that these companies do with billboards and fucking stickers everywhere. It’s like their noise – I want to create that same noise, but in an artistic kind of way that’s going to make you stop and think: “What the fuck, why is AT&T buying x-amount on a billboard?” I want to come into the picture like that. Coming from that environment where people want to brand themselves, like the rap groups…you see all of them want to make their own shirts, graffiti artists writing on their own jackets and on roll down gates… when I go to galleries now and I sign the gallery book at the front of the door, I put “thestanleysteel@gmail.com”.

L: I heard “The Stanley Steel” once and I never forgot. S: Right, it’s catchy as fuck. It’s like the snake language from Harry Potter. L: Slytherin? K: Parcel tongues. S: Yeah, it’s like [makes snake noises], you know? K: One last question on a different note, what do you see yourself doing after May? S: I mean I’m like a Capricorn. I really believe in astrology and I’ve always figured myself as a grounded person. I like thinking ahead and planning things out. As soon as I graduate in May, I need to get an internship and either a part-time job or a way to make income. With these pieces, I’ve already started…I’ve started putting these small stickers everywhere in the city. It’s like conditioning: if people see these little things everywhere, they will pick up on it. And that’s really guerilla; that’s, to me, really offensive already to people because it’s a sticker. I also try to place it in public without being really aggressive; any bulletin board that I see. I carry around a bag of posters – they look like advertisements – and when you walk into a building, they have the bulletin boards for residents and if they don’t have the glass locked, I’ll just go and put them up on the bulletin board, incognito. A lot of people think that it’s really narcissistic, like this kid is really into himself, but if that’s the way you really think about it, why aren’t you so into yourself? Like I am not thinking about that. Alright, I’m Stanley Steel and I am the face of it because I’m the artist, but at the end of the day, it’s big artists…big groups of artists working together to produce work, like Rem Koolhaus. Rem Koolhaus is a brand now. Hopefully one day it’ll become like that; a foundation for something that’s more than me.

S/M

RACHEL SCHAMING

LAUREN BRITTON

Dancing in the Public Eye words by Ryan Schnackenberg art by Ryan Galloway

Boring logistical stuff we have to get out of the way -Aaron Maine, Purchase pseudo-alumni/celebrity has been playing with a full band under the moniker “Porches.” since 2010. Recently he has added bassist and girlfriend Greta Kline, who also writes and performs music as “Frankie Cosmos.” -Porches. Released their full-length debut, “Slow Dance in the Cosmos” on Exploding In Sound Records in summer of 2013. -Frankie Cosmos is releasing her first studio-recorded album “Zentropy” in the spring of 2014 on Double Double Whammy Records. -If you listen, you’ll hear recurring themes in both artists work e.g. Ronnie (Maine) and Frankie (Kline), Jo Jo (Kline’s dog), the cosmos, and the age seventeen.

Ronnie and Frank Philadelphia, PA. Pre-show Eight people fill a very small living room. I recognize a few of them as Purchase graduates, but can’t tell who actually lives here and who’s just hanging out. Dirty dishes cover almost every surface except for the dining room table, an outdoor picnic table that’s been moved inside, where I try not to embarrass myself from yacking at the overwhelming smell of cigarettes. I’ve been invited to tag along for the weekend by _____, a friend who, due to involvement in multiple bands, has several congruent shows with Porches. I’m filling a role somewhere between “guest” and “merch guy” (What’s the expression- Always the bridesmaid, never the bride?). The first thing I notice about Aaron Maine, upon Porches’ whirlwind entrance, is the bleach blonde hair. I’ve seen pictures on the Internet, but in person it’s oddly jarring. Maine has quite possibly the squarest jaw I have ever seen in real life, deep set brown eyes, and a nose that’s right on the edge of being big, but fits with the rest of his face. Describing him as “all-American” would feel like a cop-out if it weren’t so true. Although only a five piece, the band seems to flood the room, hugging, shaking hands, and introducing themselves to people they don’t know. They’ve been in bands long enough to know that overwhelming niceness is the best course of action when someone’s letting you sleep on their floor. Maine, however, sticks to the back, opting for the casual nod to those he hasn’t seen in a while, which includes our mutual friend, _____.

Also with the band is a roadie, or maybe just friend, who I immediately totally hate, probably because he’s most likely filling the same role I am, only with much more enthusiasm. He wears a straw Huck Finn style hat and pigtails, and is constantly smiling/laughing, which causes his eyes to squint, basically making him constantly squinting. Show The venue is the Golden Tea House in South Philly, and really is just a big house, but one that’s been making a name for itself, as far as DIY music venues go in Philadelphia. Porches is on the upswing right now, and their shows reflect that. The crowd is right on the edge of being rambunctious, but it never breaks into outright chaos, which seems to suit Maine just fine. I wish I had a better description of the performance, but I spent most of the set scowling at Pigtails, thinking about how stupid he looks when he has to grab his hat from sliding off his head when he does this creepy writhing motion that involves too much of his body. During the end of their final song, “The Cosmos”, Maine moves to drums and the drummer (Cameron Wisch) moves to vocals and guitar to perform, along with pretty much the whole crowd, the song’s final phrase: “I want to go dancing in the public eye.” Post-show I have posted back up at the dining room table, not comfortable enough to navigate the rest of the room, which has somehow become even more disorganized since this afternoon. To give you some sort of mental image- I’m sitting bottom right; to my left is _____, struggling to remember how to consume a baby bottle pop; across from him is Maine, playing a game he has made up which involves filling up a cup with immediately accessible liquids/solids and trying to bounce a quarter into the cup from the edge of the table. Kneeling to Maine’s left is Pigtails, who cheers the singer on in his quarter flicking attempts, giggling and adding more contents. Next to Maine is Porches keyboardist and on the end of the table is Greta Kline. Kline has incredibly small wrists, and the first thing I think is that I could fit them between my thumb and pointer finger twice. Her bangs fall just above her eyebrows (I’ve never really understood what people mean when they compliment someone on their eyebrows, but Kline has eyebrows that I could imagine her getting a lot of compliments over) and she keeps the rest of it in two braids behind her head.

Kline asks me how old I think she is. I fake guess and tell her 20, which I know is wrong. It’s too embarrassing to reveal how much I know about her life and relate to it through Frankie Cosmos and Porches. The noise behind me from the house’s rowdy post show tenants has grown enough to cause actual fear in turning around to see what all the commotion is. Maine shoves a dollar into the cup; upper lip curled in Elvis fashion, ignoring spillage from the now unidentifiable mixture and Kline’s teasing requests for him to “stop being so weird.” It’s Pigtails’ turn. He flicks the quarter, misses, and goes again, which upsets me, and I might have pulled a muscle in some strange form of self-induced whiplash when I force my neck to stop from violently swinging in either direction, looking for validation that Pigtails going twice in a row is indeed total bullshit. Nobody else seems to care. Maine is up next. He misses and goes again. Except when he hogs the quarter, it doesn’t annoy me. On the contrary, I want him to go again. I like watching him do something stupid and arbitrary just by dint of him being who he is, the same way I inherently won’t like watching Pigtails doing the same thing. For Maine, being who he is requires a certain amount of unselfconsciousness. This isn’t to say he’s not human and doesn’t suffer from every day anxiety and stress like the

rest of us, but the real trick is making his audience think he doesn’t. Think about breathing and how the second you start to think about your own breathing patterns, it becomes impossibly hard to not focus on them entirely for fear that if you stop thinking about it you might forget how to do it. I can’t be sure if breath control is something that plagues Aaron Maine or not, but I would venture a guess not. Maine dryly asks _____ if he can try some of his baby bottle pop. _____ complies with what is admittedly a pretty strange request and passes the miniature bottle to Maine. He takes it, unscrews the nipple cap and dips into the white-pink sugar in the bottle. He sucks on it, somehow doesn’t screw his face up from the flavor, and hands the bottle back to ______. “It’s weird, especially after someone else has sucked on it,” Maine says. It probably goes without saying, but Maine eventually gets the quarter in the cup. Greta yells, “Ronnie!”

He raises his hand slowly over his head, and leaves them up there for a second too long, which is the perfect amount of time. There’s no “I” audience The word audience comes from the Latin root “audire”, meaning, “to hear”, which has always been easier said than done. Porches and Frankie Cosmos have found something of sweet spot in the performer/audience relationship through building the mythology of Ronnie and Frank. You’re average listener can hear “Slow Dance in the Cosmos” and pick up on recurring lyrics, themes, and characters, building the listeners perceived connection to the artist. And can you blame us? Isn’t the whole point of this sad-singer-songwriter thing to feel close to someone? This is where the real responsibility falls on the audience. The responsibility to remember that these songs weren’t written with me, for me, or about me as an individual in mind. They were written by a human being, not a character or a brand, and that human being is most likely dealing with their own shit and is just trying to fill up their emotional fuel tanks like everyone else. You might disagree or think I’m being overdramatic, but forgoing this responsibility puts us in a precarious position.

An audience that doesn’t know it’s an audience looks at everyone as a performer, as a character in their life, and not as a real deal flesh and blood mistake-making human. Do this and you’ll know how it feels to be alone in all sorts of rooms.

The Emptiness Purchase College Student Center Pre-show Brief description due to looming word count: Heart shaped balloons, red and white streamers, and glitter everywhere. (I mean everywhere. I’m probably still shaking it out of my hair).

Almost out of nowhere, Maine is standing next to me. Not across from, but next to me, so our shoulders are facing the same way and we don’t make eye contact. He puts his hand out in front of him and makes a swinging motion with his wrist, asking if I want to play ping-pong. Get paddles. Get ball. Return to table. There’s music coming from three different locations, forming a scalene triangle, making us the point of audial convergence, or as close as you can get, because it’s impossible to hear anything. Maine takes off his hat and jacket, revealing freshly bleached hair, and puts in earplugs. We volley at first, feeling each other out, getting a sense of ability and how much respective effort we’ll have to put in. I consider myself an okay to pretty good ping-pong player, and I think I can take him, but there’s also mounting pressure on trying to A.) get him to like me B.) not let him know that I’m trying to get him to like me and C.) get something worthwhile out of this for Sean (Sub Mag editor-in-chief), who I can just feel watching the whole thing. I ask Maine if he’s ready to play a game. He nods and smiles and quietly says, “to eleven,” which is pretty much the last thing I hear him say. The rest that transpired is probably the most confused game of ping-pong I have ever played. I realize halfway through that he has been serving in sets of five and I have been serving in three (just the way we were raised I guess), so not only do I have to ask whose serve it is after each volley, which he can’t hear or might not be sure of himself, but I have to ask what the score is, which he only relates to me through hand symbols and mouthing words, so it ends up feeling like two deaf-mutes playing ping-pong. We’re tied at match point. I offer the classic “win by two” rule via very bad hand signaling so it takes upwards of a minute to get the point across. Maine nods, but I get the feeling he has no idea what I said and is just playing along. Maine wins unceremoniously (I flubbed a back hand return and hit the net). We shake hands, but before I can confess that I’ve been asked to write a story on him, he’s already walking away, late to set up for Frankie Cosmos. I watch him as far as the doorway. Somebody asks me if I’m still trying to play. Show

Upon entrance to the PCSC, I overhear two students talking about the real St. Valentine, who, from what I gathered from their conversation, was beaten to death and beheaded.

Maine’s younger brother, David, plays bass for Frankie Cosmos. The two look eerily similar. The backup singer, Gabrielle, slow dances high school prom style with a member of the crowd.

Frankie Cosmos full band is playing tonight, and Sean Posila (Sub Mag editor-in-chief) has urged me to attend and get an actual interview with Maine like any self-respecting journalist would. My pleas that I am not a real journalist go unheard.

Greta refers to the band as Frankie Cosmos and the Emptiness. She keeps her hood up and plays Maine’s guitar. A patch on back of her jacket reads “Zentropy.”

I spot Maine at the ping-pong tables holding his own against Cameron Wisch, who I know from experience is a pretty damn good table tennis player (Cameron plays ping-pong like he plays drums, which is somehow incredibly rhythmic and logical while also being really unpredictable- a force to be reckoned with in both situations). Maine’s style is a little more straightforward. He’s an overall solid player. The biggest weakness I could find is he plays a little close to the table, which makes it hard for him to return a powerful serve. Wisch wins and they both get off the table. I chicken out of asking Maine for a game, kicking myself for missing the only real opportunity I have had to talk to him.

During the last song, Greta lays down on the floor, playing guitar pseudo-dramatically, making a right angle towards Maine, who smiles at her from over the cymbals. She smiles back, each in on a joke I can never really know.

S/M

UNTITLED

DAVID ZHENG

We dispose ourselves on beds leaving pieces of us between the sheets, pieces that will never wash away in the laundry room because those stains we leave are permanent just as the scars we never see. So we fuck because we’re young and our impulse tells us to. Maybe I’ll find something in this one I tell myself, perhaps we’ll connect like abandoned puzzle pieces, but when you wake you will have forgotten, all of last night’s flames washed away by the emptiness of the morning.

LEGACY

RILEY A. DIXON So much of you I know from film on reels. Time expands, it grows into corners – time fills. Tell me how the basement feels. I recall you only in parking lots and fields – Utica and so many colors, two dollar bills. so much of you I know from film on reels. I remember mousetraps, I remember how you kneeled, each one placed careful – peanut butter, never killed. Tell me how the basement feels. VHS and Betamax – moments you could steal, my life on screen was always Christmas, caught in stills – but so much of you I know from film on reels. “Don’t go down there, he hates nipping at his heels.” I can still hear whispers, “going nowhere, always downhill.” Why won’t you tell me how the basement feels? Please: this is my one, my final appeal. The house is empty now, my voice is shrill – so much of you I know from film on reels, you must tell me how the basement feels.

KAITLIN GIUSTINIANI

SUBMiT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SEAN HENRY POSILA ART DIRECTOR ALEXANDER GOOSMANN SENIOR EDITORS KOLTON BABYCH, BETH RUDIG, KRYSTALINA TOM PUBLIC RELATIONS PETER GRAMLICH PR INTERN LINDSEY SIEBER COPY EDITOR LUCAS TROMBLEE COPY INTERNS FRANCINE HENDRICKSON, ESTEPHANY PAYANO LAYOUT EDITORS MATTHEW SOTIRIOU, JULIANNE WABER LAYOUT INTERNS HANNAH BROWN, ASHLEY PINILLA ASSISTANT EDITORS ALANA COSTELLO, AMBER FRASER, EMILY SETO, MEGAN ZULCH FACULTY SPONSOR STEVE LAMBERT

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