The Opiate: Spring 2023, Vol. 33

The Opiate Spring 2023, Vol.

33

Your literary dose.

The Opiate

© The Opiate 2023

Cover art: “Old Woman Frying Eggs” (sometimes disputed as “Old Woman Cooking Eggs” or “Old Woman Poaching Eggs”) by Diego Velázquez, circa 1618 This magazine, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission. Contact theopiatemagazine@gmail.com for queries.

-William Makepeace Thackeray

“No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes.”

-Virginia Woolf

“All is vanity, nothing is fair.”

“Fate

Dale Champlin, “Briefly Rapturous,” “What of Pestilence” & “Coil and Recoil”

Edward L. Canavan, “[look no further]” & “[eternal et cetera]”

Stephen Barile, “Hot Knives” 74-75

Robert Guard, “Sauna” & “The Last Dairy Farm in Ohio” 76-77

Cynthia Good, “The Striped Marlin We Set Free” 78

Christina Hennemann, “The Cormorants” 79

Carella Keil, “Locked” & “The Shadow of Your Silence” 80-81

Andrew Hudson Barter, “How It Feels to Float No. 2” & “Where We Haunt” 82-85

Priscilla Atkins, “What I Would Stand For”

86-87

Gabor Gyukics, “Deep Sea Calm at Low Tide” & “Deep Sea Calm at High Tide” 88-89

Thomas Wells, “Covert Consciousness” & “Escape From Prison” 90-91

Criticism:

Genna Rivieccio, “They Call It Love... But It’s Actually Indentured Servitude for No Good Reason Other Than Buttressing Capitalism” 93

Editor’s Note

The topic of aging has come up quite frequently in “the culture” during recent months. Not just anyone’s aging, of course, but a woman’s aging. For it has always been the most sinful thing a female could do—apart from actually daring to age “in public.” As Vanity Fair (the book, to be clear) has been mentioned of late in the mainstream thanks to Hugh Grant condescendingly namechecking it in his pre-Oscars “interview” with Ashley Graham, it bears noting that the novel has evolved over the centuries since it came out to seamlessly serve as an allegorical “showcase for celebrity, wealth and power,” per the description in Kirsty Milne’s At Vanity Fair: From Bunyan to Thackeray. Which brings us back to the “in public” part of aging that women were never really “permitted” to do until now. Except that they still really aren’t, as a woman “continuing” on in her career of choice past some arcane “expiration date” is continually viewed as scandalous. Particularly if it’s a career centered in the spotlight, where looks mean everything (regardless of these false cries of body positivity and anti-ageism).

This is undoubtedly why it was so deeply felt for Michelle Yeoh to announce during her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actress, “And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you [that] you are ever past your prime.” Alas, where was this message before Madonna was practically tarred and feathered for showing up at the Grammys looking especially, shall we say, plucked and stuffed? There were no kind words then. Only more accusations of her being “old,” therefore why is she trying to be out in public at all? As though women past the age of thirty-nine should go crawl into a hole in shame as they await their death (a.k.a. forty)—which is surely far more “generous” a societal concession than it used to be, when women were deemed day-old bread at twenty-five (still are in the modeling/Leonardo DiCaprio world, actually). The constant reiteration about how we’ve “come so far” as a society is ultimately designed to keep women complacent, convinced that things are vastly improved when, undeniably, there are so many more barriers (and balls) to break.

To this point, it’s really only the United States (precisely because it’s the most vanity-driven country) that has been more open to these conversations about the double standard ever-present for women “of a certain age,” and how they should no longer be hemmed in by the rules of so-called dignity. Such rules including, but not limited to, not bothering to try to look youthful via plastic surgery (even though the flipside of that is being condemned for looking their age [read: old]) and definitely, definitely not dating much younger men (à la Cher and Madonna) the way that men are afforded the “inalienable right” to date much younger women. Even after the spotlight on all the ickiness surrounding such a “phenomenon” in the wake of #MeToo.

These supposed “frank” conversations surrounding women and how they’re treated (especially as they get older), however, did not prevent the U.S. from showing its true colors as an unapologetic patriarchy via the arbitrary repeal of Roe v. Wade. Effectively rendering the “most developed” country in the world among the most backward in health care. And yes, abortion is health care. But what should repealing it matter to barren old bitches, right? They should stay out of the commentary, n’est-ce pas? Non. Hence, the constantly referred to image of an elderly Polish woman holding up a sign in 2016 at the Czarny Protest that read, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit.” For, lest anyone needs to be reminded, it was the young women who became old that fought for the young women (who assume they’ll never be old) of today to have rights that were once not so “no-brainer.” And of course it enrages the women who fought to break down those barriers at great cost see them get so effortlessly rolled back by the old white men (and also one old Black man and one white woman) that advocated for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A repeal that effectively underscored to women: you’re made for breeding and nothing else, and that’s why your body is not your own. With that archaic logic in mind, it’s no wonder ageism is so rampant against women in particular. For once their vagina has “dried out,” what good are they to society if they can no longer propagate?

The quote from Woolf alluded to above is, on the one hand, a response to Christina Rossetti’s “An Apple Gathering,” yet on the

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

other, indicates that it is always easy for a woman to value youth and beauty when she (or her lover) has it, wielding it as the weapon it undoubtedly is, only to write off these qualities as vain and meaningless once they’ve been lost. Which is why it would be truly groundbreaking if the youth of the moment—particularly the female youth—could learn to be slightly kinder to those viewed as “aged” (in Gen Z world, it seems anyone over twenty falls under that category). To recognize that their ”power” as the “hottest, newest” thing is ephemeral, and that, soon enough, the generation coming up after their “heyday” will be lambasting them as old and irrelevant, too. So irrelevant, in fact, that they can scarcely remember to think of them at all, save for when they might ”happen” across one in their infinite scrolling, making for that effect at the end of Logan’s Run where ”Timid Girl” (Ashley Cox) approaches the only old man she and the rest of the escaped youth mass from the sealed-off city have ever encountered. She’s as stunned as all the other youths that someone could be so ”old,” having only ever been surrounded by their own delusional, suppleskinned ilk before.

With this in mind, there is often the alternate accusation that ”olds” are just as prejudiced against the zygote set, hence terms like ephebiphobia, youth panic, pedophobia (better than pedophilia though), etc. But if that “fear” is, in fact, real, then it stems from being its own defense mechanism, designed to protect from the verbal lashings that unfiltered preadolescents and adolescents are known for delivering without warning, without context. In short, stay away from the youths, and one will stay away from self-esteem evisceration (maybe that’s part of why Tina Fey as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock says, “Oh God. Youths!” when she sees a pack of five boys on the street and then runs inside).

And what, all this self-superiorty because they have more years to endure on this shithole rock? Get a better flex please.

Respect your elders (or at least don’t make them feel like total shit...unless they’re industrialists),

Genna Rivieccio, twenty-nine and feeling fine

FICTION

Abracadabra

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Winter—that

long dark night of cold shadows and shattered dreams when the passage of time and loved ones takes its toll. It had been but a few days since Anya had left us, when, now, in the early bittersweet sighhhh of mourning, I had only her journal to console me—pages soaked in wine and tears, the faint scent of burnt candle wax...yesterday’s smoked camembert.

I cannot see you, but I know that you are there, like the sweet nostalgia of butterfly wings, the dust of memory between my fingers. Since you have gone, my friend, all the ashtrays in Paris are full, all the bottles are empty. A thousand crows have flown from your head into mine, clocks at the Musée d’Orsay have decided to stand still, and Billie Holiday is beginning to sound a lot like Leonard Cohen. Since you have gone, since you and I have both decided that everyone in Paris lives on the sixth floor, I wait for you at the top of my landing, I wait for you in small rooms with big hearts, I wait for you in all the stations of the soul that have no last metro. I wait for you, now, as I walk along the canal, the Winter moon drinking the river’s dark. Dark, as bottomless as memory. Darkness, as unfathomable as you.

“Black, yes. It soothes me. With black, I feel I can disappear or

appear and who’s to know the difference?”

It was the voice of Anya’s friend and sometimes lover. The one for whom she had written these words. I had first noticed him on the landing, out of the corner of my eye. It seems, in retrospect, the perspective that best suited him. Everything about him was prominently side-stepped, a little off-center—the shock of his white hair drawn back in a thin leather tie; the mustache, also uneven; the goatee, a little sparse; the small silver earring in one ear. I had heard what he said, but assumed he was speaking to someone else when I looked up and realized he was speaking to me.

“Yes, and Nothing goes so well with Everything.” I answered. A line I had once used on a concierge who had shown me the “furnished” room which was, in fact, completely empty. Almost as empty as her expression in response.

“Exactly!” he said, beaming, as if it was the first time in ages that someone could speak his language. Although, admittedly, now, one year later, upon entering this cave of a café-bar, I was delighted to find a vaguely familiar someone who could speak mine—my French being almost nonexistent, unless you count perfect Menu (the desire to eat being a great incentive to learn). And, I confess, nothing intrigues me more than a man wearing a black blazer, black shirt and a black vest over pajama bottoms as he offers me his card that bears Aleister Crowley’s Hanged Man from the tarot deck on the face of it. It was all that I could do to keep from checking out his name on the front. I slipped it into my bag which, in turn, slipped off my shoulder. I caught it just in time. I thought. But out fell a couple of small items which he helped me to pick up, bending down very eloquently to do so.

“I have the whole deck,” I declared, in an effort to retrieve my “cool” along with my bag.

“With you?” He became noticeably excited, then began to cough.

“No, at home.”

“I used to carry mine with me,” he said, clearing his throat.

“Well, of course. You would.” There was a kind of familiarity in this and I was pleasantly surprised at myself. I ordered an “Orgasm’’ from the barman. Whatcanisay? I love amaretto and I adore this cocktail.

“You come here often?” he quipped.

“Haha,” I reacted, a little embarrassed, though, admittedly, I admired his quick wit.

“You from England?”

Abracadabra - Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

“No, the States,” I replied, realizing that I had probably slipped into my British mode.

“So, why do you have an accent?” he asked.

“I dunno.” I had answered this question many times before and found myself on autopilot when I added, “Used to work as an actress... picked up a few along the way.”

“Aha! That’s what I thought!” He said it as if he were onto something then took his hand and slapped it down on the bar in lieu of an exclamation point. Turning to me, he was almost visibly excited. “A

stage accent...or one of those movies where everyone goes around and calls each other “dahling.”

Good god, I thought...this coming from a man who talks like Bela Lugosi! Bela, by the way, was actually his name. I put the spotlight on him by countering, “How ‘bout you? Where’re you from?”

“Tran-syl-van-ia” he replied, letting all four syllables roll off his tongue with the import of Count Dracula.

“Really?” I leaned forward. I had always considered it as such a fictional place...and I had certainly never met anyone from there before, but, for some reason, that would have been my guess about his

“‘What’s your secret?’ His eyes fixed on mine for the first time. ‘You look younger.’

‘No, secret...’ I stared directly into his glazed-over gaze.

‘I think good thoughts. Our cells listen in, you know.’”

country of origin.

“Really. My family...all my family was in the theater...for centuries. Four hundred years ago, they thought acting was like witchcraft. A good many of my ancestors were burned at the stake.”

“Gee...and all I ever had to worry about was a bad review.”

That struck him as funny and he laughed. “Forget about those other voices. I think you should keep this one.”

“Sweet of you. It isn’t like I’m a phony or anything,” I protested. I mean…I’m a real phony. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’m a veritable jukebox of associations. I could see that this particular reference would take some explaining and what was the point? He knew what I meant. The barman brought me my drink. I paid for it and swigged half of it down in one fell swoop. My gut feeling told me I had better not stay too long.

“What is real?” It was a rhetorical question he was posing... and the silence seemed to answer it better than any theory that either of us might present. After what seemed to be a long pause, he reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a silver flask and poured what I assumed to be vodka into his beer.

“What else do you have in there?” The words fell out of my mouth as if I were a little girl wondering what else a magician had up his sleeve. Usually, I would be too polite to ask, thinking it more fun, anyway, to have things reveal themselves in time. I was more concerned with time than usual, as I was about to have a birthday and was not feeling all that good about it. Not knowing how much time we might share, I was being both a little forward and, yes, strangely familiar. Stranger still was that neither of us spoke of our being neighbors. Neither of us even mentioned Anya, who, knowing Anya, was anxiously awaiting his return.

“What month are you born in?” he inquired, as though reading my mind.

“This month. I’m a Pisces,” I announced, thinking, somehow, he could relate.

“Ah, I thought so.”

“Why is that?” I wondered, not at all skeptical, as trusting as the Pisces motto, “I believe.” I believe that printed on the billboard of my forehead that night must have been: “Not immune to the charms of a Scorpio,” which I imagined (another fishy trait) him to be.

“Because...you seem sensitive and...intuitive...and...”

Yes, I thought, he reads me well.

“And, because your ID says so,” he concluded.

“Oh my god, thank you.” I smiled with sincere appreciation,

Abracadabra - Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

taking it from his nicotine-stained fingers. And yet, I didn’t like the thought of someone checking out my identity out of sheer curiosity. The smoke was beginning to bother me as well.

He finished the glass, which was half-full, in one swill. Then, he grinned the grin of a Cheshire cat who had just eaten me for dinner and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What’s your secret?” His eyes fixed on mine for the first time. “You look younger.”

“No, secret...” I stared directly into his glazed-over gaze. “I think good thoughts. Our cells listen in, you know.’’

“You look younger.” He glanced away, barely muttering and staring into space.

“Younger than I did a minute ago?” I asked playfully, but with a hint of irritation. In spite of our age difference, I had been attracted to him—his energy, and I had just, after all, been had. Then, too, I didn’t want my age to be revealed. Not complete vanity on my part as I’ve been telling people I’m a year older than I really am for years now.

Annoyed, but begrudgingly amused, he grumbled a little just for effect. “Ten, even fifteen years younger than your date of birth.”

“Oh...” I said, letting the repartée slip away. What could I say? It was true. “Thanks for the compliment.” Feeling the total loss of chemistry, I suddenly proclaimed, “I’m sorry... I have to go... Well, it was...nice... It was...really interesting meeting you. I teased, “Maybe we’ll run into one another, again...in my past life.” Then I added a token, “Bon soirée.”

“Oh, we will,” he assured me, accompanying me to the street. We both paused under the awning. He took out a cigarette case from his inner pocket, lighting up one that was as deftly rolled as his accent. And then he was gone. On second thought... ***

“The last time I saw you, you were handing out blankets to the homeless. You didn’t see me,” he said, standing at his open door. It was the apartment around the corner from mine—the one he sometimes shared with Anya. I took a deep breath and then snuck a peek to see if it was as I had remembered. Inside the cozy parlor, lined with books to the ceiling, there was a little cot and a candlelit table, not unlike mine. Whereas I would ordinarily hesitate to enter the abode of a man with whom I had shared only a brief exchange, I was heartened by the sight of Anya’s photo and two candles illuminating the silver frame. As I

approached, I recognized the sweetly familiar countenance radiating therein, as well as the strains of Billie Holiday: “Hush now, don’t explain/You’re my joy and pain.”

“Right away, I noticed your Mona Lisa smile. It...moved me. I was wondering when we would meet again.” He exhaled, the smoke wending its way to me. I was touched by him—he was real...real and yet surreal. I was relieved to be looking at myself in his mirror and experiencing myself through his eyes. I waved away more smoke. What is it with smoke and mirrors?

“We didn’t meet by chance, you know.” He insisted on this while flashing me a meaningful look.

“Nothing is by chance,” I confirmed.

“Well, let us just say that appointments that need to be kept aren’t always the ones you make. I’ve been waiting for you.”

I took a look at the bookshelves. There was a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a well-worn Ariel and a number of journals—all hers. I recalled a line that went, “Like a boat passing between two dreams,” the sky all at once drawing a curtain between night and day.

“Anya told you...about me?” I asked, wanting to be reassured.

“Anya,” he repeated, coughing his cigarette cough. And, after the spasm subsided, he looked at me with resignation and said in the most intimate voice, “She mentioned you were a healer...that she could trust you...” Then he looked away and began to roll another cigarette.

“I don’t do the healing, it comes through me” I explained. “It’s the love of the Divine...” He winced at this. I continued, “To help you heal yourself. I barely touch you…”

“This is a good voice, too. I think,” he noted of my intonation. What a character, I thought, smiling for an instant. “But...do you?” I asked in my most plaintive voice.

“Do I what?”

“Trust me?”

He nodded as he struck a match.

“And...you’d like my help?” I, for one, wasn’t convinced. Had he so easily forgotten that our Anya died fighting for her last breath? That he was her joy and pain? When he didn’t respond, I exclaimed, “For God’s sake, and the both of ours, please put out the damn cigarette. Please!”

I softened as I could see he was in pain. It had probably been a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that and, as even I was unaccustomed to speaking that way, we were both a little shaken. He quickly obliged my request and, I could swear, he looked better to me

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The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

already. Then, I turned and reached into my bag, which was a lot like feeling around in the dark, and I pulled out the syringe and placed it on the table in front of him. His eyes grew larger at the sight of it.

“It’s an opium derivative. You can self, uh, medicate. When you really, really...” My voice trailed off as I removed from my bag a small birchwood box, no bigger than my palm. He sighed and looked at it reverently as if it were the Madonna on a shrine.

“You carry it with you?”

“Everywhere I go,” I asserted, a little too sarcastically, I confess... considering. Truth is...I had only placed it there minutes before. “I’m glad to not have to carry her around any longer,” I remarked, referring only to the burden of sorrow.

“Winter—that long dark night of cold shadows and shattered dreams when the passage of time and loved ones takes its toll.”

“You would miss not carrying her, if I know you,” he said placing “her” gently on the altar. Untranslatable silence.

“That reminds me,” I said, grabbing my key, “I’ll be right back.”

He followed me to my room. When I opened the door, he remained in the doorway, taking in the contents of the space and inhaling with the rest of his senses their significance. I located the journal and the tarot cards, and handed him the deck. He patted it—as if pleased to see an old friend. Then he shuffled the cards meaningfully

and spread them on the table. When he was through, I focused on the Divine and lay my hands over him and slowly began to clean his chakras.

One by one, the dust of memory...slipping through my fingers. We were both silent for what seemed like a small eternity.

“Dahling...I have a houseboat on the canal. The ABRACADABRA. You should come visit it sometime.”

“She missed you,” I said gently—the words floating to the surface, at last.

“Here,” I pointed out, finding the place, “this was her final entry.”

He read it slowly and solemnly. I could just about tell where he was on the page—his tears marking each passage.

I wait for you in metro stations Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel, where, split in two...you look at me, I look at you. Your last night in Paris still waves back to mine. Walk me to the corner...our steps will always rhyme. Then, you turn the corner, as I turn this page.

“Did she feel anything?”

“No,” I whispered. “Nothing.”

“Nothing goes so well with...Everything,” he uttered, his eyes rolling back up into his head.

Abracadabra - Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Pestilence

Kate Maxwell

Grandad went first. I mean, it probably should have been Grandma because research suggested that women were more susceptible. Then again, Grandad never put much stock in research, so he probably dismantled Grandma’s traps and threw out the baits once she’d gone to work. Grandad spent his days in front of RAT (Reality Adjusted Transmission) cable “news,” twisting his lips and eyebrows into opposing directions, and muttering about snowflakes flushing the country down the toilet.

“Dad, you have to listen to Mom. Leave those traps alone. These things can kill you, you know,” Mom would warn.

“Rubbish! Smoked since I was thirteen, enjoy a bloody drink or three and I’m still here today. Strong as a horse, I am. Bloody new breed of green guinea pig ain’t gonna worry me none. What a load of claptrap! It’s all about control. Just another way for the government to manipulate us.” He slapped his oxygen tank with a gnarled old hand to make his point.

So, when Grandma found him slumped over the bathroom sink

one evening, blue-mouthed and foaming, it wasn’t a huge surprise. She looked all over for a bite mark but found nothing. At that stage, everyone still believed the infection came from actual Virarod bites.

In any case, Grandad left behind a collection of RAT logo caps, coasters, coffee mugs and a hefty medical bill. Grandma moved in with us shortly after that.

When the first reports about a newly discovered rodent species flashed up on our screens, everyone was fascinated by the creature’s quirky appearance. It was smaller than a mouse, but with bristly dark green fur and the ability to produce a foul odor. The first time I ever smelled one, I nearly threw up. By that time, I’d been inoculated and, apart from a week of stomach cramps, I evaded any hospital stints. Thousands didn’t. Mom worked as a social worker in elder care when she wasn’t painting or sculpting. Unfortunately, she got sick before the vaccines came out. Mom was in the hospital for weeks and we only got to see her once before she died. I miss her so much. My older sister got it, too. Athough she survived, she’s not up to much anymore. She used to work in this funky bar uptown while completing her marketing degree. “Such a high-maintenance babe,” her ex-boyfriend used to smirk while fondling her ass. She was always the full makeup, nails, hair and gym junkie. Now she just sits around in her pajamas, unshowered, bloated and zit-pocked, watching the same RAT junk that Grandpa did.

We eventually got used to our new life, I suppose. It’s not like we had any choice. Nobody goes out much anymore as it’s such an ordeal. I’m meant to graduate at the end of this year, but I have no idea if that will happen. School is online occasionally, but it’s pretty random. Pity really, because I was always good at school. Initially, it was thought that the little green furry things appearing in backyards and parks were just cute mammals on some type of mass migration movement. Nobody had ever seen them before. There were all sorts of theories given for their sudden appearance. Naturalists claimed that the little rodents were merely an undiscovered burrowing species. Some scientists blamed chemical infiltration of the environment affecting adaptations, but this was quickly disputed by the RAT network. RAT News started calling them “Mini Mickeys” and touting them as the new must-have pet. But within a week, excitement turned to fear. The scientists studying them fell like bowling pins. By the second week, many had died, and that’s when the government

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alert was raised for people to avoid contact with these newly discovered creatures.

“They may look cute and cuddly, kids, but please don’t go near them if you see them in your backyard or anywhere else. Tell your parents immediately and call 1-800-Virarod.”

Of course, even once they were rebranded with a more clinical name, people still caught the Virarods and showed off their new green

“pets.” That’s when they smelled the damn things. When anxious, Virarods emitted an unfathomable stench. If you’re unlucky enough to be within meters of one of their “funk” sprays, you’d struggle to stay upright. The smell is like an intense combination of vomit and sewage. Eventually, experts connected the dots and realized it wasn’t a bite, but their spray that transmitted the deadly toxins. People went crazy setting mouse traps and scattering rat poison. Family pets, and even some curious toddlers, died. Some people also went so far as to bury gas mines or fox traps under their lawns. Mormons, mail staff and delivery service workers were clogging up the hospitals with injuries and breathing issues. Regulations were set up about when and where you could lay traps and poisons, but had to be relaxed again when thousands took to the streets demanding a post-amendment to the second amendment:

“We eventually got used to our new life, I suppose. It’s not like we had any choice. Nobody goes out much anymore as it’s such an ordeal.”

right to lay traps.

RAT News broadcast the National Rodent Trap Association’s ads almost daily now. Soon, the next problem became supply. People lost their minds when mouse traps, pellets and gas bombs started to run out. Nobody wanted to go outside anymore because the Virarod population had increased so much. The risk of being sprayed outdoors was huge. Police and essential workers were issued with Virarod protective gear, but it was expensive, and most couldn’t afford it. Dad caulked any crack or crevice he could find in the walls and floor. I almost took my thumb off when I reached into a kitchen cabinet to grab a plastic lid that triggered a trap.

Last month, one of Dad’s clients, a police officer who was incapacitated at a violent NRTA rally, couldn’t afford representation so he offered the use of two outdoor protective suits for a day instead. Dad and I went to the beach. I mean, it was damn hot getting there—sealed up in all that silicone and plastic. But Virarods hate the sand and the ocean, so when we took off our suits and went swimming, it was bliss. And, because so few people are getting to the beach anymore, the water was fresher and more pollution-free than it’s ever been. My first dose of freedom in a year.

Nobody knows if we’ll ever get rid of the little bastards. Scientists are working on a new species of toxic cat they may be able to release to wipe out the Virarods. RAT News did a whole sell on the idea, but I suspect this plan has its own problems. Meanwhile, Grandma and I continue to smash the last of Granddad’s RAT coffee cups into jagged pieces. She’s helping me finish my “RAT is the real plague” mosaic. Mom would have liked it. She always said art had the power to heal us.

The Island of Old Women

Carla Tomaso

Part One: Diana Nyad

I’mfreezing,” Claire yelled from the backseat of their convertible Mustang. Deb had rented it for their annual vacation, this time to Key West, which was unusually cold for April. And on top of that, Holly had eaten stone crab at lunch, which she just remembered she’d been allergic to as a kid. And she still was, evidenced by chills and vomiting the moment she and Deb reached their room in the hotel.

They’d been friends, the four of them, for fifty years, or around that. They didn’t celebrate friendship with cards and flowers. It was an informal best friendship and unique because they were all so different. Deb had never married and played in tennis tournaments for seniors. Holly had been married forever to a narcissistic geologist introduced to her by Mary, who was married to Claire, the central link. Claire had been to high school with Deb, college with Holly and Mary.

Holly was a nurse, so she knew what to do about the stone crab allergy. She got her friends to bring her salt and sugar from the hotel restaurant to level out her reaction by morning.

It did. She felt better when she woke up. They called her hus-

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

band and told him the good news...now that there wasn’t bad news anymore. He was rude about them not having called earlier, feeling left out and unnerved. They were all at an age where every day held the potential for their health to deteriorate for good.

But Holly wasn’t really well. Everyone could see that, except Holly herself, who was very brave and heavily in denial.

Later that day, they went to Hemingway’s house, where the feral descendants of his cats lived off the kindness of others who put food out for them in spite of the many signs forbidding it.

Holly exclaimed, “Look at all those monkeys swinging from tree to tree. Leave me here. I have to write a poem.”

They did. They left her on an old bench where Hemingway had probably jotted down phrases and notes when he wasn’t too drunk to stand up. But Holly wasn’t drunk. She had just a little bit of a postfever drift, a little tinge of that hallucinatory tendency we all get after a high temperature.

That’s the way Mary, who knew a lot from reading and being a psychologist, described it.

“Don’t move from this spot,” said Claire in her firmest voice. “If you move, we’ll lose you, and Eric really won’t like that. And,” she gestured to the cats, “those are cats, not monkeys.”

Deb wanted to get a sense of Cuba, so they left Holly there and climbed the old lighthouse at five dollars apiece, allowing them to see the entire island on this very clear day. Claire had acrophobia, but she climbed the hundreds of circular stairs anyway. Mary told her the tendency to fear heights was a hereditary thing stuck in her DNA, and nothing to be ashamed of.

When they reached the top, Deb told them the story of her family leaving Cuba after her mother fell in love with Sammy, who was stationed there in the Navy. Soon enough, they got on a boat with all their belongings. Still, they didn’t really believe they’d never return. Mother, father, grandmother and Deb’s mom just made it out before Castro took over. Her mother was forever bitter after that.

“My parents hated Castro like everybody who had money. Now the place is poor and rough.”

They returned to Holly, who, by this time, had written her poem about cats, thank god. No mention of the monkeys.

“Hemingway’s cats have six toes and wander around his thick garden catching mice and swinging their fat tails

like they own the place. Which they do.”

Deb, Claire and Mary applauded dutifully. Holly usually had a poem up her sleeve.

Then they went back to their hotel rooms and got ready for dinner.

Wearing pastels and sandals, they walked to an outdoor café. Everybody was half their age and mostly drunk already on sweet cocktails in tall glasses. They each felt homesick in the same instant.

“Let’s get our food to go,” Claire suggested, waving over their waiter, a tan kid with his head shaved like he’d just had brain surgery. Claire had money and believed in getting what you wanted with it. Just like that. Mary had grown up poor and enjoyed having the security of lots of money in their account.

Nobody disagreed about leaving, although they kind of felt like they shouldn’t. What were they, elderly ladies afraid of the dark, afraid of restaurants, afraid of themselves? Mary particularly felt like resisting. She was recently retired from her therapy practice and was considering things like traveling around the world or opening a no-kill animal shelter for dogs and cats and anybody else who needed a place to stay. The animal shelter would be particularly open to black animals who, statistically, were killed the most often at the county places before the others. Except at Halloween.

She thought she could seed her shelter with some of Hemingway’s feral cats, but then she realized they were happier where they were, roaming the wild and thick gardens of the old man’s historic residence rather than in some cold, hard prison cell. That thought made her redesign in her head the whole shelter concept. Maybe homeless people could take care of one or two animals in the cleverly designed tiny houses. Also, there would be lots of free-range land and grass and big blue sky.

By this time, they were back at the hotel. Claire and Mary had the best room, bigger than the one Holly and Deb were in, and with an amazing view of the boats coming in and out of the harbor. They got the best room because Claire always paid—for all of them. She bid more than anybody else on the rentals at the auction her nephew ran for the university. One year, they all went to Italy. On her dime.

They set up their dinner on a table in front of the big window. Holly had ordered a mild soup, which they warmed up in the microwave. The room had a fully equipped kitchenette.

“I’m being careful with my stomach,” Holly explained as

she sipped daintily. “And I don’t think I’ll take that boat ride you’re planning for tomorrow.”

“What will you do instead?” Deb asked. They were eating lobster and paella and linguini with clams.

“I’m going to swim to Cuba like Diana Nyad did a few years ago.”

Deb spit out her linguini. Claire and Mary looked up from their paella and lobster.

“You’re kidding of course,” Mary said, trying to gauge Holly’s mental health as best she could. They were all old enough to have the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. But could it come on this fast? Holly had always been like the rest of them, struggling to find the right word, forgetting where she put her glasses, that kind of thing.

Statistically, one in ten people get it. How sad that would be if Holly was showing the signs.

Mary continued to eat her delicious paella and looked on silently as Holly outlined her plan: “We rent a boat and you all ride next to me just in case. No press. Just us. Remember, I’m a swimmer. That’s my sport.”

It was. Every place they went had to have a pool so Holly could do her laps.

“You aren’t Diana Nyad,” Deb reminded, though kindly.

“Of course not,” Holly agreed, “but surely you remember my story.”

They did. Diana was once swimming laps at the same public pool as Holly. In the locker room afterwards, Diana told her these exact and wonderful words: “Good stroke.” To Holly! She’d heard it right.

Part Two: Cuba

“It’s seventy miles to Cuba from here,” Deb declared. “You aren’t a long-distance swimmer, Hol. It’s crazy.”

Thank god for Deb, who said it like it was. Always. She had a white drift of hair leading from her forehead into the salt-and-pepper. It looked like lightning.

“Eric won’t approve,” she continued. “He’ll fly down to stop you. The Coast Guard won’t like it either. The sharks will be very happy though.”

They finished their meal except for the paella, which they stored in the room’s refrigerator for later. Holly was still hungry, but nothing really appealed. That’s the way it is sometimes after you’re sick to your stomach, they told her, but swimming to Cuba wouldn’t help.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

In fact, they said, you need lots of nutrition to swim that far—like three meals’ worth of protein and fat. And a shark cage and something to keep the jellyfish from stinging.

Mary was sitting to the side of the group, on the couch, worrying and looking at the sunset, said to be the most beautiful in the world. What would they do if Holly’s brain did go out on her? Take turns visiting at the assisted living place until she didn’t recognize them anymore?

They played cards and then went to bed. Holly promised herself that, next year, she would spring for her own bedroom no matter how much extra it cost. Deb snored.

Tonight she barely slept, even with her noise machine and earplugs.

Lying awake, Holly began to plan her swim. She knew her friends would try to stop her from attempting it, so she realized she’d have to go to the marina alone, early. Then she would have to hire a boat and a driver to travel alongside her and kill sharks or whatever. That shouldn’t be hard given the fact that everybody in Key West who wasn’t a tourist was involved with boats.

She’d swim into Cuban water and then the boat driver would bring her back. She’d leave a note for her pals.

“It was as if they’d forgotten everything that had come before. Not forgotten exactly, not amnesia, but it seemed their choice was to live fully in the moment.”

Deb’s snoring grew louder—the loudest Holly had ever heard her. She let out long, long, long exhalations that would almost be funny if they weren’t so annoying.

Despite the noise pollution, Holly eventually fell asleep.

In the morning when they woke up, Holly was gone. They read the note she left behind: “Swimming to Cuba. See you later and wish me luck.”

Part Three: Not Cuba

“Why?” Mary said. “It’s like we never really knew her. Swimming miles and miles and miles in the wild ocean.”

“Maybe she’s trying to prove something,” Claire offered. “Like she’s still strong and young.”

“And independent of Eric. He’s kind of a bully,” Mary added. They were walking around the marina, looking for somebody who’d seen her.

“She thought the cats were monkeys. That’s a clear symptom of something bad in the brain, wouldn’t you say?” They nodded. Claire kept talking. “Let’s rent a boat and have them take the same route as Diana Nyad.”

“Or the quickest route,” Deb emphasized. “This makes me so mad.” She punched her palm with her fist. “It’s always Holly who screws things up by putting too much into these vacations. Remember the overnight pony ride into the Grand Canyon?”

“Donkey ride,” Mary corrected her.

“Whatever,” Deb dismissed. “I could have insisted we take a day trip to Cuba to see the hotel my grandfather ran. My mother was born there.”

“I didn’t know that,” Claire said. “Any of it. Does that mean you’re Cuban?”

“Genetically no,” Deb replied. “My grandparents were Americans making money off the tourists. But still. The truth is, I didn’t want to push you guys too much on this trip.”

Claire rebuffed, “Push us? Mothers are important. Even if we don’t have them anymore.”

“We have them inside. Or if we don’t, we can try to find them,” Mary remarked, being the resident psychologist of the group.

“The real truth is that right now we’re all terrified about Holly,” Claire said.

Finally, they found somebody who had seen her. He was preparing his charter for a group of college students on spring break.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

“I’d never do this if it weren’t for the money,” he swore. “These rich kids just trash the boat. Like they own the world.”

“Our friend left us a note about swimming to Cuba,” Deb nudged. “Like Diana Nyad. We’re worried about her safety. We need to find her.”

“Could we hire somebody to take us out there?” Claire asked.

“Sure.” He pointed to a dubious-looking motorboat a few slips away. “Nice guy, but can’t run a business. Can’t get the money to buy a decent boat.”

“Sounds like the wrong boat for us, doesn’t it?” Mary wavered.

“No, no,” the guy assured. “It’ll get you to Cuba. Just be prepared for a bumpy ride.”

It was. Deb threw up the whole way and the others turned a strange shade of green. At last, after what seemed like forever, they saw Holly sitting on some rocks.

The captain took them to a landing that he said wasn’t watched by Cuban guards and left them there after they paid him practically all the cash they had. Holly was in her bathing suit, crying.

“We found you,” Claire gushed. “You didn’t drown.” They all embraced one another and Claire gave Holly the towel she’d brought from the hotel.

“I didn’t get very far,” she lamented. “The skipper had to grab me out of the water after about a mile. Laughed at me. ‘These women,’ he said. As if women like me were always trying this swim. I feel like such a fool. Don’t tell Eric.”

“How do we get home?” This was all Mary wanted to know.

“My guy just left me here,” Holly blubbered, beginning to cry again. “He said that’s what I paid him for, not a round trip.”

“Strange,” Mary noted. “This whole thing is feeling very strange.”

They noticed Holly was bleeding. Her arms and her legs had scrapes all over them.

“We need to get you some help for those cuts,” Mary insisted. Claire had other concerns in mind. “Oh god. We have to climb over all these rocks?”

The rocks led straight uphill to what looked like a path.

“What else are we going to do? Our boat guys don’t give a shit. They’ve got their money,” Deb grumbled.

Holly mused, “You know, swimming a mile in the ocean isn’t nothing. I felt pretty good and then all of a sudden I didn’t. I thought about every nice thing I could. My kids, you guys. The sky, the ocean. But my legs cramped so I had to call for the boat guy. I maybe could

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

have made it farther if he’d just let me rest a little bit.”

“I bet you could have made it all the way, Holly,” Deb comforted as she helped her stand up. “Let’s find a town. We’ll hold each other up.”

“But where are we?” Claire queried. Luckily, the little town they came upon didn’t have any police or “gendarmes,” as Mary kept calling them. They wouldn’t be arrested for trespassing. And they found a tiny hospital for Holly’s scrapes, a place to stay in somebody’s house and friendly people.

that last night,’ Claire said.”

“We’ll get you a boat to take you home,” their nurse promised brightly.

“We can’t pay you the money until we get there,” Claire stated honestly. “We gave all we were carrying to the guys who brought us here.”

Mary chuckled. “You know what this conversation reminds me of? People from Mexico and parts farther south trying to get across the border.”

“Except you won’t get arrested or die in the desert, dumped there by unscrupulous coyotes,” the nurse joked.

Around margaritas that evening at the only restaurant in town, the women decided this was their best vacation ever. They were a little tipsy.

The same nurse that treated them in the hospital came over to their table with her drink.

“‘I couldn’t do it,’ she bemoaned. She was crying a little bit. ‘I’m old.’ ‘I thought you got over

“Have you noticed anything...different about this place?” she asked them. She was prettier than she had been in the hospital, although she looked somewhat older. Her hair seemed whiter and the wrinkles around her mouth deeper. She told them her name was Jenny.

“We like it here,” Deb pronounced. “We were just saying this is our best vacation ever.”

“Oh my god.” Holly had an a-ha moment.

“What?” they all spoke in unison.

“It’s only women. That’s what’s different.” She motioned around the patio and then waved towards the rest of the town. “We didn’t notice.”

Mary blinked skeptically. “Aren’t we in Cuba?”

Claire seemed to notice the gender discrepancy all of the sudden as well. “Where are the men? Not that I miss them.”

Jenny sat down in the free chair at their table. “May I join you?”

“You’d better,” Holly encouraged.

Part Four: Old Women

“You’ve landed on the Island of Old Women,” Jenny announced. “Of course, you can leave tomorrow if you want to, but we suggest you think long and hard about it before you decide. At least give the place a few days.”

Deb was in disbelief. “No. You’re kidding. We’re in Cuba. Both of our boat guys brought us right here. There’s no island on the map called Old Women. You’re playing us, aren’t you?”

“Where are all the Cubans?” Claire demanded. “Everybody here looks like us.”

“You mean we’re not brown enough for you?” Jenny riposted.

“Exactly,” Mary confirmed, not caring if she sounded racist.

Holly still wasn’t exactly following. She was on her second margarita, smiling oddly and petting a tiger cat that had shown up to rub against her legs.

“Push her away if you want,” Jenny said.

“I like cats,” Holly slurred. “Is this one related to Hemingway?”

“They all are. Inbred little devils. Six toes on their paws.”

“But if we’re not in Cuba,” Deb continued, “how did they get here?”

Jenny shrugged. “Stowaways, I guess. On the same kind of boats that brought you here.”

“About those boats...” Mary began.

“Have another drink,” Jenny urged, “and just enjoy yourself

before all the questions.”

As though the universe was heeding Jenny’s request, their dinner arrived to distract them. Fish again. Divine.

Part Five: Sleeping

That night, they slept at Jenny’s house. The second floor was given over to one large room with beds in each corner, covered with beautiful quilts in autumn hues.

“It’s like you knew we were coming,” Claire murmured.

“I did,” Jenny affirmed.

Claire pulled out a drawer in the chest standing in the middle of the room. She was happy to find underpants and socks and a couple of pairs of shorts in her size, all neatly folded.

Mary felt a frisson of fear but didn’t show it, she hoped.

“Like in a fairy tale,” Holly cooed. “I read books to my grandkids where logic doesn’t matter. Everybody has to have a magic power. So you knew we were coming?”

“Let’s not think too deeply about it. I get a tingling in my fingers when somebody new lands here. Usually, I don’t want to think about how it works.”

Mary quipped, “Like the witches in Macbeth. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’”

Deb had been quiet during the conversation. She was trying not to be scared, but everything so far on this vacation had been pretty strange. She figured the best thing to do was to listen.

Claire had already chosen the bed with the best view of the ocean. She lay down with her hands behind her head. The conversation should have been making her nervous, sitting here with this obviously psychotic landlord, but for some reason it didn’t. In fact, she was more deeply relaxed than she could ever remember. So relaxed, she could barely speak. But she wanted to.

“Hey,” Claire uttered.

“Hey what?” Mary replied. She’d been sitting on her bed looking out the window at the church across the square. It looked like a miniature Notre-Dame.

She didn’t know what to think. She thought of herself as agnostic, but she was drawn to the church as if she were an old nun, the kind that taught her penmanship in third grade at St. Bede’s.

“I don’t know,” Claire said dreamily to Mary. “I’ve never felt so peaceful.” And then she fell asleep as though to prove her point.

Jenny showed the others the bathroom. Four towels, fresh and fluffy. And then she said good night, very softly so as not to wake Claire. Considerate as hell, Holly thought, washing her face. The soap was the

kind she used at home.

They talked for an hour or so, even Claire, who woke up when they all came back from the bathroom. A chorus of questions ensued:

“What are we going to do?

“Where are we?”

“Are we safe?

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Mary ventured. “I love it here. We should stay.”

“But what about our cats and dogs and husbands and friends, etc.?” Claired reminded.

Holly answered, “Maybe we’re in heaven. Some sort of afterlife.”

Deb had seen some tennis courts, but of course couldn’t play anymore. She announced she might try surfing if Jenny could show her a beach. The waves were probably perfect for it.

Then they all fell asleep. That is, everyone except for Mary, who heard weird whisperings and calls in a strange language from the open window. She got up to look.

This is exactly like a major, classic, Freudian dream we’re in, she realized. Except that she knew it wasn’t. It had gone on too long from one thing and to another, what was it supposed to mean? Dreams had to mean something, didn’t they? In fact, she’d never heard a patient’s dream without it revealing something, a hidden truth, usually brought up by

“The Island of Old Women seemed to be alive and fueled with knowledge and passion. How beautiful to be in such a place, even if she was dreaming. Was she dreaming?”

the patient herself.

The worst dreams told of abusive relationships, often forgotten, buried under years of depression, anxiety, despair. The mysterious feelings that had originally brought the patient into her office.

Of the four friends, only Claire was what Mary would call a PTSD survivor. Post-traumatic stress disorder described her childhood perfectly, complete with a neglectful, narcissistic mother who still liked to drink and slap and shout in her nursing home. Claire had just retired from teaching English literature to teenagers, so she felt like, with her newfound free time, she really should visit her mother more often. Deb taught tennis until a couple of years ago when her shoulder gave out. Mary was just finishing up with all her therapy clients. And, of course, Holly had raised kids and cooked dinner for Eric every night.

The voices outside grew louder—singing, chanting, whispering. Mary was actually a bit afraid, but not terrified. She was too curious to go beyond scared. She stiffened her body as much as she could and then released her muscles one by one, a technique she’d learned in some anti-anxiety workshop she had once attended for licensing purposes. After enough stiffening and loosening, she finally fell asleep...

Part Six: Awake

Claire woke up at dawn, but not tossing and turning with anxious anticipation of the coming day as she usually did. Always wondering what awful things were in store for her: car accident, doctor’s appointment, phone call, cat vomit, earthquake, fire, somebody’s death, the dinner party they had to attend, falling over during the tree pose in yoga, dishwasher overflowing, neighbors calling the cops to report their dog barking. But this morning, remarkably, she wasn’t worried about anything, at least not yet. The air was a perfect temperature, the birds were singing their sweet songs, her sheets were soft and not one mosquito had bitten her in the night. Even with the window next to her open wide. Had she left it that way? Where was she?

She opened her eyes. She remembered.

They were on the Island of Old Women, on the top floor of Jenny’s house; four beds, Oriental rugs, beamed ceiling, pine walls. Lovely. She stood up and noticed she was wearing a t-shirt as a nightgown. It was black with the words, “Island of Old Women” written in white block print on the front.

She took a deep breath and immediately felt even better. For the first time in her life, the breathing calmed her, even though she took

hatha yoga every day when she was home. She walked over to Mary’s bed but didn’t wake her. She just gazed in awe at her lightly wrinkled face, her short white hair and small nose. An old pixie, and Claire’s one love.

Holly was up, looking out the window at the sea. “I couldn’t do it,” she bemoaned. She was crying a little bit. “I’m old.”

“I thought you got over that last night,” Claire said. “A mile is a mile, and it’s much tougher in an open sea. It’s to be celebrated. Remember?”

Claire couldn’t believe she was actually reassuring someone about these things. She smiled warmly at Holly. “We’re all old. We’re all seventy. We landed on the Island of Old Women. That seems to say it all. It’s not so bad here, is it? I have a feeling this is exactly where we’re supposed to be right now. I think we’re learning everything about getting old.”

Holly ignored the comment. “I have to tell Eric where I am. He must be crazy with worry.”

“Don’t think about Eric,” Claire balked. “For once in your life, think of yourself first.”

Holly considered that statement as Claire noticed Deb’s absence

“It was a comfort at least, but that’s all it was—no magic, no healing energy. Come to think of it, everybody she’d lit candles for had died. There was no escaping it. Die, die, die. Dead, dead, dead. Platitudes and an empty, dark future.”

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

and wondered aloud, “Where’s Deb?”

Her bed was empty and she wasn’t in the bathroom. They worried together briefly, and then they didn’t, distracted by Jenny arriving with a breakfast of scones, hard-boiled eggs, fruit and coffee, all balanced easily on a carved wooden tray. It was obvious she’d done this many times before.

Mary then repeated Claire’s question: “Where’s Deb?”

Jenny put the tray down on the dresser and the three friends poured their coffee and sat down on Holly’s bed to eat.

“I ran into her this morning at the cliffs. She had swim fins in one hand and a mask and snorkel in the other,” Jenny described. “I can tell she’s going to be fun.”

Holly nodded, changing the subject to ask, “What should we do today? And do you have a telephone? Mine won’t pick up a signal.”

“Do whatever you want,” Jenny replied. “One of you was looking at the church.”

“That was me,” Mary said. “But yesterday, wasn’t it a miniature Gothic? Like a baby Notre-Dame with buttresses and gargoyles? Today it looks like an adobe, like the one Georgia O’Keeffe painted near Santa Fe.”

“Go over for a visit,” Jenny spurred. “You’ll learn something new here every day.”

Mary wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to learn anything, that she was quite happy with all the things she already knew. But she stopped herself. It sounded pompous to say it out loud even though she meant it.

Claire looked at Mary gratefully for biting her tongue, as if she knew exactly what she might be about to say.

“What about us?” Claire said.

“Just start walking,” Jenny responded. “There’s a lot to see.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Holly decided. “I got us here and that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Jenny chirped, collecting the dishes from breakfast.

“But I do need a phone,” she added. “Before Claire and I take our walk.”

“No phone. But I’ll send your husband a note with our next delivery man. He’ll be here tomorrow. Melons, Maker’s Mark and meat. If any of you is a vegetarian, I can make arrangements.”

Nobody spoke up. They each had their favorite animal they wouldn’t eat—beef, chicken, pork—but they weren’t vegetarian. Mary wouldn’t eat turkey, which nobody could understand. What an ugly, stupid animal.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

“I think it’s the way my father used to hack it up at Thanksgiving when we were little,” she posited. “He made us name the body parts.”

Chimpanzees and elephants were smart and had empathy, but they weren’t on anybody’s menu.

Claire turned to Holly. She expected an objection of some kind about contacting Eric sooner. What island didn’t have phone contact? But she was just smiling peacefully, kind of like Claire herself, which was amazing given the dream she’d had last night. Cosmic nightmares about her awful mother doing something awful. The usual thing. Except in last night’s dream, for the first time, Claire fought back. She cut off her mother’s head with one clean sweep. Ahhh. Maybe that would do it for her PTSD.

“So it’s going to be perfect weather today,” Jenny trumpeted. “T-shirts and shorts weather.”

“Is it always perfect weather here?” Mary asked, getting dressed. “I bet it is.”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘perfect.’ Some people like rain. But it only rains a bit here. We have cisterns and a river and tall trees in the central valley.”

That seemed to satisfy Mary as a response and, after getting dressed, they left for their walk. Jenny had made each of them sandwiches. Salmon for Deb, chicken for Claire, roast beef for Mary and vegetable for Holly. That way, they could wander all day.

While Mary strolled into the church, Claire and Holly chose a path that they hoped would lead to the ocean, and maybe Deb.

“Is this real?” Holly wondered as they padded along. The path was so soft, it was almost like fine sand, except they were in the woods.

“It’s real,” Claire promised. “But it doesn’t matter one way or the other. We’re here for a reason.”

“I bet when I get home, Eric will ask me where I was and what’s for dinner... I know you all don’t care for him.”

“It’s his voice. He whines. You know, that nasal thing he’s got going. ‘Haaalllleeee.’ He says it out of his nose.”

Holly laughed. Claire was right. She could hear him talking like that even in front of her friends. Her job was to make him comfortable while he worked in science for the government. Nobody else in the group had a challenging job like that.

“You introduced us,” Holly reminded.

“True,” Claire conceded. Besides, who am I to judge? Mary and I bicker all the time over stupid stuff.”

Suddenly, the air got much colder and the path turned to powdery snow.

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

“What’s this? Where are we?”

“We’re on the cold side of the island, I guess. I’m glad Jenny gave us sweaters,” Claire said as she put hers on.

Now the trees were exceptionally lovely with all the soft snow covering their branches.

“Look,” Claire pointed. “Over there. It’s people sliding down the hill on toboggans. Are they old women too?”

Part Seven: The Mother House

Mary had almost become a nun. The nuns who taught at St. Agnes, her college, had targeted the most likely candidates and taken them by station wagon for overnights at the motherhouse. Or two nights if they seemed especially promising.

Mary hadn’t really almost become a nun, but she let the women at the motherhouse have their hopes. She requested three separate weekends of sleepovers, mostly because the food was so much better than it was on campus. Some of the nuns were young and seemed clearly to be lesbians, albeit in huge denial. She liked them.

But she knew that she wasn’t made to be a nun. She liked being part of the regular world. She liked to talk too much. And she

“There’s a lot of forgetting on the Island of Old Women. The thing is, it doesn’t matter. Life is so beautiful here. We all live in the present and let the past take care of itself.”

probably liked sex, although, at that time, she’d never had it. Mostly though, the idea of being a nun sounded lonely.

In her hard bed, in the cold motherhouse, she realized that she didn’t love God enough to spend her whole life devoted to Him. That’s what she told the mother superior who took her hand, patted it and nodded sagely. “It’s good you found that out so quickly, Mary. Many nuns go through their entire lives blaming themselves for being weak, or just unhappy here.”

Mary could imagine this. But she couldn’t imagine staying once she figured it out.

Right now, she felt very lucky to be free, free of the Catholic Church and proud of her work as a psychologist. She hadn’t slept with any patients or told any of their secrets or ever talked too much about herself...in sessions.

She entered the adobe chapel and lit two candles near the altar. She always lit a candle no matter where she was. Some churches weren’t even Christian, but you could light a candle and leave a dollar. Say a prayer and remember your loved ones.

Mary had had a couple of girlfriends before Claire, both of whom had later died from grisly forms of cancer. Even though Mary had lit candles for them at every church she visited. It was a comfort at least, but that’s all it was—no magic, no healing energy. Come to think of it, everybody she’d lit candles for had died. There was no escaping it. Die, die, die. Dead, dead, dead. Platitudes and an empty, dark future.

Her clients had loved her, sure. Even if it was all transference, making it easy to stay “within herself,” as her yoga teacher would say. She was just a projection of their fantasies. Humbling, but important to know. She’d seen too many colleagues lose their licenses for kissing, cuddling or worse.

Mary sat down on an old wooden bench and sniffed the air. Incense, pine, leather. A small painting of a Southwest virgin, smooth and shy, over the altar.

Someone sat down next to her. A priestly woman with a white robe tied at her waist.

Part Eight: Surfing

Deb was perched on the edge of a cliff watching the surfers riding waves below her. As far as she could tell, they were women, mostly younger, but not by much. Several had white hair and were sitting on their boards waiting for the perfect wave. The big secret Deb had was

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

that her rotator cuff was so worn down, she could never play tennis again. No more tennis friendship group, no more strong leg muscles, no more tennis club, no more life. She’d been crying on and off for days, ever since her doctor called her with the results and future plans, of which there were none. Shoulder replacements were difficult and often unsuccessful.

Her life had been three or four times a week on the court since she was a kid. She thought that, without tennis or any of the racket sports, she’d shrivel up and die. How did she not anticipate this? Bodies wear out.

She gazed at the sea and felt the surfers pulling to get ahead of the breaking waves. Could she do that with one good arm? Wasn’t there a teenager with one arm, the other bitten off by a shark, who was still in the game? Deb could take lessons. She needed a new sport.

Amidst her thoughts, Holly and Claire appeared and sat down next to her.

Deb looked over at them and asserted with an athlete’s zest, “I want to get down there with the surfers. I want to rent a board and take some lessons. I can hardly wait to have that feeling of riding a wave.”

“I bet it feels a lot like skiing,” Holly speculated. She’d been a skier since she was a kid, living in New England near a few small resorts with slopes that were perfect for kids. When she got older, she bought a car and took her friends with her on jaunts to bigger places. She never broke a limb, she was proud to say.

Deb turned back to the waves as though in a trance.

“We’ll take you down,” Claire proposed. “We passed a trail, a very nice path, no problem there. It seems like half the islanders surf.”

Deb nodded and the three of them climbed towards the beach. It was the most beautiful place. Palm trees, white sand and the bluest water ever. They left her there, sitting on the sand all by herself, waiting to be approached by somebody in a wetsuit. They decided it was the best thing to do. Each woman had to find her way alone.

Holly and Claire went back up the path, keeping their eyes open for the discovery they were supposed to make. The discovery that would lead them into the heart of the Island of Old Women. They didn’t understand how they knew this, but they did even without speaking.

“Okay. Eric is a jerk,” Holly admitted out of nowhere, knocking her head on a branch along the trail. “And I’m not much of a hiker.”

Claire didn’t say anything. Eric wasn’t so bad, just anxious all the time and bossy and, well, he wasn’t so bad for a husband.

Claire’s wife, Mary, was, of course, a million times better and

Claire sometimes felt that she wasn’t nearly as good of a person. Mary was brave and kind. Claire was scared of everything, though at least she had money. Not to imply that the money was what kept Mary around, but Claire figured it didn’t hurt.

Part Nine: Religion

Smiling warmly, the priest was the first to break the silence with Mary. “You’re new here. Welcome.”

“You’re new here too,” Mary replied. “I guess you could have been a French priest then, though. Just dressed up in a fancy gown.”

“Exactly,” the priest confirmed. She had bright blue eyes and a long nose. “I can’t explain it, but every day is different. Different church, different priest robe. I’m not even sure I’m always Catholic. Funny, I think of priests as men. Nothing’s changed with the sexism has it? I got here about ten years ago.”

“There are lots of women priests, just not Catholic,” Mary answered. “I almost became a nun when I was in school. But the whole nun and priest thing was going out of fashion.”

“And you knew it wasn’t for you.”

“Yes...” Mary bowed her head. It still made her feel a little selfish.

The priest took her hand. “There are many ways to feel close to God, whatever God is.”

“I heard some witchy sounds last night,” Mary confessed.

“Yes, there’s a coven just outside of town. The witches live everywhere, but they meet for ceremonies once a week in the woods. Sometimes this building becomes a witch temple and we have rituals right here.”

“How lovely. I suppose the townspeople can join any worship group they want.”

“Or all of them.” The priest glanced around the adobe church. “Soon my parishoners will come. You’re welcome to join in. My name is Helen, by the way. That never changes. When I came here, I was running away from something. Scientology, that’s it. They had a headquarters in Key West. I lost my family and my life but I finally got here. I stowed away in one of those boats that brought you to the island. Of course, the captain knew I was in the boat...but he hated the Scientologists more than he cared about collecting my fare.”

Mary arched her brow. “Why is everything so magical and mysterious here? I’m a psychologist, but not a Jungian. I don’t appreciate that feeling of letting go of everything I know. I probably should have been a scientist or doctor or mathematician.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Helen said. “Besides, nobody’s asking you to let go of your beliefs.” She lit a stick of incense and waved it under Mary’s nose. “There’s a lot of forgetting on the Island of Old Women. The thing is, it doesn’t matter. Life is so beautiful here. We all live in the present and let the past take care of itself.”

“Doesn’t anybody die?” Mary inquired, genuinely curious.

“That’s what you heard last night. The witches’ mass for the dead. She, Adrienne, was buried under a pine tree to give nutrients to the soil. I’ll bring you to the next burial. You have an interest in everything, don’t you?”

“When I came here, I thought I knew everything I wanted to know. The world is in crisis right now. I don’t want to be a part of that.”

“What about Claire?”

“She’s always been the depressed one...yet here, she’s been a different person. Sort of gentle and giving. Now I’m the one who’s complaining.”

Part Ten: Surfing to Cuba

Deb sat down on a piece of driftwood and waited for someone to approach her. She was sure this would happen sooner or later. The

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

“Her life had been three or four times a week on the court since she was a kid. She thought that, without tennis or any of the racket sports, she’d shrivel up and die. How did she not anticipate this? Bodies wear out.”

Island of Old Women seemed to be alive and fueled with knowledge and passion. How beautiful to be in such a place, even if she was dreaming. Was she dreaming?

She picked out a particular surfer to watch. Maybe she could learn to surf just by watching. The woman’s technique was smooth and fine. Tremendous, Deb marveled. She was catching and riding the

waves like a perfect serve in tennis, a stroke Deb would never be able to perform again.

The surfer had become part of the wave. As though calmed by the sight, a smiling Deb lay down on the warm sand and fell asleep.

She woke up a few minutes later to a soft touch on the top of her head. But she wasn’t startled. Instead, she felt like a baby almost: vulnerable and trusting.

“You want to learn how to surf?” the voice above her asked. It was the woman Deb had been watching, talking to her as if she could read her mind.

“Yes,” Deb affirmed, sitting up and grinning. “You people know everything.”

To prove that point, the surfer imparted, “No more racket sports. How sad. It happens to everybody though. You slip, you fall, you get arthritis, you can’t move your shoulder or neck without pain.

“Everybody was happy with the changes. Change is good and you don’t have to be anxious and depressed all the time, Claire told them. Nobody really missed men.”

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

But surfing is different. You move and sway. It’s almost like dancing.” She held out her hand and pulled Deb up. “I’m Annie.” Then she smiled as she told Deb,“Surfing’s easy if you give yourself to it.”

“Almost like sex?” Deb teased.

Annie laughed. “Maybe so... You must have had some good sex.”

“Not for years.”

“Me neither. That’s what’s so good about surfing. Like I said, you can do it even when you’re old.”

Deb learned to surf that afternoon. She also came to a conclusion. She needed to get to Cuba soon. She needed to see where her mother was born. She felt like only then would she be complete.

Part Eleven: Walking Home

“My legs are tired,” Holly complained. They were on the crest of a hill that overlooked what seemed like a field of wine grapes. Claire gave Holly some water and they sat down on a wooden bench someone had carved in memory of Shari, a fine woman, evidently, who got the most out of life, sitting here drinking wine, being herself unapologetically. “Unapologetically’’ barely fit on the backrest, but the carver had been determined.

“Most important word in the whole memorial,” Claire assessed.

Holly thought about that a long time. She grabbed Claire’s hand and pulled her to another clearing where a house stood. Claire gasped and almost choked. It was Holly’s exact house. They could see her husband wandering around inside, glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Eric,” Holly whispered. “Look at him.”

“He’s lost without you.”

“I do love him,” Holly ceded. They ambled down the path to the front door. She tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. “But I think he’s made me a little bit crazy.”

“Yes,” Claire agreed.

Holly found a door to the kitchen swinging open. Turning to Claire, she invited, “Come in.”

Holly opened the refrigerator. “Just as I thought. Nothing to eat. I left him a week’s worth of frozen dinners. Does he look fatter to you?”

Claire didn’t answer. She’d grown to expect magic on the Island of Old Women, so if Holly’s house was sitting in a clearing, so what? There was something they were supposed to learn.

After Holly finished cooking him a meal from some canned food, they left...with Eric none the wiser to their presence.

They walked a little bit and turned around to find the house was gone. All they could hear was Eric calling, “Haaalllleeee!” in his irritating nasal voice.

“What was that all about?”

“I don’t know,” Holly said, crying a little bit.

Claire thought for a moment. “I think it was about how much you love Eric. You made your house appear.”

“I’m going back to him,” Holly vowed. “That’s what I discovered. But I’ll never be the same. I’ll be the new old me.”

Part Twelve: Claire

Claire was the only one who hadn’t had an epiphany. She kept going for solitary walks and trying to see something exceptional. Mostly, she was looking for a vision of her mother. She wanted to forgive her for being such a selfish bitch. She wanted to fix their relationship, even though her mother was probably going to die soon. She was ninetyeight, after all. But she still had her brain. Somehow.

Mary tried to convince Claire that she’d already become the loving, generous person she’d always wanted to be. “But my bad mother is still inside me,” Claire rued. “I want that to be over.” And then she went for another solitary walk, looking for her mother.

This time, she found what she wanted...in a tree. A tall redwood. Beautiful and strong. And standing alone. She thought she heard the tree calling to her through the breeze. Claire ran toward it and stared, then she put her arms around it as far as she could. She kissed its rough bark. She felt her heart pulsing with joy.

“I love you, Mom.”

“Me too,” the redwood whirred. “Forever.”

Claire let the unselfish embrace wash over her, contemplating the forgiveness she decided to allow for her mother.

“You can go now. I don’t need you anymore,” Claire wept. And on her back, she could feel something patting her. It must have been the tree branch. How lovely and magical that was.

Claire sat down at the base of the trunk. She was breathing deeply and then softly. She closed her eyes and slept.

Part Thirteen: The End

Holly left the next day for home on the supply boat. They all waved goodbye except Deb, who had already departed for Cuba on her surfboard.

So it was just Claire and Mary who remained on the Island of Old Women, with all the other ladies who weren’t their friends yet. Claire thought they were weird, every single one of the residents. Some had dyed their hair purple and wore huge native earrings, sweatpants that were too tight for them and no bras at all.

She soon changed her mind and became much more accepting, especially after having so many great conversations with most of them. Fifty at least. Jenny had a big, woody living room with couches and chairs. The paintings on the walls were all done by the Islanders—from abstract visions of the trees and hills to realistic portraits of several residents—but none of their families or former homelands. It was as if they’d forgotten everything that had come before. Not forgotten exactly, not amnesia, but it seemed their choice was to live fully in the moment. It was the cliché phrase that Jenny had painted on one of the walls. A cliché, Claire realized, that was completely true.

They got a letter from Deb, who wrote that she was going to live in Cuba, that the hotel her grandfather used to manage had been turned into apartments and there was one available, bathroom down the hall. She didn’t speak Spanish, but it seemed that she’d stay and learn. She’d already opened a surf clinic for women of all ages.

“The people here are mostly poor,” she wrote, “but they’re full

“They’d been friends, the four of them, for fifty years, or around that. They didn’t celebrate friendship with cards and flowers. It was an informal best friendship and unique because they were all so different.”

of life and music. And the medical care is free.”

They were rocking on Jenny’s front porch, like they owned it, waving at women they didn’t know, drinking iced tea and eating the lemon cookies Jenny had baked.

Mary put the letter down. “It’s like family to her in Cuba, I guess. Her mother lived her childhood there. It’s a place where people are happy with almost nothing.”

Jenny’s weekly salon always had topics and, of course, food. Everybody on the island came, bringing their snacks and opinions. They each knew who the current world leaders were. As it turned out, the old women hailed from around the globe. They knew about mass murders and climate change and the pandemic, but really, the Island of Old Women was all that mattered. And their dreams, thoughts and miraculous insights.

Claire and Mary, who had moved to another smaller room in Jenny’s house, loved the salons and had started to help her with the newcomers and anything/everything else they could think of. In fact, they got so good at helping her out that, when Jenny told them she needed to retire and just enjoy the island, Claire stepped in to run the place. Everybody loved her positive energy and sensitive, empathic nature, so they accepted her with open arms as their leader.

For Mary, who used to know everything and soon discovered she actually didn’t, this was a good thing. She became the priest when Helen decided that she wanted to be a chef and cook food that was delicious and healthy.

She wanted to serve seafood from the ocean and the vegetables she grew in the kitchen garden. She took over the island’s only restaurant when the owner started a music school specializing in the piano, flute and violin.

Everybody was happy with the changes. Change is good and you don’t have to be anxious and depressed all the time, Claire told them.

Nobody really missed men.

They got a letter from Holly, too, who described her new relationship with Eric. “All I had to do was train him, like a dog.” When he whined, demanded sex or said that he didn’t know how to cook, she ignored him and went for a walk by herself. When she got home, she’d find that he made a passable spaghetti and meatballs.

At the end of the letter, she drew herself with a happy face and a small Eric sitting at her feet. He was lifting a pie he’d just baked up to her as an offering, they figured.

And that’s the end of the story, really. The Island of Old

Women was a place you’d want to be if you could ever find it. You see, it moved all the time, with magical food and mail delivery and even a taxi service by boat to the mainland.

“We don’t know where we are exactly,” Claire acknowledged. “Which is a good thing.”

“Can you imagine if people knew how to find us?” Mary added. “They would either overrun the place or try to destroy us. It’s hard for people to watch others be happy.”

“Or change,” Claire said. And she knew. She was the one who’d changed the most.

The Island of Old Women - Carla Tomaso

Rough-Hew Them How We Will Tony

Covatta

Nogood deed goes

unpunished. So I thought as I climbed out of my victorious clients’ car early that morning at the old courthouse in Bay City, Michigan. Cold, needle-sharp rain was misting down. The temperature had hovered just below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit all night. Glare ice coated the streets and sidewalks. Local television forecasted more ice and then snow.

My two clients were happy because they were on their way back to warmer climes, escaping a gloomy, snowy, icy day in central Michigan. No more nights in fleabag motels, with meals in C-minus grade interstate restaurants. They were also happy because, the day before, I had won them an injunction against a large Bay City chemical company, right here in its hometown. Not easy to do. My opponents were two hired guns from a prominent New York City firm, guys brought in from the Big Apple, not from their Detroit office, partnering with Bay City barristers who knew the judge.

I was smiling, but not completely happy. I had volunteered to stay behind and attend a brief appearance watching the judge reading our verdict into the record. Dressed in a navy blue courtroom suit and

Rough-Hew Them How We Will - Tony Covatta

cordovan wingtips, not designed for rain, much less glare ice, I pulled two roller carts, each loaded to capacity with boxed documents and stuffed briefcases. The court appearance was to be only ceremonial, the cumbersome documents would neither be opened nor even referenced. Currying favor with the clients, I had agreed to lug them home. I picked my way across the ice and into the dark, poorly lit courthouse, hoisting my load up flights of worn, slick, wet marble stairs to a strangely quiet

third-floor courtroom.

“Oh, Mr. Martino! What are you doing here? Didn’t anyone tell you the hearing this morning is at the new courthouse?”

I had interrupted the clerks’ aimless morning chatter, but they were ready for my questions.

“What new courthouse? Where might the new courthouse be?”

And no, no one had mentioned anything about the site of the hearing or provided directions. My defeated local opponents would have known this. Was this a deliberate—nope, I won’t go there.

The two clerks exuded solicitude and, luckily, the new courthouse was only a few blocks away. I cautiously made my way back downstairs and across the icy front steps to the skating rink that the sidewalk had become, then hesitantly ferried my haul of now useless

“...I rejected my unwelcome, dismaying invitation to be a selfless Samaritan, betraying the man I thought I was. Instead, I gave in to being a heartless lawyer, capable of murder...well, at least possible manslaughter. And all this for a court appearance as close to meaningless as they come.”

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

documents through the treacherous blocks to the new courthouse. The morning snow had commenced. I nearly fell under the ungainly load twice in the half hour that elapsed.

The new courthouse was warm, bright and cheerful. The large, high-ceilinged courtroom was adjacent to the parking lot, and buzzing with bands of lawyers there for hearings and appearances. My opponents were all in a jovial mood upon seeing me, despite their loss. Hmmm. I was late, but Judge Barnes, angelically reading the morning paper at the desk in his open-doored, glass-walled office, was not in one of his moods—yet. I went to the bailiff’s desk at the front of the room to report my presence. All was right with the world, I thought. Outside, cold and snowy; misdirection and initial confusion. Within, rules and schedules. An adjudicator to show us the way, reward the successful and punish the errant. But then...the plans we blithely make so easily go astray.

“Mr. Martino, hello. Why haven’t you completed registering here in the district? We sent you the forms and have been waiting for your signed enrollment card. We can’t proceed without it.” She fell into a stage whisper: “You know how the judge is...”

Chuckles erupted from the amused lawyers, sprawled in their seats and on tables, relaxed, all waiting for something to happen.

“I signed the card and sent it back weeks ago!” I replied.

“Must be over at the old courthouse. You’ll need to go get it. Can’t start without it.”

More chuckles. Many had seen me drag my cart through the icy parking lot, shake the snow and ice off my suit and stamp my shoes almost clean...only to be forced out into the cold again. At least I would leave the worthless boxes of files behind. But the local boys and the big city boys had their shoddy little victory, seeing the comeuppance of the hotshot from down in Ohio who had smote some of their own before this very judge. Let him take another walk through the snow. In Bay City, we do it every day.

Before I could complain and risk contempt of court, a portly lawyer I didn’t know, sitting in the front row in his three-piece suit, florid tie and gumboots, stood up and chimed in,“Take my car.”

“What?”

He threw me a bulky fistful of keys with a sweeping gesture. The laughter stopped immediately. The generous key thrower, standing at the front of the gaggle, was signaling to his brethren that I was part of the group, therefore merited consideration. None of our brothers should have to take such a brutal walk through the icy streets and piles of snow. Stunned but not about to refuse, I accepted the key ring and

Them How We Will - Tony Covatta

asked which car.

He smiled a knowing smile. Were he not gazing at me with glowing innocence, I would have found him smug. But there was something forthright and direct about his look, which demanded acceptance. It was as if he had offered a hungry child an ice cream sundae.

“You’ll recognize it. The red one in the front row.”

He could not have been more right. Everything about this gift was over the top. “Samuel (Sammy) Johnson,” it said on the ornate key ring, which also featured his plated business card—complete with Sammy’s name, address and phone and fax number in gold and black lacquer—attached to the ring. Along with colorful, small amulets of the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Cesar Chavez. The key itself, once found, was for a brand-new, fully-loaded Cadillac, redolent of that wonderful new car smell, with an industrial-strength heater and footdeep cushioned seats, upholstered in beautiful, light brown leather.

Once I had absorbed this opulent surprise, I went at the speed of a hockey rink Zamboni driver to the old courthouse, retrieved the all-important enrollment card and inched back toward the new courthouse. I cautiously tried to preserve the harmony that Sammy’s generosity had imposed on the situation. But the natural world plays by its own rules.

With only a half block to go, the new courthouse was in sight. Through the lighted windows I could see lawyers, some milling around in the courtroom, some at the windows. Then, off to the right, I saw— as though she stepped out of a Chekhov story—an elderly, halting silhouette in a babushka suddenly collapse into a snowbank. Powdery snow billowed about the fallen figure. Catastrophe. But I said to myself, Keep going! You’ve got a hearing!

As I fixed on the motionless shape, my mood went from contented to guarded. I shepherded the Caddy to a safe landing, pausing to consider my options. Could I drive on? I had to. So I passed her by, reaching the courthouse parking lot soon after. But the anxious thought would not let me go—not the buried babushka, but me sitting in court, unable to rid myself of the backbiting of my conscience; focusing not on the unpredictable judge, but on the body in the snow. Not without painful feelings of guilt and shame, I rejected my unwelcome, dismaying invitation to be a selfless Samaritan, betraying the man I thought I was. Instead, I gave in to being a heartless lawyer, capable of murder...well, at least possible manslaughter. And all this for a court appearance as close to meaningless as they come.

I presented the enrollment card to the bailiff, only to receive yet

Rough-Hew

another shock. The bailiff scrutinized the card, blanched and charged in to see the judge. After his honor dropped the sports pages that had held his rapt attention and raised his eyebrows, they both trundled quickly unannounced into the courtroom, causing the assembled lawyers to stand, shuffling to attention. Judge Barnes looked searchingly at me. Why had no member of the local bar countersigned the enrollment card? How could he enter the judgment without that? My heart sank, but before my opponents saw an opening and interjected, starting a death spiral for my case, Sammy, sensing yet another opportunity for a theatrical performance, took the floor.

He begged the judge’s attention and volunteered to vouch for me on the spot. “Your Honor, I am sure that Mr. Martino is a credit to the Ohio bar, just as he has proved a formidable competitor here in Bay County, and a gentleman. He also took splendid care of my red Caddy. We can all be proud of him, just as if he were one of our own.”

Perhaps Sammy was not completely altruistic. Had he gotten in a dig at the A-team boys from New York City (“gentleman,” “one of our own”)? I thought so. He provided the necessary but entirely undeserved attestation to my good character, his grandiloquence making me feel even more the petty jerk I knew myself to be.

Silently accepting the advantage, I received my judgment from the now pacified judge and shook hands all around. I especially thanked Sam Johnson, who wouldn’t think of recompense, and I bummed a pleasant ride to the airport from the New Yorkers, both good sports. We would have to do lunch when I was next in the city.

As we passed the spot where I had abandoned the fallen babushka, I asked them to stop. Upon further inspection, I saw no body, no police tapes, no signs of emergency vehicles, no blood—only a faint pair of small footprints disappearing up the street into the snow.

That was the last I saw of both courthouses, icy downtown Bay City, the New Yorkers, Sam Johnson or the babushka in the babushka. But the memory of these events ate away at me. Sammy’s forthright, all-encompassing generosity versus me ignoring a defenseless old woman.

I had always taken for granted that there was a balance to things: the Golden Rule; forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; we need to take the good with the bad; every cloud has a silver lining. In folklore, the ledger of bad versus good behavior somehow comes close to balancing out, with profit ever so slightly outweighing loss. At funerals, when asked to speak, I say: “Our friend, [fill in name], has left the world a slightly better place than he/ she found it.” Here I had failed to provide a good deed on the ledger

of accountability when given the chance.

Over the next few months, to lessen my feelings of discord and self-reproach I played the admitted fool with friends. I told them the story of my heartless selfishness and silence in the face of undeserved praise with self-mockery, which allowed them to laugh with, rather than at, a guy they (presumably) liked a lot. I got points for confessing my sin

with an apologetic grin. For an “honest” examination of conscience, the most perceptive of them, I believe, thought more of me rather than less. Of course, there was little about it that was honest. I was trying to purge myself of guilt by letting the audience mollify me. They could not see my cynicism.

The following year, disturbing news changed the calculus as I told the story to one more group of lawyers. One of my listeners knew Sam Johnson. He had heard that he was in a terrible accident in the red Cadillac somewhere in Michigan. The car was totaled, and Sam was going to be laid up for many months. He was lucky to be alive. That bad news blurred the picture. It made me feel cheap in telling my coy, disingenuous account of the incident. Unable to fathom how or why Sammy was being punished for his good deeds, I lost sight of my Bay City moral conundrum for some time.

As the years went by, like other knots left untied, the affair of

Rough-Hew Them How We Will - Tony Covatta

“In folklore, the ledger of bad versus good behavior somehow comes close to balancing out, with profit ever so slightly outweighing loss.”

the red Caddy and the grandmother abandoned in the snow came back to haunt me. Any notion I had entertained when I was younger that a benevolent deity sitting on a cloud oversaw the world’s karmic balance simply did not jibe with what I read about the trillions of galaxies with billions of stars and many, many planets, on a goodly number of which there simply must be life of some sort and dimension.

In my youth, I had felt that good actions like Sam’s simply radiated a benevolent force that strengthened one’s resolve, that could be picked up and acted upon as an example of the life that should be lived. When the memory started worrying me in my middle years, like a piece of gristle impossible to dislodge from one’s rear molars, I had a darker view of a less comfortable world. It was the work of a cruel fate to punish Sam Johnson with his terrible collision even though he was apparently an instinctively generous person. I chalked this sentiment up to the cynical aphorism that opens this story: no good deed goes unpunished. This jaded view of how the world works provides just the right “down” mood when things are going poorly, and bode to keep doing so. Even worse was the question that kept coming up for me: was he being punished for my selfishness? This thought paralyzed me. I regretted letting it arise in my mental meanderings.

When I retired, I bought myself a nice car (much finer than the

“Any notion I had entertained when I was younger that a benevolent deity sitting on a cloud oversaw the world’s karmic balance simply did not jibe with what I read about the trillions of galaxies with billions of stars and many, many planets, on a goodly number of which there simply must be life of some sort and dimension.”

one I drove when I was practicing) to reward myself for my past labors. My well-appointed new ride reminded me of the red Caddy and Sammy. I couldn’t help but weigh anew Sammy’s punishment for his good deeds against my niggling trips across the Bay City tundra, puny penalty for a minor inconvenience, while ignoring the fallen babushka. The disparity nudged my thinking in a new direction.

I may never get to the bottom of the gross inequity. There is far too much about Sammy and everything else that I will never know. But if I cloak it all in the poetic couplet, only half of which I employed as the title of this story, the whole concept has a sonorous dignity that leaves me in a place better than before.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will.

We do what we can to make life livable. We are ham-handed at it, only dimly see what the moving finger writes. Now, at least I do my small part. When out driving my shiny new toy, I watch laser-focused, not just for potential peril to the car, but for children and old folks crossing the street, for joggers and cyclists in and out of the bike lane. Just last month, stopping on the busy interstate, I rescued a frantic, terrified mutt trapped on the center island, shaking and barking with fear, unable to make himself go any farther. I’ve named him Muldoon. He loves my wife and grandkids...and tolerates me.

The babushka and Sammy survived. I prevailed in court. Muldoon found a home. Good came out of evil, an element of the divine. I bask in the equanimity of it until something better comes along.

Rough-Hew Them How We Will - Tony Covatta

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us Jared

Billings

Imet Julian Gris at the museum bar in 2001 and somehow I instantly knew he would destroy my life for the better. I had come alone, I was only there because there was nowhere else to go, and I ended up in the corner where Julian happened to be whispering to a man who looked like a stalk of celery. Julian, in contrast, looked like a fisherman; he was the least fashionable man I’d ever seen, but those type of people are always the ones who are the most in style, the most magnetic, by nature. The celery man walked away with tears in his eyes and then Julian turned to me, a complete stranger, and explained, “He didn’t realize all of these paintings are fake.” His hand slowly gestured towards a wall holding some frames of Goya, Dumbt, Schiele, Bosch, and Petrollucci. I didn’t recognize any of them at the time. “You don’t know either, do you?” he asked. “Every one of those scenes is a replication of a memory or a dream. None of them are perfectly true renderings of the original vision. That’s the artist’s impossible mission. It’s sad, really. They try so hard.”

“It’s very sad,” I agreed. But I smiled and Julian smiled and we stayed in that corner together for a very long time, drinking Bloody Az-

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

tecs, sometimes talking about artists I’d never heard of and sometimes not talking at all, just taking in the aura of the paintings, or, as Julian called it, the dreck. Initially, I told him the truth: I was new in town and had a bit of money. Then, I lied and told him the money came from my parents. He didn’t seem to care, he only cared that I was a nobody. I was a nobody with something and he was a somebody with nothing.

“Listen, have you ever considered buying before?” Julian inquired as we parted for the night.

“As an investment?”

“No. To enrich your life.”

The first dealer Julian introduced me to was a small man from Toulouse, who lived in one of those classic colonial houses overlooking the cliffs of the Spanish coast. Julian told him I was an underground buyer, someone he never heard of because I preferred to buy in the shadows. The Frenchman asked what kind of art I was into and I told him I loved cycles, loneliness, eradication, beautiful sadness and simplicity—only the kinds of art that told the utmost truth.

The dealer insisted, “Every piece of art is the artist’s truth,” and Julian and I laughed.

“He likes the stuff at the ends of the spectrum,” Julian nudged. “The kind where the artist unintentionally tells humanity’s truth.”

“It can be boring and straightforward, a graphite sketch of an apple or a skull...” I added.

“...or it can be utterly surrealist,” offered Julian. “Like nauseous watercolors of a headless man vomiting on his legless wife’s bare chest. Those types of things.”

“I see,” the Frenchman remarked. “And your price point?”

“Nonexistent,” Julian assured. I nodded.

The Frenchman smiled and took us to his basement where he unlocked a series of doors leading to rooms full of paintings which became more abstract the deeper we went. In the final room, lit by hundreds of candles, a massive painting, maybe larger than a car, leaned against the back wall. A flowering dress of innumerable shimmering hues cascaded across the canvas, shaped with thick brushstrokes of clotted paint extending out towards the viewer. The colors of the dress moved in small whirlpools up to the woman’s neck where they abruptly stopped under a malformed face, drawn in thick black marker, with deep streaks bleeding down from the eyes and ears into a gaping mouth full of serrated teeth.

“Bohannon the Clown by Diego Vloches,” said the Frenchman.

“Magnifique,” Julian assessed.

“Vloches painted the bottom half, supposedly the start of a

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

portrait of his wife, before he died in his sleep later that same night. Tuberculosis, so it goes. After his wife woke up in the morning and reported his death to the coroner, she came back to find the painting finished with the face as you see it. As such, it’s the only known painting completed by a ghost.”

I asked the Frenchman how much it cost and Julian interrupted me by telling him we’d take it. He wrote the check out of my checkbook while I helped the Frenchman carry the painting upstairs. Julian chose my living room wall for its permanent home and we prayed to it before we ate lunch: “Oh Bohannon, you beautiful bastard. Watch over us as we dedicate ourselves to the Great Aesthetics. Bless us with good health, strong alcohol, a million orgasms and enough luck to find you a sweet Prince.”

“I’m in love with her, my rich friend,” he told me.

A few days later, Julian moved into my tiny apartment on top of the hill overlooking the ass end of Blanes and we began to spend every day mingling with the notable artists and dealers in town.

“These types of people are like bubbles,” Julian warned me. “They’re all floating aimlessly and some make their way up and up and up, while others fall and disappear forever.” He introduced me to them as his rich friend and I didn’t mind. I felt like he was solidifying my sense of place, or at the very least showing me a good time.

From Juliet Ramires, a student sculptor who only worked with papier mâché, we bought a small devil-horned frog for fourteen euros. Then there was the man with no name, known only as the Bard of Lisbon. He sold us a pointillist portrait of Baby Lindbergh, painted by a descendant of one of the French masters, for seven thousand four hundred Swiss francs. John Johnson, an up and coming American who everyone called Buck, drew us a custom piece depicting God destroying various world landmarks, entitled Scorcher, for one hundred fifty American dollars. We wooed January Thompson, the curator of the very museum we met at, into selling us a much-litigated Malevich for twenty-one point six million euros...under the table, of course. Euclid the Hindu, the preeminent avant-garde tastemaker of our time, as Julian put it, sold us a grotesque biblical Chagall for nine hundred million rubles. After we paid for our spoils, we smoked hash or drank vodka and the sellers told us about their muses and their dreams, and afterwards Julian and I laughed at all of the men who were in love with their mothers and all of the women who thought they could change the world. We were happy.

At night, we preferred to eat dinner on riverboats and pretend to be Egyptian kings. We discussed gallery shows and freehand techniques

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

and our theories on auction valuations, even though we never bought from an auction, because Julian said that was where the perverts played. We smoked cigarettes as the sun set and I always asked Julian the same probing question: “Why aren’t you an artist?” Sometimes he told me about how much he hated critics, other times he said he was an artist and I didn’t know it, one time he said the world wasn’t ready for him, and once he turned the question around and asked me why it was so difficult for rich men to be creative. He never said he didn’t have the talent to make it.

Our friendship grew as we filled every space on our walls, buying off dealers and curators and artists themselves and hermits and investors and swindlers and families and zealots and foreign governments and sportsmen and corporations and robotics engineers and coffee shop owners and drug addicts and normal, unknowing people. We became so close I couldn’t handle the thought of suddenly breaking his heart, so I was left with no choice but to forewarn him my bank account couldn’t keep up at our vicious pace.

“Why not?” he demanded, waving his hand at me. “Wine never killed anybody and cigarettes only killed people much older.” His sarcastic nonchalance made me wonder if he had been tracking my bank slips. After all, he was more of a right brain than I was. I could never make sense of all those numbers—incoming, outgoing, dollars, francs, rubles, pounds. He spoke that language much better than me.

“No, you joker. The buying and the dealing.”

“You mean the handshakes with these devils,” he corrected.

“I have a lot of money, but I’m not made of money, there’s a difference.”

He told me we didn’t have to worry, we’d be okay. He said he knew all things must come to an end.

“I guess we can turn around and sell everything if we need to,” I mused.

He pulled me close to him urgently. “No. You must promise me, you’ll never sell a thing. It’s all part of us now. You’re a sucker if you don’t take it to the grave.”

Without a second thought, I replied, “I promise.”

He looked at me in the eyes. “Selling a piece of art is akin to selling a piece of your soul. You can never get it back. It makes you less of a person.”

A few moments passed and I laughed and told him that meant artists were gods and, if artists were gods, then that made us titans...the kings of gods.

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

After that, we took a break from buying for a while. Julian said we needed to save ourselves for the next score. No museums, no dealers, no penthouse social clubs, no dorm room art shows. It made me sick. He told me that was good, he could tell I was addicted.

We stayed in our beds for the first few days of our hiatus and then moved to the couch where we watched films back-to-back-to-back in an endless procession. Julian loved slow cinema. At best, those sickly halcyon days felt like we were floating on a waving pallet of grass in a summer meadow. Otherwise, and most of the time, I felt trapped, an auto mechanic under a van, a never-ending compaction of a thousand hours.

In the middle of an apocalyptic Russian film about philosophical sin, I told Julian it hurt to piss and he chuckled and told me it sounded like I needed a shot of de Kooning. “Get back to the film for now,” he instructed. “This is where the good stuff happens. Maybe it’ll tide you over for a while.”

“I hate movies,” I announced.

“You just don’t have the stamina,” he countered.

“They tell you what to think.”

“What, you think you know everything?”

“A painting gives you the chance to enter into your mind at your own leisure.”

“Leave, then.”

“I would, but you’d be nothing without me,” I said with a playful laugh.

That’s when he jumped across the couch and strangled me. It would be disingenuous to say it was out of nowhere, because I could always tell he had a hint of danger to him, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised he could be dangerous to me. Looking back, I realize it was inevitable. Friendships always devolve into violence.

“Do you know how much I’ve seen?” he asked, his face calm like a twilight surgeon. “I’ve seen Degas and Klimts and Fuchdahls and Munches and Dembabas and Renoirs.” His hands pinched tighter with every name and his bathrobe flapped open to reveal his nethers swinging back and forth like a metronome as he continued to chant, “I’ve seen Arthurs and Pollocks and Lichtensteins and Babbitts and Zuloagas. I’m intimate with Lucenas and Cézannes and Ferraris and Pinosches and Bolts and Basquiats and Mondrians...”

Strangely, on the precipice of consciousness, all I could think of was that he resembled one of the first Homo sapiens, and how those first Homo sapiens were the smartest people on earth, by default. When my body fully loosened and I was ready to let go of everything, I thought

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

the last thing I’d ever see was Bohannon the Clown looking down at me over Julian’s shoulders. In that moment, he released me.

“I wish I was as stupid as you,” he stated as he sat back down. We finished the movie together and laughed with our whole bodies at the last scene where an old man is taken to the loony bin and misses his child’s first words.

A few days later, Julian brought me to meet Mr. Bite. He lived in a sprawling house at the foot of the mountains, almost a three-hour bus ride away. Julian had been in a sour mood since our argument and he didn’t say a word to me on the bus, but he brightened up once we walked into the house. They told me they had met in a bathhouse a few years ago and ran into each other at the museum every once in a while. I thought it was funny Julian had never once mentioned Mr. Bite, and I cringed when Mr. Bite greeted Julian as “Julianito.”

We spent the afternoon eating cucumber sandwiches and talking politics on a grass veranda in the back of the house. Mr. Bite was an agri-socialist, which meant he believed a massive farming revolution

“Selling a piece of art is akin to selling a piece of your soul. You can never get it back. It makes you less of a person.”

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

was necessary to overthrow the world’s elite and restore order. He told us the whole thing was a burgeoning movement and we should learn to cultivate crops as soon as possible, just to be ready. Julian ate it all up and said he already knew the secret to growing the freshest tomatoes in the world.

“Never let them touch water,” he said.

“You’re crazy,” Mr. Bite balked. His eyes sparkled and he delicately rubbed the top of his hairless scalp with his fingertips, almost as if his skull was a crystal ball. If he could have, he would’ve eaten Julian whole.

“You even have to cover them in the rain,” Julian continued.

“Won’t they shrivel and die, like everything else?” I asked.

“No. If they’re deprived long enough, they begin to bake in their own essence and their juices become even more tomato-y.”

“Maybe it does make sense,” Mr. Bite ruminated. “Deprive an organism long enough and it becomes more of itself instead of shapeshifting to become something it’s not.”

“Of course it makes sense,” Julian reiterated. “Just think about every bad tomato you’ve ever eaten. You take a bite and there’s nothing but the taste of water. The tomatoes can’t help but let the outside in, and it overtakes them.”

We left later that night, after a few quick rounds of absinthe. It was too late to ride the bus so Mr. Bite called us a taxi and wished us well. Julian looked relieved when he said we were welcome back.

It was the first time we’d ever gone anywhere and not talked about art or the art scene or, at the very least, the creative mindset. I asked Julian where this whole thing with Mr. Bite was going and he told me it wasn’t up to us, it was up to Mr. Bite. Then, just as he was falling asleep in his seat, Julian looked up at me and said, “Fate is a drug from hell and it comes for all of us.”

The next time we saw Mr. Bite was on a foggy Saturday. The bus took twice as long to get to his house and the ride made me sick. Mr. Bite prepared some tea for me and I spent the entirety of the visit lying on his couch. Julian and Mr. Bite started the afternoon in the kitchen before moving from room to room and gradually disappearing completely.

A few commercial construction lights provided the only lighting in the living room, which made the bare white walls intolerable for me to look at. I stared at the ceiling and closed my eyes and wondered what would happen if God treated the Earth like Julian treated his tomatoes. Or is that what’s happening already?

I woke up to the house enveloped in darkness, with Julian and

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

Mr. Bite crouching on the ground and smoking cigarettes while they they drew polygons in the dust on the floor with their fingers. Julian waved me out the door when he noticed I was awake. In the taxi, I asked him what happened while I was sick, and he said everything we needed to happen. I told him to stop talking in platitudes and he turned to me and smiled.

“Mr. Bite grew up in Quebec. A place called the Land of Dreams. Can you believe that?”

I had no idea what he meant. “Are we playing a game or doing something illegal?”

“We’re waiting for a meteor to hit us,” he replied as he nestled against the car window.

“How do you know one is coming?” I asked, trying to play along.

“Because he told me.”

The last time I saw Mr. Bite was our third trip to his house. He met us at his front door and shook our hands before hurriedly leading us into his office at the end of the main hallway, where he offered us chairs in front of his massive wooden desk. I asked him what he did for work and Julian glared at me.

“I’m a spiritual esthetician,” he declared with a grin, ducking his massive frame through the doorway and locking the door. “Would you care for a shot of scotch?” He grabbed a bottle from his desk and poured glasses for Julian and me, then took a long swig of his own from the bottle. Neither of us had started to drink yet, but that didn’t stop him from topping us off. We both stared at the liquid dripping down the sides of our glasses while Mr. Bite sat down behind the desk. “Tell me, Julianito, why are you here?”

“You invited me.”

“Of course, but why did you come?”

Julian took a sip of scotch before finishing his glass. “Because I’m looking for the ultimate enlightenment.”

“And what about you?” Mr. Bite looked at me as he poured Julian another drink.

“Because fate is a drug from hell that comes for us all,” I said. Julian turned white and Mr. Bite laughed. He grabbed the scotch bottle again and took another swig.

“Don’t look so nervous, Julianito. Your rich friend is hip.” He looked into my eyes and then into Julian’s and went back and forth between us, a mosquito buzzing from flesh to flesh. “He’s the yin to your yang,” he whispered. He stood up, hands on his hips. “I’ve got something for you boys.”

Finally, I thought.

“I only tell you because I truly think you’ll appreciate it. Love it, even. Covet it, most likely. In fact, it may kill you.” He chortled and we drank deeply. “You must understand, not everyone is permitted to get this far. I’m very careful with my friends. I won’t allow false words to be

spread. Is that clear? I’d like you to swear on it.”

“I swear,” we said in unison.

“Swear on everything you hold dear.”

“We swear.”

“Now swear on your God.”

“I swear on Vloches,” said Julian.

“I swear on fate,” I promised.

“Good. Now I won’t have to squeeze your balls out like I’m funneling icing onto a cake.”

Julian smiled so big that I could see into his throat. I took the scotch bottle off the table and drank the rest.

“Boys, I have in my possession a certain item which I believe will possibly change your lives. Actually, it could change all of our lives.” Mr.

“‘I hate movies,’ I announced.

‘You just don’t have the stamina,’ he countered. ‘They tell you what to think.’ ‘What, you think you know everything?’ ‘A painting gives you the chance to enter into your mind at your own leisure.’”

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

Bite pointed at the wall to his left. “This is a false wall, a tangible version of the false wall your brain creates to make you believe you aren’t going to die someday. Behind your brain’s false wall is reality. Similarly, behind this false wall is a painting. This painting is so rare that its value declines at the simple mention of its existence. So, you see, that’s why I don’t bring just anyone here.”

“We’re honored,” said Julian.

“Yes, indeed. You’re blessed,” Mr. Bite echoed.

“When can we see it?” I asked.

“Well, there’s a couple things you should know. First of all, one of the reasons this painting is so rare is because it’s one-of-a-kind. The artist, God rest his soul, never made anything else. This is it, his coup de grâce and his lifelong disappointment, all in one. And, if you’re wondering, this painter is the greatest of them all. There’s no debate.”

Julian licked his lips and I thought he was going to jump out of his pale skin. I couldn’t control myself much better.

Mr. Bite continued, “Now, those points themselves don’t make this painting worth so much. We have The Death of Marat and Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom and The Scream and Piss Christ and all of these works that are zeitgeists unto themselves, made by transcendent purists, but I promise you, this one is more valuable than all of them. Why, you wonder?” He paused for dramatic effect and, for an instant, I thought God Himself had stripped him of his ability to speak, but then he murmured, “Because no one has ever seen it.”

Julian exhaled and I closed my eyes.

Mr. Bite emphasized, “I’ve never seen it. The previous owners of the house never saw it. There’s no curator or investor on the planet who has laid their eyes on this painting.”

“Eureka,” Julian exclaimed.

“How do we even know it’s real?” I asked. I could tell Julian wanted to punch me in the gut, but he couldn’t move.

“We don’t, of course. It’s a matter of faith. Faith in the great creative spirits, faith in whatever you want to put your trust in. Faith in me too, I guess.”

“And if we want to it to be ours?” Julian queried, like a ravenous hog.

“First, you’ll give me what I want; you won’t see it until that moment. It’s part of the rarity. The value proposition.”

As the one controlling the purse strings, it was me who had to know: “How much is it worth?”

“Well, there’s its worth and there’s its cost. I don’t think it has a worth, if I’m being honest. What is a strong wind worth, or love itself?

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

Some things operate outside of monetary worth in our world. But it’s cost...” He took a pen from a cup on the table and scribbled on a small scrap of paper and pushed it towards us. Julian began to cry as if his life was about to be made whole.

“How many people have you given this speech to?” I grilled.

“Hundreds,” he admitted with a barely concealed smile, then backpedaled, “or maybe none.” He walked over and crouched down in front of me so that we were eye to eye. “Every word of information I give you makes this a more perilous transaction for me. I’ve already told you too much, my rich friend.”

Julian stared at the wall as Mr. Bite patted my cheek and sauntered out of the room.

We sat together in silence until Julian turned to me. “I heard a saint died in this room,” he said.

“Who was it?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re all the same—poor, lonely and godless. But it does make this place exponentially holy.”

“Or downright hell,” I riposted.

Julian stood up and put his hand on the wall. “Feels like Heaven’s gates to me.”

“Won’t it be worthless once we actually see it, if it’s even there?” I asked.

“Maybe,” said Julian. He began to stroke the flowered wallpaper like he was caressing a woman, something I’d never seen him do before. “But it was once completely priceless. Wouldn’t that count for something?”

I shook my head and looked out the lone window. The jaws of the mountains had started to devour the sun, beginning our world’s predetermined descent into complete darkness.

“Why do you think Mr. Bite never tore down the wall to see the painting?” I ignored Julian’s question and his hand abruptly stopped fondling the wall, his fingers splayed out over a bloomed yellow orchid. “Because he’s an idealist and he wants to live forever,” Julian asserted, turning his head to stare at the piece of paper on the desk. “Because he’s a coward.”

I rode home in the taxi alone later that night, after Julian decided to enter the wall.

A few days later, I came home from a walk around the neighborhood to an empty apartment, the walls entirely bare. In the place of Bohannon the Clown, there was a strip of tape with some paper under it, which looked like a row of teeth stuck to the wall, almost as if someone had left a note and then decided at the last minute to rip it

Fate Is a Drug From Hell That Comes For All of Us - Jared Billings

down and leave silence instead.

My account hit zero soon after. I found out when I went to buy a ticket to the museum and my card was declined. The cashier looked at me with such pity. I tried to console her, but I only made it worse. She kept saying things like “It’s a travesty!” and “Why is the upper class the only one who gets to appreciate art?” and “Remember, the poor make the art so the rich can look at it.” And then she offered me a free drink voucher at the bar, where there was an event in celebration of a generous anonymous benefactor who had sold their entire collection to the museum. January Thompson approached me as I ordered my drink and she mentioned she would love to offer me a job, but she wasn’t sure the board would allow it. I told her it was okay, I didn’t want the money anyway. The Frenchman was there, too. He asked if Bohannon was still alive and I said, “Oh yes sir.” He asked if I ever saw her move, and I confessed, “I never looked hard enough.” We shook hands and he offered to show me some of his less expensive pieces if I was ever interested. “Maybe I’ll come by,” I shrugged noncommittally. “You know,” he said as we looked at Redon’s Cyclops hanging on the wall, “every painting is a window into each person’s disgusting soul.”

I laughed. “It’s an incomplete view. Like looking at a man’s eye and claiming to know his conscience.”

Later that night, I wandered up to the second floor of the museum where I ended up lying on a bench beneath Judith Slaying Holofernes. I fell asleep thinking of what a strangely beautiful depiction of friendship it was.

POETRY

Briefly Rapturous

Dale Champlin

I admit I love beauty— is there anything more splendid than an open casket?

See how the corpse is laid out in finery— all pink satin and serenity. Notice the carefully applied makeup, ladylike—

unlike anything that went before. The departed soul might flit— moth-delicate in candlelight.

Bouquets burgeon down either side of the aisle—trumpet-shaped vases gleam lustered, golden and glossy

at the end of each pew— a dusting of roses, lilies and baby’s-breath the scent of lilacs, incense and beeswax.

Mourners’ shadows, long and narrow, nod and bow with the requiem— shuffle forward for a last glimpse.

And all the black gabardine, parched denim, threadbare wool, mothball musty, here and there a veil—how appropriate—

fragrant floor polish and rusty specks powder up from cushions compressed under supplicants’ knees.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

What of Pestilence

Dale Champlin

Grandmother Gaia changed my nappies— perfumed with moss and wildflowers but beyond that, she was careless.

I was left to my own devices.

Back then there was no such thing as a Maytag, a Hoover or a Frigidaire

leftovers rotted, dust bunnies littered the floor.

When I reached the age that I no longer soiled myself

I left my filthy house bright and early.

The wide world was my oyster, my branch, and my cave—

what did I know of heroes and goddesses?

I grew up in an amusement park; rain squalls, my shower; tide pools, my TV; birdsong, my playlist—

hungry for chocolate and sex.

I questioned time/what day/what month/what year?

Coil and Recoil

Dale Champlin

I long for the singing blood, The stone is so still and cold, I dream of life, life is good. Will no one love me and be bold And me awake?

-Rainer Maria Rilke

She may be blind, nervous and childish— but she busses my dishes and washes my feet. We snack on magic mushrooms while I read her smut from Athena’s Playgirls.

“You can’t see this, little chipmunk,” I tell her “but this one’s as long as your forearm.”

Porn is more soporific than wine to an acolyte. Intimacy works wonders when falling asleep. Technically we’re virgins, stifled by celibacy.

“Let’s try this,” I coax her and pinch her nipple. I can tell she likes it, so I pinch harder and spank her butt cheek with my other hand.

“Tell me

how you feel—baby

Daphne.” She roots and squeals like a piglet. Now I tell her to touch me here and here and here. Soon we are in the thick of things. My breasts flush luscious; I feel a surge between my thighs. When I run away I’ll take her with me.

Outside Athena’s palace, orchards purple and disappear; sworn to darkness, clouds snag on mountain peaks, weep and thicken, silk to blanket. Our limbs twist into knots. Daphne and I gather shadows and dream of escape. I take refuge in the curl of my helpmeet’s softening slumber.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

[look no further]

Edward L. Canavan

the turning of self upon the only heart

knowing the depth of scar and pressing deeper every time both so close and so far

from the realization that the blade from which we too often bleed is in our own hands. *

[eternal et cetera]

Edward L. Canavan

as babylon burns from both sides nowhere safe but the unsound mind from within and beneath the cracks and folds the silence beckons. ***

Hot Knives Stephen Barile

With my eyes closed I see The red-hot tip of the butter knife On the electric range, glowing circles Turn to a green after-image. Another knife holds the kernel of hash.

“Hot knives,” the boys are yelling. “Hot knives,” They dance around.

As the blades touch, The boys take turns

Sucking in the blue plume.

At the party

Of indigo smoke

The stupor of hash seizes me From the overstuffed Chair I’ve fallen into.

With smoke deep in my lungs, Laughing at hot knife tips glowing Red and angry,

I stand up, collapse

To the carpeted floor And dream of flowers blooming.

The dream changes:

Suddenly a child's eyes

Peering in darkened hallways.

Father beats down the door, Kills mother with a .45,

Leg-bail in a cloud of blue smoke, With a gun he borrowed

From the man With a plate in his head.

In the time it takes To heat the tip of the knife,

Place the nugget tenderly On the end of the cool metal blade,

Bringing one tip to the other In an explosion of smoke.

The man whose head throbs, Digs in the backyard flowerbed, Buries the gun.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

Sauna

Robert Guard

Outside of bleeding, it is the most honest Expression of the body’s work. From one hundred and eighty degrees, I come out wet and new as a moment-old calf, Pulled headfirst, a sliding mess, Swarmed by flies as her mother licks The afterbirth in morning’s mist.

High inside a barn, catching bales of hay As fast as the old auger can cough them up, At one hundred and twenty degrees, I am learning what real work is about. Spreading manure across the fields in August, Steam and stink cover the land; I sweat, therefore I am.

The Last Dairy Farm in Ohio

Robert Guard

I didn’t know it then but it was the last, the last bend in the road where a Holstein would be milked, where a cat who hung around the milk house like a story in a child’s book, would drift away, a ghost in search of field mice, that the long barn feeding two hundred and fifty would soon store boats, or that the silo screwed into the earth, become a ruined tower yawning bats, that the rolling hills now would call out acres of storage for RVs and the canoe livery down the road would swell to ten times its size, that the farmer and his wife would buy a condo in Florida and live out their dream, that it all would soon be gone with a slap of a tail daubed with shit, and all the cows laughed and laughed.

The Striped Marlin We Set Free

Cynthia Good

Looking for dorados in the gulf we trolled fast From harbor toward Chileno Bay, and landed A baby striped marlin under fifty pounds, Her satin skin a negligee of streaming indigo, Yellow and green, her elegant bill, sharp As a sword but useless in the struggle. She Flailed hard, drumming the hallowed fiberglass, Heaving her slim self into a corner, torso arching, Hammering with all she had. Imagine her surprise

As ocean flooded her eyes, a hook ripping into Her lip. We felt her in our chairs where we sat Watching her stomp and snake her midsection. I Wanted to scream to make it stop. She thrashed

Like her life depended on it, like she knew she Wouldn’t last another twenty minutes, like she knew What we wanted to do to her. She battered The only thing she had, banging body into boat. I felt her thump the scorching deck, and steadied Against the pitch, diesel burning our noses. I saw Her stunned-wide eyes. She pounded like she knew If she lost, we would tear her open like fabric, A dull knife slicing into a burger, like she knew we Would carve her into pieces, maybe eat her alive

As my father and I did after catching tuna, Like she knew once dead, we’d hoist her up To weigh our trophy, like the stuffed four hundred-pounder My son caught, now in an ex-boyfriend’s attic, That we’d laugh and high five one another

With our grimy salt-crusted hands, glistening

With her scales as they caught the spinning sun, Like she knew they’d hose down the deck, diluting Her burgundy, flushing away any sign of her, Until there’d be no evidence we were ever there.

The Cormorants

Christina Hennemann

It’s not a plea, a possibility When the cormorants herald The flowering of hailstorms.

Black wings glide over the river, Merciless they swish over the bridge As chimneys smoke obsidian dust and

Paper planes take off over cirrus clouds. It comes as a shock when The beak pierces in headfirst,

Their majestic conference on the pillars Of the pier, your fate has been decided Long before you saw them coming.

Seers tell me they carry a message, But I keep reading the smoky clouds, Collecting droplets of dew in my amulet.

The river lies stillest under the mist Of a rising sun, after the storm, As the birds contemplate death—

Find me here, on the bridge, In my blackest plumage, Waiting for Future to rise from the fog.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

Locked

Carella Keil

black sin in her matchstick eyes lights a fuchsia fever

he follows her sublime curves to emotional infinity

tumbling down a red leaf staircase into a chakra sunrise

her alabaster rib cage, a jail for his muddy heart.

The Shadow of Your Silence

Carella Keil

The shadow of your silence self-portrait in mirrors still life of a dream.

“I’m counting down from infinity” you say, and that is how I know we’ll never see each other again.

I remember my body curving into yours like a figure eight. I remember feeling something so elusive

I’ll be chasing it for the rest of my life.

The evil queen said, “Cut out your heart” and you obeyed. Now there is nothing left to lead you back to me.

Sometimes, I can still feel your lips against my forehead, pressing there like fossils.

It will take thousands of tears to slough away

The damage you’ve done.

You gave the best hugs.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

How It Feels to Float No. 2

Andrew Hudson Barter

I went to the grocery store for milk, and bought limes too. The cashier asked me if they were lemons.

The drive home was uneventful, people walked their dogs, cars sat on the side of the street, some with smashed-in

windows. I clocked the price of gas as I passed by the station, but realized I had no reference. I buy gas so rarely now.

The person in the turn lane ahead of me was distracted and missed the green light entirely. I sat in my car

watching them stare out the driver’s side window. I could have honked, but why?

Later, when I was home, I came downstairs to find you staring out the window and I asked what you were looking at.

“Nothing,” you said, “just looking out at the world, like a cat.”

Where We Haunt

Andrew Hudson Barter

When I dream of my grandma’s farmhouse, it is always daytime but the garden soil is rich as the midnight sky, the striving greens stark against the velvet backdrop. When I dream of her house, I engage a hidden, crystalized element of myself.

I am wind; I am sunlight. I am the reflection in a morning dew drop.

The most haunted parts of my grandma’s house were the parts that she had added on. Nobody knows why. But my grandma fed any old soul that wandered in, perhaps the dead ones too.

With the new kitchen she expanded the basement beneath as well, creating a barroom

that became inhabited by partiers. They played at the pool table, the ball clacks echoing along with their laughter. I heard them once all the way from upstairs, followed them down down down into a dark and empty room.

The still shadows mocked me, but the air was all abuzz.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

I went to my grandma’s house every summer. She tucked me into her life like a field mouse in her apron.

Pert near lunchtime, she’d say, eyeing me as she hung crisp laundry.

I’d be eating grass on all fours pretending I was one of her cows.

In the center, calmed mind, place of peace.

A slight breeze picks up on grandma’s farm. Grass moves, the barn creaks. I am presence.

Spirit interior.

When I was younger, being near her was the safest place to be. Her bathroom smelled like Dove soap—clean and warm.

It never spooked me when she took out her teeth to brush them. I marveled at her precise cleaning techniques, how she’d scrub each tooth

turning her whole mouth every which way in her hand. She’d look me dead in the eye, Always brush your teeth.

When the second story was built that became haunted too. The grandfather

clock would chime even though it was broken and

I saw an old man crumpled in blue in the far corner one night

when I was very young. I never had to sleep upstairs alone again.

I drove by the old farmhouse recently, though my grandma is long gone, long dead.

The lawn was unkept and sticker bushes lined the driveway. I wanted to stop, to hold

a polished stone, but I kept going instead.

I waved to the ghosts to let them know I remembered them

and hoped they’re living well.

What I Would Stand For

Priscilla Atkins

Pretty much all things Bonnie & Clyde. (Well, not all things, all hours.)

My mother, in London, stood in line ninety minutes for King Tut. I might have gotten swept up.

Then, again: I saw it all in a big yummy coffee table book. The blue around Tut’s eye. Ahhhh. We need the Gold, but that Blue melts me. (Oh-my-Google-god: there’s a “King Tut Blue Sweet Pea” blossom named for it!)

Of course, no one means “King Tut.” What we’ve got here is fancy papier-mâché; it’s that kind of party. (Snort.)

Recently, I read that Bonnie’s watch—one that was pinned to her dress—was up for auction. It was on her body, or in her lap, or something (somehow it hadn’t got shot) and ended up somewhere, in someone’s hands.

Eighty years later: on the block. I would not stand in line to see a tiny clock. But her body?

Two hours. Max.

In fact, I did go see their car. In the late 60s, when the film came out, an enterprising soul took the death-car on tour and my mother drove me out to the Kmart in Urbana, Illinois where it sat in in the parking lot in a museum on wheels. A converted semi-truck. I forget how much the gawking cost. A quarter, fifty cents. No line of weirdos—just me.

There were some photographs (which I’d already seen, in a book). And the bullet-pocked Ford V8. At the time it was born, I doubt it was that shiny. (Or maroon.) (Good grief: the car’s currently housed in “Whiskey Pete’s Casino” forty miles south of Vegas. What do you know.)

For Clyde, I wouldn’t do two. Wouldn’t be happy about twenty-five minutes.

Oh paper-and-bones. Let’s do it.

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

Deep Sea Calm at Low Tide

Gabor Gyukics

streams creeks inject messages into the veins of earth rivers carry the news to the seas and oceans the gods swinging their legs on top of their belfries waiting for the material to be processed watching

Deep Sea Calm at High Tide

Gabor Gyukics

a hole in the sky was carved by the moon over the ocean for birds fallen to the water a giant’s searching for his face in the surface of the water trees born again on the shore the gods are laughing on their tongues not a single bird will get away

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 33

Covert Consciousness Thomas Wells

Faint flame emergent from neurotransmitters. The brain, a torch arranging patterns of awareness, patterns of recall, encounters, adventures and ordeals. Covert consciousness realized in coma patients, detected in vegetative invalids by the analyzers of EEGs, the probers of the mind.

Bedridden with no signs of life, These sufferers were long thought brain-dead. The only question; when to withdraw life support. But our deepest traces do often linger with immobility. Our hardly perceptible scintillas send measurable signals.

They offer no bodily changes, no responses to cues. They never give themselves away in behaviors. Yet, science now knows them as genuine. Are these the souls and ghosts felt by our ancestors? Are these the wraiths and apparitions feared by so many?

Created from the temporal, assembled from life, is their structure entirely in the mind? Maybe part of their energy resides in other realms, places in and out of which they drift at our death.

Escape From Prison

Thomas Wells

Prisoner mortally confined, plotting your escape like Papillon, conceiving freedom like a zoo animal. Then dreaming on, you meet a flying child in all your mirrors. Nearly weightless, pulled in every gale, lifted like a kite, catapulted high over every trail. Then dreaming on, you are the drafty power of your path, the easy elevation of your flight. This embedded skill is never forgotten. Deep within the hippocampus, your winged Poseidon, the flying child in all your mirrors. Then dreaming on, soaked in sleep, reverie’s seahorse. Flying child, free of worldly constraints, free of torment and angst, free in oceans and skies, your tourist anima continues vaulting. But then, eyes open in the dim grimness, You remember this cell, these sad limits of the corporeal. Yet, how is it that your dreams know more? Prisoner mortally confined.

CRITICISM

They Call It Love … But It’s Actually Indentured Servitude for No Good Reason Other Than Buttressing Capitalism

Genna Rivieccio

The release of Alva Gotby’s first book, They Call It Love: The Politics of Emotional Labor, feels well-timed for this moment in our history. The alleged leaps and bounds made in the matter of equality among the sexes has never been more tenuous than in the present “modern” climate. Between the rolling back of abortion rights in the United States and the vehement clinging to the Dark Ages in misogynyfeeding countries like Iran and Afghanistan, the notion that women are anywhere near being “equal” is laughable. More ironic still is the fact that “equality” in this capitalistic society is based entirely on whether or not someone is partaking of productive labor. And yet, long before women were allowed into this particular “sphere” of the working realm (if it sounds mythological, it’s because most work is made up by capitalism), they were engaged in the daily drudgery of reproductive labor. That work so often regarded as “invisible” or “easy” solely

because it is done within the so-called comfort of the home.

To highlight the ways in which women’s work is rendered by men as “farcical,” one need only look at how it’s made fun of by the likes of a comedian such as Bill Burr. In a special called Just For Laughs that aired in 2004, Burr centers one of his monologues on how absurd it is for Oprah (or anyone else) to call motherhood “the hardest job in the world.” Balking at such an assessment, he proceeds to malign the notion with comparisons to much more life-threatening, physical labor (roofing being among such categories). He then goes on to declare, “Any

job you can do in your pajamas is not difficult. It isn’t.” As he asserts this, the camera cuts to a particularly enthusiastic male applauding that sentiment in the audience. For men relish any opportunity to join in on berating “women’s work” as no work at all. Never stopping to consider that remaining in one’s pajamas is likely part of having no real time for much in the way of “self-care,” whereas men are allowed their abundance of time within the home to “recharge” so that they might get back to their paid labor. In any case, the opportunity to engage in the belittlement of women and their various forms of “invisible” labor abounds. And since it’s so invisible, society deems it as no hindrance to

“…the opportunity to engage in the belittlement of women and their various forms of ‘invisible’ labor abounds. And since it’s so invisible, society deems it as no hindrance to actually being ‘allowed’ (at last) to enter the workforce.”

They Call It Love... But It’

s Actually Indentured Servitude... - Genna Rivieccio

actually being “allowed” (at last) to enter the workforce. Then again, women have long been present within that “force,” going all the way back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when it wasn’t just “the Angel in the House” trope that reigned supreme. Sure, this applied to the white bourgeois woman, but certainly not working-class women (white, black, brown or otherwise). Nonetheless, “the Angel in the House” “template” of a female was held up as a paragon of virtue. Something every woman should aspire to. And they could all thank Coventry Patmore for that, for he was the one who penned the poem called none other than: “The Angel in the House”—featuring such vomit-inducing phrases as, “Man must be pleased; but him to please/ Is woman’s pleasure” and “She loves with love that cannot tire;/And when, ah woe, she loves alone.”

In these contemptuous “billings” of women, Patmore cuts to the core of Gotby’s book title, with “love” being presented as something women relish giving out for free. Because it’s just “who they are as people” (read: docile, self-sacrificing and subservient). Displaying it in so many “non-quantifiable” ways that apparently men didn’t want to bother counting out the hours according to the wages a woman might receive if she was actually paid for her reproductive labor. Referencing Wages Against Housework (released in 1975), Gotby quotes Silvia Federici many times throughout They Call It Love, notably her declaration: “It is precisely this peculiar combination of physical, emotional and sexual services that are involved in the role women must perform for capital that creates the specific character of that servant which is the housewife, that makes her work so burdensome and at the same time so invisible.” Gotby builds on this by adding, “While the role of housewife has more or less disappeared [not exactly true], most people still rely on their family members to meet at least some of their needs. The reproduction of people depends on some stability over time, even when the exact type of care they need changes.” For instance, adults technically need the “care” that comes from having older adults, i.e., their parents, watch over their children so they can go to work and continue the productive labor cycle. As Gotby puts it, “We continue to rely on family members to care for us and our own dependents, even when we are adults and seemingly more independent. Reproduction is a complex network of relations and dependencies, even in a neoliberal era which seemingly privileges individualism.”

But, as it is said in the form of a back-handed compliment, “Behind every great man is a great woman.” An all-in-one “support system,” if you will. Paid in the occasional “reciprocation” of “love.” No man is an island, after all. And if he is, he is buttressed entirely

by watery, moveable women. Whose “inherent nature” has been repurposed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to be associated with a job description (usually one that never seems to apply to men). Because of modern capitalism’s commodification of what was once derisively deemed “women’s work,” “high-end emotional services are often individually tailored as a part of their commodification. Certain forms of emotional labor and care services are thus limited to those who have the means to pay for them… The satisfaction of emotional needs is sometimes tied to access to commodities and services, and capitalism continually generates new needs that can only be satisfied through the market.” Case in point: “leisure activities.” Yet another privilege of the rich thanks to every aspect of any such activity being slapped with a price point. This starts from the cost of a plane ticket, which no longer factors in any of the fees that were once included, namely checking a bag or “extra” leg room. And, while we’re on the subject of plane rides to enjoying leisure, Gotby wields the profession of flight attendant frequently as an example of such a job that has appropriated the “women’s personality” for commodifiable ends. She is expected to smile in the face of every complaint (no matter how superfluous) while absorbing the abuse that never seems to be directed at her male co-workers.

This speaks to the idea of women being beacons of “niceness,” never wanting to upset the status quo long enough to stand up for herself a.k.a. “seem angry.” As such, Gotby describes, “The reproduction of society calls for a particular set of feelings seen as socially appropriate. Different feelings are the right ones in different social circumstances. For people to feel well, someone [read: a woman] needs to create good feelings.” Gotby goes on to note that, “These feelings of niceness are a core function of the bourgeois family. There can be a lot of work involved in creating a spirit of niceness at family dinners and holidays, where conflict needs to be held at bay. It is also a key feminine task— smoothing over conflict, soothing hurt feelings, creating a spirit of relaxation and well-being. Women are called to perform these tasks in their families, at work and among friends and acquaintances. Niceness is a bourgeois family value which women are compelled to create through both domestic and emotional labor. In this way, the gendering of feeling reproduces a split subjectivity where women are tasked with creating rationality and emotional well-being, while men have license to act as solitary individuals affirming their own importance and worth over others.”

In the 2021 debut novel by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch, the entire theme of the narrative centers on this reality as the heroine (or anti-

s Actually Indentured Servitude... - Genna Rivieccio heroine, to some), “The Mother” a.k.a. “Nightbitch,” finds that her bottled-up rage is causing some kind of transformation within her. Prompting her to become a “bitch” in the dog breeder’s sense of the word at night, when she finally has some “alone time” after spending her days tending to her toddler son, for whom she’s given up her art. Her husband can’t see anything wrong with her day-to-day existence though, clearly bristled and resentful when she acts in any manner other than cheerful—positively “grateful” that she doesn’t have to be

They Call It Love... But It’

the one to go to “actual” work. Of the novel’s “fantastical” presentation of its message, Yoder would comment in an interview with The Millions, “Being a mother in a society that praises and encourages mothers’ absolute abnegation of the self is the curse. Imagine being told from an early age that it’s right, holy, nice and proper to abandon your own needs, emotions and desires. We are conditioning girls and women to believe that psychological and emotional self-harm is correct. That’s the curse.” And it’s one that’s been going on since time immemorial. Because this is simply “the way things are” (or “expected to be”)—the “natural order”—women find themselves at odds when they come to despise the role that’s been assigned to them by patriarchal, capitalist society. No wonder “The Mother” in Nightbitch needs to resort

“…if one wants to feel the ‘welcoming warmth’ of a ‘good woman,’ then maybe they should pay for it. On this note, the reason why prostitutes have long been so threatening to ‘polite’ society is because they’re commodifying something that is deemed ‘sacred’ because it is ‘private.’ Within the sphere of a woman’s ‘natural duties’ behind closed doors.”

to turning into a dog, just so she can finally have a pure form of free expression without being told to stifle it. Trying to balance her artist’s inclination with her duty to motherhood results in a very real internal bifurcation. Because she is expected to be “glad” for her circumstance, it makes her all the more angry. An anger that boils and brews when required to be shoved down for the sake of “creating pleasant feelings” in the household she manages. A household that’s, in the end, another trap that behooves only capitalism. Per Gotby, “Bourgeois ideology celebrates a particular form of reproduction, both through the image of the self-sacrificing wife and mother and through the story that in order to have a good life, we must desire romance, a family and a private family home. Emotional reproduction is intimately tied to the ideological notion that capitalist reproduction is overall good and desirable, as we come to associate good feelings with particular forms and relationships of reproduction. This valorization of reproductive labor can reinforce the split between productive and reproductive work… [and] does not translate into women’s autonomy over their labor, nor does it challenge the conditions under which they work. Instead, it serves to increase women’s attachment to reproductive labor as the source of the good life.”

But there’s nothing “good” about what Betty Friedan once called a “comfortable concentration camp.” And even the women who are able to avoid it by becoming “career-oriented” aren’t immune from the fallout of rejecting a “traditional” life. Particularly women who end up in the public eye. From Frances Farmer to Britney Spears, there have been countless examples of a woman in the spotlight being made an example of as a result of acting “incorrectly.” Gotby characterizes this phenomenon as follows: “When women fail to enjoy or start resisting gendered work, they are met with various kinds of violence, both physical and emotional. One form of violence is the pathologization of women’s resistance to emotional labor. Federici writes that women are called insane when they resist housework, ‘going crazy’ has historically been one of the only ways for women to get out of their responsibility for reproductive work [e.g., Britney shaving her head—granted, that was supposedly so that she could actually maintain her kids by passing a drug test]. Those who fail to perform and enjoy the naturalized labor of femininity, then, are likely to be pathologized, even criminalized.” For it’s sheer “madness” not to relish the “essential responsibilities” of “what it means” to be a woman, isn’t it? That’s what capitalism’s core tenets would like us all to believe. And, in that respect, the “commodification [of emotional labor] in some cases implies the loss of the infinite character of love. As emotional labor

They Call It Love... But It’s Actually Indentured Servitude... - Genna Rivieccio

is scripted by company manuals it becomes divided into discreet and measurable activities. When emotional labor is directed and controlled by employers, the social rules of emotion which are normally implicit become explicitly stated.” And if that’s the case in productive labor, then it ought to be in reproductive labor as well. In short, if one wants to feel the “welcoming warmth” of a “good woman,” then maybe they should pay for it. On this note, the reason why prostitutes have long been so threatening to “polite” society is because they’re commodifying something that is deemed “sacred” because it is “private.” Within the sphere of a woman’s “natural duties” behind closed doors.

Of course, when people are honest with themselves, it’s plain to see that everyone’s a prostitute for capitalism. And mass resistance, especially from women, is likely the only way to ever take down this structure (even if Mark Fisher rightly imagined that the end of the world is more plausible than the end of capitalism). Among suggestions for resistance, Gotby offers, “The emotional cost of being seen as a ‘bad woman’ can be resisted collectively. Through the refusal of work, women display their power. This can be done through small acts of defiance, such as when the female flight attendants [mentioned] in [Arlie Russell] Hochschild’s study [The Managed Heart] stop smiling or refuse the additional work of presenting their smiles as ‘genuine.’” Because, yes, service with a smile does come at an emotional cost to women that is rarely ever paid back in any monetary way.

While both genders “are exploited when… compelled to work for others, either by force or because we have to work to meet our own needs,” Gotby assesses that “women tend to be exploited insofar as they cannot satisfy their own needs other than by laboring for other people. Often the only way women can have the economic security they need is through entering romantic relationships with men— relationships that tend to involve a lot of reproductive work. Men, on the other hand, often benefit from this labor because they tend to be the beneficiaries of women’s caring work [see: Jack Lucas and Anne Napolitano in The Fisher King], and because they are largely freed from performing caring work for others. They are often excused from fully reciprocating women’s care and from the work of caring for children, the elderly and other dependents. Workers who have the option of exploiting the labor of others have an advantage over those who do not, since that gives them more time for their waged work and more leisure time to restore their capacity for labor.” The “average” woman, in contrast, is a twenty-four-seven laborer. In this sense, the female worker is the ultimate capitalist wet dream, wherein more work can be extracted for no pay. And there’s “nothing” she can do about it.

Caught in this machine as she is. Merely another one of its cogs. To this end, when one gets right down to it, the reason abortion is a hotbutton issue to right-wing capitalists is because it challenges women’s supposed “love” of reproductive labor (much more literally, in this scenario). For it is “a way of challenging the imperative to reproduce for capitalism.”

Without the constant arrival of new soldiers for neoliberalism, the machine fails altogether. Which is exactly why anti-natalists are onto something. Indeed, by the end of They Call It Love, Gotby advocates for the abolition of just about everything—at least as we know it. The abolition of family, gender and, therefore, emotional reproduction under the constraints of capitalism. For, in the end, “much of mainstream feminism has encouraged men to get involved in reproductive labor, in particular childcare… But teaching men to do reproductive labor, without challenging the conflicting needs and contradictions within capitalism, will only take us so far.” That is to say, not far enough at all.

If you like The Opiate magazine, you’ll love The Opiate Books. Find our current roster of titles (featured below) online or at your favorite bookstore. Visit theopiatemagazine.com for more information.

Brontosaurus Illustrated by Leanne Grabel

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Megalodon by Donna Dallas

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Lindsay Lohan Stole My Life (A Tate Carmichael Novel) by Genna Rivieccio

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The PornME Trinity (2nd Edition)

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Yet So As By Fire: A Passion Play in Two Acts by Anton Bonnici

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Quasar Love: A Reenactment in Three Acts by Anton Bonnici

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Not everyone is necessarily feeling “renewed” or “fresh” this spring, but that doesn’t mean The Opiate can’t provide its usually renewing and fresh take on things through the lens of fiction and poetry. In Vol. 33, here to help with that task is Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, Kate Maxwell, Carla Tomaso, Tony Covatta, Jared Billings, Dale Champlin, Edward L. Canavan, Stephen Barile, Robert Guard, Cynthia Good, Christina Hennemann, Carella Keil, Andrew Hudson Barter, Priscilla Atkins, Gabor Gyukics and Thomas Wells. So what are you waiting for? Get dosed!