The Opiate
© The Opiate 2025
Cover art: your editor-in-chief against the backdrop of some opiates
This magazine, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission. Contact theopiatemagazine@gmail.com for queries.
“The
makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have taste...yourformed...literary life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place.”
-Arnold Bennett
“Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a [wo]man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.”
-Edgar Allan Poe
40
Editor-in-Chief
Genna Rivieccio
Editor-at-Large
Malik Crumpler
Editorial Advisor Anton Bonnici
Contributing Writers:
Fiction:
Holly Marihugh, “Celebration of Life?” 10
Max Talley, “Men of Good Fortune” 19
Russ Doherty, “Song of the Whippoorwhill” 28
Lela Cermin, “The Pain Is Only Temporary” 42
Kari Wergeland, “The Blue Ox” 53
Nonfiction: Renshaw, “I Done Had a Case of Too Many Bad Days” 66
Poetry:
Zeke Greenwald, “Die Weltbürger” 75
Alex Osman, “A Day at Three-Legged Races” & “Bicentennial Man” 76-77
John Grey, “The Beginning of a Long-Term Relationship” 78
Djanet, “Useless Keyboard,” “Hiding Behind the Till” & “Twenty-Five” 79-83
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, “Blown Away!” 84-85
Alessio Zanelli, “The Multiverse at Noon” & “Rice Soup” 86-87
Stephen Barile, “Elzebub” & “Hollywood Memorabilia Show” 88-91
Alise Versella, “You Venture for Answers, What Answers Back?,” “Cool Girls Were Made at Cost Cutters,” “The Old Block,” “Beauty Mark or Blemish” & “Dustsceawung” 92-102
Frank Freeman, “Doing Dialogic Shots With Kristeva,” “Still Sharp” & “At This Moment” 103-105
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios, “Standing in My Son’s Empty Room” 106
Ken Been, “Associative Properties” 107
Frankie Laufer, “Paper Towels” 108
Dale Champlin, “Mysterious Love” 109
Marissa Glover, “Menopause or Something Like It,” “PTSD,” “A Cigar Is Never Just a Cigar,” “Ode to the Broken” & “Better Living Through Chemistry” 110-115
Criticism:
Genna Rivieccio, “Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz” 117
Editor’s Note
I’m not usually one for marking time. In fact, I generally refuse to acknowledge it altogether (some might say that’s how I stay so perennially youthful, while others might offer that it’s a key sign of my Peter Pan syndrome). But it would be hard to ignore the momentousness of forty issues and almost ten full years of The Opiate (which was first launched in March of 2015...a simpler time). When I started it, the only thing I had really set out to do was blow the New York-based literary magazines’ dicks out of the water. For those actually aware of this publication, I think I succeeded.
As for my future “intentions,” I’m keeping it “low-key.” After all, the biggest achievement anyone running a literary magazine can lay claim to these days is the fact that it’s still “afloat” at all. And one uses the word “afloat” lightly, for it’s not exactly as though the (non-)financial benefit of The Opiate has ever been the motivating factor to keep it going. But the same thing that motivated me to do it then is what continues to motivate me now. I do not see enough “spaces” (that annoying term bandied for just about everything that isn’t a literal space) where challenging, envelope-pushing literature is published. That’s even truer now than it was then. What with the obsession with curating magazines to come across in a certain way--namely, to tick all the boxes on the “right” kind of writer to be represented.
While I understand/am fully aware that the world of literature is still oversaturated with white men, that doesn’t mean I can abide publishing someone’s work based on anything other than the straightforward criteria that it’s good, and I like it. It might sound “shockingly” simple, but it’s the truth. And it’ s an instinctual, go-with-your-gut method that fewer and fewer editors seem to be using, instead favoring this “checklist” approach to what the author “should” be and topics that the piece “should” accordingly broach. All the while discounting any of the visceral emotions that are supposed to go hand in
hand with literature, in whatever form it’s presented.
I know that this view is only going to become more controversial in an American political climate where the white male is once again more openly catered to than he was in the brief blip between 2017 (when the #MeToo movement was sparked by the Harvey Weinstein revelations) and 2022 (when Roe v. Wade was repealed by the Supreme Court). But I believe there is a fundamental difference between changing with the times and changing yourself to suit the times. This isn’t about fetishizing the past (I have a tendency to bring up 1960s-era Esquire as my benchmark for the height of short story/serialized novella/book excerpt publishing in magazines), but rather, not forgetting it. Some would also say it’s a dangerous game not to “evolve”---adapt or die and all that rot. But I would say that the ease with which we turn our backs on the past is how we fail not only to learn from it, but to preserve some of the best parts of it. Including literary magazines that didn’t give a fuck about censoring thoughtful and thought-provoking prose to accommodate the phony (that Salinger word), hypocritical ideals of those pulling the strings in what’s left of major print media.
Of course, if I’m being honest with myself, there are many parts of my own past I have chosen to block out for emotional self-preservation. Particularly from the period of time when The Opiate was first started. And, as a result, I probably have failed to learn from previous mistakes, doomed to keep repeating the same ones, both in matters of love and finance. Maybe someday, (I hope) I’ll be able to reexamine that era of my history with less pronounced blinders on (I still find it extremely difficult to even utter the word B***wick, where this rag was born, try as I might to deny it). But to deny who you were and what you did in the past never seems to end very well (in fact, there’s a few canonical works of literature that speak to that very form of suppression...like We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson). Just look what happened to Don Draper a.k.a. Dick Whitman. At the very least, though, I can say I’m not at risk of escalating a drinking problem the way
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
Don was----I’ve kicked that addiction since “the New York years,” so, if nothing else, that ’s a true sign of (personal) progress in the decade since The Opiate was spawned. And I believe, too, that the literature published has only improved within these pages. And will continue to, so long as this niche cabal of readers and writers are willing to keep supporting it in whatever way they can----whether that means buying the issues, submitting work or just passing word of the magazine’ s existence along to a friend or family member. For, to this day, the power of “word of mouth” is still stronger than any of the most advanced technology.
As for the cover of this issue, I’m not usually one to go all Martha or Oprah just because I run this thing, but, for once, I wanted to full-tilt embrace my narcissism to pay homage to the specialness of this issue. Many of you who are in it are “familiar favorites,” while some of you are new to The Opiate arsenal. Either way, I’m glad to have been able to build a small network of writers and readers. It ’s truly an incredible feat for someone as antisocial as I am.
Looking forward to many more editions to come,
Genna Rivieccio
January 2025
FICTION
Celebration of Life?
Holly Marihugh
“Celebration
of life” marked a shift in the death industry from funereal deep-black to softer shades of mourning. Supposedly created to lessen the sting of an absent loved one, even a troubled one, it attempts to shift the focus to what’s happening behind the curtain. Like in The Wizard of Oz, the person has disappeared forever, but the service tells friends and relatives to “look over here” instead.
That was supposed to be the case in the latest Fuller Family Funeral Home service. But a Boston radio station called, and then The Washington Post. “The journalists were all super polite,” Audrey Fuller recalled later. They wanted to know if “celebration of life” was the service’s correct name.
Audrey had inherited the family business from her parents, making her the “queen” of it. Now, her daughter, Brittany, a new college grad, had also climbed aboard the professional funeral train.
“Let me do it, Mom,” Brittany told Audrey the previous evening. “I’m faster at the website stuff than you are.” The twenty-twoyear-old whizzed through the steps of taking mourning online.
Two days ago, their small city was seared in half by the news of a bloodbath inside Deerfield’s Restaurant downtown. Yet another mass shooting in America: eight dead and four wounded. The killer
Celebration of Life? - Holly Marihugh then pointed the gun at his own head, which is why he’d ended up at Fuller’s.
“Oh my God, now it even happens in our backyard,” Audrey thought. Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, Audrey had never felt the stabbing shock of a mass shooting less than a few miles away. Such events were so common in America now that she didn’t believe it was possible to feel such a visceral reaction in her body. Still, a dark pang landed squarely in her gut.
“Ken Delaney killed?!” Audrey shrieked when the names and photos of deceased persons flashed on her television screen. “He’s got four kids! And a business to run!” She recognized other faces, but she didn’t know them like Ken. He’d been in her high school graduating class.
“Mom, I knew the shooter back in high school!” Brittany’s eyes bulged with the revelation. “Tyler Tucker was that weirdo who’d say the creepiest things to girls. If you told him to stop, he’d get really mad. We just steered clear of him.”
Tyler had sent shivers up the spines of many girls, but their complaints were brushed aside. Teachers, guidance counselors and the principal felt their hands were tied when addressing Tyler’s full deck of issues. His parents repeatedly raised a stop sign to any suggestion of professional intervention in their son’s life. No, thank you. Being creepy isn’t a crime, they’d counter-argue. The school just wanted to push him through senior year and hand Tyler a diploma on his way out the door.
“I remember one time he walked down the hall dressed like the Joker,” Brittany cringed. “Had on a red wig and lipstick, and he got in our faces one Halloween. It was way too much. Tyler loved making us jump and scream. Finally, the principal made him take off the wig.”
“Well, now he’s a mass shooter,” Audrey declared. “He killed a dad I know. Tyler Tucker’s dead too, but no one is sad about that, except maybe his parents. This is beyond crazy!”
As a fifty-four-year-old, Audrey’s growing up years were in the 1970s and 1980s. It seemed a million miles away from this new era of mass shootings. The hotspot in Worcester was the mall in the city’s center. She and her friends would spend hours walking the halls to get noticed, trying on shoes they’d never buy, and pouring over the latest albums at the record store. The news then was full of stories about the American hostages stuck in Iran, big greed on Wall Street and Hollywood in the White House for eight years. President Reagan had been shot, but he survived.
Today was different. Audrey thought that anger seemed to ooze out of the pores of young men. It always seemed to be guys who held the gun and mowed down bystanders, passersby and random targets.
Sandy Hook Elementary School, a theater in Aurora, Colorado and, only a half-day before Tyler Tucker’s local broadside, there was yet another at an El Paso Walmart. Why such madness?
Audrey couldn’t answer that question today. Her family had a funeral service—whoops celebration of life to host. But at that moment, her cell phone rang.
“Hello, this is Nathan Spencer of WUXB in Boston,” a deep male voice announced. “I’d like to speak with you about the so-called celebration of life service for Tyler Tucker, the twenty-one-year-old accused of killing eight people in your city. Can you please tell me why
“Audrey thought that anger seemed to ooze out of the pores of young men. It always seemed to be guys who held the gun and mowed down bystanders, passersby and random targets. Sandy Hook Elementary School, a theater in Aurora, Colorado and, only a half-day before Tyler Tucker’s local broadside, there was yet another at an El Paso Walmart. Why such madness?”
his parents and your funeral home are hosting that kind of service?”
Audrey didn’t know why. Brittany must have been on autopilot, not thinking how this kind of service might backfire. She quickly pulled up the webpage for Tyler’s memories and saw it contained all the regular features: spots to upload favorite childhood photos, places to record cherished memories and even a virtual sky where a visitor could place a “star” next to Tyler’s. Yikes.
Someone had already posted photos of Tyler as a little boy: grade school homeroom, football teams, birthday parties—all the stuff of a normal childhood. But Tyler wasn’t normal.
“Can I call you back?” Audrey asked Spencer. “There seems to
Celebration of Life? - Holly Marihugh be a mistake.”
“Would you please confirm that your funeral home is hosting Tyler Tucker’s service and that there is a page on your website devoted to his ‘celebration of life’?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t confirm anything at the moment,” she curtly replied, pressing the red circle at the base of her iPhone. How had this happened, Audrey asked herself. All these years in the business and nothing quite like this. Or was that even true?
“Brittany! Come quick. You’ve gotta delete Tyler Tucker’s page,” Audrey yelled. She looked down at her phone as it vibrated again. Another name she didn’t recognize. Thomas Kozlowski. She Googled the name, along with the word “journalist.” The first result listed Kozlowski as a writer at The Washington Post.
This time, she screamed Brittany’s name. “My phone’s blowing up with calls about that killer!”
Once the page was down, Brittany and Audrey let out a collective sigh of relief. Audrey wasn’t even answering her phone. It kept ringing and flashing numbers. Finally, she relented.
“Hello, Fuller Family Funerals,” she winced.
“Hello, ma’am. This is Vanessa MacChesney with CNN,” the woman stated, striking a crisp, professional note.
“I know why you’re calling,” Audrey blurted out. “The page about Tyler Tucker is down. It’s off the website. It’s going to be a private service.”
“Yes, that is why I was calling,” MacChesney continued. “But can you tell me why his service was labeled a ‘celebration of life’ to begin with? Also, why would anyone want to celebrate the life of a mass shooter?”
Sarcasm sounded like it was dripping out of the corners of MacChesney’s mouth, even though Audrey couldn’t see it.
“It was all a mistake,” Audrey said, sighing deeply. “One of our employees accidentally put up a page that we regularly use for most of our clients, and now it’s deleted.”
“But why did it appear in the first place?” MacChesney pushed. “Did his parents request this type of service?”
“Look. There’s no story here,” Audrey insisted, her tone rising with exasperation. “I’m sorry, I have to get off the phone now.”
She hung up and slammed her phone down on her desk. How had this trainwreck happened? She looked at herself in the mirror on the wall.
Growing up, she’d always been such a careful, responsible— even dutiful—kid. When she was in the seventh grade, her choir director
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
had stated in front of a room full of forty students, “I need someone responsible to deliver a note to the principal’s office for me.” He then looked at twelve-year-old Audrey. “You’re responsible!” he announced as he pointed right at her. “Please take this note to Mr. Fiske’s office and come right back.”
Audrey’s chest puffed with pride. She never got that kind of recognition at home. Life inside the walls of her house on Belmont Street was unpredictable, at best. There was always a beer bottle on the kitchen counter that her dad, Harvey, reached for. It was most often a Schaefer’s, but sometimes a Budweiser. Harvey was never without his beer, no matter what the label on it said. It was the lubricant and the agitator in family relationships. Harvey could be honey-sweet after he gulped down the first couple of swigs to “take the edge off the day.” But after a whole bottle, and then another, and yet another, he’d bark that someone was kicking the table too loudly or scream that someone else was talking too much. And God forbid someone dropped, spilled or broke whatever. That’s when the full wrath of Harvey, now a liquorinfused volcano, would erupt. His lava of anger would scald anyone around him.
Audrey and her three siblings, Tom, Scott and Cindy, learned to make themselves mostly invisible. Talk only when spoken to. Listen closely to orders. Never trip up.
Barbara, their mom, was rarely a bold Mother Jones type in these situations. Unlike the famous crusader for children’s rights, Barbara had become so beleaguered by Harvey’s high-voltage temper that she withdrew into a cloud of silent depression and workaholism.
But Barbara knew she still held most of the power in the relationship. Because it was her family that had started the Fuller Family Funeral Home two generations ago. In the back corner of his sober mind, Harvey knew that, when push came to shove, he might end up out the door. With nothing. Plus, Barbara descended from a long line of alcoholics. So when it came to dealing with Harvey’s mood swings, she’d already learned how to tolerate the disease and the erratic behavior that accompanied it. Sort of like a box of horrors in a haunted house: open it up and be careful what pops out.
Audrey, as the oldest, tried to cool Harvey’s heat. She’d put her finger to her lips to shush seven-year-old Tom whenever he talked over a whisper inside the house. She’d run interference by quickly wiping up liquid and sweeping away glass shards when five-year-old Scott spilled his orange juice on the kitchen floor. She’d held three-year-old Cindy on her lap and stroked her hair to quiet her crying after a fall. Audrey was only nine years old herself, but she wore the cap of caretaker and
Celebration of Life? - Holly Marihugh
told the others to keep quiet. Hide. Disappear. For their own good.
All those years of walking on eggshells had taken a toll. Tom’s teachers were always calling home about his teasing and bullying of the other students.
“Your son pushed a child in the hall when they were supposed to line up for lunch!” Mrs. Nicoletti, his second-grade teacher, complained to Barbara. “Then the child fell and hurt himself on the marble floor. I’m telling you, this happens way too often with Tom.”
Tom eventually ended up in juvenile detention for frequent shoplifting at the neighborhood hardware store. First, he stuffed a Snickers bar under his shirt, which fell on the floor as Tom passed by a shop clerk. Then, he crammed a pack of D batteries into his school backpack, and it was caught on camera via the convex security mirror mounted in the corner. Finally, Tom graduated to stealing a small power saw, which he thought he could rush out the door with, but of course, the store had his number. The thirteen-year-old was the only repeat offender they knew, and they watched him like a hawk.
Scott grew into a scared rabbit who’d hop away at the first sign of trouble anywhere. He also stuttered in class, which meant he got teased.
“My n-n-n-n-n-ame is S-s-s-s-scott,” he was forced to say at the beginning of the school year to a new class of kids. Eventually, word got around among the teachers that the stuttered announcement was torture for the boy, and they found a way to skip him altogether. “You’re Scott, right?” a new teacher noted with a pitying smile.
Cindy grew into a voluptuous vamp, to borrow a catchphrase from the era. Not finding much attention or affection at home anymore (Audrey had left for college), the fifteen-year-old discovered the mesmerizing power of her breasts over boys. Once they stared long enough, she’d offer them a feel on the sly. This overly generous gesture led to a backseat car tryst, which blossomed into a pregnancy.
Abortion was out of the question in their Catholic family. So Cindy became the only young mother in the entire sophomore high school class of two hundred students. She dropped out when she couldn’t stomach one more day of taunting by the boys:
Got any milk in those left for me?
Will your mom babysit so I can take you for a ride in the backseat?
Let’s practice making another one.
All the salacious remarks came in the hallway, never loud enough for a teacher to hear. Still, the volume was turned up just enough for any bystanders within earshot. The laughter rang through Cindy’s ears for the rest of the school day until she chose to turn it off once and for
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
all by dropping out.
All these years later, Audrey was still in the stalwart role of caretaker for the family, soldiering on from afar. Her brothers and sister, though, followed in the footsteps of their father. Rarely seen without a drink in hand, Tom had been in rehab at least three times. Frankly, Audrey had lost count. She’d been so hopeful the first time he’d told her he was going.
“Yep. Finally headed up to that famous place in Minnesota,” Tom had told his older sister. “The rehab center where all the celebrities go. Heck, even Eric Clapton went there, and he got sober.”
Tom smiled as if the triumph of his favorite rock star might transfer to him. Believe it or not, it finally did rub off, like polish on a brass casket. He’d been sober now for sixteen years.
In contrast, Scott and Cindy both drifted in and out of sobriety. From all the reading Audrey had done over the years while trying to understand the legacy of her family’s addiction, she concluded that hitting the bottle was a disease.
In a new generational cycle, her nieces and nephews were popping way too many pills and got caught up in the current mess of painkillers. Oxycontin overdrive. Percocet pleasure. Fentanyl fiascos. Amazing how the addiction disease morphed into other forbidden fruits.
Audrey had always managed to walk the straight and narrow. The cascade of booze, pills and powder somehow never washed over her and her immediate family. So the outright shock of the perverse turn in the story she now faced stopped her cold. How did her family, which had shouldered a respectable funeral business for more than two decades, end up connected to a national tragedy? And in such a morbid twist?
Audrey’s mom had told other funeral home tales over the decades. Way back when the industry was only lightly regulated, an undertaker could do almost anything with a corpse, as long as it was behind the curtain.
In one story, their priest had recommended the Fullers’ business to a grieving family whose elderly father had passed away. Barbara’s dad, Gerald, picked up the body in his hearse, which was some old-timey limousine, the story went. Gerald Fuller performed his usual magic on the body, just as he had on a similar male corpse a day before.
The teary family arrived at the funeral home, expecting to see their father in the classy coffin they’d selected. The final resting box was lined with red felt and gold trim. This style showed respect and deference for a man who had protected and provided for all of them over the years. The selection, they thought, was like giving their father
Celebration of Life? - Holly Marihugh
a final salute. Alas, when family members walked in, they didn’t see their dear dad encased inside, but rather, someone else entirely.
“This isn’t him!” the wife of the deceased cried as she clutched her son’s arm. “Where’s my husband? What have you done with him?!”
“People can look very different in death,” Gerald assured her calmly. “I can promise you that this, indeed, is your husband, ma’am.”
“This is not my father!” yelled the son, his eyes popping so far out they looked ready to spill over. “We demand to see where you’re
“In a new generational cycle, her nieces and nephews were popping way too many pills and got caught up in the current mess of painkillers. Oxycontin overdrive. Percocet pleasure. Fentanyl fiascos. Amazing how the addiction disease morphed into other forbidden fruits.”
keeping him!”
Audrey couldn’t remember if part of the story included Gerald tippling that day. But he must have been...because, really, who mixes up corpses? Especially given that her grandfather knew the deceased man from church, for heaven’s sake.
Sure enough, backstage at the funeral home, the family identified their missing father. But the drama continued. When Gerald switched the bodies, he offered to line the coffin with new red felt. After all, the family had paid for an upscale version.
“While he made the switch, he kept laying the hammer down on my dad’s chest in between stretching and nailing the new fabric,” the son told another church member later. “I was so angry. I couldn’t
Opiate, Winter Vol. 40 even speak.”
Audrey snickered at the memory. It happened about eighty years ago. The Fuller Family Funeral Home was the only mortuary in town way back then, and the family had strong bonds with its church. Members depended on the Fullers to take care of their deceased family members, and Gerald’s snafu eventually faded from memory.
But there’d been other scary incidents, and no doubt those had been lubricated by alcohol, if not directly caused by it.
In her mom’s day, Audrey remembered her talking about letting Harvey fill in for a missing pallbearer at the last minute. Usually, a family chooses its relatives to serve, or dear friends step up to lift the casket and gently place it in front of the church altar. With a deity or saint staring down from a stained-glass image, the scene invokes angels singing and clouds parting above.
This time, though, one of the casket corners was missing a pallbearer. “Harvey, quick!” Barbara gestured at her husband. “The McArdles’ friend can’t make it, and they need a pallbearer, pronto.”
Harvey took one of the back ends of the casket on the way up the church steps. Barbara hadn’t caught a whiff of the telltale booze on Harvey’s breath when she leaned in to whisper instructions.
Halfway up the short staircase, Harvey tripped, lost his grip and fell. Fortunately, his outstretched hands caught his fall, so he didn’t take it on the chin. But the casket rocked back and forth like a tugboat until the remaining pallbearers could steady it. They all glared at Harvey, and the guy closest to him spit, “Get outta here now” through gritted teeth.
Friends and family knew of Harvey’s “problem,” as they called it, but it had rarely spilled out in a public setting. Now it had.
Audrey snapped back to the present moment. Dammit, could all of these incidents centered around booze have led to this grand screw-up? Is that a shared link connecting these moments of calamity? Now, amid this tragedy, these were questions she just had to ask herself.
For a second, a total sense of shame enveloped her. The past had crept into the present, and her family was caught in the squall of condemnation.
She paused and pondered the connection. Then, turning on a dime, she went back to work, suddenly on autopilot. “Hey guys, can you rope off the back ten rows in the chapel? The service for Tyler Tucker is going to be very private. Only family and people they personally identify are on the guest list. No reporters. Absolutely not!”
Men of Good Fortune
Max Talley
Miles Coburn had suffered through 1988. The slow-motion dissolution of his relationship with Debbie, the awkward beginnings of his band, watching former music heroes selling out to beer commercials and strained relations with his mother. She wouldn’t discuss his missing father and that only made Miles more anxious to know the truth. At twenty-four, he felt adrift; still waiting for his adult life to truly begin. In retrospect, he would view 1988 as a golden year for concerts.
The last show he went to that fall was Leonard Cohen’s in mid-November. Miles took the advice of his music industry friend, Joanna, and bought I’m Your Man, listening to it religiously while also catching up on Cohen’s back catalog.
With Miles moving to his Village studio on December 1st, as a peace offering, he bought two tickets and invited his mother. Ali was delighted. She’d loved Cohen back in the seventies, but he fell off her radar until recently. Now everyone talked about the fifty-three-yearold poet/folk singer, written off by the music industry as a commercial failure, who had somehow crafted the best album of 1988, excoriating everything wrong about the synthetic decade of yuppie greed, covert wars and cocaine mania. Something Dylan or no other artist seemed
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
up to doing at present. Cohen’s lyrics were both stinging and funny as hell.
“Thanks, Miles,” Ali said as they walked the seven blocks down Broadway from her apartment to the Beacon Theater. “Is this your goodbye present to me?”
“I’m just moving to the West Village.” He pointed south. “Only in New York would three miles away seem like a different country.”
“I know things have been tense. I—”
“Miles had watched Mick Jagger sprinting around stadiums in tight yellow football pants trying to prove he was two decades younger, while Leonard Cohen seemed content just to be alive. Center stage with slicked-back hair and wearing a pinstripe suit, vocal sirens Perla and Julie admiring him and echoing his gruff tones with their angelic voices, Cohen presented a midlife crisis that any man would kill for.”
“I get it,” Miles said. “I didn’t move out right after graduating. I fucked up my mailroom job at Warner Brothers. Instead of following you into the music business, I’m trying to start a band. And not even a commercial one that could actually make money.”
“You burned some bridges at Warner, being part of that mailroom team. Bernie stole from the company, and Paco got some promotion guys to front him drug money, then ran off to Puerto Rico to build a church.” Ali threw her hands up in disbelief.
“To be honest, there was a ton of shady behavior there. The drug use, young secretaries who conveniently wanted to date the artists, favors for radio people.” Miles sighed. “Our mailroom crew was just the easiest to blame. Lowest rung on the corporate ladder.”
Men of Good Fortune - Max Talley
He wrapped his plaid wool scarf tighter, the November temperatures dipping downward. “But Debbie and I are done. It’s definitely over. She went to Vegas with some lawyer and we had an ugly fight afterwards.”
Ali frowned. “Miles, I try not to be judgmental, but I never trusted her.” Linking arms with him, she added, “Debbie would do whatever she had to do to get what she wanted. And she wanted a lot of things.”
“I know, I know. When someone likes you, well, you want to believe it, want to just enjoy it. Then you try to ignore the signs when it turns bad.”
“We all make bad choices, Miles.”
“You mean like with my father?”
“Look.” Ali pointed toward the marquee above the Beacon Theater announcing: LEONARD COHEN – In Concert.
People swarmed around the entrance, their overcoats and faces bathed in the yellowy dazzle of lights from above. Most of the audience members appeared middle-aged or older, but Miles didn’t care. He’d never fit in with whatever his generation was supposed to like anyway. Plus, Leonard Cohen made it seem cool to be older.
Joanna raced over and kissed Ali on the cheek, then she lightly punched Miles’ shoulder. “Tell me I was right about I’m Your Man.”
“You were right.”
Her whole face lit up. “Well, even the music snob looks happy tonight,” she teased. “See you after. I have to go meet my, uh, friend.” She hustled inside.
“Joanna looks really thin, Mom,” Miles said. “It’s the music biz powder diet. But you know about that.”
“Do you want to start an argument before the show? And do you really want to lecture me on drugs? I’ve done coke a couple times, but I don’t go out to clubs and get high.”
Ignoring her question, Miles continued, “I blame it for half the eighties bullshit. It infested the music world, the fashion business and it’s on Wall Street. Drives the economy. Former radical hippies who became greedy yuppies use it as fuel, like your ex, Dorn. Lowlifes to high society, models and porn stars and Eurotrash, Democrats and Republicans, black, white, brown all come together on this one drug that boosts the ego—and triples the asshole factor.”
“Let’s find our seats,” Ali directed. “I hate when you get on a high horse. ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
“Mom, you’re an atheist.”
“And Jesus might have lived longer if he’d been one too.”
Cohen’s band played a blend of gypsy music, finger-picked
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folk and Europop, with a Parisian monotone in the Serge Gainsbourg tradition. Miles had watched Mick Jagger sprinting around stadiums in tight yellow football pants trying to prove he was two decades younger, while Leonard Cohen seemed content just to be alive. Center stage with slicked-back hair and wearing a pinstripe suit, vocal sirens Perla and Julie admiring him and echoing his gruff tones with their angelic voices, Cohen presented a midlife crisis that any man would kill for.
He played a short first set ending with “First We Take Manhattan,” then returned for an expansive second one, including Miles’ favorite, “Tower of Song.” It played like a European minimalist tribute to beatnik poetry readings over a bongo drum background. As if everything extraneous had been stripped away from the skeletal composition to leave only the magic heartbeat pulse and Cohen’s breathy somniloquy remaining. The reverence of the crowd amazed Miles, who took note of their rapt attention to every witty lyric he intoned.
Ladies brought flowers to the edge of the stage to raise up to Leonard.
“Damn, he’s got every older Jewish woman from the Upper West Side in the palm of his hand,” Miles whispered.
“Watch it.” Ali elbowed him. “I love seeing artists come back like this. It’s inspiring.” Ali’s face held some religious rapture he’d never witnessed before. “Columbia treated Leonard like shit. He’s a legacy artist who makes the label attractive to other talent. Reprise should have fought for him twenty years ago.” She shook her head. “This is why I got into the business. It’s the concert of the year, Miles. We’re seeing an artist at his peak.”
Miles felt elated. “You’re right.”
After the show, they bundled up and said quick hello-goodbyes to Joanna and her surly-looking date. Miles recognized a figure on the Broadway traffic island. “Van Monk?” He ran over and hugged him. “This is what I was talking about when we argued years ago about—”
“Experiencing great art from the artists of your own lifetime,” Van Monk interrupted. “I remember.” He waved at Ali. “I have to go, Miles, but glad we were all there for Leonard.”
Miles and Ali trudged up Broadway toward home. “Want some food?” she asked.
“Definitely. Breakfast.”
“At ten p.m.?”
“Of course.”
Thanks to both Van Monk and rock journalist Dustin Blazer putting in good words for him, Miles got his review of the Leonard
Men of Good Fortune - Max Talley
Cohen concert published in The New York Post. A couple of his paragraphs on the best concerts and albums of 1988 were printed in The Daily News between Christmas and New Year’s.
Miles knew he couldn’t make a living off snippets, but his friends dug it, and Ali framed his Cohen review in her living room. Though he enjoyed doing reviews, Miles had little interest in working his way up to writing band features. All that hanging out on tour buses, plus either building them up as great, misunderstood artists or tearing them
“‘No, man. This is the new Lou. Have you heard New York yet? His best album in seven years. The guy is a regular human now.’ Regular human being? Performers like Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Keith Richards and Lou Reed could never be normal. Should never be. It was their alien, inhuman qualities that made them so fascinating. Did they ever eat, did they sleep?”
apart as luck-blessed charlatans, held zero appeal to him. But Dustin promised him comped tickets to concerts if Miles would do him a favor when he needed one.
Miles agreed to the Mephistophelian bargain because, after years of record company perks, he felt weird asking his mom for tickets. However, with Dustin, you had to accept whatever favor he asked, otherwise he’d shut you out, close the iron gate. And Miles knew from Van Monk that a “Blazer favor” could be a major pain in the ass.
Dustin called him at two a.m. in mid-February. The call went straight to Miles’ answering machine in his Thirteenth Street apartment, the volume on the plastic gadget set high.
“Come on, Miles. Pick up! This is your Uncle Dustin.” Whenever he adopted a bogus familial bond, it was a sign he needed
something. “I know you’re there. It’s the middle of winter and even the transvestite hookers on Fourteenth are inside tonight.” He paused. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m wired on some primo blow and I’ll keep talking until this fucking tape runs out.”
Miles finally relented. “Yeah, I’m here.” His voice still entombed in his throat, he demanded, “Do you know what time it is?”
“The shank of the evening.” Dustin laughed. “Remember I pulled some strings for you? Well, I need that return favor.”
“I’m not going out and buying drugs for you tonight.”
“No, no.” Dustin sounded reassuring. “Want you to do an interview for me. I’m just too jammed up with travel and deadlines, but it has to get done.”
“With who?”
Dustin’s breathing came loud through the receiver before he replied, “Lou Reed.”
“You’re joking.” Miles hadn’t followed Reed much beyond owning New Sensations from a few years ago and seeing his Honda motorcycle TV commercial. He did remember reading old Creem issues and the verbal slug-fests between Lester Bangs and Reed. “I can’t. He’ll laugh at me.”
“No, man. This is the new Lou. Have you heard New York yet? His best album in seven years. The guy is a regular human now.”
Regular human being? Performers like Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Keith Richards and Lou Reed could never be normal. Should never be. It was their alien, inhuman qualities that made them so fascinating. Did they ever eat, did they sleep?
“Lou lives in the countryside with his wife. A female wife,” Dustin added. “He rides his motorcycle. Did you see the video for ‘I Love You, Suzanne’? Lou danced like a motherfucker. I think he might have even smiled once.” When Miles didn’t respond, Dustin kept talking. “He’s getting great reviews for New York, and I got seats for his St. James Theater run in March. This may be the best time in Lou Reed’s whole career to interview him. The dude’s actually happy.”
“Yeah, okay. I guess so.” Miles knew he couldn’t refuse. Maybe Lou had changed. Hell, he must have—to have survived.
“Great, great. Listen to New York beforehand. Impress him.” Dustin paused, and Miles could hear him banging away on his manual typewriter. “Just remember that Lou is sharp, whip-smart. Don’t challenge him or bullshit him, just go with his whole new positive vibe.”
The following week, Miles took a sick day at work and ventured down to Reed’s publicist’s office in SoHo at one in the afternoon. FM radio had been playing “Romeo Had Juliette” from New York and Miles
Men of Good Fortune - Max Talley
enjoyed the album, so he looked forward to their meeting. Since the interview was set for two p.m. at Prince and Greene Street, he dropped in at the Dorn Gallery on Broadway.
“Miles, how’s it going?” Frederick Dorn asked when he saw him come in. He held a phone between his shoulder and ear as he munched on a croissant. “How’s your mother doing? No, not your mother,” Frederick said into the mouthpiece. “Call you later.”
Miles studied his ex-stepfather. He wore dark suits with a gray t-shirt, sported Miami Vice stubble, slicked back his graying hair and had a permanent sniffle.
“I’m downtown to interview Lou Reed.”
“The walk-on-the-wild-side guy?” Unlike Ali, ensconced in the music business, Dorn had tuned out on hip music years ago. “He’s still around? Good luck with that.” Dorn was already calling other clients, selling, buying, counting profits in his head, figuring tax loopholes. His interest in art was the only thing separating him from being a bland Wall Street broker. “Great to see you, and give my love to your mother,” he said as a means of dismissal. “Let’s do lunch some time.” Dorn waved goodbye then swiveled in his chair to have a heated exchange with someone.
Miles slurped up a bowl of onion soup at a French delicatessen on Prince before going up to the interview.
“You’re three minutes late,” a harried woman snapped at him. “Please wait in the office.” She closed the door behind him. The publicist’s office had been decorated like a shrine to recent Lou Reed. All eighties photos: Lou on a motorcycle, Lou with his wife, Lou wedged between record company executives, his last few album covers framed on the wall. No freaky old shots of skeletal blonde Lou or pudgy Lou in glam makeup. Miles waited twenty minutes.
At last, a compact man with a huge presence walked in wearing a black leather jacket and impenetrable shades. Reed’s curly hair hung long in the back and had been cropped shorter in the front. His complexion looked gray, most of the flesh tone leached away.
Reed removed his glasses to take Miles in. His eyes were dead, mirthless.
This was the happy Lou? Miles switched on his cassette recorder.
“So who are you again?” Frowning, the songwriter stared at a piece of paper on the desk.
“Miles Coburn. Dustin Blazer asked me to do this interview for him...”
“For him?” Reed scoffed. “I insisted he not do the interview. Do you know what he said about me twelve years ago?” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter.” Reed put his shades back on. “What are you, twentytwo? You’ve reviewed a Leonard Cohen show. Wow.”
“Twenty-four.”
“Liberal arts college graduate, probably from the Upper
25.
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West Side. Maybe Jewish—no, half-Jewish.” Reed laughed in a selfcongratulatory way. He gazed at his watch with a bored expression. “Let’s see if you know anything. Okay, so what are your favorite records of mine?”
“Uh, Transformer, Berlin, the new one and Loaded.”
“Hey,” Reed said. “Didn’t you read the rules? Mary?”
His frightened assistant rushed into the office. “Yes...”
“For a slight instant, Reed smiled, then his lips flatlined. ‘You’re pretty young to know that shit. You read it somewhere, an old interview.’ He leaned forward. ‘How do you know I didn’t lie to Lester Bangs? You think that bastard deserved the truth?’”
“Rule number one: no mention of my former band.” Reed glared at Mary. “Did he see the sheet?”
“I sent it to Dustin Blazer, Mr. Reed. Maybe he didn’t pass it on.”
“Okay, you’re not helping me here.” He waved her away.
Reed faced Miles again. “Everybody says Transformer is their favorite, so you shouldn’t.” He paused. “Berlin was a masterpiece, but nobody got it. I was pillaged by the critics. But my best was Metal Machine Music. Do you know why?”
Miles shook his head, figuring silence to be his best option.
“Because I bridged heavy metal, experimental music and classical music. People didn’t understand it. RCA marketed it like a rock record. The most returned album in their history. How would you
like to live with that? Oh, never mind.”
Men of Good Fortune - Max Talley
“Can I ask you about your band on New York?”
“Ask.”
“You’ve used Fernando Saunders on bass for several years. Some people would say he’s an odd choice for your style of threechords-and-poetry rock.”
“Some people are assholes. What people? You need to be specific if you’re going to be a...journalist.” He said the last word with contempt. “Why do you think I work with Fernando?”
Miles thought carefully, then remembered something from Creem. “You were a fan of Stanley Clarke’s bass playing and fusion jazz, so you wanted a fretless bassist with that level of musicianship in your band.”
For a slight instant, Reed smiled, then his lips flatlined. “You’re pretty young to know that shit. You read it somewhere, an old interview.” He leaned forward. “How do you know I didn’t lie to Lester Bangs? You think that bastard deserved the truth?”
“No one would pretend to like fusion jazz, especially not the Godfather of Punk.”
Reed jolted in his seat. “I hate that fucking name. Makes me sound ancient, and like I’m responsible for all that noise. My influences are Delmore Schwartz—look him up—Bertolt Brecht, Dostoevsky and doo-wop music.”
“Back when you started in that other rock band in the midsixties, was your vocal style influenced by Bob Dylan?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” Reed put a hand to his head. “I love Dylan. Even his last album that everyone hates is better than most people’s best, but you need to do research. Dylan started recording before me, in ‘62, but when did he start elongating his syllables? When did he start doing that talk-singing thing?”
“On Highway 61 Revisited?”
“More like Blonde on Blonde in ‘66, after he hung around the Chelsea Hotel and met Nico and Edie Sedgwick, after he saw me and the Velvets in concert, and after he heard our first album... Understanding history is so important. Okay, last question. Let’s keep it current.”
“Is this new album part of your happy, mature phase that began with New Sensations?
Reed made a snorting noise. “Please leave this office right now.”
“It went well,” Reed’s assistant told Miles on his way out. “You got through a dozen questions and he didn’t start screaming at you.”
“Mary!” Reed shouted from beyond the closed door. “Get in here.”
Miles exited the building and checked his cassette recorder to verify it had actually happened, then wandered north on Broadway toward Tower Records.
Song of the Whippoorwill
Russ Doherty
Redstone Arsenal. Huntsville, Alabama. Late August, 1969.
“Your final’s in two weeks, Wednesday, September 10th,” Mr. Bradbury, our civilian electronics instructor, drawls. “Y’all know how important this is gonna be for your Army career. Any of you who flunk this test will not be promoted. You’ll end up in Vietnam by Christmas.” He points to our platoon leader, Sergeant “Sarge” Odun Carroll, and Corporal John Booth. They’ll both need help to pass the final, if they want to be radar technicians.
Booth jeers at Sarge under his breath. “Rice paddies for you.”
Sarge turns and stares Booth down, black versus white.
Mr. Bradbury glances around the drab, all-gray classroom at the twelve of us. “Okay, break time.” He claps his hands. “Fifteen minutes. Remember: turn off your test circuits. No electroshocks.” He points at me.
Wineman comes over to my worktable. We’re looking forward to the New Orleans Pop Festival this coming Labor Day weekend. “What time we leaving Saturday?” I ask. Then I turn off my radar screen test circuit with the exposed capacitor.
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ
Doherty
Wineman says, “It’s a six-hour drive, we should vamoose by eleven. When we get to New Orleans, we can figure out where to camp, grab some grub and get ready for the show.”
Booth intercepts Sarge as they walk past us toward the door. “Jesus H. Christ, Sarge, what’s this shit about not getting promoted? That dog won’t hunt.” A nasty redneck from South Carolina, Booth dislikes Sarge. He has a pronounced overbite, a buzz cut and speaks fast with a nasal twang—he’s a yippy puppy. Booth adds, “You know, I think segregation should still be legal.”
Sarge has a liquid, languid voice, like butterscotch. “Booth, how many times I gotta tell you? I don’t make the rules. But you might could go ‘bout your business and do your studying.”
They walk outside separately, carrying their coffee cups. The aroma lingers in the room.
I’m so primed for the pop festival this weekend. Ever since Woodstock two weeks ago, we all talk about how incredible the vibe must’ve been. Time magazine claimed that over four hundred thousand people showed up. “It’s the stuff of which legends are made,” the article said. We missed Woodstock, but we won’t miss this next festival. Loads of cool bands and Southern girls will be there. I need to be part of a legend.
The music we’re going to hear inspires me and I turn to play a few drum licks on the metal frame of my test circuit. Bam! I’m knocked to the floor.
Next thing I know, I wake up in an Army ambulance to the smell of burning flesh. The medic bandages my arm. “Why do you keep electrocuting yourself?”
My third time in eleven months. My inside right forearm stings, there’s a blood-red burn mark two inches long. One hundred and ten volts discharged through my arm. My head rings from bouncing off the floor. Man, am I stupid.
Mr. Bradbury says, “I told him he could die from not paying attention. He don’t listen well. He’s one of our best students, but he’s just not vigilant around the test equipment. He shoulda discharged that capacitor when he turned the test circuit off.”
“We’ll take him to the clinic and patch him up,” the medic promises. “He’ll be good to go.”
I better be or Sarge will cancel my leave for the festival.
As they’re about to close the ambulance door, Sarge calls out, “Get well, Paddy, I’ll be needing your help to study for this here final.”
A bird sings and I glance out the door. Sarge looks up, then back down at me. “That’s the song of the whippoorwill. He can’t stop
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singing ‘cause he misses his dead partner. Don’t worry Paddy, you ain’t dying, ain’t no bird be singing for you.”
On Friday, our usual TGIF party occurs off-post at Steve and Linda Jones’ house. It’s decorated in the style of “early garage sale”: brown butcher paper on the wall showcases Linda’s Alice in Wonderland drawings, a sheet of plywood on sawhorses covered with oilcloth works
“That’s the song of the whippoorwill. He can’t stop singing ‘cause he misses his dead partner. Don’t worry Paddy, you ain’t dying, ain’t no bird be singing for you.”
for their dining table, concrete blocks and unfinished wood for a bookcase. There’s not one matching chair, plate or cup. I love people who embrace being poor. Friday nights are strictly potluck and BYOB because none of us has any money.
Wineman and Cooper are here and I’m wondering when Sarge will show. “I’m So Tired” from The Beatles’ The White Album grinds away on the stereo. Lennon implodes about going insane, while the music explodes to emphasize his pain. I hope the music at this weekend’s festival will be as intense.
“Booth called Sarge a jigaboo behind his back this morning,” Cooper remarks.
“He’s piece of work,” I say. “I’m surprised Sarge doesn’t punch him out. Ever since we were told no promotions unless we pass the final, he’s just ripped Sarge a new asshole.”
Cooper shakes his head. “Booth told me he’s trying to goad Sarge into hitting him, so Sarge will get sent to the stockade and Booth
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ Doherty can take command of our platoon. Booth thinks I agree with the shit he pulls since we’re both from South Carolina.”
Cooper’s a flaming liberal compared to Booth.
Sarge strolls in with a six-pack of Bud under one arm, his beautiful, white girlfriend on the other. “Desiree and I just got engaged, we getting married, right after graduation.” He holds her hand up, showing us the ring. We all clap and congratulate them.
Sarge is short—a rotund black dude with a friendly laugh. He’s not supposed to fraternize with us enlisted men since he’s an NCO, but he’s no stickler for rules and relies on most of us for help with his classwork. He flips Desiree’s blonde, pageboy haircut and kisses her.
He looks around. “Is Bad Boy Booth not here?” He grins.
We shake our heads. Looking at Desiree, I wonder if I’ll ever find a girl as nice as her.
“That boy get on my nerves.” Booth would be livid if he heard Sarge call him a boy.
Booth thinks he’s hot stuff. He owns an AMC AMX, a little two-seater with a huge three-hundred-ninety-cubic-inch engine he races at the drag strip in Huntsville. His idol is Don “Big Daddy” Garlits, the National Hot Rod Association champion. Booth has never won an NHRA race, much less a championship. But he gets ticketed a lot for racing around Huntsville.
Sarge looks at me. “Paddy, Mr. Bradbury kindly slipped me a copy of the written final test from last year—with the answers. He said most of this year’s questions should be the same.”
Lightning surges down my spine. “No one should fail now.”
Sarge grins as wide as the room. “Hee, hee.” His eyes light up. His pomade curls bop up and down. He covers his mouth with his hand. “We already won.” Desiree smiles with him.
I ask, “Are you gonna tell Booth about the practice test?”
“Now Paddy...of course I am. Whenever he goes low, we go high. We set the bar. We don’t help him lower it. Booth gonna get the same help y’all get.”
Wow. He’s a nicer person than I’ll ever be. Booth treats Sarge like garbage and here he’s going to help him anyway. My electrical burn screams. I scratch at the bandage.
Booth stumbles in with his wife, Jenny. He’s clutching a quart of Southern Comfort, drunk already. I look at Steve Jones and raise both palms, silently asking who invited Booth.
Booth yells, “What’s-a-matter, Paddy? You don’t wanna drink whiskey with a real Southern gennel-man?” Slurring his words, he knows I don’t drink whiskey.
“Now Booth, don’t be hassling Paddy just ‘cause you pissed about the final,” Sarge tells him.
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“Boo-ya! I’m pissed ‘cause I might not get promoted. Fuck the final.” Booth points to his wife, who has tawny pigtails running down her back. She looks about seventeen. Booth can’t be more than twenty. “Paddy’s mad at me ‘cause I got a bee-yoo-ti-ful wife and he can’t get no poon-tang.” He grabs one of Jenny’s pigtails. “I use these as reins when I’m riding.”
Jenny bares her teeth. She hates that comment.
Red spots flare up on Linda’s cheeks. Her eyes throw daggers at Booth. She turns to her husband, Steve. “Can you get him out of here?”
Steve obliges. “Booth, you need to leave, you’re drunk.”
“And your wife’s ugly, but at least in the morning, I’ll be sober.”
Jenny pulls at Booth’s arm to get him to leave.
“Stop it,” he yells at her. He turns to Sarge. “And Sarge, if you don’t help me pass the final, I’m gonna fuck with you.”
“Corporal Booth, I’m ordering you to leave this house,” Sarge answers.
Booth glares at him as Jenny continues tugging. Finally, Booth leaves with his Southern Comfort and his pissed-off wife.
Sarge shakes his head. “That boy does not treat women right.” Desiree kisses him.
Saturday’s a long day. Cooper, Wineman and I drive to New Orleans in Cooper’s VW bug, but the festival’s actually an hour away at Pelican International Speedway by Baton Rouge. Three hippies at a gas station point us east on I-10 along the misty swamp south of Lake Pontchartrain. Thick, wet air and rotten egg smells hang about the cypress trees, the moss, the marsh grass. Egrets high-step through muddy water. It reminds me of...
I blurt out. “I won’t survive Vietnam. I gotta pass the final.”
Cooper tries to comfort me. “Shit. Relax. We got no prob. It’s Sarge and Booth who gotta worry.”
The speedway is a NASCAR racetrack with concrete bleachers around it—not ideal for music. We set up our tent at dusk on the infield of the racetrack. Then, a band called It’s a Beautiful Day comes on and it mellows everyone out. Their song, “White Bird,” settles over us as the hypnotic violinist frolics onstage and hundreds of swallows flit through the air.
On Sunday, it’s steaming by midday. There’s a small, murky lake in the infield and we skinny-dip with everyone. The naked girls
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ Doherty
look stunning with their mud streaks. I could lie here all day. Musky vegetation grows around the lake and the water tastes slightly metallic. The music comes into sharper focus. This whole pop festival thing exists in a world unto itself.
After swimming, we get back to our campsite and Wineman hands me a small square of paper with a blot in the middle. “You ever take acid before?” He sounds like some kind of guru.
My breath catches, I’m at a crossroads. Wineman squints at me. I’m afraid of screwing up, socially speaking. Then I blurt out, “Could this lead to harder drugs—heroin or something? I don’t want to lose my shit and get hooked.”
Wineman grins at me like I am losing it. He runs his fingers through his brown hair.
“I mean, I’ve only heard bad stuff about LSD.” My hand trembles. “When I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, those Merry Pranksters went crazy on acid.”
Wineman scoffs. “I bet everybody tripped at Woodstock.” He rips his blotted paper in half. “Just try a little. You’ll still have a good trip.” He puts a half on his tongue and swallows.
Cooper shakes his head. “I’m not doing that shit. How do you even know what’s in it?”
“The dealer said it’s Owsley. He makes the best,” Wineman assures.
Caught between the two of them, I’m not sure which way to go. Normally, Wineman’s more my type: laid-back, go-with-the-flow. Cooper’s got his college boy set of rules, always talking about spring break at Myrtle Beach, never wears socks on the weekends. He loves Motown music. Wineman leans more toward folk-rock. My eyes dart back and forth between the two of them. Cooper flinches first and stops meeting my eyes. Wineman shrugs his shoulders like he doesn’t care what I do. So I rip my blotter and shove half in my mouth, washing it down with a swig of beer.
I don’t know what’s supposed to happen, or when, and I’m breathing fast, like I just ran laps around the racetrack. I’m hoping there’s a medic if something goes wrong.
“It takes a while to come on.” Wineman motions for me to follow him and leads me up to the stage. The Youngbloods are playing and the closer we get, the better they sound. As they play their hit “Get Together” I feel myself turning into Jell-O. Oozing towards nirvana. Jesse Colin Young plays his acoustic guitar and sings as if there’s no one else in the universe, just me and him. When we get to the stage, he’s only an arm’s length from me; there’s no guards, no fence. And he just smiles at me as he sings, “Love one another, right now...”
So I turn and look back at the infield audience. They’re all dancing and twirling, scarves flowing in the air, reflections, people slapping beach balls, sparkles, tossed Frisbees, vibrations. I’m walking on some
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other, spotlit planet...an electrified Mars.
The Army doesn’t exist. And then it slams right back at me as I think about that asshole Booth and how Sarge doesn’t let Booth rile him. It’s almost like he wants to out-nice Booth, so Booth will somehow grow into a better person. I need to be like Sarge, I need to be a better person. Get together, try to love one another right now. I can’t stop smiling. What do I normally do with my hands?
Wineman states the obvious. “Looks like you’re coming on.”
When I turn, he seems far away. My senses amplify. The music sounds ten times louder than it was a minute ago. The racetrack infield seems miles away. People rush around. Tie-dyed t-shirts explode like supernovas. I’m antsy, as if something’s about to go wrong and I can’t stop it. Could I possibly flunk the test?
White clouds in the sky resemble KKK hoods. Glancing at Wineman again, he appears even farther away than last time. I reach out with my hand, but he’s still right there; none of my senses seem trustworthy. I’m breathless.
A sudden image flashes through me. I’m a child, lost in the supermarket, teeming with anxiety, unable to find my mother. Terror overwhelms me. I pace endlessly, fearing for her, for myself, restless, scared. No one listens to my cries.
“I...I need to lie down.” I grab Wineman’s hand like I’m about to fall.
“It’s okay, I got ya. Let’s go back to the tent.” He walks me towards our infield campsite.
I’m not prepared to roam around inside my head like this. God knows I know all about obstacles and how to negotiate them, but I’ve got little knowledge or experience in how to deal with these bizarre sensations. Sarge says I’m lucky to have a good brain. I like that. I hope he’s right.
But I don’t feel like I’m ready for this LSD journey—especially alone. And no matter how tight I squeeze Wineman’s hand, I feel utterly alone. My throat thickens. I need to get away from the crowds. Dust soaks up the air as we shamble through the infield.
I look around at all the people, thinking about everyone I’ve lost: Mom, Dad, Greenie, Chicago friends, bandmates at the orphanage. All gone. Sometimes I wonder if I made them up.
Here’s Wineman with his Army haircut, and now I spot Cooper—the same. I try to look at myself objectively, like other people see me. What am I, but a skinny runt in a smelly, sweaty t-shirt, with my bald head circling a smart-ass brain that spits out cutting remarks? Sometimes I get a laugh, but I know I hurt people too. I think Booth
Song of the Whippoorwill-
Russ Doherty
needs hurting. Should I do that?
Why should Sarge help Booth? Why should Wineman calm me—by holding my hand? I need to be as kind as him. We must look weird.
We arrive at our tent, Cooper eyeing us suspiciously.
“Y’all holding hands now?” He laughs at us. “I knew doing acid was gonna make y’all wacky.”
“I’m nervous.” I rub tears off my face. “Maybe even scared.”
“Then it hits me. I’m nineteen, what the hell have I done with my life? Learn how to play drums and chase electrons? A ten-yearold can do that. Good God, Alexander the Great had conquered the known world at nineteen. I can’t even conquer my fears. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing to be scared about. Just enjoy the music, the people, the beautiful day,” Wineman instructs. I snort, thinking he’s made a pun about the band, It’s a Beautiful Day.
Then it hits me. I’m nineteen, what the hell have I done with my life? Learn how to play drums and chase electrons? A ten-yearold can do that. Good God, Alexander the Great had conquered the known world at nineteen. I can’t even conquer my fears. What’s wrong with me? Will I remember any of this? Probably too well.
What do I want to do with my life?
Am I asking too much?
My brain thumps.
My burnt forearm throbs.
I’ve always thought of fear as a cold sensation—shivers, goosebumps—and here I’m burning up. The heavy, moist air pulls
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40 beads of sweat down onto my eyes.
As I listen to the rhythms and chords and melodies coming from the stage, surrounding me, pulsing all of us, I wonder if I’ll survive this trip. I crawl into the tent on top of my sleeping bag and stare at the sunlight dancing outside.
Heat rises, intensifies, clarifies.
Fluorescent colors shapeshift—purple and neon green and magenta and lemon and fisheyes—and time drifts. Music becomes mystical. Small animals crawl across the tent top, bugs with hairs and snakes with limbs and breathing sticks and I vibrate into slumber. Time passes. It’s a Beautiful Day starts up again and calms me, just like last night.
The lilting violin echoes the whippoorwill.
Later, sunlight slips over the edge of the tent flap, falling fast, and I have a vision. There are many different layers of truth. Wineman said something about LSD allowing you to walk through the door of an alternate reality. In my new reality, I will be a better person.
The music dies, and crickets chirp, and bullfrogs croak. I smell burning sage.
Much later, congas awaken me, melodies soar and I hear the guitar of Carlos Santana.
My mind clears. I leave the tent in darkness by myself. It’s cooler and I walk toward the edge of the stage. Stars sprinkle the sky, arcing across the stage, an ending and a beginning.
There’s still no security. I lean on the wooden platform. Carlos, eyes closed, black vest over brown skin, plays his guitar five feet from me. His music rearranges my mind. His crying sound pulls me in. Has he lost a partner? His intensity convinces me to learn guitar, to learn these same notes, to transcend. It may take a while, but I’ll do it. My paranoia disappears. Fearing a bad trip, I had one anyway, yet now I’m energized. I’ve not only survived, but transformed.
Hallelujah.
What’s important in life? Doing great things or being a good person? The truth probably exists in some intersection of the two.
We leave the next day, Monday, without seeing the other groups perform.
Another six-hour drive back to Alabama, back to Redstone Arsenal, back to reality. It seems like forever since we left on Saturday. This wasn’t so much a pop festival, as a persona festival.
And I’ve found a new one.
Ten days until our final.
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ Doherty
During the technical part of our final, everyone seems overamped, hyper-tense. We know this is a tipping point. Each of us has to be certified, and promoted, or we’ll be tossed on the scrap heap and end up in an infantry outfit, slogging through rice paddies. We’ve finished the written part of the test, and everyone passed. The practice test Mr. Bradbury gave us proved invaluable.
Mr. Laws, Mr. Bradbury’s supervisor, lectures us on the integrity of the Army’s test process with his little Hitler mustache quivering. “Anyone caught cheating will flunk this class.”
We know from Mr. Laws’ earlier statements that he thinks we’re all cowards and deserve to go to ‘Nam. He pretends he’s better than everyone.
This hands-on, actual troubleshooting portion of the final will show whether or not we each have enough independent thinking to: 1) find the problem in the radar equipment and 2) recommend the correction steps to fix it.
I position myself in the middle of the pack, never wanting to go first or last. I got the highest grade on the written final, but Cooper volunteers to go first. Then it’ll be Wineman, and I’ll go third. The other guys will be in the middle with Booth and Sarge at the end. Even though they passed the written final, they got the two lowest scores.
Cooper overheard Mr. Bradbury telling Mr. Laws that he put the malfunction in the display system of the “acquisition” radar screen, the one that acquires—or tracks—the enemy’s airplanes. Cooper said he’ll talk out loud as he troubleshoots his way through the problem in the hope we can hear him from outside the radar equipment trailer.
I position myself by the open door of the trailer and listen as Cooper talks his way through the problem. Mr. Bradbury hovers inside, supposedly to keep each of us honest as we work through the problem. As Cooper goes through his radar checklist, he eliminates each one: “Site radar...check. Missile radar...check. Enemy tracking radar...enemy tracking...enemy radar doesn’t work...it’s the enemy radar display panel that’s not working.”
He pinpoints the correct circuit that needs to be fixed. Now I just have to wait my turn. I know I told myself during the acid trip I was going to be a better person, and this seems like cheating, but no way in hell am I going to Vietnam.
When I finish and pass the test, I realize maybe Booth and Sarge won’t go step-by-step like I did. They might give away that they know the answer already. Then, Booth does exactly that and Mr. Laws
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
flunks him. Booth starts screaming he wants a do-over. While he’s arguing with Mr. Laws, Sarge passes the test. So we only have one failure, but Booth hates that he could end up in the infantry after all the work he’s put in. My new better person self tells me not to smile at Booth’s demise.
Sarge says to me, “I feel sorry for Booth. He’s so hotheaded, I think ‘Nam won’t be good for him.”
Two days later, on graduation day, I’m stoked. I did exactly what I needed to do: pass my final tests and avoid Vietnam. And I’m about to get promoted.
I ask Sarge what’s happening with Booth and he says, “Booth already got orders for ‘Nam. He’s been posted to advanced weapons training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He needs to pack. Jenny got to move back home. Booth say he gonna write his congressman and complain.” Sarge rolls his eyes. Holy shit. Booth’s going to ‘Nam. He’s hosed.
I don’t see Desiree. “Is Desiree coming to graduation?”
“We getting married next week. She’s got shopping to do, but she might could make it yet. And I got posted to Hawaii. Desiree and me, we be over the moon going to Hawaii.”
God, that’s great for Sarge. Cooper gets Alaska, and Wineman and Jones get Germany.
Because I have the highest grade, Mr. Bradbury recommends I stay in Huntsville and go to the Radar Instructor’s School and become a teacher in the program. I say yes, but Mr. Laws doesn’t seem happy with me.
Chaos outside interrupts our graduation ceremony. Mr. Laws runs in and shouts that Booth—drunk—was racing on the highway and crashed. He and his wife died. I shiver.
My LSD sensitivity creeps back, everything sharper. I feel alone again as I rub my arm. Gloom rises...then silence, and tears.
What an omen, the sudden loss of Booth and his wife.
From now on, I need to make the right choices, every time, or my life could also end this abruptly.
Booth’s ghost appears down a long hallway, chugging Southern Comfort, cursing me. Could I have helped him pass the test and kept this from happening?
Mr. Laws cancels the planned graduation reception. Everyone starts leaving. Steve and Linda Jones offer their apartment to anyone who doesn’t want to go back to the barracks and be alone. That’s me.
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ Doherty
Cooper and Wineman also take them up on it. Sarge heads home to pick up Desiree.
Outside Jones’ apartment, we’re quiet as we walk up with a Schlitz six-pack and some Cheetos. Wineman and I rode over in Cooper’s VW, distraught that two people we’ve known for over a year are dead. “Jenny didn’t deserve to die,” Cooper remarks. The jury’s out on Booth.
Inside the apartment, Linda’s broken. I didn’t know she cared so much about Booth, or Jenny. Steve looks shellshocked, saying he just got a phone call from Mr. Bradbury.
He tells me, “Desiree’s car broke down on the highway. Booth spotted her and offered a lift. Booth was racing, over a hundred miles an hour, to bring her to the graduation ceremony. He lost control and hit a telephone pole. They died instantly.” Total silence.
Desiree’s dead. I’m stunned, unable to breathe.
Sarge will be devastated.
***
The following week, I can’t sleep at night or concentrate at the Radar Instructor’s School. My brain ticks like a clock, moving through waves of false memory, where only good things happen, not the terrible things of my actual life: lousy acid and death and bad choices without redemption. Each morning, I listen to the motorized sounds of the Army base waking up and wonder how I’m going to make it through another day.
Halfway through that first week of instructor’s school, I lean against the electronic test circuit and electrocute myself again, ending up in the clinic. Was it on purpose? I don’t know.
I don’t seem to care what I’m doing.
Mr. Laws decides I’m a liability and cuts me from the program. I get new orders. For the rest of my time in the Army—eighteen months—I’m assigned to a radar repair site in Rhineland, Germany. The real world slaps me in the face. ***
Later, at the memorial for Desiree, Sarge laments, “She was my everything.” He hesitates, looks away. “I’m not taking my Hawaii assignment. I’m gonna be a chopper pilot in Vietnam.”
No way. He seems defeated, like nothing he’s tried in his life has gotten him anywhere except inside a living hell. Not at all the person I knew, now with dull eyes, talking in a monotone, shuffling footsteps. I’m afraid for his future.
39.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
The funeral home quiets. “Sarge, the average life of a chopper pilot in ‘Nam can be measured in weeks. You sure you wanna do this? It sounds like suicide.”
“Paddy, ain’t nothing gonna happen to me that won’t be a release.” He steadies himself, salutes me and slumps away past the other mourners, ignoring their words of sympathy.
“At the end, we’re all just as alone as I was on that acid trip. There’s only darkness and emptiness and misunderstanding of the choices available. You just gotta hope someone offers you a hand.”
I follow him down to the doorway. “Sarge, I’m sure Desiree would want you to live.”
“She’s the smartest person I knew. Told me I’d be good at anything. Well, I’m gonna either help guys in ‘Nam or meet up with Desiree in heaven.” He’s crying.
He looks more like a dead man than any dead person I’ve ever seen.
His plans scare me. Hopefully, my future in Germany will work out better.
On a too-warm Alabama evening, the owls and lesser nighthawks hover around, hooting and hunting, searching for food, trying to stay alive. The smells of wet earth and pine trees fill the air as the sky turns first red, then purple, and I wonder why anyone would choose death over life. We’re all going to die. But why would you push
Song of the Whippoorwill- Russ Doherty
it? We already die mentally many times over before we ever face the final sleep.
The song of the whippoorwill, crying for his dead partner, haunts the night.
At the end, we’re all just as alone as I was on that acid trip. There’s only darkness and emptiness and misunderstanding of the choices available. You just gotta hope someone offers you a hand.
The Pain Is Only Temporary
Lela Cermin
I’ve walked this street hundreds of times, maybe even thousands, but I can’t figure out where the fuck anything is because the thing about immortality is that everything changes except you.
I’m near Spring, but where the printing shop used to be there is salad, only salad. I walked past a FedEx on my way here, but I remembered the bitter smell of warm glue and fresh pages, hot off the printer, from this mom-and-pop shop, run by an Italian mother and her son; while he was in the front greeting customers, all chipped gold and combover, she sat quietly in the back, reading glasses on, handling the paperwork, keeping the business afloat, letting her son shine. I remembered how she looked at him while she sat there. Like all his gold was real.
But now there is Just Salad.
The printing shop probably closed decades ago; I can’t place how long it’s actually been. I think they knew me as Jennifer, but I can’t remember which era that was. I stopped trying to be only one name long ago, instead began having fun and just saying whatever came to mind. Somehow this practice is easier than trying to remember which name I’ve chosen to pretend is mine.
I was born in New York and have called it home for the last
The Pain Is Only Temporary - Lela Cermin
three hundred years because they mind their fucking business. People don’t ask, don’t investigate; see something and don’t say something. The odds of running into the same person are slim to none (it’s only happened to me twice in three centuries, and both times, naturally, it was an ex-lover). I’ve lived in the same apartment for a hundred and twenty years; my landlord met me once and never bothered me again. The new landlord, his grandson, took over last year and assumed I inherited it from my grandmother.
I schlep back to the FedEx and print fifty copies of my flyers. I begin pasting them up on my walk home, one ad amongst a mosaic of others, taped over the top of calling cards of struggling musicians and small-time pot dealers.
“HELP NEEDED,” it reads.
One-time service of a supernatural variety. Must be able to handle blood. Medical experience & loose religious qualms preferred. If interested, come to 122 Forsyth at 12:30 p.m. on October 3. PAID.
At 12:34, there is a knock on my door, the first and only.
But I only need one.
When I open it, I see a sprite of a girl, a petite brunette with wide blue eyes. Dancers’ arms. Not as muscular as I would’ve preferred, but a dancer would see the job through; a dancer wouldn’t know how to quit.
She has the flyer clutched in her fist. “I’m here about the ad?”
“Come in, please.” I usher her past me, into my living room.
“Thank you for having me... ?”
“Marcia,” I fill in the blank. Fuck.
I’m wildly off on my decade, but it just popped out. Names were cyclical anyway, like every other trend. How many Mabels and Ethels and Gertrudes had I met in the last decade, names I hadn’t heard for at least a hundred years?
“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever met a young Marcia.”
“How funny,” I say. I show her to my couch. I had been tempted to cover it in plastic, just for the performance value of it all, but I had left its usual tartan exposed. “And you are?”
“I’m Edith.”
I smile through gritted teeth. “What a lovely name.”
She shifts on the couch. It crosses her face for only an instant, but I can tell she hates the tartan.
“Edith, do you have any medical experience?”
“I dissected a frog in fifth grade—”
“Okay, none. What are your religious beliefs?”
“Jewish, but I believe in Jesus.”
“So...Christian?”
“I consider it more Jewish-adjacent.”
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
“Yes.”
“What are those beliefs, specifically?”
“You mean, like, what do I think happens when we die?”
“Precisely.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, no one is sure.”
“I don’t think it’ll be so much of a physical place as an emotional one.”
I lean forward. “Elaborate.”
“I think it’s like the first bite you take after making a family recipe for the first time all on your own, and you’ve nailed it. I think it’s like the train ride home after a long, long day at work. I think—”
“The local or the express?” I interject.
“The express, duh.” She says it like a teenager.
I smile. “Continue, sorry.”
“I was just going to say I think when you let go, you don’t fall.”
“So you don’t believe in hell, then?”
“I don’t think there’s a designated place. I do believe in karma, though. So however you’re punished on Earth during your life, it’s the same sort of punishment over there. But—”
“Emotionally.”
“Exactly.”
“Jewish-Christian-Buddhist, huh?”
She smiles. “I said adjacent.”
“The pay is fifty thousand dollars. If you want it, the job’s yours.”
Her jaw drops. “Are we burying a body?”
“Close,” I lean in. “Edith, I want to die.”
Her eyes lock onto mine in shock. “Aren’t there clinics for that?” she whispers.
I laugh. “Those aren’t...quite what I’m looking for.”
She rereads the flyer. “Ah. The loose religious qualms make sense now.” She uncrosses her legs; her feet begin to tap. “I don’t know if I can help someone kill themselves. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel. But there’s still a tunnel.”
“What if there was only tunnel?”
She sits up. “What do you mean?”
“Are you taking the job?”
She nods, just slightly.
“I’ve been alive for three hundred years. I can’t die.”
She doesn’t laugh. She looks at me with tight lips, thinking. “That’s impossible.”
“I assure you, it’s not.”
“When were you born?”
The Pain Is Only Temporary - Lela Cermin
“1724. I just celebrated my tricentennial last month. But I was immortalized at twenty-five, so even though I look amazing, I’m bound to feel existential dread for eternity.”
She smiles at that one, smiles amidst everything she is learning. I hand her a knife from my block, a chef’s knife, the one I use to chop onions and core cauliflower. She tries to argue, but before she can get out a full word of protest, I walk into it.
Horrified, she watches as the knife slides into my lower stomach, as smooth as butter melting on a hot skillet.
“I was born in New York and have called it home for the last three hundred years because they mind their fucking business. People don’t ask, don’t investigate; see something and don’t say something. The odds of running into the same person are slim to none (it’s only happened to me twice in three centuries, and both times, naturally, it was an ex-lover).”
I back myself off the knife and lift my shirt, where the fibers of my skin are stitching themselves up, sealing the wound. I glance at her. “We’re gonna have to be creative here. How strong is your stomach?”
Method #1: Quick & Easy
“I don’t think I can do this,” Edith tells me. “I’ve been shot before. I’m fairly confident gunshots don’t do it.”
“Fairly?”
I shrug. “My body kinda...spits it back out.”
“And if it doesn’t, then I’m left with a dead body.”
“Not my problem.”
She gapes at me, not hearing my sarcasm.
“Have you never buried a body before?”
“No!” she yells.
“No one will be looking for me. I don’t even exist, legally. You’ll be fine.”
A smoking bang goes off as Edith pulls the trigger and lodges a bullet in my brain.
I fall to the floor. I can feel how dramatically I have fallen, how my limbs are splayed out. It feels excessive.
Two minutes later, the bullet clangs on the floor beside me as my brain rebuilds itself.
“Whatever happened to a fucking countdown?” I groan.
“I had to just do it, I’m sorry.”
I sit up. “Okay, well. Shall we move on?”
Edith approaches and gingerly reaches out for my scalp. Her fingers are ice, a soothing cold compress. I lift my hair for her. “See? Nothing.”
“It’s...unbelievable.”
“That bitch did her job well.”
“Who?”
“The one who gave me eternal life.”
“And it doesn’t hurt?”
“I have a headache, probably will for a little while. It won’t last.”
“Do you need some Tylenol or something?”
I glare at her. “Each little neuron has to reattach itself.”
“Extra Strength Tylenol?”
“Let’s just move on.”
“Okay,” Edith says. I can’t help but notice a sudden excitement in her eyes, blue as a newfound fire. “What’s next?”
Method #2: Extra Crispy
“When do I put it out?” Edith holds the fireproof blanket away from her like it is already on fire. “When you’re medium-well or welldone?”
“I think I’ll know before that point.”
She douses me in kerosene over the tarp I have laid down. I can’t stand the smell, the thought of it lingering.
She lights a match and flicks it on me.
The fire ignites the kerosene, but it does not ignite me. It is like
my skin is coated in a layer of blubber, inflammable whale fat. The fire surrounds me like an aura; it does not penetrate past.
I stand still for two minutes. I do not move or scream or roll. Not even my hair burns.
She wraps the blanket over me, dampening the flames; I am hurtled back to my childhood, eons ago, my mother wrapping a stiff wool blanket around my shoulders when I caught a cold. It is rare I am ever reminded of my first twenty-five years so viscerally.
She sits across from me. I notice a bead of sweat on her forehead from being close to my flames. I am as temperate as ever.
“Why do you want to die?” she asks quietly.
The blanket smells of burnt rubber as I answer, “I cannot stand the idea that there might be only better things beyond the threshold.”
“What if there’s worse?”
“Even if it’s worse. I just want to know.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she recites. “Literally.”
“There’s another part to that quote that everyone forgets: ‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.’”
I can tell she doesn’t fully understand. Why should she?
“I just want to know,” I repeat.
Method #3: Soggy Bread
Edith flicks her hand in the tub water. “Too warm?”
I place my hand inside, and can’t tell where the water starts. “Perfect.”
I get on my knees.
“I was hoping to add this to my resume,” I hear Edith mutter.
“I don’t see why you can’t. Under ‘Skills,’ just put ‘problemsolving.’”
She looks at me, annoyed, and then shoves my head underwater. The world record for holding your breath was twenty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
The world record, minus me.
Normally in this situation, the person with their head underwater struggles, fighting for their breath. I lay there with my eyes open, staring at the bottom of my ceramic tub.
My lungs begin to burn, like a balloon leaking out air, but before it can empty itself out into a withery, floppy thing, it stops. The leak plugs itself, and I feel a reserve of air flowing through my system, of the same lesser quality as recycled oxygen on an airplane.
It is uncomfortable, but definitely, cruelly survivable.
I tap her on the hand.
“It’s only been three minutes,” she says.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
“You could hold me there for thirty. It wouldn’t make a difference.”
I wipe my face off with a towel. “I would’ve guessed this one would kill me. This is how the witch who did this to me died, a victim of ‘drown if you’re not, die if you are,’ that genius method.”
“An actual witch?”
My mother had urged me to stay away from her, the local pariah,
“I get on my knees before her and am hit with a sweeping sense of déjà vu. Had I been executed in a past life, prior to this eons-long one? Had I been Anne Boleyn? Was I fucking with the system, staying in this body forever? Was I fucking over everyone I would’ve become?”
Eve. She warned, “That she shares the name of the first woman, God’s first daughter, is blasphemy.”
But it was too late.
I can’t tell if I was bewitched or just loved a witch; I can’t remember anymore if I asked for it or if she offered.
All I remember is being beside her at the lake, the water still. The frost was closing in on the water, freezing it from the outside in, but her shoulder was warm against my cheek.
“There is one caveat,” she informed, her voice silky, slinking like an eel. “You can never know what lies on the other side.”
“You mean, die?” I reiterated with a mocking laugh.
“In simple terms.”
Wasn’t that implied in an offer of immortality?
The Pain Is Only Temporary - Lela Cermin
“You will never know what happens after this life. Whether there is a life beyond or not, what it might look like. What your soul and spirit become, all the potential enlightenment you might reach. You’re ready to sacrifice that?”
I didn’t think about it long enough. I took that moment, the moment she gave me an out, for granted.
I was a child, although technically my brain had fully formed by then. I had lived twenty-five measly years; what did I know?
“Yes,” I consented.
I never guessed, never imagined, that one day I would grow tired and lonely and curious, so aggressively curious.
I’ve convinced myself now there must be something, something great; why else would Eve have phrased it like that, like it was some grand sacrifice?
After all, she never made herself immortal.
She placed a hand over my heart and I felt it sear until it hardened into a lead weight, crushing me from inside out, setting in like the frost.
“The pain is only temporary,” she said.
Method #4: Honey, I Think I Lost My Head
“I might gag,” Edith cautions.
“That’s fine. So long as you aim away from me. I don’t need vomit getting stuck in my neck tendons when my head inevitably reattaches itself.”
“I can’t imagine your immortality reaches...this far.”
“Well, ideally, it won’t.”
I offer her two choices: butcher’s cleaver or executioner’s axe.
She weighs both in each hand, practicing her grip. She returns the cleaver back to me.
“You really want to die.”
“What gave it away?”
She sits down. The plastic of the couch crinkles underneath her; I’ve decided to cover it anyway, so my spurting blood won’t stain the tartan.
“It’s most people’s biggest fear,” she notes.
“Is it yours?”
“By default. The unknown, I guess.”
“Or is it because you have no choice?” I probe.
“You don’t either.”
“Wanna trade?”
“I don’t think I’d trade death for life. I just don’t think I’ll ever be ready for it.”
I get on my knees before her and am hit with a sweeping sense of déjà vu. Had I been executed in a past life, prior to this eons-long one? Had I been Anne Boleyn? Was I fucking with the system, staying in this body forever? Was I fucking over everyone I would’ve become?
She swings the axe over her head and brings it down, severing my head so efficiently the axe blade becomes lodged in my wood floor.
I feel my tissues search, yearning to be reunited. I fit myself together until I am whole once more, but it still feels like a sinew is out of place.
Method #5: It’s Much Harder Than Cartoons Make It Look to Cut Someone Clean in Half
She uses the same axe. I had it sharpened prior so I should crack under it easily, my skull fracturing like a walnut shell.
She is to cut me straight down the middle. She’s shorter than me, so she stands on my couch, her feet sinking into the cushions.
She holds the axe high above her head again; I see her biceps, defined. It must feel good, using all that untapped strength.
I’d stopped believing in the heaven I’d been raised with long ago. But that didn’t mean I was right. It didn’t mean I was wrong, either. That stupid cat would exist in both states until I opened the goddamn box, but the box wouldn’t open.
Do we bounce around on clouds, sustaining ourselves only on joy? Do we look down, amused at our singular life, wisdom accumulating in our soul with each life lived, each tiny perspective painting a bigger portrait of enlightenment?
Two Ediths appear suddenly as my vision splits, but as my body retethers itself, the Ediths merge back into the one.
“Yee-ouch,” she exclaims. “That looked like it hurt.”
I grimace. My headache has been compounded, and now I have a bizarre stomachache. “I’ll be—”
“I know, I know. The pain is only temporary.”
I look at her. “Seeing as neither of us are dying anytime soon, do you want to spend the night?”
Method #6: Any Service Around Here?
“You don’t have to stick around for this one,” I offer. “This one will take at least a week.”
“For 50K? Honey, I’ll stay a whole month.”
I smile. “Ah, I get it now. You’re a harlot.”
The
Pain Is Only Temporary - Lela Cermin
“Your 1724 is showing. And no, I’m not a sex worker. I just wanted to see what it was like, sleeping with a zombie.”
“I don’t think I qualify as the undead.”
“I mean, that’s exactly what I’d qualify you as.”
“You’re like Tantalus,” she’d said the night before, my oxblood sheets pulled up to cover her, the same color as the burgeoning hickey on her neck.
“Tantalus... Remind me.”
“It’s a Greek myth. Zeus punished him to always be hungry and thirsty, but sentenced him to a place where he stands in water and has a fruit tree dangle above him. He can never reach either, but he always wants them. It’s where we get the word ‘tantalizing’ from. Something you want but can’t have.”
I liked the way she told stories, the way she gently unpeeled them for me.
“Heaven is your grape.”
On the fifth day, she calls it. “Water,” she says. “Survived.”
On the ninetieth day, she kisses me. “Food,” she says. “Survived.”
I collapse into her arms, those dancer’s arms. I am definitely weaker; I might faint, but I won’t die.
My first meal after my starvation period is a bowl of purple grapes; I’ve been craving them the entire time, ever since our first night together. They burst in my mouth perfectly. I feel better, comforted. At least I got to reach literal grapes.
“I’m sorry. I tried really hard to kill you.”
“I love you regardless.”
“I’ll haunt you,” she assures. “I’ll push glasses off counters, explode lightbulbs. I’ll terrify you to the best of my supernatural ability. I’ll write you love letters through a Ouija board.”
“Thank you.” Then, hesitatingly, I add, “Will you also tell me what it’s like?”
Method #7: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
We are lying in our bed. The house is mostly the same as when Edith first knocked on my door sixty years ago, except for the tartan couch. She had it reupholstered in light blue, dotted with tiny white polka dots.
She is eighty-seven. I am still twenty-five.
“Edith’s an old lady name,” I tease.
“A self-fulfilling prophecy,” she wheezes. “What was your name?” Her voice had first begun to tremor five years ago, but now it shakes
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
like an earthquake. “Your first, I mean.”
It is a barely flickering bulb I have to pull from the depths of my darkened memory, trudging past all the people I have been to find the person I once was.
“Constance,” I whisper.
“An old lady name.”
A smile twitches at my lips.
“Constance,” she repeats. “I’ll remember that.”
Will you? I think. Will you please?
“Edith,” I whisper in her ear. “Remember to tell me what it’s like.”
It is small, but she nods. I hold her papery hand, run my fingers over her bulbous blue veins. She is already starting to grow cold, her body leaving before her soul.
“I’m ready.”
“Take me with you,” I say to the ceiling. The words reverberate silently back to me, a soundless, unanswered echo.
Her blue eyes close, their fire burnt out, and she is gone, to that place I cannot follow.
If I rip out my heart, sauté it in an olive-oiled pan with a clove of garlic, onions, peppers, mushrooms, a sprinkle of thyme, dice it into neat cubes and eat it, will it reappear in my chest like Prometheus’ liver? Do I even need organs? Where did Eve lay that golden curse upon me? Where?
It is clear now I will be here when the world burns, when the sun explodes in a fiery, all-consuming combustion. Surely then, under that iron-melting heat, I will burn.
Would my skin regrow on my charred bones like moss? Will I emerge from my own ashes?
I’d always thought of phoenixes as triumphant, their resilience defiant. But what if they hadn’t wanted to come back each time?
I’m not leaving, Edith had said on her seventieth birthday. You’re staying behind.
I burn her in the evening; the flames have no issue reaching her. I burn her until she is ash; I claw at my self-suturing skin, fruitlessly.
Maybe death does feel like the train ride home, and on the other side of the express (not the local), Edith waits for me. Maybe.
I wouldn’t know.
The Blue Ox
Kari Wergeland
Lucinda and her fiancé, Sam, were driving a scenic stretch of Highway 101, north of Arcata. This after hunkering down in two Victorian homes in two vintage towns, retrofitted for the tourist industry. The battery fueled by their attraction was alive once more, albeit with a medium signal. Sam at the wheel. Lucinda in the passenger seat, sipping coffee from a travel mug. Every so often, she suggested he stop at a wayside. He humored her request roughly sixty percent of the time. She now had a nice photo stream on her phone, one she fired off to family members who remembered this drive. This journey rested inside her DNA.
At the next viewpoint, she found someone willing to take pictures of the two of them. The photos made them look happy to be on the road, happy to stand together before the Pacific Ocean. Any bystander watching could imagine where they were headed next. After they returned to their neo-VW bug, Sam nosed the yellow car back onto the highway.
She looked his way, noticing the expression beneath his mop of
Winter 2009
wavy brown hair was unfaltering. Not cheerful, but not unhappy? She thought she should probably wait till the corners of his mouth lifted into a ready smile, but she couldn’t help herself. “Mom keeps asking... When’s the wedding?”
“Do we have to have a big one?” Sam kept his eyes on the wet road before them.
“She’s looking forward to this.” And so was Lucinda. But she didn’t want Sam to know how much. Because Barbie dreams had been rising, followed by big doses of embarrassment. These musings moved in after Sam gave her the ring, after she and Sam came up with this plan to celebrate their impending nuptials during winter break. Santa Rosa to Port Angeles. Ultimately, Victoria.
The viewpoints were helping them become more romantic, she decided. They’d started out that way. Hotter in the sack than most fledgling couples. Their connection had been so surprising, she’d allowed the tango to barrel into an adventure for two, a series of adventures, really. Sometime later, they figured it would be crazy not to save money by sharing a place. More time passed, and she’d watched a certain “daily-ness” blunt the electricity that had once sparked between them. She’d been noticing how Sam tended to create his own character. As they went about their lives, he stuffed her into the role.
For example, Sam was big on wine. This was fair. Wine was an easy pastime to enjoy in Sonoma County where they shared the condo that had once been his. She didn’t mind drinking with Sam, but she had no interest in the ceremony wine connoisseurs cherished. Though she’d tried to signal her feelings on the matter in a number of ways, he continued pushing her into being an interested participant.
“What do you think of the bouquet, Cindy?” he would ask, handing her a glass from which he’d just sipped. “Give me some adjectives.”
She went along with him because he was excited about his evergrowing knowledge of California wines. She decided some effort in this regard was part of the compromise she was making to keep their relationship whole. Though, sometimes, she allowed her irritation to show, suggesting she had other priorities for her free time—suggesting she could be satisfied with the latest four-dollar special at Trader Joe’s. Yet Sam continued to treat her as if she was as excited about winetasting as he was.
If he happened to invite someone to come along with them, he’d openly boast, “Cindy and I just love hunting for that special bottle.” She never had the heart to point out how she could be perfectly happy drinking cheap wine from a paper cup without saying a damn thing about the five S’s, which she couldn’t help but rattle off in her
The Blue Ox - Kari Wergeland
head: sight, swirl, sniff, sip, savor.
She glanced over at Sam, sighing on the inside. The whole ritual meant so much to him, she would keep working on her S’s. She did hope their new rings and the adjective, betrothed—not to mention this celebratory trip—would reignite the chemistry that had brought them together in the first place. She wanted them to regroup, get to know each other beneath the surface, so their marriage would become a communion. And she wanted a fabulous wedding, with all their friends on hand to dance right along with them.
She considered stories she’d created as a kid, when she owned Wedding Party Barbie and SuperStar Ken. She’d acted out one wedding after the next. Russian Barbie, Indian Barbie and African American Ken were always special guests at the big event. This thought made her grin at the trees to her right.
When Sam finally proposed, memories of this childhood play immediately surfaced. She felt so happy! Lying awake at night to the sound of his snoring, she admitted something to herself. She wanted the whole show! She wanted the gown, the flowers, a shower, the cake, something blue (all those goofy rituals). And she wanted the most remarkable honeymoon they could come up with.
She was pretty sure Sam would be surprised by this hidden facet of her psyche. He could call her a feminist without sounding snide. “That’s what I love about you,” he once said. “You aren’t pushing me to be a provider.”
Sam saw himself as a free spirit who defied convention. This side of him spoke to the free spirit in her, which was another reason they were such a good match. She silently ticked off more reasons. They were both into the outdoors. They both liked to travel. Sam had a good job—like her. He was a community college instructor—like her. That was how they’d met.
“I can’t wait to see Butchart Gardens,” she said.
“It won’t be blooming this time of year.”
“They make it festive for the holidays,” she countered. “Don’t be gloomy.”
It had been raining off and on, though the skies in Mendocino had been nothing short of glorious. In that quaint village, they’d strolled the bluff above the sea and spent way too much money on meals and drinks. Last night’s dinner in Eureka had cost them even more. That was okay, she thought. They could catch up on their credit card bill when they got back to Santa Rosa.
Sam steered the car away from dramatic waves and twisted into forests—then pastures—then forests, which gave the day a dusky feel. It was like they were moving through a set of curvy tunnels and
nothing else existed. There were some small towns. The Yurok Tribe lived around here. Lucinda was more familiar with the region than her beau, though he was a California boy, born and bred. She was from Washington State. When she was a girl, her family used to make this trip every year. Memories of that time had been moving alongside the car.
“What are you most excited about?” she asked. Florence, Oregon was next. They were planning to spend two nights with her brother, Jack.
“I don’t know...”
“You don’t know?”
“Olympic National Park?”
They’d already checked out a few attractions. There was the Avenue of the Giants. There was the drive-through tree. There was the world-famous Gravity House at Confusion Hill where one could “experience optical contradictions and odd physical sensations that are truly CONFUSING!” There was the life-sized sculpture of Bigfoot. She wasn’t sure how anyone could verify the authenticity of the replica, though the creature did look believable. She’d always wanted Bigfoot to be real. When she confessed this to Sam, he snorted, “It’s a fairy tale.” She’d squelched a hurt feeling by attempting to be mesmerized by the trees.
“We need to figure out what to do tomorrow,” she reminded him. “When we’re visiting Jack.”
Her fiancé managed a “sure,” prompting her to reach into the bag at her feet for an inked-up guidebook.
“Old Town is nice,” she said, after reading a bit.
Sam didn’t answer.
She was thinking she should get the two men to hike around Heceta Head—up to the lighthouse and over the hill through the Sitka spruces, and then on to the Hobbit Trail, which led down to a pristine beach. That had been her favorite outing when she was a little kid. She hadn’t done it in years.
“Jack said we could rent a dune buggy,” Sam suggested, glancing her way.
“If that’s what you want to do...”
“Why do you always find ways to make me feel guilty about the stuff I like?” he asked.
“Dune buggies aren’t my thing,” she pointed out.
“Then maybe you could shop in Old Town while Jack and I get out on the dunes.”
She felt a dense sensation rising from her belly, one she tried to
The Blue Ox - Kari Wergeland
ignore. That he wanted to do something she didn’t wasn’t a surprise. But this was the first time he’d suggested leaving her out.
“The purpose of this trip was for us to spend time together.”
“Which we’ve been doing for four days.” Sam took a sip from his water bottle. “I’m not interested in Old Town. You’re not interested in dune buggies. It wouldn’t hurt to take a break.”
The sensation broke open, and she felt wounded. She hated feeling like this! And she didn’t want to ride in a damn dune buggy. Yet Jack was her brother, and she hadn’t seen him in a year. “I’ll take the dune buggy ride,” she conceded.
“Yes, Lucinda reminded herself, she’d chosen to date him, because they had so much in common. Though she certainly hadn’t ignored how well he could model REI gear with that sculpted body of his... The two of them shared an employer, and plenty of work gossip. They had backpacked in Point Reyes National Seashore. They’d spent winter weekends in Tahoe. She’d been feeling so lucky. But now that they were engaged, she
was experiencing mild desperation.”
He looked at her pointedly and then back at road. “You know you don’t want to.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“You said so yesterday—you don’t find dune buggies compelling.”
“I was hoping to hike near Heceta Head,” she interjected.
“Well, I’m not in a hiking mood.”
“So it’s a dune buggy ride. That’s all?”
“It’s been go go go, ever since we left,” he whined.
“That’s the point of travel!”
She wondered if he was enjoying this drive that had been such a family favorite. The road trip had become even more fun as her family
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
went through the same old ritual on subsequent trips. All their favorite places.
“I’m just saying...” He glanced her way.
“You want a break from me,” she cut in.
“That’s not what I said,” he replied, not bothering to cover his annoyance.
“But I really wanted...”
“Maybe Jack will hike this Hobbit Trail with you. Like you did when you were kids.”
The night before, she’d gone over the memory with Sam, thinking he’d be tempted to get out on the trail and share it with her. Because she and Jack had once been ecstatic on the Hobbit Trail, pretending they were real hobbits running away from huge and terrible spiders. Trees and shrubs arced over the path. Uncovered roots on the trail had threatened to trip them. They’d raced through the trees like crazy, looking back over their shoulders every so often to make sure they were outrunning the giant spiders. When they finally hit the beach, they knew they were safe. Those ugly spiders didn’t like the open air, the bright sun or the sandy shore where none could hide.
“Sam, I want to hike the Hobbit Trail with you.”
He did not answer.
She focused on the guidebook, trying not to notice how her throat was constricting. There must be something else, she thought. “How about the Sweet Creek Trail?” she asked.
“This is a road trip, not a trek.”
“It was just a thought.”
“I choose dune buggy.”
“It’s like this at home,” she said abruptly.
“Like what?”
“You really don’t see me.”
“You’ve got blonde hair and blue eyes, double pierces in each ear through which you’ve affixed silver earrings. You’ve got a tattoo of a sand dollar on the inside of your right forearm. You are wearing a cable-knit sweater...”
“You don’t know what makes me feel hot.”
“I thought I had that part down,” he smirked.
“I’m not talking about sex.”
“What else is there?”
Though he’d made this comment in a way that suggested he was trying to be funny, the comeback pushed her focus to the same place in the road that held his gaze.
“There’s a lot of things,” she finally said.
“I’m not a mind reader, Cindy.”
“Sam, I’ve been giving you some pretty big clues.”
He looked at her. “Like what?”
“What it would take for me to be happier.”
The Blue Ox - Kari Wergeland
“You’d be happier if you didn’t take the dune buggy ride!”
Now she was pissed.
“I even suggested you might like that time to shop in Old Town,” he added. “That means I was thinking about your needs.”
“What about us?”
“What’s wrong with us? That’s the question. You think something is wrong.” He tried to make eye contact, but she refused to look his way. “We have everything, Lucinda.”
“Maybe you have everything, but I need something to change.”
“Which is what I don’t get!”
“Never mind,” she sighed. “Jack enjoys the dunes. I can hang out in Old Town.”
The intermittent drops on the windshield were multiplying and Sam turned up the wipers.
Yes, Lucinda reminded herself, she’d chosen to date him, because they had so much in common. Though she certainly hadn’t ignored how well he could model REI gear with that sculpted body of his. Sam wasn’t macho, but he was strong and sexy. The two of them shared an employer, and plenty of work gossip. They had backpacked in Point Reyes National Seashore. They’d spent winter weekends in Tahoe. She’d been feeling so lucky. But now that they were engaged, she was experiencing mild desperation.
In Mendocino, she had initiated a discussion centered on family, how they could set up theirs. This was a topic Sam eschewed. He liked things the way they were, he insisted. Well, okay, children weren’t everything. She hadn’t found it too difficult to shrug off the idea. But if they weren’t going to have children, she wanted to develop her career.
“That would be stupid,” he’d shot back as they’d cuddled together. “You wouldn’t make that much more money, and we wouldn’t have our breaks off together.” She started to protest, but he cut her off. “That was the whole reason we went into this field.”
“I went into teaching to help others!”
“Well, so did I.” he replied, sounding huffy.
“I just think I could do more as a dean,” she explained. “We’ve got to get people reading and writing again.”
Their colleague, June, came to mind. June was an older English instructor who always took the creative writing sections. The venerable teacher had been encouraging her to try for interim dean. “Arts and humanities need you, Lucinda! We need a new vision.” As she rewound the scene in her mind, an image of Sam frowning at the TV held her brain on pause. He’d said, “So you set up some cutting-edge program that makes you look good. Meanwhile, the students remain as they always were.”
“That’s cynical.”
He shrugged, and she’d wanted to come back at him—
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
challenge him over how he never supported anything that mattered to her. But then she thought, Lighten up. He just wants to be with you on the breaks. They did have a sweet deal. They’d said that out loud to each other. And here they were together on winter break—driving her favorite highway on the entire planet.
“Trees of Mystery?” Sam asked.
She looked out the window at the roadside attraction. “I used to love this place,” she laughed as he turned into the parking lot.
A stab of happiness came over her as they got out of the car
“Her head jerked up. Paul must have heard what she said—or someone playing the lumberjack had heard. Oh yeah! She’d forgotten about this mechanized side of the statue. The giant could talk and move. He’d chatted with her family when she was a little girl.”
and strolled up to the strapping, forty-nine-foot statue of Paul Bunyan, one that could only be described as manly. Babe, the Great Blue Ox, stood silently by his side. The two mega-statues were painted with bright colors. Paul wore a red shirt, blue jeans and massive brown work boots. He sported the sort of beard Lucinda admired—very appealing! Babe was light blue with a brown nose, white horns and a white belly. Adorable!
Lucinda knew the folk characters jumped out at cars zipping along the highway, because her family had never failed to turn and stare. “There’s Paul Bunyan,” her father used to say. “And there’s Babe, the Great Blue Ox,” her mother chimed in.
She caught sight of the ox’s virility. “Man, oh man,” she bantered at her man. “Does Babe have a pair!” Her Ken doll had been pretty flat down there, but the state of Babe’s masculinity was not in question.
“Cindy...” Sam reproached. Though he sort of smiled. Then
The Blue Ox - Kari Wergeland
he said, “Paul’s boots must be about ten feet high.” This line made her feel better because he was finally being playful.
“Yes, that axe there is about twenty-four feet long...” She grinned back at her fiancé. “They just don’t make men like this nowadays.”
“Hey there, little lady!”
Her head jerked up. Paul must have heard what she said—or someone playing the lumberjack had heard. Oh yeah! She’d forgotten about this mechanized side of the statue. The giant could talk and move. He’d chatted with her family when she was a little girl.
“Yes, you there—in the violet raincoat,” Paul called out.
She studied his lips but could see no evidence that he’d spoken. “Me?” she finally asked, pointing at her chest.
“It’s a good thing I’m already married to Mrs. Bunyan!” the lumberjack cackled.
Paul’s lips did not move. But someone was watching them. Someone was talking to her. “Are you from around here, little lady?”
“No she isn’t.” Sam said loudly. “Let’s hike the trail, Lucinda. Isn’t there a museum?”
“Wait,” she insisted, touching Sam’s arm. She studied the giant’s big black eyebrows. They didn’t move, either. “We’re from Santa Rosa.”
“I stopped for ale in that township after finishing up the Grand Canyon,” Paul revealed. “Do you know about our Skytrail?”
Was this guy inside of Paul—or was he sitting over there in that complex, enjoying the fun?
“You are awfully cute!” the big logger added.
“Do you want to see this place or not?” Sam demanded.
“Please, little lady,” Paul urged. “Stop and see the trees! The Trees of Mys-ter-eee.”
“You’re certainly no poet!” Sam scowled. “And she’s not a little lady.”
“She looks pretty little to me.”
Lucinda giggled, before catching Sam’s expression. Tension was all that seemed to be holding him together. “Sam? Are you all right?”
He motioned at Paul. “He’s a jerk!”
“Little man...” Paul retorted.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous?” she said in a half-joking tone, turning to her fiancé.
Sam did not smile.”
“You are!”
“This here is Babe,” Paul interrupted. “The Blue Ox. I know,” Lucinda answered. “My mom used to read stories about you two.”
“Babe was born during the Winter of Blue Snow,” Paul said soulfully.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
She caught Sam’s eye. “He is poetic.”
“Cindy... C’mon we need to...”
“Now don’t get too close to the Blue Ox, Sir. You never know...”
“Will you shut up?”
“Where’d did you find this guy?” the logger asked.
“He is definitely a spoilsport,” she agreed, before turning her attention to the big blue ox. “Pleased to meet you, Babe.”
“Did you know Babe likes three wagon-loads of turnips for dessert?”
“Wow!” she exclaimed.
“Lucinda, I’m done!” Sam turned back to the car, but she remained there, squarely in front of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Great Blue Ox. Paul gave Sam the royal wave with his huge, huge arm.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“Did you know Babe could straighten out the entire length of Highway 101?”
“I did not.”
“I’d just have to hook her up to one end.”
“Cool.”
“Looks like your friend there is pretty unhappy.”
She shrugged. “He hasn’t fully gotten into the spirit of the term ‘road trip.’”
The giant lumberjack guffawed.
“Lucinda! We need to go!” Sam was at the driver-side door, but he did not get in.
She glanced across the highway, where she could see the Motel Trees. “What’s your real name?” she asked.
“Shad,” he said in a sort of a whisper. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Well, Shad...”
“Whoops! You gotta call me Paul.”
“Sorry! So, uh, Paul. How’s that motel over there?”
“The Wi-Fi’s a bit iffy, but people like it.”
Sam shouted, “We need to get to Florence.”
“What about the Forest Café?”
“They’re good to Babe. He eats a ton and a half of hay every day.”
“I’ll hike the Hobbit Trail!” Sam offered.
She smiled up at Paul, who was really some guy named Shad. That was a weird name.
“Dammit, Cindy!” Sam cried.
“You know what?” she said to the giant, “I could use some mystery.”
“Let’s go!” her fiancé exhorted.
She stayed where she was, gazing up at Paul like he was a great
Blue Ox - Kari Wergeland
big Buddha—like she was about to leave an offering. Babe stood beside him, silent and reassuring. A pause had settled around all of them. Then she beamed and managed a squeak. “Gotta go.”
“Bye now, little lady.”
As she hurried over to the car, she figured Paul was waving.
“Finally!” Sam grumbled.
“I’m taking a break,” she announced.
“I’ll wait.”
She shot a pointed look at the Motel Trees—and then she moved past him to reach inside the car so she could pop the trunk. “I mean a real break!”
“Suit yourself.” He glared up at Paul and said, “He’s probably some horny old guy who doesn’t give a rip about your needs!”
“The Forest Café will do just fine!” She grabbed her suitcase and closed the trunk. Sam climbed into the VW. He flipped her off before roaring up the highway. As she gingerly lengthened the handle on her roller bag, she decided she hadn’t seen him clearly.
She stepped toward the motel, but then stopped to watch Paul once more. He was doing the same shtick with a with a big-boned woman. “What’s your name, little lady?” Paul asked. The woman had longish red-brown hair.
“Anniken,” she replied. “Hey, where’s the bathroom? I’m not going to make it to Crescent City.”
Paul hammed a chuckle, before sending Anniken on her way. Then a man with two small boys moved to stand in her place. The lumberjack greeted them. “May I introduce Babe, the Great Blue Ox?”
“Hi Babe!” a little boy said with tremendous adoration.
She experienced a shot of relief at seeing the oversized logger with other admirers. Any residue of quirkiness and fun had drained out of her. Turning toward the highway, she headed for the motel wondering who Shad was. He could be anyone, this guy who was playing Paul. She might even run into him without knowing he was the one who’d flirted, albeit in a somewhat sexist way. She hated to admit it, but in that moment, Shad’s words had been pure music, “little lady” and all. Though a couple of days of his diction would probably start to grate. She smiled at the ground. Shad was thoughtful. Maybe he could hear some feedback. She contemplated how the mystery guy had gotten into his line of work. Had Shad taken acting classes? Had he auditioned? At the college, they were always on the lookout for ways to prepare people for real jobs. Yet there were lives in this world she’d never considered.
She checked in and found her room. After unpacking, she called her brother.
“Where are you guys?” Jack asked.
She told him she was still in California. She told him she was stranded because Sam was headed to Oregon.
“He left you at Trees of Mystery?”
“It’s sort of my fault,” she answered, before explaining how she’d flirted with Paul. When she got to the part about Sam’s jealousy, Jack started laughing, which triggered her own smile.
She gripped at the silence between phones “Would you be willing to come down and help me pack?”
“You mean—at your condo?”
“Sam’s condo.”
“Cindy, are sure about this?”
“We could go wine-tasting...”
“But...”
“There are better men out there.”
Later, when she was seated in The Forest Café, she ate more than she wanted. Every so often, she would look around the restaurant for a lone man who might be Shad. No single guys. Maybe he was married.
She returned to her room and crawled into bed, resting comfortably against a pile of pillows. The heater warmed the place in a jiffy. Though it was dark out, she had a view of the illuminated statues standing tall across the highway. She got up to close her curtains. That Paul!
Back in her makeshift nest, she opened her laptop and began reading up on the guy. The Wi-Fi worked just fine. She discovered many tales online. About Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Great Blue Ox, including a few that took place in Oregon. Looked like Sam had just driven to the land that swallowed Paul Bunyan whole. The logger was believed to be resting in some remote forest in the Pacific Northwest. This was after their life of logging ended and Babe, the Great Blue Ox passed away.
NONFICTION
I Done Had a Bad Case of Too Many Bad Days
Renshaw
Iam sitting at the bar at Biggio’s, a sports bar nestled in the Marriott Marquis. It’s an odd mix of energy—muted screens filled with endless replays, conversations humming along, as if the world outside doesn’t matter. In front of me is a Dirty Dog and a No Spring Training—a glorious non-alcoholic concoction I have barely touched—and to my right is a woman, the kind who looks completely at ease in a place like this, yet her purpose here is something altogether different. She’s attending the International Quilt Festival, the largest annual quilt show in these United States, she told me.
I’m not entirely sure why I feel so chatty, why this ever-present urge to open up to a stranger in a bar, of all places, is bubbling up inside me. Maybe it’s the anonymity, the briefness of it all. I don’t know what compels me, but once again, I’m leaning into that familiar, inexplicable need to engage.
“I’m full,” I blurt out, directing my words into the space between us. It’s an invitation, one I hope she picks up.
She offers a polite smile. It’s small, almost resigned, as if she’s heard this kind of statement a hundred times before, from people like me, in bars like this. But I press on.
“You know, the strangest thing has happened,” I continue, my
voice gaining momentum. “I’ve been an emotional eater my entire life. You wouldn’t believe the damage I could do to something like this.” I gesture at the Dirty Dog in front of me, its bun a little soggy, its filling barely touched. “But lately, my appetite has completely flipped. It’s like something inside just switched off.”
She looks at me, a bit more curious now, like I’ve said something that’s triggered a shared experience. I carry on, feeling the need to explain more, to unravel the oddity of it all. “I just finished an intensive recovery program—over a hundred and twenty hours of therapy. And somewhere along the way, I just lost the urge to eat the way I used to. I mean, I couldn’t finish this if you told me my next meal was twentyfour hours away. I just...couldn’t.”
She turns a little more toward me, adjusting herself on the stool. “I get it. Totally,” she says, and her voice has this calm understanding to it. “You’re listening to your body now. You can stop when you’re full.”
I nod, feeling a tiny flutter of validation. “Exactly. It’s new for me, though. I’ve spent so long eating out of habit, out of emotion...and now? Now, I’m just sitting here staring at this massive hot dog, and I don’t even want it.”
She glances at the Dirty Dog, then back at me. “I’m the same way with portion sizes. I’ve learned to look at the plate and, unless I have someone to share it with, I go for the smaller sizes.”
Her words sink in and, for a moment, I wonder if that’s some kind of gentle critique, a suggestion that maybe I ought to be doing the same, to avoid this peculiar little dilemma I’ve found myself in. But it could be a dig, and I respond before I can stop myself.
“Yeah, I should probably work on that,” I admit. “It’s this scarcity mentality, you know? Years of wanting more because, well, I was always convinced there wouldn’t be enough. Not enough love, not enough attention. So, I grabbed onto everything I could. But I guess I need to be more mindful now.”
She smiles, and we share this brief, quiet moment of understanding, like two people who have stumbled across the same truth, though in different ways. But then she stands, pays her tab and we exchange a few polite goodbyes. I’m sorry to see her go, in a way. I’ve gotten used to her presence in this strange little bubble we created. But that’s the nature of encounters like these. They come, they go and you’re left alone again.
The bartender slides the check in front of me, and I ask if I can charge it to my room. He nods, asks for my room number, and I tell him. Simple as that. He doesn’t even blink, doesn’t try to verify if the
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room number matches the guest name. And as he taps away at the machine, I feel a strange rush of satisfaction.
I used to be a bad person, I think to myself, that familiar warmth of mischief rising in me. A good person now, or so I’d like to believe. But not so long ago...well, things were different.
I glance around the bar, remembering those moments when I would have done something sneaky, exactly in a place like this. Like last year, at the St. Regis, I’d gotten foolishly high on seventy-fivemilligram Delta 8 THC gummies, racked up a decent bar tab and then had the audacity to charge it to someone else’s room. Another time, in San Juan circa 2022, I had charged the bill to another guest’s room— someone I’d fooled around with during my stay. He ended up paying for a Sunday brunch. No one even noticed.
And there it is, the thought creeping in. Wait. Did I? Did I do something similar in 2020? Holy cow, I did, didn’t I? My mind flashes back to when I woke up hungover in my Van Zandt hotel suite, with a stolen chicken cutout from Geraldine’s, advertising some special—an absurd reminder of my reckless, impulsive drinking personality from the previous night.
I’ve been in therapy on and off since 2019, though it feels like a much longer journey. Medications became part of my life in 2021, and with them came names for things I had once thought were just parts of me: complex PTSD, childhood developmental trauma, major depression. Suicidal ideation, which never quite left me since my early teens, was always looming in the background, something I assumed was normal after all the things I’d endured...or I just chalked it up to my existential angst. It’s strange how a label, once given, both clarifies and weighs you down at the same time.
In recent months, I’ve been told by therapists, life coaches and group therapy facilitators about something called maladaptive coping. It’s a phrase they use a lot. I never used to think much about my “coping”—I simply did what I had to do to get through the messes, the heartbreaks, the empty nights. But now, as they describe it to me, I see it all laid out in front of me, like pieces of a puzzle that I hadn’t realized fit together.
***
I can see my triggers now, in ways that I couldn’t before. I see how, for a decade, alcohol was my constant companion. I wasn’t just drinking for fun, or to unwind after a long day, or as part of a
I Done Had a Bad Case of Too Many Bad Days - Renshaw
“lifestyle.” No, I was drinking to fill some super void, to push down the feelings of inadequacy that surged up every time I tried to make my human connections work, only to watch them slip through my fingers. I used alcohol as a crutch, something to hold onto when I couldn’t bear the thought of facing my life sober.
“Suicidal ideation, which never quite left me since my early teens, was always looming in the background, something I assumed was normal after all the things I’d endured...or
I just chalked it up to my existential angst. It’s strange how a label, once given, both clarifies and weighs you down at the same time.”
I also see now the strange thrill of shoplifting, something I’ve never fully admitted to anyone but my best friend, though they know about it in my therapy circles. I would walk out of grocery stores with a cart full of unpaid-for groceries, my heart pounding in my chest, half-expecting someone to stop me at the door, and yet, hoping they wouldn’t. It was never about needing the food or the greeting card or the beach cover-up; it was about the rush, the power of getting away with something, of taking control when everything else in my life felt so wildly out of hand.
Then there were the nights in bars. I’d sit there, alone, waiting for a stranger to drift into my space, someone who didn’t know me or my history. I lured them in, playing a role I had perfected over the years, ignoring the small voice in the back of my mind that whispered it was wrong, immoral even. That voice was easy to silence when the alternative was to sit alone with the poison I felt inside me, the rage that festered at the edges of my being, directed at the world and at the people who I believed never thought I was enough.
I understand my provocative nature now, something I used to flaunt, thinking it was a sign of confidence, of control. But it wasn’t. It was just another way of crying out, of saying, “Look at me! See how I’ve survived!” It was a need for validation, for someone, anyone, to see the pain behind the bravado, the brokenness hidden beneath the surface.
They’ve told me all of this was a cry for help, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. I was too busy living, or rather, surviving in the only ways I knew how. Looking back, it’s so clear how frantic I was, how desperate my attempts to shape my life into something resembling normalcy really were. I wanted love, but I didn’t know how to give it or receive it without destroying everything in the process. I wanted connection, but my methods were clumsy, sometimes hurtful, leaving me more isolated than I ever intended to be.
And now, sitting with all this understanding, I can’t help but wonder if I could have done it differently. If someone had told me sooner, explained to me what I was doing to myself and to others, would I have listened? Or would I have continued on the same path, thinking that the chaos I created was just a part of who I was, something unchangeable, inevitable?
It’s hard to know.
In a recent conversation, my best friend—who I call the miracle of my life—posed a question that unsettled me more than I expected. “Do you feel remorse?” she asked. And though her tone was gentle, I couldn’t help but feel the accusing, judgmental tinge beneath it. “I don’t sense it in your telling. And aren’t you afraid of retribution, if you choose to publicly own your doings?”
There was a moment of silence between us. My old instinct, the one I’ve carried for years, the habit of slinking away from confrontation, made itself known. I could feel it creeping up my spine, the urge to deflect, to avoid. But something made me stay, made me sit with the question. Remorse. Did I feel it? Should I be protecting myself from what could come if I didn’t?
The answer, when I thought about it, was no. No to both. I did bad things, I know that. Morally, ethically, I lived for years without holding myself accountable. I was careless with people, with their emotions, with the fragile connections we shared. I hurt them— sometimes deliberately, sometimes out of thoughtlessness. I was an asshole to people I encountered at random, and I can admit that now.
I Done Had a Bad Case of Too Many Bad Days - Renshaw
But remorse? No, that doesn’t sit right with me. I’m sorry for the hurt, deeply sorry, yes. But remorse—remorse carries with it a burden of guilt, shame, self-resentment. I have none of that. Not anymore. The things I did, the way I acted, they were the symptoms of a person unwell, someone carrying the weight of unspoken and unresolved pain. A person diseased, in every sense of the word. I can look at my past with a kind of clinical detachment now. It’s like looking at muscle spasms in someone with undiagnosed multiple sclerosis. If those spasms caused me to knock over a glass of red wine onto my host’s pristine white couch, would I feel remorse for that? Should I? The action was real, the spill happened, but it wasn’t the fault of the person as much as the illness that controlled them.
And I’ve learned, through countless hours in therapy, that I have to look at myself in the same way. Intensive therapy has been my guide through this, and over and over again I’ve been told to practice self-compassion. To replace the harsh, negative self-talk that comes so naturally to me with something softer, something that allows me to see my mistakes as part of a larger story—one where those mistakes don’t define me. I’ve been told that I must accept my past, but not drown in it.
So, no, I don’t feel remorse. I don’t dwell in the pit of shame that others might expect of me. What I did, I did. I was lost, I was angry, I was acting out from a place of pain I hadn’t yet come to terms with. That doesn’t excuse it, I’m not looking for excuses, but it does explain it. And with that explanation comes a kind of release, a freedom from the guilt that I once thought I had to carry like a badge of penance.
As for retribution—what can I say? I accept that there might be backlash for the things I did, for the way I treated people. I accept that I may face consequences if I choose to speak openly about my past. But isn’t that part of healing, too? My self-awareness demands that I take responsibility, that I own my actions, however difficult that might be. I can’t hide from the fallout, and I won’t.
What I can do is manage the triggers that led me down that path in the first place. I’ve learned healthier coping mechanisms, strategies to deal with the rage, the loneliness, the feelings of inadequacy that used to consume me. I’ve worked hard to ensure that I don’t repeat those wrongs, that the person I was doesn’t rear her head in the present. That’s my real work now—making sure that my past doesn’t dictate my future.
So, when my friend asked if I was afraid, I could only shake my head. No, I’m not afraid. I’ve come too far to let fear hold me back now. Fear of retribution, fear of being judged for the person I used to
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
be—that’s no longer a concern of mine. I’m not that person anymore, and while I won’t erase her, I also won’t let her define me. I’ve done my time in the dark, and now, it’s time to live in the light.
It’s strange, this place I find myself in. There was a time when I couldn’t have imagined sitting with these thoughts, when the idea of facing my past was so terrifying I would have preferred to run away, to
“I understand my provocative nature now, something I used to flaunt, thinking it was a sign of confidence, of control. But it wasn’t. It was just another way of crying out, of saying, ‘Look at me! See how I’ve survived!’ It was a need for validation, for someone, anyone, to see the pain behind the bravado, the brokenness hidden beneath the surface.”
drink it all down, or to lash out in some way that distracted me from the pain. But now, with the clarity that time and therapy have given me, I see it all so clearly. I see the mistakes, the hurt, the damage I caused...but I also see the person underneath it all—the person who was hurting even more.
I’ve come to realize that self-awareness is a double-edged sword. It allows you to understand your behavior, to see the patterns and the reasons behind them, but it also forces you to confront things you’d rather forget. It’s a painful process, but a necessary one. I can’t move forward without looking back, without acknowledging the wreckage I left in my wake. But I don’t have to wallow in it, either. I can acknowledge it, learn from it and move on.
And that’s what I’m doing now—moving on, moving forward and letting go of the need to punish myself for the person I
I Done Had a Bad Case of Too Many Bad Days - Renshaw
used to be.
But then, really, does a diagnosis release me from my wrongdoings? What does it let me slip free from, if anything at all? Perhaps it softens the edges, makes things look a bit more faded, as if I’m seeing them through a scrim of late-afternoon light. But still, I wonder, where does guilt come in? Is there a line, some faint threshold over which guilt becomes petty—small, almost forgivable by default—or is that only something I tell myself to make things bearable?
I can’t help but smile, just a little. It’s funny, in a twisted way, how I’ve lived through so much and still constantly find myself on the edge of old habits. But not this time. This time, it’s different. I’m celebrating something real—a milestone, a breakthrough, proof that I’m moving forward.
I glance at the check again, and then back at the empty seat beside me. There’s no mischief tonight, just the quiet satisfaction of knowing I’ve earned this staycation, this moment of peace in a place filled with strangers and stories I’ll never fully know.
POETRY
Die Weltbürger
Zeke Greenwald
It’s better out here than it was inside.
What does it matter that the world is wide
And some goodly dwellers of this globe
Pass by? This side street, be it exposed
To the expeditious just the same
As the ambler making his lonely way
Simply longer before he just goes home, Is emptier, and we are more alone.
There’s no music like there was in there,
But unburdened of the record player,
What’s better, we hear our thoughts, speak our minds;
And when the rain comes down, there’s place to hide
In a recess, where behind the grill
In an inner court there echo still
Off the windows of cosmopolitans
(The world’s close! Don’t worry, they won’t listen...)
The words we used to attempt to explain
When, with a kiss, it grew complex again.
A Day at the Three- Legged Races
Alex Osman
Two siblings
Two kids the product of incest
Lived in a yellow cottage together
And rode bikes with trailing wagons
The wagons held backpacks
Backpacks suffocated plastic fawns
Collected for church fundraisers
Their parents bet on
The three-legged races
Murdered the same night
Blood on brand new Nike sneakers
When the kids grew up
Bikes took a turn to early graves
The siblings were buried together
A memorial of plastic fawns
Still stands under a pine
Bicentennial Man
Alex Osman
1976, I was living with this woman who let me live with her for free, if I worked as a sort of maintenance man. I’d have to crawl under her house and get rid of the animals who dragged themselves under there to die. In the winter, I’d be under there relighting the pilot light, after the pipes froze. I could hear her screaming through the floor.
Sometimes she’d ask me to have sex with her and I always hated that. She’d say, “Nobody loves me.” She would watch me sleep through the crack in the door.
I got caught rifling through her medicine cabinet one night, and where I thought I’d be chastised, she reached in and grabbed a bottle.
“This is what you want. Go ahead. Take a couple.”
I’m not sure what those little yellow tablets were, but I found myself nodding off like never before, with my head nearly in between my legs, drooling like a lobotomized dog. She repeated phrases like, “Thaaaat’s it…” and “Don’t choke yourself, now” and “You still breathing?”
Stumped on a crossword puzzle, she asked, “What’s another word for disengage?” I didn’t know the answer.
I tried to leave when the smell got to me, making up some half-truth about going to the rehab center, but she just stood up and said, “What do you want, a fucking award? I just want the dead to stop rotting underneath me.”
So now, I go on night drives and kill the headlights. I wonder when I’ll hit one of the animals that would eventually crawl under her house.
The Beginning of a Long-Term Relationship
John Grey
It will be worth it, the point from which the embargo is lifted and suitors can move in, although a brief span in human years that will lead to grief and loneliness at some ungodly age but for now it is founded in pleasure and forward thinking, as love not blood invisibly traces your heart with another’s finger and you embrace a measured eagerness with eyes on a level like the horizon sun until one sets most likely him.
Useless Keyboard
Djanet
I hated it as much as I loved it
Every few months, I felt like quitting
I cried a few times
Convinced it was either gonna be her or me
Who would lose their job?
The beloved boss
Or the trainee who was never invited to the lunches
I thought that it would have to be me
Until one day I heard the whispers
People were saying She had quit
Finally I was happy
Who are you
When all of a sudden
You’re no longer the employee they needed
But the girl with
The key to the printer?
–
Unfortunately
We won’t have a desk for you
We won’t have work for you
The new trainee starts next month
You have to accept that this mistake is no longer our problem
You have to leave
Before she starts
Move
Now –
I cried
When I heard
You laugh
Hiding Behind the Till
Djanet
–
10 to 6
Suffocating
Losing my mind over things I used to care about, but now hate I’m wondering: Should I quit?
–Quit
I wanna Quit I wanna Quit I wanna Quit I wanna Quit
I wanna Quit –
You ruined it for me.
I used to dream of working with you, learning from you. You took me under your wing, and for months, it was a dream come true. Then you broke my trust, and everything became a nightmare that I refused to relive.
Waking up to work became a burden I couldn’t carry anymore. You almost broke me.
I’ll send you my therapy bill. –Light’s off Don’t wanna go to work
Forget about passion Need to pay my bills
Why bother
Culture is overrated
Hell I must be brave Can’t let her win
Gonna leave
Before I’m dead –
I will never forgive you for the tears I shed the sorrow I carried
I came in full of hope I left disappointed
Now I’m full of rage
Twenty-Five Djanet
–
Just a reminder I might be living a dream
My eyes wide open
–
Writing is like walking I can’t stop until I reach my destination Except I never know where I’m headed
–
Twenty-five is when My mother was pregnant with The person I am
–
How to sabotage your boss?
“It must be so nice to work surrounded by books” What a dream...
To have someone yell at you for not understanding what they are thinking.
–
Smile, Smile bigger, Smile more enthusiastically. Smile like your master’s degree was worth minimum wage.
–
Dying to know if the people starving will survive our indifference.
–
People are dying
To see Taylor Swift singing about choosing 1830 without all the racists that we carry into 2024
People are dying
Trying to survive
Under the rubble –
To die of starvation is to perish from food deprivation. It is to experience the agony of hunger and the pain of being famished. It is to meet death at the hands of terror and despair.
I will never say those words again. It’s time for lunch, and my stomach is growling, but I’m not starving like I used to think.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
Blown Away!
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
I said forgive us for what we have done ‘Cause we’ re young We’ re young We’ re young
we were young we were unstrung with neither reason nor regret we were blowing each other’s mind in a season of Forgetfullness! we lived for oh what we’d give for a little fame the untamed and brief intoxication of the moment we were young we were restless we be cool we played the fool we were not what we seemed we had style wore just a smile shined you on lied in our dreams drove needles our every vehicle into the ground didn’t know up from down lived and died beyond our means
we were raw we were rawesome we were lazy crazy drunk gone on freedom dope and sex on angst and torment fears that vexed us drunk on our own tears we lie dormant and in pain while that electric ink shot through us
-Tulisa
at the speed of neon light help me make it through the night
high as fuck on that sudden rush on random lust on angel dust high as the deep blue sea a broken tune the lush and decadent melting moon we checked in and out too soon high as hell in love with danger we awakened the next morning with the stranger we once knew was it me? or was it you?
we were young yet unsung heroes unprepared openhearted brokenhearted perhaps we burned too bright too fast some things some beings never last please forgive us but please give us our next fix our next fix our disgrace our lack of grace
drunk on space and cosmic fusion drunk on pipe dreams and illusions we laughed we sighed we cried OD’d in bed or in our heads in that same breath that same conclusion that took our breath away nothing stays nothing stays
a whirlwind of commotion emotion we moved in rapid vapid motion we ranted panted chanted for what we took for granted for humanity for our sanity we made our sound whirled round and round we were lost we were profound om namaste om namaste we were learning how to pray
we were young we were lonely if only if only
The
The Multiverse at Noon
Alessio Zanelli
One December noon, gray and bleak, one of those numb with the slowness of hours but sharp with memories, during the vain search for some unspecified, futile bauble, inside the vintage armoire in the closet, under a pile of old bedding, at the bottom of a cardboard box packed full of miniature plastic soldiers, folded on itself a zillion times by means of gravitational lensing and space-time warping, in the shape of a tiny crystal sphere, polished, like brand-new, all of a sudden— the omni-comprehensive multiverse. The most audacious fancy of a solitary child over fifty years before.
Rice Soup
Alessio Zanelli
A bowl of boiling soup, a pinch of grated cheese, a glass of dry Lambrusco. Here the dark five months have just begun, they think for one last time, in the end. Waiting for the broth to cool while eyeing black and white photos strewn on the couch. Feelings resurface I cannot use, although I loved them once, as I fail to remember. Day by day year after year the night stays a youngling while recollections go stale. Flavor of celery and carrots, sweet savor of grains of rice, multicolored bits of acid past which scratch my washy face in the slowly ascending steam.
The Opiate, Winter Vol.
Elzebub
Stephen Barile
1.
He was a “hard-driving hillbilly,” a rock-a-billy cat in a country-western band. He could play any instrument, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, mainly, the electric steel guitar. A demon on the strings; they called him Elzebub, after the philistine god. With dimples, black hair and a silver tooth, teen heartthrob good looks, he wore a white t-shirt, the sleeves and cuffs of his blue jeans, rolled up, over black cowboy boots.
He came from a family band, older sisters, Mary, on fiddle, Lollie, on bass fiddle, taught him to accompany them on guitar. The Pillow Family Band, was popular at the nightclubs in Fresno, the Tic Toc Club, the Hoedown Hall, Flamingo Club on Broadway, Johnny’s Place, by the fairgrounds, and the Cozy Inn, on Railroad Avenue.
2.
He played a custom triple-neck console steel guitar, with an inlaid Bigsby logo, solid birds-eye maple with four legs, that once belonged to Noel Boggs. His big song, one he wrote
recorded with the Hayride Gang, on the Morgan record label showcasing his playing talents, was “Feather Pillow Rag.”
Moving a steel bar across strings of a plucked guitar in a finger-picking style; first-rate hornlike punches, single-note solos, rapid-fire, switching necks mid-solo, clean legato chord voicings in a swing-jazz guitar styling. He was the star.
“Women were always throwing themselves at the band,” agreed his wife. “The lifestyle just lent itself to that kind of behavior.” She got really mad when she found out he got drunk and had a fling with Jean Shepherd, of Noble’s Melody Ranch Girls, the band’s new singer. His wife drove to Tulare where the band was playing, caught them together. 3.
In the County hospital for acute pancreatitis, He was getting better. One week later took a turn for the worse. His temperature spiked at 107 degrees, everything was downhill. He didn’t live long enough to learn to play the pedal steel guitar.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
Hollywood Memorabilia Show
Stephen Barile
We went to the Blossom Ballroom
At the Roosevelt Hotel in old Hollywood, For the Hollywood Memorabilia Show.
Charles, and his associate Dave, Peddling movie star signatures On old film contracts, In a room of folding tables, Booths with minor celebrities.
Traders buying and selling Collectibles; autographs, books, Lobby cards, movie posters, photos, With old movie stars attending.
At one stall, on folding chairs, Two Hollywood Indian actors. Older versions of themselves,
Iron Eyes Cody, the Crying Indian, A braided wig, fringed leather, And beaded moccasins.
Jay Silverheels, a Mohawk, Wearing his characteristic leather Tonto headband.
They were smoking cigarettes, Talking about their Cadillacs.
Cody drove a ‘59 convertible He purchased from Harry James. Tailfins, dual bullet taillights And a 390 horsepower, V-8 engine.
Silverheels bought a Fleetwood Brougham From a dealer in San Fernando Valley, His had a 500 cubic-inch engine.
You Venture for Answers, What Answers Back?
Alise Versella
You ventured for answers to Montana, and I journeyed out west to a desert and at the top of the mountain we found snow. It hasn’t snowed in Central Park for the last two years. They buried the bodies under the parks because we ran out of room in the cemeteries. He died before the Pandemic took hold; we stared at rock formations like the foundation of Mars before the parks that held the formations were closed. Cancer eroded you and then what was left of us.
We plant dune grass to keep the waves from eroding the beach turning the beach and the parking lots to dust. My father prevents the fence from turning to rust. I am curious about the blood in the heart and what it felt like when yours stopped.
We try to augur the wings of the hawks in our yard, haruspex from all that remains.
There are more age spots on your temples and gray in my bangs, acerbic words cut between. I remember when your forefinger traced my face: caught my nose, my chin. An ex once did the same and I thought my future was aligning; I was always waiting for it to begin. It arrives anew each morning. The man might be different but the poet continues the daily battle with her face. The mountains she tries not to let crumble beneath her fingers. I drive us around mountains and uphill and flat land is beginning to depress me. Pine needles seem hypodermic. I want the lighting moving through the Sangre de Cristo and the smell of lavender and sage. We rage and rage and obliterate. The acne scars and the old remarks shadow us at the kitchen table.
The man and I make love before dining at our table. We cook together and create. We gather at new tables now and I remember the old one, with cigarettes and hands full of kings and queens and crochet needles clicking in living room chairs, all watching. I watch the birds outside my window and their chicks breaking free of the shell returning to the
telephone wire and talking to each other as if to say, “Look, here, girl your ancestors are cardinals, look how blood red like the river of you so alive against the blue spruce and evergreen.”
There are some things I can only find on this coast, but I still remember the hum of the insect wing in the early morning of Joshua Tree, the ghost-howl of coyotes as we fell asleep. It will always be you and me. And maybe we are the last branch in a tree whose roots are uplifting, but we were always breaking through concrete.
I felt more like myself at Abiquiu, red sand and drumbeats through Santa Fe. Calm in the desert even if the mirage was confounding—the way sky was made sea and how I drove us through a galaxy. The range of the Rockies made me feel alive, like hope was possible, like this could be a good life.
Did you find answers you didn’t like? Did you find anything at all? Sometimes we search for things in places outside of us, I see you searching and searching and coming up with emptiness. I watch her trace our lineage to a port in Greece and at some point, it just stops. I wonder what role history plays in how we view ourselves. Is where we come from as important as where we are going? Is who we are dictated by the blood of the land we first stepped foot on? You brought back crystals from the mountainside and no answers. I am what you made of us. I am what I make of myself.
Cool Girls Were Made at Cost Cutters
Alise Versella
for Amy
I beelined to the makeup aisle. Bonne Bell lip gloss and blue body glitter.
Body Fantasies body mists: cucumber melon and sugar vanilla.
Didn’t we smell so sweet, so much like an orchard, every fruit ripe for your picking?
Oh, how the world picked us apart.
We picked ourselves apart.
Separated ourselves like subjects in Five Star notebooks
Every new school year the cool girls had their Happy Bunny t-shirts
Their Lisa Frank folders
Lip Smackers smacking cotton candy Bubble Yum
We betrayed best friends for the boys who cheated on them
Cakey-white eyeshadows and our faces feigning lack of sentiment—cool girls could not care less
We cared the most.
Cool girls sang in the school choir, performed in the drama club’s rendition of Little Shop of Horrors
Wasn’t high school just the biggest horror?
The shell-shocked, post-9/11 teenagers already mourning their classmate at the start of freshman year.
Fifteen and dead in a plane wreck.
We made a wreck of our newfound independence like we had all the answers
Learned how to counter the authority of parents but not yet the patriarchy
We were the queens of making mountains out of molehills, liked to think ourselves so ironic
Cool girls were on birth control and tetracycline
We challenged the boys with Warheads and sourballs of lemon
Pretended not to grieve our childhood, desperate to be taken seriously
Thought every decision life or death, irrevocable
We dared and yearned for truth
And as we approach thirty-five, we are certain of nothing at all but confusion
The silvery hairs starting at our temples, how did they get there?
Everything tastes a little charred in our mouths now, like we stayed too long at the feast
Our naked limbs not nearly as newfound as Ariel’s on land that first time
The cool girls now microdose on mushrooms and try to cure their childhood trauma and ever-increasing anxiety
Constantly wringing out our hands and groaning inwardly
Somehow we remain defiant.
Snapping our tongues as forcefully as we blew bubbles with gum.
Is it weird how I regret the fall of Cost Cutters? Her fluorescent aisles, that corporate conglomerate
It’s impossible not to see the aisles of Halloween candy and the flickering of my childhood ghost
Roaming the streets for Three Musketeers, their foiled wrappers piling up on the table as we watched MTV
Weren’t we so cool? So above it all
How easily back then a cool girl could be bought.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
The Old Block
Alise Versella
after Ras Heru
He asked us to “picture your block.”
Myblockmyblockmyblock I don’t have one.
My block has been disappearing, like the fig trees and the grandfathers who knew how to tend them.
Little Italy used to be fifty blocks and now it’s three, a tourist destination with overpriced chicken parm instead of a neighborhood, fully functioning. In the early twentieth century, more than four million Italians immigrated to the island of Manhattan, splitting themselves between Mulberry Street and East Harlem. My great-grandparents settled at 78th Street—a four-story walk-up and no air conditioning, roaches dining with the aunts and uncles on Sundays. They came here with a steamer trunk that now sits in my living room, filled with the crocheted blankets in cheap brown yarns—all the darnings of a dream.
They dreamed the dream of golden pavement and opportunity and they got it, moving to outer boroughs and, later, the shores of Jersey, didn’t they? Didn’t we make it, in this new country, four generations later, staring at the burning world and all its blazing glory?
I watched them hold their tongues, learn a new language, forget the old one. Turn the other cheek at “Greasy Guinea” “Savage”
“Dago” “WoP.”
My language is disappearing. “I can’t say anything nice in my native tongue...” learned all the bad words first. The words have all been bastardized I mean Americanized. Goomba, gabagool, gidrool...
I think the destruction of a language happens first. The easiest way to destroy a culture after you bulldoze its universities, its hospitals, kill their poets, slash the art. Tell them, “Speak English!” Shout it at them until they crawl inside their olive skin and never speak it again in front of their children, in front of their grandkids.
Assimilate stunad
Until the dark skin they lynched in New Orleans bleaches like bones in the sun
Until you forget you’re notorious for violence so you lose your backbone, bend your spine
Stay silent so your voice doesn’t ripple their streams
Forget your faith.
My friend went to Kansas and the woman asked him if he was “one of them I-talians,” was he “Catholic”?
A religion steeped in superstition, silly little rituals. (America was mostly Protestant in the early 1900s and just like the Irish, devout Catholicism didn’t fit in with American Ideals)
Our families of eight in tenements were not ideal either my great-grandmothers and their washboards, their hands breaking chicken necks and kneading bread, walking blocks with bags of groceries their granddaughters still can’t afford, but we make do anyway. Stretch and stretch, I scrape the bottom of every jar until there’s no scrap left, until we are tall, head held high and shoulders back
Something resembling proud.
Proud of my heritage, proud of the endurance of generations that brought me here: strong-willed and maybe a little bit unforgiving.
Maybe one day I will forgive America her bullies but I cannot forget them
They, who couldn’t be damned to spell correctly our names at Ellis Island so we just made them up, I guess Versella was good enough. Our names you mocked, you glorify now your Tony Soprano, your Cousin Vinny, but never my grandpa, Vito, my uncle, Nunzio, my uncle, Salvatore.
They, who deemed us ruthless and dishonest, criminal, never gave us a fair trial. Say Maria Barbella, say Sacco, say Vanzetti. And in their prejudice they rounded four hundred and eighteen of us up to Missoula, Montana as enemy aliens and on October 12, 1942 deemed us worthy of appeasement, no longer a threat to national security, so they gave us the statue of a man who stole indigenous land and we were supposed to say thank you, thank you for finally considering us worthy of dignity.
I am indignant. That cultures can assimilate to the point of disappearing, that nothing melded in this so called melting pot and the tar they melted over the dirt on old city blocks is asphalt I no longer recognize. It is happening everywhere I turn my eyes. They gentrify everybody’s neighborhood and call it growth. “Be mesmerized by all this wealth you cannot touch.”
They turn us against us.
We say to one another, “You’re not Italian enough, not Sicilian enough,” I don’t speak the language right or practice the old traditions, I’ve never stepped foot in Italy. But I’m learning, trying to regain something my ancestors were forced to lose.
So many of us feel that too.
I felt it when he asked us to picture our blocks, the places our families immigrated to, how a new generation of us are left with diaspora but no place left to scatter to. That’s what it means, diaspora in ancient Greek, to scatter about. To scatter from your homeland across the globe and spread your culture as you go. It should be beautiful, to share your culture, but we make it ugly don’t we? Turn down our noses and shun what is other. Shove it into ghettos and three-block radiuses until it forgets altogether where it came from.
Ras my block had gardens.
Italians stuck bits of sticks in their suitcases, tucked seeds into their trunks and here they bloomed into cardoon and cucuzza
And fig trees
Hostile climates were no match, we’d wrap them in burlap or bury them in the dirt and at the end of even the harshest winter, they’d survive.
They’d survive. The Opiate, Winter Vol.
Beauty Mark or Blemish
Alise Versella
My sister and I
Share the same freckle on our right hand
Sound the same on the telephone and sometimes
Shy away from what we know is better for us
Perhaps we think we don’t deserve much
A little damaged by the family that raised us
Searching for the parallel lines that would take us to a brighter finish line
She was the first to catch a fish on that taut line
We spent our summers pulling up crab cages in the Pines
Learned our father’s favorite curse word, “Mother…”
She no longer touches tequila
I no longer have the effort for rage
Worn out and trying desperately
To hold on to happiness in an unhappy place
She is always persevering
The only one of us committed to the shipbuilding
I spend a lot of time forgetting
That I used to roll white bread balls in sugar because I read it in a book once That I am just as much
From Ireland as Italy and famine isn’t always related to the stomach
We are tender-hearted sisters
Rag-tag and hasty but innovative and brazen
Engineers of our own survival
I didn’t mean to abandon you in the lake
To the dark and waste
I used to think our futures were prearranged
I had no choice but eavesdropping on our parents; brittle walls and tiny halls
Pleasure and violence
Did you hear what I heard, see what I saw?
Behind closed doors or
That night in the living room—brawl on the couch
Did it strip you of something like it did to me?
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I remember you coming into my bed when the dog seized, How you didn’t want him to die And I still don’t know how to comfort you, how to make the horrible truths Less a chisel that cuts away at you
We mounted horses in the woods one day We never felt so free...
Dustsceawung
Alise Versella
(The contemplation that dust used to be other things...the walls of a city...dust is the ultimate destination...)
The avenues are swollen
Trash fluttering like aerialists
Women wringing their wrists
The bus late, again
Flatbush and Staten Island sweats
Corrupts, entraps us
With their glorious scent
Warm summer asphalt, fresh-laid
Basketball rubber and hoop chain effigies
We lazily watch the ceiling fan
Desperate for air
Giggle in spite of the heat or maybe because of it
Delirious with a fervor like only two little girls could have in this brief night of summer...
The texture of it heavy with weather
Staticky like the fuzz crackling on the TV, crackling like ginger ale...
Every night we stayed, Grandma would grab cans of it from the basement
The side door opened to screen to let in any semblance of a late summer breeze
Aunt and uncle on the front stoop, his and hers cigarettes
Sneaking saltwater taffy from Jersey...
My favorite ocean is this prairie of high rises
The heights of hopeful dreams before the building foreclosures
Before the city comes toppling down all around us with September’s
rubble
Burning like fall leaves in gutters and the sirens singing change their tune
I want to remember this sweet perfume
Late August, nicotine and Revlon lipstick
Rimming the can of ginger ale left on the counter by the sink...
Grandma puts us down to sleep
Window open to the sounds of late night on the expressway
Goethals to Verrazzano
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Horns and roaring engines, poker game laughter
Cigarette ash like dust on the kitchen table
Look at the city we had built for us
How they placed it in our hands
The condensation gathers on the can... I stare at my hands.
Doing Dialogic Shots With Kristeva
Frank Freeman
(for Robert Gibbons)
twisting, but not uncomfortably so, on my bed of fresh-firecoal chestnutfalls, I found myself in Paris at some dive bar next to one of those bookstores that looks like it has been open since the Revolution, (white cat in the window asking, are you writing?), with Kristeva.
the Bulgarian vodka in me asked, why do you put in all that linguistic scientific jargon? merde! she shouted at me and slammed the glass on the table. I glugged her out another. when I do that, I am clearing my throat, ahem!
about Bakhtin and carnival?
you think you are so smart, she said. I tilted my head back and let it burn. I like your stuff. Black Sun, Desire in Language, Revolution in Poetic Language, Time and Sense.
you read too much. she peered at me. pour another, big shot. she slammed it down. you know what your problem is, big shot?
I poured myself, very carefully, another. what? you need to write with your balls. merde, she added, softly smiled, and shook her fierce birdlike head.
what about you? I slammed it back. balls? we have our own kind, mon ami.
Still Sharp
Frank Freeman
green glass rising out of green grass, the midden from the past, original owners of the house who tossed their empty jars out the window. now once in a while a shard appears sun-bright like sea glass but still sharp. from the slow waves of soil of earth dancing in the shadows of herself bejeweled.
At This Moment
Frank Freeman
Robert Antelme coming back from the camps, as described by Duras, is shocking and moving. how he shat green shit that bubbled. could only eat gruel for 3 weeks, had a series of fevers, then finally said, I’m hungry.
they would put him in a room and let him eat lamb chop after lamb chop eating alone in the room. he said, no one understands me. get angry when the food wasn’t ready on time.
he’d weighed 88 pounds when he arrived, on a 5’10” frame, the doctor paused in the doorway as if afraid to come in.
at first Antelme had to lay on 7 pillows, one for his head, one for each arm, leg, foot. it hurt to have a blanket on top of him.
at the end of her description, Duras curses the reader if they have been nauseated or winced “at this moment” when she wonders what was coming out in the bubbly green shit, whether it was his spleen or heart. “Because after all, what was it?”
to those who have looked away from what she describes, she shits on them, wishes “the same kind of devastation on them.”
Standing in My Son’s Empty Room
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios
Silence will do that to you, it opens a space larger than his room larger than the burning plane, a shape of him you fall through.
Silence will cover you with a damp blanket suffocating the sun, seeks his dusk, his shadow, his footfalls on the stair.
Silence does that until it seeps into the body’s hollow and wails. Wails. The Opiate,
Breathes with you breathes with the room, in an earworm of quiet strumming stilled guitar strings silence pounds against dull windowpanes trying to release to the morning sky.
Associative Properties
Ken Been
The best parts of getting old are the revelations that just show up in your sleep nascent human abilities like levitation people used to marvel about on late-night TV or sliding over my parentheses with just one little finger the bulk of (time) as moveable as a shower door the associative properties I learned in (seventh grade) math finally clicking.
Paper Towels
Frankie Laufer
A snake cut in two still has poison in the head. The body looks for accreditation. It will not go lightly into the night. Creating problems and undermining hope. It encourages excessive paper towel collection. Organizing day trip turns unorganized. Front door suddenly is stuck...or is it me?
Car was left running all night.
A friend shows up although none were called.
“IT’S TIME,” he announces with intent but not malice. We drive to see his doctor friend for what I surmise is an unannounced mental check-up.
Doctor not in apparently, he’s taking a government mandated fifteen-minute break.
A buxom red-haired beauty fills in, taking my excited pulse. She shows me the quilted garment she is sewing. Buttonholes are missing but thread finds an opening. That opening transports me back to an apartment I lived in fifteen years ago.
In my absence the snake has had my car towed. This dream exits on a soft buttery cloud.
Going to the store now as I discover I’m out of paper towels.
Mysterious Love Dale
Champlin
My faith in you was composed by the song of a thousand birds fulgent in a blue spruce at sunset, branching stark against rosy streaks blushing a bridal sky.
For the most part silent, budding trees count slow years circling within their woody bodies—
slender or ballooning concentric lines, tell of famine or abundance—drought, fire, or plagues of wasps. All this time, our small copse has been encroached by woodland—fragrant and teeming with life.
Ghosts walking barefoot over forest litter reach into brambles for lush fruit, raising their cheeks to sunlight.
The year we wed I painted a nude, part male—part female— depicting light and air—my way to capture time as flesh and blood.
In our mythology of Love, the gods of wind and light embrace in our branches. New leaves sip dew and drip— this ticking clock keeps us on a circular path, amazed afresh by each heartbeat.
Menopause or Something Like It
Marissa Glover
The gynecologist argues with me for five minutes, telling me it’s not possible for me to be in menopause because the word literally means menses has ceased for twelve consecutive months, and I’ve had two periods in the past year.
I’m no longer too nervous to argue with this man, now that I’ve seen him in person; he’s older and fatter than the gorgeous, good lord, this man’s a doctor? who’s about to see me naked? photo on his business card. No judgement—I’m older and fatter too, because, hello! Menopause! Okay, fine, perimenopause.
Bastard.
He asks what I do for a living, and then asks that I don’t judge his writing, he was never any good at grammar, and then he asks for a list of symptoms, so I rattle them off like a shit ton of pills in a very big bottle: fatigue, weight gain, frequent UTIs, night sweats, mood swings, insomnia, mental fog, memory loss, low libido, hot flashes...
He’s scribbling fast to keep up but stops to look at me when I add that sometimes, for no reason at all, I want to stab my husband with a kitchen knife. He says he’s not going to put that one in my chart. He chuckles, nervously, probably because he knows he spelled “insomnia” wrong, and says we have three options.
Worst case: surgery, medical menopause, like frfr menopause. Or I could do meds, hormone replacement therapy, not without its own side effects. Or, if I’m up for it, I could try to wait it out. If I’ve only had two periods in the past year, maybe I’m almost in menopause, he says. Bastard.
Waiting it out sounds like worst case to me, and probably to my husband who’s hidden all the knives, but HRT reminds me of that
spelling game people play where they remove the vowels and see if you can still read the word. I guess that leaves medical menopause, but at least it’d be for real and maybe my doctors would finally believe me, yes, me, woman me/mom me/girl me/not a doctor/didn’t sleep in a Holiday Inn Express/uterus interruptus me when I tell them what’s wrong with me.
The Opiate, Winter Vol.
PTSD
Marissa Glover
I’m sitting behind a truck at a stoplight, and I know right away he’s military. It’s not the gun rack across the back windshield, loaded with weapons. It’s the semper fi and molon labe bumper stickers.
They stopped requiring Latin in American schools in 1958. To be considered educated in 1776, you had to learn both Latin and Greek. It’s the twenty-first century, and I wonder how many other dead languages this soldier speaks.
A Cigar Is Never Just a Cigar
Marissa Glover
There is a certain dog, fully intact, in the neighborhood who always knows when other dogs are in heat. This is his gift. This is not to say he hasn’t any other gifts. Only that this particular gift outshines all the others. It’s also the only gift that keeps on giving. Unwanted gifts, mostly, a triumph of biology over romance. This poem is a metaphor. And also not a metaphor, because the dog’s name is Maxim, and there are lots of other dogs in the neighborhood with names like Max, Maximus and Max Factor. But the poem is still a metaphor. Everything is about sex, even this poem, because sex is a prime motivator. A triumph of biology over romance. Chemicals kinked in the brain, commanding the body, nothing to stop the drive except a person, who is not a dog, who may not growl, or bark—but bite.
Ode to the Broken
Marissa Glover
It’s cold without them here, our arms are full of things we don’t desire, a room of dust on all the gifts they gave—and pictures dull with yellowed years and tears and broken trust. It’s said that buried anger eats you up inside, that nothing precious can survive: Each heart a scab reopened when life erupts, we live in shadow, calling it alive.
Forgiveness, like a shiny barnacle that calls for holding, slicing through our skin: Consider scars a mark of miracles— the break is where we let the light back in. Unhook what’s caught to cast the line again... we first accept the end—and then begin.
Better Living Through Chemistry
Marissa Glover
Sorting meds into the seven-day pill organizer can be a kind of rosary—answering questions and reciting allergies at each appointment, a litany. Pinching the capsule between thumb and forefinger like taking a wafer—washing it down the throat with water instead of wine, you are a priest now presiding over this holy rite. Affirmations in the car or mirror are just prayers said with your eyes open.
CRITICISM
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz
Genna Rivieccio
By now, it’s not exactly a new take that Eve Babitz and Joan Didion are two sides of the same California-centric coin. Except that the latter was always given far more credit and weight (despite her thin frame) than the former. It was in large part thanks to Lili Anolik that Babitz has experienced such a resurgence in the past decade, starting with a 2014 article that Anolik wrote for Vanity Fair called “All About Eve—And Then Some.” It didn’t feel like a coincidence that the feature dropped on Valentine’s Day, for it’s an unabashed love letter from Anolik to Babitz. As it turns out, it would be just one of a few. Which continued with the first proper biography of Babitz, Hollywood’s Eve (an obvious play on Eve’s Hollywood), released in 2019.
Considering how detailed and ambitious that project already was, one might be surprised that Anolik would want to take another deep dive into Babitz’s life and psyche with a new book called Didion & Babitz (note that Didion still somehow manages to get top billing). But how could Anolik resist when a box of previously unread and unsent
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 40
letters from the back of Babitz’s closet made themselves available to her by way of Eve’s sister, Mirandi, in the wake of Eve’s death? So it is that Anolik tells us in the preface, “It was back. My love for Eve’s astonishing, reckless, wholly original personality and talent.” And even though Anolik was already promised to another project at the time (Bennington Class of ‘86, which became a podcast called Once Upon a
“Didion was deliberate about remaining a wisp so that she could appear non-threatening to her male writer peers. If she wasn’t seen as ‘womanly,’ then maybe they could forget she was a woman altogether. Conversely, Babitz was never treated with the same seriousness as Didion precisely because she was ‘buxom’ (a word that Bret Easton Ellis also uses to describe Babitz when recalling their first encounter to Anolik...).”
Time…At Bennington), she couldn’t ignore the gift from the literary gods that had been bestowed upon her. The chance to fully explore two women who were both each other’s counterpart and nemesis. The story she needed to tell was taking precedence over everything else, personal and professional. And even though she had already technically told Babitz’s tale twice (once in Vanity Fair, another in Hollywood’s Eve), she declares, “I’d tell Eve’s story again. Except this time I’d tell it differently. Better. Because I wouldn’t be telling just Eve’s story. I’d be telling Joan’s story, too. Joan, Eve’s opposite and double, completing and revealing Eve as Eve completed and revealed her.”
And yet, throughout Didion & Babitz, it’s difficult not to feel
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz
that Babitz is the one who holds a mirror up to Didion and her (false) persona far more. Makes her comprehend, whether she was ever fully willing to cop to it or not, that Babitz was that artist who lived her art, whereas Didion was the poseur who simply culled her stories from everyone else’s lives, never really living herself. At least not too dangerously. Particularly for the time (the sixties and early seventies) and place (Los Angeles). Even so, Didion pulled the wool over many readers’ eyes (and continues to do so to this day) with her nihilistic, sparse prose that feigns understanding—lived experience—through gravity. This in direct contrast to Babitz’s style, all open and direct, levity and light. Didion, instead, was always deliberately trying to obfuscate herself. Or rather, any part of herself that negated a carefully curated persona: the “cool customer,” as she likes to say in The Year of Magical Thinking, repeating a term one of the doctors called her after the death of her husband. And yes, Anolik is sure to mention at one point in the book that there is a story about how Didion wasn’t too distraught over Dunne’s death to call Sonny Mehta, the editor-in-chief at Knopf, to see if he thought The Year of Magical Thinking would be a bestseller...just a day after she sent him the manuscript.
In yet another instance in Didion & Babitz that underscores her unbridled careerist aims as a writer (in lieu of the la-di-da artistic ones that Babitz had), Dominick “Nick” Dunne recalled Didion making a call to her publisher about Salvador the day after his daughter, Dominique, had been strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, and taken to the hospital, and everyone had gathered at the house to show emotional support. The phone line was meant to be left open in case any doctors or police called with an update. In other words, whatever was going on in Didion’s personal life, the professional always took precedence. Mercilessly so. And it’s no secret that that’s what it takes to be successful. Particularly as a woman in the arts.
Throughout Didion & Babitz, Joan is exposed for the cold, calculated woman she is—because she had to be if she wanted to make it as a successful writer in a man’s world and profession—while Eve is emphasized as the purest definition of an artist (which is precisely why she didn’t “hit the big time” like Joan). Someone not only creating art for art’s sake, but also living her life as though it was art. As Lana Del Rey says in her poem, “Salamander,” “My life is my poetry, my lovemaking is my legacy.” Babitz was definitely of the same belief, particularly with regard to her “lovemaking” a.k.a. sexual conquests. From Walter Hopps to Ahmet Ertegun to Jim Morrison to Steve Martin, Babitz’ list of conquests reads like a who’s who of Hollywood. But, in Eve’s case, she had an eye for who was going to be “somebody”
before they became famous. Call it one of her many “artistic talents.” This in addition to being a visual artist, which Anolik believes was also a detriment to her prosperity as a writer, for it was difficult for her to lend all of her focus to just one medium when she was talented in multiple arts.
And one such art—that still remains underrated despite Charli XCX bringing it more cachet—is being a party girl/scene queen. Something that Babitz knew how to do as much as her erstwhile gay bestie, Earl McGrath, knew how to alchemize his charm and list of social contacts into being a key Hollywood player despite being famous for nothing. At least nothing related to art, other than being a hangeron of that scene. With Didion counted among his coterie of influential friends as well.
McGrath was among the many who frequented the parties that Didion was happy to host, but never as much of a willing participant in them as Babitz. There was always something about Didion that remained strictly ivory tower. To back her up on this, Anolik brings no less a literary titan than Tennessee Williams into it, unearthing a quote from James Grissom’s Follies of God that goes: “I love [Didion’s] work, but I am aware that she is shrewd about her effects, her twists, her fillips and her dry perceptions. While I feel that [Marguerite] Duras has actually walked through a few fires, and now writes from the perspective of a singed victim, Didion has, perhaps, witnessed a few burn victims and shudders at the vision, wonders how it might have affected her, how the clothes scented with Lanvin smelled when the petrol met the match. Duras has seen the carnage; Didion resides on a hill, in a beautiful home with a good soup on the stove and keens about the arrival of carnage: Cassandra with a good haircut and the phone number of people at Paramount.” While the comparison was between Didion and Duras, it might just as well have been Didion and Babitz, whose passion—sheer appetite—for life is so hearty and sensuous that it makes Didion’s writing and style come across as, well, more wooden than “deadpan.”
There’s no doubt that part of their variances in tone stemmed from Eve’s fearlessness in terms of how she chose to live. Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll—that was Eve. Yet she wasn’t a groupie, even if that’s the image she chose to project to hide herself as a true artist...lest someone accuse her of being a fraud on that front. On the subject of sex and drugs, perhaps among the most shocking revelations of Didion & Babitz (apart from John Gregory Dunne probably being gay) is Eve’s casual bragging about how she had acid-fueled sex with a then barely legal Griffin Dunne, Joan’s nephew with whom she was extremely close (all
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz
the way into her later years, as evidenced by Dunne’s documentary about her, The Center Will Not Hold). It happened at a book party for Slow Days, Fast Company thrown by Charlotte Stewart. Eve recalled, “Someone brought Griffin Dunne. He was way too young. Everyone pounced on him. I got him.” It’s hard not to think of that conquest, drug-addled or not, as a pointed maneuver on Babitz’s part. A way of subliminally telling Joan, “See? There are some things I can do that you can’t. Some things that I can have that you can’t.” And, considering Didion had effectively taken away Babitz’s rightful ownership over writing about L.A., eclipsing her with her dark perspective on it, maybe this was an act of, that’s right, sex and rage on her part.
As for Joan claiming L.A. the most through the publication of Play It As It Lays, Anolik has long argued that this book was the catalyst for Babitz to write her own take on the city, starting with “The Sheik” and then Eve’s Hollywood and Slow Days, Fast Company—all arriving after Didion had colored Los Angeles with her cynical slant. To underline their divergent views on the city, Anolik selects two opposing quotes from each writer’s respective work:
Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Anas affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.
From earliest childhood I have rejoiced over the Santa Ana winds. My sister and I used to run outside and dance under the stars on our cool front lawn and laugh manically and sing ‘[h]itch-hike, hitch-hike, give us a ride,’ imagining we could be taken up into the sky on broomsticks.
Surely, you can guess which quote belongs to whom. Didion could not have been more unlike Babitz, the gusto-filled, lust-for-life writer who isn’t frail or constantly bogged down by the weight of the world. Babitz, the “all woman” figure, clashes and contrasts against Didion, the curveless, “surfboard body” figure in every way—physically and emotionally. Indeed, the “styles” of their bodies also play into how each woman writes, with Anolik and Babitz both wondering if, at times, Didion was deliberate about remaining a wisp so that she could appear non-threatening to her male writer peers. If she wasn’t seen as “womanly,” then maybe they could forget she was a woman altogether. Conversely, Babitz was never treated with the same seriousness as Didion precisely because she was “buxom” (a word that Bret Easton
Ellis also uses to describe Babitz when recalling their first encounter to Anolik—Babitz, not Didion, would provide a blurb for Less Than Zero, which flagrantly borrowed from Play It As It Lays in terms of style).
Because to have a voluptuous body as a woman is to call attention to being a woman. Something Didion never really wanted to do in her writing. Though she was happy to in her personal life when playing the fragile victim in need of a male protector...mostly, John Gregory Dunne. But before that, as Anolik is sure to point out, she was entirely reliant on Noel Parmentel (who Anolik was able to interview before his death on August 31, 2024), a quintessential cad/man about town, to fight her battles for her. Including the most important one of all: getting her first book, Run River, published. This, too, is part of how Anolik makes a strong distinction between the two women: Joan needed a man to get her foot in the door of a publishing house—especially after Run River had been rejected by roughly twentythree publishers, including editors at her eventual home, Knopf. But Parmentel managed to push it through with Ivan Obolensky, a Russian blueblood who had started a publishing company. As such, his imprint, McDowell, Obolensky Inc., wasn’t taken seriously by “legitimate” “New York people” and publishing houses. This, in part, was what doomed Run River to obscurity at first (that, and its rather blah title).
Even so, Didion showed her gratitude for what Parmentel did by offering the dedication: “For my family and for N.” The N was for Noel, of course, but he insisted that his full name not be put in the dedication. In the end, that was just one more act of kindness he performed for Joan, wanting her to come across as a writer of her own merits, not someone whose “sort of” boyfriend had an in with an independent publisher. And, technically, Babitz owes her writing career to Parmentel as well—because, since he gave Didion hers, Didion paid it forward by giving Babitz an in at Rolling Stone. In a letter (one of many Anolik makes the reader privy to) dated July 28, 1971, Didion wrote to associate editor Grover Lewis (another soon-to-be bad romance of Babitz’s):
Dear Mr. Lewis—
A friend of ours in Los Angeles, Eve Babitz, a few days ago showed me a piece she had written—about Hollywood High, where she had gone, but really about more than that. The piece surprised me—she is a painter, not a writer—& I liked it very much & suggested she send it to you to see if you might be interested in publishing it. So please watch for it.
That’s right, no less than a recommendation from one of literature’s most formidable writers working in the business is what it took for Babitz to finally be given a chance after “The Sheik” was
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz
rejected by multiple others. The story, of course, offers a wistful and romantic portrait of L.A., even if there’s a bittersweet tragedy at the heart of it. It bears noting, too, that Didion calls Babitz out as “not a writer,” as though this little caveat is what convinced her to promote a fellow woman wielding L.A. as the primary setting of her story. As a “painter,” she couldn’t be that much of a threat to Didion’s own preeminence. And, for a while, she wasn’t. Not until Anolik launched a
“...they are not, as it appears on the surface, each other’s opposites, but rather, each other’s doubles. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona incarnate. Like a yin yang, the two ostensibly opposing forces make up the same larger picture.”
rediscovery and reassessment of Babitz’s work post-2014. So much so that, as Anolik points out, Bret Easton Ellis remarked in a 2020 episode of his podcast, “…there is a burgeoning school that prefers Eve Babitz to Joan Didion. I happen to have been—and still am—a massive Joan Didion fan. And I have a special place for Play It As It Lays. It’s a very powerful, dark book. Joan Didion goes into hell. But, in some ways, it’s easier to write hell than it is to write with that light, glancing, comic style [as Babitz did]. I reread Slow Days, Fast Company, and, I have to say, that book is a revelation now. It’s one of the greatest books ever written about L.A., and may be the key novel of Seventies L.A.” So it is that Anolik pronounces Eve’s victory, even if only for a passing instant, over Joan with a reader and writer who was once always decidedly “Team
Joan.”
After the failure of Run River, ergo Didion’s attempt at being a respected fiction writer, she found fortune in a new form—New Journalism—whereas Babitz, creating her own new form which she bills in a letter to Joseph Heller as “spurts,” did not. Sure, some of the books she released were received with “warmth,” but they were never regarded all that highly, nor were they heralded as “masterworks” in a new genre the way Didion’s writing was. So it is that Babitz started to play to the gallery (something David Bowie sagely cautioned against) with Sex and Rage in 1979 and L.A. Woman in 1982. And in doing so, Anolik posits that she lost her way as a writer. Without the confidence she exuded in her own new style, both novels were unanimously panned, especially by the hoity-toity New York critics. Didion’s ascent, meanwhile, only continued into the 1990s and 2000s, with the abovementioned The Year of Magical Thinking becoming the bestseller she had hoped for.
And yet, in many ways, Babitz has had the last laugh. Case in point, Anolik recalling how writer-editor Gerry Howard introduced her for a reading of Hollywood’s Eve by noting in his speech that Babitz is “one of late-twentieth-century L.A.’s greatest living chroniclers, starting to eclipse even the mighty Joan Didion.” And she did all of this, as Anolik also points out, just by “barely [leaving] the onebedroom apartment that smelled like pee-you, that smelled like shit, that smelled like insanity.” All while Didion was running around oh so “coolly” to secure her status with the Establishment. To boot, Babitz never abandoned her native state the way Didion chose to, returning to New York after making that big to-do about leaving it for good in “Goodbye to All That.”
But Anolik sees now that “the competition was ongoing, the stakes of the competition not just raised but changed. For years it seemed as though Eve had been left behind by Joan. Now it seemed as though Eve had, perhaps, been waiting in front for Joan the whole time.” Naturally, because we live in an era where it is no longer “polite” to pit women against each other or acknowledge that women do still feel inherently competitive with one another (particularly as this world provides so few spaces for more than one woman in any given field to “take up”), Anolik is careful to suggest that, all along, the competition was collaborative. Thus, she adds, “What if the competition was actually a cooperation, Joan and Eve writing L.A. together? Yes, their sensibilities were polarized, their styles clashing. Their intentions, though, were identical: to make literature that exploited what was novel and exposed what was familiar in a city, a society and an epoch
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona Incarnate: Didion & Babitz under convulsive pressure.” In short, they are not, as it appears on the surface, each other’s opposites, but rather, each other’s doubles. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona incarnate.
Like a yin yang, the two ostensibly opposing forces make up the same larger picture. Incidentally, the cover of Didion & Babitz couldn’t have opted for two more disparate photos of each woman...by design of course. The intent is to make us see one woman—put together, poised, impenetrable—and another—fun-loving, sloppy, open to all life had to offer (whether good or bad)—as yin and yang. Counterparts. Each unable to exist without the other. The summation of the “Madonnawhore complex” that men still so often enjoy wielding in their assessments of the “two kinds of women.” Or, as Anolik phrases it, “Joan and Eve are the two halves of American womanhood, representing forces that are, on the surface, in conflict yet secretly aligned—the superego and the id, Thanatos and Eros, yang and yin.” What’s more, “They’d had an identical choice—the life or the work—and they chose opposite.” But each woman’s choice has nonetheless led to an indelible account of a time and place that was, for the most part, left solely for men to document.
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 theopiatebooks.com for more information.
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Lindsay Lohan Stole My Life (A Tate Carmichael Novel) by Genna Rivieccio
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Yet So As By Fire: A Passion Play in Two Acts by Anton Bonnici Released: December 2021
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Quasar Love: A Reenactment in Three Acts by Anton Bonnici Released: August 2022
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I Love Paris by Rufo Quintavalle
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Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero
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This Rescue Thing by Penny Allen Released: April 2024
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Pornotopia: The Incomplete Texts by Anton Bonnici Released: July 2024
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David Leo Rice
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On the Way to Invisible by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
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Diary of an Anonymous Midtown Office Worker in the 2010s by Genna Rivieccio
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The Fire Within by Chiara Maxia
Welcome to The Opiate, Vol. 40. A particularly momentous issue because of both its milestone number and seeing the magazine into its “ten-year anniversary era.” That said, we aim to keep pushing the envelope as usual in the years to come (or however long printed materials endure). This edition features a mix of “familiar favorite” alumni and erstwhile The Opiate “virgins,” including fiction, nonfiction and poetry from Holly Marihugh, Max Talley, Russ Doherty, Lela Cermin, Kari Wergeland, Renshaw, Zeke Greenwald, Alex Osman, John Grey, Djanet, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, Alessio Zanelli, Stephen Barile, Alise Versella, Frank Freeman, Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios, Ken Been, Frankie Laufer, Dale Champlin and Marissa Glover.
