All posts by Benjamin

Co-founder of gutwrench.
Issue 3., True Stories.

FALALALAF**KING LA LA LA

By Tricia Stearns

Yesterday I found myself in the doctor’s office hooked up to an EKG machine, and even the machine was having a fucking meltdown and didn’t work. There were two nurses and a doctor all hovering over me trying to get the little plastic connections that were taped to key parts of my body to read from the machine on to a paper, so the doctor could medically evaluate whether I was having a heart attack. Technology. I always thought technology would eventually kill me, and maybe God was going to show His sense of humor — His little way of getting back at me for all the expletives I yell when I can’t get a printer to work, can’t figure out how to complete an Excel spreadsheet or never set my margins right the first time. Fuck technology.

Two nurses and one doctor later, the EKG machine was ushered out of the room. Together we decided that if I continued to feel like I ate every meal at the Golden Corral, then it would be wise of me to go to the Emergency Room.

At 5:45 in the evening, the Christmas do-das on the light poles of the nearby shopping center were casting colored shadows on the paper liner of the exam table. We were all tired. While they disconnected the wires of the machine, I envisioned each nurse hustling home, each yelling at her kids to let the dog out to pee, while she heated soup or zapped those Godawful Hot Pockets for her children’s dinner. My triage crew gave me a sample of an antacid, and I went home and threw the dinner party that had been scheduled since September.

But honestly, I didn’t feel well—and I hadn’t felt right for over two weeks. But I just keep moving. I drink a cup of coffee, walk three miles despite my feet yelling at me. I work though I hate it, iron shirts, cook dinner, read a bit, write essays but never revise them, give my husband and our sex life the obligatory ten minutes. Each day I move because I must.

I thought about going to the emergency room just to cancel the dinner party; after all, I never got around to making a dessert. FALALALAFUCKING LA LA LA.

I did manage to roast dinner in the oven between the 18 phone calls an hour, ten new emails per hour, combined with a holiday luncheon where we gave a scholarship away honoring my deceased daughter.

Thus, dessert never got made, and I was tempted to cancel the dinner party.

Suzie, one of the guests, ALWAYS serves homemade pie or three kinds of cookies, along with a scoop of made-from-scratch sorbet when she entertains. Oh, and she is ready when people arrive. I, on the other hand, have to have my husband serve the first cocktail while I go back and change – and toss back my first glass of wine just to settle into social mode.

I didn’t go to the emergency room afraid I would just catch a flu bug from some other stressed-out suburbanite, combined with the fact my husband would just reschedule with the perfect people. I was almost home free. I had a roast in the oven – the ultimate answer to First World problems.

And dinner was fine. I heard laughter and compliments and merry cheer come out of my guests’ mouths. Our dinner conversation was thoughtful – with intelligent discourse on the state of our republic. My husband was profoundly pithy with dropping just the right humor when the discussion would get too heated, but the entire time I had an internal conversation with myself.

I am just so tired. I am tired of mean people. I am tired of being a people-pleaser. I am tired of dishes, cooking, work—yes, your carpet needs replacing before we put this dump on the market. What? You bought a new car a week before we close on your first house?

I went to bed reading and planning the following day, reviewing my Fitbit where I walked 19,000 steps. And I had a heart rate in the danger zone. FALALALAFUCKING LA LA LA.

Something happened that night. I had a dream. And my deceased daughter, who died at 20, was 8 years old. And she snuggled on my lap. We were on the patio of the house we lived in at the time. She had her hair in pigtails, and she was holding my face and making me look at her as she explained her dilemma. But this time she was holding my face and looking into my eyes, and saying, “It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay. It’s beautiful here, and I am so very happy and joyful.”

And I woke up to another day of First World problems. I wish I could tell you that my attitude improved. It didn’t. But I followed the mantra, “Fake it til you make it.”

I took baby steps. I went to the office Christmas party for the first time in four years. I got people dancing who normally stick to the walls like Velcro. I took cookies to that asshole in the mailroom. I bought Christmas pajamas for my other girls, even though they are adults. I baked cookies—for my dog and HIS friends.

FALALALAFUCKING LA LA LA.

Each day I feel less overwhelmed, personally and globally. I don’t feel I can solve all ills. But this one thing has occurred to me that has been a game changer.

The Declaration of Independence says we have an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. I get what our forefathers were trying to say, and I would have been on that boat with them, cold and miserable. Upon landing, we would work the fields to grow food for my family and village.

I also believe in a Cosmic God, one that is in control of the entire universe and the soul of each human being – and my dog. In John 14-17, Jesus says God created us to be happy and joyful in this world and the next.

The Declaration of Independence was ratified by a group of tired expatriates who wanted to pursue their own democratic republic, to self assert their future and the future of their grandkids.

I get the whole Peace on Earth thing, that plays on the Muzak while I wait in line at Target. But, seriously, having peace in your heart in 2016? FALALALAFUCKING LA LA LA. No way.

But, I was given a clue in my dream. I live in a world full of pain and trouble and human suffering. I do not need to add to it. I must surrender my anxiety and trust the universe.

The pursuit of happiness is just that – the chase. The get-up and hustle, the early bird gets the worm, only the strong survive, the coach yelling at you in the locker room at half- time to get your shit together and WIN.

Often in that pursuit of happiness we create Idols. We can even become our own Idol – seeking the obvious: the fast car, the material possessions, the best for our children or a politician that will save our society from suffering. And, in that very pursuit, we lose ourselves.

Through the years of working, doing and being a human, I once lost myself.

And when I lost my child in a sudden accident, the News became personal.

Tragedy is only a moment away for all of us. In any given moment, our lives can change. In my suffering, that deep internal grief that only a parent can truly understand, I have made room. I have made room to surrender to a quiet joy that cannot be bought. It does not come with my employee review or 74 likes to a selfie with my dog.

This joy is the byproduct of suffering. The suffering is the foundation of a club. I belong with other members of it, and we stand in solidarity, surrendering to pain —surrendering and living with joy despite of it.

I am too tired to pursue. Instead, I receive. I receive hope.

Issue 2.

An Easy Mortality

By Myke Johns

It did not begin as a trudge. It started as a hike. From the very foot of the Appalachian Trail to about twelve miles in. This gaggle of boys carrying sticks, wearing backpacks, our faces expectant even at that hour. Under any other circumstances it would be inexcusable for us to be awake—not for a school day, not for church, not for Christmas morning. Yet here we were with boots on, intently listening to our Scoutmaster go over trail safety one last time.

“Troop 410,” that was us, “we do not hike alone. If you have to stop to rest, to go to the bathroom, to pass out, you buddy up.”

We all eyed each other and quietly decided who our real friends were. I was not going back into the woods with Quentin or Hunter—those two did not have my best interests at heart. I figured I would buddy up with whoever was closest should the need arise. Raoul and Jason stepped almost imperceptibly closer to one another, though they didn’t have to. There was no coming between those two, and everyone recognized and respected that.

“Guys, are we ready to go?” Raoul called out, and the lot of us fell in behind them.

None of us consciously thought of them as leaders, but they were easy to spot in a crowd—Raoul’s dark skin and gangly legs, jutting from the bottom of his shorts, Jason’s ball cap. They were nice dudes—treated everyone square. They were a year older than most of us—or maybe not older. They were taller.

One mile down the trail is the best moment in any hike. That wasn’t so bad, you think, I can do eleven more of those! Hell, I could do twenty. Let me go, and I’ll make it to the Georgia line. I’ll make it into New England. I’ll do twenty two hundred more of these. I’ll see you in Maine, boys. I’ll send you a postcard.

By mile five, the uneven terrain and the morning chill humbled me slightly. I started to notice how most other kid’s walking sticks weren’t just broom handles with crude carvings in them. I compared their expensive metal-framed backpacks to my regular, overstuffed school pack, my sleeping bag strapped to the bottom with bungee cords. The next mile kept getting further away.

But we were out in nature! Daniel stood in the trail ahead of me, facing east. I got close, and he waved me over.

“Look!”

We stood at the base of some great rock outcropping, maybe a boulder, but in the North Georgia chill, a layer of ice had formed on it. Now, as the day warmed, the sheet was melting, but not in a way we’d seen before. We strayed there for a moment, watching water drops like tadpoles squiggling down the inside of the ice, the boulder perspiring in the sun.

Daniel’s pack was the opposite of mine—aluminum-girded and clanking heavy with tin cans, camp gear, everything strapped down and tight. But we had an easy back-and-forth and he was small like me. We buddied up and the next mile stepped lighter. We ran into Jason and Raoul, taking a knee just off the trail.

“You boys doing alright?” Jason asked.

We’re fine, we say. They pulled the canteens they’d dunked into the creek.

“Do you guys need tabs?” Daniel asked. Water purification tablets, as we’d all become familiar that morning. They turned your water a pale yellow which was wholly unpleasant to look at, and made the water taste like a really weak tea made from dead leaves and potting soil. Nobody liked them, everybody used them. Except apparently for Jason and Raoul. They capped their canteens and made off down the trail ahead of us.

The last couple miles before the campsite, the trail led down into a valley and the slow-going switchbacks caught most of the boys up with each other. So for a short while before our stopping point, we all got to see how the others had fared. We were all doing okay and the collective boost of confidence had us speaking as men do with one another in the woods. Our conversations became jocular and adult. We talked about boobs and the best ways, we supposed, of seeing them. Not a one of us eleven-year-olds was an authority on this, but we had all hiked twelve miles into the Appalachian Trail. We could not celebrate with beer, we could not have uncomfortable-but-awesome sleeping bag sex with our girlfriends—we did not have girlfriends. But we could engage in some casual adolescent sexism as we merrily pitched our tents, built fires and ate dinner.

There around the fire, we laughed and told our stories from that day on the trail—the falls, the sights… Hunter claimed to have seen a bear, “I swear, on the ridge as we rounded the lake!” No one believed him.

Raoul’s eyes went wide.

He stood, turned, and his skinny legs propelled him into the dark forest just beyond camp. We called after him. Jason followed his friend into the woods, and we fell in behind him, abandoning the fire, grabbing flashlights and tearing off into the dark.

Jason shook us and we called their names, the lot of us, sweat-stained and wondering if Raoul had spotted Hunter’s phantom bruin. One of us made out shapes in the moonlight, and we broke sticks and brush underfoot tramping up to them.

We found them there, the two, bent over the same log—pants around ankles, hands clutched at bellies. A foul, earthy stench, like peat or spoiled soup wafted through the pines and the two boys groaned as they splattered the forest floor with their unspeakable filth.

They were buddying up on diarrhea. I glanced at Daniel—he arched an eyebrow and simply said “the tablets.” Everyone seemed to understand what that meant. The troop turned and silently made our way back to the fire. Surely they’d be fine, we thought, as long as they were together.

Throughout the night, as the fire died and we bedded down, Jason and Raoul periodically scooted off to soil the forest floor with their regrets, one always following the other, like a pair of sad angry Sasquatches, groaning into the black night, ruining their asses in the pungent and terrible woods.

We go outside to grow up. We’re educated in buildings and raised in houses, but we go into the wilderness to mature. We’ve built cities to protect ourselves because most everything out there in the world will maim us in some way, from mosquito bites to thorny brush, sharp rocks against our tender feet, teeth against our soft flesh. When camping it is imperative that you grow accustomed to the sight of your own blood. There is an easy mortality about us in the forest and sometimes watching your friends turn into shit golems is what teaches you to respect the world around you.

It rained in the night and it soaked into my tent and my sleeping bag and everything, really, that we had carried onto the trail. We stood around eating Nutra-Grain bars for breakfast. No one wanted to break camp. Mostly because everything we had carefully packed the day before was now swollen, wet, and seven pounds heavier.

Except for Jason and Raoul. Their faces were drawn, their eyes sunken. If they had slept, it did not show.

I saw Daniel eating from a cold can of beans by the wet ring of stones which had once been our campfire.

“How’s your gear?” he asked me.

“Just about ready,” came a voice from behind me. I turned and the rest of the troop were standing over my shoulder, watching Daniel coolly spooning beans into his mouth.

I ate my crummy breakfast and packed up all my wet shit. The other boys did the same. We had another ten or so miles to go that day. There was heaving and swearing all about as we got our backpacks on. It was truly awful and cold, but somehow our camaraderie had not been broken. Daniel dug in his pack, produced a roll of toilet paper, tossed it to Raoul. The boys fell in line behind Daniel, obscured by his giant backpack. He turned to the trail.

“Are we ready to go?”

I was.

I wasn’t.

Issue 2., Poetry.

The Last Four Things

By Laura Carter

Everyone is wearing the mirror that everybody’s wearing!
It will always seem like morning in twenty
shades of parrots, and ordinary things

are far. The thought of grabbing a cup of coffee from Starbucks is a thought.
Wait a second. You’re almost already
an ordinary person once again,

and then, as soon as the mountains can overtake the sea,
there’s a song by Usher playing in the background, ever so lightly, and we
attack the Jacobins for having nerve.

The beginning always seemed to be the last, lined up like coffee spoons or the new day,
as a riot on the world’s other side
turns things, shakes things up, causes a panic.

The last time I saw you you were wearing my shirt.
After the last night we were glued to the news of the latest election,
desperate for some hero.

Issue 2.

The Last Thing

By Laura Carter

Early morning shone the light over your body and I was looking.
We eat oranges at the park
because there is more poetry left for us:
no politics can sustain us,
but maybe love’s beginning can.

And what’s not perennial? In spring, we bloom out
because to make a day is to
vagabond in some sort of shimmering—

         not to diminish, but
         to exert selves
         that are almost

raw, with the crispness of sun at edges.
But yes, that sun.

                   I am not asking forgiveness now.
In earlier times, eternal
light would mean that
all earth’s accomplishments could be set

aside: there would be trumpets.
But nobody knows what is next,

and delicious futures roll of our tongues
at our own peril, at everyone’s.
The circle was always perfect.

                   You trace my heel with yourself, and
the only thing left is the beginning of
a middling that is best when embraced—

somehow, Adam always forgoes old paths.
You tell me the world

                   is cleaner
in autumn, winter.

         It makes perfect sense—
         seasons adumbrate
         perfection like loose gulls,

and the world sings
when it can at death’s approach.

                   Every player
on the stage waits for a resolution or
the light at the end of the last place
we got lost. I smile and then shrug. You
rewrite the stage with obsolete hands,
framing every hen in perfect
green todays.

                   Was each crowned
with something of the ordinary, or
was there a crescent moon that lit up the field?
It’s impossible to find the right answers here,
and the oranges are as good as the sea salt
and caramel gelato that we eat.
                   Tomorrow we may

readjourn the senate of owls that we met.
We may go back to the grove and eat precious honey.
Tomorrow we may take the noble
path out of the city and find sustenance.
Funny thing is, makes a whitewashed story,

tomorrow too emboldened.

Funny thing is, it’s almost like Rome,
and there’s no greater part of me for that,

         images banished
         (at least for the shortest time)

in order to resuscitate the horse.
Which horse? the audience wonders.
Oh, that horse.

         Not the horse of columns, but horse-
         of-many-coats,

easily removed, easily made spring,
         easily de-chaptered,
easily taken from waves,
         and then gone.

Issue 2., True Stories.

Weak Tea

By Alayna Huft Tucker

We drank it to the dregs back then? the speckled fannings swirling in the bottom of a pot of weak tea? the same leaf brewed over and over all day as we assessed each new cup for its nuance, trying to discern how it differed from the previous one, finding meaning where there was none and making conversation out of mere water.

I kept a journal of tasting notes so we’d remember which ones we liked, as there were so many. Notes written in scrawling half-cursive detailing the quality of the leaf, how intact it was, how tightly curled. And the bloom in the basket? the color of the tea liquor — was it amber, crimson, mushroom, or vermillion?

We got to say pretty words like Yunnan, Anhui, and Fujian when we asked each other which province this one or that one was from. And there were some not so pretty words like Pu-erh and Lapsang souchong that were still fun to say and felt like a secret code we’d made up between us, since no one else understood anyway. I liked it when he pronounced Oolong as “WOO-long,” without a shred of arrogance, only the grinning passion of an obsessed hobbyist trying to connect to someone through shared experience.

We drank other things too, of course. Beers hopped with sticky green bitterness that tasted like grapefruit and grass clippings, balmy round Brettanomyces, and that bready rye like a cold liquid loaf of the same. We liked to talk about them together at the bar in those corner seats, if we could get them, where we’d swirl and chew and consider carefully before gulping it all down and spewing up truths in inebriated inhibition.

Whiskey was another. I loved trying to get the timing just right of sniffing at the edge of the glass, taking in the woody aroma just before the sip so that the smell of it would swirl in with the flavor and amplify it. I swore if you breathed in at just the right time it wouldn’t burn going down. We never drank wine though — we weren’t wine people.

Then I stopped drinking all of those things because she was coming. He offered to do the same, in solidarity, but I said it wouldn’t help. He took up a cream soda habit anyway while I tried virgin mojitos and raspberry leaf tea. We talked about the future.

There were so many scary words like preeclampsia, placenta previa, and Caesarean section. But there were beautiful ones too, like when fetus became baby, and how amniotic fluid (already lovely) is often just called water — I imagined her swimming through the glowing amber caverns of the watercolored wombs I saw depicted in pregnancy books. She spoke to us through the heartbeat monitor in her own delicate language in which all the words were “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,” like a butterfly trapped in a wind tunnel.

After she came it was milk, sometimes every hour around the clock. Water for me? gallons of it to make her meals but I still felt drained, or maybe that was just the sleep deprivation. He unwound with a beer most nights, but the Saisons and Imperial India Pale Ales were replaced with cheap utilitarian Lagers, so essentially water for him too. And there was coffee, so much coffee. We didn’t see our corner seats again for over a year, and even then we just talked about her.

It wasn’t at all joyless, merely relentless — a gauntlet of a year where every hour was an obstacle course. But every time I felt as if I was on the edge of losing it, the little bean would gain some new semblance of humanity and another ounce of tension would siphon out of me, undetectably at first, but after many months of this gentle dripping I felt noticeably lighter.

Then milk became chocolate milk out of an open cup, followed by occasional juice in a real glass that I fully trusted she wouldn’t drop. I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point we stopped making that second pot of coffee in the afternoon. And I remember he and I laughing together on date nights at cocktail names like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Stubborn As a Moscow Mule. I tried Pinots and Syrahs and no longer thought they tasted like chilled rust in a glass. It would seem that somewhere along the line tastes had changed along with the tides.

This afternoon, she picks the Bi Luo Chun out of the cabinet because it’s daddy’s favorite. She can’t read the Chinese characters on the package, but neither can we. The lines and shapes are recognizable only in that we’ve seen them so many times as to have memorized them. It’s passed around and we each take a deep breath of the sweet earthy aroma. Two dainty fingers pinch at the leaf and sprinkle it into the mesh basket just as the electric kettle clicks off. Dad pours, instructing how to swirl slowly, to dowse every fine leaf and admire as they yawn and stretch out like little babies waking.

We’ll drink it flush after flush long into the evening, allowing her tiny sips and flashing a praising smile when she proclaims “It’s yummy, daddy.” And when baby’s gone to bed, we’ll sip on what’s left of a pot of weak tea and talk about how it tastes different now, but still good.

Issue 1., True Stories.

Waiting for the Phone to Ring

By Sheronda Gipson

Have you ever waited for someone to die?

It’s like waiting for a baby to be born. With a lot of false starts and senses heightened, every twitch, sigh or slight eye movement is noticed and examined.

Is it now?

My sister doesn’t want to go to sleep for fear of “the call.” You know the one. The call after 12 a.m. and before 6 a.m. that means someone you know has either been arrested or someone you know has died. The ring that is louder than normal even though the ringer volume has never been adjusted. The ring that is loud and scares the shit out of you and disorients you and makes you knock over things in the dark.

We anticipated the ring.

The first time I’d heard the ring, my mother’s side of the family was together for Christmas. It was the winter of 1989 and my cousin and I had just finished our first semester in college. My grandfather was in the hospital battling colon cancer and all the children and several of us grandchildren, were home. My cousin and I had come in from a late movie and just as we entered the sweet spot of sleep before dawn, the phone rang. One of my aunts answered and gave the phone to my grandmother. I still remember her primal moan and scream, she was doubled over and someone helped her to the bed. We all jumped up to comfort her and each other. Death began our day.

*  *  *

Before the stroke, I’d gone to see her. She was sitting in her ultraluxe reclining chair that stood her straight up or reclined full out with the flick of the remote control. It was a gift for her 100th birthday. She was joking with me, telling me, as she always did, how much I reminded her of her sister Itta B. I got ready for bed that night and she shuffled to her room to get blankets for me, even though I’d already gotten the bedding I needed. The Aunts, the rotation of my mother and her sisters that took care of Momma Nettie since she turned 95, went to church the next morning, leaving me to watch Momma Nettie. I supervised her making her own breakfast, something that The Aunts wouldn’t let her do anymore. She walked slowly into the kitchen, holding on to the doorframe and the countertop and turned on the stove burner that had the kettle of water on top. I’m not far behind, walking a foot distance behind her, arms ready to catch like spotting a toddler taking its first steps. She took an aluminum pie pan from the bottom-stove storage and put it on the counter. She walked to the breadbox and opened it, pulling out a bag of Colonel bread and put two slices in the pan.

“Baby, put me some butter on this bread. Just a little.”

I opened the refrigerator, pulled out the butter tray and cut a couple of pats of butter for her. She sat at the kitchen table as I buttered the bread and put the pan in the broiler. When the kettle whistled, I poured the hot water in her teacup and mine and we sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea, eating toast and bacon — comfortable in our silence.

*  *  *

A year later, I walked up the back steps of the trailer, bracing myself to see her. The stroke had taken a toll on her and my mother said that she wasn’t doing well. It was Father’s Day weekend, and I’d stopped in on my way to see my dad. The Aunts were in full motion: cleaning, answering the phones, propping her head with pillows, asking if she was ok, feeding her and changing her. She was sitting in her recliner.

“Hey, there little one.”

She turned her head in my direction and smiled at our family’s greeting.

“Momma, do you know who that is?”

“Sheronda.”

With strict instructions from my Aunt Margret, I fed her yogurt and we watched tv that night.

The next morning, I was leaving and I saved her hug and kiss for last. I went over to her chair and kissed her head and smoothed back her thinning gray hair.

“I’ll see you later Momma Nettie, I’m heading to see my Dad.”

Behind the water pooled in her eyes, I saw panic. She hugged me tight and when she let go, she still held on to my forearms, crying and moaning, her mind wanting to say something that her mouth wouldn’t allow.

*  *  *

A week later, at around 5 a.m. or so, my mother called.

“She’s gone.”

I’d gone to bed late that night, stomach tied in knots because the family had been told that it wouldn’t be long. So I was restless and just as I’d found the sweet spot of sleep, the phone rang.

And death began my day.

Fiction., Issue 1.

Blind in Love

By Cory D. Byrom

I fell in love with Ben the second time I saw him. He was a tour guide for Classic New York, one of those double-decker bus tours that takes you all over Manhattan, pointing out locations both historically and culturally notable. I thought it was a quirky job to have in this day and age, but Ben was wonderful at it. He welcomed every guest as they climbed onto the bus, asking my parents where they were visiting from and insisting that what a coincidence he had an aunt who lived in Marietta, Georgia, too! When I stepped up as they moved to their seats, he shook my hand and looked so deeply into my eyes that my ears started ringing. Had I been alone, or with friends, I would’ve sat right by him and made it my mission to have his number before the tour ended. But some things you just don’t do with your parents around, and for me, flirting is one of them, no matter how hot the tour-bus guide is.

The tour itself was fine, about what you’d expect. Ben pointed out all of the major monuments and delivered tidbits of trivia for the tourists to chew on as the bus lumbered through traffic. He pointed out the Egg Building at the Empire State Plaza. He showed us streets corners and storefronts seen in Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Big, and When Harry Met Sally. All the great tourist stuff.

As the tour ended and we departed, I had a sudden urge to press my phone number into his palm, but I didn’t have a pen or anything to write my number on, and before I had time to consider my options, my parents and I were standing on the street, my father wondering if we should take a cab back to Tom’s Restaurant to sit in a booth where Seinfeld ate. He was disappointed when I told him they only used the exterior.

The smart thing to do would’ve been to forget about Ben, but of course that’s not what I did. Instead, a week later I called Classic New York.

“I went on one of your tours just the other day, and I tell you, our guide, Ben I think his name was? Boy, he was really great. There was one bit of info he mentioned about the Chrysler Building that I found so interesting at the time, and danged if I can remember what it was now. I was wondering if I could get his contact info so I could pick his brain a little.” They told me that if I stopped by their office I could get a pamphlet that featured the information from the tour, and that they couldn’t give out the guides’ personal info anyway. Of course they couldn’t. So I went ahead and bought a ticket for another tour.

And it was during this second time ascending the stairs, shaking Ben’s hand, and having him once again look not at me but into me, that I fell in love with him. I told him I’d taken the tour a week earlier with my parents. “No shit?” I liked that he cursed on the job. “Who’s with you this time?”

“Oh, no one,” I admitted, feeling a little silly and obvious. “It’s just me this time.”

I pulled myself together and turned on the charm, flirting casually at first, then sneaking in more personal conversation during the down times of the tour. And I came prepared, with my number already written on a card. When I tried to give it to him towards the end of the tour, he said, “Thank you, but I’m really not interested in that sort of thing right now.”

I feigned offense and asked what “that sort of thing” was and what kind of guy did he take me for anyway.

He smiled. “You’re sweet, but trust me. It’s too complicated. I just can’t.”

I told him I understood but maybe we could grab coffee, very low-commitment, and we could each explain ourselves and then decide once and for all which of us was in fact the most complicated. It was a very playful pitch. By now the tour was ending and people were shuffling to their feet. He took the card, wrote his number on the back, and handed it back to me.

“Take my number instead. It’s easier for me,” he said. I worried that he was brushing me off with a fake number, but when I called the next day, he answered and we agreed to meet for coffee. He told me where to find him. Low-commitment. I was already in love.

I did find him. He was sitting at a table, coffee already in front of him, looking around sheepishly as if he wasn’t sure who to expect. He seemed to barely notice me approaching, but once I re-introduced myself, he was all nervous charm. As we got to know each other, it turned out that he was right about that complicated thing. He was more complicated than I could’ve imagined.

Ben explained that he suffered from prosopagnosia, more commonly known as face blindness. He could sit and study my face all day long (and believe me, I would’ve let him) and still not be able to recognize me if I walked up to him on the street. Picking someone out of a crowd was impossible. You know the phrase “He couldn’t see the forest for the trees?” Well, Ben couldn’t see the trees for the forest. People were one big forest to him. Simply put, he couldn’t recognize a person, regardless of how well he knew them.

“So, you see, having a relationship is just too complicated for me. I’m not ready for it right now,” he said, and I thought I could sense disappointment in his voice, like maybe he wanted to give it a try anyway. But maybe not.

“Who said anything about a relationship,” I said. “We’re just playing.”

“Just playing,” he echoed. Later that evening he kissed me for the first time. Even later still I gave him a blowjob in the back of a cab. It definitely had the structure of “just playing.”

We tried to come up with creative ways to make it easier for him to recognize me. I wore the same pair of blue Adidas every time we met. I offered to get a unique haircut, but there are only so many options for guys, and I couldn’t pull off suddenly going punk just so he could recognize me by my mohawk. I told him maybe I could get a tattoo in a recognizable location, but he pointed out that that wasn’t exactly a move someone “just playing” would do, and anyway, he thought tattoos were kind of trashy. So mostly we stuck to identifying clothing, like the blue Adidas.

Our just playing continued for a couple of weeks. It was a whirlwind of public makeouts, semi-public blowjobs, and late night hook-ups. It was during the third week that I finally saw him completely undressed and discovered the 3 tattoos on his chest and back. “I thought you said tattoos were trashy,” I said. He hesitated before explaining that he thought it was crazy that I would’ve offered to get a tattoo for him when we were supposed to be “just playing”. It freaked him out a little, so he’d added the trashy part to make sure I didn’t go too far. I think we both knew I’d already gone way too far.

“Are we still just playing?” I asked him. A smirk faded into a look of slight annoyance and he said, “I am,” and it stung.

Things started falling apart after that. I was finding it harder to hide my real feelings, and he was getting more and more selfish and careless in his treatment of what I perceived to be our relationship. There were times when he seemed disappointed to see me once I made it clear that it was, in fact, me. He finally told me he was tired of just playing with me. I was tired of just playing too, but we didn’t mean it in the same way. He told me I should stop calling him. He told me I could stop wearing my blue Adidas. I left them in his apartment and walked home barefoot.

It’s been two months since I fell in love with Ben. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken the Classic New York bus tour. I don’t shake his hand when I get on the bus, and I avoid eye contact. Before I went back to the tour, I got a new haircut. I grew out a goatee, too, and sometimes I even wear fake glasses. I know it doesn’t matter, because he won’t recognize me anyway- he can’t recognize me- but as long as it’s a game of dress-up, it’s easier to convince myself that I’m “just playing.”

Fiction., Issue 1.

Starlight Peppermint

By Grant Jerkins

I remember the first time I saw you. I was in my car—drive-thru banking—to get a check cashed. And even though I was on the far outside lane, you looked across all five traffic aisles and made eye contact with me. Yes, the security camera captured my image, and I’m sure it was on a monitor right there next to you, but you crossed time and space, to meet my eyes with yours. And when my money arrived through the pneumatic tube, I found you’d slipped a piece of candy into the envelope.

Starlight peppermint.

I wondered if you did that on purpose. If you were sending me a message.

I remember, too, later that August, it was hot and humid. The air conditioner in my car didn’t work—and I’ll never forget this—I was making a withdrawal. You greeted me by name. And when the clear plastic canister came through the tube, I grabbed it and held it in my lap while I twisted open the top. It was the oddest sensation. Icy vapor from inside the air-conditioned bank, flowed out of the canister and pooled into my lap. I lifted the container to my face, and the cold dry air spilled from it, brushing my lips and nose. I could smell you. Your perfume. It was like standing next to you. It was like you sent the essence of yourself through time and space, just to get to me. I was so affected that I couldn’t even speak. I replaced the canister and sped away. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.

Driving home, I wondered if you did that on purpose. If you sent that little bit of you, to me, on purpose.

Two days later, I was back with a deposit. I drove around the bank first, scouting it out, so I would know which lane was yours. This time I had a plan. I was so nervous, I couldn’t bring myself to speak or look at you. I wanted to appear distracted, so I turned up the radio and snapped my fingers and bobbed my head and waited for you to send me the receipt for my deposit. And when the transport canister slid down the tube and landed, I grabbed it and drove off. I kept the canister and drove away.

I had your air. Your perfumed essence, trapped in the plastic cylinder. Like a genie in a bottle. I had you.

I figured this must be a common-enough occurrence in drive-thru banking. People accidentally taking the tube container. I even searched online for the words bank drove off with canister, and there were over twelve million results. It happens all the time. Most likely by distracted people listening to the radio.

That night, I put you in my bed. The canister you. I laid you in the clean sheets while I took a shower. I wanted to be fresh. And then I fixed us two glasses of wine, to reduce anxiety, so we could be ourselves with each other.

I opened you. Consumed you. It was heaven. I know you felt it too.

The next day, I went inside the bank, and I asked for you by name—for Laurie. Because of course I’ve seen your gold-plastic name tag. The inside-teller (Roberta) told me you were busy and that she would be happy to help me, but I stood off to the side and waited for you. When you finally came out and saw me, you had this funny look on your face, almost like you didn’t recognize me. I smiled at you—sheepish, embarrassed, guilty. And I held up the canister. I said I was sorry. Understanding broke across your face, and you grinned and cocked your head to the side and asked me if I did it on purpose. Ha-ha. Then you laughed some more and said don’t worry, it happens all the time. It felt like you were reading my mind. Like you were sending me a message. Then I watched you open the canister. It was just a reflex on your part. Like maybe you were a little bit nervous and didn’t know what to do with your hands. I watched your fingers slip inside, and I thought about the residue from last night that was in there, coating the circular walls, and how my essence was on your fingers now, and how later, you might put your fingers to your lips and part of me would be inside of you.

In a rushing breath, I told you how good of a job you were doing at the bank, and how courteous and professional you always were to me, and how you made me feel like my business was truly appreciated, and that I wanted to tell your manager what an asset you are to the bank, but I was late for an appointment and if you would just give me your business card, I could call the manager later and tell him exactly who I was complimenting.

So you gave me your card.

Laurie Ciresi.
Customer Service Specialist.

Ciresi is not a common name. Not common at all. You were easy to track down. But you knew that would be the case, didn’t you?

Many nights, I watch from the stand of weeping willows behind your house. Sometimes with binoculars, and sometimes I just go right up and look in. You should really cut those hedges. They are a security risk. Or get your husband to do it. I don’t think he’s right for you. You two almost never sleep together. That says a lot.

Now that the weather is getting crisp, sometimes you open your windows to let in the evening air. When I get up close, I can smell your essence seeping out. It reminds me of how we first met, at your work, and how you sent me the air you breathe through the pneumatic tube. How I wondered if you did that on purpose. Ha-ha. It makes me smile now. How I brought the canister home, and then brought it back to you with a little bit of me left inside. Molecules of me. And now here I am, waiting for you, out under the stars. Starlight, remember? I wonder how many billions of years our atoms have swirled around the universe, only to arrive here, tonight, to be at this moment, bathed in starlight.

Time and space converge like the cards of a shuffled deck, and here we are.

What happens next?

I notice that you forgot to close your bedroom window all the way tonight. I can’t help but wonder if you did that on purpose.

If you are sending me a message.

I surely do wonder.