CCLaP Weekender
From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography
September 18, 2015
New Fiction by Bruce Douglas Reeves Photography by Daniel Vรกsquez Chicago Literary Events Calendar September 18, 2015 | 1
THIS WEEK’S CHICAG
For all events, visit [cclapce
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 6:30pm The View From Here Kickoff Party StoryStudio Chicago / 4343 N. Ravenswood, #222 / Free https://www.facebook.com/events/748140685315026/
The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP) launches their 2nd annual "student all-star" anthology. Doors open at 6:00pm, readings begin at 6:30. Coffee, tea, and light refreshments will be available, and the book will be available for purchase. Readings by contributing writers, including: Alecia Dantico, Anna Harnetiaux,Traci Failla, Maria Vorhis, and Esra Tasdelen. This is a free event.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 3pm Paper Machete The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / Free, 21+ thepapermacheteshow.com
A “live magazine” covering pop culture, current events, and American manners—part spoken-word show, part vaudeville review—featuring comedians, journalists, storytellers, and musical guests. Hosted by Christopher Piatt. 8pm Blackout Diaries High Hat Club / 1920 East Irving Park / $10, 21+ blackoutdiaries.info
A comedy show about drinking stories, a “critic’s pick” at Red Eye, MetroMix, and Time Out Chicago. Comedians share the mic with “regular” people, such as cops, firefighters, and teachers, all recounting real-life tales about getting wasted. Hosted by Sean Flannery.
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GO LITERARY EVENTS
enter.com/chicagocalendar]
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 10am
Sunday Morning Stories Donny's Skybox Studio Theatre / 1608 North Wells / Free
We performers are pre-booked. We feature novice as well as seasoned storytellers. On or off paper. 7pm Uptown Poetry Slam The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $6, 21+ greenmilljazz.com
Featuring open mike, special guests, and end-of-the-night competition. 7pm Asylum Le Fleur de Lis / 301 E. 43rd / $10 lefleurdelischicago.com
A weekly poetry showcase with live accompaniment by the band Verzatile. 7pm Waterline Writers at Water Street Studios Water Street Studios / 160 South Water / Free waterlinewriters.org
Curated reading series.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 7pm
Christine Sneed and Paulette Livers The Book Stall at Chestnut Court / 811 Elm St.
An evening of readings and discussion with these two awardwinning authors and personal friends. 8:30pm Kafein Espresso Bar Kafein Espresso Bar / 1621 Chicago Ave., Evanston kafeincoffee.com
Open mic with hosts Chris and Kirill.
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 6pm Lyricist Loft Harold Washington Library / 400 South State / Free youmediachicago.org
“Open mic for open minds,” presented by Remix Spoken Word. Hosted by Dimi D, Mr. Diversity, and Fatimah. 9pm
In One Ear Heartland Cafe / 7000 N Glenwood https://www.facebook.com/pages/In-One-Ear/210844945622380
Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.
To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line cclapcenter@gmail.com
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CCLaP Publishing
A darkly surreal yet absurdly funny short-fiction writer, Matt Rowan has been a Chicago local secret for years; but now this latest collection of pieces, all of which originally appeared in the pages of the CCLaP Weekender in 2014 and ‘15, is set to garner him the national recognition his stories deserve, a Millennial George Saunders who is one of the most popular authors in the city’s notorious late-night literary performance community. Shocking? Thought-provoking? Strangely humorous? Uncomfortable yet insightful on a regular basis? YES PLEASE.
Download for free at cclapcenter.com/bigvenerable
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ORIGINAL FICTION
“Old kasbah in the Sahara desert” by Alexander Cahlenstein [flickr.com/ tusken91]. Used under the terms of her Creative Commons license.
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“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” She showed me her profile. “Like a salmon.” “A fish?” “No, idiot. A salmon.” That was when I suspected that I might love Juliet, that night when we sat in the absurdly expensive Moroccan restaurant atop a medieval palace.
T SONGS BY BRUCE DOUGLAS REEVES September 18, 2015 | 7
The days were long and scorching and the nights nearly as hot and long and the desert wind sang in my ears until I was almost insane. Like discordant, battling bands, the chaos of my life echoed in my head. Black notes flew around me like carnivorous birds and the road under my feet, when I bothered to look down, was trampled to dust. Maybe it’s not on your map, but Ouarzazate has been called the Hollywood of Morocco, even the Hollywood of North Africa, but I think Palm Springs is more like it, except for the French tourists who run around nearly naked—sometimes not even nearly—so maybe it’s the Cannes of North Africa, without the water. I was there working on a picture (why else would I have found my way to that windy desert oasis?) when Juliet slid onto the bar stool next to mine. Why make movies in Morocco? I’ll tell you: more sun than you’ll ever need, cheap labor, mountains and desert, historic towns, ruined fortresses, picturesque villages. And Europe is minutes away by air. You probably didn’t know that Orson Welles filmed his strange, dreamlike Othello in Morocco back in the 1940s. He shot it in the streets and public baths of Essouara over on the Atlantic coast, draping his actors in sheets because he couldn’t afford costumes. In my opinion, Essouara has Ouarzazate beat all to hell. This place is so hot and dry, a bird could suffocate in midair, but that doesn’t stop movie companies today, who fly like suicidal vultures to this inland desert. Get out your map. Find Morocco, locate Marrakesh, then move your finger east and south. Maybe your map will have a tiny dot, maybe not, but don’t go too far or you’ll be lost in the sands of the Algerian Sahara. That blank space on your map? That’s it. You’d probably recognize the movies filmed in Ouarzazate, epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator and exotic pictures like Sheltering Sky and that one where Michael Douglas crashed a plane into a kasbah wall. European directors come here because it’s exotic and cheap, making those flamboyant costume pictures with more sex than sense. You know the kind, usually set in the kasbah, slave girls in skimpy costumes running in and out of the harem, bearded villains waving curved swords, and a belly dance whenever the action drags. I’m not an actor or director. I’m strictly a techie, one of the roughnecks who labor in the background. You’ll never see my face on the Oscars show— not that it’s a bad face. I’m on the short side, but several females have complemented me on the arrangement of my features, though these days, I’m starting to look a little picturesque, myself. Sun and sand and stimulants do their job—with help from time and gravity. Still, Juliet must’ve thought I had some appeal, even if she was nearly a decade younger, at least in years. 8 | CCLaP Weekender
Ancient as it is, Ouarzazate has a few modern hotels near the old city, places that cater to movie casts and crews and a few European tourists. The producers, stars, and director camp in the best hotels, but the rest of us don’t exactly suffer. A wide street curves like a dry river bed down a sunburned hill to the historic medina and kasbah. Dry winds whistle down that street to the medina, singing their warning: stay here at your own risk, beware of the sun frying your scalp and cooking your brain. The first place you reach as you climb the hill is the walled Club Med compound for those French who can’t wait to expose their skin to the carcinogenic rays of the Moroccan sun. I was staying at the hotel next door, a flashy place surrounding a multilevel courtyard and free-form tile-skinned pool, and wondering what I was gonna do next, when Juliet appeared: small, dark, and beautiful, a gal out of one of those film noir movies that she told me about later. Who was she? Lizabeth Scott or Jane Greer? Ida Lupino or Gloria Grahame? I’d never heard of any of ‘em, but Juliet educated me. I perched on a stool at the outdoor bar near that blue lagoon of a pool, making a beer last from here to eternity, when a tanned elbow slid across the polished wood. Then her hand began beating out a complicated rhythm on the bar, accompanied by an almost subliminal soprano. Her shoulders subtly rose and fell as the melody drifted around me, as if meant only for my ears. I took in the white shirt and black pants, so simple that they had to be expensive, the trim figure, the delicate, if not quite perfect, profile. The other women in the vicinity faded like phony mirages in a desert flick. They were too big, too robust, too assertive, too anything you want to name. “It’s disgusting,” she said. I looked around. She nodded toward the pool. “Flaunting their bodies in front of the Muslim men.” “Who?” I studied her face and the restlessness of her narrow nostrils. The bump on the bridge of that aristocratic nose saved her from being too pretty. I was to hear many stories about how it got that way—broken by a nasty sibling, an enraged stepfather, a jealous friend, a movie star lover. It all became part of my education. “The French women on their cut-rate holidays. They strut around and sprawl by the pool, showing off their boobs and everything else. It doesn’t occur to them that a woman here isn’t supposed to reveal herself to any man except her husband. Look at ‘em! Shows a lack of respect.” I’d noticed the French women, all right, but hadn’t thought about ‘em from her point of view. There they were, flaunting their less than perfect bodies as they let the North African sun change the color of their well-oiled skin, while handsome Moroccan waiters in white jackets dispensed cold drinks and pristine towels. September 18, 2015 | 9
“Chienne!” “Imbecile! Allez a l’enfer! Que je vous desteste!” One of those coppery women and her boyfriend or husband or whatever he was had come to life. I couldn’t see her face, but her thin body was goldenbrown and the pudgy guy with her was sitting on his haunches, glaring like he wanted to tear her bleached head from her shiny brown shoulders. The woman jumped up as a waiter passed by with a couple of drinks on a tray, her sun-gilded breasts bouncing as she swore at her slack-bellied lover. The young waiter didn’t turn his head, but his heavy-lidded gaze weighed and measured her naked attributes. “They have no sophistication, even if they are French,” said Juliet, the scene by the pool reflected in the blue lenses of her sunglasses. “They come here from the provinces because it’s cheap and used to be their colony, but know nothing about Morocco or its culture.” She nodded to the barman, he brought another glass of wine, and we told each other our names. I started to explain that I lived and worked in Los Angeles except when I had to go on location, when that skinny, top-heavy French woman snatched up her towel and bikini top, leaving her companion staring at the toasted orbs of her shifting buttocks. Swerving furiously, she collided with another of the Moroccan waiters, cursed him, and strode across the terrace, struggling into her top as she walked. “Class,” said Juliet. “It’s all about class, but low class Americans aren’t as bad as the lower classes from other countries. They may be crude, but they’re not aggressively vulgar.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with her, but I continued explaining that the movie I was working on had been canceled—the bastard producer skipping out without paying anyone. Juliet raised her glass in a mocking toast. “Same thing happened to me. Could it be the same asshole?” She named the producer and the movie, and yes, even though we’d never seen each other, we’d both been screwed by the same bastard. “My boyfriend was the assistant director. He promised me a part, but the so-called star who can’t move her face because of all the nips and tucks disappeared and creepo lost his financing because it was tied to her name. So
“They have no sophistication, even if they are French,” said Juliet, the scene by the pool reflected in the blue lenses of her sunglasses.
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here I am. My boyfriend is supposed to be back in LA, lining up something. I’m actually staying at the Berbere Palace, but I had friends living here.” She waved a hand at the sandy gold walls sheltering the terrace and pool from desert winds, then shrugged. “Guess they’ve run off too.” The Berbere Palace was where the big names stayed. Was she living on credit too? No, I felt sure that money was one item this gal never had to worry about. You don’t have that casual self-confidence if you’ve ever wondered how you’re gonna pay the rent. This female, whatever she was seeking, dreaming, hoping, deferred to no one. “I’m really a singer, but I love movies,” she announced. “My parents were in the business—granddaddy too. A director. You’d recognize his name if I told you, but I don’t like to do that.” She reached over and grabbed my shoulder. “Jeremiah, I’m all alone!” You would’ve thought I was her last friend on this scorched planet. What had happened to that glossy armor that coated her features like the most expensive makeup? Backing away with the half-grin that was my own protection, I proposed that we get together later. “Dinner in the medina,” she countered. “I’ll sing to you, if you’re good.” Her eyes glittered as if tiny spotlights were aimed at them. “I know a fabulous restaurant.” Hoping that this fabulous restaurant took credit cards, I agreed to meet her at the gate to the old medina. “It’s destiny,” she said, sliding off the bar stool, her childlike hand brushing over my forearm, making its hairs stand at attention. “Meeting like this.” I’ve never believed in destiny or luck—whatever happens, happens, and none of it much matters—but I fled through the fake-Moorish lobby, through a forest of columns and arches, to the front of the hotel, where I collided with a two-door Fiat older than I was. A classic car club touring Morocco had reached Ouarzazate, the automobiles corralled in the parking lot, scores of ‘em, ranging from a fifties Impala to a 1930-something MG to a couple of old Citroens, a Ford with a rumble seat, and a red Austin Healey that was the sexiest vehicle I’d ever seen. Most of the drivers were in the hotel, but a few still wandered among the cars, dusting ‘em and stroking their shiny skins, as if they were thoroughbred horses cooling down after a run. Or high-priced courtesans after love-making. No mere human could radiate the allure of these metallic beauties, unless she happened to be blessed with a certain small and delicate elbow. Once, I had a classic car, a maroon-and-black Alfa Romeo, but I cracked it up when my wife left me. It didn’t look so good when the paramedics scraped me out of it. Neither did I. September 18, 2015 | 11
That evening, scrubbed and shaved and in my cut-rate Hollywood-style finery, I confronted, just beyond Club Med’s palm-bordered fortifications, the red-brown walls of Ouarzazate’s sprawling medina. The ancient walls had been restored with money from UNESCO and a movie company or two. Their rusty colors deepened beneath the setting sun, shadows climbing sloping surfaces like a slime monster in a low-budget sci-fi flick. Maybe Juliet could help me close in on a job—or get me back to California without maxing-out my credit card. I’ve worked pretty hard, off and on, but I guess one lady who lived with me for a while summed it up: whatever I build with one hand, sooner or later my other hand knocks down. I could hear desert winds careening between ancient buildings, mocking me. Fighting a spasm of neurotic anxiety, I plunged into the shifting caramel and chocolate tints of the medina. Behind me, hard-packed red earth, above me stark walls dotted with tiny square windows. Roofs flowed into terraces, shuttered windows blossomed into doors that bled into shadowy tunnel-like alleys and courtyards. Wires dangled and swayed like lazy serpents along walls and above streets. Black-garbed Berber women slipped in and out of shadows. Half-an-hour later, Juliet strolled through the archway, gauzy scarf blowing around her heart-shaped face and turquoise shoulders. She motioned for me to follow her between the mud-plastered buildings. Hand prints imbedded in dried mud gestured from leaning walls. A woman concealed in a black chador scurried around a corner and two boys called out, eager to guide us through the mud brick maze. Juliet waved them away. “I took a nap,” she told me. “Dreamed I was singing to you, weaving a shroud with my song.” “Shroud?” “Oh, well—who knows?” After stumbling along streets so narrow that we could touch the handmolded walls on both sides with our fingertips, we turned a corner and came upon a chalk-white door under a blue awning. A mustached doorman in baggy white trousers, short jacket, and red fez flung it open as we approached. Inside, a host in still more elaborate costume pantomimed for us to follow him up a spiral staircase. He recognized Juliet, then gave me a look, as if to say, What are you doing with her? At the next level, we stepped into an Arabian Nights delirium of marble fountains, tiled floors, striped columns twisted like candy canes, brass-framed mirrors, low sofas and plump cushions, and tiletopped tables. Under a honeycombed arch, costumed musicians bent over traditional instruments, sending their songs through a maze of rooms and alcoves. “You’d never guess from the outside,” Juliet whispered, “but this was a palace.” 12 | CCLaP Weekender
When finally we anchored among waves of cushions at one of those low tables, waiters in red fezzes and snowy djellabas began hustling mezze and beverages our direction. I don’t think they were eunuchs, but they had a eunuch air about them. And Muslim country or not, these guys didn’t mind serving us quantities of wine. Good wine. “But we haven’t ordered.” “The chef sends us what he thinks we should have.” I nodded and dug into the food. At least, I could nourish myself before being thrown naked into the lowest scorpion-filled dungeon under the old palace. This was when she showed me her profile and demanded that I agree that she was beautiful. I agreed, even though I’ve never particularly been enraptured by the beauty of a salmon. “Morocco is my favorite place on earth,” Juliet whispered, settling into the silky cushions. “The people are kind and generous and look like gods. I love the secret gardens in Marrakech and the medina in Fez. It’s terrifyingly huge. Little boys kept wanting to rescue me. But the desert—it’s the desert I love. Maps are useless out there. You go by instinct.” “What if you don’t have the instinct?” “You die. My songs try to capture the music of the desert, the wind, the cries of the birds, the braying of the camels, the poetry of the Bedouins.” She clasped my hand in a painful grip. “I’m all alone. You have to help me.” Prying my fingers free, I laughed. “And I was going to ask you to save me.” “I can’t go home, but I can’t stay here alone,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I need someone I can trust.” “But you don’t know me.” “Of course I do. You’re Jeremiah.” Her eyes flickered impatiently. “I have these terrors. Doctors are no good. I’ve gone to the best, but they’re hopeless.” I reached for my wine glass, refilled by one of the eunuchs. “What about your family?” “Daddy’s dead and the rest of ‘em would just as soon if I died out there, in the desert.” The puffy-sleeved waiter brought a sweet, spicy pastry of many layers in a flaky crust—a pastilla, Juliet explained, bursting with ground pigeon, eggs, and almonds. “You’ve never eaten anything like it.” After the waiter shuffled away in his yellow felt slippers, she leaned toward me. “I saw Daddy murdered,” she confided, a hoarse dip in her voice. “By a guy pretending to be a UPS delivery man. Shot on our doorstep in Laurel Canyon.” Was this woman a nutcase or what? Of course, she was lying. “I don’t have anybody I can turn to. I had a twin sister, but she became a September 18, 2015 | 13
nun and died.” Whether or not I believed Juliet, I was fascinated by her. Was this what happened when you grew up in Hollywood? Were you unable to separate truth from fantasy? “Why,” I asked, “was your father shot?” “Shh,” she whispered. Her eyes checked out the area around our table, as if to make sure nobody heard us. “I can’t talk about it.” “What about your boyfriend? The one who was going to get you the part in the movie?” “Who knows where the bastard is now?” She glared at a gold-ringed marble column near our table. “Once, just once, I found a decent man—a pro football player. Six and a half feet tall and that wide across the shoulders.” She stretched her arms, slapping one of the eunuchs in his gut. “Walt. Like in Disney. He kicked. That was all he did. Kicked the ball. He had really powerful legs. He’s dead too. A blood clot. Everybody I get close to dies.” She spoke quickly, rushing to get out the words, as she cut into the flaky pastilla crust. “I hope I can count on you,” she said. “But I’d better warn you: I’m not reliable. I can’t help it.” Her musical voice, the tiny bits of crust at the corners of her mouth, her lovely elbow—she made me promise that I’d never disappoint her. I forgot my own history of screwing up. I even forgot that I had no idea what she intended. Fires and windstorms swirled in that voice, echoing in the bright darkness of her eyes. We worked our way through the food and wine the eunuchs kept bringing. Between courses, she sang to me, odd, exotic melodies that scared me even as they seduced. As she sang, I saw a black bird behind her, its curved beak poised to tear flesh and pluck out eyes, its wings stretched on each side of her head, feathers gleaming like obsidian. Clearly, I was losing my mind, unless somebody had doped the wine. Finally, we stumbled down to the street. Distant constellations whirled above the mud brick fortifications. Those stars were maps of the past—maybe of the present, as well, since there were no other landmarks in that desert. All that open space scared me. Groping along shadowy alleys, past walls hung with carpets, eventually we staggered through the gate opening toward the modern town. As we hiked up the hill, I didn’t know whether she expected me to go to her hotel or to take her to mine. She’d paid for the meal and wine, so maybe she deserved a little tender loving care, but I’d had so much to drink, I wondered if I’d be any good, despite her very real allure. However, my foggy concerns didn’t matter, because when we reached the old cars, gleaming like stallions under hotel lights, she kissed me on the cheek and slipped behind a silver Porsche Spyder 14 | CCLaP Weekender
like the one James Dean died in. “Berbere Palace, 9 AM,” she called, continuing up the slope toward the silhouetted buildings on the horizon. “Breakfast first. Then life!” She seemed confident that I’d be there. The next morning, when I hiked up the Berbere Palace’s curving driveway, three chamois-hued Land Rovers parked by the glass doors were being stuffed with gear. Fez-topped hotel staff in gold-trimmed uniforms were helping a swarm of beautiful young people, all of them seven feet tall with flaxen hair and gilded skin and camel-colored trekking clothes. I hoped they’d be swallowed by a carnivorous sand dune. Juliet waited inside, beside a huge marble bowl filled with obscenely large oranges and apples. “That’s what we’re going to do.” She nodded toward the golden giants under the porte cochere. “Trek into the desert.” “Oh, no. I panic if my back isn’t against a wall.” “We’ll be able to breathe among the dunes.” She looked me over. “The sun will blast away the corruption, the rot. We’ll be clean, like bone.” Why was she threatening me this way? If I didn’t escape now, she’d have me on a camel crossing the Sahara. I don’t like animals, but of all the animals I hate, I loathe camels the most, unless it’s scorpions. However, a few days later, we loaded up a Land Rover like the ones the blond gods had been crawling over, but ours was mottled brown and rust instead of spotless beige. By now, I hoped, that merry band was buried under rippling sands south of Ouarzazate. Our high-wheeled machine was packed like a Conestoga wagon, supplies paid for by Juliet. She kept telling me not to worry, our guide and our driver— both named Mohammed—had been recommended by the hotel manager. And she promised, when I spent my first night under the stars deep in the Sahara—well, I’d never be the same. “You won’t let me down, will you?” Her eyes searched mine. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what I’d be promising. She lunged at me, nostrils wide, hands open. Automatically, I grabbed her wrists. The fear in her eyes faded as if it had drained like blood from a wound. She was living her own film noir and not doing a bad job of it. “That’s okay, darling,” she said, panting slightly. “I do trust you.” But did I trust her? We were going into the North African wilderness
Why was she threatening me this way? If I didn’t escape now, she’d have me on a camel crossing the Sahara.
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with nothing to guide us but the instincts of some shifty-eyed local guide. Later that day, as the Land Rover bounced over what passed for a road, Juliet nestled against me, dark hair hidden in a creamy turban, crisp Eddie Bauer shoulder pressing against my chest. “My IQ is a hundred and seventy-nine,” she murmured, with a gravely purr. “That’s one point below extraordinary genius.” She reached under my shirt, stroking my sweaty chest. Neuroses colored the air around her like dye spreading in a carafe of water. “My whole family is smart, but I’m the smartest.” Then, her hair against my cheek, she sang. The words, whatever they were, meant nothing to me. The songs might have been about the rocks and sand or about the blue sky and occasional hawk we saw drifting like death above the earth, or they could’ve been songs of love. She didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. When we reached Zagora, at the edge of the desert, we stopped to take pictures in front of a battered old sign reading, “Tombouctou 52 jours.” “It means by camel caravan,” she explained. “What is there at Timbuktu worth seeing anyway?” “Depends what you want to see.” She pointed to a large, black rock, partially buried in the sandy ground. “A bit of a star fell to earth—a meteor, anyway.” As the two Mohammeds took us deeper into the desert, Juliet told stories from her favorite film noir flicks. They all seemed to end badly for the men, especially one starring Ann Savage, an actress I’d never heard of, but whose character lived up to her name. I’d had bad times in my life, but knew damn well I couldn’t blame any of them on black widows like those Juliet was describing. This wasn’t real. The director would call, “Cut!” and we’d go back to our hotels for showers and booze. But how had I become an actor in this epic? I was a behind the scenes guy. The road jolted the rusty Land Rover, as if trying to send it catapulting over the harsh, dry landscape, but Mohammed the driver kept his course, working that steering wheel as if he were guiding the Starship Enterprise through a spray of asteroids. “We’ll camp out tonight,” Juliet whispered, “and get up to see sunrise.” “This is something we want to do?” “It’s unforgettable.” She tilted her dark, little head, as if listening to secret music, and shivered, staring into her own memories or fantasies. “Life changing.” “If you’ve already done it, why do it again?” “It’s for you, Jeremiah. I can’t let you go to your grave without seeing the sun peek over the Sahara dunes. The colors are amazing, constantly changing, 16 | CCLaP Weekender
and the music of the dawn—it will haunt you forever.” “Sounds like Vegas to me. And I wish it were.” We lurched over the hard-packed desert, brittle scrub jutting through the broken crust like fistfuls of needles, until we reached endless hills of pale brown sand. For all I knew, Mohammed was insane, ferrying us out here to feed the scorpions. “Slow down!” I shouted as the Land Rover tilted wildly. “It doesn’t do any good,” said Juliet. “He’s deaf.” “Who?” “Mohammed the driver. Deaf and dumb.” She grasped my fingers. “Don’t worry, Mohammed the guide can communicate with him.” She thrust a redgold ball into my hand. “A pomegranate.” “I don’t like pomegranates.” “Have you ever had one?” I shook my head. “Then eat it!” She spilled red juice and seeds over the leather seat and fed me chunks of sour sweetness. Mysteries as sweet and sour as these seeds awaited in the desert, she told me. Her promises both frightened and lured me. Finally, we reached low mud-brick buildings surrounded by crumbling mud-brick walls. Several grumpy single-humped quadrupeds scowled as we drove into their territory. “This is where we switch to camels.” “If I had a map, I’d steal the Land Rover and go right back to Ouarzazate.” “Silly boy. Maps are useless out here.” I had no doubt that she was inventing her own film noir, script writer and director, as well as star, but why should I live a part written for Kirk Douglas or Robert Ryan? Or Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino? I had my own tightrope to walk without being shoved onto hers. The two Mohammeds were joined by a third fellow in a stained blue djellaba and yellow backless slippers with pointed toes. Our camel driver. A couple of dark-browed Bedouins transferred our supplies from Land Rover to camels, busy jerking their heads and complaining with righteous hauteur. Then the guides hoisted us onto two of the beasts. I hadn’t realized that a rider sat so far back on the animal’s hump. It didn’t make sense to me until the brute turned his head to show me his immense brown teeth. “The Sahara is growing,” Juliet announced, as we began lurching forward, my head jerking as if it intended to abandon my neck, “and the seas are growing. The world is becoming salt water and sand. What’ll the corporations do then? Sell sand to the sea or salt to the desert?” I was too busy trying not to fall off the damn camel to respond. And what September 18, 2015 | 17
did any of it matter to me? Taking out a camera, Juliet began shooting the variegated dunes rolling over each other like multicolored waves. I never would’ve imagined that sand could be so many shades or that its colors would shift and change so constantly, as wind and shadow swept across it. No wonder maps were useless: the place was changing every minute. Sometimes, she hummed or sang snatches of her weird songs. After several hours, we stopped and the guides set up camp. Feet sinking into a dune, I looked around: in every direction, peaks and valleys of sand sliced into wedges and crescents by the blackest shadows I’d ever seen. “How do they have a goddam clue where we are?” I asked Juliet. “They have ways we don’t know,” she replied, complacently mysterious and wise. The guides set up camp: black goat hair tents, deep-hued carpets and cushions on the sand, animal flesh sizzling over fires, lanterns glowing, beverages for our refreshment. Then one of the Mohammeds sat on a low dune behind the fire, playing a lute-like stringed instrument as sand shifted around his pyramidal shape and Juliet sang her songs. This wasn’t too damn primitive, but I longed for a hotel, however sleazy, with walls, floor, and roof. Honking horns and an ambulance siren would’ve made me feel comfortable, secure. “The stars.” Juliet took my face in her hands, pointing my gaze upward. “Look!” It was true: I’d never confronted as many stars in my life as arranged in those inexhaustible patterns across the blackness. For one crazy moment, I felt as if I’d fallen into that Van Gogh painting with swirling, almost drunken, constellations. Never had I felt smaller, surrounded like this by desert and sky. The sand became a dream that changed form even as I watched, a dream threatening to turn into a nightmare. We washed with basins of water in a screened enclosure created by the two Mohammeds and their Bedouin compatriots. When I flopped down on the carpet and cushions in our tent, I discovered a gold statuette pushed into
This wasn’t too damn primitive, but I longed for a hotel, however sleazy, with walls, floor, and roof. Honking horns and an ambulance siren would’ve made me feel comfortable, secure.
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a depression in the sand. The bald little guy looked embarrassed, trying to hide his private parts with his skinny sword. “Granddaddy’s Oscar,” said Juliet, settling next to me. “I always have it with me.” I picked it up. It wasn’t plastic. The two Mohammeds brought out brass trays covered with multicolored mezze, golden couscous, chunks of lamb and chicken. Under the gaze of Grandpa’s Academy Award for best director (many decades ago), we ate. The food was spicy and we consumed more than we should’ve and drank even more of the French wine. I was content until a scorpion crawled onto the red carpet, barbed tail aloft. “Don’t be a coward, Jeremiah. It won’t bother you if you don’t bother it.” Furious, I stomped over and crushed it into the carpet with my boot, jumping up and down, turning it (I hoped) into dust. “Maniac!” cried Juliet. Snatching the Oscar, she propelled herself toward me. “Barbarian!” As the two Mohammeds watched, she hurled the heavy gold statuette at me. I dove for the greasy carpet, sand sliding under its loose skin. The statuette grazed my shoulder, then fell heavily into the sand beyond the carpet’s dirty fringe. “You could’ve killed me.” I picked up Oscar, then looked at the name engraved on the base. It may have been real, but that didn’t prove that the man who copped it forty years ago was Juliet’s grandfather. She pulled me onto the cushions. “Don’t tease me. It’s not my fault if you tease me.” Stroking my forehead, she sang to me in a soft, sultry voice. Soon, we were making a different kind of music, as they say in those old movies. Later, leaving her in the tent, I walked into the desert, gazing at the almost invisible dunes and the chaotic map of stars until I grew dizzy. After a while, I heard breathing. Turning, I saw the bulky silhouette of Mohammed, the deaf and dumb driver, watching me watch the heavens. The side of his face was illuminated by the lanterns behind us in the camp. His strong features, deep set eyes, and almost feminine mouth were disturbing. What was going on behind those heavy-lidded eyes? What was it Juliet had told me I’d find in the desert? Freedom? I didn’t feel free. I didn’t feel transformed. I felt closed in. Only when I was back in smoggy L.A., anonymous among the crowds, would I be free. I turned to the deaf driver, who in his djellaba suggested a lumpy pillar of sand. “Why don’t you stick your head in a dune?” I stumbled through the September 18, 2015 | 19
sand toward the little camp. Wind was coming up across the desert, its harsh whisper growing into a pulsating song that suggested the heartbeat of the earth. Gusts of sand hit my back. I shouted at him again. “You could’ve buried me alive out there. Why the hell didn’t you?” “Because his job is to watch over you.” I jumped at the sound of Juliet’s voice, her musical voice, her voice that transformed all experience into song, her voice that threatened to overwhelm me. “I don’t want anyone to watch over me,” I countered, as she waded into a quivering lagoon of yellow lantern light. Sandy shadows moved among our legs. She grasped my hand, seeing only some weird vision of her own. “Remember when Marlene Dietrich took off her high heel shoes and walked barefoot into the desert after Gary Cooper?” “No. And neither do you. You weren’t born then. Your parents weren’t even born.” “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t follow the man I love naked into the desert.” She strode back into the camp, ducked down, and disappeared behind the striped goat-hair wall of our tent. The spooky thing was that she probably believed what she said. “It’s claustrophobic out here,” I said, following her through the tent flap. I fell onto the grimy cushions. Kneeling next to me, she pushed my hair back from my face. “Not if we love each other.” “This place is too strange for love.” Outside, a few feet away, the camels brayed, angry at their tethers or the world or who knew what? I stretched out on the cushions and wine-colored carpet. “I wasn’t born rich like you, but I did okay with what I had to work with. Trouble is, I always screwed up.” “Darling,” Juliet said, putting her fingers over my mouth, “shut up.” That night, shadows like broken hearts crowded around us. Blood made my face hot and we sank into the cradle of desert sand, letting the music of the Sahara rock us into drowning acceptance. The sloping walls of the tent throbbed until it seemed as if we were inside a drum, a drum that unseen hands stroked and teased. “Remember,” she told me, as we lay naked under a dusty goat-hair blanket, her fingers intertwined among strands of my hair. “I’m not reliable.” “I’m not worried.” “You should be.” She pushed aside the blanket, crawled to the tent opening, and with a brief glance over her bare shoulder, disappeared into the darkness. I imagined following her naked into the desert, no map to guide me, 20 | CCLaP Weekender
letting her song lure me across the sand, through mirages and across invisible borders, to places unimagined by most mortals. I don’t believe in fate or mysterious forces that rule our lives, but there I was with Juliet, somewhere in Maroc, south of Ouarzazate. If that wasn’t fate, what was it? C
Reeves’ novella, Delphine, published in 2012 by Texas Review Press, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Competition. He also has published three novels (The Night Action, New American Library and Signet Books (paper); Man on Fire, Pyramid Books; and Street Smarts, Beaufort Books and Ace Books (paper).) The Night Action also was published in Great Britain and Germany and bought by Warner Brothers. Recently, he has completed a new novel. Find him on Twitter at @bugfat_bruce.
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PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE
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Location: Mexico This is about telling stories, making people feel something, remembering something that was forgotten in his journey through life. Although sometimes I look for a shot of something I consider beautiful, I think that there is beauty in everything that has a purpose, even the smallest things of this world.
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CCLaP Publishing
Orest Godwin is ruining his long legacy three fingers of rye at a time. His lectures have become bizarre. He’s smoking indoors. And he’s begun to carry a knife. When Orest nearly burns down the campus destroying memoirs in his attic, the College has no choice but to dismiss him. After 50 years, a prestigious career is ended in a humiliating act of senility. Or so The Provost thinks. Orest decides he is no longer satisfied to be a known historian; he wants to be historic. So he cashes his pension, draws a new will, and vanishes. With the help of a failing Spanish student whom he has promised a fictional scholarship, he embarks on an adventure from northern California to the lawless badlands of Mexico to join a true rebellion. Armed with Wyatt Earp replica pistols and a case of rye, Orest and Augie trespass through a thousand miles of brothels, cantinas, jungles, diners, and motels, threatening those they meet along the way. If Orest can just elude the pimps he’s crossed, the ranchers he’s sworn vengeance upon, and kidnapping charges, he might just join his peasant uprising. At least while he can still remember where he is going. And if no one gives him a drop of mescal.
Download for free at cclapcenter.com/orestandaugust
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The CCLaP Weekender is published in electronic form only, every Friday for free download at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com]. Copyright 2015, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Behnam Riahi. Photo Editor: Jennifer Yu. Layout Editor: Wyatt Robinette. Calendar Editor: Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.
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