Issuu

in place and time

quinn bader 1

i know thereâ€™s a part of my mom that always wishes she didnâ€™t go to law school, but instead packed up and moved to a little lighthouse off the coast of maine and became a writer. this is for her.

table of contents

cross country

passenger

first second home

241

fratboy

imposter syndrome

biblio

tinfoil cap thoughts

steering wheel banter

on patriotism

mo(u)rning

hors dâ€™ouevre

polo blue journal entry

cross It feels like there is a Knights Inn at every highway exit in Tennessee and that scares me more than I’ve ever let on. I can’t imagine a world in which people actively decide to stay at a Knights Inn. Wouldn’t Motel 6 be more bang for your buck? How has the chain proliferated so quickly? I think what frightens me most is that I’ve spent the majority of my life in Tennessee and yet Knights Inns seem foreign. As far as I know, I’ve never met someone who has stayed in one. Clearly I’ve grown up in a part of the state that is the exception, not the rule; that’s hard to explain to someone from outside of Tennessee, though. There’s so much of the state that I don’t know and I think that’s motivated by the fact that from the time I was cognizant of where I’m from I’ve been focused on leaving.

Corn and porn. Arkansas is really just crop fields and a shocking number of adult superstores.

Somehow I never really remember driving through Oklahoma. It’s legacy seems to be that it’s unremarkable. Oklahoma City looks like what an artist who’s never been to a city would draw if you described one to them. It could be a big facade and I’d be none the wiser.

country If the Cheddar’s in Bristol is the hot place to be, which it certainly was, then this isn’t a place I should be. Every highway exit is a gentle arch, forty feet above the road. Texas has a large sky and a large number of shanty towns that look like stains. For so many half-hour stretches, the only signs of life are wind farms. There’s a dairy queen I’ve stopped at both times I’ve passed by. It’s next to the only gas station for miles on either side. There are so many people in the middle of nowhere; their stories are unheard. Frankly, I’m not sure if I want to hear them. “Full lives just like yours passing by you en masse” is a cliché really tied to urban life in my mind. Northern Texas uproots that.

New Mexico is like Arizona, but a little worse. They have a whole Route 66 thing going on at points, which are always eerily deserted for being such tourist traps. It must be aimed at passersby, not as a real destination. There are teepee shaped motel rooms at some points, which I think is sort of melancholy and beautiful.

Arizona is so big. I think about one of the Motel 6s in Flagstaff a lot. The front desk manager there talked to me for a while when I checked in; he was in his early twenties and seemed impressed by my presence and almost unaware of the world moving outside of him. I guess I was flattered by his interest, and it taught me that I carry with me a tangible air of distaste for the inland, non-metropolitan US. I wonder what it is like to be content with where you are. Sometimes it snows in Flagstaff; parts of the state are beautiful and parts make you understand why people turn to drugs.

Why do they have agricultural inspection stations at the California border if nobody is actually going to stop me and inspect my car for agricultural products? To me it doesn’t really feel like California until you hit the greater LA area.

first I have lost too many hours of my youth to LA traffic, but I can’t help but feel a certain solidarity with the other drivers when I’m stuck on the 101, coming home from work.

second home sharp and searing, slowly inching white oncoming passing west red fog tail lights sputter, rumble

Nevermind who we are or where we’re going; we are all victims of the LA experience. Dodging drag-racers, porches, and every mom with a dark blue prius, our paths overlap and knot. Together, Angelenos have woven a fabric of the city in which we are all entangled.

raking up the gridlocked rest.

but when I go to whole foods no one can see and i have alone time in the back of aisle three.

The world’s entertainment capital is surprisingly quiet under the surface. We are a city of towns, hundreds of neighborhoods bustling in sync, days soft under the humm of bottlenecks in equilibrium.

spread me on toast like an avocado and let the city eat me

I think I like it here enough to really hate the traffic but not enough to stay forever. All homes are meant to be temporary.

like it always has but this time for $15.95

fratboy Fratty Kyle always grimaces and clenches his jaw so that the angles sharpen when I walk past. I can smell that he is afraid of me. He can smell my old spice deodorant. To Kyle, I am an opposing poacher in his neck of the Serengeti. Today heâ€™s trying to scare me away. I must be within shooting range of his prey. The next Cecilia the lion. Over the years Iâ€™ve boiled down the chest-puffing bros and their sharp glares to a fear of losing status. A desire not to be exposed as onedimensional or fraudulent. 10

Fraternities once served as a facilitator of community and camaraderie within universities where the country’s elite boys’ club of followers might find their voices being drowned out in larger crowds. I get it; whatever. Today they serve as shields; recreations of an outdated social hierarchy in which ivory and affluence placed you, invariably, at the top of the food chain. The modern fraternity is a gut-jerk response to our society’s slow, but nevertheless onward, drive toward unfettered meritocracy. On the surface, and surely to Kyle, I Imagine I could have been a premiere recruit. Anglo bone structure with a hint of unique coloration that would ensure group photos don’t look like a family portrait. Ideal. To top it off, my sense of style was maybe “in vogue” two years ago but now rests flatly on the surface of groomed but mundane. I’d fit in swimmingly. My ability to grow facial hair might even win some points with the ladies for their side of frat row. Within Kyle and his squadron’s ranks, there has never seemed to be a real sense of competition, which struck me as counterintuitive. Instead, it’s mob mentality. They benefit from brick driveway money and the cheerleader effect, where more is more and less entails a vulnerable visibility. Beauty in numbers. To maintain their dominance, the frats need to recruit every man who fits their archetype. Eliminate competitors like me. White, attractive, and preferably willing to forfeit their sense of selves, if they had one to start with. I must look corruptible. When fraternity men see themselves mirrored in the faces of non“Greek” students, I imagine that’s when the fear sets in that the public may one day stop buying into their narrative of social dominance. They may have to compete, then, with “others” who don’t sit on a trust fund. Others who instead might be able to hold a conversation. Who knew? Outside the brightly-painted, beer-drenched row, one can quickly become an enemy. After rush season ended, I was branded a member of the disruptive intellectual resistance.When I dawn a plain t-shirt during 11

welcome week, no coral or seafoam greek letters in sight, I have outed myself once again. How unfathomable of me to crave an individual identity. Maybe they thought me selfish. These days, there’s not much substantive you can say with three letters. I imagine Kyle and his entourage find that comforting. I couldn’t budget my time that way; it seemed like a waste. Truthfully I hadn’t know I’d picked anyone’s side when I chose not to put on a khaki uniform and join the ranks. I’d once thought about joining a fraternity, but before I’d ever really encountered them. The one appealing trait I’d identified was the manufactured sense of masculinity they touted and propagated. Maybe the almost homoerotic circle-jerk of egos would make me more confident. Or at least get me off? I’m glad I didn’t mortgage my personality just to rent a shiny new plastic one for four years. I think I would have crashed, emotionally bankrupt, into the real world. I’m not sure if that decision not to rush was really made with dismantling the patriarchy in mind, though. Truthfully, I think I dodged Greek life because the binge-drinking, womanizing, fratzo thing didn’t fit my idea of class in the college experience. I wanted knit-sweaters, philosophy, and bourbon. That Rockwellian tale of identity formation. I didn’t get that either, though. Maybe that’s just at Yale.

I often get up and decide I need to be someone different for the day. The whole charade revolves around pretending I’m more important than I am, and it’s gone a bit too far. I put in my contacts and sift through my clothes quietly, as though it will be my last respite from the public eye all day. It won’t. When I get to the garage, I like to put on my sunglasses and clomp my boots on the concrete, trotting to my car as though I’m on a catwalk. I usually flash a flirty smile or throw a wink to the pillar next to parking spot 26. My favorite reporter stands there. Slink into my car seat. Slam the door. The windows are not tinted, but I imagine I’m fully enshrouded there and I breathe deeply. How dramatic. I’m not sure why this daily performance helps me start my mornings on the right foot, but it always makes me feel a bit more confident. Even getting to Starbucks and picking up my iced black coffee and breakfast sandwich under the name Kevin is soothing. I don’t really want anonymity, but I guess I feel a little embarrassed about being 19 and in college. I’m not sure why; clearly I’m working far ahead of what’s expected of me, but I just don’t like to be looked down on, by anyone. One of my happiest moments was standing in a DC hotel room and ironing a dress shirt. It felt like a flash forward, which is all I want. I am proud of myself in so many ways. I’m horribly narcissistic, and yet I feel like the things I’ve accomplished are not really my own. They seem menial, juvenile almost. A lot of my accomplishments are aging out of relevance. 14

If I could meet me in the future I would ask him if the feeling of being an imposter goes away. I think the truth of the matter is simply that my expectations have always grown up five years ahead of me. I keep graduating early and climbing ladders to try and close the gap, but it just grows wider. Will I always be too young for where I want to be? Probably not. I’m afraid one day I’ll be too old. Maybe there will never be a time when my ambitions align with my opportunities. I’m not sure. In trying to make up for it, though, I think I’m making myself despise my current place in place and time even more. I work too damn hard. It’s boredom or burnout, but nothing in-between. Occasionally both. I’ll regret not having taken the time to enjoy my youth more. I know that. There’s really nothing I can do now.

biblio calling calling calling you from the library parking lot in Panama, the only spot with decent enough wifi to get a skype call through. ringing ringing ringing at the little bake shop with the best empanadas on the mountain and wasting my international minutes to remind you that you are so loved and to ask myself by whom? because I’m not sure it’s me anymore. packing packing packing all my things and coming home is not as easy as I thought it would be. the fan in this bedroom isn’t cooling anything down and for the first time since I got here I don’t want to leave. sing sing sing me to sleep one more time so I can say that it’s over. 17

tinfoil cap thoughts God, I really sound like Karl Marx. Flaws in the American education system? Intentional. The capitalist system relies on the division of labour into owners of capital vs. the labouring class, i.e. bourgeoisie vs proletariat. The easiest way to enforce this framework is to enfranchise only voices that benefit from its existence. A mechanism for this exists: systems which divide people from an early age and prepare them, in terms of making peace with their futures, either to become wealthy and rule or to have their labour exploited. Enter the American education system, a vehicle of class division and system cooperation. There are levels of class division: foremost the existence of private schools guarantees that those with big money are, as a whole, better educated. Political interests are entrenched within these secondary institutions; a playing ground for America’s rich, private schools provide the connections, instruction, and air of superiority that ensure that the next generation’s inherited economic resources won’t be used to undermine the capitalist system of labour exploitation. It will remain because it benefits the people who run it. Path dependency. Within the public school system, those who show the most intellectual prowess and the most institutional piety are placed into higher level coursework and given accolades, encouraging them to continue their kiss-assery and to believe that they are destined to serve this country in a commanding capacity. Those who are more unruly or who do not excel academically do not receive intervention and extra help, but rather are made to internalize their “inferiority.” They are placed in lower-level courses, further stagnating their intellectual development, and then excluded from opportunities for professional development, enforcing from a young age the expectation of class division and their own subjugation. “Make peace with the system,” they’re told. “It’s all you’ve got.” American schools are not a product of the system. They are the system, and they need to be entirely restructured if there’s going to be any social movement that aims to uplift marginalized communities. 18

Also, school just sucks. I feel like itâ€™s intentionally miserable so that people lower their expectations for the future and feel refreshed when their jobs are marginally less awful than school, even if both break their spirits.

UP NEXT Does the government secretly subsidize the production of TV shows about law enforcement agencies so that we trust the police? I wouldnâ€™t be shocked.

late 2019

polo blue journal piece

This year for Christmas I want a bottle of Polo Blue by Ralph Lauren. And when I open the silver and navy packaging on Christmas morning and mist myself, the scent will be just as much a factory-produced amalgamation of synthetic chemicals as it ever was something more. Because for the first time in 2 years and 10 months, I’ve started to figure out that the parts of you burned into my being aren’t yours anymore. They’ve become my own. And since that night by the fire, whistling polo blue down my neck, I’ve been trying to excise the parts of you I recognized in myself, only to end up hollow. You can’t breathe someone in for years then cut out your lungs when they’re gone. You’ll asphyxiate in your own body. When someone has really touched you, there are parts of them in every inch you. The air you breathe might never taste the same as it did when they were at your side, but they’re still there. Anyway, these days I’ve decided to take what was left of “us” and turned it into what I’ve got left of “me.” I’ve stopped seeing you in people on the streets, and I’m reclaiming what I have the right to love: Polo Blue. myself.

passenger

FEBRUARY Fleecy, grey upholstery. A canopy of plastic flowers hung from the passenger’s seat sun visor, and I had to duck not to knock them down. I lifted my feet awkwardly; I didn’t want to crush her belongings. They seemed to be a heap of geometry homework, old fast food containers, and moth-gnawed hoodies. Virginia turned to me from the driver’s seat. I don’t remember exactly what she said first, but when I think back to our first meeting and try to smooth over the empty spaces, I like to imagine it was “hold on tight.” She said she knew she was a reckless driver, and I buckled my seatbelt. Had I ever gone 100 miles per hour before? Surely not on the turnpike. You know, she was always good at avoiding speeding tickets. And she couldn’t believe how bright the moon looked tonight. Sometimes she wished it would just absorb her. The car lurched to a halt thirty feet into the red light. Virginia didn’t flinch. How was the props team this year? She loathed being banned from the drama club. Nepotism. School bored her half to death, and now that she’s thinking about it, she never really learned to read, so maybe that was it. She was a big fan of the chocolate milk they sold at the Walmart self-checkout, and her boyfriend was a douchebag. He always seemed to make her feel trapped in her own body. Did I know I’m a really patient listener? She said she needed that. Especially today. We’re here. We got milkshakes. Virginia climbed up onto her car roof. Nobody explained why she was part of our post-rehearsal food fleet if she’d been kicked out of the club; I didn’t ask. The girl scared me, but I was drawn to her. Something about the way she moved made being around her feel like we were on stage. Theatrics. I hoisted myself onto the car. “What’s your sign?” she asked. I thought. “Taurus.” Her lips curled into a wildfire smile. “Me too. You know, I’ve never met a Taurus that couldn’t tie a cherry stem into a knot with their tongue.” “Now you have,” I chuckled. She frowned. “Watch.” She pulled the cherry out of her milkshake and put it in her mouth. I raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, it’s not magic. Gimme a minute.” I turned back to the crowd and listened while the usual gripes about our director were thrown around. Slowly, the conversation lulled, but there was no tension. 23

irginia turned and looked at me with the cherry stem still in her mouth. “You’re green. Your aura, it’s a pastel green.” “Is that a compliment?” I asked her. “No, that’s just what it is.” She smiled and shrugged, sliding through the sunroof and back into her seat. I followed. “I’m going to head home. Where do you live?” she asked. We pulled out of the lot, and she turned up the radio, rolling down the windows letting her hair blow around the car. She sang like I wasn’t there. I nuzzled into the passenger’s seat, and we pulled up to a red light. She stuck out her tongue. Knotted. JUNE By the start of the summer, I had Max and I lay, legs splayed across the backseat with my head in his lap, as Virginia drove to the local swimming hole. It had once been a granite quarry, but construction halted back in the 60s and it had since filled. The quarry had become Laurel County public pool’s toughest competition amongst teenagers ,and the three of us were buzzing for the summer’s inaugural swim. The sun fell in through the backseat windows and flickered, the way it only can on a midsummer day in Kentucky, as we ducked through the trees. Highway 51 played stage to our summer’s birth. It had been a hot June, and the makeup of Virginia’s car reflected it. Beach towels and a box of sidewalk chalk sat at Max’s feet. Blue Bell ice cream cone wrappers, the chocolate dipped kind, naturally, and a box of 50 cent smoke bombs and sparklers from the convenience store lay at mine. I knew we’d find out what she had planned for them soon. It was never any use asking. I dozed off and the CRV swept up the highway. Virginia had named the car Rosemary. To her, the herb symbolized good fortune, so she always kept a sprig on the dash. It baked into the seats. The passenger’s side lay empty. Virginia’s eyes were locked ahead on the road and she sipped yesterday’s warm iced tea from a swirly straw, carefully turning up the radio, not quickly enough to wake us in the back. She’d become a better driver since we met. If she dyed her hair, I would have believed she was my mother ten years earlier.

NOVEMBER I was stacking my plates by the sink when Virginia called. “Feeling angsty tonight?” I cackled. “Always.” “See you in a few.” This was a strategy we’d worked out together for when something was gnawing at us. I’d always relished the night. It meant there was no one telling you what to do until the sun came over the hills. For Virginia, night meant being invisible. On the road she was anonymous. She could be anyone, so, in those moments, she chose to be herself. I declared Auntie May champion of the Thanksgiving dessert competition for the third year in a row and doled out the necessary few goodnight hugs before leaving through the garage. The headlights peeked through the window and Virginia flashed her brights twice. I grinned. She’d already been here when she called. V pulled out of the driveway and sighed. She couldn’t wait until the end of her first semester at the community college. Somehow the counselor had convinced her to take French again and she was halfsure she was accidentally enrolled in Finnish because it all sounded like gibberish. She couldn’t find a job, and she didn’t want to work in fast food anymore after the horrors of the Long John Silver’s freezer. Her dad was asking for rent now that she was in college and she didn’t want to disappoint him this time. Anyways, she was pretty much out of money, so she figured she’d run it down to zero just so there was nothing left to mock her. We were in the woods now. Could we roll down the windows and scream? That was nice. We passed into town, then out of it just as fast; Virginia pulled behind an abandoned service station. “Came here when I was really little. Mom would take me before she left. Used to be a putt-putt course.” She pulled a bag from under her seat and slammed the door. The bag clanked. “Dollar store has the best cheap cups around. If I get an apartment, that’s where I’m going to buy everything. Catch.” She tossed me a ceramic mug. 25

“What for?” “This.” She reared back. The cup shattered against the concrete. “Feels fucking good.” APRIL “So, Corey and I had sex,” she dropped nonchalantly. “Oh my god. When? You didn’t tell me. Rate out of ten?” “Last night. Uncomfortable.” “Oh, shit. That sucks.” V took the river road down to the train trestles. The bridge crossed the narrow body of water that bordered the East side of town, where the high school rowing team practiced. We’d sometimes come to watch them from under the support beams. We got out of the car and started walking up to our spot. “He keeps texting me about yesterday. I don’t want to talk. He can fuck right off.” “Yeah,” I echoed. “If you need space, you need space.” “He told me he loved me afterward.” “What’d you say?” She stopped walking and looked across the bridge, then tilted her head toward the water. “I jumped.” Virginia watched my changing expression and smiled. I could tell she was proud of herself for the theatrics, and probably also for getting the whole thing off her chest. Nobody ever jumped, but I knew she wasn’t joking. “Let’s get my bra back and I’ll go break up with this schmuck.” JULY Someone rear-ended her Rosemary on the parkway, and she’d slid into a ditch. The car was totaled. Virginia and I spent the next afternoon at the junkyard, combing through the backseat and trunk for anything of value. 26

She’d been good to us, we agreed. Real good. AUGUST We sat in my car in the Waffle House parking lot and played our favorite songs. She cursed at me for not having any tissues and wiped her running eyeliner onto her hoodie sleeve. We both laughed and for the first time since we’d met, it felt forced. Virginia was quiet on the way home. Every mile or so, she’d crank the radio volume higher until I couldn’t have heard myself shout if I tried, but when I dropped her off we sat for a few minutes in silence before she got out. I headed North the next morning. College was starting on Monday. The culmination of everything I’d been working towards in school was on the horizon, and I felt acutely alone for the first time in years. I’d come back at Christmas and see Virginia waiting in my driveway. She would always be the home I’d left. To me, she embodied the South, although she’d vehemently reject the label. It was the way she existed in the swaying of the poplars, the warmth of the evening wind, and the unwillingness to plan too far ahead. But things were going to be different and I’d be foolish not to admit it. I would change with the seasons, but she would be stuck in Nowhere, Kentucky paying off the new car that didn’t smell like rosemary. She would always be the home I’d left.

241

A twin xl is by no means extra large and should never cradle eight limbs at once. My toes are poking out of the blanket and they’re cold but I don’t want to move you and wake you. I let the Mormons on their bikes talk to me yesterday because I’ve been afraid that I might never find love and the easiest alternative seems to be God. The whole religion thing is so worn out. They really need a new marketing campaign. Here’s a reminder so I don’t get confused: Love is not lust and we are the latter. Love is my mother, knowing and unconditional. The same when the lights turn on. I’ve never quite understood my father but I have to wonder if this is how he feels when my mother clings to him on a cold night and the TV static is quiet. No. There’s something in the flesh that dies as you get older so that truly carnal knowledge of one another is reserved for those it can break. What I mean is that your breath is wet.

I can taste it in the inch of air between us and when I sync my breathing with yours it feels more intimate than anything else. I feel you over my chest and my cheeks on my heart in your murmurs but my toes are still cold. You mouth something unintelligible to the ghost in the room I’ve always known was watching. Even with your body draped over mine We are each alone. You’ve taken both pillows under your arms but I want you to leave thinking I was something between a good lay and an ideal father to your children so I rest my head on the mattress. Do you want me to take you to breakfast? Maybe it would be strange if I asked. I’m not that clingy or stupid. You’d probably order eggs benedict. I’m sure your wife has breakfast waiting at home.

steer ing w 30

e e h

r e t n l ba I feel it in the cratered pavement withered summer asphalt scathing syrup stuck to leather lacings like we used to do What are demons if youâ€™ve faced them? Just a feeling with no basis Strangers in the street are faceless Thereâ€™s no shaking you

on patriotism It would be so much easier to get on a flight right now, leave the United States, and not come back until it’s been patched back together by some invisible ebb and flow that’s out of my hands. It would be easier to tune out when I remember more children were slaughtered this year in their own schools than the total number of fatalities in our deployed armed forces. I’m so tired of being outraged at the number of American children living under DACA who’ve never been given a fighting chance who’ve never had a path to citizenship and who now have to live in fear of being deported to countries they’ve never known. I ask you do you hever struggle to breathe? maybe not. I don’t, because I’m white. But my brothers and sisters of color can’t go outside without fearing they’ll be murdered before they can say goodbye to their sons and daughters. mothers and fathers sit at home afraid of the same sirens we claim are there to protect them. And for what? Changing lanes without signaling? Whilstling too loud?

Or was it that they held their heads too high? And you felt they might finally have realized That they are worthy of the same chance to make it in this world as the rest of us. It’s not that society has gotten worse no. we’re just finding out now how bad it’s been under the surface this whole time. It will never be hard for me to love this incredible country that’s given me everything. cradled and nurtured me and given me the voice and the platform to speak today But it’s because I love this country and because I know the incredible things we’re capable of when we’re united, empowered, and when we show one another compassion that I will never choose the easy road out. That is what it means to be a patriot.

mo(u)rning

mama’s been quiet every morning since the candles blew out at the wake she’s been drinking a bit too much bourbon and she’s gone before dawn and daybreak i ask mama how she’s been doing and she says that the weather’s been great i can hear her inaudibly mourning though the phone line connection’s not great so mama’s been out in the garden stirring all the old leaves with a rake i’m afraid that she feels she is sinking in a river cold, white, and opaque mama stays late in her office for she’s not got the time now to break and peace doesn’t come easy sleeping saying new goodbyes each time you wake then there’s biscuits and jam in the morning mama whistles a song while she bakes from a time long ago that god knows I don’t know but the tune she just can’t seem to shake.

hors dâ€™oeuvre Black Cherry | Proscuitto Crostini Ingredients: Vinegar Black Pepper Orange Zest Salt Lemon Juice EVOO Cinnamon Prosciutto Sliced Baguette Mascarpone Pickled Cherries: Pit and quarter the black cherries and put them in a medium-sized container. In a saucepan, combine vinegar with a bit of water and lemon juice. Add black pepper, orange zest, and cinnamon and bring to a simmer. When aromatic, cool and pour over cherries. Refrigerate overnight. Crostini: Toast the baguette slices with olive oil in the oven until golden brown - should be crispy but have a bit of chew in the center. Assembly: Spread a layer of mascarpone over each crostini, layer a generous helping of the quartered cherries, and top with prosciutto. Hit it with a bit of freshly ground black pepper and garnish with a drizzle of olive oil. Bon AppĂŠtit.