Dossier Fall 2007 by CMU Dossier

fall 2007

dossier

carnegie mellonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art and literature magazine

letter from the editors Welcome to Dossier! If you’ve never seen this publication before and are wondering what it is, please read on! Dossier is Carnegie Mellon’s art-and-lit magazine. This is our second edition since our re-launch in Spring, 2007. We hope you enjoy perusing the works of Carnegie Mellon students, and we hope you are more than a little impressed by the artistic virtue and versatility herein. Dossier Editor Patrick Gage Kelley Dossier Design Editor Kristen Lukiewski Managing Editor Cecilia Westbrook Reading Staff Alexander Baran, A. Ewing, Abiola Fasehun, Alayna Frankenberry, Shanley Erin Kane, JungMin Lee, Chloe Perkins, Kristina Popiel, Nicole Rippin Design Staff Rachael Clemmons, Shanley Erin Kane Cover Image Caitlin Osbahr

This second issue was easier than the first in some ways, and much harder in others. Last semester we were starting from scratch and we had a totally blank slate; it was up to us to decide what the finished product would look like, how to get it printed, how to select the work that went into it. This semester we’ve learned from our successes and mistakes and streamlined the process. For the first time we have a dedicated Dossier staff and we’ve been learning to use them to their fullest. On the other hand, the submitted material we had to work with this semester was vast in quantity, and superior in quality to our entries from last year. Our job in choosing what would go into the magazine was significantly harder. But this is the kind of complaint we hope to have every semester. The more and better our submissions are, the better our magazine will get. Our mission is to produce a magazine that adequately represents the best of what this campus community has to offer. We think we’ve done a good job so far, but there is always room for improvement. With that said, we would like to express our most genuine thanks to those who submitted work to us this semester. If you believe that creative works are truly representative of a person’s self, then submitting work to a publication is an exercise in vulnerability. We admire all those who allowed us intimate glances into their lives. More thanks go out to those who actively partook in the creation of Dossier. Our readers and the design staff were almost unreasonably patient with us; their dedication amazed us, and they made our lives much easier. We hope to see them all again next semester. Thanks are also due to The Tartan, our parent publication, without whose resources and support Dossier would not exist. The interest and participation by the Editorial Staff at The Tartan was, and remains, particularly helpful. And final thanks go to Raff Printing, Inc., who have been timely and responsible and utterly patient in their correspondence with us. We are thrilled to have such a wonderful working relationship with our printers! The quality of our magazine is as good as the pool of submissions, so if you are holding your very own copy of Dossier you should know that its future is, literally, in your hands. If you’re artistically inclined in any way, we hope you consider submitting your own work in future semesters. If you’re interested in helping publish, we hope you get in touch with us and consider joining our ed staff. And no matter who you are, we hope you help us out by telling your friends about Dossier, and by grabbing a handful to give to everybody you know.

Dossier is a publication of The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon’s student newspaper since 1906. 2

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contents p5. p6. p7. p9. p14. p18. p23. p25. p26. p28.

art

poetry

prose

Broken Social Scene, Sabrina Majeed Red Hair Lady, Lizzee Solomon teeth, Sarah Habib The Placid Sea, Cynthia Peng Chinatown, Andrew Moore Moon Over My Shoulder, Daniel Rashid Pile Them High! Touch the Sky!, Lizzee Solomon Untitled 1, Jose–Aurelio Baez Tourists, Allison Piper sunrise, Lizzee Solomon

p7. p16. p17. p21. p22. p24. p27. p30. p31. p31.

The Boy Named Beloved, Erin D. Gagnon this had a title but i didn’t like it, Rachael Clemmons Science & Sexual Reason, Mark Cullen adele, Elizabeth Barsotti Upstairs, Michael J. Hartwell Circles, Kelly Cahill Ruffled Pink Yesterdays, Kristina Popiel the perfect orange, Chakana Mentore Last night I dreamt there was a school for things I’ve longed to be, Alayna Frankenberry To Say I Love, Erin D. Gagnon

p9. Fiction: The Emasculated Blues, Casey Taylor p19. Non-fiction: Villa McDougal, Kelly Cahill

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Broken Social Scene

sabrina majeed

Red Hair Lady

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Lizzee Solomon

sarah habib

teeth 6

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The Boy Named Beloved erin d. gagnon

A shoe without stitching is merely a cup for his heel. The thread is your memory of him washing the dog, discovering sugar packets beneath the braided rug. You measure his absence in cans of soup, lullabies folded in your robe. Beloved. His name is like the parking ticket slipped in your wallet, to be paid in sourdough and olive oil, licked with a cowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tongue. Before him there was your journal, hair growing between your thighs. After, there was sweetness and brandy, days strung with ginseng. At night he was an apple dipped in gasoline. You watched him drive north. You had asked about his shoes.

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The Placid Sea cynthia peng

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fiction

The Emasculated Blues casey taylor

My first hero, Ernest Hemingway, shot himself with a shotgun when he was 61 years old. He blew his brains out at his house in Idaho. He was only three weeks away from his 62nd birthday. Hemingway gave me my first taste of masculinity in the middle of my teen years. I stayed up late at night and wondered what questions I would have asked him had he not killed himself two decades before I was born. I stared at the cover of my copy of Farewell to Arms and asked him about hunting and our country’s wars. I never got any answers. My father left Pittsburgh when I was eight. My mother, now a retired pediatric nurse, did her best to raise me as a man, although I began to feel myself slipping away from her when I hit my teen years. I saw my friend’s fathers coaching little league teams and peewee football teams and began to loathe Sunday afternoon housecleaning sessions with my mother. As for my father, he owns a ranch in Mon-

tana where he raises horses. He stopped sending me birthday cards when I was fourteen years old, and I haven’t spoken to him since. That was nine years ago. I don’t miss the conversation as much as I miss the crisp hundred dollar bill that fell out of the card every June. I’m a Cancer. I live in an apartment on the outskirts of a small section of Pittsburgh dubbed Squirrel Hill, filled with expensive houses, a small FALL 2007 DOSSIER

strip of coffee shops and clothing stores, and a synagogue on every corner. My mother raised me to be a Methodist, but I stopped going to church about halfway through my senior year of high school. I still remember the conversation we had when she finally figured out that I didn’t believe in the God she raised me to worship.

“Fuck it,” I said. I was speaking loudly again and the woman rolled her eyes, muttering something under her breath.

“I’ve failed as a mother.”

I got to Fatheads about a half hour late. My mother had called me sobbing, asking me when I would come visit her again. She moved out to Baldwin Township a few months before I graduated, an area about twenty minutes outside of the city. I hadn’t been to her house since early July. It was now September. My focus wasn’t entirely on the conversation, so it dragged further on with questions about why I hadn’t been paying attention to her. I apologized and she was happy again. I told her I would visit her soon and hung up the phone, eager to start drinking.

“Mom,” I started. “You didn’t fail. I just ask too many questions.” She was crying at this point. My mother got teary eyed at the end of Lifetime Original Movies, so she was quite upset at the prospect of a pagan son. “So you’re an atheist?” “No, I’m not. I just don’t think there has to be a Christian God or a Jewish God or,” I trailed off. I could see that the conversation was going nowhere. “I’ve failed as a mother, Brandon. I’m so sorry.” I was seventeen years old. I had never been arrested. I was a starter on the varsity basketball team. I had just been accepted to local Carnegie Mellon University, a highprofile school. She was sobbing loudly, and she really believed she was a failure. * I was on a bus on my way to Oakland to grab some lunch at Primanti Brothers when I got a call from my friend Nick about some plans for the evening. It was Saturday, and we would probably hit the Southside for some drinks. “Fatheads for dinner?” he asked. “Yeah, man, let’s do it,” I said. Some old woman, who may or may not have had Down syndrome, gave me a dirty look for replying too loudly on my cell phone. I quieted down a bit. “What are you thinking for afterward?” “I don’t know about any afterward, man. I think Sheila and Kristen are stopping by Fatheads. Let’s just drink there.” Sheila and Kristen were two women we worked with at the PNC Financial Group downtown. Nick and I had both graduated from the Tepper School of Business at CMU five months ago. 10

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Nick had already slept with Sheila, but I had yet to seal the deal with Kristen. I figured a few beers and some fake conversation would be the best way to go.

I wore faded slacks and a white and blue striped Ralph Lauren button-down shirt. The whole outfit, including my shoes, cost around $250. I turned off the television, images advertising for Viagra flashing across the screen, and headed out the door. Kristen, Sheila, and Nick already had a table when I arrived. “Hey, man,” Nick said. “We already ordered. I figured you wouldn’t mind.” “I don’t, that’s fine. I just need a beer.” I sat down and Kristen gave me a nod. I smiled back in her direction. She was a brunette of moderate height, about 5’7”, with a slender waist and comely facial features. She wore a black blouse and jeans, her breasts slightly exposed. Nick’s hand was already on Sheila’s thigh. It was only 9:00 and his speech was slurring slightly. “So, Brandon,” he started. I gave him half my attention while I ordered a Yuengling and a cheeseburger. “Sheila was just telling us that she gives up on dick for the rest of her life.” The three laughed. I clearly wasn’t in on the joke. “Asshole,” Sheila said. She playfully hit Nick’s arm and turned her attention toward me. “I didn’t say that. I was just talking

about, I don’t know, overzealous men?” She ended her sentence as if it was a question, as if I could possibly better inform her about what she was talking about. “She thinks men are too eager now.” Nick was nearly shouting. It was loud in the bar, but it wasn’t loud enough that he needed to scream. Kristen tapped a book of matches against the table. “It’s not that, necessarily,” she said, emphasizing her last word. “It just seems like men have forgotten how to play it cool. I don’t know. They’re always on the attack.” She put her hands up when she said “attack”, as if she was fending someone off. Sheila’s speech patterns were incredibly frustrating.

Nick had been groping at Sheila’s thighs, occasionally slipping his hand slightly up her skirt. She wasn’t embarrassed, but actually a bit excited. I imagined they were heading back to Nick’s apartment in Shadyside. Kristen and I stuck around and watched the traffic move around the bar. I stayed with Yuengling all night, while Kristen moved between gin and tonics and vodka tonics. It seemed that she liked tonic more than she liked the liquor it was mixed with. “How long do you plan on staying at PNC?” she asked. She was very direct. “I don’t know,” I said. “I might want to stick around for awhile, see what kind of advancement opportunities I can get.”

“You hear that shit, Brandon? We’re on the attack!” I tried to ignore all the emphasis that was being thrown around like loose change. I lit a cigarette. Camel Light is my brand.

“Smart kid like you,” she started and smiled. “I think you’ll be all right.” I didn’t like how she called me “kid”. She was only a year or two older than I was.

“I don’t know,” I started. “I think we’re products of our environment.” Kristen stopped tapping the book of matches.

“I might want to go to New York, though. Try my hand at brokering, or something. I don’t want to be another Gordon Gekko wannabe, though.” She nodded absently. She must not have ever seen Wall Street. I could tell that I was a good amount tipsy, but not quite drunk. Every now and then I had to remind myself to blink.

“How do you mean?” she asked. Sheila was still listening as well. Nick was staring at a waitress’ ass as she bent down to pick up some napkins she had dropped. “Well, I don’t want to preach, but sex is everywhere,” I said. “Isn’t that how we’re told it works? You wear good clothes, we wear good clothes and,” I stopped. Sheila was ordering another drink, but Kristen was still listening intently. “I don’t know. I just feel like it’s implied that we should attack.” Kristen raised her eyebrows and smiled at me. I was a little embarrassed so I started playing with the rim of my pint. “No,” she said. I looked up and saw Kristen smiling. Her canines were rotated too far toward the front. They looked like fangs. She pointed to my box of cigarettes on the table. “Can I get one of those?” Sheila and Nick left around 11. Nick looked like he might vomit and he was sweating heavily from the underarms. He had stains on his red polo shirt, despite a white undershirt he was wearing that was visible in between the two open buttons on his collar.

“I’ve thought about New York,” she said. “The homeless, though.” She was playing with the lime in her vodka tonic. We shared a moment of silence as I swallowed my lager and ignored her odd, random comment about New York’s street dwellers. “Do you think you would ever want to transfer, or try to advance in PNC?” “I don’t know,” she said. I waited for a moment to see if there was more reflection to come. She said nothing, instead staring at the Pirates game on television. I could see that our time at the bar had about run dry. “Hey, you wanna get out of here?” I asked. She smiled the vampire canine smile. “Attack, attack, attack.” I went home alone that night. Kristen gave me her number and said we would hang

out and get a drink again next weekend. She promised it would be without the company of Nick and Sheila. I sat up in bed and thought about what she would look like naked, SportsCenter on my television. I fell asleep before I could masturbate. * That next Tuesday I was five minutes late for work because of traffic. Nobody seemed to notice. I ate a few Tums that I keep in my desk drawer. I get terrible acid indigestion in the morning time. I had a long way to go if I wanted to be a success in the business world. Coming from a school like Carnegie Mellon, I had gotten an entry level position at PNC for a considerably high salary. Nick and I both made sure that the rest of the office knew we were the rising big shots in the office. We wore custom suits that none of the other entry level employees could afford and spoke loudly about our decadent social lives. I didn’t feel like I could afford the suits at that point, either, but I wanted to put on the image of success. That day at lunch, Nick and I went down to the cafeteria in the building and had a couple turkey sandwiches. “I never like missing a workout, man.” I wasn’t really listening to what Nick was saying. “So how was Kristen the other night?” he asked. “Fine,” I said. “I dropped her off at her place and went home.” “You pussy.” “What? No.” “I fucked Sheila.” “I kind of figured that, man.” “Yeah.” Nick stared off at the windows of the cafeteria for a moment. “She was high maintenance, though. She kept trying to tell me what to do in bed.” I didn’t want to hear any more details. “I’m going back to work.” FALL 2007 DOSSIER

* When I was growing up, probably around my mid-teens, I decided that I wanted to be a writer. I started out aspiring to be involved with television or film, as the only way I spent my free time was sitting on the couch or playing basketball. I could always imagine myself writing a successful television program that challenged people’s senses or wits. I changed my mind during my junior year of high school after I read The Sun Also Rises. I was going to be Hemingway. I got to Carnegie Mellon with the intention of majoring in creative writing and becoming a fiction writer. I also kept open the possibility of sports writing. I got very much into Hunter S. Thompson when I was a freshman, initially with his Fear and Loathing pieces, but then eventually with his coverage of different sporting events. I always found “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” to be very interesting. In 2005, Hunter shot himself with a .45 caliber handgun at Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado. He was my deepest inspiration while I was beginning to write at Carnegie Mellon. I think he shot himself because of health disorders. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of being a shadow of himself. My sophomore year I transferred to the Tepper School of Business at CMU. I had lost my passion for writing, not because of Hunter’s death, but because of money. I noticed that the crowd around me at school was very elitist and, it appeared, the pretty girls only fucked the rich boys. I got a date and I partied, meeting the occasional onenight stand, but I could never find the consistent good looking girl. They all clung to the pockets of the New York City old wealth types. I felt like I needed to get involved with that crowd more often. “Underneath the bridge, tarp has sprung a leak.” Pittsburgh is the city of bridges. Kurt Cobain shot himself with a shotgun, just like Hemingway. He was the reason I bought my first guitar when I was fourteen. I used the money from the last birthday card my father sent to pay for half and my mother covered the other half. Some say his suicide could have been foul play, but that just seems to be 12

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paranoid speculation. Know what he wrote on his suicide note? “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” All of the men I aspired to be like; all of my heroes killed themselves. Two of them with shotguns. * Kristen and I went out for another drink that weekend, this time at a small bar in Shadyside called the William Penn Tavern. It was a college bar and the crowd was made up primarily of students from Pitt or Carnegie Mellon, but it still provided a good atmosphere to grab a beer. We also wanted to avoid the Southside in case Nick and Sheila were out together. All night she kept giving me openings and I was failing to capitalize. I couldn’t find the right words to say to keep her interest for longer than a minute or two, and it was becoming incredibly frustrating. She had already refused me at the bar once, and given me no other signs of interest during the week at the office. I felt teased the entire time we were together at the bar, focusing on her enlarged canines and picturing her naked, holding an apple. I wondered how her lips would feel on my neck. I kept losing focus. “Do you have any roommates?” she asked. This kind of mindless question and answer charade had been going on the entire night. “No,” I said. “I live alone. Nick and I were thinking about getting a place together when we graduated but,” I stopped short of the reason. “You CMU boys pulled in enough money to get a place of your own?” She smiled at me. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to seduce me or if she was poking fun. I laughed. “Something like that, I guess.” We spent the next few hours acting out the same play over and over. I asked her about her college life (she went to Rutgers and graduated two years before I did). She asked me about where I grew up (in Uniontown until my Dad “moved”, then downtown Pittsburgh). I asked her about her boss (she works in a different department than I do and he’s a real prick). She asked me about my

past girlfriends (I’ve had a few, one of which lasted two years). It was going nowhere. All the while, I was encouraged by Kristen as she pounded drink after drink. I could tell by the time we moved on to childhood hometowns that she was reasonably drunk. I made the move. “Do you want to see my apartment?” It was an elementary school trick that any halfsober woman would see straight through. “Sure.” We caught a cab back to Squirrel Hill. It cost me $6.80. Pittsburgh is cheap for cab service. Kristen stumbled out of the cab, struggling to make her way to the sidewalk. I almost felt bad. She sat down on my bed and fiddled with the lamp on the bedside table. I flicked on the television to check out what I had missed on SportsCenter. I was standing with my back turned to her when I heard what sounded like gurgling from behind me. I turned to see that she had begun vomiting onto my carpet off the side of the bed. I rushed over to help her into the bathroom. After a half hour, she stopped vomiting and regained her senses, if only on a relative level. Most of the vomit had gone into the toilet, luckily, but my bathroom still smelled of fish heads and tonic water. She looked up at me with a pale face and her hair strewn about. “I’m so sorry,” she said. I should’ve been mad. “No.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “No, it’s okay. It’s not your fault.” It was clearly her fault. I was looking for sex and being as nice as possible, clinging to the slightest hope that she would suddenly snap out of her haze and jump me on the bathroom floor. “I think I just want to fall asleep.” I helped her into my bed. I slept on the couch that night. * My apartment sits across from a relatively

expensive neighborhood. Outside of my bedroom window I can see the back porch of a young family’s brick house. The husband and wife are probably in their late twenties or early thirties and they have a small child, maybe around four. I always notice that the man stays home during the day, a “stay-athome” dad, while his wife works long hours. Sometimes she doesn’t pull into the driveway until seven o’clock at night. The other day I was watching television after I had finished showering in the early evening, maybe around five. I noticed their four-year-old son wandering around the back porch. He would walk to the edge of the porch, look down at the ten or twelve foot drop and then slowly back away. He repeated this process at least four times before taking a running start and jumping off onto the concrete landing below the porch. He buckled when he hit the ground and fell, writhing in pain and screaming. I couldn’t hear through the window. It was like watching a horror film on mute. His father ran outside and crouched beside the child, looking around frantically for any onlookers. There was no one, and so he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. Fifteen minutes later the paramedics were outside, making an awful racket while I tried to focus on a Ben Stiller comedy. His wife probably met him at the hospital from work. She probably made quite a scene. I bet he sent her flowers the next day at her office. * I visited my mother that week. Her house in Baldwin Township was about the same size as the rowhouse we owned in the city. When she retired, she told me, she felt it was time to get away from all of the hustle. “Brandon,” she said when she opened the door. She gave me a big hug on the front porch and invited me inside. Our old blue couch sat in the middle of the living room, directly in front of a 30” television set. It didn’t look like she had cable. “So how are you?” she asked. I had already been over all of this on the phone a few days earlier.

“I’m good, Mom. I’m real good.” She smiled at me. “I’m so proud of you.” There were pictures of the two of us at graduation day, along with a few of her brother, my Uncle David, scattered along the mantle over the fireplace. I noticed a small picture of me, my mother, and my father when I was about five or six, resting behind two prom photos, collecting dust. “I know, Mom. Thanks.” I had gotten to a point where hearing how proud she was had gotten old. “I talked to David. He said he would be coming out for a visit sometime in the next month.” Her house even smelled of loneliness. The dark, empty smell of a house void of company and joy. “Are you staying for dinner?” I looked around at the empty living room and the dusty pictures. I looked at my mother’s eyes, beaming with hope. “Why not?” She smiled and headed toward the kitchen, kissing the top of my head as she walked by. We ate pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner. There was no gravy, which disappointed me, but I didn’t have to cook so I was still very pleased. She asked me about any girlfriends I had, and I told here there weren’t any on the horizon. I thought about Kristen again, but tried to avoid thinking about her naked or in any other sexual way. Images like that should be avoided while sitting at a table with my mother. I feared she would have a sixth sense about when I might be picturing naked women. She spoke about boring neighborhood facts, like what the Smiths across the street had done with their garden, or what the Joneses had done with the swing set out back for their kids. I was getting bored and impatient. “You need to find another man, Mom.” I thought of the old blue couch in the living room with the same old stained upholstery from red wine evenings with my father before he left. The stains hung around like FALL 2007 DOSSIER

crude reminders of her failed love life. She stopped chewing her food and stared down at her plate. I immediately regretted what I had said, but I couldn’t find the words to apologize. She swallowed the mashed potatoes in her mouth and took a sip of water, her eyes welling up. “They don’t make them like they used to.” It was the first pertinent thing she had said all night. * I left my mother’s house and immediately called Kristen to share a drink with me. I felt as if I needed to relieve some tension, and I was hoping that maybe I could finally sleep with her in the process. We met at the William Penn again, but it was much less crowded, as it was a Wednesday night. After a few drinks, I wasted no time. “Why don’t we take this back to my apartment?” I didn’t want to risk her getting too drunk again. We had only been at the bar a half hour and she was through three vodka tonics. She looked at me for awhile, and then picked up my pack of cigarettes, taking one without asking. She lit up and exhaled a puff of smoke. “Sure.” There was no doubt that time: she was definitely seducing me. The effects of the beer hadn’t set in yet, so I decided to drive home. I glanced over at Kristen every chance I could get, watching her exhale puffs of smoke out of the passenger side window of my Volvo. She left pink lipstick marks on the butt of the Camel Light. I wanted to know what she tasted like. We got back to my apartment and she was clinging to my arm. Her speech was slurred a bit, as the three drinks in such a short amount of time were clearly taking effect. She wasn’t drunk, but surely tipsy. I was so excited that my hands were shaking and it took me a few moments to steady myself enough to unlock the door. I struggled to get in, pulling her along with me. 14

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We wasted no time, panting our way into the bedroom, groping at each other and removing bits of clothing as we moved from room to room. She bit my earlobe, a trait I find remarkably unattractive, but I refused to lose the moment. We had disrobed and made our way to my bed. In my excitement I forgot to grab a condom. Before I realized what was happening, she had already pulled me inside of her. There was no time for prophylactics at that point. She moaned, gently at first, but then loudly and obnoxiously as time wore on. I attacked with a lot of vigor and excitement, but couldn’t help but feel disillusioned after a few minutes. She didn’t notice my lack of interest, thrusting her pelvis into mine and screaming out theatrics. One question kept circling through my head: what’s next? I wanted to know where I went from here. I wanted to know why I even ended up in bed with this woman in the first place. I had been so caught up in the thrill of the chase that I never stopped to ask: why? Kristen was attractive physically, but did she have anything outside of that appeal? I felt empty. I felt hollow. She came quickly, thankfully, as I was beginning to lose my erection. Her body convulsed in a sickening fashion, her fangs gleaming underneath the light from my bedside lamp. I felt ill. I pulled out and faked an orgasm, rolling over onto my side. “That was amazing,” she said. I grunted in response. She kissed my shoulder and rolled over onto her back. I turned on the television, flicking around for awhile until finally settling on old episodes of M*A*S*H. * My earliest memory of childhood involves my father. He used to tell me bedtime stories out of a book of Grimm’s fairy tales. My favorite was Rumpelstiltskin. I made him read that to me at least twice a week. Rumpelstiltskin was my first hero. He kills himself, but not with a shotgun. Rumpelstiltskin plants his left foot deep underground and rips himself in half, from the genitals upward. -CT-

Chinatown andrew moore

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Rachael Clemmons

this had a title but i didn’t like it 16

Science & Sexual Reason mark cullen >>

Remember how even before we met, we were breathless laughter on smooth hardwood floors? You said your name was what it is and I introduced myself as a silly girl with scars for breasts and laughs for words. Remember I laid on your jacket for a nap but I couldn’t sleep because we were too occupied with being harsh critics of the amateurs click-clacking their heels on those smooth hardwood floors? We would collapse on each other just looking and our faces said a lot more than our mouths did. Your eyes squinted up and your vocal cords jumped with mine and people stared but we kept up our hysterics. We were hysteric people, remember? We played with our words and I played thoughts of you across my mind and you played with me and I smiled more than I had smiled in weeks. Perhaps it was the dim lighting. Then I saw you again under unlike circumstances. Now the lights were bright, the floor was rotted carpet, the rooms smelled illegal and I was only pleased to see your face and you squinted your eyes up again to see mine. Remember you tried your best to be right by my side every second without being too obvious, even though you didn’t know how to hide your vivacity behind standard issue dormitory furniture? You sat me in your lap and made our hands into a labyrinth and to my surprise I didn’t get lost in the tangles of hard liquor and orange juice. And even though our vocal cords jumped around in our throats, and I still had scars for breasts, I no longer had laughs for words — we were no longer harsh critics of the surrounding amateurs even though there were plenty. Instead, right then, your mouth spoke my words for me and instead of breathless laughter there was breathless banter between our skins and afterwards, there were your eyes squinting at me again and for once, mine scrunched up too. And days later, right when I was tempted to give you the hollow organ in my chest for a sample, you fell asleep in my bed without me and we were no longer hysteric. Maybe I should have dimmed the lights.

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Moon Over My Shoulder daniel Rashid

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non-fiction

Villa McDougal*

names have been changed to protect the beautiful

Kelly Cahill

The first thing to know about Aileen McDougal is that her number one priority is having a good time. She has a closet full of party dresses that range from a tea-length olive brocade to a micromini in crushed velour. She’s already got your gin and tonic waiting for you when you come in the front door. She is one of those horribly annoying students who always focuses all her papers and projects on topics she’s really interested in, so even classes at university are just a laugh.

The second thing to know about Aileen McDougal is that her parents own a beautiful old white house in a Maryland suburb of D.C.; a house where Aileen spent her formative years and where she still lives when she’s on summer break from university. It is a lovely wooden Gothic revival home that sits on a hill far above the aluminum-sided, mass-produced houses in the planned community that surrounds it. There are whispers that the McDougal house, with its 150 or so years of history, used to be home to plantation owners who, south of the Mason-Dixon line in the 1850s, were probably also slave owners. The McDougal house, or Villa McDougal as I saw fit to name it in high school, has been the site of every great party I’ve attended in the last six years — which is to say, every great party I’ve ever attended. Cheers to Mr. and Mrs. McDougal, to whom we owe all of our excellent summers! Their careers in business law and policy, respectively, have allowed them to be the sort of people who own an apartment in the quiet, upscale town of Bethany on the Delaware coast. And the stress of their careers has made them the sort of people who spend long days reading on the beach every weekend from May through the end of September. In their absence, Aileen throws fantastic, all-night parties. And they were fantastic parties. They were FALL 2007 DOSSIER

real big ones, like the kind you see in teen movies, so we were mostly banished to the outdoors. That was fine because there was a whole acre of lawn to roam with your forty ounce in hand. The biggest attraction in the yard was the wooden fence around Villa McDougal’s yard. It’s the kind you’d expect to see around such an old house: roughly hewn pieces of wood propped against one another. It’s surprisingly sturdy, though it looks like a strong wind could knock it over, and that’s where we’d all go to get to second base with our strings of not-so-significant others. The second biggest attraction was the rope swing tied to an oak tree. I used to get bruises on my hips from spider swinging with Marjorie, one on top of the other, face-to-face. The really drunk kids played games of Red Rover around the front of the house. Stephen didn’t really care about winning, but Jeff and Joey always ended up on opposite teams and there would be some close call between Joey with his lean muscle, and Jeff, who had something to prove. There were plenty of skinned knees that were quickly laughed off. Now that we’ve graduated high school and some of us are attending various east coast universities, the scene at Villa McDougal is more intimate. We’ve been promoted to indoor status! Aileen keeps the guest count exclusive, which means that she invites her boyfriend of four years, Stephen, as well as Marjorie, Jeff, Joey, our friend Eliot, who has a real job, and myself. Then, depending on her mood, she’ll invite the periphery of our social group, maybe drama school dropout Nate, or our promiscuous friend Rory, or Jeff’s quiet roommate/musical prodigy, Callan. Over the past two summers we’ve all developed a taste for dressing in costume, so Aileen, ever the adaptable hostess, has thrown a string of decade parties. We started with the 1950s and worked our way up to the present. We arrive at Villa McDougal around 10 or 11 at night, and the long gravel driveway is practically mountain climbing if you’re in heels. Up the brick porch stairs (careful on the top one, it’s crumbling) and into the kitchen, Aileen rushes to squeeze our shoulders and give us a bright “Hey!” and the way she’s already got drinks ready for us makes us feel like she’s been waiting for us 20

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to show up all night. We gather around the kitchen island, which is crowded with liquor bottles and mixers. We drink everything out of wine glasses. We sing to a decade-appropriate playlist that blasts from speakers that Stephen’s jerry-rigged to the cupboard. Then, when our faces start to flush from the alcohol, when the night becomes something different than it was before, something more urgent, we leave the hanging Longerberger baskets of the kitchen for the sunroom. We must tiptoe through the dining room, or the china in the cherry wood cabinet will rattle like a warning. Then on through the living room that would make a lovely neighborhood for a flock of finches, with its collection of bird houses lined up neatly on the mantle, the piano, the buffet. Finally, the sunroom. Feels like miles from the kitchen, the house is so big. In the sunroom we’re surrounded by glass walls, all of them doors that open up to the sprawl of lawn. In that pale yellow room, we pile onto the wicker furniture. Joints sail nimbly from fingertips to fingertips. And now we are all brilliant and young and fast. We don’t think about the weights that tug at us during the daytime. We are making plans for a short film about a ballerina troupe. We are going to start a commune in Mexico when we’re 25. In that glass room, we are an excellent exhibit in the Museum of What’s Happening Now! The drinks don’t stop coming, and the joints certainly don’t stop coming, so things can get confusing when we have to go to the bathroom (back through the finch neighborhood, tiptoe past the cherry wood cabinet — but not quite all the way to the kitchen). The light’s always stuck on, but we might forget that and spend precious minutes fighting with the switch. Back in the sunroom, Stephen and Joey are throwing around the plastic lemons from the bowl on the table. Aileen’s blonde head is thrown back in laughter. Marjorie flips through a coffee table book about weddings. Once we’ve finalized the art direction for the ballerina troupe film, we are hungry, so it’s back to the kitchen where Aileen will whip up her famous frozen perogies – bathed in butter. We eat them with forks right out of the pan.

Suddenly our heads are heavy. Sleeping arrangements don’t have to be worked out because we’ve practically got assigned beds. Aileen and Stephen belong up in Aileen’s bed with the surf girl bedspread, Marjorie and I go to the guest room upstairs where we once fell asleep holding hands, Jeff and Eliot sleep on couches in the sunroom or basement, and Joey gets Aileen’s sister’s room in the basement. In the morning, we go out to breakfast or make sandwiches to nurse hangovers in the dark, cool basement with leather couches and the big screen TV. And then we do it all over again that night, or the next weekend. Again and again and again we play house at Villa McDougal. We’re just playing house. The wood floors and high ceilings, our wine glasses filled with mixed drinks. We’re just pretending. We’re 20 and 21 and we’re dressing in our parents clothes and playing makebelieve. God bless us for that, but outside of this house, time marches on. This was our last summer with all of us back at home. Next year, I’ll be writing in Pittsburgh and Marjorie’s writing in Philadelphia. Aileen will be assigned to a democratic campaign somewhere in the U.S., she doesn’t know where yet. Stephen will likely be at home working for the IT department of the same computer company, and Jeff and Joey will still be around working construction. We’ll be living in old efficiencies with anonymous histories. We’ll be struggling to repay student loans and find jobs with our humanities degrees, or no degrees at all. We’ll be without the fancy wine glasses and the elegant backdrop of Villa McDougal for quite some time. We’ll be busy with the grave work of growing up. -KC-

adele

elizabeth barsotti

siphoning a cigarette at the bar, legs in black slacks dangle. the rasp of her voice. her poetry rhymes. never urban enough. my ellie. she laughs. loves to brag. returns every week because we pour a good pour. whatever vodka she drinks, she drinks plenty. she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care what you tell her. sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got something to say.

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Upstairs

Michael J. Hartwell the grand piano is at it again. Every evening, it hobbles noisily from room to room on iron crutches. The downstairs neighbors pay it no mind, but the occasional stumble brings out a major chord, a thick shudder improbable as a face in lunar contours. The nervous flute and the trumpet have locked themselves in the kitchen against this tremendous nuisance. A cello lets out a sawing whine from the parlor, muffled by maroon curtains. A marimba answers: chatty, mindless. Unannounced, the piano comes rampaging down the stairs, uprooting the banister. Trumpet and flute exchange anxious glances, secretly thrilled by the accident. Cello considers this proof that grandeur is purely delusional. As they come out to the foyer to examine the splintered giant, their hearts stutter along to nobodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chorus. A cough runs through the snarls of wire, flat black, minor.

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Pile Them High! Touch the Sky! lizzee solomon

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Circles

kelly cahill

There will be a ring a cheap ring only a half carat or maybe even fake diamonds because that would be a good joke and everyone loves a good joke at the expense of a pretty if uninteresting girl you’d laugh too with your blackened mouth you scurvy king and at the wedding you’ll have to sit on your hands with your full weight and ache against the thing inside you that’s a raucous puppeteer yanking at your marionette strings urging nay insisting that you shake from your very CORE with it with the greedy delight at this girl’s misfortune at the silliness and sheer idiocy that leads her down the aisle in a party gown her father weeping at her impending loss of virginity as if girls are even allowed the grace of being born virgins nowadays a woman virgin now that is a good joke a joke I can laugh with you and we’ll shake like men possessed on the red carpeted aisle of the church don’t you want to shout when you’re around Catholics they’re such obnoxious ghosts and while we shake in the aisle the girl who is lovely really lovely with a long neck and small breasts will bow her head and maybe think twice about the fiancee’s crooked teeth and yellowed toenails but she’ll just keep talking over our seizures I promise to love you til the cows come home and to cherish you at least as much as my Prada bag and to not ever let you forget about that other man I could’ve married who was a venture capitalist a MySpace superstar a 500 lb muscle with perfect teeth I DO til death do us part or irreconcilable differences over the proper way to prepare lamb suddenly we want to marry her too and we’ll skip to the altar pulling out fifty dollar bills and costume jewelry we stole from our mothers and I’m hoping your scurvy mouth will frighten her and then she’ll pick me and in exchange for a glass diamond I’ll rip off her gown tonight and gobble at her small breasts and take the virgin as mine.

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Untitled 1 Jose–aurelio Baez FALL 2007 DOSSIER

Tourists

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Allison Piper

Kristina Popiel

Ruffled Pink Yesterdays

I grew up on a pink plastic countryside (darkened only by my angry god, Father), flocked with front lawn summer violets, and cheap Rainbow Brite cups full of dandelions on a kitchen table that would occasionally collapse, when four pigtailed sisters dressed in matching navy church-dresses and lacy white Easter bonnets, clambered over coloring books for the jungle green crayon. Twenty years later we read like a rock ‘n roll obituary — the brilliant carrion of chemicals and excess. Our redneck boyfriends impregnating the finest Catholic-school minds our grandparents could buy — we don’t remember our freshly starched yesterdays because the brightest snapshot of our youth is not our giddy dress-up parties or squealing fish stick fights, but the night my father cracked my sister’s ribs during dinner.

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sunrise

Lizzee Solomon

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the perfect orange chakana mentore

smaller hands, stronger hands tear down a fist-sized diamond, juicy and wrapped in a skin tough with the fortunes of rain. thumbs pierce the resilient flesh, break open the ginger-heart, breaking it open like a clam plucked fresh from a sea of branches and wood; leaves and lives; revealing a golden pearl within, sticky with the appetites of children; sticky with the appetites of gods with strong little hands.

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Last night I dreamt there was a school for things I’ve longed to be

To Say I Love

Rank was worn on the heels of jagged shoes strappy pastel sandals for the new recruits the higher-ups hobbling on golden stilettos. I was a fast learner, mastered the quick-change in less than a week. Everything was a runway. In the lunchroom, the Lucite stairs were lit from beneath. Manicured nails tapping an empty coffee cup, I’d sit there for hours watching the Ziegfeld Follies erupt from every doorway. Late one night, I remembered a family I’d once had. My bouffant a hive of moonlight, I descended the spiral staircase down to the root. Through a crack in the ivory I saw the gears of the machine. The girls we had forgotten, lost and sucked inside, teeth rattling in their heads, their ankles bruised green.

erin d. gagnon

Alayna Frankenberry

I will say the sex is bad, standing chest deep in the Connecticut River, and next to me you will gurgle, spit laughter, and suggest slutting around for a few years. The boys will back flip off the bridge, and I will say that is the ugliest dog I have ever seen. Fishermen will whistle, and I will look to the sky, contemplate awkward sex, diet coke, and wet graphic tees. Back at home, you will say selfish and time. We will sip mango margaritas, finger our swordfish, watch the charcoal glisten from the porch swing. When I sigh, you will know I’m back on the bridge, bare feet, hot pavement, water below. There will be a fern behind my ear, a rooster painted on my stomach, and from the rocks below you will cry crow.

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DOSSIER FALL 2007 is a creation of The Tartan thetartan.org dossier.thetartan.org