Issue 13

SEPTEMBER 2016

Letter from the Editor

Editor-in-Chief Bruce Hamilton

The year is here! Maybe you’re happy to be here, away from the all-too-familiar surroundings of your hometown. Maybe you’re not happy to be here, surrounded by all-too familiar brick fortresses. Either way, I hope you’re well right now, as you read this message typed by me, who, at this very moment, is most definitely sick on the couch (but don’t fret, because by the time you read this, I should be well). If you’re looking for something to do (besides read this), I’ve whipped up a list of some of my favorite attributes of our campus:

Managing Editor Georgia Koda Layout Editor Caitlin Persichilli Contributors Cover by

• the sound sculpture between the VA

and the Stood!

• WPSR’s radio shows!

• The vast woods, filled with surprises!

• The gym, filled with treadmills!

• Stood arcade games, specifically Galaga!

• The trees in the middle of the great

lawn (perfect for climbing and hollering from)!

Table of Contents

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For me, pretty much all the other cool parts of campus have to do with actual people: who they are and what they create. For that reason, I hope Gutter Mag can showcase what everyone’s been up to, whether that’s short prose, lengthy interviews, extra-terrestrial fiction, or vulgar doodles. If you’ve thought about submitting your brain droppings to be published somewhere, consider us the trough, ready and willing to feed the hungry student body.

There is Nothing for Me Inside This House 9

Yours in space, Brewce Hamilton Editor-at-Large

By W.R.

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The Middle of the Middle

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Open Forum Highlights

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Horoscopes

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photo by Caitlin Persichilli

PFBYMSAF

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it’s so weird to look back on photos of when you were just happy to be there wherever you were, whatever was going on it really may not be anything big, special, monumental but it’s certainly a something

showing up in every photograph or silly snapchat screenshot it’s funny now though because I don’t really feel what I think I should it’s not dramatic, if anything it’s sort of factual I don’t exist there anymore but I once did and now I don’t feel for it at all

I wonder how bad it would be to actually include a picture of your face on the cover of an album, I feel like that would be pretty fucked up I mean, it’s something that I would be mad about you know, if it was me

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but how personal is too personal?

I feel pretty personal about the way you’re with her (ok, too cheesy, scratch that, again) I’m just saying that I feel a certain way about it you know the other day I had a thought? yeah I was in my room in between classes, doing nothing, the sun was setting and I remember the light was coming through the blinds and I thought it was really beautiful but remember how I would randomly send you blasts of nudes? yeah well I wonder if she was ever with you or in the same room while you ignored my nudes did you get high with her after seeing those shots of my tits? did they just show up on your phone, out in the open, my pussy, while you’re making mac and cheese or some other dumb shit with the roommate you ended up fucking?

damn sometimes I get pretty sad about everything but other times I just realize how goddamn ridiculous it all is when I was younger I was fascinated by beautiful women (later I’ll grow up and realize I was also just kind of gay) but at the same time, the trope of the femme fatale really stuck with me I envied and admired women who held great power over men over anyone with their beauty; I couldn’t help it I now realize that this is pretty boring and I that I was pretty brainwashed

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it’s so ingrained it can be sort of hard to ignore just, the absolute rush you can get from attention I think that’s why ignoring my nudes was one of the worst things you could do to me rob me of the affection an absolutely quiet yet certainly destructive undermining

BY W.R.

photo by Caitlin Persichilli

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THE MIDDLE OF THE MIDDLE Elana Marcus

“Where were you last night” read the Jesus-shaped billboard hanging bright over Interstate 70. I drove past it so quickly that I couldn’t tell what it was advertising, but it seemed that it’s only purpose was to stun every driver into a brief synchronized swerve, turning the road into an illegal structure and every driver on the road into a criminal. None of us were drunk, we were driving eighty miles per hour in the middle of Kansas at twelve A.M., and every driver on the road was well aware by now that no amount of blood alcohol content could turn this state into enough of a blur to make it enjoyable. Our only vice of the evening was breathing in the second-hand smoke of religious advertising. It was almost like the billboard was placed in that exact spot on purpose. Whose idea was it to place a brightly lit billboard shaped like Jesus smack in the middle of a state comprised almost solely of wooden ones advertising the world’s only three-legged-cow petting zoo?

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Nothing in Kansas could ever be a coincidence, everything in this state had a plan.

Maybe its plan was to keep me awake. Maybe had there been sunlight I’d see skid marks on the road and little round signs reading “drive safely” covered in bouquets of flowers, indicating that this was a road infamous for death.

And since we were in Kansas, the only suitable solution was for every citizen of the state to put their billboard-making abilities into a potluck to create the ultimate shitty billboard.

It followed all of the Kansas guidelines for billboard making; it was odd, amateurish, and made the spectator feel uncomfortably close to Jesus. And no matter how fast I was driving, I couldn’t get away from it. It’s funny how Kansas has this way of getting inside your head despite how much you’d rather it be occupied by literally anywhere else.

Maybe it was there to remind me that I was nowhere close to where I was trying to be. It doesn’t get much more isolated than being in the middle of Kansas, because being in the middle of Kansas is being in the middle of the middlest state. Everyone here had somewhere to be, and we were nowhere close to any of it. It was where the destination was always too far away, where your mind begins to trick you into believing that it may not even exist because what is land if it’s not in the middle of the plains? What 3

is the point of a plot of land if not to be harvested for profit? These were the questions on everyone’s mind as we drove through Kansas, that is, until the billboard popped up.

When I drove past it, I was able to contain my slight swerve of the car more than other drivers on the road due to the Starbucks venti that was still jamming its way through my system, hitting my organs like a Tame Impala drum beat in an effort to keep me awake, so my sleeping relatives did not wake up as I feared they would. If my younger sister woke up and saw that we were not in California yet, she’d open her window and scream the words “fuck Kansas” as she’d been doing all day in an attempt to scare the crops into growing tall enough to feed the rest of the country for eternity so this state wouldn’t be necessary to exist anymore. She was twelve years old and had just recently learned how liberating it was to curse when you were unsatisfied, but she still had yet to learn that it wouldn’t solve any problems. She was an atheist like the rest of the family, but she was not yet mature enough to let religious freaks pass her by without getting fired up about it. Everyone in my family went through that stage, but something told me she would l turn out more radical than the rest of us, but I guess that’s up to science to determine.

My twin brother was still sleeping as well. We’d been taking turns driving all day, and I was the lucky one with the midnight slot. The one perk of it was getting to hear my brother argue in his sleep. I’d imagine he was arguing with my mom, explaining to her why we were running away to live with dad in California, and he actually made some pretty good points. I tried to make mental notes of what he was saying so I could use his arguments in case I ever needed to.

Being that both of my siblings were asleep, the only companion I had was Jesus, and he wouldn’t leave me alone.

He kept tapping on my shoulders, “Where were you last night?

Where were you last night?” He’d turn on the radio to the AM christian station “Where were you last night? *static* Where were you last night?” He’d stick his head out of the sunroof, his luscious locks flowing eighty miles per hour in the wind, arms raised above his head, “Where were you last night!”

Last night I sat upright on a wobbly lawn chair by the green pool of a motel telling my mother to go fuck herself over the phone.

I hung up,cried,walked up to the edge of the motel property and looked out into the distance,and I saw nothing.And I felt nothing. photo by Caitlin Persichilli 4

THE OPEN FORUM HIGHLIGHTS

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photos by Caitlin Persichilli 8

THERE IS NOTHING FOR ME INSIDE THIS HOUSE In 2004, the internet was a playground -- one I actually wanted to explore. There was music to pirate, games to play, viruses to collect, and flash videos to scare my mother, in addition to chatrooms, video game forums, and butler-themed search engines, which I assumed comprised the entire internet. I already loved Legos for every cliched reason: you could do what you wanted with the materials you were given, the storylines were up to you, etc. I also loved Legos because you didn’t have to leave the house. The internet was the largest Lego set ever made, appearing in the spare room one Christmas morning, inside of a box labeled “Hewlett Packard.”

By 2008, the game had changed. My private middle school had the grand idea to give me and every one of my under-achieving friends a laptop to use for schoolwork, with the definition of “schoolwork” changing, depending 9

on who you asked (my work of passion was stealing music, Nick’s was cracking the IT guy’s password, Denzel’s was pornography). I had to give the laptop back when I switched schools, but my lust for digital stimulation had already been downloaded to my brain, a hard drive that permanently cements those kinds of things.

This shit is complicated because I know for a fact that I would not appreciate music without the internet, and these days, music’s all I really do. Sometimes I play it, but I mostly think about it, read about it, write about it, and talk about it, much to the chagrin of anybody who doesn’t want to hear about why Boris is better than the Boredoms. The internet is the devil, and I traded my social skills for a passion.

When I hang out in my room, on my laptop, doing nothing in particular, I can’t help but think about what life would be like if I gave a shit about trees.

By Bruce Hamilton

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HOROSCOPES your Plans and Power are working. add simple syrup to whats gone sour.

TAURUS

roll your eyes back into your head (where they belong).

soak up just enough of the sinks dishwater to become satisfied while avoiding saturation.

CANCER

ARIES

GEMINI

(dont avoid the dentist). what has been unrelated is now tied up like a marriage.

something exciting is floating around somewhere, like a hair stuck in your mouth.

VIRGO 11

LEO

hold the kitchen garbage at arms length when you take out the trash

close the Open Book thats been sitting on your desk. hang a protective charm around your neck

LIBRA

SCORPIO SAGITTARIUS shut your bedroom door behind you and become quiet

let the swelling in your heart expand outwards

CAPRICORN

hey, the box under your bed is open. (Be careful of what you write down).

AQUARIUS

rearrange your thoughts like furniture. In an arm wrestling match you will win.

PISCES

use the shield, but the sword is unnecessary this time.

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