Litro 159 Teaser

ISSUE 159

First Dates

Megan Crosbie Xanthi Barker Peter Jorden Sarah Evans C.R. Resetarits Ingrid Norton Allison Smith Ian Kelly

Cover art | Louis Dazy

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ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7

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table of contents #159 First Dates / 2017 February

05

Contributors

07

Editor's letter

fiction

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The Remarkable Girls You Can Find in the Peculiar Depths of the Internet by Megan Crosbie

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Role Models by Xanthi Barker

15

The Mirror by Peter Jordan

20

Friday Night by Sarah Evans

29

Bling by C.R.Resetarits

43

The Dream Bridegroom by Ingrid Norton

comical interview

26

Casanova by Ian Kelly

non-fiction

37

The Girlfriend Experience by Allison Smith

photography

52

Louis Dazy

MA

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5 CONTRIBUTORS

Megan Crosbie is a queer writer

and occasional performer from Scotland. She particularly loves crafting fractured fairy-tales and often writes in the boundary between flash-fiction and poetry. Her writing has been published around the world, both online and in print, in journals such as Firewords Quarterly, Dark Lane Books and Pure Slush. She enjoys travelling, drag shows, and too much wine.

To read more of her writing visit www.mcrosbie.com.

Xanthi Barker is 28 and lives in

London, where she works as a tutor in maths, English and science; and is a volunteer youth wellbeing trainer. Her stories have appeared in Mslexia, the Open Pen Anthology (2016), the Things That Have Happened Flight anthology (Spread the Word, 2012) and been performed at Liar's League.

Ian Kelly is a biographer and playwright,

author of last year’s West End comedy Mr Foote’s Other Leg and the Casanova biography adapted as Casanova the ballet, scenario by Ian Kelly and Kenny Tindall, with Northern Ballet. World Première, Leeds, 11 March 2017 followed by a full UK tour and into Sadlers Wells this Spring. For booking details and further information please visit northernballet.com/casanova Casanova, Actor, Lover, Spy Priest, was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year when it was published in 2008 (Hodder & Stoughton)

Peter Jordan has received various

awards, including a literary bursary from The Lisa Richards Agency while taking an MA in Creative Writing.

Three consecutive Arts Council grants followed soon after. His work has appeared in Thresholds, Flash500, The Pygmy Giant, Flash: The International Short Story Magazine, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Avatar Review, Dogzplot, Bare Fiction and Sicklit. In addition, six of his stories are in anthologies.

He has taken time out from a PhD in creative writing to publish a collection of short stories. You will find him on twitter @pm_jordan.

6 C.R. Resetarits has new work out now in The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Southwest Review, Crannรณg (Pushcart-nominated story), and Midwestern Gothic; out soon in The Wisconsin Review, Reed Review, and Stand. Her poetry collection, BROOD, was recently published by Mongrel Empire Press, 2015. She lives in Faulkner-riddled Oxford, Mississippi.

Allison Smith is originally from

Grand Prairie, Texas and graduated from Hunter College, CUNY with a BA in Creative Writing. She currently lives in New York City and teaches English at Hunter College.

Ingrid Norton's essays, fiction, and

reportage have appeared in publications such as Boston Review, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The St. Ann's Review. She is a doctoral student at Princeton University, and a former editor and journalist. Norton is working on a novel.

Sarah Evans has had over a hun-

dred stories published in anthologies, magazines and online. Prizes have been awarded by, amongst others: Words and Women, Winston Fletcher, Stratford Literary Festival, Glass Woman and Rubery.

Other publishing outlets include: the Bridport Prize, Unthank Books, Riptide and Best New Writing. She has also had work performed in London, Hong Kong and New York.

The photographer Louis Dazy alternates living in Paris and in Melbourne and invites us here to observe a collection of photographs made following the double exposure process. The artist puts people and natural or urban landscapes in relation, which are immersed in sweet orange and blue lights.

These anonymous persons take their place in the middle of the frame, in an atmosphere that can tend to be both electrifying and nostalgic, always with the same technic mastery from their author and the same stunning final rendering.

7

Editor's letter Dear Reader, The social phenomenon of online dating has researcher who set up a table at an upscale changed the way we meet and date people. food store and offered shoppers samples of Our first edition for 2017 takes a look at the jams. Sometimes, the researchers offered six awkward First Date. First dates can be the types of jam, but other times they offered 24. start of something or the beginning and the When they offered 24, people were more likeend of it: we want them to go well, to give ly to stop in and have a taste, buy they were a good first impression of ourselves and to almost 10 times less likely to actually buy hit it off with our date – we want to want jam than people who had just six kinds to try. to see more of them, and for her or him to So what’s going on? There’s just too feel the same – and sometimes we can’t get much jam out there. Once you’ve made it away from them fast enough. to that first date, you can’t focus because as Is a first date like encountering a soon as you go to the bathroom, three othwriter’s work for the first time? Well, kind of er jams have messaged you. You go online, but not exactly – you needn’t worry what the you see more jam. writer thinks of you – but still you find out For cynics there’s an obvious stigma whether you can get on with the writer, wheth- around the dating app – the increase in suer you want to spend more time in their com- perficiality. But when you walk into room or pany, or whether you can’t bear to listen to party, often all you have are faces and height them droning on about themselves anymore. – so aren’t these dating apps just a huge fesDating apps have made bagging a tival of faces? The social phenomenon of first date as easy as swiping left or right our online dating is here to stay- dating apps smartphones, can now connect us in a matter fit too neatly into the busy lives of singles of seconds to potentially millions of singles and apps like Tinder have managed to enavailable to date, chat or simply just hang out. gage with the 18+ audience and importantly This ease of choice some psychologists believe they make meeting people fun and efficient. is a problem, psychologist Barry Schwartz in The hard part of the first date is the his book The Paradox of choice, cites the changing out of your tracksuits, cutting short

8 @LitroMagazine @LitroMagazine

Peter Jordan, gives us Mirrors – a the latest Netflix binge or putting that other story where we are left asking “Why did writers book down, sticking to one jam and she take the bathroom mirror? meeting them in person.

In Friday Night by Sarah Evans – an In Litro 159 we have a First Date with a online profile – receives a: “Hi, I think you’re group of writers you maybe haven’t met bereally cute and would love to get to know fore, but whose work you’ll hopefully want you. View my profile to find out more about to see more of. They giving us six stories and me... “ What’s the worse that can happen? an essay. We have comical dialogue between We have dialogue, between awardbiographer and playwright Ian Kelly and winning novelist and playwright Ian Kelly and the world’s most notorious lover Casanova. the world’s most notorious lover, Casanova.

Our cover artist this month is the In C.R. Resetaris Bling, sometimes Parisian photographer Louis Dazy, a phothat first date is so good it makes you questographer who uses the double exposure tion… everything. process. Louis puts people in natural or urAlison Smith’s The Girlfriend ban landscapes and immerses them in orExperience is a personal essay about going on ange and blue lights. a date for money, offering ‘a girlfriend exWe open this issue with The Remarkperience’. able Girls You can Find in the Peculiar Depths We close the issue – by going full of the Internet by Megan Crosbie. circle with magic- The Dream Bridegroom by A story that’s just magical- though Ingrid Norton, a retelling of a South Asian of course magic can be dark and scary-and far folktale.

–from-magical.

Xanthi Barker’s Role Models is a story about an unromantic, apparently meanEric Akoto ingless first date that ends up echoing down Editor-in-Chief through the years

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FICTION

The Remarkable Girls You Can Find in the Peculiar Depths of the Internet

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Megan Crosbie Some first dates can be just a bit magical…

All her online photos had been of her cats so I wasn’t prepared for the blue hair or the fact that I’d find her septum piercing adorable.

We chatted, words flowed. She told me about her art studio, about backpacking around South America, about the notebook in which she collected the stickers you get on bananas. I felt compelled to tell her secrets but instead talked about my work, my migraines, my mother.

Eventually the words began to ebb away and we sipped at dregs of coffee.

I saw her smile.

“Want to see something?” she asked.

Before I could answer she leaned forward, brought her hands together on the table, palms up. I watched, waited, went to ask – then they started to glow.

I jumped when the first spark of light burst out. Suddenly dozens of tiny fireworks shot between her palms and erupted like shattered rainbows, while doll-sized rockets looped and boomed around her fingers. I watched, unblinking, until the show ended and she blew away the twirls of smoke and ember wisps. She stood.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got somewhere to be. It was nice to meet you.”

She dropped money for her coffee on the table, the exact change. By the time I found the words to say goodbye, she was gone. I sat with the space in her chair and the smell of burnt wood. No one seemed to notice, the world rolled on, but for a moment I couldn't quite see for the inky splodges in my eyes, the afterimage of colour.

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FICTION

Role Models Xanthi Barker

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An unromantic, apparently meaningless first date echoes down through the years...

To her chain-smoking flatmate, the morning after: God the music in that place, they played that Black Eyed Peas song about six times an hour and you couldn’t get a drink for all the people grinding on each other, all the guys leering in their pink shirts and the girls thinking they were pole-dancers. I stayed outside smoking. Pat wanted to leave, Joe and Hen were getting McDonalds.

I was so awake. I went upstairs and he was standing at the bar, we talked for what like five minutes? then I was like, Do you want to come back with me? and he got us a taxi. He had this big face, nice eyes, hair that greeny-brown kind of olive colour, you know, I really fancied his shoulders. We didn’t have sex, he couldn’t, you know, he was really sorry, but, he insisted on going down on me instead, I mean, he went down on me for like an hour, I mean, for ages. I didn’t know what to do. I put Pulp on and smoked his cigarettes one after the other, lying there with the ashtray on my stomach, like I was Scarface or something. I felt like a guy. Or like some guy who thinks he’s the guy in Scarface. When I came he kissed my knees, then he lay down beside me, kind of slumped, he reminded me of a walrus. He was big but not like, muscly big. I don’t remember his name, is that bad? Nikos or something.

We lay there for a bit and I got really hot, I couldn’t even think about sleeping at all, he was sweating loads. I just thought, I don’t know, I thought the last thing I want is to wake up and have to chat to him in the morning, so I asked him to leave—I was like, if you don’t mind? I was nice about it. And he looked, like, fucking happy.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man that happy, definitely not after having drunk sex.

He was like, ecstatic, he jumped up, I got up to say goodbye and he picked me up and swung me. He kissed me like in a cartoon, you know? We said see you around and he left. It was perfect. *** A year later, after their final-year exam, talking to her classmate about whether or not in the twenty-first century there is still a difference for men and women having casual sex : Because it’s so easy now, there’s no reason not to. For men or women. I mean— not to be essentialist right? The stakes have changed, so the methods of control get subtler, but they’re still there. I reckon anyway. And the weird thing is, even as feminists, we’re still caught up in that patriarchal way of thinking. Because it’s like, not just your feelings but the actual facts that are affected by it. Do you know what

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FICTION

The Mirror Peter Jordan

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Why did she take the bathroom mirror? It’s the only thing that isn’t perfect in the whole deal.

Doctor Henry helped me get my new flat. While filling out my application form he asked, Do you know what points mean?

I said, No. And he said, Prizes. Points mean prizes.

Yesterday, when the TrustBus dropped me off, I brought with me a single suitcase and a memory board. On the memory board I’ve written Lithium x 3 and Olanzapine x 2, and below that, Tea Bags and Flora.

Whoever was here before me left everything; there’s a TV, sofa, table and two chairs, and a single bed. There’s even some food in the kitchen cupboard and the place has been decorated. The living room is magnolia, the kitchen green, the bedroom yellow, and the bathroom blue. I know a bit about decorating; my favourite television show is Property Ladder.

But there’s one thing that bothers me. In the bathroom, above the sink, is a white rectangle in the surrounding blue of the wall where the bathroom mirror used to be.

I’m lying on the sofa wondering why someone would only take a bathroom mirror when there’s a knock on the door. It’s a girl. She’s small with dark brown hair in a bob and she has big brown eyes. There’s something familiar about this girl; I feel like I know her, but I don’t think I’ve met her before. She tells me her name is Anna, and she says something about her brother and a letter. Sometimes when I get an overload of information I get a taste of copper in my mouth and I see snow falling.

When I come round I’m sitting at the kitchen table and she’s pouring water from the kettle into two mugs.

Are you okay? You look a little out of it.

I’m fine. Thank you.

She hands me a coffee.

I’m not supposed to take caffeine.

It’ll do you good.

I blink and continue to blink. Then I taste the coffee, but I don’t like it.

She tells me her brother lived in the flat before me. Her brother died, that’s what she’s saying. She talked to him on the phone that day. Later, she called to the flat and found him dead. He was a diabetic who fell asleep and didn’t wake up again.

She’s waiting for his death certificate. It was posted to my address. She says she would have given everything she had to save him. I wonder how much that is.

Do you like it? she asks.

It tastes bitter.

Friday Night

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20 20

FICTION

Sarah Evans Hi, I think you’re really cute and would love to get to know you. View my profile to find out more about me. Hope you’ll get back to me soon.

Five minutes in and already Geoff has that sinking feeling, is wishing he could bail out. He smiles widely to cover the treacherous thoughts and asks another question, allowing the woman – Samantha – to continue talking, on and on, about her work, something in the legal department of a major pharmaceutical. Both of them are wearing office uniform. White blouse and black suit for her, with a chunky gold chain adorning her pale neck. Striped shirt and navy suit for him, a brighter tie than usual.

The waitress interrupts the flow of work-speak. ‘Are you ready to order?’

Neither of them have taken time out to peruse menus or discuss what to drink. They bat back and forth – should they share a bottle, and if so red, white, rose? – while the waitress taps her pen. Her shapely calves provoke a sexual flicker which is markedly absent from his date.

‘Might as well order by the glass, go for what we really want,’ Samantha says. They can’t even compromise on wine-colour or commit beyond 175ml it seems. They order from the set menu, which limits the options and promises quick service, and already he can feel the relief of flight. *** He is home too early for a Friday night, heavy with the weight of one more failure.

Why does he even bother?

At work, a hi-tec consultancy, the women are mostly in admin roles, all too young, or old, or too thoroughly married. Of a weekend he goes cycling with a club: blokes, plus the odd dragged-along partner. Online dating is the practical solution to the fact that he meets no one new. He brings his own page up on the site for young professionals which he chose after careful dithering. His photo and profile present an image of solid dependability. In seeking dates, he sets sensible search criteria. Similar attainments in education and career. Close in age. Similarly ranked in the attractiveness stakes.

He is not going to worry about whether Samantha will contact him again.

Does not need to log in now.

His fingers itch at the thought of information hanging suspended in hyperspace. It will only take a second.

He has two new messages.

Samantha: Thanks again for a great evening. Maybe cool things for a while.

Like things have ever been remotely warm.

He replies with return nonchalance. Likewise, lovely meeting you.

Some other time perhaps.

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Ian Kelly The world’s most notorious lover had quite a number of ‘first dates.’

Award-winning biographer and playwright Ian Kelly, currently engaged with Northern Ballet adapting his Casanova biography as a major new dance work, imagines a ‘first date’ with the original Latin lover.

IK: So – this is weird. I’ve had quite a few awkward first dates, but never with a dead person – or someone I’ve written about.

GC: All dates are a sort of fiction surely? A dance around reality – a construct of hope and daring – expectations built up and met, or not met

IK: Well you would know. Here’s the thing; I

have thought about you a great deal over many years of writing a book and now a ballet, imagined conversations, wanted to understand you better – that much is very ‘first date’ – but we need to get a few things out of the way first –

GC:

Like about all my sexual partners you mean? Isn’t that a conversation for a later date?

If at all?

IK: Well, I’ve had some dates that have started

there – that didn’t end badly...this is why you are still famous – the sex – not that you had that many sexual partners, but of course you wrote about them

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Casanova

COMICAL INTERVIEW

29

FICTION

Bling C.R. Resetarits Sometimes that first date is so good it makes you question ... everything.

Claire Duckworth is a talented university scholar and an exceptional tutor. She is capable of compassion and sage advice, although disdainful of anyone who requires too frequent a dose of either. She is a valued colleague: strong will, strong opinions, but not monomaniacal; no game player unless all agree that the game's the thing—of course, then she can be downright sneaky. She is a woman of intellect, of intense discriminations, lofty goals, and exacting expectations. She is, quite simply, a snob, a real toffer. She was, for a while, a circumspect snob but has recently recovered from that malady.

Last term Claire had a crisis of confidence. Rather unexpectedly, the crisis did not involve her work. It may have been enhanced by her work, but it was not a crisis about her work. A sociologist, Claire had just completed her third book, The Social Scientist through the Looking-Glass, an edgy, erudite, irritable account of the failures of her field and the blatantly obvious path out of the quagmire. It was well received and more widely reported than either of her previous works—which had been serious little volumes full of graceful reflection and convoluted data sets. How interesting, she noted, that it was her vitriolic volume that excelled, that propelled her out into the open. Was that the source of crisis then?

Fear of being disliked? Fear of being misunderstood or thought too harsh? Her colleagues thought not. Indeed, not a one of them thought of disliking Claire or the things she said in her book. They all assumed she was talking about someone else— everyone else, really—and agreed with her thesis enthusiastically. They liked to be seen having coffee or lunch with her as never before, to be included in the coterie of those on the proper side of her looking glass. Was this the reason then? This sudden attention, this change of status? Did Claire perhaps think herself undeserving of such notice? Well...not really, not down deep, but perhaps she felt she ought to appear more humble, but this was only a small, small part of her problem.

The real problem was Larry.

Larry was the contractor working on a remodel of office space at the opposite end of Claire's hall. Claire's favorite toilet—the big, clean one, with the intact tiles and working soap dispenser—was located there. High-strung, tea-addicted, small-bladdered as Claire was, she visited her favorite toilet frequently and ran into Larry frequently too. She thought he was cute, sexy, mildly threatening with his bowed legs and his big grin, but from the start she pretended not to notice him. What, after all, could they possible have in common—besides, that is, a perverse echoing of some dire plot off the soaps and, along those same lines, fantastic, unbridled sex?

But then one day she ran into Larry in such a way that pretending not to notice wouldn’t do. She came busting out of her favorite toilet, looking terri-

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37

NON FICTION

The Girlfriend Experience

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Allison Smith A personal essay now, about going on a date for money, offering ‘a girlfriend experience’

Years ago, I was in the East Village when I paused outside one of the darkly fashionable bars ordinary to Manhattan. It was a cool autumn night, and I stood watching the streetlights shining against the bumpers of parked cars. It had been raining earlier, but now it was over and the air was rich and damp; the rainclouds looked like bruises in the gray sky.

Inside the bar, a man was waiting for me. I didn’t know who he was or what he even looked like, but I knew his name was Alan and that he worked on Wall Street. I’d never done anything like this before. It was just something I’d slipped into, almost by accident. *** I did not have high hopes when I clicked a headline written in all caps,

SHARE YOUR STORIES OF LOVE AND ROMANCE IN THE BIG CITY. The Craigslist ad

was for a blog requesting true stories written by women describing their dating experience in New York. The ad said they would pay fifty dollars per story. At this point, I’d never had what could accurately be called a love life, and I’d only been living in the city for a few months. But I was a writer and thought I could just make something up.

After I wrote an e-mail to the blog editor, attaching what could charitably be called a resume, I left for class. I bought a deli sandwich and ate it on the way back home, uncaring that honey mustard was sliding down my fingers and bits of lettuce and tomato were tumbling to the ground with each bite.

I kicked off my boots and opened my laptop. I was surprised by my own excitement when I saw the unread e-mail in my inbox. My excitement quickly gave way to dismay.

The “blog editor” was a man named Leonard. No last name. He apologized for the deception and explained that he did not run a blog, but rather maintained a group of young women whom he set up on dates with rich, older New York men. He called it “The Girlfriend Experience.“ He swore there was no sex involved, only that these men, usually corporate finance types, were lonely and too busy for conventional dating. They just wanted someone to talk to. Leonard would find men online and then set up a date with whichever girl met that particular man’s preferences. Then Leonard and the girl would split the payment. Was it something I’d be interested in?

I don’t know why I said yes.

Maybe it was because I’d been looking for writing gigs for the past month, anything involving editing or paid fiction submissions, with no success. Seldom did the online ads sound promising, but it was becoming increasingly clear to me just how difficult writing jobs were to find. Even clearer was the realization that I was ill-qualified to do anything but write.

Ads for assistants called for someone “highly organized” and “prepared.” But my room, littered with empty soda cans and books stacked like coasters on the floor, was evidence to the

43

FICTION

The Dream Bridegroom Ingrid Norton The issue ends as it began, with magic – with giants and gods, too – in a retelling of a South Asian folktale...

Usha lived with her father, a giant with a thousand arms, in an enormous house on a hill. More of a mansion, really, although the house was made of such old, thin strips of lumber that mansion seemed too sumptuous of a word. Usha had her own quarters, decked out with pale, thick carpets designed to capture the texture of sea foam. Gauzy muslin drapes covered the wide, creaking windows, which faced east towards the dawn and towards the ocean. On clear days, Usha could just barely make out the water —a thin strip of murky green-blue—on the horizon. She led a cloistered life, and designedly so. Her quarters could only be entered via the antechamber to her father’s rooms, and narrow, steep walls made of limestone encircled the house and its grounds (the house just barely protruded above the walls because of the hill, or mountain as the local mortals called it). Was it possessiveness or obliviousness on her father’s part that kept her confined? Though daintier than her father, Usha was herself a giantess who wore earrings the size of boulders. Her father seemed not to notice his daughter’s transformation from eager girl, content to sit in the garden, braiding rose trees into garlands, to sighing young woman, absently playing board games with her consorts.

Usha’s only relief from her confinement came during festivities among the gods. Then Usha could leave her father’s house. She stayed with cousins and family friends in places like the quartz caves beneath the desert and the eyes of hurricanes in the middle of the sea. One August she was invited to come celebrate the goddess of love’s wedding anniversary. The goddess and her husband held the celebration above the marshlands, where thick, lustrous clouds meet the tree tops. Only female deities were invited so that no male guests could rival the god and to provide an endless retinue for the goddess: mostly apsaras, beautiful and sprightly nymphs, though Usha caught sight of a couple of ungainly giantess sisters from the West. A small group of professional musicians floated on a cloud, concealed by fog.

The nymphs danced to the light, rhythmic drumming. In the center of the gathering, the goddess and her god swayed and laughed. The goddess of love tapped the beat with a massive ruby diadem, which she sometimes used to catch her beloved’s diaphanous blue garments. Their dancing was playful. But every now and then, Usha (who had somehow found herself in the innermost circle of dancers) would notice a detail that both thrilled and shocked her. The goddess gave her lover a fierce look, even as her eyes misted in rapture during the next moment; she caressed his ear lobe with a lust that was at once both sensual and precise.

At one point, Usha’s best friend, a nymph named Citralekha, leapt into the center beside the goddess. Citralekha was naturally slim and lanky, with dark

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Louis Dazy

PHOTOGRAPHY

We're still those same wrecked kids looking to feel not so alone

53 into the v Beware of imitators(right)

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55 Sincerely

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