The Opiate
Spring 2025, Vol. 41
The Opiate
Your literary dose.
© The Opiate 2025
Cover art: Scene from the Palisades Fire, January 2025 by CalFIRE This magazine, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission. Contact theopiatemagazine@gmail.com for queries.
“Live simply so others may simply live.”
-Mother Teresa
“Two kinds of Californians will continue to live with fire: those who can afford (with indirect public subsidies) to rebuild and those who can’t afford to live anywhere else.”
-Mike Davis
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Editor-in-Chief
Genna Rivieccio
Editor-at-Large
Malik Crumpler
Editorial Advisor
Anton Bonnici
Contributing Writers:
Fiction:
Scott T. Hutchison, “Hard Lessons” 11
Debbie Miszak, “Girls’ Night Out” 15
Mike Lee, “The Last of Them” 29
Rich McFarlin, “Emily” 36
Johnny Allina, “Mushroom Chloe” 48
Barry Garelick, “Beanpole John” 54
Mary Lewis, “Alfred Under” 61
Nonfiction:
Alexander Lowell, “Mexico City Barber School Haircut” 68
Renshaw, “Letting You Know I’ve Arrived” 99
Poetry:
Kathryn Adisman, “March 2000” & “The Curse of Ingrid Bergman” 109-110
Ron Kolm, “Star-Spangled Nightmare” 111
Margaret R. Sáraco, “I Try Not to Grow Old,” “Letter to Adulthood” & “Death, Then Grief” 112-114
Steve Denehan, “Teal,” “And Hundreds Just Like Him” & “How I Tried to Leave You” 115-119
Dale Champlin, “The Music That Learns Us” 120
Mark Katrinak, “Highway Motel,” “Purple, Blue and Yellowing,” “Stones” & “Cosmetic” 121-124
Leanne Grabel, “Famous Film Director,” “Wool,” “Botox,” “America” & “Drawing a Pumpkin Wtih Mom” 125-131
DS Maolalaí, “The Hippie Across the Street” 132-133
Edward L. Canavan, “Breakdowns & Breakthroughs,” “Waste of Ages” & “Beyond Reason” 134-136
John Delaney, “Gobi Dream” 137
Megan Cartwright, “Metamorphosis” & “Unboxing” 138-139
Criticism: Genna Rivieccio, “Blasé About Trauma As Only a Californian Can Be: Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life, Like Any Other” 141
Editor’s Note
In the end, it always goes back to California. The geographic location that exhibits the gamut of weather and natural disaster phenomena (though there will forever be those holdouts who associate the state solely with nothing but “golden sunshine”). The place that shows the rest of the world what could happen to them if they’re not careful. Of course, it’s already much too late, even though the Golden State has provided numerous examples of what transpires when climate change exacerbates an already volatile and unpredictable Mother Nature.
And while, yes, the reaction to the extent of the devastation that Los Angeles experienced as the Palisades and Eaton fires raged (while other smaller fires raged at the same time as well) was unanimous heartbreak, as is what usually happens, most of those who weren’t directly affected have moved on to the next catastrophe of the day. Whether that’s bird flu, measles outbreaks, disastrous foreign policy decisions, etc., there’s plenty to choose from to keep the focus off how grave what happened in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year truly was. Not just another harbinger of climate change or the increasing incongruity of class disparity, but, in truth, of how so many of us are content to sit back and quite literally watch the world burn without doing much about it.
This is because, in all likelihood, we think to ourselves, “What can I really do about it anyway?” It’s easy to grow complacent and apathetic. Which is exactly why there’s been so much less resistance to a certain administration in the U.S. taking power compared to the first time it happened in 2016 (but officially, at the beginning of 2017). Not only less resistance, but blatantly and willingly voting that person in (this in contrast to what happened during the 2016 election)...essentially as a “fuck you” to both Democrats and, once again, the idea that a woman (Black, white or otherwise) could ever be “allowed” to be president in the United States (a name that has become increasingly oxymoronic, in addition to housing only full-stop moronic people).
The woman that vied for “the crown” (since the Orange One is
calling himself “the king” now) in the latest election is herself a California girl. And yes, there’s no denying that having her in office instead of the dolt that managed to win instead would have been a boon for “the land of milk and honey.” After all, it’s no secret that the state has sold itself many times over for the sake of federal funding (hence, its federal prison system being one of the most burgeoning in the nation). But now, no matter how kowtowing the state’s current governor, Gavin Newson, is to the Orange One, the latter has made it his personal mission to put the state on his list of ever-expanding vendettas just because both Newsom and the state itself has expressed frequent disgust for the führer
More jarring still were the additional post-election revelations that 1) swathes of formerly blue counties in California turned red and 2) a large pro-Trump voting bloc consisted of Gen Zers. The very generation that ought to have feared the outcome of a second Trump presidency the most. For it is their future (while Gen Alpha might not even have a future at all) that will be in the most noticeable dire straits as a result of the Orange Creature’s policymaking. As for the first revelation, it’s an additionally alarming statistic to come out of the 2024 election. That ten counties—Butte, Fresno, Inyo, Merced, Nevada, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Joaquin and Stanislaus—that voted blue in 2020 flipped in favor of the ultimate American grotesque.
Now, the voting map looks nothing like the California that once made conservatives “mockingly” (even though it’s actually a compliment) bill the state as “The People’s Republic of California.” A dig at its supposed ”communistic” government (and yeah, it’s easy to seem that way in a country as rigidly capitalistic as America). But such an “insult” is holding less and less water now (much like the Shasta Reservoir), with CA falling into the deep pit of redness that was once only reserved for the “flyover states.”
The one color of the state, however, that appears to be ever- constant is orange. As in the flaming orange of fire. An element that has always been synonymous with California. Except that, in the current conditions, it’s more dangerous and catastrophic
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
than it has ever been. Something that Mike Davis spoke to in his prescient 1998 essay, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” In it, he discusses the absurdity of the long-standing approach to dealing with fire in Southern California, commenting, “‘Total fire suppression,’ the official policy in the Southern California mountains since 1919, has been a tragic error because it creates enormous stockpiles of fuel. The extreme fires that eventually occur can transform the chemical structure of the soil itself. The volatilization of certain plant chemicals creates a water-repellent layer in the upper soil, and this layer, by preventing percolation, dramatically accelerates subsequent sheet flooding and erosion. A monomaniacal obsession with managing ignition rather than chaparral accumulation simply makes doomsday-like firestorms and the great floods that follow them virtually inevitable.”
Here there is no denying that what Davis is talking about isn‘t “only” governmental mismanagement and ineptitude. What he‘s talking about is a willful state of denial (“state” meant literally [i.e., the state of California is the state of denial] and figuratively). An utter refusal to acknowledge reality, therefore ceaselessly engaging in the same behaviors that will continue to have increasingly dire consequences. That California (especially through Hollywood) has long embodied the crux of the “American dream” (or rather, the American delusion) only adds to its symbolic place within the deluded cultural consciousness of America and what it “means.”
When that batch of hellfire rained down on Los Angeles in January of this year, Mother Nature was putting none too fine a point on the fact that denial, or notions of “fake it till you make it,” can only get you so far before cold, hard reality seeps back in. Which reminds one of the 1934 quote from The Los Angeles Times that Davis places at the front of his book, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster: “No place on Earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters than Southern California.” Because, if you sell the lie hard and often enough, it will continue to be bought until the collective’s dying breath. Choked, no doubt, by the flames. Or, in the U.S. at large’s case, choked by another entity that happens to be orange as well. One that is also repeating the same lies (or “alternative facts”) over and over again despite everyone knowing, not so deep down, that the emperor has no clothes. But he‘ll more than likely still pretend that he does when he shows up to a “better and
brighter” Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics. Burned to a crisp or not, the show must always go on in California, nay, the world.
Fearfully yours,
Genna Rivieccio March 2025
FICTION
Hard Lessons
Scott T. Hutchison
Junebee
freely declared that she visualized herself in the role of military sniper. My first-day-of-school icebreaker with sophomore English is to listen—to their fantasies and pipe dreams, to openly discover what brilliant thing they might want to do with their young lives. Junebee—with her bouncy brown hair and shiny braces—smiled broadly, saying she wanted to “plunk holes in the enemy.”
My classes sit in a Socratic circle, hearing various thoughts and opinions respectfully while skipping back and forth in a lively discussion, me facilitating. Nobody can hide in a circle—I see everybody. Sometimes, I have to work harder to teach the respect part. As Junebee finished, I detected a couple of eye-rolls, and one boy mumbled psycho under his breath. I applauded—told the class they needed to be supportive, announced that I believed Junebee could accomplish whatever she wanted. I made another pronouncement, too: I felt that way about all of them.
You’ve got to be honest and trustworthy to teach and navigate young people. I asked, “Does anyone here want to be dismissed? Or labeled ‘crazy’?” Some acted like that’s fine. And that’s fine. “Anybody want others thinking you aren’t in charge of yourself?” Nobody nodded in the affirmative. “Then how about we don’t lay that meanness
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
down on others while you’re in here? Lots of words we won’t use in this class. At year’s end, we’ll revisit this discussion, hear your thoughts on it all.” There’s fair control inside my classroom.
I shared my approaches with my student teacher, trying to load him up with non-book skills he’d need in the future. He only listened out of politeness; college indoctrinated him in the newest measures and methodologies. I represented old school crossing guard thinking. He wore the fresh-faced look of a twenty-year-old acolyte, speaking in the tongues of rubrics. I shook my graying head, told him, “Try saying good morning to each and every kid. Learn their interests. Talk about the madness of their worlds. Be even-handed, non-judgmental. With the texts you pick, always share good stuff—to hell with homogenized safe stuff. Deliver, with everything you’ve got—don’t be scared.”
“Junebee freely declared that she visualized herself in the role of military sniper. My first-day-of-school icebreaker with sophomore English is to listen—to their fantasies and pipe dreams, to openly discover what brilliant thing they might want to do with their young lives. Junebee—with her bouncy brown hair and shiny braces—smiled broadly, saying she wanted to ‘plunk holes in the enemy.’”
My student teacher didn’t like the sound of parents potentially coming for his head over something that might be construed as objectionable. He experienced the banning of a couple of books back when he was in high school—he admitted that, since everything’s on the internet, fighting certain kinds of people wasn’t the most important battle to take on.
I brought in powdered milk and a gallon of whole chocolate milk, along with two glasses, and set them down in front of him. I
Hard Lessons - Scott T. Hutchison
added dry powder and water to one glass, brown delicious density to the other. I feel people have a right—I said, “Your choice.”
When Junebee, as a senior, began stalking the halls and dropping targets in pools of blood on the school colors-painted linoleum, chance found me coming out of the restroom, just as everything broke. I was still wiping my hands with a paper towel—my faulty old hearing failing to fully process the booming noises. Then the school’s defenses kicked in: alarms, an automated announcement that warned, “Intruder in the building. There has been a report of an intruder in the building.” The assistant principal’s voice frantically cut off the recording: “Intruder in the English-Social Studies wing. Use your ALICE training. Go!”
As part of my student teacher’s introductory experience, I’d left him alone in the testy clutches of my creative writing seniors, flying solo while trying out his worksheets. The announcement catapulted the school’s kids and teachers into action. I was too slow to make it into anybody’s lockdown room: teachers had turned keys, closed shades, barricaded and hunkered down silently behind desks—a standard part of education prep these days. I was flooded with thoughts—what’s happening with my kids? Probably deep in prayer and text messaging and making Divine deal promises if chosen and blessed with escape. All I knew: I wasn’t there for them. I said to hell with covering and hustled toward my students.
Junebee stormed around a hallway corner, dressed in camo and face paint, heavy ammo strapped across her chest. Junebee held some kind of long gun with a scope, drifting it back and forth in sweeping, rhythmic, calculated arcs. Pulling up short, I did all I could do: backed up against the thin metal of purple and gold lockers. Junebee sidled toward me, leaving red footprints behind her on the brightly waxed floors. She stopped, looked me dead in the eye and winked. Then Junebee marched off to carnage and oblivion.
I dimly stumbled on, found my classroom and whispered, “Clear, open the door.”
One of my bravest girls—she’d grabbed keys off my desk and locked it—cracked the door open, and I slipped inside. They rushed me. I opened my arms, hugging each of my small, trembling students as they plunged into me.
My student teacher had pulled himself tightly into a corner— the kids jumbled and cried, telling me how they handled the securing of the room. I thought about the Junebee of two years ago, the Junebee
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 41
two minutes ago, saw her needing support, saw a cringing boy needing my veteran help.
I placed a hand on his shaking shoulder, silently transmitting the teaching basic stirring up in my chest in that moment: Remember, every kid wants to be liked, every kid wants to be respected. Every. Single. Kid.
We all spun our heads toward the pounding footsteps surging in our direction from out in the hall. My student teacher scrabbled in his backpack. He ripped at the zippers and pulled out some kind of handgun. The kids screamed as he began firing at the door.
I reacted, went old school. My teaching job was done. His would never begin.
Girls’ Night Out
Debbie Miszak
Wehad to boldly go to a club we’d never gone to before last Friday because Melanie didn’t want to run into anyone who knew her ex-boyfriend. Neither of us was supposed to mention Paul. Forgetting him was the Prime Directive.
For someone so concerned about how often the actors on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation adjusted their uniforms and how distracting it could be to viewers, I couldn’t believe that she chose to wear the ill-fitting black tube top that she got for five dollars from Forever 21. She had to adjust it every five minutes. It started in the Uber on the way there. She kept grabbing the sides of it and hiking it up in a way reminiscent of someone mouth-breathing or picking their nose.
Melanie could get away with being a little vulgar and with being a Trekker (she told me I couldn’t call her a Trekkie—it’s derogatory) because she was Deanna Troi-level beautiful. She wore a Bajoran earring every day during our senior year of high school and still ended up on Prom Court. The fact that she spoke fluent Klingon was a cute icebreaker with guys instead of a red flag that she might insist on naming a future child James Tiberius or Kathryn Annika.
I liked Star Trek too, but mostly because Melanie and I would never have become friends if I didn’t give it a shot. I didn’t really get
the original series, and I didn’t have the attention span to follow the arcs in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but I liked The Next Generation and most of the movies. That was good enough for her.
If Melanie was Deanna Troi, I was more like Tasha Yar: plain and forgettable. I said this to Melanie once and she disagreed, stating that no true fan could ever call Denise Crosby’s performance plain or forgettable. I didn’t say it, but we both knew that Denise Crosby asked to have her character killed off after the first season because she was sick of standing around on the bridge doing nothing.
“This place is supposed to be really cool,” she said, using the front-facing camera on her phone to help guide her as she slathered on a thick layer of pink, cotton candy-scented lip gloss.
“Yeah, I saw Kelly post about it on Instagram.”
“I did too. I asked her about it because I thought it was weird that she didn’t post any photos from inside. I guess they have a ‘no phones’ policy. They make you put them in one of those locked bags like when we saw that comedian last month.”
“Isn’t that kind of a safety hazard?”
Melanie shrugged. “It’ll be fine. It’s cool. It’s all about disconnecting from technology and living in the moment. What do you think people did before phones at bars?”
“They were kidnapped and murdered.”
“They don’t use phones on Star Trek,” she noted. “And before you say that’s because nobody could’ve anticipated phones when TOS was on, or even TNG, it’s true even now. If you turn on an episode of Picard, he never whips a smartphone out of his pocket.”
“Right, but don’t they always have their tricorders and communicators?”
“Tricorders and communicators don’t exist in real life.”
“But our phones are basically the same—”
“Don’t be lame. This is going to be fun!”
This was the resounding echo throughout the decade we’d been friends. When I didn’t want to toilet-paper Mrs. Mulligan’s house in ninth grade, even though she did always smell like a mix of the hardboiled eggs she brought for lunch and general disappointment, Melanie said I was lame, that it would be fun. The same thing happened when she insisted on sneaking flasks into our senior prom. Even now, she still didn’t know that mine was full of Sprite.
“I am lame,” I announced. I couldn’t look at her. “I’m incapable of having fun. You know this. Ryan knew it too. That’s why he’s in the fucking Bahamas with that new girl—who has the blonde hair extensions down to her ass that I told you about—even though we could
Girls’ Night Out - Debbie Miszak
never take a trip beyond Frankenmuth in the five years we dated. But, you know, they’ve been public for, like, a month so they deserve to go to an all-inclusive resort.”
Melanie snorted. “Would you even want to go to the Bahamas with Ryan?”
“God no. But that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t understand why she gets to go somewhere nice and I didn’t. Should I have been keeping one of those punch cards they give you for Blizzards at Dairy Queen every time I did something that earned a reward? Every time I made sure he got his homework done, remembered to call his mom, got him to act like a decent human being?”
“There’s something wrong with you, like psychologically.”
“I know.”
She laughed and elbowed me. “You just have to learn to use it to your advantage. Guys like crazy. It means you’ll be good in bed.”
Our silent, middle-aged Uber driver glanced at us in the rearview mirror. I grimaced. “That’s a stereotype.”
“It works for me.”
I felt the need to give her a reality check as I explained, “Guys don’t like you because you’re crazy. They just don’t notice because of everything else.”
She sighed and looked out the window. “Maybe you’re right. Men are so shallow. Do you think part of the problem with Paul was that he looked too much like Odo? Did I project too much of what I wanted him to be onto him? Should I have settled for someone who preferred Babylon 5 to DS9?”
“Don’t go down that road. We aren’t even supposed to say his name. The boyfriend formerly known as Paul doesn’t exist to us anymore, right?”
Melanie didn’t answer; she just continued to stare out the window. Part of me wanted to touch her—to place a hand over hers or even just nudge her shoulder—to comfort her, or to try and convey that even if I didn’t understand exactly what she was going through, I knew that it hurt. Instead, I just tried not to look at her for too long.
The driver slowed down in front of a windowless brick building that had been painted a dark purple. Dance music wafted onto the street as the bouncers let a gaggle of shrieking girls with matching bachelorette party sashes inside.
I didn’t think I looked terrible, but Melanie made a face when we got out of the car. It was the same face she made when I showed up to our first day of seventh grade in the white Skechers tennis shoes my parents bought instead of the matching Nikes she wanted us to have.
“You said you liked this when I bought it. I sent you a photo and you told me to buy it.”
“It’s just pinker in person, that’s all. Don’t be self-conscious, though.”
I pulled at the hem, feeling the faux silk fabric on my fingertips. I thought about how I should’ve worn something else. It was too bright, and it was too form-fitting, and if Melanie wore it, she would look great. But I wasn’t Melanie, and that was fine. I was fine. I’d been practicing positive affirmations and I said them in my head now: I am fun to be around! I have a healthy body that helps me do the things I want to do! My friends and family are better off because I’m in their lives!
“It’s more of a fuchsia,” Melanie decided.
I didn’t make eye contact with the bouncers or the spindlefingered goth lady who snatched our phones and locked them away. My eyes met those of a wizened, graying French bulldog on a Persian rug surrounded by an entourage. It directed its snout toward a deck of tarot cards. I never was much of a dog person, but I couldn’t help wanting to scoop it up and carry it around with me. Melanie pulled me toward the bar.
There were two open seats separated by a guy in a baseball cap. He looked older than us, and he had bags under his eyes like he might have a real job. I knew Melanie would make us sit next to him. One of her complaints about Paul was that he was too “immature” (read: he was still working at a gas station even though he got a degree in chemistry, but he wasn’t applying to grad school because he didn’t have the grades). Melanie, for her part, wasn’t working anywhere. She lived at home. Her parents were both physicians. She was a dancer with a brand-new BFA, but she didn’t want to dance professionally. It would have compromised her love for it to do it as a job. Anyway, she tapped Baseball Cap’s shoulder, and he moved down a seat. She took the one next to him, and I sat next to her. A bartender put a menu in my hands without a word.
Melanie turned toward Baseball Cap and giggled over his menu. I couldn’t hear her too well over the music, but between songs, I heard her say something that ended with, “Body Positivity Barbie.”
They both laughed.
Maybe she wasn’t even talking about me, but it still pissed me off, and I pretended not to hear her when she leaned over and giggled that I wouldn’t look so miserable if I got laid once in a while, and that she would make it her mission to help ensure that happened tonight.
The menu was printed on iridescent paper that made it difficult to read under the low lights. The cocktails were boring and expensive.
Girls’ Night Out - Debbie Miszak
Melanie leaned over to Baseball Cap and pointed at a sixteendollar old fashioned.
“What are they using,” she asked, “Romulan whiskey?”
He didn’t know this joke was a test in disguise, so he chuckled politely.
“Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek recently.”
“I grabbed his face, and he seemed shocked. He had that look men get when they think you’re going to kiss them, with their eyes somehow both dreamy and surprised, poised to close as they anticipate the contact of lips on lips. For a minute, I thought about doing it, about what kind of person I could become if, instead of insisting that I needed him to see what I saw, I just gave in and made out with him.”
Baseball Cap nodded. “I’m more of a Battlestar Galactica guy.”
Melanie perked up. “You know, Michelle Forbes, who played Ro Laren on Next Generation, was on BSG, and Ronald D. Moore, who worked on Next Gen, DS9 and Voyager, also worked on it. Oh, and he worked on Caprica.”
“Caprica was shit.”
“I know!”
They turned toward each other, and over the music I couldn’t hear them continue. It was better that way, and I had time to look at the menu and decide what I would order to make myself more fun to be around. I wished there was a drink that would turn me into Melanie, or at least something that would make me more than her gawky accessory.
The craft shots were unique. The first couple were ones I’d seen at other places, the obnoxious Blow Job and Blue Balls shots, which
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Melanie used to make for us in our dorm out of contraband alcohol gifted to her by Paul and her other admirers over the age of twentyone, but the remaining three were new:
• Cute in the Dark
Melon Liqueur, Black Vodka, Pineapple Juice, Sweet & Sour
• Angry Feminist Vodka, Midori, Amaretto, Cranberry Juice, a Drop of Menstrual Blood
• Self-Loathing Slammer Tequila, Tabasco
“I’m going to order us a couple of Blow Jobs,” Melanie announced, once she remembered I existed.
I shook my head. “I don’t like the whipped cream.”
Melanie bought two for each of us and insisted on showing off for Baseball Cap by licking the whipped cream out of the glass when she was finished with each one. White specks remained at the corner of her mouth, and I handed her a napkin from a dispenser near us. I didn’t get it, but Baseball Cap seemed to appreciate her efforts. The next round was on him, he said.
“No, thank—” Melanie cut me off before I could refuse. No stranger had ever offered to buy me a drink before, and I felt like I’d been plopped into the middle of a cheesy public service announcement.
“We’ll try the Cute in the Dark. Two each, please.” She put her hand on his knee.
The bartender, a woman covered in thousands of dollars’ worth of tattoos, took our empty shot glasses and made the next set. Baseball Cap smiled and raised one to both of us. “To the start of a great night.”
We clinked our glasses together. Liquor slid down the back of my throat, and then I swallowed the next one and tried not to gag because I let too much of it hit my tongue. Still, the buzz was instantaneous, and I didn’t even have to pay for it. When Melanie asked me to dance with her, I couldn’t say no.
One of the reasons I agreed to going dancing was because Melanie was a classically trained ballerina and, therefore, she looked ridiculous when she tried to be sexy. All those years with Mrs. Golubeva beating precise movement and calculated grace into her via strict instruction and Russian swear words made Melanie win awards, and made me look like an object of desire.
“I move like Data,” she whispered into my ear, and gestured toward the impeccable freedom of the other girls, who flaunted their
strappy crop tops and long, balayage hair. “No, that’s actually too generous to me. It’s more like B-4.”
“You’re great. Just don’t pay attention.”
“Someone’s paying attention to you.”
I turned and glanced at a guy in a puffer vest a couple feet away. His eyes darted when they met mine, and he pretended to resume a conversation with his friend, who was turned away from him and grinding against some girl in a pleather mini skirt’s ass.
“I think I’m going to go talk to him,” I told her.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Go do it!”
Melanie pushed me toward him as the first sign of hesitation crossed my face, and I stumbled off the dance floor. This time, when I looked at him, he didn’t look away. I put on my best “coquette” smile and promised myself that if he tried to sell me on Bitcoin, self-help methods he found on the internet to increase productivity or Quentin Tarantino movies, I would run.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
The silence made me feel like a balloon had deflated in my lower intestine. I looked at the French bulldog again as a handler massaged its stomach.
“Do you come here often?”
“This is my first time.” I couldn’t stop looking at the dog, which now ate kibble out of an elevated gold dish. I wanted to venerate it, to hold it close to my chest like a scapular. “Do you know what’s up with the dog?”
“What?”
“The dog!”
“What dog?”
I grabbed his face, and he seemed shocked. He had that look men get when they think you’re going to kiss them, with their eyes somehow both dreamy and surprised, poised to close as they anticipate the contact of lips on lips. For a minute, I thought about doing it, about what kind of person I could become if, instead of insisting that I needed him to see what I saw, I just gave in and made out with him.
I turned his head and pointed.
“Oh, that’s weird.”
“You don’t want to know more about that?”
“It looks like a gimmick to me.”
“That’s so cynical.”
“What?”
“I said you’re being cynical!”
“I can barely hear you. Can we go somewhere else?”
“Lead the way.”
He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to a standing table in a corner. My heartbeat quickened when I realized the dog was outside of my line of sight. There was no time to cope with this distress because Puffer Vest decided to stand close enough for me to feel his breath.
“You think I’m cynical?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That dog is the best thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t even really like dogs. A German Shepherd bit me when I was five, and I still have a scar on my thigh.”
“Can you show me?”
I giggled. “Maybe.”
“I’m surprised you don’t think you’re cynical. You looked annoyed with your friend at the bar, and you ditched her pretty fast just now.”
“She’s fine, believe me.” I gestured to the group of other girls she’d joined. “Anyway, you abandoned your friend too.”
“He’s fine.” His friend, Red Shirt, had his hand on the small of some girl’s back in Melanie’s new group. There was another silence, but instead of dejection, I wanted to shove my tongue down his throat, if not for pleasure, at least to make the conversation stop.
“So, tell me about you,” he said.
“I just graduated. I write grant applications for Habitat for Humanity.”
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t know. It’s only part-time. But a job’s a job, you know?”
“For sure. Is it something you could see yourself doing five years from now?”
“Maybe. But I would want it to be full-time. It’s for a good cause.”
“You’re never going to make a ton of money as a do-gooder.”
“You’d get along with my parents.”
“When do I get to meet them?”
I laughed and moved in closer to him. “What about you?”
“I teach fourth grade at a charter school. You don’t need a teaching certificate. They just want to see a diploma. They don’t even need your—”
I couldn’t hear him as the DJ put on a dance remix of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which felt off and made me want to be sick. A migraine brewed in the right side of my skull.
“What?”
“Transcripts! They don’t need transcripts! They just let you teach.”
“That doesn’t seem like a great idea.”
“The kids have a way better chance of success with us than they would at some underfunded public school.”
“You don’t think scammy charter schools might be part of the
Girls’ Night Out - Debbie Miszak
funding problem?”
“You’re missing my point. We’re short-staffed! It’s a great gig. You need a full-time job. It’s super easy. You’d be great.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
Puffer Vest used his eyes to gesture toward Melanie. “You look like the smart one, like, out of all of the girls here.”
Puffer Vest, with his great sensitivity, intuited that he’d said something wrong. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my waist and pulling me closer. I froze. “It’s okay, it doesn’t make me any less interested. Once you hit your late thirties like me, you start to realize that looks don’t matter as much. It was honestly refreshing to meet a girl at a place like this who isn’t completely brainless...”
Refracted light from the disco ball illuminated his black hair, which had the trademark dullness of cheap, boxed hair dye. Melanie made eye contact with me.
Before I could excuse myself, she yanked my arm and announced, “Sorry, I need a tampon!”
I wanted to cry. Maybe it was the liquor but, suddenly, I felt like I was back in her pink-walled room, plastered with One Direction, Selena Gomez and, of course, Star Trek posters as she shoved her iPod Touch camera in my face.
“High School: The Next Frontier,” she said with a slight lisp brought on by her retainer. “These are the voyages of two super epic BFFs. Their four-year mission: to explore strange new classrooms, to seek out new boys and places to hang out. To boldly go where no girls have gone before.”
I pushed the phone out of my face and hid behind a pillow.
She continued, “Captain’s log. Star date: June 14th, 2013, because I don’t know how to tell what the star date should be.” I snickered in the background. “I’m here with my amazing best friend, and first officer, Number One. We have just graduated from the eighth grade. What strange creatures will we encounter at John F. Kennedy High? Who will we become? Will we truly be best friends forever?”
That was my Melanie, and here she was again, loving me, wanting me. She didn’t even drag me to the bathroom. We just went back up to the bar. I craved her audacity.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“He looked like a douche.”
“I know.”
“Don’t be upset. You put yourself out there. That’s a good thing.”
I nodded. My face burned along with the acid in my stomach, and if I could get past my bruised ego, I wanted to sit at the bar and eat something smothered in grease and salt. Melanie flagged the bartender over. I ordered pretzel bites, but I needed another drink.
23.
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Out of curiosity, I asked, “What’s up with the Angry Feminist and the menstrual blood?”
The bartender sighed. “Yeah...” She snapped a piece of gum in her mouth and saliva droplets hit my wrist. “I really wish they didn’t put that on the menu. They’re just asking for a health inspection. It’s just grenadine that we pour out of this vagina bottle.”
She lifted a heavy, disconcertingly accurate crystal decanter in the shape of the female reproductive system. Melanie snorted. The
“Melanie could get away with be- ing a little vulgar and with being a Trekker (she told me I couldn’t call her a Trekkie—it’s derogatory) because she was Deanna Troi-level beautiful... The fact that she spoke fluent Klingon was a cute icebreaker with guys instead of a red flag that she might insist on naming a future child James Tiberius or Kathryn Annika.”
bartender glared.
We knocked back the drinks as she put them down. Baseball Cap slid in next to Melanie. She hit him on the arm like he was an old friend and told him about Puffer Vest, and he reached across her breasts to pat my arm.
“I would totally sleep with you, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Thanks. It’s so generous of you to make that offer, especially as you’re actively trying to fuck my friend. You’re so kind.”
Melanie smacked me on the arm and laughed to play it off as a joke, but I turned away.
“What’s her problem?” Baseball Cap asked. “I was just being polite.”
Girls’ Night Out -
Debbie Miszak
Melanie made a show of how she didn’t want to look at me. “She doesn’t have an alcohol tolerance. Don’t take it personally, she just can’t hold her liquor. This one time, back in college, I caught her throwing up from her fully lofted bed onto our white rug. She was such a mess.”
Sometimes I hated her. Part of me wanted to correct the record and tell Baseball Cap that Melanie was actually the one who did that, and that it wasn’t just Melanie, but Melanie and Paul (who I knew she would get back together with, so Baseball Cap shouldn’t bother getting his hopes up), and they were vomiting from the lofted bed together, and they kept me up with that all night before my Econ 201 final, which I almost failed.
It didn’t matter. I stopped listening and bought myself the sixteen-dollar old fashioned and stared at the dog. In addition to its security team and ornate rug, it had a teal collar, what appeared to be a memory foam dog bed and a wooden toy crate emblazoned with its name: Snugglemuffin. It looked back at me with stoic blue eyes and wagged its short tail.
“Melanie, I’m going to steal the dog.”
“What? No! You’re so drunk.”
“So are you.”
“I don’t even feel it.”
She adjusted her top and tripped off the barstool. When we got to the velvet-roped line, a bouncer stopped us.
“I need to make sure you don’t have any food on you. Snugglemuffin is on a very restrictive diet due to her advanced age, and we don’t want to compromise her health or psychic abilities.”
I nodded. Nothing was more important to me than her safety. Melanie rolled her eyes. The man turned out the pockets of my jacket and checked my purse. My attention turned toward the current client, Puffer Vest. He sat on his knees in front of her with his eyes closed. With great majesty, she stood and revealed a stomach the size of another small dog. Her snout rooted at Puffer Vest’s lap and ear. She backed into her former spot, extended one of her front legs and, with an outstretched paw, selected a tarot card: The Tower.
Melanie hated astrology, crystals and pretty much every New Age practice that I, as a recovering Catholic and lackadaisical agnostic, governed my life by.
“I find this highly illogical,” she said, in her best Spock impression.
“Shut up.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he hobbled back to the
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
bar with a sullen expression on his face. The next person, a woman in brown leather pants, struggled to kneel before Snugglemuffin, whose handlers told her that she could prostrate herself if that was more comfortable. Either were acceptable displays of devotion.
Despite my best efforts to focus on Snugglemuffin and her majesty, I stared at Puffer Vest. He was drinking a Self-Loathing Slammer. Part of me wanted to go laugh at him, part of me wanted him to apologize and tell me that I was the hottest girl here and another, more shameful part of me wanted to just pretend he hadn’t offended me at all so that we could get on with trying to have sex with each other.
“Ma’am,” one of Snugglemuffin’s handlers called out. Snuggemuffin, my savior, launched me out of this trance. “Please step forward.”
I kneeled on the smooth rug and presented my palms for her to sniff. When she approached my ear, just as I’d seen her do to Puffer Vest, her presence made me feel, for perhaps the first time, truly beloved. Aside from treats, I got the sense there was nothing she would ever really want from me. She walked in a circle around the mess of tarot cards, and one of the handlers made a nervous expression. Snugglemuffin presented me with a card in her teeth. The High Priestess.
I leaned back toward Melanie. “She wants me to take her.”
“Don’t. I’m serious, don’t do this.”
Before she could snatch me away, I patted my thighs with my hands, begging Snugglemuffin to come to me. “I just want to pet her,” I told the guards.
“One pet,” the biggest guard conceded. “That’s it.”
She jumped into my lap and licked my face.
“That’s enough.”
“You’re right, I’ve had enough. Snugglemuffin, we’re going.”
She nestled into my arms and fixed her eyes on mine. I could hear her serene, gravelly voice in my mind saying that I was made for her, that I was a beautiful, loveable person, that I was way out of Puffer Vest’s league and that I didn’t need male validation to be a complete human being. As the burly guards attempted to rip her away from me, she remained glued to my body. We understood each other—belonged to each other in some predetermined way.
“Melanie, we have to run.”
The floor began to rumble as though the entire building were growling. I dropped Snugglemuffin from the shock, and she stared at me. A circle of guards and guests formed around the three of us. Red
Girls’ Night Out - Debbie Miszak
Shirt, Puffer Vest’s buddy, lunged at me. His stubby fingers grabbed at my ankles as he tripped on the slick floor, covered in spilled drinks from all the commotion. I kicked him with my heel, unbothered by his lackluster attempts. There would be no redemption for people like him on Snugglemuffin’s watch.
“You’re going to get us all killed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wrong. Melanie, isn’t it always true that, usually, only the Red Shirt dies?”
Though frightened by my newfound power, or rather, the power invested in me by Snugglemuffin, Melanie nodded.
“This is my dog now,” I declared, vaguely aware that my words were coming out slurred. “You can all fuck off.”
Then, a sharp pang in my chest. Snugglemuffin wiggled in my arms. She wanted to get down. I placed her on the floor gently, recognizing that a dog this ancient must have terrible hips.
“You don’t want to come with me?”
She took painstaking steps toward my legs and nuzzled me. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, she told me.
“I understand.”
I wanted to wash her paws with my hair, to anoint her, to show her proof of my conversion. Melanie caught me as a I began to weep and buckled at the waist. She grabbed one side of me, and Baseball Cap grabbed the other. They waved off the bouncers and took me out of the building. Puffer Vest gave me a timid smile, and I returned the gesture. I leaned against the cool brick wall once we got outside and tried not to smell Melanie’s bile as she threw up on the sidewalk.
“Thanks for your help,” Melanie said to Baseball Cap. “We’ll see you around.”
“‘See me around’? That’s all I get? I don’t even get your number?”
Melanie had already stopped listening and, still feral from the alcohol, tore the locked phone bag open with her teeth.
“God,” he said, digging for his car keys. “You’re both psycho bitches, and I didn’t even want to have a threesome, by the way. I was just being nice.”
Melanie laughed in his face before he turned to walk away. I didn’t even feel like he was a real person. He could say whatever he wanted. It didn’t change the gift Snugglemuffin had given me.
“Hi, Imzadi,” Melanie purred into the phone, using the near-sacred Betazed term used by Riker and Troi to call each other “beloved.” That’s who Paul was to her, I could feel it in my guts that she meant it. “Can you pick us up? We’re at that new place, the one in Ferndale. Okay, we’ll see you in a few minutes.”
27.
We sat down on a bench and watched the traffic lights change. The bride-to-be from the bachelorette party group puked into a cityowned garbage can and her tiara fell in. Her friends took photos of her and laughed, and she flipped them off.
Melanie looked at me. “When I have my bachelorette party, you have to promise to help me protect my TOS uniform, because we’re all going to be in Trek cosplay, and that’s my cutest one, and I only have one, and it’s dry clean only.”
“Of course.”
She grabbed my cold, sweaty hands. “When Paul and I get married, I want you to be my maid of honor.”
She threw her arms around me and, even though she smelled terrible, I hugged her back.
In Paul’s backseat, my impending migraine reached fruition. I rested my head on the window’s glass with closed eyes and waited for them to finish French kissing. It took three full minutes, but I could be patient.
Melanie turned toward me and said, with vomit-stained teeth, “Let’s do this again next weekend.”
The Last of Them
Mike Lee
Thewind blew down from the rooftops of MacDougal Street, carrying an array of waste paper and candy wrappers that fell peacefully like snow toward the ground. The sound of rap could be heard, bouncing from building to building, through alleys and cross streets. Lyvere guessed it was from the park, where NYU students and tourists rubbed shoulders with dope dealers and crackheads—the typical New York scene. He snared a flyer that advertised half-price glasses as it floated in front of him, wadded it and threw it into the gutter.
He and Thompson turned to check for oncoming traffic and crossed the street, passing a group of skinheads, one of whom mumbled.
Lyvere began to reply, but Thompson shot him a don’t-getinvolved look. He retracted and jerked his head away, moaning and sitting between two BMWs parked illegally on the curb. They paused in front of a coffee house, but decided against going in.
“There’s a place I go to on the corner,” said Lyvere. “It’s never crowded in the daytime.”
Thompson shrugged as they passed a homeless man curled up in a fetal position beside a stoop. Lyvere noticed he might not be alive, but they always look that way when asleep.
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Thompson was wearing the gray tweed sports coat his wife had bought him the summer before he started his university position.
He hated the jacket at first, yet meekly went along once he got used to it. He realized it gave him a classical air that set him apart from the other young instructors. Even so, for Thompson, words and deeds—not fashion—made the man.
They stopped at the coffee house Lyvere recommended.
As they entered, Lyvere turned to Thompson. “Nobody seems to like this place except a few failed novelists and me. Even on Saturday, this joint is empty.”
Thompson looked at his feet and saw cockroaches scurrying across the checkered tile floor. On the wall, he noticed a mural of the Borgia family. He guessed that this was a dump and a mob hangout— one of the two remaining in the West Village. The place reminded him of a French art film.
They sat in what passed for a booth, a row of scratched marble-topped tables covered with over a decade’s worth of grease and cigarette burn marks. Thompson figured this was the perfect location for Lyvere to hang out.
The place was probably the scuzziest dump in Greenwich Village. Leave it to Lyvere to like it.
Thompson brushed off a seat and sat down, hoping in the back of his mind that his tweed wouldn’t get dirty. Lyvere removed his own sports coat (in green plaid) and flung it over a chair at an empty table to his left. He opened his shirt and wearily loosened the knot of his tie. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros and dropped them on the table. His wife made him quit before they got married. He still stole a few puffs occasionally, especially on trips like these.
Lyvere adjusted his glasses and removed a cigarette, lighting it with one hand as he always did. Thompson remembered that he had taught him that trick. He grabbed another cigarette from the pack and lit it off of Lyvere’s.
He looked up at the waitress, who he found charming, and ordered an iced cappuccino. Lyvere ordered the same.
Thompson almost choked on the smoke. He wasn’t used to it; thank God Lyvere didn’t switch to something awful. Instead, he looked up and saw Lyvere’s ubiquitous evil grin, another reminder of days gone by.
He had come to New York to work on some research regarding CLR James for a class on Caribbean literature, which the department chair had allowed him to take. As par for the course, Thompson was versed in a lot of Caribbean writing; he even corresponded with Andrew Stalkley and other writers in the field.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the chance to meet CLR, as he
The Last of Them - Mike Lee
was affectionately known, before he died last summer. Thompson recognized him as a source of criticism. However, he was fashionable and so Thompson took it upon himself to teach his work.
He was an influential writer...perhaps one of the giants of his literary genre. CLR was also a Trotskyist and a pan-Africanist before it was even known to his community. So Thompson brought CLR, at least in spirit, to Greensboro, North Carolina.
Thompson had an affinity for CLR. The old man was an idealist, a committed activist and a survivor until the day he died. He was an
“He hated being told what to do, and he hated being told the truth. Of course, he always had the mirror in the bathroom to remind him of what he was; he definitely didn’t need Thompson to tell him. Maybe he was taking it all too seriously, but he realized he was asking for it.”
excellent author who only wrote one novel, long out of print, a brilliant essayist whose work languished in obscure Trot journals and a historian whose work on the Haitian Revolution was considered the finest in the field. To Thompson, CLR was the classic invisible man.
He was someone that the kids (he hoped) would like. A good counterbalance to the politically correct crap his contemporaries were currently teaching. He aspired to teach and had much to bring to the table. He felt CLR knew what he wrote would convince somebody that there was something more than spineless politicians and demagogues going for the lowest common denominator, with one grandstanding sore after another tearing away another layer from his soul.
So Thompson put in his hours at NYU and the public library; he dug up some old Trotskyist comrades of CLR living in Brooklyn,
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
interviewed them and spent most of his free time playing solitaire, trying hard not to think. It was the only thing he could do now that his migraines had worsened.
Antonio wrote to him around last Christmas and told him that Mike Lyvere had gotten married and moved to New York, giving his address with the attendant’s request that he write him. After all, it had been a year since he last talked to him; six years before that, they had only been occasionally in touch. But, of course, they still counted each other as friends; it was just that Thompson was too busy. And Lyvere, well, was Lyvere, the man with the broken writing hand.
So he wrote him a month before he went north, telling him he was coming up for a while for this research and hoped they would get together. Lyvere managed a reply. Yeah, sure. I’ll be happy to see you.
After three weeks, Thompson arrived and found the time to drop in on his old friend.
He met Lyvere at the steps of the research library. The first thing that surprised Thompson was that Lyvere looked the same. He had the same haircut, cropped short on the sides, though touched with a little gray, parted on the side, the bangs hanging over his forehead like Adolf Hitler. His face had softened, yet the sharp edges of his cheekbones still gave Lyvere the look of a bad character actor. He still wore ugly vintage sports coats with matching ties.
As for Lyvere, he felt ambivalent about meeting Thompson again. He thought they went off in entirely different directions over the years. He marked it from their senior year in high school. Thompson graduated, while he, Lyvere, dropped out. Thompson got to go to Houston-Tillotson and Fisk while he dawdled along part-time in a community college and washed dishes. Thompson got the degree, did the graduate work and hustled for the teaching position, while Lyvere engaged with radical politics, played music and worked as a third-rate journalist. He, Lyvere, paid his dues while Thompson worked his ass off. He felt guilty and a little jealous and wondered why Thompson would like to be reminded of his wasted youth.
Thompson was firmly in position while Lyvere was terminally spinning his wheels. Of course, he didn’t believe Thompson wanted to be reminded of that fact; hell, he didn’t want to be reminded of it. But when he saw Thompson sitting on the steps, he comprehended that, while everything had changed, nothing had changed the obnoxious asshole he knew years ago.
Thompson was still as before, although looking a tad less. When they rode the subway down to the Village, it struck Lyvere as painfully apparent that he had changed a lot. Sure, he was still
The Last of Them - Mike Lee
cynical as hell. The years, especially the ones he had spent in New York, had warped this aspect of his personality. Lyvere’s sense of humor had taken a walk on the wild side. The one-liners and wisecracks had become ugly, and his delivery had sped up. He knew Thompson had difficulty keeping up as he related every scrap of information from his head. He wondered if it was the excitement of seeing Thompson or some other undetected element that was making his delivery embarrassingly annoying. It was the wrong time to be self-conscious. Nevertheless, he was glad to see him.
Lyvere was right, Thompson noticed. Lyvere was always a loudmouth, full of useless bravado.
After about an hour, Thompson realized that Lyvere was turning into a carbon copy of his father, Louie, the wandering loser.
Maybe there was something genetic, a bad seed, in the Lyvere gene pool. History repeats itself, he chuckled, just like Spengler said.
The cycle is complete. For what it was worth, at least Lyvere had a good job and was maybe writing. But, intriguingly, the old man was at the same point in their respective lives.
Lyvere intuited what Thompson knew, and understood.
The thought of his father was with him when he went to bed at night and returned like a ghost whenever he looked in the mirror while he shaved every day for the last twelve years. When he took a chance, he dropped out of high school. Lyvere viewed it as an expected aspect of his baggage, and accepted Louie’s spectral presence as part of the life he had chosen for himself.
He realized the only way Louie Lyvere would ever truly “depart” was when Mike succeeded at something. It could be a month, a year or ten years, but, eventually, Lyvere would exorcise his father’s spirit from his life. On the other hand, thinking about his father lent him comfort. It reminded Lyvere that, no matter how things turned out for him, in the end, he was still better than the old son of a bitch. But as he grew older, and the excuses of being precociously bright were wearing thin with age, Lyvere began to worry.
Every night and every morning brought new fears; lately, his worries were death. That was brought on by thoughts of Eddie O’Day and that August weekend before their senior year. Even though he wasn’t responsible, remembering O’Day only made Lyvere feel worse. But he knew.
He was around. As Thompson used to tell him, Friends don’t clean up after idiots. And O’Day was an idiot, as were Irene, Miriam and many others except the two survivors here.
Lyvere held up his glass. “Here’s to survival.”
Thompson smiled. “Très cool, hombre,” he replied, clinking his glass against Lyvere’s.
“I have this awful feeling. Do you want to tell me something important?” Lyvere asked with a mocking concern.
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
“Like what? You have long known that you’re an asshole.” Thompson took a hard drag from his cigarette, blowing smoke in Lyvere’s face.
Lyvere angrily flicked an ash into the ashtray. “This isn’t the time to get ugly. I know I have problems.”
Thompson stared at the floor. “Sure. And you’ve had the tools to deal with them. I don’t understand why you never bothered to face them. I look at you, and it’s the same old Lyvere—the guy with a snarl.
“...they still counted
each
other as friends; it was just that Thomp- son was too busy. And Lyvere, well, was Ly- vere, the man with the broken writing hand.”
You are too maudlin for your age and seem to look for failure around every corner. New York hasn’t changed you, Lyvere. You are the same underachieving slob you always were in Texas. You’re a goddamn floater—and a con man, to boot. And to make matters worse, you’ve become a conniving wimp. And no, you are not like Louie Lyvere. No, man, you’ve become a carbon copy of Irene.” Thompson spat her name out.
Lyvere winced. He wasn’t expecting this, but, yet again, he knew it would come from somewhere. He hated the Irene analogy. He pounded the table and grabbed his jacket.
“I’ll pay the check,” Thompson said abruptly.
Lyvere didn’t reply as he just as abruptly walked out the door.
The Last of Them - Mike Lee
Thompson figured he shouldn’t try to follow him. He sighed and stared up at the mural in front of him. “God, that’s ugly.”
Lyvere crossed Bleecker and walked toward Broadway. This is stupid, childish and par for the course, but who cares? He hated being told what to do, and he hated being told the truth. Of course, he always had the mirror in the bathroom to remind him of what he was; he definitely didn’t need Thompson to tell him. Maybe he was taking it all too seriously, but he realized he was asking for it. Lyvere only felt worse. He walked to the subway station and took the A train back to Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, Thompson had reached the breaking point.
Alienating friends was a hobby. He felt alone again, just like twelve years ago. He sat in the coffee house, ordered another iced cappuccino and thought of suicide.
Even when he felt he was right, the words came out wrong. He should have understood that Lyvere was haunted by demons like himself.
What was funny to Thompson was the revolting irony that the demons chasing them were the same. Thompson was glad to see that Lyvere, in his sudden anger, had left his cigarettes behind. He took another, lighting it off the butt end of the one he had just finished smoking. There was only so much that could be done to accommodate the promises to quit, but he resolved to do it tomorrow before flying back to Greensboro.
Emily
Rich McFarlin
Isaw her through the window of the coffee shop, right there on Main Street, acting like she hadn’t been gone for well over a year. She had disappeared out of my life, out of my world, without warning, without fanfare, without...well, without anything, really. And here she was, right back in almost the same spot where I had first laid eyes on her some years back. I stood there on Main Street, people walking past me, almost as if I wasn’t there at all. I could sense that a couple of them looked at me out of the corner of their eye, staring at the man who was standing on the sidewalk in the early evening, staring through the window of the local coffee shop. I didn’t care. She was there, right where I first saw her, right where I first fell in love with her; my Emily. I finally roused myself out of my stupor and shook my head. I was still trying to wrap my head around what had just transpired, after all this time. I watched Emily, my Emily, sip daintily (the way she did just about everything) from the white and pink bone china cup. Emily had always been delicate, a real lady. She sipped her coffee from the cup, setting it down softly on the china saucer. My heart ached with sudden, newly invigorated love, a love I thought that I would never know again. I debated with myself about what my next step should be;
Emily - Rich McFarlin
should I go inside and surprise her, or wait here on the sidewalk, maybe catch her coming out of the shop? I was just about to move, to gather my courage and go inside when Emily set down her cup and rose from her chair. I watched her gather her things: her purse and the book she had been reading. She stuck them into the crook of her arm and started towards the door. I moved quickly down the sidewalk, trying to meet her as she came out. What a surprise this would be!
What would she say? What would she do? Would she throw her arms around me, smother my face with kisses and tell me how much she missed me? And what would she say about her absence? Had she been in an accident; had she been hurt? Had she possibly been hospitalized? Was that the reason she’d been gone for so long? Had she been lying in a hospital bed, lost in a coma, dreaming of being in my arms again? My stomach fluttered with the possibilities of our renewed love. I could feel my throat going dry. I almost lost my breath in anticipation of our reunion.
I saw her opening the door to the coffee shop and stepping down the three concrete steps, moving onto the sidewalk. I called to her from the side of the building, “Emily! Em! Hey, wait up!”
She never stopped, but kept walking away from me, away from our life together. I ran up to her, keeping pace at her side. I reached out, grabbing her by her bare arm. She felt soft and feminine, if that was at all possible. When I touched her, she pulled her arm away, recoiling from me.
“Hey! What the fuck, man! Don’t touch me!” she screamed, stepping away from me, almost as if she didn’t know me.
“Emily? It’s me, Bill. Where have you been? I mean, it’s been almost a year and a half! Where have you been, my sweet girl?” I tried reaching back out to her, but she pulled away again.
“What is wrong with you? I have no idea who you are, Bill. And my name is not Emily. Please leave me alone or I will call the police.”
With that, my Emily turned and walked away, leaving me standing on the sidewalk, more questions than answers at this point.
I remained fixed in my position, not quite sure what to do now that Emily had shown that she clearly did not remember me, or our relationship. I decided to follow Emily from a safe distance. I would see where she went, then determine what my next course of action would be from there. I followed her down Main Street, past the center of town. She turned up Bradford and headed north, away from downtown. At least she didn’t get into a car; that would have presented a bit of a problem, at least for me. My car was parked off Main; it would have been impossible to get down to it if Emily had gotten into a car and driven away. I would have lost her again for sure. As it was, she moved
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
quickly, particularly for someone who had been, up until just a few moments ago, somewhat of a ghost. I followed along, far enough away so that I kept her in sight, but close enough so that I could see where she was going.
I watched as she approached one of the small houses off Bradford, opening the gate of the white picket fence and closing it behind her, taking the pathway up to the front door (which was also white and in need of painting). The house was a small two-story that had been around since the late 1950s, painted and renovated over and over until it was sold to someone who had converted it from a home for a family into a rental for transients or college students. Emily was neither of those things so what was she doing here? As she approached the door, a light flickered on, illuminating the porch, and someone opened the front door. It was a man, standing in the foyer, wearing jeans and a flannel-print shirt. He said something to Emily, who leaned in toward him, kissing him on the lips! He put his arm over her shoulder, guiding her inside, and closed the door behind them. The porch light went off, leaving me in the dark about so many things.
I could not believe what was happening to me; in fact, I honestly could not believe any of this. First, Emily disappears almost two years ago, vanishing into thin air without a trace, without warning, without even the benefit of an explanation. I mourned her loss for months, trying my best to deal with not only her absence from my life, but her total disappearance. It’s one thing to have someone end a relationship, it’s another thing entirely to have them simply vanish without a trace. And Emily had vanished. She had left behind her clothes, her books, her friends and, most importantly, me. I had tried to find her, tried to understand what had happened. I had contacted the police, and then hired a private investigator after the police had come up empty. All to no avail. She had simply vanished, until now. Now, after months of anguish and heartache, she had turned up again, back in her hometown, back in my world. But she seems to not know who I am, has no idea of what I mean to her, of what we meant to each other. And who was this mystery man that she had kissed so easily and comfortably on the lips? Who was the flannel shirt wearer who welcomed my Emily home, never thinking that she might belong to another? Did he have something to do with her vanishing those many months ago? Did he brainwash her, kidnap her, seduce her into leaving me? Or was he an innocent in this macabre play? I could not believe that Flannel Man was a simple passerby, caught up in the drama of Emily by chance; no, of course not. He was a linchpin, someone who had somehow fostered her disappearance, taking her from my arms, from my bed, from my heart. And for that, he must pay. And with his demise, I would take back my Emily. Once she had been released from
Emily - Rich McFarlin
the tether of her captor, she would awaken and her eyes would be opened. She would see that it was I who had set her free from her prison, had released her from the cage that she was clearly asleep in... or simply too afraid to try to escape from. Then, once she was free, she would love me again. Yes, he must pay.
I went home and slept peacefully, knowing that my Emily would soon be mine once again. I woke to the sounds of birds chirping happily and the day beginning joyfully. Today was a day that would, as the old expression goes, be the first day of the rest of my life— correction: of our lives together. I dressed and went down to the café where, just last evening, I had once again found her. I ordered a vanilla latte and a bagel in anticipation of a long day ahead helping Emily move back home, out of the clutches of Flannel Man. I felt refreshed and energized after a good night’s sleep, filled with pleasant dreams of our reunion. My malaise from the past year had dissipated like the dew in the face of the first rays of the morning sun, and I found myself unable to stop smiling at everybody.
I finished my breakfast, taking the last of my coffee with me, and set off towards the house where my Emily was held, obviously against either her will or against the sharpness of her memories, somehow made to forget our lives together, our love for each other. Never fear; she would remember me again. I walked up to the front door and knocked, deciding that a direct confrontation was best; I would get to the bottom of the mystery! The man who opened the door was tall, at least six feet. He was younger than me, with a face hidden by a sparse brown beard. His eyes were green and sparkling, full of life and vigor, and, dare I say it, a touch of malice and deception. He was wearing jeans and another flannel shirt, this pattern in tones of green, which highlighted his eyes. I smiled at him.
“Good morning. I was wondering if we might have a chat.”
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” He cocked his eyebrow at me inquisitively, as if he had no idea who I might be. The gesture infuriated me, but, remarkably, I held my temper in check.
“I’m Emily’s husband.” I said it as calmy as possible, seething inside at having to explain to this stranger who I might possibly be.
“Again, I’m sorry, but there’s no Emily here. I believe you have the wrong house and the wrong woman. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get ready to get to work.” He started to close the door on me.
“If you don’t mind, it will only take a second to explain. We can clear all of this up in a heartbeat and I won’t bother you again. Please. I’m quite distraught. You see, my Emily disappeared almost two years ago. Then, after just about giving up hope, I saw her last evening at the café down on Main Street. You can certainly imagine my joy at seeing her again! If you’d just allow me a minute to explain, I’m sure we can
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
work this out. Then, I promise, I’ll be on my way, never to darken your domicile again.”
He stared at me for what felt like a day; lifetimes passed in that look, galaxies swirled and broke apart, re-forming as new ones in the expanse of that stare while he decided our fates. He finally opened the door wider and motioned for me to enter.
“It’s one thing to have someone end a relationship, it’s another thing entirely to have them simply vanish without a trace. And Emily had vanished. She had left behind her clothes, her books, her friends and, most importantly, me.”
As I followed him inside, he turned and asked, “Can I get you some coffee? I was just about to pour myself a cup.” He took two steps into the kitchen, which was located just off what I can only assume was the living room. There was a couch, beige and stuffed, along with a Queen Anne chair with some obsequious pattern along the side, both facing the television, which was placed on a piece of furniture that appeared to be mahogany, with drawers and cabinet doors. Cozy, but unremarkable. Emily had certainly stepped down in her tastes since her departure from my home, furnished in the finest antiques and most beautiful décor money could buy, all done by a very highly paid and highly skilled designer. No matter; soon we would be together again and Emily would be home where she belonged.
I must say, I went through that door with the purest intentions. I would ascertain how and why Emily had come to be with this man,
Emily - Rich McFarlin
rather than at home with me. I would ask the right questions, listen calmy and logically to the answers, then allow Emily to explain herself when she arrived home. I was sure that, given what we meant to each other, and given that she was obviously persuaded by some means not altogether proper to be here, that she would see where she needed to be: home with me. But he had something else to say about it; he always has something else to say about things. He is extremely insistent about what he decides, and he decides most things. Again, I did not want things to escalate beyond a simple conversation, but alas, it was not to be.
“Hit him.” I heard him say in my head, like nails on a chalkboard. I grimaced from the pain of him, pushing his way to the forefront.
“HIT HIM NOW!” he screamed at me, pushing me to act as if it were me, and not him, that was the actor in all things. Let me be clear; I had no real choice in the matter. His voice was, as ever, insistent and overwhelming.
Flannel Man, whoever he was in Emily’s life, was thoroughly surprised, dare I say, shocked, when the hammer struck, causing his knees to buckle, almost as if he were a giant oak, hewn from its rooted moorings, swaying in the forest, about to be felled. I myself was stunned at the blow, at its viciousness; he dropped the two cups of coffee, shattering them on the wooden floor and spraying hot coffee all over the room. His hands flew to his forehead and he groaned, staggering back and forth. I was almost as shocked and dismayed as Flannel Man was, but he was not shocked at all. In fact, he was gleeful, as he always was at moments like this. I just stood there, horrified at what he had done once again.
How had it come to this? How had I allowed him to push me around, direct me, steer me to do what he decided needed to be done? I was no longer an autonomous agent in my own destiny, but simply a boat, directed by its captain towards rougher waters, peril be damned. Almost as if on cue, the hammer rose and fell again, its waffled-patterned front hitting the tall man on the top of the head, blood spattering like drops of rain, mixing on the floor with the hot coffee. He lifted his head, looking me in the eyes, resigned now to his fate.
“Why are you doing th—” and he struck again, over and over. He flipped the drywall hammer around, using the hatchet side, striking Emily’s captor on the head and shoulders as he lay slumped before us on the ground.
“No more” I whispered, trying to get him to realize that the
man was done, gone, passed from this world to the next, laid at the gates of Hades holding his two coins for the ferryman. He ignored me, raining blow after blow upon the dead man, pieces of him falling off from the hatchet’s sharp wit.
“NO MORE!” I screamed at him, trying to assert some semblance of control again. Of course, it was far too late for that sort of thing. But, alas, stop he did, chuckling as he wiped the hatchet side of the drywall hammer on the dead man’s flannel shirt.
He had to be taught a lesson. You do not simply take what belongs to another man and expect to suffer no ill consequences. His logic, of course, was as always, sound. The man had stolen from us, had taken from us, and therefore had to pay. The price was almost as dear as the object stolen. But now, how to persuade Emily that this was for the best, that we had only her safety and her release from the hand of her captor in mind when the first blow was struck. No worries; why would she not be overjoyed at having her release secured? Why would she not be thrilled to be set free so that she might, once again, come home to those who adore and worship her? The answer, of course, was that she would. We set about the task of cleaning up the large mess with sudden happiness and glee; Emily would see what we had done and rejoice in our great love. He was right again, as he always was. Once we were done, we sat down to wait, silent in our brooding.
Emily came home just as the last rays of the fall sun disappeared from the horizon, casting the world into that ethereal time when night and day have kissed one another, neither one willing to relent to the other’s dominance. The brilliant colors of the sunset ran through the windows in the front of the small house, filtered by the white lace curtains that had been hung from metal rods, now speckled with the splashes of Emily’s captor. In the sun’s dying embers, the dark mahogany tone of his blood took on an orange hue, speaking of his demise to any who would hear. I was sitting in the kitchen area, drinking a cup of tea that I had brewed, Earl Grey, which was Emily’s favorite. She came through the front door and called for him.
“Noah. I’m home, honey!” She set her bag down on the Queen Anne chair just inside and took two steps before realizing that something was not quite right. When she saw me sitting at her kitchen table, she knew something was wrong. “What are you doing in my house? Where’s Noah? Who the fuck are you?” She had stopped advancing into the house and was now backing up. I stood up.
“Noah’s fine. He’s using the bathroom.” I looked towards the bedroom, implying that Noah was in there, in the bathroom. “He and I have had a lovely conversation. He’s quite a good guy, your Noah.” I stood and took a step around the table. Emily stayed where she was, but her flight mode was fully active. I had to assuage that instinct, and
Emily - Rich McFarlin
fast, or I would lose her. “Look, there’s been a terrible mistake on my part. I’m so sorry. As I mentioned to Noah, my Emily disappeared almost two years ago, just walked out the door to go grab coffee and was gone. I’ve been a mess ever since. You, again, as I explained to Noah, look startlingly like her in almost every way. I showed him several photos and he could, of course, like any rational being, understand how I made that mistake. We’ve worked things out and, now, as much as it pains me, I’ll be going. My apologies for any inconvenience I’ve caused you.”
I was almost on top of her now; her danger signals briefly abated thanks to my talk of the made-up conversation with “her Noah.” When I reached her, she was almost calm, but not quite, her eyes darting behind me, hoping that Noah would come out of the bathroom and corroborate my story. I grabbed her quickly, spun her around and, pulling the hypodermic needle from behind me, stuck it in her neck. She struggled for a brief second, then fell into my arms, where she belonged. I held her there for a moment, smelling her freshness, her cleanness; whatever Noah had been to her, he had obviously allowed her to take care of herself. I sat her down on the couch, propping her up against the pillows. She’d be out for about an hour, which was plenty of time.
When Emily began to come around, she found that I had changed her outfit, dressing her in something more representative of her station in life, rather than the ripped jeans and concert t-shirt that her Noah had dressed her in. She was now wearing a pair of Brunello Cucinellis in taupe with a black Oscar de la Renta top, which matched the black Jimmy Choo pumps absolutely beautifully. A trip to Helena’s and my Emily would be back in the world from which she was taken as if she had never been missing for the last two years. She shook her head, trying to remove the muzziness from her brain and get clear-headed. She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to get herself awake enough to comprehend what was happening to her. I watched from the chair, watched her struggle with consciousness, until she realized that her clothes were changed.
“What the fuck? What did you do to...did you change my clothes, you sick fuck? What did you do to me?” She stood up and almost fell, the Jimmy Choos wobbling under her ankles that had grown unaccustomed to being in four-inch heels.
“I did nothing. You were born to this and simply forgot who you were, Emily. You were mine; you were taken by this Noah person and held here for God only knows how long before I found you! And now,
I’ve liberated you from Noah’s clutches. And, in doing so, have thrust you back into my arms!” I stood up and held my arms wide open. I’m not sure what I thought would happen. Maybe I assumed that she would throw herself into my embrace and come back into my world as if the last two years never happened. If that was what I expected, then I was sadly mistaken.
“You sick fucking asshole! Where’s Noah? What have you done to my Noah!” She was screaming now, the veins in her neck standing out like cords against her skin, her legs spread apart in a fighting stance. I held my hands out to her while he shouted in my ear.
She’s not Emily! She was never Emily! You idiot! You’ve made a mistake and chosen someone who is clearly NOT EMILY!
“Shut up. She is Emily! You and I both know that she’s EMILY!” I think I scared her by screaming, but he is so insistent, especially when he’s wrong, and in this instance, he definitely was wrong! This was Emily, once lost and now found, and I was not about to give her up again!
“Who are you talking to, you sick freak?” She took a step forward towards me, still wobbling on the heels. Inside my head, he was taunting me. Can’t you see! It’s not her, you fucking moron! It’s not our Emily! And now you’ve got to deal with her! IT’S NOT HER!
She reached past me and grabbed for something behind me on the table, then stepped back, holding a steak knife that I didn’t even realize was there! She went back in some kind of fighter’s stance, like she actually knew what she was doing, all the while he was goading, I TOLD YOU! I FUCKING TOLD YOU!
She lunged at me, the serrated blade flashing, like she saw it done on television once and thought she could mimic the movements enough to somehow become an effective knife fighter. I advanced, trying to avoid the steak knife, with its dull, stainless-steel Caldor blade. I could see the brown plastic handle, gripped tightly in Emily’s fist, held in front of her defensively. I got close enough to reach out and touch her. The blade slid across my arm, opening the top of the forearm and making me skip back in both shock and pain. I hissed and grabbed my arm, the blood beginning to seep freely from the slice.
“You fucking bitch! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I’m trying to save you, YOU STUPID WHORE!” I guess he was right all along; he was almost always right. I suppose at that moment I realized that what I thought wasn’t quite true, that Emily was most assuredly not standing before me, ready and willing to go back, to come home and resume her life as we both had planned it from the start. That this was, in all probability, not my Emily, at least as I knew her. This was someone who was spewing hate at me, who had cut me once and would surely cut me again with glee.
She held the knife, teetering back and forth, a bloodlust in her
Emily - Rich McFarlin
eyes. She leaned towards me and laughed, one brief, short bark of a laugh, filled with scorn and hate.
“You piece of shit! WHERE IS NOAH! WHAT HAV—” I hit her with the hatchet side of the drywall hammer directly in the center of the forehead, effectively splitting her skull wide open. The blow from the full metal hammer, one side in a wider waffled pattern
“In the sun’s dying embers, the dark mahogany tone of his blood took on an orange hue, speaking of his demise to any who would hear. I was sitting in the kitchen area, drinking a cup of tea that I had brewed, Earl Grey, which was Emily’s favorite.”
and the other side the hatchet that now lay buried in Emily’s forehead, rocked her. I still held the rubberized blue grip, which was, I believe, the only thing holding Emily up at this point, although she still held tightly to the steak knife handle. Her eyes kind of crossed, probably a result of trying to see the stainless-steel axe blade that was wedged between her eyes; then she tried to focus on me, drool bubbling out of her mouth as she attempted to form words, to castigate me in some manner. Emily was always attempting to correct me, always sniping at me, telling me what a failure I was, having to live off Mommy’s money, while subsequently taking advantage of a lifestyle built on Mommy’s money. She was something, my Emily.
Later, after I had put Emily in the tub with her Noah, whose legs dangled out of the bath, limply falling over the cheap porcelain side, I gathered my things, including the clothing that I had dressed Emily in; that is, when I thought she was Emily. This one was tricky; she almost had me convinced that she was my long-lost Emily, once absent
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
and now found. She had almost persuaded me that she was finally willing to come home, to end her flirtation with freedom from the one who loved her and find her way back in my arms. This one certainly knew how to take advantage of a man’s grief and pain, and had almost convinced me. I was lucky, but only because he knew the truth, even when I was blinded by my love and despondency. I turned on the gas stove and lit a candle, setting it by the front door, far enough away from the kitchen that I had plenty of time to get out the door and down the street before I heard the whumpf of the gas catching and blowing the apartment to tiny pieces, effectively covering any evidence of my being in Emily and Noah’s place. I walked away as the building burned, sad that I had not found Emily, but glad that I had not been taken for a ride by some bamboozling, money-hungry hussy and her partner. No sir, not me; I would not be fooled, that’s for certain.
I was sitting on one of the benches that had been installed all the way through the center of town, brooding next to Main Street traffic like silent sentries, crying out for passersby to try Manning’s Law Firm for any injury caused by another. I was reading the paper, perusing the front page after having gotten the evening news out of the tin box that chewed my quarter and did nothing but unlock itself; I still had to open the top and pull out the paper. It seemed somehow wrong to me; I felt slightly short-changed. The headline was all about the monster who was going around chopping up women, mostly young and single, but occasionally with a spouse who also perished by the hand of this evil lunatic, who then proceeded to dismember his victims and burn them to ash where they were found, charred in the fire of his making. What kind of world did we live in when animals like this Hatchet Killer, as the papers had dubbed him, could go around chopping up the most vulnerable among us. It was certainly a travesty of justice. I said a silent prayer that this creature would either be found and stopped, or found and ended. Either outcome was acceptable to me.
I folded the paper and stood, stretching my legs. The streetlights flickered on as the day began to fold itself up; the sky turning several shades of purple, tinged with an orange glow as the sun lay itself down for the evening and the stars borrowed its light to illuminate the night sky. I walked along Main Street, going nowhere in particular; as my mom used to say, moseying along. I passed Friendly’s Ice Cream Parlor, seeing people eating diner food and banana splits in silver bowls, spoons clicking and clacking as they worked their way through the
Emily - Rich McFarlin
multiple layers. I smiled, seeing the families, seated around their tables, laughing and joking. The horror of the Hatchet Killer’s latest spree was pushed from my mind as I observed the happiness before me. I turned and walked on, my shoes scuffing along the sidewalk, their soft leather bottoms hugging my insole.
I saw her through the window of the coffee shop, right there on Main Street, acting like she hadn’t been gone for well over a year. She had disappeared out of my life, out of my world, without warning, without fanfare, without...well, without anything, really. And here she was, right back in almost the same spot where I had first laid eyes on her some years back. I stood there on Main Street, people walking past me, almost as if I wasn’t there at all. I could sense that a couple of them looked at me out of the corner of their eye, staring at the man who was standing on the sidewalk in the early evening, staring through the window of the local coffee shop. I didn’t care. She was there, right where I first saw her, right where I first fell in love with her; my Emily.
Mushroom Chloe
Johnny Allina
Single mom Rachel—the girlfriend—and Edna—her teenage daughter—were out. I had the apartment to myself. Welcomed a Weather Channel a.k.a. Mother Earth in Action marathon. Graphics, simulations, commentary...television at its finest. A fascinating segment highlighted the solar wind’s role in shaping global weather patterns, the matter cogently explained. I lived in a truly blessed time.
With difficulty, as though fighting g-forces, I transitioned to a mental inventory of the fridge. A rumble on the stairs—“Heavy Foot” a.k.a. Edna (I recognized the footfall pattern)—made me pause on a jar of cornichons. Edna stormed in, friends Melissa and Chloe in tow.
“Why are you just sitting there?” Edna quizzed.
I motioned towards the screen.
“Weird.”
Chloe plopped onto the couch, slipping off her backpack—a plush armadillo toy attached. Melissa beelined for the alcohol.
“Leave the champagne...” Edna ordered. She turned to me and asked, “What’s your evening look like?”
Should I take in the disturbing armadillo or Chloe’s tits? Strangely, I fixated on the armadillo. “No definite plans. Sort shirts by color?”
Mushroom Chloe - Johnny Allina
“Ambitious.”
“Easier to pick wardrobe.”
“Want to do shrooms?”
I did. It’d be a way to bond with Edna’s cronies. Show I was cool. But a past wrinkle plagued my conscience.
A Fire Island summer. Five of us: me, Jed—who, in prior years, woke the entire block screaming from nightmares—Rick and Roxanne, a hippie couple supplying the mushrooms, and Willie, with a handlebar mustache and fireplug build reminiscent of circus-strong men. I’d wanted to suggest he don the full costume next Halloween.
Our plan: simple. Wait till dark and slow-walk along the beach, a splash of stars and crashing waves serving as the accompaniment. Conditions were perfect. Weekdays, the island emptied out—tamping down vacationer energy. We’d take a clean drug and, most important, be of sound mind and body.
At water’s edge, Rick unzipped the shroom baggie and each, in turn, took a share. I succumbed fast. Feet topping sand, I came upon a mermaid sand sculpture. Animate or inanimate? I knelt down and stroked the tail. As her scales vanished, I got spooked.
Rick and Roxanne on a lifeguard tower, melded together, watched the sweep of broken waves. Jed and Willie waved us towards the Sunken Forest. Below sea level, this part of the island featured a serpentine boardwalk and mangled trees rooted in swamp water.
Entering, the darkness absolute—not even the tree branches that blotted out stars were visible—I strained to pick out shapes, failed, then proceeded in a cautious, tightrope-walker stance.
Incoherent snippets of dialogue and intermittent giggles sounded distant. An ankle throb set in. Sprained multiple times— playing basketball—the shrooms brought dormant pain to full consciousness.
Time became irrelevant. We moved outside it.
I bumped into a stopped tripper.
He demanded, “What gives?”
“Jed?”
“We may not get out of here.”
“Don’t say that.”
Jed laughed. “Well, I’d have closure about one thing.”
“Why the childhood screaming?”
“Red wolf strangling an angel. Me the angel.”
“Every night?”
“Until it stopped.”
“Wolf died?”
No answer. The others ghosts. Back-and-forth bird calls. A summer breeze, almost a giant hand, nudged me.
A troubling thought. What ever happened to Circe? Should have finished The Odyssey. Because, had I understood the mermaid correctly during the earlier scales incident, an underwater channel must connect ocean to swamp, allowing transformation into an animal not of my choosing. I picked up the pace.
Leaving the forest, feet back on sand, I raised hands to heaven, celebrating survival. Reborn, I sprinted to the ocean—our rag-tag group engaged in sandcastle building—stripped naked and swam beyond the waves.
Treading water, the stars remained static, as if pinned to the sky. I imagined the moon tugging on the water coursing through my veins, the breeze hand-scooping and depositing me within the Big Dipper. The tape stopped. A school of fish buffeted my legs. Big fish. I held it together, rhythmically churning my legs. It went on. The line, “Fear death by water,” from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, came to mind. A drowned body torn apart by sea creatures. A Greek too? Uh oh. Don’t transmit negative energy to the fish. Don’t transmit negative energy to the fish... repeated as a hymn. It ended.
Back on shore, moonlit, I revved a mad dance—simply was.
“Let’s go back,” Roxanne said.
Rick nuzzled her hair. A yes.
“Through the forest?” Jed’s voice reached a higher octave.
“We’re going.” Willie led the charge.
A return trip through the heart of darkness? Tripping, I already struggled to fathom basic concepts like trees are alive, planks of wood aren’t. However, the survival rate if I stayed was dubious. As much as I dreaded this turn of events, the smart play was to follow. I dressed.
Willie on the run, Rick and Roxanne arm-in-arm and a reluctant Jed reentered the cloaked forest. A moment’s hesitation and I, too, crossed over. We’d reach the other side of the forest soon enough. Well, not all of us. Feet slapped against the boardwalk, quickening. Wind drafted. Until a scream, splash and heavy silence.
Four of us emerged onto the beach. Not Willie.
Roxanne: “We should go back.”
Again!
Jed: “In that nightmare?”
Rick: “That water can’t be deep...”
Fuck that! Sacrifice more lives?
Thunder, vicious rain and close lightning strikes short-circuited any further discussion. We scampered inland, back to town, and scattered.
Willie wasn’t seen again. Not the next day, week, rest of summer, ever. No distraught family members, law enforcement agencies—dogs and dive teams in tow—showed up. No “Missing Persons” flyers stapled
to telephone poles.
When I suggested contacting the authorities to the surviving members, Jed threatened me. I persisted. Another body could disappear, Rick intimated. With only a first name and circus-strong man description to go on, I dropped it.
What followed? Decades of meager paychecks, broken relationships and sliding-scale therapy sessions. It struck me now that
“At water’s edge, Rick unzipped the shroom baggie and each, in turn, took a share. I succumbed fast. Feet topping sand, I came upon a mermaid sand sculpture.
Animate or inanimate? I knelt down and stroked the tail. As her scales vanished, I got spooked.”
it all traced back to that one night. Lingering guilt had festered over not going to the cops, threats or not, denying Willie’s family closure and their son’s proper burial. The body surely decomposed long ago, the salty muck responsible.
Suddenly remembering the present, I said, “I should get Rachel’s blessing... Edna?”
“What?!” She materialized, as an authority figure.
“Ask your mom if me and Chloe can take shrooms.”
“Me too!” Melissa echoed, teeth prying out a wine cork. Forget the opener.
“You ask.”
“Please...”
“Fine.”
I bet on increased odds going through the child for permission. Plus, it’d show we’d become collaborators. Besides, while a mere fifteen, Edna’s crew were experienced drug users.
A cork pop, Melissa guzzled the entire bottle—impressive or alarming? Edna called Rachel’s number; snippets of the conversation were audible. Shrooms...all three...Chloe’s...he seems stable now…they won’t leave the apartment... Edna listened at length. Then, after finishing the call, she announced, “She said sure.”
With that, a Plaza Hotel suite gathering—as I’d dubbed Edna’s gargantuan bedroom—minus Edna. She carried a strong sense of selfpreservation, never venturing past booze.
“Take this. Four- to six-hour trip.” Circular on the shag carpet, Chloe tore off a stem and, like receiving communion, placed it on my outstretched tongue. The taste was muddy, had finishing notes of cardamom and walnut. Should I become a Persephone, seeking the surface after falling into a hallucinogenic hell? I’d cling to Chloe’s voice, a guide out.
Melissa chomped through an entire cap and stem. She’d fulfilled the eucharist: red wine and, alright, a substitute wafer. After matching Melissa’s dose, Chloe stripped her jacket. Nipples showed. Deep brown. While a welcome sight, zero attraction. Anyway, slightest misstep, and the ladies of the house would resort to murder.
Stomping to the desk—forget a cat burglar career—Melissa grabbed a notebook and pencil, and, floor-prone, started drawing. Chloe sifted through the dresser-top cosmetics, uncapped a lipstick tube and began adding to a graffiti-covered wall.
As I finger-combed the carpet, the scene swiped back thousands of years. Early, fur-clad humans piled stones over a dead body; an aboveground burial, a way to hold the deceased within the community. Fire illuminated pigment-smeared faces. Star clusters blotted the sky. The funeral party faded away.
Present tense, Chloe stood admiring her 3D-lettered lipstick aphorism, “I came, I saw, I came again.”
“Now you know.” A remembrance. What mom said, after someone’s explanation of how they came to a realization. Dead or alive, parents are ever-present.
Melissa remained intent on drawing. These girls were fantastic! I gave Melissa a squeeze. She beamed, continued to embellish—what I now saw—our caricatures; done to great comic effect. Melissa would likely end up a tragic drunk, who drew. Chloe went and sprawled on the couch, stroking the armadillo, her caring touch overwhelming.
Odd to tag along? Booze, weed, shrooms, kickback parties— I’d be cross-generational. Provide refreshments and rides. Be pinball flippers, steering the Chloe and Melissa pinballs towards enlightenment.
“What’s happening here?” Rachel there, Edna too.
Mushroom Chloe - Johnny Allina
“Everything is wonderful.” I sounded moronic.
“I can see that.”
“We’re all doing something different, but we’re the same.” I was an imbecile.
Edna laughed.
“I’ll leave you to it then.”
Melissa dashed through the far door. Not the near one? Puzzled, I trailed after her. She quick-mixed a cocktail. “I’m thirsty.” Downed it, looped back, her door choice inexplicable. What did it signify?
A wave of unhappiness washed over me. We’d split apart. Chloe had dropped the armadillo, stared at star stickers on the ceiling. Melissa downed the cocktail, staggered to the bed and passed out.
I sought a joyful memory—as a child, sitting on the wicker basket in grandma’s linen closet...a calm place. Detergent and mothball smells acted as aromatherapy.
Inside Edna’s closet I went. No laundry basket, only piles of vests, shoes, bras and board games. The peace within Grandma’s linen closet couldn’t be replicated. I burrowed underneath the clutter.
Natural light roused me, the shroom outlook now passed. Emerging from the closet, I saw Chloe and Melissa spooning on the bed, looking like a pair of dead prostitutes. I checked that they were still breathing. All good.
Huddled at the kitchen table, Rachel and Edna ate fried eggs and ham. Almost Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.
“There’s coffee.” Rachel offered.
“Perfect. I’m logy.”
“Nice.” Rachel appreciated seldom-employed vocabulary words. “How was it?”
“Like the last time. Visions, mind drift. Except...”
“Tell us!” Edna shouted.
“Melissa used the far bedroom door, not the one closer to the kitchen.”
“The knob doesn’t work,” Rachel intuited, pouring a cup.
“That bothered you?” Edna was mystified.
“On shrooms? Yes.”
Distant retching.
“Melissa!”
Beanpole John Barry
Garelick
Idon’t know much about you, apart from our being cousins and attending family get-togethers when we were growing up, and that you served in Vietnam. When you were a tall and skinny teenager, my mother, in her adoring way, said you looked like a beanpole. I called you Beanpole John once when I was little. That memory has stayed with me, though I have no memories of ever calling you that again.
I’m one of many who has migrated in life. Many of us are scattered throughout the country and the world, no longer where we were raised and usually rarely going back there. I moved from Detroit years ago, as did you, though I moved out west; you didn’t move as far. You moved to Ann Arbor and then to Florida.
After I retired, I started to feel isolated from my past—I know others who say the same thing. That feeling has increased over the last few years. I call it isolation, though it may just be a feeling of discontinuity, or maybe a combination of the two. I know people who stayed in the area where they grew up, maintaining ties with those they knew in elementary and high school and even college. I envy such continuity at times. Family and friends become more important when you get older and have more time on your hands.
Beanpole John - Barry Garelick
The internet has served to connect me to people I once knew, some of whom I was close with, and others not so much. Many are connected by computers, as is evident by the number of people on any street these days looking down at their phones. Those transfixed by the glow are focused on the immediate present. In my case (and the case of others in my age group), it’s mostly the past. I rarely use the phone; I use the computer at home. I communicate through Facebook sometimes; other times, through email. It isn’t my only form of contact
“We live in a small town on the coast that my wife jokes is too small to be bombed in the event of a war. She also says we’ve never lived through a war like our parents did; very few people have now. We have no memories of the past other than what we’ve been told.”
with the world. I have friends where we live, and friends not too far away, and our daughter lives nearby. I go to a café every morning and occasionally talk to people I know. Most of the time, I just listen.
The internet that connects me with my past is, ironically, also a window into a world full of vulgarity and unrest, a disturbing mixture of hostile conversations and images of incivility and violence, worldwide. It feels as if we are on the brink of disaster. My wife thinks it’s a reaction to the conflicts and threats of wars over the world. The end of democracy here seems like a reality, and worldwide fascism and antisemitism appear to be on the rise. From what I’ve read about the two world wars, it feels like we are headed for one.
There is no mention of any of these things in the café I frequent in the morning, though I think it is on people’s minds. We live in a small town on the coast that my wife jokes is too small to be bombed in the event of a war. She also says we’ve never lived through a war like
our parents did; very few people have now. We have no memories of the past other than what we’ve been told. I’m pretty sure that’s why I asked you recently whether you thought there would be a world war.
I called you “Beanpole John” only once. It was during a visit my family made when I was six, and you were a teenager. It was shortly after your family moved from Detroit to Lake Orion, a small town considered “out in the country” back then—an hour’s drive from Detroit on two-lane roads lined with sumac trees festooned with their red berries. I looked at the area recently, by way of Google Maps. Now it looks like any other town-turned-suburb: gas stations and Taco Bells have replaced the sumac trees, and strip malls stand where older houses used to be.
What I remember of your old house was the pump organ in the living room. I would try to play it, but my legs were too short to reach the pedals. You sat next to me and pumped them while I pressed keys at random and pulled the various enamel-covered knobs. I wasn’t used to someone older lavishing attention on me. I expected at any moment that you would tire of me and go off and play with my older brother.
That never happened. Instead, you took me to the lake, down a vine-covered path just large enough to allow one person at a time. I asked if there was poison ivy. “Yep, it’s all over,” you said. “But don’t worry, there’s none on the path.”
The path snaked through a wooded area and eventually led to a beach pock-marked with rocks. A constant ripple of waves traveled across the surface of the small lake. The waves moved endlessly, right to left. We stood on the shore, looking at the water. As I stared at the constantly moving ripples I felt as if we were travelers on a shore moving slowly to the right.
“Doesn’t it feel like we’re moving?” I asked.
“Yes, it does.” You walked out to the end of a rickety pier, where a rowboat was moored. The wood planks on the pier had turned gray with age. There were spiderwebs underneath the pier. No spiders were visible, but I knew they were somewhere.
“Have you ever seen the spiders?” I pointed to the webs.
“Once in a while.”
“Are they big?”
“Some are.”
I backed away from the dock.
“Don’t worry. They keep to themselves.”
You picked up a rock and threw it over the water so that it skipped four or five times. It was the first time I had seen that trick.
Beanpole John - Barry Garelick
You took me out in the rowboat, and I remarked that now we really were moving, it was no longer an illusion—though the waves were still going in their constant path across the lake’s surface. I wondered if it were possible for the boat to be stationary while the world was moving around us, making it seem as if we ourselves were moving. “Is the lake moving, or are we?”
“We are.” A few seconds later, you added, “And so is the lake. So you don’t have to work so hard rowing if the lake is doing the work.” You laughed.
When we reached the other side of the lake, you pulled the boat up on the small, rocky beach. We stood there, the waves now traveling from left to right. Consequently, both us and the beach we were standing on now appeared to be moving in the opposite direction as it was on the other side.
“You ever swim across this lake?”
“Sure. It’s easy.”
“Looks big to me.”
“It isn’t.”
You rowed me back to the other side and, once there, showed me how to skip stones. It took a few tries, but I eventually got it. I was overcome with joy at being able to do this. We took turns skipping stones and, at one point, as I watched you do it, I shouted, “Beanpole John! Big Beanpole John!” My memory of what happened next varies; sometimes I see you picking me up and spinning me around, and other times, I see you turning around and laughing.
Your parents moved back to Detroit when I was in high school. Shortly after, you joined the Army. It was during the Vietnam War, when boys were being drafted and those who went to college had a deferment. After basic training, you visited us during a short leave before you had to ship out to Vietnam. You showed my father photos taken during your basic training. One was of you standing next to a sign on your barracks, proclaiming your unit the “best platoon.”
“They all say that,” my father scoffed. I could tell that hurt you. I guess you expected some camaraderie from someone who fought in World War Two. My father didn’t approve of the war in Vietnam and, as far as his experience in the war, he didn’t talk about it much. As you were getting ready to leave, he put his arm around your shoulder and advised, “Just take it one day at a time.”
Shortly after you returned from Vietnam in 1967, there was a welcome home party for you at your house. I remember Uncle Bill saying in a loud, celebratory voice, “Let the war go on forever now that
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Johnny’s back home, right?”
My mother gave him a dirty look.
You were very quiet. Your mouth looked hardened, and your eyes looked sad. I overheard Aunt Florence say to my mother, “He keeps to himself mostly and he swears a lot. He never used to swear.”
A few years later, you moved to Ann Arbor. You were working for the medical school, in purchasing, I think. You met Jan there and, a
“After I retired, I started to feel isolated from my past... That feeling has increased over the last few years. I call it isolation, though it may just be a feeling of disconti- nuity, or maybe a combination of the two. I know people who stayed in the area where they grew up, maintaining ties with those they knew in elementary and high school and even college. I envy such conti- nuity at times. Family and friends become more important when you get older and have more time on your hands.”
few years later, you married her. I was a sophomore at college by then. Aunt Florence invited me to have dinner with all of you one weekend. I think she wanted you to be like a big brother to me, since you were living in Ann Arbor and my mother was worried about what I was getting into.
You picked me up at my dorm and gave me a ride. I remember we hardly talked. I tried to make what conversation I could, but it was difficult. At one point, desperate for something to talk about, I asked, “Do you remember when I was little, and you took me rowing out on Lake Orion?”
“I think so. That was a while ago.”
I imagined telling you about how we were studying relativity in my physics class, and what relative motion was all about and how that’s what I was seeing when you rowed me out on Lake Orion. I decided to keep quiet; the conversation we had was strained, and I felt I would have been showing off. Back then, I thought I knew a lot more than I
Beanpole John - Barry Garelick
did.
The dinner at your house was tense. Aunt Florence made most of the conversation, and you and Uncle Henry were quiet. It was like you weren’t there. ***
You friended me on Facebook a few years ago, and I recently heard from you after posting a picture I took of the Pacific Ocean and the sky above the horizon. As many others are doing, I document my life with photos that I post on social media. Mostly, my pictures are of trees, clouds, ocean, streams, forests, sky, hills, sunrises and sunsets.
You said my picture reminded you of the South China Sea. According to your profile, you’ve written and self-published some books. I asked if you were planning to write about the war. “Maybe,” you said; then, later, another message: “No.” Then, sometime later: “I don’t remember much of it.”
I’ve tried imagining you in the war and pictured you being called “Beanpole” when you were over there. It’s the type of name you see in war movies—one of many nicknames a drill sergeant gives out that can become the soldiers’ entire identities as they go off to war. I asked if they called you that when you were there.
“Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other?” you said. “I’m now eighty years old. I’m still fairly tall; I haven’t shrunk much, but I weigh a hundred and eighty-five pounds. I left the Army at one-sixty-five. Not quite a beanpole even at my most fit. There were others a lot skinnier.”
I don’t know a lot about war, other than what I’ve learned from movies and books and what people have told me. Which is to say, my understanding of it is not fueled by memories. My limited conception of war has boiled down to relative motion—danger coming for you, or you coming toward danger, or both at the same time. I asked you if you had seen any action when you were there. “Not a lot.” You told me what action you remembered.
“I was stationed at a fort in Nha Trang. The Marines were in the fort next to us, but they moved out; two weeks later, the Second Army Division moved in. I guess they told someone what they were doing, but not us grunts. One day, they put up bunkers with machine guns on top, aiming over us at the enemy who we could not see. I had no rifle as a weapon, only a grenade launcher. Memories to forget. I’ve managed to forget most of my time there. Someday, I’ll forget all of it. But I still get reminders: some pay I receive because of Agent Orange.”
When I asked you your thoughts about a world war you said, “I hope not. It seems like there’s always lots of wars every few years
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
and that we’re heading for disaster. But things eventually calm down. I like to believe things will stay in that pattern. I can’t think about things I have no control over. Jan has been ill and she might not live much longer. There’s not much I can do about that other than to think about what I will do when that happens.” ***
It has been many years since we last saw each other and I really don’t know you very well. You’ve always been somewhat quiet. I expected different answers to my questions, but what I thought you would say is quickly being replaced by what you did say in my memory. In addition to imagining you as a war hero called Beanpole, I had pictured stories about watching soldiers die. I also believed you would say more about your thoughts of a future war. What you said was what you felt needed to be said; and it was enough.
What I know of you is mostly from the distant past, from our time at the lake, and my sense and memory of your unspoken kindness. Like you, I also take refuge in the belief that everything will be fine. My belief comes from a vague feeling of being watched over and protected by someone telling me not to worry.
The messages may come in daydreams, or sometimes whispers I hear when I’m just waking up from a dream, or as I’m going to sleep at night. The voices are sometimes those of strangers and other times of people I knew, some alive, some dead. They all say the same things. There’s nothing new under the sun even though the world is changing. Things will settle down eventually, though we probably will not live to see it. We just have to believe in what we won’t be around to see. And to take it one day at a time.
*Note: a version of this story first appeared on cafelitmagazine.uk.
Alfred Under Mary Lewis
AlfredOrf strode along the street in steps so long he felt like he was on one those moving sidewalks at the airport. Swinging arms show confidence, which he’d heard is an aphrodisiac. Out came “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” in his husky baritone. If Margaret could see him now, with all those pretty heads at the sidewalk cafés turning towards him, she’d stop taking him for granted. He was on the verse, “Everything’s goin’ my...” when he fell. Up to his armpits on the rim of a manhole. “...way.” He always finished his songs. Dangling over open space, he couldn’t pull himself out, and his arms let go. Gutter air rushed up like a sour wind as he fell into darkness and hit cold water, too shallow. His feet hit first but so hard they went numb, like jumping into the shallow end from the high dive. God, the stink! Like garbage that rotted in the sun, but cold, waist-deep. He tried to make his eyes work, but only black down here. Feet started to feel again, slimy muck ankle-deep below the water. Hands reached, felt nothing, until, there, a hard wall, curved, but when he stepped closer, the floor slid him back to the middle. A huge pipe. Way up high, the hole of light he fell through. Were those lad-
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
der rungs? Too high to reach. But he could shout and did, with the echo smacking back at him. Someone would hear. Had anyone seen him fall in? Surely those women at the outdoor tables who watched his graceful strides and listened to his amazing voice, which he kept using to yell up to that distant circle of light, “I’m down here, help!” until he watched it become a crescent and disappear with the grinding of the manhole cover.
Velvet black crept into him and made his heart pump so loudly he could hear it, louder than the sound of water dripping off his stinking clothing into the frigid river of sludge beneath him.
Something snuffled towards him from high up on the side wall, where he could hear it crawling along. God, he’d heard of sewer rats. And then it leapt onto his chest. He screamed, but the thing burrowed its snout into both ears at once and, at the same time, into the scruff of his neck, like it was three rat monsters instead of one. Claws ripped his hand when he threw it against the side of the pipe, in a soggy thud and a chorus of moans, and then a sound of small feet crippling away down the wall.
He had to get out of there before it came back with its friends, and he plunged through the water, reaching out for something to hold onto, failing, slipping back down the curved sides again and again. His hand caught on a cable of some sort, a foot thick. Hanging onto it, he used his arms as much as his slipping feet in the putrid water to slog along. Exhausted, he stopped and yelled again, just in case. The echo mocked him over and over.
Then something from behind blew cold air against his neck. How did it get so close? When he turned his head, that breath hit his face and he tumbled backwards into the water.
His head went under and he came up with slime across his face. The thing took a sucking breath, and a word wobbled on the intake, “Come.”
He started backstroking, faster than he ever had in high school, and when it got too shallow, he stood up to listen. Nothing. He strained his ears, but all that came back was the sound of sewer water sheeting off his body onto the scum below.
What if Margaret could see him now, creature of the black lagoon? This was worse. At least in a swamp there was sky above. Face it, she wouldn’t miss him, no one would. Well, maybe his boss at Boneless Wings, but Ralph ran through people so fast he’d probably think Al was one of them.
His throat felt like cardboard, but he couldn’t drink the sludge. Maybe he could suck on the inside of his sleeve. Like that’d be cleaner
Alfred Under - Mary Lewis
than the outside. But he had to have something, so he put his stinking arm to his mouth. When he stopped, the sucking sound behind him didn’t, and he could hear the sound like the ones his own feet had made when they pulled out of the muck, one step at a time.
He tried to run, but the muck kept him at a frantic slog in slomo. Along the cable, something skittered over his hand, then came back and sat there, warm and furry, dry fur, how did it do that? He shook it off and it chattered like a squirrel. The footsteps kept a slurping pace behind him and he scrambled on. Was that some faint light up ahead, or some trick of his brain? The furball came back and jumped onto his shoulder. Another clung with tiny claws to his free arm. A third scampered up his back. These things clung, but didn’t bite. Why not? There must not be much to eat down here. The children of the rat beast? They chittered and squirmed till the thing from behind clomped on faster, and they squealed and ran off ahead. He kept to the side of the pipe where the muck was not as deep, but slick and steep.
His pursuer so close now he heard it gasp in a stutter on the in breath, “C-C-Come,” and then out, “Waaait.” He couldn’t keep ahead of it. It must have hooves that didn’t get stuck in the muck.
Something hit his shoulder, a kind of net that spread around him so fast he fell off his feet. It bound him so tightly he couldn’t move and the creature wheezed, “You wouldn’t come.” Then it hauled on the ropes to drag him along, with his feet barely managing to stumble to keep pace. He strained his eyes, but they had nothing to work with. Were there others? In league with guys on top who left manhole covers off?
Might be good to be friendly, like he could do with a new guy at Herb’s. “Say, where you from? Live here long?”
The thing mumbled, like it was trying to answer, but he couldn’t make it out.
He sang, surprised at what came out. “When I get older, losing my hair...”
The thing stopped trudging along with him in tow, and laughed. It hummed along, finding its voice, low and gravely. It knew the song.
Alfred could barely breathe with ropes binding his chest, but managed to keep singing, ending with, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me...”
And then the thing went on by itself, “...when I’m sixty-four.” Croaky, like it hadn’t sung in a lifetime. Keep the banter going. “Ever go up top?”
A sort of shuffling like it was wagging its head. Then a whimper that sounded like, “Long aguh.”
“Did you come from there?”
It started tugging again and Alfred followed.
“I could take you around up there. Show you a hell of a time.”
A long sigh that ended in a grunt.
“Movies, drinks, girls.”
It jerked hard on the net, came close and pressed against him. Boobs!
If he’d been freaked out before, it was nothing compared to this. If this she-creature didn’t want to eat him, which he wasn’t sure about, what did it want?
The net tightened around him like a noose, his chest smashing against those breasts right there under some kind of cloth, wet like his shirt. Its hand grasped the back of his head and pulled him towards her, till its mouth landed on his.
Forgetting his fear that the noose would tighten if he moved, now he struggled. He turned his head away and yelled “Get off me!”
But the hand pulled him back and this time it rasped, “You like it.”
So close, its breath should overpower, but it smelled better than sewer gas, more like wet leaves.
“No I don’t, let me go.” It shut him up with another joining of mouths, and he let her. Maybe this would get over faster that way. He tried to forget where he was. But he couldn’t deny, this she-thing wanted him. Wait till the guys at Herb’s hear about this.
When she came up for air she started dragging him along again. Under his feet less water, only calf-deep. Chattering alongside, a tumble of furballs climbed onto his shoulders, then flew off into space with loud squeals. Maybe they’d get to eat him after the female used him up. He felt a bulge in his pants. In this place? At least no one could see.
When he made it back up top, he’d tell city hall what was lurking below their feet. Yeah, then they’d cart him off to some kind of rehab like they did when he had that drinking problem last year. He leaned back against the net and made her work to pull him along. “I know you can talk, so tell me, what’s the plan?”
She made a watery chuckle, but then this totally different sound, like she was hiding it all along, smooth and warm, “You’ll love it here, with Deechee.”
So she had name, but what kind of name was Deechee? Then, as quickly as she had bound him, she unwrapped him. She must have expected he would follow on his own.
“See, now you decide.”
Alfred Under - Mary Lewis
There was no seeing, but he smelled her leafy breath. The netting splashed around her, and the furballs returned to scamper in their chattering way, high along the walls of the sewer. Again he stared, trying to make his eyes work.
Okay, he was free. And then it came to him, why not convince her to follow him to the upper world?
“No, Deechee, you come with me.” He moved ahead of her in the direction they had been going. There had to be another manhole
“What if Margaret could see him now, creature of the black lagoon? This was worse. At least in a swamp there was sky above. Face it, she wouldn’t miss him, no one would. Well, maybe his boss at Boneless Wings, but Ralph ran through people so fast he’d probably think Al was one of them.”
eventually. In the knee-deep water, she sloshed along after him. He wasn’t sure she would.
And now some dim piece of light far down the tunnel. He led in long strides to test if she would keep on. If she didn’t care, she’d give up. But she continued to follow him, even when the water rose thighhigh again, and soon a manhole rose above their heads, illuminated by daylight because the cover was off.
Now he could see around him faint outlines, moving shapes, but he dared not look back at her. So far, he only knew her by touch, sound, smell. She put a hand on his shoulder, heavy, but not pulling him back. He feared what she would say.
“Don’t go.” Smooth and low. Still he did not look.
What he did see was the rungs on the side, the first one within reach this time. But there below it, a creature facing him with its long,
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
mobile snout, sniffing around like the big rat thing that had dug into his chest.
He rubbed his eyes, which must be seeing double, no, triple, after all this time in the dark, because on that one body he saw three heads. He once saw a two-headed calf at the state fair, embalmed in a huge jar. But this thing was alive, and snuffling from one snout, whimpering from another, making sucking sounds from the third. So that’s how it could sniff into both of his ears and his neck all at the same time.
Still behind him, the woman-being spoke, but in a voice that cracked now, like she could barely get it out, “Cerb, down boy, you can let him pass.”
She’d let him go, freely, though she wanted him. Who was she? He had to know.
He turned around, but before he could see her, she was sucked down the black sewer pipe, as though some huge hand had grabbed her. The water surged after her in a noisy wake that became faint and then still.
He stared at the manhole above him. And then into the lightless tunnel which threw back, in dimming echoes, “Please staaay” in that warm new voice.
He put his hand on the lowest rung and pulled himself up to stand on it, holding onto the next highest rung, like some circus acrobat greeting the crowd before taking his first step onto the high wire.
Cerb, the three-headed thing, stood on its hind legs and reached its front paws up against the wall, which put its heads in reach of his feet. But its trio of whimpers gave him this sudden urge to scratch it behind all six ears.
So he jumped back to the sewer floor and gave into the impulse, and Cerb’s moans became something like the loud purrs Margaret’s cat made when he rubbed the right spot between her two ears.
He could come back anytime. Even if the cover was on, he could climb up and make a helluva racket, and someone would notice. But first he had to find out who this creature was, the one who wanted him.
Besides, he needed a place to sleep. Surely there’d be something to eat in some cozy side room where it was dry. The furballs had to know that secret. Maybe they wouldn’t eat him, because the woman wouldn’t let them. As he moved back down the tunnel he heard her voice again, faintly, singing: “Please staaay...” and he joined her using his baritone at full forte so she could hear him from so far away.
Together they sang: “...just a little bit longer...”
NONFICTION
Mexico City Barber School Haircut
Alexander Lowell
Eleni and I had broken up four times during our twenty-year marriage, thrice in near-homicidal grand finales and once when I failed to find work in Cyprus and had conned my way into a Head of English position at an international academy in Kuwait—despite the fact that I didn’t possess a degree in education, or anything else for that matter. Though I had published poetry, fiction and much art criticism (“Fake it until you make it” was my guiding mantra for most of my working life).
Each separation had lasted a little over a year before one of us made a move towards reconciling, followed by an initially joyous reunification back on the island of Aphrodite. Now it was November of 2019 and we had been together again for six months, yet already the marriage had started to devolve into stultifying, passionless routine and the almost daily reiteration of the same bitter arguments. I knew that unless some radical changes took place, we were heading for another breakup. And the more I thought about my marriage to Eleni, the more I realized it had been a colossal mistake. I also realized that I was certainly as much to blame as she was.
The first year of our life together had been decorated with plenty of lovey-dovey romance: holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes so often and so openly that visiting family members called us the
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
honeymoon couple even though we were both well past forty-five. I owned and operated a successful bookstore in Astoria, just across the East River from Manhattan and, for the first time in my life, had no financial worries; in fact, for the previous two years I had been able to take month-long vacations in Europe with my two sons. Still, I was taken aback when, a few days after our wedding, Eleni informed me that she needed a certain amount of weekly “pocket money.” Having been involved exclusively with independent, non-materialistic, women who had jobs and managed their own expenses, I was not accustomed to doling out cash for manicures, pedicures, weekly massages, expensive haircuts, dye jobs and other indulgences. But I was in love, wasn’t I? And although such narcissistic fatuities struck me as ridiculous, I could afford them.
There were, however, enormous cultural differences between us, which were a source of humor at first, but then they slowly began to create a wedge into our otherwise blissful union: I was an American writer and occasional filmmaker of the radically non-conformist hippie generation, who had become an entrepreneur out of necessity as I couldn’t abide working for other people. She, a Greek Cypriot, had been a housewife and, later, a resentful waitress and occasional hairstylist who had been raised as a princess (her father providing generous amounts of pocket money every day) in an ultra-conservative, Hellenistic culture that believed the man should pay for everything. I had been sexually active since junior high school and had slept with many women before I met Eleni; she was a virgin when she became engaged to her first husband and had been indoctrinated into thinking that an excess of kissing would result in pregnancy. I had lived all over the U.S., plus in Paris, Athens, London and Mexico. She had never traveled outside of Cyprus until she emigrated to Canada to follow two of her brothers. Her family, concerned that, at eighteen, she had already aged out of the marriage market, had tried several times to arrange a match for her, but she rejected all suitors and, in a rare instance of defiance, decided to pledge herself to a witless butcher’s assistant because he promised to take her out of the country.
Why, you might ask, did two people from such geographically and philosophically opposite ends of the cosmos end up betrothed? At forty-eight, after working seven days a week for six years at my bookstore, I was tired of being alone and, I don’t mind admitting, I was mesmerized by her beauty. When I first saw her at a restaurant in my neighborhood, her intriguing Levantine smile and her toned, voluptuous body had an outsized effect on me, and I pursued her every day until she agreed to have dinner with me, though she warned that she wouldn’t be in New York for long.
Why did she accept my invitation? One can never fully know another’s intentions and motivations, but it was obvious from the start that she had reached a point of a different kind of desperation.
Recently divorced, she had driven down to New York from Canada to stay with a friend and explore the possibilities for a new life. But after a few months of waitressing in Astoria and still being caught in a financial hole, she decided to return to Canada (even though she was two months behind on the rent at her Montreal apartment). I met her a week before that scheduled return and we had three romantic but chaste dates, the last on the very day that she drove north. The next weekend, I flew to Montreal and we spent most of the two days in bed. She possessed a charming and effective sexual allure: she was from a culture that had always celebrated physical beauty and the erotic and, unlike many modern American women who seemed to regard sex as an unpleasant, if not repulsive, obligatory task, she abandoned herself with genuine passion each time we made love. Within six months, we were married.
I had been living comfortably in the partially finished basement of my bookstore with a bed I had fashioned from plywood, old railroad track beams and a futon mattress. A single bureau accommodated all my clothes except for one suit and a winter coat that hung from a bar between two sections of book shelving. The store had a toilet for a quick wash up, and I took showers at the gym two blocks away. But this wouldn’t do for my new bride. I offered to install a bathtub and shower in the basement, but she informed me that we needed a real apartment with at least two bedrooms in case her daughters from her first marriage wanted to visit.
Suddenly saddled with an exorbitant monthly rent, high utility bills, the maintenance and the garaging of her car—an extravagance in New York—plus her other “needs,” I was soon feeling strapped for cash. Too hastily, I decided that the quickest way to double my income would be to open a second bookshop. After all, the tiny one I had opened six years ago had been so successful that I had moved into a much larger space after only twelve months and, year by year, business had improved.
I obtained a loan, renovated a former shoe store, built shelves and display tables and staged a grand opening attended by local politicians and a few friends. But in my haste, I had not sufficiently researched the demographics and buying habits of the residents in the area. I had chosen the busiest shopping street in that corner of Queens, but had failed to notice that ninety percent of its foot traffic was made up of recently arrived immigrants looking for cheap sneakers, knockoff jeans and t-shirts, bargain furniture available via layaway and used clothing from the Goodwill and Salvation Army outlets located within two blocks of each other.
Six months later, I was forced to close the second store as it was losing money every week and I couldn’t afford to pay the two girls who worked there or to restock the shelves with the books they did manage to sell. I was still obliged to pay off the loan, of course, and by the end
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
of the year, I closed the big store and filed for bankruptcy. With what little money I gleaned from a month-long, everything-must-go sale, we went to her country for three months and, after exploring it from one coast to the other, I realized there was much more freedom in Cyprus than in my own increasingly restrictive and oppressive homeland. I determined that I would go back to working for law firms in New York, save money and emigrate to Cyprus as soon as possible. It took seven years, but finally, with the added impetus of my country’s criminal invasion of Iraq, we pulled up stakes and moved to Limassol, a small city on the southern coast.
“Why, you might ask, did two people from such geographically and philosophically opposite ends of the cosmos end up betrothed?
At forty-eight, after working seven days a week for six years at my bookstore, I was tired of being alone and, I don’t mind admitting, I was mesmerized by her beauty.”
In New York, I was always able to earn an adequate salary; first, as a proofreader at law firms, then as a paralegal (another job I had no qualifications for, but had diligently and quickly learned by trial and error). In Cyprus, I could procure only low-paying teaching jobs in language schools, and the dynamic of our marriage changed dramatically. Eleni, being from a prominent Cypriot family, couldn’t be expected to work outside the home. What would people say?
The lack of funds, as it often does, caused much acrimony and frustration. I was forced to seek side work, which left me no time to write, whilst she spent her days and nights socializing with various members of her very large family. At least twice a week, she hosted a dozen of them in our apartment for “coffee,” which meant I could not remain in my studio working, but was obliged to sit and smile and nod for three or four hours with the family, all of whom spoke English,
yet insisted on speaking only their Turkish-tainted Cypriot Greek dialect in my presence. My writing stagnated as the muscles of my brain atrophied. After five years, I still hadn’t finished the single story I had started when we arrived in Cyprus.
***
It had long been our habit after lunch—an almost always satisfying meal as Eleni was an excellent if not adventurous cook—to sit together on the balcony with coffee (and, occasionally, dessert) and talk about the events of the day. It was an interlude I usually looked forward to as Eleni’s stress over the preparation of the food (“Don’t you dare come into the kitchen!”) was now absent and she was in a relaxed, even cheerful mood, which meant there would be fewer harsh looks and insults—there might even be a question about my writing, though she could never remember what I was working on. But much of the emotional flavor of our love—and lust—was slowly but surely souring into disappointment, resentment and, if we discussed money problems, a sulphureous, exhausting argument, inevitably followed by a gelid silence as I stared off at the crests of hills beyond the city and she lit up another Rothmans. It was in such moments that I would ask myself, What exactly is love? Does it actually exist? Or is it always merely an illusion? And if it does exist, can it endure through years of cohabitation?
After two or three weeks of this stasis, it became obvious, at least to me, that whatever sentiments had brought us back together had all but dissipated into regret. I began to muse about certain places I had lived in Mexico where I had been happy and, most importantly, productive. During the last breakup, I had taught in a private high school in Pachuca, an old mining town in Hidalgo, and even with a full load of classes had managed to produce hundreds of pages of a novel. There had been few opportunities for romance in conservative Pachuca, not that I had bothered to pursue any (I was still burdened with inbred Catholic guilt), but I managed to develop a tight friendship with Mike, an expat American artist who crafted uniquely designed wooden boxes that he sold at open markets all over Mexico. Now that I was officially retired (at sixty-four) and receiving monthly payments from Social Security, and Mike had settled for the winter in his refurbished Airstream in a suburb of Mexico City, it seemed a good time to experience the former capital of the Aztec empire. I had visited the metropolis twice but only on day trips from Pachuca, which whetted my appetite for a longer stay so I could tour the many art and anthropological museums, galleries and public buildings that featured
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
the work of the great Mexican muralists. Perhaps I could manage an introduction into the expat art scene created recently by European and American painters, filmmakers and writers escaping the criminally inflated rents of Berlin, Paris, London, New York and San Francisco.
During one of those post-lunch awkward silences on the balcony, I offered, “Maybe we need a break from each other.” I figured she was not any happier than I was with the present state of affairs.
“What are you talking about” she asked with an uptick of suspicion in her voice. “Do you mean a trip somewhere? To Greece?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” In fact, Greece (specifically, Crete) had been the tortuous scene of our last breakup. Had she forgotten her reaction when we entered the bohemian-style room I had booked in the port city of Chania? She had let out a shriek of bestial rage and threw her carry-on bag across the room where it smashed open against the wall.
She almost always disapproved of my choices in hotel rooms, but this outburst was so hyperbolically inappropriate that I wondered if some vital connectors in her brain had suddenly snapped. There was nothing wrong with the room that I could see. Yes, it was an older building, one with the shabby-genteel charm of that section of Chania, but it was also very clean with polished wood floors, big blue-shuttered windows that opened onto the sea—the waves resounding a mere ten meters away—and a queen-sized bed with, directly above, a silent but effective ceiling fan.
It was not a shiny, artificially-scented Ramada Inn or, more in her style, a branch of the Four Seasons with modern air conditioning, a giant plasma TV and a bed covered with a ludicrous number of pillows.
During her tirade, she screamed that I was a malaka (“asshole”), a son of a bitch and a seekteer (Turkish for “big prick”).
“What the hell is the problem?” I asked, frustrated and confused. Maybe she had seen something (a rat? cockroaches?) that I hadn’t noticed. She didn’t answer, but instead repeated with even more vehemence, “MALAKA!”
I took a shower and then, hoping she had calmed down a bit, asked her to go for a moonlight walk on the beach.
“Go fuck yourself!”
After two more hours of the silent treatment, there came another burst of anger, with more cursing and thrown objects (a full ashtray at the wall)—this time over a pause of two minutes in the wi-fi service. I told myself, “That’s it,” and opened my laptop on the desk in the foyer and booked a one-way ticket to Tangier, certain that not only
did I want to end our marriage, but that I never wanted to see her again.
Yet two years later, here I was, sitting across from her on the balcony, in the mires of another hopeless negotiation.
“No. I was thinking of going to Mexico City to spend time with my friend Mike and to stay a month or two to see the art there.”
“I can’t go now. My sister needs me to start cooking for the holidays.”
“Yes, but I can go. You know the holidays mean nothing to me. I’ll be back by February.”
“The lack of funds, as it often does, caused much acrimony and frustration. I was forced to seek side work, which left me no time to write, whilst she spent her days and nights socializing with various members of her very large family.”
“If you go, we go together. I am your wife.”
“Well, we have different ideas about—”
“Listen to me! You don’t go to...this ‘friend,’ whoever he is, if it’s really a ‘he,’ unless we go together. You can wait until January and we go.”
“I don’t want to be here for all the Christmas and New Year’s bullshit. You’ll be busy with your family, so you won’t even miss me. I want to make this trip now, and I need to do it alone.”
“Tell me something, why did you marry me if you need to go be with other people, alone?”
“I think it might help if we took some time away from each other. I’m not talking about breaking up, just a couple of months away and then I’ll come back to Cyprus.” Though at this point, I was beginning
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
to think maybe I shouldn’t come back. I continued, “The thing is, we don’t travel well together. I won’t have much money for this trip, but I know how to travel cheaply and to live in another country on a small budget, but you are miserable unless you have complete comfort twenty-four hours a day. You won’t eat the local food and you flip out when you can’t find your brand of cigarettes or Cypriot coffee.”
“Malaka!”
I waited a beat, watching her face turn more and more crimson. I should have walked away, maybe gone for a stroll on the beach, but I asked in a very controlled manner, “What ever gave you the notion that you’re my boss?”
“If you go, we are finished.”
I didn’t answer, but left the balcony to go check online for flights to Mexico City, though I didn’t book anything. She had instilled some guilt in me with her insinuations that I was not a good husband, that I was abandoning her after so many years of marriage and economic struggle (at least on my end), causing me to question my loyalty and sense of manhood.
I noted down prices for flights on different days and checked Mexico City Airbnb pages. I knew rentals in the capital would be a lot more expensive than those in San Cristóbal de las Casas or Puerto Peñasco, two places I’d lived before, but I found a couple of possibilities near the airport that might work out.
Two weeks went by without further mention of travel plans while I concentrated on an essay about a Cypriot painter I admired, whilst Eleni spent most of her time having coffee with her family or shopping.
As I was researching online for the essay, I received a fraught email from my sister in Virginia telling me that my ninety-three-yearold mother was in the hospital and deteriorating by the hour. Cancer had been found in several places in her body—she hadn’t visited a doctor in twenty years except for prescriptions for minor ailments— and she was, uncharacteristically, resigned to moving on to the next life. If I wanted to see her again to say a final goodbye, I’d better go now.
When I showed my wife the email, she said, “Get us the tickets.”
“Us?”
“Yes. I’m your wife. What would people think if I am not there too? Are you normal?”
“But you never liked her, and she treated you coldly every time we—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m your wife, no?”
“Okay, but you’ll have to contribute. I don’t have enough money to buy both tickets.” I had ceased using credit cards years ago, so didn’t even have enough “fake money” either. I delivered the coup de grâce: “You’ll have to pay for your own.”
“You call yourself a husband? Have you no shame?”
With great reluctance and a final snarl, she handed over her passport and credit card, and I booked the tickets.
We flew to Washington, D.C. together, but because the tickets were bought separately, we weren’t assigned seats next to each other. I could have paid a little extra to get her the seat next to mine but I didn’t tell her, and she wouldn’t know that because she had never bought her own tickets. Whenever we flew side by side, unless it was a short hop to Crete or Athens, she turned into a raging beast after four hours without a smoke, cursing and spitting vitriol at me in response to the most innocent question or remark. I had often been at the point of asking the cabin crew to restrain her in some other section of the plane, preferably the cargo hold.
In Virginia, in the weeks following the funeral, with continual pressure from my siblings to vacate the house—they saw my stay there as taking advantage and suspected me (at least two of them) of remaining there only to search for valuables my mother might have squirreled away—I restated to Eleni several times my intention to travel to Mexico and suggested she fly up to Montreal to spend Christmas with her children and their families.
“If you do this,” she hissed, “we’re finished.”
But I’m the last guy you want to threaten with such an ultimatum. Various authority figures in my life, from my father, to teachers, to the U.S. Army, had confronted me with either/or demands and my response has always been essentially the same: “Fuck that noise.” This had resulted in hard knocks to the head, sharp blows on the back of the hand with a metal ruler and, finally, two court martials and incarceration in Army prisons.
I bought my ticket for Mexico City. When I told Eleni, she went into shock; she had been certain her ultimatum would win her a different result, and this propelled her into a new rant worthy of Medea.
At the local airport, I parked directly in front of the automatic doors leading to the departure gates, pulled her two behemoth suitcases from the trunk and set them next to her as she exited the car. There wasn’t much we could say to each other. The tickets were nonrefundable, so it was too late for her to change her mind.
I stepped toward her, gave her a hug and kissed her hard on the mouth for one last time.
“I’ll always love you,” I uttered without thinking. “Sure,” she responded. “You take care of yourself.” She knew I hated that banal, patronizing expression. Then she spun round so I couldn’t see her tears and started to walk away, but stopped before reaching the doors to light a final cigarette as I got behind the wheel. It seemed superfluous to wave—a bit too chummy for the occasion—as I pulled away from the curb.
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
I flew out of the same airport for Mexico City. I had booked a pension-like hotel room for five days to give myself ample time to find an affordable Airbnb and, on the third day, I secured a small house (a casita) in a rundown barrio for a hundred and fifty dollars a month. It had a sitting room, bathroom, kitchenette on the first floor and a bedroom up a shaky metal flight of stairs. The neighborhood was not attractive in any way, but there were restaurantes económicos, a bakery, a metro station and many small bodegas covered in steel bars with just a slot at the front to receive whatever you were buying. This last detail lent an unnerving air of ominousness to the barrio or, more properly for Mexico, colonia, but walking around during daylight hours, I never felt any sense of lurking danger.
I didn’t know anyone in the city (Mike was off in San Miguel de Allende at a crafts fair), nor did I know where I might meet any aforementioned expat or local artists, but I figured I could start with the many art and anthropological museums and private galleries and keep my eyes and ears open. There must be certain cafés or cultural centers where they hung out when not working, and I had enough spare cash for an occasional Americano or a glass of wine, at least enough to get started.
For the first couple of days in my casita I felt woozy, but I attributed that to jet lag and the difference in altitude (7,350 feet). On the third day, I figured this should have dissipated by now as my sleep routine had become fully readjusted. Yet when I stepped outside to head to the metro station, I experienced acute vertigo and had to brace my back against the door. I felt so weak and dazed that I nearly went back inside, but after a moment, I forced myself to tread two blocks before having to rest again.
Sure, it had been a long flight with a six-hour layover in Atlanta and a three-hour stop in Dallas, so the entire journey had taken fifteen hours, but I had flown hundreds of times in my life and never suffered more than half a day of jet lag. Was it possible I’d contracted some sort of flu on one of the three flights? Could it be something I ate or was I, for the first time, starting to feel the negative effects of age? The arduous journey on the metro, involving two transfers and long, steep stairways—the escalators almost always being out of order—as well as half-mile-long pedestrian tunnels at connecting stations, exhausted me. By the time I started my ascent of the entry to the National Museum, I was so feeble I had to stop and sit on a stone step halfway up.
Once inside the museum and surrounded by art, I began to revive, but as I drifted from painting to painting I felt the lightheadedness I had often experienced when I was writing articles about exhibits and, in preparation, had purposely not eaten anything for five hours beforehand in order to see the work in a more illuminating, more creative light. I had discovered by accident that this method allowed my brain to receive multiple varied impressions and ideas I would
never have experienced on a full stomach.
Added to this slight sense of inertia was the kind of not entirely unpleasant weariness that develops from an onslaught of visual stimulation after so prolonged an absence from it (there is very little art on view in Cyprus unless you are overly fond of icons).
Upon coming to the end of the exhibits on the first floor, I started to mount the stairs to the second, but stopped and glanced around in the hope of spotting an elevator. There were none.
I had succeeded in mounting only two steps when the muscles in my legs began to quiver and ache. I gripped the handrail and tried to remember if I’d ever felt such leg pains from a flu. Chest pains from too much coughing perhaps, but sore leg muscles? No. Maybe it was from the multitude of stairs involved in getting around the city on the metro, but I reminded myself that in Cyprus, for many years, I had regularly hiked steep trails in the Troodos Mountains with only a limited amount of huffing and puffing—or any such pain.
After a few deep breaths, I continued and reached the top of the stairs, whereupon I found a cushioned bench and sat down with an audible sigh of relief. Should I struggle on and view the art on this floor or should I rest a while longer before heading home, maybe splurge on a taxi that would cost no more than three dollars?
A group of college-age girls came up the stairs and passed me, chatting and laughing good naturedly, their innocent, youthful energy briefly lifting my spirits, but when two of them glanced back at me and broke out into fresh bursts of giggles, I felt certain I was being mocked: look at that pathetic old guy who can’t manage two floors of the museum without having to stop to rest his fragile bones!
Still, their aura of energy gave me a jolt of inspiration, and I stood up and started making my slow, deliberate way through the exhibits, stopping for more studied viewings at certain pieces that especially drew me in. Although I felt physically weaker and weaker as I progressed through the rooms, I was at least impressed if not stimulated, though in my present state it was probably not possible to derive any motivation for my own work. In fact, it took great effort and concentrated will power to complete the tour of the second floor. I sat and rested once again before descending the stairs to exit the museum, as I knew I didn’t have the strength to progress to the third floor. A moment later, I was surprised that, for the first time, the act of descending a stairway proved to be almost as tiring as going up.
Once outside, I instinctively took a deep breath, forgetting that Mexico City is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and when the toxic air hit my lungs, I coughed so hard and long I nearly lost my balance. I steadied myself against the wall of the museum then two women stopped to ask if I needed any help (“¿Necesitas alguna ayuda?”). I imagined that my big Neanderthal face must be bright red from the exertion of the stairs and the intensity of the coughing. I couldn’t force
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
any words out to reply, not even “No, gracias,” but I held a hand up in a gesture that meant, “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me,” with an accompanying thank you nod. My original plan had been to follow this visit with one to another museum nearby, but I knew it would be stupid to attempt it. All I desired now, all I could manage physically, was to get home, drink something cold and drop into bed.
I had enough pesos in my pocket for a taxi but, stupidly, I thought, If I take a cab now, I’ll be giving in to this bastard flu that’s trying to fell me. I would attempt the metro again, though I consulted my map to find a different route, one that would avoid the transfer station that required so many punishing stairs. On the map, I saw that I could take the same train back, but if I traveled in the opposite direction, the one I had taken towards the museum, it would eventually go around the city and bring me back to my station with only one change at a smaller transfer station.
I entered the metro stop and followed the crowd toward the platforms—there were arrows pointing to two different ones for the route I needed, so I walked to the closest, not noticing that I was the only man doing so: everyone else in front of me was female (was I hallucinating?) and, once at the actual platform, a policeman with a machine gun shouted at me, gesturing with the barrel of his weapon for me to go to the other option. I didn’t understand why until the officer pointed at the crowd waiting for the next train and used the word mujeres, which I knew meant women. I checked and, yes, they were, in fact, all women, and there were more signs on the wall behind me. I looked further down the platform and saw there was a pink barrier, beyond which was a waiting crowd of men. I got a few angry stares as I backtracked and found the way to the men’s section. I later learned that this segregation of the sexes was done at busy times to prevent frottage or any more serious molesting of women as people had to squeeze together inside the cars.
When I made the transfer to the next train, I must have looked very weak and frail—I was intermittently fighting off waves of vertigo— because a young woman rose from a seat close to the door and, with an empathetic smile, pointed for me to take her place. I was mortified, entirely humiliated. Okay, I was feeling tired and my body was aching in places it never had before—I’d obviously contracted some sort of flu— but no one had ever offered me a seat as if I were handicapped! Yes, I was in my sixties, but people inevitably guessed me to be much younger (my hair had not yet gone gray), which was a point of superficial pride for me. I who had always enjoyed excellent health, a strong constitution, vigorous energy in my arms and legs, had never been to a hospital except for an emergency gallbladder operation...I who had always been one to give up his seat to a pregnant woman or to the elderly on buses and trains, even in cold New York where it’s almost against the law to do so. And now a beautiful Mexican girl was feeling sorry for me and
insisting I take her seat!
My head down, I stared at the floor as I accepted the seat—I should have refused, but I did feel featherheaded and it would have been even more embarrassing and dangerous if I had fainted to the floor at a sudden jerk in the train’s movement (and there were always many).
Because of my distress over this incident—and the fact that the standing-room-only crowd blocked my ability to see the names of the stations through the windows—I missed my station and ended up at the very transfer hub I had tried to avoid, which meant that by the time I’d trudged to the connecting station up and down hundreds of steps and long stretches of tunnel and arrived at my neighborhood, I felt ready to be fitted for a pine box. After climbing the final fifty stairs to the street, I leaned back against the nearest building and pretended to be waiting for someone until the smells from an impromptu tortilla kitchen rejuvenated my senses—telling me I was desperately hungry— and propelled me along the three blocks to my casita. Though, by then, I was so weak I dropped my keys, and it was all I could do to squat down and retrieve them.
Inside, I grabbed a bottle of Topo Chico from the fridge and drank deeply as I collapsed onto my desk chair and popped open the laptop to check for messages. Even though I had been away from the house for only three and a half hours, I fully expected my mailbox to show at least two or three emails, but it was empty, and I almost had enough lung strength to laugh at the absurdity of this conceit. I took another long swig of the mineral water, then stood up and felt a fresh attack of vertigo, as well as two sharp aches in my knees. Finally, I thought, my age and all my past indiscretions have caught up with me, and I would have to resign myself to further deterioration. I had never felt such karmic negativity, as I had been certain that my good health and luck would hold out at least until I was eighty.
Clenching onto the edge of the table with both hands, I made an entreaty to the gods, closed the laptop and started towards the bedroom. If I left the laptop open and there was a pinging notification of a new message, I would not have the strength to come down from the bedroom to check it.
The only way I could ascend the stairs now was to grip the handrail with all my might and use it to yank myself upwards. At the bed, I hadn’t the strength to undress, and I dropped to my knees on the mattress and stretched onto my side. Immediately, I began to cough, a series of long, dry expulsions that felt dangerous and almost impossible to control.
For several years, I’ve had a problem with my vagus nerve, which meant that—while sitting—whenever I experienced a strong coughing fit or an outburst of laughter, I would suddenly lose the ability
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
to breathe, and I would instinctively stand up in order to straighten out my diaphragm. But even then, I still couldn’t force myself to breathe, and panic would take over. In several instances, I lost consciousness, sometimes for only a few seconds, other times for two hours. It wasn’t until during one episode, in the middle of the standing phase, that Eleni shouted I should breathe through my nose, which would seem a simple thing to do, but my brain was in such a state of hysteria it failed to communicate the message to my body. It was like pounding
“I was entering a state of severe panic, wishing someone, even the now estranged Eleni, could be there to help me...but to do what? No doubt she would shout at me to stand and breathe through my nose again, because she wouldn’t know what was happening to me either.”
my will against a thick, steel wall. That first time I tried it, as Eleni’s shouts became obscured by an increase of existential fright, I passed out before I could engage my nose, but a few days later, when a new incident was triggered, and she again shouted at me to breathe through my nose, I was somehow able to compel the tiny muscles of my nasal passages to take over, and almost immediately my nervous system calmed to the point where I could breathe normally.
But I couldn’t stand and didn’t know if that was the best strategy anyhow, even though it had worked in the past when such fits came upon me. Besides, this one was very different from those caused by excessive laughter or normal coughs. There was no phlegm or anything like it in my throat or lungs or in between, so instinct dictated that I’d have to discover a new strategy. Amid a fresh bout of coughing, I forced my body to reposition itself until I was flat on my back, but it
was instantly apparent this was a mistake because my chest muscles burned as if I had been struck with a lead pipe. Raising my knees, I heaved myself over to lie on my other side, but the coughing didn’t stop, so I turned once again and onto my stomach, a position I hadn’t taken in bed for thirty years, but I felt some relief, and the coughing abated slightly, though I still felt an almost supernatural terror that I wasn’t going to get out of this alive.
What the hell was going on? Why hadn’t I had a coughing fit like this while I was upright and moving through the subway system? What was happening to my body? The chaos of the situation was starting to distort my mind and a voice began shouting at me to stand, but could I trust this voice? Was it the same one (Eleni’s) that had compelled me to stand when the vagus nerve fits came upon me? I attempted to draw up my knees now in the first stage of the process to stand, but this simple gesture was met with fiercer coughing, so I flattened out on my stomach again, my hands gripping the sides of the single mattress as if, in the attempt to empower the muscles of my hands and arms with extraordinary strength (and adrenaline), I could divert the crisis of pain in my lungs and throat.
I was entering a state of severe panic, wishing someone, even the now estranged Eleni, could be there to help me...but to do what? No doubt she would shout at me to stand and breathe through my nose again, because she wouldn’t know what was happening to me either.
But the current problem had nothing to do with the vagus nerve. And if this was a flu, it was unlike any I had known or read about. If it wasn’t a flu, what the hell was it? If I only had a name for what was attacking me, I could Google it and find what medication to take. The only medicine I had was some two or three-year-old Tylenol and even that was for the moment inaccessible, because I had yet to unpack my bags and had no memory of where I had stashed it and couldn’t conjure up the energy to look. I sensed a new surge of coughing building up, and I strained to hold it back. I succeeded for fifteen seconds and then it exploded in violent paroxysms through my throat, causing pain in my already sore muscles. It went on for what seemed like ten minutes and I felt so weak when it finally slowed that I doubted I could survive another such attack.
Somehow it entered my brain that I might attempt a meditation technique I had employed not only for spiritual reasons but also for such mundane uses as to halt annoying bouts of hiccups. I had perfected it so well that it had never taken more than thirty seconds to succeed. I would start it right away, before I felt any hints of a cough rising, but without thinking, I instinctively turned onto my back to assume my usual meditation posture. This was a mistake. As soon as my back flattened onto the mattress, a big cough shuddered through my body and with it waves of intense chills, and it was all I could do to roll back onto my stomach. I’m so stupid, I told myself, as the coughing gradually
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
subsided. I waited a moment, afraid to move a single muscle of my body, then closed my eyes and concentrated on my breath as it phased from inhale to exhale, letting any and all thoughts pass through my brain without paying attention to them, focusing all my powers of concentration on that breath, fragile as it was, while mouthing a silent prayer alongside that focus—a prayer that had no words, but was a strong plea for relief from this trauma. At some point, perhaps fifteen minutes into this meditation process, I lapsed into a kind of sentient sleep that was soon, however, invaded by fever dreams in which the same insipid ideas or actions repeated themselves over and over like the earworm of some inane pop song, until they became so relentlessly clamorous I was forced to open my eyes in order to be free of them. I started to rise from the bed as if I had just woken from a nap, but stopped myself as I remembered the coughing fits. I stayed flat on my stomach, afraid to move my head even a quarter of an inch on the pillow. A flash from one of the fever dreams approached my mind again, but I was able to push it away before it found any purchase. Do you lose brain cells when you burn through fever dreams?
Finally, I decided to try to stand again. I had felt no initial pangs of coughing from my lungs; maybe I’d have some luck, maybe my prayer, even though it had been concerned with such a small thing, had been answered. I got to my hands and knees and waited. No coughing. Now I raised my torso up until it was fully upright and waited again, ready to fall back onto the mattress at the slightest hint of a chest spasm, but I felt nothing like it, so I slowly rose to my feet one muscle movement at a time. There was a small interior jolt as I became fully vertical, but it didn’t develop into anything stronger.
What should I do? My normal response would have been to search on the internet for the best plan of action, but I had no idea what to look for. I supposed I could start with researching the latest flu variants, concentrating on Mexico if that was possible.
Before leaving the bedroom, I pulled my heavy bathrobe from my suitcase, struggled into it, then began a slow, meticulous descent down the stairs. The last step was quite far from the floor and the effort it took to step down sent a searing pain into my thigh muscles. Jesus! Had someone mugged me and beaten me down to the pavement with a baseball bat and I’d lost all memory of it?
I eased myself into the chair at the kitchen table and opened the laptop. There were three messages on my Facebook page from a friend in Cyprus, but it required too complicated an explanation to answer her right away, so I texted that I would respond soon and went straight to Google to begin my research.
I investigated several types of influenza: bird flu, Asian flu, Russian flu, swine flu and Hong Kong flu. And though the extreme symptoms of most were similar to what I was experiencing (except for the dryness of the cough), there was no indication that those variants
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
were rampant in Mexico. Then I decided to enter a list of all my symptoms, but this also yielded nothing concrete or specific to Mexico. By now my brain was nearly back to normal, so I answered my friend’s messages in detail then waited a few minutes for her response. She did not have that excruciable habit that many had these days of sending a message, even one that contained a question, and then disappearing for hours or even days. She answered right away and I told her that I had some sort of flu and it would be difficult to communicate as often as I liked.
“Over the next few days, I battled through the worst illness I had ever experienced in sixty-four years of life. I slept for an hour that afternoon, but awoke coughing and clutching my chest to keep it from bursting, for that surely was what it wanted to do.”
I didn’t bother to send messages to anyone else. I would download a movie and watch it on the laptop, which had an eighteeninch screen. Better yet, a good tennis match, even if it was an old one with Nadal or Baghdatis, “the smiling Cypriot,” as long as I didn’t know ahead of time who had won. It would serve to calm me down in body and mind. If I could get through an hour or so without coughing, I might try to eat some lunch and indulge in a glass or two of wine if only to complete my usual routine, then take an hour-long nap.
I found a full match between Nadal and Djokovic at RolandGarros from 2013. The game, however, wasn’t as exciting as I’d expected it to be, but about an hour into it, Nadal hit one of his superhuman shots at a diagonal across the court and my spontaneous shout of excitement triggered an intense spate of coughing that first made me jump to my feet, then vaulted me towards the floor. On the way down, I knocked my head on the edge of a low table and lost consciousness. I opened my eyes forty-five minutes later, surprised to find myself on the carpet, confused about how I got there and with a severe headache that was not restricted to a particular part of my head but
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
was pulsing with the sharpest pain in the front, the sides and the crown. I’d never known such a headache and it frightened me. I had heard others complain of migraines, of course, but I had never suffered one myself. If this headache was going to continue like this, I would have to get myself to the pharmacy. I had noticed one only a block away, but it had odd opening hours, like a private bank. You might ask, why didn’t I consider going to a doctor or to the emergency room of the nearest hospital? In Mexico, as in Cyprus, most people consult a pharmacist before submitting themselves to the high expense and questionable ethics (Was he just pushing certain drugs for big pharma kickbacks?) of a doctor. The pharmacist, at least an older one, has much the same amount of experience with symptoms and diagnosis, and you are charged only for the medicine itself.
Was the headache caused by the fall, or was it the latest symptom of whatever was plaguing my body? With great effort, I rose to my feet, looked around and noticed I had knocked one of the owner’s tacky knickknacks off the end table onto the floor where it lay in many pieces. I then slid my feet, one by one, toward the kitchen table and my computer. With every movement of my enervated frame, there was a new visitation of aches, from my brow to the back of my head.
It was nearly two in the afternoon. Would the pharmacy be open or was it still lunchtime for the hard-slogging owner? Was it worth a short walk to find out? Was I capable of walking a single block? I suddenly remembered that whatever sort of flu this was, it was no doubt important that I drink a lot of water. I stood up again, retrieved the bottle of Topo Chico from the fridge and poured what was left of it into my whiskey glass. I checked around the kitchen area for another bottle and realized I was out of any sort of water, which meant it had become imperative that I venture out into the neighborhood. And in the last few seconds, the headache had intensified to the point where, with my fingers pressed against my temples, I could actually sense the inflammation of the nerves.
I checked my pockets for keys and pesos, then began a slow exit from the house and moved through the shared courtyard, cluttered with stacks of unused tiles, rebar rods, broken flower pots, odd pieces of plywood and rotting palettes. I unlocked the metal gate and stepped onto the cracked narrow sidewalk, making it all the way to the corner of my little side street before having to rest. I gazed in the direction of the pharmacy, but the glare of the sun prevented me from determining whether it was open or closed. The closest bodega for water was in the other direction, but I knew it was best to check the pharmacy first. It was now seven minutes to two, but nobody in Mexico was ever precise about opening and closing times.
By the time I reached the front door of the pharmacy, the gate was being pulled down and padlocked by the fifty-year-old proprietor, who shook his head violently when he saw my pleading face. He
did at least point down the street to indicate the presence of another pharmacy that would be open.
After several turns not mentioned by the pharmacist, I unearthed the suggested location and bought some extra-strength ibuprofen, as well as cough medicine and sleeping pills (you can buy almost any drug in Mexico without a prescription). I asked for a cup of water, downed two pills on the spot and thanked the pharmacist a little too dramatically. Then, painfully, I walked to the bodega closest to my house for a large bottle of water. They stocked only two sizes: oneliter bottles in packs of six and office-cooler plastic casks that required a deposit. I tried to lift the cask and, even though there was a handle built into its side, I was afraid I lacked the strength to lug it all the way home in my condition. Then it struck me that I could roll it down the sidewalk on its side without damaging the mouth of it, especially now that the streets were empty as everyone was indulging in a siesta. Sure it would get dirty, but I could easily slide it into my toilet and turn the shower head on it. I still had several empty water bottles and could cut the top of a smaller bottle to make a funnel, then fill a one-liter bottle for ease of use. I realized that for me to be able to think at all creatively in this endeavor meant that the medication had kicked in already. I hadn’t opened the cough syrup yet; I would wait until it was absolutely necessary as it was expensive and, according to the pharmacist, a bit dangerous if I drank any alcohol, which I very much intended to do at some point to increase my chances of sleep.
I went back to the tennis match I’d been watching and ate some crackers and cheese as I didn’t have the energy to cook. When the match finished three hours later, it was quarter to six. I rose from my seat to grab a bottle of red wine and immediately sat back down as a surge of vertigo threatened to knock me flat again. I realized that my headache had softened, but was still very much present, especially at the sides of my head, which was probably due to the change in heart rate from standing up. I also felt some straining in my lungs, though it wasn’t quite the start of a cough. I rested for five minutes, then tried slowly and cautiously to stand again. When I was fully upright, there was some dizziness, but only a twinge of it, so I took slow steps to the kitchen cabinet to get the wine and the corkscrew, telling myself I should at some point move all my essentials—the wine, the water, certain foods, medicine, glasses and plates—to the table so that in an emergency, if I couldn’t manage to stand, I could still function as normally as possible.
I drank the first glass cautiously and without much pleasure, if any, then waited a few minutes and tried another, feeling no alteration to my consciousness. It wasn’t until I had finished the second glass that I realized that it hadn’t tasted or smelled like wine. In fact, it hadn’t tasted or smelled like anything. Okay, I told myself, it’s only Mexican wine, not the best on the planet, but to have no taste or smell at all
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
was beyond comprehension. It’s not an aged Pomerol or a ten-year-old Maratheftiko, but...
Now I had a specific symptom that might yield some results on Google, but when I checked, it listed brain injuries, gum disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The only one that made sense was brain injury, because I had fallen and hit my head, but my symptoms had begun before that. As I researched further into that possibility, there was a loud whirring from inside my laptop and a kind of poof and then the screen went black. I waited the standard sixty seconds, then tried to start it again, to no avail. I unplugged it, removed the battery, waited another minute and blew on the terminals of the battery before replacing it, reinserting the power cord and hitting the “on” button. Nothing. For the first time in five years of daily use, the laptop had truly crashed. I was shocked and thought for a moment that I might be having a bad dream. Was I still passed out on the floor and had only dreamed that I woke and got up and all the rest? I slapped my face to be certain I was truly conscious.
I would try the computer later, but I had a bad feeling that it had reached its built-in period of obsolescence and could not be revived, but I didn’t know much about computer technology. The best thing to do, I decided, was to drink another glass of wine and go back up to my bed to sleep, praying silently that I would suffer no further spasms of coughing.
Over the next few days, I battled through the worst illness I had ever experienced in sixty-four years of life. I slept for an hour that afternoon, but awoke coughing and clutching my chest to keep it from bursting, for that surely was what it wanted to do. I had a twenty-fourhour-a-day headache every day and fever dreams that spiraled into delirium. And then there were the hallucinations. At first, I thought they were fever dreams, but fever dreams are maddeningly simplistic and repetitious. What was happening now was something like the intense, paranoid scenarios that can poison acid or peyote trips. Several times I woke up with the certain knowledge that a menacing stranger was in my house, creeping around downstairs or in the next room. Had they come to merely rob me or did they harbor some sort of personal grudge and were there to hack at my neck with a machete? Another hallucination involved being desperately lost in a house with a labyrinth of many rooms, searching down one corridor after another for a woman I was certain was anxiously waiting for me. But the dominant recurring hallucination involved the necessity, the urgency, of finding an answer to the fundamental question of my existence: why was I here and how was I to proceed with my life? Was it better to take things slowly, to swim with the flow and simply allow things to happen? Or was it important to act as swiftly as possible in every endeavor and to never balk at the chance to experience anything or anyone presented to me?
Several times after an intense bout of coughing, I passed out, not regaining consciousness for two or three hours, which amounted to the only real rest I had for two weeks. I couldn’t leave the bedroom to go down to the toilet most of the time, so I was urinating in a cutoff water bottle, emptying it only the few times I had to defecate when I crawled on my hands and knees down the stairs. Then, just when I was starting to gain some control over the coughing, I got a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge and I had to bring my pillows and blankets to the sofa downstairs to encamp closer to the toilet.
I didn’t think about my computer problem because I was incapable of using it, just as it was impossible to read one of the half a dozen books I’d brought from Cyprus. I also didn’t think about eating. The very thought of it made me nauseous. Eventually, about two weeks from when it all started, the coughing subsided to just an occasional short burst and the twenty-four-hour headache was reduced to three or four periods a day of an hour each. The big relief was the realization that I probably wasn’t going to die—and there had been at least five times in the midst of the worst spasms when I was certain I was on my way to see my mother and father in the great beyond.
I took a shower, holding onto the towel rack and the walls the whole time, terrified that my feet would slip on the slick tile floor, then got dressed in clean clothes from my still unpacked suitcase and opened my front door to step outside for the first time in many days of acute suffering. I had a craving for something doughy and sweet, maybe with chocolate, and I meticulously moved step by step along the sidewalk to the bakery three blocks away. My legs still ached. Indeed, my whole body felt sore, but I was able to will all the individual muscle groups involved in getting myself to the entrance of that panaderia. There was a thick, brown, wheaty pastry shaped like a big biscuit and topped with a coating of hardened chocolate sauce. I grabbed two of those straight off, then put one back as I eyed some varieties I hadn’t seen before, one being a kind of cheesecake, though nothing like the Polish-style version in New York, and a couple of custardy pastries that were gleaming at me invitingly—was I hallucinating again? By the time I had finished my second circuit of the racks and reached the counter where they would bag my choices, I had six different items and was on the verge of guiltily returning some, when I realized my body must be demanding that, after so much deprivation, all this stodge was just what it needed. Maybe tomorrow I could make it to one of the restaurantes económicos or the Chinese place for healthier food, but at that moment, I had all I needed or could consume.
When I got home, my legs telling me that one more block to the pharmacy for more ibuprofen would be impossible, I opened the bag and started in on the custardy items and kept chewing with some pleasure (finally) until I had eaten everything except the grainy chocolate concoction. I had forgotten about the mineral water, and I
downed a tall glass of it. Then, with glee, I started to bite into that final pastry. That’s when my stomach rebelled with a foreboding lurch and I ran to the toilet to empty my guts of all I had consumed.
Clearly, I hadn’t fully recovered, and I vowed not to attempt anything strenuous for a day or two. But I was still hungry, perhaps more than I’d been before I went to the bakery, so I set some brown rice to boil, which would take forty-five minutes, by which time my insides might have settled enough to hold something down.
I cleaned up the toilet and rinsed my mouth with Listerine, then tried to start the laptop again. Nothing happened. Could I afford to take it to a repair shop? In the U.S., it would cost at least a hundred dollars for them to even offer a diagnosis, but in Mexico, I figured it might be possible. I had noticed a computer shop within the big metro station where I changed trains. When I was finally fit to move around, I’d bring it to them in the hope I wouldn’t be charged at gringo rates. Most probably the problem was the hard drive, and I knew that could be replaced.
What was I going to do with myself without a computer and a brain still too muddled to read? I glanced at the television set I hadn’t bothered to check out since I’d moved in and found the remote. Not being familiar with modern TV systems, it took me fifteen minutes of trial and error to open it to the local programming. The landlord had boasted of two hundred cable stations, but I didn’t know how to access them. There were ten local stations available, two of them airing soccer matches (which I had no interest in), three stations showing telenovelas featuring the flashy rich of the country (a class of people I would never encounter in all my visits to Mexico), four others offered news programs and, finally, the last station I found was showing an old Buñuel film, Los Olvidados, which I had seen before but was happy to watch again. This film showed the side of Mexico that I had witnessed everywhere I traveled: the poor and indigent of Mexico; the people making their living at hard labor; the beggars sleeping in the streets; the children hawking Chiclets and made-in-China gewgaws; the prostitutes and petty thieves; hustlers of every age, gender and area of special expertise; the fake priests and nuns pleading for alms; the vagabondos too exhausted to wipe the road grime from their faces; the desperate missionaries (Mormon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Evangelists, even Baptists) proselytizing their chosen mythologies.
I saw things in the film, certain moments and acute observations, I didn’t remember noticing before, so it made the experience much richer and engaging—the perfect vehicle for losing myself completely and escaping the torment I had endured over the past two weeks.
Los Olvidados was followed by Amores Perros, directed by Iñárritu, and I made it almost to the end—as I poked at a bowl of flavorless rice—before I got drowsy and fell asleep on the sofa.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I awoke amidst a mild Mexico City Barber School
coughing fit that lasted only a few minutes, and I drank a large glass of water, but I was still too muscle-sore to bother climbing the stairs to my bed.
I rose at eight in the morning with most of the same muscle aches and a general feeling of debilitation but without the headache, and I was surprised to find I could smell the cooking of onions and chorizo from next door. Whatever it was that had taken over my body and spirit was on its way out.
I would shower off all the fever sweat, dress in light clothes and take the train to the supermarket, where I knew I could find certain items not available in my decrepit neighborhood. I could also buy a phone card, look for a computer repair shop and treat myself to a badly needed haircut if I could find a barber near the store. There were no supermarkets in my neighborhood and, if there were, they wouldn’t sell pâté, Camembert, rye bread or Greek yogurt, indulgences I was looking forward to enjoying now that I was starting to feel like myself again.
I left the house and walked to the metro station with no physical issues except for some pain in my knees. When I started down the long, steep cement stairs that led into the metro station, however, I felt a lot of pain. Not only in my knees, but also in my hips, thighs and ankles. When I reached the bottom, I stopped and considered whether I should continue to the cashier’s cage or turn around and go home and try again tomorrow. But I had been cooped up for so long I decided I had to make an effort. I could turn back at any point if it became untenable, and all I would lose was fifty cents for the metro.
The next challenge was the two flights of stairs to the train platform. I gazed up to the top and felt my body go slack in protest. Some words my mother exclaimed to me the last time I visited her came to me: if you get up in the morning and your body is aching and your legs aren’t cooperating, just keep moving. Keep moving until the aching stops and you’ll be fine. I hadn’t just risen from bed, but I thought her advice might serve me well now, so I pushed on, stopping for a moment at the top of the first flight, then impelling my body with all the force I could rally to ascend the second, whereupon I found a row of hard plastic seats and sat down to allow my heart to stop pounding. In fact, it was laboring so boomingly I could hear the individual beats in my right inner ear.
Was this a sign of danger? I tried to remember if I had ever heard my heartbeat in this way before. I also noticed that my vision was suddenly more acute, more perfect than twenty-twenty, and I took this as a positive sign, a reason to carry on.
There was only one change of trains to make at the big terminal and then four stops, but that change involved climbing a broken escalator of at least a hundred and fifty steps and traversing a connecting tunnel that was the equivalent in length of four blocks, so by the time I reached the desired colonia, I felt beaten down again, almost
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
completely drained of strength and energy, and angrier by the minute for the condition I found myself in, especially because I didn’t know exactly what kind of fuckery had befallen me or how much longer I’d have to endure it.
Things only got worse inside the supermarket, which had sold out of all the items I wanted that day (and, as in Cyprus, if you ask when such items will be back in stock, you will get only shrugs. In fact, you may never see those items again.). There was no Greek yogurt, just
“Was I going to die on the sidewalk on the wrong side of Mexico City and be buried in a pauper’s grave? It would save my family a lot of expense as I was certain my sister, when noti- fied, would feel obliged to transport my corpse back to the States, but, for me, a Neal Cassady end was more in keeping with the general tenor of my life as I had lived it so far.”
the watery, over-sugared fluff popular in Mexico. No Camembert, no pâté, not even liverwurst. No blue cheese or dark bread of any kind, no rotisserie chicken (“Ees too early, señor”). Even worse, the shelf that had displayed several varieties of Baja wine was now stocked solely with expensive imports from Spain and California. The only thing I could find was some sliced ham and tasteless Mexican cheese, some cans of tuna and mussels and a bottle of cut-price mezcal from Oaxaca.
I was so out of sorts, so angry at the wasted trip to the supermarket, so vexed by the aches and fatigue I still felt, that I nearly cracked open the mezcal for a long swig while waiting in the checkout line.
It was good that I didn’t because, on the way out, toting a plastic bag heavy with cans, bottles and sundries, a fresh surge of dizziness forced me to grab onto the shopping cart ramp. In the two or three minutes I held that position, four women stopped to ask if I was okay, one of them offering me a small bottle of water. Now I was
seriously worried I wouldn’t make it home, and I had a selfish feeling of resentment: what had I done to deserve such an affliction?
I looked to my right towards the metro station, then to the left down the road where, several weeks ago, I had noticed a barber pole and I thought, At least I’ll be sitting down in a comfortable chair, and maybe a skilful haircut will help to lift my downtrodden spirits.
It was a struggle to walk to where I figured the barber shop to be, my mind shifting by degrees through levels of anguish, instability and despair. Was this to be my demise? Was I going to die on the sidewalk on the wrong side of Mexico City and be buried in a pauper’s grave? It would save my family a lot of expense as I was certain my sister, when notified, would feel obliged to transport my corpse back to the States, but, for me, a Neal Cassady end was more in keeping with the general tenor of my life as I had lived it so far. If I had the opportunity before I passed out, I should toss away all my identification, so I could be certain of being disposed of by the state.
I pushed on. I was nearly at the end of the road where it met a larger avenue, but I had yet to see the barber shop. Had I misremembered the location? I stopped a passerby and asked, Una tienda para... and I made a scissoring gesture with my fingers because I didn’t know the word for barber. He pointed down to the next corner and, without much faith in his advice, I continued in that direction.
Since I had set out that morning, the temperature had risen dramatically, and it was presently at least eighty-five degrees with no shade in sight. This only exacerbated my brief but worrying spells of vertigo, especially since most of the morning’s clouds had disappeared and the sun was bearing down on me with a fierceness I couldn’t help but believe was part of the general karmic punishment I had undergone since setting foot in Mexico. If I were in New York, I thought to myself in a cynical delirium, all the tall buildings and shop awnings would provide some shade and, if I were in Cyprus, there would be trees edging the sidewalk. But most shopkeepers in Mexico could not afford the luxury of an awning and, except in the tonier colonias, such as Roma and La Condesa, there was no provision for trees along the narrow, crumbling sidewalks.
At the corner that the man had indicated, I was distressed (but not surprised) to see that there was nothing but abandoned clothing shops and a parking lot with a single pickup truck with blocks propping up its center. After crossing the street, I caught sight of not a barber pole, but the painted image of one on a sign above a building halfway down the side street. I felt a twinge of energy, and I walked at an almost normal pace to the storefront until I could read the sign in full. It was not a barber shop, per se, but rather: La Escuela de Barbero de Moctezuma, a barber school offering haircuts for twelve pesos (sixty cents).
What the hell, I thought. I’m here. How bad could they be?
I stepped inside and saw two boxy middle-aged mestizo women
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
working on two young men in simple barber chairs. The older of the two women displayed an air of authority in her voice when she rattled a question at me in very rapid Spanish. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I knew she must be asking me if I wanted a haircut or informing me how long I’d have to wait. I told her in Spanish that I could speak only a little of her language. “Do you speak English?”
“No,” she answered, and repeated her question, so I gestured again with my scissoring fingers, and she shouted that the price was twelve pesos and asked, “¿Está bien?” (“Is that okay?”). She needed to shout because the music from an oversized radio behind her was inordinately loud.
I said, “Si. Está bien,” but then she asked me something else that was incomprehensible. This was getting frustrating. Why all the damn questions? I just wanted a fucking haircut.
I replied, “No entiendo” (“I don’t understand”). Then she yelled, “Diez minutos!” (“Ten minutes!”). I nodded okay, and we were in business. She jabbed her scissors, a little dismissively I felt, towards the next room, and I dropped into a chair. In Mexico, as in Cyprus, ten minutes usually means thirty, but as I sat there waiting, trying to close my ears to the strident clamor reverberating from the boombox, presumably for the edification of the young men in the barber chairs, I grew more and more annoyed, because both women seemed to be taking an inappropriate amount of time with their work, talking nonstop as they lackadaisically clipped with scissors and an electric razor.
For the past twenty years, Eleni had been the only person to cut my hair (except during our separations), and she would say nothing until she removed the cape and ordered me to go check in the mirror. Whenever I found myself with a new barber who started rattling away with the usual kinds of questions (“Where are you from?,” “Are you traveling?,” et cetera), I would claim with a grimace that I had a headache and I didn’t feel like chatting. But these two women were engaging in long-winded conversations with their customers, as well as with each other; in fact, incredibly, they were telling jokes during which they would stop cutting altogether and wait for the laugh and shouts of bravo when the joke or story was particularly guffaw worthy. They were not just giving a haircut, they were creating a mini-fiesta, and in my Calvinist mindset, this sort of behavior bordered on the immoral. When I checked my watch, I saw that I had been sitting there for twenty-five minutes, which is nothing when waiting for a haircut, but I was infuriated anyway because neither woman appeared to be nearing the end of her process (always indicated by the removal of the collar and the final neck shave at the back of the head). In my paranoid state, I scowled with indignation at them, hoping they would get the message that I was losing my patience. Diez minutos, my ass.
As I fixated on their every movement, I noticed that the boss
was quicker and more confident in her technique, so I began hoping she would finish first rather than the other woman, who appeared much too casual in her style and downright silly in her nearly constant singsong of chatter.
Ironically, I had developed a genuine headache, which was getting worse with each minute of waiting, but although I knew how to say the word for head (cabeza), I could not conjure up the word for pain, which meant I wouldn’t be able to use this ploy to convince whoever
“I pushed on. I was nearly at the end of the road where it met a larger avenue, but I had yet to see the barber shop. Had I misremembered the location? I stopped a passerby and asked, Una tienda para… and I made a scissoring gesture with my fingers because I didn’t know the word for barber. He pointed down to the next corner and, without much faith in his advice, I continued in that direction.”
cut my hair to keep silent.
I had also failed to notice, until now, that the young men in the shop had opted for the fashionable but aesthetically repugnant haircut characterized by a high-shaved back that made them look gangaffiliated or like fresh Army recruits. Would I be able to communicate that I didn’t want anything like that? There were no magazines or books showing various styles of haircuts in the little waiting room, nor were there any photos on the walls of the main room. I should leave, I told myself, as I made to exit my chair, and wait for another day and another place and remember to bring a photo along to show the barber.
At the door I held up my hand and offered, rather feebly, “Lo siento. Debo irme” (“I’m sorry, I must go”). That’s when the boss rattled something back at me and I saw that the boy in the other woman’s chair had stood up, all smiles and chuckles, and was pulling some coins from his pocket.
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
So I was to be the victim of the other woman, who seemed too old to be a student; perhaps the students came only at night. Even so, I had little faith in her. The boss gestured for me to sit in her amiga’s chair. My face distorted by what was probably the sourest expression ever witnessed in that establishment, I sat in the chair and tried to suppress my emotions as my barber snapped the previous customer’s clippings from the cape, draped it over my torso and bound it snugly around my neck as if it were a noose. Then, from behind me, she gently placed her hand on my shoulder and, looking at my face in the mirror, she told me her name was Imelda, then asked me (I assumed), “How do you want your hair cut?”
I didn’t have enough Spanish to go into detail, but I showed her how I pushed my hair straight back from my forehead without creating a part in the middle or to the side, and I informed her it had been three months since my last cut, so I wanted this much (showing with my fingers) cut all around. Todos mi cabeza.
She mimicked my gesture with her fingers, so I nodded yes and figured that should suffice for the talking. I would close my eyes and try to calm myself with meditation, and maybe my headache would dissipate, but the mad cacophony of a Mexican rap song suddenly brayed from the radio with such violence that it jolted me into shouting, “Jesus Christ!” as I twisted my head around to glare at the source of the noise. Imelda hopped to the radio and turned the dial to a different station and the more placid tones of Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise,” which was just fading out.
“Gracias!” I thanked her through rigid teeth as she returned and adjusted the position of my head. She started to cut, and I stopped her, “Momento, por favor,” as I removed my glasses and set them on the counter in front of me.
Then she took a swathe of hair from the top of my head between two fingers and asked, looking at me in the mirror, “Está bien?” I couldn’t see clearly, so I had to reach for my glasses, set them back on my face and check.
“Sí. Perfecto,” I answered, forcing myself to smile, then I returned my glasses to the counter.
Ten seconds later, she repeated the question about the length on a different part of my head and, again, but with greater annoyance, I grabbed my glasses, checked in the mirror, reaffirmed, “Sí, sí. Por toda mi cabeza.” I gestured such with my hand, then set the glasses back on the counter and cursed at myself for ever stepping through her door. Twice more, she grabbed sections of my hair and asked the same question and I thought to myself, This is one of the stupidest people I have ever met. And with gathering foam at the mouth, I again donned my glasses and repeated, “Sí. Por toda mi cabeza! POR FAVOR!”
I was about to get up from the chair, tear off the cape, slam sixty cents on the counter and make my way back home, but it was too late.
She had already cut several clumps of hair and, if I stopped the process now, my head would look like it had been styled with a hacksaw.
She must have sensed I was suffering through a physical or mental catastrophe and was about to self-immolate, for she started patting my head like she would a colicky baby. This softened my impulse to rise from the chair, but I still contemplated how I could escape this situation without too much aesthetic damage to my head, when a song from probably a quarter of a century ago started playing. I couldn’t remember much about the song or who had performed it—I stopped listening to radio music sometime in the 1970s—yet it seemed familiar. And from the excited reaction of the two women to the introductory guitar notes, and the way the boss automatically turned up the volume, I surmised it must still be getting regular airplay here.
The singer started in a soft, sweetly tender voice with enough of the lilt of Hibernia that I knew it was an Irish group performing. But from the way the two hairdressers were acting—dancing in place, their eyes bright with smiles—it was obvious the song must have been a big hit in Mexico. Even though I was both a native speaker of English and had been to Ireland enough times to become familiar with its various accents, I was able to understand only a few words here and there: “Silence in your head... Not my family...” So I was mystified as to how these Mexican women had any notion of what the song was about, yet they were singing along to it with great enthusiasm, if not lyrical accuracy.
Their mutual enthusiasm and the mitigating effect of their soothing feminine voices changed the atmosphere in the shop entirely. And in a most seductive, most nurturing way, as if my barber’s main goal was no longer to cut my hair, but to calm my turbulent soul, her compassionate voice entered my consciousness singing what seemed to me the sweetest, most romantic song I had heard since Jackson Browne’s “Linda Paloma.” This woman was whispering endearing words of love to me. In fact, her head was bent and she was mouthing the lyrics, or her version of the lyrics, directly into my right ear, her lips so close that the heat of her breath added another dimension of emotional warmth that brought solace to my frayed psyche.
It quickly became obvious to me why the song was so popular. Because there was great power in the Irish singer’s voice, with multiple spontaneous changes in pitch and intensity as she angled her vocal cords into a fearsome exposition of heartache and pain, her voice breaking, at times, out of raw, guttural emotion. And, at other times, in sean-nós-style keening, she bent the notes into a Celtic yodel, straining every fiber of her being in the throes of some ancient tribal ritual to bring back the dead or, if that were not possible, to at least expiate the sufferings of the bereaved. But singing along with her was my gentle Imelda, giving of herself equally in an effusion of pathos—of maternal healing power—erasing my hell of the past two weeks and guiding me
Mexico City Barber School Haircut- Alexander Lowell
back towards the innocent, idealistic self of my youth. And strangely, as the song progressed to the chorus, the tenor of Imelda’s voice turned amorous. As she seductively whispered the words she thought the singer was voicing—“Stop it, stop it, stop it”—they morphed into a teasing lover’s entreaty to please stop kissing her—though what she was actually expressing was: “O, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. You’re putting me in ecstasy.”
As a result, by the second chorus, my feeling had begun to grow from a deep gratitude for the empathy this woman was wholeheartedly offering me—a man she had never met before, but one who was apparently suffering some kind of trauma—to the beginnings of sensual arousal. Gone from my internal vision was the initial image of her wide, tired face and her squarish body, and I had to muzzle the impulse to turn around in the chair, embrace her and begin to kiss her until she begged me to stop it, stop it, stop it.
All of my life, I had been able to fall in love only with women who attracted me with their physical beauty, and it had never lasted. Was it possible for me to love and cherish a woman who looked like Imelda, or was I too superficial in my physical preferences? I realized that the love that had suddenly sprung in my heart for this frumpilyattired Mexican hairdresser was joyful and pure—the unconditional love of agape as opposed to the baser eros.
I couldn’t tell now if she was still cutting my hair, but it didn’t matter. She had transformed me. She had eliminated every negative thought or emotion within my being. By the end of the song, I exulted in a state of grace I hadn’t felt in many years.
When she set her tools down and pointed to the mirror for my approval, I reached for my glasses again, but this time without a jot of annoyance. I was a changed man. The cranky gringo misanthrope who had walked into the shop forty-five minutes ago had become, once again, a caring, empathetic member of the human race, and I saw that, in addition to what she had gifted me spiritually, she had also produced an excellent haircut. To her surprise, I kissed her on both cheeks, Mediterranean-style, and placed in her hand not sixty cents but ten dollars.
I dropped off my laptop at a shop in the same neighborhood that suddenly appeared when I walked to the next corner under the El, then took a taxi home and slept soundly for twelve hours.
A week later, fully recovered from what I had learned was Covid, I Googled the lyrics I remembered from the song that my barber had sung to me (“silence in my head, not my family”) and I found that the song was “Zombie” by The Cranberries. I also learned that it was not in any way a love song, but rather, a protest against
the violence of The Troubles in Ireland, specifically the bombing of a pub in England that killed two young boys who had been innocently shopping for candy in the street. And the singer, the great Dolores O’Riordan, had not been singing “stop it, stop it, stop it,” as I and the hairdressers had thought, but “zombie, zombie, zombie,” which was what she was calling the perpetrators of the bombing and the British soldiers occupying Northern Ireland “with their tanks and their bombs and their guns.”
Dear Imelda of the Barber School of Moctezuma, second chair, I send you kisses and many gringo abrazos from Bắc Ninh, Vietnam, where, at seventy years old, I have at last found the love of my life. The Opiate, Spring
Letting You Know I’ve Arrived
Renshaw
It seems I’m meant to write. More specifically, I’m meant to write this. But then again, I’m coasting the gentle descent from the high of a fifty-milligram Delta 8 THC gummy taken about four and a half hours ago, which seems to complicate—or clarify—things.
The radio hums softly in the background. I’m curled up on my papasan chair, a Craigslist victory I often congratulate myself on. Its cushion, a ripe, satisfying yellow, brightens the room in a way that feels both indulgent and sensible. Beside me, a 1970s-style floor lamp—another thrifted treasure—spills warm light over my shoulder. Leo Tolstoy, my German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix, sprawls across the rug, as though the weight of his loyalty makes him heavier than he is. The black shelves along the wall stand orderly, bearing their rainbow of books, nearly all second-hand acquisitions from libraries or dusty used bookstores. I buy books from Amazon now, though it pains me—a concession to curiosity and convenience. Amazon, I think, should perhaps fund my burgeoning wish list for Christmas. Amazon?
The walls carry their own stories. There’s the photograph of my graduation, where I’m clutching a red wallet. It never fails to strike me—a detail born from pettiness; my ex-husband refused to hold it while I crossed the stage to collect my diploma. Around it, prints and paintings, each holding their own biography. Like the sketch I found
in Key West: a Carnival stop before a moment of foolishness with the man who sold it. He called the artist—D. Perez—and the three of us talked briefly, a fragment now preserved in charcoal and memory. Another print came from San Juan, where a street photographer led me through La Perla, clicking away as I posed against the sea and winding streets. When the day ended, beers consumed and camaraderie teetering into something more fragile, he gave me his phone number instead of the photos. He never replied to my texts, but the absence has aged into a story that I enjoy telling.
My favorite, though, is a portrait of an old woman with deep, velvety wrinkles. She covers half her face, but I never notice that. Instead, she reminds me of my great-grandmother, a figure both fierce and frail in memory—a young widow, with land and a minor child, attracting a host of opportunistic predators circling her small empire. That portrait, like my great-grandmother’s memory, holds the room together.
Today has been a remarkable day. I woke up late, close to noon, dragging fragments of dreams behind me—flickers of scenarios my brain had conjured while supposedly at rest. Leo, ever patient, watched me stir and waited for the signal. When I rose, so did he, and we began the day together.
One of life’s newfound pleasures is my morning ritual—instant coffee made decadent with oat milk and pumpkin spice creamer. How had I lived so long without it? The weather outside was flawless, the kind of November beauty that coaxes gratitude out of you. Starbucks, I thought, might consider sponsoring this moment of revelation. Starbucks?
Then came the Friday email, jolting me from my ease. A literary magazine has accepted my first-ever submission. An essay finished on Monday, sent out by Tuesday to three places, two of them heavyweights at CAA. I wonder, does CAA want to talk now?
The afternoon blurred with activity—text messages flying, Google searches spiraling into manifestations and debates with my best friend, who I call the miracle of my life. Should I ask the editor outright to nominate my piece for the Pushcart Prize? A bold move, perhaps too bold, but, then again, aren’t dreams meant to stretch beyond their usual bounds? I’ve been accused, lovingly, of dreaming too big. That, I’ve resolved, is changing because my dreams were too small.
So, yes, to the Pushcart Prize. I am willing it into existence even
Letting You Know I’ve Arrived - Renshaw
as I control my crazy and send a polite email thanking the editor. My brunch is leftovers—basmati rice and chickpea curry, the go-tos of my all-time favorite cuisine. I wonder about the decades I disowned my history, and I am grateful to be in the position to look back at the person I was and feel compassion. And the person I am is someone who, for years, wanted to be the cool customer typing away in a coffee shop, but on the few occasions I tried working or reading in that crowded atmosphere, there was no enjoyment. Did I mention things are changing?
“As an alcoholic, I’ve long harbored a secret yearning for the kind of bartender intimacy that films suggest should exist. The confidant behind the bar who remembers your drink, your troubles, maybe even your name. It wasn’t something I’d ever encountered, not in any real sense. Before I came to Austin, bartenders rarely saw me beyond the transaction.”
I am a writer now, and it’s wonderful to write or otherwise research in a bar’s ripe environment. I have been California sober for two years as of this past September, and enjoy my non-alcoholic Guinness and IPAs, sipped casually while I live out my dreams. And so, I take the short drive to my favorite bar, outfitted in a flannel dress shirt, part of a recent first-time clothes haul from Goodwill, combat boots and gold hoop earrings from Amazon. Amazon, buddy?
The bar is quiet, nearly deserted, as it often is at three-thirty in the afternoon. My spot is free—the one I prefer, tucked just far enough from the center of things to offer a semblance of privacy, but still close enough to catch the pulse of the room. It pleases me to find it available, as it often is. I’ve always taken comfort in having a favorite place, whether it’s at a bar, in a restaurant or even aboard a ship. The
predictability of it feels like a small, steady gift.
I unload my belongings methodically: my laptop, perched on a book that presently serves as its ever-faithful resting place; my keys with the panther keychain I once charmed off a vendor somewhere in South America; my phone, glowing faintly with notifications I’ll probably ignore; my lighter, a temperamental tool whose recent failures I’ve started taking personally.
Jack, the bartender, glances over. “Hey there,” he says with the ease of routine. “How’s your day going?”
This, I’ve noticed, is a new development. Jack, consistent now in his greetings, wasn’t always so attentive. I’d had to nudge him into this rhythm. Once, I chided him—casually, though pointedly—for the way he always seemed to chat with others at the bar while offering me little more than the basic mechanics of service.
“You know,” I had said, not looking up, “it wouldn’t kill you to ask me how I’m doing once in a while.”
He’d laughed, taken aback but not unkindly, and ever since, he’s made the effort. It’s small, but it feels significant.
As an alcoholic, I’ve long harbored a secret yearning for the kind of bartender intimacy that films suggest should exist. The confidant behind the bar who remembers your drink, your troubles, maybe even your name. It wasn’t something I’d ever encountered, not in any real sense. Before I came to Austin, bartenders rarely saw me beyond the transaction. There were always exceptions, of course, but Alabama and Arkansas—well, I suppose those places don’t require much explanation.
Here, though, things have shifted. Or perhaps I’ve shifted. It’s hard to tell sometimes where the change begins.
Between phone calls (missed, made and not regretted), Marlboros lit and stubbed out in quick succession and Guinness nursed with the kind of half-hearted reverence reserved for old habits, the day eased into twilight. It wasn’t just any day; it was the kind of day that carried its weight in small triumphs, enough to feel a certain satisfaction settle in, like the first chill of evening air. The news had been good— something to share, to relish in the telling—and though the pride of it felt fleeting, it left a glow.
Back at home, Leo greeted me as he always does, his separation anxiety rising like a tide the moment my absence stretches too long. Four months together, and his whining on my return has softened,
Letting You Know I’ve Arrived - Renshaw
though not disappeared. Tonight, a simple ritual disarms it. A bowl of kibble—the clink of it against ceramic—and his relief is palpable. I watch him eat with the single-minded focus I envy some days. It gives me just enough time to slip into the kitchen, to fix myself something before settling in.
I made it to the couch with time to spare—twelve minutes, in fact. Precision is a comfort, the kind of coping mechanism that fills the spaces where chaos might otherwise creep. I let myself exhale as I sink into the cushions. Outside, the light fades quickly now; inside, the glow of the television promises the kind of distraction that’s more necessary than indulgent.
Television, or art in any form, really, has been one of the few reasons I didn’t end it in those darker years. The pull of the screen, of stories unfolding before my eyes, was a tether—something distant yet grounding, a reason to linger for one more episode, one more film. Music did this too, and books, paintings, even the simple beauty of conversation when it found its way to me. They offered moments where the ache of living felt manageable, contained or at least not entirely unbearable.
And so, I sat with the anticipation of a live event streaming on Netflix, my dinner in one hand and the remote in the other. It’s ridiculous, perhaps, how much hope I place in these small things— hope for escape, for a moment’s reprieve from the weight of thought and memory. But isn’t that what art is supposed to do? To give us space to breathe when life feels suffocating?
Leo curls up at my feet, and I think about all the ways this might be enough. Maybe, I think idly, Netflix would like to collaborate on something. It’s a fleeting thought, half-formed, but one that lingers like the smoke from the Marlboros I’ve resolved, many times, to quit. Netflix, you up?
Rita Moreno’s documentary was saved to my list, and I decided it would do for the twelve minutes of spillover before the live event began. I pressed play, thinking it would be a distraction, a filler. But then the evening swelled into something more. In those seventeen minutes—of Rita Moreno on the screen, of her story spilling out in a voice that carried both defiance and grace—I found myself caught off guard. The shape of the day, so neatly contained until then, shifted.
The transition to the live broadcast was hurried, my attention pulled now to a woman speaking about the significance of an event
I barely understood, and the players preparing for the match. And in the rush of images and voices, something unexpected clicked into place. It was as though I saw, for the first time, the threads of my own life tangled and undone, the lenses through which I had long viewed my accident of birth, my choices, my disasters. How unfair they were, these lenses—not just to those who’d touched my life, but to myself, the self I always claimed I was trying to protect.
There was my great-grandmother, veiled in a story I’d barely acknowledged, her history casted off as though I feared it might stain
“Television, or art in any form, really, has been one of the few reasons I didn’t end it in those darker years. The pull of the screen, of stories unfolding before my eyes, was a tether—something distant yet grounding, a reason to linger for one more episode, one more film. Music did this too, and books, paintings... They offered moments where the ache of living felt manageable, contained or at least not entirely unbearable.”
my own. There were the narratives I’d stitched together with bright thread, each event underscored with the same phrase: the deck was stacked against me. And yet, in Moreno’s voice, in the clarity of her reflections, I saw the flaws in my own stories.
Yes, there was the man in a position of power who had sneered that I smelled like curry. That happened. But hadn’t it been just as likely that I did smell like curry that day? Yes, I’d been fired countless times, but wasn’t my attitude—prickly, defensive, impossible—at least partly to blame? Yes, my ex-husband had his faults, his cruelties, but hadn’t I also been a partner riddled with contradictions?
My life was a shadowed thing, filled with long silences and The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
sharp edges. But wasn’t there agency, even in that? Weren’t there ways I could have acted, intervened, chosen? I’d been an immigrant in a new country, disoriented by the shock of it, and I’d adopted its citizenship. But had I ever fully participated in the life of it, the work of belonging? And then the smaller details arose, their weight no less pressing. My miserable chases after men, which were really just a scramble for some version of home when I hadn’t yet found peace in my own skin. The bad tipping, which I later justified by the indignities of a twodollar-an-hour job I’d briefly held. My disdain for being branded and stereotyped as a “model minority,” all the while knowing how far from exemplary my life had often been.
I sat there, the evening deepening around me, the glow of the screen softening its sharp edges. The stories I told myself weren’t lies, but they weren’t whole truths either. And that realization was its own kind of reckoning.
Here’s the blurry line: a literary magazine has accepted my first-ever submission. The piece captures a moment of vulnerability— my moment. Fresh from intensive therapy, I weigh a lifelong struggle with emotional eating, recklessness and the pull of strangers. Memories surface: shoplifting, slipping past hotel tabs, the quiet havoc of impulse. Symptoms, not sins. A life shaped by trauma, by the ways it carved through my choices.
The essay wrestles with that tension—old instincts, new resolve. How much of identity is impulse? How much is choice? The tone: candid, wry, confessional. A mirror for those who have stumbled, who have sought meaning in hunger of all kinds.
It resonates. It feels true. But is this all there is to me? Is this the only story I have to tell? How do I reconcile who I am, who I can be and who I have been? These selves, fluid and stubborn, circling each other like leaves caught in an eddy. Creative. Dreamer. Change-maker. Thought leader. Icon. Storyteller. Cheater. Liar. Asshole. The words pile up, each taking a turn at prominence, each defining me as much as the others deny me altogether.
For years, I prided myself on being someone who thought outside the box—a risk-taker, a force of nature who resisted containment. I would say it often, sometimes with a wink, other times with a conviction that didn’t invite contradiction. Yet now, with the clarity that comes from both distance and regret, I see that I was never really outside anything. The box was always there, and I’d folded myself neatly into
105.
its dimensions without ever realizing it.
It’s not that I wasn’t capable of original thought or bold action. It’s that I let the story I told about myself take over. The image of the creative, the dreamer, the change-maker—these became their own kind of enclosure, a structure built of both truth and invention, keeping me safe from the messy contradictions I didn’t want to confront.
Inside that box, I found plenty of room for excuses. When I cheated, I was “seeking my truth.” When I lied, I told myself it was for the greater good. And when I behaved selfishly—well, wasn’t I allowed that, after all I’d endured?
There was always a reason, always a story I could tell to make it all make sense. I was the storyteller, after all. And storytellers are skilled at making even the ugliest things beautiful, or at least bearable. ***
But stories have weight, even the ones we tell ourselves. Perhaps especially those. And over time, the weight of my own narratives began to press against the edges of the box. The contradictions sharpened. The stories stopped holding. I began to see myself not as the hero, but as someone peripheral—one of those characters whose motives are unclear, whose choices can’t quite be justified.
And yet, isn’t that the nature of being human? To contain multitudes, as Whitman said. To be both the hero and the villain, the dreamer and the fool. To be someone who changes the world and also someone who wounds the people closest to them. It’s all in there, tangled up and impossible to separate cleanly.
If I’m honest, I don’t know what reconciliation looks like. I don’t know how to bridge the gap between who I am and who I’ve been, except to try to live better in the present. To tell truer stories. To accept that the box was never the problem—it was my refusal to see it, to acknowledge its limits and to decide what to do with them.
Maybe that’s enough. To carry the weight of my contradictions and let them shape me, without letting them define me entirely. To keep trying, even if I don’t fully know how.
***
In my mind, I am a folk heroine. Not the kind who graces textbooks or Wikipedia pages—one can find “folk hero,” but no “folk heroine”—not yet, anyway. Wikipedia, I joke to myself, might want to revise that oversight. I am a contributing consumer too. Wikipedia, yes?
I am the heroine I needed. I am my unique version of Rita
Letting You Know I’ve Arrived - Renshaw
Moreno, Martha Stewart, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alex Cooper, Xochitl Gonzalez, Viola Davis, Arundhati Roy, Kamala Das, Amrita SherGil, Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, Erin Foster, Reese Witherspoon, Salma Hayek, Sarah Gertude Shapiro, Mindy Kaling, Oprah Winfrey. Ladies, except those dead, care to connect?
I’m also forty-one, an American now, but India was home for my first thirty years. My past is raw: sexual abuse, domestic violence, trauma that left scars. I know loneliness, the kind that stays in the room long after everyone else leaves. I’ve faced the darkness, lived in its shadow, and come out on the other side. Now I’m ready. My voice is stripped down, no frills—just truth. I’ve burned, and I’ve risen. I want to write stories that cut deep, that linger. And I think you’ll want to read them.
The stories I carry come studded with the names of companies that haven’t paid me. Not yet, anyway. And yes, I disclose freely that this entire train of thought was brought to you by a Delta 8 THC gummy. Sometimes, that’s just how it goes.
POETRY
March 2000
Kathryn Adisman
Outside on the streets of New York City: the Diallo demonstrations.
Inside the hospital room at the Cancer Center: My father has shut his eyes on the world.
Next to the untouched breakfast lunch and dinner trays— Unread newspapers pile up, with news of the world my father is leaving behind. He’s packed up his troubles... ...and he’s heading out, big hand waving: “Goodbye! Good Luck!”
I hear him shout, and he’s off! He’s the lucky one now. We’re still here.
The Curse of Ingrid Bergman
Kathryn Adisman
I was born the year of the great international scandal: the extramarital love affair between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. It was a bad sign! My mother never forgave me. She had Ingrid Bergman on the brain.
Whenever my mother looked at me, I was associated in her mind with this intrusion of real life into fantasy. Ingrid Bergman turned out to be a human being, not a doll.
Ingrid Bergman was held over me: an ideal and a warning. When I was eight, my mother said, You have no neck; you look like Ingrid Bergman. Later, when I sprout a swan neck, my mother said, Stand up straight! God forbid you’re taller than Ingrid Bergman.
No wonder I slouch! I’m maintaining my Ingrid Bergman stature. Ingrid Bergman was five-foot-eight, according to my mother. Everything would turn out okay, if only I didn’t turn out like Ingrid Bergman: no neck, too tall and, finally, a loose woman. Blame it all on Ingrid Bergman!
Star-Spangled Nightmare
Ron Kolm
A large ocean-going freighter loaded with tons of merch lost power and drifted towards the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, crashing into it, and causing it to collapse into an artistic tangle of steel.
The name of the boat was “Dalí” so it hit me that perhaps Salvador was trying to reach out to us from beyond the grave in an effort to keep his art alive but workmen finally arrived and removed the wreckage leaving nothing.
I Try Not to Grow Old
Margaret R. Sáraco
There are only a few wrinkles but hair is graying and thinning, dyed every couple of months leaves a Cruella de Vil patch of gray racing stripe even my eyebrows are turning white plucking them increases anxiety. And that’s just my hair.
How much is too much?
I have more of this to look forward to. Joint aches, discussing poor health with friends.
Hey, I already survived cancer but do not wish to tempt fate I will erase that line if need be
Comfort me, I see the road is narrowing.
Letter to Adulthood
Margaret R. Sáraco
I
At 10, I had my first test in school. I studied as soon as the teacher told us until the moment my pencil touched the paper. I got 100 but never rid myself of the terror.
II
In my younger days, fear of failure haunted me. I was ridiculed for getting perfect scores on everything. Children kept their distance as I ate my way through anxiety.
III
Graded, grading, assessing defined my life for fifty-three years. After earning a bachelor’s, two master’s degrees and teaching for twenty-seven years, I am free.
V
I wake every morning knowing no one will test me, and there is no need for me to test anyone.
VI
I take medical tests and sometimes fail. I haven’t figured out a way to ace them.
Death, Then Grief
Margaret R. Sáraco
Hold your heart in Here, let me help you Your salty tears cover my body There is no end
Grief and misguided wisdom Have partnered with Death again Two, lowly companions on the road to the Elysian Fields or River Styx.
Here, let me hold you Come into my arms I will keep them at bey Use my courage against them.
Here, let me hold you Come into my open arms I will stay with you Always by your side.
Teal
Steve Denehan
That we have agreed to meet here is down, purely, to convenience
early, I sit in the far corner away from the door away from the dull, damp day
there are six other people in the pub all men a jacket hangs on the back of an empty chair, so maybe seven all of the men have dark hair and wear dark clothes two sets of two sit together the others sit, like me, alone
maybe they are waiting too we all are, I suppose
the walls and ceiling are the same colour teal, I think it is called thickly painted
there is one light a bare bulb, and a framed faded Guinness poster on the wall it is quiet besides two hushed conversations and the airbrakes of buses, audible through the single-pane windows
I swirl my drink, hypnotised by the small whirlpool that appears
I sense someone looking at me
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
I look up his dark face is lined, and frozen in a bare-toothed grimace I hold his gaze until he looks away I should never have come
And Hundreds Just Like Him
Steve Denehan
That he knows me seems, more than anything to annoy him
first, a hesitant hello that I return
before the proclamation I know you!
followed by a question a series of questions Was it school? No...was it?
You’re Johnny’s brother, are you? Do you get the 120 to Dublin? Where do you drink?
Wait, don’t tell me... before, finally, statements I definitely know you. That’s going to annoy me now. You’re not one of the Murrays... It’s not from mass, that’s for sure!
the queue shuffles forward his turn comes, he pays a breakfast roll and a Red Bull walks out with a smiling reminder that he knows me from somewhere we have never met in school, on the bus in the pub, at mass have never crossed paths at all he does not know me, but I know him
How I Tried to Leave You
Steve Denehan
There are very few people that I hate more than you
I look you in the eye you look back
I know you know what I am thinking how I tried to leave you how you would not let me go how I hurt you to see just how much it is you can take look at you how old you have become how pathetic, yet you are still here you parasite you virus you cancer why do you continue to inflict yourself on me on everyone
just do us all a favour and disappear
cotton quiet, but I know you know what I am thinking The Opiate, Spring Vol.
I shake my head you shake your head
I reach up pull a cord the bathroom mirror light blinks off returning me to darkness
The Music That Learns Us
Dale Champlin
—after Rodney Terich Leonard
While she’s facing the blackboard, I make all the faces I want behind my teacher’s back. She’s whistling now, Way down upon the Swanee River, her garble of notes almost too sweet to bear fall into my ears like a haint of the Old South, each note, the way my dog Bella whines when I forget to feed her on the dime. I think of the last time Rodney kissed me under the bleachers, his cornrows oiled and shining in the filtered dust drifting down like starlight. How a universe of flavors brushed my lips: Sunday dinner’s grace all salty and buttery, the texture of sweet potato and pork fat, simmered just right in Grandmama’s skillet, the faint scent of Bella’s flappy ear after her coconut shampoo bath, I always bathe her soon as she rolls in raccoon shit, the feeling of falling asleep in the back seat of Granddaddy’s powder blue Chrysler, California Dreamin’ playing real low and crackly on the radio. In retrospect, school day melodies hang like cared-for cashmere in the cedar closet or the last bite of bastilla phyllo chicken pie, my ear a poor fool like nobody else’s fool.
Highway Motel
Mark Katrinak
Wi-Fi, free coffee, cable, internet— who would stay otherwise, other than me, besides the shapely blonde whose eyes and mine met equally at open gates of sin?
A painting of a homestead above the bed— cows at pasture, the chickens in the run, bonneted woman tending to the fields who has no business being in this room.
Been here a week. The room next door in need of turnstile, many passing through both night and afternoon. I hesitate to go outside to smoke a half-left cigarette.
I leave one misery and find another one just up the highway, only to return and find a lot of flashing lights, a blonde with her back turned, a host of vacant rooms.
Purple, Blue and Yellowing
Mark Katrinak
Although they’ve long since disappeared, fading into a gray obscurity, the purple, blue and yellowing hold true testimonies of wounds, the wounds that curse the nurse, chase dark birds out of lovely trees. It’s known that purpleheart will fade to brown in time, subjected to the light. Padauk will dull to sepia, unless this furniture is placed in darkly-curtained rooms. I heard the kings of blue and purple arguing, what tint of coloring they should inflict after the subject faced his darkest thoughts, was struck again by diagnostic consequence.
Stones
Mark Katrinak
In shallow waters fewer faces, wings reflected. Stones show through the shallowness and trouble feet from shore to kayak, buoy.
A ripple in the river slippage caused, a hillside’s dip, a mountain’s year-long groan, or shifts our attitudes attributed to breakups, what was thought inseparable, what’s now a dark collage, photographs, those moments frozen—picture-perfect—gone.
Insistent rains carved couloir; oblong stones would loosen any second, send what’s with it down unknowingly upon our lives.
In drier years the sunlight touches stones more openly; wind carves the surfaces and lack of running water stuns the heart
when hearts are shuttered in the dark— there’s not an opening for light to cross; the arteries are similar to stones.
Cosmetic
Mark Katrinak
Tampering with the odometer to show less evidence of wear and tear— precision tools, a lift somewhere. Potential paramour, beware!
The weather’s rough. A bit of rust. But mind wants young presented on its clock, machinations moving hour hands backward upon a ruse of make-believe.
At some point hard pressure’s applied upon the thinning brakes, or obstacles necessitate a quick turning of the wheel leaving the driver and the passengers stranded upon the overpass. Faces revealed when minute hand befalls the hour. The Opiate, Spring
Famous Film Director
Leanne Grabel
When the famous film director came to my classroom in the lockdown facility for emotionally disabled teenage girls, I got in trouble with the principal. I was always getting in trouble with the principal.
The famous film director talked about his new movie that was about emotionally disabled teenage girls. The principal thought it was inappropriate to talk to a roomful of emotionally disabled teenage girls about a movie about emotionally disabled teenage girls.
When the famous film director asked for questions, Sienna waved her hand dramatically. “Can you give me money to buy my mom a kidney?” she asked. I oof’d. Then I glanced quickly at the principal. He was standing in the back like an obelisk. He looked down at his ugly brown shoes and shook his head.
The famous film director moved slowly. Just like his movies. He shuffled his feet. He put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know,” he whispered. Then he slowly turned around and faced the wall. I faced the film director, and then the wall. I never faced the principal.
Someone once told me the film director was not that generous. I don’t know. He did show up to my classroom. And I guess if I ever need an organ transplant (God forbid), I could call him and see what happens.
Illustration by Leanne Grabel
Wool
Leanne Grabel
I was always small. I already told you that. In a big hurry from day one. Once, in kindergarten, I decided to slip into the bathroom while walking back from recess. The teacher kept walking and so did most of the class. Only Shirley and Dana stayed back. I waved them in. It was my first bold stance. First act of defiance.
My kindergarten teacher was French. She wore black wool cardigans buttoned in the back. And there was something so French about her lips. They were lopsided and wavy. Gymnastic and wry. Only Shirley came into the bathroom. We were dizzy with fear and thrill. I was giggling uncontrollably.
Then Madame Caron appeared and ordered us back into line in English and French. Retournez dans la queue! Tout de suite!
Shirley and I both had to stand in the corner. I had to do twice as much time as Shirley, though, since it was my idea. I think I only got in trouble three times in school. This was the first time—it made me feel strong and excited.
When I got home, I don’t remember getting in trouble. My father loved defiance. He was defiance. He probably gave me a dollar.
I wore my favorite dress that day. It was red plaid, light wool. With a sewn-in dickey. And there were about sixty tiny buttons all the way down the back. They were red and shiny like perfect little cherries. But the problem with that dress was all that buttoning. My mother always got irritated. Actually, the bigger problem was the wool. There was a very small window for wool in Stockton. And a very small window for dickeys.
And I realize now I am not as courageous as I once was. I only defy in sour whispers. The quietness, I suppose, cancels it all out.
Illustration by Leanne Grabel
Botox
Leanne Grabel
I read of an experiment in which psychologists Botoxed sad people’s faces so those sad people were unable to frown or cry. No downward or lopsided expressions. The doctors wanted to see if sadness could be controlled from the outside in. The results were dramatic. No frown, no down.
Now doctors are contemplating other interventions: Botoxing the muscles that cower to cure fear, Botoxing the teeth-baring muscles to cure hate, Botoxing sections of the brain to keep it balanced.
The doctors were starting to work on curing despair but no one could agree on which muscles to Botox. Then they found a tiny muscle in the foot that does absolutely nothing at all. They discussed Botoxing it anyway to see if muscles follow the rules of double negatives.
This reminds me. I saw a woman at the store the other day and her face didn’t move at all. I thought she was a tree.
Illustration by Leanne Grabel
America
Leanne Grabel
My friends are dying. Aren’t yours? It seems like weekly. I hope it’s not contagious. I want to die later, after I learn how to breathe without wearing my shoulders like bunny ears. I want to wait until my chest stays open for most of the day and my hands don’t clench or claw. I want some days during which soft is the first word you’d use to describe me—well, maybe the second. No. I don’t want to die today. The weather is perfect. The flowers are budding. But still, that cramp. My country is dying. It’s melting like cheese. Yes, exactly like that. Orange and oily.
O. America. You’re breaking our hearts.
Illustration by Leanne Grabel
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
Drawing a Pumpkin With Mom
Leanne Grabel
I’m not creative. Not like you. My mother always said that. She made fun of her hands for their lack of dexterity. She made fun of her mind for its lack of rapidity. I didn’t like having a mother like that. I wanted a mother who was proud and able.
It was probably Nanny’s fault. Nanny was snobby. She held her pinkie high in the air while her fingers curled like imagination. She kept disdain for the clumsy in the pocket of her floral apron. Nanny roasted briskets dripping in beef juice. She stewed plums in baths of butter and brown sugar. Her bundt cakes were riddled with raisins.
I thought she was perfect. But, of course, my mother didn’t. No daughter does.
And now it’s sixty years later. Now I sit with my mother in the activity room. I sit smack-dab up against her. She never used to like that, being touched. We stare at a pumpkin on the table. We draw it for October’s Arts & Crafts. I have to shade my eyes from the shocks of Phyllis’ enthusiasm. Phyllis is a volunteer. And aflame with her goodness and giving.
My mother leans over her paper. She draws a perfect pumpkin. Her pumpkin even has slight arced ridges. The drawing is perfectly shaded and evenly spaced. I can’t believe it. “What a great pumpkin,” I say. “I thought you couldn’t draw.”
“Really?” she says. That day, my mother was almost ninety-seven. Her hands were covered in tiny brown continents. “You know I wanted to be a ballerina. But Nanny told me I was clumsy.”
In Skilled Nursing, my mother is the most graceful of all. And she finally started eating generously—muffins and French fries and
cookies and butter! First time. Yes, in her nineties, my mother grew harmless and plump.
Oh, she was probably harmless before, but I didn’t get it.
Illustration by Leanne Grabel
The Hippie Across the Street
DS Maolalaí
they’d gotten married in America when he went over to work there and had lived for ten years in San Francisco on a hill you could see the bridge off apparently. and he gave her two boys born within a year, and she dressed them like chimney sweeps in new handmade clothing and she in return painted a portrait of him standing with his arm on the mantel.
when he brought her back to Ireland, though, something had changed, and within three months she had a bruise on her eyebrow, a burn on her arm, two cracked ribs and a collection of broken vases which would rival the Ming Dynasty.
she moved out of the house then, with the two boys and a new baby but for some reason remained on in Dublin, renting a little modern building across the street where my parents lived. she stayed there in that place for another six months over which time the local birds and squirrels learned where to go to find nuts and seeds left in little saucers on the porch and a selection of very handy men learned where to go if they ever felt like fixing a refrigerator motor or putting up a shelf to hold small enchanted objects and jars of colored sand.
I never saw her going into the house with less than two bags of fake stage jewelry
or a sack filled with round sea-washed rocks which she talked about as if each had a soul, and one room got so full of dressmaker’s fabric that you couldn’t close the door from the hallway and eventually it would be labeled a fire hazard and result in her eviction.
but for those six months I got very used to looking out the window in the morning while I was getting dressed for college and seeing her pottering around in the garden in delicate homemade gypsy outfits surrounded by the glimmering of birds.
Breakdowns & Breakthroughs
Edward L. Canavan
all in time or nothing
vents ripped open and stitched thin lines traced and erased
tunnel vision horizons locked and out of view
until the bigger picture is filled in more meantime than downtime these days
a seemingly seamless parade of endless waiting for other shoes to drop
finally crazy enough to understand i will never be well.
Waste of Ages
Edward L. Canavan
manufactured misery handed down from generation to generation
we are born bright and whole slowly dimmed and smashed to pieces by our brutal inheritance
fear, trauma, violence, ignorance...
denied the promised light of arrival by the dark beast of a history we had no say in
and they wonder why we rebel, push back and seek our own way
our time diminished by having to outgrow the lies taught as truth
hoping the now that we have finally discovered isn’t already too late.
Beyond Reason
Edward L. Canavan
random at best this animal life down beneath the core the rage and the chaos that birthed a bursting black hole filled with too much nothing and still, to this day, the violent impetus of our coming to be seems much more prevalent than the goodness the soul must embody in order for us to remain.
Gobi Dream
John Delaney
I’m following a car on a faint trail through the desert. There is nothing to see. It’s a blank slate. And yet I’ve passed nomads living in gers, and cattle, sheep and goats thriving in herds. They find something to eat, move on, survive. Don’t consider defeat.
A country of mountain ranges and steppes rolling and vast, this desert. Self-sufficient. Chinggis Khan roused a power from them that conquered the world. That’s what a dream is— something born of nothing. Here, as I watch the dust rise, improbable, remarkable things materialize.
*The Mongol Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the largest contiguous empire in history. The Gobi Desert occupies 500,000 square miles.
Metamorphosis
Megan Cartwright
We are the conglomeration of colonisation. Four-billion-year-old bedrock bears our weight. A mewling litter, lithified and blind, our combined malformation is worn down by the tides.
Breccia wolves stand in opposition, snarls honed to dislocate boulders and shatter stone. Angular howls splinter bone, marrow pooling in eardrums and lungs. Pressure builds, thrums— metamorphosis has begun.
Unboxing
Megan Cartwright
Hey guys, welcome to my video. Join me as I unbox my trauma. Look how beautifully wrapped it is— and here’s a personalised note. It says,
I birthed your children. FROM MY BODY! Unboxed your progeny. Your stomach swelled fat, you think you know labour. You are labour.
I started watching horror films in my thirties. Elevated horror— the kind that’s meant to make you check your privilege. I wasn’t afraid anymore because I’d lived the plotlines.
Remember to like (please, like me), share (like we shared the bed we bought) and subscribe (your doctrine, not mine).
CRITICISM
Blasé About Trauma As Only a Californian Can Be: Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life, Like Any Other
Genna Rivieccio
Long before it was easy to glamorize the idea of being a “nepo baby” (even if it means enduring “the pain” of being constantly called that), Darcy O’Brien debunked the myth of what it means to be the child of celebrity parents. Particularly fading celebrity parents. And yes, O’Brien even published his “fictional” account, A Way of Life, Like Any Other, before Christina Crawford unleashed Mommie Dearest (released one year after O’Brien’s novel).
As much a coming-of-age tale as it is a riches to rags story, O’Brien filters his real-life parents, Marguerite Churchill and George O’Brien, through the eyes of Salty—the stand-in for Darcy. Which is why
the disclaimer that precedes the novel is so cheeky: “Any resemblance between persons living or dead and characters in this fiction is purely fortuitous, except that famous persons appear under their own names.” The title of the book itself is taken from Seamus Heaney, who, per the quote attribution on the page before the first chapter, apparently said, “It’s a way of life, like any other” “at the Czech restaurant.” O’Brien also quotes from another Irishman, Benedict Kiely, as part of the “preamble”: “There’s what I want on my tombstone: Growth, Selfdeception and Loss.” Salty’s parents certainly have the self-deception
“Long before it was easy to glamorize the idea of being a ‘nepo baby’ (even if it means enduring ’the pain’ of being constantly called that), Darcy O’Brien debunked the myth of what it means to be the child of celebrity parents. Particularly fading celebrity parents.”
part covered, as the reader quickly learns, with Salty only barely getting to enjoy the final dregs of his parents’ good fortune. The years when they would entertain fellow movie stars at their opulent abode, dubbed Casa Fiesta. One imagines it was no Pickfair, but perhaps close enough. In any case, it doesn’t take long for the party to be over, so to speak, once Mother and Father are subjected to the usual treatment of stars of that era in the aftermath of losing their relevancy. During the period when Salty is growing up, this is due largely to the invention of television (for silent movie stars, it was the advent of the “talkies” that did them in, for Golden Age Hollywood, it was the advent of TV). As a result of his parents refusing to compute their irrelevancy (albeit in very different ways), there’s plenty of the “Norma Desmond effect” to go around, especially with Salty’s mother being so obsessed over
Blasé About Trauma As Only a Californian Can Be... - Genna Rivieccio her dimming looks. One need only glance at an old photograph of Marguerite Churchill to understand. Indeed, it’s easy to imagine her watching old movies of herself with O’Brien at her side in lieu of Joe Gillis.
All of which is to say that she’s eager—or rather, the fictionalized version of herself is—to give other men a chance to shower her with some validating attention. Hence, the inevitable separation between her and her husband (divorce, for Salty’s father, is not an option due to his staunch Catholicism). The first person to cause her eye to wander is Tony Amalfitano, a man who runs a camera store in the Farmers Market (a.k.a. what is now more commonly referred to as The Grove). A few compliments about her appearance and she’s putty in his hands. But it doesn’t take long for Mother to jettison him in favor of Anatol, a Russian sculptor of stout stature. After making the big announcement to Father (at an awkward dinner she invites him to with Salty and Anatol in attendance), Salty ends up spending the next few formative years with Mother, living with her in Anatol’s one-bedroom apartment despite the fact that she’s rarely present (take your pick between the emotional or physical meaning of that word).
In truth, Anatol shows a more vested interest in Salty than she does. Though, when Salty was a bit younger, when the cash flow was still “good” (in other words, when it was still there at all), she was more prone to showing him she cared through the things that money could buy. Such as “cultural excursions.” Thus, Salty recalling, “She often talked about New York and how much better it was than California, and she said it was time I got out of the provinces and learned a little sophistication.” This detail sounds a bit too specific not to be straight from the horse’s mouth, in terms of what Churchill thought about her adopted home of Los Angeles. Because, like many actors of the OG Hollywood, she started out in theater in New York (specifically, Broadway).
The same goes for Mother in A Way of Life, Like Any Other, returning to “the city” to catch up with old contacts and generally remember a time when things were “simpler.” In short, a time when she was younger. That’s what it always boils down to for Mother. Because, even more than wishing she still had money, she wishes she still had youth (the Norma Desmond syndrome at play again). And yet, over time, Salty can see that the same is true of Father, who still dresses in the absurd cowboy style of the films that made him famous, almost as if expecting that he might get a call any day now from the studio. But it is only after enduring a traumatic first half of the separation with Mother that Salty learns just how much worse his Father is. Worse, too, in the
The Opiate, Spring Vol. 41
sense that he pretends not to be, acting pious and holier than thou in all matters. One assumes this stems from years spent playing a cowboy that comes to swoop in and rescue various townspeople from some immoral outlaw. Or maybe some people are just born sanctimonious. Either way, Salty takes a prolonged detour before relenting to landing at Father’s house, stopping in Paris, where Mother invites him to stay at the Georges V with her and Anatol, only for him to arrive and find that she’s still not there. Though there is a message for him at the front desk instructing him to stay at a “decent little pensione” instead. At least until she actually gets there in about a week.
So it is that the first real glimmers of Salty’s “coming of age” shine through as he wanders the streets of Paris “taking stock of his life” and finding it “wanting very little.” At least compared to the other people he sees around him. It is here, too, that his mind wanders toward Father, musing, “It would take some effort and shrewdness to navigate through life avoiding loneliness, boorishness or anger. My father was lonely and I pondered what missteps he had made. Probably he didn’t have enough education, so that when his movie career faltered he couldn’t go right to law school or medical school.” It doesn’t yet occur to Salty that a key aspect of Father’s loneliness is linked to being perennially obsessed with the idea of still being with Mother. A woman who would sooner drop dead than ever get back together with him. And, to be sure, his willful decision to keep carrying a torch for her stems from his own kind of vanity.
In another instant of rumination while in Paris, Salty notes, “That day in the streets I had seen young lovers. They were appealing. My parents must have been like that. The trick was to keep love going. It might work if you gave enough love. Imagine being forty-five embracing by the Seine.” Yes, imagine.
When Mother at last arrives in Paris, she is at the peak of her histrionics, decrying Anatol for ruining her trip, just as she decried Father for ruining her life. Luckily (for Mother), a new man/savior enters the picture, Peter Pines. A former actor who knew both Mother and Father from the old days, but who now works in Rome, in the Publicity Department at Fox. Urging Mother to join him there, where she’ll find plenty of work dubbing Italian actresses in English, it quickly becomes apparent that her next life change is about to take shape. And that there won’t be any room for Salty to fit into it (though there scarcely was before anyway). So it is that, in lieu of going straight back to Father’s (who really just lives with Mother’s mother—yes, it’s an odd setup), Salty has a layover, so to speak at Jerry Caliban’s, a friend from school who is the son of a successful producer named Sam Caliban.
Blasé About Trauma As Only a Californian Can Be... - Genna Rivieccio
But Mr. Caliban’s wealth is threatened for the first time after a bout of bad luck while gambling. Which means Mrs. Caliban’s usual allotment for the horse racetracks ($25,000 a year) is compromised— and it drives her a bit cuckoo (sort of like Victoria Ratliff in The White Lotus if she had to live without money). When Jerry suggests that his father should have her committed, Mr. Caliban replies, “Maybe some guys would do that, but I couldn’t. We came up together. We went through everything together. Sometimes one partner grows and the other doesn’t. I’m not the same person I was.” Soon enough, neither is Mrs. Caliban, who starts to get so loopy that she ends up getting caught “selling grapefruit without a permit on the corner of Roxbury and little Santa Monica.” So it is that Salty bears witness to yet another PSA for not becoming part of a married couple, let alone a Hollywood married couple (even if by way of Beverly Hills).
To further emphasize that point, Mr. Caliban has a mistress named Tanya, a talentless actress that he ends up having to bump from the lead role in his movie because she’s just that talentless. To make up for the slight, he also has to placate her with more “lavishments” (furs, jewels, etc.) than usual. Not exactly helpful to the rocky financial road ahead for him (due the aforementioned misfires while gambling at the casino).
Through it all, Salty remains “shockingly” calm. Or at least it’s shocking to those unversed in the ways of California “whatever”ness. For outsiders can never seem to quite grasp the “cool customer” (to use a favorite term of another Californian, Joan Didion) aura that this “breed” radiates. Even in the face of literal catastrophe after catastrophe. But that’s just it: Californians have pretty much seen it all (yes, far more than New Yorkers). Whether it’s gruesome serial killings (e.g., Richard Ramirez) or bearing witness to the opening of the gates of hell (e.g., the Palisades and Eaton Fires). Or, even more appropriately as it relates to A Way of Life, Like Any Other, encountering celebrities. With Salty having grown up among this lot, he’s desensitized to being exposed to “greatness,” even long after most people have forgotten that his parents themselves were once “great.”
This much is accented by a scene toward the final part of the book describing a trip to John Ford’s house. An outing that is expectedly kooky, especially since Ford had something of a beef with Salty’s father, making for an awkward encounter as Salty describes, “My father was very quiet and glanced often at his watch, a weighty piece with several dials which had been presented to him by a frogman. Ford was frail in body but lively in intellect. My father had briefed me that Ford was disinclined to wear underwear, and in fact never wore it, except under
arctic conditions...” Said with nary a hint of judgment in the tone, but rather, in a way that infers it’s all just a matter of course…in California. Nay, in Hollywood.
What’s also a matter of course in said state regardless of its liberal stereotype is the political redness of many counties (near LA
“Through it all, Salty remains ‘shockingly’ calm. Or at least it’s shocking to those unversed in the ways of California ‘whatever’-ness. For outsiders can never seem to quite grasp the ‘cool customer’ (to use a favorite term of another Californian, Joan Didion) aura that this ‘breed’ radiates. Even in the face of literal catastrophe after catastrophe. But that’s just it: Californians have pretty much seen it all (yes, far more than New Yorkers). Whether it’s gruesome serial killings (e.g., Richard Ramirez) or bearing witness to the opening of the gates of hell (e.g., the Palisades and Eaton Fires).”
County, Orange and San Bernardino come to mind). And, of course, actors who play cowboys are known for being conservative (e.g., John Wayne, Ronald Reagan). Thus, the Republican leanings of the real George O’Brien (since, evidently, you can’t make your career off playing a cowboy and not be a Republican) shine through in an exchange between Salty and his father about his car salesman friend, Marshall Marshall, who is currently strapped for cash. After the two meet up with him, Salty recounts, “My father asked me later had I got the impression that old Marsh was trying to touch him for a loan. I said that it had occurred to me and that if I had any money I would probably give him some. My father said that this was the wrong approach, that you never helped a man by trying to make things easy for him. You had
to pay your own way, that was the only way you learned a lesson in life. Marsh would learn, and if he had to go to jail, well, everything in life taught a lesson...”
For Californians such as Salty (he is, unlike his parents, a “real” Californian and not a transplant), the lesson that life continues to keep teaching is that there’s more strength in emotional imperviousness than, well, not. Which isn’t to say that Californians are bred to be sociopathic automatons, it’s just that, despite stereotypes to the contrary, more than most, they understand that life is suffering. Repeated disappointment and absurdity. Even if masked by a comfortable-and-warm-seeming milieu that can make uncomfortable, cold reality just a little bit more bearable. It’s a way of life, unlike any other. Besides, the trauma and farcicality of it all make for a potentially sellable script. Or, in O’Brien’s case, a sellable novel.
If you like The Opiate magazine, you’ll love The Opiate Books. Find our current roster of titles (featured below) online or at your favorite bookstore. Visit theopiatebooks.com for more information.
Brontosaurus Illustrated by Leanne Grabel
Released: June 2022
price: $34.99
Megalodon by Donna Dallas
Released: April 2023
price: $10.99
Lindsay Lohan Stole My Life (A Tate Carmichael Novel) by Genna Rivieccio
Released: April 2023
$18.99
Yet So As By Fire: A Passion Play in Two Acts by Anton Bonnici Released: December 2021
price: $12.99
Quasar Love: A Reenactment in Three Acts by Anton Bonnici Released: August 2022
price: $12.99
I Love Paris by Rufo Quintavalle
Released: September 2023
price: $10.99
Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero
Released: July 2023
price: $15.99
This Rescue Thing by Penny Allen Released: April 2024
price: $18.99
Pornotopia: The Incomplete Texts by Anton Bonnici Released: July 2024
price: $12.99
David Leo Rice
The PornME Trinity (2nd Edition) by
Released: October 2022
Released: November 2024
List price: $14.99
Released: March 2025
List price: $12.99
Released: June 2024 List price: $14.99
Released: January 2025
List price: $23.99
Released: April 2025 List price: $14.99
Released: September 2024 List price: $14.99
Released: January 2025 List price: $7.99
On the Way to Invisible by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
The Fire Within by Chiara Maxia
Taillights Disappearing by Steve Denehan
Diary of an Anonymous Midtown Office Worker in the 2010s by Genna Rivieccio
The Verities of Love by Ron Kolm
Reprise by Victor Marrero
When the Phone Rang by Anton Bonnici & Youssef Alaoui
As spring unfurls, why not curl up into a ball and pretend it’s still winter (which, in ways metaphorical, it certainly still is) by reading the literary offerings of The Opiate, Vol. 41? This edition features fiction, poetry and nonfiction from Scott T. Hutchison, Debbie Miszak, Mike Lee, Rich McFarlin, Johnny Allina, Barry Garelick, Mary Lewis, Alexander Lowell, Renshaw, Kathryn Adisman, Ron Kolm, Margaret R. Sáraco, Steve Denehan, Dale Champlin, Mark Katrinak, Leanne Grabel, DS Maolalaí, Edward L. Canavan, John Delaney and Megan Cartwright.
The