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Small Beer Press
www.lcrw.net
Copyright ©
First published in 2005, 2005
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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CONTENTS
You and I in the Year 2012
We Lived in a House
village of wolves
Moon, Paper, Scissors
Dear Aunt Gwenda:
The Pursuit of Artemisia Guile
Reality Goes On Here More or Less
Three Urban Folk Tales
The Monster Wore Reeboks
The Red Phone
Scorpions
Little Apocalypse
The Grandson of Heinrich Schliemann
Scenes
Cat Whisker Wound
The Perfect Pair
Gears Grind Down
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Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 16
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Gavin J. Grant: Still.
Kelly Link: Outtern. Tap.
Jedediah Berry: Intern. Distilled.
Gwyneth Merner: Intern. Effervescent.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet Iteration 16, July 2005. This zine is supposed to go out each June and November (but wasn't this also supposed to be an occasional outburst? What's the occasion?) from Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060 [email protected] www.lcrw.net/lcrw $5 per single issue or $20/4. Misspellings, Common Misperceptions, & Contents all © the respective authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, &c all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Color covers are a dream for now. Apologies for the lack of margin space. We keep expecting to increase the margins and page count. The economic bullet that would entail refuses to be bit. Please take your copy of this zine apart and paste on an extra inch of paper all round. This issue brought to you by reduced personal freedoms, a scandal proof monkey, and water, rising waters. As ever, thanks. Paradise Copies, 30 Craft Ave., Northampton, MA 01060 413-585-0414 d
You and I in the Year 2012
Eric Gregory
Me, Myself, and I—
You'll notice it on CNN or MSNBC or one of those—I can't remember. It's not the main story, not even a main story, just a fun little tidbit on the scroll at the bottom. Go look. Did it catch your eye? The space rock the size of Norway? Noticed it immediately, didn't you? When worlds collide, and all that. We've got a tendency to stockpile the morbid.
What does it call to mind, the notion that four years from now everything you know could be so much dust and debris? I'll bet I can guess: Mike, from high school. Remember Mike? Sure you do. The kid with the curly red hair and all the weird shit he was into. Vampires and ghosts and ancient astronauts. Guy practically ran on the stuff.
You're thinking about what he told you, sitting in Subway with five or six others, you chomping on your pizza sub while airy conversations danced around your head. He leaned across the table, getting a little mayonnaise on his shirt, and he said, “You know, the world's going to end in 2012.” And you chuckled uneasily, asked him where the hell that came from, but he was persistent. “I mean it, man. 2012. Everyone predicted it. The Mayans, the code in the Bible, everyone.” You dismissed his prophesying with a sarcastic comment, something like, “The Mayans and the Bible are everyone?” But the idea appealed to your sense of doom, and it stuck with you.
Mike was right in every sense that mattered, sorry to say. Pisser, huh? Big pisser. I'm sitting in a cold apartment with only a bed, an outdated desktop, and that ratty old black and white TV you got from your mom (still works!), typing like mad and hoping I can make it to the laboratories. Don't even have any ramen noodles, because I'm afraid to go anywhere near a grocery store, or even a gas station. Talk about riots.
So a chill just ran down your spine, right? I hope so, I really do. I mean, I understand that my tone has to this point carried a certain degree of levity, but trust me: When the days get dark you scramble for whatever levity you can find. So I apologize if I come off as a smartass in hysterics. We just get that way, right?
I can tell you exactly what will happen if you laugh this away. I can give you the Cliff's Notes on what happens if you trash or ignore this. You will change the channel and watch a documentary on the three-toed sloth, for one thing. You will stare at the television and slowly decompose for an hour, and when Liz finally calls and invites you to lunch, as she inevitably does, you will refuse her, as you inevitably do. And why? Out of some bizarre loyalty to Jean? I hate to be the one to break it to you, man, but she's been sleeping with the mailman. Doing quite a bit more than sleeping, to tell the truth. You walk in on them around October 2012, and by then, of course, it is too late.
Is it laziness? Some idiot malaise that prevents you from doing things that would actually make you happy?
No ... I guess the truth is a little dirtier. Worship is a sallow, shallow business. You know that. Worship is blind dependence on something that may or may not be there at all. Dependence disguised as adoration, dependence as abortion. Faith, on the other hand, is trust in something more than yourself.
But you know that.
Pick up the phone when it rings, and leave the house. Leave it for good, if you can manage. Do not leave me to rot in this apartment alone. You don't want to carry any regrets when the world ends. I should know.
—You and I in the year 2012
(P.S. Watch the mailman. He's crafty.)
* * * *
The letter is crammed into my mailbox, clad in an envelope addressed to, “Jeff-May 1, 2008.” In the upper left hand corner, in a tinnier, hastier scrawl: “Jeff-December 27, 2012.” I reread it twice and stuff the creased yellow paper into my pocket, closing the mailbox and waddling inside. The world feels sharper and stronger and sadder. Enervated with that certain electricity sparked by a breach in routine.
Jean lies sprawled on the couch perusing a Reader's Digest. “Any mail?” she asks, not bothering to look up.
I finger the letter. “No. There's a sale at the mall. Someone wants to stop the coffee place from coming in down the street."
"Ah.” She turns the page.
It isn't outright belief, exactly, that leads me to make a pilgrimage to CNN Headline News. Nor is it really curiosity. Mostly it's a sense of pessimism; an unfulfilling decade or so was not precisely unforeseen. If somehow a letter from my future self has managed to navigate the various channels and tributaries of time—and hey, who am I to call that crazy?—it fits that said future self is down and out in Porterville.
I walk into the kitchen, make myself a cup of tea (oolong), and flip on our runt of a black and white TV. It shudders and whirs for a moment, taking the machine equivalent of a deep breath, and the TV Guide Channel fades cheerfully into being.
TBS, for the curious, is playing The Shawshank Redemption (part of a Morgan Freeman marathon), and the Discovery Channel features an hour-long documentary on the three-toed sloth. I navigate through the flotsam and jetsam of basic cable until I reach CNN.
"—though Kennedy denies the allegations prosecutors formerly tied to the case contend—"
Ignoring the top story proves to be an arduous affair, requiring all my considerable cunning and guile. I scan the news scroll at the bottom of the screen for several minutes, my finger
hovering over the mute button.
"—a public statement, but analysts remain doubtful as to—"
Most of the stories on the scroll are “public interest” factoids, employing puns or painful attempts at wordplay in order to justify their existence at all. A celebrity's anniversary, a senator who vomits all over a second grade classroom, trivial stuff.
And then:
"We Will Rock You: Australian Astronomer Discovers Asteroid the Size of Norway—Four Years Off."
I turn off the television, finger the letter once more, and rummage through the refrigerator. Failing to find anything that would ease the rapidly sinking feeling in my stomach, I settle into my chair at the kitchen table, turn the TV back on, and stare thoughtlessly into a rambling documentary on sloth.
* * * *
The phone. I glance at it uneasily, Steve Irwin's lecture on the feeding habits of rattlesnakes momentarily forgotten. It rings again, and I have more than half a mind to let the little bitch complain.
"Get it,” Jean calls irritably. I don't have to see her to know that her eyes never leave her magazine. This does not seem offensive. This seems appropriate. Reader's Digest publishes riveting material.
Another ring. “Get it!” she cries, this time with an edge of temper. I really ought to get it. What the hell is wrong with me? Really.
I pick up the receiver midway through its fourth ring, and pray feverishly for the voice on the other end to be anyone but Liz. Brian, or someone from work. A telemarketer. The asshole lawn service that continuously spreads shit over our yard without our asking. Anyone. I don't care. It seems vital that the letter be wrong about something. I am in full panic mode, replete with heavy breathing, clenched stomach, and loose bladder.
My prayers receive the “DENIED” stamp, and the letter is three for three. Liz notices that I sound like one who has attempted to run a triathlon and failed in the final twenty meters.
"Wow, you been out jogging or something?” she asks. “You sound ready to drop dead."
"Yeah, um, I guess I am."
She laughs. We've known each other since prokaryotes ruled the Earth, and she has long since learned not to take me too seriously. I escorted her to more than one Sadie Hawkins (even if we only sat in the corner, sipped Cokes, and felt superior), and she eventually introduced me to Jean. Somehow we maintained contact through college—her doing, I never liked calling anyone—and as both of us moved back to Porterville, we have spoken fairly often even through adulthood. At least in comparison to everyone else I know.
"Well, hey, you want to go out and get some lunch or something?” she asks.
The letter's right about me as well. Four for four? Typically I would find an excuse, sound or otherwise, and boil a pack of ramen noodles. I am perfectly content to talk to Liz on the phone, probably need the human contact, but I always feel uneasy about doing things without Jean. It seems like a small betrayal. Something unsafe and uncertain.
I agree to eat with Liz not because the letter told me not to, but to prove it wrong. See? I can still go out and order a Big Mac. I'm still in charge. The logic is this: if I do something that you (you playing the mysterious postcard from a doomed place) say I didn't, I have proven you wrong. Meaning that hypothetically—and I'm sure quantum physicists will back me up—you could be wrong about other minor details. Including the everyone dying bit. Which would be enormously reassuring, really.
I am not prepared for an end, the end, my end, any end. I cannot accept that, and making a choice that the letter tells me I did not feels like an important rebellion. I'm not certain what I should feel toward it—gratitude, jealousy, horny?—but I want to spite it. Scream at it. I want to prove that it doesn't know everything, doesn't know anything.
So I agree to meet a pretty girl at Starbucks. Naturally.
* * * *
I could do anything. Filch a muffin, thank Mr. Roboto, steal candy from a baby. Anything. I'm smoke, I'm a ghost. I do as I please in broad daylight and no one sees me, no one cares.
The flip side of this, of course, is that no one sees me, and no one cares.
Liz is late. I hate that about her; she's always lagging. I hate waiting alone. I sip my frappucino—multimillion-dollar megacorporation flavored, with whipped cream—and make a half-hearted attempt to tap the rhythm of “Hey Jude” with my foot.
I've never known the words to that song. Hey Jude, don't make it—hard? Bad? Silly? Stupid?
Liz sits down across from me with a smile that is a greeting, mea culpa, and embrace. I reply with a smile that is reproach. She apologizes verbally and sincerely, however—she was detained by a sidewalk, a fat man, and an umbrella—and my resolve to be righteously irritated dies with a whimper.
"How've you been?” she asks, her eyes darting from my own to the menu and back again. “It's been awhile. Man. What? Two or three months?"
"Yeah.” I stir my frappucino unnecessarily. “I've been okay, I guess. You know. The usual."
I wonder if anyone has noticed that I am no longer alone. I wonder if they snickered at or pitied the poor soul hunched solitary over his frappucino, and now find themselves feeling silly or stupid or shamed.
Of course not. I'm silence. Smoke, a ghost.
I remember that I've forgotten to be polite. “And you? How've you been?"
"I've been better.” She slumps. “Michael left about a month and a half ago. Or maybe I left. I'm not sure."
The moment of awkward potential. What's needed? Pity, sympathy, silence, anger? None of the above?
All of the above. “Geez, I'm sorry. The asshole didn't deserve you anyway.” This is broadly true, but it sounds like the daytime TV drama incarnation of what I need to say.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. He just up and left. Took all his things, not a word spoken. I tried calling but his number was disconnected. And then one day I saw his car.” She rests her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. “At the theater, actually. The one on Briar? I walked up to it, not really sure why, and found him in the backseat with a sixteen year old. Girl I knew, actually. From down the street. I babysat her when she was younger.” As she speaks her cheeks flush, and her eyes seem incapable of resting on any one place.
A moment of silence. My hand crabwalks across the table and comforts her fingers, seemingly without input from the central processing unit.
"Jesus. Did you ... report him or anything?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. I sent her parents an anonymous letter telling them to keep an eye on her. I don't know. I still don't want him to go to prison or whatever. Seems a little extreme."
Not for the first time, it occurs to me that love is fucked up. I'm not quite sure if this is a good or bad thing.
"Anyway,” she says, “I'm just trying to get away from him in every way possible."
I nod.
"How is Jean?"
"Oh. You know.” I balk like a nervous monkey. “She's Jean."
"And work?” Liz still hasn't ordered. I wonder if she will.
"Good question. I wouldn't know."
"What, you were fired?"
I sigh mildly. “In the most euphemistic way possible. I was ‘let go.’ Set free. Pharaoh let my people go."
Liz's eyes droop. “Wow. We're an unfortunate bunch."
"Yeah. Well. Now I can write, I guess."
"And depend on Jean?"
"I don't use much. And I've still got the money from my dad.” An inchworm of unease makes its dreadfully slow way down my spine and through my stomach. This isn't a place my mind wants to be. It's the same feeling I got as a kid when my thoughts drifted to future vaccinations. My stomach wouldn't have it.
Liz's hand crabwalks across the table and comforts my fingers.
* * * *
Home. Jean. Sex as a form of nature worship. My lips brush her breast and navel, and they are golden. This is idolatry. This isn't kosher.
The room is on mute. No breathing, no background static. All reverence in the synagogue.
Still, neither of us breathe. I am licking, kissing. Breast and shoulder. Shoulder and neck. Even the air conditioning is silent. There is activity downstairs. This will need to be explored. This is significant. Ear, cheek, forehead, eyelid. This is significant. Saliva, but no sweat. Not yet. We are not fervent followers.
Nose. Chin. Not kosher. I reach the lips and make my devotionals, but idols do not respond. Idols do not kiss back. That's not the point. Golden lips do not yield, but that's not the point at all.
Cafe, part deux. May 29. Summer has lowered its spears and commenced its assault. Cold drinks are advertised. Navels are exposed. Liz bites her tongue and grins despite herself. Behind her, a seventeen-year-old girl sheathed in makeup describes her clearly dysfunctional boyfriend to an equally mascara-laden comrade.
"...And he was all like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And I say, ‘It's just a quickie, Michael, what's your problem?’ I mean, really, what's his problem? It's not like it meant anything."
Her friend sighs theatrically. “Guys are babies."
Liz clasps her mouth shut with her hand in order to prevent herself from laughing too loudly. My amusement is too mingled with disturbance to be very vocal.
"We have to get out of here,” she hisses with a smile. “I'm not going to be able to keep myself from beating them for very long."
"You need to learn restraint,” I answer.
The teenagers have changed the subject. It occurs to me that we're being a bit pretentious.
"...Some people can wear hats, and some can't. It's that simple."
A fresh bout of giggles from Liz. I strain to grimace and smile anyway. Cleared for liftoff, Captain Condescendo.
I pour a smidgeon of socially maladjusted yuppie flavored creamer into my coffee. Lactose spiral galaxies form and fade. “This feels wrong."
I'm overly ambiguous but Liz understands nonetheless. Par for the course. “Oh, shut up. You think it's funny and you know it."
I lower my voice. Do teenagers have super-developed hearing now? It seems possible. “Yeah, but I feel like I shouldn't. It's not like we're any better. You know?"
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 Page 1
