by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
“So,” James asks Marty. “What’s Juneau like?”
“Smaller. Warmer. Prettier. More like Delaware.”
“Mmm. Is there . . . much of a gay scene there?”
Marty chuckles. “If you know where to look. Which is harder than it used to be, at least for me. I don’t have any of those apps that everybody uses now. When I was younger it used to be about certain places. Bars and cafés. And that’s still true to some extent, I guess. There’s the Triangle, which is kind of gay, but it’s not an actual gay bar. So every time I’m in Anchorage I like to come in here.”
“Is it always this quiet?”
“Oh God, no. You just came here on the wrong night. You come in here on a Saturday and you’ll be fighting guys off you.”
A low smile appears on James’s face for a moment. He lifts his eyes to the muted TV, where Yoda is mouthing his last words. There are no captions, and James hasn’t seen the movie in years, so he doesn’t know what Yoda’s saying. The only sound in the bar is Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” playing over the speakers. James is caught off guard by his own laughter.
“What?” Marty asks, laughing a little himself.
“Just this,” James says, gesturing to the TV. “Sorry,” he says. “I guess I’m tired.” Then he falls into laughter again. “So, you know, this part of the song, when it goes into the robot voice—I mean, I know he’s saying ‘we’re up all night to get lucky’ but I always hear it as ‘we’ll rob a Mexican monkey.’”
“Huh.” Marty listens and grins.
“Right? You hear it?”
“Yeah, I do! You know, there’s a word for that. One of my favorite words in the English language.”
“A word for what?”
“For when you mishear song lyrics and your mind substitutes something else. It’s called mondegreen.”
“Mondegreen. Mmm.”
The door opens—halfway at first, cautiously, then all the way. A man dressed in hunter’s camo and a beige safari hat and a woman wearing what seem to be pajamas step inside and hover near the back wall. Water is dripping off the man’s hat onto his shoulders. He leans over and whispers to her, dripping onto her as well. They stand in silence. After about a minute, she walks back out the door and he follows.
“Well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you with him,” Marty says. “Do you have any other connections here? Family or . . . a job or anything?”
A resigned smile. “I . . . no. You have to understand. I didn’t . . . I wasn’t expecting . . .” He laughs, shrugs, looks Marty in the eyes. “I had no other plans. He’s got a big house on base here. Biggest bed I’ve ever seen. View of the mountains over there. I just wanted to live in his house. Sleep in his bed. Walk his fucking dog. Cook for him. Love him. But I guess he got scared. I still don’t really know why. He won’t answer my calls.” James finishes his drink.
“I’m sorry, James.”
“Yeah. I guess I just misunderstood. Or—I didn’t want to understand.”
Marty stretches, then reaches into his pocket for his billfold. He leaves a twenty on the bar. “Listen. I know this guy meant the world to you. And I know it feels like you’ll never get over this. Believe me. I know. But you will. Your life belongs to you, not anyone else.”
“I know. Thank you.” The corners of James’s mouth twitch a little. “It’s just scary. Suddenly realizing where I am. That I made a mistake.”
“Forget that. Things happened. They can’t be undone. The idea of a mistake is only in your mind, after the fact. So don’t look back. You’re here. You’re young. This place is . . . full of surprises. Go live your life.”
James wipes his eyes with his napkin. “OK.”
“Do you have a place to stay?”
“I’m at the Black Angus now. On Gambell.”
“Oh, honey!” Jolene interjects from across the bar in a loud, raspy voice. She shakes her head disapprovingly.
“She’s right,” the bartender offers.
Marty pauses for a moment. “Look,” he says, handing James a clean napkin, “I’m here for one more day. I have a nice, comfortable room at the Hilton. With two beds. This isn’t a come-on or anything. But you’re welcome to stay there, and maybe I can help you figure out something tomorrow. Up to you.”
James glances around the room. The bartender is wiping down the other side of the bar as he talks to Jolene in a hushed voice. The bar-back is on his phone, continually scrolling down with his finger. Through the small window facing Fifth Avenue, the sleet seems to be letting up.
“Thank you,” James says, flustered. “I mean, I just don’t want to . . . intrude—”
“Oh, it’s really no trouble. It would be nice to have some company. And again, just platonic—it’s up to you.”
“I think I’m OK. But thanks. Really.”
Marty nods. “OK.” He stands, pushes in his stool and puts on his jacket. “If you change your mind, I’m in room 1410. You can call me there too if you’d like.” He extends his hand, and James shakes it. “Good luck to you, James.”
“Thanks. You too.”
Marty waves at the bartender and heads for the door.
On Fifth Avenue, the sleet has turned into a light freezing rain. The street has become hopelessly slick, and two police officers are trying to push a car out of an intersection without much success. A few men slip out of the Polar Bar for a cigarette. Somebody flashes the lights inside—last call. One puts his cigarette out on the sidewalk, tucks it behind his ear and heads back in. The rest stay, shrouded in a haze of smoke and ice and breath.
Across the street, a lone man in a red sweatshirt emerges from the alley between Myrna’s and Mammoth Music. He pauses when he gets to the street and puts his hands in his pockets. He’s listening. He looks east. The sky is much darker now, a dusty violet. It’s quieter than before. He flips his red hood over his head. With careful steps, he begins to walk west.
Agni
There was no color
as far as we both could see—
nothing that was not white
or gray or brown
except for my eyes,
bloodshot and blue.
I hadn’t seen you
in months. I’d lingered long
in another king’s palace,
another man’s motel room.
You would not touch me.
I still smelled of him.
The wind blew
and I trembled,
still your vassal,
still your vessel.
So I gathered logs
and built a pyre,
praying to the god of fire,
invoking the words
I’d read on the back
of a cigarette pack:
“IN HOC
SIGNO
VINCES”
Then I blazed and burned
and danced for you,
pure as the day I was born,
a golden-red sylph
glowing in the snow.
Your face, as you stood and watched,
was inscrutable as dogwood,
veiled like early spring.
Koimesis
This is the way things did happen.
I happened on a hill
between Sunday and Monday,
looked back at the mountainside
from which I’d come—
a hundred glinting houses,
a hundred circling camps,
a hundred flickering candles
in open windows. The road
draped the coast-crags
with pale diamonds
and a woman lay down
over it all,
lustrous and low. I tendered
my resignation
to any who would accept it.
Two moose
hovered on the hill.
I saw the cow and calf
and melted into the trees.
Seven ages passed.
A flock of cranes
mourned the loss of the day.
It occurred
to me,
we should all agree
we are nothing
and should remain so.
Vacation
Already the day is done.
Blue has become green.
New love sleeps
in my hotel bed.
Already
it is old.
Whether it stays remains
to be seen.
I don’t have a second key.
A little snow tomorrow night
will not accumulate.
Try it a few times
just to make sure
[it locks behind you]
fire on the hillside
a staircase into the night
let me go
Proudly scattered on the beach,
shards of plates and bones,
remains
to be seen.
ZACK ROGOW
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books and plays. His eighth book of poems, Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music, was published in 2015 by Kattywompus Press. He is also writing a series of plays about authors, incorporating their writing into the action. The most recent of these, Colette: A One-Woman Show, had its first staged reading at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in February 2015. He is the editor of an anthology of poetry of the United States, The Face of Poetry, from the University of California Press. Currently, he teaches in the low-residency MFA writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as poetry editor of Catamaran Literary Reader.
The Voice of Art Nouveau
If we have to smother our candles
and let electricity in through the front door
If you herd us into cities
where we’ll be shelved one
on top of the other
If our furniture will be assembled
like automobiles
and our streets will be forests of steel
Then let our lamp necks be twisted
into the stems of the flowers we won’t see anymore
Let their glass shades be colored
like the wings of the most flagrant insects
Let the outsides of our buildings thrive with jungles of ornament
and the smashed tiles of old floors be crazy-quilted into a
serpentine wall
whose only purpose is to be beautiful
Let all right angles squares and rectangles be stretched bent melted
or warped
Let us have our revenge
on the perfect straight line
M.C. MOHAGANI MAGNETEK
M.C. MoHagani Magnetek is a transgender African American anthropologist, writer, poet, and artist. She draws inspiration from within to create stories and narratives about obscure aspects of life. Sometimes surreal noir and other times concrete realities, she fashions her stories with a great deal of poetics. As a transgender woman living on the last great frontier of Alaska, she employs many of her experiences in her works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She is the author of ten short stories, an anthologized story, a novella, and a poetry collection. She is most known for her Ms. Mahogany Bones and thaMind Sol-Lady tales.
Creep
Hold on. Wait a minute. Let me catch my breath, my feet are tired of having to run up them damn steps and get in the front door safe and in one piece. I have tell you like Fannie Lou Hammer said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired,” of all this shit. What’s the deal with all the creeps, lame no game having men in their cars all over Anchorage? I am so over all the gawking and honking car horns every time I walk down the block. I know I am a jazzy local celebrity, but this shit has to stop.
I guess I was about nineteen years old the day I walked in the house on a day like today, highly frustrated, to find my auntie sipping on a cup of coffee. She looked me over and situated me in the right frame of mind. She asked me what was the matter, and then I went all-in with my rant and chatter. “It’s not that I’m out walking in a scandalous outfit with stiletto heels, but I am always getting harassed when I’m walking down the street.”
“I’m sorry baby, but there is no love for a decent lady. I know, it’s crazy, but that’s why we called them honkies. And that ain’t got nothing to do with them being white, either. Black and Latino men are flirtatious and nasty, too. You have to be careful and always alert because some of them will try to hurt you if you give the time of day.”
So I follow her lessons, read the signs, and have participate in the stop sexual harassment protests sessions from time to time. As I was saying this shit ain’t right, just like the other day, off Northern Lights. Just up the block and around the way, I am girl just trying to get to my house. Now, you know me, I am in my own muthafucking zone with my headphones on bopping to the beat of my own drum. This guy pulls alongside in his old rickety no muffler loud-ass car. I was surprise he could still start it and get it to run. “Hey Hey there Hun!!!” with his lustful eyeballs popping out of his head. His left arm dangling and waving while his right had steadied the jalopy’s steering wheel. “Oh Lawd . . . not today!” is all I could think of. I was not in the mood and definitely could not feel the fact that I caught a glimmer of his wedding ring. I told him he needs to leave me alone and go home to his wife with his undercover nasty behavior. And then I thought, well, more like I prayed, “Oh God please don’t let this honky be my neighbor.” My auntie taught me right, so I reached for my razor in my purse and slyly grabbed a hold of my mace. If he came any closer, I was ready to cut him deep and spray him in the face. He was gonna learn the hard way not to F with me. I watch T.V. and see all the newsreels; I was not about to be another transgender woman victim killed, sliced, and diced up on the side of the road in a trash heap, left for dead. I don’t tell many people what goes on in my head, but I practice running in my heels and taking them off quickly to use the pointy part for a jab to the jugular of the rapist, stalker, or mugger.
This man and his slimy dick had no need to stop just cause he saw my fine sexy black behind walking down the street. Using peripheral vision, my head steadied the course ahead while I said, “Just keep on keeping on you creep!” Well . . . I didn’t add the “creep” part but I made it clear that whatever he was selling I was not in the market for buying. He was horrid and just as old and crusty looking as his car. Even on a good day, he couldn’t get far with me. Girrrrl, I didn’t even give him an “E” for effort for trying.
This shit happens all the time to me, I ain’t even lying. However, it don’t stop there, I got mad stories to tell of similar situations and other encounters in different outfits. Take last Sunday for instance, I’m on my way home walking the distance from church and here comes another honky slowing down on the hunt with a sinister lurch. I was strolling down Spenard and 27 in my Sunday best, hoping I will still make it to heaven with swaying hips, switching from side to side. I know I’m not supposed to be cussing on a Sunday after receiving the message of the Good Lawd but, “Aww Nawl!” this nasty muthafuka broke my stride, “Hell Nawl!!, I Don’t Want A Ride!!!” If you had seen this honky, you would have thought the same and nearly died from laughing at this all too real, Lifetime movie scenario. He didn’t have a car, just one of those bone-chilling-kidnapping-dark-gray-pick-up vans with an eight-track player for a radio. The only thing missing was a “Free Candy” decal sign to lure in some innocent naive child with his nasty plans. He was so morbid looking; he could be mistaken for the Addams Family’s Uncle Fester. His real name probably was Chester the Child Molester.
Yes, I’m being prejudice and judgmental, but a girl has got to have her wits about her self if she wants to survive the strife. His creepy ass could easily have been the rapist with no respect for life. Either that or he was going to go home that night, drink a six-pack of cheap beer, kick his dog, curse his children, and beat his wife. All because he was mad that I told him, “Hell no you
can’t get with me. Leave me be or regret it. I don’t play, so forget it. I quit kindergarten because they had recess. So keep on keeping on if you know what’s best.” You could see the disappointment and disgust on his face. As he sped off I got a good look and wrote down his license plate. Just in case he gets lucky with his evil smile and there is report about another missing child.
My auntie’s words ring true; black men can be some low-down dirty honkies, too. Now this brother on 36th and C Street, last week, was actually nice looking but had no game. He had a nice car, but his rap was lame. Nevertheless it was more of the same, when he didn’t get a response to his call, “Hey baby, what’s your name?” while I’m walking home all classy, sassy, hips swaying again as I switch. “Oh it’s like that . . . you Black Tranny Ugly Biaaatch!!!” That was it, the camel’s back was broken from the last straw, I was not even playing or joking when I stopped my track, grabbed my razor and went back.
“Look here, you on the down-low nasty bastard. I am not a fag. I don’t care if you are hot bothered and mad. I don’t know what you think you are seeing, but my mama is a human being and didn’t give birth to no bitch. Maybe if you knew how to talk to a girl and didn’t have a wack rap, you could get with this. Yeah . . . I know it is a given. I look good and work at Being Jazzy for a living. But I’m fed-up with all you honkies, white, black or whatever. Just keep on keeping whenever you see me walking down the street. I don’t buy green bananas cause I don’t have time for some creep!”
Yeah, my friend, I get tired of all the honkies, gawking eyes, and twisted necks; but the one that tickles me the most, the one I can not forget, is the skinny scruffy looking Latino dude last night on his bicycle. If I’m lying, I’m dying, it was such a bad approach I actually had to stop and give him the E for effort. Girrrrrl, can you believe, he was passing me by and had the nerve to repeatedly squeeze his little horn at me on his funky bicycle, “Olá Sweet Mama Sita.” He was charming, yet ludicrous, ratchet, and ridiculous, so I gave him my name and digits. Okay . . . to be perfectly honest with you . . . to tell the truth, since he wasn’t a jerk I brought his scruffy, bicycle-riding ass home and did him good like homework.
