Generation F

by Molly MacDermot

  Frustration

  ELENA COLN

  This piece was part of a FREEwrite exercise my mentee and I did just for FUN at a lovely coffee shop in Long Island City, and it was by far my most FAVORITE session. Dedicated to my dear FRIENDS, Emiko and Dan.

  He strolled into a café feeling bored. It was one of those dull days when rain just hung in the air, soaking the whole world gray. His freelance assignment had ended some time ago; his mornings felt empty now, making him fidgety and vaguely dissatisfied with everything.

  The café was dark, illuminated with a few sparse lights. The barista, a young woman in her early twenties, chewed gum and blew out tiny pink bubbles, popping them gently. Her blond hair was cropped super-short and tinted pink. He reflected idly on her pinkish hair and pink gum bubbles, the only blotches of color inside the café filled with brown and golden hues. The girl was plain-looking; she stared blankly into space, lost in her thoughts or, perhaps, simply absorbed in the rhythm of chewing and blowing out the gum. That vacant stare annoyed him somehow, and when he ordered coffee, he was aware of sounding hoarse and unpleasant.

  The girl did not seem to notice or care about the tone of his voice. She stared just as blankly at the milk jug and turned his coffee off-white (he preferred it dark). He handed her exact change, and she shifted her body away from the counter, without saying a word.

  The place was empty. He looked around and noticed a sign in the corner: “Pick a question. Start a conversation.” The last thing he wanted was to start a conversation, especially since the only other human being inside the café, the barista, seemed totally uninterested in the world. Yet he felt a strange compulsion to check out the conversation starters. He moved toward the sign and leaned forward, trying to make out tiny white letters on small black rectangles, struggling not to spill coffee as he took the first sip. “Who would you have a conversation with if you could pick anyone from history—and why?” he read. He found the question surprisingly difficult to answer. “Who, indeed?” he wondered, and felt a few hot drops of coffee slide down his chin.

  “Who, indeed?” said a female voice behind him; his shoulder muscles clenched, and he spilled more coffee on his hand.

  When he turned around, he found himself staring down into the dark, alert eyes of a petite woman standing very close to him. (When did she come in? He did not hear the café door open, did not recall a gush of cold, wet air.) She was dressed for the weather, in a long silvery raincoat cinched at the waist with a wide belt that accentuated how slim she was; carmine boots hugged her slender ankles. She held her dripping umbrella away from her body and used the free hand to push her long black hair away from her forehead. It was obvious she was expecting an answer, a faint smile hovering on the very edges of her mouth. He could not take his eyes off her mouth. Her lipstick matched the color of her boots (or vice versa?), and it seemed to glow bright in the dim light of the café. A tiny smudge in the left corner of her mouth where she had pressed on her lipstick a bit too hard irritated him, and his mind went blank. All of a sudden, he felt wary and almost hostile toward her. The woman sighed, gave a tiny shrug, and turned away to place her order.

  GABI PALERMO

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Sophomore

  HIGH SCHOOL: Eleanor Roosevelt High School

  BORN: New York, NY

  LIVES: New York, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: My weekly meetings with Kate have allowed me to grow and find my voice as a writer. Our conversations about our love for ’90s music and being a teenager in different generations has encouraged me to incorporate my interest and beliefs into my own writing. One piece that I would not have written without Kate’s help was my intergenerational memoir. In these past five months, I have enjoyed getting to know more about Kate and bonding more with her.

  KATE MULLEY

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 3

  OCCUPATION: Playwright

  BORN: Boston, MA

  LIVES: New York, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: World premiere of new musical Razorhurst at Luna Stage; “The Year Before the Civil War,” The Dionysian, Issue 004

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: My weekly meetings with Gabi have made me examine the similarities and differences between being a teenager in the ’90s and today. We are both diligent procrastinators and cynical optimists. We talk about music and TV, the things that inspire us about the worlds we live in. Our check-ins have grounded me during busy and stressful times and fed me when I have felt creatively empty. Gabi has become surer in her voice this past year, and it has been a joy to be on that journey with her.

  10 Years Later

  GABI PALERMO

  My piece is about my friends and I meeting after ten years. It explores how my friends and I have changed and stayed the same after high school.

  She never thought that she would be nervous seeing them again. They used to meet at Brookfield when they were in high school, so why would it be different now? Gabi hadn’t seen Zuri and Stephen in six months, and that was a long time considering they used to meet up every week in high school. They had just graduated from grad school, and Gabi felt like she was the only one who had no idea what she was going to do with her life. As she waited on the steps in Brookfield she thought about all of the times she waited for Zuri and Stephen on these exact steps. Brookfield hadn’t changed, it had the same stores that were meant for the rich people, and it still had that same smell of money and success. Zuri met Gabi first (as usual, Stephen was late). When they saw each other, they became those annoying-ass people from high school who used to scream when they hadn’t seen each other in two hours. They hugged each other, and couldn’t stop telling each other how amazing they looked. Gabi always thought Zuri was a goddess, but Zuri never saw how beautiful she was. Zuri always thought the same about Gabi, but she could not see how amazing she was, either. They saw things in each other they didn’t see in themselves. After two hours waiting for Stephen, he finally showed up looking the same as he did in high school. He wore the same glasses, faded flannel shirt, and jeans that his mom bought for him. He was six-three and towered over Gabi and Zuri. He gave them the usual uncomfortable hug. Stephen didn’t sit down because he was hungry as hell. “Let’s go to Shake Shack,” he said.

  Before ordering, they had to check their accounts to see if they had enough money, because after ten years, they still were broke. They realized they had money, and ordered the same thing. When they got their orders, they decided to go to the park behind Brookfield. “Let’s hope we don’t see any annoying-ass children,” Zuri said, even though she knew that they used to be the annoying-ass children and probably still were even though they were twenty-six years old. As they walked through the park, Gabi pulled out her speaker and played Frank Ocean. They didn’t care at all that this was TriBeCa. They all sang as loud as they could. Stephen was the worst singer, but hearing him try to sing made them all smile, so she didn’t tell him to shut the hell up. Singing in the streets of TriBeCa took them back to high school when they used to do this every Friday even in freezing weather. While everyone else in their grade was getting high and drinking on Friday nights, they would sing and run in TriBeCa. As they walked to the park, Stephen said he wanted to go on the swings.

  In high school, the swings were the one place they could actually catch up with one another. Going back to the swings meant feeling like they could go back to a time when life was a lot easier and they weren’t in their twenties. When they got to the swings there was no one there. They could be alone.

  “I really wish life was as easy as it used to be,” Zuri said. “Medical school is really awful. I hate it. Everyone is so competitive, and I realized that I don’t like dealing with bodily fluids, so I have no idea what I’m gonna do anymore.” Gabi and Stephen were surprised by what she said because out of all of them she seemed like the one who had all of her shit together.

  “I don’t think any of us know what we’re gonna do,” Gabi said with fear in her voice. All of them agreed, an
d talked about how they took high school for granted. All of the times they spent complaining about the people in school, they never realized how valuable their time together was.

  “If I could go back, I would have spent less time stressing and more time being a teenager,” Zuri said. There was an awkward pause among them. No matter how much they hated high school, they had to admit that compared to now, their lives were better back then because they were all together. In order to lift up their moods, Stephen talked about the great memories they made when they were in high school. They remembered all of the times they went to thrift stores and made Stephen wait while they tried on clothes and all the times they went to get bubble tea and Stephen used to spit the boba at them. They reminisced about high school, and Gabi no longer felt like they were strangers. She felt like they had become closer now that they were more honest with one another about how their lives were going. And as they parted ways, she knew that they would still be close even ten years later.

  I Lie Here

  KATE MULLEY

  Gabi and I talk about music and high school and expression a lot. For this poem, inspired by my conversations with Gabi, I took lyrics from three of my favorite Fiona Apple songs from high school and crafted an erasure poem.

  I don’t care

  I say

  You don’t say

  You care

  And this mind

  This body

  Cannot

  Forget

  You let me

  Know you

  You don’t know

  When your gaze is

  Too close

  You set your spell

  I wanted love

  Once

  And twice

  Don’t make it a game

  Don’t show your sorrow

  Don’t

  Go

  My pride

  I understand I am too proud

  (Like a fool)

  My head’s in the clouds

  And what you seem

  What you

  Don’t

  I don’t know

  When I’ve been careless

  I don’t know

  Where I can begin to be

  Done

  I know the next

  Will

  Help

  But

  I’ve got these lies you tell me

  And I need to

  Know

  What I need is

  Courage

  But you don’t understand

  You say you give

  And you lie

  And you’ll hold

  My soul

  I am

  Too smart

  You’ll never understand why you cry

  And I lie

  Here

  LESLIE PANTALEON

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 2

  GRADE: Sophomore

  HIGH SCHOOL: Midwood High School

  BORN: Brooklyn, NY

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Part two of a four-year journey through high school has proved to be particularly sporadic for both of our personal lives. Throughout the many changes, Lauren has encouraged me to keep writing a central anchor in my life. And much like my writing, Lauren has too become core to my development as a human.

  LAUREN HESSE

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 5

  OCCUPATION: Social Media Producer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  BORN: Albany, NY

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Leslie never stops surprising me with her wit, accomplishments, and curiosity! She challenges me and makes me want to be a better person. With her packed high school schedule and my change of career this year, Leslie always made time and was ready to write, edit, and work hard. I can’t imagine my life without Leslie as a mentee!

  Flight Departure

  LESLIE PANTALEON

  Generation F speaks to all the strong generations of women before it that made it possible. This poem is about what happens after those kinds of women have passed.

  A great granddaughter.

  In her eyes reflected the land that the old woman left years ago,

  without family or a cent to her name.

  Now the old woman has died, passed in a country in which she was not born in.

  Passed in a country which refused to acknowledge her.

  Her body not cold, before it boarded an airplane.

  Now she is dead.

  Now she watches over her great granddaughter, who gazes upon the old woman’s motherland in awe.

  On Funerals

  LAUREN HESSE

  I struggled with what to write this year, as we had to work on our anthology pieces separately and in different countries. Though apart, writing this and reading Leslie’s piece made me feel more connected to her than ever.

  My experiences with funerals have been sterile and generic, most in fake houses built specifically for honoring the dead with family and prayers from a local pastor that we did not know. We played a Leonard Cohen song for my grandfather, and graveside, a local National Guard officer whom we had never met presented a veteran’s flag to my mother. I don’t particularly remember any emotion, sad or reflective or joyful—I was more concerned with helping my parents and making sure we hadn’t forgotten flower arrangements or a check for the funeral director.

  I once sat shiva for a best friend’s grandmother. Grandma Sara used to invite us over for dinner, where she made salads and roasted salmon, or we would meet her at Lord & Taylor to give her an opinion on sensible yet stylish semiorthopedic sneakers. Her funeral wasn’t at a funeral home but rather a fancy funeral parlor on the Upper West Side. Afterward we went to the family’s house and I ate too many bagels from the Second Avenue Deli.

  And as I write this you’re at the vigil for your great-grandmother, your family’s matriarch, in Mexico. You and I have only emailed twice in weeks and you prefaced the note with “This email will be poorly punctuated because many English punctuations do not exist on this keyboard.” You said Mexico was not what you expected but that the burial had given many peace. I realize I know nothing of your culture’s traditions around death except for my visions of grand altars and a few key facts from a children’s movie about Día de los Muertos. I feel naïve, I feel sadness, and I feel my own culture (or lack thereof) that I have taken for granted.

  I wonder if you left a hot chocolate, like the ones you bring to share in our pair sessions, at her altar. I wonder what colors the flowers are in the town your family is from. I think about my parents not talking about death, and if we did, the moment was fleeting. You have nine days to help your great-grandmother cross over and to celebrate and reflect on her life. I wonder if this has helped you—helped your family—more than a sterile service and hearse processional through town helped mine. But the one thing I don’t have to wonder about is how much you will teach me about your time away, about your culture, about your food and celebrations, and about your family as soon as you’re back in Brooklyn.

  RIA PARKER

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Sophomore

  HIGH SCHOOL: Harlem Children Zone Promise Academy II

  BORN: New York, NY

  LIVES: New York, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Honorable Mention; YCteen

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: One memorable memory with Amy was when we chose from a pile of folded papers with a word to write something based on that word. One time when we did this, the word selected was “milk.” Usually I have ideas ready but that time my mind went blank and I was so frustrated. As it happened, that word brought us closer because it was challenging writing about milk. I think it actually made me more comfortable sharing pieces of works that I may not be proud of and more comfortable talking about issues happening in the media with Amy.

  AMY FLYNTZ

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 6

  OCCUPATION: Founder, Amy Flyntz Copywriting LLC

  BORN: Bridgeport,
CT

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Getting the email that Ria had been selected for a Scholastic Honorable Mention was something I will never forget! Getting to know Ria and her writing has been an honor. She is so informed, so passionate, so talented in her writing—and her ability to write across genres has been a source of inspiration for me. While I love talking to her about current events and social justice, I also just really enjoy getting to know her as a young woman. I keep telling her that one day, she will rule the world!

  Invalid Address

  RIA PARKER

  This poem was inspired by the definition of “dead letter mail” and being underappreciated as a black woman. This represents Generation F because we refuse to be silent and will fight for change.