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WALSH-DISSERTATION-2018.Pdf © Copyright by Dylan M. Walsh November, 2018 LOVE WEEK AND OTHER STORIES _______________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the ReQuirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Dylan M. Walsh November, 2018 LOVE WEEK AND OTHER STORIES _________________________ Dylan M. Walsh APPROVED: _________________________ Robert Boswell, MFA Committee Chair _________________________ Chitra Divakaruni, Ph.D. _________________________ Antonya Nelson, MFA _________________________ Alex Parsons, MFA _________________________ Joseph Scapellato, MFA Bucknell University _________________________ Antonio D. Tillis, Ph.D. Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of Hispanic Studies ii LOVE WEEK AND OTHER STORIES _______________ An Abstract of a Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the ReQuirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Dylan M. Walsh November, 2018 ABSTRACT This is a collection of four stories, two of which are short and two of which (so far) fall into the nebulous category of the long short story. All are works in progress. The stories focus much on moments of small, fraught drama between characters who have strong, if ill-defined, feelings about each other. The protagonists are confused, obsessive types who attempt, with very limited success, to understand their own feelings and motivations—to distinguish between delusion and truthful perception. Prominent themes include romantic longing, jealousy, loneliness, self-awareness, egotism, and responsibility for others. On the sociopolitical level, the stories are concerned with issues of economics, social class, gender identity, and racism, as filtered through the perceptions, feelings, and thoughts of white, primarily heterosexual, working-class Americans. Finally, as explorations of intersections between ideology and psychology, the stories explore ways political discourses and institutionalized modes of perception inform and shape the imaginations of individuals as citizens, workers, lovers, and family members. iv Table of Contents Issa 1 Ostrich 20 Truman 37 Love Week 97 Afterword 196 v Issa She’s the kind of thin that can make you lonely to look at or turned on. But the closest we'd got to doing anything we were out in the woods with half a bottle from my dad’s cabinet, and I told her she had the flattest belly I'd ever seen and she let me put my hand on it. But then she got up to go piss somewhere and when she came back all she could talk about was how good Frank is at two things: baseball and electrical work. Now, across the street from the commuter rail station, she's on Frank again, tapping her cigarette to make a line of ash in the crease between bench boards. “So the other day he comes over and my dad's in the kitchen like 'How you doing, Frank?' Which is weird for my dad, right? Because usually he doesn't say shit. But all the sudden today for no apparent reason he's all Mr. Friendly. But what's Frank do? Just stares at him and finally he's like 'Hey.' But, you know, it's 'Hey' in this I-give-a-fuck voice instead of ‘Yo, Mr. Caprielli, how you doing? Nice of you to be nice to me today.' Which, you know, I understand because my dad's always a big fat asshole to Frank, talks to him like he's some hood who wants to jump his precious daughter who he never talks to anyway—but Frank could set an example, right? He could take the opportunity, just be nice and polite just this once and that'd be it—Dad would have to be nice back. But does Frank do this? No, because Frank has to be bad boy vo-tech Frank. Has to have people not like him instead of like him. I say ‘Frank, how do you think you're going to run for president if you can't be nice to people?’ And you know what he says? He says, ‘I'm going to be the first president who isn't like a bullshitter. If I don't like someone, I'm 1 going to tell him to his face—I'm not going to be nice to him just to get a stupid vote.’ And you know what I say? I say ‘Right on, Frank, you fucking loser.’” “I’m sure Frank and your dad will get along eventually,” I offer. Issa sucks on the cigarette, maybe aware of me studying her out of the corner of my eye, though I pretend to be monitoring the pretzel guy in front of the train station as he bounces up and down on his toes while bopping his head back and forth to music on the giant headphones sticking out from under his pom-pommed Patriots cap. Every time a potential customer gets spooked by the pretzel guy’s enthusiasm for life and retreats without buying a pretzel, I win a drag of Issa’s cigarette—which I take even though it makes me sick. It’s one of our games. But so far today, everyone’s steering totally clear of the pretzel cart, leaving before it a wide human-less swath of sidewalk. “Here I am going on about myself again,” says Issa. “Me, me, me. So how's your mom?” “Lonely.” I can’t think of what else to say about Mom. Issa loves to hear me talk shit about her ever since Mom made Issa wait on the front steps while I ran in to grab cigarette-and- Slurpee money from the jar. “She's just in love with you, your mom. Probably wants you to bend her over the toilet...Oh, sorry, am I being offensive? Am I offending Mr. Delicate Artistic Sensibilities? Mr. Don't Talk Bad About My Precious Lonely Old Mom Who Gets An Excuse For Everything Because Her Lard-Ass Husband Farted Out On Her?” I think about it. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Issa mashes the cigarette out and aims the filter-and-nub at a pigeon, nailing it on 2 the leg. The pigeon fluffs itself and limps toward some frozen brown bushes. “Fat little fucker!” she calls after it, socking me on the shoulder. It’s pigeon hit— and shoulder punch—number three for the afternoon. The shoulder hurts, but so far I’ve managed to keep from rubbing it. “What do I have to like bad boys for?” she says. “I should like you. You're smart, sensitive, a good listener—a little fat maybe, but so what? Someday you'll have a nice house and a slick car and a non-crazy wife with a nice ass and you'll invite me over just to make me jealous. Meanwhile, my crazy-ass boyfriend's going to be a guest of the frigging government like my dad says, going to be writing me letters about how he wants to do me so bad every time he looks at a certain hole in his wall and I’m going to write back like 'Don’t drop the soap, honey-buns.' Ha ha. So original.” We smoke, she taps her sneaker toes together and pulls some folded notebook pages out of her jeans pocket. Unfolding the pages, she stares down at the one on top. “What’s that?” “Fuck off. Girl poems.” “I’d like to see—if you want to show me.” “’If you want to show me,’” she mimics. “No thanks, Grandma. They’re all about how awesome and manly Frank is and you wouldn’t be able to fake liking them.” Still, she goes on looking at the page. I notice it’s covered edge to edge in messy blue words made of fat blocky letters, like some kid’s writing. It doesn’t look like a poem to me. And I see “Frank” nowhere on it. But then Issa refolds the pages and shoves them back into her pocket. Another pigeon, this one with a pale crust on its beak, comes within range. With 3 a casual spit glob she just misses it. We watch as the pigeon sidesteps cluelessly toward the glob but randomly stops just in time, its cold pink claw just beyond the edge of the slightly yellowish pool. It dawdles for a second, contemplating its next move. Then, of course, it steps right in. Issa does a victorious pigeon-head bop with her head and drills her solid-for-a-girl fist into me harder than any of the first three times so that I almost fall sideways off the bench. “You and Frank will be all right,” I say, giving in and massaging the shoulder, deciding not to mention that the rules of our game say nothing about her getting to punch me if a pigeon steps into an already landed spit glob. “I can tell.” “Oh, really?” she says, “What makes you Mr. Relationship Expert? My brain gets worn out trying to find new ways to stroke his fucking ego. Not that he notices unless I stop stroking it. I got to say to him, ‘Ooh, Frank, you're so good at this or that.’ I got to go to his stupid boring vo-tech baseball games and watch him pitch. I mean, I guess he's really a good pitcher and all, but baseball is for people with time on their hands—of which I'm not one: I got to do something, get a job. You know I'm going to college? Filled out applications all week—BU, BC. Mr. P. says I'll get in one of them if I keep up my grades, blah, blah, fucking blah.
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