ABSTRACT

WAGE THIS WAR

by Curtis Dickerson

In the following collection of short stories, I aim to further define the political institutions which prevent oppressed peoples from obtaining equality. While many of these stories use humor, the majority have what I believe are very serious political implications, including the oppressive nature that religion, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and income inequality often inject into human interaction. I believe that literature can be a real world force of change, and with this collection, my intent is to share the lives of characters coming up against barriers and power structures which also exist in our world, so that through their (hopefully entertaining) struggle, we may better understand our own.

WAGE THIS WAR

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

by

Curtis Dickerson

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2014

Advisor: ______

Dr. Joseph Bates

Reader: ______

Prof. Eric Goodman

Reader: ______

Dr. Stephanie Dunning

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Get In My Mouth ……………………………………………………… 3 Acknowledge My Sacrifices …………………………………………… 17 Convergence …………………………………………………………… 29 Little Christian Wonders ……………………………………………….. 30 Agent Craig Meltzer …………………………………………………… 37 Then Piper ……………………………………………………………… 48 Eat Whatever the Fuck You Want ……………………………………… 52 A Brief Aquatic Feeling ………………………………………………... 57 The Coveted 18-to-35 …………………………………………………... 69 Outside the Glow ………………………………………………………. 72 Keep My Mind Busy …………………………………………………… 83

ii! !

The clouds and the stars didn’t wage this war the brooks gave no information if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river it was not taking sides the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf had no political opinions

--Adrienne Rich

iii! ! GET IN MY MOUTH

My new girlfriend is not like my ex-girlfriend. My new girlfriend does not like to pretend that she is an ancient princess warrior and scream battle cries in the shower. She does not break into my apartment and rearrange my books by color. My new girlfriend has never once called me a Mouth Breathing Product of Incest Incapable of True Human Emotion. She has never called me A Shit's Shit, A Literal Shit That Other Shits Go to See How to Become More Shitty. She calls me things like Nice, things like A Handsome Man, Considerate, and Very Good in Bed. When I unlock my door after going for groceries, I see my ex-girlfriend, who calls me things like A Walrus With a Defective Penis, or That Special Class of Person Who is Too Stupid to Know How to Drool, sitting on my recliner eating my special chips. Why are you eating my special chips? I ask my ex-girlfriend. Those are my special chips. Lay off Lenny, my ex-girlfriend says and takes another handful. You still owe me rent from October. I don’t feel comfortable with my landlady breaking into my apartment and eating my special chips, I say. I don’t feel comfortable with my pockets being eight hundred dollars lighter. There is a lesson that I have learned through this process and that is this: Do not date your landlord. My ex-girlfriend rolls up the bag and gets up to put it back into the cabinet. I sit in the recliner she had been sitting in and try to figure out how to get her out of my apartment without also paying her. I do not have the money. She knows I do not have the money. Why don’t you take that job your brother offered? my ex-girlfriend asks. Then you can pay me back and I can stop bothering you in ways only an ex-girlfriend would know how to. Because I don’t want to work for my brother, I say. (My brother is an idiot.) (My brother is not kind to his wife. My brother’s wife takes care of their children almost exclusively. My brother avoids his taxes and he does not recycle and he is rude to our parents.) You need to figure out what you’re going to do Lenny, my ex-girlfriend says. She leaves my apartment and now I am alone and I am wishing partly that she had not left. I do not own a television and I am not in a reading mood and my apartment has a way of amplifying the silence the longer you sit here.

1 I am tempted to grab the special chips but something about her eating them has tainted them and they are not as special as they were when they were unopened. Perhaps I should work for my brother (even though he is an idiot). Maybe work is supposed to be not fun, whether your boss is just a person you work for or whether your boss is your (idiot) brother.

At our dinner, at our date night, because we are the sort of couple who has regular date nights, my current girlfriend is radiant. She looks like a movie star, the kind of person people turn around to look at again when she walks past, and there is me, my arm in her arm, looking back at them, letting them know that, yes, I am tapping this. My penis has been inside this several times to significant acclaim. I am able to satisfy, I am able to fulfill this gorgeous creature's needs so you should step off, man in stupid baseball cap, his friend who is wearing shorts even though it is too cold. How was your salad? Are you finished? I ask, because I am polite. Yeah, I'm done. Thank you, she coos, like a bird, like an angel. You sure you're not more hungry? I don't want to leave if you can still eat. I'm full. I ate too much. Well, if you're ready to go I'm ready to go. I snap for the waiter, because I am suave and want to show my new girlfriend in little ways how suave I am. He brings the check and I pay for my meal and my girlfriend's salad and we drive back to my apartment where I suspect I will be rewarded for my generosity with sexual favors. Do you want a drink? I ask. Gin, my new girlfriend says. I like gin. My favorite thing about my new girlfriend is the way we fool around on my couch. Usually this means that I will be getting laid, but I very much like this first stage, where I reach up under her shirt and my fingers sort of find their slots in my new girlfriend's ribs, sort of like the handles of a bike. When I do ride her, like a bike, her little rib handles get squeezed, and sometimes I squeeze too hard and she sort of gasps, but when that happens I imagine that I have reached in between her ribs and have poked her lungs, and that poke of mine though my new girlfriend's ribs has expelled the air from her lungs back into the rest of the air. When I am riding her, like a sort of sex captain in a hurricane, I am in complete control of her and her pleasures.

2 But my favorite thing my new girlfriend does, the thing that really drives me wild, is when she swallows after giving me head. She is ok at giving head, I am satisfied, even if it does take a little long, but when it is time for me to finish, she holds on like a suckerfish to the end and will not let go until every last drop is extracted into her mouth and down her throat and into her stomach, which is a nice feeling on more than one level. My new girlfriend likes it too, she says that afterwards she sometimes feels more satisfied than if we had had full blown sex. Honestly like seriously that's the most delicious thing I've had all day, my new girlfriend says afterwards. Happy to oblige, I say, because I am. I am very happy to oblige my new girlfriend’s sexual whims. What did you even eat? Did you eat something spicy before we had dinner? Nope. Had a tuna sandwich for lunch. It's not that. My new girlfriend gets out of bed without her clothes on. She bumps against my night table because she makes us keep the lights off when we are doing it and I can hear her feeling around on the ground for my t shirt, which she wears and walks around in without any bra or panties, which is something that I love and rarely do I wash those shirts so that her smell stays on them after she has left. I hear her go into the bathroom and close the door and then light comes out from the outline of the door and the bedroom is less dark. I look disgusting, my girlfriend says, after using the restroom, after washing her hands, after turning the light off, after opening the door, after getting back into bed. I caught my legs in the mirror. It looks like a normal person's torso being lifted up by a super fat person's legs. Why do you say that? I ask, since you are not supposed to talk about a woman's weight. Oh please, you see me. I need to lose maybe thirty pounds. Thirty pounds seems like a lot to lose. Well, I have a lot I need to lose. You look fine, I tell her. I tell her that she looks fine a lot, because she does look fine. She looks super fine, like library fine, like the most expensive parking fine in the world, the kind of fine that physically hurts when you put it in the envelope to pay the city. We curl up to fall asleep, because that is what people do after they have had sex. My new girlfriend did not ask me to do anything with her after she finished with me so I assume she is

3 tired too. We both have had busy days. We are professionals, even if my profession is not paying premiums at the moment and her profession is very lucrative momentarily. As I fall asleep, I slip my hand under her shirt into the ridges of her rib handles so that if I wake up in the middle of the night I am not momentarily confused into thinking that I am instead sleeping beside my ex- girlfriend.

Are you having breakfast? I ask my new girlfriend at breakfast time. Don't even say that word, she says after she pours herself a glass of water from the refrigerator. You should really get something in your body, I say, considerate. You won't be able to think at work. My girlfriend takes a very long drink from her glass of water and looks me in the eyes the whole time as she swallows the whole thing. The look in her eyes is making me think that she is thinking about something very carefully. My new girlfriend puts her glass of water down on the counter and walks over very slowly to me sitting at the table. I'm sure there's a little something I could get in my mouth before work. When my new girlfriend gives me head in the daytime, she makes me take off my shirt and my undershirt and my pants and my underwear. My new girlfriend likes me to be naked when she is giving me head in the daytime even though she wears all of her clothes, with the light streaming through the window, with the curtain pulled back so that anyone else in any of the other apartments could see us through their window if they knew where to be looking. It does not happen often, it has been happening lately, that is a true thing, and it seems to not have come from any one thing that I have done, but off to work head is not unheard of before my new girlfriend leaves my house after spending the night on her way to work, which is not something that I also do, per se. My work is more conceptual, which means that I can stay at home more often than not, which means that my new girlfriend's not infrequent off to work sexual favors are the perfect beginning to my morning of cultivating creative energy. Tasty tasty, she says and wipes her mouth, like a little girl wiping away a fruit punch mustache. Thanks for breakfast babe. Clearly I am the one that should be thanking her, but I nod and smile, like a sultan, like a gracious benefactor. She is talented at head in general, but off to work head is specifically

4 spectacular. My new girlfriend turns to go, her hand on the door to my apartment, but she turns back. Lenny, I have a job for you today, if you can squeeze it in, she says. Anything for you babe. I'm trying this new self-improvement thing, my new girlfriend says. I want to be a better person, but sometimes it's hard to get perspective, you know? You're pretty close to being somewhere around perfect already. Well, that's nice of you to say. But, if you have any free time, could you take a few minutes and maybe come up with a list of the things about me that are less than perfect? Even if it's awkward, I just want to know. Just like a bulleted list of things about me that could use improvement. Are you sure? I ask. This seems like an exercise in self-torture. No no no, she says. I'm making myself better.

I sit and stare at my computer screen and try to figure out how I am going to make this list for my new girlfriend of the ways in which she is not perfect. I am thinking, where to begin? Because she is not perfect. I am not perfect either, no person is perfect. Each of us could use some improvement, but my new girlfriend is specifically asking me, her new boyfriend, what it is about her that I think is less than perfect. When she asks her mother, or her boss, I am sure that they will give different answers, but a boyfriend is coming from a specific perspective. She does not read. I think it is important that people read but she is not the kind of person who reads. Not yet anyway. I would like to see her perhaps cook more, I don't care for when her legs become prickly or when she asks me about my family. She tells me that she works out after getting off work and before coming to my apartment on the days when she comes to my apartment, which is a good thing, but sometimes she does not seem sweaty and is not wearing her workout clothes and I think she is lying, which is not a good thing. Her ribs. Her ribs could be more pronounced. Those are my favorite part of hers, but this is one of those cases in which a less is more mindset could be a beneficial thing. By late afternoon, I have about a hundred things on my list, maybe a few items more than a hundred, because I am if nothing else thorough. My new girlfriend is the person who has asked, so I am the person who is going to tell. I email the pages to my new girlfriend who sends back Thanks in response. I am sure she will spend time going through my thoughtful criticisms at her

5 apartment if she does not come here directly after work. I do not think that her feelings will be hurt since she is a person who seems to take criticism well. After I send my new girlfriend the list she asked for, I see an email my (idiot) brother has sent me which is not written by him but instead an email he has received from someone else which is critical of our current presidential administration, which is something that annoys me, not because he has an opinion, but because he cannot formulate an opinion (because he is an idiot), instead needing someone else to do it for him so that he can send it out to others so that others can know what he thinks from the thing that tells him what to think in the first place. In this specific message, the person who tells my brother what to think so that he can tell others what to think has called the president A Traitor, Disgraceful, Dumb as a Bag of Brick Powder, Maybe a Little Light in His Loafers, and The Most Clear and Present Threat to the Well Being and Security of the United States of America. I consider sending him a nasty reply by hitting the Reply All button so that everyone who he has sent his (idiotic) message can see my clever response, but I know that our parents’ emails are on that list of about sixty emails and that they will give me a hard time for giving my (idiot) brother a hard time, so I instead delete the email that tells me what my (idiot) brother is being told to think. Later, I hear a knock on my door and know it is my ex-girlfriend before I even get up from my chair. When I open the door, she is standing there with her arm resting on the doorframe and a smirk on her face that makes me angry immediately. How was your hot date? she asks. It was hot, I reply. How were your TV shows? My ex-girlfriend comes in without asking and sits in my recliner. Also hot, she says. They did a special about partners killing partners. This one woman killed her husband because she found out he spent two hundred dollars on a hockey jersey behind her back. You can't keep coming here like this, I say. I'm seeing someone. This is highly inappropriate. Yeah that's all nice and good Lenny. Pay me the back rent and I'll never bother you again. Because, since you haven't paid me, I can only assume you want to keep seeing my pretty face. My new girlfriend is not rude like my ex-girlfriend. She does not smirk, her face is always pleasantly tranquil, like a lake, like a sleeping puppy.

6 My ex-girlfriend gets up from my recliner and goes to my cabinet and pulls out my special chips and grabs a handful. My ex-girlfriend is older than my new girlfriend, is less quiet, does not respect me or my position in the world. My ex-girlfriend does not think my creative projects, the work I spend my days at, are Really Cool, Interesting, or Has Potential. My ex- girlfriend thinks my creative projects are Wastes of Time, So Typically and Embarrassingly Childish, The Kind of Shit Only You Could Come Up With, and Foolish, Just Really, Really Dumb.

My new girlfriend calls to see if she can come over and I tell her she can and she does. She says on the phone she has something to show me and I am thinking that it will be something very enjoyable, since it has been a few days since I have seen her and I assume that she has been storing up her great sexual energy like a dam that will break all over me, but when she gets here it is just a new haircut, since I had mentioned on my list Hair Could Be Less in Front of Face, since she is always pushing it back behind her ear. What do you think? she asks. About the bangs? They look nice, I say. Now you won’t have to keep pushing it back behind your ear. Yeah, it took a little getting used to, but now I kind of like it. I do not tell my new girlfriend that I do not like it, since I am the person who mentioned it in the first place, but I very much dislike her bangs, since it looks a little bit like a samurai grabbed all of the hair in front of her face and chopped it off with one swift swing of the samurai sword. It looks severe, my new girlfriend’s new hair, it looks like something that she is not. What did your other lists say? I ask. What lists? The lists other people filled out for you besides me. Oh, nobody else did it. I just wanted to see what you thought. Why did I think you were asking a bunch of people? Don’t know, she says. My new girlfriend goes to the refrigerator and pours herself a glass of water. I sit back down in my recliner. I ask her if she wants to go out for dinner and she says that she is not hungry but that I can order a pizza if I would like.

7 My new girlfriend and I watch television on my laptop. I am eating pizza and having a few beers and she is laying with her head on my chest and her hand somewhere between my shoulder and my nipple and occasionally sighing deeply. When we are ready to go to bed, my new girlfriend has become an animal when we enter the bedroom. She is ravenous, she throws herself onto me in a way that is uncomfortable to me until I adjust myself. Hey hot stuff, she says, her voice low in a purr, in a sweet rumble. You want this? I ask, finding it hard to breathe under the position she has pinned me into. All of it, she says. Every little bit. I'm hungry for you, Lenny.

Through a frivolous and wholly unexpected check from my brother in the mail on the occasion of my having been born on an entirely arbitrary day of the calendar year, I am finally able to pay of my ex-girlfriend, the landlord. I knock on her office door promptly at ten in the morning and hand her the envelope of cash as she opens the door looking tired. There it is, I say. Now we're square. Are you serious? she says, her face quickly shifting into a mocking smirk. Look at Lenny! Paying off his debts! No more sneaking into my apartment, I tell my ex-girlfriend. Ok ok, she says. I walk back to my apartment and grab myself a soda. This is a thing that I have fixed. This invasion of my ex-girlfriend into my private life is a thing which I have laid to rest for good for awhile. I will not be walking into my own living space to see someone whom I am no longer intimate with sitting in my recliner and eating the food I paid for and mocking me openly to my face. My ex-girlfriend is no longer part of the daily fabric of my life. That night, I am feeling accomplished and am especially giddy around my new girlfriend, though I cannot tell her the source of my giddiness even when she asks. There is an excitement within me, and I channel it outwards towards my new girlfriend, complimenting her on her truly remarkable weight loss. I found myself today looking for old photos of my new girlfriend online so that I could have a point of reference for her transformation, though it seems as if she has taken down any photos of hers that have not been taken by her within the last week. I do not mention this, but her physique is shockingly hot, as if there was this whole new new girlfriend

8 within my new girlfriend waiting to be coaxed out, like a purer, more perfect diamond that is extracted from an already precious rock. She refuses my offers of dinner, though she has a few gin and tonics as I eat spaghetti. She lays her head down for an instant and is snoring on my dinner table, though I do not mind. She is a hard worker, is hard on herself, could use some rest after a few gin and tonics as I finish my spaghetti. I wake her up after I wash my plate, even though normally she is the one who washes the plates after dinner and we arrange ourselves in my living room in our usual position, though she is in reality as light as a feather on my chest. She falls asleep again and I push her off me gently and she stays sleeping and I grab my laptop and I switch it from the television we were watching to the project I am working on. I am creating a manifesto in my free time. In the time I am not reading to better myself, when I am not running errands for my newly shockingly hot new girlfriend, when I am successfully avoiding my ex-girlfriend who is also my landlord and seems to be finding reasons to be outside my apartment, I am creating The List to End All Lists, a definitive, exhaustive catalogue of Rules for a Happy and Healthy Life Which Avoids Harming Others. There are three tenets for a Happy and Healthy Life Which Avoids Harming Others. First, avoid harming others. Be kind to those around you, do not engage in violence unless it is to protect the life of you or of your family. Tip well when you can afford it, do not steal things from the grocery store, even if it is something small that no one will miss. Second, live a healthy life. Drink plenty of water and do not put off going to the doctor, especially when you suspect something is not right. Finally, find the things which make you happy and do them. With some disclaimers, obviously, since if everyone did only what made them happy, nothing would actually get done, but find the things which make you happy outside of your livelihood and do those things, whatever they are. For instance, outside of my creative daytime endeavors, the things which give me happiness are going out to eat, being with my new girlfriend, and reading to better myself, which I make a habit of making time for. It is important for each person to make time for his or her own passions and interests. This is obviously an oversimplification of the overall project, which I am still completing and deciding on a vehicle for, but I am encouraged, since this is the most tangible and non- conceptual idea I have had in several months. After I flesh out the idea for a little bit, I am tired. I

9 wake up my new girlfriend so that she can keep sleeping in my bed. I have a feeling that tonight is not a night that I will be having sex with my girlfriend, but I am still hopeful. When she is in bed, after we have changed into our pajamas, after the lights are turned off, after the covers are pulled up, I move over to hold her and hopefully get her into a mood of wanting sex as well, though I can tell by her breathing that she has already fallen asleep again. Instead, I put my fingers in the handles of her ribs, which are now incredibly pronounced, like tiny speed bumps, like a sort of sexy braille.

My ex-girlfriend has begun to leave me things in front of my door and by some miracle my new girlfriend has not noticed. One day it was a teacup smashed to powder and fragments, yesterday it was a clump of synthetic hair extensions. Today as I walk out in the afternoon to get my mail, it is a scarf that I am fairly sure belonged to her mother. I keep them in a box in a closet in my bedroom, since I know that she has access to the garbage I dispose of and I do not want to upset her more by her seeing the things that she gave me among food scraps and bottles for beer and condoms I use to have sex with my new girlfriend often. Except we do not have sex tonight, since my new girlfriend stops in the middle of us fooling around and I can tell that she is not wild about it. I ask he what is wrong, but she says nothing, instead getting out of bed and fumbling around for a t shirt in the dark and going into the bathroom and shutting the door and turning on the light and I wonder whether or not she is crying. Because if she is crying, I have done something wrong, or something about something I have done has reminded her of something wrong someone else has done, which is perhaps even worse. You ok in there? I ask. I'll be out in a second, she says, and it sounds like something is caught in her throat, like she is crying and is trying to hide the fact that she is crying. Seriously, I say to my new girlfriend, What's up? I said I'd be out in a second, Lenny! my new girlfriend shouts through the door, her voice strained like an poorly tuned violin, like a wounded fairy. Jesus Christ lay off! I get back into the bed and pull on my boxer shorts and pull my covers over myself and wait for my new girlfriend to come out of the bathroom. When she does, I am right in assuming that she has been crying, but she does not mention it so I do not mention it, since with women

10 you are not supposed to push issues. She says Goodnight and goes to sleep. I am still horny and I have not finished yet, so when I am fairly sure she is asleep, I go into the bathroom and finish myself. I am trying not to be bitter at my new girlfriend for not finishing me for me, but I know that she has been stressed lately and that she is not satisfied, job wise. When I am by myself, finishing myself and eliminating my horniness, I have to force myself to keep from thinking about my ex-girlfriend, since she keeps popping into my head, like a gnat, like a loose board that you accidentally step onto which slaps you in the face.

When we go out for dinner, I order barbecue ribs, which makes me a little horny when I say my order to the waiter and my new girlfriend does not order anything, though she says she will have some of the french fries that come with my ribs. I tell her to order a side of fries for herself and she tells me Never Mind and orders a gin and tonic. I ran into your landlady, my new girlfriend says from across the table, after she wraps her mouth around the little straw and drinks her gin. Oh yeah? Yeah, she was taking out her garbage and I guess she recognized me from around. She does not think very highly of you. What did she say? I ask. Oh, you know. You're using me, you're a pig, I could do so much better. What did you say? You mean did I defend you? my new girlfriend asks, her eyes gleaming, like a campfire, like a sunset over the ocean. Did I come to your aid? Why does your landlady hate you so much anyway? I was back on my rent for awhile. Plus she just really doesn't like me. Interesting. So what did you say? Nothing really, my new girlfriend says. This week my ex-girlfriend has left a dead bird on my doorstep. She has left a pair of cracked sunglasses, a picture of the new pope, a popsicle stick, a pet collar, a bottle cap opening keychain. I put them all in my box in my closet in my bedroom, although a few more weeks of

11 this and I will have to find a second box in which to put the things my ex-girlfriend leaves in front of my door. My new girlfriend does not want to go back to my apartment after we go out to eat, which is a first, which annoys me a little since I paid for four of her gin and tonics, but I do not say this, since it is unfair to assume that a woman will sleep with you if you buy her drinks, even if she is your new girlfriend. I drop her off and come back to my apartment and open up my laptop and continue to work on my project, The List to End All Lists. My (idiot) brother sends a text to my phone when I am working on a particularly fruitful avenue of thought while trying to explain the Rules for a Happy and Healthy Life Which Avoids Harming Others. After I continue my particular thought to its logical conclusion I check to see what my (idiot) brother has said. He asks me how I am and tells me that Things are Really Going to Shit in his marriage and that he Really Needs to Get Away for Awhile and asks if I would like to come with him on a weekend trip, All Expenses Paid. Normally I would tell him that I would prefer to stay at my house to spend as much time as possible with my new girlfriend, but because she has annoyed me tonight by going back to her place even after I have bought her four gin and tonics, I tell my (idiot) brother Sure, Why Not, since he is the one that will be paying for the trip and because I could perhaps use some time away from my new girlfriend, since she has been acting like something that she is not lately. My (idiot) brother (who has recently sent me and dozens of other people a long email which was not written by him which explains in poorly worded and misspelled sentences why exactly Muslim Americans are Destroying the Very Fabric of This God Fearing Country) tells me where to meet him at the end of the week and I find myself becoming a little excited in spite of myself.

When I tell my new girlfriend a few nights later that I will be gone this weekend, she seems especially giddy, though she will not say why even when I ask. Have a good time, she says. Although I thought you hated your brother. He’s ok, I say (lying). What are you going to do with your weekend now that you won’t have me around to entertain you? I’m sure I’ll manage, my new girlfriend says. My new girlfriend and I have not had sex in a fair amount of time. She seems constantly exhausted, like an overworked single mother, like a free clinic waiting room. She says it is

12 because she is Just Going Full Steam at Work Like Crazy, because she Hasn’t Been Sleeping Well, because she is Feeling a Little Sick, Not Like Contagious But Like Not Right. I tell her she Might Need to See a Doctor About Being That Tired All the Time and she smiles at me tiredly and says Maybe. When I asked her earlier whether or not she was hungry and pointed at my crotch, which was a joke, my new girlfriend did not think it was funny. Lately she has been wearing very baggy sweat sweaters and too long shirts, which is not shockingly hot, but as her boyfriend I know what is underneath her baggy sweaters and too long shirts, which is shockingly hot, more shockingly each day. I’m tired, I tell my new girlfriend when I am tired. Want to go to bed? Actually, I’m ok right now, my new girlfriend says. You go to bed though. I’ll be in in a little bit. Are you sure? Yeah yeah, go ahead. Do you mind if I use your laptop though? I want to watch this thing my friend recommended. Go ahead, I say and stand up and kiss her on her cheek and walk into the bedroom and change into my pajamas and get into bed and pull the covers over myself. What time are you leaving to see your brother tomorrow? my new girlfriend asks, after poking her head into my bedroom. Afternoon, I say. Ok, just checking. Night babe.

When I wake up in the morning, my new girlfriend is not beside me in bed. I look at my clock and realize it is late morning, since for some reason the alarm I thought I had set had not gone off. I get up to check and see if my new girlfriend is in the kitchen or in the bathroom, but she is not and must have left for work. Since I have only a few hours before I am supposed to meet my (idiot) brother, I pack my clothes and my laptop and a few toiletries and take a shower and use my phone to text my girlfriend Sorry I Missed You This Morning, and that I will see her Pretty Face and Hot Bod Next Week. I meet my (idiot) brother in the parking lot that we were supposed to meet in and he is smiling (his shit eating grin) when I get out of my car. How’s it hanging, brother? he asks.

13 Low low low bro, I say back and get into his car so he can drive us to our All Expenses Paid weekend trip. On the way there I open up my laptop since the trip is several hours and since I do not feel like talking to my (idiot) brother for several hours, which gives me time to work on my Rules for a Happy and Healthy Life Which Avoids Harming Others. Instead of my List to End All Lists, I find a note from my new girlfriend. It is a harsh note, it tells me that my new girlfriend would like to never speak to me again, that I am Really Terrible, a People User, Basically the Worst Person on the Planet, Fat, a Total Psycho, and that I caught her At a Really Bad Place in My Life. I debate back and forth whether to tell my (idiot) brother about the note from my girlfriend and eventually decide to tell him since he too is having relationship troubles (though his are very much deserved since he is an idiot). Guess we’re both having lady trouble, my (idiot) brother says.

After our weekend trip is over, after my (idiot) brother drops me off in the parking lot, after I tell him Thanks for Everything, after I get into my car, after I drive to my apartment, there is a small pile of things in front of my door left by my ex-girlfriend. She has left a newspaper torn into strips, a book of matches from a Mexican restaurant, a tiny jar of clear liquid, a baseball hat with the cap cut off, a chicken bone, and several other things. I gather up all the things left in front of my door by my ex-girlfriend and put them in the second box of her things in the closet in my bedroom. I grab my special chips and sit in my recliner and turn on my laptop and watch television. I am not going to try to contact my girlfriend, since you are supposed to respect a woman’s wishes, even if they do not make any sense whatsoever, and since I suspect she will message me later this week apologizing and wanting to get dinner and maybe even wanting to have sex, like a yo-yo, like the second or third or fourth clean plate at a buffet.

14 ACKNOWLEDGE MY SACRIFICES

Sometimes on long stretches of highway I imagine that my Hyundai is a giant beetle I can control, and every jerk of the steering wheel and tap on the gas is me willing this beast to move, telling it where to carry me and my children. Their quiet chattering and the voices from their various devices are drowned out by a complete focus on the green strip of median between the lanes, the length of yellow line that bends forever onward. I see myself as the hero of their movies, the world weary and kindly warrior mother, slapping leather reigns from my oversized saddle, urging some massive blue insect to buzz faster towards our destination. Right now our destination is school. Then grocery store, then home decorating store, then home, then school, then soccer, then home, then soccer, then home. I am their portal from place to place, the fulfiller of the physical ties their interactions in the real world require. They engage with one another and with the screens and with one another through the screens and with one another about their engagements with the screens. I keep them here and show them the literal and coax them from the digital. It is a daily battle. I do not mean to say that I am somehow immune to the charms of these screens. I have been known to go on a shopping spree or two, remembering what I have purchased only days later as it arrives on my doorstep. But I know what creatures lurk, I am more watchful than my children give me credit. Only Husband knows the true extent of my observation and he only because communication between parents is important. He knows, as they might one day, that I am waiting in the wings, waiting to whisk them up and out when the situation arises. Be in the world, not of it. My children hurl themselves out of my car when we pull up to their school like parachuters. I tell them to have a blessed day, and they bend their arms behind their backs to wave goodbye discreetly while walking into the building. What I cannot control, the school will. I have the utmost faith in the school, in the teachers, in the kindly principal with the crossed eye who could have gotten it fixed if he had taken one of the parents who is also an ophthalmologist up on his offer, the kindly principal who refuses because he is a Man of God, because he believes we all are given Burdens for our own development, and his just happens to be his eye. Which may be true, but even if it is not, it is a comforting worldview to entrust my children with. Their days at their school are screen free, perhaps the longest parts of their day which are screen free.

15 In that time when they are not distracted, my children are learning about the Word of God, about how to be Crusaders for Christ, men and women of faith who never falter. It is a very good return on investment, Husband and I are very satisfied with our decision to pull our children out of public. Onward! I tell my beetle Hyundai as we pull out of the parking lot and make myself laugh. It is important to laugh, is easy to forget the importance of laughing in the face of all the forbidden fruits this world has to offer.

Husband is in better spirits after his trip with Loser Lenny, his unsaved and unrepentant brother. I ask him if he had a chance to share the Good News again and Husband smiles and tells me that Loser Lenny was unreceptive. What all did you do? I ask. Fishing, mostly, Husband says. We stopped at this diner on the way and it was like stepping in a time machine. It was crazy. What did you have? Pork chops. Forget what he had. Did he try to get you to go out drinking with him? No. Did he pay for any of the meals? Yes he paid for his meals. Did he pay for the hotel room? Yes he paid for half of the hotel room. Did he pay for gas? Yes he paid for some gas. How much did he pay? I don't know, Siobhan, Husband says. He filled up the tank. He went in. He paid for the tank. He came out. I didn't look to see how much it was. Ok ok, I say. Gosh. Where's that spirit of generosity Pastor was talking about? I'm just trying to find out how your trip was. Sorry, Husband says.

16 We are sitting around the table and eating the lasagna that I have made with my own two hands to feed the family I love. My children are nose deep in their screens and the dog just jumped up and almost stole a roll. Henry, I say to my child. Don’t use your phone at the table. What? I said put away your phone. Sorry. Eat your lasagna, I say. I want to know what he sees on there, how he manipulates the shapes and words into knowledge and meaning, tapping and scrolling and spinning and swiping and poking and zooming, but it is not the sort of thing a mother can ask her young son. When he is older, our relationship will change. When he is older, he will be more attentive to my needs as a mother, as a person, will be more willing to engage and to acknowledge my sacrifices. Now he pretends that I am a robot who dispenses food and transports bodies.

Every other Wednesday of each month is Prayer Brunch, a gathering of some of the mothers from our children's school for us to discuss our triumphs and disappointments and fears about the future and prayer requests. We go around the table and the seven of us, for the most part women who have two or more children at the school and who are actively involved in its governance, each say one blessing and one struggle. I tell them Husband is both the blessing and the struggle and all the other women laugh and the waiter is maybe smiling when he leans over to refill my water glass. At Prayer Brunch we quiz one another over omelets from a booklet for our written test before our class later in the afternoon. The ladies are planning on going and getting our gun permits together, a Concealed Handgun License. It is a protection we hope we never have to use, but it is important to be prepared and ready when the time is right to be able to protect our families from the dangers of this world. There are murderers out there who would murder my children without blinking, pedophiles who lick their lips at the thought of fondling my children's genitals, perverts and crazies and psychos and kidnappers and sex slavers and wanderers and people who lack any sense of morality because they have turned their backs to God. They can be anyone, they can be friends or neighbors or family members. If they come for my children, they will find me waiting with a little surprise in my leather purse, a justice for their inequities,

17 waiting to right their wrongs. Our instructor is a handsome man with a mustache who wears shirts that are probably too tight for how cold it is outside, but we do not care. We like it, we laugh about it together because it is important to laugh. What's the most important thing to remember when you're cleaning your gun? Rhonda? one of the mothers asks. Make sure the safety's on, keep it away from your face, another mother says. Don't want to blow off your nose, another mother says. It would be a good excuse to get a new nose job though, I say, and everyone laughs. Doctor, I was cleaning my gun. Can I get the Amy Grant? I say and everyone laughs. Or the, what's her name, the Kristin Chenoweth? One of the mothers decides that we should split the check seven ways, which is unfair since I only had water with my meal and most of the other women had orange juice or coffee, but I hold my tongue and pull out my card. Turn the other cheek. Or the other check, as Husband used to say. After getting in the car, after turning the keys and pulling out of the parking lot, after stopping by the grocery store and grabbing the usuals like the well-oiled machine that I am, after going home and unloading the groceries equally efficiently, I drive back to my children's school to pick them up. My children get in the car and I ask them how their day went and they say Fine. Peter, I call back from the driver’s seat to my child. Can you put your earphones in or turn that down? One or the other, please! What? Peter, you need to turn that down! Sorry.

Husband tells me he has caught our child watching pornography on one of his screens. Because our children must keep their bedroom doors unlocked, Husband knocked and entered to find our child quickly trying to hide his phone in a drawer of his desk, and when he asked to see it and my child said No, Husband walked over and took the phone from him and unlocked the screen and the lewd sounds of the video blared in the room and Husband fumbled to turn the sound off. What did you do? I ask. I took the phone. He's grounded for a month from electronics, Husband says.

18 That's it? I ask. What do you want me to do, Siobhan? My children inherit their vulgarity from their father. My father would have never permitted such immoral behavior; he would have smacked me or my brothers from here to Timbuktu, he would have banned us from friends and from eating and from fun and from breathing. So you're not going to do anything else? Look, says Husband. This is very awkward for me. I don't know how else to handle it. He does something wrong, he gets a punishment. Well you've already punished him, so there's nothing else I can do now is there? If you wanted, you could. I'm not saying you shouldn't. I just did what I thought was right. What should I have done? You are the laziest man on the face of this planet, I say. After I pick up my children from their school, after I drop some of them off at home and some of them off at soccer, after I tell Husband and my children to fend for themselves for dinner, I head to the gun range and it all goes away for a little bit. I pick up some of my children from soccer on my way back home from the gun range and one of them complains that I am late and I say nothing and he goes back to his screen.

I tell the ladies at Prayer Brunch about the incident with Husband and my child, and they are shocked. They tell me that he is not being very proactive, that he could learn a thing or two from my Jonathan, that he needs to step up to the plate, that the whole thing is just not right. What should I do then? I ask. What can you do? one of the mothers says. He's your husband. Head of the Household. One of the mothers tells us about her recent vacation with her family to Jamaica. Her family walked on the beaches and slept under the stars and got their hair braided and swam with the stingrays. I remember the vacation I am planning for the week my children are on spring break from their school and am encouraged. It will be a time for us to bond together, screen free. It will be a time for us to come together as a family again, to remember who we are together in a less hectic setting.

19 The only screen I'm allowing on our vacation is sunscreen, I say, and everyone laughs. Maybe the screens on the hotel windows because I hear the bugs are huge, I say, and everyone laughs. Who knows? Maybe I'll kill them all in their sleep and then I'll go on vacation by myself for a change! I say, and everyone laughs. When I come home after dropping off our children at Wednesday Church, after all the other things I have done today, Husband is waiting in the kitchen and wanting to start a conversation with me, but I am in a mood which is less than great. Love is Patient, Husband says quietly. Don't speak to me right now, I say.

Husband and I go to church twice on Sundays and our children go again on Wednesdays. They practically beg us to go on Wednesdays. Sometimes Wednesday rolls around and I am thinking that, after the day that I have had driving around in my Hyundai in service of my family, I would rather read a good book or relax a little bit in front of the television or stab my eyeballs out with knitting needles, but my children need a ride to church so I give my children a ride to church. Husband is never the one who gives our children a ride to church. Husband comes home from work and he is tired and is in a mood which is less than good. He eats a plate of whatever dinner I have made, sometimes at the table with our children and sometimes not, then goes up to the bedroom where he watches television and avoids us. The children do not seem to mind since they are also on their screens, but how could a child not mind that their father is not around often, or even if he is around often enough, he is holed up in his Man Cave watching sports or news or self-help seminars? Train up a child in the way he should go, sure, but what sort of example or training is Husband providing? Husband is not providing training. Husband is providing a model for Slothfulness, a model from which our children will not depart when they grow old. It has already begun; my children are showing signs of their father’s laziness, and it will continue to grow worse unless I can correct course. After I wash the dishes, after I fold the laundry and go up to my children’s rooms to get their dirty clothes out of their dirty clothes hampers, after I feed the dog, after I do more research on the computer for the vacation for the week my children are on spring break, after I clean my firearm, making sure to keep it away from my face and to keep the safety on and to make sure the gun is unloaded, it is time for me to pick up my children from school and drive through the

20 McDonalds for them to get a snack and drive them home and later to church and be ignored the entire time like some sort of maid. I’m not your maid, I tell my children in the car. You’re supposed to bring your clothes downstairs so I can wash them. Especially you, Ruthie. There were probably two weeks of clothes up there. Sorry, my child says. And another thing, I say. Your room smelled funny, Mark. Do you know why your room smelled funny? What? my child says. I said you left an apple core under your bed, Mark! You let it rot and when I found it, it was disgusting. Did you not notice it? Sorry, my child says. Did you not smell it? How can you not smell rotting fruit under your bed? I said sorry, my child says.

At the gun range, the ladies from Prayer Brunch are different people. I am a different person. There is a power to this tiny, weighty thing in my hand. When I pull the trigger, my arms steady because I am now familiar with the Kick Back, when the bullet leaves the trigger and travels faster than I can see into the heart of paper target which looks like an African American attacker at the end of the sort of concrete hallway, I feel like I have finally gained complete control. There is nothing I cannot conquer, there is nothing I cannot master. When I pull the trigger, it is all the laundry for the week done in a flash, it is every dish I will wash, it is the feeling I get when traffic is light and I find myself arriving in my driveway with my children and a half hour to spare. Nice shot, missy, the instructor with the mustache and the too-tight shirt says after he takes off his giant red ear protectors. Got him good. Siobhan doesn't mess around, says the mother beside me. I certainly don't, I say. Looks like someone's working out some aggression, huh? says the instructor. My blessing and my curse, I say, and everyone laughs, and the instructor smiles even though he is not in on the joke. After everyone has had a turn, after we all say a prayer together

21 in the gun range for the blessings of protection and freedom and liberty, after we say goodbye and get into our separate cars and I pick up my children from their school and I drive home, I reapply my makeup and pull the dinner I have made out of the refrigerator and put it into the oven and tell my children to work on their homework. I peek over the shoulder of my child who is sitting at the kitchen table and see that she is working on homework for her class in Current Social Problems. Mary, what are you guys studying? I ask my child. Prayer in schools, my child says. And what does your teacher say about prayer in schools? I ask. That it's bad. No, that not having it is bad. Prayer in schools is good. What else does your teacher say? That it signifies The End of Days. What does? Not having prayer in schools. What else? That people are mean to each other and violent because God is not in our schools. Do you feel lucky that God is in your school? Yes. Do you know that not everyone can afford the sacrifices your father and I have made so that you can be in a school with God? Yes. Don't forget our sacrifices, I say, and kiss my child on the head and check on the dinner in the oven and check to make sure my other children are doing their homework and tell the ones who are not to Get On It.

On Sunday, Pastor is continuing in his series of sermons about guilt. It is funny and full of tender stories about him and his wife and it is very enlightening. Pastor is a true Man of God. Husband and I sit in the pew and fill in the blanks of our programs with the little pencil nubs in the back of the pew in front of us as the key words are projected as Pastor says them. I write Forever Forgiven in the blank as Pastor says that we can’t ever forget that we are forever forgiven from sin through Christ and Forever Forgiven appears on the screen over his head. I am glad that the

22 words are projected as Pastor says them, since sometimes my mind wanders and I find myself picturing being at the gun range and aiming at the paper target and pulling the trigger. Just a reminder, Pastor says, after he finishes his sermon, after the music director comes onstage and leads us in worship and he and the four women who help him help us in singing the songs and tell us to clap our hands in time to the music and to sing the lyrics projected on the screen above their heads, after Pastor comes onstage and thanks them and gives a few announcements and makes a small joke. All the young kids are going to Trinidad on their missions trip, so be sure if you see or know of a young one to contribute to their fund. If you've got some chores around the house that need done and a few bucks to spare, send an email to the youth pastor and he'll send a few of the kids your way. It's a great experience for them, to practice spreading the Good News in a foreign country, and it's good for you too if you've got some spring weeding that needs doing or some floors that need mopping. Ok, have a great Sunday! God bless! We file out and head to our favorite Chinese restaurant since Sunday lunch is the only meal of the week that I do not cook and we order the same meals we order every time and my children badger one another since they know they are not allowed to use their screens when we are eating out. They are not allowed to use their screens when they are eating in, but they are especially not allowed to use their screens when they are eating out. We talk about our weeks and I try and get my children to go around the table and share one blessing and one struggle, but my children are not paying attention and I have to abandon this idea, since they are pulling each other's hair and chewing with their mouths open and not saying Thank You to the Chinese man whenever he refills their water glasses and being loud and throwing food and spilling their water glasses and insulting each other and hitting each other and not appreciating the experiences they have been given. Husband pays and we drive home in my Hyundai and I try to hide how upset I am by turning up the volume to the Positive and Encouraging radio station.

As the vacation I have planned for the week my children are on spring break from their school approaches, I feel myself going into my Vacrazy mode, which is what Husband calls my occasional lashings out during the weeks before a vacation from the considerable stress of trying to plan a fun and memorable time for my children and their father.

23 I ask the ladies from Prayer Brunch to say a prayer for me and for my family, since earlier in the day I called my child several inappropriate names in front of several other of my children because my child did not know how many pairs of socks to pack for a week-long vacation. They’ll get over it, one of the mothers says. Children don’t remember trauma the way all the doctors say they do. And besides, if shouting at your children or insulting them is trauma, I’m Hitler. They can pay for a shrink when they’re older, one of the mothers says, that’s what I always tell my kids. Tell it to your therapist when you’re thirty! You’re a great mother, Siobhan, one of the mothers says. And with everything you have to put up with, even if you killed one of your children, you’d still have plenty left who are well adjusted. You’d still go to Heaven, is what I’m saying. Oh gosh, is my Husband going to be there too? I say, and everyone laughs. Maybe I’ll just take the other option when they ask, I say, and everyone laughs. My flesh boiling off forever and my tongue ripped out of my mouth forever on repeat? Could be worse, I say, and everyone laughs. We pray again and agree to meet at the gun range before the soccer game on Saturday and split the bill seven ways. When I get home, I see my child who was caught watching pornography on his phone reading something on his phone on the couch in front of the television. David, what are you doing? I ask my child. It’s been a month, my child says without looking up from his screen. After I make dinner, after I tell my children to do their homework, after Husband gets home, after we all sit to eat, including Husband this time, I try to tell my family about all the things that we will do on the vacation I have planned for the week my children are on spring break from their school, but they are not listening. They are on their screens. Why are you telling us? one of my children says. Why can’t it just be a surprise? Well it’s not a surprise for me, Chelsea, I tell my child. I’m the one who has to plan it. Why don’t I get to be surprised? Because you’re the Mom, my child says.

24 ------In the morning, after a night in which I could not sleep, after a night spent drinking coffee and researching more and more events for my family for the vacation I have planned for the week my children are on their spring break, after Husband woke up and asked me what was wrong and I told him to just go to work and he went to work, I tell my children to collect their phones and their tablets and my oldest child's laptop and their music players and their personal gaming devices. I put them all in a box, I find I need a second box to put all of their screens in. I unplug the televisions in their rooms and carry them down to the kitchen table. I collect their gaming consoles and place them on the table too. The only screens left untouched are my phone and Husband's phone and the television in our bedroom and the family computer. What are you doing with all that? my child asks. I'm getting rid of them so we can be a family again, I tell my child. This is stupid, my child says. Whatever, it's your money, my child says. Mom, be serious. You can't get rid of everything, my child says. Please don't do this, my child says. I paid for half of my PSP, my child says. If you get rid of it, you owe me that money. I don't owe any of you anything, I tell my children. I drive my children to their school and some of them are crying and some of them are fuming. My child begs me to be reasonable, says that I am really seriously making a Big Mistake. I drive on without a word. I will not be dissuaded. When I pick all of you up after school, we're going to get rid of all of this, I tell my children after we have pulled up in front of their school, after I have handed back a pack of tissues. My child calls me a vulgar name and I tell him that he is really making me want to change my mind right now, which grants me an immediate apology. Some of my children are still crying when they exit the Hyundai and walk into their school. Today I will be all my children can talk about, I will be at the forefront of their thoughts when they do Morning Prayer, when they are in their classes, when they are at lunch, when they are at recess. My children will tell their friends that their mother is Crazy but years later they will recognize the wisdom in this decision, this investment in their future.

25 My father owns several acres of land about an hour north of where we live which he uses to hunt and where my children hike and sometimes swim in the lake in the summer. After school, after I pick them up, after I have gone home and washed the dishes and done several loads of laundry and fed the dog and prepared dinner and prayed and gone to the gun range, I drive my children and their screens in boxes in the trunk of my Hyundai to my father's land and they fuss and they whine the entire time. They ask Where Are We Going? and What's Happening? and What Are You Doing With Our Phones? and Does Dad Know You're Doing This? I say nothing. A Mighty Fortress is Their Mom, I think, and make myself laugh because it is important to laugh. We get out of my Hyundai and I tell my children to stand near the car while I open the trunk and take out the boxes and put the boxes with the screens in them on a pedestal that my father leaves in one of the fields for target practice. One of my children tries to physically stop me and I tell him sternly, You are never to touch your mother like that. This is for your own good, I tell my children while they cry, while they pretend to not care, while they shout at me, while they hug one another. Plenty of people in the world get by just fine without all this junk. Hopefully this will teach you all some respect. I respect you, my child says. I never disrespect you. Well, Steven, you can thank your brothers and sisters for this then, I say. I respect you too! my child says. This is for all of you, I say. I pull my handgun out of my purse and my children begin crying all over again. I close one eye and aim my firearm and it all goes away. Their crying and pleading is drowned out by a complete focus on the boxes filled with their screens on the pedestal. Plug your ears, I tell my children.

26 CONVERGENCE

A man exists—Luis—who believes that he is the man on the signs. When he sees them driving or walking, Luis knows he is the man crossing the street, the man running down steps to flee a fire, the man to indicate a restroom, the man in a dress to indicate a woman’s restroom. A woman exists—Charlotte—who believes she is the center of the world. As the earth rotates on its axis, she is the roving magnetic north, and fears straying too far from her point of origin, lest her migration to another town or part of the country or house shift the delicate balance of the planet and cause the polar ice caps to melt. The two converge biweekly, though they are unknowing participants. Luis, nervously eyeing the man in the crosswalk sign at a particular intersection, misses Charlotte turning a corner tightly to minimize the distance she is from her parents’ house each Tuesday and Friday, and Charlotte misses Luis fuming at his likeness on the diagonal road marker, so concerned is she about the damage time spent during her short work shifts has caused globally. In this way, the two have never noticed one another, so absorbed are they in their own thoughts, though this convergence has occurred regularly for the last eight years.

27 LITTLE CHRISTIAN WONDERS

Chris remembers, as a kid, touring the museum and stopping in front of a particular statue (Do not touch the artwork! his mother’s voice in his head, so he cannot know the materials used, though every inch of him itches to reach foreword). A shiny, wrinkled brain suspended in the air, attached to red and blue veins which make up the general outline of a human body extending to throw a frisbee. It is late, Christian feels the generalized anxiety of being in a place before it is about to close for the day, but he cannot leave the statue. The Nervous System, reads the placard, Anonymous, the artist line. The nerves, he knows their name, vary in size and branch and branch infinitely, like a tree whose boughs grow smaller to leaves, but whose leaves have tiny branches still. Christian realizes that day that things are like other things, even though you wouldn’t expect it, when you look at them up close. Up close, things are just made up of smaller things, and the smaller things, he thinks, are probably made up of even smaller things. How small do they get? little Christian wonders, And what’s the smallest there is? And what’s the biggest there is? Christian is taken by the hand from The Nervous System and led out of the museum by some faceless adult who is shadows in his memory. He gets on a bus with all his classmates and they drive back to the parking lot where their parents will pick them up. On the way he stares out the window at the dotted lane dividers on the highway and tries to blink in time so that they all look like one white line.

There is a not-unpleasant but distinct odor to the dog Chris and his boyfriend share, a fragrant blend of perpetual wetness and dust, an odor Chris chiefly notices as the three bodies retire each night to their shared bed. It, the dog, rushes to greet Chris as he arrives home each afternoon after work with a wag of its tail which is not back and forth but circular in motion, hoisting itself on hind legs and leaning onto Chris’s jeans. The boyfriend, Patrick, can often be found in the kitchen chopping something. Sometimes Chris stands behind Patrick and watches as Patrick’s blade crunches through the thick, central vein of a lettuce leaf, or through the broccoli, which breaks into smaller versions of the same shape, and thinks of a home they might one day share, a life they might one day make.

28 They are alone together, huddled up on cold nights and keeping cool inside on warm ones. On the day Chris happens to remember The Nervous System, Patrick is not in the kitchen chopping vegetables, or in the restroom, or asleep in their bed. The dog is there, it greets Chris in its usual fashion, but Patrick is nowhere to be found. After checking for a note and finding none, Chris texts Patrick and receives no answer. He wonders whether Patrick has gone to the store or to the library, but no, his car is in its usual place in the apartment parking lot. Chris prepares a sandwich by spreading a slice of bread with mustard and mayonnaise, then adding spinach, two slices of tomato, and some bean sprouts grown by a friend. He cuts the sandwich diagonally and wonders idly about how bread is made. The dog lurks under the table awaiting the inevitable fallen crumbs. When his phone buzzes, Chris expects a text from his boyfriend but instead finds a text from his mother reminding him it is his brother’s birthday, and to send him well wishes. When his phone buzzes again, it is not Patrick but his brother thanking him and hoping all is well. His phone is sluggish. It is an older model and reacts to his commands reluctantly. Chris, absurdly, for a moment, wonders whether his phone is losing its will to live.

Christian is in the parking lot waiting on his father. The bus has left and his teacher is asking him for the fourth time whether someone is coming soon to pick him up. He is the last one left, sitting cross legged on the pavement picking out weeds growing through a crack. Little Christian is staring at a tree which grows in the middle of the parking lot, the trunk extending from a modest mound of dirt encircled by a concrete barrier. It is October and Christian watches the leaves which have fallen onto the parking lot being blown in tight spirals by the wind he cannot see. One leaf blows near him and he picks it up. The flesh of the leaf is brittle, it crunches and breaks off as he plays with it, but Christian finds that he can tear away the matter from the leaves’ veins. Though he tries to preserve the smallest of the veins, it is only the thick center and main branches which survive. Closing one eye, Christian holds the exposed veins up to the tree and sees that their shapes are similar. Mrs. Keaton, he asks the ancient teacher standing over him, how does the water for the tree get through the wood?

29 Christian does not remember her answer, except that it is unsatisfactory, and her tone lets him know that she is frustrated, which makes him feel bad. When his father finally arrives, Mrs. Keaton asks if he will go to sit in the car, and she and Christian’s father have a silent conversation while the boy watches through the window. Sorry I’m late, buddy, is the simple comment his father makes when he gets in the car. It’s ok, Christian says, watching the trees pass by in colored blurs as the car gains speed.

As Chris watches the sun sink from their apartment window, his anxiety over the whereabouts of his boyfriend is at its peak. He has called their mutual friends, local hospitals, the police, and their bar. Chris does not have the number for Patrick’s parents. Patrick is dead, a light blinks in his mind. Patrick is dead and he is left. Chris mentally evaluates the last few days of his and Patrick’s life in search of clues. A not-insignificant spat over opinions on a friend’s behavior, though nothing violent or even out of the ordinary. Patrick has been quiet, but he claimed to be missing his mother. Chris had hugged Patrick, knowing about her inclinations towards both smothering affections and abject cruelty, as well as the years which had passed since they last spoke. He had tried to relate with Patrick, reminding him that his relationship with his own mother was rocky and temperamental, but perhaps empathizing had been the wrong strategy. Chris longs for a beer. When sirens are heard in the darkness outside, Chris feels his stomach turn over. When friends message Chris for updates, he lunges for his phone, each time thinking it might be news. When their dog whines and paces their apartment, he thinks it feels his pain. Second-guessing himself, Chris wonders how well one person can truly know another. Through actions, certainly, through things said, but what other indicators are there? Can one person know another’s thoughts definitively? How can one person know what another knows? Can any experience ever be related fully?

Christian is watching a movie with friends from junior high, some action flick or something involving a heist, when a satellite camera tracking the movements of the hero zooms out to show the entire city. He recognizes something in the shot, though he is unsure what. Something in the structure, the hubs of tall buildings connected by long stretches of thick and thin highways, bright pockets of light in the evening dim showing movement and energy. The way the structure

30 of the city extends out, reaching, expanding towards something. Then the hero is running down a street again and Christian is left with an unformed thought. That night, as the boys nestle in to their sleeping bags in the floor of a bedroom, a game of truth or dare becomes increasingly bold. One boy admits to masturbating, a subject that has never been discussed between them, then the others join in. The conversation turns to how, how often, where, when, and the boys prod and poke at one another’s fantasies and laugh and confirm. Christian is quiet, laughing but not offering information on his own habits, of which he is deeply shameful. He wonders whether the other boys will masturbate here, together, and the thought gives him an erection he hides by zipping up his sleeping bag

Mom, Chris says into his phone. I need to talk to you. Christian, it’s late. What’s wrong? Mom I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. Chris does not know what to say. His parents do not know he lives with Patrick. It is an unspoken but very present wedge in their relationship, his life against their thoughts of his life. As Chris explains his situation, his mother continues to repeat, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear this. I’m not looking for your approval! says Chris. I just need to know what to do. Chris wonders whether his mother can hear his pain through the wireless connection. She is not cruel; they speak frequently. Chris does not tell her anything about Patrick and, he assumes, she does not tell him about the bad in her marriage to his father, though he often feels dishonest talking to her about his life and finds himself lying even when there is no good reason to do so. You should call the police, his mother eventually says. If this is something that doesn’t normally happen, if you’re really worried, you should call the police. She tells Christian to keep her informed, then hangs up. The police tell Christian he must wait forty-eight hours until filing an official report, though they do ask for a physical description of Patrick. The dog has fallen asleep on the floor, and Chris finds himself irritated by its slight snores.

It is all becoming clear for Chris. He is seeing it all very clearly.

31 After a night spent watching television and compulsively checking his phone, Chris calls in sick to work. He does not feel guilty, unlike the handful of times he has claimed to be sick and gone on a day trip with Patrick. Chris is very ill. He feels nauseous and weak, unable to eat or take a nap. He feels cut off. The apartment contains memories of the life he once had with his boyfriend, who Chris is convinced is dead. He avoids the possibilities but they flash in and out of his perception: visuals of Patrick bloodied, dismembered. Run over, buried with leaves in a ditch. Hanging from a tree, swinging as the breeze passes, discovered by a smiling couple enjoying a walk in the park. Her scream as they round a bend in the path and she sees Patrick’s dead face a few feet above hers, his eyes open and unmoving, capillaries in his eyes bursting to make them look red. There is no future between them, Chris thinks. The future is cut off, amputated. Half of him is dead and he is left limping around, half a thing.

They are playing with dogs at the kennel. They are staying at a hotel together for the first time. They are driving and Chris is grabbing the door handle each time Patrick breaks suddenly. They are arranging furniture. They are meeting at a coffee shop and Christian is nervous. They are at a club. It is dark inside and Chris blinks to adjust his eyes walking in. His inclination is to immediately head to the bar, but Patrick grabs his sleeve and shouts over the music to follow him to greet some old friends. Chris knows one of the people at the table, but the man acts like he does not know Chris, so Chris follows suit. Sitting at a table near the bar, Chris watches the looks the men in this place give to one another from across the room. He watches casual brushes of arms and loud apologies after stepped on toes. The room is all purples and oranges, bright flashes of white and strips of green, rotating reds and blues. People’s faces, Chris notes, change from one moment to the next in this lighting. A person one moment is an entirely different person an instant later. Patrick sits down and hands Chris a beer and a green shot of liquor. They tap glasses and swallow the contents. Though his knowledge of the patrons is not extensive, in his head, as Patrick’s friend tells a story about another friend, Chris drunkenly tries to work out a web of sexual partners and finds it surprisingly easy. The web interconnects, is made stronger by the men Chris knows who have slept with many, himself included. He and Patrick even have partners in common, not serious or

32 committed relationships but week or night long transactions. Chris realizes with amusement that, although he is the one constructing the web, he himself is part of the structure. What’s the smallest thing there is? And what’s the biggest?

Counting down the forty-eight hours until Chris can call the police again, he has become especially sensitive to smells and sounds. Below him, Chris hears his neighbor rooting through pots and pans, presumably preparing her dinner. Later, he smells something garlicky and sour, which normally would make him salivate but today turns his stomach. Chris tries to cheat the system. Should he count forty-eight hours from when he last saw Patrick or when he last heard from him? If Chris uses when he left for work as a standard, he has sixteen hours, though if he counts the mundane phone call they shared during Chris’ lunch break, he has twenty hours left to wait. What was even said in that call? Chris wonders. He can barely remember. Something about a television court judge, Chris complaining about some new policy. No plans were made, no fears confessed. Just idle talk. Chris prays for the safe return of his boyfriend. Afterwards, he feels immediately guilty.

His mother calls him later in the evening and he confirms nothing has changed. She asks if he would like her to drive the several hours to be with him but he thanks her and refuses. Chris realizes around midnight that he has forgotten to feed the dog. Normally it is a task that Patrick takes care of. It is through their cooperation and various responsibilities that their life is built together. Chris feeds the thing and it wags its tail gratefully. The dog, Chris thinks, doesn’t know what is happening. Chris can imagine that it empathizes with him, or that it misses Patrick as much as he does, but the dog does not. The dog wants to be fed, it wants to go outside when it has to urinate because it has been taught to go outside when it has to urinate and that punishment will follow when it does. The dog does not feel Chris’ pain, it just likes being petted. Chris kicks the dog as it is bent down to eat. The dog yelps and the food falls out of its mouth. It jumps away from Chris, who immediately is on his knees coaxing the dog back. It is suspicious but walking back, instantly forgiving. I’m sorry, buddy, Chris is saying, crying, reaching out to pet the shaking dog.

33

In their bed with the dog, unable to sleep, Chris remembers a map of Egypt from childhood, tacked to a church classroom wall. The Nile branching upwards into a delta that flows into the Mediterranean Sea, rivers becoming infinitely smaller and smaller until all the water has reached its destination. Little Christian, following the line on the map, is confused about how a river could flow up, but his Sunday school teacher explains it when asked. The delta, the man says, allows the Egyptians to flourish in what is otherwise a desert. The Egyptians used this natural resource to become a powerful culture, able to enslave the Jewish people and force them to build the pyramids. The tributaries, his teacher says, make the farmlands rich and productive. All the Egyptians are able to eat because of this incredibly productive but relatively small amount of land. Christian is seeing it all very clearly. The dog sleeps curled in the bend of Chris’ knees. He feels it breathing against the backs of his legs, which he knows from school is the result of tiny, branch like structures in the lungs which divide and split off, becoming smaller and smaller, expanding and retracting to accept air into the veins and into the bloodstream

At eight, his hand shaking, Chris dials back the police station. When the operator answers, Christian inhales deeply into the receiver. I need to report a missing person.

34 AGENT CRAIG MELTZER

Dear Mr. Craig Meltzer,

Thank you for your purchase of the Postal Adventures product The Postal Spy Kit! Craig, as you know, Postal Adventures products create a unique, postal-based life experience, and The Postal Spy Kit! is one of our most exciting and fulfilling options! If you have not purchased The Postal Spy Kit! and are receiving this letter in error, please disregard. My name is Nadia Olishkov, and I will be your primary contact for this adventure. Before we begin, Postal Adventures finds it helpful to know some information about our clients to better tailor a unique Postal Adventures experience. Please answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper and mail them back to the return address:

- Is your Postal Adventure a Group Experience, or are you embarking as a Solo Adventurer? - Do you (or does your Group) have a Preferred Codename for us to use in our correspondence (i.e., Agent Black Rock, Secret Agent John Smith, Mr. Two, etc.)? - Do you (or does your Group) have any Relevant Hobbies/Specialties?

Once we receive your answers, the next letter will be the start of your The Postal Spy Kit! adventure.

Regards, Nadia Olishkov

------

Dear Agent Meltzer,*

I have heard much about you, including your interesting hobbies of butt fuggin fairy fuck and lol r u serious??, and it is well known of your specialty of fukfukfukkking!!!. You, unfortunately, do not know me. I am Nadia Olishkov, KGB agent for the glorious Soviet Union!

35 You must decide though! Will you betray your country and work for me, or will you stay loyal to the capitalist pigs that exploit you?**

Be careful with sending this letter back, Nadia

*(Sorry, but “Super Craig M. T. Meltzer, DDS, DTF, DMT” was too long a Preferred Codename for the Postal Adventure software, so I had to change it to “Agent Meltzer” for now. Just let me know a shorter Preferred Codename as a post script in your next letter. I thought it was funny though haha!)

**(Just an fyi, be sure to choose the “betray your country” option. The Postal Spy Kit! doesn’t really work if you make the other choice. Hope that helps!) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

I was eager to hear of your response to my letter. My comrades much appreciate your help with this endeavor. As part of your vetting process, we’ll need you to confirm a few things for us. We have tapped into your memories, and to prove that you are who you say we are, we’ll need you to confirm some things. Please answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper and mail them back to this address. We will confirm them with the memories we already have access to. That way, we will have proof that you are who you say you are.

- What is your earliest childhood memory? - How did you feel about your father? - If you could be an animal, what would you be? Why?

Looking forward to hearing from you, Nadia

36 (Hey, just a heads up, you mentioned in your letter that you disliked the “fake” aspect to all of this, but I encourage you to play along. A lot of people enjoy Postal Adventures when they get into it. Up to you though! --N) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

Your memories seem to check out with what we have on file. Your details about your earliest childhood memory, this one time i saw my mom naked and liked it haha ^___^, were especially accurate with our records. Congratulations! You’ve been officially accepted as a double agent for the KGB. Enclosed, I’ve sent a worksheet we need you to fill out. There’s a dangerous man named Coronal David Brown that we need information about, and we will know more about him if you complete the following task:

- Circle every fifth (5) word in the enclosed news article. Then, write the circled words on a new piece of paper to find an important message about Coronal David Brown and mail it back to this address.

Yours, Nadia

(Hey! Having such a fun time. Also, sorry to hear about your father, if the whole thing with the tractor pull accident was true. That’s a rough thing to go through. Good luck with the worksheet! --N) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

Of course! Coronal David Brown is sleeping with a mole in the KGB! But who could it be? Thank you for your help in this important matter. Your acquisition is proving to be invaluable. You mentioned that your specialty was fukfukfukkking!!!. I’m wondering if you’d help us with a little matter. We have several photos of Coronal David Brown that have been taken in

37 secret, but it seems that some of the photos have inconsistencies. Our fear is that the KGB mole is doctoring the photos.

- On each of the sets of photos, circle the eight (8) differences between the two in a red pen. Then, mail the photos to this address along with your next letter.

Good luck! I hope you know we’re all depending on you, comrade.

Nadia

(Haha I’m glad to hear your father’s fine! But still, parents can be tough. Family’s family, though, so what can you do? I’ve been through a lot of the same issues with my parents. I guess you eventually get through with it and everything somehow gets better. Also, I’m glad to see you’ve stopped sending such profane things in your letters, no offense. It really becomes a lot of fun if you give it a chance. If you want to update your Relevant Hobbies/Specialties, I can put new ones into the software. Again, up to you. Hope you’re enjoying your experience! --N) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

Thank you! The teams of scientists in our labs could not find the alterations, but thank our luck we had you! This proves our suspicions that the mole is someone who has access to both photo editing expertise and access to the classified photos. But who in our organization falls into that category? Our agents and scientists are working on another big project, but this mole situation is a serious problem that needs to be taken care of. Enclosed are several sets of lists. These are the members of our organization. Cross-list the names and see if you can narrow down our possible suspects.

- Examine the lists of names for suspects who have both Photo Expertise and Access to Photos. - Write those names in a single list.

38 - Include any other inconsistencies you find from the lists in your next letter.

If you do a good job on this Agent Ballzswagg, it would really show the KGB your dedication to our cause. And personally, I know that I would be very impressed with you as well. I’ve always found efficient and professional men to be attractive.

Grateful, Nadia

(Well isn’t that what anyone wants? To be loved? I never met my biological mom, but because of her, I was born with an addiction to crack cocaine. Obviously I got over it, I don’t remember what it was like or anything, but I still wonder what it would be like to be raised by someone who created you. My adoptive mom’s great and all, but it’s not the same, you know? Your mom sounds like a bitch, and I hope I don’t offend you by saying that, but I feel like I can trust you. You’re old enough to be able to decide your future. Just pick a dream and go. What do you do now? Do you at least enjoy it? Don’t hurt yourself in any tractor pulls haha! --N) ------(Craig, the Postal Spy Kit! doesn’t advance until you actually do the puzzle. Be sure to send it back, otherwise it won’t let me write to you again. But I know exactly what you mean! Sometimes it’s like I’m staring off this cliff, and I know there’s no way I can get over it, but everyone behind me is saying, “Go! It’s easy!” But it doesn’t feel easy, and that’s the bad part. At least you’re getting your bills paid, right? I’m sorry to hear about your girlfriend. I know you say it was both of your faults, but it sounds like she was a little unreasonable. And you’re young! You’ve got so much of your life ahead of you! Something similar happened to me recently. It hurts every time, but what else are you going to do? You have to keep going out and getting hurt in the hopes that one time it ends up being someone you love. Anyway, don’t forget to do the list puzzle. Looking forward to hearing from you! --N) ------Agent Ballzswag,

39 Thank you for your list of suspects, though I did raise an eyebrow when I saw that I was a name on your list. But, everyone must face some scrutiny and I have nothing to hide. I found your specific insight on the irregularity of ;-)* to be immensely helpful.

From these twelve names, we’ll be able to figure out who’s feeding information to Coronal David Brown. Your hard work has not gone unnoticed by the higher levels of the KGB, and I have been instructed to pass along our organization’s gratitude. I am immensely grateful as well. Is there anything I can do to repay you? For now, we need your help examining sports statistics. Our double agents in media and in professional sports regularly hide information numerically in the scores of certain games.

- Research to find a list of scores from every Chicago Cubs game for the last five (5) years. - Write out the numbers of both teams’ scores on a separate sheet of paper. - Circle every third (3) number in the series, and write the new number series taken from the numbers circled at the bottom of the page.

From that, we will be able to decode the information from our double agents to further hurt the dark capitalist interests that control the American government.

With fondness, Nadia

*haha you’re so funny!

(Craig, you’re right, it is hard. I’m still struggling to pay my rent from when my boyfriend moved out after he started cheating on me with a fourteen year old. All the sudden I’m paying double! Men are jerks. No offense haha. You’ve got such a great way of explaining things. I feel like I know you already. I don’t know why you’re single, but it seems like it would be easy enough for you to find a girlfriend. I hope you don’t mind, but I also sent a picture of me with this letter. What do you think? If you’re

40 comfortable with it, would you mind sending a picture of yourself with your next letter? I want to know what you look like haha! <3 --N) ------My dearest Agent Ballzswagg,

Thank you for your help! Yet again! The KGB would be nowhere without you. After our scientists decoded the numbers, the message from our double agents turned out to be information about our KGB mole. From that information, we have narrowed the list down to four (4) names. Yes, my name is on the list, but that is a coincidence and I have nothing to hide. Please help us with the following:

- Read the four (4) biographic files and note any inconsistencies. - Write up a briefing that suggests who you believe the mole to be. Include at least two (2) reasons you discovered from comparing the biographic files.

We’re depending on you, Agent Ballzswagg. Don’t let us down. Don’t let me down.

With love, Nadia

(You’re so handsome Craig! And sexy haha. I’d love to meet you someday. It feels like we have a real connection, not something fake or stupid. It’s tough to meet a genuinely good man these days, and all the sudden I feel like I’ve found something special. Hope I’m not being too mushy haha. Glad to hear you’re thinking of going back to school! That’s wonderful! I think school’s a great way to improve your life. What are you thinking of majoring in? I would give my right arm to be able to go back to school but I can’t even afford groceries this month ;( Could be worse, though—my adoptive mom’s in the hospital now with brain and bone cancer. At least it’s not me! Haha is that terrible? I love her and I go to visit her sometimes when I’m off work— which isn’t that often—and I’ve never told anyone this so don’t say anything but part of me will

41 be happy when she passes because she’s in so much pain and I’m way deep into debt paying off her treatments which aren’t working. Sorry to be such a downer. I just really think you’re great and I feel like I can talk to you about anything. I really trust you, Craig. I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone quite like you. <333 --N) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

I’m shocked by your report which suggests I am funneling information from the KGB to Coronal David Brown. My superiors have been notified, though I have assured them, as I hope to ensure you, that my loyalties lie with none other than the motherland, the glorious Soviet Union. I will confess though that the thought of you in that expansive capitalist nation does fill my heart with tenderness. Oh, how I long to be with you! My operations are being diverted away from the “mole issue” towards another matter. We have intercepted some American intelligence that needs decoding. Luckily, we discovered a key to the code that appears at the bottom of the worksheet.

- Follow the directions on the attached worksheet.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours forever, Nadia

(Oh my gosh Craig, I don’t even know what to say. Thank you so much! This is going to go a long ways towards paying for my groceries this week. I can eat again haha! This has got to be the nicest thing any man has ever done for me. You’re a very special person. :D I really would love to see you. I can’t afford a plane ticket or anything, and I don’t have a car, but I do have a cousin I could stay with where you live so I wouldn’t have to be a burden on your mom or anything. I would like to meet her though! But only if you want me to haha.

42 I know this is a huge request, and if you don’t want to I totally understand, but I feel like I need to meet you, like maybe my whole life has been about meeting you. Too much haha? I don’t want to say I love you or anything, but would that be so weird? I don’t know, I feel like my whole life has been turned upside down . . . I wrote my phone number on the back of this. Give me a call sometime, as long as it’s after eight on a Saturday or Thursday. I’d LOVE to speak with you! :D <33333x100 --N) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

Though we have not spoken previously, my name is General Olaf Lakinstrada and I am the KGB handler for Nadia Olishkov. Your feats and assistance in helping us defeat the capitalist enemy are well known in our organization. You are a bit of a legend! We are eternally grateful, and I would personally like to acknowledge that I am forever in your debt. Your agent Nadia though, we have our doubts. We believe her to be funneling information to our enemies, though there is no way to prove her disloyalty definitively. That is, without your help! To prove that Nadia is a double agent, I ask one more favor. The information on the worksheet she has passed along to you is false, though she is unaware. If the American pigs act upon this false information, we will know definitively and concretely that Nadia Olishkov is the KGB mole funneling information to Coronal David Brown.

- Complete Nadia’s worksheet, but do not tell her that the information is false. - Complete the attached worksheet.

Thank you for your help in this, Agent Ballzswagg. You are our only hope in defeating the dark capitalists.

To the glorious Soviet Union! General Olaf Lakinstrada

43 (Hi Craig, hope you’re enjoying your Postal Adventure kit! I know the form doesn’t really correspond to the Adventure, but this is our Adventurer Feedback portion of the kit. Just fill out the questions honestly and let us know how Nadia is working out as a Proctor. She won’t be able to see your responses until after your Postal Adventure has wrapped up, so feel free to be as candid as you can. The comments section is optional, but the sort of feedback we’re looking for has to do with how engaged she is, how believable her character is, what you thought of your Postal Adventure as a whole, etc. Thanks for your help with this! --Olaf) ------Agent Ballzswagg,

I write to you in exile from my homeland after narrowly escaping with my life. The information you sent my handlers at the KGB proved once and for all that, yes, I was the mole. Coronal David Brown and I are lovers, I have been funneling him information the entire time. This is the last you will hear from me, but please know it was never personal. Please know that I will always have love in my heart for you, Agent Ballzswagg, but the temptations of your glorious nation were too much for my weak heart. Your nation of America is the single greatest human achievement in all of history and I could no longer attempt to harm something so pure and right.

With love, my dearest, always and forever, Nadia

(I feel like my life has changed. I feel like this is the single most important thing that’s ever happened to me. I feel like you’re the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t wait to see you in a month. I’ve never even been on a plane! This is huge for me. When I opened your envelope, I almost had a heart attack. I don’t even know if I’ve held that much money without having to immediately send it to pay my credit card or pay my rent. This may be the end of the Postal Adventure, but I’m so glad to know it won’t be the end of us. And it’s so good to hear your voice! You sound just as I’d imagined from your picture. I’m lucky to have met you, Craig Meltzer. I’m blessed to be able to meet you in person. I’ll see you in a month, my love. --N)

44 ------Dear Mr. Craig Meltzer,

Thank you for your purchase of the Postal Adventures product The Postal Wild Wild West Kit! Craig, as you know, Postal Adventures products create a unique, postal-based life experience, and The Postal Wild Wild Wild West Kit! is one of our most exciting and fulfilling options! If you have not purchased The Postal Wild Wild West Kit! and are receiving this letter in error, please disregard. My name is Nancy O’Malley, and I will be your guide for this adventure. Before we begin, Postal Adventures finds it helpful to know some information about our clients to better tailor a unique Postal Adventures experience. Please answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper and mail them back to the return address:

- Is your Postal Adventure a Group Experience, or are you embarking as a Solo Adventurer? - Do you (or does your Group) have a Preferred Nickname for us to use in our correspondence (i.e., Cowboy Jim, Gary the Kid, The Black Rider, etc.)? - Do you (or does your Group) have any Relevant Hobbies/Specialties?

Once we receive your answers, the next letter will be the start of your The Postal Wild Wild West Kit! adventure.

Regards, Nancy O’Malley

45 THEN PIPER

In which, flippantly introduced by her sister, Then Piper meets Mary Rose in a dark college bar, of which Then Piper is loyally defensive as first-time visitors idly confirm to one another, after filing back individually periodically from the bathroom, how the urine odor lingers. In which, standing at the bar waiting to order plastic tubs of light beer, Then Piper and Mary Rose create small talk blossoms as Then Piper’s sister glares from across the dark college bar and ignores her boyfriend telling a story laced with inside jokes to the group. In which, Then Piper’s arm is lightly stroked by Mary Rose, and the two hunch over as the bartender waits for cash and exchange cell phone numbers as the glow of their screens makes a green half heart shape on their faces from the shadows. Then Piper was very early on in her college career, and her sister, who knew Mary Rose through classes, was working on her second degree. She hesitated to bring Then Piper along, who was just old enough to drink but found herself lacking serious friends. (Sisters are known to exhibit solitary acts of generosity, or mercy, even in the midst of a years-long wasteland of ambivalence and latent hostility.) Then Piper’s sister became a casual friend of Mary Rose—a known bearer of trouble and magnificent swirler of gossip, who had in the very same dark college bar once thrown an empty pint glass and pair of panties at the other half of a recently severed tryst—as the two took classes in the same verbose discipline. The group, in which Then Piper wishes to become initiated, having similar inclinations towards specifications in her field of study, sits in various states of volume and intoxication at a long table to the side of the dark college bar beside a wall length plastic flag of a familiar beer logo and a football player extended in a catch. One, whom Then Piper had met previously, stuffs dollars into the nearby electronic jukebox and tap requests various classic rock live recordings and nod grins to those who pass by, glance over his shoulder, and compliment his selection. Then Piper’s sister’s boyfriend speaks quietly but gestures wildly in a way which could make him untrustworthy but does not. There is a crackle in the air, an unspoken longing for the haze of yesteryear’s smoke that the patrons of the dark college bar have only ever known in infrequent trips to dark college bars in neighboring states or in old movies; an aliveness of youth, an invulnerability of being and an abandon of body, of limit.

46 In which Then Piper, returning with her beer, vacates the seat to the right of her sister and moves to an opposite corner to continue talking with Mary Rose, while with each sharp laugh of Mary Rose, Then Piper catches the eye of her sister and looks away quickly, perhaps knowing she is out of bounds. Which pushes Then Piper to drink more, having relatively recently exposed her same-sex desires—on her sister’s urging—to their parents, whose faith was shaken by the confession though they knew still the nature of this disclosure was just so typical, so something that only would happen to them, leaving Then Piper in the fragile state of being alone, vulnerable, her only ally at the dark college bar or in the dark college town being Then Piper’s sister, though, professing as she must that there was nothing at all wrong with Then Piper’s attractions, was noticeably absent regularly. They were sisters brought together hundreds of miles from home who texted occasionally. Then Piper’s hair is stroked behind her ear by Mary Rose gently, causing Then Piper to sneeze laugh and lean forward into her beer, swaying on her stool a bit, but still, way totally there. Then Piper resolves the next day to get a tattoo, Mary Rose’s left arm covered in tattoos. And Mary Rose meets Then Piper after a class days later after texting frequently. And Mary Rose buys Then Piper dinner, which was, you know, kind of nice, and they go for drinks after, though Then Piper cannot shake the looming nag of work not completed. And the two get drunk, and Then Piper ends up at Mary Rose’s house, and spends the night, and walks to class the next day without her materials wearing the same clothes. And comes back after class to Mary Rose’s house. Mary Rose, being more well read and acutely advanced academically, gives Then Piper homework as she completes her own. Then Piper studies more intensely than ever before the books placed before her which call into question Then Piper’s every assumed belief, while convincingly arguing the performative nature of self-expression and the frank impossibility of binaries. Then Piper loves these books, confuses this love with a love for Mary Rose, rationalizes and makes accurate a love for Mary Rose, packs a duffel bag of clothes and toiletries from her dorm, and takes residence in the book fortified house of Mary Rose. Then Piper’s sister, hearing reports of developments from mutual friends of Mary Rose’s who have visited the pair over the last month for wine and beer and goat cheese gluten free pizza, spends long days at the library with Then Piper’s sister’s boyfriend alternating between reading and asking his advice on how to or whether to confront her sister. Then Piper’s sister’s

47 boyfriend gives his opinion the first time, gives a shorter version the second time, stares in silence the third time, grunts and reads the fourth time, smiles and asks if she’s ready for dinner yet the fifth time. But Then Piper’s sister is closed-mouthed, and months pass, and Then Piper begins to dress differently, and hasn’t been to her dorm in really forever, and Then Piper’s parents concern call Then Piper’s sister, and Then Piper’s sister can tell them really nothing. Then Piper’s parents report back to Then Piper’s sister living hundreds of yards from Then Piper that Then Piper is combative and evasive in conversations. And parties at Mary Rose’s house and now Then Piper’s house have become a destination for the mutual friends of Mary Rose and Then Piper’s sister, who being far along in their schooling can excuse idle time spent in good conversation between likeminded peers as having academic merit. The group visits nights and weekends, armed with bottles of wine with animal graphics on labels, in various arrangements would dance or sit on the hardwood floor or open the window and smoke a joint after crawling onto the roof. And the conversations drunker, and the opinions more rigid, and the citations more obscure, all the while Mary Rose watches her guests, her arm round Then Piper’s slim waist and baggy jeans, and points and shouts across the room a comment which will surely settle the eavesdropped debate. Then Piper looks on and smiles, hiding her uncomfortability not unskillfully. When, by the summer, Then Piper is directing the closest of her casual old friends and all of her new ones to refer to her as he, to refer to he as Stephen. Then Stephen, urged by Mary Rose, urges his colleagues at the campus dining hall to use his new name, which is uncomfortable, sort of like maybe they’re going to take some time eventually getting used to it, but in the moment it’s just awkward, you know? Mary Rose is his fiercest advocate, barking in public at the slips of pronoun, referring to him as he before waiters and gas station attendants and bartenders can make the mistake. He is urged to counseling, urged to think about the next steps in this transition, about when he will break the news to his parents. Stephen’s mind is on his changes and his schoolwork falls by the wayside, not in ways which are irreversible, but in ways which are not really like in the realm of his personal standard. This lasts another month or two, and as members of the group flee for the free months to their homes across the country, attendance at Mary Rose’s house and now Stephen’s house grind squeaks to a halt. Soon, Mary Rose and Stephen are fighting in public. Both drink at alarming rates at irresponsible hours. Those left in the group sense that something terrible is about to happen and

48 they push in closer for a better view, though none will interfere, on principle. Mary Rose arrives to summer seminar one day with a black eye and urges group members who stare that they really, seriously need to mind their own fucking business. Stephen arrives to his work with a fat lip, and since he has not yet reached the academic levels of the group, and since he has become alienated from his friends who have already cautioned him against the changes and influence, and since he has neglected his close casual friends for such an extended period of time, his fat lip goes unaddressed by his coworkers. In which, sobbing at her doorstep, Stephen rings the bell to the apartment of his sister one day, who is annoyed at first but welcomes him in with warm arms (as siblings are known to exhibit solitary acts of generosity, or mercy, even in the midst of a slow burning fury), who drives to Mary Rose’s house to pick up Stephen’s clothes from the front yard, who cooks Stephen dinner and asks if it’s ok to invite over her boyfriend and Stephen and Stephen's sister and Stephen’s sister’s boyfriend stay up late and take turns hugging and drinking wine and watching a comedy they have all seen before together on a found abandoned television in Stephen’s sister’s apartment. Stephen’s sister’s boyfriend tells Stephen how special he is, what a waste Mary Rose is, what true friendship is, what growth is, and Stephen’s sister begins crying anew and goes into the kitchen and decides to just bring out the whole bottle. After a few public run-ins with attempted but unavoidable Mary Rose, Stephen, urged by his sister, goes home for the rest of the summer and takes his old high school snow cone job back, cutting off contact from Mary Rose by calling the phone company and blocking her number, cutting off contact from the group by deactivating all the various components of his online presence, who were probably really encouraging the whole mess the entire time, retreating into the familiar routine of his pre-college summer days. In which, by the steadfast prayers and urgings of father and mother built up over the summer months, and by the healing nature of prolonged family exposure, and by the sad hopeful look he catches in his mother’s eyes on occasion, Stephen returns in the fall as Now Piper, and if anyone asks what that whole thing was about last year, affirms that, yeah, it really was a pretty weird time in her life.

49 EAT WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT

That actually reminds me of an interesting story. So, after Jesus dies and comes back to life and goes back to heaven, right, the disciples are trying to figure out how they’re going to organize the church. No, I’m serious. No, this is in the Bible. So, as they’re starting to convert all these pagan Roman Greek Middle-Eastern whatever people that lived there, they have to like figure out whether everyone has to be circumcised or not. At the time it’s like only Jews who do it. People who lived around Jews were like, Um, wait. Are they cutting off their dick skin? Why are they cutting off their dick skin? So Peter’s not sure what to tell them, because he’s been circumcised since birth and he’s been eating kosher all his life. Oh, like, they can’t eat pork, right, or they can’t eat meat and cheese together, like cheeseburgers are a big no-no for kosher. So like, because he’s Jewish, he follows all these rules, but if people are becoming Christians, people converting who didn’t grow up Jewish, do they still have to follow all the Jewish rules? So Peter’s sitting around hungry one day, thinking about what to tell people, about whether Romans and Greeks should be circumcised, right, and all of a sudden he has this crazy vision where there’s this sheet being lowered down from heaven. Like, picture the thing the stork carries in his mouth, but massive, right? So as it’s coming down, Peter hears this just insane noise coming from inside the sheet, and he can’t really see what’s holding up, like, the bundle thing because it goes all the way up past the clouds. And it’s swaying in the wind and it’s coming down and when Peter can finally look inside, and I’m picturing this thing being the size of a football field, right, and inside is like every animal imaginable. There’s like sheep and spiders and pigs and komodo dragons and parrots and cows and apes and they’re all squirming in this giant sheet bundle, and then Peter hears this voice that’s like, Hey Peter, kill and eat. Yeah. So Peter’s like, Whoa, I keep kosher, I’m a Jewish dude, there’s like a leopard in there and I’m not wanting any of that at all. And the voice is like, Hey Peter, if I made it, it’s clean. I’m God, right? You’re some guy that was friends with my son. Eat whatever the fuck you want, right? And so Peter’s trying to figure out which one he wants to eat, like, Do I want the monkey? What do ants taste like? Maybe I want to try a jellyfish? I don’t know, like all the animals in the world, so he’s trying to figure out which one he should, you know, kill and eat.

50 And this this happens three times to him. Three times he sees this fucking sheet bundle lowered from the sky and all these animals and three times the voice being like, Kill and eat. So Peter wakes up from his vision, he thinks about it, prays about it I’m sure, talks to his Jesus’s friends and asks if they, like, had any weird dreams lately or whatever, and then eventually he’s so curious about this vision that he sneaks into the night to try and eat some non-kosher meat. Right, he goes to somebody’s house and tries pork or whatever. Yeah, he’s sneaking around and secretly eating pork because he got the vision from God but doesn’t want to tell his friends about it yet. And I mean, understandable, right? You live one way, you have a dream where somebody says a different way to live. Maybe you sit on it for a week or two. So eventually he does tell his friends about it, and they’re iffy at first, but like, you got to remember, this is like the first pope, right? Like Peter has a lot of capital. So Peter tells them, and some of them keep eating kosher, and some of them follow Peter and are just chowing down on beef hearts or whatever, but they’re all still trying to figure out what to do about the whole circumcision thing. And like, that must be an awkward thing to do, to be like, Not only am I following Jesus now, but, like, fuck my people and fuck their traditions and how they eat and fuck Leviticus and like, put me in a trough and pour shellfish all over my body, ok? And now they have to figure out what to say to all these people that are all like, So do I really have to have to cut my dick skin too? You know? And I’m sure that’s a tough decision to be in if you’re the first pope, and people are already asking you what to do with their genitals, but still, he’s busy dealing with this whole new menu of things to eat, so he’s like, Um, bitches, I’m a little busy. So they’re faced with this thing, and they’re already kind of fighting over the whole kosher thing, and Peter decides to take a trip to Greece, because that’s where all the letters about circumcision are coming from and he just wants to go there and deal with it face to face. Apparently Greek men are very attached to their foreskins, because they’re the ones that keep writing letters to Peter. So he writes them, and he’s like, Oh, hey, coming to see you, I had a vision, hold off on the foreskin thing until I get there, blessings blessings blessings, amen. And then Peter and his friends take honestly three years to travel all the way to fucking Greece to answer the dick skin question. And like, at this time, Peter’s so famous and he’s converted so many people that, you know, they never pay for anything. They’re constantly stopping at people’s houses to eat meals. And every house they go to, Peter’s like, Hey, I had a vision. Got any steak? And of course

51 they’re all, Thank God, because they grew up pagan, so they’ve been only keeping kosher because Peter told them to do it before he left. They’ve probably been sneaking meat the whole time. So they’re cooking these feasts for him and Peter is just like destroying all this meat. Like, rabbit and deer and sheep and beef and pork and chicken and fish and all these other animals, and he’s sort of developing a taste for all of this. Like, he’s wanting to try more and more of all these different meats. In Peter’s mind, he’s like, I want to eat a kangaroo. Bring me my panda burger. So they’re going, they’re traveling, they’re debating back and forth about dick skin, and Peter doesn’t say anything, but he’s fantasizing about how he wants to try all these animals. Like, butterflies and donkeys and shit. No seriously. And he doesn’t want them to see him eating butterflies and donkeys, right, because. Well, yeah, I mean I guess they had butterflies there because it’s in the Bible. But, so, he catches and eats a butterfly and . . . I don’t know, it’s in Acts? Maybe my church was better than your church so we learned more? But, so, but he’s eating all these things in secret, he’s hearing everyone around him talking about circumcision, and, you know, to them, they’re getting close to Greece, and they don’t have an answer. And it’s a big deal, you know, they’re being asked straight up whether someone really has to get circumcised to get into heaven. So Peter’s overhearing all this and starts to connect the two in his head and starts wondering, you know, Is human ok to eat? I’m serious. Because you have to think, right, like, if God’s saying everything’s pure, if everything he made is ok to eat, then why wouldn’t humans be ok to eat? Like what’s the difference between humans and animals, ultimately? Flesh is ultimately, like, just flesh. Slice me open and I’m a steak inside, you know? And so he’s almost to Greece with all his friends and he’s . . . . Fine, don’t believe me. I try to tell a story and you just like . . . . Don’t look it up, come on. It’s fun! We’re having fun, don’t be like that. I don’t remember what chapter. Come on. So, like, so he keeps wanting weirder and weirder meats, and he’s traveling towards Greece, he’s basically thinking about cannibalism, and his friends are like, Are you ok dude? and all these things are happening, they’re like getting freed from prisons and casting out demons and shit, and after months and months and everyone starting to look at him like he just might be a fucking psychopath, and he’s days from getting to where he’s supposed to be, and some dude invites him to his kid’s bris, because it just so happens that his wife recently had a baby and it

52 just so happens Peter’s in town. It’s like, yeah, the ceremony where they chop off the baby’s dick skin. So Peter goes, and he sits through the thing, and he listens to all the Hebrew chanting, watches the whole knife thing, incense or whatever, and I mean, I don’t know what Peter’s thinking at this point, right? Like, what the hell? But apparently he’s sitting in the pew with his friends and he starts wondering, Hm, wonder what a foreskin tastes like? He’s sitting there, he’s thinking about this, and he’s wondering about different flavors. I’m serious. And then the thing ends, and he walks up to the father of the kid getting the bris, right, and they start talking about circumcision in general. No, this happened. He talks to the dad, he’s telling him about all the debating that’s going on, and he’s like, Hey, so I’m on my way to this guy in Greece, they’re asking me about all this stuff, by the way can I have your son’s foreskin? He tells them he wants to use it as like an object lesson for the Greeks, and so the dad gives Peter the foreskin. And then he, no! He eats it! He cooks it and eats it when nobody’s around. I’m. Yes, but, so think about it, right, he’s thinking through, and this is like doctrine, right, he’s thinking through this whole, Oh, I don’t have to keep kosher anymore! thing, and because of the vision, right, he’s thinking that he can eat any animal. And he I guess decides that people are like a type of animal, but I mean he can’t kill a person, right, because that’s like, awful, so he eats the only human flesh he thinks he can ethically eat. And that’s how they solve the problem of whether people had to get their dicks cut. No, I swear to you. Saint, yes, Saint Peter ate a baby’s foreskin, and now you don’t have to be circumcised to get to heaven. But, you know, it’s not like Christians eat their babies’ foreskins now. Peter did it, and that’s how he get inspirations or whatever to figure out what to write back to the Greeks. It’s like an unclean thing, right, like if a foreskin is unclean so we have to chop it off, but we can eat any animal, even the unclean ones, because of the vision he had, then how is part of a human unclean if nothing on an animal is? And think about, like, how now all this factory farming shit is happening, and there’s like a cattle genocide going on or whatever, and they’re making chickens with giant boobs now to feed all these fat Christians. Like, if Peter hadn’t had that vision and hadn’t eaten that dick skin, Christians would all eat kosher. Right. Yeah, like, how much ozone can one vision cost the world, right?

53 No, come on. Don’t look it up. Seriously, come on, hey, we’re just having fun. It’s fun.

54 A BRIEF AQUATIC FEELING

The usual components arrive: the bucket drums the loudest, told to scatter evenly, distributing sound at an equal, echoed scale as they march across the blocks, long haired, bearded, and practiced; old women in large sunglasses raising cardboard signs with permanent marker slogans, some distributed, some who have come with their own, more clever, eye catching phrases organizers would not feel comfortable handing to volunteers; the great gawkers, the social media warriors, come at convenient times on evenings and weekends, uncomfortable, some, but hiding it well; children, always children, their smug-faced parents gradually growing more watchful as the march progresses and different walking speeds bunch up clusters into crowds; the college students; the unemployed; the disabled; the leeches, those handing out flyers to protest the protest, or to peddle some other cause, some other church, some other option, some other thing; the people, the beautiful rainbow people unidentifiable, smiling in ages as great as their numbers, mystery people caught in the whirl, the base, the protein, the power of. The police of course stop traffic, yellow vested and whistle poised. Permits have been accepted, signatures acquired, though these discussions are above this woman’s pay grade, at Corridor and Fifth, diverting commuters through Seventh onto McAdams, then Fourth and back up around this mess. If they are marching to the state house, they can go through the park to the side, but if they try to walk down Court Street around to the front, there might be a situation. There is no protagonist of the march, no epic hero or commander and chief in this congregation of bodies, yet in the blur, there is Kat and there is Jacob, Kat more willing though Jacob curious. He of the slim hipped jeans and stylish coat, her of the shawl, the necklaces, the stocking cap, the zipped boots, the winter scarf, the khaki gloves, the great fur of coat, synthetic, from a familiar store with a global workforce. Oh my god, Jacob drawls out softly. Ahead, a woman in a clown wig for no discernible reason. Behind, not prepared to even look. Did I force you? Did I hold a gun to your head? I did not. I very clearly and matter-of- factly stated the general idea of what to expect and you said that you would be fine coming and I look at your face and I see that you are not and this gives me no small pleasure in seeing, since I asked if you were sure you wanted to come maybe four times. No, hey! No, I’m not saying that. I just made a comment. Jesus.

55 I just don’t appreciate your bad attitude, Kat continues. It is contagious and I am absolutely getting sick from it. It is literally poisoning my well. You are pissing in my well, Jacob. I don’t have a bad attitude. Do you think this is a joke? This is very important. This is a very important thing that you are a part of and something that you claim to support but when you get to the actual work of trying to make a thing change, all of the sudden I am seeing this person who never before have I known to be lazy or ungenerous suddenly behaving like somehow showing up at a place for two hours is this massive burden on your shoulders that everyone ever has agreed to put there. You’re behaving childishly. It’s frankly unbecoming, a man of your age behaving childishly in public at a domestic abuse rally. Jacob takes a drink from his cup of coffee. It is a sunny day, the first in weeks when light has broken through the gray overhead. Over the chatter, the bucket drums are a rhythmic coax forward. But it’s cold, Jacob whines in the voice of a comic child. Kat laughs. What’s this thing later? Oh Jacob it is marvelous! There is this just fantastic drag queen named Maxi St. Thomas that you will meet and we’re going to her house and she’s going to feed us and we’re going to listen to this little presentation and then you will be able to drink as much alcohol as you like and meet handsome men and all the other things you do so well and so compulsively. Wait, who is this? How do you know this person? This isn’t like a church thing, right? No it’s not a church thing, thank you very much, although I’m positively sure you would benefit from some churching. I know her through a friend from work. We’ve met a few times. She’s wonderful. You will absolutely love her. Jacob stretches his arms above his head extravagantly, then stops mid stretch and puts his arms down self consciously. He finds himself, mid step, falling into the spirit of the thing. He wishes he had a brought his camera, wishes he had not questioned the politics of bringing a camera. At the end of the march, the whole together. A stage erected in a public square, microphone speakers and extension cords duct taped to pavement. Arm brushes and stumbles forward go unaddressed or waved away with a smile. Victims share their stories with the people

56 amplified, stories of cruelty, of violence, of the delight some experience inflicting pain. There is a lump in Jacob’s throat. One woman, now a minister, tells of a diseased father, the haunt of her life. Others, of the safety and solace they found in institutions, in the kindness of others, the joy of loving one’s self. A call to action is administered, a petition dispersed. The pair sign their names and leave before the final prayer has ended.

The neighborhood Kat drives Jacob to has seen better days. Of the three people walking in the late winter sun, two are walking with no particular destination in mind. The third, a woman walking to the grocery store, is hoping to be distracted before she arrives, though the possibility diminishes greatly as she approaches. There is gray, there is brown growing through cracks in gray. There is a sense of fear Jacob finds himself needing to shake, a too quickness in his step. Ivy growing on chain link fences, through the diamond shaped holes chunks of concrete and rusted bits of metal in long grass. A lone wind chime tolls from a nearby porch whose steps are broken. Like an oasis in the desert, the vibrant and whimsical house of Maxi St. Thomas emerges as the two walk from their parking spot up a hill. A wrap of Christmas lights extends from the top of the house’s fence to the outline of the roof, the house painted in yellow sun, deep green trim borders angles. As Kat holds the gate open for him, Jacob spies gnomes and small birdbaths in the yard, pinwheels and old pots, wrought iron chairs and stepping stones. Stone figurines of animals. Opening the door to greet, Maxi is electric. An absurd lion’s mane of a wig tied up with bandana and a rhinestone studded denim jacket in a sort of Rosie the Riveter tribute gone awry. Maxi is impossibly tall, her grin broad and welcoming, her voice a rich honey bourbon. Hello dear! goes Kat, a kiss on each cheek. Darling! So nice of you to come! Maxi says, her nails long and red in a loose embrace. Well you know I wouldn’t miss it for anything, even if I had my liver torn from my innermost parts I wouldn’t miss coming to this house on this night. Maxi, this is my friend Jacob I told you about and he is just tickled to death to meet you, aren’t you Jacob? Introduce yourself! Say hello to the host of the party you’re attending! Hi Maxi. Nice to meet you.

57 What handsome friends you have, Kathrine! Hello Jacob, nice to meet you. Come on in, grab a drink. There’s wine and beer, we have food. The people here are just wonderful. There is a dark odor in the house, a heavy, sour smell, like cream left out or spilled fish oil, an earthy musk of something turned, something past. Otherwise, the rooms are impeccable, a cute kitsch marriage of seventies nostalgia and farmhouse knickknacks. Here, a rooster clock, there, a wagon wheel hung, a bookshelf crammed with bright colored books, a plastic fern, an elaborate rug tacked to a wall, a long table set with electric candelabras, an old television with askew antennae, a bucket of ice and beer, a computer screen set to a burning fireplace screensaver, an iguana perched on a branch in a large, glass enclosure. A mixed group mulls about. Stylish men, more so than Jacob, hold wineglasses at severe angles and look over thick framed glasses arms folded as old men in lipstick or women in large hats gesture wildly to explain some assuredly nuanced thought. Androgynous alternatives communicate motionless, their lips barely moving and their hair colored and spiked. A drag queen in flamenco dress plays DJ with her phone and a portable speaker. Though the house is small, it does not feel crowded. There is a motion in the mingling patterns, an invisible current which refreshes conversation in a dependable fashion as Maxi opens the door for more and opens the oven to produce a wide variety of dishes, conveniently labeled with cards informing of dietary restrictions. Kat pulls Jacob by the arm through the room at a brisk pace, introducing, initiating, until the crowd has acquainted and Maxi calls for everyone’s attention near a coffee table in front of a peach love seat. Hey, all. Thank you so much for coming out tonight, she raises her voice. For those of you who have never been to one of these occurrences, my name is Maxi St. Thomas, and this is one of my semi regular WareTech Soirees, and I promise I’ll make this as quick and as painless as possible so we can get down to the fun part. A tight circle has formed around Maxi and Jacob sees that partygoers are listening intently to her, laughing too eagerly at her quips, applauding enthusiastically and knowingly as Maxi recites a list of her supporters and colleagues. She opens a compartment of the table and pulls out several sets of tupperware as she speaks. WareTech is not just food storage, it’s a whole new way of thinking. Everyone gathered here tonight is on the ground floor of something truly remarkable.

58 Kat, Jacob notes, is one of the others. Her attention is fully directed towards Maxi. Though she looks to Jacob occasionally as Maxi speaks, she turns back to the host too quickly for Jacob to roll his eyes in her direction. They are hanging on every word, the partygoers, they are glued to their pews. Everyone wants extra money, great. This is an absolute guarantee. You’ll get a five percent commission on each item you sell, but, for every two people you sign up for the WareTech program, that commission increases five percent. You sign up four people, you get a fifteen percent commission on each item you sell, as well as a two percent commission on each item those four people sell. You sign up twelve people, each item you sell nets you a thirty five percent commission, as well as a six percent commission on each item those twelve people sell. It’s simple, and if you’re doing it right, it’s impossible not to make money. Through the windows, the sun has set, its last rays passing through a green silk Maxi hangs over her west window, giving the room a brief aquatic feeling, as if its inhabitants are drowning and are too sedated to notice. No one has gotten up to use the restroom during her half hour presentation, nobody has whispered something snide, has stood up for another beer. Maxi finishes to thunderous applause--whistles even!--which shakes her living room and surely irks the neighbors. Now, let’s party! laughs Maxi and another cheer breaks out. What the hell was that? whispers Jacob as he and Kat follow the rest into the kitchen. What was what? What, the presentation? I told you there was going to be a presentation. You can’t say I didn’t warn you because I did warn you, so there you have it. Why, are you interested? In what, the tupperware? No Jacob. Well, yes, the WareTech too, but are you interested in the program? The program? Do you want to be a seller, Jacob? This is what I’m asking. Does this interest you, this relatively simple way of making a ton of money and joining a network of supportive professionals and lifelong friends? Jacob, three beers and a plate of elaborate appetizers later, is discussing politics with a stranger, a small woman wearing elbow length gloves. After another beer, he is taking a cigarette from the flamenco queen DJ out on the porch. A man who generally resembles some messiah or another steps outside and offers Jacob a bit of pot, which he accepts gratefully. It is a welcoming

59 place, Jacob finds himself getting into the spirit of the thing, though he wants to avoid apologizing to Kat for his outburst as long as possible. Perhaps he could use some tupperware--a small fortune is lost each year to cling wrap.

Kat is forgiving, meets him for lunch a week later, signs him up for the WareTech seller program. I can understand how maybe possibly you might have felt tricked, she says. I just wanted you to get in on this but I knew if I tried to describe it to you, you would have said no and would have missed out on this really wonderful opportunity. I shouldn’t have called you a bitch, especially in front of all those people. Well, these things happen between friends. They are at a sandwich shop. It is dark inside and the walls are cluttered with generic shapes and street sign slogans. Jacob is dissatisfied with his hoagie and Kat seems nonplussed with her salad. The music playing, he feels, would have been impressively hip three years ago. So what do I have to do for this? Step one, fix that attitude. Nobody’s going to buy anything from you if you act like you’re doing them a favor selling them something. Maxi should call you in a few days, you meet up with her and get your WareTech supplies. Then, just sell it to people. Or find people who also want to sell. That’s what makes the most money, having people working for you. Is that what you did with me? A string of spinach becomes lodged in Kat’s teeth and Jacob does not tell her as she continues to speak. The people walking around Jacob’s table he finds loathsome. There are no visible trash cans, though other people seem to know what to do with their waste. As they part, there is a mutual, unstated unease with the other, a thick suspiciousness. Jacob yanks open his car door, partly from frustration, partly from a dent caused by an earlier accident which makes the door stick. There is a brother with a newborn struggling. There is a sizable amount of student debt. There is rent, there is electric, there are credit cards. There are reasons why entering into a contract to sell tupperware is a mistake. There are ways to have even less than nothing. Kat’s talents are many, her skills transferrable. Jacob is limited and limits himself. She holds herself to a high standard, holds Jacob to a high standard, and he is comfortably a perpetual

60 disappointment. Kat is right often, is proud of being right often, is empowered by her correctness. She is a new friend, a first lifeline in a new city. The clouds, which know nothing of Jacob, move to block the earth from the sun as his car makes its way to the restaurant where Jacob works. They roll in at a brisk pace. As Jacob locks his car and watches them for a moment before going inside, he registers their speed against a stationary billboard and guesses it to be faster than he can jog.

The thing is flimsy. It comes in one color. The plastic is not sturdy and the lid will often not securely snap on the container, instead needing the sides bent in forcefully for the fit. His commission doubles as a discount, so the first sales Jacob makes are to himself. They are more useful than not, though they are frivolous. Aside from the boxes of tupperware, aside from the ratty sofa and a few pots and pans, a poster from his college dorm room, a laptop on its last legs, a few chairs and a fold up card table, Jacob has little. A closet of clothing, his one true vice, a small collection of hair styling gels, a watch given as a gift. The weekly addition of more is more than Jacob can handle. The flow of product, the minimum amount, he is assured, is stagnant. None of his recently acquainted neighbors are interested, no coworkers, none of his friends from back home. There are few orders, an aunt he convinced via telephone that her current food storage containers were inadequate, a friend of his aunt's, a nurse at his doctor's office, a mother in the park. No one has seemed interested in becoming a seller. The boxes multiply in his living room and Jacob is alarmed. Kat, when called, seemed at first disinterested, then conciliatory. It was like that for me too at first, but I promise you, I promise you, this will start moving very quickly. These sorts of things absolutely do have a tendency to snowball. I thought at first for sure that they would lock me up like they do those people who hoard everything. I thought absolutely one of these box towers is going to fall over and crush me to death, but Jacob, it gets better. Really, I swear to you it does. You get someone who's really interested, who likes the WareTech, who tells their friends, and then that's your interest right there. Right there you're set. She is distant from Jacob, her recent women's shelter volunteer work absorbing all her free time, she says, winter being the most crucial months, she says, as cabin fever takes hold and arguments turn violent. It is rewarding, she says, it enriches her life.

61 In his free time, away from work, away from selling WareTech, away from Kat and from the others he has met and from the nightclubs he frequents only occasionally now, Jacob sits on his couch, with no distractions, with the lights turned off and his laptop flipped shut, and chews at the skin around his thumbnails. Dropping off the weekly product, Maxi had not been sympathetic. You just have to be better, babe. I don't know what to tell you. You've got to sell the WareTech you've got. If you find someone who can sell for you, you'll move it all that much quicker, but you're signed up for six months and you'll keep being charged for that merchandise. There's no getting out of this? Oh god, now I understand why you're not selling anything. You never will if you keep that attitude. Think positive! This product will revolutionize the way food is stored and you're the only supply. Get out and spread the good news! Outside, away from the boxes, the night air smells like garbage. A dog walked by its owner sniffs a light pole for signs of a stray cat once seen. Jacob is on his way to the grocery store, hoping to be distracted before he arrives, though the prospects diminish greatly as he approaches. Like a neon flare in the moonlit farthest boundaries of seas, the vibrant and whimsical glowing logo of the store emerges as Jacob turns the corner, a smiling parrot perched claw extended atop the bend of a C in the sign. A blast of heat on Jacob's neck as he pulls back his coat's hood and steps through the electric double doors into the florescent lights. Inside, the floors are without blemish. The people weave the aisles, choosing which of the brightly colored boxes and packages they will take home with them. Here, a wide variety of crackers, there, bags of chips, canned vegetables, displays of paper towels, cartons of eggs, rows of colorful produce and colorful frozen dinners, display cases of red and gray meat, familiar slogans, familiar brands, familiar jingles. There are clothing sections and sections for pet care, an automotive wing on the store services cars while the people shop, employees stand at attention near the electronics, ready to answer any one of the forty or so questions they are asked on a regular basis. He is there for his usual supplies: potatoes, ground beef, a bottle of wine, several boxes of meal helpers, stir fry vegetables, milk, cereal, rice, perhaps a quart of ice cream. He watches the front of his cart to avoid bumping into anyone, but his eyes are everywhere else. There are consumers here.

62 A woman passes Jacob in an aisle and he looks into her cart. Excuse me, miss, he says. I'm selling tupperware? It's called WareTech and it's incredibly durable and will keep your food fresh for fifty percent longer than the next leading brand. I see you have a lot of fresh vegetables here, can I give you my number? Cute, the woman says. I'm into girls though. Sorry. No, hey, I'm gay as well, I'm not saying that. I was just wondering if your current food storage containers are adequate. People forget that you should replace them every six to eight years. We already have tupperware, thanks. Well, if you change your mind, or if you think you might need to change it out, do you want to take my number? Jacob finds this humiliating, this necessity of approaching people. He needs them, hopes they need him. He longs for the days when he was not dependent on the dead eyed pale people who buy groceries at night, wishes for the time when he did not embarrass himself for little tupperware charities. He walks home bags in hand. Headlights of cars illuminate Jacob's back as he makes his way to the apartment. His car needs a new battery and he is saving up to buy one. The operators of the cars passing have what he does not, though he hopes to possess what they do someday. It is a goal which makes him ill to consider, a luxury he must visualize to make real.

The battered women's shelter doubles as a church on Wednesdays and Sundays. It is a soup kitchen on holidays, though men and women are served separately at different hours in the day. The building has been a bar, has been a pharmacy, has been several different pharmacies. Students studying architecture at the city college occasionally ask shelter staff to tour the inner offices, though no one is permitted in the dormitories except for the women who are permitted to stay until alternative housing is found. Jacob fixes his face to walk in so as to not seem hostile and hides the anger in his voice as he approaches the woman at the desk inside. Hi, I was wondering if I could speak to Kat? he says, wincing at the realization that he does not know her last name because she uses a joke name online. She volunteers here, I think her phone died because it just goes to voice mail and I needed to get a hold of her.

63 Jacob has told a lie. Kat changed her number weeks ago. Or stopped responding to the phone number she gave him. I can tell her you're here, but you can't come back. The small receiving room features a bench, a table, and several stacked magazines. Jacob sits down and clenches his hands together into a mass of knuckles. He is the only person in the room as the woman swipes a card key and walks through the single door to the back. The florescent lights hum a particular note. He is desperate, hurt, has rehearsed accusative questions on a loop in his mind. He has three months of weekly tupperware deliveries stacked in a storage unit bought with money loaned from a brother struggling with a newborn. He has lost many of his few new friends to debts owed. He has recently learned that Kat gets a commission whether Jacob sells the WareTech or not, that she profits from his inability to sell. Maxi told him, when he passed along a clarifying question from an interested customer considering the seller program who ultimately was not interested. By then, he and Kat had not spoken for weeks and Jacob had fully accepted that she was avoiding him. Maxi does not avoid him, rides him hard, is becoming increasingly aggressive about the vast sum he owes her. Each week, as she delivers more boxes to his living room, Jacob apologizes to her beat face and lies about leads. She cracks her knuckles as he speaks and makes vague threats. Sir, the woman says coming back into the room. I'm going to have to ask you to leave or I'm calling the cops. The station is two blocks away so you better hurry. What? No, I just need to talk to Kat. I'm picking up the phone. She doesn't want to speak with you, which means you need to leave. It's not like that. She has something of mine that I need to get back. Fine. Try your luck with them then, she says and begins to press buttons on her desk phone. Unseen, above Jacob's bus ride home, a satellite passes over in its rotation tracking weather patterns, the late spring thunderstorms forming at collisions of invisible boundaries between different air pressures. Jacob cannot leave town without money and has no one left to ask.

64 ------From the window of the laundromat across from her apartment, Jacob watches Kat push open the revolving door to go inside the building. She wears a bright summer dress and walks with purpose, her expensive purse bouncing against her torso with each stride. Her neighborhood is bustling. The streets are crowded with sun kissed people smiling behind their sunglasses, adorned with the brand names Jacob has had to sell gently used. Artisanal ice cream shops set up makeshift patios by placing tables out on the wide sidewalks. A deli on the corner is a historical institution. There are no paycheck advance companies, no cash for gold signs or concentration of liquor stores, only chic, only cute boutiques and overpriced gastropubs. Inside, the lobby is impeccable, plush burgundy carpet and gold trim and overstuffed love seats and coffee tables everywhere. A doorman takes a brief glance and waves Jacob up as he eats salad from one of the medium sized WareTech container models. Jacob walks to the elevator and consults a scrap of paper in his pocket for the correct floor number. In the elevator, Jacob takes off the pair of cheap sunglasses which conceal a black eye Maxi gave him. On a night he knew Maxi to be having one of her semi regular WareTech Soirees, Jacob called the police to report a disturbance. It is a brash thing he has done, it was foolish and juvenile and easy to track. Maxi showed up at his door the next morning knowing fully well it had been him, Eight years I've been doing this, and not once have the cops been called, she said in his living room, bringing her arm back and thrusting it forward into Jacob's face. He screamed and crumpled, and Maxi kicked at his ribs until he was curled into a fetal ball. You need to find a way to get me my money. He had hoped the police would see Maxi's house for the cult headquarters he felt it to be, but all they saw was another queer gathering in a run down neighborhood, the first tendrils of gentrification they probably secretly welcome. Maxi is a force to be reckoned with, is a power, an institution, a deity, and no single person or band of people could ever hope to defeat her. On Kat's floor, Jacob notes the fresh flowers in a vase on a table by the elevators. The carpet a dizzying geometric pattern Jacob grows nauseous from watching as he walks. Her door is the fifth, last in the corridor. He stands outside and steels himself. Delivery, he says as he knocks, his head down and away to avoid the peephole.

65 She opens a window high up as he is walking out of the building and shouts, Stop that man! People turn to look at Jacob but no one grabs him, no one stands in his path or interferes with his course. Bumps against people as his pace quickens go unaddressed. The doorman has seen him, would not recognize him. The people on the sidewalk he rushes past are beautiful and disinterested. I didn’t even do anything to you! What is your problem, why would you steal from someone who has been nothing but kind and generous and openhearted to you? Kat calls from above. If you feel taken advantage of then maybe you should get a thicker skin and be better at doing a job! If you didn’t want to do it you should have said something! I don’t appreciate you calling me a bitch either, which is disgusting language by the way and you know how I feel about that word! In his hands, a plaque for WareTech top sellers, spied while seeing red on a shelf in the argument. It is a petty trophy, it is childish, it is earned through careful planning and entrapment. Maxi owns a warehouse, several sewing machines, buys material in bulk, assures Jacob he can work off his debt if he is a quick learner. He is told his fingers will become nimble in the warehouse situated between other, abandoned warehouses, more meditative, less willing to engage. He will think of the wrong he has committed, the faces of people he has been cruel to. Each stitch a wrong undone, a personal resolution, an acceptance of an inevitability, a penance, a willful rejection. Maxi is ostensibly a patient teacher, quick to reproach, quick to show again, she answers every question with a distant sincerity. It is the price he will pay for the exchange, the plaque, the look on Kat’s face. The nightlife Jacob once enjoyed churns on without him. At each club and dingy bar, connections are being made. The people are mingling, they are buying one another drinks and dancing to radio hits. They are discovering themselves in each other, seeing themselves reflected in the eyes of another. They are mashing genitals in bathrooms and parked cars, in bedrooms large and small, in groups, in public. They are driving drunk, they are fighting, they are wasting their money. Jacob does not enjoy going out anymore, does not enjoy being around other people. As he walks home, gripping the plaque painfully between his hands, Jacob breathes easier with mere weeks left in his contract, easier still with the knowledge of a clear path above water and a willing guide. The air is stagnant, the calm which comes both before and after a storm.

66 THE COVETED 18-TO-35

A pat on the head, brilliant boy, what a clever boy you are. What a clever, clever, dreadfully clever little creature you’ve become. You’re creative—so creative!—and if you set your mind to it, and set your shoulder firmly against the weight, the question becomes what couldn’t you accomplish? Of course it’s a rhetorical question, brilliant boy, which means it’s a question for which the answer is obvious, because there’s nothing you couldn’t accomplish. The things you can’t do are nothing, what you can do is everything.

Brilliant boy, why are you doing nothing, brilliant boy? Don’t you know that the world is your oyster and that you are its pearl? You’re so smart, clever boy, why don’t you put your big brain to good use? Do you want to be famous? Do you want to set out to end the suffering all around you? You see that, don’t you brilliant child? That many of those around us suffer? Do you want to start a family, clever boy, once the time is right, and the money is there, and you’re secure in what you do, and you’ve found someone nurturing and respectable enough to spend the rest of your life with? Do you want to travel, dear son, to see other places and other people? You must work to travel, or work to make travel your work. Do what you love, my sweet, and the money will follow.

My love, my sweet baby boy, where has your life gone? You are so smart, so brilliant. Why do you refuse to be weaned? Where is your autonomy, my dashing son, my handsome boy? Go and fly, dear robin, my sweetest bluebird. Leave this yard for greener ones. Let life take you by the hand, steer the ship of your destiny over the world’s stormy waters. We will be your harbor always, but you must leave this port. Dear Nathan, my child, you must mature independently. Do not fear, brilliant child of ours. Embrace the unknown.

You must go, my son. Nathan, you need to leave. You have to do something with your life, you can’t keep up this existence of just doing nothing. Who is it benefitting? It is not benefitting us, we assure you that, although we do love your company and your warming presence. We don’t believe that it is benefitting you. Are you afraid of what’s out there? Do you feel that we have not prepared you well enough for what is out in the world? Are we bad parents, not equipping

67 our beautiful creation with the tools he needs to truly succeed? Son, we love you, but you must make your own way. We can help you start, we will provide the training wheels which one day will eventually be removed, but you must believe in yourself and hop on that bike.

Nate, what have you done, son? What did you do? This is not like you, not like the clever child we have raised to go out and do something as foolish as this. What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Yes, this is a problem that can be fixed, and yes, we will help you through this difficult time, but Nathan, you must know, we are not pleased. This is not how we raised you. These are not the actions of a child to whom the world has been given. Where did we go wrong, my son? At what point did our brilliant child begin to behave with such stupidity? Were we incompetent parents, my dear? Did we do your permanent damage or irreparable harm? We apologize for our neglect if this is the case. Forgive us for our negligence. We are not perfect people and we did not know the answers. You know better though, son. You must know better.

Jesus, Nate, again? How did this happen? Do you know that you are literally breaking our hearts? Our hearts are literally separating in halves over this. I’m not sure we can fix this one, buddy. And even if we can, I’m not sure we want to. Part of life is learning to solve your own problems, so start with this maybe? This monumental, profoundly embarrassing thing that you’ve done? I’m sorry, but it’s not clear how we can help you with this. We can assist, you will always have a home with us, but if you choose to come back into our nest, you must know that your problems cannot follow you. You have to check your problems at the door, son. Such a smart kid, and what do you have to show for it? This is unacceptable. Impermissible.

Where have you been my son, my beautiful, brilliant baby boy? Where have you disappeared to, and why have you come back after all this time? Do you not know that we thought we had lost you? Do you know what happens to lost boys, even if they are grown men, who wander too far out into the wilderness of the world? Were you afraid to come back to us? Tell us, what have you made of yourself? Is your life fulfilled? Is your heart filled to the brim with all the joys this life can bring? You are beautiful purely and essentially the way you are my son. We could not be prouder of our dear Nathan, who has conquered his dragons and beasties, coming home victorious over tribulations. You are a star, my brilliant boy, who shines at exactly the right

68 moment in exactly the right place. Bring your own bright star into the universe, sweet child. Learn from our mistakes.

69 OUTSIDE THE GLOW

As the eastern sun set in the west, Joseph stormed out of the room he and Mary were sharing. An inadvertent erection was growing painful as Joseph engaged in an extended domestic squabble, which drove Joseph away from the glow of the city to touch himself in the darkness. The angel Gabriel told them that, because of the miracle in Mary’s womb, physical intimacy was strictly forbidden. Two nights before, Gabriel appeared to the couple in the early hours when Joseph put his arm around his wife in a near sleep state. The blinding flash of the angel’s entrance terrified Mary and Joseph. “Angel Gabriel!” said Mary, brushing back her hair. “What are you doing here? Does heaven send word?” “Maybe you should ask Mr. Handsy over there,’” Gabriel said, glaring at Joseph as he bit into an apple. “But Angel—” Joseph began. “No buts, you! That’s your people’s savior in that belly! You think it’s ok to wrap your burly, hairy arms around the vessel of salvation?” “I beg your forgiveness, Angel Gabriel.” “Oh, you’ve got it. God’s too, by the way. He says thanks for asking. Just no more hanky panky because that ain’t your baby! Now Joseph, maybe it’d be a good idea if you slept on the floor from now on. Yes?” “Yes, Angel Gabriel,” Joseph said. “Glad to hear it. Don’t touch her!” said Gabriel and disappeared, leaving Joseph to make his bed on the hard floor. Mary offered him the blanket, but Joseph refused. She needed it more than him. Masturbation was an activity Joseph allowed himself as compensation for his sacrifices. He had not asked for his wife to be pregnant with a child of questionable legitimacy. He had not asked to be disowned by his father and turned from his home, left traveling throughout the country looking for places to stay. He had not asked to be dependent on Gabriel, who appeared when they prayed and gave the couple enough money for a few days of food and a few nights of shelter. His only request, the same desire that ruled his actions since he was young, was to raise his own child with a woman who loved him.

70 Joseph, finally satisfied with the level of seclusion, sat down with his back against a large rock and reached under his tunic. He wrapped his hand around his dick, gently squeezing it and rubbing up and down, and thought of his wife. Of her hair and her lips. Her smile. How her eyes crinkled when she laughed. How she had done this for him previously, before they were married, sometimes with her mouth if he was lucky. How exactly he had wanted to take her on their wedding night, his hand rubbing faster, from below and gaze up as she rode him. How she would take him inside her, her slender hips grinding against his. The black of his closed eyes suddenly blazed red. Bumping his head against the rock, Joseph tried to cover the blinding light with his arm. “Hey buddy, whatcha doing?” “Angel Gabriel!” “Just, stopping by. Oh, why hello there!” Gabriel said, bending over and waving at the bulge in Joseph’s tunic. Joseph recovered himself and stood up. “What word does heaven send,” he said sternly. He was uncomfortable around Gabriel and often found himself irritated at the angel’s way of speaking. “No word from heaven. Just me. You know, checking in. Seeing how things were.” “Out on a walk, Angel Gabriel. Alone.” “A walk, huh? More like a wank, am I right?” Four of Gabriel’s long fingers touched his chest as he laughed. “Look, I’m not here to judge. I’m no angel! I just, thought, well,” he said, stepping forward, “knowing how frustrating it must be to, um, refrain from contact with your wife. Because of the miracle and all that.” “Gabriel.” “Look, I saw what you were doing. I’m just saying, I could, you know, take care of it for you. If you wanted.” “Gabriel.” “Nobody has to know about it or anything. I’m just trying to help you out. I realize this is a burden for you as well.” “How would you help me out, Angel Gabriel?” Joseph said, his hands and brow tensing. “Well, I mean, whatever ways Mary would help you out if she weren’t, you know, occupied.”

71 Joseph took a deep breath. “Angel Gabriel, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Gabriel held up his hands. “Hey, Joseph, I didn’t mean—” “I’m not sure I’m interested in what you’re offering, Angel Gabriel.” Joseph took a deep breath. “I am not a perfect man, but this private act allows me to respect my promise to the Lord. As I do this, I think of my wife, Mary, who I love and plan to have my own child with someday. For now, please leave me be, Gabriel,” he said, looking away from the angel. “This is the one thing I don’t need your help with.” Gabriel stepped back, put his hands on his hips, and opened his mouth wide. “Just what are you trying to say, huh? Big man? You humans! You’re all the same! Fine. I’ll leave you be. Enjoy yourself. But the next time you need my help, see how long it takes me to answer!” Under the moonlight, his blond hair looked like silk. The night was quiet and smelled of salt. “Angel Gabriel,” said Joseph after a moment, “because of this you would abandon my wife and I? We depend on heaven’s mercy until this child is born. We have no money, our families have abandoned us!” “Well, then, maybe that just might not be my problem,” said Gabriel, crossing his arms. Joseph felt an unease. “Angel Gabriel, do you suggest that my wife and I would be denied heaven’s aid unless I let you help me?” “Well, it’d certainly get my attention quicker if I knew there was something in it for me,” Gabriel sniffed. “Look, I’m leaving, bye. Just call me if you ever want that help. Otherwise, don’t bother. Ungrateful little bitch,” the angel muttered and disappeared. Joseph was plunged back into the darkness and again bumped his head against the rock. The man walked back to the inn and considered the couple’s situation. They had some money, but not enough to last. Bandits would have nothing to steal if they slept outside, but his wife was due in several weeks. The stress of it all would injure the Lord’s child. He opened the door slowly to not wake Mary, who had blown out the candle and gone to bed. Joseph had dreams. Darkness and blinding light. A green, slimy thing crying in a feeding trough, straw sticking to its tiny horns. Joseph old, no wife or son, swirling in darkness. A child with cruel eyes holding a dead bird. White light. His wife’s face. His own father. His father’s hands. His shoulders.

72 ------A week of stretching every last cent left Joseph with no other option than to call Gabriel. Mary tried praying when she discovered how desperate their financial situation had become— believing there was a special bond between her and Gabriel, and that she could talk to him about anything—but the angel did not answer. Joseph kept the true reason for Gabriel’s absence secret from Mary, but it troubled him deeply. As he left in the night from the inn they spent their last money on, his body was rigid. Joseph suspected Mary knew what happened in his increasingly frequent walks alone, but this night’s walk had a different goal. The man bent to his knees once outside the city’s glow. “Angel Gabriel,” he whispered. A flash and the angel appeared. “Joseph. May I help you?” Gabriel inspected his fingernails. “Angel Gabriel, my wife and I are left with no other option than to ask you, and heaven, for help.” “Oh, you’d like my help, would you? Well, how can I be of service?” “Monetary help, Angel Gabriel.” Joseph scratched the back of his neck. “And, whatever other help that help involves.” Gabriel smirked. “Pretty vague there, pretty.” “Angel Gabriel, would you also help fulfill the desires of mine that my wife cannot?” Joseph unclenched his teeth when the pressure became too great. “Why Joseph! Well, I suppose so, but my goodness, what a surprise! I’m flattered! You’re such a handsome man.” “Thank you, Gabriel.” The angel touched Joseph’s shoulder. “Oh wow buddy, you’re tense. Relax! It’ll be fine. I don’t bite. Much.” Gabriel made a snapping sound with his teeth and laughed. “What should I do, Gabriel?” “Call me ‘Daddy.’” “Gabriel—” “Just do it! It’ll be fun!” His blue eyes reflected the black of the night. “What should I do . . . Daddy?” Gabriel stood beside Joseph, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and took the man’s tunic off over his head. “You just lay there.” The angel pointed at the ground and Joseph got on the

73 ground. “Comfortable?” Gabriel knelt and crawled over to the man. With a single finger, the angel traced Joseph’s dark torso. Gabriel grinned at the man and put Joseph’s dick in his mouth. Joseph watched the angel’s blond hair bob, then closed his eyes and thought of his wife. Gabriel spit Joseph’s cock out of his mouth with a popping sound. “You know I know what you’re thinking right?” he said, stroking the man’s shaft, wet with the angel’s saliva. “I can do that.” Joseph opened his eyes and looked at the sky. “What should I think about?” “Say it!” “What should I think about . . . Daddy?” “Think about whatever you want. Just thought it’d be fair to let you know.” Gabriel bit Joseph’s hip playfully before he continued blowing the man. The angel’s skin had a faint, watery shimmer in the dark. Joseph could see the outline of his dick through the angel’s glowing cheek. After a few moments, Gabriel again spit out Joseph’s cock. “Do you want to fuck me?” Joseph said nothing for a moment. “Daddy?” “You heard me, man. Do you want to fuck me?” “How would—” “Joseph. You’re a man of the world. I’m sure you can figure it out.” Joseph closed his eyes again. “Is it essential, Daddy?” “Hey, I just thought it would be nice, ok? Do you want to or not?” Gabriel removed his own tunic and stood in front of Joseph, naked except for the coin purse tied around his waist and resting on his hip. The angel was slender and hairless. His penis hung semi-erect, reminding Joseph of a gleaming marble statue. “How do I . . . ?” Gabriel laughed and bent to stroke Joseph’s face. He crawled away from the man. “Just spit on your thing and stick it in. But go slow,” he said, looking back. “That’s a lot to fit in.” Joseph stood on his knees and stared at the angel’s still body. He slipped it in without looking, ever so slowly, and felt the angel close around his throbbing member. Gabriel’s low moans grew more pained as Joseph moved back and forth. “Ok, now lay down,” he gasped. “I—”

74 “Just lay down!” Gabriel said and brushed back his hair. He turned around, pushed the man flat on his tunic, and straddled him, lowering himself and easing Joseph’s cock inside. “Dad—” “Shh, just let it happen.” He pushed himself deeper. “Oh!” Joseph’s whole body burned. He closed his eyes, placed a hand on the angel’s moving chest, and thought only of Gabriel. As he neared orgasm and Gabriel’s cries grew louder, Joseph moved to pull out of the angel but Gabriel held his hips and forced the man further into him. Sweat dripped into Joseph’s eye but he did not move to wipe it away. The jangle of the coins in the purse, their sighs and moans, and the thud of Gabriel’s cock slapping against the man’s torso were the only sounds Joseph heard. He cried out when he came inside the angel. Gabriel looked down at the man and smiled, He stood up, tossed Joseph his tunic, and stretched naked in the moonlight. Joseph wiped the sticky mixture off his groin and Gabriel laughed as he took back the tunic. He wiped himself off and pulled the stained garment over his head. “How was it?” Joseph was panting. “Good, Daddy.” Gabriel tossed Joseph the coin purse. “Take the whole thing. Call me if you need more. You’re . . . pretty special.” The angel laughed again quietly and disappeared. Joseph walked back to the inn in the darkness.

The weeks leading up to Mary’s labor were a struggle for Joseph as his wife’s mood swings became increasingly severe. When her emotions overcame her, Mary insisted that she walk several yards in front of Joseph and their donkey. She was jealous of the time Joseph allowed himself to spend in private, but being alone was unsafe in her swollen condition. This gave Joseph more time with his thoughts than he cared for. He wondered about Gabriel, who he had not seen for several weeks and whose face appeared in the man’s dreams nightly. Gabriel’s absence left Mary worried, who argued with Joseph about contacting him. Though they had money to spare, she insisted they call, and after a particularly strenuous fight, Joseph conceded on a desert road and knelt with his wife on the dusty ground in the heat of the afternoon.

75 “Angel Gabriel!” cried Mary when he appeared. She shuffled over and threw her arms around the angel. “Whoa, ok, hi Mary,” said Gabriel, shrinking away from her reach. Joseph noticed the angel’s weight gain immediately but looked away in embarrassment and tried to think of something else. Gabriel glared at the man over Mary’s shoulder. “Hello, Gabriel.” “Hi Joseph. Long time no see. How are you two getting along? Good on money?” “Yes.” Joseph avoided staring directly at the once slender figure, now stretched and rounded by unknown indulgences. He considered briefly the body naked. Gabriel apprehensively chewed on a fingernail. “So what can I do for you?” “My wife wonders whether everything is in accordance with the Lord’s plan.” “Yep, yep. Everything’s great.” The angel placed a hand on the small of his back and grimaced. “Angel Gabriel, are you hurt?” asked Mary, her own hand in the small of her back. “No I’m not hurt!” he snapped. “And stop staring at my stomach! I put on a few pounds, ok?” “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—” “My weight fluctuations are none of your business, Mary!” Joseph cleared his throat. “We are glad to hear everything is acceptable with the Lord. My wife feared that your absence was cause for concern.” “No, no, everything’s great. We decided,” Gabriel said to Mary, “that it made more sense to just give Joseph all the money up front. That way I don’t have to keep coming around every few days, you all can be a couple in privacy. Nobody wants an ancient angel all up in their business.” “Oh no, Angel—” said Mary. “But yeah, everything’s good. I’ve been, occupied, so sorry I haven’t been around much.” “It’s no trouble at all, Angel Gabriel.” “My wife worries.” “Well then calm down honey!” the angel laughed. “Stress is bad for babies!” “You’re right,” said Mary, who smiled and looked down at her feet.

76 Gabriel rubbed one swollen ankle with the other. “Now you two be on your way. I’ve got to run. Waddle, whatever. Get some rest, Mary. Nap on the donkey or something.” He turned to Joseph before he disappeared with meaning in his eye. “We’ll be in touch, I’m sure.”

Three weeks to the day, Mary gave birth. Joseph, no longer used to worrying about money or lodging, was frustrated when he learned all the inns were full. After some attempted bribes, one innkeeper casually mentioned his stable to the couple. His gaze shifted nervously between Mary’s bulging stomach and Joseph’s handful of coins, but his wife scolded him once she heard of the situation and refused the couple’s money, later assisting when Mary went into labor. Joseph waited outside the stable in the cold, pacing and listening to his wife’s cries of pain. He kicked at some pebbles with his sandal and pondered the future. Raising this child was a task he felt unready for. Though he loved Mary, the burden of this child, including the attention from heaven involved, was too heavy. As he paced outside the stable, and as he watched his breath and listened to the pained sounds of his wife giving birth to someone else’s child, Joseph’s mind wandered to all the other women he could have chosen for a wife. New sounds of crying pried Joseph from his thoughts. The innkeeper’s wife opened the stable door and motioned Joseph inside. He walked in, stepping over a curious sheep, and looked at his wife resting on straw in the feeding trough. The child lay in her arms. Joseph stroked Mary’s hair and peered into the eyes of the baby. It stared back, oddly silent. Joseph had the impression the child was studying him. Mary, exhausted and sweaty, fell asleep with her son soon after the other woman left. The stable was too hot for Joseph, who grabbed his cloak and stepped outside into the night. He kept an eye on the stable door, but moved towards the darkness. “Angel Gabriel,” Joseph whispered. He waited for a minute, but the angel did not come. “Angel Gabriel,” Joseph called again. When the angel did not appear, Joseph whispered Gabriel’s other name. After a burst of light, the angel appeared. “What!” “Dad—Angel Gabriel, I’m sorry if I have disturbed you.” Joseph noticed the angel’s earlier weight gain had entirely gone away.

77 “No, I’m sorry, there’s a party going on upstairs. Big day. What’s up?” He brushed some confetti off his shoulder. “I . . . ” “You need someone to talk to.” “Yes.” “You can’t talk to Mary because you’re worried she’ll be angry, but you’re nervous about raising the child.” “It is not mine, Gabriel. I feel—” “Trapped. And scared, and angry, and overwhelmed. And maybe even a little jealous. Joseph,” he smiled and tapped his temple, “I know everything you know.” Joseph felt his shoulders relax. “So what should I do?” Gabriel motioned to a nearby tree and the two sat with their backs to the trunk. Beside Gabriel’s glow, Joseph was warm enough to remove his outer cloak. “A lot’s been asked of you, cutie. Maybe too much. And I mean it when I say I’ll help you out whenever, whether it’s money, or someone to talk to, or whatever else.” “I just don’t know what to do, Gabriel. I cannot abandon my wife.” “No, of course not. And I’m not sure you should have to.” Gabriel put his hand beside Joseph’s on the ground. The earth felt warm. “You know,” he said, “angels can get pregnant too.” “What?” “Well, yeah. I mean, we’re all male. How did you think we reproduced?” “I suppose I always imagined the Lord made the angels.” “Well he does,” Gabriel giggled, “sometimes . . . ” Joseph moved his hand under the pretense of scratching his head. “Have you ever, has that ever happened to you?” “No. Well . . . okay, here’s the thing.” Joseph looked at his feet and knew. In a crushing wave, he knew. “Bingo, buddy. Bun in the old angel oven. Actually, that was what I was doing before. Big birthing shindig. I’m a parent!” Joseph felt ill. “How is this possible? There hasn’t been enough time.” “I’m an angel, silly. Our junk works differently.”

78 “Has this happened before?” “Between a human and . . . ? No. Not in quite a while.” Gabriel’s skin reflected strangely in the night. “Looks like you’ve got your own miracle on your hands.” Joseph was a father. He allowed the thought to submerge him. A father without a mother. A father to the child of an angel. Joseph thought of his wife, asleep after having given birth, and looked over to the stable in the distance. Gabriel coughed. “This wasn’t . . . I hope you know I didn’t plan this.” Joseph turned from the stable to look into Gabriel’s eyes. “You don’t have to be a part of this if you don’t want to.” “How could I not be a part of this?” Joseph asked. “You’re telling me I’m a father!” Gabriel inhaled. “So, both births are a big deal. I mean, as far as heaven’s concerned. And there are a few angels who are . . . pretty insistent about raising a child. The way I see it, there’s a way that both you and the Lord could raise your own kids.” There was a smaller flash of light and Gabriel was holding a small child. He quickly wrapped it in Joseph’s discarded cloak and handed the infant to the man. Joseph felt the warmth of the tiny body through the wool and looked down at the sleeping babe. He stroked the cheek of the child. Its toes were impossibly small. “You swap the babies.” Joseph looked up. “Angel Gabriel—” “Hear me out. I’ve already gotten the go ahead, if you want to do it. You swap them, I take the Lord’s son back to him, and you get to raise your son. The son you made.” Joseph thought of his wife, and then briefly of her body and its deterioration over the last nine months. “Mary . . . ” “Do it when she’s asleep,” the angel said quietly. “Who’s telling her? Not me, not the Lord. Hopefully not you.” “But her sacrifice—” Gabriel moved closer to look at the child. “Her sacrifice was her call, and look, she gave birth to the kid. That’s kind of all she was asked to do.” “Angel Gabriel, I must tell her. Consult with her.” “Good luck. You tell her this whole story and it ends well for you? No chance.” Gabriel’s finger brushed Joseph’s. His hands were smoother than Mary’s. “You should switch the children.” Joseph wiped a tear away quickly and the child’s sighed in its sleep. “You know, it is

79 our child,” Gabriel said. “I’ll probably be around more. If it’s ok with you. Help out and whatnot. Poke in on the youngster.” “But Gabriel, what of salvation? My wife’s child was to bring salvation to the world.” Gabriel looked into the face of the man. “I’m sure God knows his own plans. I couldn’t begin to. His plans are bigger than us.” The child moved its arm and Joseph felt a part of his heart he had not known before. “Take the child,” Gabriel smiled. “It might bring you peace.” The angel hugged the man before Joseph turned to leave, and he did not resist. He walked to the stable slowly in the darkness, the bundle of his cloak in his arms. He surveyed the rocky path beneath him, the patchy underbrush, the slats of wood laying beside the stable. The candlelight glow of the stable inside and how it made his wife look. How it made the child look in her arms. Joseph heard the rustle of the animals in their pens and smelled their smells. He held the bundle closer to him and walked towards the sleeping woman. Joseph looked back at Gabriel, who waited just outside the stable door, ready to take the child away.

80 KEEP MY MIND BUSY

When I am on the trampoline, I try to jump as high as I can so I can reach the honeysuckle flowers that grow highest on the honeysuckle plant and pick them off, even though sometimes there are bees that are around the honeysuckle plant and I have to get off the trampoline and go inside because I do not like bees. Jonathan says that there is a way to bite into the honeysuckle flower and suck on it so that you get a little bit of juice that tastes like honey which is why they call it honeysuckle because you suckle on it to get the honey, but even though I have seen him do it I can never actually get any juice from the honeysuckle and it just tastes like I am chewing on a flower and I feel stupid but I do not tell Jonathan. Jonathan does everything right and everything I do is wrong. Jonathan goes to school with me and he goes to church with me and we do soccer together and we are best friends. All the teachers like Jonathan and tell him that he is smart and they tell me that I am smart but Jonathan is smarter and all the girls like him (because of the way he looks). I get off the trampoline when I am tired but I do not want to go into the house. Mom is in the house and Mom is crazy. I wish I could drive like my brother does so I could just go away whenever I do not want to be here. I would use my phone to message Jonathan to see if we could ride bikes to meet at the library or at the McDonalds but I cannot, since I do not have my phone for the time being. Instead I say Hey Buddy to the dog and pick up my sister's bike off the driveway and put it in the garage and kick a rock and tie my shoes and check to see if there is any mail and then finally I go inside.

Chop down the brown ones is what Mrs. Everly told me before she went inside. There is a little strip of these long purple flowers on the side of her house and some of them are living and some of them are not. She left a pair of clippers on the concrete in front of the flowerbed and said she would bring lemonade out later. I begin to cut the dead flowers. I wish Jonathan were here too and we could do this together twice as fast. I have to be careful to not cut the long purple flowers when I am cutting the brown flowers but sometimes I miss and I cut down some of the purple flowers with the brown flowers because I do not see very well.

81 There is not much to do besides cut flowers and cutting flowers is very boring. I think about a song all the way through to keep my mind busy but then the song ends in my head and I move on to another song and then that song ends. There are a few bees around the long purple flowers and I cannot see them but I hear them buzzing by my head and whenever they do this I jump up and away from the bees because I do not like bees and then wait for a minute or two before I get back on my knees to keep cutting the brown flowers and accidentally sometimes cutting the purple ones. Looking great, David, Mrs. Everly says when she comes out to hand me a lemonade when I have gotten halfway through the strip of purple flowers on the side of her house. Thank you, I say. Once you finish, don't forget to pick up all the chopped down flowers and put them in the garbage. Yes ma'am. When Mrs. Everly goes back inside I drink the glass of lemonade as fast as I can and put the glass on the other side of the driveway because I am afraid that it will attract more bees because it is sugary and bees like sugar. I keep hearing the bees buzzing by my head and keep not seeing them. I am cutting brown flowers and accidentally cutting purple flowers and thinking about a song all the way through when I see too late that I accidentally cut a purple flower that a bee was sitting on. Everything sort of goes into slow motion as I try to back away and the flower that the bee was sitting on hits the ground and I hear the bee flying around me even though I cannot see him and I try to walk very quickly away from the flowers and away from the bees and when I do not hear the bee flying around my head anymore I am at the end of the driveway and the purple flowers and bees are around the other side of the house. I slowly walk back around the side of the house listening very closely for bees and I stand away from the purple and the few brown flowers left and think about how I am going to finish the job and get the money from Mrs. Everly for my mission trip without getting stung by the bees, which seem like they are everywhere. I think that I am standing there for a long time because Mrs. Everly comes out of the house and asks if I am about finished yet, and I’m not much farther than when she came out to give me the glass of lemonade which is sitting by itself on the other side of the driveway. I ask Mrs. Everly what time it is, since I do not have my phone for the time being, and she tells me and

82 I realize that Mom will be here to pick me up in about ten minutes, though knowing her it will probably be more like twenty, but still not enough time to cut the rest of the brown flowers and collect then and put them in the garbage can and all the sudden I notice how hot it is outside with no shade in front of the purple and brown flowers and the bees. I tell her that I will hurry up and she goes back inside. Now it is me and the flowers and the bees. Chop down the brown ones. I keep my face away and my eyes closed and even though I can hear the bees all around my head I move the handles of the clippers and cut the dead flowers and notice that as I am cutting the brown flowers I am also cutting the purple flowers but I do not care since I can hear the bees all around my head and keep thinking that I see one every time I open my eyes. I see Mom pull into Mrs. Everly's driveway and I pick up the chopped down flowers on the sidewalk and put them into the garbage can and step back away from the bees to take a look. The flowerbed does not look good. The half I worked on earlier looks good but the second half which I rushed through because all the bees were around my head looks like someone chopped down a whole bunch of the purple flowers and still missed a few of the brown ones. Before Mrs. Everly can walk out and see, I knock on her front door and tell her that Mom has pulled up. Oh, well thanks for all your hard work David, says Mrs. Everly after she opens the door. Is it all done? Pretty much, I say. Well, here you go, says Mrs. Every after opening up her wallet and taking out some money. Thanks again. Good luck on your trip! Thank you ma'am, I say and get into Mom's car while walking around the other side of the house to avoid the bees and the purple flowers. After she drives away and I am looking out the window on the way home, I realize that I left the empty glass for the lemonade just sitting there on the driveway instead of handing it to Mrs. Everly when she gave me the money and it feels like everything I do is wrong.

Are you ready for your trip? Mom asks in the kitchen. Yes. Have you packed enough socks? Yes.

83 Did you remember your swimsuit? Pastor Duncan said you might go to the beach one day. I packed my swimsuit. Do you have enough money? Did you ask your father for money for souvenirs? Dad gave me some money already. Are you nervous? Are you excited? Did you remember to pack a knuckle sandwich? Yes Mom, I remembered to pack my knuckle sandwich, I say to Mom who thinks that she is funny. Mom is making dinner before Dad gets home and she is chopping vegetables and also washing dishes. I am trying to get away from the kitchen before Mom asks me more questions. Mom and Dad and my brothers and sisters who are home are going to drive me to the church parking lot tonight to get on a bus to go to the airport to get on a plane to go to Trinidad. When we get to Trinidad we are going to get into a van to take us to the place that we are staying and we are going to help build a church and run a Vacation Bible School for the kids who live down there and we are going to share the Good News, and also we are going to see how others live who are not as blessed as we are. I did not earn enough money for the trip, even after all the letters I wrote to family and friends asking for donations and doing chores for money and using all of the money I had saved for a new phone and getting a job with a lady from our church washing dogs at her dog grooming store, so Mom and Dad gave me the rest of the money for my missions trip. What are you going to do if you lose your glasses? Mom asks. I won't lose my glasses, I say. Are you sure? Don't lose your glasses. What are you going to do if you get robbed? I'm not going to get robbed, Mom. Just be safe, David. And don't drink the water down there. If you're thirsty and they don't have bottled water, use some of your money to buy some bottles. Ok. Just don't die. It would be such a headache for me. Ha ha, I say. After Dad comes home, after we all eat dinner, after Mom washes the dishes and Dad and I watch television for awhile, I grab my suitcase and wheel it out to our car and put it in and we get in and drive to our church. Everyone is waiting in the parking lot with their parents and they

84 are loading up all the luggage into the second church van and we get out of the car and load my luggage into the second church van too. Dad tells me to Do Good, Be Good and gives me a high five and pats my back and then Mom looks like she wants to cry and goes to give me a hug and I look around to see if Jonathan is watching but I do not see him and I hug Mom back. David, please be safe, Mom says. I will, Mom, I say, and I try to move to get her to let go of me. On the bus on the way to the airport on the way to Trinidad, I sit beside Jonathan and we both tell each other how excited we are. He says that he is so excited he’s about to poop his pants, and I laugh because Jonathan is funny. The others on the van are talking to each other quietly and seem a little bit nervous but Jonathan is talking loudly to me and to the girls who are sitting beside us and is telling jokes and making guesses about what Trinidad will be like, and I sit beside him and smile because Jonathan is my best friend.

After the airport, after the plane ride, after getting off the plane and seeing how loud and hot and crowded the Trinidad airport was, after we got our luggage, after Pastor Duncan met the man we were staying with and they shook hands and we got into his van, after we drove through the island and saw all the palm trees and the crowded roads and how the cars and bikes and motorcycles moved around and switched lanes like someone was always about to die, after we drove through neighborhoods of houses that looked like concrete blocks with rusted and wavy metal roofs on top, after we got to the place where we are staying, after we got out and unloaded our luggage and the man who drove the van showed us where we were sleeping, the man took us to a room with a bunch of tables and chairs and we ate spaghetti and salad and fruit punch and water and then we had a mini sermon from Pastor Duncan and sang some songs and we went to bed on that first night. The beds are hard in the place that we are staying and they are stacked up into triple bunks and all the walls and floors are concrete and the windows are not windows, they are open squares in the concrete walls. Everything feels sticky and dirty and there are mosquitos and other bugs everywhere and I want to shower three times each day but do not since the coldest water in the world comes out from the shower and I would rather just be sticky and hot than have to take off all my clothes to be frozen for five minutes. The people who work here who are black are friendly, but they do not say anything to me unless I say something to them first and the only

85 things I ever have to say to them are questions about where things are. The toilet works like a normal toilet which is good because I thought that that was going to be a problem, but there is only one for the fourteen boys and one for the thirteen girls so even though it is a toilet that works it is not necessarily a toilet that is always free. Especially in the morning, since the toilet is in the same room as the shower and does not have a stall around it and the shower does not have a curtain so we can either be naked in front of each other or wait a very long time if we need to use the restroom. I have learned that if I wake up early I can take a shower without having to wait for many people and also without having many people having to wait on me. Jonathan offered to take a shower at the same time as me one morning when I did not wake early like I usually do and even though I wanted to because it would save time (and because I wanted to take a shower with Jonathan to see) I told him that he could have my time and did not take a shower that day even though we were going to be working with the kids that day and I knew that I would be around them all day doing Vacation Bible School. The kids who are also black are great and there are a lot of them. It is clear that they are poor because many of them wear shirts and pants which have holes in them and many do not have shoes. They sit in our laps while Pastor Duncan and their pastors give sermons and they pull our hair and touch our faces and they take off my glasses and put them on their faces and say Oh Wow and they laugh and ask us questions about how we got so red and they sometimes try to sneak extra snacks even though they are supposed to only have one. Why did you come here? one of them asks me at snack time on the fourth day of our first week. So I could tell you about Jesus, I say. Oh wow, the one says. I think it is sweet that he would show so much attention to me, since I am here to pay attention to him and to tell him Good News. All the kids seem to like us and appreciate all the good that we have done for them. After coming here I wish I had asked Mom and Dad if they could have bought a few pairs of shoes that I could have brought down to give to these kids but the past is something you cannot change. The kids do not seem to mind that they do not have shoes.

86 All the kids like Jonathan the best. He is the best with the kids. Even Pastor Duncan said so, he said that Jonathan was A Regular Pastor Mark, who is the pastor at our church who works with our kids and they really like him. All the kids here are fighting to sit in Jonathan's lap or sit on his shoulders and they call him Mr. J. My kids like me fine but not as much as Jonathan's kids like Jonathan. I am sure that if we were allowed to team up and if the two of us could lead a group of kids, we would definitely be the best group and our kids would be the best and the happiest kids, but Pastor Duncan said each of us had to have our own group so each of us has our own group.

Every morning they make us pancakes and fruit punch and water. Every afternoon we get rice and beans and some fruit and fruit punch and water. Every night is spaghetti and sometimes meatballs and a salad and fruit punch and water. I am becoming tired with the food that they are giving us. The food that they are giving us is becoming very old. Every day the food is just ok (or even below just ok into something which is not great at all) and none of the food is ever great because it is always exactly the same as it was the day before and the day before and the day before. Every morning we drive by a McDonalds which is down the road and around the corner from the place where we are staying on the way to the church where we are teaching Vacation Bible School to the kids who are from here. Every morning I look at the McDonalds from the van windows and wish that I had had breakfast there instead of the place where we are staying where I have to look at the same pancakes every morning and say Thank you, these are really good (even though they are not). I wish we could have breakfast at McDonalds instead, Jonathan says beside me in the van, which is exactly what I have thought every morning. I know, I say. Do you have any money? Jonathan asks. Yeah, a little, I say. We should eat at McDonalds one morning, Jonathan says. Instead of this place where everything tastes like poop, Jonathan says. I laugh because Jonathan is funny. Jonathan smiles at my laughing and turns to one of the girls and says the same thing that he said to me and she says that he is Hilarious.

87 We can't though, the girl says. Pastor Duncan would be really mad. The people here always make breakfast for us. How would they even notice? Jonathan says. It's not like they count to see who's here and who's not before breakfast. I wouldn't do it, the girl says. I would do it. Everything tastes like poop, like Jonathan says, I say. We decide that we should do it but do not decide on a day and the girl turns away and looks out the window and leaves Jonathan and me to talk. We are going to sneak out in the morning when everyone else is showering and doing devotions, the two of us, and walk down the street and order breakfast at McDonalds and eat it there and come back after everyone else has eaten breakfast and before everyone gets into the van to go to the church to go to the Vacation Bible School. I think that the girl is jealous because I would be if I were here and she and Jonathan were going to have fun without me (because I like being with Jonathan and I like Jonathan) but I do not care since Jonathan invited her and she said no.

After the first week of Vacation Bible School, after yesterday when we dug more of the foundation of the church that they are building here in the hot sun and we all got sweaty and dirty and tired and sore from digging the dirt with shovels, after this morning where we listened to the sermon at the church where we are also doing Vacation Bible School for the children here, Pastor Duncan said that since we had the rest of Sunday free we could all go to the beach here and we got really excited. Because we have been working very hard. We have been teaching the kids here about the Good News and playing soccer with them and coming up with lessons every day and reading and praying and singing every night and digging churches and eating the same food every day three times a day and being tired and being hot and being sore and being hungry and never being alone and never being as happy as we have to pretend to be. A half Sunday at the beach is very much a thing that is needed. The man who drives the van parks in a parking lot and when we get out we can hear the ocean which makes us even more excited. Pastor Duncan had us change into our swimsuits before we left so we get out and everyone is already ready to get into the water. Jonathan asks

88 me to put sunscreen on his back and he laughs when I do and he moves and sort of jumps a little and says that It's Cold As Poop and I laugh and keep rubbing the sunscreen all over his back. You want to try a shark sandwich? Jonathan asks me because Pastor Duncan said that there might be a place that sold shark sandwiches on the beach since it is a specialty in Trinidad. A shark sandwich? Sounds kind of gross, I say. It sounds awesome, Jonathan says. Like, take that, shark! You eat people but now I'm eating you! Yeah, I say and laugh. After everybody runs into the water, after I take off my glasses and put them on a towel on the sand and run to where everyone else is in the water, after I get into the water with my shirt on because I do not like having my shirt off (because Jonathan and everybody else looks better than me), after we get out of the water and Jonathan helps me find my towel and I put my glasses back on, I walk up the beach with Jonathan and a few other people so we can all find the shop where they sell shark sandwiches. We find the shop which is not really a shop but two men who are cooking things on a grill with a roof over it and we walk up to the counter and Jonathan goes first and Jonathan says that he wants One Shark Sandwich, Please and then I walk up to the counter and I say One Shark Sandwich, Please and then everybody else orders and we sit down at the picnic table beside the shop which is not really a shop and we all look at one another to see who will go first. Scaredy cats, Jonathan says and takes a really big bite. Jonathan chews on the shark sandwich for a minute and then he slows down chewing and then he stops chewing and everything sort of goes into slow motion when Jonathan puts his hands around his neck and starts to make noises and I get up to help him but then he is laughing and chewing and everything is fine. It's really good, Jonathan says and I take a bite and it is really good and then everybody else takes a bite and everyone agrees that is really good except for one of the girls but we tell her that she is Crazy As Poop and we all finish our sandwiches and talk about Vacation Bible School for next week. We walk back to where Pastor Duncan is with everybody else and all our towels and I have my arm around Jonathan and Jonathan has his arm around me because we are best friends. When the sun is setting Jonathan and I stand in the water with it up to our ankles and we watch the sun until is goes all the way down and then we get back into the van and the man who drives

89 us drives us back to the place where we are staying and I think that I have never had a better day in my whole life.

On Tuesday we are supposed to perform a puppet show for the kids here during Vacation Bible School which I am very excited about. We have been practicing this puppet show since before we came to Trinidad in the church basement and it is a good and different way to share the Good News for the kids here who have not yet accepted Jesus into their hearts. Not everybody is a part of the puppet show but me and Jonathan are part of the puppet show and it is the best job, since other people have different jobs like singing a song or doing sign language but the puppet show is the best and most fun. Jonathan and I set up the curtain that we will stand behind while all the kids are having their snacks during snack time. He asks me if I am ready and I tell him, Heck yes I am, and Jonathan laughs. When all the kids come in we are already behind the curtain and from behind it I can hear them talking loudly and asking about the curtain, since it was not set up in the morning and since the kids here get excited when anything is new. Pastor Duncan introduces us and Jonathan presses play on the CD player and me and Jonathan and two of the girls begin the show. The music begins to play and the kids on the CD begin to sing I'm Not a Monkey Swinging From a Tree and Jonathan and me put our monkey puppets out from behind the curtain and we hear all the kids go Oh Wow. The song is a song about evolution and how evolution is bad because we are not descended from monkeys, we are descended from God. When the song is finished we pull our monkey puppets back from behind the curtain and we switch our puppets to people puppets and we grab the scripts which are written out so that we can read them so that we do not have to memorize the show with all of the other things that we have to do for this trip, even though Jonathan is smart enough to memorize the script if he wanted to but there is no reason to because we do not have to. Hey Kevin, I say through my puppet with all the kids from here listening on the other side of the curtain in the audience. What's up Joel? Jonathan says through his puppet. Has anyone ever told you about Jesus and how he died for our sins?

90 I don't know, Jonathan says through his puppet. I think so. Wasn't he the guy who built the boat for all the animals? No silly, I say. That was Noah. Jesus is the son of God. He came to earth so that we could all go to heaven. Jonathan has his hand on my knee and is leaning on it when he is reaching up through the curtain to make his puppet talk and he does not move his hand and I do not move my leg. What's heaven? Heaven is this great place where we go after we die, I say through my puppet. But only if we have accepted Jesus into our hearts and asked us to forgive us for our sins. What are sins? Jonathan asks through his puppet. It is hot behind the curtain and I sort of move my arm to wipe away the sweat on my forehead and I accidentally knock my glasses off my face with my arm in the puppet up through the curtain and everything sort of goes into slow motion and everything I do is wrong and I have to say something because all the kids from here are out there listening and I do not remember what the script says and I cannot read the script without my glasses. Sins are, I say through my puppet and feel around for my glasses back behind the curtain but I cannot find them. Sins are, I say through my puppet and move my hand around on the ground and accidentally touch Jonathan (on his bottom) but I do not care because I am only trying to find my glasses so I can read the script so I can know what to say. Sins are. What are sins? Jonathan asks through his puppet. Here, they're right here, Jonathan whispers behind the curtain with me and puts my glasses into my hand which is not in the puppet and I put my glasses on with one hand quickly even though I am used to putting them on with two hands and I look at the script and Jonathan is pointing at my line. Sins are the bad things we do every day, I say through my puppet. Have you ever stolen a candy bar, Kevin? One time, Jonathan says through his puppet. But nobody found out. I knew I shouldn't have done that because I could have gotten caught but I didn't get caught. Well you did get caught. God caught you. God sees everything that we do, even when nobody else does. He even knows what you're thinking. Wow. I guess there's nothing I can hide from God.

91 No way. He's everywhere, I say and everything I do is wrong. And when he sees us do a bad thing, that's called a sin. And if we have sin in our lives, we don't get to go to heaven when we die. Where do we go after we die if we don't go to heaven? After the puppet show, after all the kids from here clap and Pastor Duncan thanks us, after I find my group and we go to arts and crafts and then we say good bye and all the kids go home and we clean up the church and we get into our vans and the man who drives the van drives us back to the place where we are staying, I tell Jonathan Thank You for finding my glasses and saving the puppet show. No problemo, Jonathan says and sort of fake punches me on the chin slowly and then he laughs and I feel a lot better. What are friends for, buddy?

We only have a few days left here before we go back to our homes and our families and we are becoming very excited. Everyone is sick of eating the same food every day and digging holes and teaching the kids from here and while this has been a fun time, we are really ready to go home. I never thought that I would miss my brothers and sisters but I do and I miss Dad and I even miss Mom. Pastor Duncan has us all get into the vans because it is Wednesday night and we are going to a church that we have not been to before. Pastor Duncan tells us to Be polite and Remember that you are a guest, and the man who drives the van gets in and closes the door and starts driving. Jonathan is talking to one of the girls so I do not have anyone to talk to and I look out the window. Outside is the highway where it seems like people are always about to die and past that are the palm trees and a mountain in the distance and all the houses made of concrete and everything is green and the sky is so clear and blue and the windows are down and even though it is hot the wind is blowing on my face and it feels cool and the sun has not set yet but it is low and I think that I will really miss this place but I am glad that I got to come here and Share The Good News. We are a little late for the church I think because they are already playing music but we come in and sit in the back and everyone is singing and clapping and it takes us a little bit to get into it but Pastor Duncan is already singing along and clapping so we sing along and clap along

92 too. The men who are playing the music in the front are playing steel drums which sounds very nice and tropical and everyone is smiling really big. When the music ends and everyone sits down the pastor here gets up and gives a sermon about love and how it is good to love because God Is Love and God Is Good. People here say Amen whenever the pastor here says something that they agree with which is not something that we do at our church but something that I know that other people do at other churches in America because of the television. The pastor here finishes and everyone claps and then the pastor begins to pray and everyone bows their heads and closes their eyes except that I do not. I look around at all the people who are from here and who will stay here after I leave and they will still listen to sermons and pray and sing to music with steel drums after I have gotten on a plane to go back to where I am from. The people here pray with their hands out at their sides and their hands up and some of them move a little bit with their heads turned to the ceiling while they are sitting in their folding chairs in this white room and there is a poster of Jesus on the wall in the front of the room behind the pastor here. I look at Jonathan who is sitting a few seats away and his eyes are open too even though we are praying and he looks at me and puts his hand to his mouth and blows me a kiss and then he laughs a little bit quietly and then he closes his eyes and bows his head and Pastor Duncan who is sitting in front of us turns around and I close my eyes quickly and I pray with everybody else. After the service is over, Pastor Duncan makes us go up to the front of the church and meet the pastor here and we do and he is nice and shakes each of our hands and says thank you for coming to us and he smiles very big and his teeth are very white. I think that Jonathan was just playing around (but I do not know because why would he do what he did and why would he do it at me and what does it mean that he did to it at me) but he is talking to people and being nice and being funny and Hilarious and when he looks at me he looks normal and it is not like he is trying to tell me something (but I do not know because why else would he do what he did and what does it mean). We get into the van and the man who drives the van takes us back to the place where we are staying and the ladies here are done making and we eat the spaghetti and the salad and the fruit punch and the water and Jonathan whispers to someone else that he is Sick Of This Poop and everyone agrees quietly so that Pastor Duncan cannot hear.

93 ------Jonathan wakes me up in the morning and it is still dark outside the window which is really just a hole in the concrete wall and tells me to be quiet. Today's the day, Jonathan whispers over my bed. Are you ready? What? I whisper. McDonalds, dummy, Jonathan says. We shower and Jonathan tells Pastor Duncan when he wakes up that he and I are going out by the soccer field to do devotions before we leave for Vacation Bible School and he tells us to be back for breakfast and we say that we will and we bring our Bibles. We walk around to the side of the place where we are staying and the gates are open and we look to see if anybody is around but nobody is so we walk really quickly through the gates and down the sidewalk and still nobody is around. I'm so excited for a breakfast that doesn't taste like poop, I say. I know, Jonathan says. Poop for breakfast, poop for lunch, poop for dinner. We deserve McDonalds, I say. We've been working hard all this time. Yeah, we deserve this, Jonathan says. We walk by the many concrete blocks with metal roofs (and I think about trying to hold Jonathan's hand but I do not) and we turn the corner and there is the McDonalds and it is open. Jonathan says Thank God and that it is Like Heaven and we shout and we run towards the McDonalds and open the door and go inside. I am a little bit afraid because this is the first time that we have been anywhere by ourselves but nobody is paying attention and everyone here is just eating. They have fried chicken here? Jonathan asks when he sees the menu. Probably not for breakfast, I say. Oh yeah. We walk up to the counter with our Bibles and wait our turn behind the people who are from here and I smell the food and it smells exactly like the McDonalds we have at home and I start getting even more excited and Jonathan gets more excited and we start pushing each other because we are so excited and the man in front of us turns around and looks back at us and we stop pushing each other and we smile but we do not say anything and he turns back around.

94 Jonathan orders his food and then I order my food and we wait at the counter until it is ready and then we take our trays to a free table and we put our Bibles on the table and we sit down and we begin to eat. The food is so good. It tastes exactly like it is supposed to taste. It tastes exactly like it does at home and the food makes me miss my brothers and sisters and Dad and even Mom but I try not to think about it and keep eating because the food is so good. This is so good, Jonathan says with his mouth full of hash browns (and even with his mouth full of hash browns and open and talking with food in it he still looks good) and I am glad that we are best friends. Do you want more? Jonathan asks when we are finished with our food. Like a hash brown for the walk back? Where do we throw away the wrapper? Pastor Duncan will find out. And we have to hurry up and get back, I say. He won't find out if we throw the wrappers away here, Jonathan says and we throw away our trash and go back up to the counter and wait in line and order hash browns and wait for them and get them and throw away the wrappers before we walk out the door and eat the hash browns with our hands as we walk back to the place where we are staying. I want to ask Jonathan about blowing me a kiss the night before (because why would he do that and what does it mean and what does it mean that he would do that at me) but I do not. After we look to see if anyone is around, after we go through the gates and still do not see anyone, we go back to our room and nobody is there since everyone is at breakfast eating pancakes and fruit punch and water. Jonathan tells me that he has to Go Poop and he goes into the bathroom and closes the door and I sit on my bed by myself and everything is very quiet and I swat at the mosquitos which are all over the place and are really annoying and I wonder how we are going to sneak into the group with everybody else and not be noticed by Pastor Duncan. Jonathan comes out of the bathroom and looks worried for the first time I can remember since I have known him and I ask him What's Wrong and he says that he is worried about the same thing that I am worried about. But we do not have to talk about what we are going to do because Pastor Duncan walks into the room and asks us Where the heck have you two been? and everything sort of goes into slow motion and I am not sure whether to tell the truth or whether to say something which is less than true and I look at Jonathan to see what he is going to say but he does not say anything and I look at Pastor Duncan and I do not know what to say.

95 You don't have time to eat, I'm sorry, Pastor Duncan says. We have to leave for the church. You can't just go off by yourselves. There's a very real safety concern here. It's ok, I say and everything I do is wrong. We already ate, Jonathan says. No you didn't. You weren't at breakfast, Pastor Duncan says. We went to McDonalds, Jonathan says. Pastor Duncan does not say anything for a moment and then he says, You went to McDonalds? The food here is poop, Jonathan says. We wanted real food. We didn't hurt anyone. The two of you walked to McDonalds by yourselves, Pastor Duncan says. I'm sorry, I say and the three of us hear everybody coming back from breakfast to get their stuff to go to Vacation Bible School. Can you give us a moment? Pastor Duncan asks when the boys are at the door to get their stuff and he closes the door and I think that he is mad and everything I do is wrong. I can't believe the two of you did this, Pastor Duncan says. Are you complaining about the food that we are given while we are in a third world nation sharing the good news with nonbelievers? Do you know how hard it is to cook food for thirty-seven people? It's the same food every day, Jonathan says. We wanted something different. I'm sorry, I say. Do you think that you're better than the rest of us? The rest of us are eating breakfast on one of the last days that we're here and the two of you are off leaving the premises and lying to me and eating McDonalds? Are you kidding me? You knew that this was wrong, right? We didn't hurt anyone, Jonathan says. You had to know that what you were doing was not ok. This shows a huge lack of judgment, Pastor Duncan says. I'm going to have to talk to the two of you later after Vacation Bible School and decide what needs to be done here. Needless to say I'm extremely disappointed. We're sorry, I say. Pastor Duncan opens the door and everybody else comes into the room and they want to know what happened but I do not feel like talking and I get my Bible and my other things and I walk to the van and get in and everyone else comes and Jonathan comes and he does not sit

96 beside me and the man who drives the van gets in and closes the door and drives us to Vacation Bible School.

On the last night that we are here before we go to the airport to get on an airplane to go home Pastor Duncan and some of the other people who live here decide to give one last devotion in a room at the place where we are staying. After our dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and salad and fruit punch and water we walk out past the soccer fields to a different building and the people who live here and some of the kids who live here nearby the place where we are staying are sitting on folding chairs when we walk in and when we walk in they all start clapping and saying thank you for coming here and there is cake and fruit punch and water and one of the people who lives here has a guitar and starts playing a song and some of the girls start crying (and I feel like I am about to cry so I bite my lip and I do not cry). When he finishes Pastor Duncan walks to the front of the room and tells us what a good job we have done sharing the Good News and how hard we have worked and he reminds us about all the good that we have done here and how even though we are leaving tomorrow the good that we have done here will stay after we have left. I'm really proud of each and every one of you. Pastor Duncan says (and I feel like I am about to cry again) and some of the girls begin to cry again. You all have made Christ very proud I'm sure. Thank you all for coming here, the man who drives the van says after Pastor Duncan finishes speaking. You've made a difference in the lives of the children of our country. You are doing the work of Christ and we are very grateful. The man with the guitar starts playing again and everyone from here starts singing again and we start singing along and it feels like something is happening here with all of us in this small white room across the world from where I am from. After we sing some more, Pastor Duncan and some of the pastors from here begin praying and everybody bows their heads and closes their eyes to pray. I look up when everyone else's eyes are closed and I look at Jonathan and his eyes are closed too. I look up at the ceiling and everything sort of goes into slow motion when I see all the mosquitos and all the other bugs that are swarming around the ceiling lights like a huge swarm and I want to get up and run away from all of them because I am sure that at any moment they will all come down and bite us or

97 sting us or swarm around us when everybody else's eyes are closed while they are praying and I want to get up from my folding chair right now and run out of the room right now but I do not because I am scared.

98