ABSTRACT WHAT IF YOU’RE LONELY: JESSICA STORIES by Michael Stoneberg This novel-in-stories follows Jessica through the difficulties of her early twenties to her mid- thirties. During this period of her life she struggles with loneliness and depression, attempting to find some form of meaningful connection through digital technologies as much as face-to-face interaction, coming to grips with a non-normative sexuality, finding and losing her first love and dealing with the resultant constant pull of this person on her psyche, and finally trying to find who in fact she, Jessica, really is, what version of herself is at her core. The picture of her early adulthood is drawn impressionistically, through various modes and styles of narration and points of view, as well as through found texts, focusing on preludes and aftermaths and asking the reader to intuit and imagine the spaces between. WHAT IF YOU’RE LONELY: JESSICA STORIES 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 Michael Stoneberg Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Advisor______________________ Margaret Luongo Reader_______________________ Joseph Bates Reader_______________________ Madelyn Detloff TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Revision Page 1 2. Invoice for Therapy Services Page 11 3. Craigslist Page 12 4. Some Things that Make Us—Us Page 21 5. RE: Recent Account Activity Page 30 6. Sirens Page 31 7. Hand-Gun Page 44 8. Hugh Speaks Page 48 9. “The Depressed Person” Page 52 10. Happy Hour: Last Day/First Day Page 58 11. OkJessica Page 61 12. What If You’re Lonely Page 74 13. Suburban Still-Life Page 83 14. Heartland Theater Company Regrets to Inform You Page 85 15. Everybody Laugh: A Suicidal Porch Party Page 86 16. A Jessica Prepares Page 109 17. Collected Wedding Ephemera Page 114 18. Holy Crap: It’s a Girl! Page 121 19. Cindy Texts Page 122 20. Overhead Perspective Page 124 ii For Whitney Danger iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the faculty of Miami University for their support, especially my thesis chair and committee members—Margaret Luongo, Joseph Bates, and Madelyn Detloff—for their feedback and help with this project. Special thanks to the workshop leaders not mentioned above who saw pieces of this novel come through their workshops and provided excellent comments and support: Eric Goodman and Brian Roley. Many thanks, also, to my fellow graduate students in the four fiction workshops I took during my time at Miami (you are too numerous to list here, but you know who you are: thanks for all your help). I feel like thousands of people helped me complete this project directly or indirectly, and would like to thank the following few especially: Alison Thompson for providing the inspiration for the ending and for being my OkCupid advisor and research assistant; Whitney Danger for friendship, support, and endless inspiration; K.C. Novak for her inspiration, playwriting/acting expertise and feedback; Luke Ketter, Sarah Devine, Alex McElroy, Alex Friedman, and Edwin R. Perry for their feedback and encouragement. Marjorie Sandor also deserves heartfelt thanks for starting me on this path as an undergraduate and helping me dig deeper into character than I’ve ever dug before. Also on the list is every other poor soul who has listened to me talk myself silly about this thing for nigh two years. Special and grateful thanks to Heather Dannison for listening, helping me through some rough times, and introducing me to DEAR MAN. And of course, endless thanks to my parents for encouraging me to pursue my artistic endeavors and not even blinking when I threw away any hope of a lucrative engineering career. I’m sure I’ve left out myriad humans, and I regret that already, but thank you to all of my friends, colleagues, and family members. I would never have made it without you. Finally, thank you to anyone and everyone who reads the following pages. I like you. iv Revision Here’s what happened: I was born, grew up fairly pretty in a subdued way, did well in school, got a job at a hotel as a sophomore in high school, stayed in town for college, kept the hotel job despite the manager being a skeeve, graduated, got rejected from grad schools, once then twice, kept the hotel job, and totally got punked by this bitchy mom, parent to some prospective student, nodded meekly—a nice, quiet little girl—and felt terrible for the rest of my life. * No, here’s what happened: I was born and was unhappy, even though I had the best little life a little girl could hope for, even in the shadow of an all-American big brother, hit puberty late and was shy as shit in high school, got a job at a hotel because the manager thought I was somewhat cute and pliable, never went to dances, played soccer but never went to the parties, walked the drama-geek/jock line, and then sort of got asked out by one awkward boy my senior year—a pimple-faced drama dude—but nothing ever came of it, no first kiss, virgin lips, had plenty of time to study, and I graduated one of three salutatorians—my parents and grandparents were super proud. And then I moved on to college, got a full ride because I’m pretty bright and my mom worked in the admin building as an accountant so I got the staff discount, and I was still painfully shy, but had built-in high school friends who got stuck in town and never got out, but I quickly outgrew them, and finally, my fifth and last year, a boy kissed me post-midnight lying in the grass in the quad, but it didn’t work out, finished college thinking I’d missed all the experiences college entailed, and this one day at work, this total bitch of a mother, whose idiot daughter probably couldn’t even get into the community college, had the nerve to criticize me and my life choices at the check-in desk, and I felt so pissed off and depressed I thought I’d shrivel right there and die a virgin. * 1 What really happened was this: I grew up sad and lonely, had loving parents and a brother who was a step ahead of me in everything, a couple close friends—one a boy, one a girl—just because that’s the way it worked out, but hey, the parity’s nice. And then I aced the hardest math and physics classes the high school offered, aced the toughest English classes, wrote stories for half the soccer team in a creative writing class, graduated with a 4.0, but was still a salutatorian because of some weird 4.1 bullshit (of course, big bro got valedictorian and gave a rousing speech two years earlier), graduated college summa cum laude, which is pretty fucking good, and it was a tough market for grad schools and I aimed too high anyway the first go-round, all of them ranked in the top ten, got rejected, and so I tried again, got into a couple places sans funding, but I couldn’t survive any more debt than the credit cards I kept applying for and slowly maxing out, despite the paycheck, despite budgeting down to nothing, due to circumstances beyond my control—that ole story. So I passed on grad school the second time, thinking third time’s a charm, something everyone in my family wouldn’t stop saying to me in that condescending false-cheery way so that it lodged in my head, and I’m thinking it even now, Christ, third time’s a smarmy fucking charm. And I was still working hard at the hotel, putting on my brightest smile even though I thought of suicide more than a couple times, even though the manager hit on me constantly, “Hey, Jess, my little princess,” like he’s Wordsworth, and fuck the name Jess anyway, it’s “Jessica,” the dickhead. But I was still doing things on the side, getting roles in the local theater productions, writing something that might turn into a play, keeping my head up, “Buck up, kiddo” my grandma said, and I did, I literally did buck up, despite my love-life being a chasm and the few friends I had moving away and doing things with their lives or sinking into endlessly uninteresting stoner purgatory, and then I had to move back in with my parents when my best friend got into grad school in Ohio; my parents were thrilled, god bless them, to have a deadbeat 20-something re-nesting, but we quickly drove each other up a wall. Until I was at work one day, and this woman—you could tell from her jowly-fucking- face that she was a total stuck-up asshole—comes up, and I’m being my usual helpful, customer- is-king-or-queen self and checking her in efficiently and pleasantly, asking what she’s in town for, making delightfully polite and engaging conversation, and she says she’s with her 2 daughter—who I assumed was waiting out in the car, sucking her idiotic thumb while the other one’s crammed up her ass, because there’s no way any fruit of this woman’s withered loins turned out okay—checking out the state school in town, my alma mater, so I’m like, “Hey, that’s where I graduated from,” cheerily, conversationally ending on a preposition, and she looks at me, one of those up-and-down incredulous looks, and huffs out a “Huh, can’t be that great a school” under her breath, like I’m not even standing right there in front of her, takes her keycard and turns her back, so I hop over the counter with nimbleness I’d never had in life until that glorious, triumphant instant, and, fistful of hair in one hand, spin her around, slap her flabby cheek with the other, scream in her face, get fired, go to prison on assault charges, don that sexy orange jumpsuit, and feel great for the rest of my life.