UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE ‘Twixt and ‘Tween A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts by Andrew Dirk Sarouhan June 2011 Thesis Committee: Andrew Winer, Chairperson Michael Jayme Goldberry Long Copyright by Andrew Dirk Sarouhan 2011 The Thesis of Andrew Dirk Sarouhan is approved: ________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ Committee Chairperson Acknowledgements Endless gratitude, respect, and love to the fellow writers of my cohort. Our time together produced a rare chemistry, equal parts creative muscle and warm friendship, and washed down with a pitcher of beer or two. For me, it was a realized dream—short but sweet—of joyous immersion in a community of true artists. To the members of my thesis committee, I cannot thank you enough. Andrew Winer, this project has been a constant effort to merely approach the heights and depths I witnessed in your teachings, your writing, and your friendship. Michael Jayme, you remain a grinning reminder to me of the need to retain a sense of humanity, compassion, and decency that stands both apart and in concert with the task of writing. Goldberry Long, you were the only one who dared to answer my silly question of “How do you do this writing thing?” and in doing so, you gave me not only a creative process, but also a narrative voice. Special thanks to Adam Pelavin and Carly Kimmel. I have long considered the two of you to be the silent guardians of my thesis. Adam, here’s to late nights on my balcony. Thank you for always making me feel legitimate. Carly, in a single afternoon of conversation, you saw through me in a way that few have, and in doing so you have my enduring loyalty and love—here’s to my inevitable failure! Mom and Dad, thank you for providing the space I needed to finally complete this project. Thank you for standing with me and offering confidence even at the times I couldn’t feel it for myself. To my lifelong brothers, Jason Sarouhan and Chris Tarbell, know that every word I write is and always has been created with you two in mind—men of integrity and heart. To Negar Shekarabi, thank you for helping me at a time when I was most in need. I am forever affected by our interactions. iv To Lena Schmidt Because you were there. Because you’re still here. Dear, dear, dear, how lucky I am. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor’s Forward...…...……………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………………..2 Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………………………48 Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………………………63 Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………………………80 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………..104 vi Editor’s Forward Tea Reese passed on June 4, 2031, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. He was fifty-three years old. His death followed a particularly brutal five years in a New York penitentiary. But before those tragedies, there was much triumph for Tea, including a ten-year journey along U.S. highways, from coast to coast, from state to state, from metropolis to suburb to township to the vast and empty expanses that still, shockingly, exist in this nation. This grand adventure, along with Tea’s tireless work to combat the world attention crisis that is now popularly termed The Scattering, is well documented in Jacob Pierce’s incredible book American Griot . What you hold in your hands is the story of Tea’s life before those nomadic days. These are his memoirs, told in the third person—a particularly Tea Reese fashion of autobiography. The memoirs were kept private until his death, at which point their publication was granted by Tea’s trust. The memoirs themselves were incomplete, and purposefully so, from what we can surmise. In his trust, Tea stipulated that certain gaps in his story (and he listed those unspoken-for events, rather meticulously) be filled in by his lifelong friend Daki Kazantzakis, co-founder and innovator of the world-renowned Galumph Movement. Daki graciously accepted the task, his own writing (as you shall see) going above and beyond what was asked of him by his deceased comrade. We thank Mr. Kazantzakis for his contributions to this project. Andrew Sarouhan, lead editor August 13, 2035 1 Chapter 1 San Francisco, 9/26/2034 Well, here we are: my first words of contribution to this thingy-ding project, and the publishers already have a hair up their ass. An hour ago, I rang up the editing team from inside my club for a quick conference call, which was a laugh in itself. See, the green room at the I still has a bonafide payphone dangling from the wood paneling by a screw or two. Like a real working payphone, pure vintage, with a coinslot and a metal casing around the cord, and a rotary dial that’s probably had more fingers poked at it over the years than the girls who used to dance in this club. I called the publishing house collect and listened to the receptionist scramble around for ten minutes trying to wrangle up enough standard telephones for a conference call, as my payphone ain’t exactly compatible with the New Signal devices that most of these baby moguls are sporting nowadays. They finally got it together, and the six members of the project’s editing team congregated in what sounded like a broom closet and introduced themselves to me one at a time. And that’s when I told them. “Fellas, I’ll take the gig. Be happy to contribute to the project. And,” I say, giving just the right amount of dramatic pause, “I get the first chapter of the book.” Then I had the pleasure of listening to the muted mumble of six literati wannabes. “Mr. Kazantzakis?” a high-pitched male voice finally pipes up. “You call me Daki, son. I’m not your in-laws.” 2 “Daki. Would it be too much of an inconvenience if we were to call you back in, say, fifteen minutes? Ten minutes?” “You all need to discuss something amongst yourselves?” I ask, stretching that metal phone cord so I can reach in the green room fridge for my morning popsicle. The kid with the high voice is back, and he’s being real choosy about his words. “Daki, this project is, first and foremost, Tea’s story, told in his own—” “You call him Mr. Reese.” “Mr. Reese’s writing, his memoirs that have been posthumously entrusted to us, it commences—chronologically speaking—long before the two of you ever met, over a decade in fact. From our standpoint, which I’m sure you can understand, there’s a certain flawed logic in having your chapter begin the book. Chronologically speaking. It would create a confusion in continuity to the—” “I’ve got editor privileges on this gig,” I say with the popsicle jammed into my cheek. “Enough said.” “Actually, that’s not entirely true. As stated in Mr. Reese’s trust—” “Tea’s trust ,” I say. “The guy didn’t have a pot to piss in. Guess who paid for that funeral?” “But Tea, nevertheless, did have a trust, Mr. Kazantzakis.” The kid starts to get a little revved up, which means he’s taking my chatter too seriously, which means he’s got some personal stake in this project, which is always good info for a guy like me to know. “The trust states that you, Daki, are to be given limited editing control, specifically to your own writing. We have a lead editor on this project, whom Tea picked personally.” 3 “And whom might that be?” I ask. “You’re speaking to him,” the high-pitched voice says. “What’s your name again?” “Andrew—” “Hold on. Popsicle juice on my fingers. Getting sticky. Okay, fire away.” “My name is Andrew—” “Listen here, Scooter. My chapter’ll come first. It needs to come first.” There’s an aggravated exhale on the other end of the line, which in my world is good tidings. “And why must it come first?” he finally manages. “Well, I’ll tell you.” I lay back on the couch below the payphone, the ratty old couch that Tea used to sleep on when he came into town, before he stopped coming into town. Eating that popsicle actually has me a little winded. “I’m chapter one, Scooter, because I’m the goddamn collision. That’s why. Tea and me met—we intersected—and that was the event , for both of us. The goddamn collision. Because nothing would have happened for anybody—for me, or for him, or for any of you —if that collision hadn’t….” I catch my breath. “If that asteroid and that comet hadn’t—look, my chapter is coming first.” I’m starting to like this Andrew kid, because he can obviously here me wheezing like an old man’s fart, but he doesn’t back down. “Despite the importance of your and Tea’s association,” he says, “there were numerous events of great significance in his life before your meeting, and we are committed to providing the reader the most complete story of that life, in it’s intended order.” 4 “I perused those opening chapters you sent me from Tea’s writing. Kind of a snoozer. I hear the average reader these days gives a book like, tops, a page or two to hook them. This thing won’t sell with that sort of opening, not in the New Signal Age.” “This project,” so says Scooter, “is not primarily centered on financial gain,” to which I cut him off by laughing straight into the receiver.