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an expression of depression 1
Published by Little Episodes Ltd, No. 7005436
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010
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Back in 5 Minutes
~an expression of depression volume 1
Edited by
Lucie Barât and Fawn Neün
Designed by Chris Colston
LE
Little Episodes Publishing
The right of the authors in this book to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
L. Barât and F. Neün are hereby identified as editors of this work in accordance with Section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Any dialogue or behaviour ascribed to the characters in these stories - those who are real people as well as the characters who are imagined - is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner
Little Episodes Ltd, No. 7005436
Ways of contacting people within Little Episodes can be found on
Design by Chris Colston
With thanks to Nick Ross and Antonia Hodgson at Little Brow Book Group
and to all the contributors.
INTRODUCTION
I would consider myself to have been lost. Perhaps I provoked myself with persistent existential angst, or perhaps I just struggled with life and finding my place in the world.
I have spent time on psychologists’ couches and I have resided in various institutions, and in the end, I believe I became 'found'. On my journey, I read empathetic accounts of other people’s experiences. It helped to lift the ‘bell jar’ a little when I felt imprisoned in the battleground of my mind and when I felt most alone on the edges of society.
I wanted to create something that might provide light and understanding to other sufferers of depression, mental illness, or people just struggling. I also wanted to provide a platform for talented artists who have never had a ‘break’, as it’s well known that most artistic industries can be harsh on even the most happy of personalities. Plenty of talented people fall by the wayside simply because they don’t have the fight or the thick skin to keep playing the artistic lottery for a chance at success. The Little Episodes books have contributions from successful as well as unknown talent.
Most of all, I wanted to help de-stigmatise depression and promote compassion and understanding rather than fear and embarrassment. I also wanted to dispel the notion that depression is in any way cool. I wanted to express the belief that romantic dead poets and the image of sultry, tragic heroines are just a dangerous mirage. If you flirt with a glamorised dark side, you could fall through, and contrary to popular belief; you will not discover a font of creative inspiration, but quite the opposite; a dull, flat hell land.
Lucie Barât , 2009
ENDORSEMENTS
“This is what the field of mental health has been waiting for! To have a forum which appropriately normalises depression, accepts that substance use is just one of the ways of dealing with it and celebrates the artist, their work and the use of creativity as a therapeutic tool only has in my mind one way of going - and that way is up.”
Alison Smith ~ Psychotherapist working in the mental health and substance use field for 19 years.
"I believe the importance of your work cannot be stressed too strongly. All my life I've been denying my illness but after seeing what you've done, I now want to take a megaphone to the top of a building and shout at the world "I'M SCHIZOPHRENIC-ANYBODY GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?" The poems are amazing. Not easy to read some, as they took me back to dark places, but incredible at the same time because they were the words of somebody who wasn't me. In short you are battling a social stigma that has been beating me for 10 years!"
Ellie.
"I just wanted to say that the very idea of the book is incredibly beautiful and just right, and thank you for having a part in it and for giving a shit and being a human being."
Agniya.
"As someone who's struggled with depression since my early teens--and addiction since my early twenties--obviously, I "back what you've got goin' on."
Clint Catalyst ~ Performer,
"The static snowstorm of depression and illness can threaten to envelop all of us at times. It's art's soft hello that reminds you of your power to enchant others and emerge from the blizzard intact. Fortunately, we now have the Little Episodes collective to remind all of us this fact."
Jared Gold ~ Designer
“So-called mental “illness” is something that anyone can be prone to at any time. Throughout history there have been accounts of the ‘troubled’ artist from da Vinci right through to Kurt Cobain and I think music and all forms of art can provide a very valuable form of expression, connection and solace for people experiencing similar troubles. There is no romance in struggling to live life each day in a comfortable manner, and on the other hand there is a huge societal stigma attached to “not being right in the head”. Hopefully Little Episodes can draw attention to just how NORMAL it is to feel these things and using music and art seems like a most appropriate way to do that.”
Steven Ansell ~ Musician~Blood Red Shoes.
The ‘expression of depression’ anthologies….
The idea came from a journal and pad of art therapy pictures recorded during a stint in rehab. The idea was to collate similar pieces from as many artists as possible to provide empathy for anyone going through a psychological experience of isolation and mental struggle.
This book is the first of a volume of six.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sketch ~ Sadie Frost
I've Got Crafting in My Blood ~ Clint Catalyst
Switchblade Lovers ~ LucieBarat
Girl With Brown Hair ~PhibbyVenable
Waiting For The Healer Of Wounds ~ LucieBarat
Drowning ~ VictoriaHinault
Invasion ~ C.A. Masterton
The Bridge ~ HudsonHornick
Playing in Key ~ Nathalie Boisard-Beudin
What Have I Done ~ Meghan Lamb
The Doctor Says I Can Up My Dosage ~ Austen Roye
Bengal Tiger Boy ~ Heather Fowler
Bridge Scene ~ Rainer Wiseman and Mark Underwood
Sindy ~ Lorraine Jenkins
Poem ~ Marta Owczarek
The Spirit Level ~ Sarah Hilary
Leave No Soldier Behind ~ Ciara Burke
Fuel ~ Robert Fraser Powell
I take my clothes off to keep out the cold ~ Lucie Barât
Midnight Demons ~ GlandaWidger
On or Off ~ Anna Sykora
For Oscar, My Lover ~ M.R. Wallis
Letter to Hong Kong ~ JP Devlin
Satan ~ Aiden Cagney
Baby Talk ~ A. Beth Brown
Fuck My Twisted Heart ~ Lucie Barat
Descent Into Wellness ~ Chris Miller
Low ~ Alice Temple
Seek and Find ~ Molly Jones
Being Lonely ~ Ron Edwards
Tattoo ~ Hudson Hornick
A Moment With Gramma ~ Mark Burchard
Excerpt from 'Songines' ~ Fawn Neün
The Flickering Light ~ Pisces Iscariot
Confessions of a Lesbian Housewife ~Lucie Barat
Chemical~ Richard Godwin
Girl Afraid ~ Kim Hoff
The Beginning of Sadness ~ Eric Bennett
Flow Down Bourbon Street Nights ~ Bill Jackson
Panic Attack ~ Dan Provost
About Little Episodes
By Sadie Frost
I’VE GOT CRAFTING IN MY BLOOD
By Clint Catalyst
Along with the blue eyes, bad eyesight and stubborn temperament, I figure it’s some recessive allele I inherited from my parents.
They weren’t always Crafters though, mom and dad. I can picture home improvement projects from early childhood—mortar, bricks, being impressed ma could hammer a nail in a single shot: stuff of that ilk. But the wood glue, trips to Hobby Lobby? The assembly line of life-size Santa and reindeer combo packs that propped up like picture frames? Late, late bloomers in that tournament. As in: early 40s? Must’ve been. I was in the 8th grade, a teenager who needed my “own space”; mom was an elementary school Science teacher, dad the Sixth Grade Center’s principal, and this extracurricular hobby of theirs quickly outgrew our living quarters.
To accommodate, they built a work shed in the back yard—whereas I had recently discovered the Goth scene and preferred staying locked up in my room, listening to mix tapes of Skinny Puppy, Dead Can Dance and Screaming For Emily, studying the aesthetics of ‘fallen angels,’ glorious androgynous creatures lain to rest among the black & white pages of saddle-stitched fanzines. Among other things, I’d turned my appearance into a grand and commanding work-in-progress. The goal? To be as shadowy and sharp-edged as possible, every nuance of my feelings communicated through the spikes in my hair and tintinnabulations of silver ankh jewelry.
So when the folks enlisted me to sit in their vendor’s booth at the Craighead County Craft Fair, surrounded by cutesy carved kittens and variations of “The Razorbeak Inn”—a birdhouse constructed with discarded license plates as its roof?
Well, it salted my game, to say the least.
Still, counting change back to the Bubble-Letter Enthusiasts presented some down time, in which I was able to do a bit of my own handiwork. I tugged a duffle bag filled to bursting with fancy writing implements, double-ended drafting markers and glitter nail polish: all tools I used to meticulously decorate envelopes for my correspondence with the outside world. My beloved pen pals—such kindred souls in the No One Else Could Understand school of histrionics. It may have been a good fifteen years before the advent of internet giants like Facebook and MySpace, but showmanship still stood for something. The more infamous a pen “fiend” was in this U.S.P.S.-driven popularity contest, the more scrupulous detail was dedicated to a missive’s presentation. I’d spend hour after hour on the complete package: smother it in bat-shaped stickers, obscure symbols hand-carved out of potatoes—slippery little short-lived versions of rubber stamps I smeared watercolors onto in a grand race against time.
I can’t think of a time I wasn’t playing it, that lead-pedaled, 80 mph take on life. A race in which I was driven towards that ‘next destination’ I wasn’t quite sure of, except for the maddening sense of urgency that I had to make it there…and faster: headlights blazing at 3 AM like torches on a witch hunt or blazing in the afternoon heat—freeway tar glistening, hot enough to sizzle bacon.
Two decades it was like that, not so much “living” as binging. Sun-bleached billboards, the electric green paint of road exit signs, landmarks, people’s faces: all reduced to a series of flashes. Isolated images in warped frames, loose film strips lacking a narrative.
Now that I’m attempting to splice them together, I’ve had a serious attitude transplant about the ol’ nifty-crafty kinfolks. They’ve mellowed their take on me, as well, after enduring the descent into black eyeliner and bad behavior they assumed was Just A Phase I’d outgrow as quickly as a shoe size during those voice-cracking, acne-ridden, tempestuous teenage years. Instead, 13 turned into 16, when I taught myself how to construct fake IDs for clandestine excursions to the other side of the Mississippi. A bridge, a state line, and Memphis: then it was through the doors of nightclubs—back when the term ‘alternative’ still meant something—and over-the-shoulder with my Southern Baptist upbringing. I’d read Edie: An American Biography, damn it, and my scrawny arms ached to embrace glamour and depravity, full-on.
Same as when subjected to the PAST—and by that, I mean the Physical Ability and Stamina Test—I did the best I could with what I had. Granted, there is no scale, no barometer by which exquisite debauchery is determined in contrast to the moderate, but with certainty I can tell you this: Memphis is not Manhattan.
I was already well aware there’s a limit to how far a person can take things in Small Town, Arkansas—both metaphorically and literally—so at the very least? The almost of Memphis inspired me to up the ante. To aim higher for new highs, or new lows; that morality shit’s subjective. Graceland was fine for the geriatrics, but Disgraceland—Hollywood’s infamous crash pad of punk rock royalty I’d read about in Spin? The images accompanying the article were retinal candy; the text a source of obscene fascination. It turned out to be one of many reasons I began spending less time “busying myself” with primping, crimpers and straightening irons, and more time researching scholarships.
Yes, scholarships. The way I saw it, each attempt at those stodgy pats on the pocketbook was my own little way of taking a jab at civilized conventions. Sure, I was ‘working within the system as a means to work the system,’ except in my case it wasn’t some lame attempt at rationalization. There’s a reason the phrase is hackneyed. Think former radicals, comfortable six-figure incomes, the type of grandiose statements espoused at dinner parties. Oh no no no, it wasn’t an apology.
It was a form of revenge.
Though the logic may sound as fucked as Annabel Chong, what it comes down to is this: As much as I craved the adrenaline rush of “pulling one over,” secretly I yearned to do well. Not because I whacked-off to thoughts of popularity! and being the president of Student Council, but rather to prove something to myself. And in order to prove something to myself, I had to prove something to Them…but now I’m jumping ahead.
Speaking in academic terms, one might say that I am “diametrically opposed to the American school system’s pervasive trend that competition is ‘bad.’” Out in the real world—where everyone from the cashier at McDonald’s to a suit on Wall Street is subjected to competition—I’d be a bit more succinct: What. A. Crock. Of. Shit.
In an essay by Alfie Kohn, an alleged Leading Figure In Progressive Education, he states: “Researchers have found that competitive structures reduce generosity, empathy, sensitivity to others’ needs, accuracy of communication, and trust.”
Oh really.
Because in my case—an effeminate boy in a hateful, homophobic small town? If there’s anything my educational experience lacked, it was “sensitivity to [my] needs.” Ditto on “generosity, empathy” and those other utopian catch phrases.
Competition was all I had, was my only means to prove I wasn’t worthless. Wasn’t the things they called me. Heathen. Faggot. AIDS-face. An embarrassment. The type of person who shouldn’t exist.
Success for the sake of an F-You. Part of me wants to believe this is some great epiphany I’ve had after all the years of head-shrinking and SoCal “spirituality,” though deep down, I knew it then. The truth clung to my cheeks and hung heavy as a gust of humidity.
Besides, the sight of me hunched-over at the kitchen table—studying the stilted language and variegations of paper textures among the applications, fanned out like a deck of Tarot cards—seemed like one of the few things I did that made the folks happy.
I could see it in dad’s face when he scuffled across the linoleum during a break from Craft-land, could see the flash of approval in his cornflower blue eyes. Warm wood smells accompanied him: sometimes chewed-up bits of maple, sometimes the guts of plywood that clung to his denim overalls. Sawdust.
I could smell it in Elizabeth Arden’s bold perfume notes when mom’s face smoothened and she leaned in to kiss my cheek, rub my back. I filled my lungs with their approval.
It was nice, being able to breathe. A welcome respite from all that foreshadowing: the asbestos-white cloud of hair products hanging heavy in my room. Who knew someday I’d end up telling this story beneath the asphalt-colored skies of Los Angeles? Then again, who knew so much color could come from staring into the neutrals: beige, khaki, cantaloupe, cream, off-white, pure-white, bright-white.
So blandular, the hues—yet it was one of those packets that transported me to Germany three weeks after high school graduation. Several essay questions, a personal interview; then I lucked into a student exchange program I’ll refer to here as The Namen Night Gesägt Project.
Aside from its six-days-per-week intensive language immersion, the NNGP provided a myriad of opportunities. A chance to try my hand at studio crafts: a course in jewelry-making, an internship in Commercial Art…then there were the kind that I, as an aspiring degenerate, simply couldn’t resist.
Among them, my stipend fueled an off-the-intended-curriculum tour throughout seedy nightcrawler haunts of West Germany to Berlin, where I ricocheted a season later for its abbreviation. The word “West” was being erased; the Wall was coming down, and I was there: pick-axe in hand, chipping away at the graffitied concrete. An active verb in history’s re-write.
Deutsche Bahn, the German railway system, was its own burst of emotion. Such great fun, the Intercity Express—streaming from City Center to City Center at 300 kilometers an hour. And so convenient! Just a block away from school, it proved to be quite the distraction: especially for the spontaneous “Let’s Jump On The Next Train And See Where It Takes Us” toss-up, by which my friend Jaysin and I explored Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich… One morning, we had every intention of going to class—he with a backpack slung over his shoulder; me with my makeshift briefcase in hand—though somehow ended up in Athens, Greece.
That excursion—our most epic—turned out to be the last we’d take.
See, Interpol (as in: The Real Deal, not the musicians sporting well-tailored suits and asymmetrical haircuts) found five hits of acid in a parcel addressed to my ‘given’ name. You know, the one on my passport? The one my host family knew me by. Incidentally, the only one I couldn’t shrug my shoulders, feign innocence with an up-turned “’Bananafishbones’? What is that..a person?”
Oh yeah. Remember those pen pals I mentioned earlier? The incriminating evidence was a birthday gift from one I’d been in contact with for years—yet the dumb-ass didn’t acknowledge me by nom de plume. I mean, it’s not like it would’ve taken much thought; I had more pseudonyms to pick and choose from than my Manic Panic pantheon of hair colors.
Then there was the package’s façade. Hell, with all the glitter and iridescent stickers strewn about the grocery-store brown paper, it looked like Lisa Frank vomited a holographic message of “Hey Border Patrol! C’mon—The good stuff’s over here!”
After politely demanding I evacuate, I was spat out again in the American South, where I had a quaint liberal arts collegiate moment—including two forced hospitalizations, if that’s any indication how well I wasn’t coping with the environment—before I packed up a U-Haul and hauled ass to San Francisco for a four year stint that proved fraught with more ambulatory madness and aberrant behavior than my modest Dry County upbringing could have predicted. And for that, I am thankful.
Because you know what? In my own cracked-out dysfunctional way, crafting is what kept me connected with the parental units. In 1990, dad was hammering wood beams for the bathroom expansion mom and he planned back in Jonesboro, while on another continent, I used safety pins to Franken-stitch the slaughtered remains of dress slacks into a patch-worked grid for something close to a dress: an industrial-themed boy skirt I planned as my next ‘look’ for the club.
In the mid-90s, dad retired early to better hone the skills of his wood-crafting arsenal. By the time he lassoed mom into his crusade, the man could wield a jig-saw with a black belt ease…and so began the expansion of their empire into the South-East circuit of seasonal shows: War Eagle and the like. Me? Well, I retired early from my position as a respectable human being in order to ditch graduate studies and isolate back in my unending art project of an apartment in the Upper Haight, hot-gluing shards of broken glass and chicken wire onto headpieces, fashioning necklaces out of fishnet and raccoon penis bones, and shellacking pig skulls for my own sinister take on a cod piece.
By the late ‘90s, I was struggling to get off all those “enlightening” and “uninhibiting” substances to which I’d become enslaved—so my interests in handiwork changed, along with the artistic medium. After tossing out the rigs (yet again), I couldn’t exactly work on the sculpture I envisioned with syringes suggestive of a rib cage—nor did it make things easier for my self-portrait series rendered in rusty hues of hemoglobin. Besides, the novelty of painting with blood tends to fade if a person no longer has to schedule his day around finding a vein. Once the drug addiction I’d been hiding behind fear-fueled denial at eardrum-splitting decibels was not just out like a hot secret, but more like a Winnebago that broke down blocking their driveway, my compassionate folks took me in for an 18 day—and night: they were memorable, every one of them—carnival side-show detox.
Mom and dad’s undertaking at the time? Installing their own hardwood floors, piece by piece. I might have assisted with two or three of the hundreds, but an invaluable contraption the ‘rents provided me was a rivet gun and pile of discarded inner tubes, from which I fashioned my own recycled rubber backpacks and “murses” as a rehabilitative activity. I had fun with that fetish-craft fusion for several years into my nascent sobriety, until I excused the gadget from service upon completion of my wedding present for one of the kinkiest couples around: Margaret Cho and The Reverend Al Ridenour.
Short of the long? My relationship with my parents is better than ever. There’s over 2,000 miles between us, but we play telephone on a regular basis. Earlier today, mom confessed she’s trying to get over a cold so they can travel cross-state for a big craft event this weekend, while I talked about geeking somethin’ heavy on label-and-cover decorations for my theme-based CD mixes.
Sure, the folks and I have varying opinions on capitol punishment and premarital sex; however, it no longer seems as if I brought the San Andreas fault line along with me when I visit during the holidays. I just plop down in one of their well-worn La-Z-Boys, busying myself with whatever nifty-crafty doodad I’m frittering around with at the moment—today, it’s a plaid thrift store jacket I’m sprucing up with creepy bug-shaped embroidery—while dad saws the spruce that mom sits and paints.
Crafting is an age-old hobby, yet this is the vernacular in our modern take on ‘family,’ our common language.
Besides, with the life I’ve lived, this choice of knitting needles over hypodermics is so sick and fantastic; it seems like one of the most rebellious things I could do.
SWITCHBLADE LOVERS
Lyrics by Lucie Barât
She had a little death around the eyes,
And a lot of make-up to disguise the fact,
It had begun to seep within,
She had to take a blade to skin,
To gouge a slit and let it drain,
Just as her lover hit up another vein,
He only tries to do the same.
We're only trying to do the same.
CHORUS:
A little death around the eyes,
And a lot of shame in their disguise-
The Switch blade Lovers...
Star-crossed through the darkness,
That dwells within them.
He'll sink a gin to leak the sins,
His birth bestowed on him.
She'll dry her eyes and re-apply,
The mask that keeps her hidden;
The fact she's living out of rhythm.
They get up to pull each other down again.
The day creeps on and then they drown again.
In each other they've swung 'round the bend.
CHORUS
Sometimes she finds that she and life,
Just aren't suited as a pair that's right.
He's lost the fight with the crutch that keeps him numb,
Remembers the days when he was gonna give 'em some.
Waiting for it to come 'round again,
But there aren't enough chances to lend, no
There aren't enough chances to lend,
There aren't enough chances to lend, no!
GIRL WITH BROWN HAIR
By Phibby Venable
During my internship at the mental hospital,
a young woman greeted me, day after day,
to ask if she was pretty and if I loved her.
I said, yes. yes.
because she was pretty and because
I wanted to please her, and affection
is not that difficult to distribute, especially
if you have been given plenty of it.
So each day she abducted my attention
and wondered if I might be her sister
and did I have a boyfriend or a baby?
and would I be her friend, would i be her friend,
Would I Be Her Friend?!!
I said yes, yes, yes.
and she said, here..
and handed me a comb
so i combed her hair.
I touched her hair and she grew still.
sometimes she would reach up
and touch my fingers on the comb
and follow the strokes down
sometimes she would hold her head
all the way back so that she could stare
into my face
and always, do you love me, in that voice
of childlike desperation,
as she searched for someone I might be,
or may have been, long ago.
her hair was beautiful and brown.
Before I left there, she pulled the plaster
from a high, barred window
and used it as a knife
so the aides hurried and took her to isolation,
the last place she had meant to be,
as though isolation would cure
that terrible need.
I wish someone had combed her hair
all of her life. She had such pretty hair.
Shiny, and very, very brown.
DROWNING
By Victoria Hinault
I would dream of drowning regularly, it was like a reoccurring theme. I had nearly drowned once, the ocean had tried to take me but I was saved, my lungs ejected the water that had filled them in an abrupt rush as I rolled to the side coughing. That night I dreamt of it, but I dreamt I was drowning in whiskey. The smell from the bottle at the side of my bed saw that it found its way into my life even as I slept.
An obnoxious high-pitched noise wormed its way through the damp air of my dark bedroom and into the back of my head, sending reverberations of horror through me. Arm outstretched, I blindly thumped until the noise stopped, feeling a mixture of comfort from my bed and terror of the day ahead.
I stood silent; the water was hitting my head in a hot and steady flow. Washing over me completely, the only noise I could hear was the torrential rush. It covered my face and my heart jumped as I realised my mouth and nose were gagged by the water, I couldn’t even take a breath, I stood there slowly suffocating in my steam-filled bathroom.
I opened my eyes to a blur of motion and as the dizziness consumed me and my brain felt as if it was beginning to collapse on itself I felt the threat of death slowly sinking in. With my life flickering along with my eyelids I emerged; inhaling huge gasping breaths through my wet mouth.
I panted desperately, but after the briefest of moments I realised I had fully recovered and was disappointed in myself, in my body for betraying my mind and panicking so soon.
I stood, a little longer, letting the burning water trickle down my pale skin and sighed heavily. I knew that the purgatory between my alcohol-fuelled blissful sleep and my day ahead had to end. I shrank back under the water for one last rush and then turned the dial slowly, feeling the pressure decrease and watched as the downpour turned to drizzle.
As I wrapped the rough towel around myself, I dried my body, rubbing my hands briskly over it, letting it soak up the last beads of freedom hovering on my skin. I took a moment to notice the reappearance of my ribs, grazing my nails over them gently and trying to count them through the steam-patched mirror.
Soon though, I was blowing the steam off of my tea and enjoying the temporary loss of vision. My glasses clouded each time I exhaled into the cup of milky, yet golden, steaming liquid.
I enjoyed the blindness of the steam and the breathlessness brought by the burn. I enjoyed the control I felt on my body, which, had otherwise deserted. It was carried away with the rest of the wage slaves. As it marched to the door, falling in line with the other troops ready to salute the bus driver, my mind stayed behind, plotting ways to kill the body that had betrayed it.
INVASION
By C.A. Masterson
I need a blood transfusion,
a radioactive scrub—
anything to get you out of my system.
No more alien ions freefloating,
stinging every individual cell.
I need an ethnic cleansing
of my soul.
If the pain would only stop,
I would bang my head against the wall
until it was gone.
But your invasion was so total,
I can't separate the particles
of myself,
they're infused
with your electricity;
like a cattle prod they strike
when I assert myself.
I need freedom
from pain
from love
from you.
THE BRIDGE
By Hudson Hornick
i can’t talk anymore
about you
or this.
you, with your flowers and soil
me, with
scalpel and nail.
if you could bridge the distance
i’m sure
you would create some mockery.
something resembling a real
bridge.
and then what would we have?
call me a coward for not
coming across,
but when I come,
it won’t be of some
conjunction of earth,
but of love—my own mockery.
PLAYING IN KEY
By Nathalie Boisard-Beudin
He stares at keys, off white and slightly dusty.
They used to dance for him, taking him down some mad, whirling motion where he would do some prestidigitation over the keyboard, eager to follow the dictated rhythm, to waltz or jazz or tango as the mood would take them. He always thought they called the tune. Some days he would come in, with rumba on his mind, only to discover that the piano on that day had gone all classical and able to make him play Shubert’s “Trout” over and over and over; literally until he screamed in despair and rolled to the floor, foaming at the mouth.
The instrument had been his only solace and tormentor then, a drug he came back to every single day of his life, dreading its caprice but eager to see if the magic would take him into some exotic tune, one that would match the fever in his bloodstream, the colours in his dreams, one that could be a companion to his soul.
But his lover was fickle, whimsical even, and more often than not sent him into fits increasingly violent, his head banging the keyboard, the floor, his ranting and raving causing the neighbours to call the police—too much noise—and the puzzled officers to call the paramedics.
At the end they had put him in a padded cell, away from sounds, safe from music but free to scream and shout and kick and holler some sort of demented tunes that still managed to drift in to plague his mind. In his hours of conscience, he begged for and got ear plugs. But warped melodies still sucked at his soul, causing wild bursts of colours in his mind, driving his hands to twitch and tremble, fastening tight around his own neck.
He was tied to the bed, chemical padding inserted into his veins. They worked. As reality faded from sight and brain, music slowly trickled out, taking on a different–softer–shade every day, leaving him comfortably numb. Day, weeks, months, years passed and one day he was released from the cell, a certificate telling that he was more or less cured but should still be kept, under close scrutiny.
But close scrutiny can be careless and one day, not meaning to, he had ventured outside the gates of the asylum and found himself in the streets.
A vagrant had discovered him curled up in a ditch and taken him along. They had travelled in company for a while, he feeling much better for the cool air on his face and freedom in his lungs. The silence in his brain did not bother him: He felt he could clearly hear his own thoughts as they stood out against the noiseless background in his brain. Walk. Eat. Piss. Sleep. Drink. He came to suspect that they might be the most important things in his life. He started to cajole them, entertain them. Trying to coax them into speaking more often to him. Develop that concept: Eat? What? Sleep? Where? And as they gradually got used to him—like some feral animal being carefully tamed—the thoughts become bolder, more articulate.
Needs were assessed and ways to attain them carefully devised. Fewer errors were committed. With such progress, he found he could read, speak and listen to others—outside others—almost normally and started to blend into society a little more. Leaving his companion, he attempted work. Simple physical things at first, gradually more challenging. Of course, people still thought he was a little strange—a little repressed they said, as if he wasn’t always completely there—but once he had admitted of having suffered from severe depression, they accepted more readily his little quirks. Like his staring at musical instruments in the streets or even into the lines of old records at the flea market, as if he expected music to rise from them.
Until one day, where his work as help in a removal company took him to an old house, its inhabitant recently deceased and heirs eager to have it cleared so they could sell the property.
There he had met with the old lady’s piano, a little disused thing, dusty and covered in old photographs in pewter frames.
Holding his breath, he had shyly lifted the lid—a timid groom unveiling his bride—and peered into the ivory eyes of the instrument, looking for a sign, a message. Waiting for music to start; for colour to come back into his world.
But the yellowed keys had refused to budge and stared blankly ahead, inert and inelegant, fossils in the making.
He had nudged the piano, gently at first then with gradual desperation, sending the pictures flying in the end, tears rolling down his cheeks, an animal howl nested in his throat as he push and pulled the heavy creature about, slamming in against the wall.
When his colleagues came about to see what the commotion had been, they found him hung from the window frame, the piano cord deeply embedded in his neck.
WHAT HAVE I DONE
By Meghan Lamb
Now she’s sleeping on her side,
pressing into my body as far as
she can without waking.
Unconsciously, she reaches for my arms
and wraps my hands around her throat.
I wonder if she tries to keep me up at night.
Maybe, in her quiet way, her dreams
are just as paranoid as mine.
I can’t sleep because I see
my fingers poking through her skin.
I’m easing through, though sharply, which is
how most pleasures train themselves as habits.
In the dream I’d dream her skin is just
an excess sheen for future growth,
the starting up of something that could callous over.
I’ll scrape at it for hours knowing that is all it is.
I will not understand until I wake
Until too late to learn
What have I done.
I know that this could happen in a dream.
I’ve taught myself to recognise the signs.
I know now there is no way to unteach myself,
to let my body sleep without
the fear of what's to come.
THE DOCTOR SAYS I CAN UP MY DOSAGE
By Austen Roye
They’re going to want to know how
everything’s going, especially from
the sound of the steps in the hall
coming this way, that brisk, curious
concern of a step and now a head
peeking through the door and a voice
is saying something but what, I’m
not quite sure but something tells
me I should nod so I do and that
seems to do the trick because soon
the head is gone and the voice with it
and it’s just me again, pounding the
keys and carving my brain into four
equal pieces, sending one to the
corners of the earth to be dissected,
tenderised and returned in self-
addressed stamped envelopes marked:
DEFECTIVE, as the voices make
their way through the wall and let
me in on their conversation and I
don’t mean to eavesdrop but of
course I do and the reports are
shocking because it seems as
though something has gone wrong
and I can’t tell if it concerns me or
a co-worker but either way it doesn’t
sound good so I drown it out with
a finger in each ear humming a
commercial jingle I heard the day
before but soon the steps are coming
back toward the door and the knob
twists open, the head reappearing
to ask if I’m feeling any
better today.
BENGAL TIGER BOY
By Heather Fowler
It was right after I told him I’d be fine, though I wasn't fine, that I hung up the phone and pulled the trigger. I’d been at my place, talking to him at his place, two days after he told me he didn't want me. But it wasn't me he didn't want. He didn't want anyone. Anyway, day two after his revelation, we reached the end of the current conversation, and I went angel.
Guess I couldn’t take it anymore. Any of it. He'd just gotten a tattoo on his arm of a big Bengal tiger and there was text below the beast that said, “Stronger by the day.” His tiger was two weeks old when we last spoke, orange and black, with blue in the stripes, lots of ink, still a little crusty and tender.
After the hole cleared through my head, I remember I thought: I want to see it again, his tattoo. I wanted to see his spare shoulders, his dark furred thighs. Then I was there, at his place. And that’s the cool thing as a spirit—you just think it, and you’re present. I remember, seconds dead, I hung above his bed. He nearly napped, hands tucked under his ears, his pretty blue eyes two-thirds closed. He hadn’t gotten the news yet and it would take a good week for him to figure it out because he’d have to miss me answering my phone first, and then try and physically come knock, more than once—and finally get insistent and call my sister.
By the time he found out, my family had arrived to enact much drama— (mother screaming, "Julia! How could you? Oh, Jesus”; Katie walking around and around my body, touching the pool of blood, washing her hands; and daddy, oh, daddy, seated at the dinette, holding his head in his palms like a cracked egg)—and they had removed my body, had cleaned things up and took care of funeral planning because I’d left a note and a voicemail that day, and only a good six days later would my lover boy scuffle into my abandoned place, picking up his records and clothes as he came to, both mourning and applying his practical purpose at once.
During this time, this whole week, I’d have been watching him, floating above the 8th and Sycamore St. liquor store where we met, cruising the park where the cops hung in clumps. I’d be flying all over the city, thinking of his Bengal tattoo and how he said he liked me that one day, he really did, but he just didn’t have a thing for girls. Boys neither. He had no thing for no one. This was his failing. All his life.
And he wouldn’t have been the first guy I’d heard say that, or variations of that. Oh, no, before I blew that lead, I would have well considered the act of my own attrition, would have wasted years pursuing similarly inaccessible men. Each would have had different reasons for their damage. Marriages. Mental Illness. Abuse. And I would have decided this was a pattern. My pattern. To chase the inaccessible and whacked. To want the fucked up. To be the girl with tears like tattoos, like wet facial love letters to distant boys, permanent as those inked onto eyes by gangbangers who’ve killed people.