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EGG HEAD, by Mark Blickley
 My initial exposure to the New York art scene came during the mid-seventies while sipping hot chocolate in a mid-town coffee shop. Directly in front of my booth was a xeroxed theater advertisement of a nude woman. Her lovely back was facing me. Underneath the squatting beauty, in bold back letters, I read the words NAKED LUNCH.
Hours later I was sitting in a gloomy East Village basement, anxiously awaiting a full frontal evaluation of the lead actress. A ticket only cost a few dollars.
Turns out the poster that enticed me into the world of drama was an old and famous Penelope Ashley photograph. And not only wasn’t there anyone naked in the play, it had absolutely nothing to do with food. Although I didn’t really understand a lot of what was being said and enacted on stage, I was intrigued. I’ve always loved puzzles. NAKED LUNCH addicted me to off-off Broadway.
I threw myself into the New York art scene. It was exhilarating. The more I didn’t understand a subject matter, the harder I fought not to lose my concentration, enthusiasm, or respect for the creators and their creations. Because of a romantic liaison with a dancer, I attended numerous modern dance recitals where I absorbed the conceit of movement being as important as dance.
Performance art baffled me. Quite often I couldn’t offer up a sentence about the artist’s intent. This would bother me, but usually the presentations were so beautifully crafted, layered with such exquisite sound and lights and words and sets that I shrugged off the obscure meanings in favor of a kind of obsessive energy that exploded into artistic anarchy.
I had a head-on collision with the plastic arts in Morocco. I met an entire summer school of painters in Tangier, ranging in age from eighteen to seventy. Their skill level varied greatly, but their dedication to their art was inspiring. I was amused and somewhat baffled over their excitement of North African light.
New York’s School of Visual Arts had leased work space and living quarters inside a large, protected compound. Many nights I would visit up to a dozen artists as they toiled inside their studios. Some artists attacked their canvasses joyously, others worked with a seriousness that approached
anger.
I became infatuated with, and later married, an exotic looking woman who made small collages from objects she found in the street - cigarette packages, pieces of fabric, coins, glass, etc. She introduced me to process as well as product.
When I returned to the states I did an exhaustive reconnaissance of most of the art galleries and museums in New York. I got a crash course in art history when I discovered the German expressionists and pointed individuals like Alice Neel and Milton Avery. Joseph Cornell’s busy boxes enchanted me and I didn’t know why. By chance I walked into a 57th Street gallery and was thrilled by the work of a man named Soutine. I later read that he smelled quite foul.
Contemporary artists, I was having a problem with. SoHo was peaking. Mary Boone replaced Castelli as the art dealer. Most of the work I viewed left me feeling empty, stupid and somewhat intimidated. I didn’t get it. By the time the East Village “Bad Art” exploded on the scene, I was more angry than confused.
In the interim I had become friendly with quite a few artists, artists who had spent tens of thousands of dollars on prestigious art school educations. Every year a handful of these artists would submit pieces - you’re allowed up to three - to the annual Small Works Show. And each year they’d get uniformly rejected.
I participated in the annual rejection lament for three consecutive years. The lament was usually held at Bradley’s in the Village, and in between the bass lines of a jazz trio and disappearing pitchers of beer, we’d all rage on about the corruption and commercialization of the art world.
But I was changing. A decade of fervent art following and worship started to sour me. I taught myself to rely on my own powers of expectation and introspection, and most of the artists I knew and the products they created left me disgusted. I thought that joy and human understanding had been totally excluded from the work of the majority of my friends and peers.
At the age of thirty-one in 1984, I wrote a play that was produced in New York after winning a theater contest, and around the time of the February 2l 1985 Small Works opening, I had a short story anthologized in a book. So you see, I was honestly trying to implement my ideas; I was attempting to build something, not to simply knock a thing down.
Late in 1984 the girlfriend I met in Morocco and I viewed an exhibit in an upscale SoHo space that was so boring and amateurish I asked the gallery sitter if he could explain why the work was being exhibited. He left his desk in a huff and disappeared into a back room. When he returned he was
clutching a thick pamphlet that he shoved at us and told us to read. It would explain everything, he said.
We read it. It was such a convoluted muck of art-speak that it confused me even more than the work it was trying to describe. When I returned the pamphlet with my observations, the gallery sitter’s face turned purple with rage. He informed me that he had written the pamphlet himself, and if we couldn’t understand his words, we were the deficient ones, not the works of art.
Well, a couple of years earlier I would have been intimidated and shuffled off with my head bowed. I insisted he explain the value of the work to me, in his own words. He insisted I re-read his writing on the subject. I told him I could spend a day reading his words and still wouldn’t have a clue as to why the exhibit was produced. Just give me a few sentences, simple sentences, about your feelings and reasons for the work’s importance, I pleaded.
The gallery sitter stormed off into the back room and stayed there until my girlfriend and I left. I was furious. I wasted years and years being intimidated and mislead by a contemporary court of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
When I returned home that evening I was upset. My girlfriend immediately began to put the finishing touches on one of the pieces she was submitting to the 1985 Small Works
jury. It was her fourth attempt at gaining acceptance.
“I’m going to enter the competition,” I announced.
“But you’re not an artist,” she replied. “You draw like a kid. Even your handwriting never evolved past the third grade.”
“That’s because I’m left-handed,” I said defensively.
“And because I’m not an artist is why I’ll have a better chance of getting in than you and your friends. I bet the curator will be starved for ideas. Technique and talent I don’t have, but ideas, unobscured ideas - no problem. It’ll be revolutionary.”
She smirked and returned to her art work. I walked into the next room and removed a small drawer from an ancient roll top desk I had rescued from the street. Then I grabbed a hammer and some tiny nails.
Because of a clerk’s job at an Upper Westside chi-chi toy store, I had a small arsenal of weird and wonderful stuff with which to entertain the many children in my life. I emptied my bag of fun onto the floor and awaited artistic inspiration.
The Muse spoke. Eggs. Rubber eggs. Perfectly crafted rubber eggs peeked up at me from the colorful heap. I plucked a half-dozen of them out of the pile. Then I noticed tiny babies from Italy that were exquisitely made from hard plastic. I scooped up a handful of naked infants and smiled. I had found a theme.
The last ingredient I pulled from the colorful pile were two sets of soft plastic contortionists known as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Molded to look like a stereotypical 1950’s mother and father, these little dolls were renowned for their elasticity.
My co-workers used to thrill in twisting Mr. and Mrs. Smith into some very explicit and compromising positions.
I thumbed through a few of my girlfriend’s food magazines that she used for still lifes and cut out two symbolic pictures that I pasted inside the upper left- and lower right hand corners of the drawer. One photograph was of cherries; the other was eggplants. Because of the egg/food theme I also pasted 1950’s railroad dining car promotional postcards across all four sides of the drawer.
I took a razor blade and slit open four rubber eggs, placing a protruding baby inside each perforation. Then I nailed a pagoda of four baby emerging eggs to the lower left corner of the drawer.
Next came the two Mr. and Mrs. Smiths. I had one couple facing each other in the lower right-hand corner hoisting the other couple on their shoulders. The top couple balanced two intact rubber eggs stacked in their outstretched arms.
The final and crowning achievement of the piece was naming the art work. I asked my girlfriend for one of the
extra entry forms she always kept and penned in Procreation above the word title. She was shocked that I had completed an original work of art in thirty-eight minutes, and quite confident that it would be dismissed by the curator, Alan Stone of New York’s Alan Stone Gallery.
The next day we left together to drop off our artwork at the Grey Gallery. She took the maximum allowance of three works. I had Procreation. As we were about to leave the apartment my eye caught a piece of paper I had recently taped to the wall above my desk. It was a distorted photocopied page from a recent short story of mine based on my experiences at Tennessee Williams wake, “Visiting Tennessee.”
The copy machine had spewed out a grayish piece of paper with floating lines of type that swept across the page. Each sentence snaked into a blur. It so happened that particular page in the story contained some titillating words and phrases - erection, masturbating, penis, sweet sweat soaked, - that were still visible to the reader.
I kept the page because I loved the paper’s gray color degradations as well as the roller coaster movement of the lines of type. But as I read each sentence for the first time, I was struck by how gracefully each line slid into extinction, how each thought literally disappeared before my eyes. I snatched the misfit xerox off my wall and proclaimed it to be my second entry into the Small Works show.
“I shall title it Writer’s Block,” I proclaimed.
“You’re crazy,” said my girlfriend as I locked the door behind us. “Don’t embarrass yourself by submitting it.”
I shrugged off her criticism. “What’s wrong with it? It’s a found object. The color is lovely. And my interpretation makes perfect sense. If any of these pieces has a chance of getting into the show, this one does.” And I believed it, figuring the less an artist had to do with a work the better his chances of success in modern art.
She laughed all the way to the gallery.
A few weeks later we received our notification in the mail. My girlfriend got her answer first. A miracle! After years of trying, two of her three pieces were selected. The following day I got the word - one of my works was in the show.
I was ecstatic! I had proved that a non-artist could gain artistic acceptance because the art world was so bereft and hungry for something tangible, something with some recognizable thought behind it despite the simplicity of the idea and subject matter.
The selection announcement did not state which works were chosen. A pick-up date was issued for artists to retrieve their rejected pieces. My girlfriend and I had the same
retrieval date. I couldn’t wait to learn which of my masterpieces had scaled the art world barrier.
My success had the effect of dampening my girlfriend’s joy. After all, my foray into the art world was to prove that real artists need not apply. If I was accepted into the show I had planned to write a series of scathing articles denouncing the current state of the art. I was going to strike a blow for true, frustrated artists everywhere.
But now my girlfriend made it into the show and she was upset with me. My acceptance effectively devalued her work. I had already written her a mock bio that she loved. I was going to publish it. But now that she was going to show her work in New York she forbade me to use it. It suddenly wasn’t so funny or biting anymore. I constructed this false bio as if it were a press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TYRONE HEMHOLTZ GALLERY
“fine arts forever”
The paintings of Christine Karapetian (1954-2021) reinforces the premise that everything transitory is merely a smile. Everything we see is a proposal, a possibility, an expedient. The real truth, to begin with, remains invisible beneath the surface. The colors that captivate us are not lighting, but light. The graphic universe consists of light and shadow.
The diffused clarity of slightly overcast weather is richer in phenomena than a sunny day. It is difficult to capture and
and represent this, because the moment is so fleeting. Ms. Tavinian has penetrated our soul with the formal fuse of THOUGH I’M SCAT I STILL LOVE LITTER BOXES, using organic materials (ugh!) on canvass.
Simple motion strikes us as banal. Karapetian’s work eliminates the time element. Yesterday and tomorrow are simultaneous. Her FRISBEE AS CHOCOLATE CHIP and UP THE SCHOZZIN NOZZIN overcomes the time element by a retrograde motion that would penetrate consciousness, reassuring us that a renaissance might still be thinkable.
Early works indicate her demonical visions melt with the celestial. This dualism shall not be treated as such, but in its complementary oneness. The conviction is already and always present. The demonical is already peeking through here and there and can’t be kept down. For truth asks that all elements be presented at once, as is exemplified by the artist’s ORGASM SEEPS FROM DAMAGED BOOT and damned near didactic with the completion of her last canvass, NEW ENGLAND NEUTERS, as well as conveyed through the lesser sculptures commemorating her period of Buddhist fanaticism of the late ‘9 0’s .
CHRISTINE KARAPETIAN was born in The Bronx, New York, in 1954. Her first contact with the art world came at an early age. In 1955, at the height of the bohemian “BEAT” tradition, Mrs. Alice Karapetian was changing the future painter’s diapers in the Women’s Room at Crotona Park when Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock, both in drag, each asked the artist’s mother for a dime and admired the streak stained diaper Christine had created.
After a period of twenty-two years during which time Christine did not create art because of her paralyzing fear that ferrets would seek her out and defecate on her paint brushes, Ms. Karapetian went into a frenzied period of work that lasted until her death at age sixty-seven, when she was bitten by a rabid woodchuck while collecting organic materials for an environmental collage.
Not only was Ms. Karapetian a prolific painter and sculptress, she also published many articles and essays of art history and criticism, as well as an acclaimed autobiography,
I’m Not Paranoid Because My Fears Are Real, and a novella,
Stories I Stole From My Father.
This novella led to a thirty year court battle with her brother, Hakop, when he discovered that the book was pirated from the uncopyrighted Armenian fiction of their father. The case was still in litigation at the time of the artist’s death and was said to be a major reason for renewed interest in Karapetian among art critics, who cited the novella title as the ultimate statement in truth, thus earning Ms. Karapetian a new and deeper examination of her work.
Tyrone Hemholtz is proud of being the first gallery sponsoring a Karapetian retrospective, and reminds patrons that the Karapetian Karamels, like the ones depicted in her gastronomical collage, GUILT, are on sale in the lobby.
My girlfriend and I went together to pick up our rejected art works. I secretly hoped that WRITER’S BLOCK was the one that made it in.
She handed the clerk her ticket first. A moment later she was handed her banished painting. When I gave my ticket to the clerk I waited a good twenty minutes until the clerk reappeared.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Blickley,” he said, “but I can’t seem to find your piece.”
“Will you continue your search and please hurry?” I said. “ I have to be at work in fifteen minutes.” The suspense over which piece had made it in was killing me.
The clerk returned in about five minutes. “I’m sorry, sir. There seems to have been a mistake.”
My face dropped and I look over at Jo Ann, who was beaming. The clerk cleared the embarrassment out of his voice. “Both of your pieces have been accepted,” he said.
Christine looked liked she was about to cry. She later told me that she expected the mistake to be that none of my works had been selected for the exhibition. She admitted feeling crushed that I had aced my two pieces.
I had a lot of fun the day of the opening. I dressed totally in black, complete with a black beret loaned to me by a retired jazz musician who had worn it proudly during gigs in the 1950’s. My footwear was a pair of old boots that I dripped paint on to. I also hard boiled two dozen eggs and wrote on them: Mark Blickley, 1952 -, A Retrospective. I passed out these edible works of art to people on the subway and at the Opening.
The humor of the event evaporated for me when my artist friends, who had so recently applauded my attempt to prove that the art world discriminated against “real” artists, viewed my work hanging on the gallery walls and collectively proclaimed that, “I indeed did have an incredible intuitive talent for the plastic arts.”
That statement is totally false. And I have the proof that it’s untrue; it’s packed away in a suitcase at the bottom of my closet.
My righteous artist comrades, instead of taking encouragement and comfort from my “success,” massaged their bruised egos by perpetrating a lie. Much to my surprise they turned out to be as fake as the institutions I was lampooning.
As a result of this experience I penned a play entitled THE WORLD’S GREATEST SAXOPHONE PLAYER. It’s a mono-drama that chronicles the rise and fall of one Eric Tesler, a saxophonist
who plays his instrument without using a reed.
Mark Blickley
tell me, by Janet Kuypers
envison a person unable to achieve their dreams. maybe it’s due to forces beyond their control. maybe it’s because of inner flaws. that doesn’t matter. just envision a person that has a dream in life, and can work as hard as they can all of their life, but never achieve it. they are doomed to never getting what they think they want from their life.
now envison another person, who has the power, and manages to achieve their goal. and then they realize that achieving their goal did not make them happy. and so on to the next goal. and they work harder and harder and they manage to achieve that goal as well. and achieving it did not make them happy, either. and then they do this until they realize that they will be unhappy all of their life, that none of the goals they achieve will make them happy, and they are doomed to this life of everyone else admiring their successes, but feeling miserable because nothing is capable of making them happy.
which of these people have it worse? the one who never gets their dream? but the concept of a dream exists, and it doesn’t for the person who destroyed their dream by achieving it. is the second one better off because they can have wealth and admiration? but they aren’t happy with what they achieve, in fact, it irritates them that others think that their life is so wonderful. they have no hope. but did they have hope as they were trying to achieve any one of their goals?
why am i even asking you these questions? i’ve been trying to figure these questions out for myself. if someone has any ideas. someone. anyone. tell me.
i happen to work near two, by Mary Winters
highly emotional, talkative people.
It’s like having the radio on
all day - there they are
in the background making sound.
More like a soap opera, really.
I overhear recitations of grievances:
their pland to return defective
clothing at lunch. Their ongoing duel
with the electric company. Re-enactments
of phone calls with soon-to-be-ex-friends.
Rehearsals of dreaded of longed-for
encounters with parents, spouses.
Highly colored descriptions of our boss.
They cannot get a cup of coffee
from the cafeteria without spending
fifteen minuted describing some trivial
non-event of their trip, though I have
noticed it is extremelt difficult
for either of them to answer
a direct question. Sometimes
I’m interested in what they’re saying -
I like them both - but they remind me of
a computer I read about in a spy book
set “too deep” that always provided
too much detail. The art of summary
is unknown to them; they do not
sort or discern. I used to take part
in their conversation; I’d go home
exhausted with nothing to show for it.
Which is my basic problem with their
constant talk - what’s the pay-off?
It cannot save us from our real lives.
for c ra, by Janet Kuypers
this is a man
a thinking man
he wants to be condemned to hell
for a change
he feels the plight of too many
he is blamed for too much
these are the words
of a man
remember this, my friends:
this is a man
a thinking man
with feelings
this is his pain
this is his strength
does he know
that this is how
he is supposed to feel?
he lives life so fully
that it ages him
remember this, my friends:
this is a man
assault rifles for tots, by Larry Blazek
children with uzia
rarely appear on
milk cartons
hancock suicide, chicago, december 1994, by Janet Kuypers
so me and the guys
were just taking a break
from the construction
on the hancock building.
you know they’ve been
doing construction work
there, right? they put
that big wall up around
the block, the tall
fence, and they’ve been
doing remodeling stuff.
well, i had been working
on some tile work and
we were just walking
around the building, me
and three other guys,
walking kind of like a
square, in formation,
sort of, and i’m at the
back and i stop and step
back to check some of
the grout work, so i just
kind of lean back while
standing still. well, one
of the guys says he heard
it coming, like a big rush
of air, like a whistling
sound, but much heavier.
i didn’t even get a chance
to look up, though one of
the other guys did and
saw it coming a split second
before it happened. and the
next thing i knew there was
this loud cracking sound
and i felt all of this stuff
hit me, like wet concrete
thrown at me, but i didn’t
know what the hell it was.
and i opened my eyes and looked
down and i was just completely
covered in blood
and there was just this
heap of mass right in front of
me. it took a while for me
to realize that a woman jumped.
she hit the fence, her head
and spinal cord were still
stuck on the fence and the
rest of her was just this red
pile right in front of me.
the police had to take all of
my clothes. every inch.
they say she broke through the
glass at the fiftieth floor, i don’t
know how, that glass is supposed
to be bullet proof or something.
and the one thing i noticed was
that she covered her head with
panty hose, in an effort to keep
her face together. funny, she
was so willing to die, but she
wanted to be kept in tact. i know
i won’t hear about this on the
news, they try to downplay suicides,
but other violence is fine for them.
and they say she was handi-
capped, but then how badly, and
how did she get the strength
to break the window and throw
herself out of the john hancock
building? she must have really
wanted to die.
it really hasn’t sunk in quite yet,
seeing her fall apart in front
of me. i don’t think i’m ready
to think about it yet.
chess game again, by Janet Kuypers
we all watched the case on the news
together, the case where a man on a
subway train opened fire on passengers
in the car. nine people dead, i think.
they caught the man, they had their
trial, and by right he could have a lawyer
appointed to him. but no, he wanted
to act as his own attorney. so every
day he would come into the courtroom
in his suit, looking professional, and
he would question each of the witnesses,
the people that survived his shooting
spree and now had to look him in the
eye and answer his questions. “so what
happened then?” he would ask, and a
woman would answer “i saw you push
the woman to the ground, put your knee
to her back and shoot her in the back
of the head.” “can you point out the
man that did this?” he would ask, and
a man would respond, “it was you.” some
of the witnesses broke down under the
emotional strain. and finally he had no
further questions and the judge dismissed
the jury to arrive at a verdict. they found
him guilty, and when the judge asked the
defendant if he had any last words for
the jury, he kept stressing his innocence,
and never apologized. the judge told him
he was disgusted. he saw no remorse in
the killer’s eyes. and of all the violence
we see in the media, all the court trials
that are fed to us through our television
sets, our boxes of american dreams, i
don’t think any of us were prepared for
this. how did those people feel, when
faced with the man that has brought them
so much pain, how did they feel when they
had to quietly sit there and answer his
questions, when he didn’t even say he was
sorry? most of them sat there trying to
keep their composure when faced with a
man who lost all control. this twisted tale.
they were a pawn in his chess game again.
all bets are off, by C Ra McGuirt
for olga
our words across the ocean set
the wheel into motion,
& as it slows
i’ve forgotten how
to write my name
in Russian...
i lost you
at American Roulette
Photo Machine, by Thomas Wells
“... On page 146, chapter four begins. And for those of you who were not listening, we are looking at the One Nation text. It is vitally important that we all follow along in the oral reading because there just may be little quiz over this.”
Groans were heard and supportive groans echoed the sentiment. Miss Rand paused for emphasis while the coarse brown surfaces of desks were lifted and the noise of 5th graders foraging through papers and books filled the room. Her eyes followed the sounds of breathy voices like magnets.
Dale enjoyed staring out the window like a deer. The soft cheeky head turned on the thick torso and the brown eyes seemed tired. He seldom looked at any particular thing outside, just the totality, but he had become thoroughly acquainted with the playground. Dale thought the whole paved surface looked like an aerial photo of the desert. The glassy wet swings and jungle gym were mammoth H.G. Wells monsters over the map.
Miss Rand was giving him a wax-melting glare. How long had she been doing that, he wondered. Then he noticed someone reading out loud. Two or three seats in front of him, the reader wedged his face into the center of a book.
Dale fished for his book with great energy and frenetically leafed through the pages. It was vital that he make Miss Rand believe he knew what page the class was reading. Actually, he wasn’t even sure of the chapter, but to admit this publicly would have certainly been offering painful ammunition to public enemy number one.
She was still staring at him as he stopped arbitrarily in the text. Dale smiled as though he had found his place and that the discovery was magically enlightening. He tried to make his face appear attentive, methodically rolling his eyes over each line.
At last! She looked away. The muscles of his body relaxed like wet clay from a mold. He was surprised at how he had tightened them. The students before him rattled off the words in monotone solos. All the words seemed like pieces of concrete breaking away from high walls.
Amy Warner sat right in front of Dale. As she read, he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep bluffing much longer. A new strategy was required.
“I could do somethin’ real weird,” he whispered to himself. “Miss Rand expects it. Maybe she’ll even think it’s funny.” The class would forget about him being lost and remember only that he was funny today, he thought. Dale readied himself.
“... and so the next President of the United States was Andrew Jackson,” Amy read. “He was born and raised in...”
“a pig pen!”
He blurted with great force. A wave of laughter rushed from the back to the front of the room. Some of the children were rocking backing and forth in their seats. Others clapped their hands or stared at him in amazement.
Miss Rand had already jerked her head from the page and the sockets of her eyes were spread wide open like entrances to caverns filled with macabre descriptions. She slammed the textbook on her desk and the impact created such a horrid crash that all pleasure, all hope, and all human life were extinguished. The death terror was her power and the class agonized over the lingering punishment. She approached the demon.
“I can make this quiz a little longer if you like. Perhaps you would prefer to stay after school and take it.”
She thrust her jaw forward. Someone in front said no and a chorus of nos followed.
“Well then! Maybe you ought to at least TRY to act like normal, grown up 5th graders.
“When you get into the sixth grade, the teachers won’t put up with this! They simply will not tolerate it! And now, I won’t either!”
Everyone could tell that this last remark was the end of the first movement.
“As for you young man, you know I’ve tried to get you to work in this class. I’ve kept you after school to finish your work. I’ve sent notes home to your parents about your misbehavior. And it’s all been to no avail. You won’t pay attention. You don’t try. You scream idiotic remarks in front of everyone in class. You can’t keep your desk neat. You clown and misbehave in the lunch line. You forget your assignments! You...”
He examined his hands while the whole class focused in on him.
“ What do you think others think of you? Answer me! What do you think your classmates think of you?” “I don’t... I don’t know.” Dale’s cheeks were flushed as he answered.
“You don’t know, huh. Well, I’ll TELL you. They don’t have a whole lot of respect for you, my friend. Your classmates don’t think you’re very much of a man... Why can’t you be like anybody else in this class?”
She bent over his desk and stared at him as though he might have some relation to a strange micro-organism.
“Well, (sigh) I give up. I’m at my wit’s end.” She threw her arms around colorfully. “I’m sending you home.”
Dale tried to read the note pinned to his shirt pocket by the teacher, but since he was viewing it upside down, all of the letters just looked like fire. The class studied Dale more carefully than they had ever studied anything in that room.
With his final instructions he walked out of the door, and some of the children were not sure why they felt sorry for him. Others would talk at recess about how Miss Rand had been unfair that day. Many of them thought Dale was dumb for getting in so much trouble.
He couldn’t feel his feelings as he walked down the dark hall. He passed a hissing radiator and remembered that it would be cold outside. He dug his hands into his coat pockets fingering the mittens, and then pulled both of them out at the same time. The insides of his pockets stuck out like tongues.
Turning the corner, he counted all 23 crudely cut turkeys along the bulletin board so carefully displayed by the first graders. He caught a whiff of paste, passing by the door to the third grade class.
The teacher sang the song of instruction, a song every teacher learned somewhere. It was Mrs. Barnard. Dale was her pupil two years ago. She once told him that his drawings were very artistic and that someday he’d be a fine artist.
He was so proud of this that he told his mother who then saved all his artwork in a scrapbook. What would Mrs. Barnard think of him after this? Dale knew teachers communicated things secretly to other teachers. Would Miss Rand blab to his 3rd grade teacher about this mess?
“She probly will,” he said out loud.
That would probably make Mrs. Barnard change her mind about him being an artist. At first this thought jarred loose something that was liquid inside.
Then he whispered to himself, “Oh well, she would-a found out that I wasn’t so good sooner or lader. Yuh can’t fool people about yerself ferever.”
Pulling his coat collar up around his ears, he exited through the main doors. The cold drizzle which had formed lakes on his aerial map made him lonely and he decided to head for home.
Dale was relieved that his father was out of town and wouldn’t be back until late, but his mother would surely fly into a rage when she heard about this. She normally greeted him warmly at the door. Dale imagined the transition that would occur in his mother’s face as she examined the note pinned to his breast.
It would be like a high speed film of a rotting log. But he wouldn’t see his father until the next day, and so his father wouldn’t get nearly as mad. Dale’s problems in school were always subjects that required long talks with his father.
Dale was certain he couldn’t do anything worth doing, so he avoided quarrel with himself. He knew his father knew he wasn’t much good either, but his father always acted like he expected Dale to do better because Dale guessed that was what parents were supposed to do.
He wondered what the teacher meant when she said that the class didn’t think he was much of a man. She must be right, he thought, or else he’d know what she meant.
He thought about what men did: Men worked. Men were serious all the time. Men concentrated real hard about things, and men sweated at their work. Men were tough and NEVER afraid.
He was sure he wasn’t any of those things. Then remembering that sometimes he could be tough, he decided that this was probably a pretty good time to keep from crying. Ashamed to face his mother, Dale concluded that she would never say he wasn’t much of a man even though she d be thinking it.
There was one place that he could go where things would be all right. At the giant Buggs Drugstore on Kaswell Road in downtown Kaswell there was a photo machine. The machine amounted to a booth with curtains and a stool inside, in front of a camera lens. Dale had pretended to be on TV in the booth, and nobody bothered him very often.
The urge swelled inside him, leaving no room for worry. It would take him longer to reach Buggs than it would for him to simply to go home, but going home wasn’t so simple.
Kaswell was a busy street. Dale watched the traffic carefully, remembering when his mother wouldn’t allow him to come downtown alone. Buggs was a massive A-frame that sold a lot more than medicine. His father once said it was the biggest goddamn drugstore he d ever seen.
In the past, Dale had spent much of his time looking at toys and pets, never failing to purchase 4 or 5 pieces of caramel in the vast candy department.
The photo machine was near the small cafeteria where Dale could always smell French fries. They had big glass urns designed to show customers the orange juice and grape juice that was being squirted around in them.
He smiled to see his machine sitting silently in the corner, and checked his wallet to see if he still had the given him as lunch money for that week. He would do without his lunch, he resolved quickly.
The busy store streaked about him as he examined the snapshots on the outside of the booth. These were photos of handsome, smiling people. They must have had their pictures taken inside this photo machine because they looked like ordinary, handsome people and not like models, he thought.
Dale wondered how they arranged to have their pictures put on the walls of the booth. A layer of transparent plastic held them in place, and the poses were in sequence on narrow strips of paper.
He stepped into the booth and adjusted the curtains behind the stool. Then he moved the stool up, inserted a quarter in the slot, and sat down to face the tiny lens. It looked like a cold fish eye, but it was an audience to Dale. Below the lens was a red light which indicated when the photograph was being taken.
Waiting for the red light excited him all at once like a growing rush of applause. The photo machine was softly humming with an occasional mysterious click. The jerks and shifts of his chubby body became animated with thrill.
The bliss moved up and down his backbone, and the muscles in his round bottom were automatically tightened and relaxed, making him appear to bounce up and down on the stool. His cheeky face swelled with contentment and he now was the craziest clown that HE ever knew.
The red light flashed. He was on the air. Dale was ready with head cocked and mouth spread wide. His hands were held his eyeballs were rolled grotesquely upward. The light clicked off. He prepared for the shot by creating a new pose.
Knitting his brows, he thrust his chin forward, exposing his lower teeth. His neck muscles were pulled rigidly by their own strength. The eyes peering from the stiff face were those of a madman. The light flashed, the shutter opened, and it was recorded.
In his next contortion, Dale spread his cheeks into an inhumanly wide grin. His lips were stretched open and his teeth were clenched. Crossing his eyes, he pulled his ears out with his hands. Each frame recorded its own unique funny face until all the pictures were taken.
Dale s exhilarated giggle was filled with anxious prospect as he waited for the six photos to develop. As they finally appeared from an opening on the side of the machine, he was swept away with laughter.
The little body shook so hard that it bent over and propped a hand against the machine. The eyelids squeezed out the tears like holes in a juicy tomato.
There were more pictures that afternoon. One series began with nothing but the very top of his head. In the next picture his forehead and eyebrows appeared. By the third frame, his entire face emerged in full contortion. The fourth frame showed him sinking again, and in the last picture his entire head was gone. Only his hand and forearm were present, with the hand held upright appearing to grope at nothing.
Then Dale checked his pocket once again for any remaining change. He had been at his game for several hours and hadn’t realized how late it was. All his money was used up. There was no putting off the pain now, he had to face his mother. The clock at the cafeteria was terrifying but definitely registering 6:25, as he raced toward the doors and the darkened parking lot.
He stormed awkwardly up the front steps to his home, huffing and puffing from what seemed like the longest run of his life.
“Come in here Dale.”
The sound of his mother was like the dry earth before a storm.
“Oh (huff) hi Mom.”
“Come IN here son,” No, not his father!
“We want to talk to you.”
Both heads were now present at the glowing doorway. He hadn’t considered the possibility of his father coming home early. Dale felt like a fawn in a forest fire.
He used to be spanked; would he be spanked now? Sometimes they yelled at him; what kinds of things would they yell at him? He had failed again. He had hurt them.
“Hi Dad,” Dale forced.
The silent wrinkles of his father’s face were too weary to show his anger.
“Where is that note Miss Rand gave you?”
Dale felt his father’s words drill him. His mother shut the door with a firmness that underlined the shock. They knew everything. He couldn’t break the news slowly.
He had forgotten about the note. He unzipped his coat and looked down at his chest. It was gone. Only the pin hung from his pocket. How could he be so foolish, they asked. He confessed to every sin. He had done wrong that day at school. He understood that. No, he wasn’t very grown up for a boy his age. Yes, he was ashamed, very, very ashamed. The lecture lasted several hours.
Dale was sent to bed with no supper, there would be restrictions for the rest of the month. He had no stomach during the lecture, but once in his room he discovered his starvation.
It was true, he thought as he lay in his dark room, that he couldn’t do much of anything right. But he had always known that. He didn’t normally cause people this much trouble. He wasn’t one of Miss Rand’s “trouble makers”. Even though he couldn’t stand her, he wished she liked him more than she did.
Dale wondered if he would ever be able to accomplish anything. Maybe he could if he never did anything that was too complicated. Maybe he could be a ditch digger or something. Maybe he could just run away altogether, and find a place in the woods somewhere. It would be a place with nobody around, nobody to expect him to do or be anything.
Suddenly Dale rose in his bed. His parents were speaking in low tones over the sound of the television. A slit of light from under the bedroom door showed him his clothing. He dressed silently, and his movements were deliberate.
If he could just get back to that photo machine, he thought, everything would be o.k. He fumbled with his piggy bank for money, but there was nothing. Well, that was all right, he assured himself. He could borrow a quarter from somebody in the store. It would work out because it had to.
He grabbed his coat and slowly raised the squeaky window. Fear made him pause at the window ledge. Still toasty from bed, his skin quivered at first blush with alien night air.
Now it was only important that he return to the machine. If he had his picture taken one more time it would all be o.k. He had never run like this before and his lungs were filled with phlegm. As he coughed and puffed, he gave in to an impatient walk. His mouth and nose steamed under the street lights.
The dark continent of empty parking lot said it. He denied the dimmed store the reality of being closed. While he was straining at the door handles, the pale glow of glass counters inside made the shadowy photo machine undetectable.
Dale was pressing his face against the glass, flattening the softness of his face evenly over the surface. Slowly the image imparted clear moist splotches to the glass where droplets were released, tracing thin channels down the door.
Thomas Wells
some people want to believe, by Janet Kuypers
so we were sitting there at
denny’s in some suburb of
detroit, i don’t know which
suburb it was, but we were
there at like ten in the morning
eastern standard time, i was
grabbing a bite to eat before
i crossed the ambassador bridge
and travelled into canada. you
know, i really only associate
places like denny’s with
travelling now, i always
stop at some place like denny’s
only when taking a road trip
and just stopping for some
food. i think if i went into a
denny’s and i wasn’t travelling,
i’d get really confused. well,
anyway, like i said, we were at
denny’s, and it was morning, so
the both of us got breakfast.
being a vegetarian, i ordered
eggs with hash browns and toast,
right? and the waitress says
to me, like they always do in
some no-name town in the middle
of america, “yuh don’t want any
MEAT?”, like it’s so unheard of
to not eat meat at breakfast.
so i say, no, no meat, thank you,
and the my friend orders pretty
much the same thing, and we
sit for a while, and talk and
stuff, and then the food comes.
so then she asks me, “you’re a
vegetarian, right?” and i say,
yes, and then she goes, “but
you’re eating chicken.”
and i’m just like, well, no, i’m
not, this is an animal by-product,
not animal flesh, and i was about
to say that was the difference
between being a vegetarian and
being a vegan, and she says,
“but if a chicken sat on it long
enough, it would become
a chicken.”
and i’m just like, well, no, it’s
an unfertilized egg, there was
never a rooster around that hen,
so it could never become a chicken.
and she’s like, well, it’s a
chicken, though,
and she just couldn’t think
that this wasn’t a chicken. and
i’m just thinking, my god, does
she really think that a chicken can
lay eggs without them being
fertilized? like only worms and
stuff can procreate
without two sexes present. so
our voices start getting a little
louder, and then it ends up where
i’m saying “so are you having an
abortion every time you have a
menstrual cycle? are men who
have wet dreams mass murderers?”
and she’s looking away and saying
“i’m not listening to you -”
and then i realized that some
people, with logic thrown in their
face, will still believe what
they want to believe.
older sister, by Mary Winters
I’ve heard of some weird commune
on the West side that doesn’t believe
children should be brought up
by their parents: nothing is more
poison than the nuclear family.
I admit I’ve had the same thought
myself from time to time
and of course, once you’ve been raised
that way you re-create the dynamics
of family life in all your
relationships including those at work.
I am one of four rivalrous siblings
(the most successful partly
because I am the oldest and therefore
had two years of nurturing no matter
how wretchedly imperfect all to myself).
I understand that I always compete
with my co-workers to be
best like by the boss; in fact
that is all I ask of anyone.
It’s easy to spot other people’s
hang-ups. My office mate is an
only child whose tiniest doing
and utterance was doted on.
Which I refuse to do since I have
redrawn my own boundaries.
Our secretary, on the other hand,
did not get enough notice at home.
I told her: grown ups wear their
own watches and carry their own keys.
They have their own aspirin,
postage stamps and chewing gum.
at the milk bar, by C Ra McGuirt
synthemesc
is too expensive
will you settle
for the milk
of the
stars?
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