“The Round Up Writer’s Zine is a fresh space devoted to trangressive pieces, dark humor and works laced in sarcasm. In fact we are partisan to works that are edgy and/or possibly offensive.” –from their submission rules.
My story “March” can be found on page four of this odd .pdf format they’ve got. If you enjoy it, share, like, shout it from the mansards!
Happy Pride.
Patrick’s dad was a bit younger than mine, and, therefore, cooler. He swam and wore turtlenecks. On TV you could tell someone older was trying to connect with the youth if they wore a turtleneck. It was appreciated. Another way he tried to curry favor was by “hiding” issues of Playboy in the basement. It was clear that they were being hidden from his wife, but still needed to be readily accessible. They were recent issues, not a collection from his bachelor days.
But did he really think he could hide them from kids who knew every inch of that basement? We spent endless hours down there riding bikes in a tight circle at breakneck speed, conjuring up Bloody Lincoln apparitions, and playing “house” with his older sister, Kathleen. All he did was put them under a pile of beach blankets. He had to have known that we would see the pile of blankets was three inches higher. He might as well have put them into Patrick’s Christmas stocking or taken us to a titty bar.
However, keeping with the elaborate kabuki that this was somehow taboo, we decided to grab just one issue and take it to a corner of the basement where we could not be seen from the stairs. We had to choose pretty much at random which issue to take as Playboy at the time had “sophisticated” cover art that hinted more at turtlenecks than areolas. We knelt on wintering patio cushions, an issue from the previous March before us. We looked at each other and drew our breaths. We were about to receive sacred knowledge. We opened right to the centerfold.
She looked like a Breck Girl. Continue reading
It’s cold. It’s rainy. I have not been invited out into the night. I am alone. It could be 2014.
I settle into a night of Benson, Bosom Buddies, and Dallas. It’s 1981. I will not be watching Falcon Crest because of their refusal to feature actual birds –Lorezo Lamas’ hair doesn’t count no matter how majestic it may be. Also, I find things go easier if I force myself not to look at shirtless guys.
Mr. Lamas as “Lance Cumson”
Besides, my main job this evening isn’t TV. I need to listen for the sounds of an imminent TPing –mass movement of any kind. This is Muirfield, nothing moves after dusk because there are no streetlights, no sidewalks, and everything is painted brown. I am alone. Mom and Dad are out with other executive couples. The men talk business; the women, my mom’s cancer.
As I sit down to write this, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has just decided to veto a bill, passed by both houses of their legislature, that would make it legal to refuse service to people who somehow run afoul of your deeply held religious beliefs. And apparently a lot of peoples’ deeply held religious beliefs involve inconveniencing gays who, as we all know, will do icky things with their nibbly bits just as soon as they’re done eating that cake you’ve just been asked to bake. The logic seems to be if there’s no cake, there will be no gay sex.
But Gov. Brewer vetoed the bill, not because there’s something off about an “exercise of religion” that involves bigotry based upon judgments made while picturing the sinners naked, but because of the “economic impact.” They could lose the Super Bowl. The National Association of Polyvinyl Siding Manufacturers might move their convention. When people visit the Four Corners, they will make a point of NOT standing in Arizona. For reaction, I switched on MSNBC’s primetime Outrage Block, and the consensus seemed to be that, while vetoing the bill was a good thing, Gov. Brewer may have done it for reasons that were somewhat suspect. The moral outrage should’ve been enough.
But I can sympathize with the Governor. I once faced a very similar dilemma. When I was in college, I preferred to decorate my room in the Beta House in a modified salon wall style. Instead of framed engravings, I chose a mélange of beer signs, a life-size poster of Daryl Hannah as a topless fish, and various purloined signs. On the wall by my bed was one sign I found particularly hi-lar-ious. It was a neon orange sign with stark black stick figures in a stark black prohibition circle that wouldn’t be out of place telling people on a jobsite not to touch a live wire or hurl themselves into acid. But this was something I thought at the time was more horrid than an acid bath. In stark black letters across the top it read “STOP AIDS,” and the two figures in the prohibition circle were engaged in what I referred to at the time as “butt sex.”
Okay, I still call it butt sex, but it’s sexy when I do it. Right?
I could speculate on the source of my homophobia and cluelessness, but let’s just say that the intersection of being deeply, deeply in the closet and using “humor” to score points with frat brothers is even uglier and emptier than that intersection in your town with the bad mall no one goes to anymore and the defunct Pontiac dealership. Oh, we all had a good laugh because “Ick! Look at what the homos are doing!” Then we went back to showering communally.
I would’ve been one thing had I tossed it out along with all the other junk when I moved on from the frat house to grad school. But no, I figured the best way to ingratiate myself to the new people I would be meeting in grad school would be to hang this sign in the living room of my apartment. It hung there for over a year, and no one said anything. In that year, in the course of various get-togethers and group projects I had out gays and at least one person I found out later was struggling to come out at the time over to my apartment. No one said anything, but then again, no one in grad school seemed all that concerned with decor. So the sign just became part of the “normal” background.
Then in my second year, a couple Ronan and Anna, asked me to drive them from Ann Arbor up to Toronto spur of the moment for the weekend in exchange for a place to stay. I had nothing better to do, so I agreed. It was all rather rushed, as they needed to be in Toronto by six, and I didn’t have enough time to finish up my schoolwork and eat before hitting the road. Anna was one of those people who are incomplete without a ginormous backpack. I little while after pulling onto I-94, she reached into her bag and pulled out a McDonald’s sack. She had bought some Quarter Pounders for her and Ronan. They smelled delicious-ish. “Do you think I can have a cheeseburger?” I asked.
“Nope,” said Anna. I was taken aback.
“C’mon. I’m starving. I’ll give you the $1.39.”
“Not good enough.”
“What do you want then?”
She then leaned in from the back seat and locked eyes with me in the review mirror. “You know what you can do? You can take down that obnoxious sign.”
“But, but…”
Ronan chimed in, “Seriously dude, it needs to come down.” I weighed the obvious comedy against the fact that I was nearly ready to pass out from hunger.
“Okay. I’ll take it down.” With that, Anna handed me my prize. No one up to that point had ever called me out on my homophobia. I doubt I would’ve promised to take the sign down had the cheeseburger not been proffered because it would’ve registered as just another example of political correctness. After all, earlier that year at Michigan, everyone got a twelve page brochure in the mail entitled You’re a Harasser When… The constant haranguing had made tolerance almost a joke to me. I can hear myself saying, “What now? This, too? It’s called free speech!”
However, dangle a cheeseburger when I’m starving –that’s an argument for tolerance I could understand. Up until that point, I comforted myself in the notion that my homophobia was a deeply held moral belief. The fact that it could be upset by a cheeseburger helped me begin to realize that maybe it wasn’t so integral to my makeup. And kinda stupidly offensive.
May the 2015 Super Bowl be Arizona’s cheeseburger.
Dear Ryan or Bryce or something else with a “y” in it,
First of all, thanks. I know you have a lot of choices when it comes to mouth raping. I’m honored. I really am. It’s a crowded Saturday night at the Eagle, and New York’s premier leather-themed bar is certainly chock full with tight-panted, shirtless, and mustachioed mouths just yearning for tongue. My Relaxed Fit Gap and Izod ensemble has clearly singled me out as someone looking for a hot time. You saw right through my little charade of “I just had a little too much wine at a birthday dinner and wound up in a cab here. I really don’t like this place.” That you zeroed in on my mouth fills me with the same wonder and awe that virgins being readied for the volcano must feel. Yes, I know the wonder and awe is probably coming across more as dissociation right now, but rest assured I only dissociate when I’m really into it.
And kudos to you, sir, for not misinterpreting when I said, “Excuse me. I should probably check on my friends,” and walked over to stand by the Trivia Whiz machine. You correctly assumed that I wanted to be in a warm fluorescent glow so you could more easily find my mouth. And when I pretended to play a round, you astutely saw that as playful frolicking; I was but a nymph in a dewy field.
I would be remiss if I did not congratulate you on the technique behind the actual kiss itself. Rank amateurs may insist on starting with a soft peck or a lingering hug, but not you. You’re treating my mouth the way a hamster treats its water bottle, and I applaud you. You know what works for you. Why should you stoop to varying your speed or intensity?
I am now noticing that your hand is down my pants. And why not? Cleary I’m sending out a vibe. No slave to consent are you. Go ahead, keep tugging. It likes that, especially when you take a little pubic hair along for the ride. I, for one, cannot wait to experience the heights to which my flaccidity can take us.
This night will be magical. How can it not be? We are so in sync. The planets will align themselves just so they can get a better look at our lovemaking.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to use the restroom. I promise to be right back.
Ornamental Illnesses 