Recipe: Banana-Rum Splits

Recipe: Banana-Rum Splits

You’ll Need:

"- ½ Tbsp butter                                       - 2 bananas

- 1 Tbsp brown sugar                              - 2 Tbsp dark rum or bourbon

- 4 large scoops vanilla ice cream           - ¼ cup pecans, toasted and chopped

- 4 Tbsp dark chocolate syrup                 - Light whipped topping” (Goulding)

- Decades 

* * *

Prep: 5 minutes

    Mrs. Brown, my kindergarten teacher, looks sick when a truck that isn’t my mom’s finally comes to pick me up in front of school. Her face twists funny when my mom walks out of this strange car with no hair and a moustache. My dad introduces himself and says sorry for being late. “Family emergency,” he says. I take off my backpack in the truck, stretch my shoulders and ask him what took so long and where Mom was. He apologizes for being late. “Family emergency,” he says.

* * *

Step One: “Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat.”

    My mom comes out from behind the corner of the kitchen before I’m even halfway through the living room. The house feels muggy, like when I accidentally left my space heater on overnight and Mom got mad. I woke up sweaty, looking like Mom’s face does now when she stops me in front of the couch. We don’t sit down.

    “Do you remember your cousin, Chad?” I see her face isn’t sweaty, but that she’s been crying.

    “Yeah.” I don’t though.

    “Chad’s passed away.” I can’t see a face, and I am still unsure exactly what a cousin means. I think we’re related. Mom goes back to the kitchen crying again and I start wondering if I’m going to have to do my homework today or not. My brother comes home ten minutes later with Dad. Why didn’t we get picked up together? I thought.

* * * 

Step Two and Step Three: “Slice the bananas in half crosswise, then lengthwise, place the banana quarters in the hot pan with the brown sugar and cook on one side until deeply caramelized”

    The coastal drive to Santa Barbara is my favorite, even if no one in the car is talking. I prefer sitting in the way back of the van so Jed and my mom and dad can each have their own aisles. 

    I imagine living on the beach. Not in a house by the beach, but in a shack I’ve made for myself out of driftwood, rocks and my furniture would be made out of sand. I’d have to move everyday when the water washes it away, but the ocean would always bring new materials.

    Aunt Nancy’s house is behind a gate that has plants growing all over it. It smells like I think the bottom of the ocean should smell. Before we get to the door, Jed explains that Aunt Nancy’s kids are my cousins. I’m still unsure if that means I’m related. Cody, my “cousin,” is in his room when we’re hugged at the door by Aunt Nancy. She says Uncle Mike has been in the garage all day. There’s other people here, but I don’t know them. Everyone walks into the kitchen with the big window to the backyard, but I don’t follow them. They’re all crying and I’m not, but Jed comes back and gets me anyway.

* * *

Step 4: “Turn the bananas over and cook for another 30 seconds.”

    “Chad was Aunt Nancy’s oldest son.” Jed says to me when we’re in our own room that night. I like Aunt Nancy’s house at night because I can hear the ocean.

    “I know dying means you don’t come back, but doesn’t everyone die when they’re suppose to?” My mom comes in to check on us and leaves. She thinks we’re asleep. I hear people talking in another room.

    “Well, I guess in the way that God has plans for everything, yeah.”

    “If Chad was suppose to die, then why is everyone crying and why won’t Cody leave his room?”

    “Because Chad wasn’t even thirty yet. Everyone is sad that he should have lived longer.”

    “So why didn’t he?” Jed doesn’t answer. I am in a sleeping bag on the floor and Jed is above me in a bed so I can’t see his face. I think he’s sleeping. “Jed?” It’s stupid that Chad’s dead since it just makes everyone cry. 

    “Chad did…bad things. Do they tell you to say no in kindergarten? Probably not. Aunt Nancy told us that Chad went to bed at a friend’s house and never woke up… Chad use to give me haircuts whenever we came down here. He’d take an electric razor and run it right through the middle of my hair giving me a reverse mohawk. You, Chad and Cody would laugh every time.” It sounds like Jed is talking more to himself and I don’t want to be rude and listen. Jed stops talking soon and the ocean makes my eyes sleepy, but I keep them open because I’m afraid I won’t wake up after the bad things I’ve done.

 

* * *

Step 5: “Remove from the heat and add the rum. Be careful––even when the pan is removed from the heat, the alcohol can still ignite.”

    I wake up and Jed’s not in the bed. I go out to the kitchen because I hear sizzling and I see Cody in front of the oven. He reminds me of someone else who was in this kitchen because of how tall he is. I also remember a bald head. I think I’m starting to remember Chad and Cody says, “Morning.”

    “What are you making?” It smells good, like the bottom of the ocean should. Cody picks up a bottle that looks like the ones my mom use to twist her face funny at my dad for drinking.

    “Breakfast.” I see an ice cream container on the counter to the right of him, the one next to the big window out to the backyard where the garage is. I look out but I don’t see anyone.

    “You can’t have ice cream for breakfast.” Cody moves the pan off the stove and over to the counter away from me but tilts it down to show. 

    “Look, there’s bananas, that’s breakfast, right?” He smiles and pours the bottle over the bananas. Now it smells like the ocean really does, not like it should. Cody takes out two bowls with names on them that I can’t read, but quickly puts them back and takes out two more. 

    “Here, we’ll have ice cream for breakfast today and no one will know. Just you and me.” I think about Chad and the “bad things” and how he died in his sleep, but Cody has already made the bowls and I think that he wants me to eat with him. I don’t know where anyone else is, but I imagine Cody and I eating ice cream from bowls with names on them every morning in my shack on the ocean, waiting to see what the waves would bring in.

* * *

Step 6: “Place 2 banana quarters and any accumulated liquid in bowls.” Let it cool. Wait for it to settle in. Serves three. Look at the bowls that are full, not empty. “Top with ice cream, nuts, chocolate, and whipped topping.” Enjoy.

Works Cited

Goulding, Matt and David Zinczenko. "Banana-Rum Splits." Cook This, Not That. New York: Rodale Inc., 2010. 324. Print.

The Borough Boys: Part 1: D-Day of the D-D-Dead

The Borough Boys: Part 1: D-Day of the D-D-Dead

Despite all the activity within the first month of the uprising, I can't remember what month it was. The year was two thousand and two, the year of our lord, and, then artist, P!ink had just had a hit with "Get the Party Started". The P.O.O., or Point of Outbreak, as the special military unit calls it, was Meadows Elementary School's sixth grade dance. One kid, who all the girls had nicknamed "Fuzz" because of his buzz haircut and the guys because of his very early onset puberty, was inventing a move on the dance floor he was hoping would attract his crush, Mallory. P!ink sung on and the CD only skipped once.

The following week was to be that class's graduation. I arrived on the scene a week after that. From the only intel. that the commanding officer had at the time, it appeared that someone had been distributing meth at the party via the fruit punch.

The school cafeteria had been on lockdown since.

"What's it look like in there?" I overhead a cop asking his superior.

"We haven't seen the inside since the third day." That's what I was there for. I was their inside man. The last person who had gone in was the 6th grade math teacher. She survived twenty minutes longer than the science teacher, but if elementary school math had taught me anything, it taught me: 1 dead science teacher + 1 dead math teacher X 3 piles of bodies = 1 hot mess.

At the time, the military figured that if the students were responding to authority in some way, why not go for broke? I was the President, rather, I was to portray the president. We couldn't actually get permission for my title to be the President of the United States, so I was to be the President of Bulgaria. Close enough.

A majority of the story is the same as every bankheist-hostage-negotiation-movie, so why bother with all the details? It's what's on the inside that matters.

"Do you remember that national tragedy a year ago, Dirk?" Sergeant Dirk Ruffin asked me as the team prepped for my insertion.

"How could anyone possibly forget? And don't they keep telling us 'Never Forget'?" Sergeant Dirk Ruffin had the same name as me, but there was no relation or similarity. I just called him "Tool." I had once caught him making out with his secretary in his office and he made a similar grunt to Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, hence the name.

"I'm not talking about 9/11! I'm talking about yoga. Watch yourself in there, I think these kids are classically trained in yoga."

"Okay, so why am I wearing KFC buckets as shoes? More importantly, why are they full of mashed potatoes?"

"Are you questioning my authority, son?" I hated it when he called me son. "Are you questioning the only person to enter that building and get out alive? I think I know what you need to be prepared. We're hoping that when they go for your feet, the food will distract them. All kids love mashed potatoes."

"Without gravy?" I retorted.

"Crap. Call up the Colonel and get some gravy down here, stat!"

Development

Development

My grandfather's ashes
in a box on the ground
under the bed, shares company
with photo albums. Dead people,
my family. All of the firsts,
on vacation, "holidays," my father

my sisters and me. Never met
relatives. Who took these?
Frozen things are easily broken
like ice cube trays. The bindings
are ripped and frayed. Last page:

Just another photo of a girl
with a gun to bore me.

Fall, Aural Analysis

Oral.

(Creative analytic writing for English 368 - Gay Male Writers...for those interested)

Reckon Balls

            The mind struggles to say no, the body disputes with “yes” and the pyramid of power, that ubiquitous hierarchy, will hear of neither. The life of the budding homosexual on the verge of his story’s climax, the finding and acceptance of self in society, is a curious one, among other clichés. Fortunately, E.M Forster and W.H Auden, in their works Maurice and “The Platonic Blow,” respectively, avoid such banal stereotypes, but instead dip their appendages in deeper terrain. What does a homoerotic love triangle and oral sex escapade have in common? Other than the obvious, Maurice and “The Platonic Blow” challenge the knowledge versus body binary and, in doing so, subvert, if not completely demolish, the established hierarchy.

            Why should these works and their authors want to tear down that patriarchal, heteronormative hierarchy, shake the very foundation in which they’re writing? The characters’ internal monologue or external concerns expose the answer. Forster’s Maurice, on the first page of the novel, eyes not even fully adjusted to font type, addresses the triviality of the conventional hierarchy as the narrator describes the education system in which the “pupils did not do badly in the long run, became parents in their turn, and in some cases sent him their sons” (9). This menial cycle ignores emotions, goals, dreams, potential in education, let alone personal lives, but, thank God, at least the educators have higher hopes for the students who “seemed to [the junior assistant] a race small but complete, like the New Guinea pygmies, ‘my boys’” (10). Of course, why would those at the upper end of the echelon reflect different ideas than what they were taught? Where else should this ceaseless sequence stop but in an undesirable conclusion: shame of unaddressed passions?

            In order for these texts to effectively destroy any form of ranks and conformed conventions, they must find the root of rebellion. Since nothing is as easy as it seems, especially for a homosexual text, even roots have roots. Unfortunately, those original roots are rooted in internalized homophobia due to institutional homophobia. “The Platonic Blow,” which is, because of it’s sheer openness a celebration of homoerotic sexuality, even suffers this. Auden’s speaker is out, presumably cruising, when the speaker stops and:

                        watched the crotch where the cloth intriguingly bulged.

                        Our eyes met, I felt sick. My knees turned weak.

                        I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say.

                        In a blur I heard words myself like a stranger speak. (8-11)

Cloth conceals, and, if the cliché rings true and eyes are the window to the soul, then, when the cloth is removed and the speaker’s naked eye is faced with the naked truth, the truth of his own lusts, the speaker of the poem ought to be elated. Instead, there’s been instilled within him an institutional homophobia that stops his motion, turns his stomach and makes his own speech sound foreign, untrue to himself. Other than merely stating the actions, or inactions, of the speaker, Auden also drops word play, alliteration and consonance and instead adopts a formal and professional tone, simply stating the facts: “Present address next door./ Half Polish, half Irish. The youngest. From Illinois./ Profession mechanic. Name: Bud. Age twenty-four” (14-16). Auden’s speaker loses his fun personality, feels shameful, sick even. Hold up a mirror to this situation and the black and white reflection of the Maurice text is reflected.

            Maurice’s struggle with his homophobia lasts much longer than a few lines in a poem, and the climax of his story isn’t necessarily as messy, but, like the poem, there is the first seed that reveals his conflict. Maurice, growing into a man at school, is caught dreaming in class and he realizes, “[his] secret life can be understood now; it was part brutal, part ideal, like his dreams. As soon as his body developed he became obscene” (23). Where to begin? Maurice’s secret life, not open or true to self, is split, as most things homosexual. Split between brutal and ideal, what he truly lusts for and how the omnipresent “they” force him to view that desire. Torn inside, Maurice begins to see his body as obscene, a word with not exactly the most positive of connotations. Maurice, subconsciously, does not view his body as obscene. There’s a cloth, perhaps the same as in “The Platonic Blow,” that is shielding how Maurice’s body is true to himself. These roots of shame are at the bottom of these homosexual’s experiences, but the roots higher up begin to crack through the asphalt, tripping bikers and hikers alike, making its presence known. The roots of the body.

            Forster and Auden begin to seep past the concrete, knowing the best way to further penetrate cracks is with the body, not the mind. Maurice, long before accepting his homosexuality, begins to fall asleep, alone, “bit by bit, and first of all his brain, his weakest organ” (40). Surprising that Auden is not the one to play with the word organ, but Forster. Binaries work in such a way that they hold analogous relationships, such as how brain versus body relates to reason versus emotion relates to strength versus weakness. By accusing his mind of being his weakest organ, the narrator’s subverting the chain of doubles. Maurice isn’t the only homosexual with a struggle in the novel, as Clive, too, is forced to face head on, and in, with dualities and homophobia. Clive, immediately before he seemingly stops being homosexual, is reminded that “the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable” (118). While, traditionally, the very word that has a target on its chest, knowledge relates to strength and the body relates to weakness, the body here is made stronger, the concrete splits. But Clive does turn the way of a straight, heterosexual throughout the remainder of the novel. Was his homosexuality an act of  rebellion against the heteronormative or confusion? Clive’s fate will prove the destruction of the established system, but first, with the brain on the ropes, the body will deliver the final right hook. When reason loses to emotion and passion and the traditionally weak puts its run-down boots on the defeated chest of the strong, the stiff roots will have erected a new ground to walk on.

            The body is the contender, and there is no stronger muscle behind it than with an oddly repetitive, yet effective, odyssey through W.H. Auden’s intrepid, fleshy poem. Like sex, “The Platonic Blow” uses rhythm, energy and images to build to a climax, a climax that ends in a glorious defeat. As stated before, the poem begins with a sense of nervous tepidity and formality, but once the pants drop and bodily fluids flow, the vigor of the “sexcapade” takes form and moves the poem towards that peak. As hands and “knobs” (46) touch and expose themselves, Bud, the lover, is described, or at least Bud’s bits, as “noble,” (36) “royal” (44) and “luxuriant but couth“ (62). The hierarchy is taking form within a text that is challenging it. From formal to refined, Auden transforms a base homosexual desire and masculine, bodily, features beyond the realm of the tangible when he describes Bud’s balls as “herculean eggs” (67). The change of command is already lost as Auden enters higher territory by curiously exploring more of the skin. Continuing the “treck of inspection, a leisurely tour of the waist” (88), the speaker of the poem begins “straddling my legs a little I inserted his divine” (73). His member, slurped, has surpassed supernatural into the celestial. Bud’s body is traveled by the speaker “down the shaggy slopes,” (98) “through the forest of pubic hair/ to the range of the chest” (107-108). The body as nature signifies the body as a divine, pure creation. Which, naturally, leads to the Romantics. Namely, William Butler Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” Auden’s speaker begins “slipping my lips round the Byzantine dome of the head” (113). As in Yeats’ poem, Byzantium represents a divine beauty or nature that is eternal, unlike the nature of the orgasm still to come (2040). Lastly, at the penultimate moment of Bud’s intercourse, the edge of the inevitable, Bud “melted into what he felt. ‘O Jesus!’” (132). Jesus, part divine, therefore eternal, but, most importantly, part man. The assimilation of divine and flesh represented at one of the most, at its core, bodily functions. With this, the body, now not only elegant, not only mythical, not only natural, not only divine, not only eternal, but all of these within flesh, has dismantled the body and brain binary by Bud’s bobbing, budding and bursting.

            The ladder of power, the vertical chain of command has tipped over as the concrete has given way to the extending roots of opposition, refusing to be forced under. Fallen ladders are now in a horizontal position, similar to a position found in “The Platonic Blow,” face to face. Within this horizontal realm of the transcendent flesh, any form of upper or lower echelon cannot exist. Maurice, along with Bud and the poem’s unnamed lover, take advantage of this position and, with their newly open and accepted bodies, stomp on the hierarchy. Maurice, rising above the heartbreak and homophobia of Clive, with his new lover, Alec, knows “they must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death” (239). Alec, a lower-class servant to Clive, brings forth that rebellion against oppression within Maurice. Maurice shouts to Mr. Borenius, who represents institutionalized homophobia by speaking rumors to Alec against Maurice (216), “‘do look at the sky––it’s gone all on fire,’ but the rector had no use for the sky when on fire, and disappeared” (239). Success goes to Forster and his characters for shaking even the most certain of things as the color of the sky. Borenius disappears and takes his hierarchy with him, he has no use for this new fiery sky, nor the horizontal world that rests under it. Is the subversion at its end? The Victorian model followed within the times of these works’ publications call for a tragedy or punishment of homosexual desires or actions. While Maurice and Alec live, implied romantically, happily ever after, Clive “did not realize this was the end, without twilight or compromise” (246). If Clive’s ending is tragic and Clive had a relationship with Maurice, then the hierarchal, Victorian model rings true. However, Clive’s acts of homosexuality were not a rebellion against the heteronormative or acts of confusion, but his tragic desire to love women, resulting in his marriage to the affluent Anne, is instead a rebellion against his homosexuality. There’s a role reversal that leaves Clive stuck in the jurisdiction of the now subverted heteronormative hierarchy. A tragic ending for Clive? Yes, but for a Clive who did not remain true to his queer self but sold himself to heterosexuality to end up, in a way, as collateral damage. However, Maurice and Alec aren’t the only duo who dare dispute the domineering social system.

            The narrator in “The Platonic Blow” shows obvious signs of heretofore unaccepted differences than Bud. Education is typically a sign of at least mild affluence and the speaker’s inclusion of alliteration, consonance, loquacious, scholarly words such as “divulged,” (6) “viscous,” (60) “consummation,” (101) and “voluminous” (124) prove his culture. On the other hand, Bud, his soon-to-be lover at the time of his description, is narrowed down into, “Half Polish, half Irish” (15) and “Profession mechanic” (16). There is no sense of Bud’s vocabulary other than his eruptive ejaculation at climax, but a mixed-race mechanic in the 1940s, the time the poem was written, would not be a sign of an upper-classman. Like, Maurice and Alec, the mixed race of Bud shows the challenging of class to class relationship norms, gender norms, as well as racial norms. The differences between the two are no longer relevant when the clothes fly off, exposing the all-mighty body. Once again, without the punishment for the lewd acts of love, “The Platonic Blow” ends with an apropos happy ending. The last lines of the poem uproot any trace, if any is left, of the hierarchical system while representing all aspects of revolt up to this point. With his fingers in Bud’s rosebud and his mouth around his member, the speaker feels “His ring convulsed round my finger. Into me, rich and thick,/ His hot spunk spouted in gouts, spurted in jet after jet” (135-136). “Ring” connatates a wedding, something sacred, a divine institution “where the two will become one flesh” (Holy Bible, 831). “Rich,” describing Bud’s semen, further shows that a monetary value is second to physical or lustful value. Lastly, “jet after jet” connatates a long distance or traveling, the cumshot heard ‘round the world. Unlike the famous Revolutionary War myth, this shot does not start a war, but ends the upheaval of a repressive system against homosexuals that instills shame and homophobia and calls for a menial cycle of tragedy.

            The pleasure-wave of the destructive orgasm has rolled over and laps back and forth on the beach, now what? With no concrete walls and floors to hold back the new sense of homonormativity, or a homopolis, the future is as optimistically ambiguous as Maurice and Alec’s metaphoric riding off into that flaming sunset, like two gay trail-blazers. “The Platonic Blow’s” flaming sunset is of the slightly more naked variety. Regardless, with no tragic endings in sight, only the horizon, the last question to pose is: “Who gets blown next?

Works Cited

Auden, W.H. “A Day for a Lay.” 40-44. Web.

Forster, E.M. Maurice. New York: Norton, 1993. Print.

The Holy Bible. Michigan: Zondervan, 1984. Print. New International Version

Yeats, William Butler. “Sailing to Byzantium.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature:          Volume 2. 8^th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2006. 2040. Print.

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Naked Bunch: An Argument In Five Parts

            Muscles begin contracting, the spinal cord slightly curves and the pelvis spasms. However, the inevitable orgasm is without bliss but burns. An orgasm is reached, but not the French la petite mort. “The little death” cannot occur, the spirit cannot leave, when forced into a rigid position. Specifically, a constructed position within heteronormative expectations. The orgasmic burn is like a sadist tied up, desiring to break out of their bondage and have their way. William Burroughs’ “The Wild Boys” and André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name are the muzzled sadists, struggling and fingering at the knots of gender roles. From the outside, through a stereotyping, heteronormative peephole, an opinionated person watches the dissenting homosexual texts, the tribes of “The Wild Boys” and Elio, the passionate, peach prodding wild boy, penetrate and cultivate rituals that extend beyond gender fluidity all the way to gender and sex destruction.

* * *

Part 1: The Scopophallic Room

            Heteronormative eyes adjust to the limited sight of the peephole and focus on the most obvious, the visual. A tribe of Burroughs’ wild boys called the Warrior Ants, “wear aluminum bikinis and sandals and tight steel helmets…wash and anoint their bodies with a musk of genitals, roses, carbolic soap, gardenias, jasmine, oil of cloves, ambergris and rectal mucus” (160). The bikini, stereotypically a type of clothing worn by a female, is instead on a male wearing a phallic helmet.

            “But note the construction of the bikini,” says the eyeball through the wall, “of hard, durable metal. These traits are surely of male persuasion and appropriate the wardrobe. The bikini no longer has relation to the female.” But a bikini isn’t only of sight. Lifting a nose to the peephole, there’s a whiff of the male mixed with the female on a wild boy. A musk of masculine genitals with a scent of feminine flowers and soaps and finally the reek of rectal mucus, both feminine and masculine. The latter a destruction of the male role versus female role binary. After all, everyone has rectums. This decisive piece of knowledge does not escape Elio in Call Me By Your Name as he looks the motific peach up and down. While inside the peach, Elio invents a Ovidian story in which “an ill-fated young man and young girl who in their peachy beauty… had turned… into a peach tree, and only now after three thousand years, were being given what had been so unjustly taken away from them.” The peach has then transcended genders.

            The eyeball lightens up, “You’ve dug your own grave with that. The peach is, first, only a fruit and already without gender and, second, it does not show Elio questioning or subverting any binaries.” Elio recalls a moment of thought, before his affection for Oliver is spoken, that, “no one my age had wanted to be both man and woman” (25). Furthermore, the physical positions of Elio during sex, his domination over the “rape victim” (147) fruit, his submissiveness with Oliver their first night together where “I let him do things to me…spurred them on…begging him” (135) and at the end of his affair with Oliver when, again dominating, Elio “let my left hand rub his buttocks and then began to stick my middle finger into him” (171). Before the voice behind the hole could retort that Elio was merely exampling gender fluidity, it overhears Elio’s and Oliver’s sweet little nothings such as the reversal of names and “my body is your body” (172). If Elio’s body is Oliver’s body and vice versa, then the feminine weakness and masculine power occur simultaneously within Elio and Oliver, not a back and forth between the two. Even the wild boys, in their orgiastic lifestyle, take expected sexual positions to task when a “boy who is being masturbated rocks back hugging his knees against his chest” and “a yellow-haired boy straddles a copper-skinned Mexican” (161-163). The roles of control and obedience, masculine and feminine respectively, do exist in the gender fluid wild boy culture, but aren’t assigned to genders. The eyeball moves away and is replaced by a mouth, but before it can propose an argument, or concede, a finger is thrust in its mouth as the texts call him fool, if, indeed, that is a finger.

* * *

Part 2: The Assy Knoll and the Second Shooter

            Above the opening on one side of the wall might read “peephole,” but, unsurprisingly, above the erotic side of Burrough’s and Aciman, “gloryhole” is etched with eighteen-inch bowie knives. With their god given asses, the wild boys convert the orifice on the other side of the wall to another of their conquests. After all, sexual orientation is anything but black and white in the gay rainbow. In the same breath that Elio said he wanted to be both man and woman he also confesses he wanted to be “with men and women” (25). Pretending that Elio didn’t blatantly state his, at the least, bisexuality, the peach poking scene illustrates his desire. There’s a muffled grunt behind the wall. When Elio starts thrusting he, “finally succeeded in tearing it apart with my cock…holding each half in either hand firmly against my cock” (146). While not classifying himself as a trans identity, Elio deals with the internalized duality in the asexual masturbation session. Thinking of neither sex, he, desiring to be both man and woman, is engaging in sex with both man and woman. His desire foreshadowed at the start of the novel is stickily realized and when Elio cums he can purely enter the realm of la petite mort, not restrained by being conscious of bodies unlike the peeping tom. Pulling away for a gasp of air, the mouth at the hole asks, “I understand the peach fucking is representative of Elio’s desire to be with both sexes which supports the fluidity of sexual orientation, but what about the arguably misogynistic nature of these wild boys?” Sexual orientation will be made nonexistent by “The Wild Boys” as well as in Call Me By Your Name. “So why argue sexual orientation flexibility in Aciman if it will be invalid later,” asks the mouth, sore from the thrusting of the argument. In order to achieve a complete destruction of gender and sex binaries, gender roles, heteronormative sexual orientation rigidity and even the binary of male sex versus female sex must be disassembled to make the asexual, genderless realm’s glory whole.

* * *

Part 3: A Banana Clit with Nuts

            Steam rolls through the hole in the wall and the face behind it grows sultry with sweat. The haze of the steam makes the scene before the eye in the wall nearly indecipherable, as well as the identities of the bodies writhing on the other end. Elio, after entering the fruit, notices, “that its reddened core reminded me not just of an anus but of a vagina” (146). Earlier, Elio compares Oliver’s butt to that of an apricot and, when tossed an apricot, Elio feels that, “touching the apricot was like touching him” (35). The apricot is compared to the peach like the anus to the vagina: interchangeable in a dark or steamy room. Inserting his “apricock” (35), to steal Aciman’s wordplay, into the peach, Elio is inserting himself into something with the appearance of Oliver’s round mound, as well as anonymous, genderless anus’ and female vaginas. The transposable nature of the male and female sex within only one object reveals a split in the “established” differences of sex.

            “Elio’s sordid actions with the peach is still only fluidity of his sexual orientation since, after all, a peach is without sex to begin with,” the self-assured grin is felt from behind the wall. Elio, no doubt, has a sex though? “Naturally, as is the way of the world.” The essentialist thinking behind the heteronormative wall is incorrect. The sex of the peach is both man and woman, as Elio desires, and while jerking off Elio hears the peach “say to me, Fuck me, Elio, fuck me harder, and after a moment, Harder, I said!” (147). Recall that Oliver and Elio refer to each other by their own names during lovemaking (134). Therefore, Elio embodies the peach in the masturbation session and loses his sex.

            “This damn peach! But you, wild boys, you’re just personally dissimilating yourselves with your genderqueer ways, but the sex binary as a whole still stands. And you don’t have any peaches to fuck,” the eyeball argues loudly. Burroughs’ wild boys are, naturally, posed to attack. They take the argument one step further than Aciman from metaphoric to literal. Promptly, they make their way to the cutting room where, “they are going to take a cutting from the rectum…arrange him on a table with his knees up rubber slings” (165). The physical position of legs in stirrups is associated with a woman in labor or a gynecologist’s office, neither of which are present in the cutting room. Physically, the wild boys are taking on a the female position while the ritual itself is fusing the genders contradictorily by fission. Opening the anus and cutting from it is metaphorically transforming the hole into a vaginal opening. Once again, a constructionism perspective trumps essentialism as the wild boys create for themselves a female genitalia on their body. While not exactly intersexual, the wild boy, with their penis’ and vaginas show the variability and uncertainty of sex. To punctuate the point, when the cutting ritual occurs, “little phantom figures dance on their bodies, slide up and down their pulsing cocks, and ride the cutting tubes” (165). These phantom figures have no sexual category or gender and are having sex with a penis while a vagina is being cut into an anus. The Burroughsian blurring of sex and gender is evident.

            Still wiping their mouth from the wild boys, the voice behind the wall scoffs, “despite the argument, this wall still stands. You speak of the rituals of the wild boys and the ritual of masturbation, but the sex binary cannot be destructed. Even the Greeks new the purpose of the females was their reproductive qualities. Need I remind you that only those with actual vaginas are capable of that, not split rectums and peaches.”

* * *

Part 4: Sexpocalypse 

            Without warning, a two by four strikes the head of the arguer. The eye through the hole spells the shocked confusion that struggles to come out through it’s mouth. “But, the sex binary can’t collapse, I just said how it couldn’t.” After the wall entirely falls around it, the peephole is unnecessary as the eye is seen attached to a face attached to a naked body. Elio’s masturbation doesn’t simply peter off, there is an orgasm as “carefully, aiming the spurt into the reddened core of the open peach as if in a ritual of insemination” (147). But the pregnancy goes outside the peach and into Oliver’s awaiting stomach as Elio “watched him put the peach in his mouth and slowly begin to eat it” (149). A physical part of Elio enters Oliver and so does Elio’s love. The metaphoric pregnancy is Elio’s acceptance of himself growing and nurturing within his relationship with Oliver. A creation of a new Elio.

            “But metaphors aren’t strong enough to result in this. This…where am I exactly,“ the naked body queries. The steam, the showers, the lockers. It’s a YMCA and “The Wild Boys” is about to partake in the final step in the day of reckoning for gender and sex binaries. Immediately after being cut, which has its own connotations, a wild boy “walks over to the blackboard and rubs out the word MOTHER” (165). The naked body tries to cover up while arguing, “clearly a misogynistic act as I labeled the boys earlier. Weakening a gender or sex doesn’t annihilate a binary, it’s only subversion. To truly eliminate a binary, a fusion must occur. Much like Aciman and Burroughs did when they merged the male sex v. female sex binary.” The rubbing out of the word, among other things, doesn’t eliminate the female gender, but assimilates the gender into a new form that’s free of stereotypical gender and sex expectations. The boy also returns the apple to the teacher (165) in an act of defiance against associating with original sin. How this associates with this argument is that it is a denial of both the male and female act of Adam and Eve. “Snake boys,” a tribe, use “venomous speckled sea-snakes” and “black mambas” to fight their enemies (164). Snakes, the ubiquitous metaphor for Satan and sin, is used to rebel against the heteronormative soldiers. The boy erasing the word “Mother” is as much a statement about binaries as a dissent against biblical creation as a whole.

            “You’ve lost me. Why does religion peek its head in this argument?” The ritual in which they do so transcends a ceremony and becomes religious in its own right. Despite what Larry Kramer might have said, these faggots are fucking themselves to life. After several repeated steps done with precision on a large, blue rug surrounded by other boys, one boy in the middle conjures up a mist and moulds a shape and “slowly the boy penetrated the phantom body I could see his penis inside the other and as he moved in and out the soft red gelatin clung to his penis thighs and buttocks… spurting sperm inside and suddenly the red boy was solid” (168).

            “But now you’ve cornered yourself! The female has been extracted from the binary if these wild boys give ‘birth’ to boys. Not destroying it, but replacing it with a unary.” The naked arguer is taken to a chair and has their rectum cut, then placed in the middle of the rug. Minutes later the ritual is done and “two attendants stepped forward with a littler of soft leather. Carefully they lifted the Zimbu onto the litter and carried him to the blue tent” (169). “Zimbu” is what shuts down the last strand of the argument. Burroughs and Aciman don’t give birth, literal or metaphorically, to any person of an established gender or sex within the binary. A male is a male and female is a female, but a Zimbu…A Zimbu with neither entirely masculine or feminine traits or genitalia. With no preference to male or female because a Zimbu is neither. By all means, a Zimbu is a peach.

* * *

Epilogue: Many Ways To Have a Good Time

            Where do the peachy Zimbus go from here? The steam rises from the shower at the YMCA and, from another wall, another eyeball is seen peering through a peephole. Another dysejaculation, an orgasm that only brings burning. Like a needle pointing north, all the wild boys and fruits turn to the walls.

Fall, Creativity Mustered

Mustard.

"Let them say what they will
because they will anyhow." - Tegan and Sara

(Creative works compiled from Fall semester 2012)

--- --- --- --- ---

Transverse

And you take Celeste here,
well, he’s gonna end
up Chuck. Chuck’ll
just never change. Destiny

on the other hand, crimson
lipstick was just always his
tone. Down the street
you’ll see Miss Divine

in Lady D’s
bar, busting out
Midler or Manilow. Most
typical, oh predictable. Me?

Honeybaby, I’m
all yours. Tonight,
listen to me though,
shush, I know all, doll.

Me, I am out
finding a name. Names. Only
words like magnesium sulfate.
I was soaking my sore skin

in this stuff, salt.
Sulfate. Soul. Fate.
My body was never so melo-
dramatic. I want a name––

But you! oh we should
marry. A fabulous!
Gaudy! Fuckitall!
wedding. With a winding

down staircase, my little
cantaloupe.



--- --- --- --- ---

Typecast

    How did that dream you have go? You said we were both sixteen year old Mexican girls. Cheering and diving for our favorite luchador’s thrown cape. I don’t remember which one of us caught it though.

    I said we were young cattle drivers in torn up Levis. Silver spurs glistened, jutting from behind your leather boots. I dropped my whip to the dirt. The boss yelled from his horse behind us, “You boys reckon you kin give me four quarters for a dollar and Ai’ll think I got the better deal. I’m up to mah ass with this Weston deal and what’re’ya boys tryin’ to pull? Cows get slaughtered, ‘member?” The director called cut. The whip I used wasn’t supposed to drop. I got use to not apologizing after every take, every mistake.

    We “took it from the top,” as a stage director would yell. How did that dream you have go? We shared a corn on the cob seasoned with paprika after the wrestling match. My hair fell from behind my ear and I got butter on it.
   
    We were selling the farm after the fifth season. I sat on my saddle next to you again, ready to round up my thousandth fake herd, try to swindle the boss in another fake scheme. We wrapped as the sun finally set behind the flat horizon. You turned to me and told me I was in your dream last night. I wondered how I would respond if I was the cowboy I had been playing. If you were on top of an actual horse, not a wooden post. Would I scheme with you? Would I go back to my house, slip my boots off, get in my long underwear with a flap in the back, sleep, wake up, slip my boots back on and work with you and cows and dung all day? How long had I been doing it? Days, months, years, my whole life? What if that was us, having to deal with that every day? Then I realized: it was. “You were in mine too,” I responded. A whip laid on the ground between our boots.

    How did that dream I have go? I was wearing my seatbelt in my car underwater. A flurry of bubbles outside the driver seat window and I caught a glimpse of fabric. As the fabric seemed to open the door and pull me out, I realized the cloth was tied to a neck attached to your familiar face, only it was blue from the water. Now I remember which girl had caught the cape.

--- --- --- --- ---

Salabrasion
    All of my vices seemed to exist in the subcultures that had no interest in me. The punks, the lesbians, the goths. Unlike the flat jigsaw puzzles that I saw other girls as, full of emotion, frustration and scrutiny, subculture girls were as layered as white noise. Living next to a hospital, white noise plagued me nightly: ambulance sirens and the scraping of asphalt, nocturnal creatures, wind against the palm tree outside my open window, my dad snoring through closed doors, the fan cycling above me, the occasional yawn, the rhythmic pumping of my heart, the flow of blood to my frustrated limbs, the rubbing of muscle together, the firing of synapses, the sound of the earth moving. These were my punk girls. Smokers with a smile that separated them, tattoos and piercings, ironically bright hair colors, bastardized manifestations of ‘50s pin-up models, the ability to hold silent, one-sided conversations. Who wore long sleeves and jackets in the summer. Who didn’t shave. Who didn’t care. Tattoos and piercings are the same on girls as on guys.

    “I find androgyny sexy,” I confessed over the phone.

    “Why? That’s disgusting. What, are you gay or something?” The word androgyny always led to the questioning of my sexuality. Kristen tried to change topics by asking me what time we were going to dinner.

    “At eight,” I answered.

    “You ate? You couldn’t wait just thirty minutes? I bet you would’ve if I had short hair, wore flannel and had stupid metal covering my face.”

* * *

    She looked at me again with her doll eyes and with her dull mouth said, “I just don’t see why we need…” I wanted someone with a defined jaw bone. The skin under her mouth fell to her collarbone, creating a sluggish chin.

    Some would call her beautiful, I just called her Kristen. Her resemblance to the actress Kristen Stewart afforded me the luxury of forgetting her Christian name. As she’d dramatically purse her lips to make an “ooh” sound, I noticed the ridge between her upper lip and the crest of her nose vanish, forming a flat flap of flesh and exposing her gums and whitish teeth. The pink on her lips reminded me of raw chicken.

    “—agree, right?” I didn’t answer and the car remained silent until the braked squealed as she parked. She continued, “Listen, can’t you just tell her…” A sickly color vein pulsed as her neck skin was dragged by her smacking lips, like the gills of a fish on a hook shuttering open and close. Despite the indifference of sound, I knew from all our previous conversations that the silence was hers, not mine. Her silence wouldn’t let me speak.

    I would have told her that I didn’t care, that she was talking to a wall. A wall that didn’t care about Kristens. For the sake of conversation, I kept my mouth shut. Brow furrowed slightly, her eyes began to search for contact with mine. When they met, I only noticed her mind swimming, searching for a memory to help conjure up fake tears. Her pupils dilated when she floundered upon some past dead pet, or perhaps the inevitable death of her current ones. Unlike sincere tears, her chin didn’t quiver, but, I thought, that could be because she has no chin to quiver. She leaned forward and pulled back twice, like a novelty drinking bird toy. “Well?” She had allowed a response.

    “Remember that gift you gave me for our one week? That hippie shell that was suppose to absorb my agony if I had it in my pocket?”

    “I gave you a stone, not a shell.” As quickly as her frustration had dissipated with the mention of something sentimental, it flooded back in return at my mistake.

    “That explains it. Well, that’s certainly something,” pulling out an abalone shell from my pants pocket. And there I was thinking that karma, aura, magic wasn’t real. When we first met, she had told me that all objects were designed to hold energies that either repelled, attracted, expelled or absorbed external energies. In the car, as she buried her eyes in her hands, smudging mascara on the base of her thumbs, I wondered what energy the car had. Or if, as she said, all objects had energies, did the manufacturers of the car take this into account when gathering materials to build? Did the carburetor repel anger and the steering wheel attract it? What if the pistons expelled lust and the wheels absorbed sexuality? Kristen’s wedges had black leather on them, but the leather car seats were gray. Did colors matter? The disarray of energies cycling through the car like the stale air conditioning made me dizzy until I remembered I didn’t subscribe to “new age” thinking.

    “What do tears even mean?” through blackened fingertips. I asked if I could drive us home, unconsciously doubtful of what grabbing the steering wheel might exorcise. The brakes squealed, but I was unsure if it wasn’t Kristen just trying to get attention.

* * *

    The night before, she had confessed the first thing she noticed was the abundance of hair covering my arms and legs, like headstones in a haphazard army graveyard. Body hair showed vulnerability and openness, she had said. Were my eyebrows vulnerable? The strands of hair on my big toe did often seem susceptible, I wanted to say. That next night in the car I wondered if it wasn’t true, noticing the blonde strands stemming from her arms, only visible by reflecting the fluorescent street light. They occurred to me as something crystalline, fragile. I didn’t want to lean over and comfort her for fear of breaking them off.

    Emily, or Emma, or was it Sam? …The girl I was with while Kristen was on vacation at Yosemite had shaved her legs. My caress had been met with biting stubble, like my tongue licking five o’clock shadow below my lips after dinner. She tasted just as salty. When Kristen forced her lips upon mine in the car, to appeal to my male understanding, I recognized the saltiness from her tears and was stirred. Emily, or Emma, or was it Sam? …Yosemite Sam, had tasted like artificial, cherry-flavored lip gloss. Kristen was sweet and salty, like a potato chip. How many calories were in a kiss? Yosemite Sam’s lips had sat stagnant against mine, waiting for me to grab hold of the back of her neck and push myself against her. As I remembered my inability to act with Sam, Kristen had grabbed a handful of my hair tight enough that I could feel the roots being tugged, like plucking weeds, while still pushing my head against her chest. It was something of a hug, I supposed.

    The girl I was with before Kristen, her name was Kristen, a raven-haired, small-framed beauty when her mouth was closed, would never have done this to me. Not that I didn’t want to do it to her, but tears and grasps had meant something to me once. When she cried, I felt as if all events in my life had lead up to that single instance of disappointment I had brought upon her. When we tugged at each others bodies, it was “like the tugging of souls,” I would tell her. Both Kristen’s had found it pathetic. I wanted to be their savior, Kristen from her goth-like woes and “Kristen” from her counterfeit, feigned beliefs and cries for attention. I thought they should save me too and Kristen told me she had wanted to. I still can’t remember which Kristen though.

    One night, later, in a different car, “Kristen” had let me go from an identical embrace. “I don’t think we should see where…” She had already unlocked the car door and I was opening it. As I walked to my front door, I heard a squeak and wished it was a squeal. Next to my Hide-a-Key rock, I noticed a rounded, luminescent green stone. Recognizing it as that energy absorbing gift, I picked it up and rolled in around in my fist. I aimed for the windshield, went inside, ate chips.

    Throwing the rock, I threw with it a wall of blind hostility that I built towards Kristen and all the girls that had come before her. I wonder now what happened to that rock.  If someone picked it up, did they pick up my lack of self-awareness with it? I went inside, ate chips. The saltiness reminded me of hair and tears, something I’ve got use to now.

--- --- --- --- ---

Adhesives

I unraveled masking tape
behind tender thighs. She,
on hands and knees, stretched out,
let herself breathe. It hung firmly,
like my sight. Grout-crammed crevices
cooled my naked skin. We erected
a barrier between the door
and us of secretly shed clothes.

She turned on
the shower, let water gush across
our exposed flesh, washed away
sweat, revealed our mutual itch.

Tuckered tongues tirelessly trembled,
touched tips, spelunking crisp caves.
Stubble against stubble against
mound against muzzle. Thrust
forth, the juice sluiced into eager openings.
Our lightened voices made our pieces come

back into place. She asked me to do her
a favor and pass her black needle
lace garter belt and white torsolette.
I only had duct tape left. I held on
as she whimpered a mewl,
the sack was a little
too loose. I tore the adhesive off
with one quick tug. I apologized.

It hung between her legs again.
I told her I liked it better
that way. She smiled with yes or
no answers. I only took
them from her
with my eyes.

--- --- --- --- ---
(Group assignment)
Occupy: The Musical
    Scene 1
    High school cafeteria, Burbank. Theater auditions for Occupy: The Musical. Two rows of     plastic folding chairs, each row ten wide, with three chairs in front, off-centered towards     stage right. The stage director, Karen Turner, early thirties and her assistant, sit in two     of the three chairs in front. Offstage right, actors and actresses are giving unheard and     unseen auditions for the director while the awaiting actors sit in the folding chairs. Two     handsome late-twenties, early-thirties males, Eddie Money, with headphones in his ears,     and Felix Marlon, holding up a mirror to himself, sit in chairs four and five in the second     row starting from stage left. Both pay no attention to each other as they warm up.

EDDIE. (Singing.) I’ve got one ticket to paradise––

FELIX. I own this bank.

EDDIE. (Singing.) On a trip that is so nice––

FELIX. I own this whole goddamn town.

EDDIE. (Singing.) Got me one audition and a pair of dice.

FELIX. Now get out of here before I annihilate you. Out!

KAREN. (Turning to the noise.) Hey, can you be quiet? I’m trying to make art happen here! (Felix hides further behind his mirror. Eddie, still wearing headphones, is oblivious. He pauses for a moment and starts his vocal warm-ups to himself.)

EDDIE. Better butter. Better butter. Better butter. Better butter. Thistle sticks sixty six thousand and six thistle sticks sixty six thousand and six thistle sticks. Piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, lion. (Eddie yawns as he hold the “o” in “lion.” Karen shifts her attention to him.)

KAREN. Are you serious? It's hard enough trying to recreate the mean streets of Wall Street in this stupid high school in the stupid Valley with these sub par actors without you adding your own useless background noise. Now shut the hell up, I have a terrible audition to suffer through right now! (Karen turns back to the person on stage.) I mean, you have to know you're not good, right? (The person auditioning runs out of the cafeteria in tears. Eddie and Felix acknowledge one another with one guffaw.)

EDDIE, FELIX. Ha!

EDDIE. That was ridiculous. These amateurs don't stand a chance against my professional voice. Just wait until I'm up there.

FELIX. Being the most successful business man in the nation, what do I care? (Silence.)

EDDIE. So, you’re a business man?

FELIX. What? Sorry, no. just trying to stay in character. (Moves his hand over his face as if wiping the character off. Extends hand towards Eddie. They shake.) My name's Felix. Felix Marlon.

EDDIE. Hi. I'm Money, Eddie Money.

FELIX. Wait, like the 80s singer with the mullet? You know, "Two Tickets to Paradise."

EDDIE. I have no idea what you're talking about.

KAREN. (Turning to the boys. Acidly.) If I have to ask you guys to shut up again, I will kick you out of my cafeteria! This is a place of art and creativity, not a cafe to have a snack and chat with a friend.

EDDIE. Well, there are coffee and muffins here...

KAREN. I'm going to ignore that and pretend you're dead. (Karen turns away from them and     directs her attention to her Blackberry.)

FELIX. (To Eddie) Wait, they have muffins?

EDDIE. What?

FELIX. Muffins.

EDDIE. There's muffins?

FELIX. Forget it. (Pauses.) Have you been in a production like this before?

EDDIE. There was a––

FELIX. I acted opposite James Earl Jones in the all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Well, actually I was an understudy to Lou Myers who played Reverend Tooker.

EDDIE. That's your highlight? Back in the day, I won my high school Battle of the Bands for consecutive years. Eddie Money and the Heartbreakers stole the show!

KAREN. (Calling the next audition.) Eddie…Money? (to herself.) Wait, like the singer?

(Blackout. End Scene.)

    Scene 2

     Lights up. Eddie, right of stage, stands still, staring at Karen, his personal Medusa.

KAREN. Okay, please get off the stage now. (Eddie, blank-faced, slowly returns to his seat     after the audition. Karen calls the next audition.)

KAREN. Felix Marlon. You're the last one of the day, thank god. (Felix makes his way to the stage, patting Eddie pityingly as he gets up. He clears his throat and begins the monologue.)

FELIX. (Never looking away from the script.) You! Get me a hold of the IntraDen close––

KAREN. It’s pronounced C.L.Os.

FELIX. Uhh, right. Get me a hold of the Intraden C.L.Os. The long-term average scaled below the turbulent flow and the short term-ers are now the ankle biters chasing the bulls out of the pen and we’re fighters red flagging four options and emanating––

KAREN. Eliminating.

FELIX. (Disregarding Karen.) ––false bottoms and to top it off the discriminating…depot low rized…stocks are down goddamn sixteen. I need caffeine! (Felix takes a bow and returns to his seat.)

KAREN. Depolarized. Depolarized! Is it that hard? (To her assistant.) Oh my god, this has been the worst day of my life. Nothing good here, nothing good at all. Every actor just worse than the other––It's like people don't even respect the craft of theater anymore. You would think a name like Karen Turner would attract some talent! I once wrote a play that was used as an idea that later became the inspiration for the stage adaptation of Spring Awakening for god’s sake! Just end it all, burn down this cafeteria! (Silence. Felix, now seated, turns to Eddie.)

FELIX. (Deadpan.)At least I wasn't as flat as you.

EDDIE. (Shaken out of his stupor.) Yeah? Oh yeah? (Mockingly.) I’m the most successful businessman in the nation. Not so successful now, huh?

FELIX. At least I was in the real thing, not some hoedown, high school battle of the bands that you won consecutive years! (Scoffs. Holds up middle finger as if counting.) One consecutive year.

EDDIE. The real deal? What kind of real actor is auditioning for a play in a high school cafeteria? And that year was the best year of my life!

KAREN. (Standing up and turning towards the two behind her. Near tears.) Do you think I'm happy with this? Do you think I didn't already reserve the theatre then have to give it up because the drama club needed to rehearse their production of CATS! I'm a serious playwright with a lot of talent! I don't belong in a cafeteria, at least not as much as you two do.

FELIX. (Eddie and Felix both standing up) Oh, I'm sorry, we were supposed to be in the high school thee-aye-ter!

EDDIE. (Moving behind Felix slightly.) Yeah, and we're not part of the one-percent that gives a shit about your play!

KAREN. This isn't for the one-percent! This is for the 99 percent!

EDDIE. Yeah, the 99 percent of people that won't see your play! (Felix and Eddie high five.)

KAREN. Your opinion doesn't even matter. This is a masterpiece! I've been working on this for five years!

EDDIE. The Occupy movement didn't even exist five years ago.

KAREN. (Hysterical.) I was a visionary! (Felix picks up a copy of the script and reads aloud from it.)

FELIX. Blah, blah, blah, the ankle biters are chasing the bulls, blah, blah, blah, better butter, better butter? It's all useless, what did she call it, background noise?

EDDIE. "False bottoms and to top it off the discriminating depolarized stocks?" Yeah, Really making art happen––. (Karen grabs the script from Felix.)

KAREN. You both are idiots! This script is Tony gold! Like this part where the banker is in trouble and needs to see his daughter! Listen to the urgency in his voice: "I need a phone to phone my daughter! She also has a…phone." (Silence. Karen looks up from the script, somberly.) Oh my god. This is terrible. (Karen sits back down and flips through the script.) Did I--did I even try to write this? Did I pull this out of a garbage can by accident? What if my parents were right, what if I have to go to back to my job at Craft World?

EDDIE. Shit, maybe Eddie Money and the Heartbreakers can have a comeback!

KAREN. (Throwing her head and hands up.) I still don't know why your name is Eddie Money!

EDDIE. I still don't know what you're talking about! Wait–– it doesn't matter anyway. The Heartbreakers are either dead or in jail.

FELIX. (Looking back and forth between Eddie and Karen.) No, forget you guys. I just had a bad     audition, it happens. And, just like the felix, I’ll rise from these ashes and be reborn a better actor.

KAREN. That’s a phoenix. Felix was the black and white, cartoon cat, you moron.

FELIX. Really? (Eddie laughs. Long silence as the only four people in the room sit still. Karen’s assistant, who has been on their phone this whole argument gets up to leave.)

ASSISTANT. Uh, you don’t need me anymore today, right Karen?

KAREN. Huh? …No.

ASSISTANT. Okay, here’s the notes from all the auditions. (Holds papers out for Karen. She is staring off into space.) Oh…kay. I’ll just put these right here. (The assistant puts the  papers on the chair next to Karen and starts to leave. She turns back as if to say something, but doesn’t. Exit assistant.)

FELIX. (Getting up. Eddie stands up seconds later.) Yeah, I have to get rolling too. You’ll call or e-mail if I get the part, right?

KAREN. (Still motionless.) You guys won’t get any calls or e-mails.

FELIX. (Sharing a glance with Eddie. Matter-of-factly) …We know.

KAREN. There is no part to get. (Other than their voices, the silence in the cafeteria has been slowly reaching a peak.)

EDDIE. (Felix and Eddie both walk over towards Karen. Holding up script) Do we have to keep     these? Do you want them back?

KAREN. You can take them. Or throw them away. It doesn’t matter. (Felix and Eddie walk towards an off-stage left exit. They stop at a trashcan. Felix dumps the script and his mirror. Eddie dumps the script and they leave. Eddie’s left his headphones behind. Karen sighs. She gets up and, without looking towards the stage, without picking up any of the papers next to her, follows the boys out of the room. Blackout. End scene.)



--- --- --- --- ---

polaroid girl1

is this boring because there aren’t any details?2
cut open into my head, stick it in, yeah, stick it in.3
is this cliché to you?1 i’m sorry, my mistake.
do i sound strange?4 i wanna know, and don’t stall,5

cut open my head, stick yrself in, yeah, stick yrself in
dear Daddy…i’m sorry6 you get nervous watching me
bleed,7 does that sound strange? i wanna know exactly
what you want.8 i wanna spread my dementia,9

dear Daddy. i’m sorry you get nervous watching me
going crazy, and do you wanna watch? do you wanna cum?10
is that what you want? i wanna spread my dementia
all over my skin, taking invisible streets,11

going crazy. and do you wanna watch me cum?
tell me, did grandpa tie you up, Daddy?5 like yr razor
all over my skin, making invisible streaks,
little slits on my skin, slowly, beautiful red lines.5

c’mon, did grandpa tie you up like yr razor––
wait, rub her face in glass Dad,12 rub
little slits on her skin, slowly, beautiful red lines.
she wants me to be like her heartbrainheartbrainheartbrainlunggut13

but, wait, rub my face in glass already, Dad. rub
it in deeper now oh deeper, harder oh i’m almost14
wanting to be like her heartbrainheartbrainheartbrainhungnuts.
fold the shiver in half again,15 you’ll unwrap me here16

deeper now. oh deeper, harder, oh i’m almost
a fly around yr head or a pin in yr neck.17
fold that shiver in half again. you’ll unwrap me,
and does that scare you?18 she burnt my dresses, cut my hair.19

a fly in yr head or a pin through your neck.
and is this cliché to you? i wanna know (stickystupidrunningdownmylegs20)
does she scare you? she burnt my dresses and she cut my hair.
and is this boring to you because i left out the details?

scabs grow thicker by the years,11
a gasoline gut with a vaseline mind21
three cheers for hypodermic! three cheers for twenty years!22

1 Bratmobile. “Polaroid Baby.” Pottymouth. Kill Rock Stars, 1993. 
2 The Fakes. “Steve Society.” Real Fiction. Chainsaw Records, 1995.
3 Kaia. “Test.” Kaia. Chainsaw Records, 1996.
4 Team Dresch. “She’s Amazing.” Personal Best. Chainsaw Records, 1995.
5 Bikini Kill. “Tell Me So.” Pussy Whipped. Kill Rock Stars, 1994.
6 The Fakes. “Safety Cuts.” Real Fiction. Chainsaw Records, 1995.
7 Sleater-Kinney. “Dig Me Out.” Dig Me Out. Kill Rock Stars, 1997.
8 Team Dresch. “To The Enemies of Political Rock.” Captain My Captain. Chainsaw Records, 1996.
9 Le Tigre. “Let’s Run.” Le Tigre. Mr. Lady, 1999.
10 Heavens to Betsy. “Axemen.” Calculated. Kill Rock Stars, 1994.
11 Bikini Kill. “Strawberry Julius.” The Singles. Kill Rock Stars, 1998.
12 Bratmobile. “And I Live in a Town Where Boys Amputee Their Hearts.” The Real Janelle.  Kill Rock Stars, 1994.
13 Bikini Kill. “Alien She.” Pussy Whipped. Kill Rock Stars, 1994.
14 Bikini Kill. “Sugar.” Pussy Whipped. Kill Rock Stars, 1994.
15 The Need. “Don’t Touch the Ribbon.” The Need. Chainsaw Records, 1997.
16 Sleater-Kinney. “Taking Me Home.” Call The Doctor. Chainsaw Records, 1996.
17 Team Dresch. “Fake Fight.” Personal Best. Chainsaw Records, 1995.
18 Bikini Kill. “Don’t Need You.” The CD Version of the First Two Records. Kill Rock Stars, 1992.
19 Bikini Kill. “Rah! Rah! Replica.” The Singles. Kill Rock Stars, 1998.
20 Sleater-Kinney. “I’m Not Waiting.” Call The Doctor. Chainsaw Records, 1996.
21 Le Tigre. “Deceptacon.” Le Tigre. Mr. Lady, 1999.
22 The Need. “Whitewash Cannonball.” The Need. Chainsaw Records, 1997.

--- --- --- --- ---

Hospital cafeteria

like a shower drain,
things could get hairy.
I need a shake to go
with these fries. Grease
back my balding

tuft, baby. Wear suits
with no ties, we’ll go steady
with matching socks.
My Mickey Mouse band-

aids
cover my bruises. Quickly,
screw me fast
while I still look good,

love. For your health.

--- --- --- --- ---

Prelude: Transfiguration or Something

    It was twenty two years ago and people still sat in the pews. Miss Divine, then Larry Darlen, or Laurence William Darlen if she was in trouble, balanced a small wafer and plastic cup of grape juice in one hand. The man talking up front was droning on about a feast, but Miss Divine only paid attention once she heard something about eating flesh.

    “Dad, what does he mean we eat Jesus’ flesh?”

    “Shh! And don’t cross your legs like that.”

    “But Mom cross–”

    “I said shut up. You’re being rude.” Miss Divine’s mom hid her face behind a hymn book tucked behind the seat in front of her.

    Miss Divine put the wafer in her mouth when she saw everyone else do it. She sucked on the flesh first because she liked the saltiness. Everyone else put the plastic cup of blood to their lips, she had trouble swallowing the grape juice.

    In the back of the car on their way home, Miss Divine looked at her father’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. From her perspective, the mirror strangely doubled the reflection, given her father a second set of translucent eyes on his bald forehead and a second nose between his eyebrows. Her mother tried to answer her poor-timed question from earlier.

    “It’s called transubstantiation.”

    “No,” the monster driving the car interrupted, “it’s transubstantion. If you would listen to what the pastor was saying, you would have heard him say, “we eat this is remembrance of you.” We do it to honor what He did on the cross, how he died for our sin. Honey, show him in his bible.”

    Her mother grabbed Miss Divine’s “Kids’ Adventure Bible” from by her feet and opened to the book of Luke. Miss Divine might have started reading if the there wasn’t an illustration of a tall, slim, tan man in a robe holding bread and a goblet surrounded by twelve men of about equal size. Her eyes wandered about under the painted table. One of the men was sitting at a slant and his robe did not cover his legs. She looked at his angular calves and the daintiness of his sandaled feet. The leather straps were a bit busy, but they accentuated his heel spectacularly. Next to him, Jesus’ hips were hidden by the table, but Miss Divine was in awe of his shapely, exposed shoulder and how it flowed into his bearded neckline.

    “How come girls don’t have beards? I want to marry a girl with a beard.”

    “What?”

    “And how come I can’t wear makeup? I’d be better than those old ladies who do it that tell me how cute I am in my ‘itty-bitty suit.’ I hate this suit. It’s uncomfortable and the tie is an ugly maroon. I hate maroon.” Miss Divine’s brother laughed in the seat next to her, causing Miss Divine to contract the giggles. Her parents had pretended not to hear her outburst of questions.

    “Shut your traps back there, or heaven help me!”

* * *

Part 1: The Hello, Dolly! Revival

    “Here’s to not thinking or drinking to our fathers!”

    “Preach it!”

    “I’ll drink to that.”

    “And, and, shush…Ladies, you can all lose your composure, among other things, after my toasts, please. We simply must drink to Miss Divine tonight. She is now a permanent little member, stop snickering, of my little group of loud-mouthed, all-out, flashy-never-gaudy queens!” The last ten words were said in unison by six of the seven girls, drinks in the air. Miss Divine only blushed. “Now, bottoms up!…Very funny, how original, Honeybear.”

    After Honeybear stood upright again and straightened the rear of her dress, Celeste sat back down next to Miss Divine. Frigo’s was nearly as loud as the layer of smoke lingering in it was thick. Everybody seemed to be smoking something that night. Being early yet, the ladies, Ladies and “lame d’s,” as Celeste referred to her previous lovers, sat as still as their bodies would allow. Miss Divine and Celeste looked enviously over at the curved, corner booth from their two-tables-pushed-together seating. Celeste exaggerated neck pain looking sideways to Miss Divine.

    “If we had only gotten here earlier. Wait, that sounds familiar. Isn’t there some self-conscious, ‘I have to wear the right outfit’ attention whore I suggested that too?”

    “And after that toast I was beginning to think you had decency in you…How dare you blame this outfit? Celeste,” said Miss Divine, both faces growing momentarily somber, “be lucky I’m here at all and not in the hospital, or worse. I get it, I do. I know we all do it and it’s personal but not unique and blah blah. I’ve only heard you say it a million times, but my family is different. Coming out–”

    Celeste disregarded the look of worry draped unglamorously across Miss Divine. It was too cliché for her to accept such a typical tragedy. “Listen, you know you’re allowed to burn those tattered old britches.”

    “I think you mean bridge–”

    “Oh, sweetie, how I hate the phrase ‘coming out.’ No, no, no, we do not simply –hngh– come out. Come out from where, what do we hide? No! We make our fabulous entrances!” Celeste got on her chair again and addressed the girls. “Raise the curtains! Cue the music! Let’s show Miss Divine why she’s so lucky to have this family.”

    Miss Divine watched this haphazard, buzzed, off-off-off-Broadway quality rendition of “Just Leave Everything to Me” and fulfilled Celeste’s first toast. It was a Wednesday, hump day, the day Celeste ironically decided should be the girls’ night off and out every week. Her family was behind her, the bars were open and shirts, shoes, pants, dignity were not needed for service, or servicing. The bartender passively applauded from behind three gorgeously of-size queens, the sight wasn’t anything new. All eyes turned to Miss Divine when she fell in line with the other girls, her voice overtaking them all.

* * *

Part 2: Summer Night Ejaculations

    Those who had to get up for work in four hours found their sweaty limbs stuck to their soaked sheets. They would try moving their battery-powered fans closer to their heads, which were stuck thinking about past regrets. No one ever got comfortable. It was one of those hot, summer nights when the silver-blue glow from the moon outshone the oppressive orange splotches of streetlights. The girls on the streets had newfound exuberances on those nights. Even on a slow night, if no one made a cent, they were, each one of the girls, a million bucks.

    Miss Divine stood, hands on hips, next to the bouncy Celeste. Honeybear swung along street signs. The bustiest girl of the gang, Ariel, moved her hands to her mouth in excited fear when Honeybear flung about just a little too quickly. Destinee leaned against a wall, the most elegant cherubim without even trying.

    “We all look so majestic on these nights!” Celeste called out to her girls, who she now boisterously referred to as “Celeste’s Celestial Sluts on 7th Street.”

    “All dressed up and nowhere to go. I’m so bored tonight,” Miss Divine whined, throwing her head up to the sky.

    “Don’t spoil it for the rest of us, sister.”

    “Who said that? What am I spoiling, another drab night? Where are my men, Celeste? You promised me men. Maybe we need more girls! More in the market would mean more to bag, right?”

    “What have you done now, Miss Divine? I, unlike some whiny bitch, was enjoying this night. Now we all must suffer this plague of boredom you’ve wrought down upon us.” Lola Lipskin, the silently dramatic actress she was, threw her right hand, palm out, to her forehead as if a black and white Vivien Leigh coming down with the vapors.

    Celeste began, the groans of the other girls already behind her, “Honey, honey, honey, do you know what I had to do just to get you down here?”

    “Promise me freedom and men?”

    “I mean emotionally. I can’t just run into the nearest gay bar and grab any guy with a Gucci purse by the groin. I have to make sure there’s enough to grab anyway. Girls, what’s lesson number one?”

    “Never in, but on?”

    “Do unto others as they do you?”

    “Be polite and always tight?”

    “Oh, I’m really impressed, ladies. Try this on for size: A tiny prick won’t do the trick. Honestly, anything less than four-inches and you might as well be a eunuch.”

    “Oh, you’re too much. Would you have passed me up if I didn’t meet these, how did you put it, emotional, standards of yours? Would I simply be Miss Mediocre?”

    “But how could I say no to such a face! Girl, your elegance alone is two inches.”

    “I just didn’t take you to be the type of lady to say–– Oh! Look at this guy-candy heading my way.” Miss Divine lost her train of thought and sense of pouting and straightened her skirt, hiking it shorter than usual. Celeste intercepted the incoming potential john.

    “Don’t speak. Don’t even stop walking, get your monstrous feet stomping along. No, don’t even think about looking back.” She gave the man, who was elegantly dressed in a Marc Jacobs designer suit with socks that unfortunately didn’t match, a shove. Before the tall drink of water was even out of earshot, Miss Divine began her tantrum.

    “What in the hell was that all about?”

    “Didn’t you just smell it on him, Divine? You at least saw the cross hanging from his necklace, or did you miss that? My Father had gray sideburns just like his, I thought it was a sign of wisdom, but those signs don’t really exist.” The silver from the moon came across as steel on Celeste’s face. Miss Divine dropped her annoyance, which was always tinged with playfulness, and instead adopted a look of wickedness. Honeybear had stopped swinging. Destinee shivered.

    Miss Divine stuttered in frustration, “Listen here you two-inched, made-up, f–... Never st–… You ever do anything like that again and I will lace your mascara with Nair, heaven help me–”

    A silence interrupted the group. The pendulum moon dissolved as the sun rose hours later. The two girls apologized over tears and coffee the next day, but Celeste no longer referred to anyone as “celestial.” Miss Divine stopped calling herself “Celeste’s.”

* * *

Part 3: Wrapping it Up at 4 a.m.

    When the tenants at the apartment, whose stoop Celeste and Miss Divine were approaching, woke up, they might have gone to their window and gazed at the glorious sight of freshly fallen snow blanketing the neighboring roofs and streets for the first time that season. Regardless of their age, waking up to a transformed, white, sparkling city from a dreary, grey one, a sense of magic would drill through them. The same magic cannot be said to have penetrated the two girls. Snow appropriately froze their business and the product they were selling came in shorter supply. Celeste was stewing, after coming out of the bar they had to shelter in all night. Miss Divine broke the icy silence with her balmy voice bursting with eagerness.

    “I was with another youth pastor last night.”

    “Lord girl, how many is that this month? Three? And I’ve never even seen a damned one.”

    “No, he was fiery number four. When he first approached, I thought, as I always so self-consciously do, he didn’t want all that us girls not-so-blatantly offer. But when I saw his playfully lusting eyes, I knew he knew he was getting the whole, sweet package.”

    “What is it about you that lures all these catches? You get all the most interesting men and here I am, all dressed up and nowhere to go but down on my regulars. I mean, don’t get me wrong honey, I love those guys to death, but they stopped tipping big, among other things, once the thrill of something new wore out. We’re basically their orgasms. Once the crest of that pleasure-wave crashes down, it just laps back and forth on the sand. I want more strangers like you.”

    “We all love our remarkable regulars, Celeste, but I would drop them all for a night with someone new. Especially to see that youth pastor again…Oh, you should have just seen him! You would have dropped dead gorgeous on the spot and let him ravage your corpse anyway. The hair of John Stamos with the build of a Brazilian soccer player and the complexion of clouds! He told me his name was ‘Lu-lu-luke’ All the first-timers seem to pick the names of disciples.”

    “Jesus must have had the biggest cock to have so many guys drop their families and follow him around a hot desert.”

    “Celeste!”

    “All I’m saying is after I was done with Jesus, among other things, I’d give him a hell of a good Samaritan discount.”

    “Now, what does that even mean? No. No, I’m not even going to start with you. So shut up, Celeste, and listen about Luke. He was so much more fresh than the first three youth pastors and oh so much more exciting than the boring “big church” pastors I had to suffer through as a kid.”

    “And here, silly me, I thought you were above such horrible clichés, Divi–”

    “Oh just shut up! You know what I meant. And for the thousandth time, it’s Miss Divine
thankyouverymuch. Can I continue now, your majesty? Luke is so, so, so down to Earth. He’s not that down though, he’s a top. What a big sense of humor on that one though. As you would blurt, among other big things.”

    “All the better to bless you with. Here’s to corrupting your language as well as your mouth!” She took a swig from their shared, half-empty bottle of warming Shock Top. Celeste had dropped the cap earlier and only bothered to pick it up when somebody sauntered by.

    “It’s not that he was even a gentleman. He actually, my God, reminds me of my broth-”

    “Was he a big tipper?” Celeste interjected.

    “Well, of course. I’ve told you countless times: ‘The religious are always the most guilty and the guilty are always the most generous.’ You don’t see any of us complaining.”

    After ceaseless interruptions, Miss Divine couldn’t help but pick up all those dropped hints that Celeste was only interested in what was in Luke’s pants, other than his wallet. A silence clung like the stars at dawn except for Celeste’s occasional slurps. They both wondered how much longer the silence would last.

    Miss Divine finally sighed. “I would just love to see him again.”

    “Oh you poor doll, you know there’s never a second coming.” Celeste gave Miss Divine a hug on her tip-toes, her heels finally leaving the ground that night, and they headed down 7th street in the same direction.