5 February, 2020
Patricia Powell is the author of Me Dying Trial, A Small Gathering of Bones, The Pagoda and The Fullness of Everything. She is the recipient of a PEN New England Discovery Award and a Lila-Wallace Readers Digest Writer’s Award. Powell has taught creative writing at Harvard University, U-Mass, MIT and Mills College.
Powell teaches Fiction in our low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program.
5 February, 2020
I’ve been thinking about the community we create in workshop every week, coming together as strangers meeting for the first time, and undertaking the tasks of listening, of turning a critical eye to the work, of sharing ideas, inspiring each other and creating an environment that is nurturing and intellectually stimulating. I’ve also been thinking about what it would mean to intentionally bring some of these skills back to the places where we live and work and how they might effectively transform our relationships.
I would like to focus on listening, as listening seems to me an integral part of everything we do in workshop: our writing, our reading, our editing, our ability to give and receive feedback and all the ways we communicate and learn.
Unlike hearing which is passive, listening is purposeful; it is focused. It requires effort, conscious awareness, stillness, mindfulness, and concentration. When we listen our friends feel as if we care about them. When we listen we are curious and interested and empathic and loving. Listening is a way of being in the world that is sensitive to all aspects of our experience, external, internal and contextual.
When we write we are listening. We often choose a quiet place free from noise and interruptions and close the door. We still the thinking, chattering mind and slowly tune inward. We sit, our bodies like giant ears, waiting for the sound under all things to burp into consciousness. This kind of full-bodied listening provides spaciousness for the work to show up without pressure, for the work to be.
When we create characters we are listening. We are putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we are embodying them fully, we are attempting to understand what they feel and to say what they know, in this sense, listening involves empathy which involves the heart.
When we are reading a manuscript, we are also listening. We are leaning into the page and noticing continuity and interruption. We are tracking for content and tone and voice and intent and we are also tuning in to struggle and frustration. We are looking for murmurs and gasps and moans and utterances, and for ahas. We are listening to appreciate and to savor and to bask. We are listening to laugh, to learn, and to grow even more curious.
When we edit we are reading quietly and out loud and tuning into the things not said, the things hidden, the things silenced. We are noticing chatter and jargon and fluff, and all our darlings, which we must kill.
In workshop though, listening can be more challenging, especially if your manuscript is being critiqued. Still, we must stay open and curious, we can’t interrupt or shut down the discussion to protect the work, or protect ourselves, even though we feel judged and misunderstood and vulnerable and exposed. How can we listen if we don’t agree, if we are in conflict about the way the material is being handled or with what is being said? How can we listen without the need to defend? How can we listen when our jaws are tight, our breath is constricted and our heart is breaking? But this is the practice of the workshop. We must sit in the discomfort if we want to improve and develop as writers. And that is the practice of life when we face difficulty. Instead of turning away from our differences and our conflicts, what if we turned toward each other instead, and allow ourselves to sit in the hot seat of our discomfort, our uncertainties, our upsetness?
In workshop and in life, when we are in the hot seat, we must first of all, breathe. Yes. Take huge deep relaxing breaths from the bottom of our bellies. We must find ways to calm or regulate the emotions that are roiling inside us. We must figure out ways to self-sooth as this can melt us back into ourselves. We have to remember our favorite paths for walking and how the grass feels under our toes. Or how it feels when our dogs lick our faces, or the stillness of the afternoon when we are fly-fishing. We have to find ways to calm the flood of anger and humiliation. We have to remember those things our kids say that make us laugh. We may even have to detach a little and remember that even though our classmate is saying this is a bad sentence, she is not saying you are a bad person. She is simply saying the prose is a little flat, you can liven it up by adding more details, changing the rhythm or cutting out the extra adverbs. In fact we can even ask her to clarify, to be more specific. Even though workshop can feel like the end of the world. It isn’t. There is always an hour from now. There is always tomorrow.
And so in the real world when we are confronted by our loved ones and co-workers who are saying things that we don’t believe are true, or who hold different political ideas and social values or they are telling us how selfish we are in relationship, how we take and take and give so little back, and each time they open their mouths and say things like – Climate change is fake news, or we need to get rid of abortion rights – you want to give them the finger, walk away, slam the door, hang up the phone. Because all you can think of are the fires raging through California and the super storms flooding cities all over the country, islands that are disappearing, the million things you do that your girlfriend or boyfriend doesn’t give you credit for. And as they are talking and talking all you want is for them to just disappear right in front of your eyes.
But what if you could practice deep listening in this moment? What if you took as many breaths as you needed until you were calm enough to bring yourself into your heart? What if you turned to them with curiosity instead of walking away? What if with as much patience and compassion for yourself as you could muster, you could say to them, tell me more, please explain? And what if with an open and relaxed face, and an undefended posture, you could extend to this loved one or this stranger who is making you crazy right now, the same kind of empathy you bring to your characters, a willingness to know all sides of their story. What if you listened in this way that says – though my ideas or my needs are important it’s not necessary to bring them up now? What if you could put aside the urge to fix or judge or disagree, and just tune in instead, in this full-bodied way that attempts to acknowledge the value of what’s been said and trusting that whatever they say, it is coming from someplace deep in their experience?
We don’t have to agree with the other person. We don’t have to believe them. We don’t have to fix anything. In our attentive listening, we are simply saying – I understand what you are saying and how you feel about it; I’m not judging you. I am simply here fully present to what you are saying and feeling.
On account of what they are saying, we may encounter the unexpected, which might expand our worldview. Or maybe not. But your listening gives the other person an opportunity to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel respected and to feel valued. And when they feel that way, it is often easier for them to listen to you as you voice your own opposing perspectives.
Deep Listening can often lead to right speech and right action. We must listen before we act. We must not slouch in our efforts to fight for climate and food and housing justice. We must not slouch in our efforts to fight for racial and gender and wage justice. When worshippers at synagogues and black churches and mosques are killed we must act. When lawmakers turn back progress for women and people of color and workers we must act. And we must also listen. We must find out why they are killing us in our places of workshop? Why are they killing us in our schools? Why are they poisoning our food and our water? Why they are taking away our rights? And we must listen below the sound bites and between the lines and under the surfaces and beyond the fluff. We must listen to their emotions where the truth often lies. We must find out. We must know. Otherwise we will not be able to solve or heal the problems that ail us. It is only by listening that we can take the next right step toward our evolution.
Every conflict invites an opportunity for understanding. But we must be willing to turn toward the other, invite dialogue, stay and stay in the hot seat, with as much self-compassion as we can muster, until it cools, until we cool, because there is immense victory in listening and there is reverence too.
17 January, 2020
MEL, 22, is alone a rehearsal space in NYC. She holds her phone in her hand. She is waiting for someone. After a few beats, STEVE, 40s, enters. Whenever possible, Steve should cut off the end of Mel’s sentences. Mel immediately stands to greet Steve.
MEL
Hey man, thanks for meeting me. I know you’re busy I really/
STEVE
/Its no problem.
MEL
/appreciate it.
STEVE
Did you want to run the scene before rehearsal?
MEL
No, um, I think the scene is fine. I just wanted to check in with you before everyone else gets here –
STEVE
If we’re not going to run the scene do you mind if I eat? I’m starved. I don’t want to work on an empty stomach.
MEL
Oh uh, no that’s fine. Go ahead.
Steve pulls a large container of noodle soup out of his bag. As Mel begins to speak, he eats, concentrating more on the food than on her.
STEVE
So what did you want to talk about
MEL
Um. I mean I guess this is a little awkward but – I think I just need to be up front and say it like, right away.
STEVE
Ok.
MEL
Ok so. Um. I just want to go over what happened last night.
STEVE
Go ahead.
MEL
Well – I thought that it got off to a good start – I mean I thought that it was helpful. To be working on our backstory and our given circumstances and stuff.
STEVE
Mmmhmm.
MEL
And like I said – I just was feeling like, I couldn’t quite get into the character’s skin, and I know I said that I wanted to work on discovering our shared history or whatever. So I know that its what I said I wanted to do and I was really grateful that you offered to help me. But I just – the reason that I stopped answering was that….It was just getting a little intense?
STEVE
Well, its an intense play, don’t you think?
MEL
Well yeah but….I think there might have been a miscommunication.
STEVE
What do you mean.
MEL
Well when you said you were going to be texting me in character, I guess….I guess I just got confused about what I was supposed to do.
STEVE
Confused how.
MEL
Well at first it was like – I know that our characters have this relationship thats uh….sexual? and I was happy to go there with you, but I was just a little surprised at how – I guess, I didn’t expect you to be so explicit?
STEVE
Explicit?
MEL
I guess, graphic? I –
STEVE
Mel you said you wanted to be up front, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
MEL
I just think it was, you know. Inappropriate. For you to ask me to do that with you. I understand that you’re like, Method or, whatever and I respect that. But I think at a certain point it – it crossed a line, and – I just wanted to say something.
STEVE
Well. I’m sorry that you feel that way. But I fail to see what line I crossed.
MEL
….You asked me to…. send you a…..
STEVE
….
MEL
You asked me to send you a nude.
STEVE
No I didn’t.
MEL
….I have the text right here
STEVE
Mel. I thought you understood the exercise.
MEL
…I did understand the exercise, and what I’m saying is the exercise crossed the line.
STEVE
I asked you if you were willing to try an exercise that would allow you to take a deep dive into your character’s psyche. You said yes.
MEL
Yeah, I wanted to go into MY character’s psyche. I don’t see why you needed to see me naked when its my character.
STEVE
I didn’t want to see you naked.
MEL
…do you want me to read you the text?
STEVE
Whatever I may have said in character has nothing to do with me.
MEL
….okay but can you see how it was a little confusing? Like how was I supposed to respond?
STEVE
How would your character have responded?
MEL
….see this is what I mean, because in character she probably would have… sent the nude but like….was I supposed to google search images of naked women? Because I’m never…I wasn’t gonna send you a –
STEVE
Ok Mel. You can stop.
MEL
Stop what?
STEVE
Mel, you’re clearly in over your head here. You’re young, you’re inexperienced.
MEL
Well I guess so but – I just don’t see how anyone could have responded to that –
STEVE
Mel. You asked me for help. You said you were having trouble connecting to the character and that you wanted help, actor to actor. Do you remember that?
MEL
I remember that, yeah
STEVE
So I told you I had an idea of how we could connect. To the characters. Together. And you said you were willing to trust me.
MEL
I did trust you, but I didn’t understand that you were suggesting that we sext in character.
STEVE
I think we’re done here, Mel.
MEL
Do you think I’m stupid? Do people really fall for this?
STEVE
Fall for what, Mel.
MEL
How many other girls have you offered to “help?”
STEVE
I have coached many young people who have crossed paths with me. Some of them are cut out for my coaching. Some are not. Perhaps you belong in the latter category.
MEL
Steve –
STEVE
I think you should consider very carefully whether or not you want to continue this conversation.
MEL
Excuse me?
STEVE
What do you hope to accomplish? What would you like me to admit?
MEL
That you fucking – propositioned me for nudes.
STEVE
Prove it.
Mel Stares at him. She opens her phone and begins to read the message she has cued up on the screen.
MEL
“I want you to show me. Show me that you’re wet for me. I want to see you. I want to see your body.”
STEVE
It was part of the exercise, Mel.
MEL
(continues reading) “I am hard for you. Do you want to see how hard I am?
STEVE
I don’t see the problem here. I was clearly in character.
MEL
Clearly in – What was I supposed to say to that? Were you going to send me a picture of your dick?? How was I supposed to answer –
STEVE
“I’m picturing you fucking me”
MEL
…what?
Steve pulls out his phone, opens their text conversation, and begins to read aloud
STEVE
Your message. 10:25 PM. “I’m picturing you fucking me, and I want you to fuck me”
MEL
….that’s different
STEVE
Oh, Mel
MEL
That is totally different. You asked me what my objective is at the top of the scene. That is literally my character’s objective.
STEVE
No, you chose that objective.
MEL
Yes – because thats what HAPPENS IN THE PLAY. Our characters have sex IN THE PLAY.
STEVE
Mel, you need to calm down. You’re confused. I did not touch you. I did not hurt you. All you have are some texts that are very clearly based in the given circumstances of the play. I’m sorry that you misunderstood them.
MEL
Are you kidding me? I only said that picturing you fucking me thing because YOU said to be as bold as possible, that my character would be BOLD with her SEXUALITY
STEVE
You’re not listening to your own argument. You just agreed that we were in character.
MEL
I never said we weren’t in character, I just said you crossed a LINE
STEVE
If I crossed a line you crossed it first by using explicitly sexual language
MEL
What???
STEVE
I take the craft very seriously, Mel. Its my job to take in what you’re saying and let it come out as truthful behavior.
MEL
Don’t fucking – Stanislavsky me right now.
STEVE
If you have trouble differentiating between reality and the work than I suggest you reconsider your future in this business.
MEL
I can’t believe –
STEVE
I’m glad you brought this to my attention. I should have known better than to offer you my help. I knew it was a mistake for the production to bring you on. You’re too young, you don’t take the craft seriously
MEL
If taking acting seriously means being sexually harassed by gross dudes on power trips than yeah, I guess I DON’T.
STEVE
(very quietly) I think you should think long and hard about what you just said.
MEL
Steve.
STEVE
If you mean to cry sexual harassment I think you should be very careful about how you proceed.
MEL
I literally have the texts right here, Steve.
STEVE
Yes. You have texts. Instigated per your request.
MEL
I never asked for – you’re the one who wanted to be my fucking – mentor, to take me under your fucking WING because you SAW yourself in me
STEVE
I invited you into my process and it was clearly too much for you.
MEL
You’re a fucking pervert.
Steve grabs her arm. It is the first time they have made physical contact in the play.
STEVE
You will never. Ever. Be able to prove this. I am a well known actor. People in this town can’t get enough of me. Do you know how respected I am? You are a child who was invited into this production by the good grace of our director, with whom I will surely be speaking about your professionalism. That you are difficult to work with. That you aren’t taking the job seriously. Do you understand me? Is that what you want? Mel, is that what you want?
Mel is silent. She pulls her arm away. They stand there for a long moment.
MEL
I’m going to wait outside until everyone gets here.
STEVE
Good Girl.
Mel opens her mouth as if to say Fuck You. She thinks better of it. She pulls out her phone and looking directly into Steve’s eyes she takes a screenshot of the text message. The distinct noise that is made when an iPhone makes a screenshot is heard loudly in the room. Mel Exits.
END OF PLAY.
17 January, 2020
Production History:
Ryan and Alice? had its world premiere on June 2, 2016 at the Cincy Fringe Festival, Cincinnati, OH (Andrew Hungerford, Artistic Director). It was directed by Emma Miller; it was produced by Carly Mungovan. The cast was as follows:
ALICE…Julia Greer
RYAN…Aaron Lynn
Characters:
ALICE (19, female)
RYAN (22, male)
Setting: A bathroom during a shitty apartment party, some distance outside Louisville, KY.
A (/) in the dialogue indicates when the next character should begin their line.
—
A bathroom in an apartment just outside of Louisville. A toilet. A sink with drawers. A mirror covered in Post-It notes. A bathtub.
A house party winds down just outside the bathroom.
Ryan, 22, sits on the edge of the tub, loathing everything about his current situation except the beer in his hand. He sits for a while.
Eventually, Ryan starts snooping – more out of boredom than curiosity. He finds some lotion, puts it on, smells it, decides he hates it. He finds a pill bottle, shakes it, pockets it. He finds a curling iron. He snaps the curling iron a few times – clipping it to things, then starts playing with it as if it were a light saber. He makes the noises.
RYAN
Whomm! Whomm! “Attachment leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the DARK SIDE.” Whomm!
Alice, 19, enters and blankly watches. Ryan finally turns to see her.
RYAN
OCCUPIED!!
ALICE
What are you doing?
RYAN
Nothing. Just washing my hands.
ALICE
That’s my curling iron.
RYAN
Sorry. I’ll just uh–
I was– I washed my hands.
ALICE
Really?
RYAN
Yeah.
ALICE
Was it difficult?
RYAN
What? No.
ALICE
I just thought it would be difficult to wash your hands considering the sink’s water line broke yesterday.
RYAN
Oh.
ALICE
It’s why there’s a “Do Not Enter” sign on the door.
RYAN
I thought that was just, uh, decoration.
ALICE
Well it’s not. The bathroom is off-limits to the party, it’s not somewhere for you to like, LARP, or whatever.
RYAN
I wasn’t LARPING, I–
Sorry. Parties aren’t really my thing.
ALICE
But bathrooms are?
RYAN
Ha. Ha.
ALICE
Who do you even know here?
RYAN
Jeremy.
ALICE
…?
RYAN
My cousin. Tall guy, big arms?
Neck tattoo?
ALICE
That guy.
RYAN
We’re not that close. He brought me to be his wingman. His idea. I kinda owe him.
ALICE
You wingman by hiding in the bathroom? Effective.
RYAN
Thanks for the advice.
ALICE
Everyone’s basically left now, you can probably…
RYAN
Right. Well. Have a good… Night.
ALICE
And to you.
Ryan opens the door and abruptly comes back in.
ALICE
Um. Excuse me!
RYAN
Sex on the couch.
ALICE
Uh, no thanks!
RYAN
Ha. No. Sex on the couch.
Alice opens the door to check.
ALICE
Oh my God.
RYAN
Looks like my wingmanning worked after all!
ALICE
Gross.
RYAN
Victory is mine! Or, his. He’s the one actually getting laid.
ALICE
She must think I’m in my room. And obviously no one thought you were just creeping in the bathroom.
RYAN
Hey, I — parties aren’t really my thing.
ALICE
What is your thing?
RYAN
I don’t know. I guess I don’t have a thing.
Alice laughs.
RYAN
I have a thing, okay?!
Are we gonna…
ALICE
What?
RYAN
Shouldn’t you, like, go talk to your roommate?
ALICE
Kristina? No.
RYAN
Okay then…
ALICE
I’m just subletting for the summer – I don’t really know her.
RYAN
Ah.
ALICE
Not well enough to walk in on her, like, indisposed anyway.
RYAN
Great.
ALICE
Can’t you–? He’s your cousin.
RYAN
Oh no no. No. He’d kill me for interrupting. And what’s happening out there is basically mission accomplished for me as tonight’s designated wingman.
ALICE
Gross.
RYAN
So.
Ryan sits on the toilet.
ALICE
So??
RYAN
We wait it out? If you’re really not going to go talk to your roommate.
ALICE
No.
RYAN
Then…
ALICE
In the bathroom??
RYAN
I guess.
Alice starts breathing.
RYAN
You okay?
ALICE
Yes. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.
Alice gets a hold of her breathing.
Silence. Neither one knows what to do.
Ryan starts playing with the toilet paper roll. It unravels.
ALICE
Could you not?
RYAN
Sorry.
ALICE
I have to pay for that.
RYAN
Sorry.
ALICE
People don’t tell you you have to buy toilet paper in the real world. You just come home one day really needing to pee and you’re fucked. Though I guess you wouldn’t have that problem, being a guy.
RYAN
Yeah. Sorry.
ALICE
That’s the first roll of toilet paper I ever bought, and it’s like a symbol of me doing this all on my own and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t waste it.
RYAN
Your first ever?
ALICE
Yeah.
RYAN
How momentous.
You should, uh, you should frame a square like people do with the first dollar they earn.
ALICE
I get direct deposit.
RYAN
No, I know, it was a–. Whatever, it doesn’t–. Sorry.
Silence. More silence.
RYAN ALICE
(simultaneously) (simultaneously)
Why can’t you– Where are you–
ALICE
Ha, what / were you
RYAN
Sorry, I–
ALICE
Go ahead.
RYAN
No, it’s–
Silence.
Alice starts breathing. Ryan notices, but doesn’t say anything.
The breathing dies down.
Finally:
RYAN
Really wish I had some weed.
ALICE
Um…?
RYAN
This is just a really weird and tense… I feel uncomfortable and I think weed would help.
ALICE
Oh.
RYAN
You know?
ALICE
Yeah.
Well no. I’ve never done it before.
Silence.
ALICE (CONT.)
Though this seems like an excellent time to start.
RYAN
You don’t ‘do drugs’?
ALICE
No.
RYAN
Oh.
ALICE
I’m not like against it, I just haven’t yet.
RYAN
Okay.
ALICE
Why, do I look like I do drugs?
RYAN
…
ALICE
Wow, you are such an asshole.
Alice puts her head between her knees.
Breathing.
Breathing.
Breathing.
RYAN
Shit, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to—
ALICE
I’M IN A FIELD!
RYAN
What?
ALICE
I’M IN A WIDE OPEN FIELD!
RYAN
You’re in a bathroom.
Breathing harder.
ALICE
Shut up! Idiot!
RYAN
What did I do?
ALICE
I need to be in a field. I need a minute. I need– I need–
She crawls over to the sink drawers, looking for something.
Breathing.
RYAN
What’s happening?
ALICE
I have–. I just need to find–.
Where the fuck?
Breathing.
RYAN
What’s wrong?
ALICE
I need–. Medicine. My pills.
BREATHING.
RYAN
…
!!!
Shit! These?
Ryan produces the pills from his pocket.
ALICE
Yes!! WHY–???
Struggling to breathe.
RYAN
Fuck. Here. How many?
Alice holds up two fingers. Ryan gives her two of the pills. He goes to the sink to get her water, forgetting it’s broken.
RYAN
Shit! Broken fucking sink.
He settles on his beer.
ALICE
???
RYAN
I know you’re not supposed to…pills with alcohol. But this seems like–. Like really fucking urgent!!
Alice downs the pills. Pause.
ALICE
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??
Breathing.
RYAN
Do you feel– Is it better?
ALICE
WHY WOULD YOU TAKE / MY MEDICINE!
Coughing.
RYAN
Shh! Stop! Don’t yell.
He clasps his hand over her mouth. She squirms. He holds her down.
RYAN
Shhhhh. Breathe. Through your nose.
How’s your heart? Is it beating real fast?
Is your heart beating real fast??
Alice stops struggling and nods her head, yes.
RYAN
Do you feel nauseous? Dizzy?
Alice shakes her head, no.
RYAN
You’re going to be okay. Keep breathing.
We can just sit here.
He takes his hand off her mouth.
Silence. Some time passes.
ALICE
Thanks? But also, what the fuck??
RYAN
I know – I know –
ALICE
That’s really fucked up. To take someone / else’s meds.
RYAN
I know. Really fucked up.
ALICE
Is that something you like, do? Are you like, an addict?
RYAN
No! No. I just thought – this has been a really fucking weird time for me? Like in my life?
ALICE
I know what you mean – some psycho stranger just stole my anxiety medication.
RYAN
It was just…stupid!! Really stupid! I didn’t even look at what they were.
…
I was going to put them back.
ALICE
No you weren’t.
RYAN
Do you get panic attacks a lot?
ALICE
Do you help people through panic attacks a lot?
RYAN
I asked you first.
ALICE
Sorry, Stranger In My Bathroom. We’re not going down that road.
Pause.
RYAN
You know when you’re old enough to look at your parents and objectively know they’re crazy? And all of a sudden they’re the ones that need to be taken care of? Like, if you were them you’d be able to make much better decisions about their lives?
ALICE
No.
RYAN
What?
ALICE
I’ve never felt that way. My parents are amazing.
RYAN
Oh. Cool.
Pause.
RYAN
You sound better. You’ll probably be okay now.
ALICE
Not likely.
RYAN
Why?
ALICE
I’m stuck in a bathroom.
RYAN
Oh, is it like a claustrophic thing?
ALICE
No, literally just…bathrooms. They kinda freak me out like a lot. I know that sounds really weird but it’s very real and I don’t like the prospect of being trapped in one.
RYAN
Is that a common… fear?
ALICE
I don’t know. Probably not. Like you’re so perfect. Klepto.
RYAN
I didn’t mean common like normal…
ALICE
I don’t know why it’s bathrooms, okay? It’s not my fault.
RYAN
No of course.
ALICE
And it’s not like I was molested in a bathroom as a child or anything.
RYAN
Well that’s…good?
ALICE
I read online that trauma can be passed down through genes that are related to the regulation of stress hormones. So like, if my great-grandmother went through something really traumatic, the effects could show up in my genes.
RYAN
That’s kind of a mindfuck.
ALICE
I know!
Maybe I have Holocaust genes.
Baby pause.
RYAN
That would be so cool.
ALICE
What?
RYAN
I mean, the Holocaust was terrible and a tragedy and Hitler and like, stuff...!
ALICE
Uh, yeah. It was unconscionable.
RYAN
But it was Important. “Capitol I” Important. It would be so cool to know you were connected, like in blood or genes or whatever, to something “Capitol I” Important.
ALICE
But the Holocaust?
RYAN
The Holocaust. Or the Trail of Tears! Or the Plague?
Beat.
ALICE
So… She must think I’m in my room.
RYAN
Who?
ALICE
Kristina. My roommate. On the couch.
RYAN
Right.
ALICE
She wouldn’t just be having sex out there if she knew we were stuck in here. I think. I don’t actually know. She’s a little weird.
RYAN
Yeah, these motivational notes by the mirror are pretty pathetic.
Ryan pulls off a Post-It note and reads:
RYAN (CONT.)
“Confidence is sexy, but a good hair day doesn’t hurt!”
ALICE
Those are mine.
RYAN
Shit.
Ryan carefully returns the Post-It to its place.
RYAN (CONT.)
So…how’s she weird?
ALICE
Um… well she wears a lot of body glitter because apparently the ‘90s are back, and when she washes it off it fucks up our sink.
RYAN
Body glitter? What is she, a stripper?
ALICE
No, she’s a waitress.
RYAN
Oh. Where?
ALICE
Some place by the freeway.
Ryan starts laughing.
Beat.
ALICE
Oh my GOD. Is she a stripper? Am I living with a stripper??
RYAN
Hahaha, shit. I think you might be.
ALICE
Oh my God. I have to figure this out.
RYAN
How?
ALICE
I don’t know. Clues. Context clues!
RYAN
Seen any tassels lying around?
ALICE
Gross.
RYAN
Does she pay the rent in vertically folded singles?
ALICE
I don’t know, maybe!
RYAN
Does she come home from work covered in a musk of sad, lonely men?
ALICE
Stop!
RYAN
I could go all day!
ALICE
I know, so stop.
RYAN
I thought you wanted to know.
ALICE
Sometimes you’re better off not knowing.
RYAN
Sometimes you are better off not knowing.
ALICE
What were we talking about before this?
RYAN
Your roommate being weird.
ALICE
My roommate being weird. And maybe a stripper. And I was just pissed that she alphabetizes the pantry!
RYAN
That doesn’t seem so weird.
ALICE
No, like the spices aren’t under “s” for spices, they’re categorized individually. Cumin is under “c” by the chocolate chips and paprika is under “p” by the potatoes. That’s not how I like things.
RYAN
Ok, but how often do you actually use paprika?
ALICE
All the time. I’m a chef.
RYAN
How old are you?
ALICE
RYAN
And you’re already a chef?
ALICE
Well, I’m not really a chef, I’m studying to be a chef. But my instructor says at some point you just gotta start taking yourself seriously and say you’re a chef. I’m working in a kitchen this summer – just chopping vegetables and shit but, still it’s a kitchen. So now, I’m a chef!
Kind of. Now that I say it out loud it sounds kind of stupid.
RYAN
Man, for you being a chef, the snacks here really sucked.
ALICE
???????
Ryan starts laughing – it was a joke.
ALICE
You’re pretty weird.
RYAN
Yeah.
Pause.
ALICE
I was doing really well. No attacks. Then I get sexiled in a bathroom.
RYAN
Maybe if we made a big noise they’d realize we were / here and
ALICE
We could leave! Yeah, okay let’s do it.
RYAN
Cool.
ALICE
O-kay!!
RYAN
Heh – when we come out together they’ll probably think we were doing it in here.
ALICE
In the bathroom?
RYAN
You’ve never had sex in a bathroom?
Beat.
ALICE
What kind of noise should we make?
RYAN
Uh… We could jump? On three?
ALICE
Sure.
RYAN
Okay.
One, two, three!
They jump. Thud.
Silence.
They wait.
RYAN
(whispering)
What now?
They go to the door to listen. They don’t really both fit, but they try.
ALICE
I can’t hear anything.
RYAN
Me neither.
ALICE
I suppose one of us should check to see if they stopped.
…
RYAN
…
ALICE
Could you?
RYAN
Oh. Right. Okay.
He cracks the door as little as possible.
RYAN
Question: Does your roommate keep her condoms in here or somewhere out there?
ALICE
I don’t know!
Baby pause.
Alice and Ryan search the bathroom drawers.
ALICE
Nothing.
Ryan unearths a pair of rhinestone pasties.
RYAN
Why do you keep fancy stickers in the bathroom?
ALICE
Oh my God.
RYAN
What?
ALICE
Oh my GOD. Those aren’t stickers!
RYAN
What then!
ALICE
They’re context clues.
RYAN
What? Oh!! Shit!
ALICE
They’re pasties.
RYAN
Oh.
What’s a pasty?
ALICE
Girls use them to cover their nipples when they’re naked.
RYAN
Aahh! Gross!
Ryan tries to throw them down, but they stick to his hands.
ALICE
Perfect. I officially live with a stripper.
RYAN
Bleh! I don’t wanna get some stripper nipple rash!
ALICE
You’ll be fine.
RYAN
Can herpes be transferred through nipples?
ALICE
No! Calm down.
RYAN
Fuck these things!
He finally gets them off his hands.
RYAN (CONT.)
Ha! Fuck you, pasties!
ALICE
Did you find her condoms or not?
RYAN
…
ALICE
Fuuuuck.
RYAN
You’ll be okay?
ALICE
Yeah. I’ll just…
I’m conquering my fears!
They settle in.
A long silence.
Alice starts breathing.
RYAN
Um…
ALICE
I think talking helped. Earlier.
RYAN
Okay. Uhh…
What…
How…
…
Ask me a question.
ALICE
Isn’t it weird how when two people – a guy and a girl – are in a room together alone there’s just the possibility of sex, like, inherently? Like, that’s all you need?
RYAN
Uhhh- I-
ALICE
Oh no no no this has nothing to do with you, it’s like a larger observation. So the topic, meaning sex, has to be breached in a way / of asserting–
RYAN
I think you mean broached.
ALICE
What?
RYAN
Topics aren’t breached, they’re broached. Contracts are breached. And trust. And premises.
ALICE
Okay. Whatever. So the topic has to be broached in a way of saying that sex is not going to happen? Like, until you say it’s not going to happen it’s silently out there as a possibility, which I think is really fucked up when you think about consent issues and gender issues and like, if another woman were trapped in here with me she would not have to bring up sex as a way of saying we’re not going to do it like you did earlier.
RYAN
Wait, when?
ALICE
Your joke about us coming out of the bathroom and them thinking we were in here having sex.
RYAN
That’s not why I said that. To reinforce or challenge gender stereotypes–. Wait what was the question?
ALICE
Nevermind.
Pause
ALICE (CONT.)
What are your hopes and dreams?!
RYAN
What?
ALICE
I’m changing my question: What are your hopes and dreams?
RYAN
That’s a “go big or go home” kind of question.
ALICE
I need the distraction.
RYAN
Can we start with something easier? Not hopes and dreams, or gender politics, or… world peace?
ALICE
Fine. We established I’m 19…
RYAN
ALICE
Cool. Are you from here?
RYAN
No. I’m just visiting. I don’t live here.
ALICE
Me neither! Well, for the summer but…
RYAN
I live in San Francisco.
ALICE
Ugh, that’s so cool. I’m going to open a restaurant there one day!
RYAN
Really?
ALICE
Mhmm. My hopes and dreams.
RYAN
That’s pretty awesome.
ALICE
Thanks.
So if you live in San Francisco what are you doing here?
RYAN
Oh. Uh. Just hanging out.
ALICE
With your cousin?
RYAN
Right.
ALICE
How long are you staying?
RYAN
Oh. I don’t know. Until…
…
ALICE
Until…?
RYAN
Until I’m done…hanging.
ALICE
Cool.
RYAN
Yeah.
Until.
Yeah.
…
What kind of food do you cook?
ALICE
…?
French.
RYAN
Why French?
ALICE
It’s classic. Coq au vin, confit de canard…
RYAN
All those stinky cheeses?
ALICE
Mmm. Camembert!
RYAN
And frog legs?
ALICE
Oh yeah. Frog legs are the best.
RYAN
I think they’re pretty gross.
ALICE
Well you haven’t had them the way I prepare them.
RYAN
That’s true.
ALICE
Maybe they’d broaden your horizons.
RYAN
Maybe.
A long silence.
ALICE
Sorry our place is kind of a shit hole.
RYAN
Oh, no. It’s nice.
ALICE
No, it’s a shit hole.
RYAN
Hey, you’ve got…
Ryan looks around trying to find something to compliment. It’s hard.
RYAN (CONT.)
A toothbrush holder! People who live in shit holes are definitely edge-of-the-sink types when it comes to their toothbrushes.
ALICE
Thanks. I couldn’t afford a place actually in Louisville.
RYAN
Sure.
ALICE
Hence the shit hole. At least the commute’s not that bad.
RYAN
Yeah – you just have the crazy roommate who has sex on a couch you’ll spend the rest of the summer avoiding.
ALICE
I don’t know how long I can avoid someone I live with.
RYAN
I meant the couch.
Alice gets it.
ALICE
Oh, ha.
It’ll all be worth it though, for this restaurant. The executive chef is totally insane but he’s supposed to be this like, genius with Asian fusion.
RYAN
Cool. So. Gone out much yet?
ALICE
No. Not yet.
RYAN
You don’t know anyone here?
ALICE
No. Why? Are you gonna murder me in my own bathroom and flush the evidence down the toilet before my roommate comes up for air from your neck tattoo cousin?
RYAN
What?! No!
That’s really fucked up.
ALICE
No I don’t know anyone here. I mean, there’s the people at the restaurant but, I haven’t gotten like, in, with them yet.
RYAN
Oh, right.
ALICE
So when Kristina was like, “We’re having a party, buy chips,” I didn’t fight her on it. I bought the chips. Three kinds.
RYAN
But you didn’t meet anyone?
ALICE
No, it’s so awkward now, like, when you’re not seven, trying to make friends.
RYAN
Definitely.
ALICE
I miss when two kids could sit drinking juice boxes and as long as one didn’t pull the other’s hair that meant they were friends.
RYAN
Or Dunkaroos. Remember Dunkaroos?
ALICE
Uh, YES. Dunkaroos were THE SHIT. I had them in my lunch every day.
RYAN
Seven year old me would have been jealous.
ALICE
Seven year old me wouldn’t have cared. Dunkaroos are too good to share.
RYAN
Damn!
ALICE
I’m not sorry.
RYAN
Maybe if you guys had had juice boxes here.
ALICE
Ha, maybe.
I thought one guy was being really nice, but then I caught him checking out my boobs like four times!
RYAN
Yikes.
Ryan is reminded to check out her boobs.
ALICE
I know! It’s like, how am I just expected to carry on the conversation about your engineering internship while pretending you’re not currently picturing me naked!?
RYAN
Engineering internship? Shit that sounds boring.
ALICE
Yeah. He was probably too nice for me anyway. Or too like, like he’d celebrate the one month anniversary of us being friends by posting some inspirational quote about friendship to my Facebook wall.
RYAN
God that sounds terrible.
ALICE
Yeah.
RYAN
I bet you only date musicians.
ALICE
What?!
RYAN
I bet you do.
ALICE
You’re wrong!
RYAN
You seem the type.
ALICE
I’m not a type, I’m a person! Fuck you!
RYAN
You haven’t dated a slew of musicians?
ALICE
…
No.
RYAN
Mmmkay.
ALICE
I bet you only date beer commercial girls. You seem the type.
RYAN
I don’t even know what that means.
ALICE
You know, those girls that are like gorgeous and can rattle off stats about quarterbacks and linebacks and half…backs? Are they all backs? What are they in back of?
RYAN
You’re forgetting safeties, ends, receivers – and football positions actually come from rugby where players were either forwards or backs – in reference to their relation to the main line – and you’re wrong.
ALICE
Yeah, I get it.
RYAN
No. I don’t date beer commercial girls.
ALICE
Oh.
RYAN
I don’t date anybody.
ALICE
Oh. Why not?
RYAN
It’s hard.
ALICE
Dating is difficult for everyone.
RYAN
It feels more difficult for me.
ALICE
Well. I never would have guessed.
RYAN
Thanks.
ALICE
I mean. You’re a fairly attractive person and you just never guess that attractive people are virgins.
RYAN
Wait wait whoa I’m not a virgin!
ALICE
Oh.
RYAN
Not even close.
ALICE
“Not even close?”
RYAN
I’ve had sex with plenty of — with an appropriate number of women.
ALICE
Oh, well, good for you then?
RYAN
Like good sex. To completion.
ALICE
Stop! Gross!! I do not want to hear about your sex life.
RYAN
You brought it up!
ALICE
No I — I did, didn’t I?
RYAN
You called me a virgin.
ALICE
Right.
RYAN
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a virgin.
ALICE
Right!
RYAN
It’s just that I’m not one because I’ve had sex with women.
ALICE
Right.
RYAN
Are you…?
ALICE
No!
RYAN
Not that that would be–
ALICE
I’m not a virgin.
RYAN
Okay.
ALICE
I’m actually very good!
RYAN
I’m very good!
ALICE
Good!
…
RYAN
…?
Silence.
RYAN (CONT.)
I did date one girl, once.
ALICE
Yeah?
RYAN
Yeah. In middle school if that counts.
ALICE
It can count.
RYAN
Cool.
ALICE
What was her name?
RYAN
Jennifer Lawrence.
ALICE
Bahahahahaha!
RYAN
No really Jennifer Lawrence.
ALICE
She had the same name as Jennifer Lawrence?
RYAN
No, I dated Jennifer Lawrence. In middle school. At camp.
ALICE
Haha, no. Fuck that.
RYAN
Yeah. She’s from here. Louisville. For like three summers in a row my parents sent me to live here with my aunt and uncle, and one summer my aunt sent us to Camp Kentuckiana.
ALICE
You’re not kidding.
RYAN
When Jeremy gets out from under your roommate you can ask him. He was there!
ALICE
Oh my God. This is really weird.
RYAN
(bragging)
Not to brag but at the end of the week, we uh, we kissed.
ALICE
You kissed J-Law?!?!
RYAN
She wasn’t J-Law, she was Jenn my camp girlfriend. She was actually kind of mean.
ALICE
This is so weird. Like actually fucking insane.
RYAN
Yeah, I guess.
ALICE
She has an Oscar!
RYAN
Yeah.
ALICE
You’ve dated an Oscar winner!
RYAN
Yeah!
ALICE
Well, not really dated right? It was a week at camp in middle school.
RYAN
Hey! You said it could count! No take backs!
ALICE
Fine, fine, you’re right.
RYAN
Thank you.
ALICE
Do you still like, talk to her?
RYAN
No! It was one week when we were 14. I doubt she even remembers.
ALICE
What if she does? What if you’re like, meant to be and every year she’s hoping that fat kid from camp gets in contact with her?
RYAN
Fat kid?
ALICE
I always picture kids at camp being fat.
RYAN
That’s really fucking weird.
ALICE
Like, with their baby fat!
RYAN
Still really weird.
ALICE
Whatever! What if Jennifer Lawrence is hoping the average-sized kid from camp gets in contact with her!
RYAN
I highly doubt that’s the case.
ALICE
But what if it was?
RYAN
It’s not. Trust me.
ALICE
But you never know!
RYAN
I don’t think she’s pining over some chubby 14 year old she cheated on!!
Beat.
ALICE
Oh.
RYAN
Yeah.
ALICE
So you were fat.
RYAN
That’s not– that’s not the fucking point!!
ALICE
I know! Chill!
RYAN
No. I don’t want to “chill.” It was awful.
ALICE
Are you actually complaining about your middle school relationship with Jennifer Lawrence?
RYAN
Yes!
ALICE
That’s your dark relationship past?
RYAN
The whole camp knew. The whole camp knew and no one told me. They just laughed.
ALICE
They laughed at the fat kid?
RYAN
Whatever. Nevermind.
ALICE
No, hey, I’m sorry. This is all just a lot to take in. I won’t laugh. Go ahead.
RYAN
It was the final bonfire on the last night of camp. We said we’d meet there at 7. I put on my best bucket hat and got there just as they opened the marshmallows.
After being distracted by the prospect of smores, I saw her. Sitting on a log. With fucking TIMMY ANDREWS!
ALICE
No!
RYAN
And she just kissed him! In front of everyone! And I got so mad that I threw the squirrel in the bonfire!
ALICE
You threw a squirrel in the bonfire?!?!
RYAN
Not a squirrel.
I had made her a little squirrel figurine out of pine cones in Arts and Crafts.
ALICE
Oh. Sure.
RYAN
And I threw it in the bonfire and everyone laughed.
ALICE
That really does suck.
RYAN
I don’t get cheating. I mean, if you want to be with someone else, fine. Just tell the person first so you aren’t lying.
ALICE
Right.
RYAN
And fucking Timmy Andrews! He knew she was my camp girlfriend! And he just— betrayed me!
ALICE
Fucking Timmy Andrews.
RYAN
I mean, we were Kentuckiana Forest Buddies together!
ALICE
Oh no!
RYAN
I could never do that, you know? I could never betray a Forest Buddy.
ALICE
Yeah.
RYAN
But really, it was her. She’s responsible. You just gotta be up front about these things, you know?
ALICE
Yes.
Beat.
ALICE (CONT.)
Yeah. Like. Just be up front. Like, maybe to avoid cheating and awkwardness and stuff people should have to go around with signs on them that say their relationship status like, “I have a boyfriend!”
RYAN
Exactly!!
Alice mimes the sign for herself.
ALICE (CONT.)
I have a boyfriend.
Beat.
RYAN
Cool. Didn’t ask. But cool.
Alice is temporarily mortified. Ryan gets antsy.
RYAN
Are they still going at it out there?
ALICE
I don’t know. Probably.
RYAN
I guess she’s giving him the full package.
ALICE
Hey, she’s a stripper, not a hooker.
RYAN
Better not be, Jeremy doesn’t have any money.
ALICE
Still. There’s a difference.
RYAN
Yeah, but they’re both people. Hookers are people too.
ALICE
Well yeah, all people are people.
RYAN
Right.
ALICE
Exactly.
RYAN
No, I don’t think you get what I mean.
ALICE
No, I do.
RYAN
I don’t think so.
Ryan might head for the door.
ALICE
“I really wish I had some weed.”
RYAN
…
ALICE (CONT.)
Or a juice box?
RYAN
…
I think your Post It notes on the mirror are stupid.
ALICE
Okay.
RYAN
And your party was kind of lame.
ALICE
I know.
RYAN
There were maybe 8 people here.
ALICE
I know.
RYAN
Was your boyfriend here?
ALICE
No.
RYAN
Why not?
ALICE
He’s a boyfriend from school.
RYAN
Oh.
ALICE
He was supposed to come with me this summer but his plans changed. To Maine.
RYAN
He left you?
ALICE
He didn’t like leave me. He went to Maine.
RYAN
And you were okay with that?
ALICE
No, actually.
RYAN
But you’re doing long distance? That sucks.
ALICE
We’re not doing long distance.
RYAN
So, he’s your ex-boyfriend?
ALICE
No. But it’s not long distance. Not really, when you think about it.
He thinks about it.
RYAN
Oh yeah. Now that I’ve thought about it it’s still long distance because words still mean what words mean.
ALICE
You are so simple minded.
RYAN
Oh, are you…is your arrangement open, or…?
ALICE
No.
RYAN
Then it’s closed.
ALICE
Yeah, I suppose. Yeah.
RYAN
And you’re in different places?
ALICE
Yeah.
RYAN
That’s a long distance relationship.
ALICE
No you don’t get it. We’re not long distance, we’re pre-local.
RYAN
Pre-local?
ALICE
Yeah, pre-local.
RYAN
That is the stupidest piece of shit I’ve ever heard.
ALICE
Oookay.
RYAN
No really. Of all the shit I’ve heard that one is just tops.
ALICE
You’re making it sound—
RYAN
Juvenile?
ALICE
Exactly.
RYAN
You are a teenager.
ALICE
Ugh, don’t say teenager like that.
RYAN
Like what?
ALICE
Like I own a One Direction poster.
RYAN
But it’s what you are.
ALICE
Only technically. And not for long.
RYAN
Okay?
ALICE
I mean, I’ve been in bars before.
RYAN
Oh, you’ve been in bars before!
Beat.
RYAN
So what is the very mature reason why your relationship isn’t long distance?
ALICE
We talked about it and we plan to be together for a while, so really this is just a tiny bit of time that we’re not in the same place before we are in the same place for an extended period of time. Pre-local.
RYAN
Uh-huh…
ALICE
Whatever, it’s long distance.
RYAN
Ah – ha!
ALICE
Technically. Technically it’s long distance.
RYAN
Technically. Like your teenagerism. Teenagerdom? Teenagerism?
ALICE
Yeah, I guess. Technical, but temporary.
RYAN
I was still right!
ALICE
Things change.
RYAN
They certainly do.
ALICE
All the time.
RYAN
They change to Maine, apparently!
ALICE
Yeah.
RYAN
Why?
ALICE
Oh. He decided to Bon Iver himself.
RYAN
Bon Iver?
ALICE
The singer? With the beard and the soft hipster songs?
RYAN
No, I know who Bon Iver is, but, as a verb? To Bon Iver?
ALICE
He shut himself in a cabin in the woods cut off from all civilization.
RYAN
I think that’s Henry David Thoreau-ing.
ALICE
That’s what I told him!!
RYAN
Gotta pay respect to the original!
ALICE
Exactly! But he said, no – when Bon Iver is lacking inspiration he shuts himself in a cabin in the woods and comes out with these amazing songs and that’s what he needed to do now for his music.
Beat.
RYAN
Ha!! – I fucking called it!! He’s a fucking musician!!
ALICE
Shit.
RYAN
He had to do it for his music. Ugh, he sounds like the worst!
ALICE
He’s not the worst.
RYAN
He’s probably one of those guys who when he gets to a party he stages a violent coup of the stereo thinking his musical taste is far superior and he’s like, God’s gift to the party.
ALICE
Please don’t mock him.
RYAN
And he chose Maine.
ALICE
He’s dedicated. So am I. That’s why I chose Louisville and the restaurant.
RYAN
How’s he like Maine?
ALICE
I don’t know.
RYAN
What does he say about it?
ALICE
Nothing.
RYAN
So when he calls you he just says nothing about being in Maine?
ALICE
He doesn’t call – he has to be cut off from all civilization, remember?
RYAN
You guys don’t talk?
ALICE
We’ll talk when he gets back.
RYAN
How can you be in a relationship without talking to the other person?
ALICE
We know what we mean to each other.
RYAN
You’re not in a relationship with him, you’re in a relationship with the memory of him.
ALICE
That’s a terrible thing to say.
RYAN
Not as terrible as up and leaving you.
ALICE
He didn’t like, leave me.
RYAN
He left you. He’s in Maine!
ALICE
Just for the summer!
RYAN
He’s such an asshole. You know, when they leave you – assholes – for any amount of time – they don’t really love you.
ALICE
Whoa. Where the fuck do you get off telling me who does and does not love me?
RYAN
I’m trying to help.
ALICE
Um, HOW? You’ve never been in a relationship, except for with Jennifer Fucking Lawrence when you were fourteen and fat!
Alice climbs in the bathtub and aggressively slides the shower curtain closed.
Silence.
RYAN
Boyfriends aren’t the only ones who can leave.
Beat.
ALICE
What does that mean?
RYAN
Forget it.
ALICE
If this ends with you telling me some childhood tale about your puppy running away I’m going to be so fucking pissed.
RYAN
My mom.
ALICE
So…not a puppy?
RYAN
We thought she’d show up at her sister’s. My aunt’s.
ALICE
…
Oh! Like, here?
RYAN
Yeah I’m just, I don’t know, waiting? To see if she does? It’s not a big deal. Gives me time to buy beer for my cousin with a fucking neck tattoo.
ALICE
Why’d she leave?
RYAN
I don’t know.
ALICE
Okay.
RYAN
My dad doesn’t like, hit her if that’s what / you’re thinking. He’d never.
ALICE
No, no, no I wasn’t thinking anything.
RYAN
Good.
ALICE
Maybe she has Holocaust genes too. Not that I definitely have them, but.
RYAN
No. She makes her choices. She’s responsible.
ALICE
It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love / you
RYAN
You don’t have to say that. My mom’s just an asshole.
My mom’s an asshole, and your boyfriend’s an asshole. I just wanted you to know that I get what it’s like to have to deal with…assholes.
ALICE
He’s not an asshole.
RYAN
You can do better than an asshole.
Pause.
Alice opens the shower curtain.
ALICE
You know what I think it’s time for?
RYAN
What?
ALICE
A “go big or go home” question.
RYAN
Ha, okay!
ALICE
I don’t want to talk about assholes anymore.
RYAN
Fine by me!
ALICE
So. What’s your number?
RYAN
My phone number?
ALICE
No! Your number. The number of people you’ve had sex with!
RYAN
Do you ever ask people what there favorite color is?
ALICE
Tell me about your conquests!!
RYAN
Mine is blue.
ALICE
Just how appropriate is your number?
RYAN
I don’t want to talk about other girls right now.
ALICE
Too bad. It’s your turn. I wanna hear about you gettin’ that D!
RYAN
What?
ALICE
Or, I guess in your case it would be gettin’ that V? Or P? Or C? Depending on your preferred word for lady bits.
RYAN
Now that I’ve heard you say ‘lady bits’ there’s no way I’m saying anything.
ALICE
Come on!!! How many have there been? Unless you really are a virgin…
RYAN
Eight and a half.
ALICE
Um…?
RYAN
You asked.
ALICE
So like, eight normal women and a midget?
RYAN
No!
ALICE
Eight normal women and a kid??
RYAN
No! No! You’re sick, you know that?
ALICE
Whatever. Explain.
RYAN
Fuck. I only count it as a whole if the woman also… you know?
ALICE
So you’ve had sex with nine women – presumably one night stands as the only girl you’ve dated was a fourteen year old Jennifer Lawrence…
RYAN
Correct.
ALICE
So you’ve had nine one night stands and you think eight of the nine came on the first try?
RYAN
Hey, no one bats a thousand.
ALICE
Statistically your number is about one and a half.
RYAN
I’m not a statistic.
ALICE
That’s what everyone says, but if everyone’s not a statistic then no one’s left to have taken the polls! Science!
RYAN
Well you don’t know.
ALICE
I do know – that’s how statistics work.
RYAN
No – you don’t know that I can only make one and a half girls out of nine come on the first try because you’re not one of the nine girls and you, therefore, are not eligible to partake in the poll. Science!
ALICE
I am at least a girl and I can tell you that there is no way you made eight out of nine girls come on the first try. This shit down here is complicated.
RYAN
It’s not that complicated.
ALICE
Don’t feel bad! It took me all of sophomore year to figure out myself!
RYAN
Tell me more about that.
ALICE
Gross.
RYAN
You can’t definitively say I haven’t figured it out! Because we haven’t had sex. And you’ll probably never know because it’s not like we’re about to have sex in a bathroom.
ALICE
Right. Because…gross.
RYAN
Does your boyfriend who abandoned you think bathroom sex is as gross as you do?
ALICE
Just because your mom legitimately abandoned you / doesn’t give you the right–
RYAN
Wow.
ALICE
–to project your shit on me.
RYAN
You’re right my mom’s an asshole!
ALICE
I would never call your mother an asshole.
RYAN
Why not? I do.
ALICE
What’s wrong with her?
RYAN
It’s fine. Forget about it.
ALICE
You keep bringing it up.
RYAN
You keep bringing up your boyfriend – what’s wrong with him?
ALICE
I only brought him up because you made me!
RYAN
I haven’t made you do anything.
ALICE
No that’s not what I meant.
RYAN
I haven’t made you do anything.
Silence.
ALICE
This place is a shit hole.
RYAN
It has its advantages.
ALICE
This tub is so small.
How am I supposed to shave my legs in here?
RYAN
I don’t know. I’ve never shaved my legs, obviously.
ALICE
Lucky. It’s the worst.
RYAN
Um, no. Shaving your chin is so much worse.
ALICE
Do you see the sheer area involved here?
Alice holds up a leg.
RYAN
I’m sorry, I have to take a stand. Girls always list how they have it shittier than guys and most of the time that’s true but this, this one’s ours.
ALICE
It’s yours?
RYAN
Try shaving a chin and not nicking yourself.
ALICE
Okay.
RYAN
What?
ALICE
Challenge accepted.
RYAN
You don’t want to shave your face.
ALICE
No, I’ll shave yours.
RYAN
Whoa, that is NOT what I meant.
ALICE
It’s gonna be so easy, you’ll be fine.
RYAN
No we have a lot of like, edges on our faces.
ALICE
I’ve been shaving my knees since I was thirteen and chins are basically the same. Stand up.
RYAN
This is really weird.
ALICE
Well I’m bored and this seems entertaining. Come on.
RYAN
If you cut me I’m gonna / be pissed.
ALICE
Look in my eyes.
He does.
ALICE (CONT.)
I’m not going to cut you.
RYAN
Fine.
Alice gets the shaving cream and a razor.
RYAN
But be really careful. I’ve found that if you move with the rocking motion of the razor–
Alice smears his face and mouth with shaving cream.
ALICE
Shh.
She starts shaving his face.
RYAN
Mmm Mmm-MMmmm!!
ALICE
Stop moving your mouth! If you move and I cut you it’s your own damn fault.
She shaves his face, gaining confidence until almost all of the shaving cream is gone.
ALICE
Oookay…
Alice grabs a hand towel and wipes off his face.
ALICE (CONT.)
Ta-da! Kind of…
RYAN
What? Is it fucked?
Ryan looks in the mirror.
ALICE
No, I think I just missed this neck-beardy part down here. Do you want me to get it?
RYAN
No. Now it’s my turn. To do your legs.
ALICE
What? That’s gross. It’s like, my leg hair.
RYAN
I don’t think it’s gross. You shaved my face, now I get to shave your legs.
ALICE
Legs are different.
RYAN
Yeah, they’re easier.
ALICE
This is weird.
RYAN
I’m bored and this seems entertaining.
Beat.
ALICE
Fine. I guess that’s… fair.
RYAN
Take off your shoe.
She obeys.
Alice grabs the shaving cream to put on her leg.
RYAN
I’ll do it.
Ryan lathers the shaving cream on her leg. He starts to shave really slowly.
ALICE
You’re not–. That’s not shaving anything. You need to do it a little harder.
RYAN
Like this?
ALICE
Yeah.
He shaves her leg, pausing to wipe the razor on the hand towel.
No one says anything. Ryan just shaves. He gets more confident.
ALICE
That’s a little too hard.
RYAN
Sorry.
It gets really quiet. The razor moves up Alice’s thigh. Ryan hesitates.
He continues.
ALICE
Ow!
RYAN
Shit.
Ryan stops shaving.
ALICE
You nicked me.
RYAN
Where? I don’t see it.
ALICE
I felt it.
RYAN
Shit, I’m really sorry.
Ryan goes to the toilet paper, the roll unravels.
RYAN
Fuck! You pay for this, I know. Sorry.
ALICE
It’s fine, it’s fine.
RYAN
No, it’s your first, momentous roll and I’ve fucked it up again.
ALICE
I don’t care about the stupid toilet paper.
RYAN
Really?
ALICE
Really.
RYAN
Cause before it was like a thing.
ALICE
Do whatever you want with the toilet paper.
RYAN
Oh yeah?
Ryan wraps himself up like a mummy. He acts like a mummy, making scary noises.
RYAN (CONT.)
OooOooOoooo.
ALICE
…
Pause.
RYAN
Okay. I thought it would make you laugh. But you’re not laughing.
And now I feel like an idiot!
ALICE
You kind of look like a piece of shit. I mean, wrapped in toilet paper and all.
RYAN
Cool. I was going for mummy, but.
ALICE
Are you a piece of shit?
RYAN
I don’t think so.
I try not to be.
ALICE
Good.
Alice wipes off her leg. Ryan takes off the toilet paper.
Silence.
RYAN
Another question?
ALICE
Okay. Go big or go home?
RYAN
Go big or go home.
ALICE
Where do…
…
Why did your mom leave?
RYAN
Pass.
ALICE
Do you think she’ll show up?
RYAN
Pass.
ALICE
Has she left before?
RYAN
Why are you still with a guy who chose the woods over you?
Beat.
ALICE
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
RYAN
Uh…
I don’t know. You go first, you probably have a whole thing prepared.
ALICE
Oh I have absolutely no idea. It’s a dumb question.
RYAN
You asked it!
ALICE
Doesn’t make it less dumb!
RYAN
You’re the strangest person.
ALICE
I’ve trained myself to take comments like that as compliments.
RYAN
You’re not wrong to.
ALICE
Truth is I have no idea where I’ll be in ten years. The plan was always get to college, and then when I got there I realized I had no idea what I was doing anything for anymore. Like, in pursuit of.
RYAN
Oh. Shit.
ALICE
Yeah…
RYAN
Ok – uh – well you’ll be a college graduate.
ALICE
Yes. God willing.
RYAN
So you’ll probably have a steady job and a 401K and a mortgage.
ALICE
Ha – I’ll be lucky to have paid off my student loans.
RYAN
Oh, right. Yikes.
…
I know mine!
ALICE
What?
RYAN
I know mine now! What I’ll be doing in ten years.
ALICE
Great! What is it?
RYAN
Eating at your restaurant! In San Francisco!
ALICE
Whaaat?
RYAN
Yeah, I mean. I literally have no idea what I’m doing next week let alone in 10 years so. Yeah. Eating at your restaurant sounds pretty good to me.
ALICE
You don’t have to say—
RYAN
Hey, man! This is my ten year plan and I can do whatever I want. I want to be eating at your restaurant. There – I’m your first reservation.
ALICE
Okay then!
RYAN
I guess you’ll really have to do it now!
ALICE
Yeah. I guess I will!
RYAN
What would you make me? To eat?
ALICE
I don’t know.
RYAN
Yes you do, it’s your dream.
ALICE
Um… To start, I could make a provençal tarte with tomato and zucchini and aubergine. Kind of like a mini ratatouille.
RYAN
Like the Pixar movie?
ALICE
Yes. Like the Pixar movie. Except like, way better.
RYAN
Hey, I think Ratatouille is one of the more underrated Pixar movies! That ratatouille at the end made the evil critic guy feel something!
ALICE
Whatever, it’s not as good as the real thing sitting in front of you!
RYAN
I agree. What would you make for me next?
ALICE
Um… Oh! It has to be cuisses de grenouille.
RYAN
Cool! What is it?
ALICE
Sautéed frog legs!
RYAN
Ha! Right. To broaden my horizons.
ALICE
I promise they’ll change your life.
RYAN
Life changing frog legs?!
ALICE
Yes. I’m that good.
RYAN
I’m sure you are.
ALICE
I am.
RYAN
But I’m going to have to be drunk to eat frog legs. Wine?
ALICE
Of course there’ll be wine. You can’t eat French food without the wine!
RYAN
But none of those stinky cheeses.
ALICE
Oh, you’ll eat the stinky cheeses!
RYAN
Nooo!
ALICE
Epoisses de Bourgogne, affine au chablis, le pavin d’Auvergne…
RYAN
And for dessert? I like chocolate.
ALICE
How about a chocolate tarte tropézienne?
RYAN
What’s that?
ALICE
Giant cream puff.
RYAN
Say it again.
ALICE
Giant cream puff.
RYAN
No, in French!
ALICE
Tarte tropézienne.
RYAN
Again.
ALICE
Tarte tropézienne.
RYAN
Again.
ALICE
Tropézienne.
…!
RYAN
…!
Someone might be about to make a move.
RYAN
You’re really–
ALICE
I have to pee.
RYAN
Oh.
Pause.
ALICE
It’s just. I did originally come in here to pee before we were sexiled and it’s been like a while and so now it’s becoming like a more urgent matter.
RYAN
Oh. Yeah of course.
ALICE
Thanks.
RYAN
I’ll just brave myself for battle out there. A guy with a neck tattoo can’t hit too hard, right?
ALICE
I think they were probably done a while ago.
RYAN
Yeah.
ALICE
So.
RYAN
Well uh.
ALICE
Good luck with your mom. Whatever that situation is. Just. Good luck.
RYAN
Thanks.
ALICE
And good luck in other stuff too. Whatever other stuff comes up.
RYAN
Thanks. Good luck with your stripper roommate.
ALICE
Ha, thanks.
RYAN
So…
Ryan goes to the door. He pauses.
RYAN
Is this–? So I’ll just leave now.
He doesn’t.
ALICE
You can find me here. I don’t know how long you’ll be in town, waiting, you know…
RYAN
Yeah. Um, well she hasn’t shown up yet.
ALICE
Right. So, I don’t know a lot of people here and if you want, like, a friend?
RYAN
Right. A friend.
ALICE
I’d like that.
RYAN
I’ll bring juice boxes. Next time.
ALICE
Okay.
RYAN
I don’t think they still make Dunkaroos.
ALICE
I wouldn’t share them anyway!
RYAN
Right. Ha. Well. I’ll let you–
ALICE
Thanks.
RYAN
I was just going to say– Earlier. I was just going to say you’re really nice.
ALICE
Thanks.
RYAN
So I’ll see you soon.
ALICE
See you soon.
RYAN
Good. Well. Wish me luck!
Ryan looks at the door and makes like he’s braving himself for battle.
Alice laughs.
ALICE
Good luck.
Ryan’s gone. Alice is left alone.
Suddenly, Ryan is back.
RYAN
We never…
ALICE
Yeah?!
Ryan steps forward and holds out his hand.
RYAN
I’m Ryan.
ALICE
Oh. Alice.
They exchange awkward laughs and a handshake that lasts a beat too long.
RYAN
Bye.
Ryan goes. Alice is left alone.
She doesn’t pee.
Blackout.
End of Play.
17 January, 2020
I BUY A BASIL plant for the summer. The plant had stood alone, perched on a barren shelf at Trader Joe’s—lush, a tempting canopy cloud of green. I do not expect it to last the summer, not weeks of leading hiking and camping trips for middle-schoolers throughout the High Sierras of California. But my heart had leapt so involuntarily when I first spotted it, sparkling from a recent watering, blooming happily below a tray of yellowing mangos, that I couldn’t resist. I didn’t care if the basil eventually died. It was my first time leading children into the wilderness, and I had spent the previous day on the plane to San Francisco, journaling frantically.
What does it mean to be a good leader? What is most important to embody? I want my kids to love the world, to see how beauty and connections thrum in the air, soil, and water—I want my kids to love each other.
I wanted badly to do it right, the leading of the next generation, and seeing the basil with its leaves so large and tight together, made me think of my mother taking a pot of basil from the windowsill above our kitchen sink. Pinch the top leaves gently, she had said to me, her shoulder-length dark hair falling across her cheek as she brought the basil down to my eye-level. Right at the stem. My young fingers fumbling along the tender stalks. There, yes. A curling leaf snapping off between my thumb and forefinger. It’s good to take the leaves, she said, standing up and carefully placing the pot back on the sill. It promotes healthy growth.
In the grocery aisle, bright visions swarm—gathering around the basil every morning with the kids, watching them pour a gentle stream of water from their Nalgenes, teaching them to pinch the minuscule flowers, helping them pluck a few choice leaves to dazzle our spaghetti night. We care for this plant, I imagine proclaiming to a cluster of entranced 11-year-olds, all who had fought valiantly for the privilege of watering the basil. And in return, it takes care of us. I imagine connecting the lesson to how our group would care for one other on the trail when we were all we had for miles and to our responsibility to the earth—with its glacial lakes, red-rooted sequoias, billions of squirming microbes dying and birthing and eating each other in thick fertile soil— which gave us life and breath, so freely.
“Sure,” my co-leader Lewis says, blue eyes amused. He has tight brown-gold curls and reminds me vaguely of a bear. “Why not?” I cup the basil with two hands, the warmth of the knotted roots soaking through the thin plastic pot. On the ride back to our hotel, I hold it on my lap for fear it will get crushed.
A four-thousand-year-old herb with a golden lineage tracing back to India, Egypt, and China settles on the vibrating dash of our fifteen-passenger white van as we drive shouting children through the California dust. Ociumum basilicum—sweet basil, a member of the great mint family, famed for its extensive culinary uses, and twisted in its own tempestuous, clashing mythology. In a lengthy introduction to the basil literature within different cultures, Basil: An Herb Society of America Guide proclaims: “In terms of legend and symbolism, basil has been both loved and feared. Its associations include love and hate, danger and protection, life and death.”
On our first night near the summit of Mt. Diablo, I hold the basil up to the cluster of kids waiting in headlamps around the picnic table for their dessert. This was after an eternal, exhausting evening. After a dimpled Boy-Scout of a kid told me that he was Knife-Certified (by whom? I should have asked) and proceeded to stab his palm five-minutes into cutting red peppers. After a quiet boy with neat blonde hair hid among vines of poison oak. After a swarm of raccoons covered our food cooler and their leader—a scraggly fellow with glinting green eyes—crawled menacingly towards the children and Lewis gave everyone permission to throw rocks to keep him at bay. After a dinner in pitch darkness. After a tiny girl from the Hamptons taught me to star-spin—wheeling in circles upon circles and falling to gaze at careening specks in the sky.
“This is our Power Object,” I say to the kids, extending the basil like an offering. Its leaves flutter darkly, a picture of health. “It’s incredible because whoever’s holding Basil has the floor to speak. The person with Basil has our full respect, our full attention. Everyone here has important things to say.”
The kids murmur, giggle, peering at the strange, shadowy faces of each other. I pass Basil to the girl next to me so that we can start sharing our Highs and Lows of the day. It is difficult for the kids to control their excitement, their nerves—laughter breaks, shouts pointing out new raccoons creeping in the trees.
“Hey,” Lewis says in his gentle voice. “Who has Basil now? Who are we listening to?”
Their eyes turn, searching.
Dioscorides, a Greek physician whose classical botanical works were referenced for over sixteen centuries, warned that too much basil can “dulleth the sight…and is of hard digestion,” but John Gerad—who became one of the most prevalent English botanists in the 1500s—applauded basil as a remedy for melancholy.
A kid, sobbing of homesickness, hugs her knees under the pines while the other kids spread mayonnaise on turkey sandwiches. She doesn’t eat for the first day and a half, takes small bites of plain yogurt, throws up in the bathroom while I rub her back. On our afternoon hike to a waterfall, she lags. Another taller girl—known for the stuffed otter she packed inside her sleeping bag—falls in step beside her. “I was sad too, at the airport,” the taller girl says softly. “I didn’t want to let go of my mom.” That night, the homesick kid holds Basil, a borrowed stuffed otter tucked into her lap, and says to the group: “I want to thank my new friend for making me feel at home.”
For a few blissful days, we leave Basil outside on sunny stumps while we go hiking. But in the Yosemite, we return to tragedy—Basil torn and bitten, clawed to pieces, a handful of straggling leaves remaining of his once full canopy. After that, we put Basil in the bear box whenever we leave camp—long times of darkness, squeezed in stale metal-air between our cooler and the trash bag from breakfast. I take him out as soon as we return and place him in the sunniest patch I can find, but the evening light is never enough. I glare at every fat squirrel who dares to sniff around our picnic table.
An herbalist named Chrysippus wrote of basil’s heady, intoxicating scent in pre-206 B.C.E.: “Ocimum exists only to drive men insane.”
In the moments when Lewis and I are looking away, when we are unloading bags from the trailer, boiling water, setting up tents, our wildest kid leaps on the quiet boy infected with poison oak and punches him in the jaw. Lights the hand-sanitizer that he squirted into his cupped palm on fire. Catches Knife-Certified dimpled kid in a chokehold. “Tap out,” wild kid says through gritted teeth. “Tap out!” His arm bulges around Knife-Certified kid’s neck. Knife-Certified’s face is turning red.
“Never! I’ll never surrender!” he sputters. He sees us running toward them.
‘You’re in charge of Basil,’ I say to the girl sitting behind the passenger seat. Basil is on the floor by her feet. She nods without looking at Basil and ten minutes through the drive, swings her legs enthusiastically—Basil flies and flops all over the van floor. Soil spilling, Basil limp and pathetic as a runover animal, a green goldfish out of his bowl.
“No worries, no worries,” I say to the unconcerned girl, scooping up the soil as if every second is frantic and precious. “No worries, we’ll fix him.” She nods, looks back to the friendship bracelet tied to her water bottle.
It was strongly believed in Ancient Greece and Rome that basil would only grow well under conditions of verbal abuse. During planting season, sowers would swear at the seeds.
In the Victorian Language of Flowers, giving sweet basil conveyed your best wishes. In Crete, people placed basil plants where they needed protection from the devil.
‘I don’t think you understand,’ I say, treading the clear water of Lake Tahoe, craning my neck to gaze up at the twelve kids frowning down at me from a tall rock jutting out over the lake. They want to jump from the rock into hip-deep water, and I can hear the ankles snapping, shins jutting. ‘It is my job to keep you safe.’
A boy, tall and gangly, falls off his bike and breaks his front tooth in half, scrapes running down his legs. Blood on his chin. “Don’t send me home,” he begs. First words out of his mouth. “I want to finish.” Finish biking hundreds of miles along the winding wildflower coast, steep hills rolling up to mountains, golden grass tumbling near tight drops, the ocean always roaring wetly below. I don’t want to leave either, ever. I want to curl up in the long grass until I feel like a rabbit or a mountain lion, until I cannot remember who I love. We put the shattered tooth in a Ziploc bag, and when the grey-haired dentist with the German accent tells us that the fragments aren’t needed and that the boy is fine to keep riding, I offer to throw the bag away. The skinny boy grabs my arm, grins skeletally in relief. “No, I want to keep it.”
“Basil has bugs in him.” Lewis shows me the tiny critters, grey and crawling around the thinning stalks. Tiny holes in the remaining leaves. “And a mold problem.” Baby-blue mold, pale and fine and furry, tenderly covering the damp soil. It’s almost cute—Basil hosting other life.
I wish I would have known that a French doctor named Hilarius in the 1500s claimed that basil caused the “spontaneous generation of scorpions” and could prompt scorpions to grow in the brain. After I had made an urgent announcement that Basil was too weak to give any more of his leaves, a punk kid looked me dead in the eye, plucked the biggest curled leaf, and put it in his mouth. I wish I could have told him that his brain would soon fester with nests of scorpions.
When did it become more than basil?
It triggers a vulnerability, some hope deep inside of me, memories of past basil plants I cannot hold back. The basil that I had bought in Dublin to spice up the loneliness of my single room while I was studying abroad. I woke each morning to the basil outlined in the faint sun from the tiny window that faced the bricks of the Guinness Factory. It was the first time that I was cooking for myself—I bought exotic, real-adult foods like avocados with pride— and I used the basil sparingly in my consistent meals of chewy angel hair pasta.
The basil that I bought the August of my senior year at a farmer’s market, the North Carolina air hot and humid, oaks and dogwoods sweltering. I put the pot on the windowsill of my first-floor room in between a row of books. My first love of four years, a boy with dark hair and long eyelashes, adored the basil. Before he would leave my room in the morning, he would often walk over to the windowsill and bring the plant close to his face, as if he was kissing it.
“Basil reminds me of my mother,” he would say. “She made the best pizza when we were little.” When I broke up with him after graduation, I couldn’t look at basil without thinking of him, of his mother’s hands kneading dough to feed a young son.
Then the basil of Italy, only a few months back, growing in a thick bush in the terrace garden. I did not have to care for it because it grew so well. When rain swept through in curtains, bright red poppies sprouted around it like hearts, like lips. In the evenings, I would go down to the garden with a beautiful girl whose black curls sprung like ringing bells in the wind, and we would pick basil leaves to crush for pesto. We kissed for the first time in an old stone room where the fattoria stored their lemon trees in winter. We painted a poem in rainbow colors on the white wall—there are enough ballrooms in you to dance with anyone you’ll ever love.
“They say nothing lasts forever,” Ocean Vuong writes in his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. “But they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it.” I’m reading Ocean’s novel on the shore, and Lewis stretches out above me on a bone-white tree trunk, tanning his already golden skin. His curls shine when drenched in salt-water.
In parts of Italy, sweet basil is thought to influence attraction, and some call it “bacia-nicola”—or “kiss me Nicholas.” A basil pot on a windowsill is meant to signal a lover.
Sometimes, it seems that Lewis’ body is mine, and mine is his. When I move to take down tents, he moves to clean dishes. I don’t have to look to know he is crouching with the kids around a map, showing them the blue lines of the rivers, the steepness of the slopes. He shaves the side of my head, fingers slow and careful, while I sit in the bright sun on the edge of a cliff, watching pale moths flutter to flowers.
The thoughtless way we share. He hands me his sandwich; I give him my coffee. We pass toothpaste and deodorant back and forth. He buys two different flavors of ice teas and stands in front of me, pouring tea from bottle to bottle, until the swirl of black and lemon is smooth and perfect. When the kids ask questions that we can’t answer, we repeat: “Lewis and I are going to talk about it” or “Jackie and I are going to talk about it,” until they roll their eyes. After the kids are asleep, we sit together on the ground, exhausted, and look up at the stars over the dark pines.
I forget what it is like to feel alone.
I wish that he had a girlfriend or someone he was hooking up with, so that our possibilities could continue to be nothing more than they are at this moment—I am his friend, his partner, his co-leader. I want to always stand by him, to have this easy, unquestionable loyalty remain unquestionable. If I remain his friend, I will never have to leave him.
Do you want to go grocery shopping, he says softly, our cheeks touching. We’re in between trips and without kids, huddled behind a stack of driftwood. We had walked miles down the beach in the wind, eyelashes crusted with salt. We had been thinking of buying bananas for dinner, chips and salsa, anything we didn’t have to cook. Not really, I say. Me either, he says. In the kiss, I feel grains of sand. Our lips don’t match quite right at first, and I don’t mind at all, I want his skin so badly.
The Herb Society Guide: “In his seventeenth-century herbal, Parkinson claimed basil could be used to ‘procure a cheerful and merry heart.’”
Frosty, fog-drenched beaches. Lewis and I eat fresh strawberries and chase seagulls. We build a boat out of sand and sit inside it together, looking out at the waves, squealing when the water splashes over the prow—it seems as if we are deep out at sea. We arm-wrestle on the floor of our hostel, play cards, sleep huddled under a dark bridge, under an orange moon.
He laughs once, while we’re in the tent. Whenever we’re kissing, he says, you get this look on your face. So contemplative. Like you’re torn, you’re thinking so much.
I cover my face with my hands, instinctively.
How to tell him— a boy who can lay on the shore and naturally think of nothing, like an ancient monk who has spent years perfecting the art of giving into oblivion, of losing the self to the feel of warm pebbles pressing into the back—that my thoughts haven’t been this still in years? That in this summer brimming with Band-Aids, snow-capped peaks, and massive unfolding paper maps, I haven’t had the energy to tear into my doubts about the future and life-purpose and so I have been entirely happy?
Until there aren’t any children around and I realize—I want him. And the wanting brings my shivering, hibernating self to life—it stumbles out of its cave and into the sun, blinking, turning, confused, questions whirling around it like a swarm of crows. How far do I go? What do I give? Am I allowed to need him? Will this hurt?
The thing I most want to tell him and don’t: Lewis, if you’re happy, I’m happy.
Basil, linked to sprouting at the foot of Christ’s cross and determining chastity, is said to “wither in the hands of the impure.”
Stay alive, I think, picking off yellow, fragile leaves. Lewis’ hands in my hair, my hands pulling up his shirt. We are in each other’s arms, sun setting over white swirling water, seals diving in frothy surf. Stay alive.
The real thing I most want to tell him, that I am most afraid to tell him: I like you so much that the like slips into deep tenderness, slips into an aching desire to have your cheek against mine, slips into love like a seal swimming through underwater crevices.
Where is the narrative? Where is the thread? An invisible needle driving through us all, the first ten kids, the last twelve, Lewis and I. Basil trembling on the van dashboard, down to a scattering of ragged leaves, passed around our dessert circle every night from small hand to small hand. Sandy coast paths lined with crimson columbines, fountain-like harebells, clusters of smoky mariposas. The Knife-Certified kid muttering, “The bus doesn’t stop in your neighborhood,” as a pigtailed girl talks about how much she adores her butler. We climb jagged ridges, up and up, kids following like ducklings until we can go no further. A baby bear trundling off the trail, kids oohing. Snowdrifts up to our waist. Days of burning blue water under a rising moon, strings of seaweed dripping off rock walls as I press myself against the bottom of a cliff, waves lapping my numb toes, huddled in a concave that the ocean tides and I managed to find. Lewis wades around the corner after a few minutes, a flowery faded pink towel draped around his neck. We stand close, flattening ourselves against the seaweed hanging like tinsel, as the tides rise higher.
Somehow, through everything, Basil survives the summer, straggly leaves thrusting, the blue mold and grey bugs vanished.
But in the chaos of packing and cleaning, it isn’t till we’re flying back to Massachusetts that I realize we left Basil alone in the Holiday Inn parking lot, tucked under a small tree. Part of me thinks—better that we forgot him. Better that we didn’t deliberately choose to leave him behind. Better that the decision of abandonment was made for us, that we didn’t have to watch him while he died.
And then the other part of me hopes—Basil is free. He is wild. Unlocked from bear boxes, he grows unstoppable in the fresh air, in shifting sunlight and shadows, untamable by human hands. He is bursting into bloom, sending green tendrils and baby scorpions racing through the parking lot, wrecking love among the hotel staff, unbeholden to the end of summer.
17 January, 2020
Clinton, New Jersey
She’s really beautiful. Can you find some I Love You Cards and send them to her and just sign my name? I have a teddy bear being made and a matching ring earring and necklace set.
–Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
Seen from the air, the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCF) appears like a wheel-shaped medieval city, its modular units the beige color of the inmates’ uniforms surrounding the century-old Warden’s Hall. Instead of a moat guarding the fortified walls, double strands of razor wire coil between watchtowers to isolate the beings inside. The violent offenders.
&
In Maximum Compound, the holiday that captures the barbed wire universe’s essence isn’t Thanksgiving or Christmas; those nostalgia holidays subtract you to zero. Turkey and yams that you bastardize in the microwave. When you bow your head and give thanks, it might be the microwave you’re most thankful for. Thanksgiving belongs to the free world, a leftover like the sweet potatoes saved from Mess Hall to be doctored with brown sugar and syrup. Voila, glazed yams. No Cubano sandwiches on Christmas morning, the meats piled so high between slabs of French bread that you need double mouths to take a bite. As for the wild party of New Years, noisemakers and drunken cheers are against the rules, so the inmates toast their off-brand vintage soda to that yardstick of time served.
&
Valentine’s Day is the Maximum Compound’s signature holiday. The love day celebration that topples the walls made of rules: DO NOT TOUCH ANOTHER INMATE, DO NOT REACH FOR AN OFFICER, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR AREA, DO NOT SPEAK DURING COUNT. This day the flicker between eyes is celebrated, this day, girlfriends are made to feel special. This day, the inside expels the cold and rain an animal coming in from the wild shakes over a room. Girl love is celebrated, and even the officers can’t spoil it. Outside in the world, I know the space between people grows; we live in digital capsules, three-screen universes, and our lovers receive the least of us. The opposite is true in Maximum Compound among the murderers, the father killers, the kidnappers, and armed robbers.
&
Valentine of Terni became installed in legend as the priest who bequeathed his name to the holiday of lovers. He is said to have performed baptisms and marriage ceremonies for Roman soldiers during the reign of Emperor Aurelian in 273. Medieval texts speak of his decapitation. Valentine of Rome, another priest swept up in the reign of persecutions, too was executed on February 14th. Hearsay has Saint Valentine cutting parchment hearts and giving them to soldiers. The Basilica of Saint Maria displays his ancient, flower-scented skull.
&
I’m going to make Natacha a chocolate cake and dinner. I think you would really like her.
–Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
KRYSTAL
Google Krystal Riordan and her name alone suffices, and news article after news article comes up. AT PROSTITUTE’S SENTENCING, MURDER VICTIM’S MOTHER READS STATEMENT DETAILING HORRIFIC CRIME. The reader learns that Krystal Riordan, age 20, a New York City prostitute witnessed Draymond Coleman, her pimp/boyfriend, rape and strangle Jennifer Moore, age 18, in their rent-by-the-week room. A kind of duel was played out in the shabby hotel between the 265 lb. rage-fueled attacker and a 100-pound soccer player, fighting to breathe. Krystal froze, fearing for her own life. Surrounding them–Weehawken’s geography, exits, and billboards, green signs sprouting up like trees in a lightning-struck forest. After four years in custody and facing the death penalty, Draymond accepted a plea bargain that required he implicate Krystal. The Internet twilights hold the 20-year-old Krystal, and the 24-year old Krystal, 5’9” and taller than her public defender. She’s gained 40 pounds in her four years in Hudson County jail, her tear-stained face delicate as a lilac in the rain as she, at last, speaks for herself. “I’m not a bad person,” she answers in what I imagine is a trembling voice. The judge has asked her if she has anything to say before he pronounces the sentence. He listens, then says, “There’s only one victim here.” He sentences her to the maximum. FORMER ORANGE WOMAN SENTENCED TO 30 YEARS.
&
Yet there is more than one victim here. Eva, Krystal’s birth mother, stares at the camera with anthracite eyes that glitter as if they could withstand a miner’s pick. Her black hair, too, gives off a costume gem’s gleam. A striking woman on whose olive-complexed face I recognize Krystal’s petal lips but little else. The birth mother, a short woman, appears chiseled from rock while her daughter seems soft in comparison, the cream-puff skin and sometimes blue and sometimes hazel eyes. The reasons for Eva’s neglect of her children, unknowable. She worked as a prostitute. Krystal holds onto few memories of her earliest years before she was taken and put into foster care—joining a children’s crusade of the blighted. How did she learn to speak? She remembers there weren’t any toys. Eva bequeathed to Krystal her old crack pipes, and her daughter played with them, pretending the pipe stems were bridges over the maroon rivers of spilled wine. When she crossed the river, she’d find herself in a forest. Birds whistled, and she understood their every word, no matter the pitch. She smelled the dreams of the leaves. Or she held Eva’s hand mirror under her nose and waded into the ceiling. As an adult, she searched for her birth mother, and saw her twice. “I looked for her and found her. I wish I hadn’t. She stole my money,” Krystal says. Disappointment settles between her shoulder blades and trickles down her back like a desecrated childhood.
&
After her birth father’s arrest for selling drugs, Child Services removes Krystal and severs parental rights. After spending two years in foster care, she’s adopted. Who are these strangers prominent in Connecticut politics, the adoptive father, a founding partner in the accounting firm that bears his name? Who is the sharp-featured adoptive mother also an accountant and quick to criticize? In a dress with puffy sleeves and wide sashes, Krystal tries to smile at her first Easter, but there’s a bewildered look on her face. The night is dark for six-year-old Krystal. She hardly knows how to speak. Her adoptive father later will describe how she screams in her sleep. She will bear their surname Riordan.
&
She grows tall and plays basketball, dribbling balls, and shooting baskets. Called a natural by her basketball coaches, she pleases her new parents, but upon reaching adolescence, she rebels. The adoptive parents become her persecutors. Staying out all night and running the streets, she tests them as someday Dray will her. Krystal is sent to Élan in Poland Springs, Maine, the now notorious and shuttered facility for troubled teens. “It was a lockdown, therapeutic boarding school. I was there for three years. If I’d never been sent there, I might have had a full basketball scholarship,” says Krystal. Tuition of $42,000 – $56,000 a year purchased a student to teacher ratio of 40 to 1. Therapy consists of a teen standing alone in a corner while hundreds of students yell, curse, and call him or her names.
&
Her adoptive parents will pay for her to go to college, but after the regime she’s lived under, she wants her freedom. How can anyone graduate from years of Attack Therapy and be ready for college? Freedom is a suspect word. Krystal calls Keri-Ann, a girl she knows from Élan, who shares an apartment in Manhattan with her boyfriend/pimp. Yes, Krystal can stay with them under the condition she’ll work as a prostitute for the girl’s boyfriend, too. Krystal agrees, and in the beginning, it’s easy as beginnings often are. The sex work draws her. She and Keri-Ann from Élan, go shopping for clothes and purses and shoes. Real labels, not knockoff brands. She pierces her nose and loves the feel of money, and she’s generous to others and always buying gifts. One of Keri-Ann’s friends stops over. Draymond Coleman, fifteen years older than Krystal, is tall, muscular, and seething with the righteous anger of an unwanted foster care child. Although Krystal perceives him as a gentle giant, funny and attentive, he’s violent. Dray’s eyes, like Eva’s, hold the resurrection of a mine shaft.
Dray was funny and liked to laugh. He was really attentive when it came to me. It was like I was brain-washed. I thought I couldn’t live without him.
— Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
At first, he showers her with attention. They talk outside the apartment where they go to smoke cigarettes. Her friend’s boyfriend decides to sell her to another pimp. “That’s when Dray stepped in,” Krystal says. “He fought for me.” They leave together, and she begins working to support them. “Dray was a pimp, and I was his moneymaker,” says Krystal. “He would bring girls over on a regular basis for threesomes. I always did what I was told by him.” Her love for Draymond will lead to low-rent hotels with shared bathrooms where they will stay for the sex work. Her love will lead to shambles of sheets and stained mattresses, sagging drapes and chicken bones scattered under beds.
The guys were mostly okay. There were a few jerks, but the police were the worst. I had a gun put to my head. A knife to my throat. They demanded free sex, usually weird stuff.
— Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
The police officer already has his zipper down, and a thumb hooked in her mouth. Work it. His pinkish meat threaded with blue veins like those movie rivers she’d always wanted to visit, like the Mekong, the Volga, the Seine. She pictures herself as one of the floating flower sellers. A long-haired girl, oaring her canoe carrying a white sea of orchids.
&
And always doing what she was told by Draymond leads to tragedy and murder. The men blur—white, black, Hispanic. Most come to the room, and some rush, and others like to be coddled. “Baby, hey,” she whispers, “feeling any better?” She reaches over and cups the man-baby’s forehead. She runs her hand down his chest, offering him her mouth, her vagina, her ass, just as she offered all she had to the basketball court—her biceps and calves, especially the skin of her hands.
The baby wasn’t real to me until she was born. Being pregnant only meant my clothes’ size changed.
— Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
Krystal uses condoms with strangers but not with Draymond, so when she misses her period for the second month, she takes the pregnancy test. A positive. She tells him the news, and he’s happy, but he insists she keeps on working. Her belly incubating life means little to her except a change in her clothing size. She makes more money pregnant than not as her dates pay extra in tips. Some men find pregnant women irresistible. We don’t see Krystal, her hair a thicket, kneeling, blowing a man, another, and another. The clam chowder of semen growing a fishy mucous, sex filling her mind, the little nymphs swimming to her ample hips.
&
She’s not a druggie, although she likes to smoke weed. Draymond keeps her on a short leash, which means he loves her. He must. He never loses his thirst for more women in the circles of midnight, in the hangover of morning turning to the afternoon. Her clothes chaff her pregnant belly like cardboard. Her dreams feel green, and things keep budding. Ants build humongous castles, and ferns grow fleshy and their heavy breathing disturbs her sleep-turn on your side. Inside, separated by a thicket of blood vessels, the old miracle takes place, sperm and egg meeting, carrying the double helix, the chromosomes for sex, eye color and skin, height, bone structure, potential, and possibility. The fetus absorbing its mother, the womb-trance.
&
She gives birth to a healthy girl. The past doesn’t say hello or goodbye either; it expects you to do all the work of bringing it back. It requires curiosity. The baby becomes real when she leaves the hospital. How long before she’s working again? Is she still bleeding, still stitched up? She hardly has her baby long. One night she returns from work to find her daughter gone. Draymond has called Child Services, telling them to come for the ‘unwanted’ infant. There’s not enough strength in her to fight for her daughter. The nineteen-year-old is under Draymond’s control. Friends have questioned this story, telling me her signature would be required in a closed adoption case. Krystal was never mothered. What a sensation it is to hold a baby. When the newborn is your own child, can there be anything like it? But could Krystal feel the wonder? It will be years later when she asks me to look for her daughter on Facebook. The daughter of Krystal and Draymond is white, black, and Hispanic. A beauty. She’s inherited her mother’s long legs and expressive lips—lips like eyes. Her daughter is a teen now and distant from the baby Krystal gave birth to. When Krystal thinks of Trinity it is as if her daughter has become a waking dream.
&
Now Krystal is thirteen years into her sentence. Love’s an obstacle course that sometimes ends in blood. Girlfriends come and go, and relationships flame only to turn to cinder. In Maximum Compound when fights erupt, they are usually about the cheating of a girlfriend. Couples bond and then break apart, and yet love is celebrated on Valentine’s Day like no other.
I’m doing a redo Valentine’s Day because we were in Lock on February 14th.
–Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
Perhaps Krystal meets the beautiful Natacha in the dog cage. When you are in Isolation the officers stop by each cell in the morning, asking who wants to go outside. Time outside lasts two hours. Many cells are occupied by women locked in solitary for 100 days, and most stay in. Isolation’s haunting of the mind works its evil. Handcuffed, inmates are marched to the enclosures. Four women fit inside each roofless cage where they’re uncuffed. If it rains, they must still sit for the scheduled two hours, no exceptions. No matter if rain clouds darken the sky to a stormy green. If not rain, the hours spent in the unshaded sun make your head beat.
&
Or, the two met in Lock, not in the same cell but neighboring ones. Thirty cells side by side, two women in each, and the noise never subsides. You’re allowed your tablet and headphones, but you’ll need batteries, and they’re $4 a pack. Isolated inmates are permitted to spend only $12 on Commissary per month. The yelling from cell to cell, and the shouting to get the guards’ attention goes on around the clock. If your girlfriend’s also here, then you’re afraid she’s having sex with her cellmate. You’re on half-rations and irritable. Every third day you rise again from the stink of Isolation and are brought out in handcuffs and escorted by two officers to the shower. You’re carrying shampoo and soap and clean underwear. The rain you lift your face into cleanses body and soul.
&
And so, for my inmate friend, Valentine’s Day is the awaited for day. Even if she must create it from her almost bare Commissary trunk and State pay, she’ll give her girlfriend a Valentine’s Day to treasure. Krystal tells me Natacha soothes her. Is her voice like smoking a cigarette when you’re lying in bed, and it’s a cool morning? Bare, peaceful, explaining things lips. Krystal marches to Mess Hall, and breakfast is a cup of grim coffee, two boiled eggs, three pieces of bread, a spoon of margarine. She’s spreading margarine on her second piece of bread when the Officers tell her to get moving. Maximum Compound is all about the undertow of love dragging your feet out from under you.
&
Chaucer spoke of the mating season of birds, and men and women. Or Valentine’s Day could be pagan. Lupercalia, a Roman festival of fertility and coupling. A priest would cut the throats of a goat and dog near the sacred cave of the she-wolf. The mythological she-wolf who nursed the abandoned twins, Romulus and Remus. The good lupus mother. The hide of the goat was then sliced into strips that were soaked in blood. Half-naked young men would dance through the streets of drunkenness, flicking pregnant women with blood to safeguard the mother and ensure the live birth of the child.
&
Krystal wants desperately to care and be cared for by this woman, this Natacha arrested for attempted homicide. Like Krystal’s crime, Natacha’s homicide occurred on a hot July day. It involved a male friend who had been staying in Natacha’s apartment. The town is Tinton Falls; once called the Iron Plantation, where slaves were brought to labor in the ironworks. The ruins of the grist mill seem the town’s only tourist attraction. Natacha becomes angry at the man, shouting for him to leave. He packs and carries his gear out. On either side of the street, milkweed and red cedar grow from the silty-clay soil. She rummages in the drawers, finds two large butcher knives, and then chases him down the sidewalk. After throwing one knife, she stabs him in the chest with the other. Not far away, wild turkey and woodpeckers wander the marshlands. The police are called, and an ambulance rushes the bleeding man into the red dusk. And now, Natacha experiences the hunger of Krystal’s love.
&
What drives Natacha to assault someone she invited into her apartment? There are her daughter and her dog Charlie, whose head likely breaks through the skin of canine sleep when he hears the knife clatter and shouting. Did Natacha’s ex beat the hell out of her? Did the idiot think she’d squirreled that money away in her stomach, and that’s why he kept hitting it? No boyfriend was going to go through her body drawer by drawer, swinging his fists.
NATACHA
When Krystal asks me to go to Facebook and print some photos of her new girlfriend, I already know the process of elimination. It won’t be Natacha from Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aries, not the news editor for the New York Yankees, not the IT consultant Natacha with a multi-national. It will be another Natacha whose on-line life stopped in 2015. Yet this Natacha is beautiful, and her apartment looks airy as if a flutter of ship’s sail has passed through it. In short black strapless club dress, she blows wasp-stung kisses. One of her admirers lingers in the social media bushes wowed by her legs. Natacha’s daughter and dog are shown sleeping in her bed. “Two babies,” she comments in her post. She exudes late night drives when the stars are bright as magnolia blossoms, and you want to reach up and pull them out of the sky and eat them. There are more photos of nightclubs, darkening places, padded leather doors, deep booths, smoke-polished maroon wood. Billie Holiday crooning through the murderous hip hop. Hoop earrings, gold-flake eyeshadow.
&
The she-wolf who exemplifies instinct and loyalty, the unselfish she-wolf mother who suckles abandoned children can become the she-wolf, devourer. Women who have been wounded horribly sometimes wound others. Lethally.
Me and Natacha broke up. Yesterday she told me the real reason is because she got a crush on someone else. The lady she’s got a crush on looks like Shrek. I don’t get it. She said everything she told me she meant and she really loves me. This is the reason I always feel like I’m not good enough and ugly.
–Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387
&
The thirst of this place is going to drink Krystal into it. The imprisoned body is the chapel or the toilet to be adored or shat on. Imagine the joy with which Krystal told me of Natacha, then the crashing disappointment of seeing her girlfriend with hickeys on her neck. Krystal is sure those love bites are aimed at her heart. Idiot. She must be ugly; she must be unlovable. She pictures herself as a lizard. In actuality Krystal is beautiful.
&
Krystal needs to talk to her Natacha. She needs to be comforted. They’ve moved Natacha to a different unit. It is 1 a.m. at the correctional facility when the fire alarm goes off, and all the Units march outside into the Yard where the inmates are supposed to stand in silent lines. The inmates are talking guessing who pulled the alarm or started a fire. Maybe the moon shines, and at midnight it’s a fat scoop ice cream you want to climb into the sky and lick. Everyone talks, someone yells Natacha! And Krystal is waving her arms, crazily. The moon is filling their bodies with love. The mermaids of after midnight are swimming. Natacha turns away.
&
There are three counts a day at 8 a.m. – 8:30 a.m., 11 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., and 4 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Mid-afternoon, Krystal goes into the bathroom with her Bic razor filed away. What does she see in the mirror? The mucky walls, her time? A summer girl shrinking into winter, a 20-year-old when she was arrested, she’ll be 40 upon release. Where is the way out, the way away? She wants motion; she wants to flow. Madly heading somewhere. First the nick and then the trickling begins. If she’s brave, the shimmering red taillights of her veins will open. Have to do this. Have to struggle the blade in, no stopping. No creeping. Claustrophobic nearness of the walls. Her heart pulses where her bunkmate Lucy’s name is tattooed. They inked each other’s name on their left wrists, the arteries that run directly to the heart.
&
She cuts her left wrist, deep, the deeper the cut, the better she feels. Nearness of music. Blood is streaking her hands and thighs. The cuts are forgiving her for the I Love You cards and the necklace set; the teddy bear. Krystal remembers touching the mole on Natacha’s back. Pressing her thumb into the mole’s blue softness. The last endorphin rush feels like a gentle, loving mother. An inmate finds her and runs to tell an officer to check on Krystal in the bathroom. She’s on the floor and lying in a pool of red running from her left wrist. An inmate stretcher crew arrives, and they carry Krystal to the Medical Unit. She receives both internal stitches to tendons, as well as numerous external stitches. Her history of cutting and depression go untreated.
&
In the outside world, there is Valentine’s Day as well. Tepid, well-dressed couples get in and out of taxi’s and Uber cars, and they walk on the sidewalks lined with bursts of bergamot and jasmine. Restaurants fill with musk-fragrant suited men, and young women dressed in sheaths, the smooth silver of an ice shaker. Hair, heels, electricity. Credit cards. Couples with cheeks like glowing shots of amaretto. The inhabitants living on the continent of freedom celebrate romantic love.
&
Inside Maximum Compound, Valentine’s Day celebrates love of the she-wolf. What the officers learn of the inmates is nothing compared to what the inmates have learned of each other. Strange things lie on the bottom of us all, things we are ashamed of, and yet most inmates believe that what love embodies reigns supreme even in the barbed-wire world.
17 January, 2020
(1)
it is a tongue holding itself like an ear. its rims can’t keep
their shape. they lisp into the mattress, leave the sheet
apostrophed against the wall, head slapped, gagged in froth,
dreams tipped, bound in bruise-fade.
in the morning it is an eye. it draws white-flash fences
on its locked doors. where are the tarps that were
always being hung, tall, reflecting their stains back
onto the skin? the feeling that even having a tongue
makes it evil, and especially if that tongue were spinning
over an ear. loose a tire, suck in language that
is always the stomach’s shafts and axels slipping.
in the morning it also finds that it has dreamed of
contact lenses, big as a hand, dry and crooked. lick out
the mouth’s inside till it is round and stripped.
it wants to be the tongue rubbing sore the wet teeth but
has more limbs to air, cloth hutches to cut and bolt.
(2)
Before I put on my glasses the book forces itself on the poster
which peels into its circle in glue stutters, matches the cracked
cover’s swoop, just as easily scurries when my brain cuts the
dimensions. It liked being deepened, I can tell by its shadow’s little
shudder. The commisure of sun and fan like a certain smile. I
dreamed a yellow badger was on fire but wrapped in a wet page
emerged unharmed. I slept on my glasses and dislocated their
wires, a fish skeleton on the wall. A trick of the light like being sure
you’re bleeding when you’re not, or that, unthinking, you’ve
slashed the brittle irons of a thing. Without glasses it’s difficult
to walk down steps. The stairwell is sucked into a stench of distance,
cheeks bowed, gagged on hellos and green daylight tapping glass.
Things are too thin or too thick, and things I didn’t say yesterday
try to dry their dribbles on my reflection’s lips, the ones made only
of light: its hand on my back, breath down the necks of potted plants
horny for the hope of water but held in a dust rut on the lens.
17 January, 2020
unlike borders, etched in the earth with a knife, headlines are often written
delicate; a fuse, a blast, a city that was and they soften the blow in a language
today’s dead never spoke. i am reminded words always translate
when buried in the earth and carry my eye along a path to meet a barn
that’s battered only by wind. in town, no one mentions bombs in homilies
or at the market. what’s the price of the melon? what, when fields floorboards
hands shake? war is only happening when it’s happening to us
a potter says turning clay from the river into something to press to your lips.
god is like this, i think, an idea you shape in your hands. so i go and dig–
to plant what might feed, to try and outplay a man with a trigger playing god.
in an etch of grass and far from the smoke, this land, holding me safe, is just dumb luck
i did nothing to deserve. it’s the afternoon now and the newscycle
has moved on like it does to a prehistoric plant that’s still kicking
somewhere between when we ask for forgiveness and where we keep the graves.
17 January, 2020
like monarchs
bitter from all the milkweed
hope, in its before-form,
is only a measure of protection
i swallow, drink from wind.
how i squash that same old, same old
tamp it down with the tin.
maybe it’s best to not turn from the truth
but truth is really just what sticks best
like beggar’s lice hitching a ride
to the next field over, delicate
in its grabbing.
today, spackle
yesterday, i sanded
and i admit, i like to feel useful,
worries smoothing out with the grain.
what passes through my hands
the tremble between the wing
and the thorn— truer
than true still.
17 January, 2020
There was a moment, in fifth grade.
I, sitting on the floor next to those
metal and plywood desks, waiting
for the bell to ring me home to my mother,
home to the street which was flooded
so high I could go out in my bathing suit
and lay in it, could forget about my body
in the late evening sun. Could float.
There was a moment when I saw
a piece of paper in a girl’s hand and on it,
a picture drawn of me. Giant balloon girl,
tiny pin head. Another girl was laughing
and saying yes, yes, that’s just her—and I
stopped wanting to float or fly, like that
the image of myself in a two piece,
hair fanning out like kelp—was let go of.
I let it go. Later, I got so thin
even the principal would say how healthy
you look now, my stepdad would chat it
at the Ameristop, just look at her,
how she’s got herself together.
And I wouldn’t eat anything, not even a piece
of bread. And still, thin as I was, I remember
being sleek in a swimsuit, walking to Cara’s
grandma’s above ground pool. Grandma
whispering just look at the thighs
on that one, me, and suddenly, who was
I, again, gone out of body looking down to see
what was hanging out or over the sides
of the latex, exposing me, round
cat-eye marble in the pile, to the eye
of the one who says what’s lovely.
Now I am a mother, now I’ve let
my body blossom full as a tongue, full
as a crowning head of hair, full as a marigold,
I’ve unhinged and been above my body,
dissolving body in the lake which even
now is flooding all the fields and calling me
to take off my clothes, to take off my skin,
to let everything roll out and as it falls,
collect it in the little silver bucket I’d carry
into the flood as a child, to catch
something lovely, something god-made,
something washed clean and new. Something
ugly, too. To not worry about the weight
of a girl’s limbs, how tired they can get
holding it all in.