Edited by J. Rutherford Kensington, Emeritus Professor, Yale University
Introduction by Davis Phillips, Visiting Writer of Distinction, Yale University
Copyright of Greenfield Literary Publications, 2009.
16123 7th Avenue Suite 742, New York, NY 10013
Table of Contents
Page 3. Introduction by Davis Phillips
Page 4. Rebecca’s Death by Byron Westfield
Page 7 Jenny by Melissa Carragher
Page 10 Big Sleeping by Jacob Greenweiss
Page 11 Flipping Your Hair by Mason Franks
Page 13 A Metafictive Perfumed Garden by Thomas McGrath
INTRODUCTION
When J. Rutherford Kensington asked me to write the introduction for this collection, I was more honored than any other time in my life, except possibly when Marissa Sergeant took off her shirt for me in the eleventh grade, but then, my early sexual life has little to do with what you are about to read.
These stories will make you laugh, cry, scream in anger, and possibly commit suicide. They are that affecting. I’m being paid one thousand dollars for this introduction, no matter how long it is, or what I write. Therefore, I could, with a clear conscience and no fear of being fired, write I STILL LOVE YOU MARISSA SERGEANT in all caps and still get every cent of my money. I wonder if Marissa still thinks of me. I’m drunk right now and my waitress is bringing me a triple bourbon and coke, light on the coke. I may be writing this on a napkin. So please, enjoy the stories, and if you know Marissa Sergeant’s current location or phone number, don’t hesitate to contact me at dphils@yale.edu. Cheers and happy reading.
May 24, 2009
Rebecca’s Death
Byron Westfield
Rebecca doesn’t know why she died. She tends to think about death a lot, mostly because I make her. I don’t try to make her, but she says my existence is enough to turn all her thoughts toward death. She also says I’m like an author writing her into a story of misery and pain, the kind where she ends up jumping in front of a train and allowing a mass of phallic metal traveling at three-hundred miles-per-hour to dismember her in the ultimate act of female subservience. She says all men are like penis-obsessed trains and women are tied down to the tracks. I disagree with her, though. I am not all that obsessed with my penis, I travel closer to five miles-per-hour and I have no interest in dismembering her. Not that it matters anymore. She didn’t die jumping in front of a train. She knows that, at least. I don’t know how she died either. I never knew her until after she died, but now she follows me everywhere. I’ve tried to be as polite as possible, but no matter how nice and sweet and accommodating I am, I’m still a train intent on destroying her. I ask her why she stays with me.
“Sometimes I enjoy the destruction,” she says. “Dreams of dismemberment can be kind of fun now and then. And, dreams are all I have left.”
“You killed me,” she says one day during lunch. We’re at our usual lunch spot, a café with cheap coffees and bagels that Rebecca says would bring her back to life, if only she could eat them. I smile, like I think she’s being funny, but her expression is of the utmost seriousness.
“Maybe you didn’t kill me intentionally,” she says, “but through your actions, or the lack thereof, I died and my blood is on your hands. You’ll never be able to wash it off.”
“Not even with really expensive soap?” I ask. She doesn’t smile. Those who have died do not engage in mirth-related activities, I suppose, especially with the person who supposedly killed them. I almost ask her if she’s having her period or has missed a period, but then I remember she can’t have those anymore. I’m with her so much, she almost feels like my girlfriend.
“I’m talking about psychological blood,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I died a bloodless death.” She seems a little disappointed in me, like she expects me to understand her point of view. I’d love to understand what she’s talking about, but, alas, I’m don’t possess a piercing knowledge of being dead, and so instead I sip my coffee and try to look sympathetic. She tells me I’m pretty useless, and she’s right. She says she has to find more details. In her position, I think I’d rather stay ignorant about such things, but she’s adamant, so I graciously offer to help her. She glares at me, the image of superiority. She thanks me for my offer, says she doesn’t need my help at all, but that I’m welcome to accompany her on her quest. Ah, questing. I feel like I’m in elementary school again. I tell her this, and she hits me in the ribcage. Dead people can still punch relatively hard.
“Ouch,” I say. “You know, Becky, for an impenetrable steel train intent on destruction, my ribs feel pretty tender.” Once again, she fails to find any humor in my comment. Usually she doesn’t mind when I call her Becky, but I guess her current state of mind calls for extreme measures of unfamiliarity.
“My name is Rebecca,” she says. “You of all people should know. Now shut up.”
She punches me again, then says having sex would help—if it were possible. I’m ashamed to admit that this makes me a little aroused. She’s still very pretty with a great tan, considering she’s dead. Her brown hair kills me, it looks so soft.
“I always feel the most clairvoyant after an orgasm,” she says. “Or a bagel.” She suggests I masturbate while eating a bagel but my burgeoning erection has mysterious disappeared. I blame the mention of bagels. Once again she calls me useless. I ask her is she’s able to take her clothes off—a tight black sweater and skinny jeans. I’m not sure if that’s what she died in or not. She changes clothes now and then, but never in my view.
“I think I’ll just watch TV,” she says. “Impotence is one of my biggest pet peeves.”
I’ve never felt more alone than right now.
“You know,” I say, “sometimes I wish you were still alive.”
She glares at me.
She says, “You know, sometimes I wish someone else had killed me.”
Jenny
Melanie Carragher
Jenny and Rick have been together three years, though for Jenny it seems more like sixty. Everyday, she wakes up at 6:15 in order to make it to work by seven, while Rick stays in bed until he feels like getting up. At first his unemployment was kind of cute, but not anymore. Jenny has tried to break up with him three times already, but each time she lost her nerve. Rick has no idea about any of this. Jenny is beginning to hate herself.
“No, I’m not,” Jenny says. “I feel perfectly fine about myself.”
Jenny has considered suicide more than once, but, like with breaking up with Rick, she is also afraid of that.
“This is complete bullshit! I’ve never even thought about killing myself.”
Jenny lies to herself. Jenny lies to everyone.
Rick wonders who Jenny is talking to.
“Jenny, what the fuck, man? I’m trying to sleep.”
Rick calls Jenny “man” ad naseum, something which has caused Jenny to question her sexuality. She wonders if maybe in another life she was a man and Rick was a woman. Sometimes she fantasizes about dressing Rick up in women’s clothing.
“Honey,” she says. “Would you put on one of my dresses? Just to see how it feels?”
“Sure,” Rick says. “I was hoping you’d ask that. I try on your clothes all the time when you’re gone.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jenny says. “I did not just say that.” She looks around the room, but sees nothing. “Who are you?”
You’re not supposed to know I’m here, Jenny. You’re not supposed to hear me.
“Dude, man, come on,” Rick says.
“Oh, shut up,” Jenny says.
Jenny has a violent temper. Many of her friends consider her quite the bitch.
“They do?”
Yes, they do. If Jenny weren’t so caught up in her own affairs, if she stopped being so selfish, maybe she would realize the pain others feel.
“This is such bullshit,” Jenny says.
Poor deluded Jenny.
“I’m not deluded.”
Then why do you stay this way, stuck in a life you find boring? If that’s not delusion, I’m not sure what is.
“You’re just a stupid narrator. You’re not supposed to be intelligent. You just tell the story. Shut up.”
But you are the character. I create you. You are mine to love or hate, kill or let live.
“If you’re trying to scare me, you’re not doing a good job.”
“We’ll you doing a great job of scaring me,” Rick says.
“Shut up, Rick,” Jenny says.
Rick suddenly has a heart attack. Jenny looks at him, wondering if she should cry. What frail creatures we are, she thinks.
“That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking you’re psychotic. Rick is dead!”
He was annoying. And like I said, I have the power of life and death over my characters.
“What are you going to do, kill me next?”
No, no, Jenny. You have nothing to fear.
“As long as I don’t annoy you.”
Yes, I suppose. One thing that really annoys me are questions, especially when asked in a disrespectful tone.
“What are you, my father? Stay the fuck out of my life.”
Jenny looks wistfully at Rick. Suddenly she feels her own heart surge.
“Hey,” she screams. “I’m healthy! I’m vegan! I eat 850 calories a day, I can’t die of a heart attack.”
Sorry, Jenny.
Goodbye.
Big Sleeping
Jacob Greenweiss
The look of a bookstore girl in a 40s movie, watching the hero walking out into the rain, most likely never to return. The bookstore girl wears glasses and has her hair put up in a severe bun, but after a few snappy verbal interchanges, the glasses are gone, her hair is down, and they’re kissing, pressing their faces against each other so hard it must hurt. No pleasure in closed mouth lip-smashing.
Brandy on the bookcase, two glasses, ice melting. They still smash. “I liked that, but you’re not trying too hard, are you?” the bookstore girl says. Pulled in again. Smashing. “It’s better when you help.” That’s Lauren Bacall, To Have and Have Not. Wrong Film. Everything swirls in beautiful indecision. There are no titles. No one knows who the book store girl is. Was.
“Do you have a first edition?”
“Of what?”
“Of you. You’re a dream, angel.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
“That isn’t my name.”
“Well, Angel isn’t mine.”
None of these lines exist.
It always rains outside.
Flipping Your Hair
Mason Franks
Well, ya know, I get well leery when a geezer gets hard with me. It’s an invasion of my fuckin privacy, see. I’s just trying to get a peek at the football, and he was up in my face tellin me he shagged my lamb the night before. Geezer couldn’t shag his own mum. Had zits all up and down his neck, he did. But he was all like, “she was sqealin for it mate” and nobody shags my bird but me, so I had to stare the geezer down in his cunt face, watching to make sure the fit girl at the bar was watching me as I laid him a good one in his fuckin nose. Then the cunt decided to bleed on me so I may have kicked him in the face and stomach a few times just to make sure he remembered not to pull my girlfriend again. Saw the fit girl flipping her hair and chatting with her friend, looking shaggable as fuckin hell. Then the barman was like, “Oi, take this shit outside my pub,” so I fucked off outta there, leavin the cunt to bleed and maybe die on the floor. I hoped the fit girl might follow me, so I waited outside for a bit, but nothin. Shit, right? I woulda read her some of my poetry. Don’t get acting like I’m a prancy fag cause I write poems. Mine’s street shit, ya know? None of your love and roses and shit. Bloke told me rhythm isn’t poetry anymore and rhymes is nothing but I fucked him up for that. Right, so no fit girl, no shot at pulling her. So I just walked myself back to my gaff and told my wife to get outta the place, and go whore herself out in Birmingham or some shit place. She yelled a bit but I was reciting my poetry in my mind so I didn’t hear nothing. Finally she threw on her coat and said she was goin out, probably to find the bastard I fucked up. I wondered how the sex’d be with him bleedin everywhere. I decided maybe I’d write a poem bout that. Dreams was good that night.
A Metafictive Perfumed Garden
Thomas McGrath
When writing a sex scene, you can’t be too modest. No lovers kissing behind closed doors shit. You don’t want to sound like you’re a blushing Victorian or something. You’re in the twenty-first century for chrissake. Every day of your life you hear and see so much shit you’re jaded beyond belief. Instead of a heart, you’ve got a callous. You’re beyond feelings. You glare at puppies, even. And you sure as hell better not ever end a scene with an embrace and then start the next paragraph with “afterwards,” leaving what happened to the readers imaginations. Readers don’t have imaginations. You have to get grimy and gritty and as realistic as possible, without sounding pornographic. Your readers aren’t supposed to be titillated by the sex scenes—we’re not harlequin romance novelists here, are we?—so you have to sound as detached as possible. Your characters are fucking. You don’t care. You don’t really know who they are anyway. And please, no characters-talking-while-copulating, okay? ”Fuck me, fuck me,” just sounds so stupid. No one says that. Also, no “making love” or “giving pleasure”. You’re not writing a sexy sex scene. It’s realistic. It’s high brow. Well, not too high brow.
He reamed her. That’s a good sentence. No one can accuse you of romanticizing anything there. Let’s continue:
He reamed her.
She cried out.
“God,” she said.
“Christ,” he said.
The reaming continued. The screaming continued.
That’s not a bad scene. You have the basic elements at least. Maybe using “he” and “she” makes things too personal though. Let’s try something else:
Character A fucks Character B.
Character A enjoys it.
Character B wants it to end.
Character C walks into the room, drinking a beer.
Character C says, “Mind if I join?”
Character A and Character B scream, “No!” at Character C, who leaves the room in tears.
(When character C arrives, and suggests a threesome, things start getting a little pornographic. You want to avoid that. Try something that seems less like a fantasy.)
Character A straddles Character B in the bright, sickeningly white glare of the fluorescent lights, the grime and sweat of their bodies mixing as they crush together animalistically. They grunt and moan and roll on the shit-brown carpet, gravelly dirt sticking to them as they move. Outside the sun goes behind the skyscrapers, but still they screw in the harsh whiteness, like laboratory rats moving down a maze toward swinging turbines and certain death. More grunting, more moaning. Gruntingmoaningsexpainallisemptiness. Character A’s back arches and then loosens as they collapse into a worthless heap. The lights go out above them. Darkness, the color of death.
Yes, that’s a good scene. No titillation there, unless you have some seriously screwed up fetish-mongering readers. Make everything as realistic and ugly as possible, and you’ll succeed every time.
I hope you’ve taken this advice to heart. If not, perhaps you should go back to Victorian England and cry in your tea. That’s what Character C is doing right now.
About The Authors
Byron Westfield has been dead for eleven years. A tragic train accident took his life. He lives in Brooklyn, in Salinger-esque conditions, producing only six pages each year for public consumption. Rumors abound that he has written a three thousand page manifesto, purported to be the seminal work on life after death. Alas, such claims are unsubstantiated as of yet. We can only hope they are true.
Melanie Carragher is a writer of short fiction. This is her first published work. She does not live in Brooklyn, but keeps an apartment there for the sake of appearances. However, she dislikes people.
Jacob Greenweiss has written seven books of poetry, the last of which, Visions, has been met with international acclaim for his frank portrayals of the metrosexual identity. His first short story collection, Mothballs and Perfume, will be published this fall. He lives in Brooklyn.
Mason Franks the ill-chosen pseudonym of one of America’s finest young writers. His reportage has appeared in The Paris Review, among other journals. He lives in London and Brooklyn.
Thomas McGrath is a staff writer for three news publications. He does not ream, but has no metaphysical qualms with hard anal sex. When not in Brooklyn Heights, he spends much of his time molesting succulent cabbages and his students at a small New England liberal arts college. He prefers brunettes, under nineteen, but has found ecstasy with a twenty-three year old blonde before. He believes extracurricular sex should not have any affect on a student’s grade. He neither flunks his conquests (a common film plot device) nor gives them As. He considers himself an enlightened, fair-minded professor and an excellent man. He enjoys cabbage soup and cole slaw.
