[POETRY] Some Monsters I'm Friends With

Some Monsters I'm Friends With

by Bud Smith, with illustrations by Michael Seymour Blake

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     There was a werewolf who had a drinking problem. She wanted two things very badly, to kick the alcohol, which she felt slowly killing her; but also, to not do anything on a night with a full moon high in the sky, that'd cause her to kill anyone else.

     It was a shame when her AA meeting fell on a full moon night, and she couldn't attend.

     The other people at the meeting survived, but she began to drink again. She had nothing but the bottle.

     There is a vampire who lives above me. Apartment 22. He came down through the ceiling in a green fog and spoke to me in Latin.

     The fog hung over my TV and I was frozen.

     Finally I said "I don't understand Latin."

     And the vampire explained in plain English that he'd once fallen in love with a mermaid griffin and he wanted very badly to find her if there was a way.

     I said, "Did you Facebook her?"

     The vampire was embarrassed, he'd changed into a more humanistic form and opened his hands to reveal ten sharp spikes where fingers should be.

     "It took me ten centuries to figure out how to use my computer and it seems I have forgotten my login password for the wifi."

     There was an uncomfortable pause.

     "You can use my wifi."

     "What's the password?"

     "BreakingBadToTheBone. Capital B breaking capital B bad capital T to capital T the Capital B bone ... All one word, got that? Hold on I'll just use my phone."

    He sat on the couch next to me and I found her, easily enough, she lived in Dusseldorf.

    In her AVI, I could see her eyes were filled with ultimate evil.

    A true world destroyer.

    The vampire who lives in apartment 22 said, "Where is Dusseldorf?"

    "Lemme google map it ... You want directions by car, bus or ..."

    "Do flights, you fool."

    "Did you instant message her?"

    "No."

     "At least IM her, don't just show up like a creep."

     There was a boy who had an alligator face. He wasn't always like that. He woke up that way one day.

     And when he went to school, some of the other kids taunted him about it.

     So he bit another kid on the face. Ripped apart the face.

     Blood everywhere in the hall outside of the art room.

     And that is why you never make fun of a boy with an alligator face unless you are quick like lightning.

     I heard again about the alcoholic werewolf after her car accident.

     She hit a child on a bicycle right on my street. The child lay bleeding in the street. The werewolf leapt out of her Pontiac that was hissing after the side of the church stopped its path.

     The child would have died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

     but before she did

     the werewolf got down on her knees, I saw it with my own eyes peeking out the curtains

     and she bit down on the throat of the child, bit it hard, even more blood spilled on the road.

     when the werewolf vanished into the woods

     She was in the form of a girl I recognized from the bar, think her name is Bonnie ... but the EMTs when they arrived heard the wolf howling in the woods and they told the newspaper it sounded just like crying.

     The vampire upstairs did not find love in Dusseldorf. He comes down through my ceiling and he is weeping too.

     "What happened with the mermaid Frankenstein?" I ask.

     "Don't ask!"

     "Ok. I've got lady problems too. My girlfriend started dating my friend Paul instead."

     "Help me and I'll kill Paul."

     "No we don't have to do that. What happened with your mermaid?"

     "She sent me an electronic telegram on the World Wide Web and when I clicked on the telegram it asked for my name, address and social security number ..."

     "Oh no, you didn't enter that, did you?"

     "Yes! Yes I did! Now my bank account is empty and I find out that my love in Dusseldorf is not who she say she is!"

     "It's probably a hacker in Lithuania."

     "I will go there and find them and you will come with me."

     "I can't," I said, "I have this cat."

     I pointed to the cat.

     The vampire pointed at the cat too and the cat exploded in a whoosh of fur and bones.

     "To Lithuania," he said.

     The little girl from the car wreck wakes up in the morgue.

     She is covered in blood but she had no wounds.

     She is seven years old and her clothes have not been cut off.

     She would not have been cold anyway.

     She left the morgue.

     She went out across the wet lawn.

     Into the big moonlight.

     Many miles away she could hear howling coming from the trees.

     It was her new mother.

     The child began to sprint towards her cries.

     That's how Bonnie got that kid I see her with, she'll pretend she's the kids aunt, that she adopted her because her parents are meth heads but i know the truth, I have gotten tanked with Bonnie and she has told me all about it.

    One last thing

    The boy with the alligator face enters a pie eating contest.

    And he wins.

     No one wants to sit anywhere near him.

     So he is the only one eating pie.

     And at the end, the judges pass him his blue ribbon, tied to a long pole so the boy doesn't bit their hands off.

     There's a prize, too.

     His prize is, a kiss from the prettiest girl in town.

     My ex girlfriend, Shannon.


Bud Smith is the author of the novels F 250 and Tollbooth, the short story collection Or Something Like That and the poetry collection Everything Neon. He works heavy construction in NJ and lives in NYC where he has a car he parks on the street like that TV show Seinfeld. 

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Michael Seymour Blake is an art creator and admirer, person who says "hello puppy" in a weird voice whenever he sees a dog, and hypochondriac extraordinaire. He has lived in New York his whole life and has a love/hate relationship with it. He likes talking at length about movies, books, and comics, he also enjoys toys, food, and old stuff (but not old food). Email him at SeymourWBlake@gmail.com to talk about things.


[SHORT STORY] A Walk Around Town on a Chilly Evening

Image by Ralph Steadman

A Walk Around Town On a Chilly Evening

by Sasha Fletcher

After the sun set and the last of its heat dissipated from the baked bricks of the buildings lining what amounted to a boulevard, the cold winds started in from the North or the East or some other place full up with trouble and nonsense, and whistled their way through the town.

Outside the bar are several drunks drunk and lonely, their secrets spilling out their mouths and on down their shirtfronts, their bile spelling out a few choice phrases like WE FIND NEW WAYS TO DEFEAT OURSELVES BETTER THAN THE WORLD EVER COULD EVERY DAY and IF I KNEW BETTER HOW TO LIVE WITH MY LONELINESS THEN MAYBE YOUโ€™D SPEAK TO ME AGAIN, OR AT LEAST COME HOME and I WOULD SAY I AM SORRY BUT THE WORD FOR WHAT I AM FEELING IS NOT A WORD, IT IS A FEELING, AND FURTHERMORE IF I BROACHED THE SUBJECT OF MYSELF TO YOU Iโ€™D BE A DEAD MAN AND A HALF and THIS WAS NOT WHAT I MEANT TO ACCOMPLISH and WHOOPS, GUESS I REALLY MADE A MESS HERE, HUH?

Such are the feelings we spill from time to time on the shoes of strangers, our sadness a thing we choose to choke or choke on as the moment dictates, and depending of course on the price of whisky, which at the moment is on sale, and the road to the bar is wide, roughly as wide as my weaknesses, which will swallow me whole, just you watch. But before that, let us hold our heads under the water until something magical happens. Let us hold hands and walk through the fire in the manner of people in nicer clothes that we can afford, and let us do it with the gusto and commitment that we would like to be better known for.

Outside all of this is the jail, in which several men are interred for inflicting their feelings on unsuspecting citizens with varying degrees of violence. โ€˜Tell us something!โ€™ they call out to the Sheriffโ€™s father. โ€˜Tell you what he?โ€™ says to them. โ€˜Tell us something lovely and true and only a little vicious, just enough to draw some blood, to get the scent of living in the air.โ€™ He says โ€˜Fineโ€™ and reads them the letters he has written to the ghost he loves and when he is finished they say โ€˜And then what?โ€™ and he says to them โ€˜And then nothing.โ€™ He says โ€˜And then we keep living as best we can with our hearts on fire in a way that not even death will extinguishโ€™, and this shuts them up for the night while they sit with their thoughts which have, it turns out, sincerely let them down.

Upstairs from the jail is the Sheriffโ€™s fatherโ€™s apartment, next to the sign that says JAIL, and notes are falling from the ceiling, and have been for years, and then the wind comes and scoops them up, because the wind is a fucking asshole, and romance does not always get to win, because if it did, well, what then?

What then? is a game the children are playing that they invented earlier wherein they reinvent the wheel and by the wheel we mean history.

What then is then everyone gets the ball scores in in a more timely fashion. What then is the double play and the complete game shutout and the invention of the ground rule double, which is a thing people have got some opinions on, but fuck their opinions, because the ground rule double is a law, and youโ€™re just an opinion with a mouth. The town paper has got some things to say about the ground rule double, but is keeping them to itself. The town paper sits alone in the dark, writing editorial after editorial. The town paper thinks for a moment about what it might be like to date, to sit across a table from a body and to risk something of their feelings, or at least maybe to sit down to a meal, for once in its life. After thinking, the town paper writes an editorial, and after that the town paper writes another editorial. In the basement of the town paper, an idea, unspoken, rustles.

Up in her room is Meg who has stopped seeing Daniel, but is unsure if she wants to see Sam. Sam on his porch down the road is decidedly sure that he would like to see Meg if she would let him, while up in her room Meg thinks of how glad she is to know Sam, of the joy knowing him has brought to her life, and the ways in which their conversations have expanded the borders of her life to encompass things she had previously only dreamed of, but how that doesnโ€™t mean she wants to marry the guy. Meg thinks of Sam and is, for a moment, overwhelmed by a rush of blood and warmth let loose by her heart. Meg thinks of Sam and of how much more glad she would be if he would just let things be. โ€˜Samโ€™ says Meg โ€˜I get it. There is such stuff in my heart that you could not get over if you tried, which who even knows if you have, but that doesnโ€™t mean things between us would work.โ€™ โ€˜In another worldโ€™ says Sam to Meg from his porch โ€˜Wanting would be enough.โ€™ โ€˜In another world โ€˜says Meg to Sam from her upstairs in her room โ€˜Iโ€™d like that very much.โ€™

Past them is the moon, which is, in its own way, another world beyond all of us, and below the moon is the barbershop. Outside the barbershop are a group of men with large ideas and new haircuts and nobody cares about those men and if they do care about them well then thatโ€™s their mistake, and not one which we are willing to indulge. Past the barbershop is the Jail, where the Sheriff sits with a pipe as the prisoners ask him questions to which he responds โ€˜Well, I reckon youโ€™ll stay there until such time as you learn to not be a shit heel. No Tom, I donโ€™t rightly reckon I know when that would be either. Dinnerโ€™s beans in a cup with some burnt ends. Well because itโ€™s all I know to cook, or itโ€™s โ€™cause I donโ€™t rightly feel like expending the effort to make you more than that. Also youโ€™re drunk Tom. You pissed in your gun and thought youโ€™d be shooting piss in Billโ€™s ear instead of the shell in the chamber. Yes, Billโ€™s dead, with an ear full of piss, too. Yes, Tom, I reckon youโ€™ll hang. Yes it was misleading earlier. No, I donโ€™t feel too torn up about it. Well Tom, I have known love. Well I left that love, Tom. No, no it was just. Well, Tom, she was a witch, and I was greatly terrified of her femininity, and her power, and quite frankly I just felt like I was out of my depth. Do I regret it? Sure. Some days. I mean, who doesnโ€™t have a few regrets? Iโ€™m sure you regret leaving Bill dead with an ear full of piss. But that donโ€™t preclude an attempt at justice and whatever subsequent punishment is decided upon for the taking of a life unjustly, which, if youโ€™ve been following along here, tends in this town to be a handing. Yes, Tom. I too weep at the sheer fucking impossibility of it all. Practically every night.โ€™ And then they both weep at the sheer fucking impossibility of it all, because who wouldnโ€™t? And anyway past the jail is, fittingly enough, the graveyard, which is not so much a yard as it is the plot of land at the bottom of a hill reached by a winding staircase at the top of which is the church.

Outside the church sits an old priest and a young priest. Earlier today the old priest and young priest woke up in their rooms and they yawned and stretched and the young priest worries a bit about sleep, which is not a thing he does well at all, and the old priest cataloged his dreams so as to better distinguish them from his visions and the young priest just assumed that whatever happened inside his head was the thing he was meant to think or see, but that he should, if he could, hold those thoughts up to what light of day there is so as to compare them to the wide world and better get a grip on what plans there are that exist for him, and after al that they got dressed and met downstairs.

โ€˜Wellโ€™ said the young priest to the old priest โ€˜I guess weโ€™d better open up.โ€™ โ€˜Thatโ€™ said the old priest โ€˜Would be the thing to doโ€™, and so they went and they opened up the doors, and no one is there. โ€˜Thereโ€™s nobody thereโ€™ said the young priest. โ€˜Seems as though nobody is in need of a church at this hourโ€™ said the old priest. โ€˜Coffee?โ€™ said the young priest. โ€˜Oh yes, pleaseโ€™ said the old priest, and they retire to the back, and prepare some coffee. โ€˜So last nightโ€™ said the young priest โ€˜Oh?โ€™ said the old priest โ€˜Yeahโ€™ said the young priest. โ€˜Were you going to tell me about last night?โ€™ said the old priest and the young priest said โ€˜I wasnโ€™t planning on it but I could if youโ€™d likeโ€™, and then they both sat there with their coffee, and then someone stuck their head in and said โ€˜Hi Hello Can you help me?โ€™ โ€˜How can we help?โ€™ they said, and the person says โ€˜You can dieโ€™, and then like twenty people swarm the church, guns blazing, and the priests said together and in unison โ€˜Weโ€™d rather you didnโ€™t do this. God loves you, and violence is not the answerโ€™ and this statement got answered with more gunplay, and the young priest sighed and said to the old priest โ€˜OK so about my dreamโ€™ and the old priest said โ€˜Uh huhโ€™ and then grabbed the nearest church-swarmer by the neck and removed their head from their body and gripped the spine with both hands and whipped it around, smashing a few heads together, while the young priest shot out the eyes of the church-swarmers and said โ€˜Last night I could have sworn there was a mountain walking around the desertโ€™ and shoots out a few more eyes, which are the windows to the soul, and anyone that would visit such violence upon these men, well, their soul is fucked unto death probably, and the old priest said โ€˜Go onโ€™ and the young priest said โ€˜I mean that wasnโ€™t what happened, really. What happened was I was a much older manโ€™ and the old priest says โ€˜Like me?โ€™ and the young priest says โ€˜And I was standing on the roof of a house on top of a mountain that was roaming the desert carried along upon a series of tumbleweeds, and I was standing there with my daughter, in the dream I had a daughterโ€™ and he shot four more people through the eyes while the old priest switched out his shattered-to-shit skull on the end of the spine of his church-swarmer basher for a fresh one from the neck of a real asshole-looking fella, and the young priest said โ€˜I donโ€™t know how I knew she was my daughter, but I just didโ€™ and the old priest said โ€˜The worldโ€™s funny like thatโ€™ and the young priest said โ€˜And anyway her name was America, and it wasnโ€™t a symbol or anything it was just her name, America Resplendent Adams, and she and I were standing there, her mother had been dead a year that morning, we stood there, and we wept, and our tears formed a waterfall, and it flooded a town, a town by the sea, and the town was swept away, and America looked up at me, and she opened her mouth, and then I woke up.โ€™ โ€˜Shitโ€™ said the old priest, breathing slowly, and stacking the bodies into a sort of mountain. โ€˜Yeah, wellโ€™ said the young priest, panting from the exertion. โ€˜Guess we should bury them.โ€™

And so anyway thatโ€™s why theyโ€™re here in the graveyard, where the old priest, sweating, mostly out of breath, and leaning against a tombstone on which they have inscribed HERE REST SEVERAL POOR DECISIONS, he says โ€˜I was in love with a ghost onceโ€™ and the young priest says โ€˜1) Who wasnโ€™t and 2) We can talk about that later.โ€™ The old priest says โ€˜What of America?โ€™ and the young priest says โ€˜That isnโ€™t funnyโ€™ The old priest says โ€˜America.โ€™ The young priest says โ€˜You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?โ€™ The old priest says โ€˜I worry that America has forgotten how to loveโ€™, says โ€˜Brother and sisters, we are gathered here today huddled up amongst the rocks and the hard places, begging the Lord up above for guidance, because that is all we are good for, is begging. Brothers and sisters I say unto you โ€˜Fuck your beggaryโ€™, for it will get you nowhere. Does the lord love you more when you cry out for him to fix things? When your child ceases not with its pleas and tears, does this inspire you to love the child more? or to strike it about the face and body with your hands or some other implement of tact? This is a question put to you out there in America where we no longer know what love means.โ€™ The young priest says โ€˜That was a nice start but it gets a little aggressive towards the end there.โ€™ The old priest says โ€˜People respond to aggression.โ€™ The young priest says โ€˜Not wellโ€™ says โ€˜Recall earlier, if you will.โ€™ The old priest says โ€˜I thought that went wellโ€™ and the young priest says nothing. He says โ€˜Once upon a time in the west I was tired, and after that I went to bed, and in the morning a whole bunch of jerks sat around worrying about everything except whether they were trying to be better, more decent people, who attempted more sincerely to connect to others around them, and really grow the kind of community that would make anyone proud.โ€™ He says โ€˜Letโ€™s change the subject.โ€™ he says โ€˜Some people talk about the soul and where it resides. They say that the deepest part of you is in your head, or your heart, or your blood. โ€˜His blood is badโ€™ theyโ€™ll say. โ€˜His heart is cold.โ€™ โ€˜He has got an evil turn of mind.โ€™ โ€˜There is a darkness to himโ€™ is what theyโ€™ll say. But the worst of us, what we leave behind, what heaven never wants, is our bones.โ€™ He says โ€˜Fuck.โ€™ He says โ€˜I donโ€™t really know where Iโ€™m going with all this.โ€™ He says โ€˜I am not really going anywhere with this.โ€™ The old priest says to the young priest โ€˜Oh yes you areโ€™ and the young priest says โ€˜And where might that be?โ€™ and the old priest says โ€˜Straight to hellโ€™ and then they both die laughing. Now theyโ€™re up in heaven, and thereโ€™s God, saying โ€˜Stop thatโ€™, and the old priest and the young priest say โ€˜Make usโ€™, they say โ€˜We dare you.โ€™ They say โ€˜We double dare you.โ€™ They say โ€˜We double dare you and stamp it with a Presidential seal from the President of Loneliness, with whom we have got a real close and personal relationship.โ€™ God says โ€˜You guys know the President of Loneliness?โ€™ The old priest and the young priest say โ€˜Fuck yes we do!โ€™ And God says โ€˜Dang.โ€™ And the old priest and the young priest say โ€˜Tell us about itโ€™, and so that is what God does. And, in the morning when the sun comes up, there they are, the old priest and the young priest, still dead as all creation, and loving every second of it.

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SASHA FLETCHER is the author of It Is Going To Be a Good Year (Big Lucks Books, 2016), several chapbooks of poetry, and an out of print novella. He has recently finished a novel, from which this piece is excerpted from.


[SHORT STORIES] Selections from ECHO PARK by Ryan Ridge

Ryan Ridge's short short stories carry a sort of essence of the 21st century. His brief prose style parallels with our abrupt, social-media-driven way of communicating in the modern world. The following tales--centered around the recently gentrified  community of Echo Park in Los Angeles--capture the dark tensions behind everything from climate change to Charlie Chaplin tramp stamps.

JACKSON BROWNE

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
--Jackson Browne

He strums his Gibson guitar with an unregistered handgun in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. The acoustics are astonishing. After the failure of the โ€˜60s came the disappointment of the โ€˜70s. Now every decade feels like the last. Itโ€™s a story older than prime real estate itself. In the Country Western sunshine our heartbeats beat in ยพ time as you waltz into an Albertsonโ€™s on Alvarado Street to buy a bag of avocados. Everything costs more in California. Nothing is sacred unless itโ€™s potential for profitable media. Culture is to Capital today as Carnegie once was: nu steelโ€ฆ Out of work actors canโ€™t catch a break so instead they fall into afternoon matinees: comedy, dramedy, urban tragedy. Most lives are silent films no one sees. He handguns his guitar in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. His weapon of choice is A.) His voice, and B.) An acoustic piano dropped from a ballroom balcony in the rain, but it rarely ever rains anymore. โ€œThese minor chords sound exactly like the distance between usโ€ฆโ€ And the ocean? It belongs only to itself.


FIRE CONSUMES BUSINESSES NEAR FREEWAY

Fire consumes businesses near freeway the first Friday of every third month. The sign above tonightโ€™s flaming building says: NEED CASH NOW. Now that the sign is on fire itโ€™s no longer a sign. It is a smoldering metaphor. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire (Yeats). The residents have gathered together this evening to watch the blaze. They swallow edible marijuana while sharing stories from the golden days of television. โ€œThereโ€™s no business like unemployment.โ€ The sign above the burning building is engulfed in flames. From our vantage point, the partially smoked sign says: - - - - - ASH NOW. From my perspective, thereโ€™s nothing wrong with this as a business model.


MODERN TIMES

I was determined to continue making silent films ... I was a pantomimist and in that medium I was unique and, without false modesty, a master.
--Chaplin

I met an aspiring comedian from Colorado at the marijuana dispensary. In the lobby she showed me her half-ironic Charlie Chaplin tattoo. It was a tramp stamp at the base of her spine featuring the Little Trampโ€™s face. We were intimate that night in her studio apartment in Echo Park and the entire ordeal was done in silence โ€œin honor of Charlieโ€™s legacy.โ€ Thatโ€™s what she said. We were high. The lights were on. Eventually I was behind her, looking down at Chaplinโ€™s face looking up at me. When I pulled out I covered old Charlieโ€™s eyes and then I cleaned him up with a sock. Afterward, I felt a strange kinship for all his films. I never saw that comedian or her tattoo again, but Iโ€™ve seen Modern Times at least a dozen times now. Itโ€™s my favorite film.


PILOTS

On the rooftop of a Hollywood hotel: the tourists eye the other tourists by the peanut-shaped pool. Theyโ€™re drinking expensive rum drinks and oiling themselves down, reading books with titles like Alice in Chains Again and Cupids on Jet Skis. One woman whistles for the bartender. Thatโ€™s me. Her drink isnโ€™t going to refill itself. Her small son hunts insects in the faux grass with a magnifying glass. Our lifeguard is a licensed realtor, sells condos on the side in Silver Lake. Now the boy sees something beneath the magnifying glass and motions for me to look. So I look. Below the glass a black ant is smoldering to death in the magnified sunlight. The antโ€™s tiny antennae are smoking and this idiotic child is laughing. I deliver his mother her drink. โ€œSome kid youโ€™ve got there,โ€ I say. โ€œHeโ€™s a complete psychopath,โ€ she says. โ€œThe worldโ€™s smallest CEO. He takes after his father. Rub some lotion on my back?โ€ I oblige. โ€œThank you,โ€ she says afterward. โ€œDonโ€™t mention it,โ€ I say. โ€œItโ€™s my job.โ€ โ€œWell, youโ€™re good at it,โ€ she says. โ€œThanks,โ€ I say, โ€œBut itโ€™s not my real job. Iโ€™m an actor.โ€ She cocks her head and says: โ€œI donโ€™t think Iโ€™ve ever seen you in anything. No, I remember faces and I donโ€™t remember yours.โ€ โ€œIโ€™ve mostly done pilots,โ€ I say. โ€œPilots,โ€ she says, winks: โ€œIโ€™ve done a few of those, too.โ€


THE GANGS OF ECHO PARK

The gangs have gone away. Priced out to Eagle Rock, El Sereno, and the innards of the Inland Empire. On weekends they return to their home turf in ancient Mercuryโ€™s and souped-up pickups. They do this as a way of reconnecting with their roots, staying true. And if itโ€™s true what they say about place giving rise to spirit then the spirit of Echo Park is positively Western in an old Hollywood sense. Most Saturday nights culminate in a gunfight. Tonight is no exception. Shots ring out on Preston Avenue and echo on up to Avalon Street. Now a gangster is dead in a stairwell on Armitage. Tomorrow I will step under the police tape on my way to church. My church is a bar called the Gold Room on Sunset. You can get a PBR and shot of tequila for four bucks. The peanuts are free. I sit in a booth near the back, drinking and praying for work. I canโ€™t tell if the drinking enhances the prayer or if the prayer improves the drink. Amen. Lord, hear our drinks.


EXTRAS

They give you fifty bucks a day to be an extra in the studio audience. The only prerequisite is that you are alive and then all you have to do is clap when they tell you to clap and laugh when they tell you to laugh. I was broke and needed cash fast for rent, which meant I was in the studio audience up in Century City. Ironically, it was a sitcom comedy that Iโ€™d auditioned for. Iโ€™d come close to getting one of the leads, but in the end theyโ€™d gone โ€œa different direction.โ€ Now the character I wouldโ€™ve played was extolling brilliant life advice to his adopted daughter after sheโ€™d been booed off the stage at her student talent show. It was supposed to be one of those heartfelt moments where the audience says Awww and claps. All around me the crowd was awing and clapping, but I couldnโ€™t contain myself: I was laughing. It was hilarious to me to think that had things gone a slightly different direction Iโ€™d have been down there on the stage making the big bucks and maybe that other hack actor wouldโ€™ve been up here in the audience like myself, contemplating what mightโ€™ve been. Sure, I was laughing, but it wasnโ€™t funny. And I was causing my own scene because I was supposed to be clapping. โ€œFucking A,โ€ I said as I got up to leave. The man in the aisle seat glanced awkwardly at my crotch as I passed. โ€œExcuse me,โ€ I said. โ€œPardon me,โ€ I said. โ€œSorry.โ€ Yes, I left early, but they still gave me fifty bucks on the way out. I passed a line of extras waiting in the sun. Like most days, more had shown up than they needed.


OLD HOLLYWOOD

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological controlโ€“โ€“indoctrination, we might sayโ€“โ€“exercised through the mass media.
โ€“โ€“Noam Chomsky

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Originally the big film studios were located in Echo Park. Itโ€™s where they manufactured much of the American propaganda in the late 30s / early 40s. No one called it propaganda. During WWII the studios moved to Hollywood. Had they not, weโ€™d have Echo Park to blame for our colossal misunderstanding of the world. We might say: Iโ€™m moving to Echo Park to make it. But I didnโ€™t make it. I wanted to be an actor, to be a speck in the spectacle, but the further I got into the business, the more I mixed it with pleasure. It hurt. Then I woke up hung over one afternoon in my termite-infested apartment in Echo Park. I went to the balcony, took a few tokes from my e-cig, and I soaked it all in. Then I woke up again. My epiphany? I needed more epiphanies anyplace else.


GAME

The name of the game? Letโ€™s call it โ€œTermite Control.โ€ Itโ€™s a game youโ€“โ€“and by you I mean meโ€“โ€“play at home periodically out of necessity that requires ridiculous amounts of concentration and fortitude where you spend hours on end staring at the hardwood floor in your apartment's living room, letting your eyes relax so you can see the floor: the whole floor, all of it, and you try and spot any sudden movement, and once you've seen some action, you go to the place and find the little hole in the hardwood where the termites are coming in from and you cover it with a piece of clear packaging tape. Sometimes this prevents the termites from entering the room for months. Other times, like now, they're back within minutes because they've found another access point. To wit: you've played this game nine times tonight and the night is still young. In terms of rules, there are no rules except for this: learn to lose. Learn to love to lose. Thereโ€™s no winning this game (and it's a good life lesson!). Because when you move out come summer, someone, perhaps your slumlord, or maybe the slumlord's assistant, or the maybe even slumlord's cleaning crew, is going to wander in here and wonder why 2/3โ€™s of the apartment's surface area is covered in clear packaging tape. โ€œWhatโ€™s going on here?โ€ they might ask. Or: โ€œWas he trying to pack the entire apartment?โ€ And you'll have no answer to these questions because by then you'll be long, long gone.


CLIMATE CHANGE

California was behind me like a bad dream. Iโ€™d sold everything except for my motorcycle and a change of clothes. Now it was fall but it felt like spring. The seasons had turned strange. I was outside Houston, drinking with some old astronauts at the old astronaut bar. One guy had been to space. I asked him what he thought about climate change. He said, โ€œIโ€™ve been to space.โ€ I said, โ€œYeah, what was that like?โ€ He said, โ€œItโ€™s a lot like climate change. No one cares.โ€


Ryan Ridge is the author of the story collection Hunters & Gamblers, the poetry collection Ox, as well as the chapbooks Hey, It's America and 22nd Century Man. His latest book, American Homes, is out from the University of Michigan Press as part of their new 21st Century Prose series. His next collection, Camouflage Country, co-written with Mel Bosworth, is forthcoming from Queen's Ferry Press in December 2015. Past work can be found in NERVE, Fanzine, FLAUNT Magazine, and more. A former editor-in-chief of Faultline, he now edits Juked alongside his wife, Ashley Farmer. He is currently a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Louisville. FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: @AUTREMAGAZINE