by Chris Vola
How to Find a Flock: Stories
Chris Vola
Published by Unsolicited Press
www.unsolicitedpress.com
Copyright © 2017 Chris Vola
All Rights Reserved.
Unsolicited Press Books are distributed to the trade by Ingram.
ISBN: 978-0-9980872-5-2
Contents
Marked
Last Girlfriend
Bodies
How to Find a Flock
Better Than Ever
Picture Frame
The Only Way This Can End
An Occurrence at the Only Place You’ve Ever Known
The Shelf
Golden Age
Either Way We’re All Getting Eaten
Porn with Condoms
Dams
The Terrible Softness
Marked
Waking at night, he pissed in the empty water or beer bottles that always seemed to pile up an arm’s length away from his bed, corralled there by some unseen, magnetic-like force. He pissed in them because he couldn’t walk to the bathroom and turn on the seizure-prone light-slash-fan, he couldn’t flush the abnormally loud toilet, and he couldn’t risk looking at himself in the grime-covered mirror.
Sometimes the bottle’s opening would be too narrow or he’d really have to go and he would leak piss onto the floor or the laptop that he left closed next to his bed. He never wiped the droplets. They looked like star patterns in a photograph negative.
In the morning he would roll over and study the piss constellations. And though they never could portend what luck – good or ill – might be loosed upon him during the day, they were always a reminder that somewhere in the confines of that shuttered plastic box, waiting in frozen slumber, were the shards of something that might be described as resembling a life: favorited images of juvenile domesticated mammals that (he’d read somewhere) were likely to induce feelings of empathy and narrow the breadth of attentional focus; Groupons offering Delicious Deals and More Sparkly & Sweet Surprises; minimalist Tumblrs and image macros that dissolved before his eyes into puddles of fictive ennui; a soon-to-be-terminated back-and-forth with drtybklyngrl, who claimed to have fellated several middle-of-the-road alt-country drummers and described herself as “intentionally blurry.”
He needed to feel like he was having moments.
He tried to ignore the perma-blinking phone buried nearby under the covers – the voicemails from creditors using words like “delinquent” and “culpable,” the texts from at least two insignificant others probably calling him much worse than that. The unshakable dread that no matter what he did, the sum of his destiny would amount to nothing more than an asterisk on a mostly blank screen, a screen that would stare back at him with the coldness of a sniper sizing up his next target.
He could think of worse ways to wake up, and often did.
Last Girlfriend
She stops watching South Park because, no joke, Cartman reminds her of this blue and red oval-shaped electric egg called an iGasm that she and the Ex bought during a post-finals excursion to the city last semester. Actually, the toy was a joke, a reasonably funny one, but she knows that for a joke to continue working, you need an audience that at least sort of gets the punchline, otherwise you just come off looking a little nuts and lonely. So she finishes her homework and watches a YouTube video about a six-year-old in West Virginia getting spray-tanned and fitted for fake teeth before a pageant. “I’m smiling on the inside,” the little doll announces into the camera without a hint of mountain twang.
She walks to a copier store that also has internet access. The only other person besides the bored Arab dude who manages the dust-pale hulks of decades-old machinery is a septuagenarian transvestite with thick burgundy lipstick and matching eye shadow reading an article on a scruffy desktop monitor with the headline LARGEST MILITARY EXERCISES ON THE ISLAND that looks like a Bachelorette recap. She sits next to the transvestite at the other desktop, waits for Internet Explorer to boot. The transvestite doesn’t look up, mumbles what sounds like Haitian-celebrity-personal-trainer-baby at a half-loaded image of a woman clutching an infant.
When she’s logged into Facebook, she goes to work, a massive de-tagging spree, erasing her name from many images – her shotgunning hookah smoke into the Ex’s mouth; the two of them in matching flannels while she pretended to yank out the Ex’s chin stud; the Ex (in uncharacteristic but festival-quality Goth makeup) shaving the side of her head during their short-lived dubstep obsession. By the time her fingers start to carpal she’s removed her name from 847 photos, all of which correspond to what her mother describes as a “transitional orientation experience.” Before she logs off, she changes her profile picture to a professional headshot taken at prom a year and a half ago: shoulder-length blonde hair, red and white floral-print dress, seated coyly, tan legs facing the camera. Vacant eyes that didn’t care where to look.
She feels the tranny scouring her screen.
“Your sister’s cute, hon.”
Back at the dorm, Kandi’s gone for the night. A rush event or a lacrosse social or something equally vanilla. She hopes Kandi will have the courtesy to get plowed at a frat residence instead of on the bunk bed they share, though she knows it’s not likely. What were the lyrics to the song her and the Ex had written about her? Kandi’s not one for walks of sha-a-ame, just nights of it! She notices a plum-colored cardigan and a lacy black bra and thong poking out from the wreckage of Kandi’s closet. She sniffs them. Sweetly opaque, what she used to smell like before the Ex instituted a no-deodorant policy. She strips, puts on the underwear and sweater, helps herself to a seldom-used Marc Jacobs miniskirt, and heads to the bathroom. Products in pastel cases with names like Dream Nude and Baby Lips line the sink. She gathers what she needs, applies clumsily and reapplies. Stares into the mirror and tries to remember if the creamed-on face staring back looks anything like the prom photo. The eyes aren’t right. As she leans toward the glass to fix them, a ringtone she thought she has deleted echoes from somewhere and she stabs herself with the eyeliner pencil.
*
The reviews she read on Yelp lauded the bar’s “killer happy hour” and “chill lounge vibe,” with music ranging from “Katy Perry to 90s alternative” and “THE BEST GUACAMOLE EVER =).” But the more immediate reason she wants to go is because she heard they never check IDs. She gets in without being stopped and with minor eye-groping from the bouncer, weaves her way through the beer pong traffic in the front, around de-suited post-collegiate brosephs screaming at various sporting events on the wall of flatscreens, past pseudo-familiar eyes that instinctively leer at Kandi’s skirt, the exposed bra. Two girls from her dorm are sitting at the bar, slurping Long Island Iced Teas and cackling at their phones. She shimmies up to the stool next to them. They realize who she is and both start texting, meth-quick. She orders a Jack and Diet and a shot of Jameson from the melt-jawed bartender in his mid-thirties who might have been attractive once. She downs both, orders the same. She’s finishing her third round when the bartender, who’s bought her the last two, says something like how does it feel to be the most sought after object in the vicinity in a practiced hipster brogue and she ignores him; her rheumy eyes focus on a beer pong game.
He’s older, rolled-up Oxford shirt, a face like Rachel Maddow but with better bone structure. Her gawking must be blatant because the guy he’s playing with says something to him and points and they laugh and she thinks he’s blushing but it might just be a beer flush. She swivels around, embarrassed, and she’s about to order another round when a voice behind her says “Uh, I’ve got this one,” to the bartender, who shrugs and pours without looking up. “Maddow” sits on the vacant stool to her right and the two girls from her dor
m stop texting, glare. The specifics of the conversation are patchy – he’s twenty-two or twenty-three, getting his masters in something monetarily useless, works part-time the vegan smoothie place across the street (but he’s not, like, that crunchy), and lives in the neighborhood a couple blocks away. Not that it really matters. She’s just floating on pleasantly hazed-over snapshots. His green (or are they hazel?) eyes searching her face’s periphery. The awkwardly cute brush of his hand against hers as he reaches for his drink and his subsequent awkward apology. The jealous silence burning to her left. Proper drinks, of course, give way to well tequila shots and she doesn’t remember why she’s giggling so hard but it must be unforced because when he asks in a roundabout way if she wants to go back to his place – he’s got an eighth of a potent new indica strain he picked up earlier and he’s DVR’d the latest South Park – she leans over and whispers “fuck yeah homie,” prettily she thinks, into his cheek. He blushes again. She turns to the texting girls, blows them a kiss and their mouths drop like they’ve been tasered or maybe just voted off the island.
*
His weed is sick, insofar as it creates a foot race between her head and her stomach to see which will disengage from her body first. Right now, it’s dead even. South Park is a blaze of indefinite colors and the components of the living room – a dusty bookshelf, generic Japanese woodblock print posters, something that might be an old frat paddle or a snowshoe – are in similar states of blur. She braces against him to avoid feeling like she’s tumbling off a building or maybe just the couch they’re sitting on and he grins, blushes, wraps his arm around her shoulder, squeezes. At some point there’s a crash in the dark hallway and a squint-eyed roommate creature emerges and demands in so many croaks that they remove themselves to a fucking bedroom because the creature has to be up for a fucking conference call in two fucking hours, which means they must have been discussing something – loud and…passionate? – for a long time and she doesn’t remember what it was and it doesn’t matter because she’s happy to have her head lowered on a surprisingly comfortable pillow in a dim room lit by Christmas lights that outline the ceiling. He slumps over a laptop at a nearby desk and she stares at the blue and orange Hindu elephant and vaguely Celtic tapestries that line the walls, a décor choice she’d normally describe as mid-2000s-poseur or post-post-modern-bro-out, but which now seem to be helping to ward off the hurricane pounding the base of her skull. An electronic remix of a George Michael song sifts through the speakers at a reasonable volume and he lies next to her on the bed and they stare at the ceiling until the song changes to a dubstep remix of t.A.T.u’s “All The Things She Said.” He starts to stammer, apologizing for the playlist and she grabs his crotch, rough strokes over his jeans and he pulls her face into his mouth, the shock of chin stubble, whiskey tongue, tongues, her fingers fumbling with his zipper, cupping, plying at the black lace and the skirt and thong collapsing in one motion onto the Persian-ish rug as she arches away because she’s forgotten that she hasn’t shaved in weeks but he pulls her hips against his, mumbles stale heat against her neck, how tight she is and she grunts – how long has it been since prom? – and his tongue’s in her mouth then on her neck and she can smell herself, his sweat, getting closer, her fingers down there, bucking, still coming as he pulls out and releases a meager spattering on the plaid comforter. He rolls over and she stares at the ceiling, panting. The pants give way to chuckles and then to flat-out laughter, and it’s like she’s laughing at a video because as the wetness between her legs dissipates she feels herself floating up with it until she’s somewhere near the Christmas lights laughing down at her pants-less scarecrow legs; at him giving her this shy, endearing glance; at her patting his stomach, saying, “Congrats dude, you probably just bagged your first switch-hitter;” at her wriggling – still more than a little tipsy – gathering the clothes on the floor, putting them on while he finds his jeans and takes out a notebook and pen from one of the pockets; at him (avoiding eye contact) asking, “How does this work, can I, uh, get your digits?” and scribbles a monosyllabic nickname, a phone number and what looks like his Twitter handle on a piece of ripped-out paper; at him handing it to her and her stuffing it into her bra, at her mumbling something contrived like see you around and him lurching up and remembering, “Hey I never got your numb–” but not finishing and slumping onto the bed because she’s already gone.
*
“Pageants can paint her way to something else, like a jewelry line, a candy line, or even just painting her way to success,” a woman deadpans on a YouTube clip echoing from somewhere in the room. As she wipes makeup and a few flecks of caked spittle from her face, the phone on the bathroom counter beeps twice in quick succession: a friend request and a text message ringtone she thought she’d deleted. She looks at the clean face, her face, staring back in the mirror, smiles, and reaches for the phone.
Bodies
There’s a mist hanging over the valley. Darker and heavier than the drizzle-gray sky, thickening around the bowels of the largest trees, obscuring the path. At least that’s the way I want it to look, posted up a couple blocks from where a massive plastic chimney rises from an open manhole, pumping steam vapor above pedestrian areas and into the boughs of the pigeon-spooge park that lines one side of the avenue, where the vapor joins with cigarette smoke from three raisin-eyed brown-baggers seated at the base of a statue depicting the gout-riddled wife of a robber baron environmentalist. “Parks are an ideal convergence point for potential donors, especially right after the close of normal business hours,” is the kind of shit that Robbie, regional coordinator at Community Crusades, Inc., likes to write in his emails. Like I haven’t been temping for the dork for the past two years.
It’s almost six and I’ve barely seen any other people on the street during the two-mile hike from where I parked my on-its-deathbed Honda Civic, lugging the binder containing stacks of same-sex marriage statistics or water quality data or whatever progressive cause I’m supposed to be championing today. If I was smart, I would have called the office this morning and told them I wouldn’t be coming in. Robbie’s kind of squeamish, all I would have had to say was that I had extra-gnarly cramps, maybe mention a non-specific, yeast-related condition and I’d be home, no questions. But it’s too late for that now. I wipe some raindrops from the collar of my florescent polo, skim the contents of the first pamphlet on top of the pile – a nonprofit that sends backpacks to kids in a Serbian economic oppression zone (good thing I’m wearing my entire rainbow of awareness bracelets) – and wait for the human downpour.
Chances are you’ve seen me, or someone like me, leering at you from the most awkward center of the sidewalk. Young, seemingly energetic, possibly dreadlocked, clipboard in hand, happy to disrupt your solitude and assault your sensibilities. “Excuse me, sir? Do you support a woman’s right to choose?” “Miss, do you have a moment to talk about sustainable agriculture in South Sudan?” And if you’re like most sane people, you don’t have a moment. You’ll avoid eye contact (or praise yourself for remembering shades), you’ll plaster your phone to your skull like it’s the only thing keeping it together, or you’ll pretend you can’t hear me over the Norwegian black metal bumping in your earbuds when you’re really listening to shit that’s so light they wouldn’t play it in elevators. My favorites are the hoodied futures-of-America who find it acceptable – no, necessary – to explain that AIDS is great for population control, or to scream “god hates fags and clipboarders!” at a five-foot-two, 105-pounds-after-a-burrito size chick.
To me, you’re all PIN numbers that haven’t expired yet, bodies I can use if you’re dumb enough to listen.
As I watch the light disappear, I take out a handful of complimentary highlighters – featuring the same sad multi-ethnic child’s face – from my cargo pocket, adjust my non-threatening ponytail and side-swept bangs, run my fingers over the holes in my naked earlobe, and listen for the first sounds of movement from the cubicled pens that line both sides of the street
, hovering over first-floor retail façades. I pull out the tips of pamphlets so they’re easily accessible. The first off-the-clock worker exits a building, scowl illuminated in phone glow. The pace quickens in a matter of moments, as I have anticipated, becoming a hail storm of seasonally flesh-toned galoshes and laptops wrapped in plastic bags, enveloping me in the stink of happy hour salivation.
I do something uncommon, a rookie move. Maybe it’s the stress from still being so far below my projected savings for this quarter, maybe I’m tired. Either way, I allow myself to be hypnotized by the rapid beat of transit. I press the binder to my chest, close my eyes for barely a few seconds. I take a breath, feel water droplets pooling on the crow’s feet that the Park Ranger called my “smile lines.”
I open my eyes. Two business-casual fucktards – one flicking a music player, one struggling to zip the man-purse at his hip – are bee-lining, oblivious, toward the awkward center of the sidewalk and me and their inevitable confluence.
I brace for the collision. The impact knocks me back a foot or two, highlighters scatter. The drops trickle and run down my face. I resist the urge to curse, remain sightless, allowing the sensation to engulf me. I flick out my tongue, taste the sting of sludgy precipitation.
“UhhwoopsyouOK?” Purse Boy asks. I brush the water away and he’s scooping my crap off the pavement. He mumbles what sounds like “Lyme-disease-free-yoga,” presses the pens into my hand and walks away fast. It’s better that way. Pity talkers are the worst. It’s like I get it, you feel bad that you bumped me, that it’s cold and my metabolism makes it look like I haven’t eaten in a while, that your girlfriend told me she’d rather take bong rips of pesticide than discuss the plight of the Northern Spotted Owl, whatever. But to spend forty-five seconds pretending to be interested in the contents of what I’m pushing isn’t doing either of us any good.