PLANET GRIM
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I didn’t cure my extreme fear until I went on a two-week bike ride after eighth grade with another tribe, mostly boys. We stayed in youth hostels and rolled out our bed sheets to avoid lice and grime. My kerchief that I wore around my head to hide my frizzy hair got rolled into a headband, a style one kid called a “do drugs.” I was up in Connecticut and Cape Cod with almost no supervision. I rode for hours, hitchhiked in Nantucket, smoked weak pot, and got my ears double-pierced. But I was still scared. In college, I thought punk rock would cure me.
Yet in my fifties, I still had that fear. In 2015, at a writing residency at Sou’wester Lodge, in Seaside, WA, I borrowed a bike one day and took a winding path through fields of dry grass above the beach. It would be “real” to get exercise in my slothful, grieving state—my marriage was fracturing.
I rode on the “Lewis and Clark Discovery Trail” and used habits to gauge how quickly I could dump the bike, run through the grass and sand, and reach the waves if a man attacked me. Should I drown or be strangled? I called it the “‘Discover Rape’ Trail.” But I saw only doughy people with junk food for the seagulls. I kept riding.
FEEDBACK
“I haven’t read it, but Alex has really good tits for her age!” –Cormac McCarthy
“The characters are sociopaths and I don’t like them. I have no emotional reason to care about these people.” –Member of writing workshop, 2013
“If you knew you had only nine months to live, you would be required to write something important.
–Member of writing workshop, 2013
“You say you’re married?” –Member of writing workshop, 2004
“Your obvious skill as a writer is undeniable, and we can certainly appreciate your commitment to place-based writing and your robust depiction of city life in the Pacific Northwest. Your stories are crafted with unforgettable imagery and filled with compelling story lines unique to your voice. While a handful of the stories included in your collection handle its heavy subject matter with dignity and poignancy, some of them rely on the reader to find humor in the characters’ depravity and misfortune—a result less filled with color but with a provocative, unnatural feeling.” –Acquisitions, Ooligan Press, 2010
“My therapist is trying to get me to see that other people may not have the judgments about me that I do and that I should make peace with things that torment me. When I make judgments about myself or perceive that others are judging me, it’s not the ultimate truth. Anyway, I’m sorry the church woman was critical of you, but you shouldn’t hold onto it, if possible. She sounds like a bitch.” –Email to sister, 2001
Credits
“Angel Dust” was published in The Gravity of the Thing, August 2017.
“The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” was published in Portland Review, vol. 52, no. 3, 2005. “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and “Fallen Nest” were performed at the Federal Bar in Los Angeles on July, 10, 2016, as part of the New Short Fiction Series, Northern Writes: Round 1, and were sold as single stories through Barnes & Noble Nook Press.
“The Desperate Ones” appeared in Street Debris, 2000.
“My Martian Launderette” was published in Propeller, summer 2010.
“The Passenger” was published in VoiceCatcher, summer 2016.
“Prelude to a Kiss” was published in Watershed Review, winter 2015.
“The Scorpion” was published in Irreverent Fish, spring 2008.
“The Shrew of D.C.” was published in Word Riot, 2007.
“Teenage Riot”: parts appeared in the fanzine Bananafish and in my script for the comedy show Mortified. See also “Looking Back Mortified: Why Should We Betray Our Younger Self?” Propeller, January 20, 2010.
“Wet” was published in Nailed Magazine, August 2017.
The afterword was written for Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac for the 2016 Lit Crawl PDX event in Portland, Oregon. RIP, Kenny.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Leland Cheuk, who showed up to our Berkeley Hills writing group wearing the coolest, most don’t-give-a-shit-about-feedback glasses. Here we are a decade-plus later. Gigi Little, for her book design and good humor. Lew Watts, for the cover image of me in 1989. Lori Hettler, for her hard work and enthusiasm. Heather Maxwell Hall, for her vision and generosity.
Much love to my family, especially my mom and dad, Chris Behr, Martha Noone, Sandy Walcott, and Tom Behr. Yin Ling Wong. Chas Nielsen. Margaret Murray. MFA sex biscuits: Amber Beaman, Danielle Vermette, Haili Jones Graff, and Sandra Stringer. Dardi Troen and Lincoln Miller. Christen and Scott Derr. Laura Stanfill. Support when I’m falling: Jennifer Stady, Jordan Foster, Sarah Berry, Deb Stone, and Kathleen Lane. Annie Herron and Jimmy Herron Zamora (RIP). Cynthia Gerdes, for your focus on the body during piano lessons.
Paul Cohen, Charlie D’Ambrosio, Craig Lesley, Michael McGregor, Tom Bissell, Whitney Otto, Karen Karbo, Emily Chenoweth, Matthew Dickman, and David Ciminello. Dan DeWeese and Propeller. Mary Rechner, Writers in the Schools, and all the brave teens. Evan P. Schneider and Boneshaker. Carrie Seitzinger and Nailed. Lidia Yuknavitch (bodies). Lee Montgomery (possibilities). Producers of Mortified. Meg Lemke and Mutha. Angela Patel, Jen Pastiloff, and The Manifest-Station. Jenny Forrester (Unchaste) and Michelle Fredette (Plonk). Fiona Bruce (“White Pants”) and Scott Simmons (“Cuckoo”). Sally Shore, Holger Moncada, Jr., and Buckley Sampson for inhabiting my stories in Northern Writes. Residency at Sou’wester Lodge. Song titles from the Buzzcocks, Flipper, Iggy Pop, Nina Simone, and Sonic Youth.
Thanks forever to bandmates in The Double U, Born in a Car, Barbara Manning’s Birthday Suit, Cindy Dall (RIP), Heavenly Ten Stems, Job’s Daughters, Caroliner, Purple Oblivion, and Dumbhead.
Belief in the underground. Albus the cat. How you manifest your species.
Matt, for twenty-six years of a shared life. I saw your ghosts. And Eli Zheng, my soul love.
About the Author
Alex Behr has taught creative writing residencies at Portland, OR, high schools through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program. Alex’s work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Tin House, Salon, Nailed, Mutha, Bitch, Manifest-Station, and other publications. She has performed nationwide in the comedy show Mortified. She can be found online at alexbehr.com and on Twitter @alex_behr.