by Jen George
Alice on following suit
I returned to my hometown Coeur d’Alene, in Idaho, after everyone started leaving the city. I moved in with my parents and I worked at a neo-Nazi bar for six months. I made decent money; neo-Nazi’s are good tippers if you’re white. I took some photos, but they weren’t any good. I dated one of the neo-Nazis I’d gone to high school with. We slept together a few times but I could never lose myself in it—I was hyper-aware of my elite education and all the thoughts that went through my head were just about how different I was from everyone else, how I could use what I was experiencing for art when I got back to New York. The inauthenticity of it got to be a drag, and it turned out the guy I was sleeping with had a neo-Nazi girlfriend who beat the shit out of me when she found out I was screwing her boyfriend. I headed back to the city with a broken collarbone and my jaw wired shut. A few months after I got back into town, I got wind that people were joining monasteries, so I went upstate and signed up. At the monastery, I started doing my work on realism-based record keeping of my chores and duties (which were somewhat limited in comparison to other ascetics at the monastery due to the fact that my collarbone injury had left permanent damage), and types of wildlife observed (mostly birds). I also wrote poems about winter and spring and crocuses and stuff. It was misery. But, I was one of the most prolific artists during what’s now known as “The Garbage Years.” It’s somewhat unfortunate that this will be my legacy.
Clyde on hands
My hands are very rough. They turned gray some time ago. They are heavy like lead and smell of sulfur, but they still work.
Alice on being a bad artist
In a way, I think The Teacher accepted me into The Warehouse because he hated my work and wanted to see why I made it, or how bad it could get. I don’t blame his curiosity, but I wanted to please him, which was impossible, which nearly destroyed me. I’m surprised I kept trying. You get over it eventually, but it takes a long time, and you’re not the same after.
Notes
I’m haunted by dreams my foundation is all wrong. I have a very tricky skin tone. Also, unevenness and some acne.
Oh Time
Please do this for me.
That’s that
The not so young woman, broke and having lived some kind of life, returns to New York a while after what is known citywide as “The Garbage Years” and applies to be an administrative assistant at a midtown data collection office. She is hired. The hours are nine to five. Duties include multi-tasking, getting lunch and returning correspondence.
Death Record/Fourth of July
“Ranchera, play me my favorite record.”
“What is your favorite record?”
“It is Nuns on a Convent Hillside Having a Picnic.”
The Teacher/older man with large hands likes long-playing records. He likes constant noise since his mother was a TV addict and the television was always on in his childhood home.
Nuns on a Convent Hillside Having a Picnic
“At the convent, we pride ourselves on living life. It is perfect here.” (music begins: strings, kazoo, horns)
“Ranchera, I came to look for you all those years ago.”
“I left.”
“I came to California to find you despite my fear of earthquakes. The day I got there, there was a 9.0. My hair turned white. Still, I looked for you. Why did you leave me?”
“You gave me too much. I thought the desert sand would bury me. I thought the sun would cleanse me and rename me. I remember almost nothing about my time in the desert but white walls and the freeway and an empty hole in the ground that in the ’80s was a motel swimming pool that children were molested in. I ate only flame-broiled burgers in that place and I threw up after each one. I had pre-cancer-type test results at the doctor’s during that time.”
“My Ranchera, I called for you.” Black cerebral spinal fluid comes out through The Teacher’s nostrils. The young woman wipes his nose with a handkerchief from her purse.
“No one calls me Ranchera.”
“No one knows your name but me.”
“It was a relief not to be able to come to you when you called all those years ago.”
“Why did you come when I called now?”
“I had the day off work. It’s the Fourth of July. Anyway, it’s been a long time, and you are dying.”
“Ranchera, I am so pleased you have the day off.”
“I am too. I also have errands to catch up on. I might see a movie.”
“Ranchera, why did you never read the classics like I wanted you to?”
“They’d lost all appeal and sense of promised knowledge before I ever began. The content didn’t interest me. The books cluttered up the worktable. It seemed pointless. Every time I tried, I’d fall asleep. One word, out like a light.”
“Ranchera, you always said the best things.”
“I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“That is why it was great.” The Teacher/older man with large hands tries to breathe. His lungs are filled with black fluid. “Ranchera, why did you never love me entirely? Why didn’t you give yourself to me completely? Was it that my hands are not big enough?”
“I loved you in many ways, just not entirely. I tried. Your hands are very large. I always appreciated that.”
“Did I not make you come sufficiently?”
“You did.”
The Teacher/older man with large hands gets an erection.
“Ranchera, all of my best corporeal memories are of touching you and fucking you—your awkwardness was so sweet, the way you’d back into a corner when I came close to you. I loved how you were always cold. I loved the little zits on your ass, your clammy little hands, your pale, vitamin-deficient skin.”
“You’ll notice I’ve recently gotten a tan.”
“Ranchera, I was disappointed in the direction you took.”
“Becoming an administrative assistant?”
“The girlfriend of a burger flipper, a convent janitor—all of it.”
Black cerebral spinal and lung fluid comes out of The Teacher/dying man with large hands’ ears. The young woman dabs his ears with cotton balls from a glass jar on his nightstand.
“That was another time. Now I like stability and routines and schedules and office supplies. I like ordering lunch for everyone. I like going home at night and watching television.”
“It made me sick when I’d get one of the mass Christmas cards you sent out over the years. I’d tear them up and set fire to them. I hoped you’d sense my distress and disappointment and come to me.”
“I’ve always liked that Christmas tradition. I thought you would appreciate the cards.”
“Ranchera,” The Teacher/dying man with large hands begins to cry. “I wanted you to stay with me. I gave you straight As. I pleaded with you. I left you hundreds of messages after you went away.” Black cerebral spinal and lung fluids leak out of The Teacher’s eyes.
“Your voice trembled in the messages. It was so weak it embarrassed me. The way you needed me was humiliating.”
“I wanted you to do things. I wanted to be with you and watch you do things.”
“The only thing for me to do was something completely different than The Warehouse. I hoped you would understand.”
“Ranchera, you could have been great.”
“There are other things.”
“Ranchera, I was almost more in love with you than with my aunt.”
Black cerebral spinal and lung fluids dribble out of The Teacher’s urethra and trickle down his erection. The young woman licks the black cerebral spinal and lung fluids from The Teacher’s penis.
“Thank you, Teacher. I know how much you loved her. I did love you deeply, just not entirely.”
“Ranchera, you were so stupid. Your stupidity was so pure that it nearly killed me to look at you. It was what I loved most about you, even more than your sad face and your beautiful pussy.” The Teacher coughs, black cerebral spinal and lung fluids co
me up. “Ranchera, I wish you had stayed with me always.”
The young woman kisses the black cerebral spinal and lung fluid near The Teacher’s mouth. “Racing season came. All of the horses had been buried. The stadium and the track were like new. I couldn’t stay. None of us could. The work was finished. Nothing was lasting.”
The record plays. Kazoo and glockenspiel music fades into the background. The nuns speak:
“We are clean and pure. We pray with vigor and scrub our hands with vigor and till the soil with our hands, full of vigor. The rake shakes, the earth shakes, the shaking is dedication, it is marriage to duty, it is purpose, it is all God wants from us. Every moment of our lives we are awake, we are alert. The universe comes alive to us through God. We live in grace, we live in ecstasy, we are ecstatic. We are chosen in choosing this marriage. It is a secret. It is the most secret thing. There is a love that exists nowhere else but within the convent walls, in our gardens, in our beds, at our altars. We keep the secret. We sit in the grass, eating grapes, surrounded by the bees we keep and the flowers we’ve planted. Time does not exist. We are eternal. We smile at one another, no one speaks, we are at peace, we are praying. We are in God. This is heaven.”
Teacher/student conference: telepathy/departure
Teacher:
Me:
Teacher:
Me:
Acknowledgments
Thank you to this book’s true friends, Danielle Dutton and Martin Riker, who have been exceedingly generous, delicate, and patient with both the work and the process, and who have been instrumental in making this book a book. Thank you to Sheila Heti and to Mónica de la Torre for being the first readers of the title story that appeared in BOMB. Thanks to the memory of my father, Paul George, who was wise and funny and very human while he was here. Thank you to Jade and to Oona, who are everything good.
About the Author
Jen George was born in Thousand Oaks, California. She lives and works in New York City. This is her first book.
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