In Which We Confront The Zing Of Sun-Warmed Meat

Good at Keeping Limp

by VICTORIA HETHERINGTON 

[—Brie should be left out in kitchen to ripen for a ;few days. She stands as afternoon light deepens and bends through the kitchen window, softening then melting the brie, which comes apart in her fingers. Folding pieces of pita past her teeth against her tongue, rough on her throat from not chewing. Delicately unpeeling the spicy salami package, the zing of the sun-warmed meat muted by excess –]

• S. said: 2 girls she knew went rehab for heroin ‘habits,’ are successful artists now. remember: don’t let her influence me into thinking this ok/normal/glamorous
• don’t eat for the next 2 days. but don't smoke either
• sunny today, didn't go outside. I hate how quick time passing, months all superimposed on one another esp. when remembering dates
• it was feb 1 I got into university; it was june 20 grandma died; it was september 17 when I met P.
• it was first day of gr. ten, me & classmates played orientation games all day
• I was face-painted & sweat-salty & carried full plate of cookies w/another paper plate folded over it
• I won big plastic lei during games & kept it on during bus ride home. It was packed bc. rush hr, people pressing into me & still climbing obstinately up the stairs, & I picked patch of september sunlight thru dusty window & stared
• taking up as little space as possible: how typical, & crushing cookies against chest to maximize space (but carefully; I still stuffed bra w/socks)

[—Her stomach squirms with desire as the tidal bingeing urge rushes over her, and she seizes her hairbrush, and as she drags it through her hair, trying to feel pleasure in its shine, its resistance against the brush, the crackle at its ends, pulling herself back into her body from the bad, floating place she crams food into, registering pain in her stomach and back–]

• bus lurched lots & man standing closeby caught my eye
• he raised arms to press hands up against ceiling for balance, smirking at me. Long nails, I remember.
• Him: what’s in the textbook? Deep voice with strange warble at its ends. he wasn’t like my craggy father, more of mountain than person still, & he wasn’t like peach-fuzzed beanstalk boys I knew either
• he was young man & he was very, very dangerous
• Me (shyly): it’s actually a sketchbook. Like, duh. Check out stippled black covers, ever seen textbook like that? I showed him drawings: me hanging from cross with wires coming out of skull, flower with bones as stamens, woman balding like water-damaged doll
• I remember there was printout of trent reznor glued to inner front cover
• Him: Interesting, eyes fixed coldly on last drawing, & 3 people looked on
• Him: I am an artist in every sense of the word. I make music that, in my opinion, will crack the world wide open and teach these monkeys a thing or two. I also make art. What do you do?
• Me: I’m a student, I just started gr. ten. People started watching, & older woman openly stared. I misunderstood these gazes, & he ignored them
• Him: I would like to buy you a coffee
• He was losing hair, widow’s peak exposed white, & hair glued down forehead in strands. I remember standing beside him at counter, in dim Second Cup, thinking he seemed out of place
• Me: I need to be home by five for piano lesson. Back outside again. Him: I can see from your eyes that you’ve suffered.
• I hadn’t really – he changed that

[—Now ice cream, melting too quickly in the summer heat, her teeth freezing. After tonight, she tells herself, she will fetishize red peppers, carrots, smell them – so fresh and dew-bathed, yanked from the earth! – and she will lovingly pluck the right nectarines from the grocery store piles. The embarrassment of riches here. Doesn’t she want thin upper arms, a thin face, ropey legs? To make a certain impression? –]

• The next day: us sitting in park, he a big unwashed animal/gigantic stain under a sun-lit oak tree, me sitting v straight so socks wouldn't fall out of tank top
• Him: some people shouldn’t have children. We’re just brains piloting meat puppets. That squirrel has huge nads. I feel like I could say anything with you. Could I give you a hug?
• he got up on knees, shuffled over to me on knees, thighs long & broad, arms outspread
• he ran nails between my shoulderblades & I shuddered. Him: Now you like these nails.
• Me (thinking): I still don’t like them because they’re gross. I never opposed him though. Childhood taught me 100% compliance, withstanding furies of my father & cold indifference of my mother, arctic stream that, even in more clement times, never completely melted
• He was angry to discover my socks, pressed them against his nose: at least they’re clean
• It hurt so much & I cried whole time
• he didn’t wash the blood from his sheets for months
• Lived w/father in dark basement ‘apartment,’ worked 1-2 shifts at all-day breakfast place (pre-recession obv., no way he could get job now)
• I would fake sick days to go & visit him at restaurant
• always nearly empty. One day, late autumn, he had to rake patio & I sat on damp chair watched him do it
• He went inside to wipe rake & I folded hands & looked down at them, sucking in stomach, wanting to look right for when he got back
• Door to patio was all glass; when done cleaning rake in resto bathroom he, instead of  coming back out, came to door & stood staring at me, pressed against glass
• His fingers pressed so hard against glass his finger-pads going white from pressure, long nails bending back

[—It comes up by itself the third time, jumping up from her stomach over her teeth, clouding the water like delicate watercolor washes, excess paint springing from a brush and running through an enormous cleaning bowl –]

• He showed me picture of his mother, looking back over shoulder at sink, surprised, hands blurred w/long-ago domestic activity
• Me: so pretty! Him: She looks like a monster now, too much drinking & smoking & fucking & fighting
• he too damaged (he explained) to give me Christmas present or to water plants long-dead in basement window
• I didn’t recognize infections he gave me, suffered quietly & walked funny & soaked in baths until pain eased
• I would come back to him like windup toy, back to his father’s house through browning falls leaves then ice
• thinking: this is how it works, you’re assigned to someone & that’s it, you do everything they say
• When I broke up w/him he got on knees, begged, lower lip wriggled, all the sad things except tears
• Said he wouldn't stop sending me emails & would do everything to prove he could be better
• Wrote & recorded song for me, still remember whole thing like yesterday: ‘you think I won’t change/that I’ll stay the same/as if I loved torture/you must be insane…’

[—Spreading powder over her face, evening out the red patches and blurry sleeplessness, settling in the deepening cracks around her mouth. Lora texts: ‘my darling is it all right if you bring whiskey instead? im staring down world’s worst wine hangover.’ She rubs in lipstick, mashing it together, and waits five minutes before responding. ‘Esophagus,’ she thinks, tapping a cigarette into her hand, is a very onomatopoeic word when you think about it –]

• After I took P. back he revealed: was in love w/his sister (1 yr younger than me, so 14 then)
• Kissed her on her mouth in front of me, pretending like playing around
• My parents baffled – just 6 months before meeting P. on bus things in household went like this: father discovered I’d put on makeup one morning so drove around school 3 times until I removed completely w/wetted hands; had to be home 4:30pm every day; phone calls monitored; certain outfits, books, cds confiscated & thrown out; hours of solitary confinement for swearing. Me 100% compliant & things went fine. Now this
• Confronted P. about incestuous feelings. I feel angry, he confessed in flat tone, w/same blank curiosity he looked at balding woman drawing. It makes me want to hit you
• Me: So hit me. Nothing you can do will make me love you again. You little shit, he hissed, ran after me
• Never known fear like that, never ran down a hall – & halfway up flight of stairs – like that, never screamed like that, never struggled like that fighting with elbows knees & feet
• Dragging me over to counter, yanking me one step at time, grabbing knife from beside empty Puritan cans, pressing to my throat, making thin bleeding line all around my throat
• By then I was v good at keeping limp
• Started drinking w/Tara many times/wk, her boyfriend bought booze for us & started drinking w/us too
• Would empty whole bottle in alternating vicious gulps in coffee shop washrooms, baby duck ‘champagne’ mostly, before school, after school
• I would stumble home fantasizing about putting on new dress, coming over to cook P. dinner, descending into nightmare basement & sweetly accepting his horrid gratitude
• Would slip tiny nugget of palytoxic coral from Tara’s exotic fish tank into boiling pasta along w/spices, enough to kill us both
• Little sisters would wait by window for me every night, crying
• Parents stopped talking to me
• This boyfriend, tall dude named Eliot, slept w/me after Tara left him
• Sweaty together in his bed as his big dick shrunk down & I tried not to stare at Pokémon posters on walls, I told him everything
• Cried, streaming from entire face, choked out whole story
• Eliot stood, shiny long back in front of me, bright in afternoon light, & punched wall
• Pulled fist out of big hole in drywall, Pokémon poster collapsed inside of it like miniature tent
• Eliot, rubbing tender knuckles: I am going to break his legs
• Me, seized by desire: I’m going to watch
• I would arrange meet P. in Pizza Pizza, Eliot would identify, I would suggest smoking joint, Eliot would follow us to nearby park
• Slipped out of house at 9:15pm into thick winter air, shaking like leaf
• Bright shop, saw P. examining wilted slices w/fingers on chin as if posing, clothes so dirty, clownlike feet, hidden swordlike cock
• Spotted Eliot w/jolt of recognition, sitting on nailed-down stool & watching us over a book, & stifled strange wild laughter: Eliot prided self on never reading
• P. shook hot pepper flakes & squirted BBQ sauce all over pizza & followed me out of shop
• Can recall every streetlight lighting up every naked branch, felt like walking to my own death
• Can remember everything he was saying: I am so pleased to see you, Grace. I now work at a belt factory. I have a casual relationship with a woman named Natasha. I have suggested bondage & she is considering it. I am thinking of her dripping wet cunt right now.
• Motion out of corner of my eye: Eliot, head lowered, charging towards us
• Tackled P. & both go down hard on hard ice, Eliot punching P.’s head over & over
• P. flopping like huge fish & screaming: Grace! Grace! Call 99! Call 99!
• Eliot yanked baseball bat from backpack he carried our booze in, leapt up & kicked P. in stomach, P. stopped squirming away, curling into ball
• I run & run & run run run

[—They tumble into the car and Lora is all flirty business before the door even shuts, accepting the white bag offered by the shadow-faced dealer in the front seat, passing up the bills she rolled and unrolled and rolled in her long-fingered hands on their way to the car. “You all must be busy tonight,” Lora tells them, getting more comfortable, taking out her key already, making room, easing herself into a little nest within the bunched-up clothing. It would be so easy, Grace thinks, for them to kill us. Lora looks over at Grace, and grinning with benevolent, intoxicated misunderstanding, squeezes Grace’s hand –]

Victoria Hetherington is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Toronto. Good At Keeping Limp is an excerpt from a work-in-progress made possible by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council. You can find her website here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Images by Alexander Calder.

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we are always looking for new work, send it along and cross your fingers

In Which It Was Not Really Soft Like An Easy Chair

photo by per bak jensen

Smoothie

by ELLIS DENKLIN

He said, I treated you with respect. But for some reason, you could not give me the same consideration. In order to explain why that occurred, I must create a window in myself.

She waited for him to create this viewpoint within his own outlook, and when he had, she hung up the phone. She had noticed the device always passed along ill tidings, like how certain individuals messed up her order of Chinese food, or other collections of human beings celebrated their offspring learning to walk. She regretted ending the conversation that way, but it felt so bad to hear something sincere described insincerely.

She regretted even calling him, but something in her (not a window, perhaps more like a ceiling fan) generally had her returning to her apartment to check whether the stove remained on. (This being an old trick a writing professor had taught her, to replace a repeated instance of the verb "to be" with "remain." He had also told her the worst quality of any one person is her desire to outstay her welcome.)

He hoped she would call again. This time he would find it best to ignore her call. He could play her message over, marveling at its insouciance and temerity, and then gravelly explaining to his new girlfriend that once he had been hurt by a particular person, he would not ever get over it. But this was not strictly true. It depended on the woman; how much he would let her damage him.

Her father took her hunting. He ate a rabbit they killed, preparing it on the stove like a grilled cheese. Surprising herself, she asked him for advice. "Maybe it's just cultural," he said. "These types believe in their hearts that we are all from some abstract monoculture, but it's really not the case. On the other hand there is a terrible, universal urge to be with those who are completely unlike you."

He cheated on his new girlfriend without realizing he was doing it. Afterwards he became wracked with chest pains so psychosomatic that he found it a great disappointment when Tums left him feeling better. He listened to her voicemail when she left it. He planned to leave her one that said, "It's tough to go on without you. I miss your voice, your smell, your guitar," or one that said, "Go fuck a blender."

He had other women he treated with respect, but not nearly as much respect.

She saw a man fall, climbing a scaffolding at 78th and Columbus. He did not die, and she could see the man was ecstatic he had not cracked vertebrae on his landing. For her part, she was a little let down, realizing for the first time that trying to preserve anything fragile required the same kind of attention as making sure something broken stayed in pieces.

He did love her but when he had told her this last year she said it was a lie. Later, she accepted it, but on different terms, which he equated to those you might make with a landlord or an exterminator.

She called him to tell him about the man who fell, since waiting/discretion seemed to be getting her nowhere. It was all part of her tendency, her therapist said, to mourn the death of anything in her life in discrete, nonsequential chunks that allowed her to process the change on her own timeline. She left a message that said, "Hey, I know we haven't talked in awhile. I tried rabbit. I do miss you, maybe I never said that?" She prayed it would haunt him, and felt unsettled that she was not entirely sure what his reaction would be. Or, if merely hearing her voice meant nothing to him now, what his reaction remained.

Things returned to how they had been before she entered his life. Whatever affirming there was in his ability to continue being himself was wiped out by her casual messages. She said things to make him angry. It worked, but he was not the type to hold a fist up against an enemy. He resolved to forget she even existed. He deleted her from his phone, his gchat. He gave his blender to Goodwill. He did not call.

The light of an oncoming train.

She had never minded long stretches of time alone by herself. In a museum she felt protected, insulated: the opposite of a cat staring in a mirror. There no one ever had to ask why you were crying, because there was a recognition that when a present moment intersected with those of the past preserved in art, blowback loomed, unavoidable really. In one painting she could not tear from her mind, one child ran to a fence while her friend rested against it, composed where she was not. The difference between the two figures startled her.

It's pointless to trust someone you do not understand. And if you do realize what came to him far later, when the messages she left trickled to a stop, you are only more likely to do it again.

Ellis Denklin is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Photographs by Per Bak Jensen.

"Kveikur" - Sigur Ros (mp3)

"Brennisteinn" - Sigur Ros (mp3)

 

In Which We Lean Up Against Something Unexpected

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Meredith

by DAVID GHERGSON

I am walking with Meredith.  

Meredith says, “I’m hungry.” She starts walking ten steps behind me, lagging, half-stepping, pretending to watch dogs and their ancient owners, strolling like she’s in a museum, looking at old things.

“Hurry up,” I say, but she won’t. We stop for awhile. Meredith puffs and buckles. I lean against a fence.  

“I need to eat something,” she says.

“For god’s sakes, wait until we get back,” I say.

“No,” she says. “I’m hypoglycemic.”

“I don’t know what that means in this context," I say.

“It means my blood sugar drops, and I need to eat.  There’s a little place down this street.”

I follow.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Ten minutes later, we are outside Carson’s General Store. Hollow, a shack, but streamlined and filling to the gravel pit it inhabits. The lights are on inside and there is a lunch counter. The place is empty.  

“What time is it?” I ask Meredith, thinking it’s six or seven, as the sun is almost down and dusk threatens.

“It’s four-thirty,” she says. “Let’s go in, they’re open.” Four-thirty. It is that time of year when things seem to happen later than they normally might.

“I don’t want to,” I say. “I don’t want to go in at all. Let’s go back to where we came from.” But she walks in and I am right behind her, yapping at her heels.  Inside, there is a long white counter, with a soda machine behind. I wait for what seems a sufficient amount of time. There is no one there.

“There’s no one here,” I say.

“Wait,” Meredith says.  She starts humming a song that was on TV a few days ago.

“What song is that?” I ask.

“I don’t know the name,” she says.  She mimes filing her fingernails with her thumbs.  I press my thigh against the edge of the counter to make an impression.

“Stop humming,” I say.  “It’s driving me out of my mind.”

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Minutes pass. I ask myself if they feel like hours, but they are only minutes, ticking away. Always sixty seconds, never a surprise.  

“Can I help you? Would you like something?” Our heads swing. A boy, about fifteen, with spiked hair.

I ask Meredith what she wants, perhaps more loudly than I should. She deliberates. She hasn’t been looking at the menu, only playing with a napkin dispenser on one of the plastic tables, and strumming that same song. She doesn’t know the name of it. I try real hard to remember it. I can’t, and hate her for singing it.

After thirty seconds, she says, “I’ll have a tuna salad sandwich.”

“OK,” the boy says.  “Uh, what do you want on that?”

“Tomato and lettuce,” she says.

“Cheese?” he asks.

“No thanks,” she says.  

“Rye or white?”

“Rye.”

“And do you want anything to drink?” the boy says.

“A lemonade,” she says. “Do you have it?”
 He nods and goes behind a counter in the back of the store to start making the sandwich. Meredith turns to me and says, “This place is weird.” After she’s stopped talking, I listen. But there’s no sound.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

She puts her coat down on the seat, and sits down dramatically. She taps the chair opposite so I know where to sit down. I resist, at first, but the tablecloth is paper, and there are crayons to write on it.

“Come on,” she says. “Write me something.” I don’t want to write anything, but I do want to see what happens. Her brown hair bobs. I can’t make out the hairstyle, and I’m looking right at it. I hope I’m not getting cataracts.

The boy calls from the little kitchen. “Sorry, did you want anything?”

“No thanks,” I say. He retreats, and Meredith leans over to me.

Meredith whispers, “It’s so bizarre. He was probably back there watching football and jerking off. I’m sort of sorry we disturbed him.” As soon as she says it, I want to disagree. I want to defend this boy, who asked for none of this. But I am nodding. I agree completely.

“How much longer until we get back?” Meredith says.  “I have to make a call.”  I don’t say anything.  I am still waiting. Then, the door behind us swings open, and a big, pretty blond girl walks in. She doesn’t look at us, even though we face the door. She walks past, and starts talking to the boy behind the counter.

“She’s his sister.” I know immediately that Meredith is right. The soft, pointed features match, and even mix. The sister moves behind the counter, knows she is being watched. She tosses ice into a glass, one at a time. And she fills it to the top with lemonade.

“Good,” Meredith says, “I’m thirsty.” But the girl leaves it on the counter, to be brought with the sandwich. Meredith sighs, and puts her head against the table, rolls it back and forth, flips her hand on the side and smiles at me. I don’t want to strike her. Nothing could be further from my mind. I want to know if anyone would miss her. I feel that anything could happen.  

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

The sandwich comes, and Meredith eats the pickle first, then starts eating the sandwich quickly, as if her eating it was only one of many influences on its disappearance, and it was better to take as much as was reasonably possible while it was still available.

I occupy myself with crayons. I don’t feel ready to write words just yet. I draw a picture of a television set.  And then I draw a picture of a chair. I am about to draw a picture of a phone.  

A father and his younger son come in. The father, young and tall, looks not much different from the boy.  Meredith is too busy taking care of the sandwich, and I check to make sure the sister is gone. The boy comes up to the father and son.

“Can I help you?” the boy says.  He looks at me, and I look away.  We decided who the moment belongs to, and he’s won.  

“Yes,” the father says.  “Go on, Harold.”  The son pauses, looks around. Through the good grace of the fifteen-year old behind the counter, I am allowed to keep watching. I tremor. The sound of food being consumed across from me only heightens it.

The son. Harold. He says, “I’d like a mint chocolate chip cone.” He stares up at his father. “That OK?  You want something?” His father doesn’t want anything.  I try to picture my father.  My father worked in Boston.  He came home at night. He was tired when he arrived. He often took my brother and I out for ice cream.  He never had any, except what was left in our cups. He told us to eat it while we still could. And he was right.  He was right. I can’t eat it anymore.  I don’t know if Harold’s father is anything like mine, or if I am anything like him now. And even if he is, I don’t know if the answer lies there, or anywhere else.

I draw a picture of an ice cream cone. I don’t know the flavor.

After Harold is almost half-done with his ice cream cone, licking away in the corner as his father stands and reads the paper, Meredith finishes her plate.

“OK,” she says. “All set to go.”

I get up, but it’s not right. Brothers, sons, sisters and fathers, but not aunts and great-aunts and grandparents and half-everythings. It’s not right. Surely this store could hold the entire world; I wrap my legs behind those of the chair.

“I’m not ready to leave," I say.

“We have to go. Come on. Come with me.” I relent.

“Here’s seven dollars and a bubblegum wrapper I have been saving,” I tell Meredith. “Can you pay?”

“Uhhh,” she says in frustration as she rises. I could give a shit.  

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

I am sensing the ice cream cone. I am searching behind the counter. I am looking over the menu. The air is still. It doesn’t move. There’s no breeze at all. There’s one window. But no breeze. And it’s dark out. I forget about what it looks like outside, and try to find out what happens inside.

“God, let’s get out of here,” Meredith says. But it’s her who wanted to come in the first place. She walks to the door, and waits out on the porch for me. Before I get up, I draw a picture of a woman on the paper tablecloth. I don’t know what her name is. I fill her body parts with the navy blue crayon. The color of the crayon is more black than blue, black getting blacker, setting.

Meredith leans her head in the door, and says, “For fuck's sake, come on.”

Two weeks later, she is gone.

David Ghergson is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Missouri. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Paintings by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

"Sundown" - Boards of Canada (mp3)

"Nothing Is Real" - Boards of Canada (mp3)

The new album from Boards of Canada is entitled All Tomorrow's Harvest and it will be released on June 10th from Warp.