All posts by danieltlamb

the only monster here is me

By Jeremy Maxwell

Audio recorded live during gutwrench. issue 7 release event.

The monster is laid out on the front steps like the end of the world, like the party was yesterday and here he is, Mephistopheles, askew against the bricks and forcing everyone to go around. It smells like sulfur and piss on the stoop, puke on his shirt and spilled beer soaking into his hair. He won’t know how he got here, but this is where he’ll find himself, if he ever wakes up. The morning is soggy and hot and the monster smells worse by the minute.

The little girl stands there looking down at him for a long time. The other kids are coming, she’s going to have to make a decision soon. She looks over her shoulder, hoping they’re still out of sight and knowing they won’t be for long. She bends down and wrinkles her nose.

She pokes the monster on the shoulder, one, two, three times, poke, poke, poke. “Mister,” she says. “Mister, wake up.” He doesn’t move or twitch but the dark spot on his pants becomes a patch, grows darker, starts to spread. The smell gets worse and she scrunches up her nose till it hurts. “Ah, jeez,” she says, and leans in all the way. She takes him by the shoulder and shakes, saying mister and shaking and shaking until he stirs.

His mouth falls open and he begins to groan. It is deep and low and wide, the sound of gravel kicked up on the road.

,” he says. The sound starts small and swells to fill the stoop, fighting the smell for the space. One eye pops open wide but the other is crusted over with sweat or sleep or beer and doesn’t budge. He lays there making the sound, staring out at her through one half-blind busted eye.

,” he says, and the eye swivels up to look her in the face.

“You,” the monster says.

“Mister, you got to get up,” the little girl says and lets go of his arm. “You got to get up right now.” She looks over her shoulder again and there they are, Tommy and Tina and the rest of them, trying to cross the street. “Mister, please get up,” she pleads, and behind his broken, leaking eye, the monster begins to move.

* * *

There used to be a bathroom here but all that’s left is a piece of shattered mirror on the wall and a hole in the floor where the toilet used to sit. The monster pisses into the hole with his pants pooled around his ankles while the little girl stands in the other room. Somewhere down there are flies and a few of them swarm up to investigate his pants, his feet, the puddles on the floor. He makes the sound again and kicks at the flies as he pulls up his pants.

“Mister, you got to learn some more words,” the little girl says as he stumbles through the doorway and staggers past. The counter is lined with liquor bottles in varying stages of emptiness and he turns them up one by one until he finds one several fingers deep and collapses into the only chair in the room. It is plastic and weak in the legs and flops over sideways, spilling the monster into the floor.

,” the monster roars, and the little girl shakes her head and glances back toward the door. She shouldn’t be here, she’ll catch a beating for sure if anyone finds out, from Tommy or Tina or maybe even her mom, it just depends who finds out first. You never go into the monster’s lair, they’ll say. It’s where he keeps his power. Even if she knows better, she knows it won’t do no good to argue. They’ll beat her up for sure if she does that. His other eye is open now and he watches her watch the exit. “Good,” he says, flopping over onto his back and clutching the bottle to his chest. “GTFO.”

“That doesn’t spell anything, mister,” the little girl says, “but at least you’re trying now.” She looks down at him and wrinkles her nose. “Don’t you got anymore pants?” He stares up at her through both bleary eyes and then scrunches up his face and laughs. It starts small and slow and like all else the monster does, swells to fill the room. She’s not sure why but she’s just a little girl so she laughs with him, the two of them roaring there together in the empty house.

They’re still laughing when the knock comes at the door.

* * *

The sound is tiny and she knows it’s Tina even if she can’t say how. She quits laughing and then he hears it too and the silence that follows is as loud as the laughter ever was. It presses in around them and the knock comes at the door again. The monster sits up and drinks from the bottle, throat working against nothing even after whatever he’s drinking is gone. The tiny knock returns and the monster throws the empty bottle at the door. He’s making the sound again and she wants to cower there in the room, she wants to run for the door but the bottle bursts against it and she backs toward the bathroom as glass sprays at them both.

The tiny knock goes away and the monster climbs to his feet. She does cower then, in the doorway of the decrepit toilet, the monster’s lair, the monster’s lair, where have you gone, oh what have you done you stupid little girl. She cowers there still when he snatches open the front door and lurches out onto the stoop. She can see past him and across the road where Tommy and Tina and the rest of them are gathered, but they aren’t all kids, there are policemen there too, looking and pointing at them from the other side of the road, the other side of the world.

“Tommy’s gonna kill me,” she wails and there in the dilapidated doorway the little girl begins to cry. The sound starts small and slow and swells like the monster’s to fill the room, bigger and bigger till there is nothing else. The monster turns on the stoop and leans hard back into the house as the policemen rush across the road.

“Look here, little girl,” the monster says, holding the doorframe with one hand and pointing at his crotch with the other. She knows better than to look but her eyes are wide with terror and there is nothing else to see. “Look,” he roars again, and she does, and there’s nothing there to see, he’s just pointing at his pants. He turns away from her and heaves himself off the stoop, pitches himself toward the crowd. He’s making the sound again but she can barely hear it for her own sound bouncing off the broken walls.

He throws himself at the first policeman and then ducks as the group of them tries to grab his arms, his hair, his soggy pants or puke-stained shirt. The monster dodges and jukes and his clumsiness might as well have belonged to somebody else because his eyes burn with a clarity the little girl has never seen, not in her own eyes or her mom’s or even Tommy’s or Tina’s when they are working her over. He stops there at the bottom of the steps and looks back at her, across the stoop and the empty room and the upturned plastic chair. She is still cowering and wailing in the doorway of the bathroom and the dark spot on her pants becomes a patch, grows darker, starts to spread.

The monster turns back to the nearest policeman and kicks him square in the nuts. It is full and strong and has the weight of a full-grown man behind it. The policeman crumples to the ground and the monster doesn’t dodge or juke, just lets the rest of them reach in and grasp, his pants, his hands, his throat. He just stares and laughs at the little girl as she cowers deep inside the doorway of the abandoned house. She stops crying then, runs forward to the stoop where the smell of sulfur fills the space. She wrinkles up her nose and laughs.

Facedown in the street the monster laughs with her, he laughs until they pick him up and throw him in the back of a car, cuffed at the hands and the waist and the feet. The little girl leans out onto the stoop as Tommy and Tina and the rest of them come running up the steps. She stops laughing and grabs onto the doorframe with both hands.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Tommy yells as he reaches for her arms, her throat, for anything. Her leg is already swinging back before he has time to stop, and when she connects with his nuts he goes flying, off the stoop, off the steps, into the street facedown and the sound he makes is so familiar, so full of outrage and despair, it’s not just the monster laughing, not even just the two of them, the monster and the little girl. It’s the policemen, it’s Tina and the rest of them, the whole world laughing at Tommy, laughing as he makes the sound.

any kind of home

By Jeremy Maxwell

They’ll tell you the Panhandle is part of Florida, any map or GPS will say the same, but anybody that lives around here knows it’s just more Alabama, and it’ll stay that way for the next fifty or sixty miles. It stretches out in either direction and it doesn’t much matter if you’re headed east or west, it’s all just loblolly pines and the slow creep of kudzu tearing everything down. Two-lane roads that lead god knows where and tattered billboards that haven’t been legible for years.

I drain the last of the beer from the can and toss it out the window, watch in the mirror as it sails neatly into the bed of the truck. You would think I’ve been doing this forever, because I have. I crack open another and take a long pull.

Pantera gives way to Behemoth and I hear the tires move across the paint, feel the truck begin to shake as it starts whipping through the grass. I snatch it back onto the asphalt and take another pull from the beer. By the time Behemoth is giving way to Hank III, I’m flicking my half-smoked cigarette into the wind and tossing the empty can behind it.

There is no destination; there’s nowhere out here anyone would want to go.

I’m standing beside the truck staring at my phone, smoking a joint and trying to figure out if I still have service. I haven’t decided one way or the other when it rings in my hand.

“Hello, wife,” I say.

“Hello, husband,” she says, and I hit the joint and wait. “Are you at the show?” she asks.

“You know, I don’t think I’m gonna go.”

“Scared they won’t let you in?” she says, and I stand there, stupid. I flick the roach into the weeds and watch it burn; unbuckle my pants and piss on it, stagger back against the truck.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t they let me in,” I say, putting my pants back together and reaching through the window for another beer.

They’ve all rolled into the floorboard and I have to climb in up to my waist to get ahold of one. I pull myself out and walk around the back of the truck, open the tailgate and sit down.

“It hasn’t been two weeks since you blacked out and started doing snow angels on the floor in front of the merch table,” she says.

“I don’t remember doing that.”

“Well, they do,” she says, and I know she’s right.

I’m staring at the woods listening to her tell me it’s fine, to be careful and come on home when I see the cut. You could drive by a million times and never notice it there, even if you were looking for it. I tell my wife I love her and end the call and climb back in the truck, start it up and turn toward the ruts between the trees.

The road goes on forever, it even forks a couple of times and I’ve got no idea where I’m going, just picking left or right and hoping I don’t get stuck in the mud out here in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of the fucking woods. The truck is bouncing back and forth and the daylight’s fading and there’s only one more beer rolling around in the floorboard. I’ve just about decided to turn the whole thing around if I can find someplace to do that when the trees open up into a giant clearing of freshly mown grass. It happens fast and I hit the brakes at the treeline and sit there staring straight ahead and wondering what in the hell I’m doing out here. The Kills are singing loud and I turn them down and down and down until the sound is gone.

Out in front of me, seven single-wide trailers are set in a wide semicircle. They’re pushed back almost against the far edge of the trees with very little space between one and the next, enough for a clothesline and a couple of plastic chairs between each one. Some of the chairs have been turned over and there are no clothes hanging on the lines. A pair of jeans and what could be a sundress are strewn across the ground like everything was snatched down in a massive hurry and I get the feeling there were people out here moments ago.

“What the fuck is this, then,” I say, and I want to turn around and get the fuck out of here but there’s not enough room to do that without leaving the trees. Large vegetable gardens line both sides of the clearing. I’m getting visions of meth cooks and cartel weed trimmers and I reach under the seat for the pistol, set it on the center console.

I pull forward and I can see that all the windows are covered and the doors are closed and I know I should just go but now I can’t help myself and I keep moving toward the trailers. I stop a few yards short of the middle one and before I can get it in park the door snatches open and a woman comes storming down the steps with a shotgun. I’m out of the truck before I know what I’m doing and she’s got the thing leveled at my chest and I didn’t even pick up the pistol so I just stand there in the grass and put my hands above my head.

“Put your goddamn hands down,” she says. “Who did you come out here for?” I lower my arms and glance around and now there are bends in all the blinds but I still can’t see inside.

“I didn’t come out here for nobody,” I say, and she doesn’t say shit so I tell her I’m just trying to turn around. I’m drunk and stoned and I should’ve just gone to the goddamn show where the bouncers and bartenders all hate my fucking guts but nobody wants to shoot me.

She asks if I have a gun and I tell her in the truck and she asks what I’m really doing out here and I tell her, really, nothing. A young girl comes out of the trailer behind her with a walkie talkie in one hand and puts the other on the woman’s back. “Nobody knows who he is,” she says, “nobody’s ever seen him.”

“Jesus Christ, you stupid bastard,” the woman says and points the shotgun at the ground. “Well come on in and at least get some tomatoes.” She backs toward the steps without turning around and the girl disappears through the door and I don’t even like tomatoes but here I go inside.

When I ask what they’re doing out here, the woman glares at me as the girl piles vegetables into a paper sack. “Growing tomatoes,” she says, and takes the bag and shoves it against my chest. The place looks more like an office than any kind of home, and again I ask what’s going on.

“Look, I’ve got a dozen ladies out here hiding from assholes just like you,” she says, “and you’ve got them all scared half to death. Couple of bad decisions and you end up married to some prick with shitstains halfway up his back from twenty years of wiping his ass in the wrong direction. Creeping through the woods that way,” she says, shaking her head. “Got them all scared to death. Now please,” she says, “take these and go.”

She follows me out and watches as I climb in the truck and stow the pistol, open the last beer and set out for home. When my wife asks what I’m doing with tomatoes, I set the sack on the counter and pull her close, saying, I love you, I’m right here. I love you. I’m here.

Cycles

cycles

stories have their cycles
like phases of the moon
or signs of the zodiac.

history is doomed
to repeat
and repeat
and repeat
and repeat
itself

until it shifts.

a new cycle
begins.

headless
heads of state
cry wolf on top
of melted ice cap
ice floats

with no food to eat
no subjects to govern.

maybe there’s a cycle you’re feeling in your own life.
In your own art, or in the world around you.
maybe you’re inspired to go in a different direction entirely.

submit your poems, essays, personal narratives, (relatively) short stories, audio or otherwise artful dissonance for our consideration.

issue seven drops mid-august at our live event
8/14/19 at the highland ballroom.

Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2019

Far from Okay

By Benjamin Stevenson

Rubbing it raw, I gulped the load
and slithered away from him.
I thought the boys in the videos
made it look so much easier.
Crawling up the ladder of pelvic
bones I wish I had broken, I stumbled
disappointingly into a familiar feeling.

Sometimes bad men ask me,
Did you have fun down
on all fours like the bitch you
are? You actually looked like
you wanted to die this time.

Stripped of the flesh,
I plugged the wounds
and soaked the husk
I call a body in warm water,
because I know
it is best for blood
and in that moment
he could have emptied
a boiling pot onto my back, and
scrubbed me like a kitchen table
far from clean and certainly
far from okay.

I still wouldn’t have felt a thing.

Notes for My Underpaid Therapist

By Benjamin Stevenson

Heather,
I have been thinking a lot about death
about sensations
how my chest would feel
while falling through dusty
air in a desert city___
slipping off
the balcony. But the image no longer
seems poetic, when I imagine what
bones might sound like crashing
against stale concrete. Stiff
as a board, & white as a candle.
I have been thinking about the
darkness that would certainly
follow me to this lonely place.
how metaphorical doors would wax &
wane far too quickly to respond
timely, nor fashionably
& how goddamn depressing this reads
on the unbroken screen of a MacBook I can
not afford, but that all my pretty white friends have.

Heather,
I have been thinking a lot about
my childhood, and all the things
I cannot and do not want to remember-
selective memory loss
Do you ever wonder if some children
need a slice of darkness to develop
into the tragic adults which our excuse
for a god determines them to become?
I do & this glimmering idea,
makes life almost fathomable,
or at least this is what I tell
myself at the end of every blurry night.

Heather,
Do you still think we’re making progress?

Good Girl, Pretty Girl

By Nicholas Tecosky

I.

The dog wakes from a dream. She was running through a dark wood, chasing. Shadows ran alongside her, and she knew that she was safe, that these were the shadows of brethren in the midst of a furious primal hunt.

Dust motes float in the beams of sunlight pouring through the window of the cluttered apartment. She listens through the sounds of the city outside, and she hears the sound of the man breathing in the next room. He is alone in bed, the woman having left for work early. He will be awhile waking up, and so she stretches her joints, aching and stiff from sleep.

The dog winds her way through the furniture and into the kitchen. The woman has filled her bowls. She sniffs at the kibble. It smells only vaguely of game, something that she would chase down in the forest. She takes a bite, and the illusion is shattered.

She goes to the door of the bedroom and peeks in. The man is snoring operatically in the tousled sheets. His legs curved just so and and his arm draped over his face. She sighs and flops down in the doorway. She waits for him to wake. She drifts.

She does not get up when he wakes. She is familiar with his morning routine. He pulls himself from the great cast-iron bed. When he walks, he takes slow, heavy steps that cause the wooden floor to shake beneath him. He steps over her and into the bathroom, and the sound of his urination hitting the porcelain bowl and the salty smell of it fill her senses. He, this beast, he is hers, and she loves him and fears his shifts in mood but when he exits the bathroom, he pauses to run his bare foot over her back before continuing on to the kitchen, where he furthers his ritual by pouring the dark, pungent beans into the grinder and boiling water and opening the refrigerator to inspect its contents.

The coffee done, he sits down on the couch and places the steaming mug beside him. He will not drink more than a sip before he lies back and closes his eyes once again.

The man does not move for a great length of time. She cannot tell how long. She does not know minutes or hours. She tracks the sunlight as it shifts across the room and after it has moved from the rug to the coffee table, he sits up and looks to her. They make eye contact.

It is time to go outside.

II.

The dog wakes to the sound of sirens in the distance, and for a moment, she mistakes them for the call of her wild sisters. Before she can stop herself, she raises her head and returns the forlorn howl. It was not something that she was taught and she does not know why she howls, only that she must howl, and a memory that is not hers passes through her mind. She realizes in a moment that these are not the sounds of the Others. She knows that they are only mechanical. This does not stop her from howling. She howls until they are out of earshot, and she stops and listens. Only the sounds of the city, muffled through the thick walls.

To pass the time, she tries to think the saddest thing that she can think. But the only thing that she can think of is being alone, and she is alone right now, she does not know when or if they will return, and it is dreadfully quiet. She tries to think of something else. She cannot. She sighs heavily.

III.

The woman returns before the man. She drops her bag in the chair and she greets the dog in a high tone, and the dog gets up and shakes off and wags her tail to return the greeting. The woman walks back to the door and retrieves the leash hanging on the hook and the dog runs to her and sits on the kitchen floor and she is so excited that she cannot help but shake. The woman hooks the leash to her collar and opens the door. The dog tries to wait, because the woman will be cross if she bounds out the door before being told to do so. But she wants to go through the door so badly. She can smell the outside. She can smell the rain from before and how it intensifies the scents of the world. She waits. The woman gives her the signal, and she rushes toward the world, feeling the pull of the woman on the other end of her tether but not caring for a moment.

She squats to relieve herself, shivering with pleasure at the feeling. She sniffs the air around her. They walk. There are so many smells. They are a history of the world.

All too soon they are reentering the apartment and she does not want to return but takes consolation in knowing that the rest of her pack will be with her inside the small space, that they will eat and sit and stare at the television and if she lies next to the man, he will scratch her behind her ears and when he stops he will lay his foot upon her side and leave it there and they will both find comfort in the contact.

IV.

The man and woman take turns being the alpha, depending on who has energy after the long day. She knows her place in the chain, she is Omega, sometimes she wishes otherwise and tries half-heartedly to assert dominance, but they are not fooled and they lay hands on her and press her to the ground until she stills herself. It does not matter. It is a passing fancy. They are not an ideal pack, but they are hers and she theirs, they are all together, for now, in the cavern that they call home, and the smell of the dishes in the sink and the dust that surrounds them in the air and the socks on the floor, those that she has hidden beneath the furniture, and their bodies, their simian bodies, it is all there as it has always been. As it will ever be.

She smells where they have been. The Woman smells of coffee and stale sweat and the Man smells of cigarette smoke but beneath these masks she can smell what they feel. The subtle air of sadness, the sharp tang of anxiety or desperation. She comes to them and tastes them, and they smile and accept her tongue for a moment before calming her with hands on her skull, her neck, her back. She knows she only has so much time to taste, that they will rebuke her sharply if she persists, but she tastes for as long as they will let her.

She feels a kinship with them when they are sad. When they cannot get up off of the couch. They are alone but together. She fears the morning. The morning is when they leave her. She never knows for sure if they will return.

V.

When they are all together, they make voices that they know are supposed to be hers. They speak for her. She knows the tone of it and listens intently, her ears perking up. She understands very little of the language, but it does not matter. They are communing with her. That is all that matters.

VI.

When the man lies on the couch in the afternoon, she knows that something is wrong, but can only gauge the severity of the situation when she creeps close and sits beside him, face to face. He does not usually respond well to her face in such close proximity to his. If he snaps at her to go, he is merely tired. If he places his hand gently atop her head and looks into her eyes and whispers to her, something is very wrong. She does not know what it is, except that she feels it too, deeply, without understanding. They are alone, together.

VII.

The dog does not entirely understand pack politics. She knows her place in the order, of course, but cannot understand the subtle back-and-forth between the two people. She senses when things are tense, and also the lack of tension when things are easy. The feelings wash like a great tide over her, swelling and receding. She cannot imagine the future. She has never tried. Life is one endless expanse, interrupted by periods of dark and sleep and an occasional meal and a walk through the vast park.

The dog does not know if she is happy and doesn’t ponder it. There is an emotion in her, deep down, that she does not quite comprehend, that came from before her great great great grandmother was born. Sometimes it swells in her chest so much that she can feel it in her throat, and she tenses, barely controlling herself, half-expecting it to burst forth into the small apartment, tear through the walls, escape into the hazy afternoon sunlight outside. She shakes her entire body as if trying to dry herself. She barks into the empty apartment and listens to the echo. Something stirs just outside, in the hallway.

The dog waits.

Something will happen. It always has before.

This story first appeared in Nicholas’ website, Love & Consequences.

Cover Image: “Nightcrawler” by Basheer Tome via Flickr.

You Are Alive.

At gutwrench., we’re hungry. We are excited. We are hopeful.

It’s time for us to get our hands dirty working on gutwrench. Issue 5.

On a personal note, 2017 was a year of complete tragedy and darkness. Losing my mother to suicide was unspeakably hard. Today, I need this community more than ever before, and it is a privilege to call you friends.

And with these seasons of soul’s winter come the brighter blossoms of spring.

It’s late February in Atlanta and the energy of the city couldn’t be more vibrant. Something is stirring.

I’ve said this before: “Our work is important. Our voices are important. Art is important.”

If you’re reading this,

YOU ARE ALIVE.

If you’ve been looking for a reason to pick up your pen, your camera, your paintbrush, your guitar—pick the damn thing up and make a joyful noise.

We only have so much time to birth our ideas, our passions. Time is our most valuable commodity.

Time spent making, living, breathing and consuming art is time well spent. Time spent with people you love is even more artful and precious.

Speaking of time, you have until May 15th to submit your best work. As of today (February 25th, 2018), you’ve got 79 days until the deadline.

That’s 79 opportunities to open your heart, open your mind and express something that matters.

 

Daniel Lamb
gutwrench. Cofounder

The Lisa Turtle Rule

By Jon Carr

I grew up a homeschooled, black Republican from Los Angeles who went through a brief Gene Kelly phase. I have the unique honor of having been beaten up by just about every race, religion and sexual orientation. I was the UN of ass-kicked.

I was a black nerd.

The 1990s were a simpler time. We all just assumed that Mel Gibson liked Jewish people, Danny Glover had just recently gotten too old for this shit and Gary Busey was a respected actor. Every kid had a role model. Most of my friends idolized Tupac or Ice Cube, but for me it was Gene Kelly. Regardless of whether or not today would be a good day, there was little chance I would have to use my AK. For the black nerd, there was little representation in life or on TV. We had Lisa Turtle from “Saved By The Bell,” Carlton Banks from “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and the bane of my existence, Steve Urkel. All my white friends would jokingly call me Steve Urkel. This would have seemed racist, except that all my black friends called me Steve Urkel.

During the late 80s and early 90s, there were quite a few African Americans in television and movies. We were able to do anything: be a doctor, be a gangbanger.  We could do anything except violate the “Lisa Turtle rule.”

The rule was simple: We never get the girl or guy. We can get a girl or guy, but never the girl or guy.

But you know what? I got the girl once. Her name was Jill, and she was the prettiest girl in school. Actually, I was homeschooled, so she was the prettiest girl in the homeschool group. Every homeschool boy wanted her. One day after a pretty hardcore game of four-square, I walked off the court looking pretty hot. That is when Jill caught my eye and motioned for me to come over.

It turns out she had a secret to tell me, and it could only be whispered in my ear.

I leaned in close as she said, “There is a girl at school that likes you.”

With all the cockiness of a 16-year-old boy, I looked her straight in the face and whispered back, “OK, who is it?”

She slowly said to me, “She is very near you right now.”

I looked back and cocked one eyebrow before saying, “Yeah, but who is it?”

This went on for a while. Finally I figured it out.

She liked me, and I was crazy about her. What followed was the most wild, intense, passionate, powerful, and emotionally fulfilling two weeks of my life. I was determined to be the best boyfriend I could be. I bought her only the finest jewelry from Kmart and took her to the biggest movies.

Things like Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld.”

That did not go so well. Yet, despite this, she still seemed really into me. So I was surprised when she pulled me aside at school and told me we had to talk. It was a simple conversation, and honestly I have forgotten most of it. In fact, the only thing I remember is a single statement.

She said, “My mother says that it’s not a good idea for us to date.”

“Why?” was the thought running through my head.

What was different about me as compared to her boyfriends before or after. Did I have a reputation as a bad boy? See the aforementioned Gene Kelly phase. Did I come from a bad family, or were we too poor? My parents made the same money as her parents. We were all friends.

My mind raced because I knew the answer, but I desperately wanted it to be something different. I wanted her to break up with me because I was too fat or too ugly, because I was too poor or too stupid. I wanted her to break up with me for any reason other then that, because I could change those things. I could grow out of those things, but that’s not why she broke up with me. I had made a mistake.

I broke the Lisa Turtle rule.

The Lisa Turtle rule is based on Lisa Turtle from Saved by The Bell. The show lasted five seasons, totaling 126 episodes — not including The College Years and the New Class spinoffs. Throughout the series, they tried every relationship combination you could imagine: Zack and Kelly; Zach and Jesse; Jesse and Slater; Kelly and Slater.

Every combo except Lisa and anyone.

Every party and dance they went to, Lisa somehow magically produced a mute black kid that we had never seen before and would never see again. She was the queen of the B-storyline. Zach, Kelly, Slater, and Jesse handled the A-storyline, while Screech and Lisa generally dealt with the B-storyline.

It’s true that Screech was always trying to get with Lisa, but as we all know, Screech is crazy. It’s the Lisa Turtle rule. You can do whatever you want, but ultimately, the story is not about you, and above all, you don’t get the girl or guy.

It’s Lando Calrissian in “Star Wars,” Calvin in “Freaks and Geeks,” the secretary from “3rd Rock from the Sun,”Astrid from “Fringe,” Charles Gunn from “Angel,” Jazz the Robot from “Transformers,” and it is why Winston from “New Girl” will never get Zooey Deschanel.

I know what you are thinking. There was one episode in “Saved by The Bell” where Zach and Lisa liked each other. That is true, but before that episode ended, they came to the same conclusion my girlfriend Jill’s mom did: “It’s probably not a good idea for them to date.”

A friend once told me that he sometimes fantasized about coming back years after a girl dumped him. He would return rich, handsome and successful and make her regret ever breaking up with him.

As I stood there in that empty classroom watching Jill leave, I realized there would be no fantasizing for me. There was no amount of money, fame or success that would alter the reason she broke up with me. It was the one thing I could never change. I broke the cardinal rule.

I was supposed to be the Danny Glover of this story—a funny straight man that helped my Mel Gibson shine. But for a moment I tried to be Mel Gibson. I tried to  be a part of the main story. I guess my audience just wasn’t ready for that.

 

Hear our voices

We will not hold space for racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, xenophobia, hate or denial of climate change.

Powerlessness is born of isolation. As human beings, we need to be able to talk to each other. Relationships are born in conversation.

That’s why we started a workshop. It’s a place for people in the community to come together and talk about their writing.

On the occasional evening, you can find us around a table having a cup of coffee and planting our little seeds of hope, to make the writing better, to get the best story down on paper and to connect with one another and foster a sense of community, becoming the Resistance—by talking to each other, loving each other, sharing life one coffee at a time.

Now more than ever, it’s important that we make art UNAVOIDABLE because the regime is doing everything it can to make its rhetoric unavoidable.

We will not allow our soul to be stomped out by the squelching of free speech and the dissemination of propaganda. We must not allow “alternative facts” to replace reality, to be shifted into a real-life dystopian science fiction.

So we invite you to send us your work for the next issue by May 15 because it’s important – to fight authoritarian and fascist ideology with our soul-affirming words – poems, essays, stories – and not just to incite reaction, but to drive at what’s human and fundamentally good within all of us.

Our work is important. Our voices are important. Art is important.

Find your inspiration. Express your passion.

 

Photo by Cody Williams

…Meanwhile, in the city too busy to hate…

We do things. Many things. We dream, we breathe, we work, we love, we age, we thrive. We focus. We get distracted. We go away. We come back to center.

Sometimes, we keep ourselves on a short leash, tethered to the calendar and the iPhone, keeping our ringers on, trackers going, turning every breathing moment into a quantifiable metric.

Eventually, the pendulum has to swing back—in this case, from compulsive activity and involvement toward a retreat. Retreat, whether it be actually going someplace far away to escape the aggregate of stress in the immediacy of the day-to-day, or a retreat as in a mood or internal decision to become less involved with external distractions, can offer us the space we need to create.

The challenge, then, we offer you is this:

Stop. Just stop it.

doing-nothing-on-purpose-680x320
via The Mindfulness Exchange

 

Take some time. Turn off your phone. Sit in a dark room. Don’t do anything. Interrupt the flow of thoughts and activities.

 

Come back to the pen and reboot your process.

 

We want to hear about what happens for you, but really, we want your words.

 

The prompt is “Interruption.”

 

Send your fiction, audio, video, art, poetry, nonfiction, indescribable, literary, and otherwise gritty little things to us here by March 31, 2016.