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clothworker · 4 years

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“Questioning in Sevenths,” or “The Pale Horse.”

In this, I write about seven times I met the pale horse. Not “The Pale Horse,” no capitals, no title. She is just a horse.

First

I was seven years old when I first met the pale horse. It would not be the last time. It was November of the year two-thousand. I had woken up in the middle of the night with a hard clot of air stuck in my windpipe. I seized upright, groping beneath my flimsy pillows for my prescription inhaler. The doctor had given it to me a month ago. At first, they thought I had asthma, then bronchitis, as my breathing worsened I was diagnosed with pneumonia. My mother showed me how to use it.

“Like this.” She mimed depressing the cartridge and inhaling.

“Then hold it.”

“Then let it out through your nose, like a dragon.” She pushed jets of air from her nostrils.

I tried it, mimicking her example.

In the half-dark of the moonlit room, my small hand found the inhaler and held it to my lips. I pressed in the cartridge and breathed, my lungs crackled with phlegm. Cold flowed into my lungs and sat there at the bottom as I counted. I waited quietly in the depression I had formed in the red and green paisley mattress. It sat sheet-less on top of a matching box spring in the living room of my childhood house. The bedroom I would have slept in was unfit for occupation, the roof and windows having been staved in by a fallen pine tree. I slept in the living room facing the basement door which I stared at with wide-eyes every night until I was too exhausted to be afraid.

I breathed out through my nose, the medication fogging out of my nostrils. I coughed, first from the tickle of medicine, then from my ragged lungs. I coughed hard, my entire body seizing with each violent contraction. I finally stopped coughing and sat there trembling. I couldn’t sleep, I held the deep belief that one night I would fall asleep and my deflated lungs would strangle me from the inside. I didn’t think the medicine would work. I didn’t think I was going to get better. I took another puff anyway, the cold mist soothing the raw flesh inside me.

Unable to sleep, I slipped out of bed and crossed the green carpet, passed the TV, and shambled to the sliding glass doors. We lived outside the city in a beautiful canyon. I spent most of my free time exploring the wilderness behind our house. However, the physical properties of the canyon meant that television reception was near non-existent. The only channel that came in — fuzzy and distorted — was WWE. Even as a child, I knew professional wrestling was dumb. It was only later, as an adult, that I would understand that professional wrestling is dumb, and that is what makes it so magical. That night though, I did not turn on the TV, because there was nothing else to watch and I didn’t like wrestling. I stared through the wide glass doors and exhaled unevenly, the inhalant riding subdued air currents to the floor.

Through the window, I saw the pale horse. She saw me. I took another puff on my inhaler and choked back a cough. The horse paced to the window. Her shoulders were nearly even with the roof. She stooped to my eye level. Her languid head formed an antumbra with the pre-dawn sky. I had seen a bull moose in this same place and pose the previous summer. Its thick lips flopped as it sniffed at the delicate glass that separated us. I put my small hand against the glass and it flinched back. It shook its massive antlers in impossibly slow motion. With a huff, it then turned and receded into the woods behind our house.

I looked into the horse’s eyes. In the half-light, they were no particular colour, just two slick orbs of grey. My lungs laboured.

“What are you?” I asked her.

“A horse.”

I knew she had spoken, but could not remember a sound. The words had been discreetly deposited in my memory. She didn’t move save for a slight tremble that ran down her spine from neck to flank.

I stared. She blurred out of sight as our twin breaths fogged the glass.

I stepped to the side, her head tracked mine. She blinked wetly.

I told her she looked sad.

“I am sad,” I remembered her say.

“Why?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I frowned.

“Are you cold? It’s cold outside. You could come inside. It’s warmer.”

She cocked her head, ears flicking at invisible pests.

I felt my lungs spasm and bent double as the coughs tore at my ragged throat. The coughing subsided, the pain didn’t. I shook the inhaler, rattling the tiny marble that disturbed the medication, made it miscible with air. I sucked down another dose and counted heartbeats. When I looked out the window again the horse had gone.

Second

I had many dogs growing up. I was with every single one of them when they died. When they were too old or too full of cancer to live without pain, my parents would load them into the back of the car with a final treat of something they should not normally eat. Then my father, my mother, my brother, and I would drive to the veterinarian on twenty-one-hundred south. We would all be in the room then while the vet would lower a needle into the dog’s flank, the dog would sigh deeply, and we would weep. On these occasions, the horse was absent. We would then drive home and I would go outside and walk. I allowed my eyes to switch off, my feet carrying me by their unknowable whims. I would continue to walk until I felt good and tired and only then would I allow the fog to leave my eyes and determine where I was. It was then, and only then, that the muted breathing of the horse would return.

“Because I don’t need to be,” she had already replied.

“Why aren’t you ever there?” I asked anyway, it felt rude not to supply the perfunctory question.

I asked her this while I walked the bank of the stream that flowed through the gully in my backyard. The stream was girded on either side by groves of aspens so thick with leaves that there was perpetual twilight even at the peak of summer. A gust of wind rattled the leaves and the horse drifted, head over tail before delicately landing on the surface of the stream.

I plopped a rock into the stream, the ripples quickly blurred and intermingled with the whorls and eddies of the flowing water. The horse bobbed up and down on the diminutive waves but remained rooted as if she were sewn to the surface.

“I’m tired,” I murmured. I meant tired of petting the heads of dead and dying dogs. I meant that I was tired of digging graves on the hill overlooking my house. Tired of the shovel rebounding from the pates of bleached sheep skulls. The house had once been the location of a sheep ranch. I don’t know what had happened, but I would often find bones and skulls scattered across the entire range of property. Some unknown sickness had likely stalked the flock, dragging them to the dirt or necessitating a purge. Either way, the ranch had never recovered, and the owners had moved on and allowed someone else to live amidst the piles of bone.

The horse took a step upstream. “Me too,” she would say. The flow of water slowed, came to a standstill as she closed her eyes. When the burbling resumed she was gone. An aspen leaf, curled into the perfect facsimile of a canoe, drifted down the stream in her place.

Third

I met several different horses while working on a ranch in Idaho. The oldest horse was named Blue Duck. He was nearly white save for several off-colour splotches that made him look dirty even after a hard rain. He had lived a long life and was smart enough to retreat to the other side of the pasture any time he heard the creak and jangle of a saddle being moved. He knew we liked him. I lived on the ranch in a small yellowed camper. I survived almost exclusively on eggs, beef, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. Despite now being a food snob, I still sometimes make hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. The nearest town was a sidelined tourist attraction. Only four-hundred people lived there. The best restaurant in town was called The Chuck Wagon. The grocery store still rented VHS tapes. I did not have a VHS player (or even a TV) but I would still occasionally browse the movies after buying eggs and hots dogs and macaroni and cheese.

The ranch was nestled between competing mountain ranges. A slow but sure river ran the length of the valley. You could take a kayak and paddle against the current and hardly even notice the effort. The unique geography conspired to create a microclimate of perfectly placed clouds and a breeze that never seemed to end. To this day it is the most beautiful place I have ever lived. I think it will continue to be the most beautiful place I will ever live. I try not to think about that too much. I woke up every morning before dawn (it would be too hot to work past noon) and fed the chickens. I would bring them their usual feed along with whatever table scraps were left. Sometimes the chickens ate better than me. After feeding the chickens, I greeted the cattle, started the coffee maker and went to the outhouse. I would use the outhouse with the door open while staring at the mountains that sloped away from the upper pasture.

The nearest town was thirty minutes away and more people drove by it in a day than lived there. The nearest real city was Pocatello. I would sometimes stay at the ranch owner’s house in Chubbuck, a suburb of Pocatello. The house was on a simply titled road called Three-and-a-Half Mile Road. Several years ago, they extended the road and connected it to an arterial. I’m not sure what they call it now. I preferred to stay at the ranch. If you have never seen the stars while knowing the nearest human is at least thirty miles away then I can’t explain it, but I recommend trying it if you can.

At night I would look up at the splash of the Milky Way. A thousand billion points of light stared back. Tracing the stars with my eyes I found I was staring up into the belly of the horse. Her sides sloped away towards infinity. Every dot was a freckle on her coat. Each constellation a scar left by circumstance and whatever innate pattern recognition we are born with. I would look up every night until my eyes watered and my neck ached and waited for her answer to a question I was still forming. I and everyone else will have the answer in four and a half billion years when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide.

That ranch in Idaho is where I got some, but not all, of my scars. I helped mark the property lines with neon-orange nylon string. I did this from the passenger seat of a Husqvarna HUV4414 Utility Vehicle. I let the spool of nylon run out through my hand as we drove from one corner of the pasture to another. I was not wearing gloves. At one point, the string snarled. It jumped from the palm of my right hand, made a circuit around my thumb, passed along the back of my hand, and then twisted around my index finger before the friction pulled it tight. I shouted. We stopped driving. The string, pulled taut by a fourteen horsepower engine at twenty miles-per-hour, had worn a deep groove around the circumference of my thumb. There was no blood; the immense friction had simply burned through the flesh leaving it glossy and hot. Similar marks formed where the nylon had rubbed my hand and index finger. The pain came. I remembered being a child playing in my father’s restaurant when I had reached for a pancake and first discovered that the stove was hot. My hand pulsed. I picked at the dead, crisp skin. I cursed. I put a glove on and kept working.

That night I stood on the bare concrete foundation that would later become the garage. I raised my right hand over my head. In the dark, it formed a five-pointed silhouette against the sky. Even so, I could still see the wounds as surely as I felt them. I found an empty patch of black and slotted my hand in. My scars disappeared among several unnamed constellations.

Fourth

When I was nineteen, my heart nearly stopped. That’s not true, it was the opposite. I was in college. I had gone out to dinner with my family at a vaguely Italian restaurant. We sat in the main dining room, in a corner where the large windows formed a crease. Lamps hung low over the white-clothed tables and the room vibrated with conversation. We talked about my classes. I said they were fine. They were fine. I was not. I had spent the better part of a semester sequestered in my room or the far corners of the library. I had not gone to class in weeks largely because I had not gone to class in weeks and was afraid of what my professors might say about my long absence.

We ate slowly. I had beef stroganoff — I had never ordered it at that restaurant before, usually, I chose one of the baked pastas that came out in thick clay dishes, always too hot to hold but I would test the temperature every time anyway. I would then press my reddened fingertips to the glass of ice water to the right of my plate.

The stroganoff was good. I ate and tried to fill the conversation with what I imagined would be going on in class if I had gone to class. I was fortunate: when I did eventually return to classes the professors either hadn’t noticed, didn’t care, or were so concerned they were willing to give me the credits anyway. I did not tell my parents any of this.

I took the train partway back to my dorm and walked the remaining distance. It was a long walk up a steep hill, and I would usually open my jacket to vent heat so I did not notice that I felt warmer than usual. I trudged past the Huntsman Center Stadium where I had watched my university’s gymnastics team that same week. Seeing the banners of gymnasts somersaulting and leaping nearly made me vomit. My stomach sank like an anchor into my pelvis. I got into the elevator of my dormitory. I started to sweat. I felt like a slice of cheese left on the kitchen counter. My then-girlfriend was at my place. She spent most nights in my dorm. She would eventually completely abandon her dorm and we would move into a terrible apartment on the corner of Broadway and Four-Hundred East.

As I chatted with her in the living room I felt despair. I felt the walls begin to crumble and crush and pin me between them. I felt myself free-fall through the floor, down through the laundry room in the basement, and plummet into the blackness and stone beneath the foundations. This, doctors would later tell me, was a symptom of my condition: a feeling of impending doom.

At the same moment, I felt all the blood of my body go “glug”. I wilted to the floor. My limbs fell around me. I acutely felt the position of every one of my organs as gravity tugged them into my ribs and spine. Everything was grey. I willed my eyelids to open only to find they were, in fact, already open, I just couldn’t see. In that grey, I felt a modulation, a grey that was not the grey of my seeking eyes. My head lolled to the side. I felt a muted sensation of flesh on keratin. I could smell grass.

“Call an ambulance.” I was conscious enough to speak, but my brain could not write to memory. “Call an ambulance,” I repeated, unaware I had said it the first time. This continued until the ambulance arrived.

I was carted down to the lobby. Other students had filed out of their doors to watch the procession of medics. I grinned dumbly, unable to achieve control of any other muscles. One medic draped a blanket over me as we passed the automatic double-doors. I blinked. The gurney was shuddering to the vibrations of the ambulance. I felt a dull sting in the crook of my arm followed by a sweet, round taste that seemed to originate from inside my tongue. “Banana bag, I get it,” I thought to myself.

My vision swam back into focus and I torqued my head backward and stared out the small ambulance windows. The horse loped behind, her legs stretching the necessary length to keep lazy pace with the speeding ambulance. I looked into her eyes. She looked into mine. She nodded. All the angles of her face converged on the vanishing point of my forehead.

I was kept overnight, for observation they said. I felt fine. I felt good, even. I have had only five IVs in my life, but every time I am astonished by how quenched my thirst is with that mix of electrolytes trickling into my arm. The doctors found nothing medically wrong with me, they could only agree that some had indeed gone very wrong previously. As visiting hours ended I was left alone in the hospital bed. The room was uncomfortably bright even with the lights off. I winced at the glare from the various instrument panels that blinked and strobed. I stared out the window.

The air was clear, a recent storm had swept away the inversion. On a clear day you could see out past the Oquirrhs, find the smokestack on their northern ascent, and even the mountains beyond. I stared out the window as the horse meandered through the valley. From my perspective, she stayed the same size from the moment she left my side until she towered past the mountains beyond mountains. Finally, I fell asleep. I didn’t know you could sleep well in a hospital bed, but I did. My dream was a flat grey.

Fifth

My brother was born in September. I had to verify this detail on Facebook. We were not, in a metaphorical sense, close. The last time I saw my brother was the fifth time I will tell you about seeing the horse. It was the winter before he did what he did.

It was after midnight, we were lying on the street out front of my childhood home. I had my right forearm wrapped around his throat and strangled him until he stopped struggling. Like I said, we weren’t (figuratively) close.

Hours earlier he had called me asking for a ride home. He was drunk. He often drank but was seldom drunk. That had changed over the past year. I agreed because I did not want him to be drunker. I and my best friend arrived in time to see him thrown out of another bar. He was smiling and laughing, and it set me on edge.

I told him to get in the car. It was a ninety-five Jeep Wrangler. It was a soft-top with plastic windows that did not meet the frame on any side. It was frigid. It is, to this day, the best car I have ever driven.

I told him to get in the car. He stumbled and sat on a planter. I sighed, I didn’t want to wait in the cold. We parked the car and got out of the car. I listened to him speak. Speak is not the right word. His mouth opened, his lips moved, sounds emerged, words even, but he did not speak.

“Hah!” He often made the exclamation, lowering his voice into a baritone.

“Hah!”

“Kicked out. I didn’t drink and out!”

“Wouldn’t even give me a you know I barely even that wasn’t even a good place”

I sighed. I rubbed my face. At the end of the block, within the intersection of State and Broadway, the horse lowered its head and nibbled at the asphalt.

“Just get in the car. Let’s get you home.”

A switch flipped. A synapse fired like a gunshot.

“NO”

“NO HOME”

“I HATE THEM”

The horse looked up.

“Who?” I asked.

“Them. They never cared, they never even cared!”

“What?”

He had grown a beard. Flecks of spittle clung to it now as he cursed and hissed and growled. He bent at the waist, rocking back and forth as if trapped in a straight jacket.

“Them they never cared they never asked and if they did they didn’t mean it and if they did they didn’t.”

He held his glasses in his hands. He gripped the lenses. He twisted. The bridge twisted, became opaque white, twisted more, and snapped.

“I could become terrible.” He continued rumbling.

He discarded the broken frames.

“I could become worse than any of them could even imagine.”

He held his phone now. He twisted. The phone did not twist. He flexed it, bent it until the top and bottom met before throwing it into the plants behind him.

“I could be the worst.”

“What are you talking about?”

“THE EYES.” This was a bellow that echoed between the empty office buildings around us. It was full of spit, and vocal fry, and likely some fundamental piece of my brother that wound its way up and into the night.

Behind him, the horse paced the boundaries of the four crosswalks that marked the intersection.

Another friend of mine came to help. My brother had calmed down now and agreed to go home. He got in my friend’s car, I followed behind. Occasionally, I would check the rear-view and see the receding streetlights disappear in a bobbing shadow.

We parked in front of my parents’ house, my friend pulled in behind me.

I got out of the car.

I waited.

I looked at my friend’s car.

It shook, the Chevy Volt’s chassis shuddered side to side.

The horn honked erratically.

I ran to the passenger door and threw it open.

My brother had taken an iPhone charging brick and was attempting to gouge out my friend’s eyes.

I grabbed him from behind. He was a bodybuilder. He was thick, and heavy, and stank like a beer-flooded ashtray.

I planted my feet on the running board and strained. One arm fought for control of the makeshift shiv, the other locked on his neck. The horse circled the car.

I ripped him out of the car, the both of us collapsed onto the asphalt.

He tried to stab me.

He was chanting now.

“The eyes the eyes the eyes the eyes.”

He kept saying that until I shut his windpipe and he passed out unconscious in the street. I lay there, breathing hard, afraid to let go. My breaths came in deep, ragged gulps. I stared up at the ancient maple tree that grew in my parents’ front yard. It was bare and grey. The next major storm would strip it of its one mighty limb and the city would come to remove the damaged tree not long after. My friend was silent, my parents were shouting. I was tired. I felt the loose detritus of the road dig into my shoulder blades as I maintained my grip. I remembered it was January in Utah and shivered. I scooted upright, careful not to let go of the limp body on top of me.

The pale horse knelt in front of us. I gritted my teeth and glared. Her ears flattened along her skull. They rested there like clouds clinging to a mountain top.

Finally, the police arrived. They were polite. They asked if everything was OK. They escorted my brother to their car.

He didn’t struggle.

He begged them not to shoot my parents’ dog.

“He’s a good boy,” he implored, “Don’t hurt him.”

I drove with my friend to the hospital. I could tell he was angry. I’d like to think he wasn’t angry at me, but I wouldn’t mind if he was. I was worried about him. His face was swollen, lush gashes glistened under the passing streetlights. We pulled into the parking lot of the University of Utah hospital. I had been here many times before, mostly as a patient, usually in an ambulance. I knew the way to the emergency room. It was oddly quiet. Sometimes, there is the small, desperate quiet of a parent with a pale-sick child waiting for the only on-call doctor. Sometimes, there was the terrified, thick quiet of friends waiting for news. Today, there was no one else in the emergency room. It was just quiet. We explained the situation to the nurse. My friend had just had laser eye surgery. We had to make sure his eyes were OK.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

His eyes were OK.

We hugged. He drove home. I drove home.

I would not see or hear from my brother again before he did what he did, which was hang himself.

Sixth

It is February twenty-eighth, two-thousand-and-eighteen. I am alone in my flat (I say flat not as an affectation but because it is the word I am now accustomed to) in Mannheim Germany. I am packing for Hawaii. I like packing. At times I feel overwhelmed by the quantity of possessions and stuff I have. I imagine having to move and am filled with acidic dread as I mentally conduct the heavy logistics of transporting life from one living space to another. I have moved eight times in the past four years, I do not want to move again soon. Packing is simpler. I can only take The Essentials which, feasibly, could be taken anywhere at any time, with all the rest left behind.

I am going to Hawaii to see my friends and their friends and their family. I have known my brother is dead for a week now. I have not been informed in a formal sense, but I have known it because it seems correct. I have not spoken to my brother in months. I had last tried in December. He changed his number regularly now and had blocked me on any form of social media I had access to. My parents asked me to get in touch. I told them I didn’t know how. They said to try anyway.

I ferry clothes from my dresser to my deteriorating suitcase. It will not survive many more trips. The horse nestles in a corner, retreating into herself so completely that it is her stillness that draws attention. I do not look at her. I have lived with her for twenty-five years now and am accustomed to her muffled presence.

My phone rings, the caller-ID says it is my father. Without stirring the horse speaks to my past, “Your brother killed himself.” “I know,” I reply in my present. I know this before I pick up the phone. I know this before my father starts speaking, while he’s still choking back sobs as I answer. I know this before he tells me, “I found Chance.”

“I know,” I say. I shake my head, he probably didn’t hear.

I finish the conversation and call my mother. She is with my aunt, they are both crying, I can hear this even without her phone on speaker mode.

“I don’t know how this happened.” My aunt’s voice cracks.

“I know,” I say. It is almost a joke, but the double meaning is lost in the moment.

I call my friend. I am not sure if I should. It feels inappropriate, although the scars near his eyes have healed. We talk briefly, neither of us has much to say.

I call another friend.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Shiiiit man.”

“Yeah.”

We’re both quiet for a while.

“Shit.”

I put down the phone. I pick up the phone. I scroll through my contacts. I put down the phone. Somehow it feels rude — that I am intruding into other peoples’ otherwise pleasant days to tell them something horrible has happened. It feels selfish. The horse is smaller now, a mote of dust that circles me in a probabilistic orbit. I open my laptop and stare at the paused video. It is a bootlegged episode of Parts Unknown by Anthony Bourdain. I had been thinking about Tony, who had also hanged himself, and was rewatching old episodes. It’s not a coincidence, sometimes things just happen the way they do.

For most of my adolescence, I had been a picky eater. It would be more accurate to say I had a poor relationship with food. I despised it, I loathed it. The idea of eating would at times make me so sick that I would starve myself for days at a time before finally giving in and binging the nearest high-caloric food I could find. I hated food, I saw it as a malevolent force that served only to make my life worse. It was not until I was older (taller/fitter) that I appreciated food as something more, that it became as consumable as games and literature. I try to watch the program, but my eyes won’t focus. I am staring through the screen. I am turning on screensaver mode in my brain. I see Anthony Bourdain, alone in his hotel room, dead. I see my brother, alone in his apartment, dead. I stop watching and collect my phone. I call the woman I now love. She comes over without hesitation.

I sit and look through the floor, my eyes focusing on a point long past and at a great distance. The horse accelerates, a phosphorescent blur that casts no shadows. I am buzzing. I am an amplifier with the gain tuned past any reasonable limit, awaiting the first tug on the guitar strings.

“Stop,” I say, my eyes shut tight. The horse freezes. She takes an absolute position and hovers one foot in front of my face, just below my left eye.

I heard a knock on the door. I open the door to the woman I love and stare at her. The silence breaks like a dam, like a bone.

Seventh

After my brother died, I went to Hawaii. Kauai, to be precise. This may seem selfish, I understand if you think so. I went there with my best friends in the world. In the past, our friendships had, at times, been dark and sad, but we were still friends. We stayed in a plantation house on the Southwest coast of the island. The house was massive, a remnant from a historic coconut plantation. The idea of staying anywhere called a plantation made me uncomfortable. There were six bedrooms. I shared with Ian, a friend’s nephew who was becoming disillusioned with his time in the Marines. We slept with the windows open. Clever louvred slats allowed the sea wind to penetrate the entire house. The last night I woke to the sound of hooves on the wooden wrap-around porch. I blinked myself awake. Ian lied in his bed. He managed to keep it perfectly tidy and square, even while sleeping. One morning, after he’d made his bed and left for breakfast, I had tried an experiment. To my eternal surprise, I could bounce a quarter on his sheets.

I tossed my blanket aside and crept through the door. The horse waited for me but did not acknowledge my presence. We walked the length of the salt-rotted porch. I put a hand out but did not touch her. I could not bring myself to bridge that gap. We walked down the manicured lawn, following the concentric circles left by the daily mowing. From above, our geometric circuit would resemble everything left unsaid. An equation, a regression line for experiences I had not yet understood. I did not log my steps, but I know that if a mathematician were to retrace them they would find the R-squared zero out; a perfect fit, a perfect explanation for everything that I knew or could know. I abandoned my statistics major only two semesters into college, so luckily that certainty of math was lost on me.

Our formula solved to the beach. I had walked the shoreline several times already, sometimes alone, sometimes with everyone I consider a friend. It seemed a fitting place to return to my thoughts. Cycle through your mind’s processes, circle the shoreline, and you would eventually find yourself back where you began: a tautology of grief. That night I didn’t walk the shore. I sat on the pale sand and stared through the ocean, imagining all that is hidden rising from the bottom. The horse sidled alongside me.

“I’m sorry,” I remember her saying.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

I nodded. I pawed at the sand, inspecting any piece of sediment or detritus that felt out of place. I imagined combing through the beach, identifying and sorting through the innumerable grains. I imagined every piece of sand an answer to a question that was still being asked, would continue being asked until it was no longer necessary.

I tore myself from the thought and turned to the pale horse.

“You look sad,” I told her for the second time in my life.

“I am sad.”

“Me too.”

I considered the horizon. The horse laid her head across my lap. I breathed slowly, afraid that the slightest movement would make her start. To my surprise, she was warm. I didn’t move, but if I had I would have put a hand on her granite neck. I didn’t speak, but if I had I would have asked where she came from. In my memory, I would have found the answer. “I’ve always been here.” I didn’t reply, but if I did I would have asked where she was going. I didn’t need to ask, because the answer was waiting for me. “To the ending.”

“Is there an end?” I might have asked.

“I hope so.”

She would then rise softly. I would let my hand fall away, already forgetting the touch. Her ashen limbs would straighten and she would stand. She would stand taller and taller. Until the Moon rested on her back. Until the tides pulled inexorably towards her. Until the stars, lured from their perches, would gather. Would accelerate and collide in a castrophany and she would have her ending. But of course, that did not happen yet.

Instead, she broke the circle, crossed perpendicular to the tangent, and walked over the horizon. I did not say goodbye, there would be no point.

I have met the pale horse many times in my life. I know I will meet her again, will keep meeting her until I find a place where all stories have endings.

End

#short story #writing #fiction

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96thdayofrage · 5 years

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Last August, Cokethia Goodman returned home from work to discover a typed letter from her landlord in the mailbox. She felt a familiar panic as she began to read it. For nearly a year, Goodman and her six children—two of them adopted after being abandoned at birth—had been living in a derelict but functional three-bedroom house in the historically black Peoplestown neighborhood of Atlanta. Goodman, who is 50, has a reserved, vigilant demeanor, her years trying to keep the kids out of harm’s way evident in her perpetually narrowed eyes. She saw the rental property as an answer to prayer. It was in a relatively safe area and within walking distance of the Barack and Michelle Obama Academy, the public elementary school her youngest son and daughter attended. It was also—at $950 a month, not including utilities—just barely affordable on the $9 hourly wage she earned as a full-time home health aide. Goodman had fled an abusive marriage in 2015, and she was anxious to give her family a more stable home environment. She thought they’d finally found one. 

As a longtime renter, Goodman was acquainted with the capriciousness of Atlanta’s housing market. She knew how easily the house could slip away. Seeking to avoid this outcome, she ensured that her rent checks were never late and, despite her exhausting work schedule, became a stickler for cleanliness. So strong was her fear of being deemed a “difficult” tenant that she avoided requesting basic repairs. But now, reading the landlord’s terse notice, she realized that these efforts had been insufficient. When her lease expired at the end of the month, it would not be renewed. No explanation was legally required, and none was provided. “You think you did everything you’re supposed to do,” she told me, “and then this happens.” 

A clue lay in the neighborhood’s accelerating transformation. Up and down her street, old, shabby dwellings—many of them, like the one she rented, casualties of the previous decade’s foreclosure crisis, purchased at rock-bottom prices by investors who had simply waited around until they appreciated in value—were being sold, gutted, and reconstructed. In retrospect, a flyer on her doorstep from Sotheby’s International Realty, offering to “pay cash, close quickly, and save you the hassle of multiple showings and cleaning/renovating/staging/pictures,” was an ominous sign. Goodman’s landlord, a doctor who runs an international nonprofit, told me recently that she didn’t renew the lease for financial reasons. “With the area taking off,” she explained, “it was the perfect time to unload the property.” When we spoke, she was preparing to sell the house. 

Goodman had 30 days to relocate her family. She began scouring Trulia and Apartments.com for available rentals within her budget. Every night, she waited until the kids were asleep before retreating to the couch with her battered smartphone and a notepad. The list of possibilities remained depressingly short. She hoped to stay nearby in order to spare her children the hardship of switching schools, but she soon understood that continuing to live in this former working-class enclave—to say nothing of adjacent, more thoroughly gentrified communities like Grant Park—was out of the question. “It was like we’d been kicked out of the entire area, not just that particular house,” she said. 

She expanded her search to other parts of the city, but still found nothing. One obstacle was her rental history. Atlanta has one of the highest eviction rates in the country; in 2017, 22 percent of Fulton County tenants had had eviction notices filed against them. (The number was above 40 percent in some predominantly black neighborhoods.) Goodman once fell behind on rent payments when she was younger, and most landlords and management companies wouldn’t even consider a prospective tenant with a prior eviction, especially since she couldn’t show evidence—per standard application requirements—that her income amounted to at least three times the monthly rent, or provide a co-signer whose income equaled five times the monthly rent.  

Cokethia and her children in front of their former home in the Peoplestown neighborhood of Atlanta. When the lease expired, the landlord refused to renew it without explanation, and the family was forced to move out.

Eventually, Goodman came across a listing for a house in Forest Park, which was a 20-minute drive from their current neighborhood. Once white and middle-class, the suburb of just under 20,000 had changed dramatically over the past 20 years, as a generation of poor African American and immigrant families resettled there after Atlanta tore down its housing projects. Today, Forest Park has a poverty rate of 32.7 percent, and Goodman, driving there for the first time, sensed that the area had been hollowed out. A move to this place would further strain her budget. Her rent would increase by $50, and because her clients were in Atlanta, she would spend more on gas as well. At the house, the landlord, an affable 79-year-old man named Abdur-Rahim Dib Dudar, gave her a hurried walk-through. In exchange for the first month’s rent and a $1,000 security deposit, in cash, he agreed to forgo a credit check and any other requirements. Goodman decided that she had no choice but to take the place.  

Though the house was dilapidated, Goodman coaxed her kids into helping her spruce it up. But it was worse than it had initially seemed: The sinks were clogged up, one of the two toilets wouldn’t flush, the floors seemed to be sagging, a shower head was falling out of the wall, and, when Goodman went to plug in a lamp, the socket, she said, “caught on fire.” “I thought maybe I’d cursed myself,” she told me with a grim laugh. One morning, her car’s engine abruptly died. She had no money to fix it, so she started taking the bus to work, walking 15 minutes to the nearest stop and enduring the hour-plus commute. (Atlanta’s train line does not extend to Clayton County, which, when it was still majority white, infamously rejected the MARTA transit system’s expansion, as did other suburban counties.)  

On October 19, Goodman heard DJ, her 12-year-old son, scream from the kitchen. He’d been doing the dishes, and had gotten an electric shock as he reached his hand into the dirty water. He was crying, saying how bad it hurt. Goodman was livid. She suspected the shock had been caused by exposed wiring in the basement, where there was a pool of standing water. In some states, she could have withheld her rent until these safety issues were addressed. Georgia granted tenants no such rights. Nothing prohibited landlords from kicking a renter out for reporting hazardous conditions to the authorities, what’s referred to as “retaliatory eviction.” (A state law banning such practices has since passed.) Later that day, Goodman spotted a group of firefighters down the street and asked one of them, Lieutenant Brett Boyle, if he could take a look around. Within an hour, a group of officials from code enforcement, sanitation, Georgia Power, and the fire department had gathered on the lawn. Ken Flemming, a code enforcement officer, had been to the house before. “As soon as he saw it, he started shaking his head,” Goodman said. The electric company, discerning an immediate danger, physically cut the wires leading into the house. Dudar showed up, was handed a citation, and quickly left. A fluorescent orange notice was taped to the front window: 

THIS BUILDING IS UNSAFE AND UNSANITARY AND ITS USE OR OCCUPANCY HAS BEEN PROHIBITED BY THE HOUSING INSPECTOR OF CITY OF FOREST PARK, GA.

Goodman did her best to stay calm, but the kids would be coming home soon, and she had nowhere to take them. She couldn’t even go inside to retrieve their belongings. The Red Cross arrived and gave Goodman a prepaid debit card for food and clothing and several nights at an extended-stay motel. 

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disndatradio · 5 years

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Artist To Watch: Ellis

Linnea Siggelkow. L.S. Ellis. It’s as simple as that. And the Hamilton, Ontario musician’s songwriting is just as intuitive, a raw yet graceful breed of indie rock with a dream-pop splendor and a brooding slowcore soul.

“The Drain,” the lead single from Ellis’ The Fuzz EP, was an immediate stunner. She sings of getting in over her head and giving herself over to the depths — “But when it came the time to jump in/ I held my breath and counted to 10″ — yet the music spirals outward and upward, a perpetual overhead drone shot whisking you across the horizon. The guitars chime and smolder with the physicality of DIY basement rock, yet their combined effect is grandly atmospheric, beaming with a beauty that feels like it should be beyond the capacity of such a relatively lo-fi recording. It is the sound of an anxious soul struggling to let go, but also of undeniable talent overflowing into the world by whatever means necessary.

Remarkably, the rest of The Fuzz maintains that standard of excellence. “Frostbite” trembles with regret, then surges with resilience. The droning, churning slow burn “All This Time” builds to a cleansing blaze. “The Fuzz” effectively conjures that unmoored sensation of getting lost in a fog after a life-changing interaction. It’s a glorious piece of work from top to bottom, and we’re excited to premiere it today along with an interview. Behold it all below.

STEREOGUM: I understand you’re in Hamilton now, and you used to be in Toronto?

ELLIS: Yeah, I moved to Hamilton last May, so I’ve been there for a year and a bit now.

STEREOGUM: I feel like you usually hear about musicians moving to the big metropolis rather than away from it. What was the story there?

ELLIS: I lived in Toronto for like five years. I had played in a couple of other bands for a bit. But a lot of it was the cost of living, honestly. I think I was just ready for a change of scenery, a change of pace. It was pretty impulsive, actually, that I moved to Hamilton. I didn’t really have anything to be here for. But I kind of just did it, and the stars aligned and I found a great apartment and a cool job, and I had the time and the space to work on music. It was, I think, a really important move for me. I’ve been happier and more chill and just more creative since I’ve moved. Which is funny, ’cause you’re totally right, people move to Toronto to make art or whatever, but I find that there’s not a lot of room to do it, it’s just busy and everyone’s kind of hustling to pay rent and whatever.

STEREOGUM: For those of us who are not that familiar with Hamilton, how does it compare to Toronto? Can you describe what the city’s like?

ELLIS: It’s cool. It’s smaller, obviously. But it’s busy, like the scene is busy. There’s shows all the time. There’s cool DIY spaces that I feel like Toronto is really lacking right now. There’s a lot going on in the arts community, and I find it super supportive. There’s a really cool sense of community here that was easy to become a part of.

STEREOGUM: You mentioned that you were able to get a cool job there. What’s the job?

ELLIS: I work in a vintage shop and I work at a bar. I’ve been working a lot, actually, to self-fund this EP. I’m putting it out independently, so there were a lot of costs that went into it. And it’s sort of funny to work so that you can make art, but that’s basically what I’ve been doing.

STEREOGUM: I would think that nowadays you just have to upload something online and then it’s released, but obviously there’s more to releasing a record than that.

ELLIS: For sure, yeah. Recording costs, mixing and mastering, rehearsal spaces. And the album art. Things like that are just these little costs, and sometimes big costs, but it all adds up.

STEREOGUM: Speaking of rehearsal spaces, what is your live show like? Do you have a band backing you up?

ELLIS: My very first show ever I played solo, and I just felt like it didn’t have the same intensity that I wanted it to have. I wanted there to be a lot of dynamics. I wanted there to be a lot of crescendos to mimic the feeling that I have throughout the song, So yeah, we rehearse as a four-piece and play shows live that way.

STEREOGUM: Your song “The Fuzz” seems to be about some sort of catastrophic or life-changing conversation. Can you talk a bit about that song and why you chose it to be the title track?

ELLIS: “The Fuzz” to me is this metaphorical place. That’s how I was picturing it when I wrote it. It’s like that noise, like the fuzz on a TV screen when it’s not on a channel — it’s sort of this void. And I think it’s like this place where you feel lost, or you just haven’t quite gotten your feet on the ground or something like that. I think I’ve felt like that for a lot of my 20s. A lot of the songs on this EP were written from this place of feeling in between or just feeling unsure. It’s this picture that I just kept having in my head, and it’s the picture that I had when I wrote that song. But I felt like it sort of encompassed all of the songs and tied them together, like trying to get out of “the fuzz,” or trying to find some certainty.

STEREOGUM: That theme definitely comes up on “The Drain” with the images of being sucked down a drain and not being able to touch your feet to the ground. Have you really had those dreams you sing about in the song?

ELLIS: Sort of. I think a lot of it’s a bit metaphorical. It’s more of a vision, like a waking dream or something. I’m actually not a good swimmer, so I think it’s actually a super relevant metaphor ’cause I am actually afraid of the deep ends of pools. It is a thing that takes some sort of bravery for me, to jump in a lake or whatever. So I think that it is a real fear of mine, and of course, it’s used in that song as a metaphor for something else.

STEREOGUM: Speaking of metaphors in your songs, you use a different one in “What A Mess,” about taking the scissors to your own hair and messing up your haircut. That’s a really effective image for just feeling totally scattershot and out of sorts. Do you actually cut your own hair?

ELLIS: [laughs] Yes, usually when I’m feeling a bit unstable, I think. But it’s something I’ve been trying to do less. It’s a feeling of not being in control. And I’ve been trying to regain that control by not letting myself go there. It feels like self-destructive tendencies or whatever, even as simple as something like that, like cutting your hair. And yeah, it also is a metaphor for other things that I do when I’m just not feeling in control, or it’s sort of this chaos — this feeling of having to destroy something.

STEREOGUM: You’ve got this EP coming out soon. What’s next?

ELLIS: We’re playing our first show in the States on November 15 in Brooklyn at Alphaville, which I’m really excited about. I’ve actually never played a show outside of Ontario, so that’ll be cool. We have our EP release in Toronto at the end of November, on November 29, and then no super solid plans. I’m hoping to start recording the next thing this winter. I’ve been just working on writing. But I would love to play more shows, obviously, in more places. I’m planning to go down to SXSW in March, which I’m really excited about also.

STEREOGUM: Yeah, that’ll be the whole marathon.

ELLIS: Exactly, it’ll be a lot. But it will be cool, I think. I’ve been to SXSW a couple times just as a goer, but I didn’t really ever imagine I would get to play.

STEREOGUM: Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that seems important to discuss?

ELLIS: I think the only other thing that I’ve been thinking about with this particular collection of songs is just how personal they are and what that means to me. I’ve just been thinking about it, and this whole thing about being a woman and a songwriter, and vulnerability and stuff like that. I think in the past, even I had equated it to weakness or not being taken seriously for singing about feelings or whatever. And I just feel really excited that it seems like the tides are turning on that right now — people being able to talk more openly about their feelings or their mental health or whatever it is, and it not being seen as weak or smaller, or girls with guitars being called cute or something, and for it to be this powerful, badass thing to be doing. So I just want to acknowledge that I know I sing a lot about my feelings, but that I feel quite powerful doing it.

The Fuzz is out 11/9. Pre-order it here.

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sarahburness · 7 years

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Overcoming a Negative Body Image: 4 Things to Remember

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of anorexia and may be triggering to some people.

“You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

I really don’t remember my life before anorexia. I think back to my early teenage years when I ate peanut butter sandwiches and drank hot chocolate without a single thought of how many calories I had consumed. There was no guilt, no worry, no need for perfection. How I wish I could get those carefree moments back.

A few years ago anorexia completely distorted my perception of myself. All it took was one seemingly innocent comment from my classmate: Haven’t you gained weight recently? From that moment on, I no longer saw a healthy, fit person when I looked into the mirror. All I saw was an imperfect body.

Meticulous calorie counting, diet restriction, and exercise time logging began to fill day after day. I wasn’t living as a human, but rather as an engineer treating my body as a machine. I loved myself for every pound I lost, every piece of clothing that felt a bit looser, and every little bit of food I managed to leave on my plate.

I felt like a crazy person because my reasonable self knew that I shouldn’t be starving myself and exercising ridiculous number of hours every single day. I knew exactly what was wrong with me except there was nothing wrong.

Somewhere in the evolution of the illness, I lost control. I ate one apple a day, drank only water, ran ten miles every morning, did squats and push-ups while studying, and paced in my room instead of sleeping. Nobody asked any questions, so I didn’t provide any answers.

And then one day I was finally rewarded with my target weight glowing on the scale. I had done it! The hard work had paid off and I was free. Or so I thought. The control I now had over my body was deceiving. Once I reached my target weight, I couldn’t stop. The rush was too inviting. Every extra pound lost felt like a victory.

You Don’t Notice You’re Losing Control Until It’s Lost

When I looked into the mirror, I saw my ribs with their thinly stretched coating of papery skin, and every single hump of the spine as I bent over. People began to whisper. The doctors told me that I wouldn’t survive if I didn’t start eating. But I was proud. Every comment about how skinny I was felt like an accomplishment. My insecure self was at rest only when I met all so high standards I set for myself. It felt like a prison I couldn’t get out of.

The prison was in my head. If at some point I was controlling everything related to food and body image, now I had lost control and the illness controlled me.

I was hungry, cold, tired, and unable to pick myself up. The voice inside my head was telling me that nothing I did was good enough. If I ate a salad, I shouldn’t have had it. If I went for a walk, I hadn’t walked far enough. I pushed my body to the point that I collapsed.

Since I’m at a healthy weight now, people ask me how I overcame anorexia. The truth is that the recovery didn’t happen overnight, and not without relapses. It took a lot of tears and struggling, but eventually I stopped drowning. I chose to step out of my self-imposed prison, with the help of friends, family, and a counselor.

I was fortunate enough to have the support of loving parents who were there when things were hard, when I wanted to give up because I felt too fat, when I needed somebody to remind me that recovery was worth it. And more importantly, that I was worth it.

It was a taxing mental battle that still at times rages within me. The old eating disorder voice creeps up sometimes, but I now recognize that voice as irrational and destructive. I’m learning to ignore it. I’m learning to quit running away from myself.

4 Things to Remember When You’re Under the Spell of a Negative Body Image

Negative thoughts about your body consume you. They take and take and take. To recover, you essentially have to figure out who you are again. You have to build yourself up from the smallest bits of what you know of yourself. You have to differentiate yourself from the condemning voice. Here are some of the things I learned (and had to embrace) on my way to recovery.

1. Not all thoughts are facts.

The problem with a negative self-image is that it feels like a fact. You can easily convince yourself of something that is not true. Even at 5’7” and my lowest weight (ninety pounds), I believed that I needed to be thinner.

I felt that my waist wasn’t slim enough, my arms weren’t toned enough, and my thighs weren’t narrow enough. My mind was a very thorough liar, and there was nothing anyone could say to convince me otherwise.

If I hadn’t learned about these lies and how to discern them, I would probably never have gotten out of that vicious cycle.

You might have a hard time discerning truth from lies in the beginning, so instead of questioning whether your thoughts are facts, ask yourself which ones serve you and which do not.

Growing up with an athletic sister, most of my negative thoughts evolved around my body. I could objectively say that although I was very thin, I wasn’t particularly lean. So I signed up for a gym membership and started lifting weights.

However, what was initially a constructive thought—that it would serve me to build muscle—turned into an obsession within a few months.

I remember standing in a basement gym, pushing a heavy barbell above my head, when I realized I was crying. I let my tears roll down my cheeks and focused back on the barbell. I had to finish my workout. I was exhausted and hungry from all the workouts I put my body through every single day, but all I could think of were toned arms and washboard abs.

I think I knew long before that day that my desire for a lean body was no longer serving me. However, I couldn’t stop exercising. I had to sweat. I had to feel my heart race. My life revolved around my fitness routines.

I knew then I needed to challenge the thoughts that told me I wasn’t lean or fit enough, and adjust accordingly.

That isn’t to say that I stopped working out altogether. There are days I still experience anxiety when I know I won’t be able to get to the gym. But any time a destructive thought about my not-so-toned body pops up, I remind myself this doesn’t serve me and do my best to let it go and focus on something more positive. I may not have the leanest body, but I am more than just my physique.

2. Absolute control is an illusion.

Eating disorders are all about control. Control issues with what goes into your body and what comes out of your body. It’s about exerting control over at least one aspect of your life. However, it’s an illusion. In fact, you may feel in control, but be very out of control. The more successful you are at exerting control over how much food you take in, the less control you actually have. The eating disorder and twisted ideals are controlling you.

Right before I hit rock bottom, I was paralyzed with fear and crippled with anxiety. I needed the eating disorder. I needed the identity and illusionary control it gave me. If I felt I got everything under perfect control, I felt strong. Paradoxically, that’s when I ended up under the doctors’ and my parents’ supervision, with no control over my food intake.

Letting go of control was the hardest part. I would be lying if I said I no longer struggle. However, I’m much better at reminding myself that the greatest control is in letting go of the need for it.

3. Perfectionism is unattainable.

Perfectionism goes beyond doing your best. It’s about setting extremely high standards that are unrealistic. In my perpetual quest for perfection, I believed I could meet those high standards. I strived for perfection in my studies, relationships, cleanliness, exercise, and diet. Mediocrity was unsatisfactory. It was all or nothing.

Perfection is so addictive because it locks you into thinking that if you do everything perfectly, you can minimize the feelings of pain and judgment. But the truth is, you can’t. There will always be people in your life who judge you no matter what you do or what you say.

The one thing you can do is to surrender. Accept that you are work in progress. Embrace all parts of yourself, even those that seem “imperfect” to you. Practice forgiveness and self-compassion. And most importantly, be patient. Adopting new patterns of thinking takes time, but the work is worth it.

4. Food isn’t the enemy.

The difficulty with negative body image is that it’s closely tied to weight (and therefore, food). But unlike a drug addict, you can’t avoid the trigger. You can’t simply avoid food for the rest of your life, although it is very tempting to adopt the mindset that the fewer calories you eat, the better.

In that sense, healthy eating literally saved my life. Fueling my body with simple whole foods shifted my focus from calorie counting to nourishment. Instead of weighing myself several times a day, I focused on my health.

At times, I still pay attention to how my clothes fit and how I look in the mirror, but food is no longer the enemy. It’s the means to achieve the good health we all find so radiantly beautiful—glowing skin, shiny hair, and a fit, strong body.

Silencing the Voice

Do I still struggle at times? Yes. However, when my negative thoughts and struggles reappear, I no longer let them run my life. I recognize them as something I must overcome. There are days that I have to make a conscious effort to eat and not panic when the scale shows an increase. But thankfully, I know the price of letting fear take over my life.

I know that one day I’ll be able to step on the scale and not cringe at the numbers that appear in front of me. One day, I’ll be able to eat a meal without thinking about calories. One day, my mind will be completely free. Until that day, I keep silencing that voice.

About Petra Scott

Petra Scott is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and a Raw Food Chef who helps women build a foundation of wholesome eating to create a strong self-image. Get her free Health Mastery Toolkit to discover your ideal diet and take your health to the next level.

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bruceeves · 7 years

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“Work # 961: Six Works Seven Anecdotes”

When accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, Harold Pinter said that “there are no real distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily true or false; it can be both true and false.” What I propose here is to engage with six works I created over the past three years, a series of works that are mash-ups of gay history, art history, and my history refracted through the mashed-up lens of image abutting image and text atop image. The resulting elements of ambiguity engage memory – not exclusively, but not insubstantially either – and neatly echo the lack of reliability between real/unreal true/false posited by Pinter. “Memory” as Mary Warnock would postulate “operates under perpetual tension: the only way to cope with life is to learn what to forget; the only way to feel one has an identity is to remember.”

In 2007, after a months-long bout of self-doubt and self-recrimination, I decided to take a booth in the artist sector of the Folsom Fair North to decide once and for all whether or not to throw in the towel. I was interested in feedback more than anything. Aside from earning about 20 cents profit, the one thing I learned from my afternoon spent in Allan Gardens in downtown Toronto is that Leathermen, while supportive, are cheap, cheap, cheap . . . With success and validation like that, I realized it would be stupid to give up so I resolved to stick around (much to the annoyance of some . . . they know who they are).

Accepting “Salò: 120 Nights of Sodom” as its personal saviour, “Work # 864: The Nature of God” (2013) looked to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 enumeration of abuse of power, corruption, sadism, sexual perversity, and fascism as the first work in a series that explored the outer limits of masculine behaviour – a behaviour that is traditionally still expected of the boy before he can be considered fully a man. With titles like “Trailer Trash Terrorism”, “Behave Work Obey”, “Yes I Will Yes”, “Cell Block Bitch”, and “Shhh . . . (How to Conduct a Successful Interrogation – Lessons 1-20)” this is not a series of works intended for the faint of heart. What was done with this series was the antithesis of aestheticizing gleaming muscleboys or exploring the romanticism inherent in male bonding. “Work # 864: The Nature of God” allows that the rigour of discipline often morphs into the disciplinarian running amok. Notwithstanding the fact that this work has been described as ‘the water-boarding piece’ (which is an interpretation that I don’t dismiss), it is a multi-image cum-soaked force-feeding enacting either the predetermined choreography of some arcane sexual ritual or the resolution of cold-blooded revenge – that’s up for you to decide.

“Work # 900: (Endeavouring . . . )“ (2014) is masculine behaviour of a different sort – a mash-up of “Hercules Beating the Centaur Nessus” by Giambologna and a slightly abridged line lifted from “The Pickwick Papers“ by Charles Dickens. While it appears to be a meeting of an apple and an orange, the two parts making the whole have a lot in common. Giambologna (1529-1608) was a Flemish sculptor (born Jean Boulogne) based in Italy and celebrated for a Mannerist style of intellectual sophistication and conscious artificiality favouring compositional tension and instability over balance and clarity. It seemed logical to partner a Mannerist sculpture from 1599 with a comic novel from 1836. As in many other Dickens novels the main literary value is the often exaggerated personality traits of his characters. The abridged quote is from a scene when the perennial spinster Rachael Wardle is driven into a state of near-feverish excitement over her botched elopement. The two fragments – sculpture and text – taken together assume a different form of feverish instability by implying a post-modern conflicted relationship willfully engineered by Nancy-boy Nessus to force hunky he-man Herc into delivering the most satisfactorily masochistic pounding. “Work # 900: (Endeavouring . . . )“ could never be construed as a self-portrait. The only thing masochistic about me is my continual insistence on maintaining an art practice; and as far as what goes on, as they say, behind closed doors, I’m far too snotty and opinionated to be anyone’s slave.

It was after much arguing that this work was finally exhibited as part of a self-described “queer” arts festival hosted by Artscape – a real estate monopoly that is the purveyor of postage-stamped sized “live/workspaces” and studios priced at levels geared to the 1% throughout Toronto – found this union of 16th century image with 19th century words simply beyond the pale for breached the organization’s (previously unknown) family-friendly guidelines . . .

The fact that it even needs to be stated plainly that “according to the rules of my tribe, being 62 puts me 12 years past my best before date” strategically planted atop a photo of a hot torso in “Work # 904: Twelve Years a Ghost” (2014) should be indictment enough in exposing ageism as the last acceptable prejudice. I guess I must have touched a nerve when the piece was exhibited (by a curator old enough to known better) far enough away and high on a wall in the furthest back corner of the gallery . . . Fine, I’m a sixty-three year old, half lame, three-quarters deaf, widowed gay man with a cardiac condition, full dentures, horrible eyesight and rapidly developing cataracts; I acknowledge those facts. But that doesn’t make me, as is said in Yiddish, ein alter kocker – and old shitter!

The scenario presented in “Work # 918: Ash [and] Tray” (2014), from the same series as “Work # 864: The Nature of God” and

dredged up from deep within my unconscious, was enacted several times over the course of one sultry evening at the Crash ‘n Burn in the summer of 1977. Toward the end of the line for the C’nB, the now fondly mythologized punk rock club brooding in the basement of its overlord the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication (CEAC), the crowd had become distressingly uptown (meaning north of Queen Street). Technically acting as the eyes and ears for the head office upstairs, the perpetrator of the heinous acts was me (drunk) and the instigator (drunker) was one Paul Bartlett (now deceased), a poor little rich boy with impossible-to-resolve daddy issues and (stupidly) the perpetrator’s soon to be boyfriend. That that sultry evening proved to be one of Mr. P.B.s more rational moments was soon to become apparent. That memory is both a weapon and a crutch led Jean Genet to claim that every man guards in himself his own particular wound. I don’t remember when the affair completely fell apart but I don’t think it lasted past that Christmas. To quote Francis Bacon, they say time heals, but I really wonder about that.”

There’s nothing metaphorical in the least about the title of “Work # 943: Spider Web Sex Machine” (2015), it’s exactly what it says – two panels, one over the other; the top, a photograph of a spider’s web glinting in the sunlight and the bottom a no-nonsense advertising styled photograph of a sex machine. Discovering its existence of such a thing left me with the same sense of unease in not being entirely sure how this baroque contraption accommodates a human body as when I inspected close-up one of the pieces of fucking furniture custom-built for the future Edward VII. One assumes that Mr. Spider has gone out for beer and poppers because the web is as empty and inviting as the sex machine is peculiar and menacing.

On March 28, 2016 I received the following email with the subject heading “Question about Work # 943“ from a fellow with residences in both Montreal and Berlin: “Hey There, You show a sex maschine [sic] in the Artworkt Nr 943 [sic] called Spider web sex machine' out of 2015. Do you know where to buy that machine from? [sic] maybe you can give me a website or a hint in what direction to go for more information about the machine. Cant [sic] find any hint nowhere [sic] on the internet so far. Thanx a lot for your help. Greetz [sic] J___ B______ “. Two things came immediately to mind when I read this: 1) this is the first time I’ve ever been sent correspondence from a genuine pervert (cool!); and 2) both the deutchen grammaticus and the fractured syntax made my pants feel too tight. Of course I emailed him at once (!) with a couple of suggestions and that perhaps, if all else failed, he would be interested in purchasing the one-of-a-kind “Work # 943: Spider Web Sex Machine” (2015), which is a work of art . . .

He never wrote back. Oh well. I tried.

On an annual school trip to the Royal Ontario Museum before I had pubic hair, I recall lingering behind my other classmates when we got to the Greek and Roman galleries because of one sculpture in particular, a life-sized fragment of a man’s nether region with orange-sized testicles and globular glutes – feeling sweat and convinced I was the focus of knowing glances. I don’t think anyone noticed, but in my mind’s eye “Work # 956: David Was Horny” (2016) is how I imagined I looked staring up at David’s gigantic balls for the first time. It made me wonder whether or not male desire has really changed all that much from 1500 to the present, and while I have long delved into the question of the "gay sensibility", it’s never been either a trip down memory lane or a retreat into the stereotyped suck-and-fuck paradigm. I've positioned myself as an ironic spectator of this world of men ripped from the daily headlines where the 19th century notion of a romantic friendship has been kicked into the gutter. Herein lies the challenge: it is old news that the male body continues to be a provocation; but ironically, a critique of masculinity has gone largely unexplored, and embraces the proposition examined in much of my work that it should be possible to be simultaneously hot and sweaty and critical and detached. It is desirable – even exhilarating – to question the givens of our cultural baggage while at the same time allowing ourselves to be wrapped in its brawny arms. Bruce Eves, April 2016

Bruce Eves is an artist living in Toronto. In past lives he was the assistant programming director of the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication (CEAC), art director of the New York Native and Christopher Street magazine, and the co-founder and chief archivist of the International Gay History Archive (now part of the Rare Books and Manuscript division of the New York Public Library).

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russellthornton · 7 years

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The Omega Personality: 20 Traits that Split Them from the Herd

There are all sorts of roles people take within a group. The omega personality is one that doesn’t need or want to be a part of a group at all.

The omega personality is a very unique one. Within every group, there are different positions and roles people take. Each has their own personality, characteristic, and “job” within the group. Everyone knows the top and bottom positions. The alpha position is “top dog.” That means they lead the pack. Overall, they make the decisions for people, keep everyone in line, and are the head of the pack.

The delta is the submissive personality in the group. They are followers who feed off the approval of others in the pack. So, what is the omega personality? It is not only someone who doesn’t need a group, even within one, they typically don’t have a place or fit in anywhere.

20 characteristics of a male omega personality

The male omega personality is someone who isn’t very social, has a tendency to be inappropriate, doesn’t care what people think, or wait… is clueless to what people think about them. They live their life as they choose and without needing the approval of anyone or really having any awareness of what the people around them think.

#1 You walk to your own drum. Omega personalities are those that not only don’t care about being trendy, but they don’t even know what trendy is. Like living under a rock, they don’t care about what they look like. They wear outlandish clothes if it suits their style and are completely unaware of what others do around them. [Read: 14 steps to unfake your life and love being you]

#2 You are comfortable in your own skin. You might be the biggest geek in the world, but you couldn’t care less. You aren’t phased by someone teasing or insulting you, that is just part of the territory with being an omega personality. The best part is that you couldn’t care less what people say. [Read: A guide to being comfortable and not giving a f*ck]

#3 You don’t care what people think. If someone doesn’t like what you do or what you wear, that is on them. You live your life not to be liked, but liking what you do. Almost in a completely different universe, people don’t really exist nor does what they say or do.

#4 You aren’t afraid of the alpha personality or conform to their standards. Unlike other people, you don’t care who is top dog. And, if they tell you to jump, you stare at them blankly. Typically the object of scorn, you brush it off. No one can touch someone who doesn’t give a shit. [Read: 30 alpha male characteristics that make a man a real alpha]

#5 You are slightly “off.” You are not quite right socially. You don’t really have much to talk about except whatever your interests are. Usually those things that no one else cares about. People describe you as someone who just “doesn’t get it.” But, what they don’t get is that you do, you just don’t care.

#6 People describe you as a geek. All those things associated with nerds are your fav. If you are into Star Wars, anime, and anything else along those lines, I think you can associate yourself with the omega personality. [Read: Sigma male: What traits separates him from the rest of the personalities?]

#7 You aren’t very motivated. The only thing that really motivates you is getting the latest techie thing or getting to the next gaming level. You don’t really care about climbing the corporate or social ladder. You live for the here and now and whatever coins you collect in your fantasy computer game.

#8 You don’t want anyone to follow you unless they want. It isn’t just that you don’t want to follow anyone, you don’t want to be followed. You don’t care if someone is “into” the same thing as you, or bother explaining what you are into to anyone else. You aren’t trying to gain dominance. You just try to live your life and do your own thing.

#9 You’re kind of a loner. You don’t have many close friends, if any. You don’t need anyone besides the guy online that you play with, and you probably only know his sign-on name. Unlike those around you, you don’t want to be a part of the group. Social things aren’t your thing. You’d rather spend the night on your computer. [Read: 13 signs you’re one of those people who’s meant to be alone]

#10 You’re last in line. Not only figuratively, but literally. You don’t care about your social status, or really any status, so last in line for everything is fine… unless it is the latest release of Fantasy 2000.

#11 You have limited social skills. You don’t exactly feel awkward in a crowd because that would mean that you get that you don’t get people and they don’t get you. The only one who feels socially awkward in social settings are those who are with you. You don’t notice that people walk away scratching their heads or slightly offended by what you said because you simply don’t get it. [Read: Socially awkward? 16 little hacks to loosen up]

#12 You don’t read social cues well. You don’t only not get the social verbiage, you can’t be bothered with the cues people send you. If someone walks away from you while you describe your latest level of gaming, you have no idea that they are trying to get away from you. You see it as a “follow me and keep talking” sign.

#13 Some would even describe you as “creepy.” Yep, sorry, some people think that you are kind of creepy. The thought of a grown man living in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons screams creepy to many people around you. Like a perpetual Peter Pan, you simply don’t ever grow up, which comes across as creepy.

#14 What is personal space? There is a zone that people like to keep distance between themselves and other people, but you don’t get that. Personal space is totally lost on you, which is why you typically have people backed up against the wall talking their ear off while they have nothing but a blank stare on their face like a deer caught in the headlights.

#15 You aren’t into being “polite.” It isn’t that you mean to be rude, you really just don’t even know what being polite entails. Being polite means you understand how to be gracious, that you understand social cues and are socially aware. Those are all things that the omega personality doesn’t get. To you, honesty reigns no matter how rude or offensive it can come across.

#16 They are likely to have fetishes. Not every omega personality has weird fetishes, but most of the weird fetishes belong to those with the omega personality. [Read: 20 freaky fetishes that are actually not weird at all]

#17 You draw attention to yourself without even trying. Although not wanting the attention or caring about it at all, you have this uncanny knack to attract attention for all the wrong reasons.

Acting like a fool, shouting when it isn’t appropriate, or laughing at the most unfunny times, you just don’t get it. Since you don’t know how to behave in social situations, you have a tendency to draw a crowd.

#18 You like things like “gaming”, “Yugi-Oh!,” and wait in line for the latest fantasy game release. Yep, you don’t need friends. You have fantasy ones, that is just fine by you.

#19 You don’t have much empathy. You aren’t going to be the first at the protest with a sign or really support any cause. Empathy is not your thing. Since you lack social skills, it is nearly impossible for you to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” If you don’t typically feel sorry for anyone, not even yourself, then you might have an omega personality. [Read: Introvert vs extrovert – Which side are you on?]

#20 They have a tendency to be bullied. Since the omega personality refuses to conform and be like everyone else, they are usually the target of scorn and bullying. Not being in the group makes you the outsider who not only stands out but is ridiculed.

The omega personality is the guy who isn’t like anyone else. They have a tendency to be a loner without any ambition of being part of the group. Omega personalities are the guys who collect action figures well into their sixties, always has the latest fantasy game release, and would rather spend a night online gaming than anywhere else in the world. The omega personality simply walks to their own drum.

[Read: What makes an omega male better than an alpha?]

We are all different, so if you are the omega personality in the group, celebrate it. You don’t feel the need to conform, couldn’t care less what people think, and do what you want to instead of what people want you to do. We all have our lot in life, and yours is special.

The post The Omega Personality: 20 Traits that Split Them from the Herd is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.

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