This Afternoon In Drama

Again With the Ozark Shadows

I'm back from my-- to borrow a favorite term from the The Bachelor/ Bachelorette dynasty-- journey, although mine didn't happen to be emotional, except for the fact that the audiobook of Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild destroyed me for days.  It was more a literal trip.  In a car.  To Arkansas.  And because this was my first time to the South, since I guess you're not allowed to count Austin, people kept warning me about how "they do things different down there."  So I was expecting some real American exoticism, some cheese thrown on top of dishes that I'd never imagined could go with cheese, but it turns out that things really aren't so unlike how they are out West.

For instance, when cops in Arkansas arrest you, they handcuff you just like anywhere else!  I know this because only fifteen minutes into the state, my boyfriend was pulled over for a burnt-out headlight and then promptly arrested for an old speeding ticket he'd forgotten to pay.  We were about another fifteen minutes away from his parents' house, where I'd be meeting them for the first time, but now that Brent was otherwise occupied (being carted off to jail) and could no longer supply me with directions, I instead met his folks at a local supermarket called Harp's, since I had no clue where I actually was.  To be fair, we don't have Harp's grocery stores out here.  That was different.

And maybe you've imagined that kids drive covered wagons down South, but they don't: they drive golf carts just like any old fifty-year-old golf pro around these parts.  In fact, Brent's twin nieces have logged so many hours in their vehicle that they're able to zip you around the property at top speed while holding an intense conversation and unbroken eye contact with passengers.  They'll drive you straight over to their treehouse without ever looking at it, so that you're surprised when they successfully anticipate the need to brake just inches from the door of their custom jail, now apparently being used for detaining, according to them, "teenage boys."  It's too bad Brent's in his thirties, or he could have taken a much more convenient trip to their lock-up instead of the town poky.

 

I'd heard that Southerners really, really like to eat, so when Brent's family took me to the Golden Corral, I was like, "Look, guys, I've been to Souplantation.  I'm no stranger to multiple entree choices."  So maybe the Corral had not multiples, but exponentials, and required a hundred square feet to accommodate the desserts alone.  So maybe, for a minute, I felt a little overwhelmed.  I got over it quickly.  Pizza is pizza, right?  And a fried cupcake, which I've never seen before in my life, is a fried cupcake, no matter what nook of the country you're in.

You know, I think the only member of the trip who was bewildered by the South was Christmas.  When we stopped halfway to Arkansas at an Albuquerque hotel that had an in-house TV channel dedicated to Native flute music, she had some difficulty comprehending the appeal of Southwestern decor.  "I just don't get this rug," she said.  

She also had a bit of trouble getting along with Arkansas local Ringo the teacup Yorkie and, like the cosmopolitan snob she can sometimes be, spent the first hour of their acquaintance rejecting his Southern friendliness by perching on the edge of a bathtub and turning her face toward the wall whenever he asked her if she wanted to go shoot guns in the backyard or have a piece of his famous possum pie.

By the time we were on our way back to California, stopping in a Kansas Holiday Inn, she was all smiles again.  

But still, I think Ringo won a little spot in her heart, as I saw her trigger paw twitching later that night in her sleep, a smile of sweet remembrance on her face.

 

Oh, and I did some shooting too, but that's business as usual, pretty much.  Prettttttttty much.

The Speed Of The Business I'm In Makes Me So Mental

I'm still waiting to announce the new book deal and the new film deal because various people have taken various vacations in the middle of drawing up various contracts, and yet other various people are fighting over various back-end points.  In the meantime, The Coachella Review has launched online, and it is the new literary journal of UC Riverside's Palm Desert MFA program, where I am likely teaching young adult fiction at come January.  My short story "Dear Penthouse Forum" is up, but if you're looking for a tale of surprised and anonymous public bathroom sex/ a plumber's lucky day/ a couple who unexpectedly open their marriage during a snowy weekend in a mountain cabin/ a woman who loses her parking garage ticket and doesn't have the cash for the full amount, leading to the decision to pay the attendant in a different fashion/ the mousy, be-bunned girl at work who turns out to be anything but, you might be disappointed.  Besides that, who knows what you're into?

DEAR PENTHOUSE FORUM,

by Andrea Seigel

Bardo’s fist came down twice on my left cheek, near the lower border of the eye, as he said, through closed teeth, “You motherfucker.” It was then I decided that I would go fuck his mother.

We were in the park, which was covered with snow, making it hard to tell when my vision was whiting out and when I was simply seeing all there was to see.  After Bardo tired his hitting arm on my face, he rested on what must have been a whitened bench, because he appeared as if he were levitating.

“You motherfucker,” he said, heaving.  “Keep my girlfriend’s hands off you.”

Fucking Bardo’s mother was realistic for two reasons.  The first belonged to me: I was wanted by women.  This was why Bardo was beating me for the third time in December.  He kept finding his girlfriend, Annalese, pressing herself to me with her hands underneath my sweater.  He especially lost his mind this time when she said, “They got cold.”  She’d held her palms flat on me like she was feeling a pregnant stomach.  Which brings me to my theory on why women want me.  I am the closest thing to a lesbian experience they can have without having a lesbian experience.  My hair is long and hangs over my eyes.  I wear my jeans low on my hips like a girl.  My voice is soft.  My upper lip is sweetly bowed.  I am not a fighter.

It was easy to pack my face because all I had to do was roll onto my side.  A misguided bird sang above me on a branch that I could barely distinguish from the sky.  “I don’t have the power to stop anyone from doing anything they really want to do,” I said, only because I saw a shape, not white, moving in our direction, and I knew Bardo would not be able to kill me in time.

After the man threatened to call the police, Bardo succumbed and walked off in the direction of our school.  Over his shoulder he yelled, “I’m not giving up on the quest for that power, motherfucker!” which made the man hold out his cell phone like a taser.

If I was going to keep Annalese’s hands off of me, as Bardo had asked, that would mean cuffing her wrists with my fingers and holding her arms above her head.  This was not my style.

The one time I’d seen Bardo’s mother, she was walking through CVS with Bardo and her face was nearly kaleidoscopic from bruising.  It was a timeline, similar to mine in its current state.  Red meant now.  Purple meant a couple days ago.  Brownish-yellow meant she could hardly feel it any more.  As they went up the non-prescriptive medication aisle she cried, not like something bad had just happened to her, but like crying was how she lived.  With the back of her hand, she rubbed the tears hanging from her jaw as if they were itches.  I didn’t plan on showing up to her house with the blood.  I’d clean it off first.  But the burst vessels and swelling were key.  They’d make me look like her, or, at the very least, like a sensitive memory she had of herself.  This was the second reason that fucking her was realistic.

The man wanted to know if I was all right, and I asked him, “Isn’t this what guys do?”

“You didn’t look like you were fighting back.”

I formed a snowball and pressed it to the place where Bardo’s ring had cut my cheek.  When I pulled the ball away, I could see the blood sinking like flavored syrup into Italian ice.  ”I was,” I said.  “You just can’t see my moves.”

The man opened his wallet and gave me the card of his Tae Kwon Do instructor...

You can read the rest here.