Creative Nonfiction
Writers featured in this edition include Jeremy Ball, Keith G. Tatarelli, and Robert Tostevin.
Jeremy Ball is a senior at Central Michigan University who is currently pursuing a B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Concentration. He enjoys writing either pieces that make people laugh, or laughable pieces. Most of Jeremy’s life revolves around Red Wings’ hockey, but he is also an avid fan of an asinine array of music. Someday he hopes to either become the omnipotent ruler of space, time, and dimension, or write novels in a secluded Canadian town.
The Four Seasons
Fall in Michigan is when people start bitching about the weather. They contract their flus, colds, pneumonias, syphilis, etc, most likely in protest of the slightly colder conditions, and complain with scratchy voices how “it’s that time of year again.” School children and college students alike are treated to a cacophony of coughing in every classroom from the people who are just too stupid to stay home. The leaves all get sick as well, turn different colors, and then drop dead, making the naked trees look like that perverted groping tree from Snow White.
Snow. That’s what comes directly after, or sometimes during the season of dying leaves. Frozen crystals of evaporated lake water—which seem exotic at first, annoying after a few weeks, and malevolent by mid-February—fall from the apathetically gray sky, causing public school closures, frozen hobos, and, worst of all, Christmas music in every restaurant, supermarket, gas station, doctor’s office, funeral home lobby, and Secretary of State’s Office. All this frozen shit on the ground makes driving a Winter Olympics event. This, of course, is assuming one can dig their vehicle out from under 10 inches of overnight snowfall and convince the engine that it would rather be out working than sleeping peacefully.
After its five month hiatus where it hangs out behind the clouds, the sun reemerges with a shit-eating grin on its face and decides to melt all of the frozen crystals. This causes massive flooding which apparently persuades the clouds to start pissing out some rain, and it’s impossible to walk on unpaved ground without getting mud caked all over your newly purchased Nikes. Worst of all, Spring is just a little nymph. Your girlfriend, Summer’s, slutty younger sister who’s almost able to convince you that the sun only plans to heat the earth to a controlled 72 degrees.
Then Summer gets home. Summer’s a hot girl; but on some nights her sultriness is unbearable, and you’ll lay awake in a sweaty stupor. It is liberating to go outside minus a jacket for a while, but then one realizes that it’s against the law to shed much more clothing. Shorts and t-shirts don’t help too much when the sun takes its yearly revenge for mankind beating up on his pal, the earth. Going outside becomes a hellish death march through the Mohave. Fat people sweat profusely, and beautiful people start burning their epidermis an attractive color since it’s acceptable for them to go shirtless in public. Finally, the sun starts getting tired of its long workdays full of discipline, and it starts retiring a little earlier each day. This has to scare the hell out of the leaves who know death and massive cremation approaches.
There are only a few weeks a year where the weather is ideal, usually occurring in mid-August or early-April. The rest of the year is a constant reminder that the earth owns the land, and we’re just squatting on it. Perhaps the earth hates the state of Michigan with vigor, but I think it’s somewhat pissed with most other regions, too, what with all the hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and fiery-shitstorms. I guess I’d be mad too if six billion people, including ten million well-fed Michiganders, were standing on me, gouging me with things like shovels and bulldozers, and oil drills. Seasons still irk me, though. Except for hockey season.
Keith G. Tatarelli was born on Halloween night, 1958. He grew up in the hard-scrabble streets of Detroit and relied on books and sports to escape the grinding poverty which haunted his youth. His work history reads like a 1930’s migrant worker… cab driver, pizza delivery, bus boy, stock boy, waiter, factory worker, Teamsters truck driver and for the last 22 years, a practicing criminal defense attorney. He’s been privileged to teach for CMU since 1997. In his spare time he enjoys reading, playing sports and spending time with his family.
Where’s the Magic?
I must have believed in magic at some point in my life. Don’t all kids? Then again, I can’t remember thinking that magical things could happen, though I do remember hoping for miracles. Most of all, I don’t really remember much about my childhood other than walking in the shadow of sadness and fear. Bits and pieces, poignant events, but no continuity. It’s as if my life started and stopped, only to start again with the next painful heave. What happened in-between, what many would call “a child’s life” has been obscured by an unseen eraser.
My mother always struck me as a rather pitiful figure… a frail reed whose life seemed to revolve around beer, men and crying spells. When I would arrive back home after one of my father’s infrequent visits, she would often ask if I would like to live with him. Once I stammered “yes”, intuitively knowing that a pyretic showdown was staring at me. She slapped me hard across my face… and I bit my lip to keep from crying. I just bored holes with my eyes and ran out the door. When I came home all my clothes were stacked outside the front door in paper bags. I didn’t leave that day… I had nowhere to go. Maybe I should have.
Years later, after she had been ravaged by cancer, I would find myself at the age of twelve helping her into an equally ravaged wheelchair and pushing the matching relics into the bathroom. I became a voyeur of sound, listening to her vomit up what remained of her body. Somewhere in a dream she told me I would have to be strong, that I could be anything I wanted to be. I hated her and her twisted body.
She died in 1971. For the life of me I can’t remember the date. It was a bitterly cold February day. My brother and I were on leave from our grandparents’ house, allowed to stay at our old home during the weekend. It was Sunday morning, the air so frigid your body knifed through it as you walked. Uncle Bill, my mother’s brother arrived along with Mario, my father’s brother. I saw them through the curtains and just knew… just knew at that moment that it was over, and that nothing would ever be the same. Run, hide, stop and stare. I stood my ground.
“You knew this would happen”. My uncle spoke those words in slow motion.
No one touched me. I vaguely remember climbing into his car for the ride back to my grand parents’ house. To this day I never fought back the tears as hard as I did then. And I damn sure was not going to let anyone see me cry. My brother and I silently played Ping-Pong in the basement, seemingly oblivious to the thick air pressing from all angles. Some alien kept leaping into my throat. I kept swallowing it back down.
When I carried her casket-bound body from the church and into the Hearst, I cannot recall feeling anything at all. It was if my body had separated from me and I was traveling through the vapor that erupted from my mouth with every heavy breath. I thought maybe the nightmare was over, but I was just kidding myself. In some ways it had yet to begin.
I have vowed never to slap my children across their face. Perhaps it is in the face where magic lives and where a slap can smear it away. There is something powerful in the face of a child, its power shielded only by its fragility. In a perverse way, my mother did teach me about the ability to soul murder. Slaps can do that…
In a still moment, I miss my mother. Perhaps that is why I’ve allowed myself so few still moments.
Robert Tostevin is an undergraduate at Central Michigan University. He's been that way too long. Someone please put him in your MFA program. He does fiction and poetry to.
Anyone? Please?
The Clothes Make The Man.
When I was a child I found an earring on the asphalt outside a grocery store. It was large and gaudy with a long curvy hook. Dangling from the hook’s end was a small pendant that crisscrossed circles forming a silver embroidery. Mounted where all the lines met was a small glass sphere that had been tempered in a way that appears royal blue when looked at perpendicularly and slides between hues and becomes transparent when turned to its side.
My mother told me to throw it away. She mentioned something about diseases, specifically something about AIDs. The curve of the hook reminded me of my first fishing pole and the dread that goes with baiting that first hook. The shape and size of it was a blatant reminder of why the hook was there, to bait ears. It felt like a syringe only interested in the sport of biting.
I was an intelligent person in the 1990’s, albeit a small one, so my mother’s threat was enough to make me uneasy. Regardless, I refused. “Is that your treasure?” is what she asked me, but it had nothing to do with treasure. It was something foreign and something desirable. It felt like everything I wasn’t and everything I wanted to be. The blue and purple bauble and shapely hook was something meant only for a woman, and when I put the earring in my palm all I ever wanted was for it to be a part of me.
I’ve never been comfortable in my clothes. Choosing what to wear was hassle growing up. During grade school I wore five oversized tie-dye shirts and five pairs of black denim jeans. By middle school they all had became riddled with wholes. A few of the shirts’ shoulders resembled fishnets. The hair and skin of my shoulder was just as visible, if not more so, than the cloth of the tee-shirt still draping me. The knees and the heels of my jeans had frayed open. A few of their crotches wore open too, turning my jeans into denim chaps.
My mother often offered to buy something new. Sometimes she even demanded to buy me something. She would reiterate often, explaining that I could choose whatever I wanted. I resented every word. She had no way of knowing, but she was a horrible liar.
I resisted, and it came to a point where putting a shirt on made me feel naked. The wholes down each seam of every shirt had almost become larger than what the shirt covered.
All of a sudden I had nothing to wear. There was nothing in a store that properly described how I felt like looking, nothing that I would ask my mother to buy me, anyhow. The clothes in my closet had buckled after a long protest. The time came where I had to compromise.
After yet another speech guaranteeing that I could buy whatever clothes I wanted, I told her she’d won. However, I wasn’t prepared to accept so easily. I told her I would buy new shirts, maybe even a jean or two; but if I had to buy anything, they would be the plainest clothing I could find. Plain black shirts. No designs, no labels, no tags. Reluctant, my mother agreed. “If that’s what you really want to wear,” she said.
Shopping began immediately, and my mother and I quickly began arguing over what constituted plain. Finding it was more difficult than I thought. A few weekends of shopping went by, and I compromised yet again. I found a black tee-shirt that wasn’t wrapped in a baggy, and I bought six. My integrity was violated.
Even in the most generic of men’s clothing, I was completely unrepresented. Clothing is meant for expression, and nothing on any of the racks I considered pointing out was worth my time. At least I wasn’t naked anymore.
Knowing what’s on you says what needs to be said to whoever has eyes, that is important. That’s something people devote themselves to. I had found what I was looking four on the couch in my living room. My mother had thrown the laundry there one weekend, and under a sweater was a pair of pantyhose. I had always been drawn to the suppleness of hosiery since I can remember. So, after my mother had left the house to work in her front yard garden, I slid my foot under the pile of laundry, making sure my foot wasn’t exposed—just incase she wandered back in. I balled up a leg of the hose and let it swallow up my leg. For several minutes I marveled at the suck of the stockings. I took in how they felt and looked as long as I could, before paranoia sat in. I had never been more excited and terrified. My legs had the glow and softness of something wanting to be touched, and since then I’ve harbored the desire to be recognized as a woman.
I think this is an important story, so let me just tell you what you’re supposed to realize. This is a story about how I figured out I was “queer.” Here:
This is how you know you’re a queer:
First, when you grow up people will tell you how things work. You’ll think they don’t make any sense, but you’ll go with it. And then you figure out your queer, and the world makes sense to you; but they’ll keep telling you how the world makes sense, even when you tell them they’re wrong. And then they stab, or hang you—in the right countries—or they deny you the means to live, or pass legislation saying that you aren’t really a person and don’t deserve the same rights as anyone else—because, after all, they know how the world works. They’ve been telling you for years, and it makes sense to them. They don’t need to believe that they’re wrong because it makes sense. If you tell them it doesn’t make sense to you, they will call you a liar or tell you you’re confused. When I tell someone I’m transgender, I say it as plainly as possible. I don’t even go out of the way to say it.
Usually, when it comes up, I hear one of two responses: the first being, “Oh. I don’t care.”
The other is much kinder. It’s something only a friend would say: “No you’re not.”
Here’s what happens. At every party, at every little get together, anywhere you see more than two people walking down the street, someone thinks it’s cute to remind the people standing next to them that they are a man or a woman. More often than not, someone brings up what a man or woman is, how bad they are at it, the horrible things being a man or a woman “makes” them do. It always comes down to dogma. The vast majority of delusions in contemporary society are almost always immediately followed by the words, “…because I’m a man.” Being anything else to them is a joke. And of course, eventually, the joke comes up: At least they aren’t what they aren’t. That’s a joke that always gets a laugh. Because, honestly, what else are queers?
What these men and women (and nothing but men and women) know is all they can know—at least that’s what they’ll tell you—and, unless it relates to them, it can’t be real. Even the things they know they don’t understand—advertising, lobbyists, quantum physics, metaphysics—they aren’t really real until it makes sense to them, it seems. They’ll throw around buzz words; hell they can even sum it up for you. And even if they hear something that makes sense to someone, they’ll try to explain it how it makes sense to them. If you see something, feel it, saw it through your own eyes, these people would sooner tell you how they understand it. They’ll even explain what you just explained to them—even if they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They will sit there, they will tell you what they heard you say, and they’ll expect you to believe their interpretation is true. It doesn’t matter if you touched it, saw it, or felt it inside of you. They believe that everyone is equal insomuch as their interpretation of you is as equally viable as everything you have ever experienced. Because when it comes down to it, that’s what queers are to them. Experiences. You’re just an anecdote. So when you tell them that you see something different, all they’re worried about is their experience. You gave them a question, and now your whole life is just a question to them. They experienced you, and now their going to answer you. They’re going to look you in the eye and solve you. It doesn’t matter whether you just gave them the answer. You’re a riddle. For them there’s nothing left for you to say. They think it’s their turn to find your real name.
But let me go out of the way to say that it certainly is not. This is my life you’re dreaming up. This isn’t something that takes two words to say. This is something you’ve either lived or have never experienced; and either way, you want to hear every goddamn word. Either you’ve already lived this life, or you haven’t, and if you have then I’m sure you’re glad to hear that I share it. God knows, no one else will share, not that they don’t want to. The problem with that is they want to keep their lives. And if you have the luxury of living a life that goes often retold, it’s important you read all of these words. You may be tempted to tell me you understand, that you get it. “Prejudice, right? That’s what we’re talking about? Why not just say that?” I would say that—because it is true—but that’s not actually what I meant to say. What I’m actually saying is this is something you have no right to make words for. This isn’t a story with a moral, it’s a goddamn biography. This isn’t even my biography. Somewhere they turned it into a formula: This is a madlib, and today you’re the blank. This time you’re full of holes. You are the holes. By all means, fill in the blanks. Here’s what you are, and now tell me how you fit in. You want examples? I’ll give you yourself. You’ve made a machine for me, and now I’ve made one for you. Tell me how you fit into my life; tell me where you belong. And don’t tell me you don’t fit, either. Because you already told me you do: You told me the world works: You said you knew it all. You said you saw it, the whole fucking world and it seems fine for now.
The problem is when you’re a queer, and you make sense of the world, the world still isn’t alright. After you figure out who you are supposedly another thing happens: All of a sudden you realize that the world is still in a dark age. You realize that despite all of our progress, (microwaves and flying cars for Christ’s sake) we’re still in the wild fucking west. You figure civil rights is only a jury-rig. You still need camouflage to get by. To feel safe to be seen, you need at least a quip in your purse or just anything that stings. Because they see it all. Because even though they’ll tell you it’s not real, they’re looking for the queer on you.
One day I walked home in a suit. It was a pretty nice suit, too—the one I keep in plastic. I was walking home in my best suit and fishnets on my ankles. I walked up to the door of my dorm, and two boys in hoods sat smoking on the stoops. “What the fuck am I looking at?” the one said to me. He said it; he wasn’t asking, and it was meant for me.
Maybe it’s because they think you’re still a part of them. Because it’s true: They put themselves inside of you. They teach you to say things, and you say them. You spit them out, and they taste like bile. They’ll listen to you say them, and they know it’s not right, at least when you say them. The words taste just as bad in their ears as it does in your mouth. Those are things you’d never say again, not after you get it, not after you know you’re a queer. Those are things you won’t say again, but they’re the things you’ll smile and nod at. Anything less and you’ll be out of character: You’ll feel it slip right off. Instead you get by. You put on a costume, and you make a man out of clothes.