1:1 - Ben Cook

interviewed by Mark Killian

Over the next few weeks, 1:1000 will take you behind the scenes with our core writing and editorial team. We'll show you more about what makes these writers tick (or maybe twitch).

This week we learn a little more about a relative newcomer with a newborn, Ben Cook. Ben is a veteran of the airline industry who was tired of keeping his writing aspirations grounded, so he joined our little site to let his prose take flight. Thank goodness he did! Otherwise, we’d never have wonderful stories like “Tending to What Matters,” “Arbor Day,” “Some Dreams,” and his latest, “Like There’s No Tomorrow.”

Mark Killian sat down with Ben at their individual computing machines, thousands of miles apart from each other, to interview him via G-chat. Although Mark's never met this man in person, they soon found a kinship through notes on their writing styles and movie preferences.

1:1000: Benjamin. How art thou?

BEN COOK: Tired. Very tired. Our newborn, Bryson, didn't feel much like sleeping last night, which means no one felt much like sleeping.

1:1000: Oye. I have heard of this unfavorable aspect of parenting. On a good night, how much sleep do you get with a newborn? Same question for a bad night.

BC: On a good night he will sleep for about six hours in between feedings (which I am not biologically capable of, but you end up waking up anyway). On a bad night he is up every two or so, crying. I probably average about five hours a night, my amazing wife gets by on even less.

1:1000: That's reassuring. That's about what I currently get due to my own psychosis/insomnia.

BC: Ha! The good thing about children is in a way they cure insomnia, you become so exhausted that you go directly to sleep when you do get a chance to lie down.

1:1000: That's also what I've heard. I have seen many a picture on The Facebook of a passed-out parent with a child sleeping on top of them.

BC: Yep, those are the best naps!

1:1000: And photo opps. How many kids do you have again?

BC: Two. Liam will be five in two months, and Bryson is one month.

1:1000: Does the thought that they may find your writings one day ever cross your mind? And if so, does it affect the things you say?

BC: Yes it does. I think that's one reason that I can be somewhat reserved in my writing.

1:1000: Speaking of writing, what say we launch into this interview? (Although, there is a chance those previous questions/answers will weasel their way into the final draft.)

BC: Fire away.

1:1000: Let's start things off the standard way and see if we can't make it a little weird down the road. First, when did you know you wanted to become a writer?

BC: Strangely enough, it was a movie that first inspired me to write. I was always a voracious reader growing up (thanks Mom and Pop for making us read everyday), but I never gave writing much of a thought until my senior year of high school when I saw Clerks. The fact that a dude could write and direct his own movie was incredible to me. Around the same time I got my first job in a bookstore and read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Between those two, writing became something that seemed accessible to me for the first time. I started writing but never really showed anyone.

1:1000: That is AWESOME! I too consider myself a movie-inspired writer, and High Fidelity is such a great book/movie! Probably one of the only times I feel the movie is better than the book. Any who, what was the first thing you wrote after watching Clerks. Was it a story or a movie? Also, why did you decide not to show it to anyone?

BC: I tried my hand at screenplays, but gave up fairly quickly. I didn't know any of the mechanics of it, and back in those days ('95 or so) we didn't have nearly the resources there are now. After that I switched to short stories. I guess I never showed anybody, because I didn't have much confidence in myself or my writing, which is sometimes still a problem for me.

1:1000: Ugh! Confidence. It is our greatest strength and/or weakness. So how did you work up the courage to put your work in front of 1:1000's ZILLION (joking, of course) readers?

BC: One night I was reading bedtime stories to my four year old and he asked if he could be an astronaut when he grew up. I told him that he could be anything he wanted to be. Later that night when I went to bed I felt like a hypocrite. Here I was telling my son he can be whatever he wants to be, when I'm not doing what I want to do with my life. I started writing again a couple of days after that.

1:1000: That is freaking BEAUTIFUL! I imagine the "Top 5 Jobs" list from High Fidelity really resonates with you. I love that scene when he realizes owning a record store is actually above architect and he IS doing one of his dream jobs.

BC: Ha! Owning a record store would actually be in my top five too.

1:1000: Then does music have an impact on your writing?

BC: Music has a huge impact on my writing. Definitely more than movies nowadays. Being a parent of little kids, you don't have much time for anything other than family fare, and there is only so much inspiration you can draw from Thomas the Tank Engine. I still try to read, but again I don't have much time to myself. But I have music on all of the time, when I driving, when I am writing, and even most of the time at home our TV is off and there is either music or NPR playing. When I am writing, I will generally stick to a certain genre for each piece that I write.

1:1000: Who are some of your go-to artists when seeking inspiration and how do they affect your writing?

BC: I have found that in life, and writing, you can never go wrong with Pink Floyd or Willie Nelson. Aside from them, I guess I tend to use the setting of the story to guide what music I listen to as I write. For example, when I was writing "Arbor Day" I played a lot of Bow Thayer, who is a Vermont musician, and Janis Joplin, because growing up whenever we drove across Nebraska my mom always played Janis. And sometimes the music inspires a change of direction. For "Like There's no Tomorrow" I was listening to an Icelandic band called Solstafir. Their music literally transformed what started as a tale about unrequited love into an apocalyptic love story.

1:1000: How important is setting to your writing, both in the story and where you physically are when composing the story?

BC: I do most of my writing at work, on my downtime, honestly, so for composition it doesn’t matter much, but setting is very important in my writing. I try to make the environment almost its own character, or at least have it drive the story in some way. I think it comes from moving around a lot, and from travelling. I love going to different places and seeing how they can transform my state of being.

1:1000: Is the airline industry the reason why you've traveled a bunch, or have you always hopped around the world?

BC: I wasn't much of a traveler before I started working for an airline, but once you have access to free flights, you tend to take advantage of that. It was especially true when I was younger. If I had nothing better to do, I would just hop on plane and go check out someplace I had never been. But having that freedom, combined with the fact that I was living in Las Vegas and in my early twenties, pretty much doomed my college career.

1:1000: Ha! I can imagine. What were you studying in college?

BC: I was a History major up until I dropped out of UNLV. I went back in 2005 and took a couple of creative writing classes. In 2006 I moved back to Colorado, where I am from originally, and I planned on transferring to a small liberal arts that has a great English program, but I couldn't afford it. That was last time I did much writing.

1:1000: Which had a greater impact on your writing, the classes you took or Clerks, books, and other real-world writing samples?

BC: Honestly I would have to say, even though I don’t watch them much anymore, movies taught me a lot. Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, and Quentin Tarantino taught me dialogue. The Coen Brother’s movies taught me how much the setting can propel a story. I still take a lot of inspiration from books when I can, too. I reread To Kill a Mockingbird at least once a year, because to me, it’s perfect. I keep hoping that some of Harper Lee’s genius will rub off on me. Writing classes were great for peer-to-peer feedback, but I think I learned more from reading Stephen King's On Writing than I did from any professor.

1:1000: That's what I was hoping to hear. I have never taken a formal writing class myself, and have always felt it limited my ability to become a real writer. I'm starting to think that's a farce.

BC: I think it probably depends on where you go. The UNLV English department wasn't great. If I would have gone to Naropa (the little school in Colorado), who knows, I could have had a teacher that changed my world.

1:1000: Do you plan on sticking with short stories or will you attempt to tackle a novel at some point? Or, will you try a screenplay again?

BC: Now that I am getting back into the swing of things, I would love to try and write a novel, or at least something longer than a thousand words. A screenplay would be fun, but since I don't have a whole lot of time for writing, I am going to stick to what is working for now.

1:1000: Well, we fully support and anxiously await whatever it is you do next, as long as it doesn’t result in you leaving 1:1000.

Brothers

As of today, there will be seven of us. Mikey and I are in the basement, like we always are on CPS days. We hate that stupid lady, Ms. Fowler, because she pretends she’s looking out for us, but really she doesn’t do crap. She comes in with her fancy suit and her clipboard and wanders around while Barb “yes ma’am”’s and “no ma’am”’s and shoves the little kids’ mess into the closets. It always looks real clean when Ms. Fowler shows up.

Sometimes if we’re lucky, Barb will be too tired to put the house back like it usually is, and Mikey and I will get to sleep on the sofa bed for a night.

On every other night, the sofa bed is folded into a lumpy couch, and that’s where Barb sits and watches her shows, and where Rex passes out drunk when he gets home.

Mikey and I sleep in sleeping bags on the dining room floor. But today they’re rolled up and hidden away. In the basement, we try to do the same.

Mikey’s on tiptoe peering out the half-window through the curtains.

“Is her car still out there?”

“Yeah, you dumbass. I can still hear her upstairs.”

He’s right. Fowler’s heels are click-clacking on the newly clean floor above our heads.

“Where you think the new kid’s going to sleep?” I want to know.

“Depends. If it’s a girl, I guess with Tisha and Brianna.”

“They’re going to be mad.”

“What else is new?”

I hope the new kid’s not a girl, because then there’ll be more of them than there are of us. Rex is right about one thing: Too many women in a house ain’t nothing good.

But at the same time, I don’t know if I want it to be a boy, either. Even with Barb and all her bullcrap, we’ve kind of got a good thing going right now. Mikey and I have this agreement. He’s allowed to mess with me because I’m younger and not as cool, but he’s also got my back. Mikey, I think, is the same kind of way as me—we’ve both had teachers and social workers slap us with some kind of “behavior problem” junk every once in awhile, but we’re not like kids who are really angry.

Some kids I’ve lived with—they’re angry all the way down to their bones. Their anger actually jumps into their arms and legs and takes over. And that’s the kind of kid I don’t want to see delivered to the house today. Because with anger like that, especially in a boy, one minute you’re playing video games or flag football or sleeping or eating knock-off Lucky Charms at breakfast, and the next minute you’re on the floor, and anger’s got its grip around your throat.

“There she goes,” Mikey says, watching Ms. Fowler’s car pull out of the driveway.

“Bitch,” I say, testing the word in my mouth.

“What’d she do to you?” Mikey says, imitating Barb.

“Nothing. And that’s why she’s a bitch.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Mikey says, thwacking me on the forehead. “Come on, before Barb starts screaming.”

Too late.

“Mikey! Troy! Come meet your new brother!”

That drives Mikey crazy—how Barb’s always calling us brothers and sisters.

“Tisha is not my sister,” he always says, but I think that’s because he secretly has a crush on Tisha, and if they were brother and sister, that would be some pervert crap.

We get to the top of the basement stairs. The little kids are near the door, all scrubbed and happy, chewing on pieces of an alphabet puzzle Barb set out on the floor. Stupid Ms. Fowler probably thinks Barb’s educating them early. What she doesn’t know is that puzzle’s missing about half the letters because Tisha stole them to decorate her poster for Science Fair last month. Barb said she wasn’t about to spend money on craft supplies, and Tisha said, “Isn’t that what the government pays you to do? Support me and my education?” and Barb said, “The government pays me enough to put food in your mouth and not a penny more,” and Tisha said, “You call this food?” and flipped her bowl of tuna salad.

Tisha got grounded for two weeks, but she also got first place in the Science Fair.

“I like a girl who knows what she wants,” Mikey said.

Barb scoops up the little kids, one on each hip, and waves us all into the kitchen. Mikey grabs a couple of Powerades from the fridge and throws me one. I catch it with one hand.

The new kid is standing in the doorway. He’s tall and skinny, about Mikey’s age. All his crap is still in what Tisha calls a “foster kid suitcase,” a black trash bag clenched in his fist.

Barb starts on her house rules speech.

“Here, we are all brothers and sisters. We respect each other, and we respect this space. This is a drug-free house. Do not push me on this…”

The new kid, aside from the trash bag, looks out of place in Barb and Rex’s cramped kitchen. He’s white, which isn’t unheard of, but his clothes are too nice. They look new, maybe even from a department store, and even weirder, they look ironed. Somebody put creases in his jeans.

Brianna is sitting on the counter by the microwave swinging her legs back and forth. She has on foam flip-flops that are an inch too short for her feet. She, like the rest of us, is looking at the new kid like he’s an intruder from Mars.

“You will be home for supper every night, because I’m not giving you any extra money for eating out, and if you have extra money, you’d better be explaining where you got it…”

The new kid smiles and nods, but his eyes are glassy. Is he sedated? Mikey cuts me a concerned glance. What are we dealing with here? Rich kid, bad divorce? Somebody here by mistake?

“Now, you look like a nice young man, so I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. You’ll be sleeping in the dining room with Mikey and Troy, since we’re kind of short on bedrooms at this moment. Now go on, boys, and take your new brother to the basement to get a sleeping bag.”

“This way,” Mikey grumbles, and we lead the new kid down the stairs.

He looks out the window as Mikey digs around for a sleeping bag. While the kid has his head turned, I give him a good once over. His blonde hair is slicked back with hair gel, and the light shining through the sheer curtains lights up his face, peppered with freckles.

“So,” I say, puffing up my chest. “Who are you?”

The new kid turns his pale face to look at me. He opens his mouth.

I know then something is wrong. Where his tongue should be is a black V—his tongue is slit, forked up the middle.

“Holy crap--”

“Ssssssssssss,” hisses the new kid. I jump back, and he cackles. And in a garbled, lisping speech, he spits, “Like the lady said. I’m your brother.”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

Blue Car

Note: the author would like to dedicate this story to his aunt and uncle, Donna and Donald Creer.

It was the bane of Carl’s existence. It kept him up at night, and when he finally fell asleep, it haunted his dreams. It mocked him. It confused him. It sparked his curiosity and stole his heart.

That. Blue. Car.

Carl’s first memory was of him scaling a chair, getting on the tips of his toes, and looking at it through the kitchen window. Not once did anyone get inside, wash it, or pay it any mind. It drove him nuts.

Through the years he’d grown familiar with the unfamiliar car. He knew how long it was: 159 inches. He knew its exact color: Pantone 14-4481. He knew how the sun made the hubcaps shine like diamonds. But most of all, he knew nothing.

That was going to change tonight.

“I’m going to dinner with some of my girlfriends tonight, Carl. Do you think you’ll be fine by yourself for a couple of hours?” asked his mom.

Carl tried to hide his excitement as he coolly nodded his head. He’d been begging his mom to let him stay at home alone for a few months, and his perseverance had finally paid off. Since the divorce, she didn’t get out much anymore. To Carl, it seemed like she was always at work or at home – and he was right.

With his mom out of the house, Carl had the opportunity to stake out the blue car for longer than he ever had before. When he was younger, he used to sneak into the kitchen late at night to see what the car was up to. One time, his mom walked in on him and immediately burst into tears. He misses his dad so much that he’s looking for him out the window, she thought.

Being older and wiser, Carl was better at sneaking out of his room at night, but with one eye on the car and the other on his mom’s bedroom door, it was too stressful. Besides, other than the car, the only constant in Carl’s life was his relationship with his mom, and he didn’t want to risk making her cry again.

Carl’s mom paced the apartment. She was a tornado carrying debris of excitement, worry and anxiety.

“Don’t open the door for anyone, don’t leave the apartment and don’t stay up late watching the fuzzy channel,” she told him before she kissed him on the forehead and walked out the door. Carl wiped away the kiss residue as soon as he heard the locks click. He usually didn’t mind a good forehead kiss, but this one was a weird mix of sweat and lipstick.

He set off to gather materials.

Binoculars? Check.

Lukewarm liter of Mountain Dew? Check.

Fruity Pebbles? Check.

Go time.

--9:12 PM--

Other than witnessing someone step in the dog poop Mr. Jenkins forgot to pick up, there wasn’t anything exciting for Carl to report.

--10:08 PM--

Having so much Mountain Dew on hand proved to be a bad idea. This was never more apparent as Carl watched his pee stream create bubble islands inside the toilet bowl.

--10:44 PM--

Carl shoveled another handful of cereal into his mouth. He knew his time was running out. His mom could walk through the door at any second. He dug into the cereal box hoping to find a toy inside. The noise managed to drown out the sound of a car starting, but it couldn’t muffle the screeching tires that followed.

Carl’s head popped up just in time to see a blur head down the street. He jolted out of his chair and clumsily watched the blue car turn right on Clark St. through the wrong end of his binoculars.

“Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god!” was all he could manage to say. 

To keep up with his mind, he began to pace like his mom. The decision to chase after the car on his bike was easy once he came to terms with what would happen if his mom came home and didn’t find him. 

Just in case, he rushed into his room, balled up some clothes, and put them

under the covers to make it look like he was sleeping. If his mom was preoccupied enough to think Carl was three feet tall with a lopsided head, it just might work. He downed the rest of his Mountain Dew and took off. 

He felt boundless as he sped down Clark St. He had never been this close to solving the mystery of the blue car. He had never felt this free. The cold night air stung his eyes as he scanned the street. He was so focused, so excited, so willing to do whatever it took, that he didn’t mind the pee running down his leg and onto his bike pedals. The Mountain Dew had gotten him this far; the rest was up to him.

He stopped to rest.

He asked himself half-jokingly, “If I were a mysterious blue car, where would I go?”

A familiar noise nudged at his ear, shaking him from his personal interrogation. It was something stronger than a giggle but not quite a laugh. He stood stiff, hoping to hear it again. Then, to his right, he heard it. This time, he knew exactly what it was.

“Mom?” he whispered to himself.

Carl looked across the street and spotted her draped in the arms of some man he’d never seen before. He pulled her close and they began to kiss.

“Mom?!”

This time he screamed it. She jumped back from the man and searched for Carl. She saw him across the street. His eyes were full of tears. His shirt was drenched in sweat. And his shorts were stained with pee.

His mom took a step, but before she could utter a word, he hopped back on his bike. A cocktail of emotions surged through his body as he sped off. He had chased after a mystery only to stumble upon another, more baffling one. He pedaled faster, riding off to nowhere in particular.




Photograph by: Jaemin Riley
Written by: Justin Grady