Fiscal, Fiscal

It is the afternoon following the morning when you said you would never write again. It is too painful. Every time you get started, you find something else to do instead. Today, you choose reading. And this is what you read: sometimes Dylan Thomas only managed to get one word on the page. One word! And that was enough for him to go to the bar and celebrate. An accomplishment to write the letters in the right order. To make a word. That is all it is to write.

And you think, well, OK. I can do that. If Dylan Thomas did that and then came up with “Do Not Go Gentle…” then I guess it maybe works. One word. How hard is one word? But then you’re thinking, which word? It has to be magical if it’s only going to be the one. You go through words that sound delicious or silly or mysterious: lush, wish, dust, dish and so on. So now the word itself becomes anxiety-producing.

Leave it to fate. That’s what you should do. You say, I will look at this section of the New York Times right here and just write the first word that comes into focus. And so the word is “fiscal.” Fiscal. Hmmm. That is a word you wouldn’t have picked on your own. Maybe it’s a sign. So you write “fiscal.” And then you think, well, that was easy.Let me riff on fiscal and see what comes of this. Because it feels pretty good to write down “fiscal." It has that soft beginning, the fissss like pouring a glass of 7-UP, a secret, the promise of something better on the horizon, but then, too, the word carries that ominous threat, doesn’t it? The rough kuh sound that follows so fast after the soda fizz. And so you write it a few times and what comes next seems inescapable: fist. But for some reason, it’s not just the fist. It’s the other f-word that goes with the fist. So you write it. And it feels even better to get that on the page. Wild and daring. You’re not afraid to write like this. You’ll be the new author that “writes like this.” They’ll say, she sets it down for us, all those things we think but we’re afraid to talk about.

Next thing you know, you’ve got an entire story devoted to these strange little words. You write it all in one sitting. It’s marvelous. This is what people talk about when they talk about the zone. About stories writing themselves. About characters taking over the story and saying, “No, I’m not going to the beach to make up with Astrid. I am going to the industrial park and I am sneaking behind the building to dig a grave in preparation for the murder I will commit, so do your thing. Get it down in words for me.” You never believed it when people said, “My characters told me where my story was going.” But now you are starting to see how that might be possible.

You finish the story. It is a breathless masterpiece. You cannot believe you whipped that out in, what, like an hour? The superpower. That’s what it is. You always knew it lurked in there. Your secret talent, latent and waiting until the time was right for you to wing it out there and throw it at everyone. “Shazam!” you say out loud, “Bet you didn’t know I could do this: fiscal fiscal fist fuck.” The feeling is incredible.

Time to submit this, friends. You open up your Submittable account. You ignore the pages of red denials: declined, complete, no thank you. You find the perfect journal. You usually don’t like to be the one paying for your writing, but this journal would be so worth it. It’s only $15. What is that – the cost of a t-shirt, a glass of wine? You go through more than that in one Starbucks trip. You send it. And then you wait.

The wait lasts for days. So many days, you almost forget about it, but not quite. You’re at a stoplight; you check your email. You’re talking to a client on the phone; you check your email. You wake up at 6; you check your email. You go to bed at midnight; you check your email.

You know what comes next. You get what has become, in your experience, the inevitable rejection letter. It says, “Thank you for submitting ‘Fiscal Fiscal Fist Fuck.’ Unfortunately, it is not for us. We wish you luck and so on. “

At first, you think, wait a minute. Is this a mistake? This was my thing. This isn’t supposed to get rejected. It’s my superpower. I’ve been waiting years for this. How could they not see the brilliance, the new ground being broken? And you cry yourself to sleep and whatever.

Then the next day, you’re taking stock of your horrible life and you’re like, fiscal fiscal fist fuck? That’s what I was waiting decades to write? What was I thinking? I suck. You feel as if you’ll never write again, but that presupposes that you ever actually wrote in the first place. You’re miserable.

And here is the thing you forget: the hour, which was really more than two hours, when you wrote that story. Your daughter laughed at her book as she sat in her favorite chair with her cat in her lap. Your son came home from day camp to tell you about a front flip he almost did, but didn’t, but tomorrow he will. And you sat at your table in the middle of your house, with a Dylan Thomas poem next to you, the New York Times next to that, and some coffee waiting in the kitchen. You sat there typing, typing, the tapping sounding out a rhythm, filling the quiet, happy house like a song.


Written by: Jeanne Jones
Photograph by: Florian Klauer

The Girl with the Ponytail

I didn’t want to be with Vick. But it was only temporary and it's not like I had a choice, what with the “below living wage” from the cafe. Mom was gone now, so it would have been Vick or some other guy. The old apartment was being fumigated, so I just left all my stuff there. It had always been an iffy place because of the bugs, but bed bugs don’t kill you, and neither do cockroaches. Other things might kill you, but not those things.

I still had my coat and bought some new underwear from Giant Tiger. Vick’s mom said I could stay, as long as “I knew this wasn’t a free ride or anything.” That’s how I got a mother-in-law who lived in the front of the house, and how I found myself frying things on the stove top like I was a short-order cook. I had only just met Vick, and it didn’t take long for the whole mother-in-law and son thing to get old. I was stuck pretending I was so damn thankful, because I had no-where else to go.

I thought I only had a week, maybe a month at most to put up with them. But now, because I’d lost my money, I was years away from not having to fuck when told, or scrape broken eggs off their chipped, Teflon pan. And why was it my job to answer the door? Letting in all those ugly, cooked people. Drug-poor and broken and without a lick of hope but for what Vick would hand them in small bags.

When I thought about my money, my stomach hurt. It had been from Grandma’s estate, the amount paid off on her mortgage. It was that lawyer’s fault. The lawyer had listened to Dad about me being too young and he was the only other person with access to the bank account. It had to be Dad who stole my money. He probably took it to pay off a debt. Dad wasn’t a drunk or a druggie, but he was a frivolous type.

The teller at the bank wore a posh suit, and she looked at me, her eyes full of a pretty sort of pity. I must have been a sight for her to see, with dark bags under my eyes and a homemade hair cut. I had to used a rubber kitchen elastic because my hair was too short to hold back properly. The elastic pulled out hairs, but it gripped tighter, held harder. The teller had to say it to me again, clear and even: “The money was withdrawn last week, the day after it was transferred from the estate account. There has been no more activity on the account since then.”

I stepped outside and threw up on on their grey, concrete steps. There was greed and then there was greed. Grandma had always been nice to me, and I had been touched by her intention to leave me that money. I’d never liked her all that much, but I respected her. She’d always told me to stop eating whatever I was eating so that I wouldn't lose my figure, and it was decent advice.

“You gotta get away from these people, your mom, your dad. This part of town is full of their types.”

With the money gone, my get away plan was ruined. I woke up on that mattress on the floor, beside the spiny beast that was Vick, not able to get up. I had a weight pressing on my sternum. A fist of anger and disappointment. I have never expected anyone to give me a break, but that didn’t stop me from wanting one. I worked hard at the cafe, refilling coffees and bringing people their orders and ketchup. But it would never be enough. I wanted to go to school, to be a nurse or something like that, where if you kept your mouth shut, you’d get paid and good. They said at the employment office that maybe in a year or two I’d be moved up from part-time to full-time, and in a few more years I’d have enough to save up for school. That is, if I kept myself in the clear.

Because of Vick’s business, there was always money lying around the house, tucked away in drawers or behind bottles in the medicine cabinet, sometimes for a few hours or just overnight. Stored until it was passed on to the next person. Vick told me he trusted me. But that morning, there was $3,000 in one hundred dollar bills in the cabinet above the toilet. Karma-wise, I knew it wasn’t meant to be replacement for the $5,000 my Dad stole. I also knew that the money didn’t belong to Vick. He likely had dibs on a percentage of it and would be in trouble if I took it, but it was almost enough money to get my plan back and start new like Grandma had intended. I slipped the envelope into the back waist of my jeans and flushed the toilet to hide the creak of the cabinet closing. I bent over and tied up my laces by the door so I didn’t see Vick in the hall. I flinched when he grabbed the envelope out of my pants. I’d never really seen him mad before, at least not at me. He looked at me with his eyes drug-red rimmed.

“Who do you think you are? I let you sleep in my fucking bed. You think you should steal from me?”

He shoved me hard, and I lost my balance. On the ground, he kicked me in the face a few times, and I almost didn’t feel the pain. Instead, I thought about Grandma because she’d never been the type of woman a guy would shove around. Each time I tried to get up, he hoofed me back down again. If this happens to you, you’ll worry about the blood in your eyes and the bones in your fingers, and all the things everyone else wrecks of yours or takes from you. Until you learn how to take, too.

When he stepped on my neck, I was praying that it wasn’t a serious injury. I couldn’t move, and Vick was pacing around the room, yelling at his mom who was talking loudly, trying to decide what to do with me. That was when I remembered Grandma saying that the world was a hard place. I wouldn’t make it unless I was the type to get lucky. I guess I was a different type.

Written by: Elisha Stam

Photograph by: Hannah Chertock

Some Dreams

“You will feel a slight pinch followed by some pressure.”

At least that was my interpretation. What I actually heard through his thick accent was something more akin to “You vil fil a schlight binch follow by some brezher.” And pinch it did. It pinched like a motherfucker. I tried to breathe, to shift my thoughts to anything other than where I was, to put the fear aside. It didn’t help that between the vaguely eastern European inflections of his voice and the monstrosity of a moustache flowing over his upper lip, the dentist gave the impression of a certain long dead Russian dictator. But if he could stop the howling pain in my jaw and wrench free this abscessed tooth, he would be my hero forever.

“I vil be back, you try relax.”

Stalin got up and left the room. As the anesthetic kicked in, the numbness slowly crept through my gums and palate, bringing with it a hope of relief. I sat in an old barber’s chair, slightly refurbished and retrofitted with at least some of the accoutrements of modern dentistry. I glanced around the sparsely decorated office space. Four completely white walls and one solitary window blacked out. Definitely didn’t want the looky-loos peeking in from the alley. A small sink stood in the corner. No framed diplomas, no syrupy inspirational quotes coupled with generic sepia photographs. No saccharine pop music to put one at ease. This space was clearly all business, no play. But in a way the lack of adornment of the room was soothing. It gave the place a sterile feel, one not shared by the surroundings. Stalin returned and I could hear the din of consumerism coming from the dirty little bodega that fronted this illicit enterprise.

“You vant da lavin gas, no?”

He held up a small nasal mask attached to rubber surgical tubing.

Lavin gas? Laughing gas? Oh sweet Jesus yes!

I nodded my head affirmatively and tried to get my deadened mouth to talk. He fit the mask to my nose and started the flow of nitrous oxide. In seconds, a wave of warmth and tranquility radiated through my entire body.

“Open vide.”

I opened my jaw as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. My abnormally small mouth had made for some difficulties in eating sometimes, but at least it didn’t affect my social life. It could have been disastrous if I had other proclivities.

Stalin pried at my mouth, and though the Novocain had done its job, I could feel him grasping at my infected incisor.

“Vider.”

A furrow appeared on Stalin’s brow, and I could see him begin to sweat.

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. It settled on a piece of graffiti I had read outside, adorning the wall of the dank alleyway where I parked my car.

You don’t have dreams, you make them. It was a beautiful sentiment and glimmer of hope for all of the denizens of the ghetto.

“I pull now.”

You don’t have dreams, you make them. I could almost see the grin on the optimistic tagger’s face as his words blossomed to life in front of him.

Just wait kid, just wait. Make all of the dreams you want. One day the inconceivable weight of reality will come crushing down on you and you will find yourself far from your suburban home getting third-rate dentistry from a third-world refugee in a room behind a corner store because you can’t afford anything else.

Stalin put one hand on my shoulder and pressed down, while tugging at my tooth with the other.

You don’t make dreams, kid. You make mortgage payments and you make school lunches and you make sure you have enough Tylenol to make it through the day and you make up excuses as to why you have been stuck doing a job beneath you for the last fifteen fucking years. But you don’t make dreams.

“Open vider.”

Wider??

My mouth was open as the hood of an old Buick. Stalin dug in, gave a grunt and there was an audible pop as the tooth relinquished its grasp and came free.

The door burst open and a boy of about ten came bounding into the room.

“Papa! Papa! I got an A, Papa!”

Stalin, now hovering above me, turned to his son.

“Good job Alexei, Papa is proud. I vil be done soon. You go tell Mama.”

Stalin sat back down next to me and started to pack cotton into my now empty socket, a new glint in his eye.

“My boy gonna be dentist too.” He cast a forlorn glance at his surroundings. “Not like dis.” I caught a faint smile peeking out from under his shaggy moustache and he started to beam with pride once more. “Real American dentist. Is why we came here. For him. For his dreams. You rest now. I be back soon.”

Stalin left the room but didn’t quite close the door. I could just make out the joyous sounds of true familial love.

For his dreams.

I tried to smile but only succeeded in letting a bit of bloody drool seep out of the corner of my mouth. I couldn’t wait to get home and hug my wife and kids. Every mortgage payment, every morning cursing my alarm clock, every ache and pain, every hardship I had to endure was worth it. For them. For their dreams.

You don’t have dreams, you make them.

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe