Validation

People used to tell me I was a good writer. I worked on some flashy accounts in my 30s. But being able to write isn’t much use to a copywriter since a Twitter feed became an acceptable body of work. I took this freelance job because, well, they offered it to me. No one has done that in a while.

I know they saw my portfolio because the thing I paid a 19-year-old to add to my website told me so—one new view from a mobile device lasting two and a half minutes. My face gets hot just thinking about it. A recently promoted creative director scrolls through my life’s work at a stoplight on the way home from the office at 3am. He watches my commercial for Pennzoil and doesn’t laugh. Why would he? His dad still takes his car to get the oil changed for him. Fucking millennials.

Cruising from level to level, every parking spot in the garage is the size of a portal leading into John Malkovich’s brain. Do this many compact cars even exist in America? I park my 8-seater like a complete jerk and hustle to the elevator. I catch my reflection in the stainless steel doors. Is a 40-year-old woman wearing high tops hip or hilarious? A young man appears next to me wearing the kind of suit that looks too small but isn’t. He wants me to see his socks, right?

I walk into the office and look around. There are no cubicles, just rows of desks topped with shiny technology. I pause at the receptionist’s desk. Her age and outfit appear to be violating all sorts of labor laws.

“Welcome to Pop, how can I help you?”

“I’m Margaret Kay, the freelance writer you called.”

“Totally. Welcome. We’re swamped so I’m so glad we found someone who is available.”

Unfolding from behind the desk like a newborn foal, she leads me through the office.

“Great timing because they just kicked off a Gogo.com brainstorm.”

We arrive at a conference room where a vertical garden covers the entirety of one wall. Everything smells like parsley.

“Hey team! This is Margaret. She’s the writer helping us out.”

Their heads bob up from various screens, they mumble hello, and their heads drop back down. I sit and open my thick, white MacBook. A handsome guy wearing a tank top is leading the meeting. He looks at me and suddenly the light above me feels twice as fluorescent as all the others.

“Did they email you a brief?”

I nod and pull a piece of paper out of my laptop case. Everyone seems confused by its tangibility.

“Any questions before we get started?” asks Tank Top.

“Am I right that the gist of the campaign is, Gogo.com is the new and better Amazon.com?”

He smiles and I forget about my crow’s feet.

“You’ve got it.”

Then a young woman, broadcasting mixed messages with her neck tattoos and Nancy Reagan-esque tweed suit, speaks up.

“Well, we can’t say Amazon.”

“That makes sense because they’re a competitor,” I reply agreeably. “So it’s more like, Gogo.com is the new and better place to shop online.”

Now Chubby Ex-Frat Boy has something to add.

“We can’t say ‘new’ because the site launched over six months ago.”

“I think ‘better’ is off limits, too,” says Tattoo Nancy. “We can’t back up that claim.”

“So where are these ads going to run?” I ask, scanning the brief.

All of a sudden Tank Top addresses me like I’m a dementia patient.

“At Pop, we don’t create advertising. We create stories.”

“I see. Where are we going to share these stories? Facebook? Times Square?”

Chubby Ex-Frat Boy seems bored by me.

“The campaign is running exclusively on Snapchat,” he says.

“Isn’t that the one that disappears after 30 seconds?”

“10,” Tattoo Nancy says without looking up.

I stare at the garden wall and wonder if they would let me take home some herbs. Bon Appétit has a recipe for parsley risotto I really want to try.

“What if we show a guy surfing on a credit card and in the waves we see things he might buy, like a bike helmet…an electric razor…that kind of thing?” says Tank Top.

This gets Tattoo Nancy going.

“Yeah, and maybe it ends with a line like, ‘Deals that won’t wipe you out,’” she adds.

So puns are acceptable again. That makes sense considering how kids these days seem to be fascinated by the 1980s. I manage to be both too old and too young for this crowd.

Tank Top jumps up, grabs a dry erase marker, and plants in front of the whiteboard. He starts scrawling the surfer idea.

“That’s good, that’s good. What else?”

Chubby Ex-Frat Boy sets down his array of devices.

“Maybe there’s a cheerleader—a hot cheerleader—and she’s jumping around with this sign that says, ‘Shop for your team at Gogo.com!’”

And just like that, another gem on the whiteboard. I start sweating. I need to contribute something, that’s what I’m here for. Yesterday, I spent the entire day cleaning out our garage and now, like some sort of miracle, both of our cars can fit inside. I should start a garage-organizing business. I clear my throat.

“What if there’s a cute puppy—like a golden retriever—and he’s tearing up a shoe. We hear a woman’s voice over say, ‘Come, Gogo, come!’ Then a line comes up: ‘Great deals on shoes and more at Gogo.com.’”

Silence.

“We could do a series of them starring Gogo the dog and he’s always chewing on something different that you can buy at Gogo.com.”

Silence and then…Tank Top starts writing.

“I love it,” he says. “That kind of story has share value.”

Are those like stock options? I decide not to ask.

“Cool,” I say coolly.

An hour later, I get back in my car. They asked me to come back for another brainstorm tomorrow. When I pull up to the parking garage attendant, I realize I forgot to get my ticket validated by Bambi the receptionist. The woman in the booth tells me it’s going to be $30. That’s how much I charge per hour, so basically I was never here. I hand over the money and stare at the attendant. She looks to be about my age, with long, thin hair and spotty teeth. A book called Love at Sea is sitting open across her broad lap. I realize I’m jealous. I wonder how much she makes an hour?


Written by: CE Jordan
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Instructions for Living the Perfect Life

Arabella found the instructions for living the perfect life on a late night/early morning Amazon binge. She was drunk and immediately clicked Purchase, woke up Gael snoring next to her, and texted her best friend, Brynlee, to tell her the exciting news.

“Bella is so funny,” Brynlee said. She was in bed, scrolling, texting, liking, commenting, and swiping with practiced fingers. I was next to her, half-asleep in frog pajamas.

“Mhmm,” I moaned. It was nearing three in the morning, and the Netflix prompt, Are you still watching? lit up the dark room. I had class at eight. Philosophy with Professor Fine. One more tardy and he swore to fail me; a fate I would surely test eventually.

“She’s drunk and ordered something called, Instructions for Living the Perfect Life. It comes in a briefcase. With, like, instructions and stuff.”

Brynlee was not a vapid valley girl, though based on her speech, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Her’s was a halting dialect full of umms and likes. But in reality we all spoke this way; all of us shock troops in an army of communicators shaped and molded by emoji-speak. We unwittingly and accidentally transcended simple slang, and eventually we’ll “speak” like binary robots, with blinks and blips in a sort of teenage auditory morse code.

“I wonder who supplies something like that? Must be a private seller or something.”

“Mhmm.”

Five to seven days later, the instructions were delivered. I came home from an exam to find Arabella, Gael, and Brynlee huddled around the briefcase like it was a board game. Brynlee was reading from a piece of paper, and Gael smoked a vaporizer, letting out invisible fumes with large, smiling, sighs.

“Hello, lucky owner,” she read. “You have in your possession detailed instructions on how to live the perfect life.”

She giggled and took the vaporizer from Gael. He leaned back in the beanbag and flipped through his phone absently. Swipe. Type. Tap. Repeat. Swipe. Type. Tap…

“Before you unlock the secrets of the enlightened life,” she continued, “please read these instructions and complete the attached checklist.”

“Instructions for the instructions,” I said.

“Don’t be so negative,” Brynlee snapped.

“Knowledge is an onion,” Gael said absently. “You’ve just got to peel back the layers.”

“Is that Descartes?” I asked him.

He looked up, confused, as if the joke had just sneaked past him in the night and all he could do was smell it.

“I dunno,” he said finally. “Sure?”

Brynlee pinched my leg before I could continue with my teasing.

“First,” said Arabella, reading from the checklist. “Surround yourself with individuals of a purely positive energy. Life is optimally experienced with an open core.”

I imagined a giant robot man, his chest lighting up, his core like a bug zapper sucking up all the positive energy of the world, zapping away the bad vibes. I would call him Mister Good Vibes.

“Second,” she continued, “find a beautiful place above sea level. Like heat, positive energy rises. High elevation areas are best.”

“We could go to Devil’s Point,” I said. “It’s the highest part of the city.”

“Ummm,” said Brynlee, “I don’t think a place called Devil’s Point would have the best energy. It’s called that because people commit suicide there and stuff.”

“That’s actually a myth,” replied Gael. “It’s called Devil’s Point because it’s the middle, and highest, of the three mountains. The conquistadors, or some shit, named it because they thought it looked like Satan’s pitchfork, ergo, Devil’s Point. It’s basically geography.”

“Who told you that?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “It’s like a thing everyone knows. It’s just true. I don’t know who straight up told me.”

I got out my phone and tapped open Chrome to catch him in his bullshit.

“Lastly,” Arabella said. “Spread the love. Secrets only hurt. Honesty is the policy of the universe. Share the instructions for the perfect life once you have them, so others can benefit and be fulfilled.”

“That it?” I asked.

Brynlee nodded.

“Well, fuck it,” I said. “Let’s do this, Leeroy Jenkins. I’ll drive.”

The four of us drove up to Devil’s Point and parked at a spot overlooking the city. It was absolutely beautiful. Some sort of cosmic paint had been spilled, creating a landscape of indiscriminate grace that emanated off the canvas of the earth, that shone through the fumes of our progress and made our world magnificent. I knew the reality. Knew that the protracted wavelengths of red blocked the other colors in our spectrum as they stretched across the atmosphere. I knew it was the science that was beautiful, not some invisible projection of mankind’s vanity, or some selfish belief that these things existed for us, blind to the notion that we were nothing more than unwitting watchers in the best of times, destroyers of worlds in the worst. I knew the truth, but I chose to keep it to myself so as not to disrupt the opening of the briefcase.

“Everyone ready?” Arabella asked. She had the briefcase in her lap.

“I’m excited,” Brynlee said.

“Me too,” chimed Gael.

And then, a strange feeling spread over me. I was also, ashamed to say, excited. All the nonsense had somehow coagulated into a sort of earnest enthusiasm; in that place, with those people, overlooking thousands of lives and actions with their personal universes spread out, merging and bouncing off one another, like someone had zoomed out on us all with Google Maps - demagnified our worlds - and from such a distance we were all lawless picnics of aggressive atoms, rubbing against one another.

What was happening to me? Was there something to be said of positive vibes? Of feng shui, and Oms and Umms? Of clapping away the bad energy, or lighting incense to wash out the negative? Was there some element of truth in all this bullshit?

“Here we go…”

She cracked open the briefcase and an intense bright light emerged from its guts and momentarily blinded us all.

“Oh my god…” said Brynlee.

“What the fuck?” muttered Gael.

“It’s beautiful,” awed Arabella.

As for me, I kept my mouth shut, hoping to contain whatever mysterious dynamism toiled inside my cranky skin and bones.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

This is It

                                                                            continued from “West”

The RV made it to Austin before it died, without fanfare, in the night. Dena and Chris didn't hear it breathe its last mechanical breath. It just refused to start when they woke in the morning, foiling their intention to check out of the Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park.

"I didn't even know she was going," Chris said, struggling to open the hood of the giant camper.

"So she's a she, now?" Dena asked with an eye roll.

"It's probably the transmission," Chris said.

He doesn't know a damn thing about transmissions. He doesn't even know the difference between regular gasoline and diesel.

"Okay," Dena said.

"I'll fix it," Chris said. "Go find us muffins?"

The Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park was five miles from downtown. Dena shuffled out to the main road. She shifted her weight on one leg, thrust her hip out, and extended a thumbs-up to the passing traffic.

Is this how you hitchhike? Shit. I'm as much of a poser as everyone else.

After ten minutes of cars zooming past without stopping, Dena started walking. She Google-mapped the nearest bus stop. This is how it goes, now. Forget everything you've seen in the movies.

When the bus arrived, she boarded and made her way to the back. She slumped onto the last row of seats, avoiding an old woman with a bloom of grocery bags and a hipster with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby looked at Dena with big, sparkling eyes, but didn't wail.

At the next stop, a girl got on. She looked maybe nineteen, twenty at the most, and wore a work jumpsuit with LeeAnn stitched over the breast pocket. Her boots were enormous and caked with dirt and grease. Her hair had been dyed black, then grown out, and then the roots re-dyed camellia pink.

After her short-lived hitchhiking experiment, Dena was now sure that nothing happened unless you made first contact.

"Hey," she said to the girl, presumably LeeAnn, "Are you a mechanic?"

"Learning to be," the girl said. "Please don't tell me how badass that is. I already know." She rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette.

The hipster's baby began to scream.

“Shh, shh, Reagan,” the hipster crooned.

"Hey! No smoking on my bus!" the driver yelled.

"Whatever," LeeAnn muttered. She extinguished the cigarette on the dingy vinyl of the bus seat. It burned a glowing circle, which then blackened.

"Do you know anything about RV's?" Dena asked. She extended her hand. "I'm Dena."

"Jennifer."

Dena's eyes drifted to the girl's name tag.

"Hand-me-down uniform."

"Huh."

"So you've got an RV? What are you, eighty-five?"

"Something like that," Dena said.

She felt a jolt of realization that the RV, as much as she hated it, was the sum total of all she had in the world. She and Chris had sold everything to buy it, and now it was dead. The RV was her family inheritance, her car, her favorite vintage clothes she'd consigned at a loss. The RV was the re-fashioned, welded-together, Frankenstein’s-monster version of her life.

"It's at the RV Park a couple of miles back,” Dena said. “Won’t start. Any chance you could look at it today? Or know somebody who could?"

"I'm going to class now. I'm done at noon if you want to wait around downtown until then. You can pay, right?"

Dena promised she could.

They got off downtown, where Jennifer left her at a Starbucks. They exchanged numbers.

"I'll text you when I'm leaving class," Jennifer said.

Dena stood outside the Starbucks, watching Jennifer go. She walked with such purpose. Her bag of tools bounced against her leg as she moved. Her steel-toed boots clomped through the morning shadows of tree branches on the sidewalk. She was a rough goddess of Austin.

Dena's phone buzzed. It was a text from Chris: Muffinz? and a cat emoji.

This is my life, Dena thought.

No muffins. Mechanics, she texted. Back this afternoon.

Sad cat emoji.

Whatever. Dena pushed open the door to the Starbucks, where the burnt stench of bad coffee assaulted her. It was still early, and the line of people wound through the store, circling cutesy displays of seasonal beans and Keep Austin Weird coffee mugs.

She ordered a grande chai tea and barely flinched when her cup arrived with her name spelled "Dean."

It made her want to find some boots like Jennifer's. Who wears the pants, now?

"Is that the Oprah Chai?" a guy in a beanie asked her as she plopped down in a faux-leather chair.

Hipsters. Who wears a knit hat in Texas summer?

"What?"

"The Oprah Chai. There's Tazo and Oprah. I want to try Oprah, but I kind of don't, you know?"

"Oh. I don't know. I don't think it's Oprah."

"Gotcha. Where you from? I’ve never seen you around here before."

"Georgia."

If this guy’s going to hit on me, he could have at least bought my tea.

"Do you go to UT?"

“I graduated from college already.”

“Cool, cool. So what brings you to Austin?”

“Well, my dad died and now I’m an orphan, so I sold all my shit and bought an RV, and now the RV’s broken down, and I’m stuck here until the stranger I met on the bus gets out of mechanic-class.”

“Whoa.”

“You asked.”

“Well, good luck with all that. I gotta—“

“See ya.”

She watched his beanie-clad head pass out of the doorframe as Jennifer’s hot pink roots entered it.

“My whole class is like, in love with you now,” she said. “You got us a field trip.”

                                                                                                 ***

Chris stood on the sidelines, useless, as the head mechanic and his gaggle of protégés peered under the hood of the Chinook. Dena was there in the thick of them, handing Jennifer tools when she asked.

Jennifer’s whole class was women, all dressed in their matching jumpsuits.

“I know the whole point of fixing this is so you can go, but you should stay and come to the shop sometime,” a blonde named Shelly (nametag: Bridget) said.

“We’re going out West,” Chris said, knitting his eyebrows.

Dena watched the smudged, engaged faces of the women as they tightened valves and checked fluids.

She couldn’t remember the last time her life felt real.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Jennifer’s instructor said, slamming the hood. “The bad news is, it’s the fuel pump. The good news is, a part replacement on this baby is so outrageous that it would be cruel to charge you for the diagnosis.”

Dena looked at the grimaces on the faces of the mechanics, whom she was beginning to think of as friends. She looked at the hulking RV, her worthless everything. She looked at Chris, playing Candy Crush on his phone. This was it.

“Shit,” she said. “Should I order pizza?”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

First Kiss

Jenna told her father that she had band practice after school, so he didn’t need to pick her up until five o’clock. When the bell rings at 3:30, she makes a beeline for the girls’ bathroom and changes into a black miniskirt, fishnets, and knee-high combat boots that she borrowed from Liz. She’s too young and excited to realize that her outfit doesn’t make her adolescent body look any older. There’s something about being thirteen that makes you feel invincible. You got your period, you shop in the Juniors’ department, and boys look at your butt instead of throwing footballs at your head. She even has a grown-up haircut, stacked short in the back and long in the front, framing her face nicely apart from the acne chin-strap left in its wake.

Jenna coats her lips with Cherry Coke flavored Lip Smackers and puckers up for her reflection. She’s about to meet up with Kevin Peeler, a high schooler three years older than her. They exchanged screen names at a band competition a few months ago and would chat late at night about Buffy and the latest Final Fantasy. She must have filled up three notebooks of sappy love poetry and name-change drills as Jenna Peeler. When Kevin asked her via instant message if she wanted to hang out by the soccer field sometime, he didn’t hear her fall out of her chair and scream into the carpet with delight. All he read was, “Sounds kewl.”

Jenna walks out of West River Middle School, navigating through a sea of her peers gawking after her. The whispers fuel her giddiness and propel her forward down the path that leads to the recreational fields. She forgets to pop a Tic Tac as she concentrates on acting cool and mature for her age. Kevin’s already sitting on one of the bleachers when she approaches, wearing black jeans and a matching long-sleeve thermal. His nails are freshly Sharpied and he’s wearing the spiked dog collar he told her about last night. Jenna cannot stand how hot he looks right now.

“Hey, Kevin.”

“Nice boots. Knee-highs are sexy.”

“Umm, thanks.”

She wishes her skirt had pockets right about now, but decides to fiddle with her bookbag straps. Her stomach hurts and if this doesn’t go well, she’s totally going to have stress-induced diarrhea.

“Sit with me. Put your bookbag down.”

“Okay.”

“You’re super shy in person. Don’t tell me you’re a poser?”

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool. So, I was playing FF7 last night and I finally got to the part where Sephiroth just goes total beast mode.”

“Omigosh, that’s so cool! I actually drew you a picture of him.”

She pulls out her binder and removes the sketch from a clear sheet protector, handing it to Kevin and smiling.

“Jenna, this is really good. Like his sword and eyes are perfect.”

She might piss her fishnets, she can’t believe how nice he’s being to her. He’s so freaking cool. His eyes are the deepest blue and his hair is spiked up just right. Jenna’s cheeks are getting hot and she’s trying not to breathe so fast.

“C’mere,” Kevin says, taking her hand.

She tries to straddle the bleacher without him seeing her granny panties, and their knees touch. Jenna’s head is spinning and she really doesn’t know what she’ll do if he kisses her. Before she knows it, his lips are on hers and his tongue is in her mouth. She feels awkward, wishing it was as easy as it looks in Disney movies. She’d spent so much time daydreaming about this moment, so many nights staring into the dark wondering what it would be like to have a hand behind her head and pulled into a kiss.

But it’s not what she was expecting. She realizes now as the romantic stupor wears away that he has braces and they’re catching her tongue. There are crumbs in his mouth from something he ate earlier and she’s pretty sure it was pizza and cookies. Instead of her gothic Prince Charming, all she sees is a sixteen year old boy who probably makes out with his pillow. Her first kiss is the most disgusting thing she has ever experienced. She can’t take it back. She can’t press rewind. This is it. Jenna lied to her dad for this.

When Kevin pulls away, he’s grinning like Sloth from the Goonies and rubbing her thighs with his hands. Jenna notices two small streaks of pizza sauce on the corners of his mouth. She offers a courtesy smile and then stands up, pulling her bookbag onto her shoulder.

“I should go,” she says. “My dad’s probably waiting for me.”

“Chat later?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

Jenna walks away from the bleachers and back toward school, spitting every few steps as if it will help. Her fishnet stockings are starting to sag and that straddle left her with a wedgie she wasn’t willing to adjust with her back facing Kevin. It’s 4:35 as she walks up the sidewalk, and her dad’s here early. She gets in from the passenger side and sighs, hugging her bookbag to her chest.

“And how was your day?”

“It was okay, I guess,” Jenna says.

“Uh huh. Did you have an accident?”

“What are you talking about, Dad?”

Jenna’s annoyed, just wanting to go home and hide in her room for the rest of the school year.

“Well, you were wearing some really nice khakis this morning…”

Her eyes widen and she covers her face with her hands before turning to look at him.

“Dad, I can explain. I spilled my Powerade at lunch and Liz had extra clothes in her locker...”

“Those are clothes?”

“Daaaaaaaaaad-uh!”

When they get home, Jenna fights the gravity of disappointment as she climbs the stairs to her bedroom. She shuts the door behind her and leans back, making eye contact with Leo DiCaprio on the poster above her bed. Jenna closes her eyes and smiles. There’s still hope.

Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal