Pyramids, Part II

Our next destination was Pachacamac, a site with sixteen pyramids that was about forty minutes away. Monica drove us through several towns on the outskirts of Lima. This part of Peru is perpetually overcast, but we were blessed with sunshine for most of our trip despite an unfortunate weather forecast that promised rain everyday. Rain in Lima is just a brief sprinkling and then it goes back to being gray and arid. A truck in front of us sprayed water on the grass along the highway.

The stretches of sand all of a sudden turned into multitudes of rainbow shacks built one on top of the other, shantytowns comparable to the favelas in Brazil. I took a lot of pictures of them, but it's hard to convey the magnitude of these metropolises and how suddenly they would crop up.

When we arrived at Pachacamac, there was a little lawn where llamas and alpacas grazed. I imagine they were employed there as nature's cuddliest lawnmowers. I stepped over the barriers and attempted to approach the alpaca, but I was stopped by the woman in the ticket booth. I had a wish to embrace an alpaca while I was in Peru and my wish was not fulfilled.

Snow white angel.

There was a market outside of the museum with vendors selling baskets, jewelry, and handbags. One man was whittling a gourd with a pocketknife. He sold intricately carved gourds that were hollowed out into boxes. Some of them were birds with beads rattling inside them, little maracas. We considered buying some gourd boxes, but worried that they would be damaged in our suitcases. The artist was quick to interject. He picked up one of his creations, smashed it on the pavement, and then presented it to us unharmed, demonstrating the indestructible nature of his folk art product. We bought three of his indestructible gourds. (One gourd is in my apartment next to a Wandering Jew, filled with white chocolate Lindt truffles. The second is Upstate on a bookshelf with dozens of polished mineral eggs and a Lord of the Rings elven sword. There is also an owl-shaped maraca gourd on a sailboat somewhere off the coast of California.)

We walked through the collection of artifacts in the museum. The ceramic figures on display had cartoonish facial expressions. The Incas made jewelry and other decorations out of bright pink shells that were more valuable to them than gold.

Pre-Columbian statement necklace.

Knotted ropes that seemed to be necklaces were mounted on the walls, but Monica pointed out that they were actually writing. For a moment, this blew my mind. What messages were being communicated through the particular arrangement of knots on a rope? Upon closer inspection of the nearby description of the artifacts, it was a sort of bill for products and services.

When our guide was ready, we drove to the first of the ruins. Our guide, a Peruvian woman with very angular features, wore a beige outfit and a beige adventuring hat. She coordinated perfectly with the sand. We drove from one ruin to the next. In the car, Dave and I ravenously devoured a package of salty corn kernels and juicy peaches. Lunch is the main-event-meal in Peru and we had not had ours yet.

The first ruin was a pre-Incan palace where a community of beautiful women made crafts for the earth god Pachacamac. The most beautiful of the beautiful women - they could not have any moles - were happily sacrificed to the earth god.

There were a total of sixteen pyramids at this site, created by different cultures because the region kept changing hands and changing religions. The largest was The Temple of the Sun, an enormous beige fortress built by the Incas that was once painted with bright murals. We ascended the path to the temple, which is still being excavated.

Walking around the temple, you could see the shantytowns in the desert, an oasis of grass, and two islands standing in the ocean. Those islands have a myth: The big island is a beautiful princess who was too proud to marry anyone. The little island is her baby. A mischievous god impregnated her with a piece of fruit filled with his seed and then humiliated her in front of the other gods. She flung herself and her baby into the ocean.

Click here for even more pyramids.

Pyramids, Part I

Our first adventure in Lima was a quest for Incan ruins. Dave and I set out early in the morning with our friends Monica and Moniquita and drove to a pyramid called Huallamarca, nestled in the middle of the historical, old-money houses of the San Isidro district. The dusty archaeological site rose up in the middle of the city, right across from a bank and a small parking lot.

There weren't any guides at this archaeological site, so a security guard escorted us through the museum and pyramid in exchange for a small tip. There was an entire room devoted to the importance of gourds, with gourd bowls, urns, and masks.

So excited.

In the next room, we found an Incan mummy excavated from the pyramid. She was hunched over, like she was cowering in fear of the icy breath of death.

The glamorous afterlife.

That is just how the Incas buried their dead, curled up in a fetal position inside of giant gourds rather than lying down with crossed arms, like Egyptian pharaohs. Then the bodies were hidden like Easter eggs in pyramids for posterity, with all of their pots and bowls. This particular mummy had signs of a fractured arm that had been healed with advanced Incan medicine. She had been treated for rheumatoid arthritis. I was surprised to see a full head of natural hair crowning her skull.

Incan mummies like Russian nesting dolls full of bones.

Then we all climbed the pyramid to see small excavations on the surface. Tents covered more pear-shaped mummies with startled expressions on their gourd masks. Some of them had shaggy wigs like rag dolls.

From the top, we had a panoramic view of Lima and all of its continuous rumbling construction. Sometimes it seemed like Lima's population was entirely made up of jackhammers. Walking up and down the pyramid, my sneakers went from black to a dusty graphite gray.

I noticed that every archaeological site was guarded by an elderly, skeletal canine with a sweater and a laughable haircut. We saw one at each site, but this guy is my favorite.

Click here to read Pyramids, Part II.

Love at First Sloth

Let's Read Short Stories

It’s National Short Story Month. It’s also National Poetry Month, although it seems rather unfair that the two writing forms that have to compete for a single month. One of my goals is to read 26 short story collections and anthologies by the end of 2013. I’m reading a lot of women writers particularly, because they don’t get enough love. Not even from me, a woman. So far I’m on the tenth book. I’m a slow reader, easily distracted by online literary journals and articles about the fiber content of ground flax.

I told a friend at work, an avid reader of romance novels, that I was reading short story collections for a while and she was surprised.

“I didn't know authors wrote books of short stories,” she said.

Quite understandable. Until rather recently, they were considered unmarketable. I suppose the last time she saw a book of short stories, it was a fifth grade English textbook – a time in life that no one likes to look back on. Or maybe it was a collection of fairy tales or Greek myths. I didn't know I liked short stories until I read Poe and Kafka in high school, but I always loved fairy tales and myths of all sorts.

Some very good reasons to read short stories: You can read a short story on a fifteen minute bus ride. You can read a few short stories on a forty minute train ride. You can read a short story on your cell phone now. You can squeeze one in at the end of your lunch break. And if your job happens to be waiting for a phone to ring, you can read stories in between calls and not feel as jolted out of the story as you would reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s 27 volume opus about cats.

Here are some short story collections and anthologies that fill me with immense readerly pleasure. This list features entirely women, because they don’t get enough love. If you have a penchant for the surreal, absurd, uncanny, and grotesque, you would probably appreciate these. If not, click here to be led away from this nonsense forever, as it will annoy you and furrow your brow. And if you would like to discuss the beneficial lignans in ground flax, feel free to contact me on the “Contact” page.

1. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Kelly Link might be my favorite living short story writer at the moment. The cover says, “A Best Book of the Decade.” I thought to myself, “That is, indeed, a haughty claim.” This book lives up to the hype on its cover. Kelly and her husband, a sci-fi writer, had to create their own press just to publish her first collection. At the time, short stories were considered to be unmarketable and her stories also don’t conform to one genre. They are a mix of experimental literary fiction, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, myth, fairy tale, and surrealism. Ghosts, zombies, and fairies are presented in unique ways. They present you with uncanny pajamas or dog fur handbags. A ghost wife gets divorced from her living husband in Disney World; the Devil gets Seven Minutes of Heaven with a cheerleader. Kelly Link does magical things with sentences. Whenever you think you know where the story is going, you really don’t.

Definitely read: “Magic for Beginners,” “Lull,” and “The Faerie Handbag.”

2. Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray

I read a lot of these stories multiple times and I never get sick of them. These stories are mostly very short, have unusual forms, and make me laugh loudly but also make me deeply depressed. It’s an emotional roller-coaster to say the least. The collection lives up to its name with characters feasting on their own hair and toes, an armadillo hitting on a penguin in a bar, and a guy who marries a bag of frozen tilapia. Click here to get threatened by the author.

Definitely read: “Babies,” “The Cottage Cheese Diet,” “Trip Advisory: The Boyhood Home of Former President Ronald Reagan,” and “Code of Operation: Snake Farm.”

3. Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting has an awesome brain and I would pay thousands of dollars for it in an Ebay bid. This is a very funny book. The humor sometimes reminds me of Futurama, maybe because there is an intergalactic deliverywoman in it. You may wonder what unclean jobs it features. There’s a porn star who is paid to have sex with a game show contestant on the moon, a human ant colony, and a romantic funeral home employee who smokes blunts stuffed with the hair of the dead. I'm kind of in love with the "Sweedishy" model Garla (just like everyone else is) and the experimental rock singer who wears a tight leather jumpsuit with a butt-flap so he can easily relieve himself anywhere. So many characters that I love. So much awesome.

Definitely read: “Dinner,” “Model’s Assistant,” and “Bandleader’s Girlfriend.”

4. Fantastic Women, an anthology of stories from Tin House

Here is an anthology of 18 stories by women writers that are uncanny, absurd, and surreal, all bound together behind underwhelming cover art that doesn't really fit. Kelly Link is here; Alissa Nutting is here. There are quite a few authors that I had never read before that I love now. The women in these stories undergo metamorphoses, travel between pocket universes, and socialize with lonely circus dwarfs. Sometimes they are tied up and suspended from the ceiling of their charming suburban homes. There are  even werewolves and somehow I don’t want to punch them.

Definitely read: “Dinner,” “Abroad,” “The Wilds,” and “The Entire Predicament.”

5. St. Lucy’s Home forGirls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Last year I got an email from a former professor suggesting that I read this collection. She knows me too well. The narrators of these stories are precocious children on an imaginary island near Florida. They lure baby turtles out of the sea, learn to behave like humans, and follow the Oregon Trail with a Minotaur. Their voices are wonderful; you want to give them a hug even when they make atrocious mistakes.

Definitely read: “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” “Z.Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers,” and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.”

Mexican Chocolate

After dinner tonight, I drank a cup of guahillo chili Mexican hot chocolate. There is nothing quite so fulfilling in cold weather as a spicy hot chocolate that singes your uvula just slightly.

I’ve wanted to try Mexican hot chocolate since I saw the movie Chocolat. (Thus begins a truly pathological paean). It reminds me of the scene where the Victorian explorer drinks pure cacao and realizes his true desires, which involve a voluptuous Mayan lass.

As a supermarket cashier, one of my personal goals was to try all of the chocolate in the organic and natural section of the supermarket. Goals such as these got me where I am today. Thus, I was introduced lavender chocolate and chocolate with hunks of raspberry and chocolate with chili peppers and anise seed chocolate and the highly addictive Green and Black’s 70%. I have since expanded to vegan chocolate and raw chocolate, but I could never find Mexican chocolate anywhere.

Luckily the chocolate gods finally decided to smile down upon me and by means of a Twitter contest, Taza Chocolate, and the Culinary Guild of New England, a sampling of Mexican chocolate was literally dropped upon my doorstep as if by angels. My package of chocolate disks contains a variety pack of salt and pepper, guahillo chili, coffee, and a few other exciting flavors. Using this recipe from Taza’s website, Dave and I turned the disks into Mexican hot chocolate.

First, kill the chocolate.

The recipe says to grate the disks, but lacking a grater, Dave simply chopped them up into slivers. I warmed the milk on the stove and stirred in the chocolate slivers. The result was delightful. I've been drinking a great deal of European sipping chocolate recently and it is quite a different experience.

European sipping chocolate is sweet and thick. It makes you feel like a young, wealthy Victorian woman in a swanky café having clandestine affairs with poor abstract artists. In short, European sipping chocolate makes me feel like Peggy Guggenheim. Mexican hot chocolate is deep and earthy and a little salty. It makes you feel like a swashbuckling adventurer who travels the world and eats guinea pigs beside campfires. In short, Mexican hot chocolate makes me feel like Jack Sparrow.

Six Flags Great Adventure

Dave and I stood at the foot of Kingda Ka, a steel roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure, not feeling very great or adventurous at all. A car rumbled across the lime green steel track that suddenly bent upwards at a ninety degree angle, pressing thirty fragile human bodies helplessly against the padded seats behind them and redirecting the car onto a one-way path to the stratosphere where it would surely melt in the sun, hopelessly clicking towards doom.

At the peak of the sweaty climb, everyone in the front of the car who was desperately clawing at the foam-covered restraints on their shoulders had several grueling seconds to regret their life choices as the car teetered on the apex, almost coming to a stop. Then the car slid forward, giving into gravity, and rumbled the back seats over the tip and plummeted to the earth below with a tail of fire, spiraling mercilessly. The faces of the passengers rippled as they cut through the air, splitting atoms in a torrent of shrieks.

“Why are we doing this?” Dave and I asked each other. The line of thrillseekers ended near the “One Hour From This Point” sign, but more adrenaline-pumped lunatics with souvenir cups full of Mountain Dew were queuing up by the minute. The line was only going to get longer before we made up our minds.

A group of bald guys roared at each other, “Let’s do this! Let’s do this!”

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said to Dave. “I’ve been out of the game for too long.”

“Did you say ‘out of the game?’”

By which, of course, I meant that I had just moments ago broken a six-year roller coaster fast on a “moderate thrill” wooden coaster and nearly popped a blood vessel in my heart. I’ve never been one for screaming my way down the drops, but instead found myself whimpering like a puppy. I tried to breathe deeply. Are my adrenal glands shriveling at the ripe old age of twenty-two? Has yoga and meditation completely decimated my capacity to appreciate a “moderate thrill?”

I was terrified of roller coasters when I was I was little. I’m still barely tall enough to ride them, which exponentially increases my chances of slipping out on the drop and careening through the roof of a Dippin’ Dots stand. My nine-year-old self had to maintain a reputation for fierceness and a Napoleon complex, but who did I have to impress now? Dave seemed as alarmed by the angles of the first drop as I did.

Dave and I tweaked our itinerary and headed to Superman.  We passed some girls in gray polos with clipboards.

“Have you ever considered a career in modeling?” they asked.

Six Flags modeling recruiters. I imagined my own image in the Six Flags brochure, digging my nails into the foam-covered restraints on the Kingda Ka, my open lips rippling and exposing a chronically wind-burned pair of tonsils.

“No,” I said, walking passing them quickly. “Have a nice day.”

The girls turned and descended, like animals, upon a woman in a burqa rushing by with a baby carriage. “Hello, gorgeous!”

We got on the Superman roller coaster, a high-thrill that we could both agree on. After this magnificent ride, we went to a food court boasting vegetarian options for lunch. I scrutinized the selection of Chinese food. Beside the register there was a cooler of full of sushi and cubes of melon.

“Who would eat sushi from a theme park?” I wondered to myself.

Then I noticed little containers of octopus salad on the bottom shelf and thought, “Who would eat octopus salad from a theme park?” Anyone can survive endure a high-thrill roller coaster, but it takes a true daredevil to ingest Six Flags octopus salad.

We devoted the rest of the afternoon to simpler theme park pleasures. We watched a bearded man on a white pony much too small for his stature ride the carousel alone. He grinned into his smart phone, videoing himself alone on the carousel. About half way through he turned the camera onto us.

Smile.

The Odyssey

No one can ever know what you have seen.

You Live With Giants

Today my short story "You Live With Giants" appeared in the Maurice Sendak issue of The Golden Triangle. The whole issue is decked out with wild things, read it all and click the smudgy, hairy giant below to read specifically about giant culture.

Do not glorify the wars of giants; that violence is in the past.

Directed by Michel Gondry

If my life were a movie, two things are for certain: it would be directed by Michel Gondry and star Michael Cera in a cascading blonde wig. It would probably focus on one rather banal day in my life, only in Gondry’s imagining everyone would have giant, inflatable hands. Dave would be played by Seth Rogen and Olive would be a robot. Every moment in my life up until page one of the script would exist solely to provide background for the script, and everything that happened post-page 120 would be unimportant. By the end of the film we would all see truths regarding relationships, art, and dreams.

The first act might begin with my first day of training at the yoga studio. As I travel to the yoga studio, following a crumpled page of directions, everything is just a little disorienting. For the first ten minutes of the film everyone on the bus is speaking to me in Spanish and I could certainly use a glance at the subtitles the audience is reading.

Once I finally find the studio, everything is peaceful. The studio director, played by Sylvie Testud, puts the phone to her chest and points for me to sit in an empty room across from the front desk. I leave my boots at the entrance and sit cross-legged on the floor. The room contains nothing but a room divider, an upright skeleton, and a system of ropes suspended from the wall. My face contorts as I scrutinize the system of ropes but my train of thought is quickly interrupted by a voice.

“Do you mind if I use the room?” a woman in the doorway says. She is very skinny and wears all gray. I nod and gather up my things so I can get out of her way. The woman tangles herself in the ropes and the gears behind her begin to turn. They are powered by some sort of Rube Goldberg machine: a mechanical hand dripping ice cold water from an infant medicine dropper onto the back of a dwarf hamster which runs on its wheel and propels a conveyer belt that rotates the gears of the rope system. It is Sylvie the studio manager’s invention. The ropes contort her body into impossible forms. I assume that she must be a teacher.

“What’s your name?” the woman asks me in a voice almost like a child.

“I’m Brittany,” I say. “What's your name?”

Her body is bent into a perfect triangle with bulging tendons and she looks at me from under her armpit.

“Marie.”

“I was wondering what this machine was for,” I say, taking a closer look.

“Do you want me to show you how to use it?” she asks.

She helps me twist the ropes around my arms and waist and before I know my body is out of my control. The ropes pull me into downward facing dog and I hang from my waist like wet rag, my fingers and toes dangling just above the ground.

“Keep your knees bent,” Marie says. “You aren’t warmed up yet.”

“Brittany, what are you doing? I’m ready for you now,” Sylvie says from the doorway. “And Marie, what are you doing in the teacher’s room?”

I untangle myself and drop to the ground.

Marie wanders into a classroom, where everyone is standing on their heads. When the door shuts, the studio manager turns to me.

“Just so you know, Marie is one of our more… difficult students. I've been putting up with her for a long time, but sometimes she just loses it and I have to ask her to leave. Usually she does this when the temperature isn’t exactly seventy-four degrees.”

Just then, Marie ambles out of the classroom with a pair of black goggles strapped to face. We both give Marie a strange look. The perspective shifts to Marie and we see everything through her infrared goggles. Sylvie and I are outlined in red blurs on a fuzzy, black background. Green digital words and numbers pop up on the margins. Next to Sylvie’s head “98.6 degrees” flashes in red, and next to mine “96.6 degrees” flashes. The words “REPTILE” blinks across the screen. Marie gasps.

We watch her roll her hips and drop into warrior three. She bounces her torso to get a good stretch.

“Things have been better since I started going to that studio in Connecticut,” Marie says. Her torso falls and she hangs in a standing forward bend. “The teachers there are wonderful. I want to take the postures home with me, it’s really special. And of course, now that the season is changing I’ll be coming here more often. It’s just hard for me when the temperature is too hot. Anything over seventy-four degrees.”

She stands up straight. “I’ll see you on Thursday, Sylvie.”

Marie walks out the door, detecting the temperature of the passing vehicles. To her delight, this charming fall day is exactly seventy-four degrees.

I watch training videos on a computer screen. Over a period of a couple of hours my face grows increasingly weary and my eyes begin to lull shut. The first video is a busty woman explaining different brands of yoga gear, the second is about how to clean the rental yoga mats with a squeegee. I yawn. In the next video, an angry man in a bathrobe is nailing a yoga mat to the door of a Catholic church and yelling something about hypocrisy.

“What do you know about enlightenment?” he cries. “What do you know?!”

I stretch my arms out and it doesn’t strike me as unusual that at some point in the transition into the dream sequence I changed into a lizard costume. Now I am a lizard in a cascading blonde wig. I leave the desk and join a yoga class that starts at 12:30. The teacher is playing a popular song by Enya and the lyrics to the song are a string of pasta dishes served at the Olive Garden.

“Brittany, do you have any medical conditions I should know about?” the teacher asks.

“I am a lizard,” I tell her dreamily.

“Do you know what kind of lizard?” she asks.

I roll out my mat. As the class begins, we all come to our hands and knees at the front of our mats, tilt our heads up, bulge our eyeballs towards the ceiling, stretch our tongues to the points of our chins, and let out a growl from the backs of our throats that releases all the awkwardness and embarrassments of the day.  

The Inevitability of the French Fry

I sat wedged between two Turkish students nibbling cheeseburgers in Woodbury Commons. I was the only person outside of the MacDonald’s restaurant without food, daydreaming about frozen desserts.

Usually I do not get paid to peruse discounted brand name merchandise with international students, but the group leader for the Turkish kids flew back to her sales office in Istanbul and left the group unsupervised for the weekend. One girl, Beren, was older than the other students and took charge of the group. There wasn’t much for me to do but make sure they all got to the outlets and back without breaking their legs.

They had already been to the outlets on the fourth of July and now they were just buying souvenirs from friends. When I ask international students why they wanted to come to New York, the word “shopping” is invariably upon their lips. Clothes, handbags, sunglasses, watches – it’s all cheaper in the US.

With little money and a lot of time, I followed Beren and her young friend, Pinar, through the Gap and Armani Exchange and gave bad fashion advice with the best intentions. I couldn’t remember the last time I went shopping with girls.

“Which of these shirts do you like better?” asked Beren, holding up two white American Eagle shirts with red logos, one of which was slightly faded. Squinting slightly, I pointed to the brighter one. I watched them try on tee-shirts over their tee-shirts.

After, Pinar and I dug through a bin of underwear labeled, “4 for $10.” In spite of my resolve to spend no money, I started picking out pairs of cheap underwear. At least I’m not spending frivolously, I thought. Underwear is a necessity of life.

“Where can I go to a Victoria’s Secret?” Pinar asked, tossing aside a pair of extra-large lace-backed panties.

“Just so you know,” I said, “Victoria’s Secret is still pretty expensive here. You can spend, like, forty dollars on one bra there.”

I lifted my breasts slightly as I said the word bra because I find that communication goes more smoothly when I talk with my hands.

“What was that word you used?” Pinar asked.

“Bra,” I repeated. “Bra. But really, they’re, like, forty dollars.”

My mind simply cannot justify forty dollar undergarments.

“Bra,” said Pinar.

“I want just one to take home,” said Beren. “I will buy.”

Among Turkish ladies, I discovered that “I will buy” can be a complete sentence.

“The Gap tee-shirts are eighty US dollars in Istanbul,” Beren explained, contemplating shelf of twelve dollar tees. “I will buy.”

After many hundreds of US dollars were dropped on watches and shoes and handbags, I followed Beren and Pinar to the food pavilion. The word “pavilion” might indicate an establishment that is just as sophisticated as the designer outlets the pavilion keeps company with. Inside, we found pizza, tacos, and Au Bon Pain. This food court fare did not interest the two girls and they went to MacDonalds. We joined the rest of the group at a table outside of the MacDonald’s joint. The Turkish language reigned supreme and I had no idea what was going on.

“Kdeiomcr erjkwjhod kdjsjoe System of a Down adfadewtn,” one girl said.

Okay, they’re talking about music, I thought to myself.

“Please, Brittany, have a fry,” said Beren, pushing her large box of fries towards me. “Please.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“You have nothing,” she pouted. “Please. I beg you. It’s potato, Brittany.”

“No, I know what it’s made of. I’m okay. Really.”

“But it’s so much food,” she said.

No matter where you’re from, you must know what you’re getting yourself into when you order a large fry in America. You made your salty, deep-fried bed and you can sleep in it. She dipped a fry into a white sauce and I asked her what it was.

“People here usually dip fries into ketchup,” I said.

“This sauce… this is good. You must try it, Brittany,” Beren said.

I’m usually inhumanly immune to peer-pressure. Some combination of curiosity and a desire to not be offered any more fries compelled me to take the smallest one and dip it into the white sauce. And… disappointment. I tasted ranch dressing and salt.

“Thanks,” I said with lukewarm enthusiasm. I hadn’t eaten a MacDonald’s French fry since I was sixteen. I left the group for a moment to purchase a salad from the Au Bon Pain and rethink my life.

In the car that evening, Dave lectured me on the inevitability of the French fry.

“You thought you could avoid MacDonald’s for the rest of your life? You can’t. I predict that someday, before you die, you will eat another MacDonald’s French fry. Someday you will be traveling and you will be starving and after walking for miles you will come to a MacDonald’s restaurant. You will buy fries because that is the only food for miles around and you will eat those fries whether you like it or not because you need that food to live.”

Crunch Time

Having endured five separate leaks in this little sinkhole of an apartment, Dave and I are looking for a new place to live. We have seen twelve apartments to date and still haven’t found a keeper.

Dave started calling real estate agents and on Memorial Day we took a drive to visit one at her office. We arrived first and sat down at the desk. She burst through the door of her office in an American flag T-shirt and introduced herself as Elaine. She shook my hand and held onto it for a long time. Elaine stared at me intently through her darkly shaded sunglasses.

“Oh my god. Do you know who you look like?” Elaine asked. “You know, that girl that everyone says you look like.”

I shrugged. I supposed she was probably thinking of Cindy Lou Who or the flying nun.

“You know who I mean. Come on. That cute little country singer girl,” she prompted, waving her hands.

Clearly we would not be seeing any apartments at all until I produced the name of a cute little country singer.

“Taylor Swift?” I guessed, wincing. The last time I saw my sister she spent hours trying to Swift-ify my hair. I don't want to talk about it.

“YES. You look just like Taylor Swift. Don’t people tell you that all the time?”

“No,” I said.

Dave and Elaine began discussing apartments, but she was quickly reminded of a con man who had been plaguing her all month long. He called her house phone addressing her as a senior citizen and told her that she had won a brand new car. All she had to do was pay the taxes on it and he would deliver it to her house. 

She played along and said that she couldn’t possibly take the car today because she was recovering from hip replacement surgery. The next day he called her back. And the next day.

“Can you believe that this man calls poor senior citizens and takes advantage of them like that? He’s conned more than four hundred senior citizens in this area. You’d think the law would step in, but I called the sheriff myself and do you know what he said? He said that he’d been trailing this guy for weeks and he knew exactly where the con man is: he's sitting pretty in a big house in Jamaica, but there’s nothing they can do. The United States police can’t reach him there.”

Then she turned to me.

“Do you sing?” she asked. I shook my head. “What about dancing? No? Acting?”

“No, I’m a writer,” I said.

“You know what? You should enter a Taylor Swift lookalike contest. Have you ever considered entering a Taylor Swift lookalike contest?”

I admitted that I had not.

“I think you’d really have a chance. You should think about that,” she said. “She is the sweetest girl. She’s just so genuine. I was watching this talk show the other day and Taylor Swift was the guest star. She was talking about how she was driving along in her car and she saw a girl with a Taylor Swift concert T-shirt walking down the street to a record store. So Taylor had her driver pull around and drop her off in front of the record store. She came up behind the girl and just tapped her on the shoulder and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for being a fan.’”

After listening to more of Taylor Swift’s merits, we took a ride in Elaine's SUV and checked out some apartments. The first one was on the second floor, but somehow had a small, two-tiered yard reminiscent of the ruins of Machu Picchu.

“You could clean this up really nice and put a little patio table right here,” Elaine said.

Inside there was a slight paint odor. The floorboards were warped and lumpy due to the age of the building. I don’t recall there being a bathroom.

The next apartment was in some sort of British estate house that had been transplanted into New York. Elaine presented it as a train car-style apartment. You entered in the bedroom, walked through a door to the living area, and the kitchen was all the way in the back. It was very stupid.

Elaine drove us to the last apartment and we lingered outside of the building.

“I don’t know if you’re going to like this one, but we’ll take a quick look at it. Why not?” Elaine said. “But first I want you to meet some friends of mine…”

Elaine flung open the door to the hair salon on the first floor.

“Hey girls, look who I brought you. It’s Taylor Swift’s sister.”

All of the hairdressers stopped foiling their clients and stared at me, nodding. I waved and scooted away from the door.

The last apartment we saw was occupied by an elderly Greek couple ready to move into their daughter’s house. We barged in just as the woman was frying some fragrant Greek food. They lived in the apartment for thirty-five years and it was actually quite nice. Everything was peach and frilly and smelled like food.

“I could imagine us living here,” Dave said.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the kitchen curing olives with the Greek woman. I imagined myself on the couch checking my emails as an old Greek man beside me watches reruns of Married with Children. It was impossible for me to imagine myself living in the apartment without the Greek couple cohabitating with us like the Greek grandparents I never had. But I didn't mind.

Princess Bud

Candy Castle Keep

Lolly sits in the keep of Candy Castle with her candies-in-waiting. On the other side of the keep, Queen Frostine drinks chocolate milk from a long-stemmed glass. A stern-faced gingerbread man stands beside her with a jug of Moo Milk. She calls to Lolly.

QUEEN

Come here, my little crumpet. (To the gingerbread man) Pour another glass.

LOLLY

(She goes to the queen)Yes, my lady?

QUEEN

Sit down. Have a drink.

LOLLY

I’m… not thirsty.

QUEEN

If you were thirsty, I wouldn’t have offered you milk. Drink.

LOLLY

(Takes a glass from the gingerbread man) Thank you.

QUEEN

I would rather face one thousand armies then be trapped in Candy Castle with these trembling truffles.

LOLLY

But the candies-in-waiting are under your protection!

QUEEN

I’m just doing what is expected of me. I can’t just let them melt in the heat of the battle. You will have to live up to certain expectations, too, if you marry King Jellybean. (She guzzles the rest of the chocolate milk and hands the glass to the gingerbread man) If my little brother somehow manages to win the battle, the kingdom will sing songs of my inspiring bravery.

LOLLY

But what if Candy Castle falls?

QUEEN

You would like that, wouldn’t you? If anyone but Lord Starburst were attacking us, I would appeal to his natural cravings, so to speak. Are you shocked, my little crumpet? Here’s some advice: the best weapon is your creamy center. (To the gingerbread man) Pour Lady Lolly another drink. (To Lolly) If Candy Castle falls, we’re in for a bit of a rape. When those Wonderballs roll in from battle, even the stalest morsel looks sweet. Why, you’ll look just like a slice of cake. You can be sure that there will be a special prize hidden inside of each of these ladies by morning. Then you’ll be glad for your cordial cherry filling.

Lolly takes a glass of chocolate milk from the gingerbread man and gulps it down in one shot.

You can read the epic conclusion of the battle here.

Fifty Flavors of Frostine

Queen Frostine sits on the Candy-Coated Throne at the end of a long corridor in Candy Castle while an epic battle rages outside. The young prince sits upon her lap.

THE QUEEN

Do you want me to tell you a story? Did I ever tell you about the bite-sized candy bar who lived in the forest with his mother?

PRINCE

The Candy Cane Forest?

THE QUEEN

Yes. But there were rotten things living in the forest, too.

PRINCE

What kind of things?

THE QUEEN

Lollypops…

PRINCE

But lollypops are delicious!

THE QUEEN

…And gummy bears. The mother told the bite-sized candy not to fear, because one day he would become king-sized. She said that someday he would be the king of the lollypops, the gummy bears, the peppermints, the Swedish fish in the sea, and the cotton candy in the sky. (She produces a tube of toothpaste labeled “Essence of Fluoride”) The little candy bar asked if he would be as crunchy and satisfying as his father, and his mother said he would be. (She uncaps the tube and produces a toothbrush) Then she told the little candy bar to brush his teeth and go to sleep. (The Prince tentatively opens his mouth)

The door bursts open and several armed gingerbread men enter the room. They all step aside. Lord Licorice enters.

LORD LICORICE

It’s all over. We’ve won.

The toothbrush clatters against the floor and a minty gel dribbles out of the toothpaste tube.

Click here to read another scene from Game of Scones.

Phantom Limb

My story "Phantom Limb" recently appeared in issue 2 of The Golden Triangle. You can read it (as well as lots of other scrumptious literary morsels) by clicking the poorly drawn hand below.

Let's Learn Spanish

I want to live in the world of virtual language learning software – a Garden of Eden full of Spanish-speaking families, running horses, and women eating rice. Some of them live in apartments; some of them live in houses. Some of them live near the street and some of them live far from the street. They are all happy, regardless. They play a lot of soccer with children and go bowling with their families. There is no friendlier sub-species of Homo sapiens than the people who populate the world of language learning software. A man can simply walk up to another man who is sitting on the hood of his Cadillac and say, “Hola. You are a man.”

Thirsty people of all ages, races, and nationalities sit around the dining room table together, thoroughly enjoying tall glasses of milk. They relish in each other’s company so much that they laugh in every frame. And let’s not forget the rice. People in language learning software love rice. Nothing gets their horses running quite like it. Bowls of white rice consumed with dexterously maneuvered wooden chopsticks are the social lubricant of their utopia.

If you ran into a man and woman sitting on logs at a camp in the woods – a common occurrence in the world of language learning software – you would casually join them upon that log. They would introduce themselves and tell you they are from Italy. They would give you water. They would give you a bowl of rice. They would take you back to civilization on horseback and many old men on the street would stop and pet that horse and say with great satisfaction, “This is a horse. I am a man” The couple from the woods would introduce you to everyone they know. “This is my mother. This is my sister. This is a police man. This is a Russian. This is a baby.”

You would struggle to figure out what ending you’re supposed to use to address someone new when you say, “Enchanted to meet you.” You would regret leaving your Rosetta Stone lessons to gather cobwebs for five months and mix up the verbs for eating and running. You gloomily recognize that you still can’t make that double-L sound as impeccably as the charming Spanish man who does the voice-over.

But you know it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you know all of the Spanish you need to thrive in the world of virtual language learning software. The man, the woman, the Russian, and the grandmother will still be smiling when you use the wrong verb tense. If they are aware that you’ve made a mistake at all, they don’t have the words to express it anyways. The world of language learning software is a far simpler one than ours.

You Mean Business

I'm judging you.

If you’re like me, you’re a neurotic woman who spends several days before a job interview anxiously clicking through dozens of contradicting videos on Youtube about how to dress for a job interview. Look no further, for I will summarize it all for you here.

BUY A SUIT

She's doing it all wrong. WHERE ARE THE PINSTRIPES?

First, you will need to buy an expensive, black, pinstriped suit. Pinstripes trigger psychological impulses in your brain that make you more ambitious. Get that suit professionally tailored by a seamstress because you mean business. The suit should have a skirt because you’re a woman, unless you’re a woman who would prefer to wear pants. A dress would be even more formal, and therefore better, because it shows that your dressing for the job you want.

Wear a plain white button-up shirt underneath the suit, because anything else might be considered a brazen display of personality. And save the cleavage for the club, skankmuffin! When the interviewer is yawning under a flickering desk lamp of despair at two in the morning deciding whether or not to employ you, you want her to imagine you as a blurry, floating head and not the girl who wore a pink shirt. Remember, this isn’t Legally Blonde. This is your dismal life.

DON'T LET THIS BE YOU!

And whatever you do, don’t show up in nicer clothes than the person who is interviewing you. If you find that your interviewer enters the room a frumpy expensive suit, quickly saw a run in your pantyhose with a Swiss army knife and deposit your accessories into a nearby potted plant before she imagines that you think you’re better than her. Turn that ambition down a notch, tiger!

WEAR BORING SHOES

You should wear high heels – but not the same ones you wear to the Jersey Shore, silly! They should be plain, professional, black heels. You should definitely wear panty hose under those heels, but keep in mind that this will only impress old people. If your interviewer is under the age of thirty-two, she will cross you off of her list as soon as she sees your panty hose and begin composing a saccharine rejection email while you explain why you’re leaving your current position. And while you are sobbing next to the silent phone a week later, your interviewer will be at that the office making fun you with the free-legger she hired instead. They will all judge you.

ACCESSORIZE

Wear accessories! Show your personality! Woo! But keep in mind that your accessories will be judged mercilessly. Stick to chunky bracelets. No one is ever offended by chunky bracelets.

I hate chunky bracelets. I stopped listening to you fifteen minutes ago.

HATS

No.

LEAVE THE PURSE AT HOME

Remember, a purse is just one more thing that an interviewer can make subjective judgments about. Do you think you should bring the big ol’ hobo bag with your entire life in it? An interviewer might assume that you’re a kleptomaniac who casually shoplifted a purse full of bat-wing tops from the Forever 21 on your way to the office. Do you think you should carry in a little clutch containing your keys and cell phone? The interviewer will probably assume that you wore it to a high school dance and couldn’t be bothered to procure a purse that is appropriate for a job interview. How will you know if your purse is job interview-approved? Condoleeza Rice will come to you in a dream and deliver you a plate of homemade fudge. If this has never happened to you, you do not have the right purse.

But how do you carry your keys without a purse? Swallow them and regurgitate them after the interview. You know, like a fugitive! You can have the festering stomach lesions stitched up once you have a job with healthcare benefits.

HOW TO CARRY YOUR RESUME

Some people think they need a large purse to carry their resume. Instead, carry your resume in a briefcase. But keep in mind that a briefcase is just one more thing that an interviewer can make subjective judgments about. You can carry the resume in your hand.

IT’S RAINING

If it’s raining, don’t go to the interview. Rain makes interviewers irritable, so they probably won’t hire you unless they decide that you’re even more dedicated for coming in during a downpour. No, you can’t wear galoshes. Still carry your resume in your hand because if you really want that job, then the force of your tremendous will and ambition will be enough to keep it crisp and dry.

You're resume may be dry, but that's still a pink shirt.

YOU’RE SICK

Don’t go to a job interview sick. Coughing up blood will make your interviewers irritable, so they probably won’t hire you unless they decide that you’re even more dedicated for exposing the entire office to tuberculosis. You could cancel, but keep in mind that they probably won’t reschedule. You didn’t really want to write television advertising copy directed towards children anyways, did you?

We learned something important today.