writing

Recruitment Day: Give It Your All

Made a little zine today for a short story I wrote. Here’s the short story for ya. Enjoy.

Aggie was twelve the first time she was called into the recruiting office. Many of her peers had already been called once or twice. But Aggie didn’t possess the gifts that they did. And so she remained unchosen.

Each day she woke with only one hope in mind, to be called to recruiting. She was tired of being left behind. After all, why shouldn’t she take part in the grand ole tradition?

“It’s a beautiful day to be recruited. Don’t you think, Mother?”

“Yes, Aggie. But don’t be so eager. It’s not so terrible to not be chosen,” she would say. This always angered Aggie. Her mother had been recruited so many times now, she was practically sought after.

But the day it finally happened Aggie had not greeted her mother in her usual way. It was raining and she did not think it was a beautiful day. She went to school and sat through True History, Patriotism, and Prosthesis Care before her name was shouted over the intercom.

“Aggie Grey to the recruiting office. Aggie. Grey. Recruiting.”

At first, she thought she was daydreaming. She didn’t move from her seat until the boy next to her whispered, “Aggie…”

“Huh? George, did they really say my name?” she asked. George had an eye patch covering one eye and had to fully turn himself to face her.

“Yes! And you’d better go now.” Everyone was staring at her, including the teacher.

She scrambled out of her seat, tripping over her bag. Her hands shook and her breath caught in her chest.

She didn’t need anyone to show her the way to recruiting. She’d walked past it so many times by now wondering when she would finally be called. She’d imagined this day for so long now but in all of her daydreams she’d never expected to feel so small, so nervous. The walls seemed to bow in towards her as she walked, licking their lips and grinning as they threatened to swallow her up. Then just as her hand reached for the handle of the door, it swung open. Inside she was directed to a windowless office where Dr. Fischer, head of recruitment, sat waiting.

“So. Aggie Grey. This is your first time in recruiting, isn’t it?” he asked, looking over a file in his hand.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Well, I’m certain it won’t be your last time here. I can see from your file here that you have a lot of potential to benefit the Patriciate.”

“I hope so, Sir. It is truly an honor.”

He set the file on his desk and extended his good hand towards her. His left sleeve appeared to be hollow.

“I’m Dr. Fischer and I will be coordinating the procedure.”

She shook his hand.

“Sir…”

“You have a question?”

“Well, this is my first time. I’ve done all the reading on recruitment, of course. It’s part of our Patriotism class. But I still don’t really think I know what to expect.”

“You’re nervous, am I right? Everyone is nervous their first time. But you’ll get the hang of it.”

“Can I ask? What will be recruited from me?”

“Of course you can ask, Aggie. In fact, I’ll walk you through the entire process over the next hour or so and then you’ll be taken to medical. Does that sound ok?”

“Yes. Thank you. It seems silly to be nervous. I mean everyone goes through this, right?”

“Well, all of us plebeians do,” he laughed. “No one in the Patriciate has ever been recruited.”

Aggie laughed along with him. It felt good to laugh. It calmed her nerves. This was normal. Everyone went through this. Soon she’d be back with her classmates, just another one of them, having served dutifully.

“And in answer to your question, Aggie, we’ll be taking your eyes. Someone in the Patriciate liked their color so they’re replacing theirs with yours. You’ve gone over learning to live without sight in Prothesis Care, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The End.

Alternate Title: The Eyes of Aggie Grey.

The Endless Doom

Dropping a new short story for y’all called “The Endless Doom”. Let me know what you think. Not proofreading before I drop it. So if you find any glaring mistakes let me know.

The Endless Doom

“Mark, you came into today’s session saying you had big news and now you’re refusing to talk about it. I can’t force you to face your issues, Mark, but if you really want to see improvement, you have to be willing to talk about these things.”

“I know you’re right. It’s just, I don’t know what this means for me and Erika.”

“Well, Mark, what do you want it to mean?”

“I don’t know. Erika is everything I’ve ever wanted but…”

“But what, Mark?”

“She’s… there’s something about her that I…”

“Mark, you have twenty minutes left in today’s session. You can spend the time however you like but I recommend using it to really get to the heart of this issue you have with Erika.”

“Alright… Well, you know I met Erika in the fall…”

Mark met Erika through mutual friends. She was intelligent, beautiful, the life of the party. Mark had always been more reserved, trying hard to fit in wherever he went. He wanted to be liked, and not stand out. But he was immediately drawn to the funny girl with the crooked smile.

Erika, however, was not drawn to Mark. While she debated current politics with a group in the corner, Mark stood close by and just nodded along, never taking his eyes from her face. Erika hardly noticed him.

When their mutual friend Greg excused himself to attend to other guests, Mark and Erika found themselves alone.

“So, what do you do, Mark?”

“Uh, I’m a writer.”

“Oh? Would I have read anything you’ve written?”

“Not unless you’ve read The Endless Doom series.”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s a comic series. I do the writing. Stefan draws.”

“Oh.”

And that was it. Erika gave a weak smile and found an excuse to leave. Mark was a leaf blowing across her path on a windy day. She wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup the next morning.

But for Mark it was entirely different. He’d met a few beautiful and fascinating women but none that consumed his every thought the way Erika did. In the few moments they’d had together at Greg’s party he’d memorized every line of her face, the way she smelled, the lilt of her voice. He was certain he’d never see her again and just as certain that she would occupy every waking moment of his day for weeks to come.

“So, how’s the comic biz?” Greg asked, having returned to the corner after seeing Mark alone. He liked Mark but in the way you like someone you pity.

“Excuse me,” Mark said. He couldn’t make small talk with Greg at that moment. He needed to get somewhere private. He rushed into the bathroom and unzipped. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hard before and it only took the lightest touch of his hand to find relief. Naturally, he left the party immediately after.

He spent the bus ride home scouring social media, looking for any profile of Erika’s. He looked through their mutual friends’ profiles but turned up nothing. In the end he used an avatar generator he found online to recreate her the way he remembered her. He just wanted to look at her a little while longer.

It was a month later, when he had just begun to think of her less, that he ran into her again. Mark and Stefan were leaving a local comic shop they frequented when Greg and Erika crossed their path one evening.

“Oh my god. This is crazy,” Greg was saying, “I was just telling Erika about your little series. What’s it called again?”

“The Endless Doom.” Mark tried not to stare but he couldn’t help himself.

“You remember Erika?” Greg asked. But he didn’t need to. Of course Mark remembered her. While Stefan introduced himself, Mark reacquainted himself with her features, her scent. He studied her, if only to later improve the look of the avatar he’d created.

“We were just about to go get some Chinese. Do you want to join?” Erika’s voice cut through Mark’s daydreaming. Before he could think, before Stefan could respond…

“Yes!” He smiled and averted his eyes. Had she noticed how he’d been staring?

The four of them went down the street and sat cramped together in a decrepit, old booth eating wontons and drinking beer. Mark found himself talking more than he usually did. Something about being in her presence was absolutely electric. Soon four became three and three became two.

“I don’t remember you being this funny the last time we met,” she said.

“I wasn’t.”

Erika laughed and her voice sounded like pixies skipping on the wind. Mark laughed too. Being with her felt natural and pure.

“You haven’t touched your food,” he said. Mark was right. Erika’s plate was the only one untouched. He was sure he’d seen her eating but there it was.

“I wasn’t really hungry,” she said.

The waitress came with the check and set it firmly on the table, hands on hips.

“You pay now. We closed.”

Mark smiled up at her embarrassed they’d overstayed their welcome and pulled out his wallet to pay. At the same time, Erika reached for her purse.

“Oh no, I got this,” Mark said.

“Such a gentleman,” she gushed. But for just a second Mark wondered if reaching for her purse had just been for show. It didn’t matter. He was here with her, and this was the closest he’d come to being on a date in a very long time.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up from the table. “Wait for me outside?”

“Sure.”

Mark dutifully stood from the table and left the restaurant, wondering where the night would take them. There was a chill in the air, and after ten minutes of waiting he started to think she’d slipped out the back. Fifteen minutes went by and still Erika had not come out. He was on the brink of leaving after waiting a full twenty-one minutes when she rounded the corner of the building from the side alley.

“Geezus! You scared me. I was starting to think you’d left.”

“Sorry,” she said, “I got locked in.”

Mark looked back through the window of the restaurant. A staff member was still mopping the dining room floor. A needle pricked the back of his mind but one look from Erika dulled the sensation.

After that night they began seeing each other often. Erika worked third shift at a hospital so she was always asleep during the day and Mark’s work on The Endless Doom meant he could keep any hours he wanted. So most evenings if Erika wasn’t working, the two of them could be found walking the city streets together, frequenting any place that stayed open late. Mark found himself changing. Being with her brought something out of him that perhaps had always been there, buried. He was more confident, quicker to tell a joke. He started dressing better and even started to wear cologne. Anything he could do to keep Erika coming back for more.

But then one night it happened. At the end of a long night out, Erika excused herself and headed to the back of the restaurant. Just like that first night, and every night since, Mark paid the check and then stood to wait for her outside. He’d grown used to her ordering food she never touched and taking a very long time in the restroom at the end of the night. But this time, she’d forgotten her purse at the table. His first thought was to just take it with him outside. But a nagging feeling, that needle prick again, sent him with the purse through the little curtain in the back that Erika had just disappeared through. What he saw confused and angered him.

Erika was not heading into the restroom, as he’d presumed. She was flirting with a dishwasher and walking out the back door with him. Is this what she’d been doing every night? He couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was this perfect specimen of a woman, going out with him night after night, allowing him to pay for a dinner, never once kissing him goodnight, and now she was heading into the alley with some random dishwasher? It was more than he could take. He decided to follow her.

“Help me to understand,” his therapist interrupted. “You say you saw her go into the alley with this other man, you followed her, and you saw her kissing him?”

“No,” he said, “I said I thought she was kissing him. Except…”

Mark burst through the back door and found the two of them at the other end of the alley. The dishwasher had his back to the wall and Erika was leaning into him, her lips pressed against his throat. As Mark closed in on the pair, he could see Erika’s hands pressed against his shoulders. Her mouth moved across his throat while he moaned.

“What the hell, Erika?”

“Mark!” He’d startled her. And it was only then when she’d pulled away from the dishwasher that Mark saw.

“You saw blood,” his therapist asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you saying, Mark? I’m not sure I’m understanding.”

Relief flooded Mark’s body. The blood dripping from Erika’s lips was a much more welcome sight. She wasn’t kissing him. She was…

“Wait. What’s happening?”

Erika turned back to the dishwasher and wiped the blood from his neck.

“Go back inside, Diego. I’ll see you next week.”

Diego, for his part, did exactly as he was told, though clumsily as if in a daze.

“Mark,” Erika pleaded, wiping blood from her lips, “Please let me explain.”

And that was how they spent the rest of the night. They walked through the city together while Erika explained to Mark what he’d seen and a few other things about herself that she’d been keeping from him.

“Mark, you don’t seriously expect me to believe Erika is a vampire, do you?” His therapist had removed her glasses and was now rubbing her temples. “Surely, all of this is some kind of role play for her.”

But that is exactly what Mark had said to Erika.

“You don’t really expect me to believe you’re a vampire, do you? This has to be some kind of kink thing, right?”

“This is who I am, and who I have been for more than a century. Diego is one of my familiars. I have several around the city that allow me to feed. I haven’t killed anyone in a very long time. I find it easier to stay in one place if I don’t leave a string of bodies in my wake.”

Mark considered this. He wasn’t sure if he believed her completely but so many things about her made more sense when viewed in this light. She never ate. She never left her apartment before sunset. She had no social media presence at all. She wouldn’t even allow him to take a photograph of her. Then there was the way he’d always been inexplicably drawn to her. Had she put him under some kind of spell?

“So what does that make me? Am I a familiar?”

“You’re my boyfriend, silly.” Erika smiled and looped her arm through his as they continued to walk. “A familiar has no choice. Once I’ve set my sights on someone, they are under my control until I release them. I keep familiars around for food. I never put you under any spell and I’ve never fed off of you.”

“Boyfriend.” He liked the sound of that. “Ok, but how can I be your boyfriend? We’ve never even kissed, Erika.”

She stopped walking and looked into his eyes.

“I know, Mark. I was afraid.”

Her? Afraid? She was easily the most confident woman he’d ever known. She was so far out of his league he never even bothered to tell people he was seeing her. He didn’t think anyone would believe him. And now she’d just revealed that she was a powerful non-human entity. What did she have to be afraid of?

“I was afraid that if I kissed you, you’d fall under my spell and become just another familiar. You’re with me because you want to be, not because you have to be. I didn’t want to lose that.”

He stared deeply into her eyes. He thought about the first time they’d met at Greg’s party. He’d never been more drawn to someone. He’d been so completely consumed by her that he’d had to go into the bathroom to masturbate just so he could relieve himself of a painful erection. He was embarrassed just thinking about it. But now he realized that perhaps it wasn’t his fault. Perhaps it was just the supernatural allure she possessed. Thinking about it now, he wasn’t sure if he was really attracted to her at all, or if it was just a spell she’d unintentionally cast on him. There was only one way to know.

He leaned in and kissed her.

“So?” his therapist asked. “What happened?”

“I’m not her familiar,” Mark said with a smile. “I’m her boyfriend.”

“So you’ve decided to embrace this then?”

“I think so. The real issues is… What I wanted to bring up…”

“Mark, your time is almost up.”

“She asked me to move in with her.”

“This is what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes,” he sighed, having finally gotten it out. “It would be a huge step for me. Like I said, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted. But she’s…”

“She’s a vampire. Or at least thinks she is a vampire. And this is what is holding you back?”

“Yes.” He relaxed. It was hard to talk about this, but it seemed his therapist was beginning to understand the problem. “I’m already somewhat of a night owl, so it isn’t really her sleep schedule I’m worried about. But if I move in with her, am I going to have to put up with familiars there? Also, every window in her apartment is covered to block out the sun. I’m not exactly a morning person but I like a little light through the window. So I’ll miss that. And I don’t know if I can even have Stefan over to her place to work on The Endless Doom. I don’t know it’s just a lot to consider.”

Mark’s therapist looked at her watch.

“We’re ten minutes over, Mark. Let’s circle back to this next week, okay?”

“Ok. I think I might say yes. But I don’t know yet. We can talk about it next week.”

The Catnip Paradox, Vibes, and The Real Reason I’m Single.

Is ignorance bliss? Is self-awareness is a blessing or a curse? I don’t have answers to these questions. All I know is me.

If you know me or read me, you know I’m perpetually on a quest to know thyself and that I’m always aiming to improve myself. Reading any of my personal essays will clue you in to the fact that I am often a mess because healing isn’t linear but I never let my messiness stop me. You’ll also figure out that since my divorce, I think and write about romantic relationships, love, sex, marriage, and all that jizz jazz often. Why? Cuz I got dumped, dummy. LOL. Ok, but for real, it’s because like everyone on the planet I want to be loved and wanted and I don’t want to be alone. My fear that I’m inherently unlovable, undesirable, and will always be alone has driven me and not in healthy ways.

So it’ll come as no surprise at all that this personal essay is about that shit. Again. You’re bored already and I get it. I’m bored too. LOL. So for both of our sakes’ I will try to keep this brief.

Here is my latest theory and the reasons behind it, as quickly and as succinctly as my loquacious little fingers can write it:

Theory: I don’t think I will ever be in another serious relationship.

Reasons:

One: I rely too heavily on vibes.

I don’t really give people much of a chance on dating apps. If I don’t feel it pretty quickly, I move on. Truthfully, I find most of the “talking stage” to be so egregiously tedious that I would rather lose the ability to speak (something that might kill me) than to have to suffer through innumerable iterations of the mother fucking talking stage. KMN.

One A: If I don’t find you mentally stimulating, game over.

If I hate the talking stage so much, how will I ever find out if I find someone mentally stimulating? I don’t know, bitch. I don’t make the rules. Again, it’s about vibes. If the vibes are vibing then I’ll stick around long enough to find out if you’re a dumb dumb or not. If I find myself dissociating while you’re telling me a story, we probably aren’t gonna go on very many dates.

Two: I have a type and my type’s type is not me.

It’s cliche but I like me a bad boy with a heart of gold. Or to put it another way, there is a certain type of masculine energy that is absolute catnip for me. However, the type of masculinity that I’m attracted to is not attracted to soft, autistic, nerdy girls. They want the hot, baddie. The girl all the bad guys want is not me. LOL. And let’s be real just cuz Sandra Dee dressed up like a dominatrix at the end of Grease didn’t mean she was really a “bad girl”. I could try to play the part of a baddie, but the reality is I’m not. I’m an emotional, socially awkward, fat girl. (With a wicked sense of humor and entertaining writing style, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Two A: I know that to someone out there, I am absolute catnip. The problem is they are not catnip to me.

I’m talking about catnip a lot. The point is somewhere out in this wide world there are people who like my personality, think my face is pretty, and don’t mind my soft bod. But the people who like me I don’t typically vibe with. It’s extremely problematic. LOL.

I see one likely outcome, one “eh, idk, maybe” outcome, and one “would take an act of a deity to happen” outcome as a result of all this.

Likely: I continue to go on casual dates and make friends and have fun but never settle into another serious relationship. It’s a bummer but I’m starting to accept this as my fate for being such a picky ass.

Eh, Idk, Maybe: I settle for someone who is not my type but that likes me and I get along with. I mean, this could happen. I’ve settled before. I wouldn’t be alone. But I’d probably be bored.

Would Take An Act Of A Deity To Happen: I meet someone I fall head over heels for. We vibe. They stimulate me mentally. They’re a baddie with a heart of gold. And somehow, impossibly, I’m exactly what they want too. I know, sounds unlikely. One in a million.

That’s it guys. That’s my theory and the reasons behind it. I’ll be honest, today I am ok with the likely outcome of being alone forever. Today, I can handle it. Another day, who knows? But for now, I accept it. I accept myself as I am. And for today, I love myself.

I started this post asking if ignorance is bliss. Would I be happier if I weren’t so self-aware? If I wasn’t always reexamining myself in order to improve as a human being, would I just be a happy, ignorant, slut? IDFK. But at the moment, instead of making myself miserable because I’m not loved/wanted/with someone, I am accepting myself and my singleness and knowing that somehow it will all be ok.

spaghetti sauce stain on a country crock tub: stuff about deep seated pain or something

Sometimes our understanding of ourselves comes at a great price. Sometimes we lose and sometimes we hurt. And sometimes wounds we didn’t even know we had reopen. A wound of mine recently reopened and it changed my understanding of myself on a fundamental level.

As a child I was treated in a way by peers and caregivers that left me feeling insecure about myself as a feminine person. I have never thought of myself as masculine but because of circumstances beyond my control, I was often mocked as a child and told I wasn’t a girl. I was forced to have a short hair cut because my caregivers didn’t want to teach me how to care for long hair. This was the 80’s and the kids in my elementary school teased me, calling me a boy and “Mr. Wilson” because my last name is Wilson and Mr. Wilson was a character from Dennis the Menace. My parents called my sister and I “tomboys” and despite wishing I could wear dresses like the other girls, I was not allowed. I remember when I had to go to a dinner in the fifth grade and I got to wear a dress. It was the most beautiful I had ever felt.

I thought the teasing would stop once I went to junior high but the same group of girls who’d harassed me in elementary school had lockers next to mine. They loudly made jokes at my expense while I pulled books from my locker. I started carrying all of my books in my backpack so I wouldn’t have to go back there.

At other times in my life I was told by male friends that they didn’t see me as a girl. I was just one of the guys to them. “You’re not a girl,” stung so much even when said to me by someone I really kind of hated. I didn’t want to be one of the guys.

On top of all of this my mother spent a lot of time telling me I was fat, not pretty if I didn’t wear makeup, and would never attract a man.

I remember being around 11 years old and thinking to myself that I should just kill myself when I turn 40 since I was clearly so undesirable physically and I wrongly assumed I would start getting wrinkles at 40.

I’m 44, by the way.

This insecurity about my physical form has informed too too too much of my life. And no matter how hard I try to shake it, it remains. I have no idea what it feels like to be a trans individual but I can honestly say I know the pain of being misgendered.

When I am truly honest with myself, I will say I think of myself as a beautiful woman. But something inside grips me like a spaghetti sauce stain on a country crock tub and tells me that no matter how I see myself, no one else sees me as a woman, let alone beautiful. And without being aware of it, I’ve become more and more sensitive to the perceived treatment of my gender.

This schlock, unfortunately, was buried deep in the bricked up wall of my heart, rotting and putrefying, like Fortunato looking for some grappa. I didn’t know why some interactions with people left me reeling from pain so intense I could feel my pulse in my neck. I just knew I was hurting. Deeply, deeply hurting. And I wanted it to stop. I needed reassurance, validation. I needed to know that I was seen as a woman, maybe even a mildly pretty woman. I needed to know I wasn’t any different from any other woman.

But I didn’t know this was what I was looking for. I was just hurt and jealous and angry and sad and confused.

Why don’t they treat me like a woman? Why am I different? Is it my hair? My features? My weight? Is it my mannerisms, my voice, my diction? What in the actual fuck was it? I didn’t know. I just knew I felt different and I hated it. And I hated the crippling pain and depression I went through over this.

All this recently came to light for me when I experienced something so painful it knocked a huge fucking hole in that brick wall in my heart and exposed the corpse of the little girl shanked by mean girls with side pony tails. And, of course, as I processed all of it, I thought to myself, “Holy fucking shit?!? That’s why I overreact and act like an overly sensitive psycho bitch? Fucking hell.” It feels like I’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe somehow.

Now that I’m aware of this I have to accept a few things.

One: This isn’t going away anytime soon.

Just because I see the problem doesn't mean I know how to fix it. Healing is not instantaneous or linear. This will be a process. In fact, even as I write this, the pain of it courses through me like electricity causing my breath to catch in my chest. Nevertheless, I stride on.

Two: I have acted like a crazy fucking bitch sometimes because of this.

The crazy in me has been very strong at times and I have to own it. Looking back over my life and how I let this ruin me is beyond painful. It's straight up embarrassing. But I can't change the past. I can only strive to do better from the moment I hit publish on this post forward. Always forward, never back.

Three: Actions have consequences.

I have to own that my actions have led to hurting people that I love. I have to own that my actions have pushed people away. I have to own that those relationships may never be repaired. Actions have consequences and I need to accept mine.

Four: I am a beautiful woman.

I see myself as a woman. And sometimes even a beautiful woman. I see myself as feminine. So that is who and what I am. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It doesn’t matter how anyone else behaves towards me. I am a woman and what I think is all that matters in this equation.

Five: The only one I need to convince is myself.

I can’t make anyone see me as a woman or force them to treat me in ways that validate my gender to me. If someone sees me as a dude, nothing I can do will change that. And I need to stop trying. Yes, it will still hurt but, in time, if I continue to work on myself and accept that the only validation I need comes from within, then eventually it won't hurt quite so much.

Once that red sauce stain infuses itself into the elemental makeup of the country crock tub it is there forever, my darlings. And this tub is stained, let me tell you. But even stained tubs continue to do their job. I may be stained. And there may be no way to ever fully heal from this ish. But I’m still out here holding my metaphorical spaghetti. And even though I have damaged relationships along the way to get to this revelation, I am here now. I can start to heal and change.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the corpse of a little girl to give a proper burial.

Be safe out in this terrible world, bambinos.