Author: litmag_admin

Excerpt from OFF THE YOGA MAT © by Cheryl J. Fish

Forthcoming from Livingston Press/University of West Alabama, pub date Oct. 20, 2022

January, 1999

Chapter One “Inflexible”

Nate

“When others achieve success, how does that diminish you?” Nathaniel Dart didn’t care to consider this question from a talk-radio host. He was about to leave the apartment with a spasm in his back. His friend Gil, and his girlfriend Nora, had finally convinced him to take a trial yoga class in a studio a few blocks away. As he walked down Second Avenue with a slight shuffle, twinges running upward from his ass, the success of others gnawed away at him. A cash bonus Nora received at the end-of-the-year—she deserved the money for a job well done—but he hadn’t grabbed her around the waist or smiled in a swell of support. Nor had he taken her out to celebrate. And when Gil won a lottery for affordable housing nearby which meant more space and rent stabilization, of course Gil had the gall to rub it in his face, mentioning Nate’s dark studio apartment with moths burrowing in the closet. Nate had no choice but to resent him. One other victory throbbed against his bony vertebrate.  

His old study-group mate Monica Portman landed a teaching job in Boston, a position that Nate should have applied for, could have applied for, if only he’d finished his thesis. He struggled to accept Ralph Waldo Emerson’s credo that “envy is ignorance.”

He stopped suddenly on his walk to watch dumpster divers pick through garbage bins outside the supermarket. They’d cook what was still edible, and someone shouted through a megaphone about the futility of waste in New York City. Determined to find freshness in what had been declared foul, the freegans sorted through packages past expiration dates, found perfectly decent bags of bagels and cookies and cut-up carrots. He heard them complain about tossing food with hungry and homeless folks everywhere. Nate felt disgusted by the vast inequalities in society; they mattered more than revising his thesis on jealousy as an evolutionary trait in humans.

Nate’s research combined a trifecta of disciplines: science, literature, psychology. It sounded loopy when he claimed the existence of a jealousy hormone. Not only did it benefit species studied by Charles Darwin, like those blue-footed boobies on Galapagos, but Homo sapiens as well. Envious rage might motivate men and women to loosen their desire for control. The result could turn out for the better. Yet jealousy was no walk in the park—it caused primitive rage and destruction which Nate witnessed everywhere. In his thesis, he proved his point by examining jealous characters in Shakespeare’s Othello and King Lear.

How does their success diminish me? He wished he could put that thought out of his mind. Nate spent countless hours in his swivel chair; one could say he lived where he sat.

In the yoga class, a tingling numbness ran down his legs, pain and trembling too. He stood in a darkish room with a yoga teacher asking them to bend from their core towards the floor. He couldn’t reach past his knees, his whole upper body as stiff at age 39 as if he were 50-something. I am not a yoga guy, he thought—I have more in common with the freegans. I should have never set foot in this dusty old hovel. He felt others staring at him.

Nate contemplated his future on all fours doing cow and cat, rounding his back like a feline, or should he flatten it like a bovine? Who named these postures? The students stood in unison, placing a bent leg along their thigh for tree pose. He grabbed a beam.

“Focus on one point on the wall,” said the teacher, a strikingly fit woman named Lulu Betancourt, who welcomed them warmly and insisted they obey their own bodies. “Take a three-part breath and be mindful. Let air seep out like a leaky balloon.”

Nate smirked. He visualized a giant balloon emptying with farting sounds. He filled his lungs then exhaled as told. Relaxation could wash over him.

She soon introduced them to the series “salute to the sun.” A set of flowing movements that started with standing, progressed to rolling to the floor, then rising into the cobra and plank positions with a rhythmic grace, ending with an upward curl, palms pressed together in gratitude. A subtle choreography he punctured with jerking motions. If Nate could reach an inch nearer to his toes and roll down without collapsing, he felt like he would celebrate. His version might be called parody, not salute. He was determined to modify his moves, like the barnacles, finches and beetles Darwin observed.

“Melt into the earth with a rushing sensation, rain drenching fields,” Lulu said in a soft yet determined voice. She leaned against the wall, bowed her head.

Nate tried to experience rain. Instead, he thought about money. He benefitted neither from the loopholes in capitalism that let the richest prosper, nor from a critique of its corruption. I am an academic serf living on rice and beans, he thought, and no one could care less. He was deep in debt from loans. He should apply for another fellowship or take an adjunct position at a City University campus. He wondered about the job referred to by his advisor Offendorf in his recent nasty note. Offendorf had scribbled dismissive comments on the pages it took Nate many months to write, and even more months to find the courage to mail to the university down in Maryland, with Nora’s goading. Offendorf had the nerve to reply:

WAY TOO MUCH time spent on Darwin. It may be trendy to consider evolutionary theory, but I don’t care for that approach. Take out feminism and limit psychoanalysis. You’ve inserted too many footnotes. Let’s put this baby to bed. When are you coming to campus? Bring the revision−we’ll talk defense date. Oh, and I might know of a teaching position.”

As Nate considered whether the job was real or just another one of Oppendorf’s bluffs, he was instructed to twist his torso, knee cutting across his folded leg. That evoked the twists and turns of Nora’s desire.

“Let’s conceive a millennial child,” she said. Nineteen-ninety-nine high stepped like a marching band through her ovaries. Fear of her upcoming, their upcoming, fortieth birthdays felt like annihilation.

“Nora. I can’t give you a baby now.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Nora said. “There’s never going to be a perfect time.”

 “I’m not in the position to be a dad.”

“You’d be very loving.” She stroked his hand. “My salary can tide us over.”

His inability to care for a child felt like a character deficiency. He must finish his degree before procreating, not focus on the milestone of age forty. When his mom visited from Long Island the other day, she slipped him a wad of cash.

 “Don’t say anything to your father.”

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he said, feeling sheepish and small. 

**

Nate’s spine cracked. Lulu headed over to his side during dandasana, a forward bend that segued into a seated wide-angle pose. She crouched. “Breathe into your stretch.” He noticed a beady-eyed frog tattoo near her shoulder—green and black, sinister. Lulu smelled of rose-oil.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“I can’t concentrate.” What made her want to ink a frog into her skin?

“Observe your thoughts. They’ll dissipate.” She touched his head. “Probably.”

How should he respond to Offendorf’s reign of terror? Say “I need Darwin like Shakespeare needed Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” the source material for some of the Bard’s plays?

While Nate rested in child’s pose, head on mat, arms and legs compressed like a floating fetus, a surge of energy ran from the tips of his toes into his calves. So, what if Offendorf demanded he cut one-third of all he had written? How did their success diminish his? Disappointments acquired territory. One negative experience attracted others, expanding into new fiefdoms.

His old study group mate Monica Portman applied for everything. “I invented personal literary criticism,” she said, convinced of her pioneering role. Wasn’t she coming to town? As Nate struggled to pick himself off the floor for the next posture, it occurred to him: send her the very same pages Offendorf trashed and ask for a second opinion. Monica’s instincts resembled a baby sea turtle’s—born in sand, hurdling towards the ocean. He should trust her to guide him to safety.

Then yogi Lulu announced to the room “return to downward-facing dog.” He bent over, and placing his hands flat, stuck his butt in the air.

And I, an everburning pilot, 
Lead forth the exhausted people, 
And neither peace nor battle 
Can I foresee ahead.

~~~

I started this review before the Russian invasion, so in avoidance of tone-deafness, I’d like to suggest you seek out humanitarian anti-war efforts.

I first came across Leonid Schwab’s poetry on the Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation site, wherein his first line is “I’m made out of cheese my head is that of an old man.” I immediately knew I was dealing with something special. Although the rest didn’t prove to be so surreal, I embraced the themes of the weary travelers and forgotten details. Schwab’s work embodies the open lens state while travelling, how we notice more as we journey through new territories.

When I heard Cicada Press was putting out a book of Leonid Schwab’s work as the collection Everburning Pilot, I quickly followed the trail. I can already say this is a great achievement, triumphant klaxons for all involved. The translator’s list is a long one, nearly 20 translators are credited here, for about 75 poems. From the translator’s note, these translations have been refined and discussed with great care during the Chicago Translation Workshop as well as the Your Language, My Ear workshop. I love reading about the path these translations took, the culmination of individual and group efforts. We can be sure that Schwab is in good hands.

The introduction to this book is a treat all by itself, In Memory of Memory’s Maria Stepanova (here translated by Sibelan Forrester) offers us “CELESTIAL ARCHAEOLOGY: On Leonid Schwab’s Poetry.” I have always enjoyed poetry intros, with their framing of frames, and Stepanova’s is no exception. Stepanova gives us poetry about poetry: “the powers of language, all its smart machines work to establish a particular temporal state on their own territory, to condense each line into a radiant amber concentrate of that very happiness.” The intro is a loving summary of Schwab and his milieu. Stepanova explains how Schwab’s work is emblematic of his group, the “new epos” poets, while being mechanically singular.

From a bird’s eye view, Schwab’s poetry concerns the traveler, locations, destination, and the moments of rest along the way. Schwab’s narrative moves along an undisclosed journey, noticing people, buildings and landscape, how they all form to create the voyage. This is a 20^th century Bashō moving through Bobruisk, Jerusalem, Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan and Manchuria. Zooming in on the lines themselves gives us brushstrokes of moments, modernist jump-cuts and all manner of temporal shifts. Some characters are zipping around, some are steady movers, and another is stuck at the airport.

These translations are finely wrought and attentive, with syllabic care throughout: “And supper, like the surf, comes over them” or “Dinners afield are no big deal”. I want to quote this whole book to you; every other line could be its own poem. Having this many translators on one collection gives us a full toolbox of techniques and diction. For example, I learned the word “violaceous” from this line:

Суп фиолетов, сельдь поет на блюде, 
Мужчина вилкой трогает укроп,
The fish is singing, and the soup – violaceous, 
The man pokes at the dill weed with his fork,

The above quote shows one of Schwab’s brainteasers, I find myself drawing crisscrossing lines between each noun. The many relationships of objects action and people create a blooming flourish in my mind: fish-pokes, dill-soup, man-fork. The temporal quality of Schwab’s work is also worth mentioning. At moments, a piece will feel timeless and then a cola will appear. Or a modern jet, helicopter, or cosmonaut pilot becomes the eponymous everburning pilot who is the eternal warrior defending the people.

Most people in this collection are named by their occupation; these are poems of house painters, wood workers, station clerks, subcontractors, and builders. As every object is in use, so are the humans. Schwab shows motion through the interconnectedness of action and movement, even locations are action-oriented: fenceposts, cellars, reservoirs, and a museum bench. There are no useless vistas, flora, or virtues; everything is employed. I’m also impressed that this collection spans from 1987 to 2016; Schwab has been putting out amazing work for four decades. Despite this, the collection is cohesive, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me they were written all in the same year.

The spheres of poetry, translation, and contemporary Russian literature can rejoice in the arrival of Leonid Schwab in English. If Stepanova says that Schwab’s influence is now permanent on contemporary Russian poetry, I hope that we see that influence on more poets. Schwab, like Osip Mandelstam, writes poems that are both contemporary and timeless. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and look forward to returning to it for years to come.

Thank you to KGB Bar, Anastasiya Osipova at Cicada, and Olena Jennings for being ever supportive.

It didn’t sound too promising at first. The man on the other end of the line said that he worked with dancers, and he wondered if I might like to come over and maybe dance for him. Our terse conversation on the phone felt guarded on his end and measured and suggestive. We talked about beauty, and the voice said that he had been beautiful once but that he was “a ruined beauty” now. This intrigued me, as did the roughness of his authoritative voice. It was not the sort of voice you usually heard on this phone line. Everybody tried to sound butch-er than they actually were, and I was no exception to that. But if this guy was also masquerading, it was one of the more convincing attempts.

My dance man and I made a date to meet at his apartment. Again, I wasn’t expecting much. I had already met a lot of people in Manhattan who claimed to be directors, photographers, actors, designers, and they were anything but. They were just poor, neglected people who had hung on tight and who might have wanted to do something in those areas twenty or thirty years ago and had made a few stabs at those treasured dreams, but it all came down to a review in the Times from 1986, or an extended run in 1973.

So I entered the building after my dance man buzzed me in, and I went up in the elevator, and then I saw the name on the door. I didn’t know anything about dance then (I still don’t know much), but even I recognized the name on the door. This was not just some dirty old man who had once directed a terpsichorean evening at P.S. 122 in the mid-80s. No, this was a man who was among the few famous choreographers of the day.

The door opened, and the man who had opened it acted like he did not want to be seen, but he did want to be heard. He gave me commands; go there, move here. The apartment was smallish and dark, a large studio, with windows that showed off a view of downtown. There was very little furniture, but it was handsomely appointed. It was immediately clear to me that this wasn’t a primary residence but “a place in the city.”

“Take your shoes and socks off,” the voice said, and I obliged. The hardwood floors felt good under my feet. “Now your shirt,” the voice said. I was breathing heavily and I pulled my shirt over my head, and my heart was pounding because I was so excited. “You’re very thin,” he said, impersonally, appraisingly. “Take your pants off.”

I took my pants off fairly fast and stood there in front of him and I was very happy in the dark and the silence. I was so at home in this situation. “You have big calves,” the voice said. “Your legs are good.” The voice was far less impersonal now, almost excited, and it wasn’t really a sexual excitement but more of a feeling of possibility.

“Now, if you want to get into my company, you’re going to have to show that you can take direction,” he said, sitting down on a low couch. I could feel him staring at me intently, and I started to make him out in the dark. He had longish hair and a leonine kind of head, and a quality of nobility. He was set apart. He was a king. 

He just looked at me for a moment more and then got up and put on some jazz music, Duke Ellington. I started to move—I had taken dance classes before—and he stopped me right away. He was so totally a choreographer that he took everything related to movement seriously. This was just a sex scene role-play we had set up through a phone line, but he took the time to explain certain things to me about dance.

“You’ll be my pony boy,” he said, and this made me smile. He started the Ellington music again, and then he came back over to me and showed me how to move subtly against the rhythm of the music. His hands were around my waist and then on my shoulders and he was gently moving me like a puppet around the darkened space of the studio, and I let myself be led, because I was obviously in the hands of some kind of master. 

Finally he sort of tipped me over and pulled my underwear down and got on his knees and went to work, and this was as extraordinarily awkward physically as the dance and dance direction from him had been so very graceful and suspended in time. I had to position myself in totally ungraceful ways for him to get what he wanted, but I didn’t mind, for I liked and trusted him right away.

When he was finished with me, I put my underwear back on and draped myself on a chair with my legs stretched out for him to see, and we talked for a time as the light faded and faded until we were really sitting in the dark, and all I could hear was that low, rumbly voice of his. I pretended I hadn’t seen his name on the door, because that’s what he wanted, I could tell.

He talked a bit about former lovers, with an appealing sort of reticence. I had listened to so many drunken guys at bars babble about past loves; they wanted to tell me everything all at once, and they ruined whatever might have been interesting about their lives by being so unselective, so garrulous. My choreographer held things back, to be protective of himself, to be mysterious. I tried to be at my best, high energy, lyrical. I told him about my writing on the theater and on film, and a little bit about my photographer friend Ben Morrissey. He knew Ben’s work, and he knew the photos Ben had taken of me. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they?” he asked, kindly.

He got up and enquired if I’d like a glass of water, and I said yes, and I watched him move through the space. It was clear that he had been and still was a real dancer; it was a pleasure just to watch him walk across a room. He was rooted to the ground and moved decisively, like very masculine men do in bars, right shoulder forward, left shoulder forward, almost like a sailor, a rolling walk, but the difference with him is that his knees were slightly bent at all times, so that he might take off and spring into the air or sink down to the floor at a moment’s notice. 

After I left and went home, I typed his name into Google and found out that he had lopped almost twenty years off his age on the phone line, but that was to be expected. He was an exceptional person, and so what was twenty years? Especially if you could control the environment in a darkened apartment. Why not? Nevertheless. I have sometimes taken two years off my age, as Katharine Hepburn did most of her life, for Hepburn was sensible or right about most things. Knocking off more than two years is pushing it, I think; lopping off twenty years is nothing if not bold, but he was so dishy still that he got away with it.

I had gotten a pretty good look at him in the light as he opened the door of the studio for me to leave, and he wasn’t a “ruined beauty” as he had said, at least not to me. He was the most attractive, magnetic older man I had met at that point, and his charisma was very different from any I had encountered before. This man was a closed fortress, with armored guards. 

I went up to the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library and asked for a video of his work, and I sat down in a cubicle and put some headphones on, and then there he was in a black leotard in 1968 performing his first dance. First he was down on the floor like he was about to do push-ups, and he did do a push up and lifted his legs as high into the air as he could get them in back, and from this position he fell gracefully down onto his left shoulder and somehow got himself instantly back up on his knees, as if by sleight of hand. He did not have long legs himself; in fact, he was somewhat short. He had been wiry as a younger dancer, and the man I had met was stocky and barrel-chested.

He reached up and up with his arms in this 1968 dance and then seized back into himself, as if he had been mortally wounded, and then slowly he opened his arms back up and stretched his arms and legs out, trying to get upright again until he did a neck stand, and then suddenly he was standing, and I have no idea how he got up off the ground to a standing position so quickly. He was like this beautiful toy that could do anything. I later saw the French dancer Jean Babilée do a similar neck stand in filmed bits of the dance “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort,” and I wondered if my choreographer had somehow seen this. 

At the end of this early dance, he swung around with his arms out in a quasi-Chinese manner, and then he fell to the ground and did a backwards somersault onto his left shoulder—his perfect little body shot right up into the air from this left shoulder—in a straight line!—and then he collapsed to sit on his tailbones and extended his pressed-together-legs and moved them right and then left…right and then left. This movement with his extended, closed legs was so don’t-touch-me sexy that I got hard right there at Lincoln Center, where erections are frowned upon.

I went over to “audition” again, as soon as I could. He put on Debussy this time, and we talked about Nijinsky. He showed me how Nijinsky had “humped a scarf” during his notorious dance to Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” I was in my underwear (green print Lycra from H & M, $12, and worth every penny) and bare feet, and he started getting really into my Nijinsky impersonation as I undulated around the space with my palms up, like the Nijinsky photos I had seen. He got up from where he was sitting and said, “Now move your hips in slightly wider circles, can you do that?” I moved my hips more decisively. “Huh,” he said, studying me. 

He barreled over to me quickly and roughly pulled down my underwear to my knees and I took a sharp excited breath and my erection throbbed, and as he was walking away from me he turned his lion head slightly and grunted, “Take those off,” over his shoulder. I did as I was told, and I stood there naked and very very happy. He went into a closet and he came back out with some emerald green tights and a cunning little hat with all sorts of thingamabobs hanging off of it, and he placed the hat on my head so that my face was framed by green fringe, and I sat down and put the tights on; they were sheer and almost see-through, but not quite.

When I stood back up in these tights, I felt different, like some sea creature. He was seated, watching me intently, ruminatively, as if he were smoking a cigarette without a cigarette. I stayed upright and moved my arms a lot and rolled my hips in ever-widening circles to the Debussy music, and he just watched me.

“Okay, this is good, actually,” he said, like he was somewhat surprised. “But you need to think about working on different levels. You need to be able to work on the floor.” I tried to sort of float down to the floor as I had seen him do in his dance, but it didn’t quite work. “Here, you’re not trained, that’s OK, but let me show you some tricks,” he said, getting up again and coming over to me. 

He guided my body down to the floor and told me to think of myself as not solid but liquid. He said that I didn’t have any bones, not really. I found myself down on the floor, with his strong hands on my neck, and the tension that I always carried in my shoulders began to disappear. I was on my back, moving instinctively to the Debussy music, with the rhythm and then against it, and I lifted my legs as high into the air as I could get them and then closed them tightly and made the movements I had seen him make on the tape from 1968 at Lincoln Center.

It was dark in the studio as always and getting darker, and I let the coaxing of the oboes and the muted horns in the Debussy piece lead my body all around the floor, with his hands sometimes guiding me. I slipped far, far away from him down the floor and extended my legs and my arms in a very angular position, and he cried, “Hold that! Stay with that for a few seconds! Let me look at that, that’s unusual!”

I did as I was told, and I felt that I could hold this pose on the floor forever because it felt so right, so decisive, so theatrical and aggressive. “Now get up onto your knees and extend your left leg out for me,” he said. I did this and held my balance. He crouched down and ran his hand up my leg, from foot to calf to inner thigh. “Slide back down onto the ground on your stomach,” he said in his lowest gravelly voice. “Now lift your chest off the floor.”

I did that, and it was a yoga pose, almost, and his hands lifted my torso as far up as it would go. “Stay like that for me, just stay there!” he cried, and it sounded like he was trying to restrain his excitement, and I found this extremely attractive, both the excitement and the attempt at restraint. 

He roughly yanked the tights down in back to my knees. “Stand up and take those off,” he said in a very heated voice, and then he went back to his closet, and I heard him saying, “This dance should really be done with almost nothing on, just your cap and some glitter and body make-up and something in front to cover your cock,” he said energetically, as if he were creatively as well as sexually stirred. “Put this on, it’s a posing strap,” he said, handing me a tiny bit of material.

I put on the posing strap for him, and it barely covered me. I loved that he was dressing me up and treating me seriously as a dancer. He dusted me with a little gold glitter all over my chest and my legs. “Can you repeat what you just did, starting on the floor, with your legs together extended and move them like you did?” he asked, very seriously, all business, professional.

Did he realize that I was repeating one of his moves from his 1968 dance? Maybe he sensed it as I got back down and repeated this move and did the angular position on the floor that he liked with my legs extended and my arm in a claw-like pose, and then I got on my knees and extended my left leg. “That’s good, but you don’t know how to get off the floor in one movement,” he said. “Here, let’s practice that.”

And so we did, over and over again, until my slight awkward fumbling up, with its wobbly stages, became a much smoother transition, not as smooth as a dancer’s, or as smooth as his in 1968, of course, but smooth enough. “You’re as good as anyone in my company,” he said, off-handedly, but his impersonal tone let me know that he was actually being somewhat serious about this. I think. Then he got out a long scarf from the closet and staggered the material in the middle of the floor.

“Okay now, lower yourself as slowly as possible onto the scarf,” he growled. I sidled over to it and tried to kind of relate to it in an animal way, and he let out a light chuckle. “Good, you’re a horny little faun, now lower yourself down onto it…that’s it…stick your ass out so that the audience can see it…it’s a nice little ass, let them look at it.”

I was very hard in the posing strap; the sound of his voice was so arousing to me. I got down on the scarf, like Nijinsky had, and he said, “Now hump it…really hump the scarf….” I was close, and he knew it, and he tipped me over and jerked me off into his hand and then smeared the result all over my chest and picked me up and dropped me in a chair and tied my legs up on the chair and my hands on the arms of the chair and put his mouth on me, making little growling sounds. It took a while, but I climaxed again, and then he left me there, tied up, for a little bit. He walked around the space with his sailor walk, looking at me, and then he put his mouth on me a second time. I could barely stand it, it was such fun.

I was more than spent when he untied me and I stretched my legs out for him over the arms of the chair. He got me some water, and I put my shirt on. “Leave your pants off,” he said. We talked in the dark, and he was still very guarded. It was clear to me that he had been through a lot, and he had a stoicism, a dignity, that I found extremely winning. He was the opposite of a complainer. Keep things to yourself. But if you have things to give, give them selectively. Don’t be stingy, but don’t unload everything onto people. Don’t be needy, be a warrior, and you’ll have a better time.

He talked about a few of his major relationships. “Don’t ever be competitive with each other,” he said, and this thought landed with me, for it was the useful advice of someone who usually didn’t give advice. When I got up to leave, I spilled water on my shirt, and he went into the bathroom and got a hair-dryer and dried me off with it. This felt like a romantic moment to me. It was intimate, almost domestic.

He wrote me an email the next day, and he wanted me to come over again right away. He had one of those anonymous accounts for sex stuff that I never bothered with. It was artdad at something dot com. He was the sort who had an enthusiasm and wanted to go as far with it as quickly as possible. So I showered and went over to his studio in the evening again, around 6PM.

“We need to test your flexibility some more,” he said right away as I came in. He was still doing our agreed upon role-play, me as a dancer auditioning, he the dance master. I stripped to my underwear again (this time an almost see-through blue print from H & M). He put on the jazz again, Duke Ellington. That must have been what he was working on at the time, and I think he might even have been working out ideas about it, using me as a model.

I did my best. I moved against the rhythm of the music, which suited my instinctive perversity. He let me go and go and go. I was up, I was down, my legs were in the air, extended out, my hands fluttered a little but then made decisive stops, and then I got down on the floor and stayed down there, making movements as if I were trapped but didn’t give a damn. “That’s right,” he said finally. “You can stay down there. No need to get up. Stay down there, on the floor, use the floor.”

I moved and moved, and I felt that I could continue for as long as he wanted me to as the music got sexy. It was “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and there was good humor in this Ellington sexiness. He got up and pulled me off the floor and stood behind me and put his hands on my hips and we moved together slowly for a bit, against the rhythm of the music. That dark studio of his, always getting darker. He let me make my own movements, but he also maneuvered me into his headspace for the movements that were his. It was a kind of breakthrough in my mind, my body (they were the same thing right then). It was what I was looking for. I was in a euphoric state. Sex wasn’t the whole answer to what I wanted, but sexual energy was.

Eventually he sat me down in a chair and tied my hands and feet to it and went to town on me two or three times, and it did nothing for me one way or another. He liked it, I suppose, and I liked dancing for him and with him. I liked learning. As I looked down at the top of his lion head, I remembered the exceptionally beautiful boy I had seen on the tape from 1968, and it gave me a thrill when I thought, “You’re doing this with that guy.” I found this double consciousness—my attraction to him now and my attraction to his 1968 self—enormously exciting because it was so erotically mental, like I was getting two very different hot guys in one.

As I thought more and more about this, I began to imagine being with him at many different ages…at 16 at school in the hallways, where I took the lead with him…at 21 after a dance class, where we struggled for dominance…at 28 very drunk at a bar…at 36 in a dance studio (he was at his physical peak in his sea-green tights, and he let me take full charge)…at 42 in our apartment as boyfriends…at 48 at a hotel when his body had gotten thicker…at 55 in the middle of the night at his dance studio, and somehow this was melancholy…at 60 in a hotel after some grand reception for the sake of nostalgia…and then I was with him now in his apartment, young me and older him, and all this began to feel like an orgy with one supremely attractive man. At the same time, I knew that if I had met him when he was my age my choreographer wouldn’t have given me a second look. My youth and his age were the only things I had going for me in this situation.

He was done finally, and he untied me and my legs ached. I love a sore, worked-out body, because that’s what a body is for, not to workout at a gym but to be tied, moved, posed, displayed, felt, desired, thought of in its absence, then thrown on the trash heap when you’re all worn out and done. He was sitting opposite me now and saying that he used to be able to see those buildings from his windows, downtown. He said it the only way you should say that, gruffly, respectfully, moving right along, let’s not linger over it. He talked about Isadora Duncan. He said that the New York Times had it in for him, but he said it politely, reasonably, as he said everything. The Duke Ellington music was playing on repeat. 

I went over a fourth time, and it was much the same, Duke Ellington, tied to the chair, and so forth, and he said that he’d like me to come see one of his dances at some point. I was excited by this prospect. I wanted to see what he worked with, and whom he worked with. He sent me a discreet email invitation to his latest evening of dance, and I went by myself. 

There were two programs on the bill. The first was an old dance of his for nine male dancers, and it was easy to follow the theme—the men would group together and whenever one of them did something different or out of step with the others, this difference would be squashed and the dancer would be brought back into line with the group. The dancers were a bit older than was usual; most of them, I think, were in their mid-forties. They might even have danced the premiere of it, several years before.

There was one dancer who was younger, close to my age. He was dressed in a rather bulky black t-shirt and black pants, as the other eight dancers were. This was not a sexy dance, not at all. In fact, he was not a sexy choreographer, as a rule. His personal reticence kept his dances chaste, shy. You forgot that you were looking at bodies that might be sexual with each other.

The second dance was new, and it was between a man and a woman, and the woman flopped around in what seemed like drunkenness, and the man kept trying to catch her, but she got pulled away from him in the end by a well-meaning, repressive crowd. His work was filled with well-meaning, repressive crowds. He was intelligent enough to know that, though he was cursed, or blessed, with being well-meaning and repressive himself, it also had its uses. 

There was a reception afterwards in the lobby with champagne, and I downed three glasses in quick succession. Whenever there was free liquor, my thirst was not easily quenched in those days. I got that dispersed, fuzzy feeling from the alcohol and weaved slightly as I walked, but I was careful as I moved, in the time-honored overly careful drunken way as I downed two more glasses of champagne. I saw him enter the lobby. Everyone applauded, and he accepted their applause graciously. He was in figurehead mode, the director of a company, and I got self-conscious and didn’t want him to see me.

For about an hour, I kept grabbing more champagne and avoiding him, which wasn’t hard to do. Everybody wanted to talk to him. I slipped along the walls and into corners and hid behind the dresses of women and the shoulders of tall men and the hubbub of it all, but then the crowd surged a bit, there were more people coming in, and I was swept along until I was face to face with him, and I grinned, helplessly, and his face was set in a granite smile. He looked at me but didn’t seem to see me. After a moment, with courtly charm, he reached out and patted me on the shoulder and then moved along to talk to a group of dressed-to-kill moneyed women.

I wrote him an enthusiastic email the next day, and he sent me a very brief email back saying that he was done with me and that he had had enough of me. It was pretty brutal. I was in my twenties then and looking as good as I ever would and he was in his late sixties. Being rejected by a man so much older really stung me. But he attempted to console me slightly when I expressed my surprise. “You do something like this, and then you move on…aren’t you like that?” he wrote me. I sensed a kind of paternal kindness and perplexity in this.

Years went by, and he got even older, but he still and always looked great. On Facebook, I kept seeing info about a fancy retrospective program he was doing, and I saw that there were ten-dollar tickets available, and so I bought a ticket and went. I was in a good mood. I was in a good place in my life, and so I enjoyed the dances, and the dancers, two of whom were very sexy. And I looked with what felt like love of some kind at my choreographer as he entered to sit in the back of the theater. He seemed a little smaller physically somehow, out in the open, in the light. I was happy to be there with him.

Afterwards there was a small reception, but much more modest than the one I had been to before, and everyone seemed to be over the age of sixty except for the dancers. I screwed up my courage and slowly made my way over to him. We made eye contact, and I could not be certain if he recognized me. I don’t think he did, but maybe a little. There was maybe a little bit of recognition in his eyes, but carefully repressed. “I loved it,” I told him, and I meant it with all my heart.

An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. – Henry Miller 

Ella is sitting on her couch with her iPhone, researching venues for her show before finishing more than one painting for it. There’s no excuse why she can’t do more. Work has been light at the boutique media agency in Soho where she acts as Head of Sales. She’s in her living room taking up space, “working” from home. The blank canvases are right over there, leaning against the modern glass coffee table with an abstractly shaped oak base. There were lines of coke on it last night, which could’ve been used to fuel her creativity. Instead she opted for the routine paranoia trip: staring through the peephole in the front door every ten minutes to check if someone was outside—cops or some sort of sexual predator. With sweat-soaked straight black hair and bulging eyes, she sustained her manic watch till the wee hours of the a.m., which resulted in zero home invaders, per usual.

This has been going on for months, dare one say years. The Boyfriend learned long ago to refrain from protesting his girlfriend’s temporary schizophrenic actions, let alone trying to comfort her physically. Like he did on countless other weekend nights, he simply sat on the couch thumbing through Instagram (and, occasionally, secretly sexting a coworker, having once been too loyal to act on it in person) till daybreak when the coke was gone and Ella had no other choice but to come down and eventually fall asleep beside him.

Ella, now in her late thirties, realizes she can no longer blame anyone but herself for her bad habits and creative block. When she was in her twenties, she covered the familial inspiration in her raw, visceral paintings. The uncomfortably personal themes of her shows (with decent reviews and nonexistent sales) came from stories about her alcoholic dad who’d been imprisoned for murdering her mom and her older brother who’d been killed attempting to break up a drunken brawl, as well as the escorting years, an endless string of bad relationships and an assortment of mostly self-inflicted abuses. Nothing in her present life is inspiring her, but she still feels compelled to paint… something, anything.

During weeknights after work and every weekend, she can only focus her tired and/or hungover body on the couch, what’s new on the good ol’ Fire TV Stick and which Grubhub meal to complement it. Or when the next cycling class is scheduled at Flywheel, offsetting the overeating and keeping her body lean and toned. Or whether she has enough funds left to buy yet another pair of shoes from Vetements or Off-White (her favorite designers) after paying her quarterly dues to Soho House and the monthly fee for an all-access membership to Equinox, among other bills and whistles. And cocaine. She loves cocaine more than she cares to admit to herself and others.

FRIDAY

The Boyfriend already left for work, and Ella is waking up again from another micro-nap. Moseying into the kitchen, she pours herself a hot cup of coffee—he makes six cups: four to fill his to-go mug and two for her—cooling it with a healthy splash of almond milk. Holding the cup in her left hand, she sips the lukewarm drink while perusing Instagram on her phone with her right. She fingers the profiles of gorgeous male models William McLarnon and Matthew Noszka and influencers into extreme sports such as Dylan Efron and Jay Alvarrez, wondering if she’d be happier with a man like one of them: otherworldly sexy, superhero strong and Insta-famous. I’m still beautiful, she tells herself in the mirror, checking to see whether the Botox that’s been hiding the wrinkles in her forehead is wearing off (not yet, thankfully). If I were in some sort of social setting with these guys, I’m sure I’d catch their eye. She considers the fantasy for a few more seconds, an even mix of the familiar guilt for superficial, adulterous thinking, an always-on ache for what she can’t have and the growing unsurety of her love for The Boyfriend (very good-looking, much younger than she and great in bed when she’s in the mood) overwhelming her physically like the freezing Peconic River on Shelter Island in early June—their first vacation nearly three years ago (they stayed at the very chic Sunset Beach Hotel).

On the kitchen counter lie a bunch of bananas spooning each other inside a clear plastic bag with the Chiquita logo. Dressed in perishable goods, Miss Chiquita smiles festively, ready to perform the calypso dance leap. Once vibrant yellow, the fruits’ skin is now dull and freckled, foretelling their rot. But The Boyfriend’s ask via text remains unfulfilled: Would you do me a big favor and peel the bananas I left on the counter and put them in the freezer? That way they’ll keep for his weekday (and semi-weekend) smoothies. The making of which are an ongoing, unwelcome wakeup call for Ella prior to one of Amazon Echo’s more appealing alarm sounds. That unnerving jackhammer noise of a “Magic” Bullet Blender pureeing assorted fruit, ice and almond milk is anything but enchanting to her ears.

They live together in Williamsburg in a two-floor loft with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The luxury building includes amenities such as a state-of-the-art gym with indoor rock climbing, simulated golf rooms (plus a mini-golf course on the roof), a bowling alley, two pools, three hot tubs and much more unlisted here. Some of their neighbors have children and dogs, both of which The Boyfriend wants too. Ella doesn’t think of herself as motherly and has never been a big fan of animals. This isn’t to say she’s a bad person, just selfish, and at least she knows it.

But lately she’s been struggling with her somewhat lavish, arguably heretical lifestyle, thinking she should be spending her money and time with The Boyfriend in healthier ways. Perhaps it’s biological; her birthday is around the corner, as is her body’s inability to make babies. Despite The Boyfriend’s smoothies and other behaviors that only annoy her because she’s irritable from the coke comedowns, he’s kind and understanding of her idiosyncratic, addictive and neurotic personality. Lovers of the past provided an obsession and coinciding rush similar to the drugs (a TV actor, a banker, and a lawyer, all of whom were a year or two older and a zero or two richer than she), while never showing her love, which is what she thought she wanted for oh so many years. But when The Boyfriend came into her life unexpectedly and gave her just that (after hitting her with his bike as she ran into the bike lane rushing to the office one sultry afternoon), she accepted it begrudgingly and has been battling herself from rejecting him ever since.

She finds herself more preoccupied with the fear of his imminent departure now that she’s hungover again, nearing old age and getting crazier by the nanosecond. Moreover, her name is the one and only on the lease and other legal agreements tying her to this time and place financially. He could just get up and go anytime. A slice of her, the demon inside, craves this, as it’ll allow her to fully revert to the life of the manic art slut: hard-working by day; partying with a different “date” every night; painting her lonely paintings during tear-soaked, suicidal in-betweens. But the rest of her is well familiar with how that old song and dance eventually ends. Peeling and slicing The Boyfriend’s bananas, she prays un-denominationally that she can sustain her current commitment to him. She stores the mushy fruit in a plastic container and tosses it in the freezer.

SATURDAY

The Boyfriend keeps three tabs of acid in an empty dental floss case on the bottom shelf of his gunmetal nightstand. Each piece is the size of Ella’s pinky nail and advertised by the dealer as extra strength. Flashbacks of her goth-girl-teens arise whenever The Boyfriend tries convincing her to trip with him; while hallucinating, she’d learned her life’s vocation is to paint, accepted the deaths of her immediate family, fallen in love for the first time and realized her best friend was anything but (swiftly thereafter ending their toxic relationship). Consequently, she’s fearful of an LSD-laced epiphany that their relationship isn’t for the long haul. But her intensifying self-reflection is prompting her to finally discover the truth her own way.

She rises early on this sun-drenched Saturday morning, slipping out of bed softly to avoid rousing her recovering lover. He spent last night drinking with old college friends till the wee hours of the a.m. anyway, so it’s unlikely he’ll wake easily. These circumstances are usually flipped: traditionally she’s the one sleeping off a night of indiscretions while he’s already up and at ‘em, starting the day right with a smoothie and two-mile run to the waterfront and back, then gently nudging her conscious at about 3:00 p.m. with three Advils, a tall glass of ice water and no questions asked (her last time out was less than two weeks ago). But lately he’s been gradually assuming her behavior. Seems the end may have begun, and she needs to act now to ensure their best possible future, whether that’s together or not.

Once soft, the bananas are hardened when she pulls them from their cryo-slumber along with a bag of generic-brand frozen berries and two handfuls of ice, placing them on the crowded, coffee-stained kitchen counter. A collection of half-eaten takeout and countless empty beer bottles dominate its marble surface. Shaking a near-empty gallon of refrigerated almond milk, she’s pleased there’s enough left for two smoothies. She tosses everything into an oversized blender cup and switches on the “Magic” Bullet Blender with its familiar, unnerving jackhammer noise that’s anything but enchanting to her ears.

As she pours the mixture in two glasses and tops off each with one-and-a half tabs of acid, she hears sheets rustling, a snorty mumbling and the creaking bedframe. The door to the bedroom slowly opens, The Boyfriend emerging naked with a yawn (he overheats at night, no matter how high the AC), his average body exposed and dirty blond hair disheveled. Hey hon, he greets her in a throaty voice. Whoa, you made us breakfast?! Thanks, sexy. Just what I needed. He gives her an alcohol-and-rotten-fish-smelling kiss on the cheek. She stirs each glass with a bent spoon (they’re in dire need of new silverware), allowing the secret ingredient to fully envelop their healthy meal. Yeah, well, I didn’t break up the fruit enough in the blender, she white lies, handing over one of the glasses. Drink up! It’ll help with the hangover. Take these Advils too. He chucks the pills down his throat and chugs the smoothie. A burp, then he’s off to the bathroom for a shit.

Quickly slurping down her serving with a stainless-steel straw (plastic ones are hard to come by nowadays, and the cardboard kind on her lips gives her the chills), she uses her pointer finger to pull out the soggy tabs stuck on the side of the glass. Sucks them off and swallows. The only thing left to do is wait, so she flops down on the couch and ignites the good ol’ Fire TV Stick and the latest episode of Euphoria.

The faint sound of a toilet paper roll rattling around the holder means he’s finishing his business. Materializing again, he lets out a deep sigh, dragging his body next to where she lies, bringing with him a waft of Febreze and the stench of a hangover shit. He burps again and chuckles. There was this homeless dude inside the bar begging everyone for money, so weird, he shares randomly. Oh, I’ve been thinking we should go to Portugal…

SUNDAY

An impressive Sunday sunrise. Life has already moved on from yesterday’s trip, but Ella’s certain she never will (not completely, anyway). Via the bedroom window blinds (she desperately needs to buy blackout curtains), the 6:00 a.m. daylight bleeds into her eyes like a vampire’s worst nightmare. Sleep is always brief for her the night after taking LSD; the overwhelming visual effects she experiences while high never disappear when it’s time for shut-eye. Instead they’re more intense. For an hour or two before dozing off half-conscious till the a.m., she’s stuck watching a cartoon of Dante’s Inferno on her eyelids, starring characters from The Simpsons.

She rises unconcerned with the sound of sheets rustling and the creaking bedframe. The reason to keep quiet has been eliminated with her relationship; The Boyfriend left her yesterday. He didn’t take too kindly to her dosing him. At first, he found it arousing, achieving perhaps the biggest erection she’d ever seen him have. He was giggling uncontrollably at the second episode of Euphoria, during which Nate (played by the gorg Jacob Elordi) beats a guy to a pulp and rapes him. As the visuals kicked in, so did her libido and the realization of how much she loved this man, how passionately generous and unconditionally accepting he’d been with her for years. All her bad habits and emotional baggage, the bold selfishness, ignored. While he looked the other way on countless occasions, she was searching for fulfillment in every direction but his. How insanely mistaken you were! she scolded herself. Rushing to her knees, she yanked down his sweatpants and devoured him. The howls he made as she orally coaxed him to completion were magnificent.

Holy shit, hon, oh my god. That was so wild. What’s going on, everything is vibrating. Barely pulling on his sweatpants, he darted for the bathroom and knelt over the toilet puking. She walked to the sink beside him and rinsed her mouth. Checked herself in the mirror. Watched as the wrinkles in her forehead became white worms, slithered off her face and flew away. Feeling beautiful and perfect, she finally divulged she’d dosed him.

We’re on the acid, hon! I put it in our smoothies. I’ve just been so horrible lately, pushing you away. You know I’ve been scared to take it because of the revelations I have on it. But it was worth the risk! I now know I love you so much and I’m so sorry. I’m going to be better to you, to us. He looked into her with incredulous eyes. You did fucking what?! Are you kidding me, Ella! My parents are coming to the city today for my dad’s birthday. What the fuck is wrong with you?! 

And that… was that. A few more harsh sentences (one of which was We’re done for good, you crazy bitch!), a packed bag, his snubbing her pleas not to go out in public high or leave her there alone and on drugs, an exit with a slammed front door. Sobbing and hallucinating, she texted him nonstop for hours (but never called for some reason). Eventually the blue iMessages turned green, which meant he’d blocked her or shut off his new iPhone (he’d just gotten the 11).

Ella enters the living room overcome with sadness and regret. She glances at the blank canvases leaning against the modern glass coffee table with an abstractly shaped oak base, then texts her coke dealer.

THE END

The KGB Bar and Reading Room was my home away from home in college—you could even say I grew up there. Which is why, years later, this opportunity to guest edit the journal is all the more special to me.

In some ways, the theme of the issue felt a bit like cheating. The dilemma lay in trying to produce something that involved writers I’ve read and long admired along with what I believe is the role of any good journal: to give platform to new voices. So, to ask the writers I admire, who are established in the craft, to share with us the works of new voices that they have been mesmerized by, whom they feel the world should know, felt like the most logical thing in the world. It also left little work to do on my part.

I was somewhat surprised to see the diversity of writers in Voice, because it wasn’t something I was conscious about when making the selections. Living in New York, I’ve always been fortunate enough to be able to forget where I come from, what my gender is. I still believe, in my utopia, that should be the case. My aim here was to showcase hidden jewels, irrespective of everything else. As luck would have it, when you look for something different and special, you, by default, look everywhere—under every pillow.

I am humbled and taken aback by the work we have published here. Putting this issue together reminded me of how much talent and incredible work there is out there, outside our radar. Beauty never ceases.

So here is an issue that brings you voices you have possibly never heard of but should know about—beautiful, melancholic, brutal and strong.

Dale is in a cult. He is a cult member. Dale is seventeen. He is the fourth-youngest member of the cult.

Dale was born into the cult. It is all he’s ever known.

The cult is a religious cult. They worship their own god. The god that the cult worships is the 1984 film The Karate Kid, directed by John G. Avildsen.

The cult was started in 1986 by Dale’s uncle, Steve. Steve started the cult shortly after the film The Karate Kid became available on videocassette.

At first, Dale’s parents joined Steve’s cult because a few months earlier they had given Steve a large amount of money to get him back on his feet. They were worried Steve would do something stupid with the money.

But, eventually, Dale’s parents started to worship the film The Karate Kid, too, just like Steve.

Over the years, the cult grew and grew. Steve was a good cult leader, and the members of the cult were happy with the cult.

The cult met two nights a week. They watched The Karate Kid. They had pot-lucks and talked about The Karate Kid and prayed about The Karate Kid. They had Karate Kid costume parties. At the costume parties, everyone dressed up as a character from the Karate Kid, and the characters danced to music from the movie.

This part of the story has been the ground situation. The inciting incident follows.

In 2010, when Dale was seventeen years old, Steve got sick, and Steve later died. The cult got a new leader. The new leader was Steve’s oldest son, Harry.

Harry was a fanatic. He wore his facial hair in a way that made him look scary. Harry hadn’t liked the way that his father had run the cult. Harry thought that the cult should do more than just have parties.

Harry started to question whether or not the members of the cult really did worship the film The Karate Kid. Harry suspected that at least some of the members just liked the movie a lot, and liked going to the parties. 

Harry declared that there would be trials. All cult members would take part in the trials. The first trial was answering trivia questions about The Karate Kid. Harry had found the trivia questions on the internet.

Most of the cult members did fine on the trivia questions. They had seen the movie a lot. Two members did poorly, and Harry asked them to leave the cult. The remaining cult members were fine with this. They hadn’t liked those two, anyway. Those two never brought anything good to the potlucks.

Later that year, the remake of The Karate Kid came out in theaters, and then on DVD.

Harry declared that the remake of The Karate Kid was a false god that should be destroyed. Harry bought a bunch of copies of the DVD and gave the cult members hammers and lighter fluid and matches with which to destroy the DVD’s.

Several of the cult members thought that this was a bit much. They thought the remake was alright. They had gotten together, without Harry knowing, to go see it.

Those several cult members thought that the cult wasn’t fun anymore like when Steve was around. So they decided to leave the cult.

Harry declared good riddance to the non-believers.

Next Harry declared that all cult members should get tattoos. Must get tattoos. Big ones. But several of the remaining cult members didn’t want big tattoos, so several more left the cult.

Good riddance, Harry declared again.

There were only about a half-dozen cult members left. Harry insisted that these half-dozen were the true believers. Harry was right: the half-dozen cult members that were still around really did worship the film The Karate Kid.

Except for Dale. Dale had a secret.

Dale no longer worshipped the film The Karate Kid. Over the years, while in the cult, Dale had come to worship the actress Elisabeth Shue, instead.

The actress Elisabeth Shue played the character Ali-with-an-i in the film The Karate Kid. Dale was in love with Elisabeth Shue. Madly. Head over heels.

So when the fanatic Harry declared, in his biggest, boldest declaration yet, that the cult would be kidnapping all of the directors and producers and crewmembers and actors (other than Pat Morita, who had played Mister Miyagi and who had since passed away) and actresses and extras and everyone—EVERYONE!—who had been involved in creating the cult’s one true god for a grand, ceremonial reenactment, and then, when, through a series of events, Dale discovered that Harry’s true intentions, Harry being a fanatic, were not to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial reenactment but instead to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial sacrifice—a human sacrifice to the one true god—Dale decided that he must flee the cult and must himself kidnap Elisabeth Shue before Harry could get to her.

But when Harry discovers that Dale has fled the cult and, through another series of events, also discovers that Dale has discovered Harry’s true intentions, Harry sends his cult members in pursuit of Dale. To stop Dale, at any cost.

The inciting incident having concluded, the story now has a protagonist (Dale) and a conflict (Dale wants to save Elisabeth Shue, whom he loves and worships, from Harry) and an antagonist (Harry the fanatic).

Dale found Elisabeth Shue before the cult members found him. It wasn’t hard; he knew where she lived. He worshipped her and all.

Dale didn’t break into Elisabeth Shue’s house, at first. He waited for her to come out of her house to go somewhere.

Because Dale loved her so much, he couldn’t help but be honest with Elisabeth Shue. He told her her life was in danger. She walked faster. He told her to come with him. That he could save her. She told him to eff off.

So Dale broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house.

When Elisabeth Shue found Dale in her house, she told him to go away. Then she said she’d call the police. The she said she’d shoot him.

Dale tried to explain the situation. The danger she was in. But Elisabeth Shue wouldn’t listen.

But then some of the cult members arrived. They knew where Elisabeth Shue lived, too. Harry had made a big list.

The cult members made a lot of noise and broke a lot of glass when they broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house. They scared Elisabeth Shue, so she went with Dale. She brought the gun she had threatened to shoot Dale with. 

If a gun, etc.

Dale and Elisabeth Shue escaped in Elisabeth Shue’s car. Elisabeth Shue drove. Despite being seventeen, Dale did not have a driver’s license. He had grown up in a cult. Dale had gotten to Elisabeth Shue’s house by bus. Elisabeth Shue really didn’t live that far from where Dale lived.

Elisabeth Shue drove into the desert. Elisabeth Shue didn’t live that far from the desert, either.

She stopped the car. She and Dale got out. They were in the middle of nowhere. It had been nighttime when they had escaped from Elisabeth Shue’s house, but now it was daytime. 

Elisabeth Shue pulled out the gun and pointed it at Dale. Dale hadn’t known that Elisabeth Shue had brought the gun. She demanded to know who the eff Dale was and what the eff was going on.

Dale told her everything.

He told her about the cult: his uncle, the potlucks, Harry, the tattoos. And he told her about Harry’s plan. The real plan. And he told her how much he loved her. And worshipped her. So much so that he just couldn’t let that happen to her.

In a long, dramatic scene, Elisabeth Shue points her pistol at Dale and demands that Dale tell her what he loves so much about her. Dale then launches into a dramatic monologue about three tiny moments in the film Karate Kid—little moments that no one ever probably noticed ever but that Dale had watched and rewatched over and over and over again that had made Dale fall in love with her. By the time Dale finished his monologue, Elisabeth Shue had lowered the pistol.

Elisabeth Shue had been twenty-one years old when she played the female lead in the 1984 film, The Karate Kid. In the desert, with Dale, she was fifty-four. 

Despite the age difference between Dale and Elisabeth Shue, at the end of Dale’s monologue there was a moment where it was possible that they might have kissed.

But then they saw a line of cars coming quickly down the road. Dust flying.

This has been the Act One climax, which has ended on a positive charge in relation to Dale’s object of desire (to rescue Elisabeth Shue).

This has also been the Inciting Incident of Subplot A, a star-crossed love story starring Dale, 17, and Elisabeth Shue, 54.

Elisabeth Shue has a husband. She is married. When Elisabeth Shue’s husband got home from work and his wife was missing and there was broken glass on the floor, he called the police. This is the Inciting Incident of Subplot B.

The police came and did what they do, but it was all moving too slowly for Elisabeth Shue’s husband, who was frantic. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He got into his car and went looking for his wife. 

Before leaving, though, Elisabeth Shue’s husband went around back to put food out for the dog. Outside one of the broken windows, he found a wallet. A cult member had dropped it.

Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s discovery of the cult member’s wallet, which contained the cult member’s driver’s license indicating the cult member’s home address, is Subplot B’s Act One climax (a positive charge).

Subplot A’s Act One climax occurs in the very next scene when, with the cult members in hot pursuit, Elisabeth Shue has the opportunity to escape on her own, without Dale. But she hesitates. And, in an action indicating feelings for Dale (the indication of those feelings further indicated by appropriate facial expression), she goes back for him (positive charge).

In Act Two of this story the Central Plot is complicated by seven scenes, Subplot A by five, and Subplot B by three, all culminating in the Act Two climax. 

Act Two, therefore, consists of fifteen scenes, the three scenes complicating Subplot B nestled within the five scenes complicating Subplot A, those five scenes likewise nestled within the seven scenes complicating the central plot, the series of fifteen scenes ending on a one two three causal sequence of scenes from, in particular order, Subplot B, Subplot A, and Central Plot, those three scenes amounting to the Subplot B Act Two climax (Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s sleuthing leads him directly to Harry himself who then kidnaps Elisabeth Shue’s husband and ties him up [negative charge], the reader learning at that point that Harry has also kidnapped and tied up Dale’s parents) causing simultaneously the Subplot A and Central Plot climaxes (Elisabeth Shue learns that Harry has abducted her husband whom despite this new love for Dale she cares for very much so Elisabeth Shue abandons Dale to go save her husband [negative charge, Subplot A] sending Elisabeth Shue straight into the clutches of fanatic Harry [negative charge, likewise, Central Plot]), all setting up the subsequent Act III climax and resolution. 

In the Act Three climax, in which all characters and all Subplots are brought together in a single scene in a single location, said scene in said location orchestrated in Bond-villain-fashion by the fanatic Harry, Harry forces Dale to choose between his Object of Desire, Elisabeth Shue, whom, as a result of her attempt to free her husband, Harry has also captured and tied up, or Dale’s own parents. Dale ultimately decides to release Elisabeth Shue back to her husband (positive charge: Central Plot and Subplot B; negative charge: Subplot A). Elisabeth Shue and husband depart, setting off a showdown between Dale and Harry resulting in Dale’s parents being saved and Harry being defeated.

Somewhere in all that, the gun introduced in Act One is fired.

BH James, 39, writing this story three-and-a-half weeks after he was told by his wife Liz that, despite his not remembering them as such, the first four months of the year preceding by four years this year had been the worst, most perilous months of his and her marriage, BH James, over the course of those three-and-a-half months, questions wife Liz about those earlier four months, Liz generously obliging and thereby, despite the bitterness for both parties of the revisitation, helps BH reconstruct/reorchestrate the story. 

The Inciting Incident of the worst, most perilous months of BH’s marriage occurs in January, on moving day. His wife, Liz, tells him to be careful when mounting the TV. But he doesn’t listen. And he breaks it. And she cries, not about the TV, and she leaves and doesn’t come back for a long time. Negative charge.

BH writes this scene into a story titled Wiff and then swears to Liz that it’s not them.

The Act One Climax occurs in February. Liz, having put baby to bed, stations herself, as she does every night, alone in bedroom, where she will spend the next several hours, alone, while BH writes, Liz careful not to disturb BH, who frequently complains that he never has time to write anymore.

This night, though, BH comes and stands in the doorway. He has just learned that his first novel, Parnucklian for Chocolate, published one year earlier and having failed to meet any and all expectations, is a finalist for an award. A PEN award, he tells her, which is misleadingly vague but true.

Liz exclaims! emotes! attempts a hug that BH shies from. It’s not a big deal, he tells her. Don’t tell anyone.

He leaves, goes back to his desk, and she is again alone. Negative charge.

The Act Two Climax occurs in March, when BH insists to Liz—BH and Liz having just purchased a house after recently having a child and therefore having little expendable income—that he has to has to has to go to AWP in Seattle—that he’s a writer and he has to, BH however, in contrast to the previous year, in Boston, when he signed books at his publisher’s booth each of the three days he was there [his wife at home with their fever-sick six-month-old son], BH was participating in no signings, no readings, no offsite events, nothing at all in particular.

But he had to go, because he was a writer.

And when BH went (for four days) he hardly called home, barely spoke to his wife, to his son not at all.

Upon returning, BH, 36, finished the first draft of a long short story titled The Anti-Story and set at a fictional version of AWP Seattle. The protagonist of the story is a writer. Unmarried, with no kids.

Negative Charge.

BH James, 39, writing this story four years later with the help of his wife Liz, has read in a book about stories that scenes in a series should alternate in charge (positive, negative, positive, etc.). But that is not how this story goes.

The Act Three Climax occurs in April, when BH’s wife Liz makes an appointment for marriage counseling because her husband for months now has been a cold distant self-absorbed prick, clearly wishing at all times to be anywhere but in his own home, lamenting frequently that he’s not even a writer, anymore, not even a writer.

Liz tells BH about the appointment. BH, teacher, responds that he’s chaperoning a field trip in Sacramento that day. He’s doing it to help out another teacher. Liz stresses the importance of not going on the field trip. BH goes anyway, misses the appointment.

Liz makes plans to leave. Negative charge.

The Resolution occurs in June. BH, 36, teacher, is at a three-day training in Florida. On the first day, his cell phone breaks. It turns off and won’t turn back on, and it won’t charge. He tries calling from the hotel, several times. Leaves messages. Sends emails from a computer in the lobby. He walks to several stores to buy several devices that might make his phone turn on, but none of them work.

BH spends most of the three days alone in his room, reading. By the time BH arrives at the airport to fly home, he has not spoken to his wife or son for three days. He searches for the payphones, but can’t find any. People don’t really use them anymore, so they’d been removed. BH asks someone. He never asks. There is one payphone left.

When Liz answers, BH tells her the story of his three days without a phone. Then he tells her he loves her, and misses her. He asks to talk to his son. When Liz is back on, BH tells her he is coming home. BH intends BH’s statement that he is coming home to have both literal and figurative meaning.

BH tells Liz they should have another baby. By August she is pregnant, and the following April their second-born is born. Positive charge.

Four years later, Liz will tell BH, who is writing this story, that, as bad as it was, from that point on, it’s all been pretty good.

By the end of the Act III climax, Dale has achieved his external Object of Desire: Elisabeth Shue is safe. Harry is in jail. But Dale is not happy. Dale did not achieve his internal Object of Desire: the love of Elisabeth Shue.

But, in the end, Elisabeth Shue comes back to Dale (positive charge). She hugs her husband, pets her dogs, and leaves them. And in the story’s final scene, Dale comes home to find her standing, waiting, at the stairs.

At BH, 39’s, and Liz, 34’s son’s preschool graduation, as they wait for the ceremony to begin, BH and Liz have a lively debate about the location of the climax of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. BH contends that what they had written about the 5-act structure in the book they had co-authored (Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of English) was all wrong. That the whole play progresses toward the duel, after which there is only the unraveling. Liz, who knows the play better, retorts that the uncertainty is resolved in the closet scene, and the certainty is what matters.

BH cites Aristotle. Liz cites another author, who said that Aristotle got most of it wrong. BH tries to respond, but the ceremony begins.

BH tells the same anecdote in a blog post titled Rethinking Shakespeare’s 5-Act Structure, later published as an article in a magazine for teachers.

The next morning, BH James will finish this story. And the day after that, BH will be 40. 

He picks up his pen, then puts it back down.

When he picks it up again, he writes…

THE END