TMI

From the Table of Contents for the journal Simulacrum.

From the Table of Contents for the short story anthology, TEL: Stories, edited by Jay Lake.

"Always Victorious"

and Tea

I have told this story before online, but what the heck, I will do it again, as concisely as possible.

In 2003, I infected author Paul Tremblay with the story "you then asia." Paul was just beginning what has become a very successful writing career, working as editor for ChiZine, which is the magazine to which I submitted "asia." It was the first time I had submitted a short story for professional publication anywhere. Paul read it, accepted it, and then we collaborated via email on some edits and publishing details. He was amazingly down to earth and supportive of me, a new and insecure writer, at the time. 

Many years later, Paul and I briefly discussed "you then asia" in person. He remembered it well.

In 2018, Paul's novel The Cabin at the End of the World was published and won the Bram Stoker Award, the equivalent of an Oscar for horror fiction.

In 2023, it was made into a feature film by director M. Night Shyamalan, entitled Knock at the Cabin.

When I watched Knock at the Cabin I nearly fell over.

So much of my autobiography had leaked into it, as if my story's light had passed through Paul's story's lens and the same thing had happened between Paul's story and M. Night's film. 

Freaking empaths and the crazy shit we do. :)

My fiction on one level can be read as something of a tug of war between three young ladies: my former next door neighbor Patricia Bell, who was black, a fellow summer camp counselor named Katie, who was blonde and had lots of freckles (like actress Abby Quinn), and someone else, a redhead who was of partly Asian descent.

"you then asia" (three words, but why are they all lower case? hmm...) has a lot of subtext encoded into it about these three women, who were girls, really, when I knew them.

Katie and I were counselors at a Catholic Charities camp for inner city kids across from World's End nature reservation in Hingham, MA.

That camp had cabins.

You may be able to see some other things in this trailer. 

For instance. I'm "Charlie." :)

The connections go far beyond what can be seen in this trailer, though. 

It's pretty cool.

There are four chambers in the human heart.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Katie was very, very special to me. I can probably count on one hand the people who have made me feel genuine joy, at all, and Katie is one of those people. Our chemistry was bananas, crazy strong puppy love, and she was brazen.  During meetings with all the counselors, Katie was constantly flirting with me, kicking me under the table, grabbing things out of my hand, throwing things at me. People got annoyed. She did not care. Actually I think she did, and she liked it. Girls were not allowed to visit boy counselors in their rooms. Katie broke that rule, got us both in trouble. 

It was so much fun.

I also loved the fact that I could see her watching me while I worked with the kids, horsing around, or telling stupid jokes, or comforting them, or getting them to act silly, or teaching them something. I was excellent at that job. I loved it. And sometimes I would look up and see the expression on Katie's face as she watched. Something like admiration, appreciation, pride in me. It felt amazing to be looked at that way by someone I liked so much. She didn't turn away, either. She let me see it. She gave me that gift, which even now, decades later, brings grateful tears to my eyes.

Katie was a couple of years younger than I was, however, and one day it all abruptly ended. 

Katie and I were in the break room, sort of playing ping pong. The game was rapidly devolving into something else. Katie kept grabbing the ball when I hit it over to her side and holding onto it, to make me come get it. She was gradually escalating the circumstances, and eventually tucked it up her shirt. I came up from behind her, reaching my arms around on either side, while she giggled and held onto it with both hands, pressed against her upper abdomen. I was intent on going to get it, and the shirt was starting to slide up, and up, when another counselor came in, a kid older than me, and made a remark that I inferred meant that Katie was too young for me.

Immediate shutdown on my end. I backed off, retreated back to my side of the table, and the game ended a few listless minutes later. I can still see Katie's facial expression across that table. Pure fury.

And that was the end of me and Katie. I would not go near her after that, much less touch her. I allowed myself to be shamed, guilted out of what probably stood as the most enjoyable relationship of my life for many, many years. 

It was pretty apocalyptic.

And I wrote about it. Over and over.

It may be hard to see, but "you then asia" is very much about that ping pong game.

So you can imagine my surprise when I read Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World and found it strangely replete with tennis and ping-pong imagery, symbols and language. Indecisive characters "ping-pong" between options when weighing a decision, for instance.  There is a lot of it.

I made a short video about some of it.

Here it is.  Has at least one significant typo, and I am not sure how easy it is to follow, a bit of a mess, and hardly complete, but I hope it captures the feel of it.

Posting it because very recently, for just a couple of minutes, seconds really, I felt kind of like I was playing with Katie again. 

And that was something.

"You make an old man cry"

"Start Me Up"

The Rolling Stones

It is like the prudent Woman who, having purchased a winning Powerball ticket, tucks the ticket away in a brown paper bag, surreptitiously jiggling and occasionally crying out loudly in the town square as she diligently avoids the angel who wants nothing more than to redeem it for her.

It is like a desert lake filled with the sweetest nectar, nestled between a pair of shapely, gelatinous mountains, where a thirsty Lion comes to drink. He laps at the honey with his tongue so he can watch the mountains quiver and rise and fall. He likes feeling the warm, sandy ground tremble and then shake all around him, and to be healed by the gentle wind moaning through the valley, whispering rough for only him to hear.

"Yes, darling. Good boy. Mommy likes it. More. Just like that. Keep it -"

Until speech abandons her and the screaming begins.

It is like British novelist and essayist Pamela Hansford Johnson and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, before either had become famous, when they were young and in love, on a sandy beach. 

It is like dawn arriving over the ocean, after a long night of shadows and rain.

It is like nothing the world has yet seen.

"The Lord will create a new thing on earth—
the woman will return to the man.”

Jeremiah 31:22

It is like my every dream has come true.

Literally all of them.

-

"The Weeds became flesh.”

John 1:14

-

'Much scurrying took place, and some sleight of hand. Things were built and help was hired, and through a pinpoint prick in the irreality of the world a substance unsenseable seeped. It coalesced rapidly into flesh, hair, teeth, eyes.

Eyelashes fluttered, spasmodic. Opened.

A smile the world had not yet seen flickered, flashed.

“Well,” said the glorious mouth forming that smile.

“Here I am.”'

"Weeds"

by Charles Tuomi

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"How long will you wander,  unfaithful Daughter Israel?"
Jeremiah 31:22