Silly Little Curses

Silly Little Curses

  The ring from Hell (Sig Chi)  

Article by Katie Rowley, art by Emmaline Hawley

The Ring 

“Curses aren’t real,” I hissed to my friends in the third floor study room, where about ten minutes ago, we were actually studying. But when the room next to ours—only divided by one of those fake walls with a giant gap in the floor—flooded with noise, we made it our mission to overpower them. The conversation had shifted from Marina attempting to explain her Biology of Microbes final paper to the spooky Ouija ring I had found the night before.  

The Discovery

Let me set the scene. After quite possibly the best pregame of the entire semester, distinguished by several dances on tables, my friends and I made our way to the infamous Sigma Chi. It being the weekend before fourth week, the usual line of people waiting to be let in by the frat bouncers who get off on telling people they can’t possibly fit any more bodies inside, was nonexistent. We made our way through the front doors, immediately confronted with the stench of sweaty bodies and cheap spilled beer, which only intensified as we made our way to the back room. The dance floor. Or, the half-drunk-people-jump-around-to-shitty-EDM floor.  Not sure if I would consider that dancing, but it's better than standing around in the kitchen watching people you don’t know play beer pong. The floor is covered in the aforementioned sweat and beer, making the “dancing” a very difficult process. We jumped around on the edge of the crowd for a while, until the ring made its way to me. I landed right on top of it and being the naturally curious person I am, I just had to reach down and pick it up. I inspected it just long enough to conclude that it was in fact a ring before slipping it into my back pocket. The night ended pretty shortly after that. 

The next morning, I investigated my finding. I discovered it fit perfectly around my index finger, like it was custom-made for me. A couple rinses of hot water and soap was enough to get the sticky residue it had picked up from the floor of Sig Chi, but the overwhelming penny-like smell lingered on my finger. 

The ring itself definitely had a weird vibe. An acrylic eye protruded from the surface; its hyperrealistic soul-seeing blue iris and pupil staring right at you. The eye was surrounded by a raised alphabet and an engraved “yes” and “no.” A Ouija ring. 

I thought it looked sick. Thus it made its way to the library with me and was subjected to an intense discussion on how disturbing it was and how it was, without a doubt, cursed. At the time, I chose to ignore this. This ring had made its way to me for a reason, and it was not to cause me endless misfortunes. 

Less than 48 hours later, I found myself doubting the pure intentions of the ring. For two weeks, I had been able to avoid the “frat flu,” which had turned out to be a concoction of pneumonia, strep, bronchitis, and sinus infections. I had gone out and partied with the infected.  All my friends had gotten it. Half of my class had gotten it. But I stayed clean. Until, of course, the Monday of Fourth Week. I woke up with phlegm settled deep into my chest, its presence suffocating me. Thankfully, I only had to meet one-on-one with my professor that day, and I could spend the rest of the day nursing myself back to health, working on my final project. 

Unfortunately, I woke up deathly ill the next morning: the day my project was to be presented. I begged my teacher via email to let me Zoom into class and not present that day; she only agreed to the former. I had to present. In the middle of my presentation, my fever peaked at 103℉. I barely remember anything I said. The only relief came from the brief naps I took while others were presenting. 

This illness, despite numerous rounds of various antibiotics, countless tests for Covid, and home remedies, didn’t fully leave my body for two months. It was also the beginning of The Incidents. 

We’ll get to those in a minute. But first, for all you skeptics out there: I know that there are so many reasonable explanations that do not point to me being cursed by a ring. I could’ve picked up illnesses from my friends, or random people I passed on campus. Or, the ring itself was covered in germs picked up from the floor of Sig Chi. Doesn’t mean the ring is cursed. But, I like to blame all of my problems on inanimate objects instead of facing my reality that I am the cause for most of them. Plus, curses are so in right now. 

The Incidents

Shortly after contracting the plague, everything, to put it simply, turned to shit. The frequency of nights out ending with me sitting outside Boettecher sobbing or puking my guts out increased. The tension between my roommate and me progressed into yelling matches. Everything was bad and getting worse. So, I decided to stop wearing the ring. I set it in a bowl with all of my other discovered trinkets alongside my crystals, hoping their energy would cleanse it. 

Honestly, after a while, I had forgotten about it. Things turned around. Months went by. I went to a concert in another state without telling my parents and did not get kidnapped. I started talking to someone new. I stopped crying all the time. But the curse drew me back in, and with a quick glance at my crystals, I was reminded of its existence. An urge to start wearing the ring again. It was just so cool. It had to be worn. 

The Text 

Our romance started out like any other college romance: on a roof. Well actually, if we’re being technical, it began on the microcosm that is Colorado College Tinder. We had matched a while back before he messaged (I never message first), and after a thrilling conversation about planes, we progressed to iMessage. After many failed attempts to get together and a very busy block in which I totally forgot about his existence, our romance culminated, on a roof. In November. At night. 

We spent the entire night talking, our bodies pressed against each other. It was warm, for November in Colorado. 40 degree darkness made even colder by our stagnation. My hands slipped under his shirt to keep my fingers from freezing off. Warmth. I hadn’t been that close to someone for months. I hadn’t felt that close to someone for months. 

I wasn’t wearing the ring then. That’s why the night went so well. And as soon as I put the ring on, just a few days after the roof, the calamity began. 

Our texts got shorter. The frequency of fruitless attempts to hang out increased. And then, it happened. 

On one unusually warm December night, I got The Text. We all know it. The “I don’t wanna ghost but I do not want to talk to you” text. The “I am definitely talking to someone new, someone more interesting, someone better. And, I don’t know how to say that without sounding like I completely disregarded whatever hope you had for this relationship” text. 

I was devastated. I drove around the unfamiliar roads of Colorado Springs, sobbing. Our relationship wasn’t anything more than one night and some texts, but my delusion had built a house of hope for me and the idea of him. And the curse had burnt that home down.  Things were going so well. Then, I decided to wear the goddamn ring. 

Now, to address the skeptics once again, yes, there are other factors that may have resulted in this text, and all the feelings wrapped up in the words sent. But things changed so suddenly, and the only thing I had done differently was wear an accessory on my index finger.  Yes, Venus was in retrograde. No, I can't read minds and I have no idea how he actually felt throughout the extent of our fling. But, once again, is it not easier to blame a small piece of metal than to actually try to evaluate what went wrong? 

The Accident 

Less than a week after The Text, The Accident happened. 

Now, I’ve crashed my car before. This past July, I was too focused on finding the perfect Spotify playlist for my drive to work that I forgot to break, rear ending a very nice lady and totalling my 2014 Subaru Outback that I had owned for less than a month. I screamed louder than I ever have. I relive that day in my nightmares. I’ve become an overcautious driver. 

The Accident was different. After a cathartic drive with my friends, we returned to campus for dinner. But before we could make it into the parking lot, someone ran into me. The all-too-familiar screeching of machine and breaks. My own screams. The headache of car insurance. They were because of the ring. The damage was minimal. But it was enough to make my dad angry and it was enough to blame the ring. 

The Ending

That night, I took the ring off for good, hoping to rid myself of its energy. Hoping to finally be uncursed. But I don’t think the curse will leave for good until I am completely unburdened by the ring. Currently, it lives in my bathroom drawer, underneath hair clips and skin care creams, almost forgotten. But not gone. I need it gone. 

There's a lot of literature on cursed objects, including some very informative Tumblr pages. But they all suggest the same remedies for removing: cleanse the ring in moonlight, or with your other crystals. None of them suggest actually getting rid of the object or considering that maybe the object is not to blame for all of the things you're attributing to a curse. I thought about burning it. Melting the acrylic eye and metal letters. This way, no one would ever be harmed by its curse ever again. But, I don’t know how to create a fire hot enough to liquify metal and I don’t think my RA would be cool with that.

So, the only real plan I could contrive was to return the ring. I don’t know it’s origins. I don't know who brought the ring to Sigma Chi all those months ago, but it must go back to them. Or at the very least, it must return to Sigma Chi. The plan is simple, next time we go out, I cannot return home with the ring. It needs to move on. I need this very real curse to stop curing me. 

Or maybe, I need to surrender to the critics. To admit that it is illogical to blame every small inconvenience in my life on a random object. To admit that the ring isn’t cursed, it is a small piece of metal that slipped off someone’s finger, a person who bought the ring off of some website because it fit their aesthetic. To admit that there is no sinister jinx. I was sick simply because it was unavoidable. The number of nights of drunken sadness increased because I was sad and alcohol brings out the worst in me. My roommates and I fought a lot because I was learning how to live with people for the first time. To admit that I got The Text because I didn’t communicate my feelings and the sender wasn’t in love with me. And The Accident happened because Mark, the other driver, didn’t know how to drive. 

Or maybe, I don’t need to give in. SO I won’t.  It is entirely possible that the ring I had the misfortune of finding is cursed. And every tribulation I have dealt with since September is because of some ancient curse seeped deep into the poignant acrylic eye. And until I get rid of the ring (which will hopefully be soon), I’ll continue to be cursed. 

Closed Eyes Turn Inward

Closed Eyes Turn Inward

  Follow the loser

Article by Yusuf Khan, art by  Isabella Hageman

Tall ceilings. Chipped paint on otherwise blank, cemented walls. One long window with the blinds kept closed throughout the day.  Intermittent thuds and pattering footsteps leak into the room from above and outside the door. The hum of a fan and the sound of gusty winds mirrors the inhabitant’s stream of consciousness and soothes him into a coma as they play into the night. The sounds continue into the day, filtering outside noise. The inhabitant seeks peace in the room’s silence. 

As the inhabitant is working or even sleeping, the distance from his mind to the tall ceiling makes room for the possibilities that dreaming brings. Although this sounds like a sheltered existence, the inhabitant a prisoner of his own mind, there is more to this room than meets the eye… 

Ⅰ. A Wanderer

Imagine a stuffy room. There’s a dining table and extra seating arrangements positioned behind and to the side of the table. Around the dining table, the main area, clusters of people with hidden vices masquerade behind a front. Bodies absorbed in conversation. On the outskirts are the extra people who couldn’t  fit at the main table. In the midst of these people is an individual. Let’s call her the ‘loser.’ The loser  may not feel connected with the event, but at least she has her dignity intact. Being a loser, this individual is nothing more than a presence, drifting aimlessly and looking down at her phone to avoid feelings of self-consciousness. It is important to not feel pity for the loser because ‘loser’ is only a surface-level term that ignores the richness that lies beneath. 

The loser is easily annoyed by multiple self-affirming finger-snaps when everyone is in agreement at the main table, along with the ‘individual’  who uses the word “right” in an explanation as if expecting its listeners to understand what it is saying. “Right” is a condescending way of expecting someone to understand what the ‘individual’ thinks is common knowledge. The loser is also quick to notice how segregated this event is. The same event that is built on inclusivity and surrounded by a plethora of antiracist statements. The question then arises, “And yet, whose voice dominates?” And so, we tend to hear more from them. It is these events that lead to feelings of apathy and loss of sensation. The initial pleasure of going to them is lost, but for the loser, that pleasure was never there to begin with. 

New questions then arise, “Out of the wide social circles these bodies have access to, who do you think they’re more inclined to talk to? And if the problematic characters of these bodies are not called out before they become a problem, won’t this cycle just continue? In a supposedly socially conscious, progressive world, why does the feeling of disconnect still loom large?” 

The loser understands that one should never lose oneself to fit in the norm or continue to use traditional ways of thinking that have kept us circling around the problem but failing to nip it in the bud. It is at this point that the loser decides to leave, realizing that not only is the room starting to feel stuffy, but that it isn’t worth expending effort to build community there. And so, she, like the inhabitant, seeks refuge elsewhere in a place where she can acknowledge her potential… 

One might ask, what good does being well-educated do when your thinking is so aligned with what has been curated for you in the form of literature that you cannot form your own thoughts? What harm is there in looking up from the book pages every now and then? Why is there a lack of trust in oneself to observe what is happening before you and learn for pleasure rather than academic purposes? Some call it “dumbing down,” but that’s only because they’ve been blinded by the historically dominant voice in academic discourse and are so used to their writing styles that anything written clearly cannot be taken seriously.

The room knows all too well that the problem with intellectualizing and quantifying anything is that it only looks at the subject for its value, what it can offer, and what others stand to gain from it. At that point, the intellectualized subject is thrust into a competition that unnecessarily assigns metrics to determine its worth. And so, the room does not belong to any one inhabitant, nor does it need an overly long explanation of its role. It’s just a relationship. 

At the end of a long day’s work, the inhabitant heads to the room’s bed. The room is  a place where ideas flourish; the bed is where it starts. And not all ideas are pleasant. Into the depths of the inhabitant’s mind, anxieties, doubts, and regrets come and go. Sometimes they linger. A Kubrick-like obsession with these ideas takes place. The room’s lighting comforts the restless mind by using its darkness to help the inhabitant concentrate just on that empty void of black, dotted space. With enough scrunching of the eyes, all other thoughts vanish, and the inhabitant falls asleep. 

Let’s return to the loser… 

Ⅱ. Lights out/Fleeting Joy 

We find the loser still drifting aimlessly. They say to do what interests you, but she has no idea where to start. Her burning curiosity cannot be narrowed down to a single interest and it’s easy to say she can just do a thematic minor to satiate that curiosity. But this is much bigger than that. At this point, the loser has tried so many things to get involved but has found no meaningful connection. Not because of the clubs themselves, but because of the people who run them. “I write because it’s the only way for me to put myself out there, to strike connections, to be noticed. It’s something to take comfort and joy in, not something I have to ‘buckle down’ and force myself to do. Then again, is it really worth the effort to put yourself out there? I don’t look like them, behave like them, certainly wasn’t raised like them (any sense of self is othered or displaced from the original self for a more safer, presentable self; self-hate). I’d have to lose a part of myself to fit in with what they understand as normal. Even then there is no guarantee of acceptance. This change demands something more that I’m just not sure I have the energy for.. It might’ve just been a rocky start because of things out of my control. But I’m saying this a couple of years into it. The thought of putting on a social mask and having to tweak it with each encounter is exhausting.  The ‘what makes you you’’ is lost. No, that’s not me,” she thinks to herself.    

One thing to note about the loser is that she’s dedicated. A thought may get her down, but that itself is a source for inspiration for what she may later write about. One day, the loser passes by a couple of groups and hears about a club for creatives based in an academic building and decides to give it another shot. She enters and before taking another step, she pauses, slowly looking up to see the tall, distant ceilings and then to three long flights of stairs (much like the unreachable, excessive steps toward understanding the concepts taught in the building). 

After climbing the final set of steps, the loser stops to catch her breath (her actual face mask making it all the more difficult to breath, almost like a panic attack quietly internalized to avoid making a scene). She then faces an empty hallway lined with cone-shaped lights from start to finish. The lights move with her and start to look like unfocused orbs as if in a movie where a stream of colorful city lights at night become background blur.  The loser enters the room to see a coffeehouse and L-shaped sofas. 

She eventually finds them holed up in their ‘creative space’ only to see more of the same. Notice how there is nothing to let her know where the ‘creatives’ are, the uninviting yet laid-back atmosphere, and how alienated one can feel even in a group— it’s inclusive only when looking from afar. She finds a seat. It is here she first lays eyes on these ‘holier than thou,’ bitter, sarcastic characters. “Hey, do you know when the meeting’s going to start?” she asks the ‘individual’ sitting next to her. The ‘individual’ gives her a crazy look, wide eyes, smiling, nodding, and an “mmhmm.” Someone in front of the room finally asks everyone to go around and introduce themselves. A couple of moments later, the spotlight is now on the loser, who flips her chair, pushes everything off the table, and gets on top of it. 

“Just by reading the room, I can tell it doesn’t matter who I am. Like all of you, I came here seeking something resembling belonging. All I’ll say about me is that I’m a hedonist, a procrastinator. I stick to what makes me feel good despite all the pain. Your self-sufficient Western culture tells you all this is bad to guilt you into being more productive. That it’s all about chasing a bag and the nonstop grind, failing to realize just how useful focusing on yourself can be. So yeah, I’ll sleep through the day and work through the night. Call me an armchair philosopher, an unlicensed sociologist. You pride yourselves on a progressive lifestyle, but you’ll be the first ones to cast someone out when they critique this thing you call a ‘group’ (think white feminism). Why? Because you don’t listen. I’ve listened to y’all for long enough. You think I’m being cynical for no reason. Look around and ask yourselves, ‘What provoked her to act out like this?’ instead of being upset at me for being upset. So please, sit down, listen, and shut up while I’m talking.” 

An ‘individual’ in one of the bewildered groups asks, “Are you, like, having a breakdown? It’s really inappropriate and rude of you to interrupt like this.” 

“You see, I see through your mirage. If your group really was accessible, then it wouldn’t have been this hard to find instead of having to play it by word-of-mouth. Think the overuse of aesthetics (obsessing over something like a TV show and hyping it up to the point where it loses what made it special, becoming just another mainstream product lost in Netflix’s library and ‘quantity over quality’ mantra). Your world, your reality, is built on recycled trash. Like the game developer Ubisoft and a term coined not too long ago: ‘open-world fatigue.’ Repetitive tasks but no meaningful interactions. The pandemic isn’t the disease anymore. It’s always been y’all to each other. Look at COVID like a positive disruptive force that sheds light on failing systems that halt a never-ending, capitalistic machine where you work to live and live to work. The possibility of a four-day work week is water to the raging fire that burns inside the hollow machine. Cloth masks are the new social masks, except now it’s a good thing. Those who seek to be heard, not seen, work like thieves in the night, eyes twitching from fatigue. Ambiverts, or a blend of introverts and extroverts, who don’t subscribe to a black-and-white vocabulary, reconnect with themselves through their work. They seek refuge from a world where big personalities and outspokenness are looked at as signs of confidence. Whatever happened to stylistic confidence?” 

Another ‘individual’ interrupts, “Do you want to step down now? We really don’t care about this monologue of yours, and we feel super uncomfortable. Looks like someone needs to take responsibility for themselves.” 

“Monologue?! So then what do you call these little clubs of yours? Hmm? You and your peers are so used to validation that you can’t begin to imagine what someone like me goes through daily. Sleepless nights while restless minds lay awake, suffering in silence, numb to it all. You’ll just send out meaningless surveys to gather data but never insight into the experiences and environment that shape someone. You’re the upstairs neighbor jumping on the ceiling while the downstairs folk are planning. Huh, and you wanna talk responsibility. And stop it with these polite rhetorical questions you’re compelled to say yes to. No, I don’t wanna. So, if you’ll allow me to finish—” 

The ‘individual’ responds, “No! You can’t just barge in here like this and honestly, we don’t have to stand for this!” 

“Says who? The doors are locked. I guess you’ll just have to wait your turn like I did for this moment. I have nothing to lose. After all, I’m a loser, I just need room to improve. All those times of rejection, self-doubt, by myself. Caring too much about what they think gnaws away night after night. Doubting if I’m doing enough. Reaching out to all these people and still being left with more questions than answers. Comparing myself to others leads to an endless rabbit hole. Been down so long, you forget what it’s like to be up. You have all the advantages to do great things while the rest are left to dream. Like the job paradox: to get experience you need experience. When you’re prepping for an interview, they make it out to be a casual thing, tell you to be yourself. But really, there’s a lot at stake. The formalities and standard questions add to this overbearing atmosphere where every single thing about you has to be fine-tuned to keep them smiling while you politely put one on yourself. ‘Be your best self’ and ‘fake it till you make it’ add new meaning to this friendly, outgoing persona. And the interviewees will do anything to please them, even if that means blindly agreeing with flawed efforts that claim to solve inequalities while the people they intend to serve are still left with a hefty financial burden (fake woke). 

So, for someone like me who doesn’t have much going for her, I ask: when it comes down to it, are we really that different from the taboo entertainment industries you like to shame others for watching? Putting on an illusion, pitching an attractive idea of yourself to your next employer. And you know what they say about loyalty to a company... One can be an investment consultant on Wall Street with high earnings, giving well-informed advice, but still get away with unethical, scummy behavior. Their untouched status placed high on a pedestal by their Ivy League education and connections in higher places. Like smoking a pack of Newport’s, it filters what would be a harsh taste. While the other profession is stigmatized (but now the norms are more liberal). It brings to life tensions that’ve been repressed in the back of the mind, yearning to be released. Once self-discipline cannot hold it back any longer, tensions become desires condensed into viewable form for the voyeur. New companies take advantage of this stigma knowing their morally dubious place by taking a leap into a new, creative direction of high-end content with more of a focus on production. The unnamed profession finally commands respect but nowhere near Wall Street’s level. The only difference is one makes more than the other and has a degree for what’s looked at as a respectable job. Either way, both industries are morally bankrupt. Neither are above one another. It’s business as usual, how sellable something is, and then onto the next big thing once interest ends (like with each new iPhone release, even if that means little to no change), despite the gap in who is stigmatized. 

So, all I see in front of me are empty seats. It's like a ghost town. All I hear are the whispering trees. I start to shiver when the autumn breeze comes around. Yeah, I’m lazy and I don’t share your impressive Java, Excel, or photography skills. But I have an intense focus that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. I was asleep for most of high school. Too grown, in a way that I would feel uncomfortable sharing. But now I see more clearly. Look at all the drained students who excel in time management but look lifeless in class. You can hear it in their voices. Don’t look at me like that. Remember what I asked earlier, ‘What provoked her?’ And yeah, this isn’t the appropriate time to ‘lash out,’ like you’d say. It’s no excuse for my behavior, but like with any change in history, when will it ever be televised unless it ends badly?” 

An ‘individual’ says, “Oh my lord, she’s really going through it. Somebody call security!” 

The loser jumps down from the table, walking backwards toward a back door while facing the audience, head tilted down, eyes scanning the room above. A few minutes of silence pass. She draws her breath and shifts her jaw. In a calm, calculated way, she says, “And so, sometimes you need a demon to fight the devil. If the devil is as bad as they say, wait till you see me and this red flag warning I’ve been brewing. Better yet, take a good look at yourselves and the hidden histories that’ll tear your world asunder. Anyways, looks like I should get going.”  

Before she makes her escape, she leaves them with this: “By the way, none of you are creative. You’re craftsmen without a conscience. This misconception that to be creative, you have to be out and about, is a lie reflected in your scripts about self-entitled characters. That’s why I’d rather write something real to capture the unspoken zeitgeist. Just look around, that’s it.” Formerly known as ‘the loser,’ she faces the audience one last time, flips them off with her thumb sticking out, and kicks open an emergency exit as the alarm rings. As mysteriously as she entered, she leaves without a trace, no doubt getting back to doing what she does best… 

Ⅲ. Musings

Now, try to remember all the movies you’ve watched , the ones that stuck with you. Then ask yourself, “What makes a movie good?” Notice how with any movie that has breathtaking shots, a mesmerizing soundtrack, or even well-known celebrities, but is poorly written, it’s most likely not going to do well (a cliché doesn’t make it bad since the cliché can be made original with a unique take). The cut from one scene or character to another isn’t seamless, unlike a slow fade that makes it easier on the eyes. Then the question becomes, “What’s a good movie without substance?” Similarly, when it comes to who is studious and who is smart, a studious person doesn’t have greater depths to them. Their inner life is made up of a systematic, rigid knowledge instead of a perceptual, intuitive one. Like peeling back an orange. Its nutrients aren’t visible, but one only knows what’s on the inside once they take a bite and let it take effect. Their thirst for knowledge is instantly gratified by picking up a book but never will they be able to experience the wonder of it all because they’re stuck in constant analysis. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”— Albert Camus. The intelligent person explores other ways, adopts a growth mindset, and uses imagination to the best of his ability to keep his inner childlike wonder intact, which is often lost as one goes through adulthood. 

Sometimes what comes to mind comes out as half-baked, you feel intimidated by others’ responses, or you’re left unsatisfied with what you said. For example, it’s  easier to agree with a group’s opinion, but it’s much harder to go against the grain, especially when one has so many things to add but is so preoccupied with distilling those ideas to avoid any confusion or backlash. This leads to a new set of characters who exist in the same universe as the ‘loser’ but in a different reality: the ‘many militants.’ The ‘many militants’ aim to swiftly bring about change. But there’s a contradiction in how they go about it. There is no lesson to be learned, only hesitation when speaking one’s mind. 

Just look at the nostalgia adults have for the golden age of cartoons. The people behind these cartoons just wrote to the best of their ability, not to a specific audience. These cartoons dealt with themes made mature by the sophisticated, nuanced way characters approached issues. So like these cartoons, what we do and say will never perfectly fit into a conventional or acceptable standard. And like art, it can either be mindlessly reproduced into what’s accepted as correct (losing its value along the way) or strategically repurposed…

Ultimately, all the room requests out of this relationship is for one to be himself. And it may be hard to be yourself because you have to find yourself first. Going through this process by being confident enough to stick to what you like is tough. Even if you have an idea, they’ll make you feel guilty if you decide to focus on your interests. “Will my interest be the employer’s interest in the long run?” They’ll ask you what your major is, like that’s all they can ask about. They’ll never understand what it means to listen patiently and make your words matter. Not to mention FOMO. All the other amazing possibilities once you decide, rushing to fit in as much as you can to explore, knowing it might not happen again. That’s what the decision feels like, at least. But somehow, you just have to do what you did before that made you feel great and notice the pattern. So, like the inhabitant, take comfort in not knowing, knowing it’ll serve as a guide.

Forest Day

Forest Day

 Embracing aimlessness

Article by Logan Smith, art by  Andrew Little 

Lindy didn’t come to the forest on Sunday. She woke up with a runny nose that morning and her mother made her stay home.

Owen heard about Lindy’s cold from his mother and felt a sense of betrayal that his eight-year-old brain wasn’t yet able to apply a word to. Nonetheless, he found himself wondering why Lindy couldn’t have just chosen to make her nose run tomorrow, or the next day, or even the day after that. Sundays were forest days. They’d always been. Everyone knew that it was wrong to miss a forest day.

Owen’s mother wouldn’t let him go across the street to Lindy’s to ask her to make her nose stop running because it was “rude.” Owen didn’t see how any part of asking Lindy to make her nose stop running could be rude. If she took his advice, she’d probably feel better. When Owen asked a sixth time, his mother sighed loudly and left him alone in the kitchen.

Without Lindy, it was only Owen, Sammy, and Joe. It was harder with three. One of them would have to hold both flashlights—Sammy’s dad told them that it was always a good idea to bring at least two flashlights, no matter what time of day it was. Someone had to track down a new field journal. Lindy’s was blue with sparkly daisies, and though Sammy’s suggestion to break through Lindy’s window to grab it from her desk was compelling for a second, the boys ultimately decided against it. It probably would make Lindy’s mom mad. Plus, Lindy was the only one who could open it anyway—it was one of those secret journals with a lock, and Lindy wore the key around her neck on a silver chain from her mother.

         After taking one of the notebooks from Joe’s sister’s desk, the boys argued for about thirty minutes over who’d be the scribe, who’d have to hold both flashlights, and who’d get to be inspector. Owen realized that without Lindy, forest days were a lot harder to organize. Everyone knew that Lindy was the smartest in the group. Nobody else knew as many fairy facts and spells as Lindy did. Plus, Owen thought that she smelled better than the rest of them.

         In the end, as the second smartest person in the group, Owen convinced the rest of the boys to let him be inspector, as per usual. If anyone could flip rocks over quickly, it was Owen with his agile fingers. Sammy was assigned to flashlight duty and Joe was scribe. They set out, each wearing a pair of rain boots that swallowed their legs up to the kneecap. It wasn’t raining but the rain boots were a part of the procedure that, just like the flashlights, could not be broken. Tradition had to be maintained on forest days.

         “11:30 AM. Without Lindy, we won’t be able to find any fairy clues. So today, we’re looking for cool bugs,” Joe spoke aloud as he scribbled into his sister’s journal.

         “Cool or gross,” Sammy corrected him. Joe nodded and pushed the eraser against the page. They hadn’t even entered the forest and Owen could already see the sweat beading on Joe’s forehead. He was beginning to wonder if they’d ever get anything done without Lindy.

         At the end of the street, trees began to replace the houses, tickling the clouds and bending inward towards each other. Owen tried to count them a few weeks before, very quickly giving up as soon as he reached fifty. When Joe asked him how many there were at the end of the day, Owen said: “More than one hundred,” just to be safe.

         “Ready, boys?” Owen asked, teeth gritted and eyebrows furrowed to really emphasize how much business he meant. Forest days made Owen feel important. Like an adult. Or even better, like a superhero of sorts.

         “Ready, boss,” Sammy and Joe said in unison. Owen’s favorite part of forest days was the tradition of calling the inspector “boss.” Perhaps because Owen got to play inspector nearly every time and was also the one to both create and enforce this aspect of forest days.

         Cheek pressed into the dirt, Sammy yelled, “Boss! Look at this! Now!” He had very carefully focused the collective beam of his two flashlights onto a large brown leaf. Owen lay flat on the ground beside him and squinted at it.

         “So, you think it’s alive, inspector?” Sammy said.

         “That’s a leaf.”

         “Or is it a bug?”

         Owen brought a hesitant finger to it and gently flipped it over, revealing thirsty veins on its underside. Owen sighed and lifted himself off of the ground.“Told you so.” 

         Sammy sighed and stood back up. Owen heard Joe murmur under his breath as he scribbled into the notebook:

        “Bug was not bug, but really was leaf the whole time,” 

         He held the pencil like a cartoon turkey leg, fist clenched tightly around it as he dug its dull graphite into the paper. When Owen leaned over his shoulder to read his notes, there was not a single legible word on the page.

         “Let’s keep going,” Owen told them. The boys set forth, and when Sammy tripped in his oversized yellow rain boots, Owen and Joe pretended not to notice.

         Owen found a worm beside a bush and the boys fell silent as he began to poke it with a stick.

         “I don’t think it has magical powers,” Owen said. Joe nodded and stuck his tongue out in concentration as he copied down Owen’s words.

         “Wait, why not?” Sammy asked.

         “Because he probably wouldn’t let me poke him with this stick if he had magical powers.”

         “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” Sammy focused the flashlight beams on the worm and watched its slick body shimmer.

         “Not magic, but gross. Write that down, Joe,” Sammy said.

         “Hey!” Owen yelped.

         “What?”

         “I am the inspector. Write that down, Joe.”

         “Got it, boss,” Joe said, wiping his running nose across his wrist.

         It had only been about half an hour and the boys had already seen ten worms. It had rained the day before and Owen remembered how his mother once said that worms decided when they wanted to come out and most of the time, they only came out when it was wet and cool. In this way, Owen fancied worms as being sort of magical in their own right. They were elusive and mysterious, and Owen missed them when it wasn’t raining.

         It was when they reached the twelfth worm that Sammy began to groan and on the thirteenth he said, “Worms are boring. I’m gonna run ahead and see if there’s anything cool over there.”

         “We don’t split up!” Owen responded, putting his foot down in the same way his mother often did when she was angry.

         “But we’ll see more cool stuff if we do.”

         “Who’s the inspector?” Owen said.

         “You’re always the inspector. You never give anyone else a turn,” Sammy said.

         Owen scoffed and looked to Joe for support, but his nose was running so fast that he had trouble focusing on anything else. 

“It’s because I’m the best inspector,” Owen said. “Right, Joe?”

         “What?” Joe looked up from his crusted-over navy blue sleeve. 

         “I’m the best at playing inspector, so I play it every time, right?”

         “Uh… I—should I write that down?” Joe asked.

         “No. Just, don’t you agree that I’m the best inspector?”

         “Well, you never really give anyone else a turn.”

         “Ha!” Sammy shouted, his curls bouncing around his face as he jabbed a finger in Joe’s direction. “See? Even Joe agrees. So hold these flashlights and let me be inspector today.”

         Owen glared down at the flashlights balanced in Sammy’s grubby palms. “Fine,” he said, taking them from Sammy.

         “Then, on we go, boys!” Sammy yelled, trudging onward at a pace much too fast to notice worms at.

         Owen tried his best not to be visibly angry, but he felt Joe’s stare every time he took a step that was too stomp-like.

         “Look at this!” The boys heard Sammy scream from behind a tree.

Owen thought he looked little, the way his rain boots swallowed up the bottom half of his body and how his tangled curls covered most of his face. Without Lindy, Sammy was suddenly the smallest in the group.

“Herman!” Sammy yelled, motioning to a blob moving amongst crispy orange leaves. “The tallest spider in the world!”

“Why Herman?” Owen said.

“Because Herman is a name that a lot of tall people have.”

Joe nodded and scribbled down the name “Herman” in massive, crooked block letters. Owen realized that he was missing Lindy more and more by the minute. She had special handwriting, unlike anything Owen had ever seen. 

Herman walked in sporadic zigzags. They followed him close. Sammy on his hands and knees beside him, Owen crouched low—tongue out as he focused the beams on Herman’s long, spindly legs—Joe hovering above them at a safe distance, pretending to be far too busy with taking notes to actually examine Herman’s terrifying figure.

Herman led them to spots on the forest floor where the leaves pooled, rusty oranges and reds slowly invading bodies that were once green. Owen’s mother didn’t like autumn. She said that it made her feel like the world was spinning too fast. Owen didn’t understand how spinning fast could be anything other than fun. He never asked her.

At every pile of leaves they encountered, Sammy pocketed one. The first was bright orange, the second a pale yellow, and the third was red. A deep red with brighter dots of red across the surface. Sammy held it up to Owen’s flashlight and motioned Joe to take a closer look at it.

“Did you ever see a leaf with spots?” he asked. “It could be a fairy clue. Write this all down for Lindy.”

“I’ve seen a leaf with spots before,” Owen said.

Sammy glared. “Not spots like this. Focus the flashlights better.”

“I’m focusing them fine,” Owen growled.

Sammy’s thin eyebrows furrowed. “Are not! Focus them better,” he grunted, reaching for the lights secured tightly in Owen’s hands.

“I am doing fine!” Owen yelled.

“Do better!” Sammy yelled back.

“Hey… it’s just a game,” Joe said softly, though neither boy heard him.

“If you really focused the light, you’d see. You’d see the spots are different!”

“They’re just regular old spots!” Owen shoved Sammy and he fell into the crunchy, rotting leaves.

“You probably made me crush Herman!” he screamed.

“Get over it!” Owen yelled back. He waited for a response from Sammy that didn’t come. Sammy closed one eye and held the leaf up to the other, noticing something new.

“They aren’t regular spots,” he said softly. Owen and Joe leaned over Sammy’s shoulder.

“Ketchup?” Joe asked, pointing at the red, now smeared across the surface of the leaf.

Sammy’s eye caught the trail of red on the surface of the soil. “There’s more,” he whispered.

The boys shifted into a line, shoulders pressed tightly against one another. In sync, they followed the scattered red dots to a tree.

“What do you think is behind it?” Joe whispered.

Nobody answered him, but the line became tighter. Owen was suddenly finding it much harder to breathe. The air felt heavy in his lungs and each exhale seemed to swirl aimlessly overhead. In the past five minutes, the temperature must have dropped about ten degrees, turning the boys’ breath into thick, suspending fog.

Then, just as quickly as the chill had set over the air, Sammy snapped into something else. A different creature—entirely unafraid as his hands morphed into fists and his brows furrowed. Owen thought he looked like a grownup and copied him. Joe did the same, and in a less tight line now, the boys made their way towards the tree, creeping slowly but confidently around it.

Shoes. Black shiny shoes with gray laces—sort of like the ones Owen’s dad wore to work everyday—attached to legs, attached to a torso, attached to a bleeding chest. Owen paused at the blood. So did Sammy. So did Joe.

Fingers loosened, brows unfurrowed. The fearlessness that had fueled them just seconds ago had suddenly been swallowed whole by the slow trickle of blood creeping from this stranger’s chest. 

Joe screamed after a minute of silence. A loud, shrill, infantile scream. He sat down criss-cross applesauce in the dirt and buried his face in his hands.

“Is that guy dead?” Sammy whispered.

“Probably,” Owen said quietly.

“Should I poke him?”

“I don’t know.”

“He looks how they do in the movies,” Sammy said.

Joe lifted his head from his palms to whimper, “It’s nothing like the movies. Movies aren’t real.”

“What do we do?” Sammy asked.

“I don’t know,” Owen said. 

“Should we run away?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence tangled itself around Joe’s sharp whimpers and wheezes and the blood continued to spill from the man’s chest. Owen thought it did look sort of like ketchup. He wished it were.

He started to imagine what Lindy might do at this moment. She didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.

Owen knelt down next to Joe to pick up the pencil and notebook. In all capital letters, he scribbled, DEAD GUY. BLOODY. OLD.

“Can we go home?” Joe whispered, tugging at Owen’s sleeve, eyes wide and glossy.

“No. We have to solve this” Owen said, a quiet conviction growing in him.

“This is a grown-up thing to solve,” Joe said, his voice wavering even more now. “We should go home. It isn’t for kids.”

“We aren’t just kids. We’re detectives.” Owen stood up tall now, trying his very hardest to look the exact opposite of scared. Sammy’s eyes were still fixed on the man.

“Right, Sammy?” Owen said.

Sammy didn’t answer, but he didn’t look scared either. Owen moved to stand beside him, staring straight at the man too. He looked like he was sleeping. Owen always thought being dead would look scarier than being asleep.

“Listen, boys! I’m the inspector and I say that we need to go tell Lindy,” Sammy said finally.

Joe nodded and swiped at his nose, the snot flowing again. 

“But Lindy has a cold,” Owen whispered, taking into account the way his voice seemed to dissipate into the forest air.

“It doesn’t matter. Lindy always knows what to do,” Sammy said. He really did play a good inspector, as much as Owen hated to admit it. The boys turned and ran back towards Lindy’s house. 

If not for Queso, getting to Lindy’s bedroom window would be way too easy. She was on the first floor, just past the brown fence leading to the backyard. All they’d have to do is unlatch the fence and walk about five feet to her window. It was quiet in the backyard, but Owen knew Queso was deceptive. He could be very quiet if he wanted to be. 

“Do you think he’s back there?” Joe asked. Owen could hear the fear in his voice. 

“We don’t have time to worry about stupid Queso,” Sammy grumbled. He began to unlatch the fence and ignored Owen when he tried to cry out in protest. 

As soon as Sammy entered the backyard, a small gray blur vibrated and pulsated around the corner.

Owen tried to scream out to warn Sammy, but it was too late. Queso was upon him making dizzying, hellish rotations around his calves, nipping and screeching. Sammy yelped in fear or pain or both. Owen had already accepted Sammy’s death when he heard Lindy’s voice call out, “Here, Queso!” And everything went still. 

Queso transformed from his demon state back into a chihuahua, ears and tail reaching towards the crescent moon. 

The boys heard Lindy’s window squeak open wider and again she called, “Queso!” and poked her head out. 

“Hi Lindy,” Owen said. 

Lindy wiped the sleep from her eyes and hoisted herself out of her window. “Why are you guys here?” 

“Emergency,” Sammy said, rubbing his calves where the dog had been nipping. 

Lindy scooped Queso up and cradled him in her arms like an ugly, hairy baby. His tongue aimlessly lapped at the cold night air. “Didn’t my mom tell your moms that I’m sick today?” 

“Yeah, but we have a big emergency,” Joe said. Owen could see that his hands, which were clasped around his sister’s notebook, were shaking. “We found someone who’s dead,” he whispered. 

“What are you talking about?”
“Look!” Joe said, holding up the notebook to her face. “Look! It says—”

“I can read,” Lindy said and Joe shut his mouth. She took a moment to scan the page before she said, “I told you I can’t play today.” 

“We aren’t playing,” Sammy said slowly. “That’s real. We really did find a dead guy in the forest.”

         “No way Jose,” Lindy said.

         “Yes way Jose!” Joe countered. “Yes way! Yes way Jose!”

         Lindy dropped Queso and took a step closer to the boys. Sammy winced as the dog’s paws hit the ground, but Queso sat politely next to Lindy, suddenly a completely different dog. 

         “If you saw a dead guy in the forest, how come you’re not crying?” she asked, her voice more whisper-like now.

         Sammy and Owen pointed at Joe and said, “He did.” Joe shrugged and nodded.

         Lindy examined the puffiness of Joe’s red face and the way nervous sweat had plastered his red hair across his expansive forehead.

         “Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay, I believe you.”

         “Then you gotta come see!” Sammy said.

         “But my mom said I can’t leave the house ‘til I get rid of this,” she said, jabbing a finger toward her nose.

         “Joe always has a runny nose but he still comes to the forest,” Sammy said.

         “It’s true!” Joe confirmed, wiping the snot from his own nose onto the crusty sleeve of his sweater.

         She picked Queso back up from the grass and cradled him in her arms again. “If my nose doesn’t stop running, I’ll never be able to see.”

         “We really need your help,” Owen said desperately.

         “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow after school.”

         “You have to promise,” Sammy said.

         “Yeah! Cross your heart! And also pinky swear,” Joe said, holding out his finger.

         “I don’t want to pinky. You wipe your nose with that hand. But I cross my heart. Tomorrow after school.”

         “Should I tell my dad?” Sammy asked.

         Lindy considered this for a moment. “No,” she said. “If our parents know about this, we’ll never have another forest day ever again. Nobody tell your parents. That’s a deal. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sammy said. He looked down at his feet and Owen noticed that the fearless leader he had played in the woods was beginning to melt away.

The light in Lindy’s parents’ room clicked on and Lindy gasped and scrambled back over to her window. Before climbing back into the dark abyss of her bedroom, Lindy whispered once more, “Tomorrow.” 

For a moment, the boys stood in silence. The frogs from the forest were beginning their nighttime croaking. It almost made Owen feel better. 

Sammy squeezed between the gate and wall. None of them made a single comment about the blood dotting his pants or how it was similar to what they had just seen in the woods.

Joe squeezed the notebook to his chest even tighter than before. Owen watched his exhalations dance through the cold, dark air like smoke out of a dragon’s mouth.

         “Like Lindy said,” Sammy whispered. “Tomorrow.”

They didn’t say much after that, but walked toward their homes, the air silent except for the squeaking of rain boots and the chorus of frogs. 

Lettitor

Dear Reader,

It’s Leyla and Addie here, and if we’re being real, writing this letter feels painfully awkward. It’s hard to pinpoint why it feels so awkward, maybe because we’re writing this into a vague void that we hope you’ll read. Maybe because this letter is a space for us to level with you in a direct, candid way. But that’s what this edition is about after all. 

Aliens, naked ladies, fairies, and the messiness of trying to label ourselves. Our writers, artists, and editors have brought these pieces together in a consideration of what’s real. It’s almost poorly-constructed social commentary that when we asked for submissions for the Real Issue, we got some of the strangest, most surreal pieces we’ve received all year. This edition asks you to reexamine what real means, nestling right into the bizarre, the intimate, and most certainly, the absurd.  

Katie Rowley grapples with the consequences of finding a cursed ring on the floor at a frat party.  Kat Falacienski gives us a delightfully weird screenplay that considers an alternative explanation for the very real virus we’ve all become painfully familiar with. Leigh Rose Walden gets real about what she likes to do in her free time, an homage to the mundane that can make us all feel better about indulging in dull downtime. Logan Smith captures a moment of childhood in frank candor, peeling back layers of innocence for a moment of stark realization.

“Real” is capacious and all-expansive, and at the same time, maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. In this issue, real might simply mean humans doing what they do best, exploring the weird pockets of life that would otherwise go unexamined.

Sincerely,

Addie, Leyla, and the Cipher team

My Shadow’s Dream

My Shadow’s Dream

 A love letter to myself 

Article and art by  Joe Raiti 

I must confess to you, right from the start, there was nothing real about my life in Connecticut. 

This proclamation comes three years in the making. Kind of shocking, considering the fabricated garbage I spewed about it every day for five whole months before it all came crashing down. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry about that, I’ve been known to do that a bit. A lot. I’ve made up a number of stories before now, pretty convincing ones too. I can’t say I’m proud of it, not entirely. I am undeniably fearing how closely tied our health is to meaningful relationships in our lives and how easily they slip if you choose to neglect them. My fractured relationships weren’t a result of blatant ignorance, but instead a sort of ‘cheating the system’ of social webs. I’ve heard that an anchor to any good story is something called a reliable narrator, someone to fixate your attention on. Someone you root for through the arc of the plot and, in turn, someone who delivers a juicy ending in exchange for the trust you gave them. My story is not that, and neither is he.

He is me; in a literal sense. The unreliable narrator. It’s hard for me to write about him using I because this still isn’t a version of me I want to claim. In reality, he’s always been there; from the very first moment I let shame get the better of me and then lied to push it away. He’s only a dark shadow, nothing more, and nonetheless, he’s a part of me. And I could’ve really used this advice then, but there’s no real way to cheat your shadows without cheating yourself.

This is a story about what happens when the reliable narrator tricks you and leaves. Not an honest goodbye, no clue where they’re going, not even a death to mourn over. This reliable narrator, the person I knew I was, lived by what I loved. I oriented myself about the world by what I knew could be possible for me. “Keep your head where your feet are,” Ellen, the tax attorney college advisor, would always say to me.

Not to be overly dramatic—I’ve been known to do that a bit too. This story is not about dying, but what I mean to say is at least physical death has closure. There’s no closure here, he’s still smiling with you; carrying on like nothing off is happening as he creeps toward the backdoor. He, this made-up version of Joe I talked about for those five months, came to rule my life before I even knew it was happening. 

I started college in Washington D.C. with a hunger to meet the world and learn what it means to be gay outside of a small town in northern New York. I did just that, and once I had a taste, I let it swallow me whole. Mom, Dad, and most of the world saw a very polished image of me; studying for my Foreign Affairs practicums and shouting at the Trump administration on the national mall. They showed how proud they were on Facebook; I knew that made them happy. I didn’t tell them I was barely passing classes for my other life as an underage male escort. Why would I tell them that and the good image I created? 

I walked from class to class craving my next high of who I could seduce next. Or better, how much money I could get from the next closeted 40-something-year-old Republican to text me on Grindr. This is what it means to be young and queer, I thought, use your body and time to get anything you want in this world. Eventually, it all came crashing, as two lives stacked on top of each other eventually did. That passion to meet the world slipped away into traffic outside a cold night on U Street. No more images to keep up, I was too sick to come back to my life. I did it, I thought, the world swallowed me whole.

I decided to leave DC. It left too much of a bad taste in my mouth. No clue where I was going, but I was lost as it is, and had no intention of confronting larger patterns when I was just doing what I had to do to survive myself. Why would I do that? My family and friends had no idea what had happened. I just ‘needed some time off,’ every college student goes through that, right? I left my direction back on U Street. My Washington D.C., the most overtly international city I knew, became a monotoned conforming chamber close to a literal hell.

Now, at this point, my guess is the reliable narrator would take this time to reflect. Think about where this need to cover-up came from; and if they’re a brave hero, ready themselves to return to hell and face the horrors they created. Sure it might be hard, but in the end, they rise to the challenge, remember how much they’re loved, and reconcile to go forward with their life. They’re real life. Again, my story is not that, and neither is he. 

This was when my reliable narrator slipped out the door. I didn’t go back and rebuild my life from the jagged compartmentalized pieces. Why would I do that? Everyone would be so confused as to why I did that. And frankly, I didn’t have an answer for them. I let shame best me for the first time in my life. My friendships and life were irredeemable, I thought, best to just leave it behind. Where to go next with your life behind in shame? I got it! Make up a new one!

Making up a new life was the perfect way to move forward while outrunning shame. All the greats do it. All I needed was a new desire.; another piece of the story to redeem the plot of my life. I’ll find a new place to go! Something better than Washington could ever hope to have. Somewhere as dark and brilliant and daring as I am - the shadow sure does have an ego. What’s the next place I can project onto? Somewhere I could transfer to that’s such a story everyone would be in total awe. A quick search on the U.S. News and I found my new life: “Connecticut.”

From what I gathered, this place is a $70,000 college for tortured mediocre artists with God complexes. I wanted to be just like them. With a somehow both disinterested and narcissistic air about the campus, you could watch the intensely queer-punk students perform unredeemable critiques on society; making little 18-year-old “This Is What Democracy Looks Like” me quake in my Vineyard Vines quarter-zip. I was scared shitless. And I liked that fear. I couldn’t get enough of it, in fact. I would do anything to get there. So, he came out, a Joe already transferred; thriving in Connecticut with the past behind just like everyone had hoped for. I didn’t want to wait for that life. I couldn’t wait to feel the relief of a new story for myself. At first, he told his stories to an acquaintance, then to a group of people, and a few days later, some close old friends, then anyone who would listen until I forgot he was a story. Finally, a lie as sweet as the life I wanted. 

None of it was real. He was a theater major, for starters; but the avant-garde type. He thought those dumb Rodgers and Hammerstein shows about U.S. soldiers finding love with sweet island girls at their bases in Polynesia were simply irksome, orientalist, and dreadfully gauche. I picked up that line from an episode of Bojack Horseman. I was a college drop out-after all. He said he met his best friends through acapella, or sometimes, at a lowkey off-campus house show that only super cool people knew about. I loved telling that story. He was a part of an elite arts society with Eliana from summer camp. He wasn’t even going to apply originally, didn’t think new students were well-connected enough to the rest of the campus to get in; but Eliana was the president, and she fought tooth and nail to get him in. “He just belongs here.” I was never “there” to begin with. 

I put up a front, but at my core, I’m a risk-averse person; also risk addicted. I never take a blind gamble unless I’m sure the benefits will pay off no matter what. An oxymoron? Maybe. But have you ever wanted something so badly that you didn’t care how you got it? It’s something of a dangerously blissful yearning. Your vision closes on all sides and your eyes lock dead ahead. You practically start thrashing to close the distance between you and that dream. I’ll deal with the bruises later, you think, but sometimes later only gives you a false sense of safety. Later was realized on December 4th, 2019; my 20th birthday - the day my lies about Connecticut caught up to me, but the shadow’s dream came true.

I spent my 20th birthday wandering Warren Street in Hudson, New York, alone, waiting for the phone call deciding whether this new life would live or die. I had gotten into CC earlier that last week; as soon as I saw the word “Congratulations!” I threw my phone flat on the table and let out a massive wail with tears of joy. I did it! I got somewhere to go. I’ll figure out where I end up later, but today, I celebrate 20 years and a new potential life. I bought some cute records earlier in the day, went to some herbal shop, and talked about Sandalwood with the owner; who had some sweet Mahogany Doc Martens and fresh-cut bangs. Then as the afternoon grew darker I sat down in an old hotel with a hot cortado. Everything was calm until I felt the soft buzz of my phone pressed against my back pocket and the leather booth. It kept ringing. A number I didn’t recognize came up on the screen with the usual red and green buttons. Connecticut was on the line. 

I picked up the phone, gasping for air to catch my breath and sound unshaken either way. 

“Is this Joseph Raiti?” - I almost had to think about my answer. 

“Yes, this is he” - The first time I’ve said that in a while.

“Hi Joseph this is Chandra, head of the admissions office here, how are you today?”

Oh my fucking god. This is it. My heart was racing at 10x speed and tunnel vision set in. My breath stopped dead, my arms and thighs raced with searing adrenaline and if I waited one second further I would’ve run right into that December river. 

WHAT DO I DO. Collect yourself. I swallowed every emotion in me and proceeded.

“I’m good! Thanks for your call. How are you?”

“Great, great thanks...”

I could not be admitted at this time. 

Proceed on casually.

“I hear you have another offer to continue college?”

“Yeah I do, from Colorado College”

She picked her voice up a comforting octave.

“Ugh! A fantastic institution, you'll get a great education there.”

“Ah, thank you I’m excited”

“Alright well, congratulations, and thanks for picking up. Buh-bye.”

*click*

And just like that, he slipped away outside on a cold day on Warren Street. The dream came true. But the lies haven’t been put to rest, not until now. 

It’s an easy fix, displacing discomfort. Our truths are sometimes uncomfortable, but they’re always sound. In that discomfort, amidst maybe everything in our body screaming and shouting at us not to, we have glimmers of our souls screaming out when we come to that age-old, everyday choice. To either keep inside an uncomfortable, human, fragile truth or let the mess out, be seen - engaging in the small, delicate, volatile acts of being human and being fragile creatures.

This is a story of a time someone let deep insecurity fuel a lie-induced mania to compensate for their actual life while dreaming about another one. The story comes to its implosion point on my 20th birthday when the lie finally proves unattainable. And the aftermath, in all its covert forms, unfolds. The story concludes when I realize I must write my own resolution, come to terms with the effects of lying about life, and realize I can atone and move on. It’s my story

Bob the Drag Queen says people in recovery, for any addiction, have two kinds of days. There are good days when everything is peachy and you don’t engage in old habits, and there are great days, when life throws everything it’s got toward you and you still don’t engage. I hated writing this piece, every fiber of my being wanted to lock it away forever. But once the truth is in your hands, it’s one step closer to a great fucking day. 

Anxiety in 3/4 Time

Anxiety in 3/4 Time

A massive fuck you to Ms. Frizzle. 

Article by Frances Thyer, art by Isabella Hageman

My friend asked me the other day why I listen to music. We were in the kitchen cooking dinner listening to Wisdom by Brian Jonestown Massacre, and I was midway through a ten minute rant about how the lead singer was the most talented psychedelic rock artist of the 90’s. I didn’t mean to lie to her, but I responded that I listened to music because I get so excited finding new artists with which I launch all-consuming obsessions. If I had thought more on the subject, I think what I would have said was: you can count on good music to be good, and that there’s always going to be more of it. Essentially, music is controllable. It’s a tool to manage how overwhelming and scary the world feels. I’ve thought about this conversation a lot, since a few days later she made a joke about how it must be hard for me to have a thought if I’m blaring music constantly. 

Every normal person appreciates music all the time, in various ways. Then again, normalcy to me is utilizing other people’s heavy thoughts in song to quiet your own. I wonder if my tolerance for stress wasn’t equivalent to a lightweight freshman after a beer and a half, I wouldn’t need to overwhelm my ears in order to subdue my brain. 

On the first day of fifth block, my teacher was laughing about the overly-complex nature of some critically acclaimed film when I felt my (now) occasional panic creeping up my chest and into my throat. For me, panic attacks are the physical, unpredictable, scary manifestations of anxiety disorders. It’s how I imagine unwilling subjects of the Magic School Bus would have felt. It’s a bus full of tiny people invading your body with an ease and absolute control that, I could only assume, would feel like a massive fuck you. 

I told my roommate the other day that for all the work that I’ve done to alleviate my anxiety, debilitating unsteadiness feels like a persistent and elusive stalker, forcing you to check the mirror, since odds are, it’s following you a few cars behind. Panic pushes me along a revolving door, where illogical fear is a never-ending drawback of existing. I am tired, so that’s fine. There are bigger things to talk about.

As a reluctant companion of chronic anxiety, I think I’ve become numb to some of the regular-person anxieties that can be useful. My mom had been calling me sporadically throughout the week before fifth block, giving updates on the status of my grandmother who was nearing the end of her life. I felt horrible all day after my panic filled first Monday, with the tingly hard-to-breathe feeling that years of self-preservation and behavioral therapy hadn’t magically mended. It didn’t occur to me that the heaviness in my chest could be related to the impending death. I just was angry with myself for letting my day be once again derailed by my mind’s intangible, permanent houseguest. 

I know what I like to do, and what I don’t. I am someone who likes to do things. I like art. I like being outside, and when asked, I have enough sweet memories to convince you and I that I know myself and my needs. The thought of my psychiatrist inevitably having a field day with my cognitive dissonance does, on occasion, crawl out from the spot deep in my brain where I keep all my other contradictory knowledge. I want to go climbing, but I might cancel because the idea of leaving the apartment, with shaky hands and a burning knot in my chest, isn’t worth it. Without a reasonable explanation for my physical and mental state, I probably won’t say anything.

I don’t want to be ingenuine with people. Chronic anxiety is, at its core, stupid. The evolutionary step my great grandfather’s great grandfather missed that makes me feel the need to go into fight or flight mode while quietly sitting in class was probably important. While it is not something to apologize for, it is sure as hell not something to shout from the windows about. 

A few weeks ago, I went home for my grandmother’s funeral. Watching as family members console one another through soft tears, I stepped outside, plugging in my headphones and breathing in the much needed fumes of a cheap cigarette I had found in a purse from high school. I didn’t cry, spending the rest of the day taking care of people I had always perceived as much more achieved and competent than I could ever be. I believe that change in oneself is an underappreciated relief of growing up, and coming home to a family and sense of self that you no longer recognize is not easy to accept. Coming to the realization that both you and your parents are growing is incredibly strange. 

There is a misconception that personal transformation and emotional competency means that anxious thoughts must have just diffused from your brain. There is a lot of shame that comes along with openly being anxious as we get older and constantly hope to be perceived as capable. 

With anxiety attacks and just fear as a whole, you find yourself impoloding and exploding simultaneously; you occasionally say erratic things to others as the real insane thoughts about yourself ricochet around your brain. The wake of your actions is ultimately unimportant compared to the burden of waking up the next day and just having to be okay. Acknowledging the heaviness of something that has been a burden for your entire life feels, again, stupid. 

A friend of mine released an album recently, with the pinnacle song named “When it Comes Time for Leaving”. It deals with the normal anxieties of growing up, taking care of yourself, and basically just existing. There is a particular line in the song where she talks about turning a rock over and waking up feelings you’ve put to rest. I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about the psychosomatic nature of chronic anxiety, and I think that this is a great example of that; as a normal person, you deal with things as they come at you, but I suppose being constantly anxious means you save those feelings until you are able to manage them, therefore reacting more erratic than your average person would. If circumstances allow, these feelings can feel like fireworks all intentionally set off at once, lighting in your stomach and allowing a moment of nausea and full reprieve. 

I have been happy lately, so I have turned the rock over and found that I do feel better for it. 

I suppose this article doesn’t argue for any cure-all for anxiety. There are many ways to rationalize anxiousness and fear, with no real answers. In my experience, there is no explanation or apology full enough to convince anyone.

Someone who I love sent me a playlist a bit ago with the kind of music that makes you feel so good that it invalidates your unreasonable fear about the world. Not to be that person with shortsighted advice about anxiety disorders, but listening to Axis: Bold As Love could be about as good of treatment advice as I can offer. Faces provides an opportunity for reflection on the magnitude of emotion and perception of mental disorders. MyKey asks if something “made you anxious or make you upset” in Was It Something I Said, which I suppose I can’t tell the difference between most of the time. 

Ultimately, anxiety will continue taking unwilling passengers on the bus. I feel simultaneously like a victim of my mind and a perpetrator of continued hurting; at the core of anxiety is the need to feel in control, and that want can undermine our ability to take care of ourselves. Fighting for authority of your own headspace means that yourself and others will be judged and hurt. It is not intentional, and the best that anyone can do is to support those around us suffering.

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Eight

A tidy house and naked ladies.

Article by Piper Campbell, art by Sienna Busby

11.1.21

The reason I went to her tidy house was because she’d stopped me in the hallway

on a Monday

when I’d been taking a self-designated bathroom break from a dull class,

and while that professor droned on

this professor asked if I would like to cat sit for her.

The fluorescent lights flickered above

Humming

Gray walls squeezed us in. 

Cat-sitting!

What a liberty.

I smiled,

of course, Joyce.

When I entered the house, I was worried that it looked this tidy.

Worried that the cat was brushed every day

that clearly, this was not a house of dirty dishes.

And why did she keep such a tidy house? I knew she did not have a lover or children.

But next I saw her craft table and the vases and picture frames within which

naked ladies rested and

some old weeds arched sideways dead

in the garden and I thought, maybe.

When my friend came to visit

we drank vodka and cranberry juice

played at her craft table with her cat and counted

all the naked ladies we could find (there were twenty seven).

We dressed up and tried on her earrings and spoke in British accents and laughed

and laughed.

Later that night when my hands were clenched around my professors toilet

(after my friend had hollered from the craft table, asking if I needed someone 

to hold my hair to which I had waved a groggy no)

it occurred to me, oddly,

that perhaps Joyce loves women.

When the second friend came to visit

she stayed up past 1 am finishing an essay.

Though it was a Tuesday, I was still disappointed in her,

because earlier in my professor’s kitchen

as we teetered about, pantless and naked ladies

watched us from the fridge magnets,

I told her I was bleeding and she shrugged and said that’s okay

with me.

So around 2 am, bound by her word, we covered white sheets with red towels

and she fucked me hard and fast and too soon,

before she had even kissed me for long. 

I sighed when I realized I should have gone to sleep.

She held it out then, 

long, bloody and thick,

and said

You should probably clean this up, and I rolled my eyes.

The naked ladies in the bathroom watched me

as scalding water seared the silicon shaft

It seared me, too

and I did not meet their gaze.

When the third friend came to visit

we baked cookies and somehow mine were burnt even though

we were eating off the same tray.

We watched a movie and I massaged his hand how

I knew he liked it,

how I did when we used to sleep together

for those quick and confusing weeks

and when I hit the right spot his shoulder melted into me on the couch

while the cat watched

and my clit twitched.

But I kept eating cookies and drove him home early because I was tired,

too tired to open that door again.

Not like that, full of burnt cookies with the twenty seven naked ladies watching.

When the final friend came to visit

I showed her the twenty seven naked ladies.

And she nodded, slowly, waving her head up and down as if greeting,

individually, all twenty seven of them.

Gay? I wondered, and she waved her head up and down

at me.

Months later I sat alone across the country

far from the cat and the twenty seven ladies

eagerly lapping up a book of her poems.

The book, of course, with a naked lady on the cover

who I think perhaps is Joyce.

I was surprised, somehow, even after the twenty seven naked ladies,

to find out she loved women and furthermore the way she said it

not lesbian, not dyke, not gay or queer, but

elegant.

Almost like she had been there

on the other nights when my friends were not,

when I became the twenty eighth and

pulled the blinds to walk with them once

slipping into her floor length, fur-lined coat and looking into the mirror

above the sink, 

where I washed off burnt cookie

where I washed off thick blood

where I washed off vodka vomit

where a naked lady watched me. 

I stroked her cat and

stroked her fur-lined coat

and for a moment

it was me

and it was her

and we were elegant.

I see why she keeps it tidy, I whispered to the well-brushed cat.

Airborne Transmission

Airborne Transmission

 A play

Article by Kat Falacienski, art by Isabella Hageman 

Characters

Watermelon: a missing person

Olive: Watermelon’s sister

Beck: Olive’s husband

Elliot: Olive and Beck’s son

Trish: Watermelon’s daughter

Scene 1

Lights up in an ornate dining room. At the end of a long dining table sit OLIVE, BECK, ELLIOT, and TRISH. Olive is wearing white gloves. Elliot is buried in a book. The table is piled with food.

OLIVE

No reading at the table. 

ELLIOT

Aw, c’mon mom, please? Just this once. 

OLIVE

No. Put it away. We’ve discussed this. 

Elliot sighs dramatically, carries the book offstage, then returns and sits down. 

TRISH

What were you reading about?

ELLIOT

Aliens. 

OLIVE

That’s very nice, Elliot. How was school? 

ELLIOT

Boring. I hate Zoom. 

OLIVE

Well, don’t worry. This’ll all be over in a few weeks. 

BECK

Actually, we’re not so sure. The folks at the WHO are saying it might last a few months ––

OLIVE

Beck, please. Let’s try to be positive. 

TRISH

Aunt Olive, where’s the watermelon?

OLIVE

There wasn’t any at the store today, dear. 

TRISH

Well evidently there was bananas, grapes, kiwis ––

BECK

Were.

TRISH

Huh? 

BECK

You mean there were bananas, grapes, and kiwis. 

TRISH

Yeah, bananas, grapes, kiwis, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, and peaches. So why not watermelon?

ELLIOT

Because they were out, dummy. 

BECK

Elliot, that’s no way to speak to your cousin. 

OLIVE

Beatrice, I don’t know why there wasn’t any watermelon at the store, but there wasn’t. You’re just going to have to make do with the other fruits. Okay?

TRISH

Okay. 

Pause.

OLIVE

I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m just worried about your mother. 

ELLIOT

Did you hear anything from the cops? 

BECK

I’m afraid not. It’s only been three days, and she could be…well, she could be anywhere. 

OLIVE

But we’re doing everything we can. The only thing we haven’t done is gone out and searched for her ourselves. 

ELLIOT

Why not? 

OLIVE

The police can do it better than we can. And, like your father said, she could be anywhere. 

TRISH

She’s in the Black Forest. 

Pause.

ELLIOT OLIVE

Whoa! What’s she doing there? What are you talking about? 

TRISH

She texted me this morning.

OLIVE

She ––

ELLIOT

Did the phone show her location? 

TRISH

No. 

BECK

They found her phone in a room at the Holiday Inn.  

OLIVE

Well, that’s all very –– 

ELLIOT

Why didn’t you call the cops up and tell ‘em? They coulda found her by now. 

TRISH

She told me not to. She said that everything would be fine as soon as she ––

OLIVE

Honey, why are you even seeing texts from her? I thought I told you to block her number. 

TRISH

She’s still my mom. 

OLIVE

Yes, she is. But she hasn’t been making very good choices lately, and I don’t want you… exposed to that. 

ELLIOT

Wait, what was she gonna do?

OLIVE

How about we change the subject. Elliot, how was school? 

ELLIOT

You already asked me that. 

OLIVE

I did?

BECK

Yes, Olive, you did. Look, I know things are stressful right now, but if Beatrice is telling the truth, then we probably ought to just call the cops up real quick, give them the information ––

OLIVE

Can I have a word with you, Beck? Please? Right now?

BECK

Um, sure. 

Beck and Olive stand up and start to leave the room. 

OLIVE

If I catch either of you listening in, you’re grounded for a month. 

ELLIOT

Mom, there’s a pandemic. We’re already grounded. 

Beck and Olive go into a bedroom on the opposite end of the stage. Lights over the dining room go dark. 

OLIVE

What on Earth are you doing? 

BECK

What am I doing? I ought to ask the same question of you. You’re acting strange and you’re being cruel to Beatrice. I shouldn’t have to tell you ––

OLIVE

You don’t know the half of it. 

BECK

You can’t expect a child to cut herself off from her own mother ––

OLIVE

Beck. If you absolutely must know, her mother is going to be the death of me, and if they find her, she’s going to be the death of the entire family. 

BECK

So that’s it? You care more about your reputation than your own sister’s life?

OLIVE

It’s not just reputation!

BECK

Then what is it? Tell me!

Pause.

BECK

Look, you’re all flushed and you’re sweating. Why don’t you just take off the gloves for a second and we can talk ––

OLIVE

Don’t you dare touch my gloves. 

BECK

For the last time, Olive, I don’t care what your hands look like. It wouldn’t kill me to see them ––

OLIVE

It’s not just my hands!

She stands facing the wall, her arms crossed. Lights over the bedroom go dark. Lights over the dining room go up. 

TRISH

It’s Trish, by the way.

ELLIOT

What is?

TRISH

My name. It’s Trish. Not Beatrice. 

ELLIOT

Oh. I didn’t know that.

TRISH

Apparently Aunt Olive doesn’t either. 

ELLIOT

So, what did your mom say she was doing?

TRISH

I’m not sure, her text wasn’t super clear. Something to do with Covid? She said she knew where it came from and that she was going to try to stop it. 

ELLIOT

You know where I think it came from? 

TRISH

Where? 

ELLIOT

Guess. 

TRISH

Aliens. 

ELLIOT

Obviously.

Lights over the dining room go dark. Lights over the bedroom go up. 

 BECK

Olive, please. Just let me send them a tip. We’ll deal with the fallout once we get her back–– 

OLIVE

You don’t understand.

BECK

That’s because you’re not telling me anything!

Pause. Olive yanks open the closet door and starts putting on a coat. 

OLIVE

All right. You know what? You really want her back? You really want to see what would happen if she came back into our lives? Fine. I’ll go find her. 

BECK

What, no, you can’t just go into the Black Forest at night all by yourself. 

OLIVE

Don’t tell me what I can’t do. 

Olive steps into the closet and slams the door behind her. Beck throws up his hands.

BECK

Olive, what the…?

He opens the door. She’s not there. He looks around the room. 

BECK

Olive?

All lights go dark.

Scene 2

Lights up on the Colorado Black Forest, choked with snow. Off to the side is WATERMELON, a scraggly figure clad in dark clothing, black gloves, a balaclava, and sunglasses. She is stooped over a rectangular mound of earth with two leather shoes sticking out of it. She shovels frozen soil on top of them, stopping occasionally to cough into her elbow. 

Enter Olive from the opposite side of the stage. She looks around for a few seconds but stops dead when she sees Watermelon. Watermelon stops shovelling and looks up, unperturbed. 

WATERMELON

Is there something I can (cough) do for you? Are you lost?

OLIVE

Lost?

WATERMELON

Are you trying to find your way out of the Black Forest? 

OLIVE

Um, no, actually, I’m not. I’m just looking for my sister. She may have gone missing here. 

WATERMELON

(looks down and resumes shoveling)

I’m (cough) sorry to hear that. What does she look like?

OLIVE

She has blonde hair and blue eyes, and she always wears…pigtails? Or maybe a ponytail? One of those two. I can’t remember. I haven’t seen her in a while. 

WATERMELON

Why?

OLIVE

Why haven’t I seen her? 

Watermelon says nothing and continues shoveling. 

OLIVE

Well, she’s difficult to be around. She’s a funny duck, that’s for sure. But she’s really had some problems with her stability these past few months. It’s been difficult to watch. I know she’s suffering a great deal, but it’s just so hard on the rest of the family. To see her like that. 

WATERMELON

Hmm.

OLIVE

But when the whole Coronavirus thing hit a few weeks ago, she just went off the deep end. She somehow got it in her head that aliens had caused the whole thing. That they had secretly infected the Earth in order to subdue all of mankind. And then she started insisting that she was an alien too, or whatever. She said she’d been “planted” on the Earth to help the aliens fulfill their big, crazy, top-secret mission. 

WATERMELON

Top-secret, huh?

OLIVE

And then she started saying that she was named after a fruit! Of course, I can’t remember which fruit off the top of my head, maybe a grape, or a banana. Like it matters anyway. 

WATERMELON

So, (cough) let me get this straight. 

Watermelon throws down the shovel.

WATERMELON

Your sister was having trouble with her mental health, so you got scared, and right when she needed you the most, you abandoned her ––

OLIVE

That is not what happened. She did it to herself! You know she had plenty of opportunities to get help. Plenty! More than most people get. And instead of taking them, she chose…this! I don’t even know what to call it. 

WATERMELON

(Cough) Olive ––

OLIVE

But you know what, I am done. I am done with this God-awful freakishness. I am going to bring her back and I am going to make her normal. I will do it if it kills me. I will make her normal.

WATERMELON

Like you would know. 

Pause.

OLIVE

I’m sorry, what was that?

WATERMELON

(Cough) Look at yourself. What are you doing out here? Why are you alone, spilling all your feelings to me? I could be a serial killer for all you know. 

Watermelon removes her sunglasses, revealing icy blue eyes. Then she takes off her balaclava, and two blonde pigtails spring upright. 

WATERMELON

Look, Olive. I may not be normal, but neither are you. 

Watermelon removes her gloves. Instead of fingers, long green tentacles slither out from her sleeves. 

WATERMELON

They’ll be coming to get me soon. You won’t have to be inconvenienced by me anymore. And in the meantime, we will try to get a handle on everything that’s happened. The virus (cough)... we didn’t mean for it to turn out like this. It went horribly wrong. We realized that after we all caught it ourselves. This fellow here died from it, and a couple of the others aren’t too far behind. We will never, ever inflict such damage on Earth again. I promise. 

A high-pitched whirring noise cuts through the air. A moment later, a strong wind blows across the stage, and the snow and dirt that were covering the corpse scatter. The corpse is an alien, with green tentacles identical to Watermelon’s. 

A UFO descends and hovers a few feet above Watermelon’s head. 

WATERMELON

And for the record, my name is Watermelon.

A flash engulfs the stage. When it subsides, Watermelon and the UFO are gone. 

Olive looks at the sky, then at the body, then at her hands. She slips off her gloves, and her green tentacles twirl in the air.

END OF PLAY.

Fairy Godmother Tell All

Fairy Godmother Tell All

 Take notes, hoes.

Article by  Emma Devlin, art by Veronica Gibson

I’m a stranger to you, but hopefully my words resonate. I’m sure they’ll be in your best interest because I have a perspective you don’t. I’m sure about that because I’m a character woven into your reality. Yes, like a story, but in your subconscious. No, I’m not God. Fairy Godmother, if you will. Though I’m more like a voice in your head. We haven’t met before, but I heard you’re in need of advice. I’ll help you find your current purpose, but understand, it’s always changing.

Look in the mirror. Yes, please take a look. What do you see? Yourself? Did you expect to see the fairest of them all? A ghost? Those things don’t exist, unfortunately. The world would be more exciting if they did. But, what’s real? Here’s a hint: being real is recognizing your existence. Yes, it’s quite complicated, but that’s just how we are.

What do you think is real? I’m aware it’s a difficult question. That was unfair of me to ask so suddenly.

Imagine you’re at your worst. It’s the part of the movie when everything goes wrong and the hero loses all hope. Perhaps you were rejected from your top-choice college. Perhaps, after hundreds of dollars spent on Accutane and two years of clear skin, you wake up on the day of prom to the biggest breakout on your face. Or you get a phone call from a stranger, who tells you, I’m so sorry, but she passed yesterday in her sleep…

Are you okay? I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I want you to imagine what I’m saying because only then will you understand what’s real. Do you need a break? No? Alright, I’ll continue. 

When I ask this question, most people don’t think about tears. But I start my explanation in this manner because it’s a little off-beat and grabs their attention. It rubs people the wrong way. I can tell because they may lick their lips dry or bite their nails, like you are. No, no! Keep biting them if that comforts you. I’m not your mother. I can’t tell you what to do. I guess I am telling you what to think, in a sense. But I’m different from your mother in that I can’t force you to agree. She may tell you repeatedly that if you bite your nails, you’ll look like a slob. And eventually, you may believe it because people believe people they know well. At least, usually.

As I was saying, tears make people uneasy. They don’t know how to stop tears. They ask themselves: Should I hug them? Should I leave them alone? Should I give them advice? Should I get them help? Should I cry too? It’s as though the “soother” has unknowingly entered a shark tank without a cage, without knowing how to swim, and without an escape plan. Not knowing what to do is a perfectly rational response. The emotional shift can be so sudden that the “crier” often fails to realize they’ve been forced to experience reality straight on. Let me explain. Humans are quite strictly trained to limit emotional expression. When people do cry, it’s normally unplanned and perhaps unwanted. Crying is real because it breaks the everyday rhythm of life. It’s real because it makes people reconsider what “normal” means. Strange, really, that humans are expected to behave completely against their nature.

Now might be the time to explain what I am. I do not have a clear answer. Do you know who you are? Exactly. Yes, I said I’m like a Fairy Godmother. I show up when people need help - a reality check - and I provide the best advice I can. I certainly can’t turn pumpkins into carriages or rags into ball gowns. Still, I would argue that an outsider-looking-in notices a lot more about a person than they do about themself. In that case, I’d say what humans and I have in common is our natural instinct to observe and make sense of the unknown. 

What defines human nature? I’ll tell you my own definition as someone who is not entirely human. Please note, it derives from a number of different sources and conversations, taking several years to form. And still, I think my definition could be better.

I believe human nature is the manner in which people process and react to their surroundings. But it’s more than just surroundings, it’s the little things, too. It’s how they react to change or disaster. It’s how they laugh at irony and celebrate good luck. It’s how they observe, maybe unintentionally, every person in the hospital waiting room, asking themselves, what’s their story? It’s how they feel the need to protect the vulnerable—siblings, animals, children. It’s how they sigh deeply after they miss a flight or stub a toe, how they set five alarm clocks and sleep through all of them. It’s how they become somewhat lost during a transitional period, from high school to college, college to the working world, dating to marriage. It’s how they let complete strangers pet their dogs, telling them, he likes it when you scratch his ears. These are simple scenarios, but there’s more complexity than what I’m capable of telling you. See, nothing is black-and-white. Things are gray and tan and violet and royal blue. It seems that the majority of humans work tirelessly in hopes of earning a well-paying job, but a number of them (and this number seems to grow everyday with the rise of Gen Z) are seeking a relaxed lifestyle. Go with the flow, you do you, let it be, life is life. I think the latter type of person is happier, but then I ask myself, are they fulfilled? And my question returns to my first point, which is that human nature is complex. People aren’t only happy. I think they’re mostly happy-sad or happy-tired or happy-silly. There are loopholes, special cases, irregularities, and human errors in real life. But above all, I want you to understand that people are imperfect, emotional, and moldable. Unapologetically human.

How do I have all this knowledge about a different species than my own? I don’t. Not really. Maybe I come off as confident, but I’m only telling you what I’ve learned over time. Someone else could give you entirely different advice based on what they’ve experienced.

I want you to imagine you’re at Tony’s on a Friday night. A man has been inappropriately touching your best friend. He finally hits a nerve in you when he hands her a cloudy drink, his hand gliding up her back. Gross.

At this point, your friend is nervous, paralyzed. Enough is enough. It’s your chance to step in. You don’t really know what to do, but you feel static. No thoughts, just emotion. Bam! Sucker punch! Right in the face! The man falls to the ground with a bloody nose, some blood still on your knuckles. You suddenly grow wings. You feel amazing and scared and proud and disappointed. You notice the impressed faces of onlookers, but you also notice a frowning bartender walking towards the crime scene. You wish your wings were real so you could fly away.

Not everyone can stand up to a random assaulter. It takes a certain lack of fear. People are just people at the end of the day, no more special than the next. When put like that, no one’s that scary.

You don’t know how to feel after a traumatic or spontaneous event. Perhaps you should feel guilty after punching someone in the face (even if it’s awesome), but I think you feel something else entirely. In situations like these, you become hyper-aware of yourself. You’re not feeling a reactive emotion, rather, you’re feeling yourself in the flesh. You feel real. In the example above, you may start fixating on your bloody hand, your heavy breathing. You’ve hijacked the social rhythm and brought reality front and center. All eyes on you.

I provided this example because it shows that you’re not always in control of yourself. People are not perfect beings and, truthfully, they don’t understand what they are. I’m not human, and that position allows me to view humanity in its most unbiased form. Humans don’t like to acknowledge themselves; it makes them think too hard. So, I’ll do it for them. My perspective on the human race is illuminating, I think, because I can see the things humans are capable of even when they can’t see these things themselves. And frankly, that ignorance keeps humans sane. To answer your question, realness connects to human nature because human nature is complex, and that complexity is what makes things real.

At the moment, this is my perspective on human reality. It will change many times because I am always learning. You brought me into your mind to give you answers, but my thoughts come from what you already know but haven’t yet realized. Yes, in a way you are self-meditating. It’s important to sit down and grasp your humanity. Talk to yourself, if you please. Next time—and there will be many next times—I may not be the one talking to you. If I am, my advice will change because you will have gotten older, wiser, and a little more willing to understand yourself. You’re waking from this daydream (perhaps it’s more like a hallucination); your conscience is straining to regain control. I’ll say goodbye, but hold onto my words. Your existence is only starting to take place. 

The Unmarketable, Completely Real Hobbies I Make Up

 The Unmarketable, Completely Real Hobbies I Make Up 

 Embracing aimlessness

Article by Leigh Rose Walden, art by  Isabella Hageman

“What are you studying in college?” 

“What do you do outside of school?” 

It feels like in conversations with anyone unfamiliar these are the two questions I get asked. And I know from experience that if my answer to the first one isn’t interesting enough (and let’s face it, my answer is sociology, so it’s usually not to most people) the latter will be the one most heavily relied upon to gauge what kind of person I am. 

I know when I graduate those questions don’t go away, rather they’ll shift to “what do you do?” and “what do you do when you’re not working?” In a market society, our time is split into our working and our non-working hours. The things we do when we’re not working however, are feeling more and more like they are types of work. 

When someone asks you what you do in your free time, what your hobbies are, there exists a feeling of pressure, for me at least, to say something impressive. At CC, impressive hobbies are not hard to bump into:

“I rock climb some of the world’s largest mountains.” 

“I ski some of the state’s most out of bounds peaks.”

“I’m teaching myself graphic design.”

Very rarely do you hear someone answer the question “what are some of your hobbies?” with “I generally prefer to completely dissociate from reality while staring blankly, albeit accidentally, at total strangers.”

My hobbies (and I know they’re hobbies because they are things I do habitually as a form of rest) are seriously unimpressive when compared to some of my peers. I take extremely slow electric bike rides that don’t require me to pedal very much through the fancy homes in the Old North End. I pick out new and weird flavors of chips and candies from the C Store and tweet my impressions of them to my whopping 118 Twitter followers. I eavesdrop on strangers in coffee shops and give them names and try to imagine what it would be like to have brunch with them. 

My hobbies are partially a reflection of what I have access to. They’re things I can do without spending much money or time, but they’re also things that feel like genuine rest. There’s no real goal in doing them, no one to impress or even to share them with. I’m not getting more fit, or smarter, or more interesting or more hirable by deciding that the new banana flavor of Sour Patch Kids is an abomination. The things I do when I rest are things that I genuinely enjoy.

In that respect, I think I’m lucky. I have experiences of friends coming up to me and grumbling that they’re having to do work on their non-work. That their hobbies are taking up too much space and creating too much pressure. However, feeling lucky and knowing I enjoy my hobbies doesn’t stop me from questioning whether my hobbies are “real.”

There are some signs that point to them being distinctly unconventional, the most glaring of which is the fact that I don’t bring them up when someone asks me what my hobbies are. I don’t jump to tell people that I’m going to take a break from my work by going on my phone and adding things to my Etsy cart that I will never buy. Instead I tell them things that sound vaguely impressive like reading or crocheting or hiking. Let alone the fact that I read mostly fantasy novels, have 5 unfinished crochet projects, and genuinely enjoy hikes only if they have a pretty view and snacks are involved. 

For people who enjoy those things and find rest and reset in them, that is fantastic and beautiful. But for people like me, I wish there was more acceptance for rest that really isn’t necessarily productive. All that it is is rest. 

I think those kinds of hobbies are radical. I think it is one of the most revolutionary acts to truly do unproductive things. To do things purely because they make being  human more bearable, not because they’ll make us “better,” because what the hell is better anyways?

It feels like I’m being sold “better” in every direction. Do this to have a better body, this to have a better relationship, this to be a better student; commonly these suggestions are attached to products. “Buy this to look cuter, go to this event to be a more interesting person, oh and come on, only the worst people are not buying this product that saves trees through yoga, do you hate trees?” 

It honestly makes me mad that my rest has become something that someone wants to market to me, and even more mad to think that they’re doing it by telling me that even in rest I am in deficit. 

The way we engage in our hobbies ought to be unique to ourselves. In such a fast paced world and especially on the block plan, the times when we can rest and engage in things purely for enjoyment are truly invaluable. I'm tired of wasting it trying to do things that other people think will make me a “better” person.

I’m getting to a place where I’m more comfortable being real about my rest. Right now, being vague but honest has been working. “I enjoy trying new foods” and “I like to learn about old homes.” Maybe there will never be a day where I’m completely honest about what I do when I rest, but maybe there doesn’t have to be. The things I do are for me, and these useless, unmarketable, silly things are revolutionary anyways. 

Gay By Association

Gay By Association 

 Identity in the in-between 

Article by  Leyla Kramarsky, art by  Isabella Hageman

My moms get called “sir” in the fish line at Whole Foods. And at other places too, but it’s in the mess of shoppers and carts and sea smell that it sticks with me. Sometimes, Jeanne gets called “Sir Paul McCartney.” The resemblance is uncanny, honestly. It’s happened a few times. Anna, my mom who doesn’t look like Sir Paul Mccartney, says it’s because of the way they both occupy the world. She says femininity and masculinity aren’t really about the presence of, or lack thereof, boobs or butt or hair, but about stance, stature. She takes up space. That’s masculine. 

My brother gets called ma’am every once in a while. Kind of. Usually, it’s more of a general, group-directed “girls,” and he happens to be a member of the group. He’s tall, but he’s loose-limbed and earnest. So I guess that’s feminine.

I get called lucky. All of the kids that I’ve ever babysat for, my middle school classmates, and the younger siblings of my high school friends have been jealous that I get to have two moms. Even when they don’t understand the mechanics of it all, the idea of having not just one, but two, of the nurturing, maternal presences they call their mothers is elating. I am lucky, but, to me, it’s luck related to the love and comfort that my family possesses, not to their queerness. That element has always felt strikingly normal. 

My whole family is queer. My grandpa was too, but he didn’t come out until he was old and divorced and only after he had ousted his own daughter for being a lesbian, but that’s not really what I mean when I say family. When I say family, I mean the network of my mothers’ friends and ex-lovers, collected at college and in activism groups and beneath fluorescent club lights. My Uncle Betty taught me to laugh. He’s John when he’s a lawyer for the city, but he’s Betty Pearl, the blonde-bobbed drag queen, when he’s with us. Uncle Betty has the best stories. At six years old, I sit with him on his porch, eyes wide at his stories, while his husband puts their daughter to bed. One of his hands holds a glass of wine, the other gesticulates wildly. 

On the train ride home from my first day of first grade, my mom asks if there are any “cute boys or girls in my class.” No. Ew. 

Nothing is ever assumed in my house. Gender and sexuality are hypotheticals to toy with and try on and eventually sort of figure out. If you throw enough darts, you’re bound to hit a bullseye. My brother hit it early. A letter home from summer camp contained two papers. One addressed to “Mama and Mommy and Leyla” and one addressed to “JUST LEYLA.” In it, I read, “I’m bi. I miss you!” in a twelve-year-old’s shaky handwriting. My parents didn’t read it. They’re generous with secrets. It didn’t matter, though. He came out to them a month later. I, on the other hand, pretended that the lack of haste in exploration meant a free pass from doing it at all. 

My family was the second gay family ever to enroll at my New York school. My parents were pioneers and, by extension, so was I. In Debbie’s kindergarten reading class, I teach my friends what a sperm donor is. 

“How can two women make a baby?” 

“Well, my biological father donated his sperm and they put it in my mom at the doctor’s office.” 

“What’s sperm?” 

That one was above my pay grade. In middle school, I am recruited to assist with the Gay Straight Alliance called Spectrum, or coloquially, “Gay Club.” At Gay Club, I teach my friends about ball culture and suggest we have a screening of “Paris is Burning.” It’s a classic in my household. When my friends start coming out, I am relieved that other people can finally share the weight. Being gay-by-association was getting exhausting.

I never stopped to think about my own sexuality. I told myself it was because I knew that it didn’t matter. I told myself that I was enlightened, born into a monarchy of queer people with no need for binaries or labels. I hated labels. I hated them because I couldn’t even begin to reckon with what mine might be. I didn’t feel straight. I was injected with too much queerness for that. I had been to one too many pride marches, one too many shabbat sedars filled with lesbians, seen one too many shirtless pictures of my mother campaigning for equal rights outside the White House. I was too open-minded to be straight. In the hallway outside my apartment, I told my mom I didn’t think anyone was 100% straight. She asked me if I didn’t think that people could be 100% gay. I was stumped. I asked her what she was on the kinsey scale. She rolled her eyes as she put the key in the lock. 

“That’s a stupid scale.” 

Then she pushed the door open and said, “a six.” 

I also wasn’t gay. I knew that much. I could tell which girls were hot, but in a distant, sterile way. Every once in a while, I thought I might like to kiss one, but not enough to follow through. I couldn’t pinpoint a place where awe turned to attraction. There was the camp counselor that I was a little too infatuated with, the upperclassmen whose shoes I needed to buy, but it was never enough to decide anything definitively about myself. What confused me the most, though, is that I wasn’t really that into boys either. I hooked up with a few, followed through with none. I never really cared. I convinced myself into crushes that vanished the moment they were reciprocated. I can only remember feeling true attraction to two boys during high school, one of whom I never even kissed, and one of whom I ran from after he expressed interest in a relationship. I was freaked out by the idea of myself as a sexual being, and more freaked out by my own passivity in it. My upbringing, warm and forgiving, was absent of the sense of urgency and confusion that allowed my friends to realize themselves. With no binary to rebel against, I was left floating in a strange in-between. I watched as my peers tried on labels, discarded them, and began again. I watched as they found power in the words that they used to define themselves. I had no words. My best friend, Theo, said, “Leyla’s sexuality is the great mystery of our time.” I laughed and offered no explanation. 

My first year of college, I found some clarity. Yes, I am definitely actually attracted to men. But, also maybe to women, but also it doesn’t matter because I’m preoccupied anyway, and I go to a liberal arts school where everyone seems to assume that women are queer because they wear Carhartts. Fine. I floated. I worried a little bit that I would float forever, and I let it go. 

Then, the summer after my freshman year, I met Lucinda. We were counselors at a summer camp spending hours in the sun teaching kids to weave and craft canoe paddles and brush the dirt off of carrots before taking gritty bites. 

We call it a love affair, but it started as a friendship. Days into meeting Lucinda, I decided she was the funniest person in the world. I looked for her in every room, took uncomfortably long strides to catch up to her on our walks between staff orientation meetings. She felt out of my league, like she knew something I didn’t and I was desperate to learn from her. Sitting in the backseat of her camry during drives to the gas station for beer or into town for ice cream, I felt giddy like an awkward high school freshman adopted by the seniors. 

When she found out that I had two moms, our dynamic shifted. In the heterosexual world of outdoor-focused summer camps, she felt out of place as a lesbian. I was gay-by-association again, but this time it was my superpower. My queer upbringing allowed me to view the world through a similar lens as her. She said “I got it” and no one else did. I was proud to be her confidante. 

There was romance woven into our relationship from the start. I was aware of it in a way that nagged at me, something I could almost grasp, but couldn’t define. We joked when the campers tried to identify the counselor couples that they would never realize that we were secret lovers. We spent days off searching for the perfect diner brunch. It became a source of immense tension when we disagreed about the quality of the breakfast sausage at two rival establishments. She thought they were dry at my favorite place. They were not. I had never had a friendship like it. It was infused with a new level of intimacy, a frenzied desire to cram as much closeness as possible into our breaks from work. We bantered and argued with passion, staying up unhealthily late to debrief the inconsequential parts of our days as if they were scenes in a gratuitously dramatic movie. I felt lucky to be in her presence. I didn’t understand why her camp cabin, infested with beetles and leaky with rainwater, felt so safe.

She told me during the last week that she was in love with me. I already knew. I had felt it well up somewhere behind glances and shared PBRs and the time that she learned my favorite song on guitar. Sitting on her porch steps in front of an uncomfortably beautiful sunset, I cried. I cried because the part of me that I had evaded for so long had manifested in one of the most incredible people I had ever met, and I still couldn’t tell what I wanted. I couldn’t allow myself to let go, to embrace the depth of the things that I was feeling, because I had ascribed so much pressure to what that might mean. I was suddenly trapped in the labels that I had thought that I rejected. Would that make me bisexual? Would I be ceremoniously inducted into the world of my parents? I felt like an imposter. I felt like a child. I felt the way that my friends in middle school must have felt when they began to figure out who they were. The weight of my years of avoidance was crushing. The open mindedness I thought that I possessed was gone. I couldn’t give her an answer. I didn’t have one. I went to bed with an unfamiliar devastation. I spent the next day on the verge of tears, hyper aware of her ease at vulnerability and of my weakness. That night, drunk off of sprite and vodka, she asked me if I had ever, or could ever feel the way she felt. I told her yes. She asked me if I was attracted to her. I told her yes. 

“Well, then this is ridiculous.” She kissed me. And I knew immediately that I had told her the truth. 

It didn’t matter that she was a girl. Well it did, but only because our relationship, in its closeness and love, was one untouched by expectation and rooted in a confidentiality that I believe is often unique in female friendships. It didn’t matter that she was a girl because what was really special about it wasn't that I had finally unlocked a profound truth about my identity, it wasn’t about feeling vindicated in some new label. It was that I had found this extraordinary, new sense of love. A delicate, gentle, understanding one built on a foundation of friendship and forgiveness and intimacy. It was that I had allowed myself to let my feelings– the visceral, wordless ones–propel me into a happiness that I didn’t feel any need to explain. And when I left behind the logic and the worrying I got something raw and real. And it was me and it was her. And that was it. 

When I told my mom, it didn’t matter to her that Lucinda was a girl either. 

“Any summer loves?” She asked from the living room couch the morning after I arrived home from camp. I paused.

“Well... Lucinda.”

“Mm. I thought so.” She returned to her crossword.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe some long-awaited celebration of this newfound similarity, or at least an acknowledgment of an unspoken question between us. My mother, true to her word, didn’t care.

 I don’t know what it means to me to be queer. I don’t know where I fit in on the kinsey scale or what words I might choose or not choose, but I know what it means to love Lucinda, so I’m not really worried about it. Maybe there will be more hers (not that anyone else could be her) or maybe there won’t. Either way, the summer I spent with her will remain cemented as one of the most important of my life. I don’t feel scared anymore, and I don’t feel any need to justify myself. I feel comfortable being in motion, stitching memories and people and pieces together to create a me that feels true. I’ll probably never be finished, and that’s totally ok.