Nancy Stohlman

Couple's Counseling

2011-01-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

Published in Exquisite Quartet

“Exquisite Quartet” is a collaboration of four writers who will put together a story, piece by piece. Each writer adds a bit more to the racy tale until, like an old beat-up sectional couch, it miraculously fits together. This story is a collaboration between writers Meg Tuite, Sheldon Lee Compton, Karen Stefano and Nancy Stohlman.

“Couple’s Counseling”

Vlasco and Darlene withered as lovers will do over time, but slowly like a cloud passes over the sun. Each partner found a separate, unspoken pastime to keep them somewhat lively and unencumbered as a couple. Vlasco had taken to internet porn sites in his locked office on Sunday nights after Darlene’s snoring was rhythmic and deep. Darlene greeted the dawn three times a week with Tyrone. Vlasco sometimes woke up before the sun, with a distinctive urge to pee, to a locked bathroom door and the vibrating regularity of that erectile, blue, larger than life Tyrone, who kept Darlene in a state of C battery abandon.

This was sufficient for a period of time, until Darlene decided it was no longer sufficient. She came back from a weekly luncheon with her friends loaded with a mission and a phone number to match. One phone call later and Vlasco found himself sitting on a couch next to Darlene, across from this psychologist, this man of letters, a brute of a man who held all the libidinous keys. Vlasco deflated before this professional muscle man framed by bookshelves, while Vlasco noticed how Darlene inflated. Her eyes blasted dams open and the couple’s non-coupling sexual activities became a typhoon of Vlasco’s inadequacies as a lover, a provider and a companion.

Vlasco cupped his crotch with sweaty palms holding on to whatever was left of his balls at these weekly meetings. A new tic discovered Vlasco’s left eye. He had to focus to keep it from twitching while Darlene and the doctor calmly discussed Vlasco’s depression, sometimes clutching his head in his hands to hold the eye taut. And it didn’t end at the counseling sessions. He drove home with Darlene reliving the doctor’s ludicrous responses like, “let the downpour begin” “sounds like a bunjee cord of a ride” or “good to get it out of the oven” yet she never opened her wallet to pay for this crap. No, Vlasco, the buffoon of a provider, had to slap down the $120 every week with Darlene gushing all over this crackerjack who probably laughed all the way to the bank.

But Vlasco kept with the $120 a week, the twitching eye, the literal and figurative reminder that was, in the flesh and inside his head, the psychologist, that man a whisper in his ear of being a lesser among lions. And he tried to stay away from those late night internet sessions, but when Darlene drifted, mumbling between her snoring words like “downpour” and “out of the oven,” Vlasco found himself again in the dark folds of his office with the computer screen a beacon of release.

To his credit, though, Vlasco searched for porn with actresses who looked like his Darlene, the Darlene of their beginnings – a softness in the eyes and across her hips, a mouth endlessly trimmed with lips always swollen, full, lush. Red hair like autumn leaves. And legs so long, and long, and, oh. Toenails painted red this day and a light purple the next. The videos, the pictures, slowly became memories that after a time were to him those moments of the Darlene he lost, allowed to slip away. In the darkness then, he found the courage.

Into bed, sliding across the sheets on hands and knees, eyes closed and focused on the Darlene of his beginnings, he felt Tyrone jutting into his knee, tucked in the bend of her back like the remains of a lover Vlasco never had the chance to see face to face. Tyrone in his spot, inside his woman. The psychologist would not whisper now, but roar into Vlasco’s ear. And that roar was a true lion. It could have been laughter or rage. Vlasco was unsure. But there was an old proverb he remembered from childhood, and he repeated it over and again to find sleep. Better to be a wounded lion than an impeccable flea. Better to be a wounded lion than an impeccable flea.

Vlasco whispered the words like a mantra, but sleep would not find him. He sat up again, knees folded under him, and knelt as if praying before Darlene. He rocked his torso back and forth, still whispering the words, a psalm, repeating them faster and faster until they mutated into a furious chant. “Better a wounded lion than impeccable flea, better lion than flea, lion not flea, not flea. I AM NOT A FLEA!” Vlasco looked between his legs at a manhood, big as a wildcat. Next to him, Tyrone sat there not daring to mock him anymore. Vlasco grabbed Tyrone by the neck and ejected the blue bastard from his lion’s den, cracking Tyrone’s throbbing head against the bedroom wall, spilling the C battery guts across the floor. Despite the violence and roars, Darlene still slept, snoring softly, unaware of Vlasco’s transformation.

Vlasco placed one arm on either side of Darlene’s head and lowered himself down to her neck. He extended his tongue and licked the length of her neck like an animal tasting a snack before devouring it. Darlene woke with a start and Vlasco saw his face reflected in her rabid eyes. It was the face of a feral cat. And before Darlene could blink, it happened. They were fucking again. Or was it called coupling? Vlasco took Darlene down, with all the porn queens from his computer screen forgotten. They did it all, like the days of yore. This was no mere “making love.” Vlasco sneered at those words as he thrust deeper, thinking back to the question posed by that sniveling fool of a shrink to his beloved Darlene, “How do you feel when you and Vlasco make love?” The quack had spoken these words like only a clinician could, sterilizing the act with his thin, warbling voice. The words amused Vlasco and he roared at the ceiling–a yell, or laugh, or growl–he didn’t know. It was no sound he’d ever made before.

Vlasco looked down into Darlene’s eyes. He could feel Darlene’s blue jewels penetrate him while he worked at penetrating her. They would climax in a chorus together like they used to, at the beginning, when they first met. Darlene had a distant look, far away, yet so close. Her lips parted for something? A rapturous kiss? To moan like a conquered lioness? To scream out his name? Her mouth opened wider and he interrupted with, “I’m going to–I’m going to…!!!” And just before he hit the mark, Vlasco looked down into that beautiful mouth in time to see it complete a YAWN?

And then it happened. Abandoned by the Darlene of his youth and God himself, raw rage pulsed through Vlasco. Darlene’s face became scruffy and her eyes were just smudged glass. Vlasco heard that psychologist’s annoying voice as Vlasco pounded away, “letting the flood down”, “letting it all out of the oven.” Oh, hell yes, it was all out of the oven now, and Vladdy boy was finally giving Mr. Something-up-his-ass the whooping he so deserved. It culminated in a downpour of therapeutic proportions. And then it became limp. A sea cucumber between his legs.

At their next appointment Darlene didn’t even sit next to Vlasco, instead choosing the crushed green velour chair. She picked at lint on the arm handle and started to cry as she described the “particularly violent” sexual episode that had transpired between them. The therapist nodded in a concerned, eyebrow-knitted rhythm. It was a call-and-response chorus of “hmmms” and “I sees.” Vlasco sat alone on the white leather couch with the eternal jellyfish between his legs, and wondered if he should have just punched the guy in the mouth months ago.

The psychologist looked at Darlene’s sniveling face and handed her a Kleenex. He glanced over at the clock and Vlasco knew what that meant. Vlasco took his hand off his balls and pulled out his checkbook.

***

This month’s contributors to Exquisite Quartet are:

Sheldon Lee Compton, whose work has appeared in more than 100 journals and anthologies including Ramshackle Review, BLIP, Emprise Review and, most recently, the short story collection Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia. He edits the online journal A-Minor and can also be found here. He lives in Eastern Kentucky.

Nancy Stohlman, author of Searching for Suzi and The Mix Tape: A Collection of Flash Fiction. You can find her here and here.

Karen Stefano, whose short fiction has appeared in the literary journals Ellipsis and The South Carolina Review. Other stories are forthcoming in The Santa Fe Literary Review, Iconoclast and PilotPocket. Her book, Before Hitting Send: Power Writing Skills For Real Estate Agents will be published later this year. She lives in San Diego, where she practices law and struggles constantly to find enough time to write.

Meg Tuite, whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in over 40 magazines and journals including 34th Parallel, One, the Journal, Sententia Magazine and SLAB Magazine. She is the fiction editor of The Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. Her fiction collection “Domestic Apparition” is forthcoming in early 2011 through San Francisco Bay Press. She can be found here.

What I Mean When I Say I Love You

2010-12-25T20:08:00.000-08:00

Published in Cliterature, APPETITE edition

1. Endorphins are the natural opiates the body produces to protect us from pain. Touching secretes endorphins. We crave the emotional nutrition that comes from touch, just like a vitamin. Without it we develop a form of emotional scurvy.

2. Oxytocin is a peptide that spikes when someone touches you. If you spend time in that person’s presence, oxytocin will surge just at the thought of him or her.

3. Which means I have acute skin hunger for you, like malnutrition.

4. Phenylethylamine (PEA) is a natural form of amphetamine that we produce when we “fall in love”. Conversely, the love-struck soul gets acutely lovesick when romance ends, similar to amphetamine withdrawal.

5. PEA creates the limerance that consumes lovers. Occasionally, high levels of PEA have been found in states of mania and schizophrenia.

6. So when I say I’m crazy about you, I probably am.

7. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) produces the pheromones that emit our scent through the skin. We each have a unique smell print. When we move around we leave a cloud of scent molecules behind.

8. Estrogen governs a woman’s receptive sex drive and makes her acquiescent.

9. So when I arch my back to you it’s called “presenting”, just like a bitch in heat.

10. Seratonin cools your sex drive. At high levels serotonin has a sensitive side, with a peaceful nature. That’s why Prozac makes people feel so good—it boosts your serotonin. It also takes away your sex drive and delays your orgasms. Low serotonin levels make you want it—now. Gotta get happy. Now.

11. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter best known for giving us pleasure. Dopamine is the common denominator of most, if not all, addictions.

12. So when I say I love you, what I mean is that I’m really addicted to the chemical rush I associate with you.

13. When I met you, DHEA increased in my brain and seeped through my skin, sending and receiving signals into the atmosphere. PEA made me feel giddy and high. Oxytocin rushed when you touched my arm. Dopamine pulsed in anticipation of what you might feel like, taste like. When we touched, oxytocin and endorphins soothed me, made me like it. Made me associate you with pleasure. Serotonin dropped. Estrogen made me arch my back. Oxytocin and estrogen demanded penetration. Just before orgasm and ejaculation, oxytocin levels in both our bodies spiked three to five times higher than usual.

14. When it was all over, when I was flooded with PEA and dopamine and you were drunk in your post-coital oxytocin coma, I realized that I loved you.

*Some text incorporated from the book The Alchemy of Love and Lust by Theresa L. Crenshaw

"Love Letter to the National Library of Poetry"

2010-11-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

Published in Monkey Puzzle Magazine, Issue #10: click here

Dear National Library of Poetry,

It is my pleasure to inform you that, after reviewing the details of my life since I first received your glowing acceptance letter in 1995, it has been determined that you are directly responsible for the publication of my recent novel.

My poem of “rare talent” you must remember well, the one without a title that began with the very original “I lie my curls on a bed of red roses,” the one you published in a hardback anthology called Between the Raindrops. I have to officially apologize for not buying the anthology at the time, I just couldn’t afford the $50 working as a Ruby Tuesday’s waitress, but I vowed to someday go to D.C. in person instead and see my work displayed.

“You should be genuinely proud of your accomplishment” your acceptance letter told me. “We receive thousands of poems each year and we choose only a very few for publication.”

And just like that I was a published author.

Had I never received your letter back in 1995, I might never have completed that first notebook, each poem growing less tentative. And if I hadn’t finished multiple notebooks, I might never have started calling myself a writer—in fact, I might never have gone to Colorado at all. And if I hadn’t gone west, I might never have gone to those coffeehouses where people wearing berets read poetry worse than mine. I might not have decided to go back to school, which means I might never have written “The Phantom of the Waffle House,” my first short story and the earner of my first official form rejection slip. And if I hadn’t started writing stories and submitting my work for publication, I might never have tried to write my first shitty novel. Or my second shitty novel, or my third slightly less shitty novel. In fact, I might never have written a decent word.

And so you see, the National Library of Poetry is directly responsible for my recent success.

You might be wondering if I ever did make it to D.C. to see my work in person? Yes, several years ago I finally went on the pilgrimage to see my work at the National Library of Poetry. I imagined the National Library’s domed ceilings where doves fluttered across beams of sunlight. I imagined Between the Raindrops as a thick, weighty book and my name in golden scroll.

I went through the metal detectors and proudly approached the information desk:

I’m looking for my poem.

Who’s the publisher?

I pulled out the old, yellowed acceptance letters with the glossy fonts.

Oh, the National Library of Poetry, she said, distain hanging from the final syllables. That’s a commercial library.

What do you mean?

I mean it’s not part of the National Library of Congress. It’s in Silver Springs, Maryland.

National Library of Poetry—you swindler, I had thought all this time that I was special; you really convinced me that I had rare talent. But you say that to all of us, don’t you? I guess I’m the one to blame, I offered up a shitty poem to the Great God of Vanity Publishing, and it was taken with the option to purchase the hardback for $50.

But, really, I can’t thank you enough. Sending you that terrible poem was the most important decision I ever made. Who doesn’t want a letter in the mail saying “congratulations. You should be genuinely proud of your accomplishment. We receive thousands of poems each year and we choose only a very few for publication. It is our pleasure to publish fine poems such as yours in our anthologies.” That your praise was contrived and formulaic made no difference in the end. And later, when I realized the truth, it could no longer crush me.

My most sincere thanks,
Nancy Stohlman

P.S. National Library of Poetry, seeing how your publication of my first poem was so crucial in my trajectory of becoming a writer, I would like to offer you the opportunity to own a signed copy of my novel, Searching for Suzi. Let me make one thing clear . . . I am selecting you as a receiver of my signed novel solely on the basis of merit. You are under no obligation to make any purchase of any kind. Of course, many people do wish to own a copy of the publication that they have had such a hand in bringing to fruition. If this is the case, I welcome your order—and guarantee your satisfaction. If you wish to own a signed copy of Searching for Suzi at my special gratitude price, please complete the enclosed order form.

"The Bargain: A Fairy Tale"

2010-10-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Published in Dinosaur Bees, Issue #1

THERE WAS ONCE a poet who stole stories. “I’m going to steal that story,” she always warned right before the theft occurred. The original owner of the story laughed. The poet laughed, I’m serious, she said, and they continued to laugh while ribbons of imagery and narrative wriggled free of its owner and wrapped around the imagination of the poet, transferred permanently to her, where she would eventually twist and torment it until it was not even recognizable.

By the time the mistake became obvious it was too late…the story had already changed hands. And yet most owners gave their stories willingly, wanted to feel that their story was worth taking.

Now, as often happens in fairy tales, there was an angel who was in love with this poet. He said to her: I’ve been watching you. I can show you the kind of story most poets would kill themselves for. But you can never write about it.

The poet, in love with this idea of herself as a poet, agreed.

The poet and the angel came together like two beams of light. They rolled through sand, water, jungles, deserts, summer, spring, fall, winter, orange sunsets, perfect pink sunrises, the angel flooded the poet until she leaked couplets.

When the angel kissed the poet goodbye, he reminded her of the bargain.

Her breasts grew, the skin stretching into pink rubbery spiderwebs. Then her stomach. Oil glossed her hair, left a marmalade sheen across her cheeks. Lying in bed watching the weak sun slant through heavy blinds, the poet felt the quickening and heard the angel’s voice:

“It is my story inside of you. But you can never write about it. You made a bargain.”

The story she could not write grew stronger because she could not write it. It was swelling, transforming, shining behind her eyes the way secrets do. She ate cottage cheese, spinach, eggs. She ate raw liver with bare fingers.

Soon the poet couldn’t write anything because every story was touched by the unborn story. Now she didn’t care what happened to the angel, the bargain seemed cruel, unnecessary. Once a story has been conceived it can’t be aborted. She had to write it.

It was on that day that the pains started. Her water exploded in a gush of warmth. The muse urged her to push, feeling for the head of the story. She fed the poet grapes and yogurt and cheese and tea and sang to her through each wave, screamed with her as the pain crested and then subsided. The poet writhed and expelled the story she was not allowed to write—the church in Armenia and the genocide and the orphanage and the opera and Sagrada Familia and the misty form of a monster disguised as an angel and the house in Mexico City and the baby grand piano with no varnish—all these images emerged from her piece by piece and attempted to arrange themselves on the page.

But the poet had waited too long. She had allowed the story to over gestate… It was now rotted, bloated with decay. Large chunks dropped from her, overripe chunks that left a strong odor. The poet birthed the stillborn mess and cut the umbilical cord.

The story was gone. Amidst the blood and tissue, she saw perfectly formed sentences, little conjunctions, baby down verbs, a sunrise pooling there, on the floor.

Upcoming Events!

2010-09-29T15:58:00.001-07:00

From the Fast Forward Denver Release, September 24, 2010

Check out some of these cool upcoming events in Denver and Boulder!

BOULDER
Wednesday, October 20, 7:30-9:00 pm
Snap Shot: Writers and Poets Respond to Photography
Dana Elkun and Rhada Marcum, poets; Nancy Stohlman and Shane Oshetski, fiction.
After their readings, we'll have a reader/audience conversation.
Wild Sage Community House
1650 Zamia Avenue
Boulder, 80304

DENVER
Friday, October 22, 8-10 pm
“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series featuring Teresa Milbrodt
(followed by open mic)
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com

Friday, November 19, 8-10 pm
“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series featuring Rob Geisen
(followed by open mic)
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com

SPD Recommends Suzi and other cool upcoming events!

2010-08-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

Small Press Distribution has now put Searching for Suzi on its recommended reading list! Pass this email along, order your Christmas copies (wink) and have your cool local bookstore stock it on the shelves. For those of you who don't know what a distributor does, their job is to get the beautiful books made by the publisher onto the shelves of the bookstores, so this is a really big deal. Click and scroll down to see Suzi:

Be on the lookout for some of my latest stories forthcoming in the Santa Fe Literary Review and Dinosaur Bees, among others. And be sure to become a fan of Searching for Suzi and Fast Forward on Facebook!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Denver Reading and Release Party for Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
Friday, September 24,
7 pm
The Mercury Cafe
2199 California Street
303-294-9258
www.mercurycafe.com

From the New York City Fast Forward Release Party

From a review of The Mix Tape:

“The microstories range from high comedy to sensitive melodrama, to bizarre animals, funerals, Holocaust, teen pregnancies, religion - almost every imaginable topic is surveyed with astonishingly fine writing. Some of the stand out works include a brief look at an encounter with possible love angles that ends unexpectedly by Felix Calvino ('In the Park'), several stories from Nancy Stohlman ('Clowning for Jesus' is bound to become a classic) whose flirtations with being naughty ('Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie') vie with those of Kona Morris ('Confession #3', 'Going Back') or stories by Sophie Rosenblum ('A Terrier's Limits' et al). To have the luxury to savor such creativity within the covers of one book is a feast. Let's hope these 'Fast Forwards' continue! Editors K. Scott Forman, Kona Morris, and Nancy Stohlman have done a superb job in arresting the talents of many terrific writers.” Grady Harp

Order yours now! Click here for Amazon

UPCOMING CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS WITH NANCY

Writing the Long and Short of Fiction: A Two-Part Event

Part One: Size Doesn't Matter: Writing Flash Fiction
October 14, 4-6 pm
Join Flash Fiction writer Nancy Stohlman for a workshop on flash fiction writing
$5 for students and nonstudents. Contact writerstudio@arapahoe.edu for RSVP by Oct 12

Part II: Size Does Matter: Writing the Novel
Oct. 25 from 4 p.m.-6 p.m.
Join Novelist William Haywood Henderson for a workshop on writing the novel
$5 for students and nonstudents. Contact writerstudio@arapahoe.edu for RSVP by Oct 20

Get Back on the Page: Connecting to Your Inner Writer
Colorado Free University

Do you feel the call to write, but struggle to find the time or focus to get the thoughts in your mind into print? The first step in meeting and/or reconnecting to the writer inside of you is to dust yourself off and get back on the page! In a supportive workshop environment, you can get the momentum going again and see the world through the eyes of a writer. All ages and skill levels are welcome, and while this will mostly focus on prose writing, poets are welcome, too. Come with an empty journal and an open mind and be ready to give and receive constructive feedback. Nancy Stohlman is the author of the novel Searching for Suzi: a flash novel and the co-founder and editor of the annual Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction. She has been teaching writing for almost a decade.

Price: $177 Non-Member $165 Member $5 materials fee payable in class
Class # Class Dates Area of town

2084E
Six Wed., 6:30-8:30 p.m. Begins 8/25 CFU LOWRY: Near 1st & Quebec

2084F
Six Wed., 6:30-8:30 p.m. Begins 10/6 CFU LOWRY: Near 1st & Quebec

To Register (click and scroll down):

And most of all, thank you all so much for your continued support!

Nancy

Creative Writing Classes with Nancy Stohlman

2010-07-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

To Register, click here and scroll down:

Get Back on the Page: Connecting to Your Inner Writer

Do you feel the call to write, but struggle to find the time or focus to get the thoughts in your mind into print? The first step in meeting and/or reconnecting to the writer inside of you is to dust yourself off and get back on the page! In a supportive workshop environment, you can get the momentum going again and see the world through the eyes of a writer. All ages and skill levels are welcome, and while this will mostly focus on prose writing, poets are welcome, too. Come with an empty journal and an open mind and be ready to give and receive constructive feedback. Nancy Stohlman is the author of the novel Searching for Suzi: a flash novel and the co-founder and editor of the annual Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction. She has been teaching writing for almost a decade.

Price: $177 Non-Member $165 Member $5 materials fee payable in class
Class # Class Dates Area of town

2084E
Six Wed., 6:30-8:30 p.m. Begins 8/25 CFU LOWRY: Near 1st & Quebec

2084F
Six Wed., 6:30-8:30 p.m. Begins 10/6 CFU LOWRY: Near 1st & Quebec

Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie

2010-07-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

Published in Fast Forward: The Mix Tape

My Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie dolls came with matching purple outfits—Donny had purple socks that slipped into white shoes, and both Donny and Marie had holes drilled through their left hands for their matching microphones that I promptly lost. Their brunette heads were fastened onto typical Barbie bodies, Marie’s 38—22—26, feet permanently arched for high-heels, Donny’s nondescript bulge.

There was only one game I played with Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie, who were no longer brother and sister. It went like this: Donny wakes one morning ready for another exciting day in plastic world. After a refreshing plastic breakfast, he decides to go to the mall. In the atrium of the mall an event is happening, a large, raised platform with a line of beautiful women, including Marie. It’s a Wife Auction—the fast-talking announcer is rattling off his prizes to the highest bidder.

Now Donny really isn’t in the market for a wife on this beautiful Saturday in plastic world, but he’s never seen anyone as beautiful as Marie in his whole life. As one woman after another is bid on and married away to the mall-visiting man of her dreams, Donny can’t stop looking at his Marie. He approaches the stage, starry-eyed. He bids. He wins.

Marie is shy, demure behind that perpetual toothy smile. Like any bride wife who has just been sold from a platform in the middle of a shopping mall, she is nervous. She approaches the edge of the stage as if she is entering civilization for the first time. She shyly accepts Donny’s hand and steps from the platform, scared like a little bird. The few onlookers applaud the new married couple.

Donny, now manly and confident, leads his new wife away from the auctioning block, away from the platform and the mall to his shoebox Ferrari. A short drive across the carpet later the newlyweds arrive home. Marie is again overwhelmed, as she’s apparently never seen a house before, and Donny shows her the two plastic fold-up walls ending at the bedroom, which, ironically, is the only room in this cheap, non-Barbie brand plastic house. In the fold-out plastic bed they kiss, him the sweet but firm aggressor, her compliant, and then finally they are naked, her plastic legs swiveled out, his nondescript bulge pushing between.

The plot never went any further. By then the game had reached its shaky conclusion, the sky was darkening and my mother was calling me to dinner.

Suzi Does New York City 2010

2010-07-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

For the full Suzi in NYC Photo Shoot, become a Fan of Searching for Suzi on Facebook

Fast Forward: The Mix Tape! June 12, 2010!

2010-06-03T13:39:00.001-07:00

You've been waiting...it's finally here!

Saturday, June 12th, 7-10“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series and Release Party for Fast Forward: The Mix Tape!!
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com

The Current State of Occupation

2010-05-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

Published in BASE: Building Alliances for Social Engagement

I abandoned my innocence
in a hotel room in East Jerusalem,
with thin walls and narrow beds that
creaked hushed confessions:
War and Politics and Passion and Urgency
and Love
melting in a crucible
where there was no injustice
for those with dark skin,
and there was always one more day
I didn’t have with you.

During the invasion,
I took a last look at my old life
from behind bullet-shattered windows.
In Aida Refugee Camp,
Palestinian faces creased with worry,
we waited for the drones.
“From childhood, everyone knows
what follows:”
ringing phones,
blood types listed on yellow legal paper,
an oatmeal sky,
a bomb-littered street,
a sniper tower,
phone numbers permanently inked
up and down
my arms

When the tanks finally rolled
down the streets,
it was almost a relief.

In Bethlehem, you came to me
like a wise man to a star,
bearing something more than
the bread I sought amidst the rubble.
Tank tracks driven through my resolve to resist
I allowed myself to be
Occupied.

In a land of injustice
you became the just.
In a land of destruction
I became the creator.
We sang celebrations over the explosions
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
When the smoke cleared
from the silhouettes of ancient church steeples
I saw only a changed world,
never mind the return plane ticket.

We sampled hotel rooms in
Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,
escaping into the old, walled city
where we could drink Arabic coffee and
pretend to be tourists.
On our last evening
we climbed the Mount of the Olives
where Jesus ate his last supper
and silently watched the sun set
over the Middle East.
Take of this body and remember me.

Now that moment is a photograph
of a man and a woman with strange smiles.
Over static phone lines stretched thin,
my mind is still kissing you goodbye
from the taxi on Ben Yehuda.
And, like a stray bullet
arching through a holy night,
I am burning up in my own fire.

Upcoming New York/Denver Appearances

2010-04-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

DENVER

Saturday, June 12th, 7-9
“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series and Release Party for Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com

Thursday, June 17th, 7:30
The Gypsy House Reading Series
Gypsy House Cafe
1279 Marion St
Denver, CO 80218-2296
(303) 830-1112

NEW YORK

Saturday, June 19th, 2-4 pm
Panel: A Discussion of Guerrilla Publishing with Susan Tepper, Nancy Stohlman, Ruth Zamoyta O’Toole, Sonia Rivera-Valdes and Jacqueline Donado. This event is part of the Uptown Arts Stroll under the auspices of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance.

New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
2:00-4:00 pm
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/FortWashingtonLibrary
tel: 212-927-3533

(Note New Venue)

Saturday, June 19th, 8:00-11:00 P.M.
A Reading and Release Party to Celebrate Fast Forward (Volume 3): The Mix Tape.
The Path Cafe
131 Christopher Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 243-1311
www.pathcafe.com

The Barcelona Review: Searching for Suzi

2010-04-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

Read the original here.

Searching for Suzi,
a flash novel, by Nancy Stohlman
Monkey Puzzle Press,
Boulder, Colorado, 2009

What happens to a young girl whose mother encourages her to enter beauty pageants as she herself had done, and whose father’s advises her at age 14: “If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow”? Whose parents were swingers until her mum found Jesus. Whose dad continued the open sex with the neighbor lady until she moved away and he took flight himself, leaving his daughter a note saying she hadn’t been much of a daughter. She becomes a stripper, that’s what, at age 16. And works the trade for the next four years.

This is “Natalie,” which was her stage name and is the only name we know her by. She now has a Masters degree, is in her mid-thirties, married, the respectable wife of a research scientist, mother of two children, and living a comfortable life in St. Louis. She has reoccurring dreams about strip clubs, however, and one particularly vivid dream about a stripper named Suzi Cooper—her first female lover—throws her out of her life of domestic conventionality and on the road in a quest to find Suzi. Not that she and Suzi had been that close; in fact, Suzi was rather trashy and stole from her, and the lovemaking had been more like fooling around. It’d been a passing thing 14 years ago. But for reasons that are not easy to articulate, the quest is on.

We follow Natalie back to Omaha where she grew up, and to a series of clubs—the Sugar Lounge, the Red Umbrella, Dick’s Yum Yum Club, the Love Shack—where she picks up on the old smells, “that mixture of cigarettes and perfume, designer fragrances with slogans like ‘If you like Giorgio, you’ll love EXCITE’”; while she quite comfortably handles herself at the bar, knowledgeable in strip-club protocol, not blinking an eye at the outrageously overpriced drinks, even game for buying a drink for one of the strippers when approached. Because they’re just doing their job. She knows.

She views the stage from the other side now, judging the dancers— “young and stiff,” she sees one; “mesmerizing,” she thinks of another, who flashes a glittery beaver. Some “Stripper Tips” are thrown in along the way as well as “Dance Moves,” and the reader gets a real feel for the seedy atmosphere where men pay to look, and for the chaos of the backstage dressing room, "the counter covered with abandoned curling irons crusted with brown hairspray, eyeshadow and blush ground into the Formica." Our narrator throws out mixed feelings about the scene: on the one hand, she can view it with some disdain (“another hour of your life wasted, thrown like pocket change to the sidewalk”), but she also knows the power it can give a woman (“Never, in any other aspect of your life, have you felt so uninhibited.”). It’s what you make it, this world of stripping.

The narrative switches from first to second to third person, from present to past and in between, but there is an immediacy to it all that keeps one turning the pages, 87 in all. We could call it a novella, or as the author prefers, a flash novel, but by whatever name this is a great romp into the world of stripping. Page by page our plucky narrator reveals more of herself until the perfect ending lays it all bare. J.A.

Literary Salon and cocktails at Dazzle Jazz Club, April 8

2010-04-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

When: April 8, 2010
Time: 10:00 PM-1:00 AM
Where: Dazzle Supper Club
930 Lincoln Street, Denver
303-839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com

Readers include:

Benjamin Dancer
Bryan Jansing
Kona Morris
Rob Geisen
Jonathon Montgomery
Nancy Stohlman
Matt Reeck
Travis Cebula
Gordon Massman
Andrew Zornoza
Shane Jimenez
Scott Alexander Jones
Andrew Schelling

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) comes to town next week, bringing with it a variety of writers, from international bestsellers like keynote speaker Michael Chabon to amateur poets working on their first collections. Six local presses, Fast Forward Press, Tarpaulin Sky, Fact-Simile, Monkey Puzzle Press, Zero Ducats, and Bombay Gin, are using the opportunity to put together a reading of unique and eloquent readers at the Denver jazz club, Dazzle, on Thursday, April 8th.

Fast Forward Press, a small independent press based in Denver, is dedicated to publishing flash fiction and will release its third collection in June. Fact-Simile Editions is a small independent publisher of mostly handmade books and book-objects, using recycled and reclaimed materials to create distinctive artifacts of literature. Boulder-based Monkey Puzzle Press is an independent trade publisher focusing on books from both emerging and established writers including a biannual literary arts journal. Bombay Gin is the literary journal of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Tarpaulin Sky, founded in 2002 as an online literary journal, focuses on cross-genre / trans-genre / hybrid forms as well as innovative poetry and prose.

Chicago Pics, New York Dates announced

2010-03-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks again for all the Chicago love and support. Here are some photos:

At Quimby's, March 4, 2010
The ever wonderful Rebecca George with an on-the-fly introduction:

UPCOMING EVENTS!

DENVER

April 8, 2010
Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com

NEW YORK

June 19, 2010
New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
2:00 pm
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/FortWashingtonLibrary
tel: 212-927-3533

Occupation

2010-02-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

Published in BASE: Building Alliances for Social Engagement

The occupation of the occupiers is to occupy the occupied. Depending on who is doing the occupying, this is called “security.”

The occupation occupies the space once occupied by the occupied at the onset of the occupation. While the occupiers are occupied with the occupation of keeping the occupied under occupation, the occupation of the occupied is to resist occupation. This resistance is usually called terrorism.

The occupied territories are simultaneously occupied by both the occupied (called militants) and the occupiers (called settlers and/or liberators). Eventually the occupiers will fully occupy the land that once held the villages of the occupied before the occupation. This is often referred to as progress.

The occupations of the occupied under occupation are now unoccupied.

But the occupation does not occupy the minds of those not occupied or occupying. In fact, they don’t want to be occupied by thoughts of the occupied or the occupation.

Occupation, after all, is such a harsh word.

Suzi Says Thanks!

2010-02-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

Hello Lovlies!

First: Thank you SO MUCH! I can’t thank you all enough for all the support you’ve been giving me as I’ve been learning how to promote a book (a whole different experience than writing one, let me tell you!) I feel very lucky…

Five-Star Review from the Midwest Book Review:

“The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.”

Woohoo! So if you’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t, yet, I’d be forever grateful…and if you’ve already read it, tell a friend…

$11.95 - Available at Monkey Puzzle Books: Click Here

Or Amazon: Click Here

Also Searching for Suzi has its own Facebook page now, so become a fan!

And Check out my new website courtesy of Noah Saterstrom and Artist Website Services:
www.nancystohlman.net

Upcoming Events!

I need a manager! No really, I do. The pay is, well…awful, but you will get all the experience and glory of working with Nate and I and launching a book into bestseller-dom. You don’t have to live in Denver, either. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is interested.

Suzi on the Road: Check out these awesome videos shot by Andrew Baran:

Video #1

Video #2

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Denver

April 8, 2010

Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com

Chicago

March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com

March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299

Thank you all again so much for everything…and happy reading!

~Nancy

Five Star Review from Midwest Book Review

2010-02-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

Published on Amazon.com

A fascinating and very highly recommended read, February 9, 2010
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.

Dark Stripping Secrets Revealed--A Review of Searching for Suzi

2010-01-28T18:31:00.000-08:00

By Dan Donan
Published in the Griffon News

I love strippers. The whole concept is wonderful. When I think about the low lights and the bumping bass and constant motion of a strip club I smile. Maybe it is just because I am a guy but the idea of a dozen or so women in various states of undress writhing and grinding in wanting ways for just my arousal is one of the top five things I can picture for any days plans. I really love strippers. But outside of dating a few in my early twenties, I never really stopped to think about the mental landscape they must live in. Then I read Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman.

This book is a fast firing flash fiction about womanhood, sexuality, exploitation, emotional evolution and the world of stripping. It is the tale of Natalie, a thirty something mother who retraces the steps of teenaged beauty pageantry and stripping to search for the first woman she slept with. The trail takes the reader on a ride through time that reveals a life of emotional abuse, squalor and eroticism.

It makes the reader think about the lives of strippers and the esteem issues inflicted on women in a world that tells them that they have to be beautiful. It asks serious questions about the effects our sexuality has on our lives.

Without becoming porn, this book looks truthfully at the world of strippers and gets quite saucy. The shifting point of view keeps the reader feeling like they are flowing in and out of the consciences of the narrator. It forces you to wonder how you would feel if you were 17 and your high school principal just walked into the strip club you work at. It keeps a dark subject light in the right places by reviewing stripper tips, like stripper tip #6: underarm deodorant glows under black light or stripper tip #11: smoking pot in the bathroom only makes the night drag on forever.

Sure there are plenty of dirty words to keep your attention and at least two sex scenes that will make you look around to make sure you are alone while you read it, but better than that is the underlying understanding of the story. It is a story about the scars sexuality can leave on us, and how those scars shape us into the sexy little beasts we become. It is also about the connections that you make in life and how things change over time. It is a story about real life and I am glad I read it.

2010 Reading List

2010-01-27T11:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, back by popular demand!

5 classics:
Ulysses—James Joyce
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein
Breakfast at Tiffanys—Truman Capote
Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
David Copperfield—Charles Dickens

1 reread
The Lover—Marguerite Duras

2 books about writing:
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing—Helene Cixous
Henry Miller on Writing—Henry Miller

5 contemporary writers
Cool For You—Eileen Myles
Staggering Work of a Heartbreaking Genius—Dave Eggers
The Road—Cormac McCarthy
The Fanmaker’s Inquisition—Rikki Ducornet
Jealousy—Alain Robbe-Grillet

1-2 books poetry
The Poems of John Keats—John Keats
The Ballad of Reading Gaol and other Poems—Oscar Wilde

1-2 collections of short stories
Flash Fiction—Ed. James Thomas
The Twilight of the Bums—Raymond Federman

1 unread book by a favorite author:
Pale Fire—Vladamir Nabokov

1 nonfiction books in a new discipline/field:
The Interpretation of Dreams—Sigmund Freud

1 children’s book:
Gulliver’s Travels—Jonathan Swift

1 book in translation:
If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler—Italo Calvino

1 biography:
Walking Back: The Life and Work of Flannery O’Conner—Brad Gooch

1 memoir:
Chasing Che—Patrick Symmes

Chicago/Denver Dates, Omaha Videos

2010-01-21T15:14:00.000-08:00

NANCY IN OMAHA JAN 13-14, 2010

With Andrew Baran, who shot the cover of Searching for Suzi. Check out Andrew's new online photography magazine, Scarlet Magazine.

See Video from Bookworm Here

See Pizza Shoppe Collective Video Here

UPCOMING PROMOTIONAL DATES:

Denver:

February 22, 2010
The Writers Studio: A Conversation with Novelists William Hayworth Henderson and Nancy Stohlman
4:00 PM
Arapahoe Community College
5900 South Santa Fe Drive
4th floor M 4750
Littleton, Colorado 80120-1801
303.797.4222

Chicago:

March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com

March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Stree
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299

Those Kinds of Girls

2009-12-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

Forthcoming in Anthology of the Awkward: The Virgins

“You can sit down right there, young lady,” my dad says, holding up a pile of papers. “When we were going through your room we found this.” He reads:

The full moon was shining over a calm lake. Jesse and I were laying on the beach, the cool waters touching our toes. He reaches for my…

My dad stops reading and squints at me. “Do you recognize this?”

I swallow. Of course. I worked on that story for a week straight, stuck it under my bed during the day with my diary and all the notes I’ve collected from school and everything else personal. They had always been looking for an excuse to snoop. And now they had it: Three hours earlier I had told a friend at school that I had tried to kill myself. It was a pathetic attempt, really, a bottle of aspirin that only made my stomach hurt, a few lines of poetry lifted from a Def Leppard song: “Lady Luck never smiles, so lend your heart to me awhile…” But I knew my secret was out when my name was called over the intercom during 7th period. I reported to the office, was given a slip and told to go home.

I walked, knowing whatever waited for me couldn’t be good. Maybe they’d be sad, crying that they had almost lost their precious daughter. After a night spent vomiting aspirin I had totally lost my taste for death, anyway, but I was sure they would lecture me. Ground me, probably. Make me talk to a priest.

When I got home all the shades were drawn in the living room and my parents were waiting for me, holding photocopied sheets of paper:

I feel warm as he unbuttons my blouse and slips off his shirt. He slips his hand under my bra and touches my breast, then my stomach, then slides his fingers down my panties. He takes his white t-shirt off and his chest is smooth and warm. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. “I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

My father stops reading, coughs awkwardly and shuffles the papers. Dear god, did he really have to read it outloud?

“This is very, uh, descriptive writing,” he finally says, looking away.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

“You know what happens to girls like you, don’t you? You get a bad reputation. No decent guy will want to go out with you.”

“But I made it up.”

My dad shuffles the paperwork again and settles on another passage: Jesse passes me the bottle of vodka and takes a swig, then I take a swig. When he kisses me his lips taste like vodka. “So you’re drinking now, too?”

“But it’s just a story I wrote,” I say, weaker.

Our bodies move with the waves of the lake and I’m not a virgin anymore. My dad glares at me and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Do you know what they call girls like you? They call them sluts.”

There was no point in telling my father that there was no Jesse, that I was a virgin, that putting dangerous words on paper was the only sexual catharsis I’d had. There was no point in telling him that I hated drinking, could barely choke the stuff down. That the only naked male bodies I’d seen were from the porn I found stashed behind our regular VCR movies in unmarked boxes or in the magazines in his nightstand drawer.

I knew there was no point in trying to explain to my parents how my dreams of freedom surged even greater than my hormones, painted my restricted world with swooshes of reds and golds and purples, joyriding, flying, how I imagined a day when I would not be grounded to the house in an endless military drill, a day when there would be no screaming, no fighting, no hiding in the shadows listening to the crying, a day when the woman my father was having an affair with would stop calling, coming over and pretending like she was still just our next-door neighbor, a day when my mom wouldn’t be preoccupied with her own grief long enough to pay attention to me.

“I’m ashamed of you,” my father decreed, folding my 10-page story and tucking it into a manila folder. “I never thought my daughter would end up to be one of those kinds of girls. And we’re going to lock the liquor cabinet from now on.”

Pictures from Book Launch--Dec 2, 2009

2009-12-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Poem to Porn

2009-11-28T19:59:00.000-08:00

Published in Illiterate Magazine, Hate to Love and Love to Hate Issue

A thigh, spread
hairless,
an ass, pushing
pushing
pushing
silent moans
volume turned down
baby asleep in the other room
don’t need the volume anyway...

I’m 12 years old
in my father’s nightstand drawer
flipping pages
listening for the car
I’m 13 years old
rubbing against the arm of the couch
volume turned down
girl unzips leather pants,
takes on five men,
girl dives into girl,
faked enthusiasm,
girl, tied up
sandwiched between two old men
I’m 14 years old
I’m 15 years old
I’m 16 years old
porn on the big screen:
woman dressed as nun
woman jogging naked
woman rubbing shaving cream on other woman’s breasts
I’m 16 years old
trying to deflect wandering hands holding dollar bills
hoping my high school principal won’t recognize me
I’m 17 years old
in the adult bookstore
watching a woman
give head to a dildo
I’m 18 years old and have never had an orgasm

I’m 19 years old and have never had an orgasm
I’m 23 years old and don’t know why I can’t have an orgasm
I’m 27 years old and only cum if I picture a spread thigh,
a faceless cock
a woman
tied up and sandwiched between two old men,
a woman
unzipping leather pants and taking on five men
I’m 30 years old and only cum if I picture something other than
love.
I’m 33 years old and wonder why I don’t like sex.

We sit in the dark as you confess
and I can only nod--
I understand, after all.
I’ve been competing against it my whole life
educated myself on it
fashioned myself in its glitzy, airbrushed image,
oh, to erase every crotch shot
money shot
conjured moan
fake orgasm
become that young girl
without the contents of the nightstand drawer.
I’m 36 years old and porn has stolen my sexuality.

Now there’s
You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
haunted.

You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
unlearning.

Searching for Suzi Book Launch December 2

2009-10-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Searching for Suzi Release Party
Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 6 pm
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St
Denver, CO 80205-2821
(303) 294-9258
Musical Guest: Nick Busheff

Monkey Puzzle Press is proud to announce the publication of our new novel - Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman!

For a free preview, click here: Searching for Suzi

From Monkey Puzzle Press:

What happens when an ex-stripper in her mid-thirties, married with children, awakens one day questioning what brought her to a current life of complicated domesticity? Compelled to return to Omaha after seventeen years, the narrator we only know as Natalie begins a quest into her past, an adventure that takes the reader from childhood beauty pageants to the sex and glamour industries. Natalie’s search becomes an intrepid journey through her own sexuality, a woman not only claiming herself but also accepting her contradictions. With inquisitive perception and agile use of perspective, Searching for Suzi is an investigation into the tragic shadows of a past preferred to be forgotten.

Here’s what people are saying about Searching for Suzi:

“Sexy, gutsy, raw and mature. A literary strip tease, Nancy Stohlman lures us through the layers of her dark world with the promise of exposing the ultimate sparkle…and ends up revealing something profound.”

Raymond Federman
Author of Double or Nothing

“Searching for Suzi offers syntax of desire itself – the complex, difficult, and beautiful ways we rupture into and beyond our own ghost-versions inside the mystery of hello and good-bye. Nancy Stohlman has written a spare, searing, and stunning book. It will wake you in the way that only necessary art can do.”

Selah Saterstrom
Author of The Meat and Spirit Plan

“In cheap pulp fiction, a stripper is either the helpless victim of sexual exploitation or the gutsy woman who makes the system work for her. Searching for Suzi is not pulp fiction. Nancy Stohlman smartly complicates the stereotypes with this story of a woman looking back on her life from a scrutinizing distance, separating the romantic images from the real and transforming the latter, through the art of storytelling, into something intimate and compelling.”

Danielle Dutton
Author of Attempts at a Life

$11.95 - Available for Pre-Order at Monkey Puzzle Books! Click Here

Or follow this link to Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Suzi-Nancy-Stohlman/dp/0980165067/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256824871&sr=1-4

Excerpt from Searching for Suzi

2009-10-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

Release date November 15, 2009
Forthcoming in Monkey Puzzle Magazine, Fall Edition

Watch the YouTube Video Here

Fourteen years after you’ve quit dancing, when you find yourself in the middle of a conversation about strippers at a wedding reception, or a book club, or any of the many places that these conversations begin, stay silent. Soon someone will admit they have a friend of a friend who is a stripper and then the inevitable elbow jabbing from the others, “Sure, your friend is a stripper,” someone will say. To which they will all laugh knowingly, the superior, non-stripper race.

You love being in the middle of these conversations. They never believe you, sweet, normal you, was an ex-stripper. So stay silent awhile before dropping the bomb.

“Well my friend told me that she makes a thousand dollars a night.”

“Yeah, I heard that, too.”

“I knew a girl in college who put herself through medical school as a stripper,” (this usually comes from a man). “She worked at night and went to medical school during the day.”

“I hear it’s dangerous. Stalkers and psychos trying to follow you home every night.”

“Oh, it is,” another assures. “My friend told me they are required to take taxis.”

Consensual nods and mock worry. Poor little strippers.

But the mystical, elusive stripper is in their midst and they don’t even know it. They sip chai lattes, unaware. Timing is everything. It has to be done in such a way to elicit maximum humiliation—not too early that everyone hasn’t revealed their fleshy pink judgmental insides, but not too late that the topic is beginning to wane.

“One of my friends went to The Romper Room and the dancer bent over and a crab jumped into his eye.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“He must be lying.”

“No, it’s true. He even had to go to the doctor.”

The best place to drop the bomb is in a group of women. When it’s mixed company you run the risk of impressing the men too much (they’ll mentally undress you, place you against an imaginary brass pole to see if the story stands), which will turn the women against you.

“You know, I would do it,” one of the women confesses.

“You would?”

“Sure,” she says, “if I was getting a thousand dollars a night.”

“Well you know, they offer pole dancing classes now at such-and-such yoga studio.”
“We should all go.” Giggles. Painted fingernails.

The moment to drop the bomb might be passing. If they collectively agree to go to pole dancing classes, then your announcement will only come off as bragging. Or worse—they’ll invite you to come along.

“I was a stripper for four years,” you say. The women face you, realizing for the first time that indeed you haven’t chimed in on this conversation. “Really?” one of them manages amidst much throat clearing and backpedaling through the conversation in everyone’s minds: Did I call them sluts? Whores? Damn. Should have kept my mouth shut.

This is the golden moment, of course, so let it last. Shrug. “I didn’t have to take out any loans for undergrad.”

An inaudible sigh—yes, you were one of those, the student strippers, the “good” ones, studying your textbooks in the dressing room. Thank god, you can hear them thinking. Don’t tell them about Suzi or the bachelor parties. “I was sixteen.”

Protests crease their foreheads: Impossible.

A club would get shut down for that.

The owner would go to jail.

That’s what laws are for.

They’ll want to call you full of shit but they won’t dare. “How did you manage that?” one finally asks.

“I said I was twenty. They never checked my ID. As long as I didn’t drink they didn’t care.”

The women don’t like this answer. They fidget. If it’s that easy then nobody is safe. “This was in the nineties though. The laws might be stricter now.”

Relieved, they all nod—of course the laws are stricter now. Whew. What a heathen time that must have been, when sixteen year-old girls could walk into strip clubs and get jobs and no one was the wiser.

You know the truth, though—why would the laws have gotten stricter? It’s not like there’s an orange alert crackdown on underage strippers. But at this point they’re very uncomfortable so you find a way to let them off the hook, throw in your “official” two cents about the sex industry and then gracefully suggest a new topic of conversation. You have several options. You can go the “Funny, the laws are different in every state” route, or you can go the “Want to hear the weirdest thing that ever happened to me as a stripper” route.

There is a third route, though. You could tell them that, at age sixteen, you felt like you had one-upped society—presented with limitations, told your greatest asset was your looks, you found a way to give yourself financial autonomy and a higher education. That you pat yourself on the back for your clever outsmarting of the society that placed the limitations on you to begin with. Fuck them for their pity. Every stripper you ever met was there on her own accord. There were no pimps waiting in the parking lots. You were more protected dancing on stage than in the real world. At least you chose to be there. At least you got to say yes.

Swallow

2009-10-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from SEARCHING FOR SUZI
Release date November 15, 2009

When I was fourteen my father gave me the accumulation of his life’s wisdom: if you want to keep a man, learn to swallow.

This was several years after they had started having “slumber parties” with our next-door neighbors where they all wore matching pajamas. Some weekends we’d alternate and all sleep at the neighbor’s house, me alone in the guest bedroom and the four of them in the king-sized master bed, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice style.

The slumber parties were only the latest in a string of similar events. Like the way my father dressed my mother up in wooden heels and no bra and paraded her around the mall, following ten paces behind. Or our series of pretty college babysitters. Or the bachelors and newlywed couples that always seemed to come to dinner.

My mother was a pageant girl herself, always beautifully posed in those old black-and-white group shots of all the contestants in their 60’s coifs and A-line satin gowns. But my mother never won a pageant. Even in the photographs her eyes are shy, embarrassed by all the attention. The other girls cheated, she claimed. It was all a popularity contest. She would blame the hairdresser, the too-tight shoes, the fact she had been crying all night with nerves.

My father loved to tell stories about my mother’s loser, outcast boyfriends; he taunted her about her morning breath, stinky feet, beak nose, giraffe neck, her one slightly discolored tooth from an old root canal. As I approached puberty, I got it too: my budding breasts were mosquito bites, ironing boards. When guests were over he hung up my training bra with a note that said “feed me.”

Right about the time I discovered my father’s vast porn collection, my mother discovered Jesus and the slumber parties stopped. So my father’s affair began. Every evening for five years he ate dinner, showered, shaved, put on clean clothes and went “next door.” If we needed him in the evenings we’d have to call next door. If I wanted to spend quality time with him it had to be while he was shaving.

“She” became a loaded word. Fights were intense and unpredictable. I stopped bringing friends home. My mother destroyed gifts, gave away any clothing reminiscent of “her” or their slumber parties; I was endlessly grounded, chained to the house.

Then one night I was home alone. Fed up, I had a bottle of aspirin and a Capri Sun. I dumped out the pile of little white discs and counted: fifty-two.

I heard twenty aspirin would kill you, so I took twenty. Then I took the rest, very fast. I lay on the carpet and waited for the Angel of Death to come and carry me away, but after an hour I was still waiting. Poison was singing about every rose having its thorn. The death part must take a while, I decided, so I did what any fifteen-year-old would do: I snuck out.

I hurried to a party that I wasn’t allowed to attend—I was grounded, after all. But I was going to die soon, so what did it matter? I don’t remember the details of the party, and once there, the aspirin dissolving in my stomach seemed as surreal as the Cheetos or the vodka-grape soda mixture in my plastic cup. After an hour or so, I began to dread the severe punishment that was surely awaiting me at home when I was discovered missing.

I stumbled home, past the huge dark lumps of suburban houses and the sounds of sputtering sprinklers, and my mind vacillated between the excuse I would use to explain why I had gone to a forbidden party and the excuse I would use to explain why I was going to die. I was woozy. I imagined myself falling dramatically through my front door, on the verge of death, and my father taking me in his arms and weeping, No!

My father sat in his bathrobe in front of the TV, the couch already made up with blankets and pillows from previous weeks.

“Where have you been?” he said without looking at me. “You’re grounded for another month.”

Dying now seemed like a very bad idea. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and tried to puke. I watched the room spin, pleading, I made a mistake. I don’t want to die any more. I begged and bargained until sleep finally won and the next morning I woke up alive.

My parents found out about the whole ordeal three weeks later when the only friend I’d confided in told our high school principal, Father Frank Dimitri, “for my own protection.” I should have kept my mouth shut. My parents were waiting for me after school with torches lit, lynching rope ready. My father held photocopied sheets of my diary; my mother slowly explained how they would never be able to leave me alone in the house because I might clean out the medicine cabinet like some common druggie. That same day they packed my bag and drove me to Lutheran Hospital, checked me into the teen psychiatric ward, told the nurses that I was to have no visitors, and left me to watch the holiday lights go up, and then come down, outside my seventh-story window.

My parents split six months after I was released from the hospital—they couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny that followed a daughter’s suicide attempt. The precarious marriage was finally put out of its misery and my father moved out, leaving only a note on my bed saying I hadn’t been much of a daughter.

Even now I still think about his strange, almost prophetic advice: If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow. I’ve swallowed so much, Dad, I want to say. More than you ever told me I would have to.

Unsinkable

2009-09-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

Forthcoming in Pinstripe Fedora, Winter 2010

It was my mom’s idea to go to the museum. My stepdad didn’t care about the Titanic, so it was just Mom and me. I like it when it’s only Mom and me—when we’re alone I can usually make her laugh, and that’s what I was doing when we walked into the museum and I saw a recovered chunk of that little cupid statue that once stood at the bottom of the Titanic’s grand staircase. I got a feeling in my stomach like I was going to be sick. I grabbed Mom’s hand, something I don’t do any more, and held it tightly as we followed the lines deeper into the bowels of the exhibit.

The museum was so crowded, this was the last weekend, lines were bunching up behind each glass box. I pressed my forehead against the display case and saw a gold chain link purse. It had been the style that year—all the ladies had one. But this one was mine; I almost expected to see my handkerchief inside. Next to my purse were spectacles like Manny used to wear, the same bent rims. And china with the blue and gold pattern for the first class passengers, with the words “White Star Lines” at the bottom of each teacup.

“Are you okay?” my mom asked, noticing my quick breathing. I nodded. I wanted to tell her that I drank tea every day from one of those teacups, watching the endless blue amidst the shuffleboard games, the chess games, the strolling parasol feathered rustled corseted derby-hatted oblivion, but I didn’t know how.

Mom and I zig-zagged past cases filled with recovered iron work and candelabras and combs and shaving kits and even paper money and stamps, letters, attaché cases and silver hand mirrors and combs and upholstered footstools like the one I had in my room and tiny diamond cufflinks and a set of shoes I swear I could step in and wear right now. Lining the walls of the exhibit were the black and white photographs of passengers and crew—Captain Smith was always so handsome with his white beard. The first time I met him he complemented me on the perfume I had purchased in Cherbourg before boarding. My aunt was ill in Denver and Titanic was the soonest ship leaving for the U.S. I didn’t care so much about all the hoopla but I can’t say I was disappointed to be on her maiden voyage among the Astors and the Vanderbilts. I know what they said about me. A bunch of floozies in their ostrich feather hats is what they were—they didn’t even care that they couldn’t vote.

The exhibit wound us through a replica of the first class dining room that didn’t look at all like the first class dining room. Where were all the gorgeous windows? The dining room had been my favorite room--bright, as if you were in heaven itself. My mom was looking at cooking dishes barely rusted and servings spoons and glass decanters, and I wanted to tell her how rich the roast beef was that last night, how amazing the pink sherry that I sipped out of a cup just like that one. But I didn’t know how to tell her that, so instead we amused ourselves with the Titanic trivia: Did you know there were 40 tons of potatoes on board? Fifty-thousand eggs? And Mom is trying to explain to me how much is a ton and all I’m thinking is that I’m sure that the coconut sandwich was not on the menu that night, I would have remembered it.

Toward the end of the exhibit was a cooled, darkened room with an imitation starry sky and I remembered looking down on water churning so far below, all that blue, white foam pirouetting in perfect trailing ribbons where the iron sliced the sea. But what I remember most were the people screaming to death all around us in the dark, in that living, writhing amoeba of blue-black that was freezing their insides into solid blocks before it finally swallowed them whole. And then there was the great silence that followed the screaming, which was even worse.

The final piece of the exhibit was the passenger list divided into two categories: survived and perished. I didn’t have to look; I was thinking about that great silence when I saw my picture, the picture Manny took in our living room in Denver, the one I hated and he loved. They called me “Unsinkable.” It made me cry because I didn’t deserve it.

As we left the exhibit I asked Mom if we could buy a souvenir but she said we had already spent too much money. I wanted so badly a replica teacup, the cobalt blue stripe with the gold swirled inlay and the words “White Star Lines” on the bottom; I wanted to drink hot cocoa from it and remember the sun setting and how glorious was the wind on my arms and how white foam pirouetted in perfect ribbons where the iron sliced the sea. In the end she bought me a children’s book called S.O.S Titanic. I wanted to tell her I was too old for pop-up books but I felt too sad to say anything.

Nancy Stohlman Reads From Searching For Suzi

2009-08-01T11:04:00.001-07:00

Watch the You Tube Video Here:

Winter Below the Equator

2009-08-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Published in Alice Blue, Volume 9

At least the winter warns you. The sun stays away more each day, the way I have, the autumn gives a final farewell in colors left on the ground like confetti after a wedding. But the death of love happens slowly, until you are sitting outside on a gray January day, smoking a forbidden cigarette, wondering if there had been signs.

You were born in mid-July, a summer baby, but you were born below the equator, where summer is really winter, and on a cold July day you came into the world wearing a coat. Perhaps that’s why you’ve never been satisfied with anything, our love, your life. The stars call you a Cancer but you carry the ice in your bones, a strange reversal that has left you hard-wired to be disappointed.

I no longer believe the promises of spring, the flatteries of summer, the drama of autumn. Our love has always lived in the winter, in the death, where everything worth making promises about has gone dormant. This endless winter that was supposed to be a summer.

Hands: A Fairy Tale

2009-07-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

Published in Summer Issue of Anything, Anymore, Anywhere

Once there was a right-handed poet. From her favored fingers flowed nimble arabesques, dexterous lyrics, puzzles without solutions and metaphors without conclusions.

One hand strong
the other
atrophied

One day the woman felt a tremendous pain in her pampered hand. She wrapped it, she iced it. The arabesques unraveled. The questions ached at her fingertips but could not be written.

My medium
my channel--
don’t leave me now!

She went to an Eastern doctor, a Western one. Finally a man set down his eyeglasses: “Given the deterioration of the bone fragments, your hand has been broken for at least 15 years.”

Could I have ignored
my own injuries so long?
Little bones, grinding

After the operation, the poet was no longer nimble, dexterous or elegant. Her right hand, bones fused together like a paddle, could no longer ask questions. The fingers of her left hand were clumsy, the wrist unresponsive. The poem juvenile. She threw it away.

But the abandoned hand grew stronger, less afraid. Until one day she sat at the keyboard and accepted the poetry of her neglected fingers:

The metaphors had conclusions.
The lyrics had codas.
The puzzles had solutions.

Right-handed poet
writes with left hand
--the questions are answered.

Trees

2009-06-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Published in Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction Volume Two

Black-eyed Susans tangle along the sides of the interstate, choking each other for sunlight. The tops of corn tassels are beginning to turn, silken tufts ready. Sunflowers without petals bow their heads as you drive by, alone in your minivan. There’s no way you could be this close and not go.

Each town name is strangely familiar, distant and familiar and every now and then a bend in the highway prickles you with recognition, Troy, Mound City, Rockport, Thank You for Visiting Missouri, Please Come Again…Welcome to Iowa. You’re approaching Offutt Air Force Base and a combination of instinct and memory tells you not take the first exit into Omaha but to keep going and take the second, the one with the big view across the Missouri River, gushing brown and opaque beneath the skyline. Casinos sparkle along the river now, flashing advertisements and upcoming acts. The Woodman Tower, once towering above the skyline like a solitary penis, has been upstaged.

You exit onto that ramp that curves gently under the interstate and softly drops you into the middle of downtown traffic and you think how much you love these kinds of city exits, and then it occurs to you that maybe it started here. Maybe preference is just nostalgia. We like a certain kind of mustard because it reminds us of a boyfriend, or we like sunsets because they remind us of our grandmother, and what if this bridge, this city, is the source? Could this one little city and that one little year of your life have mattered so much?

The trees have gotten so big, leafy monstrosities that make your memories seem smaller. You’re driving on that one road that you can’t remember the name of but you remember its long, curvy stretch from your dreams, clearly, and then you wonder which version of the street is more poignant, the real one or the dream one?

You navigate on pure instinct. You recognize a gas station with a green sign that hasn’t changed in 20 years, you feel it as the place to turn. And yes, there is your first apartment building. Well, it’s not really your first because your first apartment was with that girl from high school—you slept on her broken water bed and she slept on the couch and you lied about your age, even to her, and you let the upstairs neighbor go down on you just because he was older and bartended at the clubhouse next to the pool and you thought it might give you some status. But this, this was your first solo apartment, rented to you at age 16 because no one bothered to check your ID, and funny how often that was a theme, then, and the tree in front has gotten so huge, the whole building is in gorgeous shade. This was also the apartment that was haunted, the one you played the Ouija board in too many times until that dancer named Snow, the weird, coked out one that claimed she was a witch and would read your tarot cards on slow nights, she said that you had let in the demons. This was the apartment that Suzi lived in for that month. She never paid rent and she hardly ever slept in it, either, she just needed a place to store all her crap, and when she did sleep there it’s not like the two of you had any romantic rendezvous, that was all over by then. You wanted to be in love with her but she didn’t want to be in love with you, that was never her goal.

You pass the building slowly, then turn down a street you must have driven a hundred times, it feels as familiar as rolling over in bed, and you note the unchanged combination of rundown, antique, and functional shabby. People walk the streets with lunchtime hurry, more people than you remember, or maybe you were always just too absorbed in yourself then that you didn’t notice, and you wonder if here, on these streets, was where you developed your love for dying city centers and rundown buildings.

Between the trees you catch glimpses of the Missouri River; there used to be a make-out spot around here somewhere. The Skateland where you used to go on Saturdays and had your first sexual urges—always for the older ones, the ones who looked like they could take your hand and lead you through life the way they do in a couple skate, backwards—Skateland has become a warehouse of granite tabletops and kitchen tiling. The Ben Franklin craft store has become Dollar Tree. That quirky Italian restaurant where your family used to get pizza is now a Grease Monkey.

There is a certain kind of memory embedded in these places. A kind of memory poured between bricks and mortar. We cannot alter it. We breathe and dream in a place and then it holds us, it remembers us. But it remembers us as we were. So to return is to become a fool, everything illuminated with the glow of nostalgia, a yellowing around the edges, a softening. Maybe that’s the tragedy of living the same place all your life—you can’t return. Leaving, which takes one sort of bravery, and then returning, which takes something completely different. Which repaints you. Bravery and humility in order to grow a person. Like the trees.

I drove by my childhood home last, almost didn’t go at all. I went slowly, stalking the streets of the leafy, overgrown neighborhood and cruised around the old cul-de-sac slowly, remembering children I babysat and boys I loved. The tree in front of our old house was the only one gone. Amongst all those trees my house was exposed, naked in the bright sunshine.

Doublespeak: Key Terms of the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict

2009-04-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

A version of this article published in FM Magazine, Volume 6

• Terrorist: Dark-skinned men and women, you can recognize them by their flowing head scarves, barbaric weapons, and the gleam of hatred in their eyes. (Note: Only dark-skinned people can be terrorists. White people are called soldiers.) See also Palestinians.

• Suicide bombers: These terrorists are the darlings of the media and dominate U.S headlines. (Note: If suicide bombers had US-provided tanks and M-16’s, they would surely prefer to use them.) See also Palestinians.

• War in the Middle East: Also known as the Middle East Conflict. “War” implies fighting between two armies, but only one army, the Israeli Army, is illegally occupying a civilian population. See also Media.

• The Gaza Strip: Also known as Hamasville, Gaza is the world’s largest prison. There are 1.5 million people living in 146 square miles—that’s almost 11,000 people per square mile. There is 90% unemployment. The borders are controlled by Israel, including all movement of food, supplies, and people. See also Occupation.

• The Wild Wild West Bank: John Wayne territory, complete with settlers and hostile natives. It’s east of Israel but so called because it sits on the west bank of the Jordan River. Containing some of the most fertile and coveted land in the desert, the settlers that pulled out of Gaza in 2005 were relocated to the West Bank (and compensated monetarily). See also Occupation, Settlers.

• Israel: While popular rhetoric insists that Israel’s very existence is hanging by a delicate thread, Israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world, including nuclear weapons, US Apache helicopters and M-16’s. It receives more than 6 billion dollars a year from the U.S. in weapons, loans, and foreign aid, the most that the U.S. gives any country.

• The Green Line: The imaginary border between Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. See also Checkpoint.

• Checkpoint: Not only is this an elaborate method of controlling access in and out of the occupied territories, but it’s also a popular name for Palestinian babies born while their mothers were detained.

• Palestinians: Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Palestinians carry no passports because they are citizens of no country. Palestinians who marry Israelis are not permitted to become citizens. See also Terrorist.

• Hamas: Hamas is the democratically-elected governing body of Palestine. However, angered that the Palestinians might choose their own leaders and not US/Israeli indoctrinated puppets, both Israel and the U.S. have refused to deal politically with Hamas.

• Jews: All Jews are not Israelis. All Israelis do not agree with the Occupation. All Jewish people do not speak with one voice. See also Self-Hating Jew.

• Self-Hating Jew: A Jewish person who hates him/herself so much that they condemn Israeli government atrocities.

• Anti-Semitism: Despite the obvious irony (both Israelis and Palestinians are Semites), the charge of anti-Semitism has been used to squelch dissent. Denouncing the policies of the Israeli government is different than hating Jewish people. Hatred for any person on the basis of race or religion should never be tolerated.

• Settlements: Colonial outposts, settlements are modern “cities” with modern amenities built illegally on the choicest pieces of confiscated land. They are connected by modern, settler-only highways—no Palestinians. Different colored license plates ensure that Palestinians stick to the back, dirt roads. See also Settlers.

• Settlers: There are over 450,000 settlers in the West Bank, on what is touted as the future Palestinian state. Often coming from the extreme right-wing of Judaism, these zealots are living on confiscated land, diverting water resources, carry government-approved automatic weapons, and can’t understand why their lives feel unsafe.

• The Media: Considered unbiased journalism, there are four Palestinian deaths to every one Israeli death, but less than one out of four is reported.

• Occupation: The ultimate “O-bomb,” this word is banned in U.S. media. (Note: It is illegal for an occupying force to relocate its own people onto occupied land. This is in violation of UN resolutions. See also United Nations.)

• Ceasefire: Palestinians are still killed during a ceasefire. The ceasefire ends when an Israeli is killed. Then endings of ceasefires are always blamed on Palestinians. See also Media, Hamas.

• Israel Defense Force: a.k.a. the Israeli Occupation Forces, all Israeli citizens, both men and women, are required to serve 2-3 years in the Army.

• Palestinian Army: Just joking. Making sure you were paying attention.

• Birth Right: If you’re Jewish you can become an Israeli citizen. If you’re under 26, they’ll even foot the bill for you to go to Israel first and check it out. And if you decide to move there, they’ll give you money to move to a settlement. See Settlements, Wild Wild West Bank.

• The Right of Return: There are over 6,000,000 Palestinian refugees who can’t return to the West Bank or Gaza. Many of them still hold the keys and deeds to their demolished houses. See also United Nations.

• United Nations: An increasingly incompetent institution, in the last 60 years there have been over 100 resolutions concerning Israel’s crimes against humanity and the right of return for refugees—never enforced. See also United States.

• The United States: Founded on Manifest Destiny and currently posing as the Middle East peacebroker, the U.S. has used its veto power over 50 times to block UN resolutions against Israel. See also Manifest Destiny.

• Manifest Destiny: The belief that the entire land mass of what is now the United States was divinely destined to belong to white people.

• Zionism: The belief that the entire land mass of the holy land should belong to god’s chosen people, the Israelis. See also Manifest Destiny.

• Two-State Solution: The two-state solution seems as if the land and available resources will be divided evenly between the two peoples. In fact, Israel is constructing a wall to contain the Palestinians, expanding and building new settlements into Palestinian territory, and killing Palestinians with impunity—over 1,000 in Gaza in Dec/Jan while the U.S. had an administrative change. See also Israeli Security Fence.

• One-State Solution: Never put on the table at any negation, this radical and offensive solution would combine Israel and Palestine into one land with all its citizens enjoying citizenship and equal rights. See also Palestinians.

• Israeli Security Fence: Twenty-five feet high and made out of concrete, topped with rolls of razor wire and surrounded by electrified ditches. It’s three times higher than the Berlin Wall. Called the Apartheid Wall or the Occupation Wall, it does not follow the border between Israel and the West Bank but is built within the Green Line, enclosing Palestinians cities and villages and appropriating land for Israel. The International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal in 2004. It is still being built today.

Nancy Performing at Forbidden Love

2009-04-10T10:32:00.001-07:00

Watch the You Tube video here

Jailbait

2009-03-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

An Excerpt from Searching for Suzi Cooper

Forthcoming in Fast Forward: Vol 2

“You want a job, huh?” the big man with the swollen gut says to me. His dark tan contrasts with his white pompadour. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” I lie.

“Twenty, huh?” he says, looking me over. “Well then no drinking. Have you ever danced before?”

“No, but I’m a model.”

He smiles, chewing on a toothpick. “You’re a model, huh?” He says it like he doesn’t believe me but doesn’t care. “Let’s get you upstairs and into a costume.” He grabs a cocktail napkin and a pen from his coat pocket. “What’s your name?” I think of something and he writes it down, chuckling. “Follow me.”

A mirrored ball spins white teardrops of light across a two-tiered stage where a dancer is sliding around a pole. A movie screen covers one whole wall. On the screen two women are rubbing shaving cream on each other’s breasts. The boss elbows open a set of saloon-style swinging doors. “Joe, this is,” he looks again at the napkin, “Natalie. Can you get her into a costume?”

The dressing room is fluorescent-lit and filled with lockers. A mirror traverses the length of one wall, reflecting abandoned curling irons coated with layers of crusted brown hairspray, tangled cords, and broken compact mirrors scattered across the makeup table. Chunks of eyeshadow and blush are ground into the formica.

Joe unlocks a storage closet and holds up a handful of brightly colored strings and strips of cloth. I separate the rhinestones, tassels and lace. I’m going to follow through, this time.

Now adorned in burgundy sparkles. Cleavage deep and white, virginal, rub red lips together, comb through hair with shaky fingers, lips buzzing, adjust the g-string between butt cheeks, air conditioning goosebumps on exposed skin, ignore the baby fat still clinging to thighs, hips.

She is not me.

Natalie parts the beaded curtain.

Click, click, click up the stairs. It’s lunchtime, so the club is empty except for one guy. The opening drum beats of “Sharp Dressed Man.” Her hands are clammy against the brass pole as she tries to spin, almost flinging herself off the stage. All those pageant routines, all her perfect three-point catwalk turns—fucking useless. Mirrors are positioned around the stage in triplicate like in the changing rooms of big department stores—Natalie on Natalie on Natalie on Natalie looks jerky and embarrassed, pasty white, six different Natalies snap their fingers to every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man like fragmented pieces of herself bisecting, trisecting, severing from the original until it is no longer clear which is the original and which is the copy.

The lone customer stands and approaches the stage. Natalie kneels, thinking he’s going to tell her she looks ridiculous, but instead he loops a bill through her shoulder strap.

It’s a ten. Ten dollars just like that.

For Evelyn: In Memorium

2009-02-23T21:44:00.000-08:00

I was a farmer’s daughter in the Depression, so in a way I was lucky;

My father was an asshole, so in another way I wasn’t;

My four sisters and I drank beer, smoked cigarettes and danced the jitterbug;

My mother died in my arms when I was 15;

Norman went to the war when he was 17; we weren’t together yet;

I was married in 1950, with a feather in my traveling suit hat;

My husband’s French Canadian family didn’t like me because I was Portuguese;

My husband went off to two more wars; I lived in France, Vietnam with two children;

I lived on military bases, in Fall River, and in Virginia in a big white house with white pillars (I loved that house);

I always lived on the East Coast, I lived in Florida; maybe I was trying to get closer to Portugal;

I loved bowls of fruit salad, Sanka decaf instant, crab legs, chorizo, playing Hearts; I once had a wicked bowling hook;

I called Bingo at the church every Sunday evening for 25 years;

I smoked cigarettes half my life and finally stopped;

I had two grandchildren who called me Meme; two great-grandchildren who called me Great-Meme and a third on the way—we missed each other by two months;

I loved Cher; clothes, jewelry, teddy bears, Victorian dolls, being right; I should have been a fashion designer, a dancer like Ann Miller;

Four years ago I lost my husband; two years ago I lost my left breast; five months ago they set my alarm;

How strange it is when you know it’s coming and you’re not in control;

A month ago I was helped into diapers by my children;

At the end all I wanted was watermelon juice, the Game Show Channel, and my coffeetable book of Cher;

In the last moment I was dreaming that the tide came in, returning me to the water.

Feb 6, 2009

The Werewolf Diaspora

2009-02-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

Published in Zero Ducats, Vol. 1

Maybe I should have known when you were resisting Paris with such vigor. You’d talked of nothing else for years, yet you flinched when I presented you with the tickets. You knew. Maybe you thought you could beat it. That should have been my first clue.

Or I could have done the math and realized that your big, proud Parisian family was completely displaced: one in Chile, one in England, one in Spain, you in America and three in Mexico, not counting Raquel herself, so desperate for Paris in her empty Mexico City home that even the maid had to speak French.

But my first clue came under the Eiffel Tower of all places, symbol of romantic Paris. You were pacing. Cursing in French. Already a bad sign. Our first full day there. Still jetlagged. I guess you’d been gone too long, forgot why the rest of your family moved away, and I didn’t put it all together until I saw your fangs.

Cry Palestine

2009-01-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

Published in Spring issue of Monkey Puzzle

Saul screwed the camera onto the tripod, counting the bullet hole scars in the windows and walls. The family was seated on their couch, a sad tableau. The cushions were covered with multicolored afghans and white bed sheets. Saul adjusted the tripod, tested the sound. “Okay. You can begin. Just start talking about what happened. Try to forget the camera is here.”

The Palestinian man smoothed his generous moustache, looked at his wife and two children. He shook a cigarette from a pack of generics, took a big gulp of his thick, sugary coffee, and cleared his throat:

“When I hear the first shots I right away think of my father, who lives two streets over.” He pointed in the direction of the street. “My father has a weak heart, and I know it is bad for him to be alone if the Israelis started shooting. So when I hear the shots I go to his house to bring him here. When I get to my father’s house they have a bulldozer at the front door—they have been razing the houses to the ground all over the camp. I say, ‘What are you doing?’ They say, ‘There are militants here.’ I say, ‘There are no militants--that is my father. He is seventy-two years.’ They say, ‘Do you want to be arrested too?’ I say no. Then they grab me and hold me in front of them. They kick in the door to my father’s house with me in front. That night they go into house after house after house, using me as a shield. When my friends see me they know they cannot shoot, and so the Israelis come into their house.”

“What did you do?” Saul asked, picturing the street in front of their house, the martyr posters covering the crumbling buildings and dirt alleyways, new ones taped over old, fading ones.

“What can I do? I can’t do anything. Finally they ask me where I live. I don’t want to tell them because I am afraid. I am ready for them to shoot me instead of taking them to my house, but we are too close and that is when Yasmin sees me.”

The woman nervously took a sip of tea, smoothed her white hijab. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows. “I look outside because my husband has been gone for many hours now and I begin to fear the worst. Then I see him being held by soldiers and having guns pointed at him. So I scream—‘No, Wadi!’” She looked guiltily at her husband, as if they’d replayed this scene many times. “I was not thinking. I was just angry to see Wadi like that.”

Wadi looked at her softly, patted her hand. “So now the soldiers know where we live, so they come into the house. They put us all in one bedroom and lock the door. We can hear them making a lot of noise—I am afraid they are bulldozing the house. It isn’t until the next day that we see they have made a big hole in our wall.” He gestured towards the wall, which indeed had a hole big enough for several men. The remaining plaster around the hole was decorated with red and blue and green spray-painted Stars of David and a plethora of obscenities like “Die Arab Scum.”

“They want to make a passageway from one house to the next so that they can move around without being seen.” Wadi lit a cigarette, reached for the already-full ashtray. “I have heard of this happening before but I had never seen it for myself until that day. Then when the soldier guarding our room sees me looking he hits me in the head with the butt of his gun.” He parted his hair slightly to show the scar.

“How long did the soldiers stay?” Saul asked.

“Many weeks,” Yasmin interjected. “We still fear that any day soldiers will come back through the hole and hold us prisoner again. When they don’t find any guns they just destroy everything, take all our food, and take Wadi to jail.”

“How long were you in jail?” Saul asked Wadi, watching the two younger children fidget on the couch next to their parents. The older one, a girl, fingered a hole in her white tights and watched Saul with dark eyes right out of a Victor Hugo novel.

“I am in jail thirty-six days. Most of the time I have a bag on my head and my hands and feet are tied with a rope. It is hard to breathe and the bag smells of urine. I have to go to the bathroom in my pants, I try holding it the first day but finally I can not. I don’t know how many days I am like that, maybe a week or two, with barely any food or water.”

Saul shook his head. “You were tied with a bag over your head for a week?”

“Yes, and they give me only half a pita and some water every day, and I cannot use the bathroom. It is the Israeli way of torture. Then after many days I am moved. I am hoping that things are going to get better but they are not. They move me to a box where they tie me up but there is not room to sit down.”

“A box?”

“I don’t know what to call it—a closet?” Wadi and Yasmin exchanged some Arabic. “Yes, like a wardrobe or small place where you can stand but not sit down.”

“How long were you there?”

“I think another week, many days. By now I am very weak, I have a rash from having to go to the bathroom in my clothes, I am trying to lean against the wall to sleep but it is very hard. I just wanted to die,” he confessed. “I wanted them to come and shoot me.

“After many days they take me to a place where they take the bag off my head and give me cigarettes and water. They keep asking me, ‘Who is the leader of the resistance?’ I say I don’t know. They hit me. They ask me again. I don’t know, so they put me back in the first place, where I can sit. Many more days pass.”

Saul swallowed. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “So did you know?”

“Who is the leader of the resistance?” Wadi waved his hand and made a clicking sound. “Not in the way they are asking. I know many leaders, and many others that would be good leaders. We are all resistance, you see. Just to be Palestinian is to resist.”

Saul turned to Yasmin. “What happened in the house when your husband was in jail?”

“The soldiers stay,” she answered. “Not all of them, but some stay and they guard the hole and sometimes new soldiers come from inside the hole, that’s why we know it is a passageway for them to move among our houses. They steal all our money and they eat all the food. Even now I am scared that we are sitting here and a soldier comes into the house through the wall. Nijmeh is very scared all the time,” she said, putting her arm around the smaller of the two children hovering by her mother’s legs.

“When did they let you out of jail?” Saul asked.

“After they question me they take me back to the first place. I think it is the first place, I cannot see because I have a bag over my face but the sounds are the same and the light feels the same. I stay there again, same thing. They take me to be questioned three more times. Always the same. Finally they come to get me one night. They take all my clothes but keep the bag on my head and they put me in a truck. I can tell there are others in the truck, too. My feet are not tied but my hands are and I cannot see. Finally they unload us from the truck. It is very cold. Then the truck drives away. We are able to take the bags off our faces and see each other. We are in the dark, in the middle of a field. We do not know where we are. We stay there in the night, close together to stay warm. In the morning we walk until someone sees us. When I am finally home I see the hole and Yasmin says that I have been gone thirty-six days.”

Saul shut off the camera as the wife wiped her eyes. “Thank you both,” he said. “I hope we can get your story out.”

“InshaAllah,” the man said, smiling. “You tell George Bush, okay?” He laughed and shook his head.

Yasmin gathered empty cups and overflowing ashtrays and carried them to the bullet-scarred kitchen, returning with strong tea steeped with sage leaves. The two children climbed on Saul’s lap; they brought out their toys, their books, their plastic guns. The smaller girl held a doll in her hands and pointed it at Saul’s face: Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Her mother shooed her away, embarrassed. She continued: Bang Bang. An explosion answered her from outside the window. Yasmin made a clicking sound with her tongue. “They are just children but they are frustrated, too,” she said to Saul. “They grow up with this situation. They don’t remember before. This is normal for them. Throwing rocks at the soldiers is a game. There is not basketball, not video games. There is only playing ‘Hit the Israeli soldiers’.”
She paused to take a sip of tea. “Nothing hurts me more than the death of a child.”

Relational Activism

2008-12-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

Published in Counterpunch, Dec 5 2008

It Begins With Individuals

In September 2002 I, along with hundreds of Denver activists and other “subversives,” gathered in the Denver Police Department to claim our Denver Police Spy Files, the secret and now illegal dossiers that the DPD had been keeping on Denver activists. We were anarchists, Buddhists, ex-nuns, non-profit organizers, radical Marxists and Green party politicians, American Indian Movement leaders and transsexuals. But to the Denver Police, we were all the same. To them we were all “criminal extremists,” reduced to our lowest common denominator.

We’ve seen how this mistaken unification has affected feminism. An important critique of feminism is that the experiences of a white, middle-class woman are likely to be very different from that of an aged homeless woman, or a Latina prostitute, or an immigrant woman. In many ways there is more separating these women than there is uniting them: economics, race, education, sexual identity, culture. Falsely homogenized on biology alone, their individual experiences are buried for the sake of a united front: Women.

Like feminism, one of the problems of The Left is the assumption that we need to be unified in order to succeed. But the experiences of a liberal 60-year-old Christian woman working for a non-profit organization are much different from a 20-year-old anarchist starting an urban renewable community, or a Gulf War vet against the war, or a Marxist working for immigrant rights, or an 50-year old male American Indian movement leader, or rabbis working to stop the oppression of Palestine, or a Puerto Rican lesbian getting arrested at the School of the Americas. And not only are there a variety of issues but there are also a variety of tactics, ranging from education and advocacy to direct action and civil disobedience.

But because of this need for “unity”, factions of The Left are constantly doing battle, trying to push their agendas and tactics to the forefront. As a result there is infighting, backstabbing, fracturing and burnout. Endless debates about which strategy is the most effective and which issue the most pressing. In short, a peace and justice movement without much internal peace or justice.

Norma Alarcon, in talking about feminism, says that “The subject (and object) of knowledge is now a woman, but the inherited view of consciousness has not been questioned at all. As a result, some Anglo-American feminist subjects of consciousness have tended to become a parody of the masculine subject of consciousness.”

The dominant society relies on concentrations of power and hierarchy. People squander lifetimes trying to climb power ladders. So while the function of The Left is to question and oppose these problems of the dominant societies, it still unconsciously functions through those same ideologies. Alpha personalities still dominate, often educated white males. Different groups form to work on identical issues because we don’t know how to deal with strong personalities, nor do we want to digest any criticism. We reward workaholism until people burn out and disappear. We speak disrespectfully of other groups, other issues, other tactics.

But if activism is trying to eschew the dominant culture we first have to disentangle ourselves from the trappings of its ideology. We’ve become so good at critiquing our world that we’ve forgotten how to critique ourselves. And just as a common denominator of “women” makes it impossible to critique the relationships within feminism, “activism” masks the faulty relationships of the people within The Left.

Relational activism begins with individuals. It begins with a commitment to full respect living, both for others as well as towards ourselves. It unmasks the cultural one-up/one-down mentality: right vs. wrong, power vs. powerless, and exposes how The Left has succumbed to the ideology of the dominant culture, always one-upping the other as too violent vs. not violent enough, too radical vs. not radical enough, too liberal vs. not liberal enough.

The goal should be respectful “same as” relationships rather than stepping on one another in order to climb a ladder constructed by the very society that we want to transform. What does a nonviolent Democrat who believes in electoral politics have in common with an anarchist who believes in civil disobedience? Maybe not much. And this is the problem: as long as the success of The Left requires that these two people become unified, there will always be power struggles. We need to establish solidarity and the full respect of our differences without the requirement of unification in order to end the power struggles within the movement, to understand that activism is a machine whose parts work in tandem. Once we stop competing, we can start collaborating.

The Dalai Lama says, “World peace begins with inner peace. World disarmament with inner disarmament.” And this is where we can win. The Left is human, with all its human shortcomings and strengths. And as humans, we have the ability to evolve.

Nancy Stohlman is the co-editor of Live From Palestine (South End Press). She’s a former member of the International Solidarity Movement and the former organizer of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace. She currently lives in Denver. You can reach her at nancystohlman2@hotmail.com.

Habibi

2008-11-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

Published in The Bathroom, Issue #3:

I am twelve, dressed as a bride.

The Armenian who had come to photograph our family seemed enamored with me, posed me carefully in our family photo. “The girl,” he finally said as he was preparing to leave, “can I photograph her alone?”

My mother retrieved her bridal headpiece, the headband dripping with ropes of silk and scarves. The one I’ve been trying it on in secret for as long as I can remember. She smoothed my hair under the band, arranged the fabric to drape around my face, placed her own bangles on my wrists. She kissed me on the cheek in a way that made me very lonely, as if she were already saying goodbye.

My father, too, smiled in an unfamiliar way as I sat gingerly on the forbidden rug, in the room where the children were never allowed, among the my mother’s best baskets and our clay water pitcher, a smile I wouldn’t understand until much later. “Chin up” the nice Armenian man said softly, and I like a queen, balanced the cascade of frankincense-infused fabric on my head. I arranged my embroidered dress to fall just so over my bare legs, my grandmother’s embroidery, the native stitch of Ramallah. The Armenian studied me, tucked one of my legs under the other and rested my hands on my knee so you could see my mother’s red ring. I pressed my lips together the way she did in photographs, straightened my posture, tuned out the giggles of my brothers and sisters so as not to ruin the pose.

As he fussed with his camera I pretended that I was a bride, that this headdress was mine and these bangles and that ring, too, and even this nice Armenian with the round glasses and soft-looking moustache. I pretended that I was the queen of Palestine.

When I finally saw the picture many months later, I was unprepared for my own rouged lips, the soft halo of pinks and golds that infused all the photographs of that time like an invisible patina.

“You are beautiful, habibi,” my mother said, admiring the thick paper image of the woman I would become.

The Creation of Palsrael: An Allohistory

2008-11-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

Published in Issue #3 of The Bathroom

Following several highly publicized hijackings, public sentiment really started to change in 1972, when thirteen Israeli athletes were taken hostage and eventually killed by Palestinian soldiers during the Summer Olympics.

The world was shocked: What message were the Palestinians trying to deliver to the world with this seemingly gruesome act? Had there been some injustice, some unaddressed grievance that had slipped through the public consciousness? Reporters became obsessed trying to decode “the message.” Scholars began writing extensively on the military occupation of Palestine by Israel, the building of illegal Israeli settlements, the flaunting of UN resolutions by the Israeli government. Soon the world was outraged that this new nation of Israel, not even one generation old, seemed committed to a path of racist policies and military domination. News stories reported land seizures, razed Palestinian villages, massacres of those Palestinians who hadn’t fled and become political refugees. With the Holocaust still fresh in the world’s collective memory, the question on everyone’s lips was: How could people who were so recently victims themselves become the new oppressors?

By 1973 public sentiment had fully embraced the plight of the Palestinians. In April of that year President Nixon traveled to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat in his presidential compound. “We have no partner for negotiation,” Arafat explained to the US audiences. “We have been under an illegal Israeli occupation since 1967.”

Within six months UN sanctions were placed against Israel. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt, the Golan Heights to Lebanon. President Anwar Sadat, the last of Israel’s needed allies, publicly denounced the policies of Israel. This denouncement was followed by several European countries and finally the U.S. The United Nations gave Israel 90 days with which to comply with all UN resolutions, including Resolution 242, which mandated that Israel relinquish all land seized in the 1967 war and negotiate for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees.

At midnight on the 91st day, May 24, 1975, the new state of Palsrael was created. Politically the new state would be controlled by the Palestinian Party (PP). All former Israel citizens would be relocated to refugee camps between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Palestinian refugees and even other Arabs with Palestinian blood would be welcomed as citizens in the new state; those Palestinians who wanted to live in the newly built settlements would also be given monetary incentives. Newly paved Palestinian-only roads would connect the Palestinian settlements. Israelis in the refugee camps were taxed heavily in order to pay reparations to the Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians and Egyptians.

Thirteen years later, in 1987, a young rabbi from Tel Aviv Refugee Camp by the name of Josef Goldburg, disguised in the black and white kuffiyah of the PP, gained entrance into a mosque during Friday services. Around his waist were strapped 80 pounds of explosives that he detonated during the middle of evening adorations. Fifty-seven people were killed; their deaths dominated the headlines. The Palestinians retaliated by invading all the Israeli refugee camps with tanks and military helicopters, killing thousands, bulldozing houses to the ground. There were never any official body counts, nor did anyone demand them.

While some people hailed the suicide bombing and Goldburg as an Israeli freedom fighter, daring to resist the decades-long repression by Palestinians, most public sentiment was further hardened against Israeli terrorists and allowances jumped to an all-time permissive high. Palestinians issued ID cards to the Israelis, raided their houses with no provocation, took their men to prison without charges and tortured them indefinitely. The U.S. loaned the PP 9 billion dollars for the construction of a 25-foot high iron and barbed wire “security fence” to encircle the Israeli refugee camps. Checkpoints in and out of the Israeli-occupied areas were manned by Palestinian soldiers armed with US weapons for ensuring their safety against hostile Israeli terrorists.

At this same time the new prime minister of Palsrael was called a “man of peace” and featured on the cover of Time with an olive branch in his mouth.

Published in Issue #3 of The Bathroom

Reading List 2008

2008-01-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

The list is a bit shorter then usual, this year, because of graduate school. Still, I am hopeful and excited. I'm also happy to add a new catagory: books by former teachers. Happy reading, all.

2 books by contemporary authors
The Poisonwood Bible—Barbara Kingsolver
All the Pretty Horses—Cormac McCarthy

1 international
In the Name of the Rose—Umberto Eco

2 classics
Moby Dick—Herman Melville
To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee (not read from last year)

2 Books by former teachers
Augusta Locke—William Haywood Henderson
You, Me, and the Insects—Barbara Henning

1 poetry book
Coney Island of the Mind—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

1 writing book
Steering the Craft—Ursula LeGuin

1 history book
Ten Days that Shook the World—John Reed

1 children’s book
Robinson Crusoe—Daniel Defoe

1 reread
Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck

New Holiday Carols for Progressive Thinkers

2007-12-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

by Nancy Stohlman

The Twelve Days of the Iraq War

On the First Day of the Iraq war, the media said to me:
Weapons of Mass Destruction
On the second day: Orange Alert
On the third day: Must be patriotic
On the fourth day: Osama bin Laden
On the Fifth day: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
On the Sixth day: Operation Freedom
On the Seventh day: Axis of Evil
On the Eighth Day: Why do they hate us?
On the Ninth Day: Abu Ghraib
On the Tenth Day: Islamic Militants
On the Eleventh Day: Civil Liberties
On the Twelfth Day: Gotta bomb Iran

O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem
how steep that wall doth rise
above they deep and dreamless sleep
An APC rolls by
Yet in thy dark streets shining
An everlasting spotlight
The hopes and fears of all the years
are lost in thee tonight

We Wish You a Fair Election

We wish you a fair election
We wish you a fair election
We wish you a fair election
In this Happy New Year

O Diebold we bring
To you from your king
O Diebold for elections
In this Happy New Year

Now bring us a paper receipt
Now bring us a paper receipt
Now bring us a paper receipt
And bring it right now

Ooops--I Did it Again

2007-12-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

This write-a-novel-in-a-month thing is really a great idea, although it should be called "Write a Shitty First Draft of a Novel in a Month." In any case, it is terribly freeing to be able to write a whole "novel" without rereading it. The working title on this one is called "Underage--A Memoir." It deals with being an exotic dancer and a Miss Nebraska contestant at the same time--now that's a combination you don't see too often!

More Mehndi

2007-11-19T09:36:00.001-08:00

Excerpt from Cry Palestine

2007-10-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Chapter One

Saul Rosen didn’t think of himself as a superstitious man. He didn’t believe in premonitions, he wasn’t into kaballah, he didn’t even do yoga. But when the phone ran that rainy March evening, he had a bad feeling. So bad, in fact, that he almost didn’t answer.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Saul. It’s Eva.”

“Eva?” It had been six months since they’d spoken—six months since she’d left him. The sound of her voice on the phone shamed him with familiar intimacy.

“I’m going to Palestine.”

“You’re what?”

She laughed with nervousness. “Yeah, I’m going to be part of a delegation of activists going to Palestine. Crazy, huh?”

Saul could picture her biting her fingernails, ruffling her short hair. “That sounds dangerous,” he finally said.

“Well yeah. Oh course it’s dangerous. But important, too. We’re going to be lying in front of tanks and stuff.” She paused. “I wanted to tell you myself in case, you know…anything happens.”

“Did you tell Adam?”

“Of course.”

Of course. He bit his tongue.

“Well,” she said after a long pause, “I guess I should go. A bunch of people are coming over tonight and I have to finish packing. I guess some news station is coming, too,” she chuckled. “I feel so important.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“No, I’m leaving tomorrow morning. Sorry I didn’t call sooner…I kind of had to work up the nerve. You know.”

Now Saul didn’t want to hang up the phone, didn’t want to sever the connection. He took a beat to swallow. “You won’t do anything stupid, right?”

Eva exhaled loudly on the other end. “Well, yes, Saul, I’m planning on being stupid.”

“Just….please…come back. Okay?”

“I will.”

The phone clicked and she was gone. Saul went outside for air. There was a light on in Apartment 3—the new kid, DeAndre. Eva’s cat ran from around the side of the building, skirting the barricade of dead rose bush husks Eva used to tend so diligently when she still thought they might work it out. At first Saul had kept up the gardening, watered the plants. Now he saw Eva’s absence in the shriveled brown aloes and crunchy hanging things that swayed in front of his small, overcrowded apartment. All this time spent recasting his memories about how he was better off without her and all her drama were swirling and flushing down the toilet along with the fantasy Eva he had created in her wake.

Fantasy Eva wouldn’t be running off to a war zone.

Chapter Two

Eva sat on the plane, chewing her fingernails. For Whom the Bell Tolls sat open and untouched on her lap—she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the end of this 11-hour flight and what waited for her there. She wished she could reread her notes. She’d ditched anything with the word “Palestine” in an anonymous trash can at Denver International Airport before she left. But she wished she could reread them now.

To think that six months ago she couldn’t have found Palestine on a map. Adam still thought this trip was some sort of early life crisis brought on by their divorce, but he hugged her extra hard when he dropped her off at DIA that morning. It was becoming real for everybody.

She traced circles in the steam of the windows, ordered a scotch. Planes always reminded her of Saul—they met on a plane like this. United Flight 329 from Miami to Denver. Her anxiety took a 30-second reprieve as she fast-forwarded through their entire relationship starting with United Flight 329 and finishing with his final words on the phone the night before: “please come back.” She knew what he meant. She always knew what he meant.

She didn’t mind being arrested; she had been arrested before. What bothered her were the bigger consequences that she wouldn’t say out loud. She tried again to remember her notes: 1948, creation of the state of Israel, expulsions, millions of refugees and 1967, when Israel confiscated the remainder of Palestinian land and arrived at “the current political standstill.” Those were the exact words Neil had used that afternoon in the offices of the Denver Coalition to End the Occupation when he gave her a cram session of the Middle East conflict.

“Do you feel comfortable about getting in?” Neil had asked.

“I guess so. I mean, I’m nervous.”

“I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem getting in. Just remember that you’re a tourist. Getting out is when they really harass you.”

“I would think they would want to be rid of you.”

“They do, but they also want information. They’ll want you to give the names of Palestinians, who you saw, who you worked with, what you did, stuff like that. So you’ve got to mail all your notes, film, any Palestinian souvenirs back to yourself before you leave.”

“Okay.”

“And make sure you send it from a post office in West Jerusalem or else it will get rifled through. Rent a cellphone at the airport and don’t forget an extra battery.”

“What if I have trouble getting in?”

“Just go with it. If you don’t give them anything they’ll have to eventually let you go. Just don’t talk about Palestinians or ISM or anything. Like I said, I don’t think you’ll have much problem: You’re a Christian, you’re there to visit the holy sites for Easter, you’ve never been there before. Just make sure to throw away all these notes in case they decide to be assholes and search you. And maybe try to dress, like, well, not like an activist.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly.

She had taken Neil’s camera, head swimming with information. The same camera that sat on the empty plane seat next to her, now. The rest of it she would learn by experience, she guessed. Like Hemingway.

Eva was switching planes in Toronto when she learned about the attack. In the boarding area for Tel Aviv people were tense, nervously reading the papers, softly whispering. The headline on an abandoned newspaper quickly confirmed: “Suicide bomber kills 128 at Passover service in Jerusalem.”

A dark-skinned man was gesturing with frustration at the ticket counter. Everyone was watching but trying not to watch. Eva rubbed her arms, her own dark skin. Shit. She was going to the Middle East for real. Eva thought of her grandfather who had served in three wars. He would tell her to pay attention and quit daydreaming.

Eva deplaned at Ben Gurion Airport, the Israeli customs officials not suspicious as she nervously rolled by. In the immigration line she made sure the first button of her blouse was open enough to reveal her gold crucifix. She showed the phony hotel reservation, gave her rehearsed speech about coming to the Holy Land for Easter, handed over her new passport with restored maiden name: Santiago. Thankfully no one called the hotel to confirm her reservation, and with a great sense of relief she rolled into Israel, unmolested.

Walking through the terminal towards the cell phone kiosks a man whispered, "enjoy your stay in Palestine," with barely a brush of her elbow and a knowing look before fading into the amorphous crowd. Pay attention, Eva, she heard her grandfather’s voice say.

A warm, sweet rain moistened the night. A gray-haired Palestinian man was waiting for her outside a van, holding a sign with her name in glaring black letters.

“You made it,” he said when she approached, shaking her hand. He wore a black sweater, gray slacks, scuffed shoes. “Any troubles?”

She shook her head. His name was Yasuf. He took her bag and loaded it with the others. The inside of the vehicle was stuffy, humid with breath and windows shut against the rain. After quick introductions they left the airport and sped through the night.

“Where are you from?” a Brit named Nigel asked as he passed around a bag of grapes.

“Denver,” Eva answered. She swiped at the adrenaline of strangers fogging up the windows; half of Europe was already represented. Not able to see the scenery, Eva instead scanned her mind for the gazillionth time: Balfour Agreement, Camp David, Oslo, 1948, 1967. Occupation. Intifada. Right of Return. Don’t show the bottoms of your shoes. Bidun lakme o jaj: No meat or chicken, please. She thought of everyone who had come to her apartment the night before, helping her pack old clothes, gloves for dismantling roadblocks and checkpoints, baggies of onions to withstand teargas. All these intimidating words: checkpoint, roadblock, teargas. She touched the smooth stone in her pocket as the van sped through the dark. Maybe, if she came out this alive, she would write a book.

Forty-five minutes later they were welcomed into the West Bank by a machine gun against floodlights as their van was denied entry through the Bethlehem checkpoint. Another machine gun rested in the shadows where the floodlights didn’t reach. There were probably more. Eva had grown up on military bases; she’d seen guns before. But as a child she had always been on the “right” side of the gun. Now she was in a van with yellow license plates and being denied access.

Yasuf drove around the corner, turned on his ancient CB radio and started speaking in rabid Arabic. Finally he stopped the car in front of an enormous pile of broken concrete and cut barbed wire, wet from the rain. “You get out here,” he said, opening the van door. He popped the trunk and unloaded their bags, very fast. “There will be a car waiting for you on the other side.” He pointed them towards the 15-foot pile of dirt and chunks of white concrete, coated with rain like a layer of clear paint. They handed their baggage one to the next, water pails to an inferno, "quick, quick," still introducing themselves. On the other side, a taxi with a chainsmoking driver was waiting to take them to the Bethlehem Hotel, where more then 70 people had gathered in the past week.

The Fallacy of the Starving Artist

2007-04-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Artists are poor—that’s just the way things are. Our job doesn’t give us health benefits, insurance, retirement. And there is a kind of nobility in this holy poverty—it gives us something to write about at least. We all know that making art requires suffering. Look at Henry Miller, Hemingway. Besides, rich people are assholes.

These are the things I’ve been telling myself for years, beliefs about money that have kept me where I am: poor and self-righteous.

I’ve known that something was amiss with my relationship with money for several years. I’ve seen how these beliefs, my own self-imposed and fiercely sustained glass ceiling, have ultimately limited my own financial success as an artist. I just didn’t know how far the rabbit hole went.

A few months ago I took a class called “Financial Literacy,” which was not a class that taught you how to make investments or balance your budget but a class that examined your relationship with money. And I proudly recited my known negative beliefs, feeling like I was ahead of the game in my self-disclosure.

But once I cleared away those obvious weeds I realized that there were more insidious ones waiting still to be exhumed. They sounded something like this: "Well, it’s not like I’m going to write a bestseller. Have you seen the fluff that gets on the bestseller's lists these days? I would have more financial success as a writer if I wrote cookbooks or “how to change your oil” manuals. No, I write literary fiction, and because I won’t stoop and write mass-market garbage, I will just have to accept smaller circulations with more refined readers. In other words, I’ll work till I die and I’ll never have a lot of money, but I’ll be a 'real' artist."

A few choice words come to mind, of course, like: what a load of pretentious crap.

I’ve been telling myself this, perhaps, because I was afraid to dream bigger dreams. I’ve told myself that it’s unrealistic. Funny thing is, I’ve started to sound strangely like a grown up. A grown up with self-imposed limitations. A grown up who has given up dreaming.

A character in my book, American Gypsy, says the following: “You know, I think it’s something about growing older,” Howie finally says. “We stop dreaming. When we’re in our 20’s we’re full of ideas, we’re going to change the world, we’re going to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the Mothership is going to descend and tell us the secrets of the universe. When you’re 20 you’re resilient—if one dream dies you replace it with another and just keep going. Somehow, as we get older, we don’t seem to replace them. We just keep holding on to the same old tired dream even though it doesn’t work anymore, we just keep trying to make it fit. I guess this is what happened to our parents. Remember my dad always saying “Oh, I did that in the 60’s?” What the fuck happened to all of them? Well, now that I’m older I get it. They hit one disappointment too many, and a little spark of hope died. And then another, and another…”

I see the connection with my own life. By embracing the fallacy of the starving artist I was not making a childhood dream come true, I was actually limiting my own potential as a writer. I was telling myself, just as thousands of parents tell their children every day, “It’s okay to be an artist, but just don’t think that you’re going to make any money doing it.” I justified my choices by saying I didn’t need money, that I was happy being a starving artist. But there is a difference between living simply and panicking every time you have to pay the rent. Henry Miller starving in the streets of Paris sounds so romantic, now. In truth, starving is starving, and it’s nothing to aspire to.

I am a hard-working, talented writer. Not worrying about money will not make me less of an artist—on the contrary. I can be an artist and have enough.

As a young dreamer I always knew that I would have enough, even abundance. Now, a more practical adult with children, I am consumed with what I don’t have, what is not possible. What if, just for a moment, I again opened the possibilities for my future? What if I made the fallacy of the starving artist what it really is—a fallacy?

I know wishing for any kind of success alone will not make it happen. Success takes hard work and lots and lots and lots of cups of coffee. But how can I possibly achieve a success that I don’t even believe possible? How can we achieve what we cannot dream?

The first step in dismantling the starving artist fallacy is to dismiss the brainwashing. Artists can be prosperous. They can have health insurance. They can retire. The bestseller’s lists still beckon.

We can still be whatever we want to be, as long as we have the courage to believe our own hearts.

Mehndi pictures

2007-03-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

What Does My Writing Mean to Me?

2007-01-31T11:25:00.000-08:00

(This essay was part of a grant application for A Room Of Her Own Foundation--www.aroomofherownfoundation.org)

“Being a writer means that I make sense of the world through stories.”

I write that sentence on a snowy Saturday in January; I stare at it while a layer of white softly conceals the ice leftover from last week. The meaning of the words is as buried for me as the ice. What does my writing mean to me? I can only think of what it does not mean—it means that I’m not a banker or an office slave. But I’m only treading on the surface of the question, like the new snow.

First I write some drivel about how being an artist is to accept some degree of insanity, then some proselytizing on how artists aren’t appreciated in this culture and that together we are joining a struggle for artistic respect. But that answer seems so cold and impersonal. The more I dig the more the more opaque—and frightening-it becomes. The excavation is too daunting; I want to hide under a blanket. How can I say anything that doesn’t sound like “liberate your inner artist” rhetoric?

I think back to my childhood. I got my discipline from my father, but it was my mother, my artist mother, who gave me permission to create. She mowed the lawn in mandala patterns. She had impromptu funerals for potatoes that fell through the grill and perished on the coals. She started a folk band, a clown troupe; she painted my bedroom in art-deco stripes and made my red taffeta prom dress on her old sewing machine. She drew elaborate caricatures on hard-boiled eggs and returned them to the refrigerator. Though she wasn’t paid for her artwork until 25 years later, she cleared a path for me—she taught me that there is no other kind of life but the one that gurgles up from the pit of your belly. She also taught me that while all people have been given artistic talents, not everyone is called to be an artist.

As a young girl I admired Hemingway and London, male writers with the “bad boy” image who were able to excuse a flamboyant lust for life and over-the-top lifestyle choices solely because they were writers and people expected it of them. Women writers, however, still seemed confined to the landscapes of the heart. It left a void that I wanted to fill—what would happen if a woman, with her intimate knowledge of emotions, made art with the kind of high adventure of her male contemporaries? At 11 years old, I knew my calling.

I was a smart child, and thankfully my family never put limitations on me for being a girl. Sure, helpful relatives reminded me that I had a sharp intellect and that I could do anything I wanted to do…like… go to Harvard and be a famous lawyer. Or become a brain surgeon. Or work for a newspaper—a practical way to make a living as a writer. I tried on the lawyer fantasy for a while, then the doctor fantasy. I even spent a semester pre-med while taking literature and theater electives. Posing as an intellectual, it didn’t take me long to understand I didn’t belong. People who have not been called to be artists don’t fully resonate with the need to create. It’s not just a hobby; artists aren’t just “quirky,” as my father regarded my mother. It’s a compulsion that is the result of filtering the world through a different lens.

As I flexed my new writing fingers I was unwilling to compromise or accept a life of mediocrity. I knew I was supposed to have experiences and make stories from them. So, notebook in hand, I set out to live the kind of life that Hemingway would be proud of. I was a stage actress. I was an exotic dancer. I spent my 20’s living in a van and traveling with the Renaissance Festival. I hitchhiked the U.S., shaved my head, hiked the Himalayas, and wrote my first novel at 27. I gave birth in my living room attended by midwives. I was a human rights observer in the West Bank and published my first book, Live From Palestine, a month after my 30th birthday.

And for many years my fiction accurately reflected my life; my characters were beauty queens and exotic dancers, they fell in love in the Himalayas, they traveled to war zones, they gave birth and shaved their heads.

But as I continue to mature as an artist, I’m discovering that art that endures is not just high adventure or aesthetics—but art that moves, bothers, compels, inspires. It isn’t as simple as adventure vs. landscapes of the heart. It isn’t enough to lead a crazy life and write about it. It isn’t enough to manipulate words and make lovely sentences. I don’t want to just write, I want to write words that put their finger on universal truths and push hard.

I stop typing. That seems profound: I am a writer because I accept a social responsibility to move the culture forward—or at least to throw a spotlight on where it’s stuck. To be a writer, then, is to sound an alarm, to say that the earth is round or moves around the sun regardless of who is standing there with an ax. “So as an artist I have been called to walk a difficult road. Artists often take us where we don’t want to go—or where we think we want to go but aren’t strong enough to go alone. Never challenged, a society might forever rest upon the lowest common denominator, banning and condemning their greatest works of art. Great art can shift paradigms, and great artists intuit which paradigms are ready for shifting.”

I stop writing, get a fresh cup of coffee and check on the baby, still napping, then return to my words. So art worth producing is art that stretches me as a person? Is this what my writing means to me? Yes, I think—when I enter my stories I’m entering a crucible. My life of travel and adventure lends itself to exotic locations and gives my work its style, but when I accept my own stories and write them down, I’m really accepting self-examination. When I allow my characters to evolve, I evolve. To write is to put myself at the mercy of life’s lessons—like inviting a Zen master with a mirror to live in my office…indefinitely.

I laugh at the image; I don’t want to look in that mirror. The mirror has always been there for me, even without the monk. The mirror shows me where it hurts. The books (and essays) I’ve avoided writing are always the ones with the most potency. An act of creation, like birth, is accompanied by pain. But pain serves a purpose, I tell myself. It shows us our fears and our limits and can give us courage to surpass them. Giving birth can be empowering. For me, facing the pain of birth taught me that despite fear my body knew the steps. I carry an ancient wisdom in the marrow of my bones. In a society afraid of pain, to birth a child is to confront our fear of death. In the same way, to birth a work of art is to confront our fear of life.

What I’ve written hovers in front of me beside the flashing cursor. I reread my first sentence, trying to remember where I was going with all this. “Being an artist means I make sense of the world through stories.” Yes, I think, it is a gift. Making art from pain gives it meaning, just as making art from joy celebrates joy. Through stories I make sense of a world that is mostly senseless. Seeing the world through this lens, my life is given purpose.

My wrist cramps. I look up from my computer and watch the snow fall outside my drafty Victorian windows. The elbows and the crotches of the bare crabapple fill with white in the circling snow. I single out a flake and follow its progression; it doesn’t fall straight down but instead swirls and spirals as if refusing to land. And I realize that all the flakes are spiraling and dancing, like an airborne ensemble against a bright, white sky. Watching the snow I wonder if the answer for me, too, is in the spiral, in the way that an artistic work needs to first meander through the mind of the artist, to float and be blown. Maybe the truth is somewhere out there in the convoluted pattern of the falling snow. There is no straight down, it seems to tell me. There is no quick and easy answer. I think again of my mother, mowing the lawn in zig-zags. Sometimes finding answers requires a less direct trajectory. Sometimes snow falls sideways. What I make of that is what makes me an artist.

And the meaning of my first sentence finally becomes clear: Being a writer means that I make sense of the world through stories. I look up and notice that the sun has begun to shine, like a round of applause.

Big, Scary, Fun Adventures for 2007

2007-01-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

What is life without big, scary, fun adventures? And what is a committment to big, scary, fun adventures without public accountability? So on that note, here is my list of adventures for 2007:

1. Teach myself to play the piano
2. Learn French
3. Go to Zambia
4. Buy myself a good camera (and use it)
5. Apply for the AROHO grant for women writers
6. Go snowboarding at least twice
7. Take a solo vacation

Reading List 2007

2006-12-25T17:20:00.000-08:00

With some possible last minute juggling, I think this is my reading list for next year. As for last year, I am furiously reading Atlas Shrugged at the moment to finish up my 2006 list. (Note: the words "furiously reading" and "Atlas Shrugged" should never intentionally be in the same sentence.)

1 biography:
*Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life—Jon Lee Anderson

1 memoir:
Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored—Clifton Taulbert

3-4 classics:
Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austin
Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens
To Kill A Mockingbird—Harper Lee
Othello--Shakespeare

2-3 writing books:
On Writing—Stephen King
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel—Jane Smiley
Writing the Breakout Novel—Donald Maass

1 history book:
Haiti—A Slave Revolution—Edited by Pat Chin et. al

2-3 books by authors I’ve never read before:
Slaughterhouse Five—Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Eye—Margaret Atwood

2-3 contemporaries
Sexing the Cherry—Jeannette Winterson
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—Dave Eggers
The Last Bongo Sunset –Les Plesko

1 book poetry:
Howl and Other Poems—Allen Ginsberg

1 unread book by a favorite author:
New Jack—Ted Conover

2 books in a new discipline or field:
Man and His Symbols –Carl Jung
The Koran
The Lexus and the Olive Branch—Thomas Friedman

1 children’s book:
The Diary of Anne Frank—Anne Frank

2 rereads—any genre:
Unbearable Lightness of Being—Milan Kundera
For Whom the Bell Tolls—Ernest Hemingway

2-3 international/intercultural:
Love in the Time of Cholera—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Fear of Mirrors—Tariq Ali
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer—Patrick Suskind

1 inspirational:
This Time I Dance—Tama Kieves

1 political:
Palestine: Peace not Apartheid—Jimmy Carter

Reflections on Writing a Novel in a Month

2006-12-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

So now that I have recovered from the whirlwind of November, it is time to reflect on the mad dash to 50,000 words.

First of all, to recap the process, National Novel Writing Month challenges writers to write a 50,000-word novel from scratch in the month of November. Over 75,000 writers from all over the world took the challenge, checking our daily stats on nanowrimo's great website where you can watch your little bar-graph climb--or flounder--as you reach for the goal.

Being an incredibly disciplined over-achiever, this challenge seemed right up my alley.

So I began. And I began with a bang, getting to 18,000 by the first week as I dug up and cultivated the pieces of a story that I've been pregnant with for years. By about week three, though, as my real life demands began to catch up and my family was home more then usual for the Thanksgiving weekend, and I hovered at 38,000 words, I began to doubt my ability to cross the finish line before the month's end.

On November 27th I gave up. I had written 42,000 words, and I decided that was just "good enough." I had a pressing editorial deadline and could not accomplish both. I had a lump of clay that I was proud of, and who cares if I "won" or not?

Apparently, my ego.

It was like that time that I climbed Gray's Peak, one of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains, and just throwing distance from the summit I collapsed, refusing to take another step. "Look at the view from here," I protested. "It's good enough." Thankfully a persistant climbing partner urged me the last 20 minutes to the summit, and I earned my picture taken with the official sign on the summit of Gray's Peak. And I earned the right to say, "I climbed a 14,000-foot mountain." And yes, it was worth it.

In those last 36 hours I decided that I was too close to quit. I could blow off my other work for just two more days, even if it meant I would suffer all weekend to catch up. How often does one end up 36 hours away from being able to say, "I wrote a novel in a month?"

So I blew through the block and wrote scene after scene, checking my word count every 20 minutes to see how much farther, how much farther, how much farther...almost...almost...48,785, 49,124, 49853...(just write anything you're almost there)...50,000! Ding, ding, ding! I did it.

So I put the winners logo on this entry with the pride. Recommitting to the process in those last 36 hours was also a recommitment to myself, an acknowledment of how far I had come, how much work I had already done--not just in November, but the many years of dedication to a seemingly selfish endeavor to move people with the poetry of my life, the terra incognita of my imagination. These moments are worth celebration since, let's face it, the life of a writer offers few definitive moments of "achievement."

But more then a winner's icon, I discovered a certain gift in writing so quickly that you do not have time to reread. Yes, my newest novel has a lot of holes, and yes, I repeat myself endlessly, but also for those blessed weeks in November I was able to effectively turn off my inner editor, that evil elf that wants it perfect before you are allowed to continue. There is not time to engage with that little voice when you are trying to generate 1667 words a day. It becomes instead a creative free-for-all, a wonderful brainstorm where no ideas are too base to follow into the woods. And paths cut into the woods at that speed often lead to unexpected gingerbread houses.

Whose *&#%$ Idea was it to Write a Novel in a Month?

2006-12-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I did it. As one of my friends kindly pointed out, my houseplants are dead, my goldfish is swimming in his own filth, and I haven't combed my hair in days. So I'll keep this entry short and to the point: I wrote a 50,000 word novel in one month! I really did. See that lovely icon? Ah, sweet icon. My only proof for now, as I wouldn't wish reading my latest novel on anyone at this point. Check out nanowrimo.org for more information on this crazy challenge. More on the process soon. For now I need to take a nap...

Cannibalism, or What to do With that Novel (Story, Novella) Hidden Away in a Box

2006-10-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Now that I’ve crushed all your hopes and dreams about your first novel and you have given it up completely and taken to drinking that old bottle of St. Remy brandy that has been sitting around the house for at least four years…there is one thing I forgot to mention. First novels are a gold mine for future writing.

Think of yourself as a circling vulture. That scene that you worked on every day for three weeks and you loved and thought had to die along with the rest of the novel-you’d be surprised how easily it lifts and transplants into a new story, a second novel. Or that one fabulous character from your first novel that everyone loved, that one character that had some real pizzazz…well, by all means, steal it!

If you are too attached to your stories exactly as written, then you might not see the future wealth that could be unearthed if you could just dig away at your old expectations. Not only does this excavating produce wonderful characters and scenes in future work, but sometimes you can salvage a complete short story, even a novella from what might have seemed like airplane wreckage.

So if you’re one of those people with a novel lying around—particularly if it’s been awhile since you’ve thought about it—dare to crack it open again. It may be a bit like rereading your college essays; you may cringe a little, but you may also say, “hey, that part wasn’t too bad.” Take it. Use it in something new.

You just may find that your favorite scene or character clicks in its new surroundings better then it ever did in the box. And nothing is sweeter then feasting on the fruits of your own labor—no matter how long has passed.

Looking for a Male Character with a Small Penis

2006-10-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

First novels are a lot like first children: you make a lot of mistakes.

I remember my good friend and colleague, E.B. Giles, telling me that her first novel was in a box at the bottom of a drawer. At the time she was working on her third novel, and I was appalled—you mean you wrote a whole novel and you aren’t trying to publish it? But even then I must not have wanted to admit what I must have already known: first novels are the practice field where we try our hand at a new form.

Really—how many people set out to paint a masterpiece with their first painting? Or play a concerto with their first lesson? Even if you have been writing for a long time, and most (though not all) potential novelists have been, writing a novel requires its own unique form and set of rules.

Now that I am completing my second novel, and it’s been a healthy three years since I’ve even looked at my first novel, I can finally swallow what I didn’t want to swallow then—my first novel, too, was practice.

Now there are exceptions to any rule, and most writers like to consider themselves the exception. And there’s nothing wrong with a little self-confidence. But as a freelance editor I work with mainly first novelists and first novels. And I can see in their work, as I can now see in my own, the common mistakes of a first novel:

1. Trying to put too much in the novel. This is the number one mistake of a first novel. A first-time novelist, not seeing a bigger picture, a longer road, a second novel, will put every character, every nuance, every scene, every storyline he or she has always wanted to write into one novel. “It’s a book about a space alien who is struggling with his sexuality on a boat out at sea, and he falls in love with….” You get the idea.

2. The spine of tension. What is this story about? Novels that fall in this category tend to be written well but the writers have still not yet figured out what it is that they are trying to say. I read a lot of semi-autobiographical or autobiographical novels that seem to cover 40 years with no discernable plot. It ends up like watching home movies. Lots of little interesting stories do not add up to a novel—there still has to be a “spine of tension” that carries the reader from one place to another, that hooks the reader at the beginning and pulls them through to the end. If you cannot answer the question “What is this story about” with one consise, compelling sentence, then maybe you are actually writing short stories. (Short stories still need a spine of tension, however.)

3. Poor writing. On the flipside, there are writers who have a great plot idea but still need to learn the basics of quality writing. The greatest idea in the world can be killed with poor writing. This includes the obvious grammar and syntax problems, but also poor verb choices, overusing adjectives and adverbs, or wordy, academic-sounding sentences. The writer often has a great imagination but just needs to spend more time on their craft.

4. Cliché storylines or flat characters. Most writers writing a first novel will rely heavily on the universal pool of stories. It has been said that every story has already been told, and that is true, but most first-time novelists don’t have the confidence in their work, yet, to truly personalize their story and keep it from sounding cliché. For example: why does every male character have to have an enormous penis? I say give me a first novel where the male character has an average or even a small penis. Now we’re cooking.

5. Being too focused or too anxious about publication. So often I meet an author who is already asking me for quotes when I am telling them to consider cutting a storyline or work on focusing the main theme. The excitement to be the next bestseller, the six-figure deal dreams robs the writer of his or her patience to really write the best story they can. Keep in mind: you only get one chance to make a first impression with an agent or a publisher. Slow down. Be patient. You’re not going to die tomorrow, and you are probably not going to lose your one chance at a six-figure deal if you don’t act today. Make sure your writing is phenomenal before you worry about the next step.

And what if you've worked and worked and worked your first novel to death and it still is sitting in a drawer or a file somewhere? Start writing a second novel.

Like first children, all that hard work makes the next one feel like a breeze.

Excerpt from "American Gypsy"

2006-08-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Chapter One

The cab drops me in front of the Sugar Lounge, duffle bag in hand. God, if I have to look at this place for one more week I’m going to shoot myself. And no, it’s not because I’m being pimped out on the side or dodging my lecherous boss or hooked on heroin. I’m not making $1,000 a night, I’m not snorting cocaine off the bar, and nobody is stalking me. Just because I work in a strip club does not make me a victim. I’m nobody’s victim.

Mostly what I feel today, as I shut the taxi door, is the sheer monotony of it all.

I started stripping after I left home because working graveyard shifts at Village Inn sucked and I couldn’t think of anything else that paid better. And since I would not swallow my pride and ask for money from my parents, or even consider going back to their fucked-up reality of a household, I had to figure something out. I’ll admit I was attracted to the whole drama of it, too; it comes from being raised by a military pervert who measured a woman’s worth by her attractiveness. My poor mother wore red lipstick and big wooden heels until the day she divorced him and finally let herself go gray, god love her.

Joe, the bouncer with skin like moist obsidian, towers half under the Sugar Lounge’s red awning and half in the open door. His suit is tailored, his bald head buffed to a shine. Above him the neon silhouette of a woman flickers with low wattage. He looks at his watch disapprovingly as I zoom past him and into the club, waving at the bartender and a few of the regulars: Lou, the rich cowboy who always comes on Thursdays and tips $20 bills when he gets drunk, the Chemistry professor in the corner with the foot fetish. They’re auditioning a new girl on stage as I hurry to the dressing room. She’s clearly never danced before—the stiffness, the overdone Flashdance moves. I remember my own audition and my cheeks warm with embarrassment.

Upstairs half-dressed dancers slam lockers and apply melted chunks of cheap lipstick. The go-go bar has a particular stink from years of unaired sweat and smoke and perfume; the smell is worse in the dressing room because sweaty high-heels ferment behind lockers night after night. I shimmy into a tasseled two-piece and strap on a pair of high-heeled spikes, smudge fat black lines around my eyes and rub red lips together. The air cools while descending the stairwell, the walls on either side covered with lipstick-kiss marks—the carved initials of a thousand women who have passed through the doors. My eyes rest on the faded purple of my own mark, though I don’t bother touching it for luck.

The club is crowded for a Thursday. The stupidest part of our job is to sit with customers and get them to buy us $8 cocktails when we’re not dancing. I visit the DJ booth and request “anything rock and roll,” then flash a smile at the patrons sitting stag at cocktail tables before the staff catches me sneaking away to the dressing room. Too late. I’ve been spotted. I acquiesce, steering into the closest swivel chair as if that’s where I was headed all along and wonder to myself: Would you like it better if this man, this Chemistry professor with the Russian accent who always smells of lavender soap, pulled out a $100 bill—would that make it more interesting for you to sit here and smile and lie about the details of your life? Would that change the fact that you know that under the table he’s handcuffed himself together in order to play out his dominatrix fantasy in a socially acceptable way, that he’ll expect you to retrieve his wallet from his coat pocket as usual and pay for all the drinks with his money? Does he suspect that you’re drinking $8 glasses of orange juice, that the shot you ordered for yourself is just water? Does he know and just not care, and if you were to yell butt out just buy me a drink, bitch, would he find this secretly exciting and tip you extra when he finally uncuffs himself to drive home? You decide it’s good to have power, even if it’s only sexual power. It raises you a few notches in the food chain. Well, you say, how’s your week been, as if the fact that this slightly overweight man with a European nose isn’t handcuffed, and you talk about things, boring things, what books you’re reading and what movies you’ve seen. You always attract the professors and the intellectuals, you’re too All-American to be nasty, there’s too much Elsa Brown Modeling School running through your veins. The television anchor men still wearing their suits, the visiting celebrities—that’s how you met Sean Penn and the Superstars of Wrestling. Jake the Snake autographed one of the dancers’ ass but you’re not like that, you’re the one who makes people snicker when she cusses—and would you be happier if he gave you $20 bills rather then $5 at a time so you could hurry up and be done with it? Well, you say again, drink gone, shot of water followed by lime, I think I’m up next so I should go get ready, and you tip yourself $40 from his wallet as he watches because, really, what is he going to do about it, and you walk up the stairs, two drinks marked off your nightly bar quota and another hour of your life wasted, thrown like pocket change to the sidewalk.

Cross-Pollination

2006-07-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

Wow. The muse has descended, and these last weeks I have been lounging with her, spitting cherry seeds, taking bubble baths, walking to the lake—and writing four or more hours a day!

How did this happen? I’m always asking for a visit from the muse—why now? Yes, I did allow myself to take a break from editing during these summer months, despite the financial repercusions. And while opening myself to my anger last month must have also triggered my current creative boom, I give the real credit to mehndi.

Mehndi is an old art form of body decoration using a paste made out of henna (see pictures below). It stains the skin for several weeks, and it is used traditionally in India, Southeast Asia, North Africa and the Middle East during celebrations and rites of passage, and in the West for safe, non-permanent body adornment.

So what’s the connection between mehndi and the muse of fiction writing?

Cross-pollination.

It's all starting to make sense. My mother is a painter and a seamstress and a woodworker and a jeweler, my brother a visual artist and musician, my uncle a talented sculpture artist and photographer. The creativity gene runs thick in my family (and that’s just a brief overview), but I’ve always considered myself a one-trick pony. While I long for the instant gratification of visual artists, I am usually left alone at the computer, aggravating my carpal tunnel, “alligator wrestling at the level of a sentence,” as Annie Dillard would say.

As far as instant gratification goes, writers have it the worst. It only takes 30 seconds for an audience to appreciate a photograph or painting. Try dumping a 80,000 word double-spaced novel into someone’s lap and saying, “I can’t wait to hear what you think of this.”

Perhaps for me the muse disguised herself as the Hindu goddess, Lakshmi, adorned with mehndi. I’ve been supporting and working with mehndi artists for years, but never had enough confidence to pick up the henna myself.

By stepping away from writing, the fiction muse has descended. I think sometimes we just bang our head against our preferred art form, not allowing ourselves cross-pollination, not allowing ourselves a guilt-free break. Now I’m painting henna at a hip hair salon and at the First Friday art shows—and my writing has never been more inspired or prolific.

What’s more, I’m actually having a creative Renaissance. I’m eating chocolate with the muse, decorating cakes, making my own lotion, taking artsy pictures. I danced the Universal Dances of Peace. I started riding my bicycle.

I’m 150 pages into the final revision of American Gypsy—and I’ve got an appointment to dye my hair punk rock pink.

Mehndi Pictures

2006-07-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

Seventy-Two Things I Hate (And a Few I Love)

2006-06-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Lately I’m angry. But instinctively I’ve known that what I am feeling is a constructive kind of anger, the kind of anger that acts as a signpost to let me know that an injustice is taking place. In many ways, the injustice is one that I’ve perpetrated on myself—my lack of connection with my own strongest feelings.

In our culture we are afraid of anger. We’ve internalized that it is impolite to be angry, and that no one will want to be our friend. But if we do not nurture and listen to the messages of our anger, then how can we listen to the messages of our bliss? Sticking to acceptable milquetoast opinions and feelings to avoid our anger will also have the unfortunate consequence of keeping us from our passions and joys, as well.

In Beyond the Writer’s Workshop, Carol Bly says that as artists, we have to nurture our strongest feelings. She complains that too many people in our culture are addicted to neutral feelings—and art is not born from neutral feelings.

Now this does not condone irrational or violent or destructive anger. But we are so quick to fear our anger, so quick to fear our deepest feelings that we avoid listening to the messages of our constructive anger. And in our anger lies our deepest opinions.

If we do not have any strong opinions, or if we don’t know what those opinions are, then as artists we are doomed to work in the world of aesthetics only. Bly calls this kind of beautiful, superficial, art-for-art’s-sake “angel scat,” and rightly so.

A fellow writer asked me to articulate the psychological profile of one of my characters. I stumbled, and then she asked me pointedly, “How well do you know yourself?” Instantly I claimed to know myself quite well, thank you very much. But her question burned in me until I realized that I, too, have been a victim of watery non-committals and blurry opinions. Only in one area of my life, my politics, have I been able to make a clear stand.

So what would it be like if I were to take a stand for all of my values and name my strongest feelings? I wrote the following list in an inspired moment, but the thought of posting them, of actually committing to my own opinions, sent my heart racing. What if someone is offended?

Then again, isn’t art meant to provoke? As artists we must be able to name our strongest feelings, admit them and own them, before our writing will be infused with the kind of power we long for.

I suggest, after you are finished being offended by my list, you make a list of your own.

Seventy-Two Things I Hate (And a Few I Love)

I hate people who gossip, and I hate myself when I gossip.
I hate mediocrity.
I hate people who claim to be feminists but aren’t.
I hate people who judge me or treat me like a “pretty girl.”
I hate people who call me up on the phone and expect me to drop everything and have a 2-hour conversation (there are exceptions).
I hate people who skirt or dodge difficult conversations.
I value people who are able to articulate and confront their difficult emotions.
I value things that are free.
I value people who find and look for things that are free.
I value other ingenious ways of saving money while not skimping on life.
I hate show-offs.
I hate people who have money but complain that they don’t.
I value loyalty in my relationships.
I value physical health, including attention to healthy eating.
I hate obesity—and I fear it.
I hate being woken up when I’m sleeping.
I hate feeling burdened by the neediness of others (on an ongoing basis).
I hate feeling judged and particularly misjudged.
I hate falseness in people.
I hate people who are overly cynical or sarcastic or selfish.
I hate people who always complain.
I hate people who act New-Age and enlightened.
I hate people who wear too much make-up—and insist that they don’t.
I hate people who are habitually late to or cancel engagements.
I hate people who talk about things they know nothing about as if they are an authority
I hate people who criticize others to make up for their own insecurities—especially when it comes to criticizing art.
I hate jealousy.
I hate people who are unconcerned about the health of the Earth.
I hate people who are unconcerned with the suffering of others.
I hate Wal-Mart and other unethical companies.
I hate people who shop at Wal-Mart and other unethical companies.
I hate rude children.
I hate parents who don’t address (or acknowledge) their children’s rudeness or bad behavior.
I hate parents who are unjustly strict.
I hate the ethics of a consumer market.
I hate those who stereotype artists as lazy or careless dreamers or losers.
I hate people who try to impose their will on others.
I hate alcoholics and their destructive behaviors.
I hate people who lie.
I hate people who steal.
I hate arrogance.
I hate people who say one thing and do another—or say they are going to do something and don’t.
I hate feeling unappreciated.
I hate being yelled at or demeaned in any way.
I hate when people treat me like I’m stupid.
I hate people who think I should be flattered by their sexual attention.
I hate the way I sometimes have sex because I don’t want to be rejected.
I hate people who can’t own up to their own mistakes.
I hate men who cheat on their wives without remorse.
I hate people who hide in religion.
I hate shadow artists.
I hate pushy people.
I hate pathetic excuses.
I hate sloppy, half-assed work.
I hate people who are (or claim to be) vegetarians because they think it makes them cool.
I hate high-maintenance people who act that way for attention.
I hate hypocrisy.
I hate people who step on others.
I hate corrupt politics and politicians.
I hate people who defend corrupt politics and politicians.
I hate racism and prejudice.
I hate ignorance—particularly ignorance that claims to be informed.
I value truth.
I value being a person of my word.
I value sincerity and genuineness.
I value spiritual seeking.
I value emotional responsibility and growth.
I value the ability to relax and enjoy life.
I value honest, constructively framed feedback about myself or my work.
I value relationships that can exchange honest, constructively framed feedback.
And most of all, I value the courage it takes to face our lives with honesty and integrity.

Confessions of a Word Junkie--Or My Five-Year Love Affair With Writing Group

2006-05-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

For five years my writing group has been trying to name itself. The suggestions have ranged from Write Club to Urban Scrawl to Verisimilitude to Work Junkies. At public readings we have been forced to call ourselves “The Writing Group.” Coming to a consensus, the lowest common denominator, was impossible.

My writing group has been my anchor these last five years as I’ve written two novels and published Live From Palestine. Every Wednesday, barring life-threatening surgery or typhoons, we would come together in some locally owned coffeeshop to critique, edit, talk about writing—and then head to the nearest bar for more of the same. After so many years, baristas across Denver awaited our business—and by proxy the magnet business of writing and reading groups that seemed to magically blossom on Wednesdays in our wake. We saved many a dying coffeeshop and put many more on the map. We drank carafes of wine in Italian restaurants, scotches in dive bars, and pitchers and pitchers worth of Pabst Blue Ribbon, especially when one or more of us was broke. We imagined ourselves like The Bloomsbury group, or like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Pound. We traveled twice to the Aspen Literary Festival, hosted or attended dozens of readings, book signings; we wrote through one divorce, one gay wedding, two babies and one spin-off (my son, now 7, is working on his second novel, the sequel to Cat and Frog’s Adventure.)

Between us we have written eight books and more stories and poems then I could count. We are more then colleagues, we are fellow artists and sanity for one another in the often cruel world of publishing.

So it was a painful realization, nine months ago, to accept that it was time for me to leave the nest.

I remember the moment perfectly: I was having lunch with Rikki Ducornet, which in itself is a great pleasure, and she casually mentioned that at some point a writer needs to stop showing their unfinished work to others, needs to cut the umbilical cord of writing groups and workshops and trust their intuition. As a child needs to outgrow a parent, a writer needs to outgrow the potential crutch—dare I say the addiction—of feedback.

I had to chew on that a while. I chewed on it through the birth of my second child, I chewed on it as I tried on different writing groups, took workshops, all hoping in vain to find the one group that made me feel like I did five years ago when every bit of feedback was a light bulb illuminating my writing. But none did. Not only did I not find another writing group, but I became angry at myself for my lack of faith in my own writing, angry at my artistic steps backward. Angry that I couldn’t seem to find other writers to inspire me the way I had once been inspired by others.

But I didn’t need to. What I learned from over 250 meetings with my talented friends changed my writing forever. And having those people pop the bottle of bubbly when my first book was published was the kind of intimacy every writer craves. But I see why we never came up with a group name, why Word Junkies or Write Club never stuck: we are multiple entities with multiple talents and writing futures as varied as we are. In seeking to create unity, we instead created ourselves.

I work as an editor, and the editing process is crucial for all writers. But you will know who you are when I say that some of us just keep editing and editing—looking for the one person, the one editor, the one writing group member who will say “This is a masterpiece.” So we keep revising and resubmitting and revising and resubmitting until we are writing for approval, not from the solitary well of intuition where masterpieces are really born.

So now I stand on the edge of a new world as have many before me, a scary leap away from feedback and into intuition—and the fear of isolation. The time to step away. To trust myself. Trust my work. And know that I am surrounded by a legacy of writers whether we meet once a week or not.

But maybe I’ll go just one more Wednesday…

The Importance of Having a Reading List

2006-04-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

I want to talk about the importance of having a yearly reading list, especially if you are a writer.

I was first introduced to the idea of "intentional reading" from an article in Poets and Writers several years ago (forgive me but I can't remember the name of the article's author). He suggested not only intentional reading but an actual syllabus to ensure that the unfocused writer did not fall into the trap of reading the same author or just reading whatever fell in his/her lap.

It's crucial for a writer (especially) to continue to read difficult, varied, and classic books because this is our job. There are books on my list that I've been "meaning" to read for years, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Would I have done it without the curriculum? Maybe not.

Most people either balk at my supposed abundance of time or share my enthusiasm but won't actually commit. I understand--I kept that photocopied article from P & W for years in a desk drawer for years. This year, making my list of New Year's resolutions, I could feel the resistance and the excuses: I'm not a fast reader. I'm the mother of two children, one only seven months old--I'm not even operating on full nights of sleep. I have my own editing business and I'm finishing my second novel. It's too daunting...

The truth is, once I made the list all my fears evaporated.

1 biography: Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Pierce (Kent Nurburn)

1 memoir: Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)

3 classics: Altas Shrugged (Any Rand), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)

2-3 writing books: The Writing Life (Annie Dillard), Elements of Style (Struck and White), Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

1 history book: A People's History of the U.S. (Howard Zinn)

2-3 books by authors I've never read: Ishmael (Daniel Quinn), In Cold Blood (Truman Capote), The End of the Affair (Graham Greene)

1 book poetry: Ariel (Sylvia Plath)

1 unread book by a fave author: A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)

2-3 books in a new discipline or field: In the Shadow of Man (Jane Goodall), The Soul of Money (Lynn Twist), Elements of Typographic Style (Robert Bringhurst)

1 children’s book: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

2-3 rereads--any genre: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe), On the Road (Jack Kerouac), The Incredible Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)

1 international/intercultural: The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)

1 other: Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting (Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn)

No Really, I'm Not Into Blogging

2006-04-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Well, after two years of insisting that blogging is a form of public masturbation, I have surrendered to technology. One of these days I'll also upgrade my computer from the caged pterodactyl who chips away at a granite stone with his beak. But no need to go crazy all in one night.

I've decided to blog under my own name, though it was an anonymous blog, Agent 007, that finally won me over. Thanks, Agent 007.