Sometimes I write fiction
Beautiful as the canyon, grand as the depths of this gorgeous, God-sized hole.
Hello angels,
I started making art in 2020, and I started to make a lot more of it during grad school later that year, once I had a real writing project to hide from. In school, to practice scene and dialogue, we were asked to write a few short stories, even though our program was for nonfiction. Soon enough, I was working on short stories when I should have been working on thesis submissions.
Writing about real stuff is hard. You have facts and information to worry about. Ideally, some critical thinking should take place. Then there is the actual labor of the sentences. For me, fiction is easier to generate and much more anarchic. I can say whatever the hell I want, however the hell I want to say it.
Here is a section from a short story I am working on when I should be working on essays. It started with a sentence I overheard at a coffee shop, but it really came to life when I had a bad day and decided to drive to the Grand Canyon about it. While I did not follow through on the trip, it got me thinking about how difficult it can be to have relationships with insane people like me. I hope you enjoy. Thanks as always for reading <3
xoxo
JJ
Dad has been overprotective, which bothers Graham. He can’t stand it when Dad is hanging around half drunk with his chest hair sticking out of his shirt. The beer cans bug Graham, the way Dad leaves them everywhere—in the bathroom sink, on the bookshelves, in the cupholders of the car. The bottoms of the cans create tacky little o’s on every surface. It’s like the apartment has ringworm. I bet that’s what Graham thinks about it.
Graham’s face gets ugly when he catches a whiff of an empty that’s been sitting around overnight or when he accidentally elbows one off the countertop while he is doing the dishes. He makes a production out of it. He huffs and kicks the fallen can against the cupboard like a little kid blam, then sticks his head around the corner at me and dad on the couch.
“Frank?” he says to Dad. “Please. The cans.” What he means is eat shit. Sometimes Dad takes them out, but mostly he lets them sit. Then the ants come, which makes Graham even more tense.
Graham knows about book publishing, European history, Persian rugs, the Poconos. He went to the best schools, and he knows a lot of people. When I was trying to sell my novel, he’d got me a meeting with an agent. Family friends and family money: with him, I hit the jackpot on both. When we met, I was sure Graham would be a winner.
Another thing is that Dad loves to clomp through the house in his big boots on the way to the fridge to get another beer saying things like, “Do you have enough to eat, sugar?” and “Did you take your pills?” all of this said to me through Graham, who Dad has designated my nurse. He loves to stop and shake the pill organizer Graham got for me at the drugstore and ask if I’m all drugged up proper, haha.
“That's a freebie,” Dad likes to joke as I swallow my PM pills with dinner. It's takeout for me and Graham and a big bowl of instant mashed potatoes or canned beef stew for Dad. He also loves markdown steaks beat thin with a mallet and pickled asparagus pulled straight from the jar with his fingers.
It comes on all at once. One day I am at my desk coming up with headlines for the clickbait articles I am paid to write—Top 8 sexiest family annihilators; This parasite eats your internal organs. Is it in your tap water?—and the next I am opening six boxes full of makeup I bought online and driving to the Grand Canyon. That's where I ended up this time, staring over the edge at Bright Angel Gorge with a guy who I’d met on the internet the night prior. We’d driven my car through the night, then hooked up in the back seat at the park entrance while the sun rose over the tops of the pine trees and the ticket-takers pulled up in their 4x4 trucks to unlock the gates and assume their posts in the booths.
There we were at the canyon, staring out across that great expanse, Graham's worried texts buzzing in my pocket, the cum still pulling at the hairs on my lower back every time I sat or stood or twisted my torso around to observe the throngs of tourists in their bright clothes. They were so bright and so round they reminded me of planets. I reached into my pocket and grabbed all five of the lip glosses I'd stored in there, one for every mood. I liked how I could change the way I looked by applying the color theory I'd learned in the Intro to Graphic Design course that I took at the community college back home. With just a few smears, I could make my face a masterpiece, an ecstatic burst of hue and shape, beautiful as the canyon, grand as the depths of this gorgeous, God-sized hole.
The cops or the nurses or somebody had called Dad when they found me later that week, unconscious in my hotel room, having bought something called slug off a lanky guy with no teeth in the sides of his mouth who I'd seen outside the mini mart where I dragged myself to get some cigarettes. I didn't have my meds and I was feeling bad. The toothless guy could see it. He wanted to help me. He did.
The motel alerted the Coconino County sheriff when I failed to vacate the room. When the cops came in, I was wrapped up tight in the shitty hotel bed cover, naked, with my head at the foot of the bed and my feet on the pillows. I had painted a whole scene on the bathroom mirror with lipsticks and eyeshadows. I didn't remember doing it, but at the hospital they were calling me Rembrandt and kidding me about it. They told me I’d painted quite the portrait, but they never showed me a picture of it. All I remember is opening my eyes for a moment while the EMTs dragged me on a gurney past the motel office. It had one of those motivational posters from the 1990s taped up on the plexiglass in front of the check-in counter. A kitten hung from a tree branch. Hang in there, it said.