The OrphanAGE, Vol 1.28
First Lines
"Every day is a god, each day is god, and holiness holds forth in time."
—Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
I think we’re all feeling it: the weight of the thick, summer doldrums settling down upon us. Those urges to slip away, to see the mountains or the ocean or to see an old friend. Hell, even visit far-flung family (at least the ones we’re still on speaking terms with in this epoch of top-down angst and irritation ).
We think you’ll enjoy this week’s meaty, summer, grill-out of an issue:
The bluesy, unpretentious honesty of Clark Crow, exhumed like a lost Lomax recording from the swelter of some overlooked Louisiana bayou. Joined by three color-field works peeled from decades of work by tennis coach and educator, Max Fearing. And rounding this week out: a sneak peak from the full-length travel memoir by our Mac Danny, Stayton.
We promise you’ll be hearing more from each of them in future issues.
Till then, find a shady spot and keep hydrated (I hear, the final week of the Tour de France can be cued up on Peacock).
Peace,
Dante
In this Issue
- Music by Clark Crow
- Travelogue sneak peek from Danny "Mac" Stayton
- Art by F. Max Fearing
My Little Honey Bee
by Clark Crow
Excerpt from a forthcoming travelogue
by Danny "Mac" Stayton
Chapter 1: Time Share
Besides my mother and my sisters who are bound to me by blood, I have not spoken to a woman face to face in well over a year.
If that sounds like exaggeration or the hyperbole of an angsty teenager, believe me, it is not. I am 23 years old.
Before you cast judgment, know this: I had an excuse. The bars and cafes were closed and locked tight. The grocery store was a horror show of iridescent lights, masks, and the eerie booping of a distant checkout. The parks were empty and roped off with caution tape. People were keeping a measured distance of six feet between one another, referencing friends and family as “pods” and limited to short walks around the neighborhood and conversations that never left the front porch.
It’s hard to explain, even now, as someone who has survived the end of the world. In the blink of an eye, my life had gone from classes and house parties, from freedom, independence, and blind enthusiasm about the future, to pumps of hand sanitizer, my parent’s refrigerator, and the endless exhaustion of tomorrow. There was barely any room for joy on the life raft, let alone romance.
So when Los Angeles began to open its doors again, and we began to emerge from our caves, I immediately downloaded every dating app available and messaged every girl in my ten mile radius with the vigor of a touch starved 23 year old male who had just graduated college and was now living in his parent’s garage. Thus, my dear reader, with the cryo-fluid still wet on my skin, my first date in our brave new world was with a stranger that had been introduced to me by the algorithm.
It was a tale as old as time. Our rendezvous point was at a local bar on main street. The bar had only just been re-opened to in person customers and even then only for strict four hour increments and that was only because the staff had built a makeshift outdoor patio that looked like a traveling circus that could not afford branding. It was a small white tent that jutted out onto the road and between every table there was a strip of see through plastic and beneath our feet there were the painted lines for handicapped parking.
That's where we met. Under the polyester and above the asphalt. When I first saw her, she was wearing a mask. When she took it off, I remember watching the elastic band pull up and over her ears. We had an awkward confirmation of identity, matching the photos of our phone to the face that stared across from us. Satisfied, I stuck out my hand for a handshake and she went in for a hug. We sat in the corner so that both our shoulders brushed against the tent walls. She was cool, aloof, and played it all off like nothing was unusual. I was clumsy at first, but second by second I managed to slip into the flow of things.
She was a traveler. Before everything had shut down, she had solo backpacked around Europe, living out of her suitcase, joining up with groups of foreign youths she had met in the hostels. From Lisbon to Istanbul, I followed her words like a lost dog. I was envious of her adventure.
When she asked about where I had been and what I had seen, I couldn’t match her. Instead, I diverted the conversation and told her about a spot I knew of close by with great views. How I had spent a lot of time up there, thinking of this and that. A place I went to clear my head. You should have seen the way she smiled when I told her that.
“Take me there.”
That’s how I found myself driving up the Angeles Crest Highway, a curvy roundabout drive through the San Gabriel Mountains, the silent giants that loomed over my youth. The drive is dark and windy and goes up and up and up. Cars careen past and their headlights are blinding. For a stranger, it could be scary. None of it seemed to bother her. She was barely paying attention to the road, sitting in the passenger seat with her knees to her chest, scrolling through her phone for the next song as she pulled on her vape that left great clouds of what smelled like strawberries.
When I found a pullout and backed in, Los Angeles sparkled before us in its lazy sprawl. I popped the trunk and that's where we sat. My hoodie was up over my ears and sat on the middle of my head. I peered at her out of the corner of my eye. She had a leather jacket on, but still, she shivered. I threw a blanket around us and that's when we kissed. It was the first time I had kissed a woman in over a year, and she left my lips buzzing like great clouds of strawberry.
For a moment, we were just a muffled mess of limbs and breath before she broke away. She looked at me from under long eyelashes, her eyes so glassy that they sparkled with the lazy sprawl of Los Angeles.
“Is there somewhere else we can go?” she asked. “Somewhere more private.”
“Uh, yeah, of course” I lied. “We can go back to my place.”
I am not proud but neither am I ashamed. I was determined to see this one over the goal line. I refused to fumble my first play in the new world. So I took her back to “my place” and when we pulled in the driveway, I lied to her some more.
“You have to be quiet, okay?” I said. “I have dogs. And my neighbors get weird when they bark late at night.”
“Okay!” she smiled and was out of the door in a flash.
I jumped out and beat her there, reminding her again by placing my finger to my lips. Past the squeal of hinges, we slipped through and walked into the atrium and not more than ten feet away, the sliding glass door to my living room stood wide open. All of the lights were on. I grabbed her hand and took a hard right turn and brought her into the garage.
“You live here?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a timeshare thing,” I lied some more.
Although technically my bedroom resides in what was once a garage, it is not what you think. It’s nice and cozy, spaced out with hand me down leather furniture that is in great condition and would fetch a nice price on Facebook Marketplace. The walls are insulated and the automated door is no longer functional. The room is about the size of a loft apartment if you ripped out the kitchen and the bathroom. On one side of the room is my bed and clothes rack and Ikea closet and on the other is my father’s desk he has kept since grade school. In the middle of the room there is a sofa, a coffee table, a carpet, a recliner and a television. In truth it’s a man cave and one that any High School boy would be thrilled to call home and once upon a time, I was thrilled.
But now, I am not so sure. There is something off. Something I quite can’t put my finger on. A shadow that lingers. It has nothing to do with the furniture, or the lack of sunlight, or the dust, or even the walls of the room itself. It’s what’s in between.
Every inch, every crevice of space, is being utilized. Even the ceiling
Above my father’s desk, there are rafters that hold all of our Christmas decorations. Even now, a nativity scene and big plastic light up nutcracker gather dust up there. Between the decorations, there are boxes jammed full of my dad’s old newspaper clippings, baskets of blankets, clothes, paintings, and God knows what else. Directly over my bed, mountain bikes hang from the ceiling. Down below, the walls are lined with books, and a weird amount of dressers that I have never opened and never plan to. I know if I ever did, I’d just find more stuff. Oh, and my clothes are everywhere. It sometimes —depending on my mood— has the aura of a big walk-in closet.
Even the blank spots of the walls are occupied by photos of grandparents, parents, sisters, uncles, and aunts. Worst of all, there are photos of myself. Ranging from the day I was born to the day I graduated High School, every step of my short walk of life seemingly digitized and framed, as some sort of testament to a life lived well.
In the great year of 2020, as my life has been reduced to an experiment of quarantine and social distance, everyday, no matter what I do, the eyes of my ancestors and past lives alike sit and watch me from my bedroom wall.
And at that moment, it just so happened that they were watching as I was having sex with a woman.
Or at least attempting to. You see, there was something about the in-between that was affecting me. Maybe it was the bed stand that was crashing into the wall causing me to awkwardly cut things short and jam a pillow back there before resuming. Or the pictures of grandma and grandpa that were tilting with every thrust. Or perhaps, it was the bike, swaying just above my head or the sheets I’ve had since high school that were now engulfing her body.
In my mind’s frantic scramble to be anywhere but in that bed with her, I began thinking of my family’s dusty nativity scene and the way the prickly manger and the animals and the shepherds are separated in the box by the white styrofoam that is cut to the shape of each piece and how the styrofoam is so old that its edges crumble between my fingers leaving bits and pieces of white and how the old crumbly styrofoam cradles every inch of Baby Jesus and how he must feel swallowed by the styrofoam, and I began to wonder, does Baby Jesus understand that the styrofoam that is molded to every crevice of his body is meant to protect him? Or does he ever find himself wondering about the distant sounds of thrashing organic material and the meaning behind it? Does he find himself wondering how it might feel to breathe and sweat and itch and cry and seek pleasure for pleasure’s sake? Does he dream of a different world, one in which he might be free to live any way he sees fit?
And that’s when I began to hear the faint whistle of the bomb falling. The silent countdown as the blood stopped pumping. In the end, I was forced to say the famous words.
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
When we agreed it was over, I flopped down next to her and without a second to spare, began fretting about my bedroom door, praying that I would not hear the ill-fated no-knock-squeal-of-hinges, and watch as you-know-who came waltzing onto center stage. In my spat of fear and anxiety, I heaved myself up and out of bed and began to get dressed as the walls continued their thousand yard stare and the space between continued to scream.
She lay there, completely naked, staring up at me and, God as my witness, I stared back. I wonder now, safely away from there, what she must have thought was going on between my eyes. Her guess would have been as good as mine. As much as the garage was my body's cage, my mind was somewhere else entirely, pieced only together by cells and pink matter.
In a huff that jolted me from my mental frenzy, she sat up and got dressed without a word. I was very pleased by this, as I had nothing to say. It would have been a flawless evac, if she had not abruptly stopped two steps from the front door.
“Can I use your bathroom?” she asked.
In another world, if I were a cruel man, I would have refused her. That way, I could have sustained my illusion, cemented my lie as truth. But unfortunately, I am a gentleman to the very end.
“Sure,” I said. “But I have to be honest with you. There is a good chance you are going to meet my parents.”
“I thought this was your place. Some kind of timeshare?”
“A timeshare with my parents.”
When I led her back through the atrium and into the living room, there was my father, hard at work on the dishes in the sink. He turned before I could sneak by. When he saw the two of us, he broke out into a huge smile.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, “This is, um….”
“Monica.”
This of course only caused my father’s smile to stretch further. With a soapy hand, he waved and it took all my strength not to cry. While she handled her business, I stood in the living room looking anywhere but the kitchen sink. Finally, I looked at my father. My Dad was still standing there, smiling. I’ll never forget what happened next. With same soapy hand, he pumped his fist in the air and said:
“Way to go, Son!”
Paintings by F. Max Fearing
F. Max Fearing calls his paintings MAXISIMS: expressive interpretive abstractions. He has been showing his works for many years at various juried and non-juried venues in Kansas City MO, Kansas, and Lawrence Kansas.
Visit his website to learn more and purchase his work.