Volume 1, Issue 1
Summer is Hell

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the first issue of quarterlife magazine! To your right are essays, works of fiction, and innovative and interesting things put into words; to your left is a cover, and maybe an ad. In front of you is the future, but let us not be concerned with that. This is happening now and this issue opens doors for many new things to happen.

The purpose of quarterlife is to share writing of the Whitman community to the Whitman community. You don’t have to be a “writer” to be published in this magazine because everyone writes, because everyone is a writer, because everyone has a story or an experience or a creative mind that they can share through this medium. People do innumerable things with language and quarterlife is here to celebrate and share everything that people are writing.

Summer presents us with adventures and relaxation and spreads us out across the world away from these academic buildings planted between trees – for this reason summer can be anything. The works in this issue focus on a theme of “Summer is Hell,” not that summer necessarily is hell but we sure can make it that way. We work, have internships, travel, lay in the sun, ski in the southern hemisphere, day-dream, babysit, hang with old friends and relatives … things are new and exciting or familiar and comfortable or some combination or something else all together. We hope to share part of summer with you.

The theme for the next issue is “Supernatural” and the third: “Disassociated Communication.” We are accepting submissions for these and will narrow the selections down to fit the magazine. Please email submissions by Nov. 3 to quarterlife@whitman.edu and consider the theme a loose guideline, just something to get you going and don’t worry about length, we want it all (well, between one word and two- or three-thousand). We are greedy like that. Whitman contains multitudes – peruse, study, celebrate, and enjoy!

Return to top.

.

June Eleventh
Kim Hooyboer

    It’s cold and the rain doesn’t agree with my cigarette. For weeks, the sky has maintained a fairly perpetual precipitation, spanning from violent downpours to almost snow-like drifts, flutters of rain that seem best described as torrential mist. I don’t really notice the rain anymore or, at least, it has ceased to faze me. Jamming my free hand into the pocket of my sweatshirt to escape the chill, I watch the wind ripple the surface of the leaf strewn swimming pool. The ground is wet so I stand hunched over the porch rail, hood drawn in an absurd attempt to stay dry. I smoke quickly during breaks in the rainfall, the light drizzle creating shadowed rings on the cement floor of the pool.

    The sky strobes with distant lightning, accompanied by a faint rumbling thunder disproportionate to the harsh flashes that illuminate the clouds behind silhouetted trees. The vague murmuring is entirely overwhelmed by the nocturnal chorus of crickets preaching solitude to the night. I wander towards the pool, ignoring the threatening weather, and sit beside the water. My toes curl over the ledge, testing the concrete edge for weakness. I would walk across the surface of this water, but the stones in my pockets keep weighing me down. I leave no footprints on the rain soaked ground and my skin is slow to dry in the cool night air.

Return to top.

.

Lifeguard
Drew Arnold

    The climate of the town is warm enough for the swimming pool to be open all year but it is cool enough that the lifeguard very rarely has anyone to watch. During the cooler months Jonah dusts the counters, sweeps around the pool, and watches the clouds in the sky. But mostly he sits. And as it is almost impossible to just sit and do nothing else, Jonah also loses himself in reverie. His thoughts are always on the same topic and they are never about swimming. Jonah dreams about a girl that he used to know and date and love but he does not know her anymore or date her anymore. He is still in love with her in his head. His daydreams are more than idle ponders; he escapes to a place that becomes real in his mind where he can connect again with her. He joins her in his secret place of memories where the softness of her skin still pushes up against his and the scruff of his face still finds an opposite comfort in contact with her neck; his nose in her hair. He goes to places with her – revisiting the places he has walked with her a thousand times, everyday things like shopping and driving in the car and going on day hikes and her mundane words are captured in his mind and become golden strands like strings on an angel’s harp to resonate infinitely more fragile and more elegant. He transports to a place where he is with her even though she left him to go to Bangladesh; he takes her out to dinner even though she is eating whatever the orphanage where she works now is serving; he holds her soft, healthily plump, and glowing body against his to watch some mindless television show even though she is now thin and fit and has roughened her skin against mountains and weather and poverty. He does not go to the summer after graduating from college when she made the decision to leave California for a new life – a life without middle-class comforts and a life without him. These thoughts of his past love occupy his day, he does little more than think of her and watch the sky and the undisturbed water in the pool.

    His travels to former times with her start to slowly dissolve as the heat becomes more intense and patrons of the pool begin to trickle in. The people disturb his day as he has to be attentive over little children and mischievous teenagers who are out on their own and determined to make the most of their new independence. The girls bubble gossip and the boys gawk in awkward awe while trying to remain super-cool. The mothers read books and magazines and check watches to get back to their houses in time to watch talk shows and get the children a snack. Jonah becomes unsettled and ungrounded without the safety of his memories. He signs people into the pool and he monitors the safety of the pool. He tells kids not to run and he warns about jumping in too shallow water. He is a polite and personable lifeguard; the mothers smile and appreciate the familiarity of him at the pool. The busier the pool is the more energetic he becomes; the more he has to do the less he has time to reminisce.

    Although he is a more productive person during the hotter months he feels a spiritual disconnect. On the surface he performs like everyone performs: he is normal. But the jagged activities of the day sharpen themselves on the inside of his head and he sinks without the thoughts of her. He blazes in the heat of summer, surrounded by people in recreation. And he yearns to float on his ideas of the past.

Return to top.

.

All Work, No Pay
Brian McGuire

    Career, future, going away party, 401K… now is the time to begin thinking about… black socks, water cooler, is this chair ergonomic?... I thought so… otherwise… workers comp... premium and deductible, lawsuit, discrimination…. Vacation.

    Purgatory is a windowless library turned intern cave on the 14th floor of an office building in sunny downtown Portland. As an intern, my responsibilities are to maintain the defenses on a two front war. In the west, I battle to keep my eyes from glazing over. The moment I step into the flouro-halogen dungeon I am met by my 75 Hz. monitor that flickers on and off (intern equipment), and the pulsing fluorescent lights. I bite on a rag when I can to mitigate the seizure risk. In the east sits my dungeon mate, a recent grad from U of O, an actual employee with actual paychecks who actually just sits and chats all day… after a few weeks she has yet to receive an assignment (they know she is there – I checked),

    My dungeon mate, Jessica, is uninteresting and far from attractive. I wouldn’t say she is ugly, ugly is interesting, ugly can be sexy, she is plain. Plain plain, as in tattooed sunburst on her lower back plain. I imagine that she goes home at night and eats a box of Nilla wafers while staring at the wall; sometimes turns off the light to spice things up.

    The single most interesting thing about her isn’t even about her at all. I guess another student named Jessica Brown at U of O drew a controversial cartoon for the college newspaper. It depicted Jesus making out with a man while sporting an erection of messianic proportions. Awesome. Some Christian “pro-family” groups got all pissed off and Mom, Dad, and little Billy McBiggot started making threatening calls and emails to Jessica Brown – Nilla wafer Jessica Brown, not Fag-lover, Jesus-hater Jessica Brown.

    It is hard to say if it has affected her too much. She is scared to go to the store. Or walk outside. You know, because of the people. And though I am dying to come in every morning and put some LSD in her coffee I restrain myself and we have fun together. Actually, for all my complaining, I think about half of my time at work is spent thinking about sleeping with her. Proximity is such an attractive quality, though difficult to write love letters about. “Baby you are the sexiest thing within reasonable walking distance.”

    Sometimes I can escape it all, I put on headphones and shut my eyes, I try to imagine I am sitting on a beach somewhere in the flickering fluorescent sun, but my imagination is stubborn, and I end up in a bunker or control room in Chernobyl, control room computers buzz, and the concrete walls close in on me. Occasionally, I strike a compromise with my stubborn imagination and end up on the Marshall Islands.

    If you don’t know about the Marshall Islands I can sure tell you a thing or two, one of my main “job responsibilities” is to explore the “world-wide web” for things that interest me. Oh boy, gee whiz isn’t this the cat’s pajamas, there is so much to learn and explore on this so-called “internet.” I feel like an astronaut first landing on the moon. Thank you internship for exposing me to this exciting “cyber world”…

    I actually do learn a lot. Did you know that the equivalent of 7000 Hiroshima bombs were dropped on the Marshall Islands before WWII after relocating the people/locals/natives/savages/people-beasts? Needless to say much of the islands were vaporized, as in cease to exist, as in are probably the dust collecting on our stack of old Core books. Hell, we have probably all eaten a bit of the Marshall Islands over the years. But, it turns out those pesky locals want compensation for their lingering health problems, the costs of relocation, and the vaporization of their homeland. Or whatever. That is what I learned today.

    At the end of the day us strangers pack together in sterile steel elevators politely pretending one another do not exist. Buildings depress their 5:00 PM plungers and we shoot life into Portland’s veins. I often meet a friend of mine from Whitman who has an internship as well. Together we recount our workdays.

Return to top.

.

Talking to Strangers
Toby Kahn

    I am College Pro. Together … realizing potentials. Reaching out our wings … moving from adolescents to adulthood. Learning … how to learn. Living and learning how to live. Together … embracing my fellow thetans and conquering the evil enthetas in order to safely move up the bridge. Fuck. That last one is from a Scientology brochure not a College Pro leaflet, my bad. I am proud to say that I spent three hours every evening this summer as an employ of College Pro Painters. Indeed, I was the harbinger of good news, roaming the streets of Walla Walla spreading the Gospel of College Pro. In my white shirt with the sky blue College Pro logo emblazoned onto the breast and the rich navy blue trim along the neck and arms I heroically knocked upon the door of every house in Walla Walla wanting of a new paint job. As one homeowner located on Fern street so eloquently explained, my willingness to go knocking door to door was “unabashed as a girl scout.” Thanks College Pro customer! Luckily, I met lots of other great people over the course of my wanderings.

    … The hunter.

Early in the summer I was walking merrily along one of the streets off Howard between Alder and Tietan when I came upon a fairly standard looking house. Medium sized, nice enough. Its pale blue paint was fading all over the siding and beginning to peel on the garage. This is a high probability score I thought to myself. I rang the door bell and waited for a moment, absently twirling my clip board as I noted a “File of Life” sticker on the door and wondered for the 100th time that summer what that phrase meant, perhaps another cult to explore? Suddenly, the door jerked open revealing an older man with a thick white mustache wearing a ten gallon cowboy hat.

    “Howdy,” he barked at me. “What can I do for ya?” This summer I learned that when you knock on someone’s door holding a clip board “What can I do for you” roughly translates to “Fuck off.”

    “My name is Toby,” I replied, launching into my pitch, “I’m here with College Pro Painters. We’re a student run exterior painting company.” I stumbled; not speaking for a moment as I completely lost my train of thought. Something had destroyed my concentration and desire to sell, something furry. Above the man’s head perched on a large slab of rock was a mountain goat. A big dead mountain goat. Except that it didn’t look like it was dead. The taxidermist responsible for the project did an excellent job … that was one perky goat. It had magnificent horns and looked like it must have been a good 300 lbs back when it was alive. It was relaxed as it sat on the rock, as if it might just bound away at any moment. The best part was that fact that its head had been arranged such that it was staring straight at anyone who entered the house.

    “Umm,” I continued. “I was curious if you would be interested in a free estimate with us?”

    “Son … I do my own paintin’. Thanks for your time.”

    “Nice goat,” I reply. The door shuts.

    If I had a dead goat in the entryway to my house I’d at least rig it so I could press a button and get it to mouth along to the words of “Louie Louie.”

    … The chosen ones.

    It was one of those days in July where afternoon temperatures reached well above 105° and I was not a happy employee. I trudged wearily along either Balm St. or Juniper, I can’t remember exactly where I was. In the oppressive heat I stopped at nearly every home that might possibly want a paint job in order to take advantage of a bit of shade and a rest.

    “Aha, another good bet,” I thought as I approached a two story home covered in peeling brown paint. I walked onto the porch and rang the doorbell. Looking down I noticed a large pot filled with real dirt and plastic plants, a depressingly common sight. The door opened. Standing in the doorway was a girl who couldn’t possibly have been any older than my twenty-one years of age, and quite possibly a few years less. Judging by the bulge in her dress, the baby would be due shortly.

    “Hi,” I said, “my name is Toby, I’m here with college pro painters, we’re an exterior painting company. I was wondering if you would be interested in a free estimate with us.”

    “Sorry,” she replied, “but I don’t know. My mom is out right now but she’ll be back soon. You can try again later if you want.” I turn to leave, disappointed by the prospect of returning to the Walla Walla heat. Luckily, I was saved by a minivan that just that moment had pulled up the house’s driveway. I began walking towards the minivan the second it came to a rest.

    “Hi!” I yelled out. No response. “Hi!” I yelled again. The driver rolled down the window and revealed a middle aged woman. “Are you the home owner here?”

    “Yes,” she affirmed.

    “Well, my name is Toby. I’m here with College Pro Painters; we’re an exterior painting company. I was wondering if you would be interested in a free estimate with us?” There was a long pause in which we stared at one another. Unable to stand the fiery heat of her stare I looked away. Finally, she answered: “Why?”

    I was dumbstruck by this response, the only of its kind the entire summer. Maybe it was the heat, maybe some other intangible factor, but at that moment, I transformed into Tobias Kahn: wise-ass college student.

    “Well m’aam, I represent a painting business. We derive our revenue from funds transferred to us by homeowners in exchange for performing the service of house painting. By signing up with me for an estimate, we hope that you might decide to do business with College Pro Painters.” There was another long pause.

    “Oh. Well I don’t want one,” she said. I smiled, thanked her for her time and hit the streets once again.

    “Yikes,” I utter beneath my breath, “teenage pregnancy: 1, human gene pool: 0.”

    …the Biker

    I rang the doorbell and waited for a full minute, still no answer. As usual it was extraordinarily hot and I didn’t particularly want to move, so I remained in the doorway for another sticky moment. After another minute I felt a cool breeze rush towards my face and detected the smell of chamomile as the door swung open. The first thing that struck me about this house was the fact that there seemed to be a jungle inside of it. The second thing I noticed was the tattooed biker standing amidst all of the foliage. With his crew cut, black leather jacket, and hoop earrings he looked like some kind of post-apocalyptic pirate.

    “How you doin’ bud?” he asked me, “Come on inside and grab a seat.” Uhhh … I don’t particularly like to enter people’s homes, but Mad Max is probably going to give me a lead. He might also give me a bit of the old ultra violence and feed me to the jungle Gods. Predictably, I decided to follow him into the cool interior of the house. My feet sank luxuriously into the shag carpet with each step I took. The areas of the living room not attempting to recreate the hanging gardens of Babylon seemed to be composed entirely of couches and pillows.

    “Have a seat, I’m just gonna make a quick phone call,” Corleone lit a cigarette and started punching keys on a portable phone with his other hand. I was beginning to regret my decision to accept his invitation to enter the house. I sat nervously on the couch waiting for him to finish his conversation. He finally switched off his phone and took a long drag at his cigarette.

    “I quit my job yesterday,” he took another long drag and let the words settle and grow heavy in the air. This was not an ideal situation. I began to subtly calculate the thickness of the window behind me. I concluded that the glass was thick enough to cause serious head trauma were I to attempt a diving exit.

    “Twenty-six years.”

    “Uhh, sorry,” I replied.

    “I’ve been repairing cars for twenty-six years. Man, I could do that shit when I was nineteen. It was about time to get the fuck out of there. I still haven’t told me wife,” he slapped his thigh and laughed heartily, “If she kicks me outta the house I’m gonna jump on my hog and ride into the sunset.” The knot in my stomach began to unravel as the biker’s character became clear. I saw a set of golf clubs tucked away in a corner and realized this guy was no Hell’s Angel; he enjoyed a plush lifestyle supported largely by someone else.

    “Sounds awesome, man. So I’m here from College Pro Painters, I was curious if you would like a free estimate with us?”

    “Sure. Do you want some whiskey?

    “Yes, yes I do.” Roger and I proceeded to polish off the remaining half of his fifth of Crown Royal. I can’t really remember what we talked about for the next half hour but that guy kicked ass. I bid him farewell and continued upon my way. Over the next two hours I drunkenly convinced five people to sign up for estimates! This leads me to the final moral of my story: intoxication and solicitation do mix after all.

Return to top.

.

Croatian Football: Expressing Nationalism
Chris Juergens

    I was taking a train from Austria into the former Yugoslav nations last June and had the pleasure of sharing a car with a bunch of chain-smoking, half-shaven, working-class Croats on their way back from Berlin where they watched their country’s football team loose to Brazil 1-0 in their first game of the World Cup. They spent about two hours arguing with each other – and by arguing I mean screaming at each other – about who actually won the war against Serbia from 1991 to 1995. Nowhere else in Europe had I found such determined nationalists with such a sense of national pride and hate of another country. We won our fucking country! … No, we didn’t get enough! they yelled back and forth at each other in Croatian (as I was told by the one guy who spoke almost fluent English). These working-class Croats nearly filled the entire train as they returned to their economically struggling country after a trip to the expenses of a World Cup match. Little did I know that this passionate, football-crazed nation would really be crazier than I could imagine.

    I decided to spend a couple days in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, before continuing to Italy. Coincidentally, I was there during the Australia-Croatia football game, which was an elimination match by virtue of how the first-round bracket shaped up. Coincidentally, most of the people at my hostel were jolly Aussies who were getting ready to head to the city center to watch the game on a big screen. So I went with these new mates of mine to the center. The Croats were generally amicable. There were at least 1,000 of them in the center – all passionately singing national songs in their national garb. The ten Aussies, plus myself and a Brit, were all lumped together and stuck out like a sore thumb, not least of which was due to the fact the Aussies decked themselves out in their national garb. Every goal scored by Croatia sent the Croats into frenzy, and every goal by Australia sent the out-numbered Aussies into frenzy, drawing the anger of a bunch of Croat fans quickly “getting on the chop.” The game ended 2-2, and these “chopped” Croats who just watched their team get eliminated (by virtue of a tie-breaking rule) were not too happy. Beer, beer bottles, spit, and harsh language all came reigning down without mercy on the English speaking crowd. The police surrounded us as people were assembling to fight and they escorted us onto the metro and back to our hostel through the stares of many angry fans.

    As an American, this seemed like the most absurd thing that could ever happen to me. To the Englishman with me, this was life as normal in Europe (just think English football hooligans; he was used to it). I know Americans are crazy – too crazy – about sports, but a riot assembling? Come on. I guess Americans do riot from time to time over sports, just not soccer. I ultimately think that the craziness we see in European football fans is not anything that absurd when considering how crazed almost all peoples are about sports. But Croatian fans seemed different. They acted like they had a chip on their shoulder. While Germans, the English, and Italians will all get drunk and talk smack and riot, I got the feeling being around those fans (I never saw them at their most extreme moments) that they do it out of pride but also because they enjoy the thrill. They like to drink, fight, and defend their teams. But Croats, they seemed like this soccer stuff was all business. We are a very proud people. We are a small country, but very proud. This small nation has not been fully independent for hundreds of years (until Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s). We are small, but in 1998 we were third in the world. We are small, but we are strong. Maybe it is a continent-wide phenomenon, but the look in the eyes of those angry fans was something I will never forget; that argument on the train is something I will never forget. I found a pure nationalism in Croatia that I failed to find in the other European nations I visited – a type of nationalism that is not just about winning or losing, but about life as a whole, in an everyday and extraordinary sense.

Return to top.

.

Fear and Loathing: A Savage Journey into the Heart of Dr. Gonzo
Ben Kegan

Ben Kegan
IAPCJ:
Intercollegiate Association
of Popular Culture Journalism

Fear and Loathing:
A Savage Journey to the Heart of Dr. Gonzo1

    The lady behind the window apologized for running out of lanyards. We were too deep to turn back now. My associate, a dark skinned Pollock, didn’t seem so bothered. “That’s fine,” he said as he reached to sign for the credentials. Good God, the two and half hits of blotter acid reduced him to a mere shell of appeasement. Not so foolish, I added three lines of medicinal grade cocaine to ensure I still had my wits about me.

    “I’m not signing a damn thing until I see a lanyard,” I barked. “A miserable insult to our journalistic integrity.”

    My associate shot me a glance suggesting we forget the lanyards and move on. It was impossible. A pale jittering started in my leg, a sign I was coming down. Normally this would toss me into lucidly. I like to think the effects of cocaine mask my hallucinations. However, acid far outlasts any cocaine induced clarity.

    The woman disappeared behind the window. I noticed my associate’s face pressed firm against the glass, inspecting what that scoundrel was up to. I didn’t trust her one bit. I never trust a woman in a glass aquarium. I watched her swim back to the glass. I was slipping quicker than I thought. The entire credibility of our assignment rested on a twelve-inch piece of yarn controlled by a floundering fish slumlord in a glass aquarium. Resistance was impossible.

    “I was able to dig up one, but that’s it,” she apologized, reaching out her scale infested palm to reveal a soggy string with a metal hook. No doubt once lodged inside her cheek.

    My attorney's dark hand jarred something into my fist. “Sign,” he said. I recognized a writing implement in my hand. “Your name,” he blurted, shuffling some papers in front of me. “My name. I know my name . . . made of letters.” I forced the ink upon the paper.

    Saturday, 10:30pm . . . Chillicothe, Illinois . . . Summer Camp Music Festival. Sun scorched and halfway melted, “I recognize this feeling: three or four days of booze, drugs and sun.”2; We were too far in to see where we entered, but still no exit in sight. Deep into our assignment to cover the festival experience, we were experiencing the miserable festival. At this point the acid weighed heavy, forcing each move to be painstakingly deliberate, but with a complete lack of precision. There was no escaping now, the only path was to dive in deeper.

    The sun had vanished. “Get comfortable,” I said to my partner. “We’re in for the duration.” He seemed to take note, scribbling feverously in his notebook. I followed suit.

    With each stomp the hateful devil worshiping noise grew louder.

    “Ahhhhhhhh!” my Mexican associate screamed, and with reason. Mindless hoards of the undead surrounded us. It was a bottleneck to the gates of hell. Their eyes bulged as blood, phlegm, and vomit sputtered from their mouth.

    “No sympathy for the devil,”3; I murmured. “Careful, they have a hunger for brains; they desire what they lack: the way of the undead.”

    Two thick men guarded the gate. Any relief they could have offered evaporated as I realized their eye sockets were hollow, deep recesses of blackness. I shuttered. A quick flash of our badges and we were through. The outer rims were a twisted carnival with lights that snapped and twirled. A medieval fair grounds for the soulless. Halfling vendors swamped about, peddling their wares. The people here, if you can call them that, stood out. They had just entered, many stood frozen, uncomfortable with their deteriorating flesh as it flaked from their limbs. Helpless. They would remain here for the duration, stuck on the periphery forever. Pity the godless.

    My partner moved ahead. I followed behind. Disgraceful, infants and children laid strewn about. Some, in a hellish frenzy, crackled as they roamed. Their small bodies wove amongst the fellow dead. Most, however, laid limp. Push the minuscule bodies aside. No innocence here.

    My partner was nowhere to be seen. Have mercy on his soul.

    The carnival lights had diapered, vanished. I plunged deeper. The scent of slaughter overwhelmed my nostrils. I was careful not to touch anything. Have mercy! A man was peeling back the flesh of a willing woman, her chest ripped apart –– A feeding frenzy. The lustful desire of the undead was insatiable. Mounds of corpses laid on top of each other, grouping about. A hand reached out for me.

    “Get back you godless fiend. I’m not your kind,” I cried, yielding my credentials like a crucifix.

    “Relax,” my Pollock friend sputtered. Bits of corndog and beer flew from his lips.

    It was the realm of the mindless dead, the swarming dead. Hollow bodies clanked amongst each other. Something came close, dripping vile fluids. “Careful,” I warned, throwing my partners beverage. “Aim for the eyes!” It was no use; they were closing in on us. We were trapped, slowly suffocating, tossed about in waves of verbal nonsense. Crawling on my hands and knees I emerged for a breath of damp air.

    The heat was unmistakable, even in the darkness. Monsters drenched in bile slung mud upon each other. A damp mound socked me in my jaw. “Get it off me.” I screamed and scratched at my face. My partner tackled me to the ground and commenced wrestling with the air. “My face, it’s on my face,” I directed with terror. My body went limp as my head slammed into the bile, a mouthful of sulfur.

    “I think I got it.” My associate released his grip.

    “Thank you, It’s why I never work alone,” My appreciation was understood.

    Two more eyeless goons faced and a black gate faced us.

    “On assignment,” we mumbled, flashing our badges as the gate locked behind us.

    It was worse than I thought. Spires of fire shot up through the ground. My heart pounded within my chest, it’s last few breaths I was sure. My brain creaked. “Hold it together, don’t let it fall apart.” Reassurance was no use; “there was no way to cope with it.”4; My face became stuck, wax that suddenly hardened. Sheer violence followed. A pair of solitary skeletons sat propped against a mound of uncovered earth. Their craniums were fixed upwards, needles in hand. This was too much. I took another dose of pure Las Angeles snowball dextromethorphan.

    Fists pounded rotten flesh. A fight of the undead ensued. Appendages ripped apart, sockets gouged. The devils work. My attorney picked up somebody's arm, swigging it by the elbow to ward of the soulless. These creatures were worst of all. They stood frozen, flesh sucked tight against their skulls. Their eyes bulged, locked forward upon the horned daemons prancing about on stage. Their blistering frostbitten noses protruded, pockmarked and chipped. Disgusting. Worst of all was their comfort, perfectly at ease. At least this was the case with their flesh. Their souls, however, sank somewhere deep beneath the sulfuric earth: beneath the crushed beer cans and cigarette butts; beneath the empty baggies and burnt roaches; beneath the dispensed condoms and used needles; beneath where I stood.

1 Hunter S. Thompson, the author of a series of journalistic pieces under the title Fear and Loathing, often referred to himself as Dr. Gonzo. The best known of these works is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
2 Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 89.
3 Thompson, Fear and Loathing, 89.
4 Thompson, Fear and Loathing, 129.

Return to top.

.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation
Diana Peabody

    This past spring semester I decided to take a break from school. The general reason why I went home to Chicago was because of depression. I was really sad for a while. I moped around quite a bit, and eventually I came to the conclusion that I needed to do something with my time instead of wasting it. So what did I do? I got a job, and a few months later I became a mentor.

    The funny thing about depression is that it makes you one horribly self-involved person. My problems were so consuming to me that basically I would tune-out other people or start a running dialogue in my head (“I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about how your stupid, banal day went. If you feel fat, don’t go to Wendy’s drive through and eat a lonely meal of your feelings and fries. Screw your boyfriend; I would be better in bed with you anyway.” Things like that.). I really just didn’t care about anyone else. What mentoring did for me was it forced me out of (at least temporarily) that loop for a little bit each day because I had to actively put someone else’s needs above my own.

    I also realized that I needed a job. I hated feeling like I was completely dependent on other people to get me along. I get a job! I get two offers!! What to do? Well I could either work at this 4 star restaurant and have to buy clothes just so I can keep the job, or I can work at the Starbuck’s down the street and go work not having showered for 4 days and walk out smelling the same as if I had showered and went to work. Starbucks it was. From the first day I knew I wouldn’t get along with my head manager. What a foul human being! I feel pretty confident that he resented me because I didn’t exactly hide the fact that Starbuck’s isn’t the end all, be all of my life, nor would I sweat this guy because he was my dipshit manager. He would do things like cut me off mid-sentence, or make a phone call in the middle of me trying to address something with him. I was never properly dressed and I was constantly reminded that I was lucky that this guy was kind enough not to write me up for everything wrong with my approach and execution as a barista. Wow, I was lucky to have such a great manager! Every single time I would show up for work and he was there, I would come up with new and exciting ways of offing myself because I wanted to get out of that building so bad. I began to obsess over the way I smelled. I would come home reeking of the smell of burning. It was like coffee only much more industrial, coupled also with the funk that you get when you work hard, too. It made me feel common and like other people looked down at me. Working at Starbucks has given me a whole new appreciation for the working force that makes this country run. There is little respect for our workers and laborers. The people that come into Starbucks could use a reminder.

    I hated the customers almost as much as I hated my manager. Living in Chicago we have a unique kind of yuppie. It’s an exclusively Midwestern thing, but you can see the type very clearly. It’s the post-college, post-Greek system, young professional that lacks a certain sophistication because of this Midwestern quality. Seriously, the Midwest is totally trashy. We call the ladies “Trixies” and the fellows “Chads.” They come from University of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They go to the meet-markets Thursday through Saturday, and the gym daily. They’re in marketing and real estate. They want to pair off and make babies and move to the suburbs. I was so close to being one of these people that I thank whatever power that is in control of these things daily that I’m not. These were the people I dutifully served. I would sling my lattes and americanos. I’d chitchat and make these already pretty people feel that much more important. I’d coo at the babies. I’d complement women on their tragic and upsetting accessory choices. I would flirt with these future balding, overweight leaders of America just so I could get that dollar tip. I was a whore for Starbucks. Oh, was I ever.

    I had a job, so that got the ball rolling, and yet I felt extremely unfulfilled. I came home from work one night and I found a note from my mom. She had gotten a message through the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (which my mom is president of the Chicago board) that the Jewish Children’s Bureau needed a mentor for a 10 year old diabetic boy. I sprang at this opportunity as soon as I heard it. It wasn’t necessarily fun as much as it was so deeply rewarding. But it was the most frustrating reward ever. Half the time I wanted to rip my hair out and slap a leash on this boy. Cody is his name. He’s sweet, so gentle and so deeply kind; and yet completely off the walls and without any focus at all. ADD/ADHD is a typical byproduct of neglect and abuse.

    My relationship with Cody was not so much about our shared diabetes connection so much as it was about how he needed someone to tell him that he was cared for and that he was protected and that he could trust me. It had been the most intense interaction I’ve ever had in my life. I found myself crying after my visits with him. I cried so hard I couldn’t move or drive. I was so angry and saddened that this is a taste of peoples’ lives. I was so angry that this sweet, loving, empathetic, and gentle little person could have gone through such horrific things. I became angry with myself and the fact that I hate who I am as a diabetic. I hate it and I don’t talk about it. I hate my disease so much that I somehow rationalize it in my head that if I ignore it maybe eventually I won’t have to deal with diabetes. Working with Cody demanded that I get over my own self-loathing of diabetes, and help him try and become a functioning person despite of all the abuse he’s suffered.

    It was heavy.

    This whole time off taught me a lot of things. I made a lot of mistakes. I learned that to achieve contentment you have to work at it. Hard. When you become so used to feeling miserable, it becomes very easy to find comfort in it because it’s so familiar. To find happiness within myself was/is hard. It’s hard for everyone. But if you really want to become happy and live the life you want to live, you need to face who you are head on, fall apart completely, build yourself back up again having learned from your past. It really does take that much fucking work.

    I wouldn’t work for Starbucks again. I am addicted to their coffee, but I cannot stand the people in upper management. The last shift I had was the best ever. I was so happy that I never actually had to use one of the very creative and entertaining ways of trying to kill oneself while at work. My summer was boring. My semester was boring. I made a fool of myself a lot. I grew up and I feel have completely lost my innocence and naiveté of childhood and adolescence. I mourn it. But I became who I want to be. I like me. You like me. I worked my ass off, but things are going swimmingly and are continuing to be so. It just takes work. Work. Work. WORK. So I guess it didn’t quite suck. By the end it wasn’t so bad. But shit. I needed to have a break from the monotony and get away for a while. And now I need to be a student – be at Whitman…. Land of Frats, Liberal Arts bullshit, beer, crunchy hippies, great parties, and some of the most wonderful and beautiful people I’ve met in my life.

Return to top.

.

Intercoursing Dualities
anonymous

    24 June: 87° in the shade. So the long, blinking grimace that is summer has crept over the Walla Walla Valley. I have heard of a nice Adventist girl who is getting married this afternoon to her high school sweetheart. I laughed for fifteen minutes yesterday about a gravesite funeral with one of its pallbearers.

    Three, four weeks ago the clouds sagged, full of wet. They lazed about the sky like overlarge tabby cats napping in the favorite patch of sun. And then they broke, and it poured so much that the locals began to claim this as the mildest summer in memory.

    I caught a cold, and my body began its uprising against my self-control and pride.

    I have been on birth control to have sex (without getting pregnant), and am now on my third week-long run of antibiotics for a urinary tract infection because (I’m pretty sure) I had too much sex. The first two sets of antibiotics were useless; before this third prescription I would spontaneously realize that I needed to piss only a few desperate moments before the yellow trickled gracefully around the curves of my ankle and into my clogs. No twenty-one year-old with a shred of dignity would leave the house: “Yes, my parents shell out forty thousand dollars a year to educate a daughter who pees herself.” Or did; until the day before yesterday. As a result of this latest antibiotic my twat was dry and painful; and this morning in my magnifying hand mirror I discovered three pinkish sores on the left labia and a cracking vertical laceration that screamed if I touched my right lip. A clotty bruise near my hipbone.

    Under the guise of a mature, beautiful, intellectual woman I am an oversexed, overmedicated liberal arts monster.

    In this weather my skin is constantly sticky with almost-sweat and my short, greasy hair goes unwashed, save a rinse in the shower. Most of the time, I smell of barely-concealed-by-natural-deodorant ripe body. And a dry scalp flakes off my head.

    But I can still get ass.

    Scratch that. It’s certainly not as exciting as you think. I have been getting pretty regular sex from a pretty regular lay since October. I’ll call him Bender here, although it’s not what I call him in bed. But I don’t particularly want to type “Poppa Bear” every time I reference him.

    I lie. Not to myself, but to other people. If I’m not lying, I try to be terse. When people whose business it isn’t to ask about us, I tell that the sex is good. It either satiates their desire for information or affronts them to the point where they don’t want to ask any more questions.

    So – Bender. I call him that as a throwback to the middle school thing that girls do when they create codenames (like “Moon Doggie” – another throwback) for the boys that they like. They protect each other’s secrets; here I’m protecting his – or at least telling our secrets and protecting his identity.

    In some phases of our relationship we have loved each other, so “regular lay” is a little unfair. He can play my lover. He loves my intense, flooding orgasms. He likes the way I smell. He is the wickedest cross between a hopeless romantic who loves everybody and a cynic who is uncertain of everything. I’m trying hard to stay uncommitted.

    He took care of the fever that resulted when I switched antibiotics the day before yesterday. He tries to cradle me, calm me, even when I’m thrashing and moaning in my feverish nausea, and resents me when, in my pain, I treat him like a punching bag. Fair.

    But it is too fucking hot in this town to have a fever.

    I will never be hungrier than I will be hot. I will never be more overjoyed than I will be hot. I will never be crazier than I will be hot. I will never be more turned on than I will be hot. In all fleeting situations run the undercurrents of overwhelming, thick-tongued hotness. Until my feet and legs start swimming in the heat waves rushing upwards from the concrete, I will wrangle with my duality as an emotional person with edges and as an organic thing being eaten alive by the sun. But then I will struggle no more, and I will be purified again. Like a widow.

Return to top.

 

Masthead

Editor                 Drew Arnold
Layout                 Kim Hooyboer
Staff        Ben Gannon
Danielle Alvarado
Dan Dennedy-Frank
Toby Kahn
Ben Kegan
Marcus Koontz-Williams
Lizzie Norgard
Diana Peabody
Nicole Pexton

Return to top.