FANZINE

Dad says the pool temperature is 72 degrees and that seems too cold, and there’s an argument about that. Also, the dog is fat. Nobody walks him. I mean, her. Also, I’m sick of dogs. If you over-love your dog a part of me hates you. I’m just being honest. Honesty is respected in some cultures. In some cultures, menstrual blood is revered. This isn’t one of those cultures. Where is the vodka? Someone said there was cake vodka. Is that a lie? Honesty is respected in some cultures. If that person was lying about the cake vodka I am going to be disappointed. I like vodka because it reminds me of water. Water is my favorite drink. It is clear and blameless. There is no viscosity, nothing to unclaim, unlike, let’s say, menstrual blood. Is it just me or does every woman’s pajama pants have the faint rust stain of months and months of errant period blood? I don’t know about you, but I can never seem to contain that shit. Especially at night. When I am sleeping, it’s as though my uterine lining is a problematic teenager who waits for its single parent to fall asleep so it can sneak out its bedroom window and go looking for trouble. In this case, the trouble is whatever pajama pants or underwear I am wearing. Why? There is a time and place for trouble seeking. Oftentimes, this time and place is unplanned. It is mood plus opportunity. This is what spontaneous folks are made of. Trouble comes in varying degrees much like the weather. There is small trouble, like, let’s say…littering. You can pick up a small trashcan. Let’s say it’s filled with toilet paper wrapped menstrual-soaked products, yellow-ended Q-tips (or “ear swabs” if you’re using the off-brand kind), hair strands and booger tissues. Let’s say you can walk down to the local Starbucks and dump that small, bathroom trashcan in front of its front door with a flourish. Like, you are so proud you are causing trouble, albeit small. It is still trouble and you are no juvenile delinquent like your dumb middle of the night period blood. There is also larger trouble like car stealing and fag-bashing. I use the term “fag” in conjunction with “bashing” because the sort of person who would do such a thing would use such an offensive term because this sort of person is the sort of person who enjoys causing larger trouble. I also feel like this person is male and his name is “Brodie.” Brodie had a fucked up childhood that caused him to hate and he pushes that hate out onto the world in all that he does. Especially when he is “fag-bashing.” (my apologies on using the term once again). Brodie laughed at the person who flourishly dumped their small bathroom trash in front of the Starbucks but silently respected the small act of trouble. Brodie has made big trouble for as long as he can remember. In fact, he cannot go through one single day without some sort of big trouble. If I was Brodie’s mom, I would be sad. Even if Brodie graduated from college. Even if that graduation took place in a giant stadium with everyone dressed up for the occasion. If I was Brodie’s mom, I would not look for him in the sea of gowns. I would not text him to let him know what section of the stadium I was in so he could see me, so he would know I’m there, so he could wave at me with all of the I’m-done-with-college-joy in his heart while I waved back from my stadium seat with all of the my-boy-has-graduated-college-joy in MY heart, so we could feel connected. Connection is important in a love relationship. But if I was Brodie’s mom, I would have deadened that love long ago and Brodie would’ve never gone to college anyway as he would’ve spent too much time in Juvenile Detention Centers. I am the idea of a mom at a college graduation who wants nothing to do with her hating, large trouble making son. I just want cake vodka that I cannot find. I will take that cake vodka and put it into one of those trendy Mason jar glasses. I will throw some ice into it. People will think it is water and it is the opposite of water but I don’t care because the dog is too fat, the pool is too cold, my pajama crotches are stained, I am a medium trouble creator and all of my sons are Brodies. I will slide into the pool like a fucking knife. Watch this. I am wearing a white, gossamer gown and nothing underneath so all of my beautiful private parts are completely visible. I am walking…striding…toward the pool in slow motion because that is how I move through the world. My body is shapely, curved, muscled and toned and you immediately get a boner and your labias start dripping with ready-to-fuck juice. My hair is dreadlocked and the locks are twisted above my head like a car accident. There is a red and white striped paper straw sticking out of my mason jar that is filled and frosted with iced cake vodka. Each time the straw meets my lips and I suck through it, you ejaculate just a little, fouling your boyish jockeys. The pool draws closer and you can’t wait for the water to make the gown and my skin the same. I approach the pool at the speed of a reluctant bride and still you wish it could be slower. The cake vodka is sweetly grotesque but I need to forget about all of my Brodies and so I continue to suck. The water begins to look like a welcoming. I see its open arms and its place that promises forgetting. I continue my stride and when my feet enter its wet the vodka tastes glorious and my gown heavies at the bottom and your erection grows twice its size and you marvel that you can now grab it with two hands. The water parts around me as if I am also water. The vodka no longer burns and I forgo the straw and tip the glass into my mouth until it empties, all the while going deeper. My knees, my thighs, my buttocks and your labia begin to throb and swell to the size of a baby corpse left inside the trunk of a hot car on an unusually hot day in March during the year 1972 by an evil man named Zeb who will later receive the death penalty for doing so. My stomach, my breasts and my arms above my head holding the now empty mason jar like a lion king and your boner semen-explodes and you die happier than you or any of the children you’ve ever had or never had have been in all of their lives as well as the lives of their grandchildren and their children after them. Now my head, and now the water embraces me and I, it. I show it my lungs, teasing it at first like a lover peeking a nipple. “You want these lungs, don’t you?” The water tongues my mouth and it’s the hottest shit that’s ever happened in my mouth and I want it so bad, baby, so bad, and so I give it my lungs! And the water enters me, all of me, taking the very place it is forbidden and, deflowered, I float and forget and the forgetting…oh, the forgetting!…the forgetting tastes so sweet, like cake vodka.

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_{xTx is a writer living in Southern California. Her work has been published in places like The Collagist, PANK, Hobart, The Rumpus, The Chicago Review, Smokelong Quarterly and Wigleaf.  “Normally Special,” a collection of stories, is available from Tiny Hardcore Press. Her chapbook, “Billie the Bull” is now available from Dzanc Books. Her story collection, “Today I Am A Book” is now available from Civil Coping Mechanisms. She says nothing at www.notimetosayit.blogspot.com.}