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Marriage Counseling Over a Game of Go There are 391 points on this Go board for us to position where we feel our most confident. Where we think we can gain the most if we block the points on the hundreds of compass roses before us. When you move the black stones into each cross section the way one builds the foundation for a cairn, I think about how each gap you leave makes me feel when I look into your eyes after you make your play. Smooth, obsidian, with my reflection within them curling like a wave on the shore. I rub a white stone between my fingertips the way you may rub that amethyst in your pocket before each interview. You asked me to play Go with you because you didn’t want your mind to become stagnant. You wanted to see if you could build territories that snaked and bent across the earthen board. Every second of silence before you let the black stone pathway expand is a moment for you to become more assured in your growth and power. I want to help you continue this growth, to ensure that you can cover the world in shadows. However, you’ve asked me to lay pearls down and encroach upon your new world. You ask me to threaten you, to challenge you, to make you fearful. Once we put the stones away and share a warm mug of plum wine after we play, I hope you can still see me as the person who supported you, even as I forced you into resignation by taking away your liberties. Video Games On a small street off DuPont Circle, two figures hidden in the evening are huddled close together. Their forms merge into a stoop, their shadows blend with the ones cast by the apartment complex across from them. One of them exposes himself with the light of his smartphone, his glasses reflecting back the album art on screen. I hear the voice of Lana spill out into that February evening air. She claims that Heaven is a place on Earth with you. I wonder if these two, lost in the space where the street lamps were torn out to widen the road, could call this their own personal paradise, or just a place to wait for their rideshare. People could walk by without even knowing they were there in the world built for two. Well, at least now I do. Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, Virginia. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul’s Drag Race Twitter Poetry (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019), and more. For more information, visit carriganak.wordpress.com or on Twitter @carriganak.

You're trying to keep a smile on your face. Marie had tied two giant balloons onto your chair and now the bloated, gold helium-filled numbers '3' and '4' are bumping into the back of your head, buffeted by the ocean breeze that's rising as the sun sets. You look around the table at the figures silhouetted in the magic hour light and take stock: Marie and Pham have flown in to San Francisco for the night and are talking about their luxe hotel suite, a welcome respite from the kids whereas Julie-- sleeping on your couch -- is posting the dinner party, minute by minute, onto instagram. She taps "Nicole turns the big 34!!! #girlsnightout #happybdaygirl" into her phone while telling you all about why her lips look fuller. "Fillers, bitches!" she grins. You take a deep breath and realize how much things have changed since you all met in college. Between the four of you there are one husband, one wife, one cross-fit-obsessed boyfriend (Julie calls him Tyler, the love of her life; Marie and Pham just refer to him as “that motherfucker right there’), two adorable kids, and one betta fish. The fish is yours. “Sweetie, are you okay? Was it the chicken? Do you want tums, I have tums—” Marie starts digging through her purse while tears start to roll down your face. Pham asks if your ex dared to call you. “No, no, it’s okay,” you insist. “I’m just so glad to see you—” your three friends huddle around your chair. “But this morning the supermarket clerk called me ma’am,” you wail. Later that night Julie is braiding your hair like she used to during sleepovers while you watch reality tv. "Tyler says if you don't like something, change it," Julie breathes as she watches the reveal of the woman onscreen, glimmering from a makeover as she runs to a gazebo to get engaged. "I mean, Tyler’s cut his body fat to 15 percent. You just have to decide you want something bad enough, you know?” Earlier you told Julie what you were too embarrassed to say during dinner: that the breakup wasn't mutual, that one day you were living with your boyfriend and looking forward to the future and the next day it was over. You felt like a dog that woke up and realized its family had moved and left it behind. So, you found a short-term rental while you figured things out. You thought about getting a new job but you weren’t sure. You looked into taking a vacation, but you didn’t know where and none of your friends could go. You got the betta fish, and you got back out there, but things had changed. Dating felt more like being on the stock market, like you had a value and it had unaccountably dropped. The worst was the date where the guy coolly looked you up and down outside the movie theater, said, "okay," and then didn't speak to you again until after the movie when his taxi pulled up to the curb. And the strangest thing was, you don’t feel like you’ve changed so much. You didn’t magically turn into a crone when you hit your 30s, you’ve always been smart and kind and a go-getter, and yet somehow everything feels difficult. Gray and cold and no fun. Meanwhile Julie has extended her eyelashes, her nails, and soon, she tells you, her breasts. "What? Why? Your boobs are great. And isn't that expensive?" You know she can't really afford them. "I’ve always wanted bigger boobs, so why not?” Julie takes another sip of wine. "Besides, I don't think it's anti-feminist or whatever. I'm happier now that I like the way I look. Manifest the things you want, and even more will come to you." “But is it what you want? Or what Tyler wants?" you ask. Julie shrugs, her eyes on the television. "Why can't it be both?” That night, you look at yourself in the harsh fluorescent bathroom lighting. You look sad, and tired. You think about needing a new plan, a fresh start. You pull your hair back and think, “Why not?” Two weeks later, Julie seems astonished when she sees your new look. She's frowning, but you tell yourself that Julie's had a hard time. She went through with the breast implants and while she said she was happy it was harder to breathe. "But the doctor says that will go away soon," she said with forced cheerfulness. You smile and toss your hair extensions-- beautiful, wavy real hair that glints gold and honey and oak-- feeling like Cinderella. "Damn, girl, you look like you could be on tv. It’s like you're a whole new person," she says. She sounds worried, but you admire your gleaming acrylic nails and think to yourself that she's just in a bad mood, maybe even jealous. Luscious new eyelashes have been gently glued to your own, individual eyelashes by a tiny woman named Mia who has the dexterity of a surgeon. Your skin glows a soft, buttery gold thanks to Anna, who strips you down to your underwear in a small tent and sprays you with ice-cold tanning solution while you pose like a bodybuilder. You cannot wear white, use mascara, or sleep on your stomach, but your lashes flutter like a Disney princesses' and everyone at work compliments your tan. At every appointment you’re greeted with glasses of wine, delicate, fluttering hugs, and girl talk, like you’re just visiting a new friend instead of buying something. But the hair extensions-- stiff, two-inch long tapes with paper-thin layers of human hair-- are layered around your head like scales. When your scalp itches, you have to gently reach between the tapes and scratch with one manicured nail. The weight of the hair is immense. You call Marie and start to feel defensive as she asks about how you’re feeling, how much everything costs. “Don’t get me wrong, you look…great,” she says too carefully. “But you looked great before too. And what about your other plans?  You were talking about taking a trip out of the country, that would be fun.” You shrug. “I’m having fun now,” you say. “Besides, I changed my mind about moving. What if I meet someone amazing tomorrow and then we move in together?  I just want to leave my options open.” Marie rolls her eyes and you tamp down the spark of anger that kindles inside you. “Nic, listen to yourself—” she says as you hang up. She doesn’t get it. Maybe you two are just too different now to understand each other. You check your makeup on your camera phone and scowl at the faint lines on your forehead. Your phone chimes as an ad for botox pops up, like magic. You go back to Johanna, the Valkyrie hairdresser who did your extensions. Her salon glitters like a tiny Aladdin's cave as she hands you another glass of wine, asks how your mom is doing. She runs her hands through your hair and you close your eyes and sigh. It’s been a while since anyone touched you. Flipping a handful of swatches around in her hand as though she were shaking a tiny dog, she frowns. "Honey, it's just the weight of the tapes. It's like getting braces, you'll get used to it after a while." You take another sip of wine and see a book lying on the table: The Rules. "Are you really reading that?" you ask. "Oh girl, yes. I know it seems retro, but I'm telling you, I've been using it on this guy who I'm really into and, you know, making him be the hunter? And it's totally working. I swear. He's texting me constantly now." You both laugh as you down the last of your chardonnay, and for a moment you feel like part of a secret club. Then you hand over your credit card for the last of the $2000 it cost to get your mermaid hair. You've never looked or felt better, you think. There’s a reason for everything, which is something you saw embroidered on one of Julie’s pillows. You just have to have faith in the universe, you think. But now you can't sleep. At night you dream of chrysalises, delicate legs breaking out of even more delicate shells. An acrylic nail catches on a snag at work and it rips off, scattering droplets of blood across your desk. You suck your finger and taste the coppery, bitter tang of blood and plastic. You miss one spray tan appointment and are appalled when you get out of the shower and see your skin mottled a dozen different shades, peeling. You're molting, you think. The first time you wash your hair, it bristles and puffs up as if an angry cat is tied to your head. The next night you massage handfuls of rose-scented oil into your hair and braid it. After that it looks beautiful, but you wake up with your hands clawing at your hair, trying to peel away the scales. You swipe on an app until the faces start to blur. You go on a date. He's a lawyer. His name is Josh and you've always liked that name. You have a good time. You're grinning as he walks away, and you catch a glimpse of your reflection. Your hair looks good but now your teeth look a little...dingy. Crooked. One tooth is chipped, you notice. You find a dentist and at his office, he shows you a photo album of gleaming smiles. They look like they could be porcelain, you say. "Oh no, we stopped using that a long time ago," he says cheerfully. The procedure is long and surprisingly painful. Your front teeth are sanded down and a veneer is placed over each tooth like a press-on nail. You are sent home with extra-strength painkillers. You fall into a deep sleep. When you wake up, your mouth feels awkward. You smile in the mirror. Your teeth are gleaming, all right. And they look large, so large. You bite down gently and wince with pain. They'll settle in, you tell yourself. You meet Josh at a steakhouse where you both get salads, and you talk for an hour about favorite restaurants like two alcoholics reminiscing about their favorite drinks. He kisses you in the moonlight, and you flinch away as he caresses your hair, afraid he'll tell it's not yours. You laugh at all his jokes, just like it says in The Rules, even when they aren't funny. He suggests you meet again. You go online and find Josh's Facebook page, his professional website, his instagram. He's so handsome. You look at a picture of him and an ex-girlfriend, standing golden and happy on a beach. If you stare long enough, her face morphs into your own. You start waking up with a gasp in the middle of the night, imagining a snake is wrapped around your neck. It’s just the extensions, you tell yourself. You develop dark circles under your eyes. You still aren’t sleeping, so you go to a very expensive doctor with a perfectly oval face who injects fillers into the shadows under your eyes. She numbs the skin with ice and then a cream, but you can hear the pop the needle makes as it pierces the skin over and over. The deep bruises take a week to fade, or maybe it's two weeks. Your boss calls you into her office to talk about an improvement plan, she believes in you, she knows you’ve had a hard time, but it’s time to show initiative. You nod and try to listen but your scalp keeps aching. People keep complimenting you, except your friends. But they can’t understand your life, what you’re going through, you think. You’re taking control of your life and making positive changes. If feelings were colors you had been blue and drab, endless gray. But now you’re surrounded by gleaming hair, sparkling nails, flattering, and swishy dresses that are delivered every day as if by magic. You tell the mailman that he’s like the helpful mice in a fairy tale but he just rolls his eyes. You go out with Josh two times, or maybe three. "You look beautiful," he says. He kisses you by your car. His lips are soft and sweet. You nearly bite them. He asked if he could come over. You almost say yes, but then stop yourself. You haven’t had time to get ready. He's so handsome, so nice, you think. You want everything to be perfect. That night you run screaming out of a dream where you were chasing someone--or something-- on all fours. Your scalp hurts, your mouth hurts, your muscles hurt, your very bones are throbbing. You hobble to the bathroom and gulp water straight from the faucet, like an animal. You breathe deep and look in the mirror. Your brain stutters in confusion for a second before you recognize yourself. "Oh," you say. "That’s me." You grimace in the mirror, inspecting your new teeth, and for no reason you growl at your reflection. Marie and Pham call you. You see their shocked faces and are proud of how far you've come. "Glow-up!" you trill. When they don't start smiling, you drop the phone on the ground and walk outside and stare at the trees, mesmerized by the way the branches thrash in the rising wind. That night you dream that you're chasing something again, and you wake up teeth bared and hands clawed, triumphant. You caught it that time. When you go to feed the betta fish, who you never got around to naming, you see that the tank is empty. You look around and can’t find a trace of it. Your cards are all declined at the next week's appointments. You panic, shouting that you have to look good, you have to look perfect, you have a date. Johanna pulls her boss from the back of the jeweled cave and you are escorted out. You hiss at the closed door and walk away. You walk all the way back home, crossing a highway and dodging cars. You tell yourself you’ll freshen up at home, but you end up falling asleep, exhausted, outside your front door curled up on the welcome mat. When you wake up, it’s time for your date with Josh. Your fingers scrabble to pick up the bottles and brushes. You impatiently pull off some of the nails so your hands are free as you ignore the blood coursing down your hands. You pull on a dress and notice with satisfaction that it's even looser than it was when you bought it. "John will love this," you say as you twirl in the mirror. "Or Josh, that's right, his name is Josh." Josh has made reservations at the same restaurant you had your birthday at, months ago. He even reserves the best table-- the same one you had before. It's perfect. You're both perfect, you think as he takes your arm. "Why are your fingers bandaged?" He asks. "Oh, just a little accident!" You laugh, maybe for too long. You sit down and toss your beautiful mermaid hair and feel tension snap like a string. Several lengths of hair fall and you hastily kick them under the table. You fix your eyes on Josh-- John-- Josh and ask him about his day. One of your acrylic nails drops off into your soup with a plop, followed by the patter of eyelashes, falling like snowflakes. Josh's voice halts. "Nicole, are you alright? You don't seem like... yourself." You sniff and swipe a hand across your face, smearing your makeup and he hands you a napkin. He's so nice. "I think I'm just tired," you say, and you take a bite of your steak. As you put your fork down Josh gasps. "Nicole, your teeth! What is wrong with your teeth?" Your head whips around to your reflection in the giant glass window. Your veneers are coming off, leaving pointed fangs and nubs. Your mouth is red with meat and blood. You gasp, and as your hands touch your face, you stare and stare and suddenly grin. You turn around and Josh is backing away with his hands up. "Look, let me call an ambulance or something. You're not yourself, you need help, Nicole." You howl with laughter-- he's so funny! You rip hanks of hair from your head and drop them to the ground, relieved as your headache finally, finally fades. You feel that spark of anger again but this time, you let it rise up, up, up until you feel like you’re burning from the inside. "How do you know I'm not myself, Josh? How do you know this isn't the real me?" You look at your figure in the glass, silhouetted in the twilight. You feel your head beginning to clear, finally, now that the pain is gone. As you leave, you walk by a glowing young couple. They could be on a dating show, you think. You lock eyes with the girl, and take in her glowing deeply tanned skin, her shiny, plump lips and long lashes, and wince as you remember how it all felt. She stops in her tracks nervously, eyes darting towards her date. You lean in close, until your hair tangles with hers. “Boo,” you say.

Joan’s face goes blank, but not fast enough to conceal a sour, fleeting look of… scorn? Boredom? Disappointment? All of the above? I sip my lemonade. It’s sour too, and different from the concentrated frozen sugar water I grew up drinking. The menu listed the ingredients: soda water, lemon syrup, dash of violet syrup, sprig of fresh thyme. Purple swirls at the bottom of the glass. So that’s what violets taste like. Most nuances are new to me. Joan’s a blasé New Yorker in her late forties, twice my age. We met through work. Her husband’s a banker; she’s semi-retired and volunteers two days a week at a local nonprofit to get out of the house. You don’t know anyone here, do you, she asked the first day we met. Not really, I said. Couple of friends from high school. On hearing this, Joan arranged a phone call with one of her gay friends, Chet. I didn’t know men were still named that. We did not hit it off. He told me all about his workout routine. It’s been years since I last set foot in a gym and I own no athletic gear. He told me all about his wardrobe, purchased at a discount from the department store where he sells shoes. I wear button-down shirts and my glasses slide down my nose every ten seconds. I asked which authors he liked. You read? he asked. That’s… so interesting. With that, the Chet chat was over. Joan has already heard this, of course, and been told that I’m weird. She keeps her face blank but a sourness lingers. My mouth tastes like violets. I switch to plain water. There will be no more introductions. * I’m climbing the stairs, visiting my new friend Alexandra’s apartment for the first time. It’s in a nicer part of town than where I live. The houses here date from the early 1900s and exude a dusty genteel Southern charm. There are smiles on the painted exteriors; the savagery stays in the basement. About half of these old beauties have been divided into flats. Alexandra’s place is at the top of this outdoor staircase. It’s sunset now, humid. Cicadas drone. Winston-Salem is big enough for there to be a dim rumble of traffic in the distance, but the nearest main road is far enough away that noise doesn’t intrude. A votive candle flickers on every step. It’s been rainy lately, so the wood is damp but still creaks underfoot. For a second, I’m thinking of fires because of course I am. I set my high school dorm room on fire and got kicked out for it. It was an accident. They kicked me out anyway. Five years have passed since then but the memory smolders. I am troublesome, unwelcome. Somehow I am here now; I was invited. I continue my ascent. * From inside comes a shriek: Mark or Matthew. It’s like being back in high school again but with less arson and more screaming. A few months ago, I bumped into those two and my friend Lucy at a laundromat. Lucy is a goth lesbian who favors pale pancake foundation, crushed velvet dresses, and chunky silver rings on every finger. What are you doing here, she asked. What are you doing here? I replied. She works for a bank now. She does things with loans. Matthew and Mark were with her that evening. We’ve hung out a couple of times. Matthew has the cheekbones of a Hollywood leading man and the acne scars and self-esteem deficit of a drama-school dropout. When he’s drunk, which is often, his hands go roaming. Truth be told, I don’t mind, provided Mark doesn’t see. Mark tends to look as if he didn’t quite understand what you just said. He doesn’t talk much. I wonder how tonight will go. It’s Alexandra’s birthday. We’re starting the evening with drinks. She’s booked a limo to take us to a club later. This feels adult, sophisticated, alien. I sort of drone when I talk, and I’m clumsy. I forget most people’s names as soon as I hear them. I’m often told I’m an acquired taste. Is this an acquisition? An audition? * I’m in the big Kroger supermarket now, the newer one across town from where I live. On payday, I shop here instead of the Food Lion closer to home. It’s vast and the linoleum is still white. There’s a loneliness in being mostly broke. Tonight I’ve got an extra fifty dollars. Joan’s friend Cherie wants to throw a party. Joan suggested I help with the decor—a second chance of sorts. Fifty bucks is nothing to them but it’s about the same as my food budget for the last ten days of each month, which means I have to spend two bags of groceries on unspecified festive things for Cherie’s party. I’ve never been to her house, though. I searched the Yellow Pages for a craft store. The one in Winston went bust several months ago. There’s another an hour away, on the west side of Greensboro, too far. Like most grocery stores, Kroger’s sells party supplies. I look for streamers and bunting and find them—in primary colors. I also find birthday candles and cupcake tins. Coloring books and greeting cards. Tubs and tubes of icing and sprinkles in the baking section. They sell art supplies too: I find markers and crayons, packs of construction paper. I pick up a ruler, and it tells me my measure: you don’t know what you’re doing. Nothing goes into my cart that I don’t plan to eat. * Alexandra’s apartment overflows with dark antiques. Bookcases totter—her library’s even bigger than mine. The burgundy walls and crystal stemware give the place the feel of a bordello or a boudoir. I wonder how she affords this on a cashier’s salary. But it’s time to leave for the club. Ahead of me, Mark limps down the stairs to the limo. At first, I think he’s drunk. He acted a little subdued tonight, mostly staying on the sofa nursing his beer. They got in a fight earlier, Lucy tells me later in the club. Matthew threw Mark against the bathroom sink and knocked it clean off the wall. Water went everywhere. Then he fell against the commode, which was backed up and full of turds. His arm went in up to the elbow. Can you imagine? Now I’m watching them dance: Matthew limber and sloshing, Mark stiff and trying to keep his face blank and wincing anyway. Music hammers at us; cigarette smoke hangs thick in the air. I’m going outside, Lucy says. Alexandra and her girlfriend are off in a quiet corner arguing about something. They’re the only people here that I know. Can I join you? I ask. She says yes, and we stand outside in the late-summer damp talking about the mortgage applications she declined this week. It makes her happy, stomping on dreams with her Doc Martens. * Every night at a club has that moment when the lights lose their sparkle, your ears can no longer withstand the pounding music, you notice how sweaty and smelly you are, and you feel dehydrated and just want a shower and a big glass of water. We troop out to the waiting limousine andthe driver opens the door for us. Not wanting the night to be over yet, Alexandra directs him to take the long way home. I can’t tell if Alexandra’s outfit tonight—vintage 1920s flapper dress, shellacked platinum Marilyn Monroe hair—is a costume or whether she always dresses like this. Matthew, ruinously drunk, buzzes open the moonroof, stands up, and screams WE’RE RICH AND YOU SUCK! at pedestrians. Why anyone is on the street at half past one, I have no idea. Mark sucks in his breath through his teeth, stands up, and does it too. So does Alexandra’s tomboy girlfriend whose name I keep forgetting. WE’RE RICH AND YOU SUCK! Except for Lucy and me, everyone else in the car works retail. With the last of the champagne, we raise a toast to being broke. * The chauffeur pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot. Winston isn’t a large city but we’re still about 45 minutes from Alexandra’s place and everyone is drunk and has to pee. I walk in carrying my glass of champagne in its plastic flute. Mark follows me into the men’s room, positions himself at the next urinal, unzips, and makes sure I can see. I’m surprised. Not all of him is average. A second later, Matthew stumbles in, mumbles something about the smell, pulls his shirt up to cover his face, and announces he’s going to use the ladies’. While I’m washing my hands, I hear screams. At the counter, an argument seems to be brewing. The McDonald’s employee doesn’t want to serve Alexandra’s girlfriend because, as he puts it, except for the titties she looks like a boy. Alexandra snaps, she was a woman last night when her legs were wrapped around my face. Matthew tumbles out of the women’s room, joins us at the counter, and helps himself to a sip of my champagne. You can’t drink that in here! the McDonald’s guy exclaims. I tell him it’s ginger ale and he can tell I’m lying. You should all get out of here, he warns. Just get out of here before I call the manager. Or the cops. Or the manager and the cops. Go. And we do. I’m the only one who notices the flashing blue lights in the distance as the chauffeur speeds away from the restaurant, no doubt keen to be done with work, with us, with this whole night. * Chocolate cupcakes are festive, aren’t they? I’ve cashed the check and the extra bills are painful in my wallet, even more so when I stop off at the bakery in the nearby mall. I’m running low on coffee and breakfast cereal, two items I’ve vowed I must never run out of (toilet paper is the other). I’ll survive—I’ve got pasta and sauce, cans of soup, ramen, and a package of chicken breasts—but it’s the grim end of the month. It’s getting dark. I’m taken aback when I pull up the driveway at Cherie’s house in the suburbs. It’s bigger than I was expecting, if not as mansion-like as Joan’s. The azaleas are a tumbling riot of purple and pink but everything else about the place is tidy, suburban, and white. Cherie has just gotten divorced. She thinks a party will reset her social life. She hasn’t turned the porch light on yet. Shadows surround the front door. For a second, I wonder if I’m in the right place. Often I’m not. I knock anyway. A moment later, she lets me in. Sees the flat box of cupcakes. Asks where the decorations are. Almost masks her disappointment when I tell her this was all I could think of, all I could find, but not quite. * Cherie is tipsy, maudlin, and struggling with buyer’s remorse. There’s nothing at all wrong with her decor—tasteful objets d’art and furniture I doubt she bought locally, a couple of tall white candles burning on the mantel, no dust on the blinds or the parquet—but she had her heart set on glitter and confetti. Not just the literal sparkly stuff but also the human kind: a pack of young gay boys to liven things up. Dance music, cocaine, and merry shrieking. We could paint each other’s nails and die of the giggles. Joan glowers. She asks, have you met him? Guests begin to arrive. That was my other job, curating guests. Matthew and Mark, both hammered, rode with Lucy, who tells us not to expect Alexandra. She’s fighting with her girlfriend again. They break up every couple of months. Is that the Marilyn Monroe one? Cherie asks. I was hoping to meet her. She sounded… effervescent. I’m sorry, is all I can think of to say. I’m so sorry. Would you like a cupcake? Would you like a refund? * Months ago, over a different lunch with Joan and Cherie, I told them about our night with the limousine. I left a lot out, made it more madcap. Oops. Now two more guests—the last ones I’ve invited—have arrived: my other high school friend, and a mutual friend I dated briefly and still have a crush on. The high school friend is a straight woman, fun and vibrant and smart. Joan and Cherie take one look at her and are civil. For all her charm, she isn’t going to sneeze glitter, fart sparks, or pull a disco ball out of her purse. The guy I dated comes the closest to the gay-boy fantasy I’m only now realizing was the intended but unmentioned theme of the evening: he’s borrowed a little black dress from my high school friend and is drunk. Before long, Mark and Matthew are arguing. Lucy and Joan are glaring at each other, a case of instant mutual loathing. Matthew goes into the bathroom and can be heard throwing up. Aren’t any more of your gay friends coming? Cherie asks. Hope dies behind her eyes. I don’t know anyone else, though. I thought she knew that. I ask, you didn’t invite anyone? Neither of you did? They did not. My high school friend is the first to bail, sensibly reading the room and closing the book. The toilet flushes. Matthew emerges and says chocolate cupcakes and vodka don’t mix, but don’t worry, it’s not diarrhea. But this isn’t festive at all! Cherie wails. I look at her, then at Joan: one in tears now, the other glowering. I don’t know whether it’s more polite to leave or offer to stay and help clean up their mess. This is the last time I will see either of them outside of work. Being gay incorrectly: this isn’t a problem I thought you could have. There will be no more introductions. Marshall Moore is an American author, publisher, and academic based in Cornwall, England. He is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is a short-story collection titled Love Is a Poisonous Color (Rebel Satori Press, 2023). His short fiction and essays have been published in The Southern Review, Eclectica, Pithead Chapel, Trampset, Asia Literary Review, and many other magazines and journals. He holds a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University, and he teaches at Falmouth University. For more information or to stalk him online, please visit linktr.ee/marshallsmoore.

In the reviews I’ve done thus far, I’ve spotlighted indie authors or debut publications. E Ethelbert Miller is not in that category. A quick google search will highlight his years as a poet, activist, and teacher, and the many awards and honors he’s gathered in those roles. In short, he’s a hugely accomplished and acclaimed poet and an inspiration to countless writers. One of Miller’s recent collections is If God Invented Baseball, highlighting his passion for the game. Over the course of a month, I had the opportunity to chat with Miller, visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and read the collection. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is in the historically Black 18th and Vine neighborhood of Kansas City, less than a mile from downtown. Walking there involves passing under an interstate highway and several desolate blocks, a geography I’d guess isn’t happenstance. The museum shares a building with the American Jazz Museum and the nearby streetlights have banners proclaiming, “Let’s Play At 18th & Vine”, some featuring jazzmen, others ball players. There are several colorful murals and a few jazz clubs around, including the famed Blue Room which is connected to the museum. The Negro Leagues Museum was free for Black History month with donations accepted. My donation made, I entered and the first image I encountered was a painting of Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher who also graces the cover of Miller’s collection. Paige’s legend and accomplishments are unmatched in baseball. His semi-professional career started at age 18, he first pitched in the majors at 42, and threw his last major league pitch at 59. He is reported to have won over 2000 games, thrown a ball at 105 mph, and often told his fielders to sit down while he proceeded to strike out the side. Miller writes about Paige in “Rain Delay”: The rain stops in mid-air like Satchel Paige throwing his hesitation pitch or the Supreme Court deciding it’s all deliberate speed when it comes to integration. Satchel’s hesitation pitch was designed to fool the batter. Miller’s poem, like many in the collection, might fool us into thinking it’s just about baseball when soon we’re taken into a history lesson or a jazz riff. “The Boys of Summer” ends with the line: Our mothers talking about Jackie Robinson and how Willie Mays learned to catch a ball while turning his back, running full speed as if he were Emmett Till. Willie Mays made “The Catch” in the first game of the World Series, September 1954. A year later, Jackie Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to their first ever World Series win over the vaunted Yankees. Emmett Till was brutally lynched in between those events in August 1955. Connect those basepaths. Miller was generous with his time and talking with him was a great pleasure as well as a challenge to keep up with the pace of his mind and references. The conversation jumped between baseball, literary, historical, and family topics. When I told him that my interest in baseball was reignited after years of dormancy by my son’s baseball career (my own little league career included a mere three hits across three seasons), he thought for a moment then tossed at me, “How did baseball influence your parenting?” It wasn’t a softball. Later in the conversation, I asked Miller his opinion of the pitch clock, an innovation Major League Baseball introduced last season to speed up the games. He took me to the theater. “Imagine a phone rings during a play. We need the character to be on one side of the stage and the phone on the other. The character has to walk the entire stage to get to the phone.” Point taken. The Negro Leagues Museum is a collection of treasures. Newspaper cutouts, old gloves and bats, ticket stubs, and uniforms fill cases. There’s also a mini baseball diamond with statues of the legends. Satchel Paige is, of course, on the mound, throwing to Josh Gibson, arguably the greatest power hitter to wield a bat. Cool Papa Bell, one of the fastest players ever, hangs out in center. There was a joy to these portrayals which also came through in the quotes and videos. But there was also the reality of Black life in America. “There was no place between Chicago and St Louis where we could stop and eat … So many times we rode all night and not have anything to eat, because they wouldn’t feed you,” Bill Yancey, New York Black Yankees. Imagine playing a game at the highest level in front of thousands of fans and then having to sit hungry and dirty for hours on a bus. I found a quote from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the powerful and racist baseball commissioner, saying he strongly opposed the barnstorming games between the Negro League and MLB teams. He knew his teams were more likely than not to lose. I was moved by the history, imagining the lives of these men, living their dreams by playing a game, in a country where the fleetness of their feet could also save their lives. I was also moved by my fellow museum visitors. I walked in parallel with a father and his daughter, a girl of about seven or eight. She laughed, pushed him along, grabbed his phone to take pictures, but also stopped and made pointed observations about the men in uniforms who could have been one of her great-grandfathers or uncles. One of my favorite poems in Miller’s collection is “The Trade”, recounting his experience as a boy upon learning he was going to switch to an all-white school. It closes with: You give your mom a Curt Flood look And your dad nothing at all. You turn From the doorway and walk to your room. You feel traded. You feel betrayed. And then, just as the Negro Leagues Museum gives way to the Jazz Museum, the poem moves into music. Outside your window the birds are chirping blues. Ma Rainey is singing about the Mississippi risin’. Sam Cooke calls from next door and says “Yes, a flood is comin’ and a change is gonna come.” In both the painting and the book cover, Satchel Paige looks tired, impatient. When is that change gonna come? The brilliant poet Matthew Johnson, who shares many of Miller’s sensibilities, argues in “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever” that Paige’s weariness may have come from not being the first Black player in the MLB. That after decades of setting the groundwork, Carrying black baseball on your back for well over a decade Someone else was chosen, and you weren’t the first one 𑁋 A change did come and Paige made it to both to the show and eventually to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame at the Negro League Museum will have no more members, yet it remains as relevant as ever. Visit the museum, read E Ethelbert Miller and Matthew Johnson, and push for more change. Links E Ethelbert Miller’s work is widely available. You can find If God Invented Baseball many places. One is linked below as well as a terrific interview in which he discusses and reads from the collection. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/If-God-Invented-Baseball/E-Ethelbert-Miller/9781947951006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUb6wVtmgE Matthew Johnson’s poem cited above was published and nominated for an award by this press. Link to the poem and his full collections below. https://roifaineantarchive.wixsite.com/rf-arc-hive/post/an-interpretation-of-why-caged-birds-sing-maybe-i-ll-pitch-forever-by-matthew-johnson https://www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com/book Negro Leagues Baseball Museum https://www.nlbm.com/

I read novels for so many reasons including to travel, to learn, to think, to escape, to immerse myself in the lives of characters, and to appreciate language. Christina Cooke’s debut novel, Broughtupsy, meets all of these markers and more. Broughtupsy is the story of Akua, a twenty-year-old queer Jamaican woman living in Canada via Texas. We meet Akua at her twelve-year-old brother, Bryson’s, hospital bedside. Bryson dies early in the story leaving Akua and her father bereft. The final member of the family, Tamika, the older sister, comes neither for Bryson’s last days nor his funeral. Akua, grieving the loss of a brother and a relationship decides to return to Jamaica with Bryson's ashes in a wooden box to find her long-lost sister. We quickly see that the relationship between the sisters is tense. Akua is angry with her sister for abandoning the family. Tamika, devoutly religious, is openly hostile to her sister’s sexuality, calling her “strange” and telling her that has no place in Jamaican society. Early on, Cooke gives us the intimacy of a car scene, complete with all the sights and sensations of the Kingston road. The language soars. We continue up, up, passing half-built houses with rebars turning red with rust. Silence fills the car like smoke as Tamika turns down a side street, pulling off the road then parking on a green bank. I turn to her, my questions shattered into splinters burrowing deep into my insides. The image of splinters gives us a visceral view into Akua’s state of mind as she tries to cope with both her sister and native land. The narrative continues with the tension between the sisters ramping up. To get away, Akua sets out solo to explore the city, often stopping to leave literal bits of Bryson across the city. These trips are ones which encompass the past and the present as Cooke’s expertly takes us back and forth in time, following the patterns of Akua’s mind. Wild goats munch on patches of weeds next to shops closed up behind zinc shutters, graffiti scrawled on top. … Boys in dirty khakis and girls in pink dresses come running toward the bus and I remember! I don’t know where I’m going, but I know where I’ve been. I remember staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, at my own brown tunic with pleats starched crisp. First day of first form. I was ten years old. As Akua grapples with her past across three countries, in the present, she meets Jayda, another “strange” woman. Here Cooke ratchets up the novel’s tension several notches. We see intense scenes between the sisters, passion between the queer women, and roof blowing scene on the occasion of Akua’s baptism in Tamika’s church. Cooke’s prose captures the big and the small, from street-level details to the largest of emotions. No spoilers, but the novel’s last scene is as beautiful as anything I’ve read in a while. This rich novel takes us on a multifaceted journey though space, time, identity, sexuality, and the struggles of family. Broughtupsy (a phrase used several times in the novel) is a force and a must-read. I read in an interview with Cooke where she said she hoped her future works would involve “more insightful explorations of who we are and what we want as told from a Jamaican and immigrant lens.” Yes, yes, yes. Read Broughtupsy as we await more exceptional work from Christina Cooke. You can pick up your own copy of Broughtupsy here.

“So many things, so many experiences, seem to be about the breaking of a woman, and not the mending of her.” This line from “At My Gynecologist, the Ghost Gloves Go to the Garbage and the Too-Green Girls Become a Little Less Green” the first essay in Exodus Octavia Brownlow’s razor-sharp collection, I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?, sets the table for what’s to come. In a series of essays, following her own growing up, Brownlow shares experiences and observations on how the world seeks to put down and demean women, Black women in particular. The essays center Black women in relation to one another and to the larger world. The book’s third offering, “Stories from my Grandma’s Body”, follows the author’s thoughts on the day before her Grandma is to begin a diet. She tenderly recounts her Grandma’s history with longing and beauty. “Stories from her breasts, where babies have sipped, and slept, and grew.  … Stories from her hands that have slapped against reluctant biscuit dough, and against my rebellious brown bottom.” Brownlee’s prose is intimate and flowing as she pushes back against the idea of diet, wishing that her Grandma could live forever in her “big, beautiful body.” In the second set of essays, Brownlow tackles the complexity of hair for Black women. She describes the processes for Black hair care – which of course vary with the style, her decision to go natural, and the historical and social implications of the choices made by Black women in this regard. Early in the first essay, “Love & Nappiness: On Hair, Race and Self-Worth 2016”, she addresses the question of “why the hell hair matters so much to the black community?” She then gives us definitions of good and bad hair, followed by a funny but painful scale upon which Black women are rated for attractiveness involving hair, African features (or lack of), and body shape. We learn about her hair journey and “nappiversary”. In writing through her process and decision-making, Brownlow gives us a close window into her thoughts and emotions at different stages and the reactions from others along the way. And lest someone who looks like me, might think, It’s just hair, what’s the big deal?, she hits us with the line, “Appearances are important, when black girls are suspended from school for literally wearing their hair as it naturally grows from their scalps.” In the third set of essays, Brownlow’s takes us up to the present. We see her with her grandmother again, and we see her moving through the South, the complexities of the past and present intertwined. In “We Deserve More Black Stories with Happy Endings”, she writes: “Yes, I want to write the happy endings despite all of the obstacles, and I am aware that happy endings for black people exist, but in many ways, they are simply conditional. Conditional, until we are pulled over by the wrong kind of cop.” This line leaps off the page, showing us how a happy ending in a Black life can explode in any moment. In her last essay, Brownlow describes being told by an older white man that she reminds him of the “old south.” Is that the south with “whites only” bathrooms, the America with sundown towns, a nation with slavery, or the current south with confederate statues which still loom over the town square? Reading Brownlow, these questions and so many more, hit us square on. Among her many gifts as a writer is to dance between the present and the past, the idealist and the realist, and the verbiage of the academic and the parlance of the storyteller. In a recent New York Times essay on the mid-twentieth century Black novelist Chester Himes, the writer S.A. Cosby says of Himes: “His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul – that is what makes him the bard of the existential African American psyche.” With this collection of unsparing essays, Brownlow puts herself squarely in this tradition. One can only hope that as we get more work from this remarkable writer, that the moral arc of the universe does bend toward justice, and that there may be movement toward happy endings. You can pick up your own copy of I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can? here.

“Spring break meant a trip south of Atlanta to Georgia’s fat bottom.” When I finished Ra’Niqua Lee’s collection of flash stories, For What Ails You, published by ELJ Editions, I decided to play a game: open a random page and look for language. “The first ghost she meets isn’t dead. He has coke-bottle glasses.” “Happy as the raisin in potato salad flock.” “When Ginny aches deep enough to betray her own self, she will invite the wild girl out for drinks.” “Pretty Women get kissed at 4 AM. Lisa made the mental note as the reassuring smell of sulfur from the chemical plant blew in from down the street.” In lines such as these which drop into every story, we see Lee’s gifts for magical language and storytelling explode from the page. In “Remedies in Riding” Ginny pushes her bike so as to catch or perhaps run from the wild girl. “The Ghosts of Our Lives” brings us a young asthmatic girl, struggling for breath and caught between an uncertain future and the past which keeps showing up. Lisa, the protagonist in “Skeleton Cat”, learns to live with the sulfur smell, hooking up doggy style with a man who won’t look at her, and her neighbors whom she loves despite their constant noise. Lee describes herself as a “hood feminist”, her characters Southern Black women struggling and succeeding both in pain and beauty. Their stories are stories of the soil, often blood soaked, whether it be in the burning protest summer of 2020 or a visit to Stone Mountain, a homage to the Confederacy where “the man on the golf cart collecting trash is Black.” In several stories, Lee balances race with the ritual of football including “Saviors, Spells, and American Tragedies”, a flash story with the thematic reach of a novel. The 48 stories in the collection come fast and furious, some lasting less than a page. Characters such as the Prostitute Nurse, and Grace, a single woman who contemplates her sister’s family and the accompanying advances from her brother-in-law, recur. The reading can be challenging as we try to take in the themes through the dazzle of the language. I often found myself needing to slow down to take in the flash fiction. Finally, Lee’s tales take us into the supernatural. Besides ghosts, we see a woman fly, felines with no flesh, “Horse man”, and a collection ending mermaid. These characters challenge us to see and think beyond what is, beyond our limited perception, beyond our stereotypes, and into the possible. With For What Ails You, Lee announces herself as a storyteller for our time, one who gives us an imaginative tour de force while holding a mirror to the sins of our past and present. Grab this collection and anticipate future work from this magical writer. You can get your own copy of For What Ails You by Ra’Niqua Lee here.

“They gave Jada an ultimatum: do the work or get kicked out. Ayanna delivered the news during indie. ‘You’re here to face what happened, learn from it, and thrive.’” These are the opening lines from LaToya Jordan’s novella “To the Woman in the Pink Hat” published by Aqueduct Press in March 2023. Aqueduct’s mission is to “bring challenging feminist science fiction to the demanding reader.” Jordan’s novella, part of the press’ “Conversation Pieces”, does just that. Without giving away too much of the masterful plot which Jordan unravels at a steady pace, we soon learn that Jada is a young Black woman in the year 2040. She’s committed a violent crime and is now confined to the Center, an alternative to prison and place where she is to undergo rehabilitation in the form of various therapy sessions. Ayanna is her AI therapist who plays good cop / bad cop with her human therapist, Zoe. Both therapists have the goal of getting Jada to relive and confront her crime whether in the world of her mind or that of virtual reality. Despite the odd fact that Jada and the other young women in the center are called “Leaders”, the set up seems straight forward. That is until we begin to learn more of Jada’s background. Prior to her crime, she was a member of the SUs. “People already called us a gang, but we called ourselves a movement. Someone on the social came up with the moniker SU, and we went with it. It stood for stolen uterus and we thought Sue sounded safe and all-American for a group of brown girls out for justice … and maybe a little blood.” Ah, here we are into the Sci-Fi part. A group of girls whose uteruses have been stolen? A movement which some view as a gang? It’s impossible to read “The Woman in the Pink Hat” without thinking about the last few years. Years in which Black Lives Matter has been vilified. Years in which a 13-year-old Black girl in Mississippi is raped and forced to give birth in a post-Dobbs nation (https://time.com/6303701/a-rape-in-mississippi/). And years in which Black and brown skinned immigrants are said to “be poisoning the blood” by the former president. Late in the novella, Jada recalls a speech she delivered to her fellow SUs before her arrest. “The people who did this wanted to hurt us so they could go back to a time when Black folk are ruled by them. They were afraid of what would happen in a country where they were outnumbered by POCx.” These words ring all too true in 2024, taking us from the future to the present and it was impossible to read the novella without surges of anger in which I had to put the book down and breathe. But Jordan’s work is storytelling and not political allegory. There’s a strong narrative with Jada as a compelling and very human character at its center. As more of her backstory is revealed, we are moved by her family history. No spoilers here, but readers will come across an intimate and beautifully rendered scene from her past. Ultimately, Jordan answers the major plot questions including the identity of the woman in the pink hat and the true purpose of the Center. But the age-old questions of justice remain and Jordan ends the novel with a homage to a timeless quote from a leader in a previous age. “To the Woman in the Pink Hat” succeeds as story and conversation piece leaving us plenty to think about as we await the next work from Jordan. You can pick up your copy of "To the Woman in the Pink Hat" by LaToya Jordan at Aqueduct Press: https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-236-7.php

INHERITED MEMORY: BACK FROM THE MIKVEH Setting: penumbra of lamplight, clothed in warm flannel, back from the mikveh, my bleeding done. You—always a stranger beside me— a gentleman in front of others. A monster with drink, in bed a voracious animal or an exhausted peasant. And me, who am I? A victim of the brutal night? Or a stranger’s cruelty—? A rapacious husband who pretends passivity during the day? A bristle of beard on soft skin. Can this be illuminated in the melting darkness? AVALANCHE The cornice above the granite face hovers a shiver from disaster. A ski edge, a dog paw is all it needs to release the suspended energy of time’s snowy curtain. Did the ravens and spiders who guard this kingdom abandon their vigil? Does the snow misting behind the avalanche have memory? Do I have to remind you, his mother expected him, praising his prowess in the snow? How quick a river can become a riptide, a wave a tsunami. How the flesh compresses under the weight of ice— how life is stilled. The phone call in the night, the answering machine message retrieved in the morning. The mother’s voice; My son, my only child; the dog in the snow, distraught, searching. The father gazing nightly thereafter into his blazing bonfires, a ticking timepiece, the forsaken dreams, superhero figures unearthed in the yard years later. From where? All that remained. Laura Celise Lippman’s work has appeared in Apricity Magazine, Avatar Review, Brief Wilderness, The Broken Plate, Chained Muse, Courtship of Winds, Crack the Spine, Crosswinds, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Flights, Glassworks Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hey I’m Alive Magazine, La Presa, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Perceptions Magazine, Plainsongs, Pontoon Poetry, Poydras Review, Journal of Family Practice, The Meadow, Neologism Poetry Journal, New English Review, Red Ogre Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Spotlong Review, Synkroniciti, and The Vashon Loop. She is a co-author of the book Writing While Masked, Reflections of 2020 and Beyond. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She practiced medicine for thirty-seven years and raised two children in the Pacific Northwest. Since retirement, she continues to take poetry courses at Hugo House in Seattle. She enjoys the outdoors and sharing her wonder at the natural world.

ANNIVERSARY I stick my thumb out and demand a ride. It’s our anniversary. Of the day we died in our last lives. I want to celebrate with you—catch up over coffee, then find a room to catch up on all things pent up. I pray whoever just complied with the thumb’s demand isn’t a creep. I point every few streets, he turns as I direct, until we are forty-five minutes away from where he meant to end up. We start pulling through what looks like our old town, and I see what looks like our favorite café: same beaten-up exterior, same yellow walls. I don’t know why I remember so much, or why I was stuck remembering if I wasn’t given the power to find you. I start crying. The driver doesn’t interrupt, just rolls down my window, puts on a song. When he drops me, he tells me, “I’m sorry, whatever it is, I’m sorry.” I tell him, “Thank you,” before shutting the door. Everywhere I go I do not know what I will find, but I cry just in case it’s still not you, all over again. WHEN I SAY LONELINESS I’m at a restaurant. The walls are white, the lighting fluorescent. The waiter is glued to the kitchen, barely checks in. To my right, there are stacks of unused chairs. I counted them: fourteen. The fly in my soup gets lodged in my throat, and is humming along to the Lucy Dacus song playing in my ears. When the waiter makes his way back over, I ask for another of the exact same thing, and swallow it down fast so that the fly can have someone to talk to. He buzzes as if to say thank you, and I breathe as if to say I know what it’s like. ART + PAIN > NO PAIN, NO ART I say look ma, I made art, and her eyes fall to the ground. The vase she dropped only a moment ago Is now enhanced in its beauty by some pinecones I found in our backyard and some flowers I picked From the front. She says that’s great, hon, but the Shards will still make your feet bleed, and proceeds to sweep away all my goddamned work. PSYCHIC The psychic folds over a card and leaves me to stare at it. She carefully chooses one that says I will die in the near future. I reach for the dictionary to define “near” but she slams her hand against the book and holds tight—I can’t slide it out from under her. She gets up to fix me tea. She even tells me to take my coat off, she’ll wash it for me. She says she wants to spend some time together, make a day of it. She says we don’t have much time. I reach again for the book for a definition of “much.” And I guess she doesn’t trust me anymore; she throws the book into the fire across the street that wasn’t there when she started to toss, but I guess she saw it coming. I have checklists of what I want to feel before dropping dead, and if I’m low on time, I need someone who’s going to do all the work, make me feel all of it at once. She tells me there’s a man who plays guitar on the same street corner every night, gives me the coordinates, says when he plays he looks just as impassioned as I do when I’m hunched over sheets of looseleaf, agonizing over words. She promises that he, too, thinks driving into the mountains at 4:00 in the morning is the most important thing a person could possibly do. Sounds like my kind of guy. I get my ticket for the subway and tell the woman, her hand on a pole, that I have finally found something worth holding on for. She asks me where it is, and I tell her, I don’t know— I lost the coordinates—left the boy on the corner for somebody else to find, because I already have it, just by knowing it is possible. And because I know everything I have ever wanted is out there, I don’t need it, not even any of it! I let myself fall asleep, deciding that I’ll get off at whichever stop I wake up. How can it be that both things are true? I am dying, and everything is possible. Danielle Lisa is a poet born and raised in Long Island, New York. Her mother knew Danielle would grow up to be a poet because, as a child, poetry would get her to stop crying. Now at twenty-six, poetry doesn't get her to stop crying, it makes her start. She has been published in Waxing & Waning and her poem "I'm Convinced You Actually Liked the Whole Wheat Pancakes" will be published in an upcoming edition of Rattle.

Lying in bed one night, I found a lump on my testicle. This was Spring 2009; I had recently turned thirty. To be certain, I fondled the protuberance with my fingertips, discreetly worrying at it until there was no room for doubt – a small node on the right side not present on the left. My heart sank, my stomach roiled in queasy appreciation. This was it, the moment you think will never happen to you. Certainly not in your twenties but they, it seemed, were long gone. As I lay there, my wife beside me (oblivious to my intestinal turmoil), I made a snap decision – the single most imbecilic, feeble and contemptible of my life. I would ignore it. If I pretended it wasn’t there, maybe it would go away. I said goodnight, turned off the lights, and lay there staring into space. Why had I reacted like this? I had one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met lying right next to me yet my instinct was not to mention it. Rather than share, which would have allowed me to tap into the unwavering reservoir of support that my wife, Kim, provides, I chose to hide it. Simple: embarrassment. It was too much. Not the embarrassment of becoming ill, (although the idea that my immoderate lifestyle was finally catching up on me, you reap what you sow, the pigeons coming home and all that, did cross my mind as I lay there pretending to sleep), but of having to show a doctor my junk. I was so mortified by the idea that in that instant, I made the fateful decision. It was preferable to slowly die of testicular cancer than to get it checked out. I fell into an uneasy sleep. This secret, that I had a tumor in my bollix, I lived with for months. I compartmentalized the issue, stored it neatly amongst the bric-a-brac of long-lost friends and childhood clothes at the back of my brain. Nightly I would check and recheck my right testis to see if I could be mistaken, hoping beyond hope that somehow this lump would miraculously disappear, but to no avail. Every time I checked, there it was on my right, there it wasn’t on my left. The old queasiness would roll through me and I would turn over, close my eyes, and hope that when I awoke the next morning, it would have all been a bad dream. After the first year, I became aware that the growth was living up to its name. Previously, when I first noticed it, it had been more or less the size of a pumpkin seed, whereas now it had doubled to the size of a pea. There was no pain, no tangible decline in my fitness, no erectile dysfunction, no hair loss (which I know is caused by the treatment of cancer rather than the cancer itself but the association is strong). No ill effects to speak of at all. This did not, however, inspire confidence. I may have felt fine, but it was inevitable, the tumor was metastisizing inside me. It was only a matter of time, I was sure, until the ticking bomb in my ball sack went boom. Still, I kept shtum. The bigger fear, even bigger than dying from a disease slowly but surely forming in my very core, was to have to expose myself to a medic. This is far and away the most pathetic thing about the whole story. I had conditioned myself to think this way. It was hard-wired into me. Years upon years of schoolyard banter, taunts by friends at me or more likely by me at friends, had emotionally stunted me to such an extent that I was paralyzed with fear. Death was preferable to potentially opening myself up to ridicule. A literal case of toxic masculinity if ever there was one. This is all the more embarrassing to admit given that Kim had just given birth to our first child. During this time, as practically all pregnant women do, Kim had undergone any number of smears and scans and prods and probes, yet I couldn’t even bring myself to get checked for cancer? Not just putting my own risk at health, but potentially tearing our newborn family apart just as we were starting a life together. Another year passed. Still no illness, no pain in the marrow, no thinning hair (I’m aware I’m an idiot, this is the point). We were trying for another child, we wanted a bigger family, and after several months, Kim became pregnant again. We were over the moon. So much so, we decided not to wait until the traditional twelve-week mark to tell people, but instead told friends and family at around week nine. What was the worst that could happen? we reasoned. If there did end up being a problem, surely it would be better for our friends and family to know than have to go through it alone. The theory soon got put to the test. At the next scan, week eleven or so, we were told the pregnancy was ectopic, the foetus was, for want of a more medical term, stuck in one of Kim’s fallopian tubes. We were to lose the child but, with immediate treatment, they may be able to save the tube. A hammer blow, we were devastated, but, thankfully, we didn’t have to go through it alone. Our friends and family swiftly rallied around. Kim subjected herself to more probes and scrapes, pills and poisons, and I did my second-best to support her. I did everything, absolutely everything I could, except, of course, from subject myself to anything remotely similar. God forbid. What if somebody poked fun at me? Another year passed. The lump had, at least, remained pea-sized throughout. This did little to encourage me though. I was sure this could only mean the tumor was boring inwards, its ever-metastasizing carcinogens seeping deep into my dick, my other ball, my spine. By now, I knew, I could be riddled, and there would be nothing I could do about it. Through a mixture of embarrassment and prudishness, I had let myself die. I’d destroyed our family. Finally, one night, after more than three years of procrastinating, I mentioned it to Kim. You need to get that checked, she said without hesitation. No drama, no molly-coddling, just straight. She was right, I agreed, there was no time to lose. Two weeks later, a helpful porter escorted me into a room in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, asked me to take a seat on the trolley and wait. The Ultrasound Doctor would be along shortly. A minute later, in walks a young, female doctor, extremely attractive, who asks me to lie back on the gurney and pull down my pants. This was it. The moment I had been dreading for so long, that I had put my health at risk for. What if, God forbid, she laughed at me or, even worse, I had an erection. Dublin is a small place; this woman could easily know people I know. With no small sense of horror and shame, I did as I was told. The doctor was in no mood to hang about. Without the faintest amusement, repulsion, or admiration for that matter, she slopped a dollop of KY on my ball sack and began nudging my nuts with a sonographic probe. The experience was neither pleasant nor in any way, shape or form, arousing. It was perfunctory and sterile, and the doctor, like every other medic in the country, was actually there to help, not to laugh at or tease me like an immature child. You’ve a cyst, she said matter-of-factly. Is that, like... cancer? Oh no, an epididymal cyst. They’re quite common, really. Oh. Ok, I said, my fears evaporating like the mists of a new dawn. So, what do I do about it? Nothing. Just ignore it. It’s not dangerous. If it gets too big, come back in and see us. How big is too big? The size of a fist. At this, I almost choked on my own relief. The notion of having something the size of a fist tucked neatly betwixt my balls was abhorrent. Whenever it gets to bothering you, she reassured. Here, she said, handing me a ream of blue tissue paper, clean yourself up. That’s it for today. I went home to Kim. Everything was going to be okay. Part 2 A decade passes. A second daughter is born, then a third. We have the family we have always dreamed of. My cyst is not yet, thankfully, the size of a fist. It is, however, the same size as the other two spheroids in my sack. This was considerably disconcerting, especially when playing football. I took one to the balls a couple of times that year and the pain was the usual agony but exacerbated by a crippling fear. The cyst might burst, I thought, leading to who knows what kind of a mess down there. There was only one solution. My third ball, the superfluous bollock, had to go. I told my doctor the situation and we booked in for another scan. This was the diagnosis. Below is your ultrasound report. There are several things that can go amiss in one's sack and you have more than your fair share. Good news is none of them will harm you unless they get too big and even then are only an annoyance to be removed. Your visit to the urology clinic in June will be infinitely more valuable with this done in advance and ideally they will offer you the chance to have some of these extraneous items removedThere is a 4.2 by 4 cm cyst in the head of the right epididymis, this has increased considerably in size since examination of 02/11/2012.There are small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. There is a small left hydrocoele. No other focal abnormality in either testis is demonstrated. Conclusion: Interval increase in size of right epididymal head cyst. Small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. 4.2 by 4cm cyst. Slightly larger than your standard ping pong ball. Two months later, having fasted for eight hours, I arrived at Loughlinstown Hospital for surgery. I met the consultant leading the operation, he made some crass joke about me being lucky to have three balls (obviously went to an all-boys school too), and I was escorted to wait in a ward. A few minutes later, I was in a cloud of blues and whites, six medics surrounding me. The mask went on and the lights went out. I awoke back in the ward, groggy and weak. The surgery had been a success, I was told. I had pain along the centre line of my scrotum where the incision had taken place, but apart from that, all was well. The cyst had been removed; my balls were back to normal. Kim kindly picked me up, three relieved daughters in the back seats, and we went home. Despite having been under for two hours, or perhaps because of this, I was still exhausted by the time we got home. I shuffled into the living room, lay down on the couch, and promptly fell fast asleep for another hour. Then, at about eight p.m., I made my way upstairs, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed to sleep the whole thing off. Part 3 Break the fucking lights. This is what I asked – no, correction – begged of Kim as she pulled up behind a couple of cars at the junction of Ailesbury and Merrion road. Run the fucking lights, I screeched in hysterics, another wave of pain crashing over me. Run the fucking lights! It was astronomical, the pain, like nothing I had felt before. I was teetering, on the verge of passing out. I needed to be in the Emergency Department fifteen minutes ago, when the pain was only threatening to pull me apart. Not now, too late, when it already felt like I’d been shot. The lights turned green, Kim raced through, pulling up in an ambulance bay where a kindly porter fetched a wheelchair and helped me into triage whilst Kim parked the car. I’ve always fancied myself to have a reasonable tolerance for pain. I’ve played rugby with twisted ankles, broken fingers, a broken thumb. Every tackle sent a white-hot jolt up my arm as my thumb inevitably banged off the opposing player’s hip, but I played on, then strapped it up the following week and togged out again. This was different. For one thing, the pain was bigger, much, much bigger. It felt as if somebody had affixed a clamp to my gut and was slowly but surely jacking it apart. Like a hole was ripping inside me and it was only a matter of time until my guts spilled out on the floor. Then there was the fear. Despite not being localized there, the pain could only be emanating from my most delicate point. Something had gone wrong with the surgery and now there really was a problem down there. The pain was excruciating. I sat in my wheelchair in the E.D. waiting room and whimpered inconsolably. Eventually, after an interminable half hour, I see an administrator. He asks me some details. My brain is too scrambled to communicate effectively but thankfully Kim is by my side, (in sickness and in health) and relays the pertinent points. How I had had an operation, what time the surgery, what time the pain kicked in, etc, etc. Did you do any strenuous activity when you got home? Not a thing. Slept on the couch for an hour, then went upstairs and went to bed. You walked up the stairs? he asks incredulously, as if I had broken the cardinal rule of cyst excision. This stair-shaming did little to alleviate the pain. Yes, I mewled desperately, mea culpa. I had walked upstairs. At this point, or some indeterminate length of time thereafter – time had ceased to move forward but was instead caught in an eddy, slowly but surely dragging me down with it – I was shown through to the ward and assisted onto a trolley. Kim was not able to follow me through so reluctantly turned away and, without any concrete understanding of what was going on inside her husband, headed home. My trolley and I were wheeled into the middle of a busy E.D. and deposited there to wait our turn. I can talk (even if only to groan), I can breathe, I am not bleeding. I am demonstrating no immediate risk to life. Ergo, my problems can wait. At least a full five agonizing hours later, a cannula is finally inserted into my vein, I am administered a shot of morphine and slump into an exhausted heap. The opioid hits me like a cold blast. The pain, the incessant, interminable pain, is finally gone. I sleep. Part 4 Briefly. I am awoken by a drunk woman who is shouting outside my door (unbeknownst to me, I have been wheeled into one of seven rooms which stem off the central station), threatening to fight the entire staff on duty. No particular reason, as far as I could make out, but she was well up for a scrap. I look down at my stomach. There, where the pain still resides despite the lingering effects of the drug, is a dark purple bruising. Two inches wide, slightly below and to the right of my naval. The penny drops. Internal bleeding. The scab on my right epididymis where the surgeon cauterized the wound must have come off and I’ve been bleeding into my abdomen. This is a relief. Yes, the pain is still monstrous but at least I now know what’s going on. I lie back down and listen to the soothing sounds of an Emergency Department in full flow and soon fall back to sleep. Shortly after, I would guesstimate at about four in the morning, I feel the need to pee. With an abundance of care, I ease my legs off the trolley and, wincing, take to my feet. I stick my head out the door. All is quiet now, relatively speaking. The mad woman has been sedated, there are few shouts or cries. I tread my way to the toilet, lock the door behind me, stand in front of the bowl, and pull out my penis. Still groggy, but having done this literally thousands and thousands of times, I take aim, close my eyes, and let it flow. Disaster. My urine is not just slightly off target, it has flicked to full garden-sprinkler mode. The spray is everywhere, all directions all at once. I look down to see what is going on and that’s when I see it – the horror. My dick is not something I recognise. Instead, I appear to be holding a dark purple mess in my hands. It’s an organ of some description, that I can tell, but if I had to guess, a barbecued kidney would be my best bet. I turn off the hose and, mortified, stuff my malformed sex back in my pants and wipe the piss off the walls and floor. I now have a moment of confusion. In this bathroom there is also a shower, it’s a wet room of sorts. I wonder if this shower has been provided for people in my exact predicament – that of not being able to control the trajectory of flow. I wonder in all seriousness whether I am meant to piss up against the wall and then wash it down. Eventually I realize this can in no way be hygienic and is probably the last thing I am meant to do, but nor do I think if I sit down on the toilet will I be able to hit the pan beneath. I’m torn, and still in dire need of the toilet. So, for once, I do something sensible. I go and ask a nurse. Of course, as luck would have it, the nurse at the station is unbelievably good-looking. Let’s have a look, shall we? she says, leading me back into the bathroom where I am obliged to show her my mutilated genitalia. No problem, she says, disappearing for a moment before coming back with a cardboard jug. Here you go, she says, handing it to me. Pour it down the toilet after and then stick it in the bin. I do as I’m told. The jug, a one-liter not dissimilar to the type of juice bottle that has a handle fitted into its side, has an over-sized mouth for this very reason. Relief. My dick may be presenting as an aubergine emoji, but exhaustion takes precedence. I limp back to my room, lie down in the bed, and snatch a couple more hours’ sleep. Part 5 I spent four days in hospital that week. The streak of bruising along my midriff extended from one side to the other, three inches deep, fifteen wide. A belt of blood, purple and green; a bike tire track across my gut. My balls and dick matured in color from mauve to a dark wine. Guts of a pint had spilled into my nether region, one nurse estimated. The elasticity of the ball sack ideal for soakage. Like a sponge, he explained loudly. I thanked him for his candor. There were three other men in the urology ward with me. To my right, Kieran, a short, wealthy (as he liked to allude), tonsured man in his early seventies. Kieran was of a nervous disposition, and understandably so. He was being monitored to see if he could qualify for a new kidney. Opposite him was Gerard, a younger man, mid-fifties I would say, with rich, thick, dark, peppered gray hair and pitch-black eyebrows. He reminded me of one of those guys in a Just For Men advert. His was a good news story. He had found blood in his urine, flagged it with his doctor straight away, and now here he was, a couple of months later, happily recuperating as somebody else’s kidney filtered the waste from his body. Time would tell but the surgery, it seemed, had been a success. Then finally, opposite me was Patrick, the eldest of the group. He was in his eighties. I wasn’t sure what he was in for, general waterworks presumably. Tall and thin with a sharp nose and sprouting eyebrows that gave him the air of an elderly emu, he was a warm, friendly, chatty man, but ever-so-softly spoken. On the first day we exchanged pleasantries but neither of us could clearly hear the other given our debilitated states. The important thing was, though, we both understood and recognised that the man opposite us meant well. There was an immediate rapport. There were curtains between each of the beds which any of us could draw around ourselves should we need our privacy. Plastic piss jugs sat on the night stands beside each bed (Patrick had several scattered around his enclosure), and a television was on mute in the corner. That is to say, your typical man’s urology ward. Whitewashed walls and linoleum floor. There was also a large bathroom into which we could totter to use or empty our piss jugs or to give them a rinse. That first day I remember very little of, other than being visited twice by troops of trainee doctors requesting a look at my butchered meat. Two separate occasions, two separate cliques. I lay on my back, pulled down my tracksuit bottoms, and thought of Christmas. Twice. The ignominy. If my teenage self could see me now. Here you go, folks, here’s the road kill. Feast your eyes. The second day passed much like the first. More trainee doctors, some nurses, a consultant, all swung by for a gander. Down went the pants and up went the smile as I grinned and beared it. At least something good might come out of this, I thought. At least by exposing myself to all these future healers I may help prevent some other poor unfortunate three-balled bastard from experiencing likewise. A learning experience all around. Also, Gerard had had more good news. His latest test results were positive. He might be allowed leave tomorrow, all things being equal. The same couldn’t be said for Kieran though. His bloods, or whatever it was they were monitoring, weren’t where they needed to be. There was zero progress being made, no evidence his body would accept a new kidney and therefore no point risking one. He put on a brave face but we could feel his anxiety heighten, but what could we do? Patrick, opposite me, had a quiet day that second day. He sat up on the side of the bed when the nurses and doctors came to examine him. He’d shoot me a conspiratorial smile, the occasional wink before the curtains were drawn, but other than that there was little engagement. Rest was the order of the day. No family came to see him, nor me, for that matter. I had agreed with Kim it would be too much hassle with the kids and sure wouldn't I be home soon enough. On day three, Patrick slept even more than the day before. There were no smiles, no craning of the neck over a nurses’ shoulder to give me a wink. The man was clearly exhausted. But overall, day three was a good day. We said goodby to Gerard. At least, myself and Kieran did, Patrick kept his curtain closed. Gerard’s levels had sustained, they were happy for him to check out; he could take his new kidney home to meet the rest of the family. Hands were clasped and, when Gerard’s daughter came to collect him, celebratory sweets passed around. We were both genuinely happy for him. He was a nice guy and now he’d go on being a nice guy out there in the real world. If Kieran was jealous, it didn’t show. Gerard’s bed, a totem to modern-day medicine, remained unoccupied for the rest of my stay. Patrick’s, however, was still occupied and still he lay asleep. At intervals I would get a peak in at him, resting there, surrounded by quarter-filled jugs of wan piss, which the nurses would either empty for him or not, depending on how diligent they were feeling. Whatever plumbing issues he had, fatigue was a major side-effect. I, on the other hand, could feel my strength coming back. More nurses and doctors came to visit me, to peer at the medical anomaly between my legs, and I even managed the occasional joke. Not literally, but things were looking up. I’d be home the following day, where I could lie on the couch and not have people come to visit me and the most mangled member in Dublin. Kieran said he was glad for me. I almost believed him, too. The next day, day four, the day I was to be discharged, I woke to a commotion. Patrick had died in the night. Nobody, other than medics, that is, had come to visit him during the four days I had been there. Nobody, confirmed Kieran, during the two days prior to my arrival. Just me, Kieran, and Gerard, the last three people on earth he had spoken to who weren’t discussing his blood pressure, piss or pills. The wink he had given me the day before was the last interaction with a human outside of the medical profession he ever had. Kieran and I shook hands when it was time for me to go home. I wished him well with the kidney, even though I had heard the consultant earlier that morning telling him the bad news. They would wait one more day but if there wasn’t a significant change there would be nothing they could do for him. He wished me well with my recovery. I thanked him and we parted. Him, climbing back into the bed. Me, by chance, walking out the front door. A few weeks passed (it would be a few months yet until I was back at the 5-a-side football); I had some old school friends around to watch a match. A barbecued kidney, I insisted, much to their disbelief. I’m serious, I said, slipping out the phone. (On day three, prior to a shower, I had taken a snap in the mirror. A quadrangle of black circles described my torso, the gluey residue of monitor suckers. My penis engorged and hideous). I flashed the screen at them. Look, I insisted. Look!

My father played guitar at night. Sometimes, I’d peek out my bedroom door to listen. He’d sit in an old velvet chair, his guitar like a broken lover in his arms. Strumming and picking until the nylon strings snapped. Until his fingertips bled. He had a voice like chocolate syrup, so sultry and smooth it was easy to crave, easy to get lost in a sugary high. Easy to forget the bark, the bite, my mother’s resentment, his indifference, the neglect. My father played guitar on weekends. Sometimes, I was his audience. Sometimes, his many girlfriends were. He’d sing about old truths and new lies, lost in the tomorrow of yesterday. He’d sing about little white houses and harbors. About the end of the return of the long dark nights. He’d sing until his audience disappeared. Until his voice cracked or his eyes misted. He’d sing until there was no turning back. My father used to play guitar. Now, his music gathers dust. Sometimes, I sit on my red velvet couch transported to the bedroom I’ve never really left. The cold smell of frost on its single-pane windows. A fresh coat of paint on its crumbling walls. I listen to his old recordings. The unmistakable crackle of the cassette tape. The squeak of a finger slide. The shiver of a fret buzz. I listen to his voice, a splash of sambuca in my cup of espresso. His words spike my heart. I listen until I can’t hear it beat.