They’d been sitting for at least three hours. Everything was packed and Maria was on the phone with the moving company. Her monologue was absurd because the words were so simple and short. All sentences began with “you” and rarely got beyond that. “Fuck. You,” Wilt thought at his mom. “You, are an unfillable cunt.” “You. You need to. You said,” his mother babbled. She was idiotic. There was nothing pathological about his anger and shame. She deserved it. It was very clear. “You have.” “Fuck you, Maria,” his dad told her. He was drunk, Wilt didn’t know. Maria put her hand to the phone and mouthed fuck you at Clarence. Bo wasn’t her fault. Clarence had to forgive her anyway. He was a black fat fuck in sweatpants whose only work was drawing red circles around classifieds and sending tepid emails. “You!” she yelled at the mouthpiece. It didn’t work. “Mom,” said Wilt. “He can’t help you.” Clarence left the room. He was in the bathroom where he’d sequestered a small bottle of vodka in the toilet tank. It was slightly below room temperature and he had nothing to mix with it. It was illegally bought before noon for $4.75. He should’ve slept with the woman who sold it to him. She’d wanted to. She’d smiled and tapped her nails on his hand. Clarence, she’d said no purred when she looked at his ID. There was no need for her to look. He could’ve fucked her. That mouth open and low tongued. She was forty and he was thirty. The vodka didn’t stain his breath. “Fuck you, you ignorant pecker,” thought Wilt at his father, tripping into the room. He was remarkably acrobatic and sloppy and had called Wilt’s friends niggers last Tuesday. Well he was the nigger. He hadn’t wanted to show his dad the jewelry and letters he’d found while moving his mom’s dresser. They should just kill each other. But they were moving, from black to white, his father said. Wilt hated them. “You fuck you!” his mother shouted at her cell phone and threw it down the hall. The three stared, watching the dark phone slide across the empty floor.
How to get on
May 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Essays
Tagged: Ajjepsen, Andrew J Jepsen, Andrew James Jepsen, Andrew Jepsen, Fast fiction, How to get on
The Master’s Vice
December 30, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Discussed in this essay:
The Master’s Voice: Henry James’s curriculum vitae, by William H Gass. Harper’s Magazine. 7 pages. $1.41 (based on a year subscription)
As I opened William H Gass’s review of Sheldon M. Novick’s review of Henry James in the July, 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine, I had to stifle a groan of “Oh are we really going to navel-gaze for seven pages?” as I read William H Gass losing himself in and spinning off in a realm of self indulgent rhetoric while writing an essay ostensibly about Sheldon M. Novick’s biography of Henry James. In his review of the books, Gass blatantly ignored Novick and railed like an old man pissed on from a roof. He fixated on the curious minutia of James’s life such as some scholars’ attitude toward his possible homosexuality (“I had heard the gossip. The gossip was that [James was] a “hooray-he-as-a-gay-guy,” pooh-poohs Gass, dismissing it all as nonsense that didn’t get past Gass), James’s chewing habits, and in a tossed aside, blamed the vapidity, disquiet, dehumanization and alienation of our youth on text messaging.
Categories: Book Reviews · Essays
Tagged: Ajjepsen, Andrew J Jepsen, Andrew Jepsen, Essay, Gass, Harper's Magazine, Harpers, Henry James, reviews, Satire, Sheldon Novick, William H Gass
Michael Steffen
emilyvigor
christopherpatricksteffen
Ajjepsen
Tali Beesley
mlangston
random
Andris Liepnieks
jfilipovic
