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.
Entries categorized as ‘Essays’
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
On Candid Photography
January 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment
By Emily Vigor
Photography has always been something I’ve enjoyed more behind the lens. An awkward recluse of a kid, I felt most uncomfortable when I knew the slice of round glass was on me. Growing up with a snap-happy father, I quickly became adverse to having a picture taken, creating an unconscious tic, a tensing of the body whenever I heard the wind up of the film, the popping of the flash, the inevitable “click” which meant whatever I just did was captured permanently.
I was not a girl who grew into herself easily. Friends around me were able to automatically create a persona in front of the camera, resulting in pictures that captured their burgeoning beauty, and yet were contrived, posed. The ability to morph oneself, to pretend to be happy, or sexy, or innocent…these were not skills I possessed. Appearing awkward, with a look of surprise or fear in my eyes, was the only way I knew how to take a photo that wasn’t candid. Today, I’ve been able to alter my tactic to just looking angry or making some ridiculous face. And yet I’ve always been fascinated by photography. In high school, I got my first black and white 35mm and had a love affair with a darkroom. I worked after school at a commercial photography studio, assisting in portrait sessions of families, high school seniors, and newlyweds. Watching the way people changed themselves once a lens was on them was fascinating. The shift in body position, the sucking in of certain parts, the jutting out of others, the lowering of the chin, the carefully placed smile (can’t look maniacal), I took it all in as though I were an anthropologist. Why was it we had to pretend to be the things we want to be? Most of these photo shoots ended in frustrated parents, crying children, and arguing couples. It seemed as though the option to just take candid shots of people didn’t exist. But the camera can be an unforgiving tool, and often exposes us to the sides of ourselves we don’t want to see. No matter how much we try to compose ourselves, the camera is relentless in its blatant attempt to make you look as ridiculously human as possible.
Categories: Art · Criticism · Essays
Tagged: American Apparel, Beneath the Roses, Candid, Cindy Sherman, Complete Untitled FIlm Stills, Gregory Crewdson, high art, Marc Jacobs, photography
Take Aim and Then? After the Photo
January 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment
This past summer, I got together with two friends for a photo shoot. It was something that we had talked about at bars and over drinks and I don’t think any of us thought it was something we would really do. I think everyone had a different idea about the purpose. We all thought that it would be fun and that it would be something that would bring us outside of our comfort zones, as having our picture taken isn’t something that any of us are really comfortable doing. While we were getting ready, one friend made the comment that if nothing else comes out of our photo shoot, at the very least we will create a memory. She talked about how her mother had done similar things at our age and she was glad to have the photos now. So at least we would be able to create a collection of photos to look back on and reminisce.
But can we knowingly create a memory? In pointing a camera, depressing a button, opening a shutter to expose film to light, is a memory captured? Is the moment preserved? Photos seem to serve as reminders of an instant in time but without the accompanying knowledge that memory supplements, does a photo serve a purpose?
Categories: Essays
Tagged: Emily Vigor, Memory, Molly Langston, Photo Shoot, photography, Tali Beesley
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
Candid Camera
December 12, 2008 · 1 Comment
Picture it. Montana. 1946. Your grandpa, a strapping young man, is just home from the war. His loving wife (not your grandma, his first wife!) holds a picture of him in his army uniform to her buxom. It has been months since she’s seen him. Will he look the same? Will he still love her? Will he still think she’s beautiful? As he comes out of the small airline terminal, he searches the faces until he sees his wife, and just as he grins and winks at her—Click! Another picture of him is taken.
You, years later, never having met ol’ grandpaps, have two pictures of him, the posed army uniform one and the candid. You value the candid one far more than the posed one, even going so far as to have the candid one framed. In fact, you don’t know where the posed one is anymore. But that’s okay, because you consider the candid photo to be a better representation of your grandfather: you remember your grandmother (his third wife) telling you that she couldn’t help but love the candid photo because it caught the sparkle in his eye that helped him get and lose four wives, making him who he was. It was more authentically Grandpa.
Also, the term candid means frank and open, it implies honesty. Yet, because a photo is candid it does not necessarily mean that the photo has captured an authentic image of who that person is. In your grandpa’s photo, sure. He was a sparkling rake. But this essay isn’t about him.
This essay is about the photos posted above, three of which are from a photo shoot my friends and I had in our backyard. Next to the candid shots, you might think that the photo shoot pictures are less authentically ‘us’ just as you do with your granddads’ two pics. (more…)
Categories: Essays · Images
Tagged: Authenticity, Candid, Candid Camera, Carrie Underwood, Emily Vigor, Jamie Lee Curtis, Molly Langston, SF Gate, Tali Beesley, talimckell
Equal Rights Means Equal Fights…
August 12, 2008 · 1 Comment
Equal Rights Means Equal Fights or What Feminism Means to Me.
by Molly Langston
“Equal rights means equal fights.” This is what my cousins told me growing up. To them it meant they could treat me like one of the boys, push me around, push my buttons. To me, it meant I could take it. I was as tough as them. Not in the same ways. I knew that too. They were bigger than me, so I couldn’t always win physically, but I could always win in my own ways.
It is also what I assumed “feminism” meant. I remember being in elementary school and being asked if I was a “feminist.” I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was something to the effect of “No way. But I like what they do.” Feminist always seemed like a dirty word, like it was a bad thing. I was never sure why they were bad but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be one. At the same time, my mother taught me that I could do anything. It didn’t matter if I was a girl; I could use tools if I wanted, get dirty, or go play with dolls and turn pirouettes. It was up to me, which is what I thought feminism was or should be about. So 15 years later I’m still not sure that I understand what feminism really is as a movement, as a philosophy. 15 years later I’m still not sure why I thought feminism was a dirty word. So in an effort to figure out what “feminism” is in the general sense as well as to examine what “feminism” is to me, I, like most of my generation, turn to Google and Wikipedia.
Michael Steffen
emilyvigor
christopherpatricksteffen
Ajjepsen
Tali Beesley
mlangston
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Andris Liepnieks
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