“It’s because I’m a pig isn’t it? … I did not get the nomination for best actress … can you  honestly say I am not Oscar material? … In this male chauvinist, non pig world, did you ever  think I even stood a chance?”  

Miss Piggy to Johnny Carson at the 52nd Annual Academy Awards.¹ 

I should begin with honesty. A very good place to start. I am not a Muppet fanatic. I have not  always adored Miss Piggy as much as I adore her now. I was, for a long time, much more of an  establishment Disney villain queer. A devoted worshipper at the shrines of Cruella De Vil or  Ursula the Sea Witch. That said, I can happily watch a Muppet film with a glass of wine and enjoy a  pleasant giggle. 

Something about Miss Piggy struck me more deeply than the usual queer coded Disney villains. It  could be the wig. It could be the dress. It is probably the karate chops. As a queer man, I am  constitutionally inclined to admire a confident female character who can karate chop a villain with  one hand and cradle her amphibian lover in the other. 

There is something irresistibly special about Miss Piggy. 

Her position in the public eye fascinates me. How could it not. 

Miss Piggy has been a still performing celebrity since her debut in 1974 as Piggy Lee, a parody of  the singer Peggy Lee, in a Jim Henson television special. ² Since then she has done everything. She has starred in multiple feature films including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The  Fantastic Miss Piggy Show and The Muppets Take Manhattan. She has hosted, guest starred, sung  duets, delivered monologues and stolen scenes with alarming ease. 

Through all of this, Piggy has developed a distinct comedic persona, one that draws heavily from  the work of earlier comedic and dramatic female stars. She is a vessel for those classic feminine  sensibilities, preserving them, exaggerating them and carrying them forward into the present day. In  a strange way, she functions as both archive and performance. 

Miss Piggy does not age. She is, much unlike myself, unvarnished by time. 

Because she does not age, she is spared the usual indignities that accompany celebrity longevity.  There is no physical decline to be commented on, no descent into public cognitive fragility, no late  career unraveling that forces audiences to renegotiate how they feel about her. Unlike so many real  celebrities of the past, she does not become an awful person, nor is she reframed through hindsight  as someone whose opinions now make us wince. 

Stars of her era tend to fall into familiar categories. Some become venerated icons, endlessly  rehabilitated and re-contextualised, like Jane Fonda. Others quietly disappear into the fog of  nostalgia, remembered fondly but vaguely, like your Tallulah Bankhead or Lauren Bacall. Miss  Piggy exists in both spaces at once. 

She is a figure of nostalgia and an active character in the contemporary media landscape. 

She is a kind of immortal Carol Burnett, who fittingly appeared as a guest on The Muppet Show in  1980. 

Because of this, Miss Piggy acts as a bridge to the previous century and to older, conventional ideas  about femininity. She embodies them so fully that she is able to subvert them, twisting tradition into  something that still resonates with modern audiences. Her exaggerated glamour becomes  commentary rather than costume. 

Modern pop stars even echo her influence. Chappell Roan, for example, has been rumoured to  draw inspiration from Miss Piggy’s theatrical silhouettes and unapologetic excess. ³ This makes a strange kind of sense. Piggy understood the power of costume long before the internet turned  fashion into a language of identity. 

I am always interested in who Miss Piggy appears alongside. 

On the original Muppet Show, she sang duets with John Denver, Elton John and Raquel Welch.  Piggy is endlessly adaptable. She bends just enough to fit the guest star of the week without ever  losing herself. Her personality is strong but elastic, capable of surviving any context. 

In the most recent iteration of The Muppet Show, she appears beside Sabrina Carpenter. What is  striking here is that Carpenter subtly adjusts herself to fit Miss Piggy, rather than the other way  around. That alone says a great deal about Piggy’s accumulated cultural weight. By embodying  stereotypes and gleefully undermining them, she has somehow become a modern trendsetter. 

This is not something all boundary breaking celebrities manage. 

Plenty of stars who once seemed radical now feel awkward, dated or outright troubling. Scarlett  Johansson and Diane Keaton (until her death) continue to defend Woody Allen. Nicki Minaj has called herself Trump’s number one fan . Patti Lupone being Patti Lupone . ^{5 6} 

Divas age. They change. Often the media reacts badly to those changes, often unfairly. But Miss  Piggy avoids this entire cycle. At the end of the day, she is literally put back in a box and stored  until she is needed again, perfectly preserved. 

Sabrina Carpenter is an interesting choice, but not an inspired one. The new Muppet Show is  intriguing, yet it ultimately feels like a retreat into familiar territory. If you love The Muppet Show,  you might as well just watch the original. It remains sharper, stranger and more alive than its  successors. 

Miss Piggy’s greatest appeal is her ability to function as a bridge. On the surface, she is just a pig  puppet in a wig and a dress. Beneath that surface is a personality capable of making people feel  seen, affirmed and entertained all at once. 

As an entity, Miss Piggy also works as a quiet teaching tool. For audiences still learning about  pronouns, identity and gender norms, she offers an accessible example. You can point to her and  say, notice how this character refuses to be defined by what society expects of her. That is a deeply  uplifting thing, even when it arrives wrapped in satin gloves and dramatic eyelashes. 

Diva worship is basically my religion, and Miss Piggy absolutely deserves a niche, if not a full altar. 

My favourite historical nugget is Miss Piggy’s 1979 campaign for the leading actress Oscar for her  role in The Muppet Movie. It is what I love most about her. It felt like a genuine expression of  character rather than a corporate publicity stunt. That campaign even produced a wonderfully  absurd exchange between ABC’s Hughes Rudd and Academy President Fay Kanin. 

“To see Miss Piggy is to think of Olivia De Haviland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid  Bergman, Oscar winners all. So why shouldn’t Piggy have an Oscar?” 

“You know we all do love Miss Piggy,” Kanin replied, “but the rules of the Academy say that  we give awards and nominations to actors and actresses, not to characters, and since Miss  Piggy is a character, we just can’t, we can’t do that.” 

Miss Piggy, of course, would disagree. And she would be right in doing so.

The post The Glamorous, Immortal Nostalgia of Miss Piggy  appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Cole left his desk and stood in the office doorway. “You doing okay, buddy?” he asked.

Imad regarded him with eyes that seemed too big for his face. “I’ve been under the weather,” he replied. “Too much reading. You know how it is.”

“I’m more of an audiobook man myself.” Cole cleared his throat. “Listen, Imad. I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t look so great. Do you want to sit down before you head out? I’ve still got some soda from the graduation party in the minifridge. You’d be doing me a favor if you took one.”

A wan smile surfaced on Imad’s face. He took a step toward the office, but his expression twisted into a grimace as his laptop bag shifted against his side. “Thanks, but I’d better get going,” he muttered.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone? Like a Lyft or something?” Cole offered, but Imad shook his head and slipped through the door to the stairs. 

Cole watched as he left. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the corridor, but he could have sworn he saw a sheen of sweat on Imad’s forehead. It was probably nothing more serious than a summer cold, but Cole wondered what Imad could have read to make his face so pale. 

As he indulged in speculation, Cole’s imagination got the better of him. Miskatonic University was famous for housing a large collection of books once deemed heretical by the large universities in Boston. Even today, books bound in human skin occupied a substantial division of the library archives. What if Imad had gotten sick from contact with one of the books in the special collections?

A story about a forbidden book would make a great podcast episode. The most downloaded episode on Cole’s feed was a story about a cursed doll he’d found on Etsy. Creepy dolls were a dime a dozen, but the pink mildew poking out of this doll’s cracked porcelain scalp was something special. The listing said the seller was local, so Cole sent her a message and requested an in-person viewing of the doll. The seller immediately replied with her address.

When Cole drove over, he found the doll perched on the edge of the rotting concrete porch of an abandoned wastewater plant. It sat in a puddle of something that wasn’t quite liquid. Cole was painfully aware that he’d walked headlong into a prank, but he didn’t touch the doll. He had no interest in mucking about with the neon fungus infesting its hair, but he was more than happy to take a photo. 

Cole invented a lurid story about the doll for his podcast. Sure enough, listeners loved it. He resented the popularity of such obvious clickbait, but it served its purpose. For a time, at least. As was so often the case with online content, interest waned quickly. He needed another hit. Cole fancied himself to be a literary horror specialist, and he used his show to discuss writers like M.R. James and Elizabeth Gaskell alongside twentieth-century film noir. An episode about a cursed book had the potential to draw an audience, and it would be a much better ambassador for the show than a fabricated story about a cursed doll.

When he introduced himself at department parties, Cole didn’t hesitate to tell new acquaintances that he hosted a podcast. He’d even printed a business card on handsome matte black cardstock with his name and website. Most people accepted the card, but very few asked him what he meant when he described his field as “dark academia.” Perhaps they assumed he was complaining about grad school. 

To be fair, Cole had tried his hand at a graduate program, but only briefly, and only at a small department at a state school in Ohio. The college’s fluorescent-lit cinderblock buildings didn’t contribute to a scholarly state of mind, and Cole dropped out after his first semester. He took the opportunity to relocate to Boston, where he found a job writing copy for the alumni magazine of a liberal arts school. 

Far from being the ancient and shadow-blighted city he’d read so much about, Boston was a textbook case of gentrification, especially the neighborhood around the university. After a year of mounting debt with nary a Gothic spire in sight, Cole found a listing for an administrative assistant at the Classics Department of Miskatonic University in Arkham. There wasn’t much charm or prestige out in the Essex County suburbs, but it was hard to deny the lure of cutting his rent in half. 

Cole was interviewed by the department chair, a harassed-looking elderly gentleman in a threadbare blazer. The chair informed Cole that there were no other applicants, and that the position was his if he wanted it. He would be working under the head administrator, a cheerful red-faced woman named Peggy who introduced herself with a wave. The chair didn’t seem overly concerned with how the department was run, and Cole suspected that Peggy had acquired the blush on her cheeks from a liquid lunch. He accepted the job on the spot.

The Classics Department was like any other office, equipped with outdated computers and furniture straight from wholesale. The industrial wall-to-wall carpeting bore the stains of years of department parties, and a neglected snake plant struggled valiantly by the lone window. Cole didn’t see much of the professors, and the grad students were an uninspiring bunch interested primarily in gossip. 

Imad was different. As far as Cole could tell, he was the only person who made use of the shared grad student office. He came in every afternoon, and he always stopped by the department office to say hello before disappearing into the small room at the end of the corridor.

Imad told Cole that he was working on his dissertation, a comparison of Near Eastern gnostic texts from the seventh and eighth centuries. He more properly belonged to the Religious Studies department, he’d explained, but it was dissolved the same semester he finished his coursework. Cole didn’t follow his breakdown of the situation, which had something to do with falling enrollments and shrinking budgets, but he understood that Imad had been taken in by the Classics Department as a courtesy. 

Cole asked about the progress of Imad’s work every afternoon, and Imad was always ready with a concise and practical explanation. It didn’t escape Cole’s notice that Imad was blessed with a mellow yet resonant voice that would sound excellent on tape.

Cole gradually developed a casual friendship with Imad over the course of the spring semester, and he came to look forward to Imad’s visits to the office. Once classes ended and the students disappeared from campus, however, Imad started to change. He lost weight, and his cheeks became so hollow that his eyes seemed to bulge from his face. The golden tan of his skin faded to a sickly olive. His beard was patchy and uneven. 

And there was another thing. Imad had begun to smell. The odor that lingered behind him wasn’t unpleasant, but it was odd. The smell reminded Cole of wet asphalt drying in the sun after the rain. Or like an antique doll sitting in a puddle of creosotic slime outside an abandoned water treatment plant in the twilight of rural Ohio. 

Cursed book or not, something was going on, and Cole figured that he owed it to himself to get to the bottom of whatever was troubling Imad. With almost no work over the summer and a boss who only rarely bothered to show up to the office, it’s not as if he had anything else to do. 

There weren’t many students on campus during the summer. Truth be told, there weren’t many students on campus during the school year. Cole was given to understand that Miskatonic’s enrollments had been falling with each successive semester. This didn’t surprise him. The campus was filled with stately old buildings, but none of them had been maintained for years. The gym had been built in the 1970s, and the dorms a decade earlier. It wasn’t the sort of place that attracted students. 

Regardless, Cole was required to be in the office until the end of working hours. He replied to emails in the morning and spent the afternoon in comfortable solitude searching for stories online. 

He’d recently started researching the Theosophical Society Lodge next to campus. The Lodge had supposedly held seances well into the twentieth century, but they apparently stopped on the eve of the Great War. The building now housed a library that served as a stage for public lectures on world religions, some of which had been recorded.  

Cole had just downloaded the most recent lecture when Imad walked into the office. He looked even worse than usual. His face had gone from olive to yellow, and the sheen of grease on his forehead was unmistakable.

Cole swallowed his shock as he greeted Imad. “Hey, so,” he began. “I was reading about modern Gnosticism. Not much to do here over the summer, right? And I was wondering. How would you pronounce, ah, Mandaeism?”

“Mandaeism? You pronounced it correctly. The Arabic is al-Mandāʾiyya, but Mandaeism is fine for general use. Why do you ask?”

“I was fishing for material for my podcast. I read that a lot of Iraqis moved to the suburbs of DC during the early 2000s. Apparently, one community brought lead amulets written in a form of Aramaic that no one at the Smithsonian can read.” 

“I wouldn’t say that no one can read them,” Imad replied. “Even if the ganzibria priests couldn’t transliterate the written text, they’d be able to recite the historiola.”

“The historiola? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that term.”

“A historiola is a short story about a ritual. The act of reading the story functions as a performance of the ritual itself, like a magic spell.”

“How does that work?” Cole asked. 

Imad shrugged. “It’s magic. Who can say how it works? Still, it’s probably for the best that no one at the Smithsonian can read the amulets. You wouldn’t want to pronounce the Aramaic with too much accuracy. If the divine creator brought this world into existence with a word, it stands to reason that another word might open the gates between worlds. That’s a metaphor for the expansiveness of spirituality, of course,” he added with a smile, “but one can never be too careful.”

“Interesting,” Cole said, and it was. The idea that the act of reading could serve as a magic ritual was intriguing. “So what are you translating this afternoon?”

“Well,” Imad started to say, but he winced as he leaned against the waist-high counter separating the office from the faculty mailboxes. It could have been a trick of the light, but something seemed to ripple under his layers of sweaters.

Imad caught the look of concern on Cole’s face. “Sorry,” he said as he turned toward the door. “I might have had too much tea with lunch. I’m going to visit the bathroom and head to my office.”

Cole nodded and returned his eyes to his computer screen, hoping that he’d staged a decent performance of polite interest. He hesitated to cross the line of professional distance with the members of his department. He couldn’t afford to move back to Boston, and he needed this job. Arkham wasn’t the most prosperous suburb, and the only other paying work he’d be likely to find here was at the fulfillment center warehouse by the highway. 

Still, he liked Imad. Professionalism be damned. 

Later that afternoon, he brewed two bags of mint tea in paper cups and carried them down the hall to the graduate student office. When Imad answered the door, Cole was struck by the wet smell that emerged from the room. It was as if something spilled on the carpet and never dried properly. 

“So I was thinking,” he said, “no one is using the department chair’s office over the summer. I was planning to air it out a bit. Care to join me?” 

The chair’s office was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and equipped with the sort of grommeted furniture that populated movies about gentlemen explorers. It smelled like fine paper and old leather, and the sunlight that filtered through the cloudy panes of glass in the mullioned windows was bright but gentle.

 “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you’re working on?” Cole asked as he sat down. 

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” Imad replied. He sank back in his chair as he took a long sip of tea. “At the moment I’m working on a translation of the Kitab al-Azif. This is a gnostic text that originated somewhere in the vicinity of Yemen in the early eighth century. It was believed to have potent magical properties, and it was translated into several languages over the centuries. 

“Manuscripts of the Azif managed to travel around the world, but they’re remarkably rare. When I was doing research for my MA thesis, I’d see one translation or another cited in various papers, but I could never find the original source. It turns out that the only physical copies in the United States are held by the Miskatonic library, which is why I applied to do my PhD here. 

“I thought it might be interesting to compare the versions to understand how key phrases were translated by different cultures. When I spoke to the head of Special Collections here at our library, she was happy to share a PDF of a tenth-century Arabic manuscript held by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The file isn’t the best quality, to be honest. The manuscript is a copy of a copy of a copy, and the source is badly damaged. I’m doing the best I can with what I have available. 

“I’d like to write a grant to go see the original in person, but I’m not at that stage yet. Maybe next spring? I could use a vacation.” Imad shrugged and took another sip of tea. Cole was relieved to see the color returning to his face. 

“So this Kitab al…”

“Azif. It’s a poetic word that refers to the chirping of nocturnal insects.”

“So this Kitab al-Azif, what’s it about? If that’s the right question.”

“No, that’s a great question. The book holds that there’s a deeper truth to the universe, and the author – we don’t know his true name – tells a remarkably coherent story as he explains what this supposed truth is. He claims that our universe is like the thin film on the surface of a bubble, and he believes that there are all manner of things outside the bubble we can’t see. 

“This isn’t an original idea, but what’s interesting about the Azif is that its author provides a history of our planet long before humans lived here. Most creation myths describe humans as being brought into existence shortly after the universe itself, but the Azif speaks of genesis in terms of cycles. People that weren’t human inhabited the planet before us, and people who aren’t human will live here after us.”

“That sounds kind of Buddhist,” Cole cut in.     

“Exactly! There’s a great deal of Eastern thought incorporated into these ideas. All times exist at once, simultaneously, and in different dimensions. The borders between dimensions can be weakened by magic, supposedly. By the act of reading the Azif, the creatures occupying other dimensions can be invited into our own world.” 

“I’d love to meet them,” Cole remarked. “I wonder what they look like?”

Imad stared at his tea as he shifted the paper cup between his hands. “They’re probably not what you expect. I think we’ve gotten used to the strange creatures that appear in movies. When you finally see the monster on the other side of the door, it becomes familiar, like a type of mascot. We can see horrible things online whenever we want, from deep sea fish to the microorganisms that live inside our bodies, and we’ve learned to love them. But maybe there are things out there that are so alien that we’ll never be able to process them, either intellectually or emotionally.

“Gnosticism seems so natural in the twenty-first century, doesn’t it? Of course there’s a deeper truth to the universe. All we have to do is use science to figure it out. People publish their findings, and what they learn becomes real to us in the form of technological innovation. But the modern Western world didn’t invent science. Other cultures studied the stars and the principles of chemistry and physics long before Aristotle began giving lectures at his Lyceum. So why did gnostic ideas fall out of favor? Why did people stop thinking about the universe as a malleable series of experiential planes? I wonder if perhaps someone saw the monster on the other side of the door and decided that it would be better if the truth remained hidden.”

“Wow. I wish I could have recorded that.”

  Imad looked up from his tea. “What do you mean?”

“That would have been a fantastic interview for my podcast. You have a great voice for audio.”

“Do I?” Imad laughed, but his mirth vanished as his face twisted into a grimace.

Cole frowned. “Listen, Imad. You’re really not looking so great.”

“I’m fine.” As Imad rose to his feet, Cole couldn’t help notice the awkward movement of his body. The way his sweaters bunched around his torso was decidedly odd. Something like a thick strip of cloth hung from the back of the layers of fabric. As Cole watched Imad leave the room, he could have sworn that it twitched.

Cole returned to campus later that evening. He unlocked the department office and sat at his desk without turning on the lights. He considered making a show of checking his email, but the performance would be for no one’s benefit but his own. As long as he was here, he might as well get this over with. 

Cole wanted to tell himself he was sneaking around for Imad’s own good. That was true, to a certain extent, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He’d always regretted not investigating the waterlogged doll, and he promised himself that he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that again. Still, as he set off down the dim corridor of faculty offices, he couldn’t help but feel guilty. The grad student office wasn’t a private space, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t violating Imad’s trust. 

There was no strange smell when he opened the office door, just the lingering aroma of bergamot tea. The two cubicles closest to the door were empty. Imad had claimed the cubicle by the window, and he’d dragged a table next to the wall behind his chair. It was covered in library books.

There was nothing unusual on Imad’s desk – a bottle of aspirin, a jumble of cheap pens, and a spare phone charger. He hadn’t pinned any photos to the corkboard cubicle divider, but a collection of thank-you cards from students was propped in a corner. Several manilla folders were stacked on top of each other in the opposite corner, each neatly labeled in Arabic.

Cole opened one of the folders. The paper inside was covered in dark smudges. This must be a copy of the manuscript scan Imad told him about. Cole didn’t know anything about Arabic, but even he could tell how bad the image quality was. It was amazing that Imad could read this at all. Interleaved between the photocopies were pages torn from a yellow legal pad. The loose papers were covered with annotations surrounding a handwritten English translation.

 Cole scanned what Imad had written, but none of it made sense to him. As far as he could tell, this particular passage had something to do with constellations. The next page was a clean photocopy of what must be a Latin translation, and the next was a translation of the Latin into severely antiquated English. Under that was a printed copy of the Wikipedia page about the sky quadrants used by medieval astronomers.

Something seized in Cole’s chest as he flipped through the pages. This was exactly the sort of academic work he once imagined himself doing. A lone scholar sitting at a quiet desk with nothing but paper and a pen as he studied ancient texts, taking careful notes while excavating the meaning of words written in centuries past. There was a certain romance to the idea, and Cole wasn’t at all surprised to find that Imad’s handwriting was as beautiful as his voice.

He picked up the legal pad sitting at the center of the desk and flipped to the last few pages. A word written in capital letters immediately caught his attention: SHOGGOTH. Under it, Imad had written: “What is formless will be given form. The shoggoth will heed the call of its creator, if called in a [dream??] voice speaking its proper name. That which hides in the deathless gap between hours can be retrieved by a shoggoth, grasped within its hands without hands.”

The next page contained a series of vectors that Imad had labeled with numbers and overlaid with pencil sketches of constellations. Cole recognized the Big Dipper of Ursa Major, as well as the three stars of Orion’s Belt, but something about the angles formed by the connected lines felt wrong. Looking at them too closely made his head hurt. 

The next page was a photocopy of an illuminated manuscript written in Latin. Cole didn’t understand Imad’s annotations, many of which were crossed out, but a square yellow sticky note appended to the bottom of the page caught his attention. Almost without being aware of it, he read the note out loud. “The hands without hands, fhtagn ph’nglui.”

As the words left his mouth, the image of the thick pale thread emerging from Imad’s sweaters jumped into Cole’s mind. He was struck by the smell of water. Roiling seas under an endless expanse of sky, stars and constellations without number, pinpricks of light fitting together into an intricate matrix of impossible geometry.

Something unpleasant rose in his throat. He barely made it to the bathroom in time.

Cole couldn’t leave the building quickly enough. He was sick again in the bushes beside the parking lot.

It was only sitting in his car, with the air conditioning blasting in his face, that his nausea dissipated. As he clutched the wheel, Cole chided himself for letting his imagination get the better of him. A cursed book was all well and good, but the notion of a cursed photocopy was absurd. He’d managed to spook himself for no reason. Whatever was going on with Imad had nothing to with star charts or Latin manuscripts. A section of the roof of Whateley Hall had collapsed during the heavy snowfall of the previous winter, and Cole wouldn’t be surprised if it had resulted in extensive water damage to the building. The insulation in the walls was more than likely riddled with mildew.  

Someone should get Imad set up in a different office. That someone, as it happened, was him. He’d bring it up tomorrow, Cole resolved as he backed out of his parking space. Still, he was troubled by the word Imad had written in rough letters at the top of his legal pad. What the hell was a shoggoth? 

Cole woke up the next morning haunted by a lingering sense of shame. What had possessed him to drive back to campus and sneak into Imad’s office? That was creepier than any cursed book could ever be. He needed to talk to Imad. Really talk to him. Maybe even ask him out to dinner.  

Cole washed his hair for the first time in a week and trimmed his beard as it dried. His apartment occupied the top floor of an old Queen Anne house, and the morning sun streamed through the tall windows under the peaked gambrel roof. Songbirds chirped in the branches of the stately ash tree growing beside the house. Cole had been toying with the possibility of moving back to Ohio, but he couldn’t deny that there was a certain charm to summer mornings in New England.

In the department office, he chatted with Peggy as he handled the visa paperwork of an incoming grad student, all the while feeling a sort of secondhand pride that someone would come all the way from abroad to study at Miskatonic. He ate lunch on the outside patio with the two elderly women who ran the office of the Modern Languages department. They showed him photos of their cats on their phones and told him stories about their grandchildren as they enjoyed the sunshine. Afterward, they brushed their teeth together in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, which they agreed was the nicest in Whateley Hall.

 Cole waited for Imad to come to the office. He waited so hard that he couldn’t read Wikipedia, not even the entry about the mysteriously nondescript warehouses used to house banks of internet servers. Everything he saw on social media annoyed him. Eventually he gave up on trying to do anything productive and opened a website that emulated screensavers from the 1990s.

After spending half an hour watching digital fish float through an overbright coral reef, Cole realized that he was being silly. It was a beautiful summer day. There was no need for him to kill time in an empty office while Imad was making himself sick looking at crusty photocopies of wizard nonsense for the sake of a dissertation that no one would ever read. 

Cole’s palms were sweaty as he knocked on the door of the grad student office. What if Imad had noticed that his research notes had been disturbed? 

“Imad?” he called out, but there was no answer. He wiped his hands on his pants before grasping the doorknob. At best, he’d have to apologize to Imad for going through his papers. At worst, he’d have to drive him to the hospital. 

There was another possibility: a void, a vacuum, a tear in the fabric of reality. A window opening onto an oceanic abyss trapped beneath sheets of ice for millennia. A silent city suspended under lightless stars. A multitude of insectile eyes focused on the present moment: a miniscule oasis in the ever-expanding desert of time and space. 

Cole opened the door. The office was empty.

The window was open, and a faint breeze carried the scent of freshly cut grass into the room. A ceramic mug of tea sat on the table next to a laptop with a burnished copper finish. 

Cole closed the door and stepped back into the corridor, where he was greeted by a strange but familiar smell. The odor wasn’t unpleasant, just unusual. It reminded him of the lake shore where his uncles had hosted cookouts when he was a kid. He’d spent most of his summers indoors, reading his way through the local library’s paltry stock of fiction. His isolation made the outings to the lake with his cousins all the sweeter. In truth, Cole loved the smell of water, and he had a good idea of where it was coming from. 

He retraced his steps down the corridor until he arrived at the bathroom by the elevators. With no hesitation whatsoever, he went inside. 

At first, Cole didn’t understand the sight that greeted him. He recognized Imad’s face, but it took a few seconds to process the rest of him. Five fleshy appendages ringed with red patches of irritated skin emerged from Imad’s naked torso. The tentacles were limp but twitched spasmodically. 

Beads of sweat pooled on Imad’s forehead as he stared at Cole in horror, his sweaters clutched in his hands. “Listen, I don’t… I mean, I can explain,” he stammered. 

“You can explain later,” Cole replied, his concern for Imad’s discomfort winning out over his shock. “Just sit tight. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

Cole dashed to the department office, hoping against hope that Imad didn’t flee. He grabbed a can of ginger ale from the office minifridge and rushed back to the bathroom.

He found Imad sitting on the bench by the door. His face was utterly forlorn, and his tentacles waved listlessly in Cole’s direction. 

“Buddy, you’ve got to hydrate,” Cole said, popping the tab on the can of ginger ale.  

Imad accepted the can with a curt nod and drank. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The words of the ritual,” he muttered. “The book was a historiola, but I got the words wrong. I couldn’t read them correctly.”

“Maybe you can get them to send you a better photocopy next time,” Cole replied. “For the time being, you need to take better care of yourself. Your, uh… Tentacles? Can I call them that? Whatever’s going on there. It looks like they’re irritated by your clothing. Peggy has a giant bottle of hand lotion on her desk. I’m sure she won’t mind if you use it.” 

“This doesn’t bother you?” Imad asked.  

“It’s not making you evil or anything, is it?”

“I don’t think so.” Imad’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just a lot to get used to. And sometimes I see things I’m not sure are actually there.”

“What type of things? Anything fun?”

Imad managed a weak grin. “Why? Do you still want to interview me for your podcast?”

“Forget the podcast. But I’d love to talk with you. I’m not busy right now. Do you want to take a walk? Maybe go out for coffee or something?”

Imad’s tentacles perked up at the question. “Are you asking me out?” 

“I… yes. I’m sorry if that’s not appropriate. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“You don’t want to make me uncomfortable.” Imad stared at Cole in disbelief before breaking into laughter. His tentacles undulated with good cheer. 

Cole returned his smile. He’d been worried that something was terribly wrong with Imad, but this wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Imad’s tentacles were kind of cute. Perhaps they would have been more horrific if they’d come directly from a cursed book, but there wasn’t much damage a grainy photocopy could do. Whatever this Kitab al-Azif was, he and Imad could handle it together, preferably after they’d gotten something to eat. And who knows, it might even make a good episode for his podcast. 

The post The Annotated Kitab al-Azif appeared first on The New Absurdist.

If he were to look up, he might see his own reflection in the mirrored ceiling of the elevator. An anonymous dark head, an anonymous gray suit. But Virgil is not the type of person to look up. Instead, he tilts his wrist so that the face of his watch blinks on. Six minutes early. Perfectly on schedule. 

Virgil is headed to the third floor. In fact, the elevator will only deliver him to the third floor. What actually lies on the floors above, the land of vision and dental and paid vacation time and conference calls with the CEO, he does not know. And however splendid floors four-through-seven are in reality, Virgil’s imagination is constantly concocting something much, much greater. 

The elevator doors glide open. Already the office is dotted with faces, eyes that twitch up when they hear the mechanical thunk of cogs sliding into place. Across the rat-maze sprawl of cubicles, Jude Esperanza is standing in a cluster of employees, waiting for his turn to speak. Jude, too, looks up when he hears the elevator. Jude’s eyes land on Virgil’s face, and stay there. 

Virgil imagines the office as a slaughterhouse. Meathooks swinging from heavy wrought-iron chains. Bodies pale and doughy, strung up by the ankles. Featureless masses of skin and sinew, strawberry-red muscle and cauliflower-white fat. Nail gun, bone saw, twine. Bodies heavy and ripe for the picking. 

Virgil blinks when he hears the elevator doors start to drift shut. The office is normal again, clean and white. No hooks, no white hanging bodies. He slides his foot forward into the doors’ path. For a second they just hang there, nameless hunks of machinery. Then, a groan as they slide open again. Shaking his head like he is trying to dislodge a stubborn shard of shrapnel, he shoulders his messenger bag and walks to his desk. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows colonize the west wall. Outside, the smoggy sky, easy fodder for habitual daydreamers. Past the asphalt parking lot a smudge of black against the snow, high-rises compete for dominance over the skyline. It is a bitter, brisk day. Comparatively, the inside of the office is sterile and warm, an incubator. 

The sound of a completely superfluous briefcase being slammed on a desk makes Virgil look over. Darcy, sliding her rolling chair over the linoleum, waves. 

All of the cubicles in CronosTech offices are made entirely of glass. It is supposed to symbolize something, Virgil reasons, but he can never quite figure out what. It makes him feel like an object on display. At any rate, Darcy can always see him through their shared wall, and seizes onto any moment of accidental eye contact as an invitation to chat. 

“Hey, you!” she chirps. “How’re you holding up?” Six weeks since the operation, and Darcy is still perpetually interested in Virgil’s health. 

“Fine. You?” 

“Oh, alright. My knee’s been bugging me again.” 

Virgil frowns, an appropriate facsimile of sympathy. “Sorry to hear that.” His hand twitches toward his mouse. Darcy, not finished, inches her chair towards him. “Did you hear,” her voice the stage-whisper of the unrepentant workplace gossiper, “That 

Jude got the implant?” When she says implant she points to her temple, although Virgil knows the implant is located at the back of the skull. 

“Isn’t that confidential?” Fragments of light glint off of Darcy’s round glasses. Virgil feels a headache coming on. 

Darcy ignores him. “I mean, I’m not totally certain, but it makes sense, right? I always got the impression that Jude would do anything to get a…competitive edge.” The implant, as it is colloquially known, does not yet have an official name. Still officially in testing, the offer to install it had been cordially extended to select employees at CronosTech. When one really considers it, the name feels like a misnomer. The unassuming little chip does not truly implant something new inside its host, but takes something away. The idea for the implant is this: humans, in modern day, developed countries, no longer have any need for the sensation of hunger. Certain innovators and entrepreneurs, funded and championed by CronosTech, consider hunger an evolutionary excess, as useless as the vestigial tail, and a nuisance. So, they began developing a procedure that could eliminate it. Virgil, of course, eagerly went under the knife. 

When someone is hungry, they are uncomfortable, and therefore less productive. Since the operation, Virgil’s focus has hardened, sharp as the edge of a scythe. He’s at the top of his game. He finishes work quicker. Completes extra tasks. All the while, he feels lighter, buoyant. It’s like a tiny but impossibly heavy rock in his stomach has been extracted. 

Darcy huffs at his lack of reaction to the news. “I just thought you’d like to know.” Jude is the only person on the floor who Virgil considers his direct competitor. He had been promoted to the second floor only a few weeks after Virgil, and was mere days behind in the ascent to the third. And now the (alleged) implant. Virgil has the sinister impression that the man is gaining on him. 

He realizes he’s been staring out the window. A powdery white cloud speared on the spire of a high-rise, a car backing out of a parking space. He turns back to his computer, and gets to work. 

Lunch break still hasn’t stopped feeling strange. Each day watching his coworkers take their meals from the fridge, food smells mingling together: leftover half of a burrito, BLT on sourdough, kimchi fried rice. Sitting around the break-room table, sidelong glances, everyone pretending they don’t know or haven’t guessed. Making small talk: weather, layoffs, weekend plans. The rational part of Virgil knows that he does still need to eat, despite the lack of hunger signals to his brain, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s faking it. 

Today he extracts a deli sandwich from the fridge, ham and cheese, with his name scrawled across the side of the packaging. The break room is curiously empty for the time of day. The coffeemaker burbles diligently in the corner. 

The door swings open as Virgil unwraps his sandwich, background chatter and keyboard clacks seeping in from outside. It’s Jude. 

Partially stooped and awash with the bluish light of the fridge. Jude’s long hand wrapped around a tupperware container. 

The whir of the microwave settles into the otherwise quiet room. Virgil’s sandwich tastes of nothing. Jude is staring intently at the microwave like it contains the answer to an essential question. He is an unreasonably tall man, almost Muppet-esque with his oversized, gangly limbs. The wispy ends of his hair cover the nape of his neck, where the incision scar would be. If it were true. 

The microwave beeps, and Jude sits opposite Virgil. He avoids eye contact in a way which Virgil considers a purposeful slight against him, as he pries off the lid of the tupperware. Steam rises languidly off the liquid within. Who in their right mind brings soup to work? 

“How are the reports coming?” Jude has the low sort of voice that hums in your chest. “Fine.” 

“Anya says she wants them done by Tuesday, did you get that email?” 

“They’ll be done.”

To watch Jude dip his plastic spoon into the soup, blow on it, and bring the spoon to his lips, is almost unbearable. Something about it repulses Virgil. He yearns desperately to avert his eyes. Yet, he does not, and instead watches Jude’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. Something passes in his expression, his mouth tightens and his nose crinkles almost imperceptibly, which Virgil recognizes. His suspicions confirmed: Jude has gotten the implant. 

The loading symbol is an ouroboros, never satisfied. Virgil clicks the mouse impatiently, although he knows that will only slow the machine down more. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS: functional computers. 

The weekend had passed uneventfully. Virgil spent Friday night watching old sitcom reruns, went grocery shopping on Saturday (shopping expenses lowered since getting the implant; no use splurging on on pricey ingredients when it all tastes the same), and on Sunday called his mother. She chided him for not going to church, and interrogated him about his mental health. She was convinced that the implant was bad for him, and monitored carefully for adverse side effects. Throughout the weekend, the image of Jude bringing the spoon to his lips and swallowing painfully would suddenly appear, unbidden, in his mind, which he stamped down with the vehemence of a cowboy crushing a snake beneath his boot. 

The document loads at last, and Virgil is once again free to insert figures into his spreadsheet: numbers upon numbers. Dollar signs, expenditures, profits, slotted neatly into the green and red checkerboard. Everything in its rightful place. 

There is a tapping on the glass of his cubicle, like a bird pecking at a window. When he looks up, Virgil expects to see Darcy’s owl-eyes peering at him through the fishbowl of her cubicle. Instead, he is met with Jude’s cool dark stare.

“Sorry, it looked like you were in the zone there.” In the zone sounds stilted, almost ironic, coming out of Jude’s mouth. 

“Yeah, well.” Virgil rubs at a sore spot on his neck, which continually reappears despite CronosTech’s patented ergonomic chairs and keyboards. “What’s going on?” “The reports? I’m supposed to pass them onto Anya, and you said on Friday—” “Oh, right.” Virgil had finished them, in what some might consider a frenzy, after his and Jude’s lunch conversation. Then he had promptly forgotten about them. “I just need to print them out. Give me a second.” 

Virgil opens the document, and the ouroboros returns. His mouse hovers over the print button. Jude taps a bony finger against the top of the cubicle. 

Virgil presses PRINT. He rises from his chair at the same time that Jude starts to move towards the printer. 

“I got it—”, “It’s fine—” 

Their voices overlap each other. Eyes track them across the room, their buzz of adrenaline. Virgil and Jude plant themselves on either side of the printer, as it hacks and shudders like a cat coughing up a hairball. Over the plastic hull of the machine, Jude’s jaw is set and his eyes are hard stones. He looks wildly uncomfortable. Is he sweating? The printer spits out a sheet of paper, then another. Something unfamiliar churns in Virgil’s stomach as he watches Jude pull at the collar of his button-up, exposing a narrow strip of collarbone. 

Virgil imagines a butcher’s shop. Dull thud of knife hitting cutting board. Thick strong hands knuckling slabs of meat tender and pliant. Cleaver glinting, silver-toothed smile. Pool of red bleeding pink at the edges as it glugs down the drain. Raw crimson scent that settles at the back of the throat. Intoxicatingly sweet. Virgil takes a deep breath in.

The printer sighs, and the third sheet of paper is released. Virgil darts his hand out and grabs the stack. Jude tries to do the same, too late. His hand jerks out and slams against the printer with a thunk. 

“I’ll take these to Anya myself,” Virgil says coolly. 

When he returns at last to his cubicle, Darcy is, as usual, not working. “Jesus, Virgil, what was that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

It is not until he sighs and clicks open the spreadsheet document again, the blue light washing over his face, that he realizes what the strange churning feeling had been. It was hunger.

The hold music is a rendition of one of Beethoven’s concertos, distorted and fuzzy over the phone. Virgil stands under the awning of the bus stop, watching the rain pour. A car rolls by, spraying up a sheet of water. A single bulbous drop lands on the patent leather of Virgil’s shoe. 

Beethoven comes to a stop. A laconic voice on the other end says, “How can I help you?” “Hi, yes, I’m calling to get in contact with Dr. R—?” 

“This is his office. What is this regarding?” 

“He implanted the CronosTech, uh, thing in me, and it’s malfunctioning.” “Are you experiencing any of the following symptoms: swelling, fever, dizziness, fatigue, memory loss, hearing loss,” The voice rattles off. 

“Well, it’s just that I’m hungry again. But it’s not a normal hunger, it’s stronger, it feels… weird. Bad.” Virgil takes a gulping breath. “I’m not myself. I’m thinking strange things.” “So.” The word is heavy, drawn-out. A shuffling of paper, a sigh. “Dr. R—’s earliest appointment slot is in February. We can have you come in then, if it works for you?”

Virgil leans his head against the cold metal of the pole, feeling slightly faint. “Hello?” comes the voice. “Are you still there?” 

“Yes,” Virgil says. “February works fine.” 

The receptionist confirms the details of the appointment, and Virgil resuscitates frozen fingers to add the date to his phone calendar. He is shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat when someone ducks under the awning beside him. 

Jude nods in greeting. Virgil forces his face into a smile. 

“I’ve never seen you take the bus,” Jude says. 

“I normally Uber.” Finances have been tight. 

Jude nods thoughtfully, like Virgil has just provided some keen insight. 

Virgil looks back at the ground. The gutter is congested with slush, gray-brown and sluggish. The churning in his stomach is back. 

“Do you ever feel,” Jude says into the thick silence, “Like you’re being compartmentalized?” 

“What? No.” 

He glances over his shoulder. “In there, I mean. At work.” 

Virgil shrugs. 

“I just…” His eyes are darting around, like he’s hunting for some secret camera or enemy agent. He looks into the headlights of oncoming traffic, pigeons resting on a telephone wire, the shuttered windows of the building across the road, but never at Virgil’s face. “I’ve been feeling claustrophobic, lately. Yesterday I nearly hyperventilated in the elevator. The third floor is so small all of the sudden. It’s like I’m a figure in a spreadsheet, and I’m stuck in my stupid rectangle. And I can’t move, even if I wanted to, until they decide it’s time to slot me into the next compartment. And maybe the next compartment will be a little bigger, but maybe it’ll be just the same as it’s always been.” 

Virgil doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should defend CronosTech, something about the ingenuity of the company, the beauty and symmetry of it. If Jude doesn’t like being a tiny cog in an immaculate machine, that’s his problem. But the words aren’t coming, they’re stuck somewhere in his small intestine, forming a hard knot. 

“I don’t know,” Jude says. “I just feel like there’s something missing. A hole. Something like that.” 

A distant rumble. The screech of heavy, unoiled machinery. The bus is here. Jude steps towards the bus as the doors swing open. He looks back expectantly. “I’m taking the next one. This one doesn’t go to my place.” Virgil lies. The thought of 

close, humid quarters, of beads of moisture trickling down the windows, of heat and fabric and skin, of Jude’s bobbing Adam’s apple, makes him feel sick. 

The rain does not let up until the next day. Puddles in the office parking lot shimmer iridescent like the hard shells of beetles. The sun pokes reticently out from behind a fat gray cloud. Darcy is humming an infuriatingly cheery tune, breathy and soft. Virgil supposes she’s cheerful because it’s almost 5pm, when they can all pack up and go home. But Virgil will be staying late tonight. 

Anya had pulled him aside to point out a miscalculation in his most recent report. Virgil could only stand there like a chastised child, heat creeping into his face. It is unreasonably time-consuming, to fix all the incorrect dates and numbers that had spawned from the initial miscalculation. His eyes are heavy marbles in his cottony skull. Perhaps, on a brighter day, an automated solution to this problem might have found its way onto the FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS list. 

Jude is pretending their rainy conversation never happened, that he never admitted his secret seditious thoughts. He is smiling widely at everyone, baring his big chemically whitened teeth. 

All the while, the pit in Virgil’s stomach expands and expands. He had eaten his deli sandwich today, for the first time in weeks, ravenously. This did nothing to quench the hunger. It boils and palpitates within him until he is certain it will spill out in a great wave, flooding the office with a tide of want. 

Darcy says goodbye as soon as the clock strikes five, power-walking to the door with the tenacity of someone with a hot date. Virgil lacks the energy even to roll his eyes. By the time he inserts the last corrected figure onto the document, the sky outside is the color of wet charcoal. The date of his appointment with Dr. R— could not seem farther away. The printer whirrs and spits. Infernal machine, always complaining. The office is nearly deserted; the motion operated lights over every cubicle but his own have long shut off. His own, and one other, on the other side of the room. Through layer after layer of distorted glass, he can just barely make out the figure sitting behind the desk. 

Virgil takes the papers from the printer, warm like a hand, and tries to ignore the pounding that now thrums in his skull. He is ready to double over from the hunger. He lays the corrected reports down on Anya’s desk, hoping that the speedy correction might win back her favor. 

When he looks up, Jude is there. He’s breathing heavily; Virgil can almost imagine he feels the breath on his own cheek, goosebumping his skin.

The look on Virgil’s face might have registered as surprise in Jude’s mind, because he says, “Sorry to startle you.” 

When Virgil doesn’t reply, he adds, “Burning the midnight oil, you know.” “Me…too.” Virgil manages. 

“But I’m done now.” 

“Me too.” 

Virgil drags his eyes up from the floor, up Jude’s improbably tall frame. For the first time he looks, really looks, into Jude’s eyes. Inkwell black. In those eyes Virgil sees reflected the same hunger that dwells rabid and desperate in his own stomach. The wave inside him crests, foams over. 

Virgil stares. Jude stares back. 

Then, two snarling beasts, they are upon each other. A passerby glancing idly at the scene might have seen a pair of lovers, but lovers do not generally tear each other’s throats. Virgil’s teeth sink into Jude’s neck. Jude drags his nails down Virgil’s back. Blood, hot and sweet, rushes into Virgil’s mouth. The taste of iron and sweat. Jude clutches Virgil’s head, knots his bloody fingers into his hair. His face pressed to Jude’s neck, Virgil swallows to keep from choking. Jude clamps his teeth into Virgil’s shoulder, tearing away a soft chunk of flesh. 

The two dedicated CronosTech employees, locked in their embrace, crash into the nearest cubicle, which shatters into a kaleidoscope of broken glass. There is no time for efficiency, shrewdness, precision. Their work is simple. Simple as the food chain. Simple as carnivorousness. 

It is as if Virgil has been eating gravel all his life, and now he finally has tasted food. Hearty, lush, instinctual. Meanwhile, Jude writhes against him. His teeth ribbon Virgil’s flesh.

Virgil’s shoulder burns, ache laces through him, but the taste is so magnificent he does not care. He will gladly take hunger if it means such bliss.

The post Saturn Devouring His Son appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Lora Lee broke up with the ocean. The news talked about it for as long as they talk about any celebrity drama, so about one afternoon. They mentioned that Lora Lee moved to Amsterdam, and she’s a poet and you know what they say about poets (this is the part where the reader is supposed to nod wisely and try to remember any prejudices about poets). Misspelled her hometown’s name three times in three different articles. 

What the news didn’t say is that Lora Lee wears perfectly ironed shirts and cuts the crusts off her toast. That she hasn’t written for over a month but she sings to the flower pots on her window in the evening. When singing she positions herself so that the flowers and her and the view out of the window fit into a perfect perspective, silhouettes in gold, portrait of an artist in the city of art. Lora Lee has long fingers and smiles with only the corners of her lips. 

Lora has dated lakes, a small, warm-water sea. She wrote poems in the curls of their beaches and they whispered pleasantries in waves, cradled her in mirrored sunsets. They phased in and out of love in soft watercolor touches. It was different, with the ocean. 

They met on a ferry. Lora has a plan for what she’ll do if she finds out the world will end in ten minutes but never had a spare tire, so adventure, so raincoat and rubber boots but no umbrella, face to the rain. The rain is also the ocean (many things are). The ocean ran down Lora’s face with the professional intimacy of a make-up artist, asked her the traveler’s questions: where are you going? Where are you from? Lora’s voice flowed with stories. Somewhere between an evening in Paris two years ago and the pigeon she met in the park this morning Lora invited the ocean to her friend’s gallery opening – Sunsets In Porcelain is perfectly exquisite, I do hope the critics do it justice. They wandered the streets, Lora in her raincoat and the ocean in her sunlit rain, glimpses in puddles and storefront screens. Lora Lee showed her cafes and antique shops, strung in and out of conversations, made every street lamp into a stage and passerby into protagonist. The ocean held most of everything and Lora Lee held the ocean and everything fit. 

They broke up in a year. Lora Lee was sitting on the waves, not quite walking on water but letting it hold her with its being. Lora read her poems from memory. In them the ocean was a field, a desert, lovely beast with stomach full of sun. In her poems the ocean was a woman with a gentle smile and never spoke of anything but love. 

I don’t think I ever felt like this before. 

Like what? 

Small. There is so much of me that never fits in your poems. 

Quaint. Surely nothing important? 

The ocean ran her heavy waves along the bones of ships, bloated corpses centerpieces in the ballet school of scavengers. Took stock of trash islands, strange squirming life, jagged edges and soft, lush rot blooming in her shallows.

I don’t really know. I don’t think you could love any of it. 

Lora lies in bed in her beautiful apartment and runs months through her fingers. Waterside walks, quiet evenings, breakfasts in bed. Carefully curated secrets. Her face smiling back at her from the water. Love story with no beats missed. Roll credits, roll credits, never mind what happens next. 

Lora Lee volunteers at the lost and found, tries to let things be simply things. The young person looking for their phone and the phone the lost and found received a few hours ago do not match in tak, she recommends another lost and found, doesn’t know how the story ends. The lipstick-kiss sealed letter sits and sits and is mostly dust. Every once in a while a person with ink stains on their fingers or lovestruck look walks in, keys and keys and ticket, the letter sits. No address. No narrative. 

On her way to the lost and found Lora greets the bushes, the storefronts, the sidewalk puddle. It’s usually there, shaped by the pavement, sky-colored and oil-painted. No words, small wave, small wave back. 

There’s a name on the outside of the letter and Lora checks the phonebook, not quite sure what she’s looking for. Finds addresses. Anette on Tidorestraat, on Makassarstraat, on Boniplein. Anette by the park and Anette with a full view of the docks, ships and ships and life. Maybe the letter was to go by ship, by train, France to Denmark or the other way around or something else entirely. Maybe the Anette in question is registered as Levi or Antoine or any other ghost. Maybe this story has no ending at all: Lora Lee, dear Lora Lee, is it so against your being to leave anything unfinished? 

The Anette on Tidorestraat cannot speak for long, fatigue lining her face, children noises. Her apartment smells of cats and pasta and looks like it was intended to be something else. She is not looking for letters and she has enough of love. It began to rain between Makassarstraat – sorry, she moved out a few months ago, moved in with her partner, I think, – and Boniplein. It fits, Lora tells herself, the third act rain, of course there would be rain and music and running for the last door, warm orange to contrast the storm, violin music swirling in anxious notes. Rule of threes and third acts. 

A woman answers on the second knock. Smiles with only her lips, interrupts Lora a few sentences in. People are speaking in the living room in hushed voices and her eyes are brimmed with red and she sounds as tired as she looks. 

I’m sorry. I am not expecting any letters. There must have been a misunderstanding. Have a good day. 

The door shuts and Lora stands in the rain and doesn’t notice how the letter is soaked through, the trace of someone’s lips mixing with the ink mixing with the water, one recipient short of a kiss. 

She walks back to the lost and found, keeps her head down, hides from the rain in her jacket. People hurry past and there’s a child stomping through every puddle with all the joy a human heart can hold and she doesn’t take note, doesn’t make it into a poem. The rain feels nothing but wet and cold. 

The lost and found is closed for the day and Lora sits on the steps and nothing, nothing. The world goes on and she has no plot. 

Hi, says the puddle, rippling with rain, a thousand faces per second. Tough day? Lora opens her mouth, closes it. Nods. Lets the silence stretch beyond comfort. 

There’s an absence sitting beside her in the shape of an ocean and there’s an absence in the shape of her, too, and she can’t think of anything to say that would cover it. 

Yeah, she says, three breaths and a few selves later. Something like it. 

The puddle gurgles in sympathy and it’s a little bit the ocean – many things are – but not enough to remember any lasting hurt, any long-lived wisdom. All it has to give is a little understanding, and Lora gives some back. 

It rains and rains and she and the puddle talk about nothing – rubber-booted kids, the underbellies of umbrellas, the world cast in the shadow of leaves floating on your surface, poems, published and not, hometowns with names so forgettable they get misspelled thrice and so you feel inclined to pick a name that really rolls off the tongue. 

When the rain tires out of itself Lora goes home, the letter doesn’t. Maybe once it dries some bird takes the fallapart paper and shapes it into something like home, maybe its never-recipient lives so much she hardly missed out on any love, who am I to know? 

Lora Lee’s learning how to live and she’d rather not fit herself into any more stories. Enough to say she carries an umbrella with her from time to time.

The post Lora Lee Broke Up With The Ocean appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. Within a rapidly changing world which prioritizes tech, my discipline and motivation to produce meaningful thought provoking work remains the same. I am invested in processes that are not digital, or adapted from technology, but human driven. Slow and simple traditional methods which continue to be reliable, with the use of hands instead of computers. In a capitalist world where commerce overtakes creativity for the sake of profit, my only investment is to hand produce work with commentary on what I deem neglected and important. I don’t really care about selling the clothes from my runway shows, or producing seasonal garments; my runway shows are there to tell stories, and my work is there to whisper my obsessive ideas, opinions (and sometimes secrets) to the mass public. 

A Bloodline And Their Rituals.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, we get our nutrients from the corners. East Los Angeles is where my unnamed neighbors sit next to me on the public buses and crowded mercados. It’s where artisan hand painted eyebrows became a fad and rosaries dangle from our throats. Where frightening gunshots get mistaken for fluorescent firecrackers, and add warmth to our atmosphere. Where we spill our teeth over our subhuman occupations during the heat of the summer.

The concrete is meticulously tattooed with graffiti, so pure, however its expression is often misunderstood. Our blood; it gets misplaced with a type of sticky tar. Our skin sizzles in the summer as we congregate under the sun in fields or in manufacturing factories scattered across this country. Our sweat drips and pools around our ankles, as our labor becomes someone else’s commodity. The community I was raised in, it places me under its tongue, and I’m absorbed into its gums. It’s dangerous. 

I come to realize how my Chicano identity and Latino background has become the originating genes to my body of art work and craft. The working class struggling family and community I was born into aided my drive for innovation, and a lust for “honest art” which to me, is realistic, relatable commentary on underprivileged lives. I come from a culture of people you never see featured in popular magazines or media. Our lifestyle is evident and purely valid, however I continue to find narratives of our existence to be misconstrued. I want to showcase truth and honesty. This is the significance and integrity I wish to provide through destacarse. My apparel work and runway collections have always been really personal and intimate. 

Experience From Losing Teeth

One of my first professional runway showcases featured my Fall Winter 2015 collection titled “The Boy Who Dreamt Of Losing Teeth”. This collection was inspired by my discharge from a psychiatric mental hospital. The collection focused around recovery and phototaxis organisms. The color pallet for the clothing juxtaposed dark colors such as navy blue and black, but with neon orange and faded blues. Some garments also had dead moths sewn into the linings or behind clear plastic. The models graced the stages with bloody noses and bruises (makeup, of course) and I hand constructed metal face masks that also had moths and butterflies clustered onto them. I was twenty two years old. 

Another significant collection was my Spring Summer 2017 collection titled, “Sinnerman”. This collection was really a menswear collection but had very feminine details such as hand pleated tulle ruffles and lace. Some of the male models walked down the runway in knit dresses. This collection was inspired by gender and binary oppositions regarding human sexuality My models also had their arms dyed in Japanese ink to physically represent the “illness” of being queer onto the body. This period of my life allowed the DNA for this collection to unfold willingly. 

The next collection which I feel pushed me to extend beyond personal realities and enter into political commentary was my Spring Summer 2018 collection, “Travieso”. This collection was born in the era where children were being contained at borders in cages and unmentioned presidents were specifically targeting brown immigrants. “Travieso” was a collection that drew inspiration from both the Bracero Program in the 1940’s but also the Zoot Suit Riots. I think American society heavily (and secretly) relies on immigrants for staple industries such as the garment manufacturing industry and agricultural industry. Around this time, I had gotten fired from my job for whistleblowing cruel mistreatment towards the undocumented immigrants in the company. “Travieso ” showcased garments that had hand sketched, tattoo inspired cultural imagery screen printed onto select pieces. 

The layout of this show forced the audience members to be separated by a chain link fence that ran along the runway. Audience members were seated on both sides of the fence, looking at the clothes on the models and the audience on the opposing side of the fence, as a border. This emphasis of separation was crucial to my strategy presenting a blatant division of people that I wanted to provide commentary on. It was obvious and it was cold. Lastly, the model who opened the show was wearing a hand draped chunk of metal chain link fence. This wearable piece was inspired by the reality that immigrants in America always carry the weight of the border on their shoulders.  Intersectionality is a very fascinating format, and with my work, I want to introduce narratives that allow my audience to resonate and understand immigrants, and the underprivileged. I hand construct every garment in my collections, and am hoping to showcase a new collection after I graduate from RISD. This collection will be  titled, “Dolores”, which means Pains in Spanish. My fingers are crossed. 

Left Image: From “Travieso.” Right Image from New Collection, “Dolores.”

Weaving Possibilities

I am currently developing woven textile work and learning how to weave while earning an MFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I got accepted into RISD with no prior weaving knowledge, and so here is where I am completing my full circle of garment development. I feel like I have enough knowledge and experience on how to produce a garment; the final link that was missing from my skill set was the ability to produce the textile for the garments. Now I am learning how to weave both by hand and machine to produce the woven structures for my garment. I learned how to use an eight shaft floor loom, and soon I will learn how to weave using a Dobby loom and industrial Jacquard loom. Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. 

  My label, destacarse., was formed originally to showcase abstract garments. Since then I have been transitioning my brand to highlight Chicano culture and what I deem as “East Los Angeles realism”. Now, I am in the early stages of investigating how my brand can really produce nearly 100% hand made and housemade goods and artwork without outsourcing. I know after I graduate, I will expand my work and products on a somewhat larger scale. Slow fashion is the way to go, and I am even considering how to find a way to produce all the textiles for my garments as well. 

  I value handmade work. Where there is technology, there is ease and a lack of trial. The trial for error is supremely human. Technology and its abilities are a major crutch on civilization. We no longer solve math problems in our head or on paper, we use the calculator app on our iphones. We have no need to write grant proposals for non profit organizations, we now use AI. Chronic convenience suffocates human motivation. All these shortcuts diminish our ability to think creatively and independently. However, as we, a society continue to use technology to solve all our problems for us, at the same time this is happening, we are beginning to undervalue the ability of craft and handmade. There is a tremendous amount of trade and skill that goes into constructing a garment, so why are seamstresses getting paid subhuman wages? Why are there declining artisans worldwide who specialize in shoes, apparel, handbags etc. Why are there no longer special members in each family who sew clothes for the family and mend on a domestic level? I think one answer lies in the creation of the assembly line, pushed by the industrial revolution. The disassemblage of craftsmanship was caused by the expansive mass producing assembly line; where employees are forced to remove themselves from a “start to finish” process, and only perform a one step task repeated in a production line. Hand making, the skill to be able to build and make something on your own, is a weapon against capitalism and in some ways can be the most political step away from government, because you no longer require monopolizing companies to sell you goods and services. In my opinion, we have to relearn these archaic ways of life. 

 I still find myself unsatisfied by all these absurd systems. At the moment, I find myself caught in the jaw of an art school. My past and future are flashing before my eyes like a fire alarm signaled during a therapy session. I come from a community where art is labeled as “Folk Art”, instead of “Fine Art”. Beyond all this I have realized that my integrity and dedication to my craft has gotten me to where I am today. Since high school, I am doing exactly what I set out to do to my surprise. I still have so much more to learn and experience. I still want to study textiles and denim manufacturing in Okayama Japan, too. Dedicating my life and labor to design and craft has been challenging, but I have a feeling that things will eventually work out. I feel like I am in my own little golden age. 

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“The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this Monster [Homosexuality] … It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than Socialism but more deadly, especially to children.” – Quentin Crisp, 1968

The city of Melbourne is a vain, intriguing concept for a colony of criminals, utterly ruined by the reality of people living inside of it. ‘Marvellous’ Melbourne’s pride is the honesty it brings to its inhabitants. A gust of foul wind knocks a wheelie bin on its side. A phalanx of drunken teenagers are shattered by a pram filled with groceries instead of a child. Someone in stylish overalls silently carries houseplants equal in size to themselves into the foyer of an apartment block. Above us, someone is screaming through an open window. A spotless black Tesla floats through an intersection and squashes a distracted pigeon. The obese, round bird is instantly rendered flat and deceased.

This sauna is one of two in the city of Melbourne. The other is larger and has better facilities but is more publicly a gay sauna. The inner-city location tucks itself away behind 24-hour gyms and convenience stores.

Melbourne’s fondness for poverty and prejudice always provides a short-term need for the saunas. Anyone can walk into a sauna and, for less than 30 dollars, be given a towel, a locker and somewhere to sleep. This makes saunas desirable among some homeless. Anonymity in this place is strangely sacrosanct. Despite showing ID at the front door, you can call yourself whatever you like. You can spend hours speaking to no one, but showers are communal. Rinsing off next to me is an elderly bearded man very casually whistling. He is naked but has caked his whole body in shaving cream. He looks like a very gay snowman. He could be someone’s grandfather. He could be homeless. He’s also wearing thongs and you can almost feel the athlete’s foot beneath you.

Disease is a growing contemporary issue in a venue like this. Gentrification in the late 1980s allowed inner-city police to raid gay saunas by labelling them as brothels. COVID-19 sealed these places away and has become the main reason for closing saunas down. That and the emergence of monkeypox among gay communities has given excuse to some LGBTQI+ lobby groups advocating for closing saunas. Among these groups, the gay sauna is a relic of an improper and illegal homosexuality. It should have died with the rise of AIDS and the enveloping of gay culture into the wider, western one. Stuck between graphic images of men kissing and touching of our Melbourne sauna are government and lobby-group advertisements about getting tested, using protection and staying healthy. The models in the ads look nothing like the men here. They are clean and sensible; they have had their queerness tided to be acceptable.

The maze-like structure of the venue mimics playground equipment. Ramps and corridors going nowhere. No windows, only bright electric lights. Turns left or right that loop back around to join arrow entryways, leading to lounging areas padded with pleather. It all eventually goes back to the actual sauna part of the entire complex.

This is a more conversational area. Francis is the only inhabitant of the huge jacuzzi beside myself. He’s imposing at 6 foot 4 and looks like a tattooed seal with a small, greying beard. He’s friendly and open about his hypocrisy. He swung by after work before he has to get on a train home. He has two daughters and contently married. He’s not afraid of COVID because he believes it’s a Chinese conspiracy. He’s not conservative but he doesn’t trust doctors. Then, as soon as he starts talking, he’s gone, out of the sauna and into the smoking area

Quentin believes that apps and local government will exterminate the saunas. Grindr, Scruff and other dating apps do naturally erode the population of the sauna. Those with a car or a house can more easily access casual gay sex. Rather than make the sauna less useful, instead it has become an important environment for the safety and privacy of gay men.

On TikTok and Instagram, the ‘Pride’ movement is defined by its exclusivity and commercialism. It has become a cloud cuckoo land of online advocacy. Influencers create a public and easily accessible experience that promotes a definition of normalcy for audiences. To stray outside conventional aesthetics, to not fully publicize your identity, is to not be a member of the ‘Pride Movement’.¹

While physical appearance does play a big role in a sauna where you only have a towel, at the same time you can see elderly bodies, chubby bodies, skinny bodies, scarred bodies, muscular bodies and bruised bodies. Shame becomes irrelevant when the playing field is level.

The saunas represent only one facet of a difficult gay history. As non-heterosexual relationships became more acknowledged and more accepted by conventional society, it is important for ‘Pride’ to acknowledge the history it brings with it, rather than abandon aspects of history that are unseemly to contemporary culture.

As I leave the sauna, I reflect on how unique this space is compared to everything else in Melbourne. It’s more comfortable than the National Gallery of Victoria, it has less crazy people than Federation Square, and it’s cheaper than the Docklands Stadium. But I also worry that a venue like this will be forced to close and become a museum to historical queerness so that a few commercial gays can better show their financial backers that members of ‘Pride’ can be well behaved for the majority.

Afterword: For the sake of privacy and better understanding, interview subjects for this piece have had their names and words changed.

Footnote:

1. Ami Pomerantz, Big-Girls Don’t Cry: Portrayals of the Fat Body in RuPauls Drag Race, 2017, Springer International Publishing)

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Calling Heroines of All Ages!

Are you ready to heed the call to adventure?

Join Princess Isabelle of Xamayca as she answers her first call to adventure on the high seas to free the people of Orphalese from the sinister Captain Flint and his fleet of greedy pirates. Along the way, not only does she find love in magically unexpected places, but Isabelle finds strength in forming and commanding her own crew of powerful warriors to fight the demons—both real and imagined—that threaten to take away her crown and test her will to survive.

Journey to Orphalese is book two in the chronicles of Princess Isabelle. Book I: The Embryo Goddess and the Morpho took you inside the formative years of this fearless demigoddess, daughter of the powerful Sun King, Vata Helios and the imperious, yet stunning Ice Queen, Cythona. As readers witness Isabelle’s harrowing story unfold, we learn valuable lessons on how to become the heroine of our own life story.

Join Princess Isabelle, her faithful companion, Xerxes, and an eclectically beautiful crew of sailors on this exciting, sometimes perilous, journey—and discover yourself along the way! 

Author, Nicole Cutts, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and success coach, continues to blend the rich elements of diverse female archetypes with the universal mythology of the heroine’s quest in book two of the story of Isabelle, The Princess Royal of Xamayca.

The Journey Begins 

Aboukir 

The post The Adventures of Isabelle Book II: Journey To Orphalese appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I kept to myself for so much of my life, I had to — for safety. When I introduced myself to others, I was a citizen, a citizen of Los Angeles, California, where I grew up. But at home and my close friends, they knew I was undocumented. Even though I explicitly talked about being undocumented throughout high school but that would change coming to college, I knew I had to keep it a secret. I didn’t know anyone on the East Coast, but soon I would find a community that understood where I came from and welcomed me with open arms. 

In my paintings, I explore the in-betweens of my past and present and how these temporalities affect the future I want to create. I build this future in my art using symbols that I find in my memories.

Process

My application of paint has changed throughout the years. I started with more expressive techniques, where I would swirl acrylic paint with different brushes. The clash of colors produced a sense of motion.

In I Gave my Rose to Gemini, the textural quality of the paint in the rapid brushstrokes allows the moon, sun, vines, roses, tunnels, and hourglass to intertwine with one another. To the right of the canvas, the birds are frozen in a moment just before contact with a swing and blooming roses. The application of the paint and the use of the brush becomes smoother, and the imagery more linear as the viewer looks towards this direction.

The symbols used, like the moon, vines, and flowers, center my story. They gave me a temporary place because they were around me. I focus on the memory, I write down what happened, what things I saw, how it made me feel, and what tangible objects I could paint. And from that, I started imagining a setting, a place where these symbols could live.

I wanted to create a world in my paintings where realism could co-exist with the emotions I put into my symbolic objects. This incentivized me to include realism alongside expressive brush strokes in my technique and is what I started exploring in my following work.

In 18 Cents, viewers see a telephone stand surrounded by heavy brush strokes. The painting uses color to emphasize a sense of reflection and abstracted form existing together with a real object.

Every object I depict in my paintings holds my memories and lived experiences. Growing up as an undocumented migrant, these objects contained my future as well. I use these symbols to tell my stories, stories that I didn’t see growing up. 

In Deconstruction of My Salvadoran Identity, I build on the rearrangement of the Salvadoran flag through various symbols and techniques related to my own experiences. Growing up, I could never represent my flag pridefully, hiding my identity to protect myself from people knowing I was undocumented. As a result, I had to navigate my identities in private, only disclosing when it was safe for me to do so. Although coming to college, I couldn’t explicitly speak publicly due to a fear that I had lived. 

The deconstruction and repetitive usage of colors from the coat of arms in the Salvadoran flag allowed me to rearrange the symbols and envision a future where documentation is not needed for my existence to be valid—bridging where I was born and where I grew up, always living in between.

I explore these uncertainties in the smaller series of flags that break from the rectangular format into smaller rectangular pieces connecting with one another. They coexist with the larger inkjet print—mediums in collage, seeing how my past intertwines with my present. Though my status changed in 2021, my future is uncertain — but I will forever be a dreamer, creating and living

Any stories that I did see in the media focused on the trauma of crossing the border, but not our dreams. With art, I could focus on certain aspects of my migration, the overlooked stories that only those who have undergone my experiences can see themselves in. That is how I could control the narrative and how I would tell these stories. 

Symbols

Sunflowers

Growing up Salvadoran and gay, there weren’t many people to whom I could reach out. It wasn’t until someone described me as his sunflower that I could see myself outside of my political body; many folks would think that I shouldn’t even be here in the US. It was a soft and gentle gesture of care, and I took this gesture and this sunflower and made it my symbol of hope, joy, love, and community. Sunflowers hold a special place in my art.  

My painting “Gansito, you made me realize that I’m not an alien, and for that, I became your sunflower. Thank you, for I have found my sun”  shows many of my life stories through symbols. I speak about migrating at the age of five with the phrase “No Soy Un Alien.” Below that, I wrote “5 y/o,” which speaks to how I continue incorporating little symbols and phrases into my paintings.

Nature

I’m invested in the connection of the body and nature and what this relationship means to create futures of belonging in my work. For me, Nature holds spaces for warmth and nurture. In Mangos Verdes con alguashte y marañones (Translation: Green mangos with ground pumpkin seeds and cashew apples), I captured a moment of longing, reflecting on a state of dreaming and how my memories of El Salvador have influenced those dreams. 

Eating little green mangos with grounded pumpkin seeds and some marañones (cashew fruit), I look up at them as if they were just within reach, growing from the fruit trees I would eat them off from. They stay just out of my reach and serve as a reminder of how El Salvador is. 

How far and how long since I’ve tasted marañones, and what that feeling would be if today I had those fruits in my hand!

I continue this theme of the intertwining of body and nature in my painting El Salvador, te digo adios, por ahora, y Los Angeles, hola, por favor tratame bien (Translation: El Salvador, I say to you goodbye, for now, and Los Angeles, hi, please treat me well).

This painting lives in my past, at the moment I left El Salvador at the age of 5. I walked and ran through unknown lands, and now that journey seems so far from reach. 

In my art, I relive those memories. I feel my body travel through those same lands of Guatemala, Mexico, and California that once were unknown to me.

How I wish I could, for one last time, say goodbye to El Salvador, goodbye to my childhood friends and family. Those goodbyes are attached to me; I pull and pull, becoming one with the ground. The roots are deep. 

My mom tells me her stories, and I narrate the memories in these portraits and landscapes. These stories, and her, are what I have. I didn’t need to say goodbye to her. 

Los Angeles became a new home. At first, it wasn’t kind to me, but I learned to keep to myself and dream between my past and future. I knew I belonged somewhere in the in-betweens, never only in one place or the other. This diptych painting tells my story of El Salvador, where I was born. 

Having the possibility to say goodbye to my friends and family, but those goodbyes would have to wait for now. Reconnecting those ties and adapting to a California that didn’t want me and didn’t value my humanity, but I kept going. 

My paintings don’t always refer to my future. I create surreal states using lush and dense environments in my paintings. The space is activated by the in-between of past and present and the stories that go with them.

In “Scars on my Memories,” the body in the lower portion of the painting represents my queer and migrant body, intertwining with nature. Banana leaves and various plants reflect an environment of wonder, mystery, and self-reflection. These small moments are seamlessly integrated into the visual representation of those events by the different plants I saw in my neighborhood. The hand coming out of the plants captures a moment of intimacy with the banana plant and how nature can represent those feelings. 

As I keep developing my visual language, I purposely bring in elements of my previous paintings and techniques. Some of my current works in progress resonate with my earlier paintings. Texture can evoke a sense of memory, creating surfaces of emotions. By layering paint and creating thickness, I can change how clear and realistic I want a symbol to be. I think that is the beauty of art; you are able to control your narrative. I can continue on this journey, expanding on the world I create in my paintings, a future of wonder. 

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Quinn (they/he):

To start, can we just go around and Introduce ourselves, our names, pronouns and artistic and creative practices and projects?

Jason (they/he):

Sure. I use they/he pronouns. I am a senior, at Tisch Drama at NYU and I am a playwright, I’m an actor, voice actor and creative leader of interactive, immersive and experimental projects, video games too.

Anisha (she/her):

I figured. Awesome.

Sally (they/she/he):

My name’s Sally. I use they/she/he pronouns in that order of preference. I mainly illustrate and write poetry, but I also dabble in sculpture work and animation. I mostly make work about identity, home nostalgia, intimacy, and fantasy. And I’m a senior at Parsons School of Design, majoring in illustration and minoring in psychology.

Anisha (she/her):

Oh my God. I was a psych major. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. To kick it off, well, we just kicked it off, but to kick it off again, we just want to know, how did you guys meet, how did you guys start collaborating and what were your various roles in making untitled gamer play? We can break that up since I know it’s a loaded question and I always forget part twos!

Jason (they/he):

Sally how did we meet?

Sally (they/she/he):

We met in our high school Japanese class and in junior year when we got assigned to be partners, we also became best friends and started dating. We started collaborating because we had to at first, because of Japanese projects and stuff like that…but you put two artists together and you constantly want to keep working on things together or be each other’s partner in crime or whatever. And I always joke that they’ve been my muse for like five years now. My role in untitled gamer play or UGP (however you want to say it) was at first just as a cover artist/event artist, but then after I finished my thesis, Jason reached out to me again and was like, “I heard you have free time. Do you want to be my codesigner?” That’s what I helped do co-set designer and co-set paint.

Anisha (she/her):

Nice. Nice. The sets were beautiful. Just throw that out there. I saw a clip of the video. It was really good.

Jason (they/he):

I wouldn’t call Japanese exercises collaboration, but I think we started … Wait. It is. we started collaborating in a real collaborator sense, I guess a little bit later when I decided to pursue art going into my second year of college diving right in there. And it’s just like whenever a project would pop up, for example, like rank choice dating popped up last September and it would be like an opportune time to bring Sally on. I brought Sally on about it and of course the muse part is definitely true for both of us of a lot of the art we make, I guess, is inspired by each other’s lives and the lives in our community and can’t wait to chat more on that. I am the writer of untitled gamer play and I’ve been, I guess I started writing this in my first year at NYU, which is like two and a half years ago. I wrote like a 10 page version of this as well as several other like 10 page plays that eventually …

The first version of this was just about “Oh, Gamer’s toxic.” And it was just a bunch of gamers in a room bantering and the one eager in their group that they were trying to woo, which did not end well. And then it eventually turned into this after many, many, many, many different drafts and iterations of this. And that’s where it went up.

Anisha (she/her):

That’s amazing. That is major props. Quinn, sorry. Did you have anything to say?

Quinn (they/he):

No, same. Just the script was a really amazing read. I had a great time and I had a great time watching what I could of the video that was sent too. And I also wanted to say that the set design was so beautiful and so good job both of you. I guess for the next questions, like for those who are listening and aren’t familiar with the play, can we just get a quick synopsis and also a little bit about Albert and what his character is indicative of?

Jason (they/he):

Untitled gamer play. It’s this play that revolves around Albert. He’s this 17 year old Chinese American kid who’s closeted and he’s sad and lonely. He plays video games all day to the extent that he’s paying this kid with the same first and last name as him to go to school for him and get good grades for him so he can impress his mom while also just playing video games. And he does that alongside his best friend Kevin who’s this like two or three years older, just big brother figure to him who hypes him up, cheers him along. And they go along this big adventure where Albert overcomes his fear of risks and tries to become a professional video gamer. And he does make this choice where he can’t go back by cutting ties with the guy that’s been going like ransom … Now at this point, like blackmailing him. If you don’t pay me, I won’t go to school for you and I’ll tell on you.

And he gives that up fully commits and then don’t want to spoil anything, but that choice changes how he views himself, how he views his mom and Kevin and at its core, this play is about saviors and what we do when people go out of their way to help us and we have no choice in the matter as so many of our parents do, immigrant parents do. And I wouldn’t say Albert’s character is indicative of anything. When I write, I normally just like to think of these people as real people and how would they want to their stories to be serviced and told, and reach as many people as possible.

But I think the best way I can answer this question is Albert is this amalgamation of gamers that I have met online and in-person and grown up with much, much more on that later. The naturalistic dialogue to him came really, really easy to me when he was just this huge conglomerate of just these voices that I’ve grown up with. And I hope that I’m able to service those stories and those memories of what was once just this massive part still is of my childhood.

Anisha (she/her):

Well, honestly I loved everything you said, it was very inspirational because I think I’m very big on storytelling as we all are especially at The New Absurdist and as creatives. I really just appreciate the thought and effort that you put into building out this character and really just not being like, this person symbolizes this one thing, but if it just comes to that, then that’s kind of what happens, but just letting the person be authentically.

And you touched on this a little bit so feel free to elaborate more or if you feel you answered it already. But you touched a little bit on this. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of writing this character? I know you said you pulled from some of your experience and the play in general. How did that look for you?

Jason (they/he):

Yeah. I think the process of writing this character is definitely tied in with the writing the play. This play revolves around Albert and well, it does revolve around Albert although every single character I hope has a really emotionally fulfilling arc. And I would say Albert started off as this idea of when I was in my first year playwriting class, I went like, “I have this massive part of my life that I’ve shut down in order to be here.” And whenever I look back on that gaming life, it’s like these people said slurs, these people hacked and bullied others, was there any good to these 10 years of my life that I spent online or was there anything good I could pull from that? And of course there’s a lot of bad and I had to really, really search for the humanity.

And I’m so glad that I found it because it made me be a little bit more compassionate to myself. These gamers are just really lonely kids for a lot of … And one place where this play did come out of is all the media especially in plays right now or historically is rarely about people of color with some exceptions chat out to black feminist video game. But it’s like the gaming and like D&D like table tabletop RPG setting in playwriting is dominated by white men. And no one’s really talking about how Asian games are. There are so many Asian gamers, there’s so many Asian kids and friend groups that live in these little channels on discord. And that’s how they grow up because they all want some kind of escape from their really, really tough lives.

And that escape is much, much different for them. Because they’re escaping a lot of expectations and a lot of rigorous classwork, stuff like that. And sometimes it feels like their entire family’s dreams are on their shoulders. And so when they escape that to play video games, they feel guilty. And there’s just so many parts of this that I was so grateful to find. And so the process of writing this was started out as this little exploration and then I explored many, many things about what this play could be. I think there was like a 120 page version at the beginning of last year. 1.5 years ago of where it was like this play was structured around money and enterprise of this professional league of legends esports system, where it was so much more focused on that.

Because if you think about it, esports is a cult. esports is like professional video gaming and it’s biggest in league of legends, which is where my background. League of legends is like the world’s most popular game, I guess. Don’t fact check me. It’s the most popular esport and the cults following. And there’s a lot of those professional gamers happen to be Asian. And no one really talks about that. I think where that draft started from is, oh, these gamers are Asian. Where do they come from? How do they end up here? Are they just heroes of their hometown? Do they have like these dreams? A lot of these gamers are coming from low income backgrounds and using these games that they love to support their families as opposed to all the other players who are just doing it for fun and they had their luxury for doing it for fun. And that was a whole exploration of that because in the end everyone’s competing for the white man’s dollar.

But then I circled back, found out, really explored the emotional lives of each character and ended up here much more to come many, many more edits to come. But I’m really glad that I took a step back rooted this in the people that I cared about because it was getting a really hectic and hard to control. And I think I made something really great.

Anisha (she/her):

You did. You did. I will attest to that…I second that.

Quinn (they/he):

I agree. And I also really liked finding the humanity in the gaming world. From what I understand, when you’re gaming, other people are just little voices and characters. And so extrapolating the human out of that is just so cool. For the next question, we’re wondering how..And you already touched on this too, but how Albert is relating to and exemplifying changes or lack of changes within the gaming community?

Jason (they/he):

There’s this really, really great article by my friends that I want to plug. They wrote a paper about Albert as a character. And in relation to being a gamer and the multiple identities he holds as an assignment for class. Her name is AJ, we have a playwriting class together. I think at its core, the gaming community in [untitled gamer play] is incredibly homophobic. And I think the sentence in this paper that hits me the most is…let me find it.

“Albert’s fundamental existence as a gay gamer is that his passion lives in an environment that is inherently unwelcoming to him.” This article beautifully explains that this community is degenerated and I often say gamers are the worst of people. They throw these slurs around, they have no fear of consequences because they’re often very self indulged in the fact that they’re trying to escape. For that reason, they get away with a lot. Albert is just this little kid trying to exist in this hard world that is unwelcoming to him. This play in particular, I think does capture a lot of humanity and goodness in video gaming community and it does definitely give a little bit of light, a tiny little bit of light to the bad I would say.

I think what I explored in terms of like Albert being a character and homophobia in this play was that like the bro-gamer and bro culture is often like, “Yeah, yeah bro.” How is this not gay? How has no one ever talked about this? Like being remotely suggestive of these gamers being gay. So Kevin will go off and do these really obscene things and bait Albert and lead Albert on in these sexual crude acts of humor as well as their online connection, they’ve never seen each other and yet they have this brotherhood and the way that both of their masculinities benefit from this relationship and just those two things I think are very, very key parts of this gaming community. Men will get really, really close and they will be very strangely straight. Let’s talk about that. Very long tangent feel free to cut.

Anisha (she/her):

No, no, I loved it. I loved it. I don’t know if you saw because Zoom’s a little hard, but I was getting a little emotional as you were talking about humanizing people. I think that’s so important. And honestly I’m going to be completely transparent. Prior to reading your play, I’ve had friends growing up who are very much in the gaming world and they would tell me so much about the toxicity. It was honestly really refreshing to read your play.

I was like, whoa, this is a whole other side to this world that I’m not in, but I can almost empathize with. It was just really a little jarring, but in the best way possible. And also I love the threads of homophobia that you touched on throughout the play, I think was very seamless. Thank you for that. It was very refreshing on my part, very enlightening for me as a person. And also along the lines of integrating homophobia, you also spoke about immigration and really touched on the life of immigrants. I was wondering, was there any particular reason why you chose to incorporate this? How does it relate to gaming and how does it relate to the gaming world in general? I know that’s a loaded question-

Jason (they/he):

Definitely.

Anisha (she/her):

-so take it in parts if you have to.

Jason (they/he):

I have many answers. Don’t worry.

Anisha (she/her):

Excited.

Jason (they/he):

This definitely came, like I said, came from like the fact that so many of these professional gamers are Asian gamers and children of immigrants. For part of my visual research I took these pictures of pro gamers when they entered the scene, like in 2013-2014. They have bull cuts, they have glasses, they’re fucking ugly. But then give them five or six, seven years as they come into massive amounts of wealth and they support their families and they completely change.

There’s this story of one of one very controversial gaming in figure. But I do look up to him. His name is Doublelift in the League of Legends Community. He entered this scene really early, in 2012, he was really, really poor and he was playing this game to support his family to which he had a very strange relationship with. His mother gave him up because he was playing video games and he had to live in this journalist friend’s apartment for many, many years because his parents kicked him out, but he still had this dream.

He still plays this game. He’s very controversial because he is toxic, but he still plays this game a lot. And in, I believe that around 2017, 2018, his mom died. His mom was murdered by his brother. That was heartbreaking because we followed his life and he’s talked about his family. Around that time he reconnected with his mom and was starting to heal their relationship, but she died before they were able to fully do that. And the thing is, he went through that. Two weeks after that happened were the regional finals in North America and he played through it. And like, God, I was watching this stream choking up. Right before that game, right after that game, you can just hear the entire crowd in that stadium, just shout, “Doublelift. Doublelift.” And it was just like, wow. That’s that.

I think there’s this huge part of…all the Asian video gamers have this relationship with their mom. I’ll say that. Like I will be on call, I will hear my friend’s mom literally say something like, “Don’t call me bro.” You could ask east Asian men if they’ve played league of legends and most of them will say yes. I think every single one of them who has this relationship with gaming and their mom play this game to fit in and find community. They actually find a lot of other Asian kids who are doing the same thing. Playing this game is an escape like I said before, from like the strict expectations of their parents.

And their parents desperately want to stop. And there’s this constant tug of war of, “Stop, stop, stop, stop.” And they go like, “I’m doing fine. I’m doing fine. I’m doing fine.” There’s also these more intricate interactions. One friend, Yusuf, talked about me about how lots immigrant kids to try to confuse their moms with technology and say something like, “Oh our grades are on the student portal, go check it,” That’s the only thing that they can leverage against their very smart, very cunning parents. They have this knowledge of the online world and they can use it to confuse. There are just so many parts of this, but I think I foiund a synthesizing thought.

Anisha (she/her):

Go off if you have to.

Jason (they/he):

I guess at its core, when it comes to gaming and immigration, you play this game to escape your parents because they want the world out of you. Sometimes you just want to go into something where you can feel like you’re progressing, you can feel like you’re powerful, you can feel like you have friends, because you definitely don’t in school if all you’re doing is doing tests. There’s just so many things that help this online world, both in terms of a social world and in terms of immersion and escape, make you powerful in a sense. There’s so many things that make the online and gaming world attractive to children of immigrants. And there are so many children of immigrants that play. And I will say immigrants too. It’s just alluring, it’s new, and it makes you feel like a person when the world doesn’t.

Anisha (she/her):

Well said. Well said. And also thank you for making me cry at nine o’clock in the morning-

Jason (they/he):

This is normal for me.

Anisha (she/her):

That was very touching. Thank you so much for sharing.

Quinn (they/he):

I can totally understand why your friend wrote an essay tracking Albert’s experience as a gay gamer. You could write so many essays about what you just said and about the play as a whole. I really appreciate everything you just said and also for the very emotional gaming background too. I guess the next question is for both of you. I was just interested, what was it like to see your play move into a physical space. What was that process as a writer and then also as a set designer?

Sally (they/she/he):

Well, for me, Jason sent me like… 50 different versions of this play  in the past two years that they’ve been writing it. Reading through all the different versions, I think the one thing that I kept thinking about was projections, really fun lighting, and this idea of solitude. I kept thinking about that. When I saw that they were thinking about a modular set design, especially with cardboard and stuff like that, I had this idea that the cardboard boxes were a bit like pixels. They would move and shift with every iteration. For me, even though I thought of it as such a high budget play being portrayed with such low tech, it was still really endearing when you think about the meeting of cardboard boxes and play. In both the digital and real worlds, we play into ideas of what our parents want and also play into ideas of how we should behave in school and to our friends and stuff like that. It made a lot of sense. Seeing this play move from just words that…I still cry when I think about it. The visuals…and everyone coming together I thought was really heartwarming.

Jason (they/he):

It was very, very heartwarming. I think the main thing tying together this experience for me is the amount of respect other people have shown in bringing this work to life. Not to discredit the many, many, people that have feedback for my play and who have given me such amazing affirmations throughout these years, but I’ve always felt that my work has not been respected, especially at NYU. I will be in a playwriting class and when I present my work, the white people in the room will turn their cameras off on Zoom because they don’t know how to interact with it. Or  people will not know how to approach this work because it just like belongs to a culture other than theirs. For the longest time, I’ve just felt so undervalued and that no one would pay attention to me.

I started to have this bitterness, I had to fight for everything…I have to make people turn their heads. So I was getting really bitter and, in a really unhealthy way, just feeling that I have to fight for my voice to be heard in every single kind of space. I have this baseline expectation that no one will listen to me because of how this curriculum is structured and because all the playwriting teachers are white, but then to have my work…

I was so pessimistic going into this that the Asian people would not be there, that noone would want to work on this. But then to be met with an amazingly large and diverse team and for my work to be handled like that, with an insane amount of respect, it’s just like, wow, that was … Throughout those years, I guess I was getting something done. I was heading in a right direction. I was doing something right. It’s very, very affirming. Shout out to all those collaborators and to the level of communication on this project because people were so invested, facilitated by our amazing stage manager Tatiana. We had so many amazing artistic conversations that really just showed how much people cared to me. I think like one really, really big thing coming out of this project is a newfound confidence in myself. Also shout out to director Jonathan.

Sally (they/she/he).:

Literally the entire cast and crew felt like family and it was so … I just felt like even if I worked on it in-person for maybe a week or two, I felt so connected to everyone, they were so sweet. Everyone was so dedicated.

Anisha (she/her).:

Oh my God. That’s so heartwarming. I feel like when I hear stories about spaces where there isn’t a strong sense of like community, it’s usually the opposite where it’s like, “I felt very left out. I was running and putting things together, but I didn’t really talk to anyone.”  So I am relieved. You guys actually built a little community so, shout out to you two.

Honestly, shout out to you guys for like really carving out spaces for others…because especially as people of color, just navigating the space as belonging to a marginalized community, it can be so, so difficult. I’m also getting emotional again, so don’t mind me if I start crying. But that’s something that hits home to me, but it’s just so inspiring to see you guys. Really just carry on as a force to be reckoned with in this space. You guys are really making movements and it’s just really amazing to see. Applause to you guys. I think that’s amazing.

Jason (they/he):

In many ways, this thing went so fluently. I have had many bad collaboration scares and that just made this one so good. In many ways, I feel like we proved a lot of people wrong and we subverted a lot of expectations going into this. Now people know what we can do. People are treating us differently and it’s a big culture shock. I’m really, really proud of this. My ego is not normally this high, but we really subverted every narrative about us.

People are coming into this process with really similar stories to mine, about never feeling seen or appreciated for their talents in their cohorts throughout their arts education. Then this happens and they get to see just how wonderful their community (and themselves) can be when they are supported. And they have the support that has been denied to them for so many years.

Anisha (she/her):

Obviously I wasn’t there when you guys were doing this, but just hearing about it, you can see the love and appreciation you have for the project and the rest of the team as well. It’s really a shining through. I think that’s really important to build a community within a community sometimes because it can be so isolating. It can be very much  like… you think you might have to diverge past a little bit. You’re like, “Maybe this isn’t the right field for me.” I don’t know if you guys ever thought that, but I did at some point.

And so when you see that community come together, you’re like, “Oh wait, no. I got this, we got this.” It’s very inspiring. Thank you both for being very vulnerable and sharing those parts. I definitely really appreciate it and we really appreciate it in general. We touched on the art and all this stuff. Sally, you also touched on this. We both really enjoyed your art and I really love the idea of the whole like pixels moving.

It’s so crazy because like, I don’t know, Quinn if you also have this thought, but I had the thought. I was like, “Oh this reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put the puzzle pieces together,” and then you said “ it’s like how pixels movie.” And, that’s exactly what I was thinking I just literally could not find the words to describe it. It’s really cool. We both really enjoyed your art and we would love to hear about what it is like for you in terms of intersecting, like that storytelling aspect with the visual, narratives and how that all comes together. Also I think you mentioned, if I’m not mistaken, you worked in different mediums of art as well, but how does that also relate to the whole experience? And once again, loads of questions so we can take that in parts.

Sally (they/she/he):

I’ve always been drawn to visual art and storytelling because growing up, I was the youngest child, and youngest daughter of a family of immigrants. My brothers are 4-5 years older than me, and they’d be gaming together, going to school together, doing big things and I’d be stuck in this gender role of, “Oh, you’re not allowed to do those things. You can’t get addicted to games like they are, and you can just read books and watch cartoons.” For the limited amount of time that I was able to game with them or watch cartoons with them, especially with things like in the more sort of like Asian, especially east Asian sense of anime and manga, I was able to see more stories like mine with people that looked like me like Crayon Shin-chan and Chibi Maruko-chan. 

Growing up with those was really important especially because I wasn’t allowed much screen time. Reading a lot, getting immersed into those worlds through children’s books especially because it was the first time that I really encountered stories that were meant to uplift me even if the characters didn’t look like me yet. Shout out to Eyes that Kiss in the Corners Oh my gosh…

Coming from that perspective of being really inspired by children’s books and wanting to get into them since I was literally five and since I figured out how to draw, because I only thought writing was an option, I guess it was always my preferred medium and storytelling and adding words to that really came naturally. So sorry, what was the rest of the question?

Anisha (she/her).:

Totally good. The intersection between storytelling and visual narratives and different mediums and stuff like that.

Sally (they/she/he):

I guess I always stuck to almost the cheapest materials I could find because growing up in an immigrant family, there wasn’t really much, and art materials were so expensive. At the time, I didn’t feel like my art was worth investing so much into especially as I was still a kid and I was still practicing and we couldn’t afford any art classes. I treated it as a hobby and I just practiced and poured my soul into it, even if it was just pencil and paper.

And then when I was 14, my brothers chipped to buy me a Wacum tablet that I’ve been using ever since. I asked for that specifically because digital art is so much more accessible than other mediums in a way that you don’t have to keep paying for paints and brushes and things that break down, like a canvas, you could just keep using the same tablet as you were seven years ago.

All the colors are there, really everything is there. That’s all you really need. That’s what I’ve been using since really. And as for other mediums, I do ceramics, I do soft sculpture, I do animation stuff like that. All that has been as I’ve grown more confident in storytelling and my skills, technical skills as an artist where I’m more willing to invest in it especially as I…Well that confidence only really came to be as I started applying to art schools and college. I really hadn’t invested a whole lot before then, but I do think that everything comes down to storytelling. It doesn’t really matter if it’s visual or just writing, I think that stories are just really important.

Quinn (they/he):

I wanted to just say, both Anisha and I looking forward to what’s next and definitely looking forward the eventual Broadway production. But I also just wanted to say, I feel like I’m a big believer in art as a space where power and hierarchy can be subverted and where community and lifting each other up is really important. So I just wanted to echo what Anisha said earlier, thank you for being so vulnerable about talking about this process and everything. But anyways, I have another two- part question for you, Sally. I know that you talked about your thesis earlier, I’d love to hear some about that and just that process of working on a long term project and how that has been for you?

Sally (they/she/he).:

My thesis is titled One Day the Sun Won’t Be Wounded and it’s a growing collection of originally written and illustrated poems of about Chinese mythologies, dieties, spiritualism, family history, queerness, transness, and myself. Showing up for thesis, we started like five years in, no, my gosh, five weeks into our first semester, at the time I was incredibly burnt out. I had this whole grand plan of last year thinking about like, “Oh, I’m going to make this super cool, illustrated chapbook” and also I was thinking of an accordion book and that it would be huge and at least 30 pages or something like that. I thought I planned out all the subject matter that I was going to tackle. But when it came down to it, that first semester I was so burnt out that I couldn’t get anything out of me really other than one piece, the first one.

And I guess it was mostly a process of trying to find compassion for yourself, especially in a world that’s so capitalistic and it’s so driven by productivity. I was punishing myself every single time. I couldn’t start every week where it was like, “Come on, just write some things,” or like, “Just like dress sketch. It’s not that hard. You could do it if you like.” You felt the pressure too and yet nothing was coming out. And because of that cycle of like, “Oh, you have to do something.” And yet, I’m not allowing myself to do anything enjoyable until I start and being paralyzed. And that was difficult to get out of, but then when winter break came and January came, I was able to let go of that a little bit and also be more motivated by seeing what other people were creating in class and being able to let go and play Stardew Valley for a while was exactly what I needed and so I just started thinking of like, “Who cares, it’s thesis, not like it’s the last project that I’m ever going to do.”

And that was what my professor said too. Like, don’t take yourself too seriously. It’s not your last thing. Sure, it’s bigger than any other project that you’ve done, but that’s not the end all of your career. I just took it step by step and drew out. I saw it as a work in progress and something that I’m proud of rather than something that is more of a punishment in trying to prove myself to people that aren’t particularly my audience.

Quinn (they/he):

I’ve been working on my thesis too for the past year and so I get the struggle. I guess that’s something that has to come out of me at some point. For the last question, we’d like to open it up to both of you again, and we were wondering, what advice would you give to aspiring artists and playwrights and what would you have liked to hear when you started working on untitled gamer play? I’m sure it’s a lot.

Jason (they/he):

Do you have an answer Sally?

Sally (they/she/he):

You can start.

Jason (they/he):

I got it. I would say at the beginning of this process, I wish I knew that my problems were big. For example, we Asian artists have executive dysfunction as evidenced by everything I just said. We have a very poor relationship with our work, especially creative work because of the anxieties passed down to us. And I think I belittled myself a lot for not being able to write. I wish I had more compassion for myself and knowledge that the artists that are able to work through this create even stronger art stronger, what does that mean? 

Our executive dysfunction problems are big, treat them like big problems and when you get to overcome them, give yourself a bigger reward. What I like to say to people is: you’re up against a final boss, not just another slime. And a word of advice would be on that related note, you need a hype squad if you are a writer from a marginalized background, and people will be like, “Ah, you don’t need validation.” But you need validation, it’s human, it’s one of your needs. Belittling that need is belittling yourself. Yes. Many people will make you feel like you’re nothing. Especially for Asian artists, they will reduce you to being proficient or uncommunicative or rude. And a lot of things will eat away at you and you deserve having a community that will vocally support you often to just keep you afloat and keep you writing.

Sally (they/she/he).:

I totally agree with that. I would say trust in yourself and also trust in your community and rely on community, support your community because they’re the ones who are always going to be there for you too. Especially with illustration and writing, of course, these are usually really solitary acts and you usually do them alone. It’s like, oftentimes you really don’t feel that support unless it’s right in front of you and you’re going after it to talk to people and hear each other’s voices, sometimes you really don’t feel like that support is real. It’s just like, again, like pixels on a screen doesn’t really mean anything to you, does it have any value? But working on things like untitled gamer play and being in a team environment, you really can see how the emotions that you put into the play reflect through how everyone else is experiencing it and the care that they have for you and your work is also the same care that you offer to other people.

And that’s what really keeps everyone creating things and building things and trying to make a better future for everyone I think. That’s the big goal, I guess. We’ve all started writing stories based and we wanted to hear ourselves and see ourselves in our communities represented. And so I feel like supporting each other is just one other aspect of being an artist.

Anisha (she/her):

Oh my God. I love. Sorry. I think you were going to say something. I just …

Quinn (they/he):

No, I was just going to say the same exact thing. Thank you so much you guys. This has been so wonderful and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and-

Jason (they/he):

I found out a future project.

Quinn (they/he):

Yes, please.

Anisha (she/her):

Oh my God.

Jason (they/he):

On June 11th, 2022, I will be performing and Sally will be costume designing for untitled waifu play. It is directed by Jonathan and the playwright is Char Nakashima-Conway, who I love with my entire heart and who inspired this playwriting journey in me of writing for small groups of people that have never been seen before. Come see it, it’s about incels who materialize their anime wife into real life and try to go on dates with them and we’ll see how that goes. 

Anisha (she/her):

That’s so interesting. Oh my God. Well, thank you for that. If I can make it, I probably will. Try to start my schedule out. But no, that sounds amazing. I see the gaming thread there, which is also really just enlightening, like I’ve said a million times, but that’s honestly how I’ve been feeling. But thank you guys so much. It has been such a pleasure, like Quinn said, just to have this conversation. Thank you for being so open and vulnerable with the entire process and also being very transparent because I think that a lot of times people, especially when they come on platforms, they’re like, “Yeah, it was a wonderful ride.” And you’re like, “Okay, it was, but let’s be real. It was a struggle to get to this point.”

Really appreciate your transparency and your honesty throughout the entire thing. You guys did a phenomenal job with the play and bringing it to life. It was really, really eye opening. And I think that these stories, like you said, they need to be materialized a lot more and just brought to a lot of different audiences. Really appreciate you guys bringing it to the New Absurdist audience as well. Really look forward to sharing your stories. We’ll be in contact about the whole process of things like that and once it gets posted and all that stuff, but honestly, thank you guys so, so much. I know it’s bright and early on this gloomy morning, so really appreciate you guys plowing through and being the resilient people that you guys are. Really appreciate more power to you and honestly look forward to seeing the amazing work that you guys continue to put out.

Jason (they/he):

Thank you both.

Sally (they/she):

Thank you so much for your time.

Anisha (she/her):

No, of course. Thank you guys.

The post A Look at “Untitled Gamer Play” appeared first on The New Absurdist.

JOCELYN

I sooo should not have taken my mom’s car to this, like what if someone takes a picture of the
plates and my mom gets arrested for buying D-RUGS!

KATE

Dude your window better be rolled all the way up when you say that shit.

JOCELYN

You said that and I actually thought for a second I was dumb enough to have a window cracked.

KATE (teasingly)

To be fair, you are dumb enough to have a window cracked.

JOCELYN

Hey!

I’m glad we’re finally doing this, though. Like I’m totally nervous–what’s new–but winter break is
almost over and this is gonna be an awesome memory to have.

KATE (nodding)

Kinda a crazy way to reign in the New Year, but I’m excited for tomorrow. What I can’t believe is
that Matt actually asked us to meet in front of Lincoln High…like, the irony is just a little too on
the nose.

JOCELYN

You know he lives like a block away. It’s just convenient for him. But yeah, I get it, I haven’t been
here since graduation.

KATE

Remember I visited once last year. It was so weird, though, I felt like I was in one of those
dreams where you show up to school with no pants on. Except I had pants on, I was just old.

JOCELYN

To be fair, you are old as fuck now.

KATE

Correction. We’re old as fuck.

JOCELYN

Nah, I’m still a teenager for a whole two more months. Pack it up grandma.

KATE

Wow you got jokes now? What happened to being nervous.

JOCELYN

Dang, I actually forgot why we were sitting here for a second.

KATE

Where the fuck is Matt anyway? Didn’t he say he was leaving his house like five minutes ago.

JOCELYN

I mean, are you actually critiquing the customer service of someone selling us drugs?

KATE

Fair enough. But, I don’t know, I had first period with Matt senior year and he always showed up
five minutes early.

JOCELYN

Ok well I had last period with Matt senior year and he barely ever showed up.

KATE (nodding)

A truly multifaceted man indeed.

JOCELYN

Do you remember that time that Matt and Nick set off the fire alarm during our chem test and
Mr. Hendley wouldn’t even give us more time?

KATE

I was so pissed off that day, I really didn’t need anything else going against me on the test. I
can’t believe you not only kept dating Nick after that shit, but you literally gave him head in the
stairway after school.

JOCELYN

I never said I made good decisions in high school Kate; you know this. What I can’t believe is
that you didn’t date any guy at our school.

KATE

I’m sorry did you see the guys at our high school?

JOCELYN (laughing)

Ok fair, fair.
(beat)
You were like the hottest girl in our grade, none of those guys would have deserved you
anyway.

Okay but seriously, where is this dude? I’m worried some cop is gonna pull up and start asking
questions.

KATE

Joss, we don’t even have any drugs on us. What would they even accuse us of?

JOCELYN

I don’t know! What if Matt shows up, drugs in hand when some cop is right next to us.

KATE

You’re reaching juuuuust a little, honey.

JOCELYN (laughs)

Don’t you honey me!

(beat)
With that verbiage, maybe the cops will think we came here to hook up.

KATE

Jocelyn—

JOCELYN

I know, I know, you’re too classy for car sex in front of Lincoln but you know many say that I’m
actually quuuuuite the catch and I—

KATE (angry)

JOCELYN!

JOCELYN

Kate, is everything ok? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that joke would make you so mad. You know I’m
absolutely kidding right? I just—

KATE

Matt’s walking up to the car.

At least I think it’s Matt.

JOCELYN

Oh, shit. Ok, ok should I like, just roll down my window or should we get out or–

Guess that answers that.

Hey, Matt, what’s up.

MATT

Hey Joss, hey Kate. Sorry I’m late. My mac and cheese had like 5 minutes left on it when you
texted me and I didn’t want to light my house on fire or whatever.

JOCELYN

You’re totally, that’s totally fine. We didn’t even notice, right Kate?

Right well, anyway…. here you go.

MATT

Cool well, I’ll see you guys around then. Nick’s over at mine all the time, Joss, you should pull
up sometime.

JOCELYN (laughing)

I haven’t talked to Nick since last winter break. I think I might have to pass but thanks for the
offer.

MATT

No worries. Hit me up if you two need anything whenever.

JOCELYN

I really thought for a moment that Matt just gave me my change and nothing else. I didn’t realize
it’d be so small.

First successful drug deal complete.

Shall we get the fuck out of here?

Ok Kate, what’s up. Tell me what I did and what I need to say, you know I can’t function when
you’re mad at me. You’re my best friend in the whole world.

KATE (blushing)

Look it’s nothing ok, just
(beat)
don’t make jokes like that.

JOCELYN

What? Jokes about us hooking up? I’m sorry I didn’t realize it made you uncomfortable.

Didn’t realize the thought was just soooo disgusting.

KATE

Joss, I literally just told you to stop making jokes like that.

JOCELYN

Ok my bad really, my friends at college and I make those kinds of jokes all the time. I guess I
didn’t realize they don’t translate to us.

KATE

Yeah it’s whatever I just don’t want you to, ok?

JOCELYN

Yeah ok.
(beat)
Ok, this might be like totally obtuse to ask, but it’s not because we’re girls right? Because I
thought you were cool about that kind of stuff. Or like, I don’t know, I feel like I’d know if you
were homophobic, but I guess I just always assumed that you—

KATE (heated)

Ok you need to stop talking right now. I am not HOMOPHOBIC, JOCELYN. I had a massive
crush on you in high school, I literally could not have cared less about the boys in our grade.
And you’re like the straightest girl I know and that’s fine and I’ve made my peace with it, but
calling me hot and making jokes about us hooking up is not what I need to hear.

JOCELYN

Kate…

KATE

You really don’t have to say anything. Honestly, I’d prefer you didn’t.

This is why I never told you. I didn’t want to see this look on your face, I didn’t want you to worry
about me when Nick was such an emotional drain on you anyways.

And I’m glad you’ve moved past that because you deserve someone better than Nick but sitting
outside Lincoln just makes me feel like we’ve regressed back into those people and I just want
to get the fuck out of here.

JOCELYN (quietly)

I really didn’t know Kate, about any of this.
(beat)
I’m not straight. At least, I think I’m not.

KATE

What? I–When did you realize this?

JOCELYN

I don’t know, I never really thought about it in high school. The Nick drama kept me pretty busy, I
guess. But going to college really makes you question who you’ve been the last 18 years of
your life. There were like no out people at Lincoln, so meeting some queer people first year
made me realize that maybe I didn’t just like guys.

You could have told me in high school, you know.

KATE

I didn’t want anything to change. I didn’t want to lose you, you’re my best friend.

JOCELYN

I’m so sorry you thought you would lose me. You know if you murdered someone, I’d help you
bury the body.

I just thought you were too mature for the boys at our school. You were always so driven, I
wanted to be just like you. I didn’t want Nick to define me in high school, but I let him, and I
missed out on so many things because of it.

KATE (tenderly)

Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s nice to feel wanted, I get it. We were so young, we’re still
so young.

JOCELYN

Kate?

KATE

Yeah Joss?

JOCELYN

What did you mean when you said you made your peace with it?

KATE

I meant like that I knew the situation was what it was, or at least I thought I knew. So, I went on
with my life.

JOCELYN

So, you don’t like me like that anymore?

KATE

I don’t think people simply stop liking people. Like if you liked someone for long enough, there
was a reason for that and unless they did someone to irreparably damage that view of them in
your mind, you probably still remember why you liked them. And, I don’t know, I guess a part of
me still remembers why I liked you, but I shoved that part of me deep, deep down when I
thought there was no chance. Does that make sense?

JOCELYN

Yeah…yeah it does.
(beat)
Sorry you know me; I take a million years to process new information and this is definitely the
most process-worthy information I’ve been given in a while.

KATE

Yeah, I know Joss. You don’t have to do anything right now; I’m not asking you to make a
decision about anything. I told you,

I made my peace with it a long time ago.

JOCELYN

What if…what if I was asking something of you right now?

KATE

What do you [mean]—

JOCELYN

Just let me finish before I lose my nerve. What if I asked you to kiss me right now? What would
you say?

KATE

Fuck. Fuuuucck. You’re actually doing something bold and I have to be the one to say no to
you?

JOCELYN

Shit. Kate, I’m so sorry. I thought like….you said that and then like you’re you and I’m like wow
oh my god but like…oh my god….I—

KATE

No, no Joss please listen to me.

It’s just not that simple. I thought about something like this–well, maybe not this setting, but you
and me–for so long in high school.

But I can’t drop everything because you want me to kiss you. That’s not fair to me and not fair
to….

JOCELYN (softly)

Is there someone at college, Kate?

KATE (defeatedly)

Yeah, there is. It’s pretty new but she’s… we really get along.

JOCELYN

You don’t have to explain yourself.
(beat)
I’m happy for you, honestly. I’m just sorry I didn’t realize when it might have mattered.

KATE

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.
(beat)
I’m really proud of you for asking me.

JOCELYN (embarrassed)

Yeah well…might take me a little while to work up the courage to be bold again.

KATE

Do NOT let me be the one and only time you asked for something you wanted! You are PAST
Nick, past all of that shit. We’re at a fucking drug deal for christs’s sake, you have $90 worth of
straight up drugs in your pocket! You are the stupidest, funniest,
take-your-mom’s-car-to-a-drug-deal-est girl I know!

JOCELYN (laughing)

I hate you so much.

KATE

Yeah, yeah you too. Let me buy you some ice cream, okay?

END OF PLAY

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