April Fools

The time was 3:36AM and I am masturbating in the bathroom on the fourth floor of the university’s main library when a clatter comes ringing through the door. Annoyed, I stilled my hand from persisting with its familiar rhythm and waited for the interloper to leave me be. My irritation grew when my veined love muscle sunk back to its lowly state after the sound of a voice—a male voice at that—echoed off the tiled walls.

            “But there is justification. You heard the doctor; the odds of retardation are like…ten times greater amongst the offspring of first cousins. Really Lisa I don’t even know how you’re even thinking of keeping the thing. I thought we talked about this? We made a mistake—a horrible, drunken mistake. To think of this as anything else is sick! Lisa you’re sick! I think I might vomit right now just thinking about it! Please please please I am begging you: do the right thing here. We will move on with our lives, forget it ever happened, shit maybe even be comfortable enough to laugh about it in a decade or two. Lisa, do you hear me? Aren’t you listening to anything I’m saying? Anything the doctor said to you?”

            There was a long pause. If only I could have seen myself positioned as I was in that moment: legs shot out directly ahead of me with pants and boxers at my ankles, the soles of my shoes pushing against the stall door so as to keep the illusion alive for the intruder, apparently a cousin-fucker, the myth that he was the bathroom’s sole proprietor. I wanted to laugh, cry, but mostly disappear completely from the absurd plight all around me. I was beginning to seriously consider the prospect of the air vents near my feet when the silence was broke by the sound of a child’s weeping. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. You realize” the voice sobbed, “you realize our lives are over. One hundred percent. Over. Not just in all the ways a normal unplanned pregnancy can fuck things up, no that I could maybe live with. Friends, our family for godssake, they all will be gone. What in the world will they think? We’d have to move out of the state—out of the country! Can’t you see, Lisa? Can’t you fucking understand this in that fucking pea-sized brain of yours?” Now, where the voice lacked sniffles and blubs it compensated with volume. “You ruined my life! You fucking killed me you stupid bitch! Please! Just abort the damned thing and save the three of us!” Pause. Long ominous pause followed by a distinguishable crash. In came skidding across the tile, a cell phone. Quickly my eyes darted beneath the graffitied door where legs crowded a pair of aging jeans. Then, a sinister trilogy that still deafens me: a metallic click click boom.

            The blood in my eyes hindered my vision. It was a text message. But I could only see the date: April 1.

a poem and a short story by Alexandra Naughton

sad story #4

I want to ask I don’t want to ask but I want to tell I don’t want to tell I need to show you I don’t need to do anything

life is really just a series of pressures and scenarios in which to embarrass oneself

I make my bones exposing myself

making bones

I have nothing to achieve from holding it

I have little to squander from embracing it

some apologist’s respect

I am trained for this

have it harnessed so sexy

sad story #8

am I special oh my god why do I always do this like torturing myself but I want to be validated in a sensitive way I mean I don’t need it to survive or even function or feel good but if you’re going to occupy like this I’d like to feel a similar impact because otherwise what’s the point. my affections are capitalist. writing this in a notebook in fat sweeping lettering but it looks clean and almost in lines almost like I have decent handwriting I guess I’m calm because what if this is only legible to myself but I am confident a stranger could find this notebook and read my every thought as if it were printed but maybe not I have terrible handwriting haha I write that in a letter to you or you write that in yours and I guess we’re both so self conscious or maybe it’s just me I guess it’s always just me but I really can’t tell. keep pressing that little button on the side to see if you’ve replied to the message I sent to you itself a reply to something you texted me writing we’re always talking about writing it’s like the only way we can talk about sex because they’re almost the same thing especially when it’s frustrating.

sitting on my feet. my cat is next to me and we’re listening to Turn on the Bright Lights. I loved this in high-school but now I associate it with another time in my life riding the bus trash bags full of clothes up steep streets and leaning forward to stay balanced to keep everything from falling out. it’s comforting in a grimy way. alone besides my cat and I don’t mind it I actually like it I mean I like being with friends but not all the time. like time to sit in bed or at my desk with my cat and it eats at me when I can’t have this like I wish I could quit my job.

but seriously or just anyone. like can you tell me but I don’t need you to say anything I just want to say it to you to kill it you don’t even have to look at me but I tend to do this with so many questions I want to say but don’t want to know the answers to. wonder if things were different like I wish I had given myself some time like at my desk or in my bed with my cat. Jesus Christ. sometimes I find myself in a near catatonic state I don’t know if that really is what it is but it’s kind of like that hot tub scene in Ferris Bueller and I just sit and can’t move not even my head or my hands and I think about doing something like standing up or rolling a spliff but not even that I am really just staring at some odd point on the wall like a picture of Al Pacino or the bottom blind in the row and I wish I had a plan.

in the bathroom I stand in front of the sink and look in the mirror open my mouth and grimace and notice something I ate in one of my bottom teeth did anyone else see this I pick up the green handled toothbrush and clean up looking around the bathroom looking at the pair of old underwear in the trash the ones with the birds that I bought in high-school that I kept way longer than I should more holes than fabric faint blood stains I can’t wear these or show them to anyone and they even feel dingy when I wear them so what’s the point. looking at my teeth again I think of a song lyric for an emo band and think about writing it down spit and leave the bathroom and look inside my notebook reading the last line I wrote and immediately forget what I wanted to write down.

walking on the beach insects buzzing in my eyes a dead raccoon something in the water that I think is an animal swimming or bobbing up and down but it really just a large rock the water splashes over broken glass in the sand the train tracks just to the left with the commuter train coming quick around the bend almost out of nowhere how I thought about parking on Carlotta street and calling it in my head the whole time mad Carlotta street how I almost instinctually walked toward the tracks just before the train to put out a cigarette how I thought about how if the train had caught me you might be sad for a little while but not long probably and I wouldn’t want you to be but I think I would want you to remember me.

Afternoon nap

I'm drunk or drugged, giggling and feeling loopy with a man in bed.
He's older, and initially I can't make out who he is.
My vision begins to pick up details.
I know where I am and who this man is.
He's my dad. This is his room.
Feelings boil up inside me.
I'm upset, enraged and afraid.
I scramble out of bed and grab my scattered clothes.
I bottle my urge to yell or cry because I'm not sure which to do first.
My only thought is to escape as quickly as possible.
I run out of the room and slam the door behind me.
My mom is lounging on her chair, looking at me ignorantly like a child.
I run to the upstairs bathroom and see myself in the mirror.
My hair is a mess, and my eyes are in a drugged-up daze.
I scream.

Jamie Barrodale

William Wei - Amie Barrodale The Paris Review Vice

I once had a one-night stand. She was ten years my senior with luscious lips. That's all I remember about her looks besides her breasts and ass. She had broken up with her boyfriend Cedric, who worked with her at Ocean Drive magazine. We were both wasted at a South Beach bar. A friend sitting at the booth behind us reached across my chest and told me to give up because I wasn't going to get any. She called me a white Supremacist and I told her she was right. We fell to the floor and broke some glasses, then walked three blocks down to her apartment. I remember struggling with a third condom as she went to the bathroom. I waited a long time before checking up and finding her passed out on the toilet. Her name was Capucine.

The following month I started freshman year of college. Ebony was in my Comparative Genocide class and we paired up for a dehumanization project. We decided to analyze a real-life current systematic killing of a people instead of imagining our own. Palestine, we argued, is seen as an invasive species. "A rodent problem," I specifically remember saying. She told me I reminded her of Hitler. "That moustache." We pinned ourselves against an entire classroom of Jews who were none-too-pleased. That's how we began to relate to one another. It was something I had done many times before. She invited me to a party in Cutler Ridge. Her friends assured me I'd be safe as soon as they met me. We drank fortified wine and Ebony placed her hand in my backpocket. I tongued her ear when no one required our attention. A fight broke out and a bicep was stabbed. The molly kicked in as lights flashed red and blue. She slept over my house many nights before she invited me over.

Parked on her driveway were matching black impala and monte carlo. Her share of the efficiency was towards the back. Her brother asked me where I purchased my shoes. She pointed to a door which led to her parents' bedroom, then showed me her room and told me her parents were out of town. I asked her if she was baby-sitting her baby brother. She laughed and said of course. I always laugh when people laugh at something I said, like I understand the joke I just made.

She made a dreadful pasta in jar sauce, a steamed vegetable and a portion of meat. An American tradition. I’ve cooked up pasta before, beef bolognese on lemon-pepper angel hair, smoked beef rib on a plate, asparagus and mayonnaise, associated crystal hot sauce, the Italian works ground on a silver tin. I swallowed ragu and opened another four loko. After some steady rope sex, I got up to go to the bathroom. I felt tempted and decided to peek into her parens' bedroom. It was a broom closet.

It reminds me of the time a friend invited me to dinner at her house and set a pot on fire. She asked me to hold her hands behind her back as I pushed against her. That night I learned something.

	Dan Brat
	gay marriage tonight
	It was weird, because I looked at pornography pretty frequently at this point. It was even a problem, so that I would spend an hour looking for the most disgusting pictures I could find. Maybe disgusting is not the word. For example, I liked a short video where an older man was fucking a girl in the ass while he put a Blow Pop inside her. Then he stopped and put it into her ass. Then he put it into her mouth, and he started to fuck her again. But somehow this conversation ...
	Vicari Valdez
	i feel like i've read that before. where is it from?
	Dan Brat
	Amie Barrodale
	William Wei
	this is like the fifth time I reread this story
	Vicari Valdez
	ah yeah!
	great story
	really good
	i should give it a re-read as well
	Dan Brat
	check out the stuff she posts on vice
	I really want to learn from her style
	Vicari Valdez
	i only read one about when she got married in las vegas
	loved the comments section
	was not moved by it immediately
	but it was like a contemporary HST
	in a way
	Dan Brat
	HST?
	Vicari Valdez
	hunter s thompson
	in the sense that it's 1st person journalism
	Dan Brat
	oh word
	Vicari Valdez
	and it reflects the banality of our times
	Dan Brat
	yuh
	Vicari Valdez
	like she's not taking a bunch of drugs
	she's not really doing anything at all
	and it's even more narcissistic
	like she was in town (i assume) to cover a porn convention
	and she talks about sharing a hot tub with a pornstar
	but doesn't bother to tell us (or remember?) the name
	she kind of doesn't even really care about what's happening in the city above and beyond what she's doing
	Dan Brat
	We got take-out from a delivery service, and around eleven, her hair had fallen down, and her cheek was resting on her hand so the top of her head just touched my shoulder. I still have the shirt I was wearing at that time. It’s hanging in my closet.
	it's subtle this is what the poet Gregory Solano said: i was reading one of her vice articles  12:35 PM here's a small excerpt:  12:35 PM "The mixologist was named Nichole Villerot. She had big, Brigette Bardot blond hair, and she was sexy and nervous. I think she was the first outwardly nervous person I’d seen in a long time. I am nervous. I usually hide it in situations where I think it’ll make others uncomfortable, by taking pills. I used to do it by drinking. So it was funny for me to see that a nervous person is a person who is good-hearted, kind, sensitive and—since I’m talking about someone other than me—brave. All she had to do was take a belt or a pill, but she didn’t, and she shook as she talked about the four mocktails she had made up for us, on the fly."  12:35 PM i hate this cold ironic angle that defines every fucking vice article  12:36 PM they could write about going to chernobyl and it would just end up saying something like "Yeah, and so it was like really weird I guess" Send "Brigitte Bardot" Ringtone to Cell A Brigitte Bardot está ficando velha, envelheceu antes dos nossos sonhos. Coitada da Brigitte Bardot, que era uma moça bonita, mas ela mesma não podia ser um sonho para nunca envelhecer. A Brigitte Bardot está se desmanchando e os nossos sonhos querem pedir divórcio. Pelo mundo inteiro têm milhões e milhões de sonhos que querem também pedir divórcio e a Brigitte Bardot agora está ficando triste e sozinha. Será que algum rapaz de vinte anos vai telefonar na hora exata em que ela estiver com vontade de se suicidar? Quando a gente era pequeno, pensava que quando crescesse Ia ser namorado da Brigitte Bardot, mas a Brigitte Bardot está ficando triste e sozinha

i hate this cold ironic angle that defines every fucking diff int article