Pas de Deux

She—no, they slam the apartment door. They’ve left each night this week. At first, Xavier tried inviting me. “Come on,” they said. “We haven’t had date night in weeks.” It hasn’t been that long, I think. We haven’t gone out in only one, two, three…okay, it’s been two weeks. Working two jobs each made our schedules sporadic, but we had always found time for each other. Even after the alienation of work, we had managed to rejuvenate one another. But I feel none of that now. Coming back to the apartment after finishing a shift at The New Erding Market and Empire Clothes Factory Outlet remained draining. Xavier tried to kiss and hold me to make it better. But I just stand there, being kissed and held but neither kissing nor holding. No electricity sparked; no desire or lust made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like a porcupine’s quills. I’m just tired, I say to myself. Missing a few date nights shouldn’t matter as long as we still love each other, right?

But tonight, Xavier left angry. They had stopped inviting me the last couple nights. I think they expected me to ask about it; to beg for an invite. But I figured it was fine to stay in another night. “Theresa,” Xavier had called from the bedroom. When I entered, they asked, “do you still love me?” I couldn’t pin down the tone. It sounded tongue-in-cheek, but—I asked what they meant. “Do you”—the playful paint peeled from their tone—“still love me?”

“Of course,” I told them.

“Then what did I do wrong?” They asked.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Jul—”

“It’s not Julia.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m still getting used to—”

“Save the excuses,” they said. “You told me how much you hated those when you transitioned.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“So why won’t you go out with me tonight?”

“I’m exhausted. Working two shifts between two different jobs really kills you.”

“I know. I do the same thing.” They walked out and slammed the apartment door. How can this be happening to me? I think. Why is this happening? Everything was fine until tonight. What’s their problem? Not going out for two weeks isn’t so bad. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you’re too busy or too tired. Sometimes nothing’s wrong. The only that happened two weeks ago was Xavier started to transition.

#

“How does Xavier sound?” they asked me a few weeks ago.

“For  what? Like a pet or DnD character?” I said.

“No, for my name,” they said. Now I feel like an asshole, I replied. “I didn’t frame the question right, sorry,” they said.

“It sounds fine, but it’s very—how do I put this—stereotypical trans masculine?” I said.

“How?”

I said, “there’s this joke how trans femmes always name themselves after a flower or their mom’s maiden name, and trans mascs name themselves Stone Brody or Heraclitus or Rad Heroman.”

“Those are great ideas,” they said to themself. “But why did you pick your name?”

“Theresa sounded pretty” I said.

“Well, Xavier sounds handsome,” they said.

“Xavier it is, then,” I smiled at them lying against my shoulder.

As abrupt as that conversation appeared to me, Xavier started to transition socially and medically. Of course, something’s appearance and essence tend to be contradictory. The foam of a river masks the current below. Yet, the foam was the result of that current, that essence. I imagine their question had been bubbling up like foam on a river.

“Anything else I should know?” I asked Xavier.

“What do you mean?” they said.

“You want me to call you Xavier now, so what pronouns are you going by now?”

“He/him,” they said. “Though, I guess they/them can apply to everyone, can’t they?”

“Unless someone says specifically not to, yeah.”

Xavier started wearing men’s clothing. They threw out their pleated skirts, skinny jeans, cotton blouses, and lowcut tops. No matter the gender expression you want when transitioning, you have to be an extremist first. The cis public takes your identity as something in contention. We have to be seen as a girl or boy or neither first before you can be seen as a feminine man or masculine woman or non-binary with any expression other than pure androgyny. Time and patience will then let you express yourself however you please. One of these days, I’ll start being butch, just not yet. As conflated as they are, there isn’t much similarity between trans men and butch lesbians, even early in the former’s transition. They wear their masculinity differently, in ways that can only be seen rather than told.

Yet, Xavier had never been happier. Again, on the surface that seems contradictory. They were even more anxious about the cis public trying to pass. Their growing gender dissonance meant they spent even more time in front of the reflection of shop windows trying to get the most perfectly unassuming man look; trying to lower their voice before speaking to the barista or cashier to get that perfect pitch. But that was like cleaning your room or doing laundry: it was the messiest right before it becomes its cleanest. Jeans and shirts must be thrown across the room and on the bed before they can get in the dresser and closet. Change is messy. Xavier was closer to their self than ever before.

#

Is that what Xavier thinks this is all about? I think. Because they transitioned? The timelines do match up, but that’s preposterous! I’m trans too! Why would I be avoiding them just because they transitioned. Before they transitioned, we both identified as lesbians, and we both only ever dated girls and non-men. I’ve never considered dating a man. I don’t think I’ve ever found one attractive. But that can change, right? What does it matter that Xavier is a man now? I loved them for them, right? They’re my soulmate, right? So, their body is changing, all of ours do in one way or another. It’s what’s on the inside that matters, right? Cause inside, they’ve always been a boy. They had a boy’s soul or whatever. We’re soulmates. And Xavier knows my last relationship ended because I transitioned. How could she think I’d do the same to them?

I get up and change into my cutest outfit then grab my apartment keys and coat.

#

Natali had left me when I told her—that’s not true—it wasn’t telling her that made her leave; it was following through that made her go. You always word it weird when you start telling people. You say dumb things like, ‘I wanna be a girl.’ It’s the kind of stuff that makes it sound negotiable or temporary. For some people it is, I guess. But not many. Not enough. But a lot of people don’t even give themselves the chance to re-forge themselves with such certainty. I said ‘I wanna be a girl,’ and Natali just looks at me like ‘yeah okay sure whatever you say’. Then I started ‘being’ a girl, and Natali wondered where she went wrong. She never took me seriously, I suppose. Then you start saying how things really were, like ‘I’ve always been a girl,’ and they rightfully point out that wasn’t what you said before. But you were stupid. You barely understood what you meant. But Natali, she acted like she understood better. And as infuriating as that was, I started to think maybe she did because I was up shit creek without either a paddle or map, so any degree of confidence came off as truth. Now, of course, I know she knew less than me.

You think everything will be alright, anyway. What does it matter that she finally knows you’re a girl now? She loved you for you, right? She was your soulmate, right? So, my body is changing, all of ours do in one way or another. It was what was on the inside that mattered, right? Cause inside, I was always a girl. I had a girl’s soul or whatever. We were soulmates.

“I can’t do it,” Natali said as she started packing. “I’m not into girls. I’m not a lesbian.” She held back from yelling. Or bi or pan or whatever, she said so softly it was almost a whisper.

“You’re really just gonna leave?” I said. “We can talk about this, Nat. I promise we can compromise, work this out. It’s not gonna be that big of a change for you, I promise.”

“You already made your decision, Br—Theresa,” she said as she continued to throw everything her burgundy duffel bag as if it where bottomless despite looking as though it was begging to burst.

“What do you want me to do, Nat?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she yelled. Then she stopped. She felt the blouse in her hand in silence before finally saying, “stop.”

“What?”

“Stop. What do I want you to do? Stop.”

“I can’t, I won’t do that,” I said as my sadness turned to anger.

Natali started packing again “then there’s nothing stopping me from leaving.”

The only sounds I could pull out of my mouth were incomplete and incoherent: just a bunch of stammering of “well’s” and “I’s” and “if’s”. But she continued to pack. I made excuses. I told her I wasn’t thinking about bottom surgery and that she didn’t have to call me Theresa if she really didn’t want to and that we could still get married and gave kids and a house like she always wanted. After a while, I just sat on the floor, a spectator to my own life. My anger was temporary. When she finally grabbed her duffel bag and slammed the apartment door behind her, an emptiness crawled its way through my stomach and guts again. She was gone. And even if I did ever see her again, would either of us want that? There was a finality to her door slam, at least, even if she did make her friends come around a couple days later to pick up leftover property she forgot in her torrent. Literal closure. I watched these familiar faces take things that felt so essential to the apartment that it was as if they came with it. Within a week, there was an emptiness to the place that I couldn’t stand; an agonizing kind of emptiness that wasn’t like the absence of something like how darkness is the absence of light. No, this emptiness manifested itself into a physical object: an antimatter or black hole that annihilated or pulled out the habitability and bearableness of certain rooms and corners.

I began spending less time at home. No, home wasn’t the right word. The apartment I was leasing. I had no ownership of it. It was disposable. Or, I was disposable. I first knew that when the real estate agent started showing the apartment to potential renters. I felt like a zoo animal that the agent and potential renter simply walked and talked around, the first thing to be cleaned out by the end of the month like the old keys or garbage.

I hadn’t been a part of the gay bar scene before. The unfortunate part of new millennia gay bars is that they aren’t seen as hives of scum and villainy anymore, so voyeurs and tourists frequent them more and more often. So, the regulars—the real gay regulars—are suspicious of newcomers, and the new gay patron themself is suspicious of anyone. Another problem is that some bars are more focused on one kind of patron than others. Some bars truly represent the diverse coalition of queers. But most are simply gay men bars, lesbian bars, ‘gay’ bars that have a drag show once in a while but mostly appeal to straight women who will threaten to call the cops if another woman hits on them. And if you have one gay bar in a 20-mile radius of your town, you just have to accept it. The only reasonably gay bar near me was just a few blocks away but most prominently housed gay men. They make fine company. But I needed a place to be with other queer women, not even just for lust or love. I needed somewhere I could be confident in sisterhood, because gay women are already seen as predatory enough, but add being a trans gay woman and they’ll kill you in the streets. It was a lot of luck that Xavier came one night. They had been a newcomer like me, with no knowledge of how Guillaume’s normally functioned.

#

Outside the apartment, the autumn New Jersey wind funnels the flaming leaves like embers between the brick buildings. New Erding feels like a huge, colonial college campus in its uniformity. I walk in a galloping speed toward downtown. The area glows like the Seaside Heights or Ocean City boardwalks of my childhood. People walk up and down the sidewalks and crossed the street as they pleased without much attention for cars. But if you lived here long enough, you know how stupid it is to drive down Main Street most nights.

I window shop the restaurants trying to spot Xavier in the dimly lit rooms. I even check restaurants we have never been to together out of desperation. But I can’t recognize a single face through the tinted glass lining the east side of Main Street. I check harder on the west side, even stopping in my tracks to press my face in the window. I scan the outside seating areas like a parent looking into a crowd for their lost child before moving on. It’s funny; no matter how many lights downtown tries to illuminate the darkness with, you can still always tell it’s getting darker, it’s getting harder to see. Yet, if you ever end up in downtown when there are no lights at night, the darkness is almost invisible, as if our eyes alone can cut through it. Finally, I walk back to Guillaume’s as though it’s some point of origin.

#

Xavier sits with a group of friends, some mutual, some acquaintances, some I haven’t talked to much. Xavier looks like a stranger to me to the point where I feel like I got the wrong person. Despite how physically close they are to me right now, it seems like I’m staring into a different world and different life. I have to look down at my own two feet in order to feel grounded again. This is Guillaume’s, my usual bar. And that is Xavier—my partner—sitting in front of me.

“Come home with me,” I say.

The entire table looks up at me. All their faces have different expressions like a collage of drama masks. But Xavier looks the most dumbfounded; a mix of complete surprise, confusion, anger, and happiness. The table is silent. Then, like a scratched disc finally moving on to the next song, Xavier says, “Theresa.” They still sound in disbelief as though I’m a ghost levitating in front of them.

“Xavier, please come home with me,” I reiterate. My voice cracks. I feel my eyelids try to clean away the tears beginning to pour from my eyes like windshield wipers as a drizzle turns to a storm.

Xavier looks at me in silence for a few long seconds before looking back at their friends. They all look back at Xavier with a variety of non-verbal nods and hand motions displaying a variety of advice and opinions. Xavier looks back and forth between their friends and myself before grabbing their own stuff and coming towards me. I grab their hand as soon as they are in arm’s reach. Once we exit the bar and entered the outside night, I pull them close and kiss them more passionately I’ve done in weeks.

#

As we enter the apartment, we’re kissing each other. Xavier’s eyes are closed the entire time. But we’ve been together in this place so long, we can navigate it blind. I lead them to the bedroom. I wanted them in the bedroom, our clothes off, as if then we will connect brain to brain as though it will strip away all that has been different these last few weeks. But as we continue to kiss, as I place my run my fingers through their hair, as I place my hands on their back and thigh, I feel myself become drained. Xavier kept a rough grip on my butt and thighs. The more I kiss them, the more it changes. At first, I thought it feels like kissing a stranger, but that isn’t it. No, it began to more and more feel like I’m kissing a friend; purely platonic. It’s as if Xavier is pecking my cheek or forehead even though they are pushing their tongue down my throat. But I keep taking Xavier’s clothes off and they start to take off mine. I push Xavier onto the bed.

We are against each other. I feel Xavier trembling beneath me and my hold is tight enough to crack. “Oh my God, yes,” Xavier keeps moaning over and over. But my head feels broken off from my body and thrown away. My eyes look straight forward at the shaking headboard as I count in my head. And then this is the way.

This is how it is.

Xavier lies next to me, asleep. I try hard to separate my brain from my body, but a red string keeps them connected like a nerve. It’s just one bad lay, I tell myself. It doesn’t mean anything. We haven’t had sex in weeks, maybe we’re just out of practice. That’s right, we haven’t had sex in weeks, not since Xavier transitioned. Maybe we are out of practice, but Xavier looked so content lying next to me. I could tell he was satisfied. I don’t love Xavier anymore. Is it because Xavier’s a man now? Is it because I’m only attracted to girls and non-men? Is that okay to think? I tell myself that it isn’t. If it is, then I’d be no better than Natali. If it is, then that means what Natali did was okay, right? That she had every right to treat me like she did, to make it harder and more dangerous and less acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so? I can’t be like her. She did everything wrong. There has to be a way to fix everything, to get Xavier and I to work out. My brain has to make my body understand this. But it can’t. Looking at Xavier, rubbing his forehead, my body sent a message to my brain. I thought of myself as a brain or soul crammed inside a body or shell. I fooled myself into accepting that whatever my brain or soul or mind was stored in was not important, not a part of my consciousness, that I am trapped inside here, and I use it only as a vehicle or form of travel for my soul or whatever. But I can’t just separate my mind and body, because it was never separate. It’s a totality. Whenever I thirst or hunger or feel pain enough, it becomes the only think I can think of. And stress and grief never stay in my head as they ache and exhaust me. Feeling ill or well, my body feelings make a vital and substantial contribution to myself.

I thought there was conflict between my brain and my body. I thought my brain was in the right place and my body was misbehaving like a child. Or maybe it was vice versa? But perhaps there had been some miscommunication, not just between my brain and my body but in my understanding of this conflict. Maybe my body was trying to say something to my brain. Maybe I was shooting the messenger. The totality of my being needed a change, and I was too busy focusing on the individual components of it, reducing myself to parts as though I can separate myself from my body or my brain. If your dashboard tells you that you need to fix your breaks, you do not replace the dashboard.

I get out of bed so not to wake Xavier. I feel sick to my stomach. Natali was right, I think. I put my clothes back on. My duffle bag rested on the shelf at the top of the closet. I took it down and began packing some of my tops. A few of the blouses were ones Xavier gave to me when he started transitioning. I didn’t know if I should take them or not, so I put them to the side on the beige carpet. I can’t fit all my tops in the bag; I move on to the pants and underwear from the fake wood dresser. Again, there are a few items of Xavier that he gave me. I put them with his former tops. My bag is almost full, and I still have so much to pack. I stand up and walk through the apartment. There’s no way I can take everything of mine in one trip let alone one bag. I wonder if I’ll need to get a few friends to come by later and pick up the rest. Natali was right, I think. But I still hate her. Nothing about this is right. I returned to the bedroom and flipped the duffel bag over to let all the clothes fall into the floor. If Natali was right then why do I hate her still? I think. If she was right, why does this feel so wrong. I have come to turns that I don’t love Xavier anymore, not like a lover. I know how Natali felt when I transitioned now. I understand her better than before. But don’t—no, I can’t understand how she handled it. I understand her, but that doesn’t make her right. Instead, I’m not sure if understanding her makes me want to forgive her or hate her more. Even if I no longer loved Xavier like that, there has to be way to make something work out; to make it easier and safer and more acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so. I sit back on the bed next to Xavier but don’t fall asleep.

#

I lie in bed till Xavier wakes up. His eyes open tenderly like he’s only been resting them but he’s been snoring for the last couple hours. He pushes his head closer to mine. He looks like a little brother to me. “Xavier,” I say.

“Yes, Theresa?” He says.

“We’re not gonna work out,” I say.

“What?” He’s fully awake now. Nothing is a better alarm clock than a jolt of anxiety. “Theresa, what are you talking about?” I hear him start to whimper.

“I’m talking about us, Xavier,” I say.

“What’s wrong with us?” He asks. I don’t say anything. As true as the cliché, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ has become, it will have been worse to say than nothing at all. “It’s because I transitioned, isn’t it? I know, I know that’s the reason. I’m not stupid, Theresa. It doesn’t take a scientist to notice that you’ve become so distant ever since I started. But that’s so hard, so fucking hard to admit to yourself. I could hear myself screaming about it. But I still believed you when you just said work had gotten hard and that you were exhausted. Even when I stormed out, I blamed myself,” Xavier says.

“You’re right,” I say. The look at Xavier’s face is crushing, so I can only imagine how crushed he is. He puts both hands on my face. In the past, my face always turned warm and red at the prospect, but now it’s as sterile as a friend’s touch.

“Theresa, I love you. I love you so much that I’ve never felt more comfortable with anyone else. And I thought, and I thought that meant I could finally be me. I could be me with you! You know what that means because you’ve been through the same! I finally found someone with a commonness, a sort of bridge between souls unique like ours,” Xavier got better at holding back tears. I was good at that too when everyone thought I was a man including myself. Now, I cry every time we’re out of coffee in the morning.

“Yeah, but I’m finally being honest for once,” I say. “At first, I thought I didn’t love you anymore. But I felt it so hard to see you suffer. Maybe it was guilt. I’m sorry, but it’s complicated.” Xavier still lays in bed, his gaze not leaving me. “I’m not leaving,” I say. To make it easier and safer and more acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so, that’s the point. “Let’s be friends,” I said. “Best friends.”

__________________________________________________________________
About the author:
Nico Bailey was born and raised in Pennington, NJ and has an MFA in Writing from the University of New Hampshire. This is her debut publication.

Anthurium

_________________________________________________________
About the artist:
Julia Cuddahy is a librarian and local artist who likes to celebrate nature in her art.

Mouse

“And a mouse is miracle enough
to stagger sextillions of infidels.”
– Leaves of Grass

All eyes and ears
a tuft of gray fur
scoots across the cellar floor
on invisible feet

zigzags like a clockwork toy
and zips away,
his stubby butt-end
disappearing into the shadows

Behind a box marked Glacier Park,
hulled seeds in wisps of dryer fluff
define his winter den,
Whitman’s mouse.

___________________________________________________________
About the author
Carolyn (CAT) Phillips is a resident of Mercer County, a retired teacher of English and history, whose work has appeared in several journals. She twice won a contest for ekphrastic poems describing sculptures at Grounds for Sculpture. She continues to participate in a poetry group, established fifteen years ago, which meets at the Mercer County Library in Lawrenceville, and which is devoted to the study, reading and writing of poetry.

A Tale of the Ordinary

Wes has a gun.

I worked at a diner before I met Wes. I worked behind a long shiny counter and got to know the regulars pretty well. Shauna was one of the most memorable regulars, an energizer bunny of at least 75. She barely passed five feet and had striking red hair, swearing she never dyed it. She wore a weathered leather jacket that I was positive she had since the 1970s and never came in with anyone except herself. She was a bitter old woman. I read a quote one time, probably on an inspirational park bench somewhere, saying that you should never be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer – it eats at its host. Shauna taught me that this was true, her bitterness was eating away at her. And she wanted to eat away at everyone around her. She was always the bearer of bad news, yelling at the small Sony screen we had behind the counter playing channel 6 all day long. I remember the day the news broadcasted something about a shooting threat. No one was hurt and nothing bad happened besides a few shoppers in Barney’s having to wait a few extra hours to buy their Jimmy Choos. But it sent Shauna into a rage about guns. She told me that guns only existed because the ordinary were threatened by the extraordinary – they needed something that could keep themselves safe from the extraordinary, at a distance. She was always concerned with the ordinary and the extraordinary. I never caught any of Shauna’s bitterness, and I didn’t buy into many of her conspiracy theories. But, I did buy into her obsessions about where the ordinary and extraordinary stood in the world. I knew I was ordinary. I didn’t know if I could ever be extraordinary, or if I even wanted to be.

Wes has a gun. According to Shauna’s logic, that makes him ordinary.

It’s small and silver and looks like the kind of gun criminals hide in their waistbands in the movies. You might call the gun ordinary. It fits in his hand too comfortably, like his palm was designed to mold to its handle. The gun isn’t all shiny. There’s dark red in the creases around the handle. Wes says it’s rust – that the sleek metal ends up wearing from the oils on his hands. He says this matter of fact like he’s an expert on gunmetal and skin oils. He says it like I should believe him. He doesn’t want me to remember. So, I forget. I forget the time Wes stood stoically and shocked, seeming helpless for the first time I could remember. I forget how I made myself an accomplice for the first time by cleaning up the scene while Wes sat there helpless. I forget how the last thing I did was take the gun from Wes’s hands and rinse it off in the sink. I forget how I couldn’t get the dried blood out of the nooks and crannies of its handle. It’s the kind of moment that’s so out of the ordinary that you think you imagined it. You think that it’s something that would never happen to you. When you’re in the moment, time moves quickly and slowly at the same time. You don’t know how to make the world feel ordinary again. So, I believe Wes. There’s rust in the cracks of his gun.

I always know where Wes’s gun is. I’ve been aware of where Wes’s gun is the entire 7 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 14 days that we’ve been stuck in this extraordinary situation together. I am always wary of its existence because I know I am ordinary. I don’t want to fall into the trap of relying on the gun to keep the extraordinary at a distance. I want to let the extraordinary come to me if it’s meant to be. I want to know if I am meant for the life of the extraordinary.

Wes and I are staying in a shed. It’s an ordinary shed. It’s only temporary – we have something set up for us in Cincinnati. We just have to hide on our way there. It’s not that bad. We’ve stayed in places that disguised themselves as houses and apartments that were far worse than this shed. I just wish the shed had a lock. I’m nervous they’ll find us. At night, I pretend to sleep while Wes holds me in his arms in our cotton, navy sleeping bag. I don’t want him to worry that I lose sleep here. I want him to think that I’m tough – that I’m built for this seemingly extraordinary life just like he seems to be.

We’ve done what we can to make this place ours. The shed doesn’t belong to us, but the things inside of it do. We sleep on an old sleeping bag Wes grew up with. There’s an unrecognizable stain on the inside, near the top corner. I catch Wes tracing his finger around the edge of the stain when he thinks I’m sleeping. I wonder what the stain reminds him of. We have an old oak table that Wes found at a foreclosure sale a few blocks away from us. The wood had scars in it. It looks like it was used as some sort of work table in its past life, though it was clearly meant as a dining table. We eat at the table. We’ve used it as a scene for other, more devious activities at times when Wes was feeling spontaneous and loving me a little more than usual. We also have two old beach chairs we sit in throughout the day. We found those on the curb outside of a house –  a big one. I know they’re nice because they say “Tommy Bahama” on them and I always see rich people wearing clothes that say this on the beach. Our ragged, Walmart duffel bags stuffed with our belongings hold our clothes and toothbrushes. I have a few personal belongings with me that I don’t think are unique enough to share. Many parts of my life are painfully regular – you just wouldn’t expect it because I’ve been on the run with my boyfriend for 7 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 14 days. And that is certainly out of the ordinary.

For the first year of this never-ending, cruel game of tag, I kept track of the hours and minutes. When we hit the one-year mark, it didn’t feel necessary anymore. Wes had been on the run before I joined him. Except it wasn’t the same kind of run, he was running from a life that was set up for him – one that would’ve been too ordinary. I wonder if he wishes he stayed in that life. I guess it had to have been pretty bad for him to be content with the life we have now.

Wes has busy eyes – they’re always moving, nervous about what they might find. Every time we walk into a room, he scans the entire place. He notices things other people don’t notice – he has a knack for seeing the unseeable. It’s extraordinary, the way he pulls something out of nothing.  I like when his eyes land on me, because I know he’s seeing a part of me that others don’t see. I live this life with him because he seems to be the only person who would see something, anything, in me. I fear that I’m painfully, disappointingly ordinary. But he sees something extraordinary.

The world I lived in came off its axis when we met. I felt that it was the first extraordinary thing to find me. I wondered if it was the last. We met in an ordinary way – dumb kids being dumb kids. I had been reading Seventeen Magazine in the lobby of a Planned Parenthood (like an ordinary stupid teenager) and saw an advertisement for a new makeup brand that everyone swore by. It was beyond my price range, but I was angry at the world and wanted to take control of my life. When I left my appointment, I went to Macy’s and tried to steal a foundation and eyeshadow palette. I got caught. I was given community service at a food pantry – it could’ve been worse. Wes was also doing community service – also for some sort of robbery. We worked four straight shifts together before I was done with my stint there. He still had a ways to go. The day I left, he asked me for my number and proceeded to text me over the next few days about how it was so boring working there without me. Then he asked me to hang out. My world hasn’t been the same since. 

One night I drift off to sleep easier than normal. I’m lying in a nook that Wes created for me between his side and his arm. He’s drawing circles on my hand the same way he does around the stain on the sleeping bag. His hands are almost as busy as his eyes. I think they’re nervous, too. He’s telling me our plan to move on tomorrow – make the journey to our next halfway house. This one will be better – there’s a bed and a kitchen and a real bathroom. It sounds more like an ordinary home than what we’ve become used to lately. I drift off thinking of the ordinary life we are moving closer and closer to.

The extraordinary cannot exist without the ordinary. We exist in a world stuck in a cycle of painful relativity. The extraordinary would not stand out if there weren’t people like me to compare them to. Maybe I’m not meant for a life of the extraordinary to make me into an extraordinary person. Maybe I’m just a vessel to make the extraordinary standout.

I dream of a day when the game is over, and our enemies have finally tagged us “it”. Wes and I live in a house with a fence and a real address that we paint on the mailbox. Maybe I will work at another diner, or maybe I’ll work as a secretary to one of the extraordinary. I will wear khaki dress pants and shiny button-down blouses that blend in with the rest of working-class women who buy the same professional outfit to rotate every day for the rest of their working lives. Maybe Wes will get a job in construction where he can scan the construction scene looking for cracks in the foundation and using his hands to create something where there is nothing. We will come home at night, eat bland food I learned to cook from a recipe I found on the internet. We will watch television sitcoms every night for about two hours until we go to bed, where we will lay side by side on a mattress we will buy from a big box store during one of those crazy holiday weekend sales. Instead of always being at his side in case of an attack, Wes’s gun will sit in a lock box in his nightstand. We will be ordinary. Painfully, disappointingly ordinary. And to me, that will feel extraordinary.

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About the author
Emma Colby is an undergraduate student at Boston College, otherwise based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Stylus, Next Page Ink, Orca, the Elysian Chronicles, The Massachusetts’s Review, and others. She works as an intern for Post Road Magazine and wants to publish novels in the future.

Lost in Hell’s Kitchen

Reincarnation can’t be so hard to pull off. After all, businesses do it all the time. Especially in the far west side of the city. A little bar recently died and came back to life right in front of everyone. And not for the first time. It started out as a neighborhood bar, devolved into a punk bar, transformed into a sports bar then a gay bar before shockingly becoming a juice bar for a time. Now it was a bar for the third millennium or so the owners liked to describe it even though, given its history, chances were high the current incarnation wouldn’t survive longer than a year.

The bar was gutted then re-imagined as a bar without walls, a bar whose interior was as malleable and mercurial as cloud formations in a violent sky.

The dining area could be two tables or 10. A too-crowded bar triggered mini serving stations for wine and beer to pop up until demand diminished. Even the lounge was fickle. One night an asymmetric couch, a flat-screen television and a few ottomans. The next night an explosion of love seats, coffee tables, over-stuffed pillows, even a day bed to relax on. All of it arranged haphazardly as if the pieces had been shaken up then tossed out of a tumbler.

Each night’s crowd determined how the room looked; more diners enlarged the eating area; if instead more drinkers appeared, the bar expanded, and when a crush of people showed up wanting nothing more than a place to hang out, the lounge and its harlequin-colored furniture accommodated them.

This arrangement the owners thought brilliant. A bar that changed nightly became their raison d’être. So they named the place “Fluid”.

Keane had been to Fluid once but at the moment being there did not translate into knowing where it was.

“I thought it was on Forty-Ninth,” he said as the car he drove cruised between 8th and 9th Avenues. His sister Laura and his cousin Quinn scanned the north and south sides of the street for the bar’s name that might or might not be lit up in blue neon letters, Keane couldn’t remember.

Laura fumed. She punched the entire series of pre-set station buttons on the car stereo cutting off singer after singer mid note.

Keane turned the steering wheel at 11th Avenue and the car looped around the block then tentatively came down 50th Street. A thin trail of smoke rose from the hood of the car, turned red briefly from the reflected glow of a traffic light then evaporated into thin air. Keane stared at the hood as if he could look through it. Underneath was an engine he knew not to trust. Keane sniffed the air inside the car for a burning smell, and not just for some general, vague notion of what could be burning. His nose had experience with this engine, his nose was educated. It could distinguish between burning motor oil and a burning fan belt; one whiff could discern whether the brake calipers had burned out or if instead radiator coolant boiled over and vaporized on the engine block. There was no smoke in the air now, no evidence, but he wondered how long that would hold.

Convinced the future held something detrimental Keane switched his goal from finding the bar to finding something else he hadn’t seen for a while: a parking space.

“Let’s just walk,” he said. “It’s easier to find the bar on foot.”

Suddenly all three looked for something different. Laura stayed with the neon sign, Keane searched for a parking space and Quinn, recognizing hopelessness when he heard it, hunted for an empty cab to take home.

“Explain something to me,” Laura said to her brother, the glare of the city lights flashing across her face. “If you can search someone’s entire vascular system at the hospital and find a blood clot the size of a microbe, why can’t you find this bar?”

Keane braked for a traffic light. “Did you know I stopped looking?”

“Me, too,” Quinn added.

“This cannot be our evening,” said Laura, worried the boys were content to drive aimlessly around Manhattan. “It’s my big night out in the city. I’m supposed to brag about this night to my coworkers tomorrow morning.”

From under the hood came a sharp pop then a hissing sound as if the engine was filled with snakes. Thin clouds of white steam rose in sheets from the grooves where the hood of the car met the windshield.

Keane hit the gas pedal hoping to cool the engine with a rush of evening air. The car sped toward Ninth Avenue as if being chased.

“What’s on fire this time?” Quinn asked from the back seat. He did not panic at the vision of smoke rising from the engine, frankly it wasn’t that unusual a sight.

Keane knew but shrugged. “Could be anything.” The car shot across Ninth Avenue scattering the pedestrians who lagged in the crosswalk. Keane aimed for the only legal street parking in sight.

As the car slowed, thicker, fiercer white clouds rose from the engine. Gauzy, acrid vapor floated in through the heating vents, seeping in ominously like it did into a gas chamber.

“So I guess it’s overheating,” Quinn said.

“Gee, you think?” said Laura.

Keane squeezed the car into a parking space and snapped off the ignition knowing it was the only help he could offer the engine. The hiss of the steam was louder now that it didn’t have to compete with a groaning engine.

Keane unlatched his seat belt.  “Let’s go,” he said but Quinn and Laura were already climbing out of the car.

“That was the worst ride of my life,” Laura swore.

“And you know he’ll make us chip in for gas later,” said Quinn.

“It’s 70 degrees outside. How do you overheat?” asked Laura.

Keane patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys. “Did you lock your doors?”

Involuntarily all three looked at the car. They saw the engine smoldering, the crooked front bumper and the wheels missing their hubcaps.

“You’re kidding, right?” said Laura.

Unoffended, Keane asked again.

“Okay, sure I locked my door.” Laura took off along the sidewalk.

As they walked they succumbed to the distractions of the city: they explored vainglorious store windows filled with silver jewelry, exotic clothes or hand-written signs that promised life-altering tarot card readings; they scanned illuminated menus framed in glass boxes hanging adjacent to the front doors of percolating restaurants. They even, for many long minutes, tried to look appropriately pious as a street preacher standing on an upended milk crate vehemently promised that dozens of sinners would plunge into Hell that very night. It was leisure time they were spending, Saturday night leisure time and though they had a place to go and a time to be there, their obligations were as elastic as a child’s promise to a parent.

At one point along his intentionally aimless route Quinn passed two folding aluminum tray tables, the kind he usually saw only in his grandparents’ living room in front of puffy chairs that faced a television set. The tray tables were a mustard color and had spindly, silver legs. Instead of supporting TV dinners, which was the sole use he could imagine for them, here on the sidewalk the trays displayed incense sticks and three-pronged stick-burning holders made of fired clay the color of dried blood. Next to them were small vials of oils with labels written in a calligraphy script. He read exotic names like Clary Sage oil, Neroli, Coriander, Eucalyptus, names he only vaguely recognized on bottles he could not imagine a use for. Behind the two tables sat a black man with a shaved head and a wide, shopkeeper’s smile. Quinn smiled back as he watched the tendrils of smoke from a burning incense stick rise into the air and disappear. He moved around the side of the folding table and accidentally stumbled over a corner of a blanket he hadn’t seen lying on the sidewalk.

“Careful now,” said the bald man as he reached to steady Quinn. “You don’t want to break anything.”

Quinn looked down and saw a stack of vinyl record albums.

“That isn’t my merchandise, but still,” continued the bald man pointing to the items laid out on the blanket. After nodding and apologizing Quinn decided he might as well do some browsing so he crouched down and thumbed through the albums.

“Check it out,” a voice said. Quinn looked up and saw a pale white guy stepping out from the shadow cast by the stoop he had been leaning against. “Two dollars each.” The guy paused as if catching his breath. “Lost my lease sale.”

The white guy had disheveled hair that stuck out in sporadic tufts on the top and sides of his head. It glistened with hair gel or sweat. In a fashion magazine his hair might pass as stylish, in real life it looked like he needed shampoo.

“Cool albums, some real classics,” Quinn lied. He continued flipping through the covers and for a moment the guy believed Quinn. Then Laura and Keane appeared.

“Why are you looking at those?” asked Laura. “You don’t have a record player.”

The guy behind the blanket retreated to the shadow of the stoop.

“I called Fluid,” Laura told Quinn. “Thanks to me we’re no longer lost. It’s on Ninth and Fifty-Third.”

“It must have moved,” Keane mumbled.

“Right. So let’s ask where it’s moving next week in case we go back.”

No one seemed in a hurry to leave so Keane started shopping. He looked at the few books and magazines on the blanket then spotted a slice of yellow metal on the far end of the blanket.

“Look at this,” he said. Keane moved some magazines and revealed a yellow metal box that had wires dangling from the back. “It’s the coolest car stereo Blaupunkt makes.” He picked up the stereo with a kind of reverence reserved for handling religious objects.

The guy leaning against the stoop once again emerged from the shadows. “That kind of thing goes quick around here,” he said hoping for some fast cash.

Keane ignored him. “I have the same model. It has four channels, Bluetooth and streams all the best music services.”

Laura rummaged around the piles of magazines to see what else they hid.

“I made it sound even better by hooking it up to an equalizer I hide in the glove compartment.”

“And does it look like this?” Laura asked as she held up another rectangular box. She waved the box back and forth and if her arm was a little higher and she was standing a little closer to the street, people might think she was flagging a cab.

Keane looked startled, like his sister had conjured an equalizer out of thin air. He stared at it slowly realizing that the box Laura clutched looked disturbingly similar to the one stashed in his glove compartment.

He stepped closer to the guy from the shadows. “You stole my stereo?”

The guy behind the blanket scratched the back of his neck like he had an incurable itch. “Nobody stole nothing, man.” He backed away from the blanket. Suddenly he saw the downside of setting up shop between the stoops of adjoining brownstones. The buildings behind him denied a retreat and the three now highly unsatisfied customers in front of him blocked his walking away. Yet as jittery as he felt he could not back down.

“Get out of here,” he yelled. “What kind of shit do you think you’re pulling? I didn’t steal nothing so fuck you.” He walked up and down the length of the blanket like an animal caged in a zoo. “Fuck you!”

Quinn turned away from the albums and sat back on his heels. “Did you smash a window to get in? Or just open the car door Laura didn’t lock?”

Keane and Laura stared at him.

“What? Everyone else got to ask a question,” said Quinn.

“Let’s call the police,” said Keane. “My car’s five blocks away. We can settle this in two minutes.”

“Ah now there’s no reason to be calling the police,” said the bald incense salesman. “They won’t settle nothing. And you know they’ll blame the black man.”

“Someone call the police!” Keane yelled. Miraculously some spectator did. Keane heard the notes as someone pressed the numbers on a keypad.

“You’d better be right, Keane,” Laura whispered, though she noticed neither of them released their hold on the stereo equipment.

“I just want to check it out,” Keane repeated to the jittery salesman. “We can go right now, forget the police.”

In the distance they heard a siren; police, fire, or ambulance they couldn’t tell and it hardly mattered. It couldn’t possibly be the cops headed their way. Not this fast. Still the siren electrified all those watching from the sidewalk because it stood for danger, antagonism and the need for third party intervention.

For all Keane knew, the guy with the cell phone was still on the line with the police. If not the police then maybe his girlfriend. Or his stockbroker. People gabbed to anyone on a cell phone.

But to the jumpy white guy behind the blanket this was more than just another siren in an emergency-prone city. To him this siren was the last straw. The city might have many sirens but it had many more cops. Sooner or later they’d be at his blanket. Once there the police couldn’t prove he did anything wrong but then he couldn’t prove he didn’t. It was a tie as he saw it, a tie where the win would not be given to him.

The incense salesman behind the aluminum tray tables stood to assist a few people who decided to shop while waiting for a fight to break out. He pushed back his chair and uncapped a vial of rosewood and cedar oil, claiming it promoted peace and tranquility.

“Prove it,” someone challenged him, pointing in the direction of Keane, Laura and the guy behind the blanket. It is not a magic potion the salesman wanted to say. He feared testing the liquid. After all, if it didn’t work what would he have left to sell?

The alleged stereo stealer rubbed his palms on his thighs while he plotted his next move. He saw the incense salesman’s empty chair and noticed how near it was to one of the stoops that had him cornered. The empty chair gave him an idea. It was pure impulse but he needed to escape and since he was all wound up and ready to go, why not do it now.

In a few quick steps he crossed the alcove and jumped onto the empty chair, landing with both feet on the metal seat before most of the spectators knew enough to look up. Without stopping to breathe he leaped toward the iron bannister along the stairs of the stoop, grabbed the glossy black handrail and leaned his body forward while swinging his legs over, his motion as smooth and practiced as a gymnast flying across a pommel horse. Once over the railing his two feet landed on the fourth step. To his surprise he was not twitching but calm, confident enough to take a short breath before running down the stairs and into the anonymity of the crowded, heedless sidewalk.

Keane saw the guy threading through the people milling along the street.

“He’s getting away,” he shouted.

“I believe that’s the point of running,” said Laura.

“Maybe now we can head for the bar?” asked Quinn.

The crowd around them slowly broke up, dispersing on its own once there was no threat of violence to hold their attention.

Keane took off after the runner. Laura reached out to pull him back, missed, then threw her hands up in frustration and disbelief.

“What’s he doing?! We’re supposed to be bar hopping tonight.”

Quinn shifted off the blanket and stood up, wiping blanket fuzz and flecks of album cover cardboard from his pants.

“Keane can’t let anything go. Not him and not the two million other people on this island. Everyone’s walking around with a pocket full of matches and a millimeter-long fuse. You’d think those relaxation oils the bald guy sells would be as popular as heroin around here.”

Laura shrugged. True or not, at the moment the only fuse she worried about was Keane’s.

“Let’s go get him,” Quinn said then ran after his cousin.

Laura considered leaving the equalizer. But she was certain if it went back on the blanket it would be stolen for the second time that day.

“He left all his stuff,” she said to the incense salesman.

The bald man looked up as if surprised she was speaking to him. “He knows I’ll watch it. It’s not the first time he suddenly skipped out.”

The blanket, though picked through, did not look messy or chaotic. Even with two metal boxes missing there were no gaping holes in the presentation. Looking at it now nothing seemed amiss.

Laura shoved the equalizer into her shoulder bag.

“Here,” she said to the bald man after she reached into her pocket and pulled out some bills. “When the jumpy guy comes back, give it to him. Just in case.”

The bald man pocketed the cash without nodding or committing to anything as if honesty and generosity were just two more risks one took in New York City.

Then Laura slipped into the sidewalk traffic and chased a certain colored shirt, a shock of hair, a face she’d recognize as a member of her family.

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About the author
J.G. Alderburke once won a T-shirt in a writing contest sponsored by a beer company. Other wins include having work appear in White Wall Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and others.

A Right Smart Piece to Go

If Cactus Hill south from Richmond proves out as pre-Clovis, First Americans certainly crossed the Alleghenies into the Shenandoah well before sixteen thousand years ago

The Spanish never made it up into Virginia

De Soto came north from Florida for El Dorado through what became Georgia and the Carolinas, but south of the Smokies his 1540s opportunistic curiosity took him meandering on westward

In the eighteenth century the Shenandoah was already heavy with Europeans off their transatlantic crossings walking southwest via Pennsylvania down long and graceful mountain-valley Virginia for the Cumberland Gap 

My brother and I probably came into the Shenandoah over Swift Run Gap

Crossing the Blue Ridge that way, via Culpeper in our aunt’s 1942 Chevy

Fall 1943 Home Front gas rationing, but she was the Yancey Mission lady with the only car in the parish and so with a B or even a C sticker she was able to drive up out of the Shenandoah to Washington and back

The first night was spent with her in Trenton at the Stacy Trent and then she took us away on a Washington train in the morning

Riding in a parlor car

She was obligated but brave to take us on, me seven, my brother four

Intensely confused little kids 

Either she picked us up in a taxi from the Robinson farm or Elizabeth Robinson, who had saved us from state care months before, delivered us to the hotel 

It’s blurred and there is no one else alive to ask

As the deadened past tense of every event soon turns

And too, “what you see is nothing compared to the roots”  (Tomas Tranströmer)

Of a father’s suicide leaving a deranged mother with young ones 

Hemingway flogged Ballantine Ale, probably why my father drank it

“…nothing exists which does not understand its past or its future”  (Ezra Pound)

“Hem always believed that you should get yours inside the system”  (Pound in St Lz on Hemingway’s magazine ads endorsing beer and a pen)

Writers think through how to do it

How to stay at it, make it work

Understanding that they are individual, and then some are trying to be original

Doing the best they can at that

“Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another”  (Julia Kristeva)

As if most lives were the same

“Theory, that capitalized catch-all term which is meant to cover all the various ways of studying the arts so as to make the student feel as smart as the artist.”  (Clive James on Walter Benjamin)

In the dead upper trunk punk of a boxelder, the dray of flying squirrels or a pair of gray squirrels keeping cavey with their late winter progeny

The nest destroyed overnight, noticed in the dawn from dead leaf litter on the snow below, odds are a great horned owl

“I’m just not a fixer or an influence peddler”  (Alan Dershowitz)

Being the sort of sleazy ego we’ve had during Trump’s four years

Now as it is with some raptors’ unsettling ability to keep on vanishing after they’re gone, eager for the same rapid disappearance of Trump, Stephen Miller, all the ethically odious shlumps in the Trumpismo directorate

As we earnestly try to push past covid and slide beyond following a catastrophic year of dishonest federal mismanagement  

And wind down or leave it after almost twenty years in Afghanistan

Two trillion dollars and twenty-four thousand military casualties

Orthodox corruption and deceit, boundlessly vicious treatment of women, bachi bazi, Hesco barriers and pitiful hopelessness

Done in black, white and red

“Westerners have a history of undervaluing all things blue. During the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, reds, blacks and browns reigned supreme; the ancient Greeks and Romans admired the simple triumvirate of black, white and red.”  (Kassia St. Clair)

Fall 1940 or 1941, a shrimp left to my own devices along a quiet street on one side of the Princeton campus on my elbows down on the flagstone sidewalk looking at ants, then shoes were present, not bedroom slippers, and when I looked up he was smiling down

Soft accented words from him that I’ve never remembered, apologies from me as I scrambled out of his way

He with it all in his head

More than two billion galaxies, billions of stars in each, most stars orbited by exoplanets

As though reaching, reaching, reaching, Shostakovich’s eerie piano Prelude No 14 in E-Flat Minor

In the same universe as a superb supper now of Veneto risi e bisi with Puglia Primitivo

Alive in the exact particular

A dot in time                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Eighteen centuries after La Maison Carrée in Nîmes came Jefferson’s Virginia Capitol, both of course slave labor built

In front the Capitol state workers in good weather sit and read at lunch in spring sun on its dramatic steeply sloped lawn

And his Charlottesville Rotunda designed with close reference to Palladio’s drawings of the Pantheon, slave labor built as surely as was the Pantheon itself

That incredible Roman concrete dome, more than six meters thick at its base and weighing over four thousand tons

Those vividly Classical designs alive on down the line to our present, as with our huge stadiums’ peel back ETFE pneumatic cable net system cushion roofing

The serial modifications of everything pointedly linked

Or allowed to go derelict and ignored, or destroyed 

As with the new A303 highway tunnel under Stonehenge, to break ground in 2023 after “archaeological mitigation work”

As twenty-seven years after his death Mr. Jefferson’s Charlottesville went about treating his genius like so much Aeolian debris

When in 1853 the University of Virginia with slave labor attached an annex to Jefferson’s Rotunda that in 1895 burned and destroyed the Rotunda itself

Eventually re-rebuilt en toto in 1976 faithful to his design

Our aunt drove her Chevy from St. Stephen’s Mission to Charlottesville forty miles over the mountain now and then to visit her Bishop and deliver her church’s deep Depression collection plate proceeds

Nickels and dimes

From those steadfast Yancey people to whom she’d give emergency rides

“Much obliged, Miss Steward, how much I owe you?”

She was the mission lady, there to help and sympathize, to offer sound often teacherly Episcopalian counsel

Their skinny supple feed-sack dress bib overall bodies

With quiet Appalachian dignity

Their fast pace barefoot manner walking the Rocky Bar Road to church

We ring-worm “Yes Mam” kids running wild there in Yancey’s hollows, on the dirt roads and wagon tracks

Those families living up against the Blue Ridge having no economy no jobs no cash at all in the early 1940s

Trade this, trade that, fatwood, chickens, heifers, hogs, honey, berries, whittled handicrafts, smokehouse ham, bacon and game   

Don’t make me no never mind, have time, happy to help 

He called his nonchalance “specifically Appalachian in origin”

Chuck Yeager (1923-2020), “I was always afraid of dying. Always.”

Flying as he did through the sound barrier with the finesse of racing a ball joint stock car

That’s the breed those people are

Living in the Shenandoah

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About the author
D. E. Steward has many hundreds of literary magazine credits. His five volumes of Chroma are published by Avante-Garde Classics/Amazon (2018). Chroma is a month-to-month calendar book, the months are continuing past the books of them published, of which the piece published here is one.

dnr__Borderland

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About the artist:
The-O is an artist previously published by Kelsey Review. His piece represents Ukrainians’ struggles in blue and yellow. They survived the genocide of 1932 (Holodomor) and communist repression. The hands depicted resurrection of peace (dove) or to crush and suffocate it; a bilateral meaning. Calm, quiet, tranquility and peaceful, written in Russian and Ukrainian in reverse, to embody the world’s resentment of Putin’s action.

Bienvenido Belfast

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About the author
Leonora Rita V. Obed is a West Trenton-based fine artist and writer who has exhibited at the Ewing Library, Highland Farm, Trish Vergis Gallery, New Hope Arts, Artsbridge, and has published with The Sculpture Foundation, Poetry Marathon Anthology 2022, Bronte Studies Journal, Wild about Wilde Newsletter, Outlook by the Bay, Journal of the Short Story in English, The Kelsey Review, Reminisce and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Looking Up: A Lifetime’s Love of Aviation

It is a warm July morning in 2001. I have an early mornings’ flight lesson with my instructor at Princeton Airport Flight School, in Princeton NJ. I have been taking flight lessons since about December 2000. Yes, the year is 2001, about two months before 9/11 and the drastic changes that day would entail for the world of aviation. Chuck T., my instructor, is in the office manning the front desk. I am dressed as I have always dressed when I was flying, comfortable shoes, slacks, shirtsleeves and a necktie and in winter a waist length leather jacket. But always shirtsleeves and necktie. I do this out of a sense of homage to the heroes of my youth from what is called the ‘Golden Age of Aviation’, the 1920’s through the 1950’s, when aviation history was being made by men like Charles A. Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, Howard Hughes, Wiley Post and Roscoe Colman, Ira Eaker, Jim Howard, and John Glenn, et al. Any pictures one may see from that era show these men invariably in shirtsleeves and necktie, if not a full suit (I do draw the line!) or military uniform.

Chuck tosses me the ignition key to a school aircraft on the flight line. I sign out, file a flight plan out to the ‘practice area’; a spot in the sky about 20 miles due west which is sort of a designated area for instructors to take students to work on basic airmanship, flight maneuvers, etc. My aircraft is a Cessna 172, registration number N5404K, painted in big numbers and letters on either side of fuselage; the classic pilot training aircraft in the Cessna company line in addition to the 152 which has a slightly tighter interior and is dimensionally smaller. Commonly called a high wing monoplane, with tricycle landing gear, that is it has a nose wheel and wheels on either side just behind the front seats. The wing lies on top of the fuselage which gives occupants an excellent view of the ground during all aspects of flight.

 Every time I make the short walk to the flight line, I know that I am fulfilling a lifelong dream. To learn to fly and become a licensed Private Pilot. I have a little book of Procedures that cover everything from the Preflight check to final tiedown and every eventuality that may occur in the air and on the ground. It is my Bible, it goes everywhere with me, I study it religiously. It will always be with me when I fly; along with Pilot’s Manual for the Cessna 172. Both will always be in my flight bag. Flying is all about procedures and detail, detail and more attention to detail. The preflight check starts at a specific part of the aircraft and goes completely around ending where it began. This can take about 20 minutes or so. No nicks in the propeller; that is good! No dents or dings in flight surfaces, that too is good. All flight control surfaces are functioning correctly and are attached as specified. A good start to the day! And yes, we do literally “kick the tires” making sure they are inflated properly and have tread on them. Check all liquids, fuel and oil. Given the high air temperatures expected today, full tanks of gas are not necessary as they would impede the aircrafts’ performance in the hot weather. The preflight check is done and all parts on the aircraft are where they should be and attached in the correct manner.

Chuck comes out, we climb aboard and do the cockpit (there are many opinions about the origins of this name, most are unmentionable!) check. I yell out the window, to no one in particular, just procedure, “clear prop!” I start the engine. Revs are good. Check left and right. Taxi out to taxiway to Runway 28. A little hint: the numbers after ‘Runway’ denote the compass heading of that runway by adding ‘0’ to the end of number. So, for example, Runway 28 has a compass heading of 280 degrees, almost due west. This is true of every runway anywhere in the world no matter how big or small the airport may be. We sit at the head of taxiway and do a final engine ‘run-up’. Magnetos working, final check of flight surfaces functions, check pattern, make sure no one is landing, radio call “Cessna November 5404K departing 28”, flaps 10 degrees, advance throttle to move out onto runway, engage brakes at top of rudder pedals to hold in place, final visual clearance of airspace, advance throttles to 2600 rpm’s, release brakes and we are rolling! Trim set ‘nose up’ and we break ground about a third of the way down the thirty-five- hundred-foot runway. I had done this many times in the past months, but it still gave me such a feeling of exhilaration that it is hard to put into words. Flaps up and Chuck tells me we are just going to “shoot a couple of touch and go’s” before we head out to the practice area. A touch and go is a normal landing and after ‘touchdown’, go to 10 degrees flaps, increase power from ‘idle’ to 2600 rpm’s, accelerate to take off speed and lift off again. I do this a couple of times and after the last Chuck tells me to taxi off to the taxiway. I do as he says. At the taxiway, he opens his door, gathers up his equipment and gets out. “Go solo”, he says. “You’re ready. Stay in the pattern, do as many ‘touch and go’s’ as you want”. I am taken by surprise, not expecting this but it is every fledgling aviator’s first goal. Door closes, ‘thumbs up’ and off I go.

My love of aviation and ‘man-made things with wings’ is hard to define and give a starting point. All I know is that I have always, and still do, ‘look up’ at the passing of any aircraft; no matter how low or high it may be, no matter the type of aircraft. I grew up in the Bronx, NYC in the 1950’s and commercial airliners overflew the area where my family lived quite often, as we lived in the landing/takeoff approach routes to LaGuardia Airport. All aircraft, private and commercial were prop-driven at this time, the jet age did not arrive, commercially at least until the rollout of the Boeing 707 in 1954. The prop-driven airliners were usually below 10000 feet, allowing them to be identified by type; and if they were low enough, I could make out the airline’s logo and paint scheme. I had excellent eyesight in those days and the height of the aircraft usually presented no problem in identifying type and airline. Lockheed Constellations, DC-3’s, 4’s, 6’s and 7’s (DC stood for Douglas Company), Martin 202’s and 404’s and Convair 240’s and 340’s and Boeing Stratocruisers; TWA, Eastern Airlines, United and Pan Am, and the smaller carriers, I knew them all and could identify them all with the merest of glances. The Constellation (the ‘Connie’ to real enthusiasts) was easy to identify with its beautifully curved tail and triple rudder tail assembly. The most beautiful airliner to ever grace the skies! I built models obsessively; balsa and paper models, plastic models, every cent of allowance or whatever I could make as a ‘shoeshine boy’ in the neighborhood went toward the purchase of model airplanes. My father was relatively supportive, but my mother had, as most mothers do, higher aspirations for ‘her oldest’, thus I got no real support from her other than I needed to be “better at math”. Not a necessity for a Private Pilot’s license, but absolutely for a career as a Naval Aviator, my other not-too-secret passion.

All through my pre-teen years and beyond, into junior high school and high school, aviation was always ‘there’, but girls and sports had crept in and ‘usurped’ my interest. There was no airport close to me that would allow me to pursue my passion, so aviation kind of retreated to the recesses of my consciousness. But it was always there. Then family came into the picture; two kids, a wife and a house. Then a big career change, becoming a police officer, which would be my focus until December 2000. But aviation and airplanes were still there, tucked ‘away’, every now and then a side trip to Princeton Airport, which, providentially was in the next town west of where I was employed as a police officer, sometimes in a patrol car while still on duty I would ‘sneak’ over to the airport, since it was close to my patrol area, to watch the aircraft taking off and landing and to talk to the pilots. I also had a brother officer who had just got his Private Pilot’s license and would take me up every now and then. We made a couple of trips up the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge, when private aircraft could do that with no problems. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the late afternoon sun; what a beautiful sight! Out of the question post 9/11! Those flights did it, the old desire was ‘rekindled’, and I resolved to do this before it was too late. I enrolled in the course at Princeton Airport and went up for my first instructional flight with ‘Chuck’. Did what was known then as the Basic ‘Four’…climbs, turns, straight and level and descents. Take-offs and landings are by necessity, part of any lesson, for obvious reasons. At the end of any pilot’s career, if he or she has 9867 total take-offs in your logbooks, you want to have 9867 landings. That is a successful career by aviation standards. My logbook filled up with flight time with Chuck in the right seat. My hat is off to anyone who can go up with someone who has never been off the ground and teach that person to fly an airplane. You must be cool and calm with a totally unflappable personality. Chuck was that and more, an inspirational and more importantly, a patient teacher. I treasure the time we had together in a 172, I learned much under his tutelage and will always remember the flights, every one of them! Aviation is rife with adages, all aimed at keeping fledgling aviators and their passengers to- be safe. Chuck was full of them, his favorite, I think, was asking “What is the most useless thing to a pilot? The air above him”. Meaning being the higher you are the more time you have to deal with any emergency and having the ability to put the nose down and trade altitude for speed, which leads to another adage, from the book ‘ALOFT’ by William Langwiesche, “Keep thy speed up lest the Earth reach up and smite thee”. When given thought to in purely aviation terms, they make complete sense.

I am taxiing down the taxiway slowly; do not taxi too fast, it is hard on the toe brakes. Holy crap! I am about to solo; by myself, all alone, just me! Procedure and detail, procedure and detail. This is one of the two things I have wanted to do (the other was to be a working cowboy…had already done it…another story!) in my life since I was a little boy. Back to matters at hand. Come to stop so that I can see aircraft in their ‘final’ and ‘base’ legs, conduct my rev tests, magneto’s okay, all flight surfaces functioning, control column pushed forward and pulled back making sure the elevators are free and functioning, turn it left and right, ailerons functioning, rudder pedals, push one in then the other, rudder functioning. Check pattern, no one on ‘base’ or ‘final’. Key radio button on the control column: “Princeton Tower… November 5404 Kilo departing on ‘28’, touch and go’s”. Wait a few seconds, no response from anyone in the traffic pattern. I am good to go.

Advance throttle a little bit, release brakes and roll out onto runway 28. Engaging the toe brakes, I straighten out facing down the runway; heat shimmers off the far end of the runway, thirty- five hundred feet away. Toe brakes engaged, I advance the throttle full in, the engine is throbbing, flaps at 10 degrees. Release brakes and I am rolling, feet dancing on the rudder pedals, keeping straight down the runway, watching the airspeed indicator…40…50…60…a little nose up trim and she breaks ground on her own, a little back pressure on the control column to show positive ascent on altimeter and I am climbing out, positive rate of climb, flaps up. At a given point on the ground, I initiate a left turn at 900 feet altitude to my crosswind leg. At another point I turn left again, ascending to my ‘downwind’ leg ‘traffic pattern altitude’(TPA) of 1200 feet. Every airport has its own TPA, the maximum altitude an aircraft looking to land at that airport should maintain, upon entering the landing pattern until its ‘base’ leg. I parallel the runway on my left about a quarter mile away. As I pass the point at the end of the runway from where I took off, throttle back to 1200 rpm’s, drop 10 degrees of flap, roll in a little nose down trim, I feel the aircraft starting its descent. Looking back over my left shoulder, when the runway is approximately under my wing at my left shoulder, I key the radio and call “Princeton Tower, November 5404 Kilo turning left to ‘base leg’,” still descending, throttle back a little more, I am perpendicular to the runway, descending through 700 feet. At a given point over the ground I key the radio again, “Princeton Tower, November 5404 Kilo turning left onto ‘final’. Drop in flaps to 15 degrees, the control column is ‘pushing’ back so I roll in some nose down trim, this relieves the pressure on the control column. Three things are important in keeping things smooth on ‘final’, Pitch, Power and Trim, Pitch, Power and Trim. Suddenly I realize at this point that tears are running down my cheeks. I am crying, not sobbing uncontrollably, but I am definitely ‘tearing up’. This is what you have wanted since…forever. Get a grip, fella!

Nose down, pass over the Land Rover car dealership, on Rt. 206, cars are whizzing by beneath me as I pass over them, looking good, flare, sink rate good, throttle down; back on the column, main wheels hit with a little ‘chirp’, the nose wheel settles as I throttle back, rolling down the runway to the first taxiway. Flaps up, turn onto taxiway, Chuck is standing nearby, gives me a ‘thumbs up’ and walks back to the office. He cannot see the tears in my eyes, I did it, I finally did it! I think I did about seven or eight ‘touch &go’s’, taxied back to ‘the line’, conducted post-flight, tied down and went into the office where my tie was promptly cut in half, my shirt and what was left of my tie put up on wall in the office with a caricature drawing of me and the date of my solo signed by Chuck, along with the hundreds of other students who learned to fly there. I think my eyes were still a little teary; always my ‘emotions on my sleeves’.

I will admit here that the day I soloed was the greatest moment of my life, bar none, that includes the births of my kids, the day I married my wife and the times I was able to fulfill my other wish to be a ‘working cowboy’. I hope that does not shock and upset those that I love the most, but I harbored a love for flying long before they were a part of my existence, and I theirs. Our dreams sometimes are derailed as nothing is certain in this world, it is said, except ‘death and taxes’. Several months later, as if the horrors of 9/11 were not enough, I started to suffer from bouts of ‘vertigo’, not good at any time, and absolutely a deadly thing for a pilot, especially if you are aloft. They would come on unexpectedly and last for several hours. Advised not to fly by medical professionals, that was pretty much the end of ‘my dream’. But prior to that, after a couple more flights with Chuck to make certain I could handle emergencies and was proficient in the basics, he ‘cut me loose’ to fly solo out to the ‘practice area’ and to any other area airports and practice landings and takeoffs from other airdromes. Those were the happiest and most memorable of my flying experiences. Flying solo is indescribable! I still have my logbook; it lists everywhere I flew, how long it took and when, the exact aircraft flown, endorsed by Chuck or any instructor I could talk into going up with me, if needed and he was not available. But, as stated, medical reality set in and I have not piloted an aircraft since.

Even today, as I look up at any aircraft today in the landing pattern to nearby Trenton-Mercer Airport, I am ‘in the cockpit’ trying to emulate in my mind the procedures the pilots are going through. My love of aviation will always be with me, never to really go away. I hope that anyone who has a childhood dream, and has an opportunity to fulfill that childhood dream, feels the pure joy I felt as I turned onto ‘final approach’ that hot July day in 2001.

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About the author
Elliot O. Smith is a 75 year old student at MCCC, also retired law enforcement (30 years). A lifelong passion for aviation and desire to learn to fly was finally realized in 2001.

half-light

after pulling my hair back tight
I lace my boots, my ankles sturdy

the people I love have been awake for hours on the east coast
I’m waking up at moonset
pre-sun, hungry for something
California feeds me—: 

alone, I hike up carved crests
I don’t stop for anything

ravens caw and linger at the yarrow
poppies slowly unfurl their petals 
bending towards sun peeking over the ridge
tule elk graze in the hip high meadow

not me—: 
I trudge forward until majesty greets me
2500 feet above the sea I’m straddling the cloudline 
commanding the fog

when I was young, 
my most ethereal moments
were spent alone

so I hike hushed slopes
keeping pace, counting the dips of my thumping heart

I wish I was a girl again: 
unbroken soul full like ambered honey
buzzing beauty
infinite breath

I place my hands on the soil when I summit
bare and wild with wonder

I want to be above it all
just a few moments longer

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About the author
Lauren Fedorko, M.Ed., is an Adjunct Professor of writing at Rutgers University, teaches AP and Honors high school English, and advises a creative writing club for her students. Her passion for writing is longstanding and ongoing, composed mostly of poetry and creative non-fiction. She enjoys exploring, good company, and traveling the world every chance she gets. Her work has previously been published in the Kelsey Review and The Philadelphia Inquirer.