Despite the fact that WHO declared the pandemic as over, I don’t want my stories to be engulfed by the rushing tide of someone else’s idea of relevance. So I promise to keep going with this pandemic narrative, because there’s still a lot yet to be gleaned.
If you’re in a position to do so, please consider supporting this project by upgrading to any paid subscription. For those intrigued by the lascivious details only hinted at in the free weekly, a paid subscription will reveal some of the specifics (in good taste, always) that otherwise appear as innuendo or subtext. I’d gladly trade some clarification for some coin. Thank you for reading my supermarket tabloid.
Editor’s note: A reminder that the section header above says “Dispatch” in braille. Even with near perfect eyesight, I often encounter blind spots The Fates so graciously place before me, testing my patience, strength, character, and sense of humor. Both my great-grandparents were blind; braille was my second “language”, even though it’s actually a code. As Gauguin said, “Sometimes we must close our eyes so that we may see.”
A South Bend-bound Train
Climbing up the walls became a popular pastime during the pandemic, especially if those walls had a fresh coat of ’grammable Farrow & Ball paint signaling the completion of yet another house tszujing project. There are only so many shelves to line with faux marble contact paper, and early spring in Chicago isn’t known for being anything like spring at all. The lingering grey of old man winter combined with the same alley view I’d had since 2010 sent a stir-crazy me into a head-scratching tizzy. How to catch a change of scenery while keeping to shelter-in-place guidelines? The only logical answer: take the train across state lines and spend a few days with some complete stranger.
The first and last politician I’ve ever donated money to is Pete Buttigieg, so naturally I was curious to see this remarkable Rust Belt transformation he had built his campaign on. I packed an Eckhart Tolle book and a few of my favorite jocks. Millennium Station was nearly empty. My train car had tops a total of four passengers. Run-of-the-mill suburb turned to industrial wasteland with a ghostly casino rising up from the bleak landscape where Illinois touches Indiana for the very first time, right around the bend in the lake.
Eerie sodium lights and electronic billboards then gave way to a blighted Beaux-Arts Gary, Indiana, whose disintegration and spectacular collapse is nothing less than a Hiroshima-sized socioeconomic catastrophe. Signs of life were few and far between, except at Roxxy’s bar where the marquee out front read “GOD IS GOOD.”
I eventually arrive at the stranger’s place, long past nightfall but still Friday evening. Social pleasantries ensued. The most welcoming creature however was the stranger’s cat, Winnie. Winnie happened to be in heat. Winnie really took a liking to me. She sat on the floor directly in front of my chair, staring ever intently while meowing meows and yowling yowls like I’ve never heard.
At the end of day two, after many advances from Winnie and a few from the stranger, a few lovely meals and conversations about plants and crafts, and a walk through South Bend to see what Pete Buttigieg had done, it was time for me to go. I made my way back to the train and back to Chicago, glad to have gotten some fresh air in my lungs and some more miles under my belt, realizing that “GOD IS GOOD” indeed and that South Bend is a dump.
Art is contradiction. Art is magic. Art is futile. Art is obsolete. Art is useless. Art is wanton. Art is love. Art is beauty. Art is unnecessary. Art is needed. Art is a newborn lie swaddled in gauzy truth. Art is relentless. Art is a safety deposit box. Art is never having to say you’re sorry. Art is eternal. Art is a joke. Art is context. Art is despair disguised as a gummi candy. Art is the best expression of our vanishing humanity. Art is true attempting to murder false. Art is false unless it’s not. Art is a Xerox of a Xerox. Art is an illusion. Art is Chantry. Art is juxtaposition. Art is a burned-out flashbulb in your darkest hour. Art is light favorites in a crowded waiting room of crying babies. Art is a wet fart. Art is dental work from too many nougat centers. Art is the sound of one hand clapping. Art was nice while it lasted. Art was life all along.
Most of our lives is spent occupying liminal space, our senses infiltrated subtly and not so subtly by the acrid fluorescence of a janitor’s closet or the aphrodisia of roasted nuts, urine, and cigarettes that only a New York City subway exit can offer. We might pretend not to notice the periodic uneasy twitch or we could soak everything up like a spongemop, but either way we push through because liminal space is just for getting someplace else—to reach our goals, milestones, or final destinations. Little do we realize that liminal spaces serve as the incubators where the seeds of our futures are germinated, fertilized, and nurtured until fully grown.
Motherhood is an 8x10 yellow shag carpet. It is bright, warm, and inviting. It may be a little retro-leaning, but it provides comfort and joy. It can also take the heat of an absinthe fire so long as you have an empty cheeseballs canister close by. The yellow shag I’m speaking of is the rug from my friend Alyssa’s senior year dorm room. Perched on the top floor, above the Jonathan Edwards College Dean’s office, here was a portal to another place—anywhere but our current reality.
As a recent new member of the Dead Parent Club, Alyssa attracted others also bereaving the loss of someone or something, others who didn’t quite fit neatly into a single bucket, others who needed a place for comfort and care—even if that care often came from a Buddha slash dragon motif slash Tiki-style ceramic object. I can’t quite remember. Floorsitters invariably find other floorsitters to sit with, the plush yellow rug and big square meditation pillows making for a perfect setting for blissed-out escape. Naming inanimate objects is also motherhood, with a goose lamp called Goosey Goose and Barb the bowling ball becoming vital characters and proxies for our dearly departed.
Alyssa was my gateway to a whole other way of being. A dining hall lunch lady, she responded to my “What is that?” query with a scoop, a plop, and an “I don’t know. It’s all shit.” That’s when I knew we’d be good friends. She filled a void after I lost my mother, sharing mixtapes of her favorite songs, coaxing me into a London spring break after only knowing her for a few months, and showing up for me in my time of need as recently as just a few months ago. Now an actual mother herself, something I don’t think she ever quite expected to be, I see how her motherly instincts even way back then were spot on and natural to her being.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. You know who you are.
It could’ve been a day like any other except it was Christmas and the last one I’d ever spend with her. Aunt Amanda and I were sure to take in the lake from as many different angles as we had the time for. We did the usual drive across Highway 155’s three bridges spanning Lake Palestine. The manmade body of water’s breadth and depth sharply contrasted the sheltered childhood I’d spent there up until 21 years ago. Passing the Bible Camp, I ask if that’s where they do the gay conversion therapy, to which my aunt responds in her subtle Texas drawl, “I’m certain you are exactly right.”
We cut through a dense patch of piney woods on a rolling county road that’s fun to speed on and good for opening up an engine. But we were in no hurry to get to the airport for my flight back to Chicago. The wind in our hair on a sunshiney winter’s day gave us life, whipping our flesh with sharp but cool reminders that we were in fact alive and sharing time and space together as blood.
We eventually get to Pounds Field, the small regional airport nearest my childhood home (but still 45 minutes away). An hour and a half early, we sat out in the parking lot waiting for the security checkpoint to open, talking in the truck and smoking cigarettes.
I toss her my left AirPod and tell her to put it in — that I have three songs I wanted us to experience together. I place the other AirPod in my right ear, cueing up the first song, Billie Eilish’s “All I Ever Wanted”. For the next 15 minutes, our bodies draped over the doors, we were left and right channels connected. Never had we been more present with one other, the only distraction being our mid-playlist smokes. Next up: Arthur Russell crooning about how he’d “Come to Life”, a stigma-shattering joyous song from the 1980’s AIDS crisis. The final track was “Belief” by Mount Eerie, our swan song before her aneurism not even a month later — she cast back into the abyss from whence we all came and I set adrift on an endless mortal sea.
Verse 1, from “Belief”
Through all of my life
I waver back and forth between
A belief and not
Believing in anything
In any solid shape
The unfettered mind
A deeper understanding that holds nothing
That lets sounds come in the ear
And just pass through without deciding what it was
If it was a jet or a dragon
It was merely a sound without a name or a picture
It was every possible thing at once
New for Issue 010
A few small changes for the tenth issue of Dispatches from the Feral Fringe. The intro now precedes the Dispatch section header, and subsequent stories for this column will have a renewed focus on the original intention: a space for sharing tales that warm your heart and make you sick to your stomach. I’ve been covering topics related to life’s present concerns, but there are many stories from the pandemic that still need documenting against a rough timeline at the very least. One more re-living for posterity before they go saying the pandemic never happened.
Other updates include a crusty new banner image for the weekly email. The anti-design was dragged behind the pickup on a recent ride to hell and back. It shows the rawness of life at the Feral Fringe and beats you over the head with it. The newsletter also got itself a mascot: Fletcher the Feral Ferret. Just 7 more founding subscriptions, and every paid member of the Feral Ferret Brigade receives their very own enamel pin of our fearless furry friend.
