Issue 10.2 Spring 2015

10.2 cover image

 

Artist Statement:

The excellence of every Art is its intensity.”
           

Beginning with a quote from John Keats may be peculiar, but I feel it appropriate. Here’s why.


Things take time. Rarely have I ever conveniently found on my lap the chance to savor a truly auspicious moment with my writing after cranking out a piece quickly. That’s the key word here: quickly. It just usually doesn’t happen. It takes me longer to churn stories out, and much of that can be attributed to my own levels of intensity. I have always been overly self-critical, as there are minds far sharper than mine that may critique my work. However, I managed to craft the first draft of Inscribing Soleas in under seven hours this past winter, and I was surprisingly content with that. Now normally I’d have gone on the fritz, but I really did become comfortable with it. And in saying all of this, I hope dearly that this is not coming off as the premature defense of some haughty braggart, as this is far from my intention. All I’m stressing as a tenacious storyteller is that, in terms of detailing the process of this story and its subsequent revisions, I have definitely reflected upon what has been created, and I hope that readers take this into account.

Bonus! I have a thing for weaving anagrams and biblical verses into my pieces. That’s all I have to say on that matter, as I’ve never been a big fan of spoilers.

 

 

 

 

Inscribing Soleas

 

Alex Bertacchi Passett

 

 

“So when we look at Handcrafted Epyllia, what do we see? What do we hear from the words?”
           

Mr. Floy. What a chump.
           

I’m in my seat, and two fat chicks sandwich me in so hard I feel like I’m going to fuse with the chair. I feel like I have to hurl.
           

And by that, I’m not just talking about trying not to upchuck last night’s takeout between these double-decker slobs.
           

This class, English 135, Section 5, is trash. Don’t want it. Don’t need it. The prof, Mr. Floy, calls it Introduction to Narrative Style. It’s an afternoon GenEd I have no choice but to take. Reading isn’t for me. Writing definitely isn’t for me. Add on Fatties One and Two clogging the air, in-class material that puts me to sleep, and Mr. Floy with his tacky-ass getups, long hair and stupid jokes, and this whole thing is just repulsive.
           

“If you haven’t already, open to page twenty-nine.”
           

There must be forty, maybe fiftyish students in English 135, Section 5. Most of them are hideous. Everyone flips frantically. Forty, maybe fiftyish sets of hideous hands fingering through slabs of stories in our required text, and here I am sitting, just sitting, because I didn’t do the reading.
           

Everyone’s looking at their books, avoiding eye contact. No one wants to speak up.
           

I hope no one read it. That’d make it easier on me.
           

“In Handcrafted Epyllia, the textbook gives us notes in the margins as to what is going on, but I implore you to go beyond that. Listen to what I’m asking, without the CliffsNotes. What do you all see? How did you interpret the piece?”
           

No one says a thing.
           

Good.
           

“Anyone? There must be someone ready and willing to guide us along!”
           

He’s way too enthusiastic.
           

“Anyone…”
           

God, I just want a nap.
           

“Come on, now.”
           

Yeah. Come on, guys! Talk about Handjobbed Godzilla!
           

“Bueller? Bueller?”
           

Don’t make jokes, you Ben Stein wannabe.
           

“But seriously now, really, what is it you see? How did the plight of the two main characters make you feel?”
           

The fuck’s a plight?
           

No one has spoken up yet. Maybe he’ll stop trying.
           

“How about a pop quiz on it?”
           

Mr. Floy, Mayor Dickwagon, Buzzkill Supreme.
           

Now the frantic flipping quickens fivefold and two, three, four hands shoot up in the air trying to get his attention.
           

Suckers, all of them.
           

“Yes, you? What do you think about it?”
           

Generic Goon Student takes the floor.
           

“I felt, uh, bad when it happened.”
           

“Felt bad?” Mr. Floy asked. “Can you be a tidbit more descriptive?”
           

Can you be a tidbit more of a faggot?
           

“Um,” he stutters. “It was sad, uh, to see it happen when they were, um, the only two people in the whole thing.”
           

“Bingo!” Mr. Floy is still way too excited. “So based on that response, you felt, well, robbed as a reader?

 

Because the commitment you made to the characters in the beginning of the narrative was shattered wholly in the end?”
           

Generic Goon Student looks like a deer square-on in the headlights. Hope he gets hit.
           

“Yea, yea…” he sputters out.
           

They’re both faggots.
           

“Excellent,” Mr. Floy continues. “That’s why we steer away from vague answers. I like it.” He pauses, and I wish he’d just choke on something. “So there’s one thought. How about another?”
           

How about not?
           

“I really liked it,” this girl in the second row says. Her voice is high-pitched and whiny.
           

“In what way?”
           

You’re yanking teeth, Mr. Floy. Enough with the fucking questions.
           

“It was tragic, but realistic. It’s something I could, like, see happening. Not that I want it to happen, ‘cause, like, no, but it could.”
           

“Now that’s some selective language! Tragic, but realistic. Yes! We connect with the fictional characters while acknowledging the likelihood of something like this happening. Thank you.”
           

Great. Shrill Broad got one right.
           

“We’ll get more into this later, but Handcrafted Epyllia, this short award-winning tale, is something I’d like us all to refer back to as the semester progresses. Being able to relate to the protagonists in such a short story is a huge part of this course. Not to mention the feeling, as a reader, of having the rug swept out from beneath you just when you’ve gotten situated with the story and immersed yourselves.”
           

What special recipe of Hell am I in?
           

“You guys may want to take all this down.”
           

A jailbreak of panicky noises erupts again. The page-flipping turns to pen-scribbling, the line-scanning to loose-leaf-ripping, and here I am with zero interest, not a damn clue as to what they’re talking about, stuffed between two sweaty female versions of the Hulk and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
           

No time to call the Ghostbusters to exorcise Mr. Floy, either.

 

Fuck it.
           

I stand up, heading for the back door of the lecture hall, and wouldn’t it be my luck that Mr. Floy sees me leaving.
           

“Can you take your seat, Soleas? We’re in the middle of a discussion.”
           

I don’t say anything. I keep walking.
           

“Excuse me? Soleas?”
           

Peppy profs like this make me sick.
           

I stop, and I tell him that other professors don’t halt everything on a dime just because one person is getting up to take a tinkle. Generic Goon Student covers up a laugh. Mr. Floy notices this, probably thinking I’m the class clown now. That I’ve struck a match and now anarchy will burn free.
           

Man, the Fountain of Sarcasm never runs dry, does it?
           

“Well I do. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re being rude to me. Would you please take your seat?”
           

I ask him why.
           

Fatty Two gasps, like I’m an academic blasphemer who just squatted over the Bible and broke the student-teacher code of conduct. Lord, no. Heavens forbid! I talked back.
           

She should save her breath for the crumbling, half-chomped, coffeecake-flavored cinnamon roll stuffed in her side pocket.
           

Mr. Floy is unamused. He tilts back away from the lectern, leaning against the wall, spreading his hands on the little ledge where the markers and erasers were. Probably thinks he looks like a damn Christ figure.
           

“You haven’t read Handcrafted Epyllia, Soleas. That’s obvious, otherwise you’d understand the gravity of this. What’s even more apparent is that you don’t seem to recall the part in our syllabus about hecklers in my class.”
           

Another chick sitting along the aisle murmurs to me, telling me to shut up, telling me it’s not worth it.
           

I tell Mr. Floy no, I don’t recall, but I also couldn’t give a rat’s ass.
           

Houston, we have Hallelujah.
           

It’s like a tennis match now. Everyone’s eyes bounce back and forth from me to Mr. Floy, then to me, then to Mr. Floy.
           

I don’t regret starting this, though. This is intense, probably the highlight of their day.
           

“This is fun, huh? This a game to you, isn’t it Soleas?”
           

He doesn’t sound intimidating. I just wish he’d stop repeating my name, like he’s treating me the way negotiators handle hostage-takers.
           

I tell him it is fun, and that I still have to let loose that piss.
           

Fifteen-love. Shrill Broad is flabbergasted by my tone. I like it.
           

“I don’t tolerate hecklers, Soleas. You put me on the spot, I’ll put you on the spot.”
           

I ask him if he’s heckling me now.
           

Ooh, serve returned.
           

“You’re not getting off easy. We have two classes blocked off this week for Handcrafted Epyllia. I specifically carved that out, just to give the structure of this class some wiggle room. You think you’re stalling me and ruining my lesson plan, but you’re not. We can do this all day. You’re just making a fool out of yourself.”
           

Someone whispers to someone else, asking if he can say that.
           

Now I’m wondering if someone will report him to the university. Or report me.
          

A lull fogs down onto us. We’re at a standoff. The pale walls and thin, cockroach-brown carpet are our Old Western town. I might as well be Clint Eastwood. Mr. Floy can be Tuco, and Generic Goon Student can be Angel Eyes.
           

The Good, the Bad, and the I Don’t Give A Fuck About Introduction to Narrative Style.
           

I imagine a quiet tumbleweed rolling past. Mr. Floy doesn’t flinch.
           

“Let’s get down to brass tacks then. Let’s make this real.” Mr. Floy straightens his posture. “You have right around a sixty-two percent in this class, Soleas. That’s a low D. Walk out of here and I’ll drop it to an F with no opportunities for extra credit.”
           

I hear another gasp, but I tell him I don’t care. I tell him grades aren’t everything. I tell him to go stuff his extra credit.
           

No one can believe the roll I’m on right now.
           

“I’ve met people like you, Soleas. You don’t care about the education you’re lucky to have your parents spoon-feeding you? You don’t care about decency? All the while you neglect your studies and disrespect your instructors, coming off as unappreciative and bad-mannered?”
           

I tell him I do care, just not about this class. I’m more of a prob and stats kind of guy.
           

“I, on the other hand, don’t think you care. Not a bit,” he counters, hammering his foot down on the word don’t.
           

I also throw in that his big, fancy-word lines sound like he’s trying to cram too much into one pretentious sentence.
           

Mr. Floy scoffs. His face reddens.
           

I swear, this is like a captivating, daytime soap to everyone else in the room.
           

“The statistics major is criticizing the diction of the English professor?” he asks me. I can hear the vinegar sizzling in his throat. “You’ve got some balls, Soleas.”
           

I tell him that’s what his sister said last night.

 

And just like that, everyone lost the ability to contain themselves. Some booed. Some hoo-hah’ed. A couple goth kids in the back pretend to catcall. Three frat-looking guys pound the backs of their chairs like furious baboons. The rest of my classmates just sit there in awe.
           

I feel like a ringleader. A glorified ringleader, fit with a top hat and pinstripes and all.
           

Step right up, I thought to myself in a booming announcer voice. Welcome to the Big Top! Our main event… Mr. Floy!
           

I take a step in his direction and I tell him that I did do some homework, with a crank of emphasis on some. Some homework on him. I tell him I looked up floy, and that floy-floy was used in a song once as slang for a venereal disease.
           

Yeah, that’s right. I just called my prof an STD.
           

You’re the herpes of college professors, I shout.
           

After this performance, I’d like to thank the Academy for what has turned into an unexpectedly magnificent day.
           

I don’t even care what happens next. My temper had squelched out of me like thick mud through a narrow drainpipe. All this, coming out of nowhere.
           

Full disclosure, I think I may be a fun-loving hothead.
           

Mr. Floy is a fallen gargoyle, perched onto nothing. He doesn’t toss a jab of his own back at me. He doesn’t move.
           

He doesn’t move…
           

Doesn’t… move…
           

The fuck? Why isn’t he moving?
           

Then, he shifts towards me like he’s on a chessboard.
           

“No one else would entertain this,” he says, his voice like a low engine, rumbling. “Your peers have witnessed this. I can have you expelled. Arrested even, if I wanted to. Or, I can get on with our class.”
           

I sneer at him now.
           

That’s it?
           

That’s your secret weapon?
           

Your Crème a la Floy?
           

You’re schooling me with that?
           

That’s rich.
“You win, Soleas. Congrats. You’ve made your point. Go. Leave.”

 

I turn away from him and chuckle to myself. What a fucking pushover. What a –

 

“You may want to do a Google search on the author of Handcrafted Epyllia, though.”
For the life of me, I don’t know why I look back, but I do. So I coo at him mockingly, asking him why I should bother.

 

He parts his hair and locks in on me.

 

“Because I wrote it, you ingrate little shit.”

 

Immediate silence blankets the lecture hall.

 

"Now, what do you say to that?"

 

I say nothing. Someone whips out their phone and starts videoing.

 

“Now is as good of a time as any, isn’t it, Soleas?”

 

For what?

I don’t understand, but I’m dumbstruck.

 

“In our book, it was originally going to say that Handcrafted Epyllia’s author was left anonymous. I would’ve specifically had the publisher do that when they’d go to print this collection for our class, and then it would’ve been a surprise for you all.

 

“But I didn’t,” he said. “Right there on its title page. There’s my name.”

 

My mouth is still shut. I’m thinking that, okay, maybe that’s slightly impressive, but it isn’t a ruthless mic drop at the end of an extreme rap battle.
Mr. Floy? A thug? Hell no.
Then why am I still silent?

 

“But you know, maybe it’s better, for me at least, that you didn’t know. This way, it really speaks to your ignorance, Soleas. And disarms it. ” Floy almost hisses.

 

What, I mutter.

 

“Dude, did you not know?” Generic Goon Student asks, right out of the blue.

 

Know what, I think. That Floy wrote Handcrammin’ Gorilla? No, but –

 

“Like, yeah,” Shrill Broad blurts out.

 

Even Fatties One and Two chime in.

 

“Why do you think we barely said much about it?”

 

“It’s different to have a professor’s work to read.”

 

“Really, bro?”

 

“You’d know that if you read it…”

 

I start to wonder if they’re really all saying these things, or if that’s my head talking.

 

“Let me spell this out.” Floy stood in the center of one of the aisles between our seats. “Handcrafted Epyllia is the story of two children, Soleas. Both are deaf. Despite this, their bond steadies them through thick and thin. When lip-reading isn’t enough, their sign language is. When speech can’t unite them, the language of their hand motions builds that bridge. That’s the hand part of Handcrafted.It’s something they create together. It’s something they cherish.”

 

The student with the phone keeps filming as a tear rolls down Mr. Floy’s face, and I don’t even have the scrap of an urge to call him a pussy.

 

“But then, in the epilogue, a day-drunk driver swerves through their neighborhood and runs one of the boys down, killing him on impact. And that’s it. Abrupt, but finished. But what the story doesn’t detail is how this took the other boy away from the world for a while, how it soundlessly tore him apart. He sat there, being forced to imagine what that crunch of bone-on-car sounded like. He was involuntarily detached from it because the volume in his little block of reality was too low. He couldn’t even hear himself cry as he mourned this loss in the middle of the street, the dead boy’s blood soaked into his shirt.”

 

Generic Goon Student is frozen.

 

Shrill Broad and Fatties One and Two are frozen.

 

The chair-pounders, cat-callers, booers, they’re all frozen.

 

I’m frozen, too.

 

“I kept these parts out because they’re more personal. Omitting them was the right thing to do. That decision was, however, supposed to lead to a better meaning by the end of the semester. You were all supposed to dissect the boys’ relationship, trying to determine how the one remaining could find solace in any of it. This was supposed to take our class on an ultimately fulfilling journey, not this shit you’ve backed me into.”

 

This breakdown was going to hit YouTube very, very hard, and now I was sharing center stage with the Mr.

Hyde side of Mr. Floy.

 

And now he was approaching me faster.

 

“What? Should I stop? Should I be fired for this?”

 

I backpedalled. He advanced.

 

“Well let me tell you something else, Soleas. Cochlear implants aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

 

"What," I ask.

 

Without hesitation, Mr. Floy pulled off what I realized was a wig. A convincing one, too. Hooking around his ear and attached to his bare scalp was an implant that the long, russet-shaded hair had been able to hide.

 

“I shouldn’t hate this, but I do. I shouldn’t be ashamed of it, but I hate the whole goddamn thing,” he spat out, pointing heatedly at the device. “The internal bit, the processor, feel latched onto my head like a niggling tick. I shake myself awake in the middle of the night, feeling phantom vibrations, thinking I taste metal and worrying about it breaking and rupturing into my skull. I can’t rough-house with my son. I hate the battery-changing. I hate that I could’ve gotten one with a slimmer electrode, which could’ve granted me a wider spectrum of sound, but I didn’t because me and my family have been in an awful financial pinch for years, both my parents’ generation and now mine.”

 

Look, I say –

 

“But most of all, I hate being told I can’t do this, that and the other, and I abhor with this same panging ache having to inscribe this message into the ignorant, fleshy, lightweight, unused, undeserving brains of implausibly shitty people like you.”

 

The class, unmoving, looked like a snapshot into the eye of a storm.

 

“Hecklers are one thing. You’re playing a game you don’t belong in.”

 

His face was now inches from mine, the smell of his anger wafting into me, his nostrils flaring.

 

“Oh, and not only is an epyllion, plural form epyllia, a shorter kind of an epic poem, but Handcrafted Epyllia is an anagram for Deaf Children at Play.”

 

The hushed oohs that came out of the rest of the class said it all.

 

If verbal showdowns were a thing, then this was his victory.

 

I looked at his cochlear implant. Then I looked at the class, putting myself in their heads.

 

“Damn, son.” some of them probably thought.

 

“Anything to say, Soleas?” Mr. Floy asked.

 

“Talk about emasculated…” another thought, I’m sure.

 

“He is just gonna take that?”

 

“Doesn’t he have a comeback?”

 

Here’s a tip: don’t get in others heads. It leads to this.

 

“Too bad the driver didn’t hit you, instead.”

 

The next thing I knew, his fists and the two cold, steel rings he was wearing hit my ear, then my jaw.
I’d toppled into a daze before I hit the floor.

 

“Still feeling blissful, are you?”

 

Not even a vowel comes out as I groan, my cheek pushed against the thin carpet.

 

Below everyone’s feet, disoriented, the room spinning, one of my teeth lying next to my own ear, Mr. Floy knelt over me, scowling.

 

“Now, get the fuck out of my class.”

 

And I did.

 

The Big Top closes.

 

The curtain falls.

 

Game.

 

Set.


Match.

 

 

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