opium magazine issue 7

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All rights reserved. Book design and photo spreads by David Barringer (www..com). Cover design by Jon Bailey. Printed in USA. Opium Magazine is also an online magazine of fiction, poetry,

reviews, interviews, art and miscellany. Visit www..com. Direct all inquiries to Editor Todd Zuniga at [email protected].

OPIUM MAGAZINE.PRINT7 | COPYRIGHT 2008

FOUNDING EDITOR TODD ZUNIGA

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DESIGN CHIEF & SENIOR EDITORDAVID BARRINGER

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MANAGING EDITOR SHELLY CRISWELL

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COPY EDITOR KRISTIN KEARNS

POETRY EDITOR JENNIFER FAYLOR

ASSOCIATE EDITORS �PRINT & .COM�CEDRIC STINES, CICILY JANUS

David Habben was born in Oregon, raised in Idaho, and educated in Utah. He’s spent the majority of this year as a children’s book design fellow for Chronicle Books in San Francisco and continues to freelance as an illustrator for publication and apparel. His work can been seen in two upcoming shows in California, one at Gallery1988 in San Francisco and another at Eclectix Gallery in El Cerrito this fall. When not creating art, David is an avid runner, reader, and musician. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.habbenink.com.

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Masthead

Chuck Close is an American painter and photographer famous for his photorealist work and massive scale portraits. The contact sheet on our cover led to one of his most iconic works. The contact sheet dates from 1967. Inkjet prints were made in 2000. Copyright Chuck Close. Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.

NOTE ON ART FOR

THE COVER

3

Todd ZunigaFounding Editor

Todd ZunigaEDITOR’S LETTER

OPEN CORRESPONDENCEESTIMATED READING TIME: 1:27

We’ve pinched ourselves and it appears the excite-ment, exhaustion, and accomplishment aren’t a dream. We’ve rolled seven. Opium7 is here,

OpiumMagazine.com is seven (and three-quarters) years old, and once the Literary Death Match debuts in London, LA, Denver, Atlanta, and Denver by winter’s end, that’ll make seven different cities to feature the whimsy-rich series.

It strikes us as absurd that all of the above is true.

The real magic of Opium over this course of time, by my count, has been our great luck (there’s that seven again). We’ve asked for and received some outlandish things: time, trust, stories, designs, blurbs, cartoons, patience. Recently, when I blasted half the planet with “Subscribe or I’ll Kill Someone,” we dared ask for money. Even that half-worked!

But what I’m most proud of is that Opium is transitioning toward a more enterprising dream, evidenced in this issue more than any before it. What I’ve long wanted is taking shape: Opium isn’t just a magazine/website/reading series, but a platform for ambitious, clever types (just check Jesse Nathan’s sterling eighteen-page insert). His effort officially marks the launch of Opium’s Special Projects, an open invitation for you or someone brilliant you know to pitch us a concept and a page count to curate a section in a future Opium issue. To find out more, please visit OpiumMagazine.com/news.aspx.

Beyond that, the continuing growth of and excitement around the Literary Death Match (www.LiteraryDeathMatch.com) has blown us away. The next evolution: an LDM in your town. Seriously. Just ask: [email protected].

The better news: We’ve got plenty more surprises (well, only two, actually) that’ll roll out in the coming months. But we don’t want to give everything away. After all, you’ve got reading to do, an issue that we’re thrilled is in your hands.

Fanatically,

Contents

NOTHING

6

THE LAST NOVEL

8

HE MAKES ROCKETS

16

LIFE’S TOO SHORT

17

WHAT WE DID WITH JANEY’S MORTAL REMAINS

22

THE SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

25

MY MEMOIR: THE DISCLAIMER

38

ISN’T IT NECROMANTIC?

41

DON’T TRY

42

REASONS TO BE PRETTY

44

CATCALLS FROM AN IMAGINARY CITY

58

THE BUMBY’S

60

67 THESE THINGS

7-LINE STORIES

85

NOT THE SAME AS FUNNY

90

THE DICTIONARY

95

SUICIDE CHEF

99

THE FREEDONIAN

� �

104

SOMETHING TREMBLING

118

VIVA LA RÉVOLUTION!

� 125

THE WORD

128

THE SOMEWHAT TRUE STORY OF A TREE

130

DIVE

120

SIDEWALKS

134

HURRY UP NOW

138

6 7

And she loved a man who was made of nothing. A few hours without

him and right away she’d be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time she’d boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, she’d let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids, and she’d wait for the day to be over, so she could go to her apartment building, climb the flight of stairs, turn the key in the door, and find him waiting for her, naked and still between the sheets of her empty bed.

Etgar KeretNOTHING

STORY

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 2:32

6 7ETGAR KERET NOTHING

Etgar Keret, born in Tel Aviv in 1967, is the author of five bestselling collections. In America his stories have been featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts. As screenwriter-directors, he and his wife, Shira Geffen, shared the Caméra d’Or for best debut feature (Jellyfish) at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

where she worked, she’d wait for the minute she’d turn the key in the door, and there he’d be. She hadn’t the slightest doubt or apprehension. She knew that this love would never betray her. What could possibly let her down when she opened the door? An empty apartment? A numbing silence? An absence between the sheets of the rumpled bed?

Nothing in the world would have made her happier than to make love with him all night long, tasting his non-lips once again, feeling the uncontrollable quiver run through him, the emptiness spread through her body. He wasn’t her first. There’d been many before him, sweating and moaning in her bed, squeezing her till it hurt, their fleshy tongues in her mouth, in her throat, almost choking her. Different men, made of different ingredients: of flesh and blood, of fears, of their fathers’ credit cards, of treachery, of longing for someone else . . . But that was then. Now she had him. Sometimes, after they made love, they’d go for a walk in the night-soaked streets. Holding each other, sharing a single poncho, oblivious to the winds and the rain, as if inured to their touch. He took no notice of what people were saying around them, and she pretended not to hear either. None of the gossip or the nastiness could touch their world.

She knew her parents weren’t happy about her beloved, even though they hid it. She once even overheard her father whisper to her mother, “Better than an Arab—or a junkie.” Of course they’d have been happier if she were going out with a gifted doctor instead, or a young lawyer. Parents like to take pride in their daughter, and that’s hard to do with a man who’s made of nothing. Even when the man made her happy, filling her life with meaning, more than any man made of something could.

They could spend hours together, wrapped in each other’s arms, never saying a word, lying there naked with no change in their love or their position. And when the clock began urging her out of bed, she’d skip her morning coffee, skip washing her face or brushing her hair, for just a few more minutes of being together, with him. And all the way down the stairs, to the bus stop, to

This story and “Sidewalks,” page 134, are excerpted from The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret, translated by Shondra Silverston and Miriam Shlesinger, published in April 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 1992, 1994 by Etgar Keret, translation copyright © by Etgar Keret, published by arrangement with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. All rights reserved.

8 9David Markson

THE LAST NOVELNOVEL EXCERPT


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“Write as if you would never be discovered.” David Gates was told by Jack Gilbert.

“Life’s too short for fucking Ulysses.” Justin Taylor was told by David Gates.

“Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.” SOPHIA AL-MARIA WAS TOLD BY PHILIP PULLMAN.

“IF WHAT YOU’RE WRITING ABOUT DOESN’T SCARE YOU, YOU’RE NOT

WRITING ABOUT THE RIGHT THING.” Tara Austen was told by Amanda Davis.

“Even though writing is done in isolation, it’s not a solitary discipline.” Stephanie Austin was told by Kate Tierney.

“You can do anything you want, as long as you tell the reader.”

Paul Beckman was told by Alice Mattison.

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Russell Bittner was told by Mark Twain.

“Keep a low overhead, and never live with anyone who doesn’t support your work.”

Dawn Corrigan was told by Grace Paley.

“Don’t self-publish, go for the brass ring. You’ll make yourself proud.” Deborah Eden was told by Janet Fitch.

“[Writing is] pouring out invention diligently from your innermost capacity to bridge otherness, to grow, to learn, to battle passionately and tentatively for

moral redemption in a world devoid of fairness.” Matt Ashby was told by Jonathan David Jackson.

“I saw how much work there was going to be for me to even get in the game, and I got a little frantic, felt time ticking by, and thought, basically: whatever it takes. In other words, I knew I

wasn’t getting, and wasn’t going to get, the needed time anytime soon, and felt acutely how much heavy lifting I had ahead of me, just in terms of technical things, and reading, etc.—and decided to forget any preconceptions about how I might achieve what I

wanted, and just go for it.”

Jodi Bullock was told by George Saunders.

“The more literal you are, the more metaphorical people think you are being.” Blake Butler was told by Amy Hempel.

“I am persuaded that we are tremendously influential, even though most national leaders, my own included, probably never heard of most of us here. Our influence is slow and subtle, and

it is felt mainly by the young. They are hungry for myths which resonate with the mysteries of their own times. We give them those myths. We will become influential when those who have

listened to our myths have become influential.” Laura Carney was told by Kurt Vonnegut.

“Writing a novel is like dumping everything you’ve got into a pot and stirring it up…. Writers are artists who make their own clay,

and the name of that clay is The First Draft.”

Susan Cushman was told by David Wroblewski.

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” john donovan was told by richard bach.

You can only learn who you are when you cease to become—that is, after a lifetime.

22 23

It took Janey three tries to kill herself. By the time she finally managed, the sailor

had been gone three months and she was beginning to show.

Suicides should lie at crossroads. Since we don’t have one, Lyness elders decided that halfway between us and Moaness, the other village on the island, would have to do. So we drove her out the four miles and buried her near the road, shoveling up three feet of moss to get to some earth to put her in. All of us went. Some rode in the cart; the rest walked. No mainland reverend was sent for. Only the idiot cried, screaming like a bonxie.

Lauren SchenkmanWHAT WE, THE PEOPLE OF

LYNESS, DID WITH JANEY’S MORTAL REMAINS

STORY


22 23

Lauren Schenkman is probably living in Los Angeles, Portland, or Nicaragua, although she may be living in none of these places. She likes bicycles, islands, and physics, and has never met a cheese she didn’t like. Lauren welcomes good conversation at: [email protected].

LAUREN SCHENKMAN WHAT WE, THE PEOPLE OF LYNESS, DID WITH JANEY’S MORTAL REMAINS

I’d learned suicides can’t rest in a kirkyard with Christians, but I couldn’t see why we’d taken Janey out to that place. The nearest kirkyard’s on the mainland; no ground here is holy. I told Mother and she slapped me, set me copying Corinthians.

We should have given her a seaside grave, a stone, words for next spring’s sailors to read. Somebody clever to make a bust who could have done the hair right. Or a dinghy and a push seaward, lit on fire like the Vikings Papa says we’re descended from.

Everybody’s wrong, saying it was shame. Somewhere else, Janey would have gone after him, belly getting big and proud like a prize melon. Not in Lyness. Only difference between her and us is we’ve never had anything worth losing.

We should have buried her somewhere else.

41

Melissa Broder is a poet and literary publicist in New York City. She is currently in the MFA program at City College. Her poems have appeared in The Blue Jew Yorker and The Orange Room Review. Email: [email protected].

ISN’T IT NECROMANTIC?POETRY


Melissa Broder

Did you vomit in my shower? asks the gentlemanwho isn’t her husband. She didn’t. His sea sponges,

razor blades and rose soap petals are crusted in warped pudding, the way the ground appears flying

over Tulum. It’s strange dirt; the same that follows herinto the bathtub nightly, defiling the porcelain, forcing

her maid to threaten she’ll quit. On the surfaceher skin is clean, creamed, fragrant with violet, cloaked

in constellations of bright blue bruisesfrom dancing, walking, anything that shakes

the blood so thinned by gin. At a ladies bathhouseshe first bled earth, and since then, in bodies

of water it comes in clods. How to explain this strange dirt to a gentleman, when it baffles her?

44 45NEIL LABUTE REASONS TO BE PRETTYNeil Labute

REASONS TO BE PRETTYDRAMA EXCERPT


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44 45NEIL LABUTE REASONS TO BE PRETTY

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When poor people say they’re broke, they mean they’re asking you for money. When rich people say they’re broke, they mean they’re not giving you any.

61

APPRAISALS BY GILL AND JILL BUMBY

61Todd Zuniga

THE BUMBY’S: A FAIR AND HONEST APPRAISAL OF

YOUR APPEARANCEINTERVIEW


: How’d The Bumby’s come about?

: I saw a girl do a similar stunt at a party/art show. The idea stuck with me, though I thought her execution was flawed, her face wasn’t covered in any way, and people basically assessed their willingness to participate by how attractive they found the girl. In other words, if they found her to be more physically attractive than they personally considered themselves, they felt that it qualified her to render an assessment of their appearance, thereby bestowing on her the status of expert in some way. I thought that was bogus and ridiculous and that it is entirely unnecessary to know what the “appraiser” looks like.

This section marks the launch of Opium’s Special Projects. Jesse Nathan curated this project. You or someone brilliant you know can curate the next one. Just

pitch us a concept and a page count, and we will consider it for a future Opium issue. To find out more, please visit OpiumMagazine.com/news.aspx.

Stephanie von Reiswitzlives in London. Her drawings and illustrations appears widely, including in The

Believer and in books published by companies like Random House and Faber. See more at: www.steph.vonreiswitz.com

Art Spiegelmanlives in New York City. His drawings and comics are published widely. His Maus

series won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award in 1992.

95

It was almost time for my ten o’clock with Dr. Brimley, and I prayed he wouldn’t bring

up his dictionary again. The manuscript he’d sent several weeks before filled ten boxes. Under normal circumstances I would have ignored his phone calls until he wrote something else, but he’d begun appearing on Oprah as an expert on the human ear. He became a minor celebrity, like Dr. Phil, only smaller and humorless. Even his most opaque treatises were selling. I pressed him to write a memoir, strike while the iron was hot. He’d write the memoir, he said, if I read his dictionary. I agreed. I had no choice. It took me only a few pages to realize it was unpublishable.

He walked into my office. “Dr. Brimley,” I said, rising. “Did

Cindy offer you some coffee or—”“Have you read my dictionary?” he

asked, sitting down with his customary lack of ceremony. He was unremarkable save for his small size and his left eye, which squinted spasmodically.

Bradley BazzleTHE DICTIONARY

STORY


99

The old man’s name—Flagler—was the same as that of a nearby

county. Not a coincidence. He sat across a candlelit table from

Dane, whose oversize chef’s jacket reeked of olive oil and pesto. Flagler, on the other hand, smelled like money and power. It was the tailored suit, the expensive watch, the disregard for the hostess and the other customers, who were scarce despite its being Friday night.

Flagler pressed both palms flat on the white tablecloth, spotless from disuse rather than bleach. He leaned forward, looked around to make sure no one sat within earshot, and said, “I want you to kill me.”

Dane blinked several times, Morse code for “Excuse me?”

“I don’t mean slice me with the bread knife. I want to eat myself to death.”

Dane responded with laughter. Flagler did not join him.

Bill FerrisSUICIDE CHEF

STORY


105

A NOTEIn this, as well as in the

previous issue and upcoming issues of Opium, we are paying homage to the groundbreaking witlit

ezines of the past. They popped up online in the late 90s and grew to gigantosaurus proportions in the

early 2000s and then suddenly died off, leaving evolution to do its

thing. In this issue, we recognize The Freedonian.—Eds.

105

I started The Freedonian with fellow writers and friends Jason Eaton and Ian Lendler in the summer of

1999. We had no grander purpose beyond selfishly providing an outlet for our own writing that we were previously unable to place in The New Yorker or Men’s Health.

Over the course of two and a half years, we published humor pieces by (then) little-known writers who soon went on to do quite well for themselves: Rob Kutner (Daily Show, 4-time Emmy winner), Scott Jacobson (Daily Show, 4-time Emmy winner), Neal Pollack, Michael Hogan (editor at Vanity Fair), and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket).

Ian and Jason have done pretty well for themselves, too. Each has written a successful book, and, quite recently, they sold a screenplay for $500,000 to a major Hollywood studio that rhymes with NGN.

I, on the other hand, still live in the Hoboken basement apartment that I share with my half-brother, Stuart. Am I upset? Jealous? Enraged? Probably. But, when feeling sad, I have a wealth of material to read and enjoy.

What follows is a sampling of the hundreds of pieces published on The Freedonian between 1999 and 2002. The rest is lost to history. If you enjoy these pieces, trust me when I tell you that you would have really enjoyed the others. If that makes you kind of sad, you can always contact me through mikesacks.com. You will receive a response within three days, most likely from Stu, who has become my assistant and handler, as well as my “eyes” whenever I go shopping or get my hair done.

Thank you for (re)discovering The Freedonian. God bless each and every one of you and...kick it!

—Mike Sacks

Mike SacksSELECTIONS FROM THE FREEDONIANFROM THE EZINE ARCHIVES


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125

I knew we’d jumped the shark when we killed Brangelina. Up till then it was just too much fun. You

know—like some videogame you can’t stop playing even though you’re totally hungry and have to go to the bathroom?

It started when they put my friend Desiree’s mom in jail for DUI when she hadn’t had one drink. Not before the accident. She’d worked three shifts at Denny’s, plus she hadn’t eaten because she was dieting for some audition. That’s why, when she stopped at the dry cleaners, she hit the accelerator instead of the brake and smashed her Geo into the bar next door. When she totally lost it about missing the audition, the bartender gave her a cosmo to calm her down while they waited for the cops. So duh, she failed the breathalyzer. But it was so lame for them to send her to jail. I mean for like, two years?

Anne R . AllenVIVA LA RÉVOLUTION!

STORY


Say the word (or email us a few words at [email protected]), and we’ll work

together to throw literature’s most outrageously fun and beloved event in your town!

“Imagine a reading series where everyone is forced to read their stuff while driving monster trucks towards each other with no brakes and no steering wheel. That’s Literary Death Match (kind of). It’s not the most fun you can have at a reading. It’s the only fun you can have at a

reading.” — , author of

You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero

“When you can’t decide between American Pastoral and American Gladiators, between Henry James and

Henry Rollins, and between a reading and a beating, Literary Death Match is a kickass All Of The Above.”

— � �, author of Adverbs

Opium’s Literary Death Match

is our Fight Club.

PO Box 3423 | Eugene, OR 97403 James Stegall Publisher | www.SONEWPUBLISHING.com | [email protected]

ISBN-13: 978-0-9778151-2-9

US $12.00 | 200 pages

David Barringer is the author of the novel Johnny Red (Word Riot Press), several collections of short fiction, and a book of design criticism American Mutt Barks in the Yard (co-published by Emigre and Princeton Architectural Press). He is the recipient of the Winterhouse Design Writing Award for 2008. His second book of design writing There’s Nothing Funny About Design is forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press in the spring of 2009. Much of American Home Life is set in Michigan, where Barringer grew up. He now lives with his family in North Carolina.

“We all have our lists of writers we love, those writers that not everyone in the world knows about but should. Sometimes we keep these writers close to us and don’t tell anyone because we want that special bond that we have between ourselves and the author, and we don’t want to spoil it by telling everyone else about them. But the hell with all that. A great, talented writer deserves to be known to everyone, which is one reason why you should read the work of David Barringer. David’s latest book is the novel American Home Life, which is described as a ‘comic novel about contemporary suburban father-hood,’ but it’s so much more, and it’s amazing.”

—Bob Sassone, Professor Barnhardt’s Journal

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