ISSUE 24: WINTER 2014

All Vacations

“[Michael] Jackson is a great artist, and we must accept him as an artist. His movements are terrific. Not many people can move that way. You will end up breaking your bones.” —Bal Thackeray
“[Michael] Jackson is a great artist, and we must accept him as an artist. His movements are terrific. Not many people can move that way. You will end up breaking your bones.” —Bal Thackeray

The Activist and the Lepers

T

he activist arrived at the leper colony and started hugging lepers pretty much right off the bat. They are just like you ’n’ me, he wrote on his blog, thegreatlepocrisy.geocities.net, and posted a picture of himself with his arms flung around a sheepish, scabby woman with her hands wrapped in gauze.

Today I held a leper for nearly two hours. I have no symptoms. These people are not to be feared. They are to be loved ’n’ cuddled. We must hold them to us as we hold our own, blogged the activist. Your gunna fucken die!!!!! posted Terminator82 to the comments section.

“I’m tired of everyone judging these people,” the activist told the head physician at the colony. “Someone’s got to stand up and tell the world that it’s just not right!”

He was impassioned; he sprayed a thin mist of spittle into the air when he spoke. This the head physician wiped away with the biggest Band-Aid anyone had ever seen—seriously, it was crazy, this Band-Aid.

Here in the colony I have met a man named Edgar who has had leprosy for nearly 40 years, began the activist’s final blog post. He has no arms or legs or torso or head ’n’ yet I’m writing this from inside him.

Ways to Save the Planet

Two moms of North American origin were going to something called an “eco-retreat,” which one of them had found out about while accessing the Internet. The eco-retreat was basically a farm where environmentally engaged activities were available to visitors. You slept in the converted hayloft of an old barn. You drew your water from a well. You could milk sheep. “You can milk sheep,” the one mom explained to the other, who became wet.

This was at a time when guilt about humankind’s destruction of the planet had inspired all sorts of getting-back-to-the-land activities, such as buying local apples rather than ones shipped from overseas, and buying special light bulbs, and perhaps even walking to the store to buy them. One did one’s own screwing also.

The moms wanted to go on a vacation that wouldn’t make them feel bad about themselves, that might even, in some small way, make a difference. That is, they wanted to make life on the planet better for unfortunate people, wetly.

Few could believe the savagery with which they milked dry so, so many sheep.

Luck, Bad Luck

Sometimes on holiday you’ll get stuck at a roulette table with an old person who will make a joke that isn’t funny, but everyone laughs—even the bandolier’d croupier. Basically everyone’s just relieved that the old person isn’t dead. Also they’re honouring him, in a condescending way. Like, “Hot toddy, you old cow! You’re still kicking!” and also, because of the joke: “And look at you connect!” It’s a relieved sort of laugh: relief that this old person isn’t dead, but also not boring the rest of us to death. And then we bet on black.

They’ll Never Take Us Alive!

On my day off I’d gone to the parkette to spit on some pigeons, because they’re dumb like that, they don’t know it’s wrong, they think it’s just raining, maybe—and out broke some smooth jazz. A guitar and a sax. The guitar guy had an amp. The sax guy was smooth. There were some ducks on the little lake that fluttered. If I’d eaten a lunch I would have lost it. But then I was, like, free. And I started thinking, is this is smooth jazz, or is it free jazz? Because, Helen, I finally felt so goddamn free.

Writer-in-Residence, Love Boat Division

A scarlet beret, bejewelled stilettos, Dragondancer available in nineteen languages, eyes that said to the first mate honestly (yet it was the mouth that spoke; below the eyes, a nose intervened): “People know me best as a fantasy writer, but I’ve been a fan of the Alien movies since the first one came out. The sequel was the first time I’d seen Paul Reiser in anything, and, what can I say? He charmed me! I knew we had to work together someday. So after the smoke cleared with Dragondancer the timing felt right, and Aliens: Repreiser pretty much wrote itself. Though producing it as community theatre happened a little more … organically.”

White Flight

Many travellers used to fly with wedges of tomato clamped between their buttcheeks. This being the fashion of a certain epoch. All day it tingled back there, apparently. Those in the know exchanged pained and knowing looks. Bums squirmed on the hard plastic stools of the airport bar. Others were more Zen-like and dealt with the vinegary discomfort with stoicism and poise. Because sometimes it’s hard, you know, those mornings you wake and the leaves are already trembling.

The Future Which is Now

Involved with the death kit were these scientists, or academics I think. I think actually they were all sorts of things: scientists, academics, philosophers, cultural theorists, there might have been a veterinarian involved for some reason, though maybe he was just someone’s husband who was hanging around waiting to drive everyone home.

Valentine’s Day

Hugh Hefner’s Fourth Wife put down her tattered copy of Jane Eyre and moved once again to the attic door. She knelt and placed her ear to the empty martini glass she kept, for just such an occasion, inverted and scotch-taped to the solid oak surface studded with heavy, iron nails, for just such an occasion. From downstairs she heard the muffled, female voice of the First Wife shriek, “Someone’s been using my mascara!” There was a crash, then, of something large and potentially ornate and almost certainly filled with expensive-sounding dinnerware. The martini glass, in fact not made of glass at all but pure 100 karat, non-fair-trade diamonds, reverberated against the Fourth Wife’s ear, also studded with diamonds, as were her hair and uterus. This created a not-altogether-unpleasant sensation, she thought, as the glass trembled and sang in a sweet falsetto to her, and to her alone. Truly, this was the Fourth Wife’s sole moment of joy since the Third Wife had been scalped by this weird fake Cherokee.

Not to Ever Confuse the Annulus of Zinn with the Zonule of Zinn

Johann Gottfried Zinn was born in Schwabach on December 6, 1727. Zinn invented the term “the human eye.” He was taller than most of his colleagues, who were short and weasel-like, yet somehow fetching. Once, he got thrown in the pool; “Stupid,” he muttered, dripping on the deck. As a boy, he longed to be a surgeon. Often he dreamed of cutting, cutting. Zinn died in Göttingen on April 6, 1759. He died surrounded by friends, loved ones, and a few tittering nurses, their hands pressed to their mouths and their eyes aflame with mad, putrid lust.

The Artist as Player Piano

Someone built an artist with a button you’d press. Or a crank? I forget. Anyway, you’d turn the artist on and it’d make an art. Sculptures, conceptual installations, avant-garde sound collages, still-lifes, whatever. Its talents were diverse and sometimes it would make a thing you’d like so much. Though what you’d really like is to become immortal. And then die. Oh, but Black Jesus couldn’t give a fuck if you live or you die.

About the author

Pasha Malla is the author of four books. He lives in Toronto.