I take one for the team, and I’m glad I did when I see its Kim Vodicka and Jack Skelley, though I’m confused why they’re here.

“We were just in the neighborhood,” Vodicka says. I look into the wide expanse of wasteland; no neighbors, roads, or anything you would even stumble over or slip on, on accident.

I hand her the peel of my devoured banana. “Sorry, Kim—this is all I can offer at the moment.” I smile at Jack Skelley.

“Do you know Jack?” Kim asks me. “He’s got a new book out, you know…”

Of course I know who Jack Skelley is, but before I can answer, Kim explains they’re circumventing the whole book tour thing for his new collection Interstellar Theme Park (BlazeVOX, 2022). “We’re revolutionizing it, actually. Instead of expecting people to come to us at some bookstore, we are going door to door, straight to you. Like fucking Paper Moon, you know?” she says, taking a happy drag of her yellow American Spirit.

Jack Skelley smiles, offering me a book. Then a weird thing happens: I notice Kim keeps taking drags of her cigarette, yet blows no smoke out, even when she talks. “Okay, well… do you mind if I just give you our normal pitch anyway? You’re the first house we’ve come to and I need the practice.”

“Sure, Kim,” I say. I hadn’t spoken to her since last summer, so I let the lady fly, then allow her and Jack to talk amongst themselves to quench The Last Estate’s dissociated idea of “company.”

“With a creative career spanning four decades, writer-musician Jack Skelley is a veteran of the Los Angeles punk-intelligentsia scene. His first book, Monsters, was published by Dennis Cooper. His band Lawndale has shared bills with acts such as The Fall, Meat Puppets, and Sonic Youth. His extended literary circle includes David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler, and Eileen Myles, among others. He once received a postcard from Kathy Acker, on which she wrote: “You’re a really good writer—never what’s expected.”

“In the company of such luminaries, Skelley has always held his own. His most recent collection, Interstellar Theme Park swirls high art and low culture with sex, humor, and socio-political commentary like a hardcore soft serve fever dream. You might call it a perverse celebration of the glitz and the gutter, one that ascends its subjects to hagiographical heights as much as it breaks them down to their units of base cosmogony. Punctuated with technicolor collages by Erin Alexander, Interstellar Theme Park does barrel rolls and boomerang loops, double helixes and death drops through pop iconography, Disneyfication, commodification, and rock star tragicomedy. Now, I’m gonna speak with Skelley about this latest literary romp since I’m a bona fide carny. Stay seated, keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle, and enjoy the ride.” 

I humor Kim’s analogy, despite our front lawn littered with carcasses of cars once considered road-worthy. “Carry on, Kim—but we ain’t going fucking nowhere, girl.”

She smiles at me before turning to face Jack Skelley.

In Interstellar Theme Park, you decided to group pieces according to subject/theme rather than chronologically. Everything flows nicely, despite, in some instances, pieces having been written decades apart. How would you say your voice has changed over the years, and in what ways has it stayed the same? How have “the times” changed and stayed the same?

I opted for contents-order Plan B: throw the manuscript pages up in the air and see what groupings emerge. One persistent theme is love-hate affairs with pop icons. I thrust archetypal resonance upon them. Interstellar Theme Park spotlights big-time personages: Miley Cyrus, Mary Shelley, Elon Musk, The Kardashians, Yahweh, Wilma Flintstone, Vanna White, The Ramones, Artemisia Gentileschi, Stanley Kubrick, and Hello Kitty are all in the mix. (Sometimes in the same poem!) It’s a twisted apotheosis, elevating the famous to mock divinity.

If these disparate periods and people somehow mesh, it’s because we humans have an inherent, trans-historical need to idolize, despite the atomization of culture at large. Or perhaps it’s just due to marketing, which is another theme of the book. The urge of marketers to exalt products/celebs aligns with religion, ancient prophesy, and the primal impulses of poetry. I love that, and I love to mock it. So, with idolization comes degradation.

As for an evolving “voice,” Interstellar tests verse in weird formats: press release, movie review, biblical scripture. There’s one modeled on the Catholic ritual of the Stations of the Cross. Currently, I’m exploring AI and social media algorithms. Rather than using AI to produce texts (which the whole world is doing now), these new “stories” mimic its fractured forms to pose larger eschatological questions: Is AI the vaunted tool for human evolution? Is it steering “singularity” in a race between hyper-capitalism and transcendence? And…how can I make fun of it?  

You’ve been writing and publishing since at least the early 80s. What was it like to be a writer then as opposed to now? What moved you to release this collection of “New and Selected Writing” now?

My motivation was to stage THEE GREATEST COMEBACK IN THE HISTORY OF INDIE LIT! No, actually, I had a lot of older stories and verse, originally published in magazines or online, that I wanted available again. The pandemic was a factor. For some reason (free time? fear of death?) it birthed a burst of writing. And my earliest books, Monsters (Little Caesar, 1982), From Fear of Kathy Acker (Illuminati, 1984), and More Fear of Kathy Acker (Illuminati, 1985), were out of print. So, I grouped parts of these together.

The Monsters-era writing descends from 1980s days of “The Gang” that coalesced around Dennis Cooper at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice, CA, where I worked. There’s renewed interest in this period. Not just Dennis, but magnificent writers from that scene, such as Amy Gerstler and David Trinidad, who remain successful and prolific. In 2019, Turtle Point press published Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World, which collects the poems and notebooks of the late Ed Smith. Another supreme writer and performer from that period is the late Bob Flanagan. His collected works, long out of print, will finally appear this year in Fun To Be Dead: The Poetry of Bob Flanagan, edited by Sabrina Tarasoff.

Some of your work is very sexual, especially parts of Fear of Kathy Acker and Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson, both of which are excerpted in Interstellar. Do you feel any tension between creative sexual expression and your (perceived) authorial identity, and, if so, how do you reconcile it?

The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker publishes in May 2023 on Semiotext(e). Its flagrant content is mostly cis-het male, hardly outrageous and mostly satirical. Yet even my publisher exclaimed during proofing how shocking that comes across these days…and Semiotext(e) has published some of the most transgressive shit ever! 

Fear of Kathy Acker was originally written and published in serial form in the 80s. I’ve made virtually no changes to the text since then. The narrator’s sexual obsessions include a lot of pussy-eating. (Can I say that?) There are asides of queer sex. Like most of the novel, these expressions are couched in arch irony. The prose flies from cosmic to comic, then gets dirty on these same planes. The self-seeking, self-mocking narration, some pulled from extraneous texts, is inflated to funhouse-mirror the setting: 1980s underground Los Angeles, including a stoned gaggle of poets, artists, and punk rockers, plus celebrities and political assholes. A giant Amber Lynn burns down L.A. skyscrapers with her orgasms. William Blake manifests as “Jack’s” friend Rick Lawndale. “Jack” wants to fuck the universe. Stuff like that.

Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson was written in 2021. Historically, Charles Manson mind-controlled a harem of hippies. He manipulated Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson by giving Dennis free access to the “Manson girls.” Dennis was very screwed-up in his relationships. In chapter one, Wilson face-fucks Manson girl Susan Atkins, a.k.a. Sexy Sadie. The story is classic Faustian tragedy, but with laughs and, ultimately, transcendence. 

To get at your real question, imposed gender norms are wrong. But what work of art is not, in some way, embedded in sexual desire, frustration, and sublimation, including love and romance? The newer poems in Interstellar Theme Park revisit Freud, Jung, and Camille Paglia. Throughout 2022, I ingested the work of feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva (The Severed Head) and Hélène Cixous (The Laugh of the Medusa). That’s the inspiration for a new story, “Walt Disney’s Head,” subtitled “Since I’m Dead I Give Good Head.” So, I’m never done with carnal content…plus celebrities! 

As Kathy said in an early interview, “One doesn’t express true or false identity, truth or falsity. One makes identity.” In crazy ways, FOKA was an early expression of new-narrative and other genres that now, decades later, dominate literary fiction. 

We know that writing is real magic. It makes consciousness. It melds minds. Kathy fucked me with a universe of fuck: I opened to her bliss, her mockery, her frantic scramble for love, and her extreme sexual anxiety. Yes, her “fear.”

Americans have the longest childhood, and some never grow up. Commodity culture, which you explore at length in Interstellar, doesn’t work unless it infantilizes its target markets, playing to the lizard id and making people want more, knowing more is never enough. Can you say more about your love-hate relationship with commodity culture, as well as with Disneyfication and pop iconography? How has being a native Angeleno and spending most of your life in Southern California informed these love-hate relationships?

Recently I pin-pointed my earliest childhood memory: Seeing Mickey Mouse and Pluto wall decorations from my baby crib. That’s some powerful pre-verbal branding! Along with pop archetypes, the evil joys of commodification are a long-time theme. Another interviewer recently asked me a version of this question, in the context of William Burroughs’ “language is a virus” concept. Perhaps it’s partly a long-time fascination with the mechanics of marketing, but I see vast, global commodification as a late-capitalist virus rising within the language virus. I enjoy making parodies of our already linguistic-based hallucinations of ego, society, reality, and collective mind.

So, for example, “The Gospel of Elon” in Interstellar rewrites Gnostic scripture using contemporary business jargon. It perverts Gnosticism’s grandiose tropes with brand names and sex games:

These Angels were Yahweh’s yes-men

Who released their stress in the flesh of daughters.

The most pneumatic super-heroines

From Vivid Pictures they would spirit away, 

Collared in the celestial bounce-house,

Its blue-tinted dome, floated and

Inflated with a clean-burning

Composite of silicone and Cialis.

Another chapter, “Disneyland,” has sick poems and stories about The Magic Kingdom. To this day, I dream variations on dark rides and theme parks. These archetypal forms mirror parts of the psyche. The book title, Interstellar Theme Park, satirically posits the amusement park as a metaphor for cosmology, the essentially literary act of creation. 

So, yes, I suppose growing up in Southern California—where mushroom Disneyland trips were a casual thing, and there’s always some dumb film crew blocking traffic—feeds these obsessions along with a half-snarky celebration of celebrity culture.

You’re a founding member of the psychedelic surf rock band Lawndale, one of the lesser-known acts on the punk/post-punk label SST Records. Your creative trajectory feels very punk, very anti-rock star. At the same time, in the “Rawk!” section of Interstellar, you seem to empathize with rock stars, occasionally even personifying them. How do you feel about ideas of fame, stardom, and “making it,” whether musically, in the literary world, or otherwise? 

Lawndale, despite our geezer-hood, still performs and records. Our new album, Twango, is on all streaming platforms. A fun irony of this project is that Lawndale songs are completely instrumental. No vocals, and yet I’m a writer. Go figure. 

When SST signed us, we’d already been gigging with their roster: Black Flag, Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Meat Puppets, Descendants, etc. We got to be good friends with Sonic Youth and opened for them, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, Husker Du, and every noise or punk band in L.A.

This was an indie scene, so I get your question: Why my focus on big rock stars? The empathy shown in Interstellar toward the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Beach Boys is, again, mixed with satire. It comes from seeing them as comic-tragic figures. Both Brian Jones of the Stones and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys died in quasi-suicidal drownings. Their demons—displayed in their love lives and drug lives—make them fascinating demi-gods. The pressures of stardom warped them even more. I’d love to update this series with Amy Winehouse or Ian Curtis.

As for “making it” in the literary world, does that exist, even at its top levels? Most of us are swimming in the smaller ponds. All the more reason to support each other and be grateful for whatever audiences we draw.”

Considering Skelley’s pond analogy, I invite the two of them around back of the Estate, where stagnation, rot, and erosion has turned our once fertile lagoon into a boundless putrid swamp; where the ducks can no longer swim. Instead they just sit, staring ominously at the bog’s shattered reflection of our jaundiced skies, waiting for something to change. I pull up three frayed wicker chairs, correcting their stance since knocked over from previous tenant’s suicides from the Poplar trees—at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

“Can I offer you two a seat?”

How can you measure the structural integrity of the mystery if it’s born from a burst of inspired agenda-less energy? A formless vapor yearning to take shape by seducing its opposition, blending into its contrast until the “you” is surrounded. You’re not only trapped; it’s finally figured “you” out, or it’s firm to communicate it will die trying.

This is the anti-world of Lindsay Lerman’s What Are You, a book so enraptured with a catharsis that it almost doesn’t want it—that would mean its end, its death. The convenient afterglow of climax? No, this is all about the process, the unraveling by further tangle. It’s a book that nearly transcends review or judgment. I was challenged, even taunted by the book; it injected such insecurity I couldn’t arrive at my own conclusion without consulting others first. 

“Derek! You wanna book club the new Lerman?” I yell across the house. 

“I already fucking did it!” he hollers back, half-resentful, and I’m not sure if he heard me right since we’ve also been arguing about chores, and it was his turn to push Jake Blackwood onto his side so he’ll stop snoring. We’ve been sleeping all summer. 

The others ask me what the book is about. 

“I don’t… know?”  

Eventually, I’ll confidently acclimate to that response to Lerman’s confrontational observance of the unknown. Three months later, it’s stayed with me, haunted me, and actually paralyzed my attempted eloquence. 

In its six parts, comprised of forty-nine short chapters (chapter sixteen is no more than the single line What Are You?), Lerman has taken us all for a sharp left turn—anyone who was expecting a repeat of her debut I’m From Nowhere will be bewildered, like being led into the middle of the forest at night then forced to find their way back home alone. This is a fluid thread of fascination/repulsion essays seeking questions rather than resolutions, a paradoxical tantrum protesting the depths of the floor dropping while stomping it further down, inch by inch, until freefall.

Even the snags on the way down strangely affirm Lerman’s contrarian epic. Like her preoccupation with digression, where at times she’s almost too inquisitive in the gamut of everything “you” might be; and just when we get somewhere, there’s a “maybe/maybe not,” “perhaps,” “I’m not sure,” that can be sort of infuriating—an unnecessary breaking of Lerman’s otherwise effective hypnosis. After grappling with my own initial uncertainty about What Are You, now I can’t help but think this shoulder-shrugging could be a legitimate part of the journey, led by a disembodied voice yearning to deduce between possession and abandonment. And since Lerman is an authority on conceptual dissection with a Ph.D. in philosophy, it’s in her very nature to ask questions; even if it means constantly doubting her answers. It’s a neurosis that expands the mind, one could argue.

And what are we doing here if we’re not trying to push the borders out? What Are You might not have been the book from Lerman we expected, but it proves she’s in full control of what she offers; and if we believe we’ve figured her out, What Are You will be the book we actually needed to confirm our fumble.  

Derek finally comes out of his room, drowsy yet sincere with his eye contact. He hands me a piece of paper.

 
“Sorry, man. Here…”

The Right Reader

—on Lindsay Lerman’s What Are You (Clash Books, 2022)

____

It is easier, safer, and wiser to avoid you. I am not the right reader.

____

I flip to any page and am met with technically adept language – – – drawn out, tense ruminations on possession, desire, creation, and control. Many of the sentences could be credibly taught in creative writing workshops on “evocative” language. For the right reader, the narrator’s flood of tightly crafted meditations will be “hypnotic,” and perhaps “haunting.” For the right reader, an intimate familiarity with the narrator’s thoughts will be “seductive.”

____

The decision to present these reflections entirely in the second person craves this very intimacy, and, for the right reader, it will undoubtedly work. For such a sweeping narrative encapsulating creation, death, and the universe it is a remarkably taut work. The themes can be absorbed in reading only a few paragraphs, at any point in the text, in any section, and in any order. This repetition, for the right reader, will be proof of its power. In another reader’s hands it may be evidence of a dull ride, the same notes written and rewritten and overwritten until the effect is more personal religious text than engaging literature.

____

The language itself will be, I suspect, for the right reader and the right reviewers and the professional blurbers, the key to unlocking the work’s power and beauty. Other readers may find the language desperate and devoid of surprise. There is very little mystery in this work, the wrong reader will surmise, despite its desire for mystery. There are two excellent lines, early on in the book, where the narrator says: “Some of you are special. Many of you are not.” I, the wrong reader, felt this way about the sentences themselves and about the sections and fragments making up the entire work. The many that were not dulled the blade of those that were.

____

Many of the themes are present in Lerman’s previous work, I’m from Nowhere (Clash Books, 2019). I am a huge fan of this book. The themes unfolded through an interesting, engaging narrative told in wonderfully rendered fragments that, when taken together, wove a unique story of a widow navigating her place in the world as an object of the male gaze. Narrative has been replaced in What Are You with fragments of memories, addressed to a “you” that participated in the recalled events. The “you” can both pull us in and push us away in equal parts. The effect could be described, generously, as being let in on a secret. For the wrong reader, these hints and references to places & parties long past, may just demonstrate all the actual interesting scenes we’ve missed out on. What Are You is more “letter to the universe” than novel and this, for the right reader, will be one of its many selling points.

____

I will read Lindsay Lerman’s next book and the one after because she is that talented and that bold. There are few writers working today in America with her capacity to enthrall. And I will hope, selfishly, as a reader is all too often, that she does not write the same book and then the same book again, stripped barer and barer each time still of the artifice and scaffolding of literature until it is simply a solemn prayer. And I say this knowing, very well, that the right reader will want exactly that.

All photographs by Liz McGrane.

LONE STAR BEACONS, 

HIGH DESERT DEFECTORS, 

AND THE NEW L.A. BRAT PACK.

One reason I moved to The Last Estate was to write exactly what I want, at my own pace; no one telling me what to do, when, or how to do it. I find it difficult to even celebrate my writing, because nothing is ever finished; our work a river, overflowing, ever-replenished. 

Now that I’m on the other side of the pitch desk, of course it’s already getting kind of old. Publishers and writers often ask me to review a book the week of its release, or to set up a reading for them with little notice. On one hand, I can’t blame the hustle, but I wish many young authors – and older ones who should know better – would contact me three months in advance like they might actually care about my time. 

But one young writer I’m always glad to hear from is Chandler Morrison, the “extreme” literary-horror author who is so much more than that. Style-wise, Morrison takes more cues from Bret Easton Ellis than Stephen King, and while he’s created a “brand,” he constantly subverts expectations from his fans—or his detractors, when they think they’ve got him nailed to the cross. 

In fact, I sort of owe the journalism I do to Morrison being such a compelling figure, enough for me to track him down for an interview back in summer of 2020. I had just read his depraved, smog-veiled neo-noir Along the Path of Torment and couldn’t get it out of my head; under my skin like scabies. Through the book I felt a sort of kinship with him, and once I found out he was only 26—in the midst of being heavily maligned and misunderstood by the horror community — I felt protective of him, compelled to put him in correct and deserved light for our culture’s sake. So, I interviewed him first without giving it any thought to where I would place it, until Lit Reactor published it, and I’ve been with them ever since. 

While typically stoic, choosing even his most casual words with surgical precision, Chandler recently messaged me with atypical enthusiasm, bordering on unhinged with a unique pitch:

“Gabe, hear me out—there are so many hot authors in L.A. right now and literally no one is talking about this. It’s literally a Hot Author Renaissance. We’re, like, Making Literature Hot Again. Someone needs to be shedding light on this and I think it should be you.

“Hey Chandler, great to hear from you, though I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“You just kinda crossed my mind this weekend — I was out with Tea Hacic-Vlahovic, Jon Lindsey, and Allie Rowbottom, and Tea’s husband made a comment how we were ‘like the Brat Pack.’ It got me thinking, that would be a cool article: The New Brat Pack. Hot young authors who buck the writer stereotype and embody the antiquated idea of the glamorous literary crowd. There’s a bunch of a cool writers you could include — Eris, DuVay, Elle Nash, etc. Could be something cool, like the types of articles Vanity Fair used to publish in the Tina Brown era.”

My mind ignited – I was totally picking up what Chandler was throwing down. Visions of classy, full page glamor spreads of L.A. authors who live like rock stars, exuding so much style and personality that you almost didn’t even need to read their books — but you might feel very left out of the conversation if you hadn’t. No doubt this coming brainstorm was also informed by the Once Upon A Time at Bennington College podcast, which Chandler and I had recently gushed about to one another. Lili Anolik’s salacious, no-stone unturned series tells-all; where Ellis, Donna Tartt, and other young writers converged at that cultural axis, their paths overlapping, back when the media still embraced literature as its deserved exalted art form. 

“I like this, Chandler. Since none of us can expect to get that Fuccboi money, we can at least ‘become’ the media at this point of our careers: inform the legends, have full control over the information, how our personal stories are presented — the Malcolm McLaren approach.”

“Exactly, Gabe. With the media being what it’s become, and all the ways it’s beholden to nefarious influences that really don’t give a shit about art that doesn’t also function as policy-enforcing propaganda, it’s easy to get disillusioned. But journalists who do the type of things you do just prove that it’s actually time for something new and better, which is exciting.”

Then, I nosedive, suddenly self-conscious; how my accidental journalist reputation often overshadows my priority as an author, that I only write criticism/conduct interviews for the money and for the exercise — strictly, so I’ll be a better novelist. Yet, my agent recently sent me an email saying my novel was rejected by 23 of the biggest publishers in America, so maybe I should just accept my fate as an aging, bitter literary journalist who at the very least, has his finger on the pulse of some of the most brilliant young writers out there. 

“So, Chandler, if I did this, it would be a mainly photo-driven piece, right? Like, captions listing all the designer brands the authors are wearing, maybe an irreverent quote, something visually iconic, unforgettable, yes?”

“Oh, totally. I knew you’d know what I was talking about. There’s this whole group of us who have similar aesthetics and sensibilities and something like this could contribute to placing authors back in the cultural conversation in a really cool way.”

“Cool, cool. So who, besides you, were you thinking?” Rather than volunteer myself, I gave him ample chance to include me in the short list.

“Oh, you know… like I said, Jon Lindsey, Allie Rowbottom, Eris, maybe Marston Hefner if we could get him… Oh! Autumn Christian and Stephanie Yue Duhem are going to be in town too…”

Chandler?

Yeah, obviously me too…

No, Chandler—listen to me… I am going to be in one of those photographs, okay?

“Oh, okay? I guess I don’t really see the harm in that—”

“Well, uh yeah? Why would you? I used to really be someone in Los Angeles, you know?”

“Yeah, but that was more for like, music stuff, and you moved away almost eight years ago.”

“Yeah, but then why would we have Autumn and Steff in this piece, they’re from fucking Texas?”

“Well, because Autumn is like the sister I never had, and Steff is like a sister to Autumn…”

“Yeah, but we’re all in a group chat together— what does that make me?”

“That makes you, like, cool, literally; charitably hot, maybe, but also just… kind of old. Like the father we never asked for.”

I booked the night April 14th at Stories Books in Echo Park so we could all be at the same place to read our latest works, then peacock in front of Liz McGrane’s camera. To make things weird, I put science fiction poet Jean-Paul Garnier on the bill, another L.A. defector I would ride down with from the desert. To make things even weirder, my new girlfriend would not only drive down there separate, but with her mother, who I’d be meeting for the first time—her sweet, down-to Earth mother, whose first impression of me would be hosting a reading where we’d be romanticizing drug use (me, Eris, Jon Lindsey), flirting with beastiality (Marston Hefner), satirizing anorexia (Chandler Morrison), fetishizing extreme violence (damn, me again), and chronicling homicidal jealousy/infanticide (Autumn Christian). The gravity of this didn’t hit me until Garnier and I were already in route, a two-hour trip, now with the sudden feeling I had passed the point of judgment, of no return; and all I could do was pray she’d still be my girlfriend when it was all over.  

Garnier and I arrived at Stories early, just in time to see two old friends of mine sitting at one of the tables outside the patio.

“No way, what’s up Gabe? I hear you’ve got an event here tonight?”

“Yeah, should be really great— are you coming?”

“Oh my God, totally!”

“Sweet, see you then,” I say, a quick salute, relieved that at least two people planned to show up. I walk past the patio into the bookstore—Jon Lindsey has just arrived. We wave, embrace, mutually stoked, Surfer Boy meets Desert Island Shipwreck. Jon asks me if I’m going to the Forever Magazine launch party after our event. It’s sort of exciting the way L.A. is having a bit of a literary moment; our two gatherings back-to-back, then Jon must return to Stories tomorrow evening to host his own reading. 

“Man, I totally would, but I have to get back to the desert, got an interview to get on food stamps early tomorrow morning.” I regret saying this immediately, despite its harsh truth. “Ah, bummer,” he says.

I see my girlfriend walk in with her mother. I run to them, show them to a seat, panicked but doing my best not to reconsider what we are about to put this woman through. 

Chandler has yet to show, yet he’s already the hero of the night—he’s picking up Autumn and Stephanie from LAX, then driving directly to the event. While the girls possess two of the sharpest minds in our landscape, they’ve yet to learn you never ask any Angeleno to pick you up from the airport. Because there’s no other way to teach your guest this rule other than simply retaliating: the Angeleno will then obsess over this grand sacrifice they made for your arrival, often using it as blackmail leverage for the rest of your stay.

They arrive with no moment to waste. But first things first—Chandler is urgent to let me know his red tie is “actually” vintage Virsace. Autumn is pregnant, glowing and starting to show; it’s our first-time meeting in real life, and she’s charmingly shy and smiley, out of character for the outspoken shitposter. Stephanie and I met over Zoom two weeks ago when she hosted the online release for my poetry book, so she feels comfortable enough to warn me: that if I post one of tonight’s photos without showing her first, she will fucking kill me.

I see Marston out of the corner of my eye, impossible to miss, his towering, shadow-casting presence bee-lining right towards me. “Are you Gabe?” he asks. I confirm my identity, we chop up pleasantries. Then, I remember Eris is in court today, for the stabbing incident or for drugs again, no one can keep track – not even her. “Has anyone heard from Eris?” I ask my star-studded huddle, who collectively sigh, like they’re “shocked” but totally not surprised. I scheduled her first on tonight’s bill just in case she got popped, so we’d be able to start later, or read longer, whatever.

I check my phone— there’s a video text she sent me an hour ago where she’s dancing, or more like Vogueing, in a Lyft, thank God—then, she waltzes into the cafe, the world her runway. “Oh my God, hi!” she screams to all of us, no one in particular. I’d be mad she’s late, but I’m too relieved she’s not in jail. Since she constantly endangers herself, we must casually protect her, because Eris is the scene’s Edie Sedgwick, only Eris is actually talented; and on further thought, never mind—there’s totally no one else like her. 

“You ready, Lizzie?” I ask. She nods her head, slurs something, sits down, implying her mark, get set. I jump on the stage, do my opening bit, begin her intro, but I look down where she was sitting—she’s fucking gone. Hold on, can you stall? I’m in the bathroom! we hear her scream. She’s already making the audience lose their minds without even hitting the stage. Eris is not so much a girl on her ninth life as much as she’s nine cats when trying to herd her, and to amplify her psychic incongruence on no sleep, she chooses to read one of her longest pieces (“Peter,” published online by Tragikal back in 2020). Her chaos contagious, I forget to press play on my recording device until half-way through her reading, mostly because I keep checking on any visible expression on the face of my girlfriend’s mother, the real indication of how this night will go. 

I hear my two old “friends” who first greeted me—they’re still outside the patio, where they’ll remain, talking too loud, audibly invasive over every author who reads, until I walk outside to tell them to shut the fuck up. Busted: they realize I now know they were never actually planning on coming inside to join us, and for the night’s hyper-focus on Los Angeles, this would be my most personal L.A. moment of the evening.  

After we give our words, there’s photos to take. Liz McGrane tells us where to go, what to do. When it’s time for the group shot, Eris has disappeared. “Wait, where’s Lizzie?” I ask. Chandler cringes, “I think she left?” We take the photo just in time for her to re-enter. “What? I was looking at books! What, you think we’d be at a bookstore and I wouldn’t be looking at books?” she says, trying to impregnate herself with Autumn’s impressive thigh-high boots. McGrane captures her and everyone else perfectly at the zero hour. 

The night is young, there’s a whole other lit event downtown everyone’s going to, where Autumn and Stephanie will get all their luggage stolen out of Chandler’s smashed car window, but their event is still more glamorous than our event, so I’m glad they’re all going; I have food stamps to score, and a girlfriend’s mother to redeem myself with on our ride home to the desert. We merge north onto the 10 freeway when she catches her mother’s eye in the rear-view. “What’d you think of the reading, Mom?” 

“It’s fine, it was fine, I just need a nap, I think…”

In rare instances, nature tries giving us a break; blessings in disguise, prompts to explore our larger panorama. When the pandemic ground nearly everything to a halt, artists whose revenue relied on the public stage were among the hardest hit. Yet, we could argue, artists lucky enough to make money from their art are in a fortuitous position of privilege; so while their livelihoods would be wasted by plague, they’d still breathe at the end of the day — merely their identity and ego killed, not their precious life. 

But many bands held onto their ego, in a cringing, contrarian death-grip; insisting we watch them on the internet in monetized streams since they knew no other way to adapt to the cultural uncertainty. As a result, most resembled fools playing out an insulting minstrel show, embodied cognitive dissonance, rocking out while the population perished. 

Granted, as a musician, I felt that existential fog; one day an exalted God on stage, the next day, rudderless — God forbid(den), suddenly I’m just a person? How dare nature challenge us, to question what it all means. But my shift of consciousness yielded unexpected epiphany: because of these live music streams, between all their semi-subliminal guilt-trip complaining, musicians suddenly became annoying, even archaic to me. I found myself slowly but surely walking backwards in sabbatical from the community, shivering from indie-rock’s self-righteous desperation. 

Yet, I was inspired by one pandemic-adaptive story from Terminal A, the two-piece electro-punk band from San Pedro, CA who traded their drum machine, microphone, and guitar for Hazmat suits, mops, and sanitizing sprays; becoming biohazard/death-scene cleaners to stay afloat in the pestilence.

While it would take me two years to reconnect with them, I knew a piece on Colin and Lee’s post-music occupational hazards was essential; to set the record straight in case anyone assumed it was some kind of attention-seeking performance art from the theatrical group. Make no mistake: Terminal A is among the only class-conscious artists out there, unafraid to rub their face in our refuse in true proletariat spirit; while others, still breathing, refusing to get dirty, assume the right to scream why me? 

All answers are joint statements unless otherwise noted.

What prompted you, or attracted you, to such an extreme job. Was it the pandemic’s downtime of no live music, something to replace that loss of adrenaline and intimacy? The desire to be charitable in a way? The primal urge to embrace sacrifice? Survivor’s guilt from the pandemic’s unforgiving scythe?

We started working for the bio-hazard company about two months into the lockdown, through a good friend and former coworker of ours. Prior to COVID, we were both working overtime at our jobs saving up for a two-month European tour that was supposed to begin in April. Once the pandemic hit, the tour was canceled, and we were both out of work. With what little money we had tied up in now-unusable plane tickets, and hitting various bureaucratic blocks with our unemployment filings, we found ourselves in pretty dire straits. Though it was interesting doing a job that mattered, and there was a moment of edification in doing so, it was mostly out of fear and financial desperation that we joined up.

How did you assume you’d have the emotional constitution for such a job or do you/did you? Do you feel mentally fucked up from the experience, or feel like you can face anything now? What kind of person does it take to assume this role?

It’s funny, the question of emotional fortitude never really crossed our minds. Being so behind the eight ball, saying yes to the work was just a knee-jerk reaction. Consent in a socio-economic sense is kind of a luxury. Concepts like qualification, emotional/physical fitness for the job, didn’t really factor into our thinking. Like most of our past work situations, you say yes and figure out how you’re going to manage to pull it off once you get to the job site. There’s really no other choice.

How much work do you bring home with you? In other words, are you able to compartmentalize, or do these scenes and experiences seep into your dreams/subconscious? 

There’s no way to compartmentalize this kind of work fully. To be around such sites does shift your way of thinking entirely, which we’ll address in all of its overtones in question number 8.

What are some of the easiest scenarios you’ve had to clean, and the hardest?

For us, cleaning and sanitizing COVID outbreak sites was by far the easiest, but not without its own challenges. There was something unsettling about being at war with an invisible enemy, and the speed at which the information about said enemy was changing at that point in time. These were still the early days of COVID, and worksite protocol would change sometimes twice in a day due to CDC updates. The unattended death sites were of course the hardest, but apart from those the most difficult were the hoarder houses because you were in a site that was a mirror of a damaged psyche, as well as the massive scale of some of those jobs. Some took weeks of a full crew working almost around the clock. ALL these places come with smells.

How has the job affected your cleaning/hygiene habits at home? 

Not in the slightest haha!

Did the job ever have an impact on your dating life, a diminishing of the libido? An existential view on mating for life, a crisis of permanence?

Colin: There were no romantic endeavors for me during this period, but I did cut quite a few friendships. I realized that work put me in a situation where my relationship to my own time was non-negotiable and that people who don’t respect your time have a more negotiable relationship to time itself. More and more I believe this relationship is class-based.

Lee: My dating life and libido were pretty well dead and buried long before this job, but if that hadn’t been the case I’m sure this would have brought me there. I’ve always had a complicated relationship to concepts like mating or romantic permanence, and have always been pretty repulsed by the human body in general. But I will say that seeing a fully nude woman with two prosthetic legs intentionally defecate in the middle of her apartment while making unbroken eye contact with me on one of our hoarder jobs didn’t do much to help.

Have you ever found pets of the deceased at the scene, or worse, a Mary Prevost scenario?

No, thankfully we never encountered pets on the job site. There was one SRO apartment that had about 2 ½ inches of dried dog feces covering the entire floor, including the bathroom, but, alas, no dog.

Has being on the front lines of death given any indication that human life is being incrementally devalued, even from the view of the deceased individual?

No, the fact that the end is so gross, undramatic, and underwhelming makes life and all its grandeur actually more valuable. To think I will be a putrid stain washed away by someone who cares not for my existence makes me cherish the sparse moments of agency all the more.

Post-script: 

Earlier this week I received a text from Colin, apologizing their part of the interview was taking longer than expected. In an effort to explain, he wrote of a blossoming theory that chilled me to the bone:

“I just want to be careful in addressing the questions, because through that process, what Lee and I discovered was a lesson in class-consciousness: working people have a different relationship to time, to their bodies, and virtually no relationship to the idea of consent. These are points we really want to communicate clearly with this interview.”

This intrigued me instantly — I assumed Colin was referring to revelations of viewing the deceased, those who perished in fatal patterns of self-neglect, of addiction pushed to their limits, possibly confirming my own quantum theories of “living fast.” 

But after asking him to elaborate on this point, it turns out he was referring to Lee and himself, the desperate automaton working-class walking dead, something immediately relatable to me; therefore, far more disturbing. He texted back in voice message to dive deeper into this theory — I felt his vocal tone was important for these first-hand reports, so we’ve presented them here, unedited. 

But it was a fair enough question from one Jesse Hilson, the genre-jumping, keeping-everyone-guessing author/commentator of prolific nature, when he asked how to submit, considering his top-shelf quality output overflows. I made my lisp joke (THE LAST AESTHETE) to prove that everyone is welcomed here “as long as you can get past the armed guards.” 

“Who are the armed guards?” Hilson asked. 

“We all take turns, alternate while the others sleep,” I replied.

Yet, this afternoon is a rare exception, where everyone is wide awake while someone hogs the shotgun: me, standing inside, fogging up the front window as I stick the rifle barrel through an old bullet hole in our wood paneling, waiting, wondering where it all went wrong; how Evelyn Winters could have actually gotten our address here, and what her, or Tom Buckner’s intentions were by sending us her full-length manuscript unsolicited. I won’t allow the others to stand guard until we figure out how, and who, these people really are. Since I appear to be the one targeted, I feel I should be the one behind this scope and barrel.  

About a month ago, I found myself on an email list I didn’t willfully subscribe to — to be fair, not the oddest thing in the world when you’re a writer, a reader, a mover, a shaker like me; who often acquires new strangers presuming I’ll appraise their work, even when I currently can’t sell my own fucking novel. It was the email list of Evelyn Winters, a writer whose name I vaguely recognized from lit mags where we have appeared in tandem.

Hi Stephen King! Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter everyone is talking about! is how the first unwanted email addressed me, before it further devolved into a brief Q&A, mainly to raise awareness Winters had new pieces out at Maudlin House and Bear Creek Gazette that day. I don’t have Internet, but I heard they are in there, somewhere was her last comment in this interview, a total nosedive intended to raise intrigue that Winters may live in the middle of nowhere with shoddy or no internet, even though some of us really, really live like that, man. 

I’ve smelled sub-par performance art like this before because it tends to reek. 

Thankfully, the second email was benign enough, a simple quick link to her newest story minus the (wacky! kooky!) one-sided fanfare of the first. But I heard from others, like Speak of the Devil Hilson and Karter Mycroft that they too, were receiving these emails. It’s not like we were shying away from eye contact to someone who couldn’t read a room — our eyes were just busy, rolling into the backs of our skulls. 

Then, Winters ramped it up with the introduction of Tom Buckner, a man who she/he claimed to live in her basement, who may or may not be the one sending these emails, the third of which was just a link to a podcast featuring an interview with Buckner, whose voice is pitch-shifted akin to someone in witness protection. 

In cre8collbor8’s episode entitled Arson, Arms, and the Art of Bartering, Buckner hijacks this interview from host Jody Sperling, carrying on the intricacies of trading buckets of rusty nails for chainsaws, between meandering ramble-fluff about, well, nothing; not unlike getting cornered at the gas station by a stray meth head who’s run out of projects. Buckner occasionally refers to Evelyn Winters as his significant other, but this episode is clearly the Buckner Show, though we are confused why the Sperling went to such lengths to track down, much less feature Buckner. 

However, goosebumps are raised towards the 45-minute mark, where he says he definitely did not burn down Odie Greens Hardware store (AKA the Great Calamity of 1991), where he says he definitely did not drop a cigarette in a pool of gasoline (“What kind of fool would do that? Things could happen…”). When the host reminds Buckner that his car was right there when it happened, Buckner swerves into musing on firearms and property rights instead: “You can shoot whoever you want when they come on your property, so if you come on my property, we’ll see what happens… I don’t want anyone knowing where I live,” he says.

(Relatable, I think, as I gently massage my finger with the trigger here, though it’s my neck that really needs work — it’s cramping up since I refuse to move an inch from my guard post — we’ll call it FOMO until they figure out what’s really wrong with me. In the meantime, Tom, now I know where you live because…)

The package showed up here two weeks ago. I had just returned home from the big city where I witnessed two people overdose on Fentanyl in close quarters; one of them inside a nightclub, the other outside of another bar (because downtown is simply suffocating). As a result, I may have been bringing that residual mortal dread home with me when I opened the mailbox, framing this odd parcel in immediate existential paranoia, but come on: from the return address of Tom Buckner in Cody, WY is a full-length manuscript authored by Evelyn Winters entitled Everything, Ever. Even stranger, while this was addressed to the house here, instead of me or anyone else who lives here, the proposed recipient is a fairly well-known Los Angeles-author who is published by Penguin (that’s big time — so this author, like, isn’t necessarily even in our scene, man). Stranger still, it’s postmarked in Pesco, WA — thousands of miles from WY. 

Before I showed the package to my housemates here at The Last Estate, I tweeted at this well-known author, requesting he messaged me, alerting him there was some “weird shit afoot.” Prompt with his response, I presented him with the incongruence, complete with photos of the package. 

“Well, this fits with the strangely similar emails I’ve been getting from that mysterious person! No idea why or how they got your address. I don’t know, that person is very strange and unsettling,” he said “Thanks for letting me know though!”

“It seems like a bi-polar ‘bit,’” I said, remembering similar untactful stunts I pulled when I was younger, the sole intention to make people uncomfortable. “And yeah, I’m unsettled someone has the address of The Last Estate. I guess, let me know if you hear anything.”

“Will do,” he said. “I unsubscribed from the emails, of which I never subscribed to begin with, and I’ve been worried ever since that it might set someone off…”

I call for a meeting with my housemates. We gather in the living room, sitting Indian style in whatever spots aren’t piles of broken glass or mildewing newspaper, where I tell them everything — the emails, the vague recall of Winters name; I play the weird podcast, then I show them the package. We chatter intermittently with speculation until:

“Wait a sec,” says William. “Rudy and I just accepted a piece from Evelyn Winters for Misery Tourism. We’re publishing it next month.” 

In that moment, assorted projections compel all seven of us to stand erect, pointing fingers at one another like the Spider-Man meme: My left-hand points at William and Rudy, who had yet to turn in their secret collaboration for The Last Estate, so I immediately suspect this is their infuriating meta-tempt. My right-hand points at Jake Blackwood, a born prankster, whose voice/cadence I realize sounds very similar to Tom Buckner on the podcast if he disguised it in an even lower pitch than his notorious baritone. Derek points to Unity, who is infamous for his multiple personalities writing under various alts. Every suspect immediately denies the accusations, every accuser accepts their plea of stood ground. “Hold on, where’s Stuart Fucking Buck?” I say, totally forgetting he’s been in the kitchen making us cake for the meeting this whole time. “Nope, not me neither!” I hear him holler from the ovens. It takes me a second to believe him, since this also seems like something that would come out of Bear Creek, but the collective’s trust is among The Last Estate’s most important virtues. 

“But, you know, I published something from Winters in the last issue of Bear Creek!” he followed up, walking out to the living room, wiping his hands on his apron. This was getting aggressively vexing from my own falsely persecuted coven, whose only crime was the inability to provide all the answers for me the second I demanded them. 

The collective dove onto their monitors for their own detective work, to further expunge their names from the suspicious hat. William suggests the piece may be AI generated, as the rhythm and usage seems akin to clunky bot-language we’ve read before — which opens up a whole other suspect: fucking autocastratrix. Not only were they supposed to be the eighth member of The Last Estate before they amicably bowed out a month ago, but I also interviewed them for my piece on AI-generated fiction at Lit Reactor last October. But this too, was debunked by raw editorial instinct — after revisiting some of autocastratrix work, the work of Evelyn Winters just didn’t read as sophisticated, not as writhingly witty as autocastratrix. 

To our emails, Will forwards the Evelyn Winters piece they’re about to publish entitled “Cynthia’s Mug.” The title alone freaks me out, raises my blood pressure — not only does it share the namesake of my shadow-casting ex, who is one of the only two people in this whole big bad world who I am sort of terrified of (even though I also sort of miss her; typical), but this mug she made in ceramics class happens to be the last thing I have of left of hers. The synch is chilling, really. I speed read the piece, searching for clues to solidify my nostalgic paranoia, though nothing hits, pure coincidence, thank fucking God. 

Now, I feel like I need to take all the blame for this — it was my responsibility to get The Last Estate a P.O. Box so our location could remain un-porous, and last fall I accidentally sent copies of my books out with our real return address. I checked my PayPal history, though, and no one from WA or WY has bought a copy of Fallout from Our Asphalt Hell. Then, I blame the vinyl mail orders I fulfill for my band Jail Weddings and my mind collapses — our fans tend to be their own sick quivering web of deceit. Luckily, most Jail Weddings devotees are too drunk to read, so those two sides of my coin are dismissed. 

Still, I still feel bad I may have let the house down, somehow, sharing our address willy-nilly; some other reason I’m projecting, territorial with the house gun, the roiling gut feeling this all feels nefarious… so if anyone gets hurt first it’s going to be me, who will also shoot first. 

I decide to grow a pair and reply to one of the emails, curtly. Hi, this is Gabriel Hart and I have no idea how I got on this list, nor what the intentions were of receiving Winter’s manuscript, or much more, how you got the address here. 

They responded immediately:

Even in (or maybe because of) it’s playful tone, something about this was feeling more sinister by the second; like some real Chain Letter by Christopher Pike shit… or…

Besides the ex who I mentioned, the one other person in this whole world I’m terrified of is my first editor, who I have far more reason to avoid and guard this house from, who’s name I’ll withhold to avoid further descent into endangerment for him or I. Though I am alive and breathing, one could argue this man ruined my life; at least seven years of it, back when I was just starting to take writing seriously. This man, who was brilliant and charismatic as much as he was diabolical and manipulative, was the sole reason my first novel was held hostage for nearly a decade. 

It began fortuitous: he was a fast-rising author who saw value in my work, demanding me under his wing — quickly becoming my liaison for a hot indie publisher who agreed to publish my book on his word alone. Gradually, like the frog in boiling water, I was pulled into his psychic vampire undertow; a bewildering gumbo of co-dependence (my fault), narcissism, domestic violence, embezzlement, drugs, his mother’s tragic murder, and other things I’ve since blocked from my memory. Before I knew it, he had ingratiated himself into my life, moved himself in with me in Echo Park; turning my basement into sketchy lair I was afraid to enter. He was the embodiment of entities I allowed to fly into me, one of the main living catalysts for me leaving Los Angeles, for fear I would never get rid of him, the man who was supposed to be my conduit for the publisher, who he was also draining money, resources, and sanity from. 

During my first year of relative safety in the desert, after blocking him from my phone, I got a call from the editor’s baby-momma, a dear friend of mine, with a full-report he was involved in a three-hour stand-off with the police at the residence of another host he was playing parasite to, climaxing with him finally giving up their four year old son to the cops through the small window of the downstairs apartment he had barricaded the two of them in, where he was howling psychobabblic non sequiturs until someone finally called the pigs. He was 51-50d, and when they drew his blood, he tested positive for methamphetamine. Shocked but not surprised, I was almost impressed by how much he had damaged my own recognizance by then, when my own experience with that drug in my teens somehow fallen short to spot this specific of red flag. Sadly, I was likely in denial, as he remained the one standing between my publisher and I, with all the edits of my book he’d been withholding, stalling the process with his own detours of devolution, of which I made excuses for him to protect my own narcissistic ambitions. 

Six months after the book was finally published elsewhere, my band Jail Weddings had a show downtown. As we set up to play, I nearly lost all my mojo when I saw a ghost across the room — the shell of the man who was once my editor, at least 80-pounds lighter, for better or worse. I had told him to stop contacting me, so his appearance, and subsequent staring at me across the room (as he inched closer and closer into arm’s length) was a major breach. I marched to him, drunk on adrenaline, “What the fuck are you doing here? Leave — now!” 

He argued he was just coming to see us play, that it was a public space, that everything was fine now because he said so. He then launched into scolding me for mentioning him (I withheld his name, obviously) on a podcast, after the host asked me why the book took so long to be published — I couldn’t not vent about it, as his calamities had become part of the book’s delayed history. Luckily, someone came to break it up between us — unluckily, my defenses came down again, and before I knew it, I was somehow apologizing. He insisted on buying one of my books (since edited by someone I trust) under the insidious presumption he was doing me another favor. Salvaging some fumes of compassion, I hugged him, wished him well, and he dipped, leaving behind a shaky but stubborn sense of resolution. 

Three months later, I receive horrible news from his baby-mama again: after miraculously regaining joint custody of their son, it had been the editor’s weekend with the boy. When it was time for her to pick him up, she began to worry when he wouldn’t answer the phone. Concern tightened when she rang the door for hours — no one answered. She called the police, they break down the door, and the young boy is found alive with multiple incisions all over his body from a steak knife — wounds most notable from the boy’s bleeding mouth, where the editor had been performing rogue dentistry, convinced he would extract miniature hidden cameras that were surely implanted into his jawline by the police. 

Old habits die hard, but there’s a place in Hell for those who force the young into their struggle. I didn’t need to hear any further to know he was on meth, as I know from first-hand experience the whole “hidden cameras in the human body” bit is a mysterious shared hallucination among users. The editor ended up going to prison for child abuse, and while I wholeheartedly believe in rehabilitation, I selfishly pray for my own sanity he’s still in there. The good news is the young boy is happy, healthy, and has a fantastic, strong mother leading his way. 

“Wow, get this…” I hear William exclaim. “I just read Evelyn Winter’s bio on her piece we’re running — all it says is: You’ll never find Evelyn Winters.”

So, Evelyn Winters, Tom Bucker, whoever/wherever the fuck you really are — let it be known: we harbor no delusions of phantom hidden cameras in our anatomy, nor have we installed any real state-of-the-art exterior ones at The Last Estate here (bullets are faster than video, you know…), but please, be mindful of the potential temperaments of those you attempt to pull the wool over — some of us have been through enough deception, blinded enough to stumble clumsily with loaded guns, unsure of our breaking point until… well, it’s like I always say: 

“Sometimes, you never really know someone until it’s too late.”

Postscript: For further proof of the simulation unraveling — when I searched for Evelyn Winters’ piece in Bear Creek Gazette to hyperlink the mention earlier, the first thing that came up was what I can only perceive as another Evelyn Winters, and her erotic romance novel Guardians of Bear Creek. You can’t, as they say, make this shit up. I’m beginning to feel Stuart’s Bear Creek concept is becoming its own magnetic Mandela-effect Area X, pulling us in, spitting us back out into altered time/form.

Editors note: If they are reading this, we’d like to invite Evelyn Winters and/or Tom Buckner to write us — we want to hear your story. Drop us a line (or a noose) at first@last.estate.

But last spring I noticed points of light aligning between the two, each example independent of one another. I got to know noir author Stephen J. Golds, who boxes regularly while writing in Japan. Then I read “Pretending to Fence” by SG Phillips (Expat, February 13th, 2021), an introspective non-fiction piece about the subtle intricacies of his neighborhood boxing gym. I saw another mob-noir specialist Max Thrax posting videos of himself hitting the bag… then, while writing an article on legendary L.A. poet Wanda Coleman, I learned she engaged in boxing-type training before she did live spoken word. More recently, Pussy Detective author DuVay Knox revealed a photo of himself as an 18-year-old “knockin motherfuckaz out at Lite Welter n Welter weights, fighting n’ fucking across Europe” — he later qualified for Olympic trials. So clearly something tangible is occurring, a cultural convergence, whether they realize it or not.

But the loudest example of someone who straddles the two worlds, on a professional level, is James “Lights Out” Lilley, the “punching poet” from Swansea, Wales. Lilley is the author of The Thousand Ghosts of You (Alien Buddah) and The Blue Hour (Uncle B Publications). After a long road of near-wins, Lilley was belted as the new British BKB (Bare Knuckle Boxing) Champion last summer, an achievement best expressed in his avalanche of giddy obscenities while being interviewed live on national television. The elation of his big win was not only contagious and magnetic — it officially bridged the gap between his literary and sports peers cheering him on; as if we were also acknowledging each other between claps. I found it irresistible to track him down and dissect his relationship between these two sides, and to cast an even wider net, I recruited Derek Maine, writer and boxing voyeur, to accompany my interrogation. 

Gabriel: James, what came first – the burning desire to write or to beat the fucking shit out of people?

Thinking back, I started Kung Fu when I was about 6 but that wasn’t so much about fighting; it was more to be like the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. I wrote my first poem at a school workshop when I was about 8. I think the desire to write came first. I never was able to move away from writing. It took a back seat, sometimes for years, but the desire was always present. My desire for fighting came when I walked into my local boxing gym around the age of 13. After that there was no looking back.

Derek: Watching your interviews, you are a great shit talker. Funny and cocksure.  Do you feel this same confidence as a writer? So many writers are down on themselves or constantly complaining about the difficulty of creation. Are you able to transfer some of the braggadocio from the fight game to your writing life?

I suppose I do in a way. With fighting and writing, I never had dreams to be a world champion or a best-selling author. I just wanted to fight and write. Getting paid, belts, and published are all bonuses so I think the reason I’m so confident is that I enjoy it. I don’t feel too much pressure from either. Writing is slightly different as now I have been immersed in the world, especially all the great writers I have met, which makes me see the level some people are performing.

Gabriel: I have a personal reason why you’ve captured my imagination, James – back in 2010, there was a week where I began taking boxing lessons, which just so happened to be the same week I started writing my first novel. I had this naïve romantic idea I was going to be this tough yet sensitive writer/boxer hybrid. After arrogantly telling my instructor not to go easy on me when sparring, he fucking pummeled me, likely to teach me a lesson. When I got home later to write, I was so punch drunk I was slurring on the page, unable to construct a sentence. So, I quit boxing, thinking it was one or the other. So when you came on my radar, I was vicariously elated, knowing there was someone out there pulling it off. Have you ever sustained a head injury that kept you from writing? How do you balance the two hemispheres, since the instincts might seem counter-intuitive to some people?

I’ve been lucky enough not to take too many blows to the head, maybe due to my style of fighting, but for someone who has been in over a hundred fights, I haven’t been in many wars. It certainly is a worry if I am being completely honest. I think the older I get the more worries increase, though I have never thought too much about how blows will impact my writing. I think there will be a point, not too far in the future, when I will have to give up fighting. 

Derek: What are some differences between bare-knuckle boxing and traditional boxing that a viewer, or an average fan, might not know or appreciate? Is there anything in your training that is significantly different for a bare-knuckle boxing match?

It sounds a little obvious, but the gloves are the main difference — and I don’t mean the fact that they are protecting your hands. With gloves, the size and build of them offer you protection when parrying and blocking shots. You don’t get that kind of protection without them. The rounds are a lot shorter in modern-day Bare Knuckle boxing so you’re likely to see more action with neither fighter particularly worried about pacing themselves. 

Gabriel: I mentioned the instincts behind boxing and writing being disparate, but I feel there’s a lot of overlap in the experience. Often when we sit down to write, we don’t know what’s going to come out; or what kind of inner emotion our writing may trigger that might inspire the next move. I think many overlook the emotional fallout of fighting, how it can knock loose hidden emotions the same way it can knock loose a tooth. Like, I remember a couple of times getting in fights when I was younger, where I actually beat the fucking shit out of the person, maybe even unfairly, and when the dust settled, I burst into tears in private. Do you ever have any breakdowns after a fight or does the residual adrenaline create a shield from this?

Whether I win or lose, the fight being over, finishing training, even for a little while fills me with a sense of relief. It may not be the most macho thing to say but being able to facetime my wife and kids to show them I am ok and not hurt is a relief, to say the least. I don’t reflect on the fights too much. I suppose in a way because we are both looking for the same things, the same goal, to win at any cost, I don’t spare much thought to my opponent. That is probably a selfish thing to admit. I have kept up a good relationship with most former opponents. There is definitely mutual respect and I speak to them often. 

Derek:  I like to watch and follow club-level boxing. I think the stories of the fighters are more interesting and oftentimes fights are far better matched at a club level. Going by your Boxrec, it looks like you’ve completely moved over to bare-knuckle. Do you have plans to put on the gloves again?

Gabriel: To expand on Derek’s question, let’s talk pain and tolerance for gloves versus fist. Having been punched in the face by both a glove and a bare fist, part of me prefers the tactile bare fist – I’d rather have the force of my opponent potentially split my skin as a wound I can focus on, than the more profound pummel of a glove where sometimes you can’t focus on anything. I think some might think a glove is like getting punched with a little pillow or something, but it’s brutal. More like getting a headrest from a car getting smacked across your face.

It’s a complex situation in the UK, if you compete in MMA or Bare Knuckle you won’t get a boxing license (or have it revoked) by the British Boxing Board, there are avenues such as unlicensed boxing. To be honest, I feel I have found my niche with Bare Knuckle.

To answer your part Gabe: apparently, a study showed Bare Knuckle boxing was safer for head injuries than glove boxing. The glove is designed to protect your hands so you can repeatedly administer concussive blows. Whereas with no gloves you crack a guy in the head in the wrong place you break your hands, I once described being punched with no glove as having hot water thrown on my face. You instantly feel heat and swelling which you don’t get straight away if your opponent has gloves on. The other thing is every blow you deliver damages your hand.  The punches to the face I can handle, the pain from your hands is another level. 

Derek: Do you think you’ll stay in the fight game after your own fighting days are over? If so, what interests you? Training, managing, promoting?

I’ve been thinking of this a lot lately. I’m kind of addicted to fighting if I’m honest. I don’t know how I am going to give it up. I’m getting older however and have a young family to think about. I’m a fan too so I enjoy watching MMA, boxing, or whatever but I don’t know if I can train others just yet. Maybe a break first. 

Gabriel: I prefer to fight with words over violence, but there is a huge part of me that feels wistful for the days where getting in a fight was a viable way to solve a disagreement. Take the advent of social media cancel culture, where even if the offense is real and there are receipts for it, what is the actual endgame? What does accountability even look like when another person’s life has been ruined long-term? But when two people of equal build confront each other in real life, there’s a tangible veil drop of who’s sincere and who’s been disingenuous – and that weakness of spirit will often transfer to the weakness of their physical defense. And then, it’s over. Barring the cowardice of domestic violence from the equation, it’s almost as if violence often keeps things moving along, in a sense. 

My gym’s motto is Fighting Solves Everything. Many people, including myself, will try to avoid confrontation and violence. Trying to live a peaceful, safe, existence but there are some people in this world who will not take you walking away, or saying sorry as the end of the matter, unfortunately. The world is a cruel place and I think we need to be able to contend with it. 

Derek: There are two moments that I’m obsessed with as a fan (a voyeur, a viewer). That time alone with yourself before walking out and the first clean, flush shot you take in a fight. What goes on in your head in the dressing room beforehand? What are some of your mental preparation techniques? Can you read on fight day? Is it calming? And that first clean shot that your opponent lands; I have seen so many fighters perk up in that very instant, almost like that’s when the fight starts for them, and they seem to draw energy from that shot. Is it that way with your or are you firmly in the “hit and don’t get hit” camp?

The emotions you get on fight week are a rollercoaster.  They are hard to master. You kind of question why the fuck you are doing it. I go from supremely confident to fearful in a flip of the switch. The changing room before a fight is also a weird experience. You seem to have all the hours to kill before you fight. I like to listen to music, never tried reading to be honest because I doubt I could focus. I am quite calm in the changing room, but you do get the nagging doubts creeping in. Coaches and other fighters you know all help with the nerves. Suddenly the hours have flown by and you get a knock at the door. One more fight before yours. Start hitting the pads, calming, steeling yourself. It’s a wild ride. The bell goes and you kind of empty your mind. You aren’t thinking anymore — your instincts, training take over. I usually take a shot early before I click into gear. 

Gabriel: Do you believe engaging in violence, or at least knowing how to physically defend yourself, builds character? Prepares youth for the unpredictability of our cruel world? With all the modern emphasis on anti-bullying campaigns in schools, are we doing our children a disservice thereby making them soft in the long term, robbing them of their fighting spirit?

I think the world has become a lot softer. It may sound like a cliché but I grew up in a rough area, boxing saved some of the kids from prison and whatever else. I think sport is important in society. Not everyone enjoys sports or martial arts, and I can completely understand people having no interest in them. Take my two daughters for example. The eldest enjoys coming to the gym with me, loves exercising and doing classes but has no interest in punching the bag. wrestling or Jujitsu. My youngest daughter (and toddler son) both love wrestling, pretend fighting. I’d like to put all three of them into a martial art, so they have some form of protection or knowledge, like you said the world is cruel and unfortunately not everyone is down for harmony. 

It could be brushed off as bad habits adopted by and from the uber-ambitious — “if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?” But that argument doesn’t really hold when you consider NYC’s Expat Press. The editor in chief is Miami-born Manuel Marrero, author of the challenging, idiosyncratic Not Yet Vol. 1 & 2 (Expat, 2019), in which he uses language the way some cultures traditionally consume the entirety of an animal.

He calls Expat a manifestly populist press, fueled by a spirit of defiance rather than the cloying middle-of-the-road approach. Since 2015, Manuel and his inner circle have been rallying against the de-facto literary paradigm, establishing a free-range stable of un-pandering authors who magnetize a vast uncompromising readership; all while giving the middle-finger to the global company store. 

“We’re fighting over every margin at Expat, which is why we’re such an existential threat,” he says. “The authors I work with are on the same page, they don’t give a fuck about Amazon. We don’t need them.”

A fiercely transgressive imprint, the energy of Expat surges where punk ethos and artistic sophistication converge. Visually, an Expat book might remind one of an expensive art-reference digest, yet it contains enough inflammable material to burn a whole gallery down. The cover aesthetics, executed by NYC artist Arturo Herman Medrano, are a thread weaving through the catalog.

Manuel Marrero

Staying true to his populist vision, Marrero approached the press’s pandemic survival as a chance to disseminate information for Expat’s cultural moment — he made PDF’s of every release free to download, which in turn moved the hard copies, which in turn assured the press’s most successful year to date in spite of the industry’s scrambling frequencies.

“Expat felt like Grove Press to me when I first started buying the books,” says Anthony Dragonetti, author of Confidence Man (Expat, 2020). Dragonetti went from Expat fan, to Expat author, and is now part of its editorial masthead. 

“I hate words like ‘transgressive’ or ‘dangerous’ — we’re talking about books here, calm down. But what really drew me in was the philosophy of publishing what a bigger, more mainstream press wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Expat has authors from all walks of life. What unifies them is they keep it real. Sometimes that vision is ugly. Sometimes it’s inscrutable. It’s often so honest that it hurts. That rawness is palpable with everything Expat releases. It’s inspired a mad devotion, which is what any small press needs to survive.”

Another way the press survived the pandemic — they began publishing new pieces of writing daily on their site from mostly unknown authors, proving in real time how wide their influence was spreading. Ever contrarian, Marrero considers Expat less of a publishing house and more of “a playground, a stateless ghetto.” 

“We want to attract people cryptically, because that’s how you get the most intellectually and otherwise diverse people, even if they don’t all get along. The je ne sais quoi is like an inkblot beacon bringing people to us. It curates itself,” he says.

And indeed, the surprises keep coming. Nothing could have prepared the public for the release of Fucked Up, the 858-page debut tome by nihilistic queer author Damien Ark last November. It’s not so much a novel as it is pure immersive trauma — a book that isn’t read as much as it’s experienced, for better or worse. Since Marrero is a master of language and style, the press releases he writes are a large part of Expat’s manipulative seduction: 

“Fucked Up is a relentless onslaught of brutality to stagger the fainthearted, an incomparable monolith, a testament to what is printable, a spectacular orgy of the gruesome and profane, of violence and depravity raw, uncut and unadulterated, eerily prophetic, bearing an uncanny resemblance to modern times.”

It might read as hyperbolic, but I read Fucked Up and it altered me — to the point where I must be mindful of the delicate sensibilities of those to whom I might recommend it. 

But this isn’t to frame Expat as some kind of edgelord press. Some of their books find their strength in their focused subtlety, like James Nulick’s The Moon Down to Earth. An intimate eight-character close-up of a down-trodden American desert town, Moon orbits around an affair between a black teenage pizza delivery boy and an older obese, unemployed white woman. It’s a story so delicate, yet lodges itself firmly into your psyche, every word meticulous and haunting. Because Nulick may be the eldest, most experienced author on Expat (he studied under William T. Vollmann in the nineties) he acknowledges the press’s vitality: 

“Manuel has a keen eye for finding young new talent,” says Nulick. “Expat’s maximalist books house a barely containable exuberance that pretty much puts the final nail in the desiccated sad boy husk that is alt-lit, thank God.”

Another successful maximalist experiment is Nikolai Andreyevich by Ted Prokash, a rowdy Midwest author of deceptively wide range. Prokash reinvented himself again here by re-creating the style and themes of classic Russian literature in order to prove “that all people, even when separated by hundreds of years of history, or thousands of miles of geography, behave about the same.”

The most anticipated release of 2020/21 would be Expat 4, a thirty-author statement of intent through contemporary situationist prose. It would be a disservice to call it an “anthology,” as its presentation creates an impression of a sustained sacred, confessional, sometimes mad text. At one point during its confrontational online promo campaign, Expat claimed its theme was “fear.” Surprisingly, nowhere in the book is that theme mentioned, besides the unraveling of the writer’s works — the theme’s subsequent removal creates a conspiratorial energy as you read it, an interactive paranoia suggesting the authors know something you don’t. But the further you read, the more you’re indoctrinated into its very “now” madness. It’s an inclusive move for Expat, aligning unknown writers with much more established ones. Yet, there are no author bios — no cluttering end credits of chest-beating resumes. Only clean, classy confidence of the work contained — another notch of an Expat author’s self-reliance that adds to the mystery, the authenticity, of their canon. 

If authenticity is Expat’s goal, the wildfire press may have met its incendiary match in Los Angeles outsider author Elizabeth V. Aldrich, known to friends as Eris. The German/English/Columbian 28-year-old has lived a whirlwind. Raised in a Japanese doomsday cult in the San Fernando Valley before moving to the Bay Area to become a peepshow girl at The Lusty Lady, she’s now back in L.A. barricading herself in the sanctuary of her bedroom. Her debut novel Ruthless Little Things is an Expat bestseller, only Eris wasn’t present for its release last January — she was in jail for “allegedly” stabbing someone. 

Expat pressed on with her scheduled release, further motivated to expedite the royalty checks to bolster her commissary, if not her legal funds. What else could they do, besides casually utilizing her incarceration to hype the release, promising a handwritten letter from LA County Jail with every book sold? The first pressing sold out within a couple weeks. 

Yet, it wasn’t just jailbird sensationalism that made Eris an Expat bestseller. She’s a notorious no-filter legend among the expanding “cyberwriter” community, her psycho-sexual drug-addled transmissions dropping on sites like surfaces and Terror House while often blurring into her real-time Twitter meltdowns. 

The term cyberwriter is an in-joke among this post-alt-lit crowd, coined by Southern eccentric Jake Blackwood while Eris was in jail, the distinction quickly establishing itself into their collective lexicon. “What the fuck is cyberwriting?” she asked upon her release. “It’s YOU, Eris,” was the unanimous response. She represents a misunderstood generation of writers who spent copious time on public forums like livejournal, deadjournal, bleeding confessional diary pieces, trading voyeur/exhibitionist roles, unbeknownst they were establishing their chops by compulsively oversharing. Now, cyberwriters have a world of proper online sites to submit to, yet they accept their work’s terminal fate — read one day, forgotten the next. But that hopeless immediacy is the thrill of cyberwriting — you can almost hear the writer’s heavy breathing accompanying their words, as if they were ramping up to their last fatal scream into the void.

In his press release for Ruthless Little Things, Marrero recalls his encounter with Eris: “Glamorous, painful, fearlessly honest… when I met her, she was ready to die and I believed her.”

A month after her release from jail, I sat down with Eris to hear her side.

Elizabeth “Eris” Aldrich

“Is there anything you don’t want me to bring up?” I asked her. 

“Just try to make me uncomfortable. I dare you,” she said. 

“I had just found out my girlfriend of seven years — who I met doing porn — died, so I was on the verge of suicide when I met Manuel. I was mourning but horny, writing a lot on social media. He thought my online expression was stellar and asked if I wrote outside of Twitter,” she said. “So, I compiled all my shit, just gave it to him in a big file, totally unprofessionally giving him some of it by .txt file. That all became Ruthless Little Things. I also gave him so many dark nights of the soul, he was really there when I needed him. And people talk about predatory editors — fuck that. I don’t even know what ‘grooming’ is. When I was thirteen, I was scamming people on Stickam. William Bernardara Jr. called me the ‘sexual predator’ of alt-lit. I was so flattered. But I’m just here, trying to make a difference in the world,” she says with a humbled giggle. 

Eris is also a compelling voice, if not blunt critic, for those like her who struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder. “BPD is awful,” she says. “You just have to own it and accept it. Especially if you’re not gonna work on yourself and get better. Everyone talks about their crazy BPD ex, so it’s not like I have to be the first one to bring it up. I have a lot of crazy BPD ex-girlfriend stories and I’ve obviously been that girlfriend too.”

What makes Ruthless Little Things stand out from all the other Go Ask Alice type-cautionary tales of at-risk youth? It accounts for every imperfection and dangerous impulse without succumbing to the ubiquitous and pandering redemption arc. The result is an exhilarating joyride through the eyes of a peepshow girl, driven with insatiable lust to feel good by any means necessary, even if it kills her. The reader is gifted the vicarious pleasures of her blurred, kaleidoscopic catharsis, the howling yet introspective suicide missions lived out by Eris as your seedy urban safari guide, so we don’t have to disappoint our own parents firsthand. It’s a rare glimpse into modern no-tomorrow hedonism. She’s an endangered species in high heels stomping the glittery streets seeking to preserve misspent youth in whatever euphoric elixirs of immortality come her way. Because sometimes that’s all we need to get from one page to the next. 

But in real life, what kind of fate awaits Eris, now that she’s facing possible prison time? Her release from jail last January merely proved a taunting intermission for these stabbing charges, which she describes as an unfortunate result of fight or flight instinct. It’s a complicated case for a complex girl, who somehow finds the strength to stay gallantly — and yes, defiantly — cheerful through it all. 

“I think she feels consigned to a fate she can’t abide. But she’s the real thing, lives life on the edge of instinct and intuition, even if she’s now living on borrowed time,” says Marrero. “There’s no other era where her and I could have discovered one another. I’m glad the global village has welcomed her as the serious writer she is.”

But words don’t wait. Last May, Expat released the neo-pulp existential horror collection Bonding by Maggie Siebert. It’s urban Lovecraft, only tighter, less verbose; so the dread never overstays its welcome in the heart of our present-day malaise. It forces catharsis to our modern panic through unnamable nightmarish visuals that defy physics or logic, because these ugly, suffocated feelings we harbor must go out of our minds to be fully realized. With these quick bursts of anxiety and climax tailormade for the disinformation age, Siebert turns literary horror to high art, offering enduring parables for culture’s inexplicable lust to hit brick walls. Even potential theater is conjured in “Ammon” and “Marriage,” where she explores a strict dialogue format – you can hear these particular pieces scream to be performed as one act plays, triggering voices in our heads, a private Greek chorus.

But what is tragedy without comedy? I was howling through the pages of Family Annihilator by Calvin Westra, Expat’s latest release from July. A sharp, clever, meta-Turducken of a tale, a TV show within a book within a couple’s third mind that must break every wall to display its hidden tenderness. You could call it a wild card, an Expat curveball – but really, isn’t it all?

Meanwhile, Marrero has ushered in another cruel summer by hosting a series of full-capacity readings at an undisclosed rooftop in East Village. “It’s been a who’s who, over a hundred in attendance. Many have traveled over state lines for them. E-celebrities have shown up. The readings feel powerful and momentous,” says Marrero, offering a clear visual to these new huddled masses elevated against the New York skyline, one that seems comforting to view as a horizon with no limits.

PART 2: Self-immolation

The article you just read was actually rejected from the Prevailing L.A. Literary Site it was written for. 

It may sound haughty, but I see journalism as a viable way to engineer culture; to help steer it in the direction I want to see it go, even if just getting it out of the garage in some cases. Selfishly, I often scan my periphery for what I’m about to deem “important” simply by the way its ripples resonate with me – and I prefer to highlight those who aren’t getting the immediate credit they deserve. 

Shortly after I became an overnight fan of Expat Press last year, I immediately submitted some of my more hot-potato short fiction to Manuel Marrero. I began getting published regularly on the site, before becoming entrenched deeper into their orbit of authors because 1.) either I don’t know boundaries or 2.) they occupy a space in indie lit I always hoped could someday exist – heavy on style, vision, erraticism, and punk ethos – so naturally, I was rejoicing in their fierce output and felt a genuine camaraderie. Because of this, I’d be the first to admit my reporting wasn’t objective, but compulsive. 

No one asked me, but I felt impulse to do something beyond the Lit Reactor interview I did with Manny in December 2020; to sort of give back, to shine an even brighter light on them. Despite their fanatical following, I saw an opportunity to break their story to a larger media outlet, where they might reach an even wider audience beyond the vast cult they had organically accrued. Since their L.A. author Elizabeth V. Aldrich AKA “Eris” had just missed the release of her debut novel Ruthless Little Things due to her incarceration, I saw the story as one with an even wider perspective of genuine pathos – perhaps an opportunity to give a voice to a drug addict with BPD, hopefully to smooth the bad influence Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl had on our culture’s compulsion to demonize BPD instead of understanding the millions who struggle with the condition. One could even argue our same broken culture that gives birth to the Borderline helps perpetuate it (I strongly suggest reading I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me by Jerold J. Kreisman, MD, and Hal Straus – an insightful no-stone-unturned clinical treatise on understanding Borderline Personality Disorder).

So, I was thrilled when my editor at The Prevailing L.A. Literary Site took the pitch – he agreed it would make for a compelling piece. A month later, I turned in the sprawling bullhorn expose on the breakout “transgressive” publisher and their female author who was now facing prison time for last year’s stabbing incident. In the piece, I present Expat as so aesthetically revolutionary, so literary daring that their books “contain enough inflammatory material to burn an art gallery down.” 

Ironically, my article also contained enough inflammatory material to self-immolate in an unfortunate, but understandable zero-hour editorial critique and mass-redaction, reducing it to ashes. 

“I’m so sorry to say this, but I’m afraid I can’t run this article,” my editor said. “I feel it’s exciting and important, shining a light on an emerging literary scene that deserves greater recognition, but as much as I hate the term ‘triggering,’ it will be so for a great many of our readers.” 

He made it clear he would prefer seeing it in its original form elsewhere rather than him neuter the piece. Clearly, his hands were tied – despite his senior editor position, the ripple effect could have undermined trust in his leadership. My brain quaked, split hemispheres – one side taking this all on the chin, since I plan to be in this game for the long haul; the other half crushed, angry – not at my editor, but the state of our ever-tightening reactionary culture he must adhere to.

Remembering an editor’s responsibilities reach far beyond their red pen, I managed to stave off any delusions of censorship by calmly revisiting Arthur Plotnik’s essential Elements of Editing, Chapter 5: “Troubleshooting,” by lawyer Robert G. Sugarman: 

“The one editorial skill that even the most Philistine media executives can appreciate is the ability to sniff out trouble before it gets into print…They learn how trouble can spring from minute or prodigious causes: a single careless word or a fundamental misunderstanding.” 

In other words, it was the right time, but wrong place for the piece. I could foresee the alternate universe where it ran, where my talented (and actually, very tolerant) editor’s day or even week would get mired in angry emails, phone calls even staff distancing themselves from the organization. At that higher tier of media, it’s the senior editor’s duty to keep things moving, remaining on the path of least resistance. You could even say our culture’s reactionary tendencies are just as adversarial to a transgressive writer as it is to a senior editor – both prefer their instinctual tasks don’t become a Sisyphean chore. 

It may seem regressive to present an article with its own sub-commentary introduction, but fair warning: you may see this often at The Last Estate, considering we specifically started this site as a place for creative reporting and cultural critique – although little would I know my redacted Expat piece might have a wider conversation because of its elimination. It’s further testimony to many points I make within the article – and like all the greatest art, Expat continues to possess a singular energy liable to repel as much as it attracts. And Hell, this piece is already its own time-capsule of sorts partly because of that dynamism – their masthead and authorship shifted last summer, stemming from a rather dramatic mutiny – but this seems part of Expat’s continued intent: to simply, though acutely, document moments in time. 

They’re a publisher often known for blurring the lines of their own auto/meta-fiction, and before I knew it, I was pulled in the strange tides of my own documentation, when Marrero invited me to read at one of their infamous NYC rooftop events like the one I described right where I left off of my original piece. 

So, I kept writing the article. 

PART 3: Introduction to Vyvanse

Expat’s “Blank Swan” event, scheduled for November 13th, was to be their last of the year. Marrero expressed how exhausted he was after the late summer/fall turbulence climaxed at Angelfest (which they co-sponsored) when the event was infiltrated by NYC Antifa. “I have no idea, I guess Antifa just hates poetry or something? They looked like they wanted to kill us,” he said, after I asked what they could have possibly wanted from Expat. 

“Reality and the internet got very close at Angelfest. They were making out, breathing down each other’s throats, touching midrifts – hot!” tweeted Scott Litts, Expat’s resident “ethicist.” 

Blank Swan promotional flyer

Further attraction to cultural extremes came earlier in September, when, for a couple weeks, notorious IG influencer Caroline Calloway became Expat’s most outspoken follower. “There goes your neighborhood,” I told him laughing, gnashing my teeth, after he had to explain to me who she was. Ever challenging the concept of “outsider,” Marrero agreed to have her read at an event, only to witness her use the gathering for her own shit-stirring callout confrontation to an audience member. One could debate her literary merit (to be fair, she has written a memoir), another could argue it was performance art; but these Expat readings attract a legitimate outlaw element that can test even the most refined spectator’s expectations.  

But despite Marrero’s commitment to situationist art, he seemed a bit overwhelmed by the boiling-over of the last two readings, these events perhaps becoming too inclusive for their own good. As a result, this upcoming “Blank Swan” was to be a tighter-knit affair at the rooftop of an undisclosed location to rekindle the original feel of the early gatherings. He kindly invited me to be a featured reader, alongside an eclectic yet perhaps less-combustible group comprised of Expat mainstay Ted Prokash (Wisconsin), Derek Maine (North Carolina), incel-satirist Paul Town, crime-writer Nicola Maye Goldberg, poet Sasha Leshner, Paris Review-writer Olivia Kan- Sperling, and Scott Litts, who tweeted that Hunter Biden was also attending the event. 

I almost talked myself out of it — suddenly leaving my desert bubble seemed terrifying, I’ve been here alone for so long. But there’s a bubbling magnetism with a louder voice, telling me I’d be an idiot not to finally meet all these people I’ve been living with online and in their books for the past year. I’ve even become close friends with Elizabeth Aldrich since the original article. As I’m packing for the trip, she texts me a photo — not a nude like she’s often known for — but a fully-clothed snapshot of her folding herself up to demonstrate she could maybe fit in my luggage. “My ex used to call me Origami Girl,” she says. I’m totally impressed at the sight, while taken aback, as usual, by her ability to make herself appear so small. Throwing her into the mix of what might to be a boy’s club at Manuel’s apartment seems progressive, but her unfolding legal woes are confusing, convoluted enough that I fear I’d be harboring a fugitive over state lines. 

Anxiety mounts when I arrive at the Palm Springs Airport, my first time flying since 2019. Ignorant to the latest pandemic protocols, it feels like my first time in the air, a kid again. But a child wouldn’t find his self in the airport’s bar, drinking my breakfast: two greyhounds (vitamin C) and one 16 oz. strong ale I am guzzling so quickly it’s dripping down my chin, when I see my plane is boarding around the corner. I find my seat, F20, and pull out my copy of CHAOS: Manson, The CIA, and the Secret History of the 60s; a book I somehow can’t put down despite the nightmares and waking stints of paranoid constellations it’s given me; the way it’s exploding my imagination into believing everything is connected, how nothing I was ever taught without experiencing first-hand isn’t even real. Maybe that’s why I’m going to New York, to prove to myself that I need to really, really meet these people in real life, or else it really is just another vague conspiracy I very well could be fooling myself about. 

I look down at the desolate sepia floor of the Coachella Valley merging with the Sonora and the Mojave, borderless, fused by all the same dirt and sand, and I wonder where all those dirt roads lead. I wonder what’s really going on in those single warehouses miles away from anything, where there are no roads. 

During my layover in Chicago, I get a message from Curtis Eggleston, thanking me for my review of his new Expat novel Hollow Nacelle in my recent Bear Creek Column. “I hope you cry tears of joy at altitude,” he says. “We will steer clear of stadiums,” I assure him.

From day to night, I arrive at La Guardia. It’s freezing, but after a twenty-minute cab ride I am greeted warmly by Marrero and his girlfriend Eva at his apartment in Ridgewood. Ted Prokash is already on his second night on Marrero’s couch. Prokash is more gentle and understated than how I imagined him from his rowdy online presence. He’s taking leisurely sips of the beer he’ll later call his “medicine,” speaking in slow, thoughtful, often humorous observations; yet he still casts a tuff Rust Belt shadow. 

Marrero nearly introduces me as a journalist, then catches himself, “I don’t know, how do you see yourself, I don’t want to speak for you?” I want to elaborately quote John Hellman from Fables of Fact: The New Journalism’s New Fiction, where he argued New Journalism could be split into two camps: those who participate and those who observe. I would have then concluded by claiming the entrenched participant side of the coin if it hadn’t been a week later that I’d actually read that quote, so I settle for, “Whatever, I’m just a writer…” 

After the four of us enjoy a contemplative view of the city on Marrero’s roof, a vibe of things to come since the weekend’s reading will be from a similar vantage, he shows me to my sleeping quarters. “You get to sleep in the library,” he says. Since I’m initially distracted by his voluminous shelves, it takes me a second to realize how much this is life imitating art, as I had just turned in my latest Bear Creek Gazette column, where I write from the perspective of a character who is camping out in the possessed town’s library. I don’t mention this, as I’d rather not distract from Marrero’s hospitality, not make it about myself, since he’s shown only genuine selflessness in the year I’ve known him. 

I’d wait until I returned home to write this before I’d make it all about me.

We awake the next morning elated to hear that William Duryea, co-editor of Misery Tourism (and host of our online writing group Misery Loves Company), has made a last- minute decision to take the Greyhound up from Virginia for the reading. This adds a whole other level of urgency to the event: another co-sign of this summit’s compulsive magnetism, another vital head we get to meet in real life. He’ll be arriving at Port Authority right behind Derek Maine’s train into Grand Central Station. 

Marrero mentioned Vyvanse; I asked him for one. I was once a teenage meth-head, then well-versed in gobbling my ex’s Adderall, yet I had yet to try this new elevated prescription drug that lately seemed to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. “Speed, for the people,” he says, nodding with a Cubano James Dean smirk. This began a daily communion between him and I, washing our legal, clean productivity capsules down with our morning coffee before we would motormouth with the others. An hour later I am wholly impressed by this new wonder drug; one that actually – finally – makes me feel so comfortable in my own skin, I begin to wonder if I too, harbor some form of unchecked ADHD. Vyvanse reminds me the best drugs are the ones where 1.) no one can tell you’re on drugs and 2.) the drug actually integrates you into your environment rather than offering an escape. I’ve found the exodus aspect of drugs to be potentially alienating to others, the ones who have bravely chosen to actually engage their surroundings; while they inherit the responsibility of having to deal with you, the attempting escapee, who just can’t. And since I just got here, the last thing I want to do is escape New York. 

Instead, we spend the day hitting pavement. I’m conquering record stores as efficient as a Japanese tourist, able to pull up/assess sixty-records every sixty seconds before I meet them at the bookstore. I’m there for fifteen minutes, and while I haven’t read every book in there, I am convinced I already know what every single one is about, the minutiae of their contents, by the time we leave.

We jam back to Marrero’s pad to meet Maine, then Duryea soon after. It’s a jubilant atmosphere, not at all weird as it could have been; there’s a feeling we’ve all smashed through the screen of social media and online journals to test our faith, our taste in fellowship. We all pass with flying colors, and not just because I’ve gotten a recent burst from my time released Vyvanse, an hourly reminder it’s still coursing thought my system. We can’t stop talking, though it’s still just Marrero and I mildly speeding along. Another test of our chemistry: three out of the five of us don’t even drink, so it feels all the more genuine no one needs that much grease to let down our guards. Writers familiar with each other’s work have this advantage — since we’ve already shown our vulnerabilities through our work, it’s as though we’ve all seen each other naked; a pre-leveled playing field. 

Since our group has grown, and growing men must eat, we return to the streets, now the nightlife. Marrero takes us to Gordo’s Cantina, where we meet Misery Loves Company regular/longtime Brooklyn resident Michael McSweeney, who immediately feels like a window to the neighborhood’s history. Back at Marrero’s we all cram on the couch to commence a volleying tutorial on avant garde cinema. Remember: pretentiousness means you’ve simply given something a lot of thought. When it’s my turn, I turn them onto Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures. All eyes transfixed, I’m glad to be useful. We are pontificating, waxing heretics yet laughing like teenagers at a slumber party where no one wants to go to bed. But yet another thing I loved about Vyvanse: it allows me to.

#

I allow myself to sleep until 10am. In my super cute cactus pajamas, I enter the living room to a bustling scene. I’m late, everyone’s chopping it up without me. However, Marrero has just run the day’s feature on the Expat site, so I am right in time for our communion, our time-released rhythm continuum. I panic, realizing I haven’t taken a single photo. This scene needs instant documentation, a portrait of each player, solitaire on the couch, flush against the room’s brick wall. When it’s time for Marrero’s close-up, I insist he follows my direction for his own good: 

“Okay, Manny, now let’s see a big confident smile… but not too confident! Let’s make it a nice, accessible smile — ‘cause we are re-branding you here, so you can subliminally atone for a transgressive publisher’s transgressions, to make yourself, you know, more appealing to all those who threw you under the subway train last summer, those writers who I’m not sure even write anymore — those who appear to be utilizing selfies as their main creative outlet. Wait, should we just make this look like a selfie? No? Okay. Good? That’s it. Perfect!”

Marrero has his own thoughts, thinking ahead to the evening. He proposes the “crazy idea” that Duryea hosts the reading instead of himself. It’s not a case of Marrero avoiding responsibility, more an acknowledgement of this natural host’s rare presence in the city. Duryea panics, then agrees, exhilarated. Maine and I are particularly enthused — since Duryea cancelled Misery Loves Company this week on account of traveling, we get to scratch that itch. Duryea has an impeccable knack for facilitating, assessing personalities, then commenting on a writer’s recitals. 

The reading is on the roof of Scott Litts’s apartment in Crown Heights, where we arrive in our full pack. “Here are… my angels,” says Marrero, his smirk announcing our arrival to Scott and his roommates; it’s a self-effacing quip, no doubt poking fun at his impresario shadow he never asked for. It’s comfortably chaotic — Litts makes five different trips to the liquor store within a half hour as we wander around the living room, picking things up, putting them back down again, cups to lips, the heavy lifting getting lighter with every sip. The apartment becomes packed with heads, bodies, overdressed for the depleting oxygen inside. I see Joshua Chaplinsky, my editor at Lit Reactor, has arrived; then my wide-eyed friend Ammo from Los Angeles, who has escaped that particular Babylon, into another. Soon, at least sixty people in one room, sweating profusely. I perceive Marrero in panic, so without thinking, I appoint myself to cup my hands and yell, “Everyone to the roof.” I hear the propelling sound of 120 soles stomping up the stairs behind me, too late to turn back now. 

It’s immediately ceremonial, everyone knows where to go. The spectators, who are also participants, make a horseshoe formation, sacrificing their backsides, offering a wall from the frigid wind. Us readers, one by one, step up behind a solitary blue light that gives a warmth of focus; allowing our voices to shiver freely. There’s a rawness here, don’t blink or you’ll miss it. 

Duryea takes the mic, introducing himself as co-editor of the “third most cancelled literary journal on the internet” before presenting Sasha Leshner, our sacrificial lamb, a young woman who immediately appears like living, breathing poetry. I’m instantly drawn to her — she resembles a female Rowland S. Howard; sleek, bundled beneath a dark coat like 3-D silhouette, a woman out of time. Her presence inspires instant quiet to the tooth-chattering captives. Her verses drip, cascade; depression as a warm blanket, apocalypse as an end to worry. I love the way she utters “oleander.” All were still, breathless while she spoke, her warnings and real-time premonitions folding in on themselves. While Leshner finished, a freezing wind began, like she brought it herself, one last statement. 

Duryea introduces Olivia Kan-Sperling as the writer who just got Expat into the Paris Review — Marrero runs up, whispers in Duryea’s ear, a slight faux pas of incomplete generalization. Sperling ends up speaking for herself by just reading; strong, sincere first-person fiction proving her range beyond journalist. 

Scott Litts reads at Blank Swan.

Next is Litts, the first to shatter any assumptions the night could take itself too seriously. We can smell the garlic singe our nose-hairs, feel the acid-reflux burn our throats in his observational subway piece, “A Meaningless Exercise in Self Discipline,” (published online by Back Patio Press, 2019). I’m doubling over, bellowing a cackle that shamefully cuts through everyone else’s polite giggling before I can restrain myself. 

Ted Prokash follows, underdressed in a thin grey hoodie cinched all the way over his face, tied at his nose. As a fan of Prokash, I’ve been dying to know what he’s going to read. We’re treated to a meaty excerpt from his novel in progress BOINGERS! A Club for Gentlemen; a boozy, bawdy, post-modern post-nautical romp for land-lovers. Delivered in his native Wisconsinese, he throws bar after bar, triggering the heartiest of hardy-har-hars amongst the trembling throng. Prokash possesses one of the widest ranges out of any current author I’m aware of, an acute grasp and wield of language. I finally read Moby Dick earlier this year over a three-month slog, and after hearing this piece of BOINGERS tonight, I feel wistful that Melville’s failed novel could have benefitted from a sharper captain like Prokash steering the ship. 

I brought a stack of my newest book to NYC with me, a noir/speculative-fiction collection published by Close to the Bone, my U.K. publisher. Why I mention this: I forgot the books at Marrero’s apartment. I briefly scold myself, lamenting the books travelling all this way with me, taking up valuable real-estate in my luggage, only to fail selling them at the reading — you know, be a real, working author. I quickly realize it’s a resolute problem to have — I was having too good of a time to concern myself with turning art into commerce. It’s not really that kind of reading, anyway. Marrero prefers to call these shows, not readings; more akin to the unpredictability of DIY punk than a dubiously regimented bookstore gathering. The imperative is presence, a moment in time, creating a memory that cannot be a facsimile, a psychic NFT for our minds only. 

Regardless, it’s my turn. Duryea introduces me to the crowd as his friend, and at that moment there’s no other way I want to be described; it sounds better than a journalist or even a writer, really. I choose to read my recent Expat piece “Pitchfork After Scythe” because reading it on a freezing rooftop on the other side of the country in front of fifty strangers feels like the safest way to share something so personal; though I maintain its fiction — memory as the unreliable narrator. 

Derek Maine goes after me, thank God. This ain’t a contest but it’s always tough to follow him at Misery Loves Company. A reading from Maine is much more than that; it’s a performance, no beat missed. His urgent cadence like a runaway, determined train; or maybe its anxiety-ridden Southern conductor, describing to us gasping passengers all the obstacles barricading our tracks. Tonight, he reads “The Dolphin Lane Motel (Off-Season 1993-1996),” originally published in the 2020 winter issue of Ligeia Magazine, on this rooftop where he has all the room to pace. 

Recently, in the spirit of keeping everyone guessing, Expat has embraced the gnarlier bracket of the noir contingent, so when crime-writer Nicola Maye Goldberg was asked to read for the event, it only made sense. She opens with a sarcastic quip, “So, I heard you all like autofiction? Well, I got something here for you…” Oddly, her offering was not autofiction, but a tight epistolary piece — a sympathetic open letter to notorious serial killer Aileen Wuornos, giving true-crime a feminist bend. “Men like to tell us to get back in the kitchen as if that’s not where we keep our knives, they love to put their cocks in our mouths, like that’s not where we keep our teeth…” Killer.

Headliner Paul Town’s reputation preceded his appearance. To his detractors, Town might be perceived as an outspoken, controversial incel king. Marrero, however, sees him a writer with a unique voice, and genuinely felt an Expat reading might be the only place to give him a serious platform to be re-evaluated by literature people. Town reads from his infamous self-published thicky It Is the Secret, a sprawling tome of cruel philosophical vignettes of overcompensating masculinity that I couldn’t put down at Marrero’s apartment. His hybrid tone meets at the unlikely intersection of Crispin Glover and Jim Goad. Since no one here is an idiot, most are dying of laughter when he reads — surrendering to the rush, the precarious dangle of not knowing – and not caring – whether it’s a joke or not. Twitter, however, didn’t join in our revelry with Town, when they banned him from the site just a couple days after the reading. 

The following day, a Sunday, we saw off Maine, Duryea, and Prokash in staggered exits, leaving Marrero and I to salvage the last hours of my final day. “Do you play chess?” he asks. I’ve always wanted to learn; I decide now is the time. We post up at the Bad Old Days, a dark, quiet drinking hole around the corner whose built-in chessboard has green and white squares. Marrero teaches me the rules as we play, allowing me to make mistakes first before he suggests better strategies. I feel like I’ve accomplished something important by acquiring this new armchair athleticism, even while my mind is struggling to retain the rules of the game; and because Marrero is planting these seeds, he’s able to get further under my skin without even trying; so much so, that it’s not until my long plane ride home that I finally wonder what his next move will be.