A Story for Submission
by Jacky Stephenson

NEW NEW NEW– write something NEW you dusty brained bastard. Something they haven’t seen. Something pouring out of you with the precision of articulated prose and the whimsy of Dadaism, but not the Fascist kind– God forbid we leave room to credit Ezra Pound as an influence. Something, something, black petals on a bough? Was the bough black? I would Google it if I gave more of a shit.

NEW NEW NEW not the scrapbook poems from tenth grade math class or the shit you workshopped into a hundred-thousand dollar degree. 

Something with a fury, something a few glasses of wine in, something liberatory– something LIGHT but not so feathery that it makes the good reader sneeze. A Calvino reference there, did you catch it?

No, you didn’t, because it wasn’t a Calvino reference, I lied to you, and I’m merely subjecting myself to typing because there isn’t much more to do. This keeps me from biting my nails.

I saw the news today, more dead children, more names that I’ve learned so I can hate them, more things to balance so delicately on my tongue and so heavily on the front of my mind. I read this out loud and thought, ought you not put it that bluntly, fella? But I don’t see any reason not to. There are few things so true in the world as the ultimate shame and disgrace of a humanity that dances past dead children. You might not read much longer if I start politicizing these words, right? I’ll hold it here.

See, I want to write but I have to live and I have to live but I want to write– have you ever loved something so much that you did it for free? I guess you’re reading, but unless this turns into something with my name delicately pinned under the title, something situated on my curricula vitae, it’s likely that you’re getting paid for this too, isn’t it? Editor? Reader? What ought I even call you?

I know what you want– the newnewnewnewnew? Something so feverish that you jump from your seat and exclaim, “by God! He’s speaking right at me!” But you’d be wrong in your assumption, in fact I detest gender and I might have a dick but I’m more feminine than most and I wear women’s shirts because I like buttoning from the left, their pants because it makes my ass look better.

If you’re here, you’re queer, or at least you don’t mind me writing about it– which is alright, just less exciting. How fresh do you want this to be, reader? You ever read about what it feels like to watch somebody pull your zipper down? I wouldn’t be so bold if I had anything else to say– when will my words be enough for you?

If I got cranked on acid on a beach in the Netherlands and blamed it on rubber duck voiced literary magazine editors, would you get the fucking point? “But I had to see something!” I would shout as they put me to sleep, burned off my fingerprints and tossed my teeth into the North Sea. 

But they never put me to sleep, I fell asleep, on sand, and saw only black and nothing worth characterizing– a failed grasp at the new. 

Clutched my shoulders, wept, rocked back and forth and spewed into a fit– you sonuvabitch you’ll never get published in the We Appreciated Your Submission Review or the Try Again Next Quarter Quarterly or the “We Run Out of that School That Rejected You Twice” Magazine. The quirky Gen-Z generated names. We lambasted the Bloomsbury Group, but we’ve made it over again, except now we can talk about men fucking men, women killing men, women loving women, and loving it when they do. But beyond the sex and all the good and the liberated bodies– I caressed myself that night on the Dutch coast, the one you probably thought wasn’t a faithful story. Caressed myself, catered to my shriveled sense of place, and whispered “little fella, little fella, things are going to be alright.”

That is hardly anything worth <2,000 words or $3 or logging back in to Submittable. Instead, I got drunk tonight on a bottle of wine from the Chevron across the street and watched a Sorrentino movie about somewhere in Italy–

PAOLO

To all, I exclaim– art is a woman I want to film nude!


SOMEONE THAT ISN’T PAOLO

See her?! (Hands him a picture of his former lover) Sexy!?


PAOLO

You mock me! No, Paolo!


SOMEONE THAT ISN’T PAOLO (PAOLO’s FRIEND, PAOLO?)

Naked! Is that not what you mean? How do you mean, Paolo!?

PAOLO

Is that all you want me to mean!?

There’s no way that I’ll be ignored now– even the reader that scrolls flippantly through the page will glance and say, “Courier?” Then they will read more, because if a piece of writing makes good use of two fonts then it certainly becomes worth reading.

If you made it here, I want you to take a moment of silence for all of the brilliant prose that you have scrolled-on-past because it was in one font– words someone cared to write that you never cared to read. I would now say something about “not telling you how to do your job” if your job wasn’t to read. But do not fret, writing and reading are only two of many religions that are a bit more lackadaisical when it comes to repentance.

Reader, don’t leave! 

I never meant to sound so averse to your practice, so unappreciative to your time, so unqualified in my criticism. I imagine that when I land on the one True Reader that they will have seen all of these words and thought, “how bitter, how sad– how lovely to have read it and proven them wrong.”

Perhaps then, I’ll be published out of spite, and we can pretend that getting this thing into print wasn’t the end-all-be-all from the first NEW NEW NEW.

PAOLO

To my mother, wherever she may rest–



PAOLO’s MOTHER (FAINT VOICE OVER)

Remember me, mi cara Paolo!



ANTONINI, FRIEND OF PAOLO’s FRIEND, PAOLO

The writer tricked you into reading this far?



PAOLO

Earth or Heaven or the places between!



PAOLO’s FRIEND, PAOLO

End! Antonini, you patronizing prick!



ANTONINI

Fuck you Paolo!



PAOLO(s)(UNISON)

Fuck me?!

INT. STUDIO APARTMENT – NIGHT

[REDACTED], sits idly before a laptop, thinking only about credit card debt and the differences between Siddhartha Buddha and Budai. [REDACTED] sips that aforementioned wine, thinking about their last ditch effort at making something of substance, [REDACTED]thinks there might be substance in nothing, thinks about whether or not to embed a Lorca quote in here somewhere, a puzzle, something to keep the reader reading. Wonders whether or not they caught the plagiarized bit from Frank O’Hara.

Breathe Reader, that’s the last time I’ll drag you into script– there’s only so much I can copy from a Google images picture labeled “script format” anyhow.

But I’ll lay it all to rest here, at your feet, to judge what I’ve scraped together in a word count that just breaks through your guidelines.

Go now– tell your friends about the newnewnew and the way you read it all the way throughthroughthrough and pretend that, after close inspection, you found the O’Hara plagiarism (there wasn’t any) or that you knew when you read the script that Lorca fell from the lips of the imaginary voice in your head. Maybe this whole thing was a Calvino reference, did I lie when I said I lied to you?

Twelve hundred words and a tedious evening of revision ought to be well worth your time, but I can’t force you into it. I can tell you for certain this was fresh enough for print, but you might be boiling a bit thinking, well I could have done THAT!

Sort me as you will, put me into the DISCARD pile if you feel so inclined to do so, but who wins? 

My Arial font is more permanent than your judgment ever will be.

Jacky Stephenson is a native Texan, queer writer, adopted New Yorker and MFA candidate and instructor at Western Washington University. They specialize in creative nonfiction and have been largely published by St. John’s University’s Sequoya Magazine. They can also be found writing about food, surfing, Italo Calvino, queer Texan identity and Queens, New York.

Image source: Camille Orgel/Unsplash

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