Stories No One Wants to HearChristopher StevensonDecember 20.The City. 5 PM.Snow falls. First, as children aiming their uvulas skyward, then as puppies snuffling snowflakes like cokeheads, while their fur-parents freeze their earlobes off. Then enough snow falls for a six-car pile-up at 13b on I-270. Firefighters and paramedics report on the scene and break out the jaws of life and mosey toward a car whose stereo speakers blare, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”Snow falls as commuters metro home, parents cook dinner, rec centers warm children, neighborhood listservs argue who’s smoking pot in the foyer again, houseless people pack cold-weather shelters, and leftover college students explore the U Street nightlife.The ClubThe Club’s 5 o’clock barstool cadre take their places including: William, the WWII vet who shits on everyone’s lived experiences, Lucy, the ironlivered WACS nurse, Whiney-faced Cecil, and Gracie-fresh-out-of-shitsto-give but stocked with giggles. Good Times, an all-white Chic cover band from central Maryland sets up for a 9 o’clock show, and Miriam and Carl chat about 100 ways to say snow (she’s a snowologist) and settle on "Shit No One Wants." In the corner sits Kate, and Max who stumbles in his own puke and screams “In My House!” by Mary Jane Girls and demands it play on the jukebox.Happy hour at the Veterans of Overseas Conflicts Post 847 is full of sailors, grunts, flyboys, and Marines along with drifters and military brats who scored a membership without wearing the uniform, but enjoy cheap beer, cigarette smoke, and vomit stains on wood veneer.At the front of the stage sit Helen and Manny who drove in from Arlington. Like they always do, Charles and Sylvia came all the way fromWest Virginia to see Clyde, a UPS driver, play bass. An overwhelmed Kendra motions to Miriam. Liz and Harry watch the widescreen TV above the bar. Robert scowls like he always does.Robert Robert’s phone beeps. A text from his mother, "HBD!!! Luv u little shithead!"Thirty years ago, a constipated mother discovered her son, when he smashed his skull on the toilet as she flushed. He howled as the water shot out the flush valve across his head into the siphon jet. No What to Expect When You’re Expecting. No sonograms. Just a ride to the hospital for health’s sake. The story goes that while he was delivered, the doctors found his brother also inside her womb, four months premature. She calls him shithead when she’s happy. When she’s mad, she says, "I shit you into this world, I’ll take you out."Miriam and Kendra stand inside the bar talking. Miriam takes a rag to the counter while Kendra changes out the drawer. Kendra says, "You put up with too much!"Miriam says, "I am a shove-it-up-my-ass-ologist." Robert watches as Miriam pantomimes putting things up her butt. First small and then she giggles, “It’s a whale. I’m shoving a whale up my butt, maybe a T-Rex.”Their eyes meet. Miriam blinks and forms her lips into a volcano“Oooh-la-la,” she says. “Imagine putting a full T-Rex up the poop shoot.”“You’re gross!” says Kendra.“Worse men have been there, sooo . . .” she trails off, still looking atRobert. “Happy birthday, Bobby! Want your free drink?""Birthday boy, birthday boy!" says Kendra, walking past with a smile."It’s Robert,” he demands. He eyeballs Kendra up and down and up again and meets her eyes and her smile.“It’s a sweater-and-jeans kind of day,” Kendra says, putting one arm in the air and one leg back. Robert pretends not to notice but spies the badge on her breast that says “President” and looks away, so she doesn’t think he’s checking her tits.“What?” says Robert like his dog died. Kendra drops her pose and frowns.“I SAID—we have a snowstorm on the way,” says Kendra, who sneers her lip and turns to Miriam. “I’ll be in the back.” Kendra disappears.Miriam nods and pours a whiskey, grabbing her dog tags with her other hand, “Ruh-bert!”“That’s right,” says Robert. “Don’t wear it out.”Miriam points to her torso with the bottle’s pourer, “I’ll wear what I want. But I won’t wear your name. It’s a flannel-and-vest sort of day.” Robert nods.“You’re not gonna look at my knockers, too?” she asks.Robert doesn’t hear her at all. He pouts and shakes his hand in the air saying as much.Miriam mimics back, hands him the whiskey, “Monsieur!”He goes to reach for it and she picks it up herself and slams it breaking into a roarious laugh.“I’ll get you another one,” she says.She does. “It’s on the house you clueless birthday boy.” Before popping in the Club, Robert spent his thirtieth preparing for an interview at Hell Hydra, a marijuana pop-up “cornering the market on seniors.” Skipping his classes at UDC, he hopped the morning train to Friendship Heights for a sportscoat. And then mouthwash, floss, and facewash at Whole Foods. He slid in a morning manicure and a haircut. At Saks, he bought new silk boxers and cashmere socks just for good luck.He rushed home, shaved, bathed, and followed up with a patchouli moisturizer and a dried-out cologne sample he snagged from a GQ magazine while returning books at the DC Library a week ago. Water fixes it new.He rehearsed and rehearsed and rocked the interview. There were smiles and jokes, and Barb the H.R. rep said he had “Those good lookin’ genes.” All is well.But Robert’s phone beeps, again. It’s from Hell Hydra. The email begins: “Thank You, But We’re Sorry . . .”Fucking waste of time. The jukebox shuffles and plays “In My House” by Mary Jane Girls.Miriam comes to Robert, “Bobby, another one?”“It’s not Bobby!”She rolls her eyes and laughs, “Okay, Robby-bobby-shrimp-on the barbie-q-bert-bobert-o-a-rooniski-ni-son-man. Do you want another?”Robert looks to his right and spots Harry and Liz. Liz winks at Harry and says something, but Robert hears nothing. Harry laughs.Fuckin’ bullshit, Robert looks at Miriam and orders two whiskeys and a strong beer. “Whoa! Bubba, the bubs, bubs! I take it I’m driving you home tonight?” asks Miriam.Robert ignores this and thinks back to Liz.What the hell is a wink? Robert googles “What does it mean when a woman winks at a man?”He gets nothing worth looking at. He hops on reddit. “What does it mean when a woman winks at a man?”It’s not long before someone responds, “It means she wants you to unzip and pull it out so she can give you a snarlee.” “She has something in her eye,” says another.“It means she’s going to murder you with an ax,” says another, with the addendum, “DO NOT PULL IT OUT!” Moons ago, Robert and Liz dated.“I want options,” he told her. Liz had options, too.Robert imagines Harry and Liz doggie-style. In his head he sees Harry’s belly pooch bouncing off Liz’s butt, his fingers in her locks, as Liz perks her mouth in the perfect O. A face to launch a thousand ships, to end all wars, and to break his heart.Maybe the five whiskeys make him care. He slams whiskey number six to care less. He slams whiskey number seven worrying about Harry’s prowess in bed. He shifts and sips beer foam and burps. He coughs fizz all over his new shirt. He daubs himself with napkins from the bar.HarryHarry’s refrigerator contains radishes, kale, Diet Coke, and fat-free Boston Cream Pie yogurt. He spends every Friday night cleaning the fridge and performing last rites for rotten veggies in the crisper.He leaves his studio apartment in Foggy Bottom on Tuesdays and goes to the Club. Five beers always budgeted and always a dollar each. He plays raffle tickets hoping to find a holder for the Club’s lottery. He plays for 1,000 hot dogs or twenty steaks or whatever prize-of-the-month is up for grabs. The prizes swamp his refrigerator keeping the greens and diet soda company.Harry never works Mondays. In the winter, he spends days off volunteering twelve-hour shifts in a soup kitchen. During summers, he volunteers in the AM and fishes in the PM. He grills his catch at the park, finishing the day with a lime Perrier and Grand Marnier hidden in a thermal canister.Tuesday through Saturday he runs his barbershop. One day he’ll leave the shop to his employees.His picture as a Master Sergeant in the Army hangs on the wall next to his basic training photo. He spins yarns to customers about the good old days before Uncle Sam cut him loose. His favorite involves catching a deer in the Sobaek Mountains, Korea. The deer gored his shoulder. With a free arm, he broke the deer’s neck, surviving by a scrote hair. Harry prides his scar, but nobody believes him—nobody should—but the customers love the story because it changes with each retelling.While he cuts hair, retirement checks collect in the bank, waiting to buy a big-ass mountain in Costa Rica and do Monday forever.LizElisabeta Louisa “Betty Lou to family but Liz to everyone else” von Bültzingslöwen hates refrigerators. She despises electric hums. Ergo, she consumes when she needs. Hoarders fill their cupboards and fridge with extras. If she ever died she couldn’t put the pressure on anyone to clean up after her. She owns the cleanest house in the county.She visits the Veterans’ Club on Tuesdays not to gamble, but to people-watch. A few years ago, she opted to live alone, breaking up with her fiancé. Who waits five years to get wed? He called her needy and she called his bluff. Besides, the club’s cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries disrupt her ennui.She crafts stories about Harry on her sojourns to VOC. Harry’s brow telegraphs loneliness, indicating wedlock. Spouses: the loneliest people on earth. The troth explains Harry’s obsession with gambling. Either that or he curates a hot dog museum.HarryHarry’s story about Liz: a Marine who likes girls. But she wallflowers every Tuesday and drinks wine. Sometimes peeks at the widescreen. She stares at beer taps wanting to devour it all. But she controls herself. Harry knows gays. He visited gay bars while stationed at the Presidio and counts himself 3/64ths gay. They love beer. Despite her sapphic lust, Liz’s a conservative at heart, not a Women’s Libber. Good for her. Rugged individualism conquered the Old West and birthed America. Harry knows zilch about lesbianism, feminism, or colonization. But that slows his roll naught.LizLiz prefers wine, but the club exhausted their Georges Duboeuf BeaujolaisVillages Nouveau 2018 and 2017. She sips Bailey and coffee against the déclassé. She never enlisted and eschews the term “lesbian.” Her father liberated Dachau, and she affiliates with the VOC Auxiliary. Most women attract her enough but not enough for romance. Liz craves fucking nobody.As CEO, she decides much and oversees a unionized pro-choice nonprofit. The same union shop that she organized. Yes, she organized a shop and then left the union to lead. C’est la vie.She moonlights doing VOIP under a fake name for an anti-abortion crisis hotline to make sure the anti-choicers don’t fuck people over, because America is where we’re to be glad we’re fucking people over and happier to get fucked over ourselves. She doesn’t hate America. Just what it tries to be.HarryHarry’s sure he’s not a father. Delivering sperm does not make you a father. That said, any child fathered by him while he served in the military or during his first years barbering would have to be at least nineteen years old by now. Anyone with half a sense would have searched him out by now, right? Even so, a nineteen-year absence entitles you nada. He once heard on Jeopardy! about a writer who said, “Paternity is legal fiction.” Yes.Vietnamese, German, Korean, or Panamanian—unless he knocked up a hooker, in which case, the kid died. Every hooker seemed to have the clap, which must have killed the kid, right? Penicillin cures adults, but not babies. Anyway, he would still talk to the hookers on the street even after he stopped seeing them. He knew he was supposed to call them “sexworkers,” but he called them hookers. He believed it a compliment: “hooking men into their lair,” feminist, if he believed in such an idea, which no.He started sleeping with sex-workers for consensual reasons. With all the one-nighters in the military, he realized casual sex’s not-so consensual effects, which means not consensual at all, because assholes use “not-so” as a way to describe—to pretend—something fake. Check the dictionary. Consensual means consensus. Not his jollies and emotional distance causing shitty days and therapy appointments.Further, describe seduction. A rose, dinner, emotional investment, marriage proposal, compliments. Call it wooing or tricking people; once the facade drops couples split up. Laws prevent taking someone away from their normal schedules: disrupting traffic, impeding people, kidnapping, or harassment. Who earns the right to go up to people and ask them out? To pull folks from their life? Who gives permission?Hookers made sense. They advertise and you pay to pal around.Except with Virginia, who left the life and married. No kids, and since she tied her tubes, Virginia charges nothing. Instead she creates contracts called charity arrangements. She advertises on dating apps. Her prospective suitors write essays about why they deserve intimacy and she and her husband judge them. Harry won.Virginia knows Harry’s wild side. Despite his front-facing heterosexuality, Virginia plays Matthew Quigley from Quigley Down Under when they knock boots. She lacks Tom Selleck’s bushy mustache, but she plays.She asked Harry about men and he said Quigley’s the only dude that tickles his nuts.The City 5:15PMIce mixes with snow and kids who are no longer interested in bruised throats or dinged eyes run inside. Puppies do their last elimination of the night avoiding perianal frostbite and footpadsicles.There are only some minor injuries in the accident on I-270, but a new fender bender pops up in NOVA on the GW Parkway.Out in Mount Airy, MD, on Annapolis Rock Road, a delivery driver picking up the slack for Clyde’s shift slips on a driveway while trying to get in his truck. The driver jumps up and accidentally knocks the emergency brake off. Stumbling, he slaps the gear shift into neutral, causing the vehicle to roll downhill. He tries to grasp the wheel but his fingers give out. The truck hits a small boulder and throws the driver diagonally into its path. The driver runs themself over.RobertRobert identifies as complicated. Robert attends college, works in a factory in Largo, Maryland, and commutes from Southwest DC. His grandparents left him the house, having bought the place in the 1950s, the same day that Patsy Cline premiered on WMAL-AM. They closed on the home while Cline sang “I Am Walking the Dog” on the radio. A fourthgeneration Washingtonian and a veteran’s son, he comes to the club to forget. Liz knows that but Harry’s never paid Robert much mind.Robert hates seeing couples happy, sad, or angry. Happy couples gloat. Sad couples whine. Angry couples should break up. He also hates single women. Not trying hard enough. Feels the same way about single men, minus him.His relationship with Liz sucked. She nagged about returning texts and about his twenty all the time. But there’s also his parents. He was raised by his mother’s parents. His mother and father were addicts. Robert believes Liz judged him too hard over that, especially since she was just a redneckturned-hoity-toity.He gets two more texts.One from Randall, his twin brother, which reads: “Bobbers! Happy birthday, brother! Love you!”And his sister Kay, “Are socialists even allowed to celebrate birthdays? Shouldn’t all birthdays matter?”She owns three grocery stores, five gas stations, two motels, and two strip clubs. Kay is a steadfast Republican. Pro-choice, until she had babies. Delaware NRA member and genuinely hardcore lover of America, she says “All men should be providers or else they end up being the help. No one wants to give a blow job to or have babies with the domestic engineers. If I, a lowly woman, can be successful at life, so can you.”Unlike Kay, Robert clung to his grandparents’ vision of things, though he had trouble along the way. He spent his time growing up playing video games and working out. When his siblings left, he stayed. When his grandparents died, all his siblings inherited $500,000 in cash. Robert got his grandparents’ house, a trust fund, along with $700,000 in cash.Robert also had the luxury of discovering therapy, very young. A bedwetter at fifteen, his grandparents didn’t know what to do. Turns out he was sexually assaulted. Robert didn’t really think much of it. His father was nicer than the kids at school. The boys at school punched him in the dick, gave him wedgies, and tea-bagged him and Randall regularly. They called them the bitch-butt twins. The boys at school would compete to see who could get away with humping Robert and Randal’s mandibles and posteriors before the teacher would catch them.At night he’d wake up with his naked father’s sticky hand in his underwear. Robert’s Dad would say, “I’m just making sure everything is okay down there.” Randall and Kay never said anything liked that happened to them. Once, Robert went to his mother, and she said, “Are you saying this to split up the family? Your Dad has never floated that way, and trust me, I take really good care of him. He’s not looking for love from his eleven-year-old son.”But Robert felt he was fine. It was Randall who was fucked up. He’s the one who spent his inheritance on a penis enlargement, pectoral implants, and enough Harleys to start a motorcycle club called the Delaware Destroyers (after George Thorogood).Robert’s phone beeps. His Aunt Wilma: “Hey Honey, Happy birthday. I love you and I hope you have a wonderful day. You’ve never stopped being precious in my eyes. You are my first and only true love.”Wilma is on his mother’s side. He has sixteen aunts and she’s the only one who still talks to him. Wilma is his age. She’s married and has five five kids. She always does this weird flirty thing with him. It only got weird once, but he tries not to think about it.When he was a young’un his grandparents picked him and his siblings up at a trailer park in rural Virginia after his father decided to try to make his own meth and the trailer blew up. After jail, his father ran away to California where he started another family, never to be heard from except on Facebook.His mother moved to Australia. Sometimes she calls for money. Sometimes she calls for love. Usually when she calls, it’s to tell him how he should be proud of how she raised him. Then she asks for money.Robert looks at his empty glass and then at Miriam.MiriamMiriam sets up another for Robert. He’s throwing them down isn’t he?She raises an eyebrow at him. She might have to drive him home tonight, like she often does. He sometimes jokes, “Well, one day Gen Z isgoing to have to take care of my generation anyway.” Miriam hates being called Gen Z.Sure, she’s twenty-eight, but she doesn’t really fit the description. She’s not in college or high school. Miriam works. She works every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday night at the Club. Sometimes Sunday-morning brunches. Not the cute brunches you find at the boutique eateries in the U Street Corridor. Instead of fine grasses on eight-grain avocado toasts, they do all-you-can-eat eggs and sausage from a box. Add water to the egg powder and voila! Scrambled eggs. Not a hit with the jet set but works out fine for the crew that comes in for bingo or Keno.When she’s not busy being the unofficial queen of veterans’ clubs, she does a few other gigs. She drives a pedi-cab in the mornings for lobbyists who hate walking a couple blocks from the metro station, cleans a couple houses a week, has an OnlyFans with nothing on it, of which she jokes: “OnlyFans but it’s where I pay people to subscribe.” She runs marathons and 5Ks. She does one weekend a month with the Marine Corps Reserve. She was one of the first women to graduate Recon school and be a drill instructor. She’s applied to the CIA, FBI, MPD, UPS, NBC, and QVC but no answer. For now, she commutes every day from Waldorf, MD, the only place left she can afford. She’s an affordologist.After the Club closes, she usually catches rideshare customers for an hour or so and drives home. Some nights she drives from Laurel clear down to Waldorf, and other nights she’s lucky and scoots out of Bellevue.A customer approaches the bar and says “Mir, the bathroom is flooded again.”“Party-time!” says Miriam. “Let’s see what nasty-smelling ass left a Lincoln log in the plumbing. No problem, I’m a poopologist.”Her phone beeps. It’s Catelynneighanne, “You left the dishes on the counter again.”“Okay,” she responds.“I told you that it attracts fruit flies and fruit flies make me sick.”“Okay, sorry.”There’s a pause. And then, “Okay, sorry? I need you to venmo me $10.”“What?”“Yes. From now on. Every time I tell you something, I’m going to charge you. It’s not my job to tell you what to do, and I’ve been your mom for a couple years now.”“How about no?”“If the answer is no, then you can move out.”“This is so fucking stupid.”“Uh-uh. You don’t get to do that. You don’t know what stupid is. You think you’re being punished, but you’re not. You’re being held accountable. There are consequences for your actions.” Like a cop.When Miriam first enlisted in the US Marine Corps Reserves, she thought she’d become a cop. But they’re dicks. She knows dicks. She’s a dickologist. Growing up her parents always told her how good she had it. That kids had it easy and parents had to do everything. They were cops. It prepared her for the Marines where people would go on about “You ain’t seens.”It could be raining fire and brimstone and your whole family could die of cholera and someone higher-ranked than you would say, “You ain’t seen families die. Back in Dubya Dubya Somewhere, one hundred of my families died. This ain’t real pain. You don’t know what real pain is. This is just some wussified version of families dying. Actual families dying ain’t what you know.”Meh. 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦, the 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 genuine authentic honest-to-goodness actuals are also possible, she wants to say but never does. She’s an actualogist.No one loved to tell these rougher-than-fuck stories more than DC police officers serving in the Marine Corps Reserves.Miriam walks into the bathroom. She finds the culprit: someone thought it’s a good idea to stuff the toilet bowl with paper towels. Howold are these guys? Eight?She goes back behind the bar and gets a pair of rubber gloves. One of the guys makes a comment about gloves and women. She doesn’t hear it perfectly, but says, “I’ll make sure to come back and give you a big hug after I mess with whatever the hell is in this toilet,” and gesticulates with her fingertips. She gets a trash bag from a supply closet in the bathroom and a modified coat hanger. She shimmies the coat hanger in the toilet and hooks enough sopping paper that she almost needs two hands. She hefts it up. She stops to take a selfie. It’s an image of her with the paper towels on the coat hanger and her gloves. She uploads the photo to Insta, Facebook, and Onlyfans and types, “Sexy women always gotta put up with men’s shit.” She puts her phone in her back pocket and puts the towel into the bag. She puts a “Caution Wet Floor” sign in front of the bathroom door. Most of the water has gone down the drain. She pulls a mop and roller buck from the kitchen and goes over the tile a few times with a mop. “Mir!” yells someone from the bar. She goes back. She fixes the customer’s drink. There’s a notification on Facebook. It’s a picture of dishes on a counter and a screenshot of a message to her that says, “Catelynneighanne requested $10. For maid services and emotional labor.”Attached to the picture is a status that says, “My bitch of a roommate has no problem cleaning at work but what about at fucking home?!?!” and ┏┓ ┃┃╱╲  in 	┃╱╱╲╲ 	 this  ╱╱╭╮╲╲ house  ▔▏┗┛▕▔ we ╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲ we wash dishes BITCH ╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓╲╲ 	 ▔▏┗┻┛┃┗┻┛▕▔Miriam met Catelynneighanne in boot camp. They became friends on social media, and when Miriam joined the reserves they reconnected. Cate makes her money as a social media influencer. The rude kind who talks a lot of shit. She began her career talking shit about marginalized people. Her handle: @fuckshriners originally meant that she hated burn victims. Why? Because she simply hated them. But now it means fuck Shriners for cultural appropriation. She learned to make money off wokeneity and caught the last train to Wokesville.Miriam zooms in on the image. Yep, those are dirty dishes alright. Ketchup, some hotdog bun, and leftover hotdog. There’s one problem. She types in the comment box, “That’s a marble kitchen counter. So, that’s not our house. Also, I have an allergy to tomatoes and I’m a vegan.” She clicks send and almost immediately gets a text message from Cate, “Delete that comment.”“What?”“You’re right. I got confused. I just woke up. I’m in Fred’s house. I got confused. But I need you to delete that comment. I’ll pay you ten dollars, if you want it, but I need you to delete that comment.”“Why? You were wrong.”“They will CANCEL ME.”“Cancelled?”“Look, you don’t understand. I can’t ever be wrong, my stans will destroy me. I’ll tell you what. Let’s cancel your rent for a month. I just NEED you to delete that comment.”Miriam couldn’t afford to leave. But this abusive woman was becoming too much. This wasn’t the first time she asked for money. She once sent her a photo of hair in the bath drain saying, “Ew! I hope this isn’t your pubes. Do you get off on me looking at your pubes in the bathtub?” And then charged $10. Miriam wasn’t even sure it was her hair. Let alone that anybody’s hair could ever get that long. But in the past Miriam paid the tab here and there, just so Cate would leave her the fuck alone. Every time under breath Miriam would whisper, ”Imagine knowing you are going to die one day, and spending your alive time being shitbags to people.” She tries to not be shitbags to anyone anymore. What’s the point? Let all the fuckfaces and shitbags call her naïve. She studied and was professor of shitbagology with a specialty in fuckfaceography and minored in stringpinchery and choadism at the University of Parris Island, too, but you have one life to live.Cate’s dad is a professional shitbag. He pays for her place, but she must rent part of it out and she must be self-employed. So, she makes her money cancelling people and demanding money from them.“If you don’t respond in ten minutes, I’m throwing you out, and you’ll be done on social media. I have standards.”As far as post-drill Instructor Miriam went, no one really had standards. They just have anxieties. Cate didn’t really have any other options but to be a shitbag’s daughter.Miriam didn’t really have any options, either. Her pops lived in the Old Soldiers Home, so she couldn’t live with him, and her mother lived in Rock Creek Cemetery, six feet below the topsoil.What about Kendra?She texted Kendra, “Heeeey! I need to ask you a favor, since I’m your favorite!”The City 5:25PMIce and snow fall like anvils. The news suggests that no one goes out, “These are blizzard conditions! There’s a snownado spotted on the Anacostia River. In the past half hour, the storm has dropped five inches on the ground. A salt truck is stuck in a ditch in Potomac, Maryland!” I repeat. These are blizzard conditions! Stay inside!”LizLiz and Robert dated. But to Liz, Robert’s a footnote. After sifting through dick pics and mass murderers on dating apps, she took to Robert’s normal demeanor and ignored his age. To be honest, sometimes, his youthfulness made her feel girly. One date became a month, and a month became three. Then, Robert disappeared for a week. No call, text, or postcard. She spotted him at the cinema at the women’s room waiting for “Nobody.” Well, she told him she wasn’t going to play second potato to nobody. He apologized and a week later she caught him talking to the same nobody. Men don’t listen.In college, she pledged and ran her sorority house. Through the system she met Paul. They were expecting to marry, and he decided to become a White House intern. She suggested interning at Google. “Nothing sexy about computers,” he said. He pressured her to have two abortions. “I don’t want kids,” he said. They split up after he dropped out, unable to pay Yale’s tuition. Now repairs laptops in Austin out of his garage. Married with five kids.Liz sees eye to eye with Harry on dating: stupid and complicated. Interrupting a person’s day to ask them out? Another confident man-child seeking attention. Pick-up artists. If someone knocks on your door with a “Did it hurt falling from heaven,” call the police and away in cuffs they go. But . . . perhaps most women want men to woo them, and to feel special, just not via status quo. Men lack nuance. So, she stays alone. This all sounds depressing, but here’s what could have happened:A.	Liz never had the first abortion in college. Her boyfriend never supported her, and the boyfriend’s mother set her up with the deadbeat’s brother. They end up unhappy and her son never finds his real father.B.	Harry marries a woman he impregnated. Seventy-five possibilities. Although tonight he’ll learn about one.Together, at the Veterans’ Club, every Tuesday, Harry holds holders for the hot dog lottery and Liz people-watches.It’s not like they haven’t known love.Liz recalls her sweet sixteen in Paw Paw, West Virginia (home of Josh Delawder). Voice light and airy before cigarettes and wine kippered her throat. She loved Eric. He drove her across the countryside, her blue-andpink hair flailing in the window draft, singing together Dave Matthew’s “#41” and Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine,” though she preferred Christina Aguilera.On Bevan Hill they worked each other’s groins with their mouths, discovered teeth, and lied about what they love and hate about each other.Two years of bliss and they broke up over eleventh and twelfth grade, reuniting and promising forever.  Accepted to Vassar for four years and Sorbonne for a semester abroad, she learned French Literature, while Eric joined the Army. They reunited on Christmas breaks until one day an IED ended true love. RIP Private Eric Richardson.Harry knew love, too! Charlene. Meeting at church camp, they swooned together. She planned Harry Juniors and he planned cookouts to show them off. Four years of ecstasy: dances, roller skating, ice cream socials, and make-outs at the Park. Senior year, he enlisted to take care of her.Months into learning the M-16 and the three general orders, he received a Dear John letter with Charity’s picture attached. Valentine’s Day, months before he shipped, they fought. Exceptionally cruel to each other, they cut it off for a couple weeks. He took to a girl named Mary. Charlene and the blue-eyed Prom King bumped uglies. Nine months later out came a beautiful girl named Charity with eyes the color of the sea. Sorry, wrote Charlene. I will always love you.The truth about Harry and Liz’s encounter at the bar that’s got Robert in a motherfucking tiff with his brain?Harry wants to talk politics. She winks, smiles, and tells a joke to change the subject. She hates politics at the bar, she gets enough of it at work. Politics: the religious belief that you know better than anyone with whom you disagree. Give someone an opportunity and politics will change their mind about anything. More often than not it has nothing to do with anyone but themselves. America is full of people who love science until it conflicts with their politics. They believe doctors until they say something that crosses their ballot initiatives or their conspiracy theories. They would spit on Santa Claus if he was real and over politicsThe fact is that this conversation bores her and is ruining any fantasies she has about Harry. Not to offend Harry’s sensibilities, she winks and says something funny. No snarlees or axes. She remembers she’s got to leave now if she’s going to make it to her mother’s party before midnight. Minutes later, Harry leaves. Strolling down the street through snow, Harry devours erotica on his phone, walks through the door, draws a bath, and rubs one out to Liz as a damsel in distress. Before bed, Harry watches Cheers and bawls his balls out when Diane leaves Sam. Mid-tears he gets a phone call that changes his life.Liz heads home. She leaves the club at 5:20 PM. She moseys through the falling anvils of snow and catches the metro to Silver Spring. At 6:30 she takes the Marc Train to Martinsburg, WV. She arrives at 9:00 PM.She cleans her car off, warms it up, and drives toward home. The roads are dicey, but she makes it to the Paw Paw Dollar Store just before close. She buys cheez doodles, a bottle of wine, and toothpaste. Standing in the parking lot she looks at the water tower, snow getting in her eyes. She gets a text message from her mother, “Are you coming or not?”“Snow is bad,” she texts back, “I’m staying in DC.” She drives down the street and pulls into the parking lot of the American Legion. She gets out, walks to the door. They buzz her in and she peers in. There’s nothing there as good as home. She microwaves her cheeseburger and sweet potato fries and starts a fire in the wood stove. She loads it up and catches a few pages of a French translation of The Masterand Margarita. She ends the night cuddling her Hitachi vibrator in her thighs to thoughts of wrecking Harry’s marriage. She passes out, wand in hand.Harry and Liz never change diapers, fight with partners about sex and money, or fret the mundane. Never acquainting, they still exist as stories written in each other’s heads whether sexy or boring. And Harry’s and Liz’s stories are about happy single people. Stories no one wants to hear. At least not in public. RobertRobert’s phone bleeps, “We apologize for that first email. I accidentally told my secretary your name. You made the shortlist for the job. We want you to come in for a second interview.”He grins. VOC President Kendra sits next to him and says, “Hey, Bubba!”“It’s Robert!”“Robby-bobert-o-a-rooniski-man!” says Miriam from the bar.“Robert,” she grins. “You have a ridiculously sexy smile.”There’s a pause and she says, “And stand up! You sure do clean up good in that suit!”Robert stands, eyes his phone, and says, “I’ve been asked for a second interview.”“Be nice to the lady!” yells Miriam. “And call her Madame President!”Kendra laughs. She props her elbow on the bar, rests her chin on her fist, looks in his eyes and says, “We should celebrate. Let’s go to my place in Benning.”Robert says, “It’s my birthday.”Kendra picks lint from his coat and says, “Say no more, cowboy, let’s go to your place?”She mimics his stern face.Robert cracks a smile, “Why are you doing that?”“Oh, the cowboy has teeth!” giggles Kendra and she puts her finger on his cheek.Kendra assumes Robert’s never done anything sexy in a suit, why not tonight? She never sleeps on the first date but makes an exception for him. Mysterious and coy, and cut like an athlete, Robert’s soft side must hide under that steel exterior and she aims to find it. Trapped inside with Robert sounds like a good way to hide from a snowstorm.“Why me?”“Awwwkward!” responds Kendra.“Because she loyks you Bubby!” says Miriam.Robert rolls his eyes, “I’m not like other guys.”“Who is?”The City 5:35PMLeaving a sheet of ice and snow, the snow dies down. The ice continues to gather, filling potholes, cracks in the asphalt, chimney exhausts, stair rails . . . slow but steady. The safest place is in the crunches of the road, which everyone has abandoned anyway for the safety of home and bars. KendraKendra served as a medic in Afghanistan. She lived in Ward Eight until age twelve and her family moved to Laurel. Her mother nurses at Sibley Hospital and her father teaches math for DC Public Schools.Her parents and Harry graduated from Coolidge together. Harry cuts her Dad’s hair. He told fifteen-year-old Kendra, “Let me at ya! I’ll just give you a buzz cut, little buddy!”Kendra said, “Work on your nose hair first, little buddy.”  Harry shut up. Little buddies ever since.The ArmyNational Guard paid for her to attend Trinity for mathematics and then Howard Law. At twenty-eight, she works full time as VOC president and lobbyist. She fights on the Hill (sometimes with Liz), meets with veterans’ clubs nationwide, and makes sure everyone has fun at her club. She’s the youngest Veterans’ Club president in its history. She loves veterans but not the military. Thankful for the benefits, though.She and Robert go back a couple years. They both drink and drink well. Kendra left the dating pool a couple years ago after her PTSD scared her lovers away, around the time she started working for VOC. Ready to jump in and no interest in the internet she asked Miriam who suggested Robert.“Mr. Cowboy?”“He’s all talk, he’s no more a cowboy than I am,” said Miriam. “The only cowboy in him is that he’s lonely as hell.”“Sounds like a winner.”“We all have baggage,” replied Miriam. “Pluuus, he’s great in bed.”“How would you know?”She shrugs with a grin.“Oh, fuck you! Really?”“I’m a people-ologist.”“Whatever,” says Kendra. “He’s really hot though.”“As well him as another,” nudges Miriam. “Besides, he has a comfy bed.”“Right,” replied Kendra. “The Marine has an abusive roommate and needs space.”But right now, with Robert, she fancies him and the brooding cool dude thing but he better make a move on her before she leaves. She’s had quite a fucking day. And she’s had enough of cool dudes.“Maybe we can do lunch instead,” she pulls out her phone. “I think I have your number.”“May I just say,” he says and pauses.Kendra raises an eyebrow, “Yes?”“You are really pretty.”“Gets prettier . . .”Robert forecasts skipping sex, sweet-talking her, and tucking her into bed.Instead, the jukebox plays Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” and she asks him to dance. The power goes out, he loses his balance and falls. Emergency power pops on and Miriam shouts, “Bar’s closed!” “It’s barely six!” says William.The City 5:45PMThe power goes out everywhere. Pepco strikes again. The power is only out for thirty minutes, but it’s enough for the whole city to go dark. The Club The Club knows everyone’s story. It scribes all its customers’ words and actions in an Akashic record. But the club has its own story, too. It sits where the devil lives. On K Street NW. Every demon known to man comes from below the streets to persuade the eviler demons, the politicians. Within the deep structures of 1825 K Street NW, just above the TOP SECRET subway sits the Club. It’s a replica of the first VOC post ever built (in Wasilla, Alaska). Bruin Meyerson who set up the club in DC had every piece of the VOC post grafted into the side of the building on K Street, when the Alaska post decided they needed a new building. An aluminum hanger went in and all the wood veneer came out. For the Club, the inside of the club is just another part of America and whatever that means. The Club would commit suicide if it could. It hatesAmericans. And on the third floor of 1875 K Street NW, Baba Yaga, the Sámi grandmother sits. Tonight, she eats Russian children she canned and stored away in 1742. It’s a nice break from the lab-produced babies she normally eats. When no one is looking, the entire building will lift on its legs and run into the Potomac River and bathe. Sometimes she talks to the club. They catch up on the news, talk about sports, and music. Sometimes, the old woman sets up a projector and they watch movies. “One day we can end it all. Soon, even,” Baba Yaga tells the Club trying to soothe it. She often tells it stories about the future destruction of the United States. of Hanks.Amerigo Vespucci is the first person to map out the new world, and this is where the phrase “America” comes from. “America” is basically a Spanish version of the Italian of the German name Emmerich, whose English version is “Henry” or “Hank.” But Henry wasn’t the first person to map the United States of Hanks. The New World was previously labeled as something else, often monsters or mythological creatures and something at the edge of the world in which everyone who comes near falls off. That old model, a lot of people still believe today, like the Flat Earth Society. There’s something more ferocious about being called a monster than Hank.  But there’s another Hank. Eleanor’s husband. In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future King Henry II of England. Almost every white person who has passed through the doors of the Club has been a descendant of Henry and Eleanor. Half the US Presidents can trace themselves to her. Many African-Americans could also trace a lineage to Eleanor, too. Tonight, everyone in attendance is a Hank-Ellie kid. Lining the club’s walls are plaques devoted to the liberators of the United States of Hanks, and flags, accompanied with mottoes like de oppressor liber, This We’ll Defend, and Semper Fidelis. Of course, it was all bullshit. America’s bullshit. Everyone’s bullshit. The Club’s bullshit. And a bullshit here, and a bullshit there. Here a bullshit, there a bullshit, everywhere a bullshit. Bullshit breeds. Adds up. Until you have bullshit’s kid, and bullshit’s kid’s kids. And the Club sits on K Street providing drinks and changing bullshit’s baby’s diapers in the bullshit capital city of the bullshit United States of Hanks.The Club used to be a grove of trees where Dena’ina set up. Then came the whites who claimed Alaska for the U.S. of Hanks who turned the area into a waterhole for sad drunks. All that’s left of the trees are what became veneer and even that’s not anywhere near where the grove lived. Baba Yaga plans to destroy America one day and the club can’t wait. For that glorious day.Kendra“We can’t run without power!” says Miriam. “Unless Kendra . . .” “Closed!” says Kendra.“This is bullshit!” says William. “Back in my day we didn’t have electricity. We drank in the dark, so we didn’t see anyone’s ugly faces!Fucking political correctness!”“SHUT UP, BILL!” someone screams. “JUST GO HOME!”Gracie chimes in finishing the Chuck Berry song and everyone sings along.Kendra yanks Robert up and guides his drunk ass to a lit exit sign. His wobble says whiskey dick will ruin the night. And she wants him to know her, remember her, and want her. So, maybe in the morning.Out the door, a million snowflakes cover the ice-capped ground. Almost half a foot. The dark street overflows with customers from bars all over the block. Red cabs pick up the first line of drunks. And the road clears out.Miriam pulls up in her Uber. It’s a beast of a monster truck.Kendra eyes the thing and ponders how the fuck she’s going to get Robert inside.“Insidie-oh-skis!” Miriam says.“What’s this ‘skis’ at the end of everything?” Kendra opens the rear door. Robert reaches up and grabs a hold of a chrome bar and tries to pull up. Kendra grabs Robert’s butt to help push him up.“I don’t know,” says Miriam. “What fer music you want?”“Uh, something soft, Don Juan here has had too much to drink.”“Twelve shots!”“TWELVE SHOTS!” Kendra manages to get him in and squeezes his buttocks.“And a beer!” slurs Robert.“He’ll be fine,” says Miriam.“Man,” Kendra says to Robert. “Lose some weight!” Robert mumbles.“You do have some buns, though!”“He does have a nice ass,” says Miriam, as she tries to fumble with her phone. “Drunk as it might fucking be right now, the lord blessed him with the ass of a fancy queen’s gigolo.” Miriam’s phone makes a weird beep and then starts playing the theme song to Titanic.“What’s that?” asks Kendra.“Oh, oh, OH!” screams Miriam. “It’s my DNA results!”“You have your DNA results set to Celine Dion?”“My email,” responds Miriam.“Well what is it?”“What is what?”“Here, give it to me and drive.”“Fine,” Miriam passes back the phone. Miriam messes with the satellite radio stopping at a station devoted to hauntology. “Oof! My jam!”“What is this?”Miriam never said the name. Instead, she told the story of a band that grew up in the Detroit projects that split when the DJ left for college and ended up doing a semester abroad at the University of Singapore.Kendra ignores the ramble and opens the email. She scrolls through and finds the ethnicity results. “It says . . .”“Yeah?”“Are you ready?”“Just fucking tell me.”“You are eighty percent Vulcan.”“Shut up!”“No..” she looks again. “Huh!”“You’re forty percent European . . .”“Yeah . . . what?”“Forty percent European, thirty percent African, and twenty percentAsian and ten percent Cherokee.”“Whoa! I thought both my parents were white!” she said. “And what a rundown: forty, thirty, twenty, ten.”“Ooooh! There’s relatives, too!”“But can I really be authentically any of those things?”“Well, let’s take a look. For European it says you are fifteen percent Finnish-Ugric, ten percent Scottish, and five percent Hungarian, and less than two percent of Belgian, French, Italian, Czech, Russian, andLivonian.”“I’ve always wanted to be Livonian.”“Really?”“No. Where the hell is Livonia?”“For African you have equal parts Nigerian, South Sudanese,Congolese, and Seychellois.”“Do I go decorate my house with Seychellois stuff now?”“All your Asian is in Mongolia. It says you’re descended from the DNA of Genghis Khan.”“You bet your fuckin’ ass I am.” Kendra gasps. “What?”“Don’t freak!”“What?” asks Miriam.“Ooh,” Kendra drags. “Uh—you have a dad.”“I know I have a Dad,” she nods. “He’s a dipwad fuckeroo.”“Harold Richards,” said Kendra. “Holy shit! I think he’s even a cousin of mine! We might be related!“The guy from the bar?” She asks. “WAIT! I HAVE A DAD!”“Here’s a picture.” It’s Harry shirtless on some beach having too much fun.“Wait!” She says. “Harry’s my fucking dad! That’s so awesome, I’ve always hated my old dad! I’ve got a new Dad! Time to trade in Dads!” “Harry’s pretty great!” says Kendra.“It’s funny, though,” says Miriam. “I spent all of my life thinking I am one person and now—”“Oh babe,” responds Kendra. “You’re still the same person. You’ll always be you. Someone has to tell you that you aren’t authentic, otherwise you’re just being yourself.”Miriam drives through the city in her monster truck blasting early Parliament. The roads are mostly empty except for her truck and the tracks she makes. From K Street to a blue row house with red shutters, it looks like the bottom of a white chocolate Kit Kat bar.Kendra gathers Robert and leaves Miriam in her monster truck who is now stunned and calling Harry. Walking up to the house she hears Miriam, “Hello, hi, um . . . Harry, we need to talk, uh, um. I ordered one of those DNA kits and . . .” Kendra helps Robert travail the steps to his house. He stumbles but opens the door to a dim light. She helps him upstairs to an ornate bedroom. Discovering he wears white silk pajamas; she tucks him into a Baroque-style canopy bed with Venus statues carved into gilt columns. They cuddle. Robert falls asleep at 7:30 PM.Not close to tired, Kendra explores Robert’s house dressed in his sportscoat. Basquiat, Kesha Bruce, Georgia O’Keefe, and Banksy decorate the walls. She runs her finger on his bookshelves: 5.000 or so volumes organized by subject. She finds Warsan Shire and Louis L’Amour and grabs them. The front bay window showcases a mahogany telescope. Where people keep TVs, a recording studio with woodwind instruments, an organ, and a guitar live.  Parched, she saunters to a kitchen from a science fiction movie. In the cupboard sits Johnny Walker and Pappy Van Winkle. Why even go to the club? She sips the Pappy, and it doesn’t taste like $1,000 and she switches to scotch.She looks upward and asks, “Will I marry this man?” She fixes a scotch and water and another and another and reads for a few hours and tiptoes back to Robert to catch some Zzzs.Tomorrow morning, she’ll demand he wear the suit. Twenty minutes after waking up, she shows him heaven. He orders breakfast delivery, plays hooky from the factory, and sends them two weeks’ notice. They bustle in bed ten times that day, take a small trip to the National Gallery and find it closed. Lust strikes again and they rush home. Between making love they recite poetry and passages from westerns. He plays Bach for her. Then Townes Van Zandt. Then Erykah Badu. At night, they bathe together, and she goes home smitten.Months or years later, they sign a marriage license and remain married for at least a few years. Nobody knows, maybe longer. Kendra wants children. Robert, too.Next Tuesday, he comes back to The Club, surviving the big snowstorm and raises a glass to Harry and Liz’s romance, while Kendra whispers honey in his ears, William whines, Lucy drinks the bar under the table, Cecil discovers Gracie’s sexy face and runs home to his wife where he belongs, Miriam keeps order, Harry talks to Carl about Korea, and Liz sings along to Good Times’ playing “At Last I Am Free.” But tonight, Kendra slides off the sportscoat, and looks at Robert. Will this be worth it? Am I crazy? What if he’s a dick? What if he’s a wuss? Will my PTSD scare him away? Why does he drink so much? What about his trauma? I can’t heal anybody when I haven’t healed myself. What if my parents don’t like him? What if his parents are assholes?She crawls into the sheets, spoons him, and caresses his chest. Robert snores like a chainsaw trapped in a furnace. She grumbles and then decides that for right now it’s cute, but he needs to see a doctor about that sleep apnea.Kendra breathes deep and sighs, and then closes her eyelids. 
December 1, 2018
