Set phasers on STUNNING: incredible new fiction by Jose Padua and Part 3 of Rob Bowman's epic diary essay "On Being and On Being the Right Size"
Dear Readers,
Tuesday, March 21. Los Angeles, CA. Still raining. Wet. Not 75. Not sunny. The palm trees look like wet cats. Can’t have brunch in the sunshine. Unhappy. Doesn’t seem fair. Not what we signed up for. Not getting proper sympathy from the rest of the country. They just don’t get it.
We may be grumbling about the weather, but we’re enthused “AF” about the new writing we have for you this week: Jose Padua’s brilliant new story, “Mandy at the End of the World,” and Part 3 of Rob Bowman’s ongoing epic essay “On Being and On Being the Right Size.”
As always, we know you’re going to love it all!
✌️
The Editors
Jose Padua: “Mandy at the End of the World”
Mandy came up from the basement one Sunday afternoon like a character from some Barry Manilow song, which is what she was. None of us were prepared. None of us thought this was possible. None of us thought that time, even with the way it creates and destroys so many things through its passage, would bring to fruition this example of early 1970s songcraft (more on that later) as reinterpreted for an American pop audience. None of us were drunk or impaired (or enhanced, as people like to say). None of us were caught in the throes of any number of madnesses for which hallucinations and delusions are symptomatic. None were named Scott or Richard. None of us liked Barry Manilow.
I was raised since infancy—from the delivery doctor’s smack on my ass to my first puff of illegal smoke—in this small Virginia town a hundred years from the nearest big city. I’d go to DC sometimes with friends for punk shows, maybe a stop at a strip joint where the bad girls ended up working when they left town. We were the coolest kids at County High, but we always came home. Leaving our small town never occurred to us. When my father died, followed a few years later by my mother, I was left in our family house, a big blue Queen Victoria style with a new kitchen built by old cousin Roger before he had his stroke and forgot how to do those things. Big Brother Jimbo had moved out two years earlier when he and Janice got married. Their kids—my two nieces and one nephew—already think I’m the greatest uncle in the world. Just wait until I make them privy to the best source of smoke, though of course I’m too old to smoke the way I used to.
“On Being and On Being the Right Size,” Part 3 by Rob Bowman
We’re thrilled to present “On Being and On Being the Right Size” in five parts for the next five weeks. You can read all the sections of the essay here.
—The Editors
When all those doctors and nurses came running in, I felt important. Never before nor since have so many people been so keenly interested in my well-being, not at family reunions or birthday parties. Not anywhere.
“What’s wrong? What happened? Did you take something?”
“I’m on antibiotics for a busted toe.” I was embarrassed for the next thing. “And I’m on hair loss pills. I’m losing my hair.”
“Anything else? You can tell us. What else?”
“Nothing.”
“We need to take your blood. We need to test what is going on with you. You can tell us. We are going to find out anyway. You can tell us what is going on. Save us the time. Come on.”
But there was nothing to admit to.
*
Maybe it’s sepsis, I heard a doctor saying. Get that blood test right away to find out. I asked what sepsis was. It’s an infection in your bloodstream. Like you’ve been poisoned. I thought about that, a kind of self-poisoning.
*
Onchocerca volvulus sounds like a spell one would cast to poison a person’s bloodstream, mumbled under the breath while rubbing a talisman, a lock of hair, a piece of paper with blood smeared across it, staring at a photo with some parts of it scratched out.
When scientists measure how poisonous a snake is, this is the scale they use: how many mice could be killed with the venom from a single bite. There is one snake called the Terciopelo, which means velvet in Spanish, but it is also called a Fer-de-Lance, spearhead in French. It is the largest of the pit vipers. A single bite from the Terciopelo can kill over one hundred and sixty-three thousand mice. This sounds like the worst thing in the world but it’s hardly anything compared to the really toxic bites. The Coastal Taipan lives in Australia and has been described as alert and nervous and jumpy. It is quick to strike. One bite from the Taipan can kill nearly five million mice. More mice than there are people in Los Angeles. How many mice would be killed by whatever was in me? How many mice am I worth?