Our Lady of Perpetual Realness & Other Stories by Cason Sharpe.
Title: Our Lady of Perpetual Realness & Other Stories.
Author: Cason Sharpe.
Genre: Fiction, short stories.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2017.
Summary: Collection of 6 short stories. In Money Success Fame Glamour, the narrator begins to hang out with the only other gay guy at his highschool, whom he admires, and as things get physical, they decide to record themselves having sex. In California Underwater, a man who had graduated art school finds himself working at the same movie theater he intended to work at for only a little while, permanently. In Scam, man who works for a call center suspects his job scams and tricks people, but desperately needs to make a sale by the end of the week if he is to keep the job he badly needs. In Darling If You Love Me, a man not quite making ends meet working at a sleazy video store makes a paid, sexual rendezvous with one of his regular customers. In The Coming Attractions, a man who is unsure whether he can afford the outing goes to a movie theater high with his friends, and reminisces about an older secret lover he once used to meet regularly in the dark theaters. In Our Lady of Perpetual Realness, a week after the Pulse nightclub shooting, a group of friends go out on the town in Montreal all dressed in drag.
My rating: 6.5/10
My review:
♥ Poor Beth. Beth who brought me flat ginger ale in bed when I was sick, who sat front-row during the winter concert and cheered the loudest during my flute solo. I pictured her in the green top and then again in the blue top, and both times she looked too young to trick a bouncer. I felt strangely vindicated by the image, and then ashamed by how pleased it had made me, which left me with a frustrating sense of futility. Bittersweet, like the way weekends can be.
"I love you," I said. I told her that I had to go, but I'd come over later with ice cream. Beth said yeah, sounds good, like she wanted to believe me but didn't.
~~Money Success Fame Glamour.
♥ Kevin is a twerp, but also what the fuck Teresa? I direct my embarrassment and anger nowhere in particular so it spills out everywhere, untamed and clumsy. I hand back the wrong change a couple of times and I snap at a customer when they ask me for directions to the bathroom.
♥ I haven't so much as touched a paintbrush in over six months. We chat about people from art school—this person has a residency, and that person got a write-up in Canadian Art, and so-and-so insulted whoever-the-fuck on Instagram. Art school was such a waste of time and money, in retrospect. Form the first day it was clear who would eventually make a career out of it and who wouldn't. I could've schmoozed with my professors more the way Kelly did. I could've tried to ride the diversity quotas, maybe gotten my paintings in a group show or two, but there's basically a waiting list to be the next Hot Black Artist at this point. I don't even know if I give a shit about art anymore. The whole thing just seems kind of stupid. When everything is underwater none of this will matter. Buoyed by this thought plus a few more beers, I'm peaceful enough that when I get home I fall easily into bed and sleep like a baby.
~~California Underwater.
♥ 12:47 p.m. — On the Phone with God/The Universe/A Higher Power, etc.
"If you're worried about the morality of your current position, think about al the underpaid writers who pen all the articles in those shitty magazines you make people subscribe to, think about the printers and the graphic designers, think about the people who make ink."
"Think about all the flight attendants who will have to get all your customers safely on and off the plane heading towards the tropical vacation you promised them, and think about all the employees at the timeshare resort who will be forced to sell your customers yet another thing they do not want. Think about the Seans that all of these people have to encounter breathing down their necks every day. There are a limitless supply of Seans in this world. Each Sean has their own Sean."
"There may not be any magazines or tropical destinations at all. The whole operation could be as big of a scam as you suspect, possibly bigger. For now, everything sucks and complicity in this system isn't exactly chill, but it's all so much larger than you, and your hands are tied by a certain limited range of meaningful options. If you bail just because you feel like bailing, you'll end up taking a position out of desperation at another company with a similar degree of moral bankruptcy that just manifests itself in some other way. The thing about sharks is that they don't actually live in the deepest parts of the ocean and are therefore unable to perceive the true scope of their ecosystem."
"The best course of action for you now is to keep a low profile. Do the bare minimum to avoid getting fired while you actively look for something else but don't stress out about it too much and don't rely on Craigslist. If/when a new opportunity presents itself in which you can fuck over the smallest amount of people possible and still pay your rent, that's when you should quit."
♥ Convincing someone to buy is like trying to lure a small animal. You have to tread carefully. No sudden movements. If a customer hears desperation in your voice it'll drive them away. Selling stuff over the phone is all about how you pitch your voice. For younger women, go slightly higher and more femme, give them that Yas queen! gay boy fantasy they trust with dating advice and clothes. For men (age irrelevant), pitch in a lower, more serious tone, like you're in a corporate business meeting. For older women, use soft tones, like you're their favourite grandchild, and don't use ma'am because it can sound condescending or sleazy. I am very aware of trying to keep my voice "neutral," which means suppressing any auditory hints of Blackness. I've noticed a lot of people doing it. Even Nidia hides her accent when she's on the phone. These are the things I have learned.
~~Scam.
♥ He stares out the window. They're driving through that space between what's inside of a city and what's outside of it. There are a few buildings that look like corporate headquarters. A strip mall. The back of a subdivision. Some trees. A patch of grass.
"Can I turn on the radio?" Sweetheart asks.
"I prefer silence," The Man says. He puts a hand on Sweetheart's thigh. Inside the grey minivan it is very clean.
♥ Sweetheart sticks his hand into the pocket of his cutoffs and rubs the crisp one-hundred dollar bill between his fingers. Tomorrow he has a shift at the video store. The day after that, rent is due. Today he will go to the beach.
~~Darling, If You Love Me.
♥ He never wanted to see you in the light, and as much as that hurt you, you didn't want to see him in the light either. He was always so paranoid that someone might see you together. He'd make you come 15 minutes after him and search for his face among the rows of seats, forcing your eyes to adjust to the dark. He had a tattoo of a red swallow just under his left eye, which is what you would look for to find him.
Eventually the secrecy of the encounters lost their appeal. The whole coming-fifteen-minutes-later/staying-ten-p
♥ The boyfriend looks at you, briefly, but it's only to check that you aren't looking at him. When you're hanging out in a group he always engages you in conversation or tries to instil some sense of camaraderie, at least for his girlfriend's sake, but when you're alone he becomes uncomfortable. You make him nervous. Sometimes, you catch his slight recoil before he puts something nicer in front of it. If one of his buddies says something when you're around, he'll look to you and then to his girlfriend, and then he'll go, C'mon, man, be cool, to his friend all serious, like he's defending your honour, but he'll say it with his head down, soft enough to be whisper, like he doesn't know what he's saying or why. Later, when you're alone with his girlfriend, your friend, she'll be like, See? Isn't he a good guy? And you'll nod, silent. You will never know what he says to his friends, alone without their girlfriends, drinking beer in the back of the bar or whatever. You will never truly know him.
♥ You get in line at the concession stand. A large rectangular box made of glass sits in the centre behind the cash, the heart of the whole operation, circulating popcorn like blood.
♥ You haven't thought about the man with the face tattoo in a long time, but he was sort of in this dream you had the other night. In the dream you cold see the whole city from way up high, but you weren't flying. It wasn't one of those dreams. You were the sky. Form that vantage point you could see that Montreal was an island. You always knew it was, but you never really took it in. You could see St. Laurent Boulevard as a thin straight line, from Chinatown all the way up to Chabanel and then beyond, to parts of the city you've never explored. You saw your old apartment in St. Henri, the vegan restaurant where you wash dishes, your current apartment on the western edge of the Plateau, that dep you like. You saw groups of friends hanging out, in living rooms in the winter and rooftops in the summer, at vernissages and house shows. You were everywhere, the centre of everything and yet totally diffuse. It was the city as you knew it but also another place entirely, the people both familiar and strange, the buildings pink and blue and puffy like marshmallows.
You saw men. So many men. In parks and bathrooms and alleyways, behind the graveyard on top of the mountain. You saw a movie theatre full of men. Rows and rows of them, watching a movie that was all fuzzy and without audio, like there was something wrong with the projector. It's common knowledge that men from Montreal make the best lovers, bad teeth and bad jobs, but they sure knew how to please a boy and now you were one of them, in the plush seats of the movie theatre eating your popcorn. You were the sky and a red swallow flew through you. You didn't want the dream to end, but you knew that it would and it did.
♥ There's only one person ahead of you in line, giving their order to the concession stand cashier. You can't afford the popcorn. If you buy it, you'll have less than 20 bucks to last you the week. But you're already in line and you want it so bad, because what's a movie without popcorn? Who would be willing to lend you some money? Who haven't you asked recently? Who do you not already owe? You watch one of the employees stir melted butter in a vat with a big metal spoon, like a grandmother hunched over an old family recipe. What's the deal with those payday loans places? Maybe you could go to one of those. Another employee takes a big metal scoop and doles popcorn into an oversized and colourful paper bag. You watch the kernels bounce and float in their large glass tank, like dandelion fluff blown from its stem.
You want a bag of bottomless popcorn. You want to have the next handful ready in your fist before you've even finished chewing. You want so much popcorn that your sweat will turn to butter, the same buttery sweat as when he touched you in the back of that theatre when you were just a sexy young thing like everybody wants to be. You want to be full of it, this thing that can never make you full. When did you become this insatiable? Somebody taps you in the shoulder from behind. A cashier is waiting to serve you.
~~The Coming Attractions.
♥ At the BBQ there are chips and meat and plenty of beer. There are wigs and dresses and Paul has a killer pair of heels but the energy is a little low. Everyone is feeling tired. We're hungover from partying yesterday, or we're in school or we've been working hard all week, in restaurants and bars, in retail and low-level office jobs.
♥ "So you're not going to wear your drag anymore?" asks Paul. Nobody answers. He's upset. "I don't want to be the only one in drag. You only want to take if off so you can get laid."
He has a point. I do want to get laid and I do think that this will be easier to accomplish out of drag. I do potentially want to go rogue at the after-hours and I think that will be easier to accomplish out of drag as well. I feel gross for thinking these things.
But it's more complicated than that. This is only a week after the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people died. This is after years of violent attacks against trans women and black men.
It's why we're all so tired, at least in part. It creates an extra layer of fatigue: Where do we go to dance fucked up all night long and not die? Where do we go to get laid and not die? Who is here in this room with us? Who is not here in this room with us? What are we going to wear? Who will get harassed on the street, by the police or a random stranger or someone we all know, sometimes in darkness but often in broad daylight, in the exact same look that any of us could've been wearing? How are we going to get home?
~~Our Lady of Perpetual Realness.
