- The Wa Magazine

THE WA
Windex
Comments selected by Lillie Afriat. Illustrated by David Owen Morgan.
We all know YouTube is full of the most angsty, inane, and hilarious comments on the internet. But, when you start looking up dubstep videos on there, you get into this really bizarre and vulgar brand of simile designed to champion the filthiness or gritiness of a track that is really in a league of its own disturbing awfulness. Here are a few of our favourites. [sic]
woteverz123 im a regular guy but when i play this song i ring my grandparents and beg
them to fuck infront of me cuz its so grime
StEvEn420BrUlE Filthier than searching for you x-mas presents in a closet and finding pictures
of your “mom” pre and post op
Synth3tikMessiah Take a fat girl, don’t let her shave for 3 months, make her run 5 miles, then eat her yeast infected, yellowish-green cottage cheese dripping, hairy, sweaty, stinky, stank cunt.
^^^ not as filthy as this track
SeanstaThaMonsta durtier than a cunt full of mustard
Rob420420Bie damn coki kills it everytime fithlier than a herpee infested methhead anus
woteverz123 is it just me or oes anyone else, just minutes after clicking on a flux pavillion song,
find themselves in a nearby gutter chewing out the ass of a homeless person??
filth blud filth
woteverz123 this song is way more filthy that two nuns muddy cunts pressed against
the cardinals cheesy knob fresh from a hobos ass
volcomthor45 shit drops nastier than The Road Warrior queef from South Park
3
THE WA VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2
The “People in Strange Places” Issue
Framegrab by Brad Tinmouth
editor & layout
Patrick McGuire
copy editor
Aidan O’Connor
business lady
Shannon Elizabeth Murphy
writing
Lillith Afriat
Stephen Buranyi
Sean Calbeck
Marlon Frisby
Caitlin Low
Pat Maloney
Tim McCready
Patrick McGuire
George Pakozdi
4
illustration
Erika Altosaar
Michael Deforge
Allison & Lauren Knight
David Owen Morgan (pg. 3)
Ryan Murray
front cover photo
Scott Pilgrim
back cover photos
Asen Ognyanov
additional photos
Carl W. Heindl (pg. 2)
Kristie Muller (pg. 14, 15)
Laura-Lynn Petrick (pg. 18)
Brad Tinmouth
Kavin Wong (pg. 10, 11)
To submit to future issues, please write to [email protected]
Places
I’ve
Slept
Written by Patrick McGuire
My live-with girlfriend and I broke up for the seventh time in April, so for most of the month, I was floating
around from shitty mattresses to stiff couches. It was fine. Sometimes you need to be a vagabond for a while to appreciate the comforts of independence. Or something. Here’s a run down of all the fun I had being homeless!
OURSPACE SLEEPOVER
Normally (no offense Avery) the idea of sleeping over at Studio Gallery while
Cobrasnake and Fatale Femmes are shooting pictures of themselves hugging in
bathrobes would seem like the last place I would want to sleep on a Sunday evening. But, when you’re homeless, a sleepover party is PRETTY MUCH the best
possible event you could see pop up on Facebook. So, after drinking more than
a mickey of Bushmills and getting kicked out of Velvet Underground’s alternative rock night for throwing beer on some girls (sorry girls) I took a cab to Ourspace. Well, it was weird. If you told me in March that I would spend the night
on a thin mattress, sharing a carpet-like blanket with some random girl, beside
an L.A. party photographer that looks like a Jewish gnome in a silk robe, I would
probably be pretty bummed. It’s funny how your standards can slip and fall.
SCOTT PILGRIM’S BUNK BED
Leave it to a guy that is essentially a comic book character to have a bunk bed setup in his room. Seriously though, this spot was key.
I’m not exactly sure why Scott has a bunk bed, but anytime someone has an extra mattress, it becomes infinitely more enticing than
a dirty couch. Nothing that crazy happened when I was staying here except a lot of whiskey and McDonalds. Oh, and I guess I almost greened out in the kitchen while discussing Adobe After Effects with Kavin.
PANTHER STARSHIP SKATE HOUSE
I used to live here, so crashing at this spot for most of my homeless period wasn’t a
big deal. That said, on Friday and Saturday nights, this is the equivalent of sleeping in
a subway station that only nineteen year old girls and amateur skateboarders know
about. Don’t get me wrong, those are two of my favourite types of people in the
world, but it doesn’t really lend itself to a great sleep. Also, despite sleeping there for
about eleven nights, I never bothered to find a pillow. Mad neck problems. One time
Pat went home to Niagara Falls and Al and I slept in his bed. I woke up to Al jumping up and down, asking me if I wanted McDonalds breakfast. He’s the best dude.
RYAN ARNOLD’S COUCH
Things got weird the night I slept here. I started the night at 751, DJing a rap night called ‘Bad Taste’ which was going pretty well,
until I finished my set and went into the crowd to dance and be a rambunctious fuck. I accidentally bumped into this
Justin Bieber looking lesbian who lightly punched me in the face - but punched me in the face
none the less. I spent the next thirty minutes standing on top of a speaker, cutting the music, yelling at her to leave, and generally turning the crowd against her. Then we went to a
friend’s house and some bros thew a bottle through their window. After that we ended up at
Ryan Arnold’s and I woke up staring at empty Jack Daniels bottles and Bud Lite Lime cans.
JACKIE’S COUCH
After showing up at the Richard Kern exhibit for a minute or two everything seemed to fall
into place at Jackie’s house. The party was going really well until I stopped remembering everything. I woke up in a relaxed daze around 5 AM and there was one other dude left wandering
around in the kitchen. This is definitely the most boring story of the bunch but Katie grabbed
this cell phone picture of me sleeping so I figure it’s an apt way to end the article.
5
Tim
Met
Twins
Story by Tim McCready. Illustrations by Allison and Lauren Knight.
Allison, Tim, and Lauren. May 2010
Last summer I was blown away the moment a friend showed me
Allison and Lauren Knight’s website lauralart.net which features
photo-realistic coloured pencil drawings of animals, members
or their family and Detroit Red Wings hockey players. Allison and Lauren Knight are twenty-seven-year-old mirror-image
twins living in Kingsville ON, about 50kms outside of Windsor. In 2006 they both graduated from the University of Western Ontario with Double Honours degrees in English and History, Minor degrees in French and Masters Degrees in History in
2008. I immediately sent them an email introducing myself with
some links from my blog and struck up a friendship with them.
When drawing, the two of them sit side-by-side each working on a separate piece of their own. Every couple of hours
they exchange so that they each make an equal contribution. Allison is left-handed and Lauren is right-handed, but
their techniques are so similar that it’s impossible to tell from
the finished product that two people have worked on it.
In their spare time, the twins enjoy reading, writing poetry,
watching the Detroit Red Wings, and jumping rope. Although
they no longer jump competitively, jump rope has played a significant role in their lives, having performed in schools, nursing homes, parades, festivals, half-time shows at college basketball and NFL games. Competitions and performances have
taken them across Canada, the United States, Japan and England.
They even appeared in a ‘Super Soaker Skipper’ commercial!
This is a drawing of their brother Andrew in Ethiopia.
Steve Yzerman & Niklas Lidstrom
6
Despite being well-educated, talented, pretty and having pleasant and accommodating personalities, their closeness as twins
creates some obstacles in their daily lives. Like Siamese twins
without the physical connection, they wear matching clothing everyday, and feel compelled to share a bedroom, phone and Facebook account since they never leave each others side. They turn
heads wherever they go and are regularly mistaken for being half
their actual age. They are not unaware of their unique situation.
The past four summers they’ve had the memorable experience
of celebrating their ‘twinness’ at the Twins Days Festival held
in Twinsburg, Ohio. This weekend festival-- the largest annual
gathering of twins in the world-- welcomes twins from across the
globe, both identical and fraternal. The festival features a welcome barbecue, Parade of Twins, Twin Talent Show, look-alike
contests, University research studies, and other celebratory activities including a party and fireworks display. Over two thousand sets of twins attend the event. For one rare weekend of the
year they can dress identically without standing out in a crowd.
Nardwuar
Interview by Patrick McGuire. Illustrated by Michael Deforge.
What was your first job?
Doing the Real Estate Weekly, which was a paper in Vancouver that nobody really cared about, but they still wanted
it distributed to all these houses and I would deliver it every
Friday for about ten years, and I saved up the money from
that to put out the first record I released in 1989 called Oh
God, My Mom’s on Channel 10 which is a compilation record of some of my favourite rock and roll bands and some
interview snippets with Joey Shithead and Jello Biafra.
Have you always been a confident, social person? Do you
ever find it difficult to approach people in interviews?
Oh, everyday I’m scared. That’s why I still do interviews. In
general, I’m just as scared when I go to the checkout stand at
the Safeway or whatever. Like, I have the wrong vegetables
or I’ve written down the wrong thing or something like that.
Any recent freakouts?
Nothing recently, but it basically goes back to watching
TV and feeling that some people aren’t doing what they
should do. I’m nervous all of the time, but what inspired me
to do interviews or do music, basically, was Arsenio Hall.
Why’s that?
He was doing his show once, and he was interviewing Sharon Stone, and she’d acted in a whole bunch of B Movies, the
Alan Quartermain and Lost City of Gold movies, which I loved
and Arsenio Hall asked her something to the effect of “what
sort of movies have you done?” and she said “well I’ve done a
whole bunch of movies, I don’t really want to talk about them”.
And I’m sitting there at home like, “my God, I love those
movies! I love the Alan Quartermaine movies!” So I was like,
if I was doing that interview, I would have asked about that.
He said he’d put me on the guest list. So I went down to
the gig and I wasn’t on the guest list. The people were teasing me like “Nardwuar you’ve been in this town long
enough to know you’ll never be on the guestlist”, then right
at that moment Kurt and Courtney walked in the wrong
door, they said “you can’t take Nardwuar!” And Courtney said, “yes I can, because Nardwuar is my cousin.”
You interviewed Killer Mike recently, are you a big fan?
I had heard of him, because he’s done a lot of guest appearances. I think because I didn’t know much about
him I was more eager to find out more information
about him, and that’s my whole thing. The less you know,
the better, because it spurs you on to want to do more.
What are your research methods like?
You can ask your friends, you can look through books... A lot
of is just remembering. Sometimes people give you too much
credit. They don’t want to be interviewed by you because they
think you’re going to discover something about them that they
haven’t told anybody, which actually you haven’t discovered.
We all know Tommy Lee did porn, but it’s funny sometimes
before the interview the publicist will go “please don’t ask
about porn or the video being reissued by Hustler Magazine”
and you’re like “what? I didn’t know it was being reissued!”
So are you a music savant or just an excellent researcher?
I’m not a music savant and I’m not even really an excellent researcher. I guess I’m just somebody that cares.
How did your Nirvana interview come together?
Courtney Love set up the whole thing. It just was interesting trying to get the interview, because Nirvana had been
playing in Vancouver for two days, so on the first day I went
down to the PNE Forum with my buddy Hugh and we hid
on top of some toilets, hoping we wouldn’t get discovered.
But, we did, and I said, “Hey! I’m the president of Sub Pop
Records!” But of course they didn’t believe me and kicked me
out. Then the next day my buddy Hugh said “come on, I think
they’re staying at the Four Seasons”. So we went down to the
hotel and bumped into Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl recognized
me from being in the band The Goblins, which was pretty
weird because in that band I played with a sheet over my head.
7
Reviews -
free mixtape/conceptual punk/toronto supervillain comic
Young Jeezy-Trap or Die 2
Lucien Stewart
Recently, times have been good for the type of mixtape
rap that Shawn Carter-Knowles bitches about in ‘DOA’.
Lil’ Wayne came out with No Ceilings at the end of 2009
and demolished about twenty beats before he had to go to
jail. The Game came out with R.E.D Room recently and despite not having that many great tracks - opens up with
a firey ‘400 Bars’. Now, we
get to Young Jeezy’s Trap
or Die 2. Granted, the
cover art is absolutely ridiculous, and somewhat
troubling. Are those Malcom X glasses supposed
to imply that Jeezy has
gone conscious? Well, yes
and no. His sound has matured, in a weird way. The subject matter hasn’t changed,
but the beats are slower and more soulful. This is most
obvious on the story-telling joint, ‘Time’. He croaks out
short fiction like; “I chopped it in the bathroom/rest behind the toilet seat/you call it my stash room!/straight
to the block/post up time to go to work/hear my granny
car start/she must be on her way to work” over a really
chilled out beat. Then there are awesome street bangers
like “My Tool” where Birdman is actually somewhat lyrical, despite being a retarded muppet. And let’s not even
talk about Pusha T and Malice’s verses on ‘Ill’n’. Murder.
Social Circkle - City Shock
Sean Calbeck
I’m going to put it right out there: concept albums are,
generally, fucking stupid. This isn’t reeeeally a concept album though. It’s a loose
collection of songs about
urban living and trying
to fit in set to blisteringly fast punk. It’s not
that often punk bands
are able to (or even try
to) form a cohesive narrative through a whole
album. Plus, this record
came out at the tail end
of 2009 when weird, dissonant hardcore made by dudes
from Florida was (is?) all the rage, So, to get an album
full of upbeat riffs instead of the despair-soaked delirium
of their contemporaries is pretty awesome too. If you like
punk music, you will like this record. Screw Flanders.
8
Kenk: A Graphic Portrait
By Richard Poplak, Alex Jansen,
Jason Gilmore & Nick Marinkovich
Franklin Stevenson
Recently published by Pop Sandbox and Raincoast,
Kenk: A Graphic Portrait plays off the publicity and
mythology of the infamous Toronto bike theft mafia
don Igor Kenk. The book explores his personal history and
attitudes towards junk collection in an unbiased comicjournalism form. The art style is gritty and formed from
photocopied photographs that were then scratched up
with a blade. It lends a dirty and oftentimes ugly aesthetic
to the impoverished and scrapyard tinged story of Igor
himself.
Igor Kenk is a Slovenian immigrant. When he came to
Toronto he saw the
garage sales and
rummage
heaps
in Toronto as
money
waiting
to be taken. It is
this attitude that
his wife calls his
“acquisition obsession”. In Igor’s
early years, he
would bike from
Trinity Bellwoods
to
Scarborough
towing a trailer
full of old bikes
and scrap metal,
keeping
some
to repair or resell, and storing some to sell back to the
scrapyards on the outskirts of the city.
The lasting impression of Kenk is not so much the
story of an immigrant bike thief and his various
criminal operations, but rather his philosophy. It
is boiled down quite obviously in a cut-out page
called “The Monkey Factor”. Basically, Igor feels
that when a society loses the ‘Monkey Factor’ - which
is the non-stop hustling mentality that emerges when an
individual is not rich enough - it is a failed state. Kenk
ran a business that relies on nothing more than the bounty of local junk and his own drive to collect it. Kenk’s slip
towards criminality is not imagined here, and while that
is to be expected from a book that sells itself as a journalistic comic portrait, it would probably be more enjoyable
to read a creative project that filled in the missing pieces.
Reviews
- skate simulation/summer sequel/emotional hype rock/alien throwback
Skate 3
Pat Maloney
The National - High Violet
Oksana Timmins
Skate 3 is incredible. There, now you know. Even if you
don’t skate in real life, there seems to be something enjoyable in it for everyone. The big differences between
the previous two games are that it’s set in a brand new
city that is way better than both combined, you can
choose from new characters (Deer Man of Dark Woods,
get outta here!), and there’s a
new realism focused “hardcore mode” in which you
can miss flat ground tricks
and screw up grinds if your
dude isn’t lined up properly.
My only complaint about
the game is that the realism
mode simply isn’t realistic
enough. Sure the tricks look
realistic but what about off
the board? You can’t hang
out and do nothing all day until your sponsors bitch at
you to get coverage, no selling boards to kids for booze
and drug money, or sell out to shitty energy drink or
deodrant sponsors. The video game version of myself
could definitly do a body spray commercial so hit me
up, Axe. Let me design a shoe in the game so I can get
some of that digital skate money for my digital meth.
What do you really need to
know about a new album
from The National? Do
you think that they’re an
overhyped, over emotional,
bullshit type of indie rock
with a singer that swoons and
moans to the correct cadence
of exactly what is trendy and
appealing in rock music right
now? Then stop reading here. High Violet is a cohesive,
and fuzzy record full of weird bangers. Look up ‘Lemonworld’ on Youtube and start playing it now. That part
about putting flowers in his mouth? Pretty awesome.
Now go check out ‘Anyone’s Ghost’. Whoa, pretty eerie
right? Now look up ‘Runaway’. That song sucks. It’s the
worst on the album. Really, I mean, with Youtube, why
does anyone need album reviews anymore? Not sure.
Independence Day
Pat Maloney
Iron Man 2
Lonnie Daniels
Anytime a comic book
movie comes out, you hear
a lot of whining from comic
book obsessives complaining about textual inaccuracies, minute costume details, and the tit size of the
#1 lady. Anytime a comic
book movie sequel comes
out, you might as well not
ever research the film because the shit you’re going
to hear is the most hateful
and nitpicky artistic criticism imaginable. Iron Man 2 is a
fun portrait of an alcoholic with CGI carnage spliced in
between. Mickey Rourke plays a weathered Russian megacriminal SLASH über-physicist who engineers an army
of airborne remote-controlled robot soldiers. Movies
like this are why it still makes sense to ever go to a theatre.
Some people have heard this story before, but one time
I watched a real midget do real cocaine. I went into this
sketchy after hours club with some of my favourite lads
and quickly noticed a little fella dancing up a storm in
the corner. “Good for him” I thought, “He must put up
with a lot of shit. But not tonight. He’s running things”.
At this point a man with a Bluetooth in his ear waved
over said midget and offered him a line on the coffee
table. HE BARELY BENT DOWN TO SNORT IT!
It blew my mind and I had to leave, only then realizing
it was very unlikely that I could locate a Wendy’s that
was still open. The nuggets there are crispy like whoa
and you don’t even know. So instead I went home and
crashed in my room mate’s jeep on the Gardiner Express
Way. It was like when Will Smith made the UFO crash
and then he gets out and punches it in the face then
says “Welcome to Earf!”. Only nothing like that at all.
9
11
Black
Metal’s
Climb
Towards
Cool!
Story by Stephen Buranyi.
If you want a t-shirt announcing your appreciation of
black metal, American Apparel carries them. It’s not the
strangest choice for the newly corporate culture factory;
the Norwegan neo-pagan miscreants of the black metal
movement ensured their cultural survival in the same way
British punks of the previous decade did. Loud reactionary music followed by a slide into decadence punctuated
with tragedy and violent excess. The formula is altered,
no drugs and certainly no girls, but murders and church
burnings are pretty good hooks. It’s enough to fuel shirts
and documentaries apparently, because the same Los
Angeles-Brooklyn tastemaker
axis that couldn’t get enough
of punk’s underground cool
is searching for more of the
same in Norway. The past few
years have seen books, a VBS.
TV series, and most recently
a festival-run documentary:
Until the Light Takes Us.
The director of Until The
Light Takes Us never responded to the questions he
agreed to answer for us because he’s cowardly and lazy
and has never heard of this
publication. His film documents the rise of black metal
as a reactionary movement in
the 80s. Best understood as
a by-product of cocaine and
hairspray, the four-necked
guitar foppery of American
metal bands confused and
enraged Nordic fans drawn
to the pagan and gothic elements of earlier metal. The
result was music that was
purposely, almost viciously,
low-fi: guitars had one neck, shows were small, loud,
and featured songs shorter than most hair-metal solos.
Fans responded to the rough authentic energy and for
a while in Norway, Black Metal was the punkest thing
around. Of course band members who don white
corpse paint and often end shows bleeding and incoherent can’t be expected to have tidy personal lives, and
it didn’t take long before a series of violent episodes
made the movement infamous in the national media.
Mayhem’s lead vocalist, Dead, took his own life
in the house outside Oslo where the band lived
12
and recorded. Dead slashed both his wrists before
discharging a shotgun in his mouth. His body was
found by guitarist Euronymous along with a rather
considerate note apologizing for all the blood. The
irony, but not the excess, was lost on Euryonymous
who re-arranged the scene with pagan props and took a
roll of photos before reporting anything to the police. Not
content with his little set-dressing episode, Euronymous
was also involved in instigating some of the fifty churcharson attacks that shocked the country over the next
year. The attacks, toward the goal of removing the “Judeo-Christian plague” from
Norway, became a media sensation and provided wouldbe filmmakers with hours
of exciting archival churchburning footage. The diligent
Norwegian authorities were
never able to charge Euronymous because he ended up
being murdered by Varg Vikkernes of the band Burzum.
I attended Until the Light
Takes Us with certain suspicions about hardcore metal
fans. These suspicions were
confirmed when someone
clapped at Varg’s speech
about the “Judaic plague”
destroying Norway’s pagan values. After two hours
that included a man mutilating himself with a knife
for nearly six minutes, we
emerged to a chorus of “that
sucked”. We talked to a guy
who thought the film-makers
had it in for certain artists,
that showing the musicians
out of context makes them look absurd and that the
whole thing was an insult to metal fans. But I can’t
imagine a context that would make black metal seem
like anything but absurd and extremely theatrical.
We can only hope that the future of black metal continues to infuriate its most loyal fans. Varg Halloween costumes? What about a new firework called
the “Burning Norwegian Chapel”. A streetwear line
of “Free Varg” shirts or better yet, why not a custom line of unisex chain mail sold exclusively at
American Apparel? This NEEDS to catch on soon.
gala tanaskovic
Little Girls
began as the bedroom indie rock project of
Josh Mcintyre, and the only reason I know Josh is because we’re both completely obsessed with rap. I like Josh’s rock albums but really, the only thing we ever talk
about is the last week of nahright.com posts, so when we decided to do an interview,
it felt right to just talk about rap. Interview by Patrick McGuire. Photo by Kavin Wong.
How does being a rap obsessive
influence your music?
across the border) who would
be on the bill?
Being obsessed with rap influenced
my approach to music. I always go
about recording Little Girls tracks
the way I would produce my hip
hop beats. I just start layering, starting with a either a sampled drum
line, or my drum machine. Then I
would add bass lines, samples etc.. I
always do vocals last. That’s the blueprint for pretty much any rap track.
It also influenced my musical output, because I’m able to record on
my own whenever I want, I’m able
to dish out tracks pretty quickly.
My show would just be my favourite
rappers doing my favourite records
from start to finish. Nas, Mos Def,
Big L (who would be alive), Outkast, Gang Starr (alive as well), Lil’
Wayne, Mobb Deep, and Wu-Tang
Clan would all play their classics.
If you could plan one giant rap
show (where everyone was guar
anteed to show up and get-
Premo, Pete Rock, and Dilla (also
back from the dead) would be DJing
between sets. Oh yeah, DOOM
would also open, and then get booed.
You produce your own beats, do
you ever rap?
Yeah I produce beats but I never rap.
Trust me you don’t want to hear me
rap. I’m awful. I’ll just stick to the
production side of things. It’s really
hard to get your foot into the rap
game. Plus, once Tha Carter III came
out I decided to stop because of
one of the beats on that record.
Two years before, I made a beat
that sampled the same song that
Swizz Beatz sampled for ‘Dr. Carter’. We both chopped up the song
the same way. I’ll never forget the
first time I heard ‘Dr. Carter’, I was
blown away. After that I was pretty
pissed, but I figured I must be doing something right if Wayne is
picking beats that sound like mine.
What makes a rap beat perfect? Is
it the horn part or the bass part or...
You gotta have the right drums.
13
Four
Cities
Story by Marlon Frisby. Illustration by Erika Altosaar.
There are four cities on the moon:
New Davenport is underground. It is where we start. Where the trains start in the center and reach out to the
streets. Spreading their arms wide until they touch the other cities. This city is the lunar heart. The tracks the
veins. Citizens of New Davenport speak so proudly of their public transportation. They talk about of how they
can be anywhere in town in twenty minutes flat. The red line travels over and under. From one end of the city
to the other. New lines connecting at each stop. The businessmen are always on time. The students are always
in class. New Davenport is a town of efficiency and not of leisure. It is not our grand tourist spot. It is pleasant
and it is a good place for families, our first city (our first home), but perhaps she is not as spectacular as her
sisters. She has no swinging towers, no vast casino, and no waterfall running down her sides. Yet everything
starts here. When you finally choose to see the other cities New Davenport has no qualms taking you there.
Luna is the city of the swinging towers. The largest city. The tallest buildings. The towers sway and rotate and
skip. They are two lovers waltzing. To the count of three. The people of Luna are the fast talking sort. On many
summer evenings half of the city finds itself at a debutante ball. Dancing in step with their prized structures.
Often you will hear a socialite's cackle. See patricians clink glasses. The moon girls asking you to dance. Close
your eyes and follow. It's all there is to do. When the dance is over they'll ask that you come to the after party
and you will be expected to say yes. Across the well lit streets and back to their apartments. We will all get lost
in the champagne and the recounting of the night's events. Who was it that danced with the foreigner? Was
it Susan M? And which song was it? All of us silhouetted by those moving buildings. Smile and say nothing
and curl up on the couch. In the morning we go. And if Susan should wake you in the night, slip two pills
into your hand, and lead you down to the street to wander through the city in a haze then I shan't say a word.
Chelsea is a gambler's paradise. A city where money is made and money is lost. This whole city is a casino.
We couldn't say where the people sleep (or if they do). Slot machines are always roaring. Men are cursing
and praising Fortuna in every breath. You, and every other tourist, will hope the goddess gives your bank
account some reprieve. A break from the slaughter. Please do not get caught up in the thrill. The splendor.
Chelsea's games are not always best. This city breeds two classes of citizens: the very rich and the very poor.
They would tell us they are the lucky and the unlucky, but we don't often listen to them. The city smiles on
those who win. She swaths them in love and attention. We'll see them in the VIP rooms spending credits
as if they come from a limitless source. They have braying laughs. They say obnoxious things. Chelsea keeps
them comfy. Always warm. Always fed. She is forgetful of those who lose. Puts them out of mind. They live in
shacks, piles, and tents in rooms that Chelsea keeps hidden. They are not part of the city proper, and the truth
is I've never seen these places. I've heard them spoken of. You will see the fortuneless men in the lounges too.
Counting small piles of chips. Calculating how to spend what little they've earned. Chelsea is our saddest city.
Flashy and exciting, but the least desirable of the four. Often when we are leaving we wish we hadn't come.
Arcadia is beside a waterfall. So in Arcadia it always rains. A constant light mist all over town. And the
Arcadians are always swimming. New pools open every week. It is best to wade where the water is most
fresh. If we follow the young people we'll find the best spots. We'll lay in the cool lakes and you may tell
them stories of your trip. Tell them about Susan M and Luna and the trains of New Davenport. Of the
games won and lost in Chelsea. Tell them about where you come from. We, like you, sometimes dream of
visiting foreign lands. Tell us about your city and your people. Your buildings and your airplanes. The Arcadians will love to listen. They are not a well traveled people. Citizens move back and forth between
Davenport and Luna and Chelsea. Sometimes, if they're wealthy, they may even leave the moon. Aside
from the soccer players it is rare to see an Arcadian outside of Arcadia. They must tend to the water that
pelts them from the sky. And it is a beautiful place. There is no reason to leave. So when you leave I suspect you will wish to return. The city casts its spell. When you dream you'll dream of her. When you see
water you will think of hers. This passes with time. Soon we'll be in our beds. We'll forget we were here.
16
Two Poems
World Championship
George Pakozdi
In Afghanistan, they don’t play football
but buzkashi instead, which is like football but instead
of a ball they use a dead goat
and the point is to drag the goat back to your goal
which is a white chalk circle
drawn on the dirt. The goat is headless
and the players all ride horses.
They say buzkashi is a metaphor
for Afghan tribal politics
or something. The point is I’m pretty sure
if they just had a chance to watch the Super Bowl
and we explained to them the rules and the commercials
and the halftime show
they would like it, though probably still not
as much as buzkashi.
zanzi
stevie vinegar
cologne clouds pollinate in
our smoky sinuses as we streak
through mall lighting and
scramblecrossings.
put speech bubbles above our heads.
we’re talking about renovated interiors
like living rooms, restaurants, and lives.
inside, the strippers dance slow
as we listen to the pulse of
houston and purple sprite.
one more g-string, two more puffy nipples,
a cheap pink bra for the road.
the air strolls past us like seniors on a power walk.
she considers ranch, ketchup, or sriracha
before getting on the wrong train.
17
My Achey Breaky Balls
Story by Caitlin Low. Illustrated by Ryan Murray.
In the summer of 2006, part of my daily routine as an editorial intern was to search the Internet for weird shit. Experimental drugs and freaky
fetishes were all in my recent Google searches.
One night, I had come across a fetish site dedicated to
“ball-busting”, a strange pain-loving festish for men who
love to get their balls crushed by women in heels. As
part of my journalism internship, I wanted to write on
this this bizarre sexual fascination, so I started an email
conversation with a man named Hans. We exchanged
emails and I was honest about my investigative intentions. I stressed that I was a journalist and all he did was
make up fantasies about me crunching his bare-balls in
red six-inch stilettos. It got a bit out of hand, when he
said that he really, really wanted to meet me alone. This
guy desperately wanted me to bust the fuck out of his
balls, but with a name like Hans and an over-eager attitude, I wasn’t feeling it.
Three years later and
I’m in a different city,
I figured, “you know
what? Fuck it. It’s time
to get serious and kick
some guy in the testicles.” But I was still
nervous. We aren’t
talking about a little
spanking in the boudoir - this is high-risk,
painful shit, and I
wanted to get in on it.
The
ball-buster
can be male or female, and the busting can be as
simple as a pair of black pumps lightly “massaging” the ball sack, to their balls being gripped in a
vice and then slowly slapped with leather tassels.
Searching for someone to ball-bust is a hard and
draining process. During my first attempt I was a
constant visitor to Kramtoads.com, a website dedicated to ball-busting. From photos of men that
were “in need of a kick,” to the “find me” section,
this site was clearly the Craigslist of ball-breaking.
When I started researching for a second time, I posted
ads everywhere and the answers were all similar.
They wanted me to get off on this. They wanted
to know what I looked like, or what kind of footwear I would use to squish their package. For
some, I would flirt, saying things like “please
help a girl out and lend a foot… haha.”
18
Recently, I started up another email correspondence
with a man named John. We communicated back and
forth for over two weeks about my story, and if he was
willing to be a subject. He was all in. I was relieved and
I felt anxious as I thought, “Fuck, this is really going
to happen.” It was like I was loosing my virginity, and
in a way I was - it was my first time ball-busting. And
like my first time having sex, I was still a bit hesitant.
Questions of where I was going to nut this guy were
running through my head. I didn’t want to go to his
place in case he Bernardo’d me, and I didn’t want him
to come to my place because I wanted him knowing as little about my real-life as possible. So, I came
up with the most rational decision: a friend’s house.
This way, if he wanted to come back and suspend me
by meat hooks while he raped me, at least he would
think I lived somewhere else. So it was set. We had a
place, I had a subject and I was ready to kick some balls.
I was sitting at work
when my phone rang at
3 p.m. on the day of our
scheduled interview. It
was John. He informed
me that he currently felt
50/50 about the whole
situation. I stressed to
him I didn’t want him
to be hesitant and that I
wanted him to be all in.
We agreed for John to
call around 8:30 later that
night to let me know his
final feelings. He called
at 9 p.m. and I didn’t
pick up. I had thought he had fucked off because he was
worried about the whole thing, and I went out to dinner instead. Beforehand, I sent him an email explaining
that I was going to move on and shelve the story because
he was hesitant, but I guess I didn’t catch him in time.
He called again later that night, I didn’t pick up. He left
a message. The next day he called four more times. He
responded to my email pleading that he wasn’t hesitant,
that he just wanted to meet before hand, but I enjoy living, and John was getting a bit too Marky-Mark in Fear.
It is a shame because John initially seemed really
nice. He was pleasant, but just a little too into the
idea of me wailing on his balls, and the notion that
we had some kind of friendship. And to think, all
I want to do was kick a guy in their fucking balls.