Peter Stenson's Blog

I kind of feel like Saunders can do no wrong. I’ve loved everything I’ve ever read of his, and although I’ve come across most of the stories in this collection before, I’ve never read it as such, from cover to cover (plus the nice essay on his life while writing these stories), and the experience was equally enjoyable. Although the stories mostly follow a set formula (first person narration, slightly futuristic dystopian amusement park setting, mostly summarized dialogue, a narrator trying to cope/get along after suffering some massive tragedy while enduring constant ridicule from coworkers, and a dream sequence with psychoanalytical tie-ins to theme), each one is fresh as fuck, inventive, equally hilarious and devastating. I’m not sure how he does it, only that it works, and doesn’t get old, and makes me hate humanity while loving individual humans.

Along those same lines, just as I’d finished the book, I was driving back from the gyno along a busy road in Denver. I was in the far right lane staring at a chubby girl of maybe twenty dressed in the black and yellow of her Einstein Bagel’s uniform, visor on and all, who was waiting at the bus stop. A white car cut me off and slowed down, then I saw the back window roll down, then a hand, an arm, something being thrown. The glass of the bus stop exploded with egg. The car sped away. I stared at the chubby girl, who was just then putting together what had happened, and it wasn’t outrage on her face, nor even fear. It was a look of resigned acceptance, as if this was just what happened, who people were, how she expected to be treated. And it broke my fucking heart.

And somehow this seemed to be exactly what Saunders writes about: people doing whatever they can to endure the cruelties of capitalism, and more poignantly, other people. Them accepting this hate as fact, as fate.

This shit’s the real deal—flat out, beautiful stories, each one better than the last. I was absolutely floored by this collection; how individually they were near perfect, and in concert, even better. Much of Englander’s collection is infused with a certain flavor of mysticism (not the shitty hipster-Brooklyn kind, but one revolving around Judaism and tradition and the power of oral histories), which adds a touch of the unexpected, but in a good way.

I had an interesting experience with the title story What We Talk About When We Talk About Ann Frank. The story revolves around two couples playing a game where they try to predict which gentile neighbors would hide them in the event of a second holocaust. It’s a heartbreaking story (better than Carver’s), and easily one of my favorites in this year’s Best American. Like any well-meaning gentile, I immediately inserted myself into the story, knowing in my heart of hearts that I would be one of those people to do whatever I possibly could to help those being persecuted. I talked about it with my wife. She seemed pretty sure I’d do the same. For some reason this made me feel good.

Three days later, a friend of mine said that his baby crib might have bed bugs. He said he wasn’t sure, that the pest people didn’t see any real signs of infestation, but were going to spray to be safe. Over text, he asked, if need be, could he and his family crash at our place.

I didn’t respond right away. I thought about shows I’d seen where bed bugs take over houses and lives and people cry and go crazy with portable steamers and shrink-wrapped bags of clothes. I thought about my nesting wife, her insistence that the house be perfect by the time forty weeks is up. And about myself. About being covered in bugs and about itchy bites, sleep a kind of nightmare. And then I thought about Englander’s story. How I’d so quickly placed myself on the side of Morally Conscious Gentile, there to help out any fellow in need. But fuck…I couldn’t even do it with possible bed bugs.

My buddy texted back, saying it was no worry, the pest people only needed an hour to spray, two hours to air it out. It was then I told him it was cool if he still needed a place to crash. I felt like a fucking dick. I thought about the story, its heartbreak, its truth. I told myself bed bugs were different, so very different.

I went to American Reunion yesterday by myself. It was stupid and predictable and funny. I ate buttered popcorn. It was good to see Stiffler and everybody else. I cried during the movie and then later that night.

After the movie, I went to a reading for a few classmates from grad school. It was the last one of the semester and the last one of my school career. I graduate next week. The poets read things I couldn’t understand but they had pretty voices and the rhythms were nice.

I had my last day at my current job this week and start a new one on Monday. I have to wear slacks. I’m a little bit scared I won’t be good at it and even if I am, that I’ll turn into the type of person who signs up for an Applebee’s rewards card.

I’m not great at change. I’m not great at endings or goodbyes or really anything to do with moving on. When I leave a room, a lot of the time I tell people to have a nice life. They laugh because it sounds a little callous. I wish I were more the type of person who told people they looked great.

I think I must have been a sophomore in high school when American Pie came out. I don’t remember whom I saw it with, only that I loved it. I was, and still am, all about embarrassing sexual exploits. I’m all about the kitsch manufacturing of happiness and friendships and love. I think it’s the best thing ever.

I sat by one of my best friends during the reading. It was really crowded so we sat on the floor against the wall. For a while, I stared at a big woman in front of me. First her underwear was showing, and then she readjusted herself and then it was her ass crack. I thought about the three years I’d spent at grad school and that being more than a tenth of my life.

I fear that nobody at my new job will think poop is funny. I fear that nobody will look up from their cubicles and that I’ll eat alone. I fear the headsets will be uncomfortable. I fear I’ll be awkward and quiet, like I always am until I know who to be afraid of. I also fear that I’ll like the job. That the money will be good enough and the promotions will be good enough and that life will be good enough.

I think if I were the kind of person who greeted others by saying, Well, you look great, I’d be better at change. I would live in the moment and appreciate others and all that shit. Maybe I’d be better at keeping in touch. Maybe I’d answer my phone and maybe even pick it up and dial a number.

In American Reunion, they are all dealing with the same things. Their lives weren’t as they planned. They felt threatened by the next generation and they felt confused and old but not that old and poor Stiffler just wants to keep the party going. I always wanted to be Stiffler, but I’m more Jim, maybe Kevin. I cried because I’d felt old watching the original thirteen years ago.

After the reading, I talked with my advisor and the editor of the magazine I’ve interned at for the last three years. We talked about wanting to be famous and people not caring and about what happens next. I felt like a child and a peer. The reading cleared out. I hugged the editor and shook my advisor’s hand. I was one of the last people to leave.

The truth is that happy hour at Applebee’s probably isn’t that bad. Neither are slacks. I like the way they make my crotch look, like there’s something there. And the truth is it’s just a job and everywhere I go, I get along with at least a few people. The truth is I need insurance and need to grow up and am almost thirty and I need to start paying off debt. The truth is also that I’ve complained about every job I’ve ever had, but motherfucker, those jobs seem like the best times of my life after a while.

I know nostalgia is pretty much a useless emotion. I know it’s not real. I know there’s a heavy component of self-pity for any good nostalgic self-created montage—the juxtaposition of current not so-great-circumstances with a highlight reel of past memories. And this is what I created last night. That song that sounds like REM on the Call of Duty commercial came on and I drove in the dark and felt bad about everything and wanted to wrap my arms around everybody I’ve ever told to have a nice life. I could only sustain the self-pity for so long. I switched the radio to sports talk radio. I listened to people talk about the death of Junior Seau. I got home and was greeted by my dog and cat and then my wife. I lay down and we watched The Real Housewives of Some City. My wife told me it’d be fine, to quit being a pussy. I thought about the movie, how their lives turned out worse than they’d thought in high school. My shit was so much better. So much fucking better.

Yesterday, I went to some marketing lunch. I guess I was technically hosting it. I don’t work for this company and really don’t know what they do but I said I would as a favor to certain people and I showed up to the Denver Tech Center with a smile and hair gel and slacks that gave me both a gunt and man-toe. I was the only man. Most of the women were old and their faces looked like avalanches. Some of the girls were sexy in that DECA-still-shopping-at-Forever 21 way. I tried to be charming and smart and I think I did okay.

I only messed up the name of the company I was representing once.

During my little speech, I was doing fine, but then the waiter brought this French bread into the little banquet room, and for some reason, I completely stopped what I was saying. I said, Yo, that bread looks good.

People laughed.

I’m not usually one to say yo and this for sure wasn’t the crowd to break it out on, but I did better after that, loosened the fuck up.

We sat at three tables of ten. I was next to a pregnant woman who kept burping into her napkin. On my other side was a doctor with a Russian accent that I completely ignored because I couldn’t understand what the fuck she was saying. A redhead sat across from me and I felt a certain solidarity in our matching rings of armpit sweat. I ate salad and salmon. I skipped dessert.

Everybody seemed so nervous. Everybody had something to sell and it was scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-suck-your-cock and it was uncomfortable. I didn’t really give a fuck because I had no real dog in the fight. This seemed to work well. I asked questions and made jokes and was a different person than I normally in, if only because I wasn’t trying to get something from these people.

Maybe there’s something to that.

Maybe there’s some life lesson that everybody has learned years ago, but like most of those things, this little nugget passed me by. Maybe people can feel desperation. Maybe people can feel neediness. Maybe they know when they are being pitched at and demanded to pay attention and expected to give something in return. And maybe this sensing of neediness and desperation is as repellent as two-girls-one-cup (to the general population, that is) and maybe the key to any successful “marketing” or “networking” is not giving a fuck about what you are selling or being sold.

Easier said than done.

I’m a slobbery mess at AWP.

And I guess it boils down to what almost everything in life boils down to: the fear of loosing something you have or not getting what you want. For the burping pregnant girl, it was not getting business for her company. For me, it’s not having magazines accept my work or at least recognize my name. It’s failure. It’s not getting what we want. And that creates the neediness. The desire to please and be accepted and deemed worthy to be part of whatever small circle we constantly feel on the outskirts of.

So if my single day as a marketer taught me anything, it’s to realize that the little literary world I put on a pedestal is just as silly as the field these women are in, at least seen from an outsider. It’s to not take it all so goddamn seriously. That I’ll do just fine being nice to people, being real, treating others like actual motherfucking humans, saying yo.

I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men. In fact, I watched four seasons in about two weeks time. School’s done and I only work part time and I sent off the third round of edits for the novel and my new work is a little strange—not psyched on short stories and am scared to start the process of writing another novel. So I have time. I have Netflix.

I don’t love the show.

I like it, but it hasn’t changed my life or my expectations for what TV dramas can do (these are lofty ideals, but after hearing people talk about the show, that’s kind of what I was expecting).

But I’d sit on Don Draper’s face.

Or maybe the less-gay way of saying this is that I am drawn to him, as I think everybody is. He’s not overly handsome, and his breath is probability sour as hell from the cigarettes, and he doesn’t seem extraordinarily smart or nice or kind or really anything. But he has something I want, which probably boils down to confidence and properly tailored clothes.

I think about being a copywriter.

It doesn’t seem like the worst thing ever.

I have an idea for a commercial. It’s for that campaign for some airline or something where they say Need to get away? I think it would be funny if a husband’s sitting on a couch and his wife is standing next to him and they’re watching the notebook and then she leans over to lift a cheek and farts. Need to get away?

I think farts are funny and poop too.

I can just imagine some medical company asking how their product relates to poop and masturbating, as my copy indicates.

Maybe copywriting isn’t in the cards for this guy.

And maybe I’m not supposed to wear nice suits and slick my hair and be in an office and maybe I’m not supposed to be Don Draper. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink and I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone and I like to spend my time alone writing stories about people who try so hard to get something they think will make them happy. But a guy can dream. He can imagine that going to an office would be fun. He can imagine people would pay him more than two contributor copies for his work. He can imagine a world where people speak of his brilliance, where girls come at him with those snowcone-shaped tits, where it’s perfectly okay to drink all day and sleep on your couch and ignore your children and live an invented persona.

I finally read Steve Elliott’s Adderall Diaries. It was the best memoir I’ve read in a long time, if not ever. It was honest in a way most every other book isn’t, which I found to be the most beautiful kind of heartbreaking.

I told myself that I’d only do one fantasy baseball team this year, but I ended up drafting four. Most of them are no good, heavy on outfielders who were good in 2003.

There’s a girl at Starbucks right now who looks just like Emily Valentine. I had such a crush on her, even after she went all psycho-killer qu’est-ce que c’est.

I defended my thesis and it was a bit of a Peter Stenson jerk-session, which made me feel good. Then I drove back to Denver and went to a party for a girl I know who’s moving and it was weird because half the group was writers and the other half investment bankers and I drank an NA beer and felt a little like a loser. We’re maybe too old to sit around and complain, but that’s what we did. It was like Freaky Friday, all of us wanting to switch places for a while. A guy who made a hundred K a year told me he was jealous of my beard, which was really him saying he was jealous of me not having to go to work everyday and being able to hang out and maybe even my ability to tie a few sentences together. I thought about the shit I’d be able to do with a hundred K and I’d be able to get the lump in my ribs checked out with insurance. This guy was tall and confident. I really liked Freaky Friday, the one with Lindsay Lohan. My wife and I watched it with my father and he cried at the party scene at the end. Maybe it makes us feel good to complain. Maybe it’s a game of self-pity and victimization or maybe it’s a common denominator for my generation—one or two past X, one brought up on Yo MTV Raps and the explosion of the Internet and the crystallization of amphetamines—all of us sitting around talking about how bleak shit is, how we’re miserable. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just conversation. Maybe it’s easier for me to talk about making $9.75 an hour instead of the fact I sold a book to a Big Six. Maybe it’s modesty. Maybe it’s false modesty. Maybe it’s the thought that everybody has something better and is happier and has more sex with bigger dicks and nicer clothes and skinnier waistlines. Maybe it’s nothing.

Reading Steve’s memoir, I thought I would like to switch lives with him for a day or two. To feel the deep hurt he puts into words.

Every fantasy baseball team is me playing GM.

Poor old Emily Valentine, that bitch just wanted to be part of the group, would have given anything to be Brenda.

I don’t know. The girl who looks like Emily keeps giving me eyes and I have to go to work and fold clothes and it’s sunny and I feel skinny and the third round of edits for the novel are done and I just sold a story and things are pretty good. That’s my Freaky Friday moment, the one where I’m grateful for those around me, for the life I have.

I’m really psyched on Dance Moms.

I told this to a friend the other day, me and my love for this Lifetime show, and he said I was either a pussy or a pedophile. I tried to explain myself, telling him it was funny and heartbreaking and ridiculous and adorable and he said, Pussy and a pedophile.

Now he calls me Pedie Pete.

Whatever.

I can take those comments because I’m secure enough in my masculinity and my not-being-a-fiddler to know that it’s something else that draws me to the show. It’s a fat woman who screams at children and parents and demands perfection. It’s judging her. Feeling like she’s a cunt. But it’s also knowing that she’s right. Everybody is replaceable. As hard as you are working at something, there is somebody who is doing more, who wants it more, who will usurp you when you least expect it. I agree with this.

This got me thinking about my soccer career. Career might be the wrong word, but I was better than average, All-State, ODP, all that shit. But I eventually started to suck because I couldn’t stop freebasing dirty crank and then all of a sudden teammates were playing Division I and I was smoking res from charred foil and then I wasn’t starting on my club team and then I quit.

I dream about it all the fucking time.

It’s me with short shorts and long hair and being in the midfield, the ball coming, my first touch like a brick wall, give-away after give-away, my coach all small with his Buzz Beamer sun glasses yelling, my father silent in his disappointment.

It’s failure.

It’s being good at something. It’s being told that you can do great things. It’s being anointed before you’ve done a fucking thing. It’s resting on your laurels. It’s whatever cliché you want to denote the fact that you aren’t good enough.

Sure, I’ll blame it on speed.

I’ll blame it on jambands and my girlfriend’s pussy that was just the right amount of hairy. I’ll blame it on my parents and other interests and too much pressure.

But here’s what I never blamed it on—I wasn’t good enough to take soccer to the next level.

So here’s me, watching an entire season of Dance Moms in one sitting. My wife and I are saying how horrible the fat lady is, the moms just as bad. We’re smiling when they yell. I’m crying when they all get selected to be in that god-awful music video. And really, I’m thinking about the fact that none of them will make it, at least not how they want. None of them want it as much as the underprivileged whose only shot is dance, those from countries that train toddlers like sweatshops. Sure, maybe they will be Rockettes for a Christmas run or two, but that’s about it. And I’m wondering if that will be enough for them, these preteens who only know dance. I’m wondering if they’ll be twenty-eight and washed-up, having the same dream once a week, the one where they stumble during a twirl, one where their coach yells and yells, while their mothers are watch on in silence.

My week one looks like this: Denver Shit Stains 0-1, Happy Shits 0-1, Cotton Touchers 0-1.

I never played football and I don’t know much about it other than they line up and throw or run and I know the good skill players and I know that whomever I think will win, does not, in fact, win. But that doesn’t stop me from spending two weeks worth of pay at the beginning of each season on fantasy football. I read the magazines and make these retarded spread sheets and I draft sleepers and studs and I’m feeling good about life until eleven o’clock. Then my whole day goes to shit. My players drop passes. They fumble. They throw the ball to the other team. All of my opponents have epic days.

I fucking hate Sundays.

I worked this past Sunday. That turned out to be a little bit of a good thing because I wasn’t mashing refresh on espn.com and I wasn’t cursing the TV and I made a little bit of money back that was undoubtedly wasted as soon as I said yes to another fantasy league. But that’s kind of bullshit. I hid my phone in sweaters I folded at work. I didn’t talk to a customer the entire day. I was still rather miserable, at least once I realized none of my players would eclipse the hundred yard mark.

But with that being said, I still thought I had a chance in one league. I was up by seven with Santonio Holmes going. My dick-head brother in law had Witten. Things were going so well and I was going to win, no question about it, Holmes hauling in short slants all night, an eleven point cushion, my spirits lifting, me feeling rather sorry for Robbie and his juvenile throwing of the Gatorade against the wall.

And then there was a seventy-yard catch.

There’s always a seventy-yard catch.

I just don’t get it. I want to hurt people when I lose at fantasy. I want to break things. This isn’t me. I’m more of the type to want to cut my thighs with a razor blade. But not with fantasy. I want to cry and I want to act out and smash plates and my brother in law just sat there smug as fuck and my dog crept to his little round bed, curling into a mound of soft serve.

It doesn’t matter. I know this. The money I have a chance of making is rather insignificant. It’s something else. Pride. Ego. Competition. Being smarter than other people and maybe it has to do with mainlines, not my strong suit, me with my argyle socks and inability to change my oil, me just wanting to be better at sports (yes, I’m considering the participation in fantasy a sport, fuck off). I don’t know. It just makes me furious.

So my week one shout-outs go like this:

Fuck you, Jason Witten.

And you, Robbie Lane.

I’ve had Ready To Die, Stop Making Sense, and Operation Doomsday in my three-CD changer for nine years. I listen to these disks and sports radio and I drive a fair amount, 120 mile round trip twice a week. I took out the Talking Heads last week. I put in Dr. Lecter.

Here’s the thing—I love this disk more than pretty much anything in the last ten years. Bronson sounds like Ghostface if Ghostface was a chef and a little bit more clever and used more internal rhymes. The beats are all good—none of that fast sixteenth note bullshit—but steady two-four, all layered over jazz rifts. The shit makes me happy.

And that’s something I don’t feel all that much listening to music or really anywhere else. Happy. Excited. Like my life isn’t one boring fucking montage minus the drama. Like I’m not getting older and holding down two jobs and playing house with my wife and pets and air conditioning that I can’t figure out how to get below 83 degrees.

So here’s to you Action Bronson.

Here’s to you for not being fucking horrible and for teaching me the word “scunt.” It works, because sometimes cunt just doesn’t get the job done.

And here’s to you for letting me feel like it’s okay to be overweight and white and still be cool, for you telling me that one’s late twenties aren’t too late to make something of yourself, for letting me know that certain people can bypass the fade of skinny clothes and still be rad.

But really, this is me thanking you allowing me to do that shit I did in my teens—walking around a city with my backpack and headphones, your music playing, positive I’m being filmed by somebody, making up narratives, smiling at hookers and guys who probably want to suck my dick, doesn’t matter, esteem either way, thinking that there’s a reason to this all, that something has to come of it, that I’m not just another motherfucker getting older with thinning hair, each and every day distancing myself from that potential teachers and parents always assured me I had.

I’d rather get fisted than ever move again.

Maybe that’s not saying much, but you know what I mean. The packing and cleaning and scrubbing and hundreds of dollars at Target and other people’s curly hairs and shit-splattered toilets and driving trucks with blind spots bigger than first downs and fights with my wife about pictures being level and my dog freaking out, change for him like the most potent of Ex-Lax capsules.

But like most of my life, maybe this is an issue of perception. Maybe it’s me seeing everything as shitty, as an inconvenience to my precious time. Half empty. That kind of thing.

And here’s the thing: I love our new place. It’s in the city. It’s in a neighborhood with store signs in Spanish (rapidly gentrifying, but more diverse than I’ve ever lived in). I can walk to work. There’s not an Applebee’s or Chili’s in sight. I saw my neighbor’s left tit—big bitch of a girl, rocking a cut-off t-shirt with no bra, reaching to get her mail, hello left tit out of the armpit sleeve, a CD sized nipple a pleasant afternoon surprise.

Things are good.

But Comcast can’t come for a week and this makes me lonely.

It’s perception, I know it. For example, over the Fourth of the July, my wife, brother-in-law, and I sat around bored as fuck. It was hot. We had no money and don’t drink and we live in a landlocked state and have no real friends to speak of. We watched men eat hotdogs. I wanted it to be the Fifth so I could go to work. We decided to go to the dog park.

My wife recorded a video of us in the car with her phone. We drank Rock Stars and had Kid Cudi’s new song playing and I ate my psych meds and we drove. The dog park was a disaster. Hot. My dog walked around the perimeter shitting every ten feet (perhaps sensing a relocation was on the horizon). The whole thing was miserable. I salvaged the night a little by finding a clip on Redtube of a woman who looked like my tenth grade American History teacher getting DPed with a yardstick in her hand.

The thing is, my wife showed me the video of our car ride the next day.

It looked amazing.

It looked like we were the coolest motherfuckers ever, having the best time, pounding tall boys, eating pills, so happy, in love with each other, our lives, our Nation’s birth. It looked like a rap video if rap videos were of white people and dogs and energy drinks.

This, of course, brought me back to the shit people have been telling me forever: It’s all about perception. It’s half-full. It’s blessings in disguise. It doesn’t matter that it’s rainy, the burning and itching is an excuse to get a physical, every rejection is an opportunity to improve a piece.

Fuck my throat with that shit.

I know it’s true. I know life is better not hating it. I know there’s work I can do that puts me in a better state of mind, one of gratitude. I know I am a happier person when I do this work.

So here’s what I meant at the start of this post—I’m so psyched to be cleaning the toilet of our new place. I love the ring of explosive diarrhea that was missed by some unnamed assailant. I love the growing opportunity that hanging pictures affords my wife and I. And creeping around the neighborhood in the Subaru late at night looking for unlocked dumpsters? Yup, love that shit too. And lastly, I’m so grateful for a week without the devil of TV—the loose-stool pants of my dog and the loving calls of my wife to move the fucking dresser are the only sounds I need to break in a new apartment, to make me feel at home, the loneliness slipping away with each passing second.