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downtownbrooklyn26 · 7 years

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Giancarlo Chico

SILENT HEART Here we go. The beginning. Level 1. Orientation day. The first trimester. I have to tell you right now, I speak in tangents. A lot. And then go off on tangents on those tangents. It’s not because I have ADD (an over diagnosed mental illness that gives parent’s a reason to justify their kid’s idiocy), but because I have learned that some misgivings could be instigated as an art form. That, and I just have a short attention span. My name is Atom. No last name. Not that I actually don’t have a last name. I just don’t want to give it. I have green eyes, am a Taurus, and I like long walks on the beach, and fried twinkies. At this very moment, I’m staring at the name Phil written out on my Styrofoam tea cup. When I’m at a café, when I’m at a restaurant, when I comment on a YouTube video, I never give people my real name. Everybody thinks it’s a scam. No matter where I go, no one can quite wrap their finger around the concept of a name like that unless they have an obscure name themselves. After a few years of dealing with that kind of disbelief, you tend to get burned out and stray to typical white names minimum wage employees can understand; John, Dave, Tom, Chuck, Shawn, Bill. At $8 an hour, their minds only function at one syllable per word. Cafés are a relatively pleasant environment, but I hate coffee. It only tastes good when you put a shit ton of sugar and cream in it (which is why everyone loves tiramisu), and even then it’s like drinking Soylent Green diarrhea with a money shot of vanilla extract. I am dreading my future, not just because I’ll be 25 years old in four days, but because my rent’s going up next month and I have no viable career options. In congruence to what most people say, creative writing pays about as well as a career in storm chasing. My father was right. I should have been a commercial jet pilot, or a trapeze artist, or a clandestine field agent, which is a fancy term for spy. Any of those would have been more plausible than trying to sell words for money. Summer is coming up soon and I have nothing to do. This is what I consider fun; sitting in a café alone, writing a novel that will be most likely be read by no one. I’m beginning to turn into my father. When I was little, he was constantly bustling about the house, studying, researching, never taking a fucking break. At the time, I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just sit still and relax, but now that I’m older… I still don’t understand. I like to write a lot, and when you have chosen writing as your career, it never becomes work. Taking a break doesn’t constitute as being lazy, it’s just time used to get over a writer’s block. Contrary to my appearance, I’m not a hipster. Never mind my scruffy facial hair, horn rimmed glasses, and pork pie hat, the only reason I like to write in cafes is because it offers less distraction than my apartment. “Hey, man. We’re closing right now.” Comes a voice above me. The café is empty and my phone screen says 10:07. There goes another day.

I can’t look up. I know that 3 inches away, some guy has his crotch lined up with my face. One of the many setbacks of traveling via the subway. With my mind wandering, I forget my surroundings. My eyes inadvertently become glued to the perverse intersection of this hairy guy’s khakis. Being from out-of-state, I tend to stray from the normal norm of NYC culture. I noticed it the first day I moved here. Every one keeps to themselves. Always. They look at their phones, read their books, sleep. Nobody interacts with one another, or stares at that cute girl with tattoos creeping up her neck. I do. I’ve been a New Yorker for over a year now, and I have a girlfriend, but my eyes continue to scream bachelor and …. out-of-state. As I’m sure you’ve probably already deduced, my parents were the ones to name me Atom. It’s not a household name but they wanted to be creative, like people who name their daughter Alia, but spell it Ahleeyah, or people who learn how to play the accordion. Ridiculous. No, I’m just fucking with you. My father was a physicist, teaching theoretical physics at some no-name community college in the middle-of-nowhere town I’m from. Despite the fact that he dedicated his life to science in an effort to explain the unexplained, my father is still a god-fearing Catholic. As a result, I am not allowed to talk about my “atheistic views” inside his house. It’s strange that atheists can have something as ludicrous as a “coming out” story. You’d think those should be reserved for mouth breathers or people who hate chocolate. I remember being thirteen years old when I went to my first (and only) confession. While most people find peace and tranquility through this practice, confessing my “sins” to a random stranger in a fancy outhouse didn’t necessarily make me feel the most comfortable. When I entered that strange booth, and saw a man resembling Bill Gates in priest’s robes, I impulsively confessed deviant acts my friends committed while at school. Although I was most likely just being a coward, I’d like to think I was inadvertently trying to save my dear friends from eternal damnation. “Father forgive me, for I have sinned. I was playing with scissors last week and accidentally cut some girl in the stomach. She’s fine but my teacher told me she’ll probably have a scar there for the rest of her life. I also cheated (somehow) in my woodshop class, and ended up getting a C+.” The priest simply nodded silently to me, his head bowed. I remember wondering if I bored him to sleep. “You must make penance for your sins, my son.” The priest suddenly spoke. “Recite ten Hail Mary’s and twenty [blah] [blah] [blahs].” When I got home, I was unconventionally quiet. My father, his black mustache twitching from behind his newspaper, looked me up and down as I stared blankly at the wall. He obviously sensed something wrong with me. “The priest didn’t do anything to you, did he?” he asked. “No.” “Good.” He responded, as if that closed the matter for good. I stood rooted in the middle of the kitchen staring at him, as his attention returned back to his newspaper. And like a swift kick to the balls, tears began to pour out of my eyes. “I don’t believe in God!” I bawled. As I sobbed loudly in the middle of his kitchen, my father continued to skim the page he was reading, absorbing the words as if they held the answer to his preteen son’s sudden outburst. Turning the page, my father asked me, “Do you pray when your grandma gets sick? Or when you really want to do well on a test at school?” His voice seemed bored when he asked, and it calmed me down enough to fully contemplate the situation I just instigated. What possible use was there confessing to my father my soul’s absence of God? Why was I crying? Being an Atheist, you have to come to terms that you, and you alone, are in charge of your own actions, your own “destiny”. “Yes.” I lied. “Then you believe in God.” He concluded. And that was that. He flipped the page of his newspaper and went on reading as if nothing happened, chalking it up to his 13 year-old son going through awkward puberty stuff. Four years later, though, at 17, when I was going through my rebellious teenage phase, when I was learning how to conceal a constant boner, I decided to be honest and spiteful about his precious lord and savior. If blasphemy didn’t have a definition before, it did now. I think that was the first time I saw honest-to-goodness shame present itself on my father’s face. I could just see his whole world falling apart in his head, wondering, “Where did I go wrong? I raised the spawn of Satan….” And to that, I would have only responded, yes you did, fucker. If I had to pray to some divine being, I would have told it, “Lord, deliver me from yourself.” From that day on, I haven’t been allowed to say the word “atheist” under my father’s roof without getting reprimanded.

My purple apartment is a second-floor piece-of-shit studio in Astoria. I like to peel the loose paint off the walls as I climb the stairs. The hallway light falters as I grab my keys out of my pocket, and my neighbors scream “Shut up!” at their wailing infant son who hasn’t even spoken his first word yet. After entering the living room, I have to remember to press the correct light switch, otherwise I’ll be paying up-the-ass for electricity I’m not using. Half the lights in my home have gone out but I’m not tall enough to change the bulbs. No to mention I’m lazy and don’t want to deal with the maintenance man who refuses to do his fucking job. The walls in my room are covered floor-to-ceiling with take-out menus I’ve collected from dozens of restaurants, and one massive poster of my favorite music group, Baha Men. I have a twin–size bed covered in Star Wars sheets from when I was 8. Regardless of the fact my girlfriend rides my dick on top of the Millennium Falcon, these sheets are still totes collectibles. Time to get to work. Unlike my own creative writing projects, my job doesn’t require me to go to a happy place of serenity. For my job, I need a constant outlet of distraction, otherwise I’ll end up chain smoking to relieve my stress. And after a year-and-a-half away from American Spirits, I don’t think I would be able to endure wheezing through another porn-filled night of self pleasure. My job isn’t what most people would call morally positive, but it’s not like I rob convenience stores or prostitute myself to Ricky Martin fanatics. I am a work-for-hire essay writer for a wide variety of clientele. It’s a wonderful little gig I’ve been doing for the past year. It’s amazing what kind of topics people are forced to write about; String Theory, gentrification, Alexander of Macedonia, how the Kardashians affect society. I have become a way station on people’s journey toward success. Three new emails today from potential clients. One client, 19-year-old Sue Yung Kim, needs a five-page research essay on the progression of cash flow in the 20th century, written by Friday (WITH a works cited page). Who said all Asians were ambitious scholars? Most essays I write cost around $100, depending on page length. Research and bibliographies cost extra, ultimately pricing this essay at around $175, if I’m feeling generous. I also take dead lines into account, so the shorter amount of time I have to complete a project, the more I charge. You may find my prices obscene, but I also guarantee every one of my customers a B+ or higher when it’s turned in, otherwise they get a full refund. So far, I have not had to return anyone’s money, and nobody’s been stupid enough to try and lie to me about their grade. Another email, a middle-aged History teacher going for his Doctorate in Psychology, wants me to write a 100-page dissertation by mid June. Two months to obtain a Doctorate education in psychology, only to write about the ‘implications of visual illusions and how they help understand perceptual processes’. I’ll have it done in one month, with a pay off of around $5,500, my biggest check yet. You may find this line of work to be a bit unorthodox, but the way I began is somewhat of an interesting story.

About a year ago, I was dozing off in the conference room of the Journalism Department at some dead-beat University. I was an office assistant working for this old Republican who was half in love with Rush Limbaugh. Aside from the usual tasks of organizing his desk, filing paperwork, and hiding his hemorrhoid medication, I also had to revise Journalism student essays. I have to tell you right now, those little fuckers are some of the worst writers I have ever encountered. How they managed to graduate high school and get accepted into a four-year University is beyond my comprehension, but I digress. One day, this girl barges into the department office demanding to see Dr. Billsby who, at the time, was in China giving a lecture on the education-economic fall out in America. I assure you, they couldn’t have cared less, not because it’s an insanely tedious topic of debate, but because the Chinese university forgot to book him a translator, so the attendees didn’t understand a word he was saying. All they did was smile and nod as he droned on for an hour. Either way, I was in charge of the office that week. I remember that day clearly. My cheerios that morning were stale and the broken office heater made me sweat more than a crack addict going through withdrawal. With my shirt clinging to my back, this girl, cheeks flushed, periorbitals swollen from stress asks me how I stand the heat. This is where I tend to run into a bit of a wall with people. There’s no real way to describe severe glossophobia to anybody. I suppose I could just give the simplest definition of the term, but that would be like a woman reading the definition of abortion to a man.

I was 20 when the idea came to me. 30 mg of Clonidine, 40 mg of Lexapro, 50 mg of Hydroxyzine, two tabs of LSD, and one packet of cigarettes per day was what it took to suppress my anxiety to a bearable level. I tried nearly everything to snuff it out completely, from public speaking classes to karaoke bars to drinking fucking coffee. Sitting in the middle of an abandoned beach parking lot with my friend, Bryce, he suggested, “Maybe you should go see one them shrinks. A psychologist.” Psychologists, those small people with their equilateral frameless glasses, their pathetic sweater vests, those ominous clocks that tick a little too loudly in the foreground of their office. My 5’5” black friend from Long Beach then offered me a hit of his cigarette as we listened to Abba in his 1980 Buick. “And maybe you should wear platform shoes to make yourself taller.” I replied, as I placed his cigarette between my teeth. “Light me, will you? It’s out.” The last words anyone will hear me say. “My lighter’s almost gone so make it count... dick.” He tells me. As the flame ignited the cigarette, I sucked hard and accidentally inhaled the butt, lodging it in my throat. I gasped for breath, placing my hands around my throat as the embers seared my larynx. If you’ve ever gone camping and made s’mores, then you most likely have an idea of how my vocal chords looked once I swallowed the damned thing. Looking back now though, that agonizing pain was probably the greatest moment of my life. I was like a dragon finally living up to my fire-breathing potential. All I had to do was rear my head back and scorch the earth. The hospital was an overall tranquil experience the following week. I had to have a full evaluation done on my throat and my father threatened to cut me off if I didn’t quit smoking, but my anxiety was gone. After 6 years, 3 months, and 17 days, my heart wasn’t thumping in my ears. I was able to breathe and, for once, my mind wasn’t swimming in an ocean of self-doubt and panic. Smiling actually hurt my face, but like people who partake in BDSM or jousting, this was the kind of pain I could thoroughly enjoy. Everyone around me talked and droned on about their lives, but for once, I wasn’t expected to reply. I wasn’t expected to over think a response. I wasn’t expected to participate. My Doctor told me my voice would come back within the next two-to-three weeks, but that’s like reminding cancer survivors they’re still going to die some day. So how does one best pull off a life altering deception? I suppose it really just comes down to eye contact. You wouldn’t suspect a 20-year-old virgin to look you directly in the eye and spoon-feed you the kind of bullshit only a deranged hypochondriac could invent…but I did. My sad big eyes would get all misty, my lower lip would tremble slightly, and pretty soon my hands would claw at your back as I embraced you in an effort to come to terms with the “loss of my voice”. I cried silently. You mumbled awkwardly. And the world went on spinning. Fuck Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio. The Oscar for most emotional performance goes to Atom @$%#&. The world can kiss my pale mute ass. Lord, deliver me from dialogue.

In the Journalism office, the flustered girl continued waiting for me to respond to her. I pointed to my throat, indicating that I couldn’t speak, which only made her all the more frantic. After cursing under her breath, the girl began digging around her purse as I sat calmly analyzing her. She was a peculiar woman, to say the least. Curly ginger hair that covered the shaved sides of her head, a pale complexion with light freckles sprinkled across her cheeks, and heavily mismatched eye-liner outlining her Hershey brown eyes. As for her apparel, she wore a black-and-white collared dress with wing-tipped bowling shoes, giving her a homeless Wednesday Adams look. After a while of digging around in her purse, she pulled out a packet and plopped it down on the desk in front of me. “I need to talk to Dr. Billsby!” She over enunciated. I scribbled on a piece of paper: I’m not deaf. And handed it to her. I opened the packet she put down and saw the name Kit Conrad typed on the upper right hand corner of the page, the title reading, Extra Terrestrial Influence on Human Evolution, and a large red D written at the top of the paper. “I need a higher grade than this. I talked to Dr. Sherry, and he told me to come to Dr. Billsby to help rewrite my paper.” He’s in China. Won’t be back until next Wednesday. I wrote. “Is there any way you could get in contact with him for me?” You have to wait until he gets back. “But I’m not going to be here next week. If I don’t get this grade up to at least a B, I’m fucked! I’m already on academic probation!” In a sudden outburst of rage, she hurled her bag across the room. A loud crack came from her purse as it collided with the book case, several books tumbling to the floor. “Shit….” She mumbled, as she hastily stooped down to clean up the mess. Even with her back turned to me, I could sense wave after wave of regret radiating off her like solar flares. Too many parties, perhaps. Too much alcohol. Regardless of what people say, two positives can sometimes equal a negative. Against my better nature, I decided to sympathize with her. After placing the books back in their designated spots, she turned around to find another note waiting for her to read. Leave your essay here. Come back tomorrow. It read. “Dr. Sherry said I had to work on it myself with Dr. Billsby.” I pointed to the line I just wrote. “Are you going to give it to Dr. Billsby?” She asked. I, once again, pointed to words I wrote. “Okay.... I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Cautiously, she backed out of the office, unsure as how to feel about leaving her essay with a mute stranger. As soon as I was sure she was gone, I began to skim her work. Lord, deliver me from red pens. Aside from lacking reputable sources that failed to support her thesis, and an uneven flow of writing, her paper was riddled with literary and grammatical errors that made Joel Schumacher seem intelligent. In layman’s terms, George Clooney’s Bat nipples were a more feasible concept than this girl’s essay.

It’s important for people to understand the importance of owning useless trinkets. Things of sentimental value that serve no purpose in life whatsoever. This concept is what hoarders rely on to keep themselves grounded. It’s important for them to hold on to their dead father’s chipped wooden cane. Own an aquamarine basketball. A broken sphygmomanometer. Their old Beetleborg action figures. Because when the full force of that battering ram called life comes bursting through their front door, they’ll at least have something to distract themselves from the inevitable aftermath of doom and isolation. I sat and stared at her first page for over three hours. That’s one football game. One Peter Jackson movie. 36 cigarette breaks. That’s time I could have spent playing Dig Dug. Lord, deliver me from Ponchito’s delivery service. After that third hour, when I’ve become too scared to look at the clock, when my head is buzzing obnoxiously, that’s when I indulged in my old useless trinket of nostalgia: my mother’s old sticky Rubik’s cube. Although loose and faded, like my boss’s wife’s vagina, the Rubik’s cube provides me with an outlet to process all analytical thought. I have never solved it, even though there are tutorials available. Manuals. Youtube videos. Swiveling those sides around, I make sure to complete one side at a time. First red, then white. Green. Yellow. Blue. Orange. With each side completed, I erase five years of my life. With each swivel, I get one step closer to nirvana. Peace. Tranquility. Bliss. Once I finish that last side, I can feel hope and confidence fill my body like a drink. Hope, after all, is the poison our souls thrive upon. I returned to my desk and spun around in my swivel chair, a 7-year-old boy again. The first sentence in any written work is the most important. It grabs the reader’s attention, sets the tone for the rest of project, represents the passion of the writer. That is why one must never begin an essay, an article, a journal, with a question, because then their passion is under scrutiny. It soils the whole fucking thing. The next day at the office, as I switched out the inept professor’s pills with Viagra, Kit entered, her low-hung shirt revealing a large Medusa tattoo on her chest. Her way of warding off perverts, I imagined. “What are you doing?” She asked. I held up my finger, indicating for her to wait as I switched out the last of my boss’s medication. From under the desk, I pulled out her newly revised essay and plopped it on the desk in front of her. She grabbed it tentatively as I returned to my mundane office duties, which consisted mainly of me watching Family Matter reruns. Kit skimmed through her new essay, her new life. “So that’s it?” I yawned silently while Urkel on screen exclaimed, “Hiya, big guy!” Dead people laugh and cheer in the background. The magic of 60 year-old laugh tracks. They can break awkward interactions, enabling a pristine environment of relaxation and glee. Before exiting the office, she paused and turned back to me. “Give me your number.” She demanded. “In case I have questions.” If I must be honest, dear reader, while my initial reaction was to ignore her, feign apathy to the highest degree, I couldn’t help but panic. With no excuses to give, the only thing that occurred to me was to squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath, hoping beyond hope that she would just go away. This always happens when you voluntarily interact with others; they expect more. “Hello?” She said as I continued to hold my breath. 20 seconds passed and my lungs were already on fire. I never could hold my breath longer than half a minute. As the awkward tension grew, I counted off the last few seconds in my head, all the while keeping my eyes shut. 10 seconds left…9 seconds…8…. “Seriously, dude, are you deaf or mute? Hurry up and give me your number. I gotta go.” 7…6…5…4…. “Are you okay? You’re not breathing.” 3…2…. “Atom?” My eyes flew open as I inhaled sharply through my nose. Black stars twinkled at me as I turned toward Kit. Her chocolate fountain eyes couldn’t have looked more intense, more alluring, like my father’s home-made paella or Scarlett Johansenn’s cleavage. I hastily scrawled my number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. After she swiped the paper from my hand, she finally left, leaving me in a frozen state of shock. I never told her my name…. I thought.

Two weeks passed with relative gusto. Every day at noon I woke up, showered, masturbated, brushed my teeth, got dressed, read a book, and masturbated again before falling into a deep sleep. The bachelor’s paradise. Somewhere in that time I ate, and pissed, and watched TV, but I never had to interact with anybody. My own personal utopia. My Disney World. My ecstasy. It was a Sunday afternoon when Kit called me on my cell phone. Unlike most people, I like answering unknown numbers, if anything just to listen to telemarketers struggle in their pursuit of potential business. “Hello, sir. I’m Amy, calling on behalf of the [blah] [blah] company. We’re just calling to conduct our annual survey on home improvement services. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to [tra] [la] [la].” “Hello? Atom?” Kit’s voice rang out loud over the receiver. Silence. “Oh, right. You can’t talk. Well, listen I need you to meet up with me in an hour at Aristotle’s Thrift shop on 4th Street. Tap the mouth piece twice if you understand me.” And just like, after a moment’s hesitation, after eternity ended, I knocked on the speaker. Tap. Tap. If you’re a Y2K kid, you don’t know what a VCR is. You weren’t born when people took pictures with something other than their phone. You didn’t know a time when people wore large wayfarer glasses un-ironically. And you definitely don’t understand the concept of phat farm shoes. I was 2 minutes late when I entered the store. I tucked my messy hay hair swiftly behind my ears as I searched through the racks for Kit. “You’re late.” Came her voice behind me. The disgusting, putrid, beautiful smell of tobacco filled my nostrils as I twisted around to look at her. Kit, with her resting bitch face and connect-the-dot freckles, stood there with an electric cigarette between her lips, staring at me. Around the corner, a smaller version of her entered the scene, texting on her cell phone. Unlike her older sister, this little-er Kit had straight blonde hair and Mick Jagger’s body with B-cup breasts. “Mikal, this is Atom.” “’Sup.” Mikal said, not looking up from her phone. “Excuse me, miss. There’s no smoking in here.” A hipster in a beanie shouted to us from the counter. “It’s a vape.” “I don’t care. There’s no smoking in here.” Kit, thoroughly annoyed, turned to her little sister. “Meet me outside when you’re done. Talk to him, will you?” So that’s how she thought of me. I was nothing but a parrot to her, an infant, Stephan Hawking. She didn’t care about leaving her sister alone with an anxiety riddled glossophobic pill popper. After exiting through the front, Mikal put her cell phone away and finally looked up at me. She smiled, encouragingly as if I were at a job interview, on a witness stand, as if I had to choose between two divorcing parents. That smile that says, “It’s okay. Take your time...bitch.” After giving me a thorough up-and-down inspection, she looked back up at my klingon forehead and asked in a high-pitched voice, “You speak sign language?”

There are people in life who end up being subconsciously regarded as secondary priorities. They are the people their friends talk over. Their jokes never get a laugh. They’re always forgotten (unless someone needs a shoulder to cry on). They’re always cut in line. Constantly getting stood up. Canceled on. These people are the visible invisibles who help bring up social moral. They are the perfect sidekicks, assistants, shoe shiners. Their sole purpose in life is to be the perfect foot rest. This phenomenon is something I commonly refer to as the Clark Kent Effect. They are crucial instruments in the pursuit of progress. They hide in plain sight for all to see, but are never valued. They are the nickels and dimes you find on the street, the chump change you need to do your laundry. That was the life I led for twenty odd years. That is, until I met Star, the deaf Canadian heart throb with the heart of bronze. I never liked to confess that I lost my virginity to a woman with a stripper’s name but I have to admit the memory of the occasion always brings a small nostalgic grin to my face. I’m always reminded of her at the strangest of times, like when I watch a Jim Carrey movie, or pour maple syrup on French toast, or when I sit in a Brookstone massage chair. Her face swims clearly in the forefront of my mind. On our first night together, with the hospital bandages muffling my gasps and moans, her mouth expelled noises that sounded like a constipated hippo or the tantrum of a down syndrome kid. It was a very instinctual time in my life, instructional, daresay even inspirational. Not only did I learn music theory through vibrations and how to overcome pregnancy scares, but I also became fluent in American Sign Language.

I nodded at Mikal, and signed, Do you? Yes. She replied. She was still looking at my forehead, giving that too-innocent smile some high school girls do at times. I read the essay you wrote for Kit. Your writing is really organized. She signed, as she finally looked me in the eye. Unlike her sister, her eyes are cold and grey, not matching the rest of her young, vibrant face. How old are you? I asked. 16. She looked back down at her phone to send a quick text. “I’m gonna go try this on. Come on.” Mikal suddenly said aloud, indicating to the sun dress in her arms. Like her sister, she had a natural instinct to command. Without objection, I followed her. I took a seat outside the fitting room on one of the rickety chairs as Mikal pulled one of the curtains shut behind her in the fitting room. The sound of a zipper being undone, followed by her jeans falling to the floor. My eyes couldn’t help screaming pervert and out-of-state again as I looked at the smooth pallid skin of her ankles. “Atom.” Mikal called, as she poked her head out from behind the curtain. “Come here. I need your help.” I looked around, making sure it was clear to approach the room. This is how people inadvertently become sex offenders. If it’s not a drunken piss in the park, it’s being lulled into dangerous situations by high school girls. As I reached the curtain, she grabbed me by my shirt and yanked me inside the room, pulling the curtain close. She wasn’t wearing the dress. I had a fleeting view of this 16 year-old girl in her mismatched bra and panties before covering my eyes shut. “Atom, it’s okay. You don’t need to close your eyes.” Brain damage begins to occur after five minutes without oxygen. I can only hold my breath for 30 seconds. Lord, deliver me from Vladimir Nabokov. 26…25…24…. “Atom, relax. Nobody’s going to come in.” 20…19…18…17…. “Come on. Give me your hands.” Gently, she grabbed my wrists and pulled them away from my eyes. I kept my eyelids locked, though. Not that keeping my eyes closed would bar me from sex offender status. 13…12…11…10…9…. “It’s okay…It’s okay…” I could feel her getting closer, her thin body and soft skin pressed against my chest. Her warm breath not three inches from my face. She smelled like strawberry lemonade. 5…4…3…2…. And as I opened my mouth to breathe, her lips were on mine. Her soft, cracked lips feeding me the breath of life, her half naked teenage body wrapped around me like a blanket of seduction. Our tongues slithered together, moving from mouth to mouth, hungry for more, always more. And right then, at our most intimate, at our most vulnerable, the curtain swung open to reveal Kit. “Dammit, Mikal. You couldn’t wait do that somewhere more private?” “It was pretty private until you yanked opened the fucking curtain.” Mikal grabbed her clothes and began hastily shoving them back on. My lips now tasted like strawberry lemonade. “I could see both your feet, dumbass. You were taking forever, so I came back to check on you. Did you talk to him?” Kit must not be a very good sibling if she wasn’t angry about a creepy 24- year-old man violating her teenage sister. Mikal looked at my reflection through the mirror, my strawberry lemonade colored cheeks and tousled hair projecting through my humility. Finger-combing her hair, Mikal asks me, “I have an 8-page essay that needs to be written by next week. You think you can write it for me?” And, just like that, in a thrift store fitting room with a blonde high school girl, my boner slowly receding, my lips gooey with strawberry lemonade chap stick, my career started.

Giancarlo Chico completed his MFA (Writing and Producing for Television, 2017) in the LIU Brooklyn TV Writers Studio, where he studied with Norman Steinberg. He also holds a BA in Communication (Radio-TV-Film) from California State University Fullerton, where he minored in Criminal Justice. Chico has worked as an emergency medical technician, a martial arts instructor, and a producer for a live news talk show. He has done script writing for Titan TV, video edited and produced for The Grio, worked as a freelance screen writer, and worked as a production assistant for WheelHouse Creative. In addition, he has been a background actor on multiple television shows and films, including the Netflix series Iron Fist and the feature film Ocean’s 8.

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