Sam Riviere

I think I always liked the game because it sounded like my name combined with the concept of alone. (My name really does mean “alone” in Slovenian!) We don’t actually care if it’s true, but we want to know the person telling us is telling us the truth. Say his name is “Hank,” as in, “of hair.” (It’s not.) My upbringing was classically smooth/chaotic, apart from traumatic events I’ve never detailed, even to myself. Traumatic but methodical. But why say what happened even. In the tech block the blinds were down and I cleared my way to the final marble under the indistinct gaze of an indistinct master. My success had allowed me to become the bastard I always knew I could be. What did it mean, to clean the board like this, counting down to one? By these gradual and orderly subtractions my persona was configured. The goal was to remain single. Sometimes telling you the truth wouldn’t be telling you anything much. For a while I’ve felt torpid and detuned, as if I want to share a view with you, so we can both be absent in one place. Look, the sky is beautiful and sour. I’m not here, too. I’m staring out of this cloud like an anagram whose solution is probably itself. I am only the method that this stupid game was invented to explain.

I felt suddenly convinced that I had feelings for the wallpaper. I was especially captivated by its blonde hair and bad dreams. I had the impression the wallpaper needed longer to properly 
respond. By the time I left, my affections had produced this abrasion on my cheek. People looked on the abrasion as unquestionable proof of my sincerity. The abrasion was produced by rubbing my face on the paper’s smooth surface. It only occurred to me later that it might have found this sensation disagreeable. But by then I had become known for my abrasion, and I seldom thought of, discussed, or in any way depended upon the wallpaper for anything. My affections, though, had produced upon the paper their own mark. To my irritation and gradual dismay, interest in the paper’s abrasion began to outweigh interest in my own; indeed, mine was starting to fade while the mark upon the paper had deepened with the passing of time. People liked to visit the paper in its room and probe their fingers into the widening tear, by now a gruesome black-edged wound. The silence of the paper during these incursions suggested to some condemnation of their curiosity, but to others implied approval. Some even speculated that the paper “enjoyed” the infringement of its surfaces, while most agreed it was a question of the paper enduring this indignity, having little or no opportunity to protest. Some visitors could not contain their enthusiasm, and over time other recesses were opened in the paper without its consent. The earliest admirers of the paper’s abrasion were heard lamenting the gulf between the paper’s current state and its previous appearance. They opined that to experience the abrasion now was to encounter a kind of mockery of the gentle and informal gesture it had once been. Others contended that while the paper’s condition was certainly different, it couldn’t be in any way “better” or “worse” than it had been 
originally; on the contrary, the paper, exhibiting as it did the marks of the affections spent upon it, was in every way a true record of the destruction this attention had wrought, and had become if anything a more moving testament, charting as it did the changing and accelerated passions of the times. In later phases of the paper’s deterioration some expressed admiration for the stoical indifference with which the paper withstood its abusers and wondered if such an attitude might not improve the willing and reciprocal style with which they and their contemporaries were accustomed to receiving each other’s gazes and caresses. Against the odds, this view seemed timely and took root in the populace, and to this day in all the estimations of historians and critics of culture it is widely held accountable for the period of dormancy and inertia among the youngest of our people, whose silence and repose has replaced the humors and rages of those whose desires had flown unchecked, who had coupled for so long with such energy and frequency.

For Sam Donsky The airport where all movies end: the scenery’s mobile, the people too (the people want to be moved), and the rounded stairways join set pieces like farewells in a series arc. I don’t understand how you write good scripts without knowing there are gods. I’ve learned the same things we’ve all learned: when a man runs through my hotel suite I can expect another half a second later. Also, tell me why I keep two keys, one of which unlocks something. Also, I know, we know, that you (hell-o) will have vanished before I finish saying this and turn around. “You’ll do that,” I’ll mention to the night, and spin my swivel chair, perusing the moment’s sunkenness. Meanwhile my antivirus angel is checking every file. We both know there’s a place you touch when your plane lifts off (I won’t say where), a little bolt that takes the plot apart, so closure is dismantled, because from here you can admit that nothing’s ever ended well. You have queued to show your documents. You have left behind your possessions for the kind scientists. The stairs have spun away and sunk, and in losing your itinerary your position is confirmed. Like, the first time a woman sees a diamond she just knows.

I dated mostly police. I hated coastal solace. In navy posts I flourished. I inflate the cost of polish. I restrained my nest-egg worries. On planes I tested patience. I prayed for lusty follies. I betrayed my foster family. In ways I lost my malice. I craved a cloistered palace. I dared say the feast was ghoulish. I became a tourist: boorish. Unswayed by mystic knowledge, I raised a frosty chalice. I was upstaged and roasted: English. I obeyed a ghost who’s tall-ish. The play was close to flawless. I stayed and missed her no less. Then one day the fester wasn’t. I cried: the taste was more-ish.