C.A. Coffing
Audit
To date is relatively simple. We make an agreement to go out. With a friend’s brother. A roommate’s cousin. The guy who caught our eye across the counter — the one with the charming smile. Our college advisor’s son. He’s always liked you. You’re close to graduating, aren’t you? The manager at our work. A coworker. A coworker’s friend. We meet them. Or they pick us up. We have dinner. A cocktail. A beer. We converse. The waitress flirts with them. They lean in knowingly. The waiter gives us a wary look. Or looks down our shirt. Or both.
We have a drink. They order another. We excuse ourselves, use the restroom. Tidy up. A new drink waits for us when we return. It sparkles in the glass, reflects the lights of the room. Soft music plays. Loud music plays. Others talk around us. The buzz works itself into our brain, which grows increasingly fuzzy and weak. Can’t think. Let’s go. Shall we? We stand unsteadily, grateful for the hand on our arm or our waist. The world twists ever so slightly.
We are on our backs. On a bed. On the floor. In the backseat of a car. On the grass in a field. No. Stop. I don’t want to. Words with no sound. We stare up at the ceiling. The roof of the car. The night sky with its whispering stars. We cannot move our fingers. We drift until the grogginess lifts.
A pile of condoms on the nightstand. No condoms on the nightstand. Wet grass beneath us. Wet sheets. Stains on the carpet. They are naked. We are naked. We are partially naked. They are clothed. Our clothes in a pile on the ground. Our clothes half on our bodies. Our clothes clumsily replaced. A button gone. I’ll take you home. Now we stand with half memory. I’ll walk. I’ll call a friend. I’ll find my car. No thanks. Why do we say the thanks when we refuse?
We tell someone. We tell no one. We report it. We don’t report it. We don’t even think about reporting it. We forget. We never forget. It defines us. We defy it. We are it. We are not it. It lives inside of us like a sharp stone. We are alone. We are not alone. We carry it as we pass in crowds, in theaters, in bars, sit with it in churches, on park benches, enshrouded in the ordinary.
Jacob’s Breath
AIDS hitting the city didn't scare us. It terrified us. But instead of hiding, we were even more determined to live, to revel harder in the underground of the banal world. Friends, co-workers, and relatives stopped calling, stopped working with us, stopped inviting us to dinner. They didn’t want us to use their toilets, finger their books, or eat from their cutlery. They loved watching us dance, but from a distance. They didn’t want to touch us, lest they get it.
I know the feeling of bare feet on damp grass after a rare spring rain. I know the feeling of twirling, my arms wide and open, beneath a blossoming cherry tree. I know what it is to have danced on the edge of the fountain in Central Park, while the angel opened her arms and released flowing water. While the saxophone player folded melodies into the warm May twilight. I have been naked on a rooftop on Twenty-Third and Steinway, dancing in the light of a perfect morning.
He lies still. He no longer wants to talk. Jacob, whose perfect body has forsaken him. Who once performed on the city’s biggest stages, now lies with protruding cheek bones wrapped in thin flesh. Jacob, whose family disowned him, never having watched him leap across the Marley floors of the finest theaters. Jacob, who loved so many until loving, became like crossing a field of wildflowers and landmines. Jacob, whose eyes will close to the New York City skyline and whose belongings they will put on the sidewalk, because no one will want anything that’s left behind. The garbage truck will take his clothes, his furniture, his writings, his artwork, on a Tuesday. The Tuesday after Jacob’s last breath joins the swirling dust in the room and drifts out the open window into the cloudless sky of a perfect day.
Bleed
We hear the song first and scatter. Our feet in boots, sneakers, rubber flip-flops, or simply bare. We run to scour for coins, to search in drawers or fish through pockets for random quarters and dimes. Fifty cents. Seventy-five cents. The ice cream truck grows closer. The recorded song grows louder. Catch it before it turns the corner. We see it, the blue and red clown painted on the side, his mouth wide, ready to envelop an ice cream sandwich. The menu posted next to the sliding window. Nothing over seventy-five cents. Red and white stripes across the cab of the truck.
I choose a root beer popsicle this time. Brown and sweet with two sticks, and if I don’t eat it fast enough, it drips down my arm like flavored earth. My brother gets the Missile. He stares at me as he swirls it about his mouth, looking as if he could swallow it whole. He pauses; points it at me. Your legs are hairy, he tells me.
I look down at my legs sticking out of the tops of my red cowboy boots. Without a word, I drop my popsicle, letting its shape break apart on the hot pavement, and run as fast as I can to the house and up the stairs to my parent’s bathroom. I pull off my boots and grab my mom’s razor. I sit on the edge of the tub and dry shave my legs until I bleed.
C.A. Coffing has an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. A self-published novelist and playwright, her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere. She was a 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project Finalist, third prize recipient in Flash Fiction Magazine’s 2021 contest and a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her written work has appeared in live theatre showings throughout the Pacific Northwest, including a series of social/environmental justice themed plays for Reach for The Sky July, a program for at risk youth. She currently writes, teaches dance, waits tables, and dreams in a small river town.
