rebecca seung

I met him yesterday and forever ago. He was the kind of boy I had been dreaming about all of my life. He saw me as I was and as I wanted to be, and in that reflection, I fell drowning into a sea of thoughts and feelings I had denied myself for years. The kind that tears your soul apart to make room for more, where the pleasure washes over in sharp jabs of pain radiating outwards from the middle of your chest, only to drip down to form muddy castles of longing and despair. He turned everything upside down and left me to hang, the blood draining to my head and clouding my vision, while the bruises on my thighs slowly faded, as did my memory of him. 

The speed flows up my nose and down my throat, a poor substitute for the usual kind of powder, but it’s all that’s left tonight. The fridge mocks me, laughing at it and my belly’s emptiness, and my unusually clear and sober headedness is just rubbing the reality into the wound of addiction. I’m just bored, I repeat, as if that changes something. She glances at me with a look that buckles, and I hand over my last twenty for a chance at that bittersweet drip. The avarice in her eyes convinces me to go home, but her boyfriend lies prostrate across the floor, lazily tapping a beat on the wooden floor boards, and all I can think is, what else am I gonna do tonight. 

my home is the road, and i’m stranded by the side of the city

PAGE 1, full page panel:

Urban fantasy, so a little gritty, city scapes in the back. But fantasy-esque characters. I’d like to see a full vertical of a man in a traditional heroic pose but with a leather jacket and boots, with a guitar in one hand, holding it like a bloody sword or a decapitated head.
Narrator: The knight was on a quest for a quest. The world had only given him one punctuation mark. His vocabulary only held five words. He only liked to use one of them.

PAGE 2, three horizontal panels:

Man playing a show on stage, head thrown back and screaming into the mic. Eyes closed, sweat on his face.
Narrator: Night after night, he asked the world.

The audience crowd surfing and moshing, just bodies flailing.
Narrator: But night after night, they asked it back to him.

An old beat up tour van. Perspective from the driver’s seat out the window at the road ahead.
Narrator: And day by day, he’d traverse the countryside.

PAGE 3, nine square panels:

A roadie talking to the man. First panel is the roadie, carrying some gear. Almost lugging it behind him, hurrying to catch up. The second panel is the man, halfway between the second and third panels (like a triptych), carrying his guitar out of case. The third panel would just be one of his legs stepping through.
“Where are you going next?”
“Wherever I end up.”

Same thing going back the other way, but empty handed. This time, the man is fully in the third panel and there is an empty space between the two people.
“What are you looking for?”
“Whatever I find.”

Going the same as the first row, left to right, the roadie is hurrying, almost yelling out, perhaps mostly in the second panel but a foot still left behind in the first one. The man is completely out of frame.
“Why are you doing this?”

Outside, the heady heat of summer came down in rays of fire, burning my already darkened skin and leaving trails of salty sweat down the back of my knees. This city is schizophrenic, I decided, and today, in its most sadistic, it tested me and the blisters on my feet. I stumbled over the railroad tracks, slipping and falling as the passenger cars rolled past, full of expressionless faces, worn smooth like the pebbles on a beach, too weary from the push and pull of the struggling tide. The blood ran down my arm to mix with the still salty sweat, but I smiled and kept walking. I’d be meeting my longtime sweetheart soon, and he would take me in his warming embrace to rock my worries away.

My boots clicked out a rhythm on the sidewalks with each step singing a song of adventure. Where they take me, I never know, but they’re always the first to find out. I turned a corner and saw the flickering lights of the discount liquor store, went in, and got a bottle of the cheapest whiskey they had. Two dollars and some change lighter, I whisked my paper bag to the alley and took a long pull. The familiar warmth comforted me, as I cooed quietly, “Hello, lover.” The open mouth gaped back, still wet from my sloppy kiss, and I took another pull. A breeze blew through the empty alley, rustling the trodden paper bags that littered the corners like a monument to every other drunk louse finding that sweet but fleeting release from whatever ghosts drove them to seek refuge in the shadows of the world.

I’m like the empty room you paid for tonight. Used and discarded like a pair of soiled panties. Well, I know your tongue is tied, even though your hands wander freely. Your dusty words keep changing, even though the story stays the same. But I still watch you when you’re not around and listen to your heart race for someone I’m not. I know it’s a fool’s fate, but I’m just masochistic enough for that. Because why do you tease me so? I love you, don’t you know?

a little boy sat in the corner, watching me while away

i don’t know what he saw in me, but here’s what he had to say

“color me pretty with these big blue eyes

read me a story that forgotten time defies”

—drawn by Atreus Sacco, colored with a 24 pack of crayons

I crossed the street heading towards my first day on a new job, leisurely strolling so as to enjoy the last of my cigarette. I walked into the thrift store and spoke with the cashier. Another woman came out from the back, and I followed her to the warehouse of women, cackling away while they sorted through mountains of other people’s unwanted goods. I went through the usual paperwork and was sent to the racks to hang clothes for the next six hours. Once in awhile, they’d point out a stain or a tear and throw it away. Sometimes they’d toss it just cause it was ugly, and every time I saw the trash cans fill up and get rolled away, I’d cringe just a little. But then, I’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past week. A little dirt on my jeans is nothing I’m not used to. 

As I got into the rhythm of hanging, my mind started wandering. Sometimes a stack would come in that would make me wonder what those people were like and why they were giving these clothes away. The really big pants—weight loss? The scrubs—career change? I could inflate the empty suits with characters in my head who would tell me their stories. 

“Yeah”, says the haggard, middle aged woman, pausing to cough and take a drag from a Virginia Slim. “I worked over at a hospital in Midtown for eight years. Too hard for too little until some upstart med student got me fired for something I didn’t do. Best thing that’s ever happened.” She smiles a smile that makes her look 10 years younger. “Couldn’t wait to get rid of those ugly ass pastel uniforms. Like fucking straitjackets.” I finished the pile and moved onto an old lady who had probably died. Well, here was a piece of her that would get to keep on moving about this world. 

The speaker blared, bringing me out of my imagination. “All employees to the floor.” Walking around and straightening the disarray of low end shoppers, one of the other women signaled for me to follow and slipped a summer sausage into my jacket. I looked at her quizzically, but she just winked and went back to picking up hangers. I shrugged and followed suit. Fifteen minutes later, I clocked out and walked the mile to my favorite coffee shop on this side of town, smiling now and then when I realized this was the first job I hadn’t had to talk to single customer. “This,” I thought, “I can get used to.” I ordered a coffee, even though it was already getting late, but if I had to stay up all night since I had no home to go back to, then I would need the caffeine. A deep sigh at the thought of working on no sleep, and I resolved to find an apartment as soon as I got my first paycheck. “One thing at a time,” I said to no one. The middle aged woman in the back of my mind laughed. 

Meeting _______

I passed him in the darkened venue, heading to the bathroom to take a pull from the cheap whiskey I had snuck in my purse. He stopped mid-step, turned, and stared, but my mind was too sober to deal with mistaken conversations. Surely, I thought, he thinks I’m someone else. The night went on and the whiskey haze settled in. His band got on stage, and I moved up front to sway with the masses, eventually sitting on one of the monitors so my barefeet could find a minute of respite from the wild thrashing of the pit. Once again, I made my way to the bathroom, and again, I passed him, but this time curiosity and drunkenness compelled me to stop. 

“I’m ____. I know I gave you a weird look earlier, but I think you’re beautiful. Walk with me?” He didn’t have to ask twice. I smiled and followed him to an empty back area, chatting along the way about the usual nonsense. A minute later, he’d lean in to kiss me. His face was warm and a light stubble rubbed the skin around my mouth so that I could still feel it lingering for the rest of the week. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first laid eyes on you.” I still have dreams about that kiss. 

the lost boys scatter into the foggy morning

curfews of conscience on an uneasy stage

their empty silhouettes dissolve into dreams

to come crashing down with angry bolts of laughter

For once, I’m going to be straight. I was raped. More than once. Molested more times than anyone needs to know. Do you want to blame me and say I led them on? Or pity me and the unfortunate things I’ve experienced? Well I don’t care what you think. It didn’t happen to you. Because yes, I knew these guys wanted to fuck me, but that’s nothing new. I’ve dealt with so many drunken passes, I know how to deflect them when I want to. And I’m strong enough to move on. If anything, it’s the stubbornness in me that says, “fuck you, I don’t care what you did to my body, you’ll never touch me”. And while I wish that was completely true, it’s not. I mean, I’m a trusting, open person, so I won’t learn from these mistakes. How much would I miss out on if I worried about danger all the time? And there are other relationship pasts that make me so goddamn guarded all of the time, but I also know that I’m not okay with what’s happened. All I want to do right now is crawl into the backseat of my car with a bottle of whiskey and drink. But I won’t because I have things I want to do tonight, and fuck me if that dick is going to stop me. The most disappointing thing is that of the few people I tried to talk to, no one seemed to really understand. But then, they’re all men, and in this, I think a woman is necessary. There’s a boil that’s been building, and it needs to be lanced before I fuck some shit up and do something stupid. Because why does having an interesting conversation with someone of the opposite sex have to lead to fucking? Why can’t I hang out with a guy without everyone thinking that I’m going to have sex with him? But then the reality of it is, I probably would. 

A series of shorts that I deemed incomplete for an individual posting. Perhaps one day, I’ll work them into something bigger, but trying to force them into something they aren’t is futile. 

And the dogs sit outside muttering insanities only veterans understand. 

Frustration eats away slowly over time like tiny microbes on the belly of a sunken ship. 

The ones who have been doing it for years; the ones who have never stopped. 

If I keep going down this road of self-destruction, I’ll kill myself. And I’d rather not have that ever be my only option because I’ll take it, and I don’t want to have to resort to that. Dying from my lifestyle is acceptable; dying from a lack of one is not.

Replay the evening, the awkward glances, the quiet shuffles, remembering that it’s all a joke. Walk alone, the shoes don’t fit, and wonder why it’s all a joke. The needle waits at the end of the record, and when the bed gets cold at night, replay the evening. 

I wake up every morning in a different place, sometimes alone and sometimes not. They say I’m crazy, and maybe that’s true, but I’m also happy, and that’s a better truth than stability and success and those other s-words like succotash because what’s the point in trying when all the catchy one-liners get strung together and looped like a cheap set of costume jewelry.

It’s too cold in Nashville, even the buildings are shivering. 

“I’m in love with my best friend, and I’m cheating on him with my husband.” I said that once, but that was so long ago, and now I have neither. Now? Now, my heart’s racing, trying to get a head start, knowing I’ll drag my feet the whole way because sometimes I forget how to love, and then sometimes I pretend to remember. 

The singers, the players, the poets, they leak out of the seams of the city, flooding into the bars with hands out-stretched like the communion-goers on Sunday, begging for scraps of aesthetic validation. “Band Tips”, the jars read, but it might as well say “Will Work for Food”. The drunkenly glazed expressions blur the lines until whatever’s left is up your nose, and the rest avoid eye contact, too busy searching for a sign from someone that the rules won’t apply just this once. But the goods are exchangeable, so the jars stay empty while the world keeps walking by and waiting. 

This is another comic book script, written slightly differently, but intended for illustration. Set in a near-future world of sky cities, where technology takes care of everything, even death, and wealth is based on individual contribution, it’s a piece of a much larger story that keeps playing out in my head. 

The artist sits alone in his room, surrounded by half finished pieces and cigarette butts. The room is small and simple. There’s an unmade bed in one corner. The rest is art supplies. It’s dark outside. He’s wearing a bath robe. I’d like it to start as a wide frame of his room with him in the corner of the frame on his bed. It slowly pans closer and closer to him, showing the expression on his face. He is a side note in his own story. The frustration is palpable. He takes a drag on his cigarette, looks at it for a second, and puts it out on his arm. His face looks bored and distant. “What’s the fucking point. This will be gone by morning.” He flicks it into a nearby ashtray, stands up, stretches, and grabs his suit. He stares into the bathroom mirror and sighs. “Another date with dissatisfaction? Why, sure. Thanks, me.” He winks, gives a comical smile, and puts his mask on. The hallway is empty as he walks to the elevator. He steps in. “The Street Corner,” he says. Things flash behind the windows as the elevator begins to move. The doors open to a darkened room. He walks in. A bar lined with food replicators stands in the center, but the corners stay dark and mysterious. Pairs of eyes stare as he pass. A moan is heard. He heads to the bar and orders a “dissatisfaction”. It comes in a fish bowl. He circles the room searching for a vacant spot and catches glimpses of all sorts. A pair of legs with fishnet stockings unfold and step forward to reveal a woman with cybernetic hips. She leans in and whispers, “If you’re in want for a Muse, I’m just the thing. A quick dab from your paint brush and you won’t be able to stop your creative juices from flowing.” He turns to face Galatea. She smiles, takes his hand, and leads him away. He follows obediently.

He sits on the edge of a chair. It’s an old, wooden, uncomfortable looking thing. It stands in the middle of an empty room. Galatea stands in front of him. She smiles a sweet, merciful, soulful smile. He fidgets on the chair, and she slaps his face. He stares back with a look of disbelief. Her face is now a hardened, angry, passionate snarl. He begins an outraged tirade, “What the fuck?!  Look, maybe you’ve got the wrong…” but she stops him. Ignoring his protests, she starts in on a story. I’d like the page split horizontally, with the story being played out as she tells it in smaller frames on the bottom, and one big one at the top of what’s happening in the room, which is mostly just torture.

“There’s a story I like to tell, maybe you’ve heard it. There was, many, many years ago, a man named Pygmalion. He was an artist, a sculptor to be exact. He loved his craft, spending hours molding the clay in his hands, shaping every finger, every eyelash. His sculptures were so beautiful and so realistic, men and women would flock to see them and swear they were real women standing very, very still. But, Pygmalion hated women. He wanted nothing to do with the fairer sex, choosing his art over love. One day, he was working on a particularly exquisite piece of a young woman. (Disdaining women, naturally, he was obsessed with them.) He spent ages working on this statue, a little here and a little there. Eventually, he stopped. The woman was finished. And it was so beautiful, the gods themselves did sigh. He fell in love with her, and he named her Galatea. He’d dress her up and bring her gifts to lay at her feet. He’d lay in bed next to her and stroke her arm, only to feel the cold clay beneath his hands. He hated himself for doing the one thing he had sworn he would never do. And yet, he had become her slave, to pine away after the one woman in the whole world who could never love him back. The weeks became months, and months became years, and he hadn’t even touched another sculpture since he finished her. But he knew he couldn’t continue this way. In the end, when he could no longer live if she could not touch him back, he went outside and threw himself off a cliff.”

Switch to Galatea’s face. “Now maybe you’ve heard it told differently, but I think I should know how that story goes, at least. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” The artist nods and whimpers, but she slaps him again, “LIAR!” She puts on a strap on and kicks over the chair. “Now, this is going to hurt. This is going to hurt a lot. But then, life hurts. It’s learning to relax this pretty little ass of yours and enjoy the ride.” She slaps his ass and laughs out loud. “There you go, it’s not so bad. Don’t resist it. Accept it. Accept me; accept yourself.” She twists one of his arms behind his back. She pulls out a knife and cuts one of his fingers off. He screams, as his balls tighten and blood starts spraying on the floor. “These hands are a gift. If you can’t use them, then you don’t deserve them.” She cuts off another finger. There’s blood pouring down his back, and tears streaming down his face. “Most of us would kill to have your talent.” Another finger is lost. “Most of us have,” she whispers. And another finger goes. “But you, you’re so fucking self-absorbed that all you see is your own ‘dissatisfaction’.” His last finger on his drawing hand is loped off. “Well, this is my gift to you.” She pulls his head back, exposing his neck. She runs her knife across his throat as blood spurts out. “Use it well.” The scene ends with a close up of his mangled hand. 

2010 was the weirdest year ever, even beating out 2006, but here’s to resolutioning 2011 to be even weirder.

I want to learn an instrument and play a show so I can go on tour and whine about it.

I want to ride a train to New Orleans in the summer when the air’s so hot and heavy, I can barely walk, visit the graveyard on the gulf, drink whiskey like it’s tea and tea like it’s whiskey, which really just means a lot of both, and spend the night in one of those old Southern haunted houses I see on tv. 

I want to go hike down a beach, barefoot and bikini-ed, to collapse at the end of it, with a friend and a bottle of spiced rum, fucking loud enough to call the whales, falling asleep beneath the stars, and waking to run naked into the ocean.

And I really want to see aliens.

Meeting Jello

I arrived in San Francisco at night, the lights twinkling below, like all the shooting stars fell here on Mission Street, bringing their abandoned, misplaced hopes with them. The city reeked of marijuana and castaway ideals, until my head started reeling and all I saw was sleazy sixth and the zombie parade. A moist wind greeted me as I stepped out of the cab and into the bar, but I avoided the door fee with a poor man’s plea, and moved back into the darkness at the corners of the venue to watch and wait for the music to start. I never would have noticed him, but after the show, someone pointed him out. “That’s Jello Biafra,” he whispered. Nodding, I looked back to see the last couple people trickling out of the bar. One of the women in the group rolled her eyes, “You live in San Francisco, you’re going to see Jello.” Someone else chimed in, “He broke my cigarette! He just walked up, broke my cigarette in half, and told me I’m too young to smoke. That dick.” A little commiseration and a bummed cigarette later, we leave the bar, still joking about our run-in with Biafra. The next night, I’d meet him again, more formally, but it wouldn’t matter. As someone would observe later, “people get famous, all they wanna do is talk about themselves.”