AMERICAN MARY officially out of print

My first novel, AMERICAN MARY, is officially out of print. The last 20 copies of the book that will ever be printed in this current form have been mailed to me in a cardboard box.

I feel somewhat sad but also at peace with it. Maybe the book will find life in a new form somewhere down the line, maybe it's a sign that I need to move on and finish that other thing I've been working on for years.

For now though, I'm happy I have some copies. My plan is to take the bulk of them with me to Philly, but I want to offer up some to y’all if you don't already have one.

I also have these fun wrapped candles that my dad designed with a prayer from the book printed on the back. There's only two, so the first two people to buy a book will get one mailed as a little bonus.

Bed Bath and Beyond

It’s the day of Trisha Paytas’ wedding.

Outside the church, I wait and drink from my Hydroflask. I am working as the bouncer.

David Dobrik shows up and I take a selfie with him. He immediately leaves.

Someone's 60 year old friend arrives and i am tasked with keeping an eye on him. We walk to the strip mall nearby to Bed Bath and Beyond.

There's a mom outside the store who is bribing a teacher to let her son into the school as a sophomore even tho he's on a freshman level. The school is inside Bed Bath and Beyond. We walk into the store and I see a small bird flying around. I reach up and extend a finger and the bird clasps onto me. I walk back outside through a turnstile exit and feel annoyed I have to exit this way. Once outside, I let the bird go.

ON GASLIGHT (1944)

“You’re not going out of your mind, you’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.”

It’s a bizarre ordeal to watch a movie you loved as a child with a new awareness, with the lived experience and familiarity of the issues being explored by the fictional characters onscreen. The magic goes away and, in my case, instead of the memories of feeling cool and grownup at slumber parties showing friends an “old movie,” the main character is now a mirror and it almost hurts to watch. I think it’s important to do this though, to revisit beloved cinema with the maturity to appreciate it in a different way.

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Video 1 of apafshsty premiering in 30 minutes

Last week during my little vacation I posted some videos on youtube, and I think I'm going to just start making a habit of updating the ol youtube channel. This week I'm posting a new short poem video every day. You can watch the first one, "premiering" in about 30 minutes (will go live at 1:30pm PST today) here.

I had a post typed out but my power went out due to the California fires, and not, as PG&E explained in their automated message when they called, because they do a shit job maintaining their equipment.

Get a copy of the book here: https://checkout.square.site/buy/NYDGJKGZEBGJBAN6EZ4O5FJ6 Alexandra Naughton reading an excerpt from her book 'a place a feeling...

The dead thing under my house

Two weeks ago I had a sleep paralysis episode combined with a scary hallucination. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the sound of footsteps on the crunchy leaves below my window, and another sound that I intuited as a body being dragged.

I knew I was dreaming, that this wasn’t real, but sleep paralysis hallucinations can seem extremely real while they’re happening. In this case, I could see the window, I could see my room around me, and I could hear movement coming from outside. I tried shaking it off and closing my eyes to go back to sleep, but when I closed my eyes I heard two voices outside my window, arguing about where to hide the body.

At this point I was sure I was having an auditory hallucination, but it was still very scary. I kept my eyes open and listened for more. I heard what sounded like a shovel disturbing the leaves and soil directly below my window. I saw a face looking into my window. I told myself it wasn’t real and eventually went back to a normal sleep, and when I woke up the next day I chalked up the experience to watching Murder Mountain and Unsolved Mysteries right before going to bed.

Fast forward several days later, when I started smelling this awful smell. My neighbors to the back of my house, right across the fence, have a dog who they don’t clean up after. In the summer, I often cannot open my window in the back of the house because the breeze that wafts in stinks like sun-heated dog shit. It’s quite unpleasant, and at first I figured that's what this was, but the smell got worse as days passed and I began to suspect that there might be something wrong with my sewer pump. I told my landlady about the smell and my guess as to the source and she had a plumber come out to check my sewer pump and the plumber found no issue, but said that the smell was similar to that of a dead animal and recommended a pest control specialist to help.

Two days later a pest control team showed up to evaluate the situation. They determined that there was indeed a dead animal somewhere under my house. They went under the house and removed the dead animals, then used a disinfectant soap to clean the crawlspace under my house, then sealed off the entrances to the crawlspace. The smell went away almost immediately.

Afterward, I asked the pest control team if I could see what was under the house. I had spoken to my mom while they were working under the house, and she told me to let her know what the workers found. They were hesitant to show me, and asked me if I really wanted to know. I told them that I am an adult and could handle it. They brought a bucket over to me where I saw the dead body of a medium sized opossum, and a rat that had gotten caught in a trap and went under my house to die. It was a pretty awful sight. I wasn’t grossed out, but I was sad. I was especially sad to see the dead opossum. I texted my mom to report on the findings and she texted back, “ew gross.”

I enjoy the wildlife that roams around in my yard during the day and at night. A small murder of crows has been hanging out in the big pine tree and I like watching them fly around and talk to each other from my window. Up until somewhat recently, I would regularly see skunks, opossums, and raccoons stroll through the yard after sundown. Sitting on my stoop in the evening and smoking a spliff and chancing upon a critter encounter from a distance were times I looked forward to. I even wrote about these somewhat magical experiences for The Fanzine back in 2018.

When I saw the dead opossum, I was a little heartbroken. I hope no one in the area is using poison to “control” the wildlife that they see as pests. There are other ways to keep opossums and skunks and raccoons from disturbing your yard, solutions that don’t subject unsuspecting animals to a cruel and torturous death. Poisons also affects other wildlife, like owls and hawks and other predator birds. I don’t understand why anyone would use it.

Anyway, I started writing this post because I was trying to link my dream of a body being dragged outside my window to the foul smell I noticed several days later. Maybe it was my subconscious predicting something, or making sense of something it already knew. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.