Here's My Writing Sample that Didn't Get Me into Grad School
Your cue, Kenny baby. The curtain is sliding open, there it goes, feel it, see the light, see the people, feel the beat, lead with pelvis, straight ahead. GO!
Ken impressed in a smart navy blue number with gold side piping finished off with stiff white collar and red tie with gold insignia. Through the glare he imagined himself ripping open his white shirt, buttons popping in slo-mo, and baring his chest for all to see. Maybe he would grit and flash his overly white teeth in that pained supermodel-as-cheetah kind of way.
But it wasn’t flashbulbs going off, just people opening their shades to the sun. He pushed the trolley down the aisle trying to avoid elbows and feet. The liquor bottles clattered below and the sea of heads lay ahead.
“Yes, I’ll have a coffee. With milk. No -- black, please. Black. No milk.”
Ken found himself muttering, “Black is good. That’s a real good choice, black.” As if that meant something or that he would “show her” for waffling on a beverage order. He poured her coffee with Katherine Hepburn precision and carefully placed it on top of a napkin on her tray table. Don’t spill. Steady. Don’t spill. Whew. Next.
The flight originated in Atlanta, a city Ken never thought about visiting let alone living in. It was now his hub and his home.
The plane was bound for Vienna and there Ken would have two days to himself to eat pastry or commit suicide. Now it was he who was waffling. The combo certainly would be an ideal way to go, he thought, handing a bag of pretzels, a ginger ale, and an embossed napkin to a freckle-faced nine-year-old version of himself in 14E.
“My pleasure, young man.” When in fact he realized he had no pleasure at all to bestow.
He pushed the trolley one more stop. For the thousandth time one more stop. The cartons of juice next to the ice bucket with the plastic bin liner began to blur as he started to fall asleep standing up. The captain’s announcement about the weather in Vienna saved him from a complete face plant. He hated morning service because of all the hot beverages. Not only because he was so shaky from alcohol and could easily scald someone into infertility, but because there were so many variations to juggle: sugar, no sugar, milk, no milk, sugar and milk, two Splenda and milk, and tea with more variations. A can of Coke was a can of Coke.
I really want to be dead right now. Can I just fall over and die and be put in the hold?
Suicide was not an option before, but things had changed in that nothing had changed. Ken had flatlined he felt, and aging did not make him wiser, just older. He didn’t want to be a burden, especially to himself. His parents were gone, his siblings had lives of their own and he was tired. Why would he want to keep this going? To fly more? To drink more? To live in rented stucco hell and become more invisible? One last time in Vienna, call in sick and overdose. Simple.
He had just celebrated his 49th birthday with friends before getting on this flight. Quite literally. It was another “oh shit!” moment while drinking vodka whatevers into the next day with Charlie and Robert and Owen when he realized his partying had run right into his needing to leave for work. Another long-haul hungover with no sleep. But there were some good pills for that. There was always a good pill for something.
Ken winced mid-aisle. He recalled blubbering on last night about getting old and having nothing and Owen telling him he could cash in, move to Thailand, take a young lover for cheap and forget all this career bullshit. Great, thought Ken, lechery and oblivion have come to Ken Marber Manor way earlier than anticipated. But in all fairness he and his friends used to joke that fifty year old gay guys replace sex drive with vast Franklin Mint plate collections and little dogs – back when fifty was ancient to them.
Forty-nine is a precipice on the journey/destination/age continuum where you either jumped or were grateful for the view. Kenny was breathing thin air and could only look down. Instead of seeing mountains and trees and gratitude all he could see were curling toes. Like a diver’s.
“Orange juice, please. Do you have a slice of lemon? I would like lemon with that, but only if you have it.”
“Certainly.” ‘Only-if-you-have-it.’ What kind of ass thing to say is that? What other way is there to get a fucking lemon wedge? Fuck. Ken hated passengers who tried to endear themselves even though he knew he was one of those people whenever he was a civilian. Fuck me, my head is splitting.
Fuck, I am hungover. He thought he needed to explain that to himself. But reeking of Burberry aftershave mixed with skin ooze stench required no explanation to anyone else. Vodka was supposed to smell like nothing, right?
If only the liquor bottles in his cart could clatter louder to drown out the thoughts, the reflections, the wince-o-matic recall of the night before. Did he really say that, do that, fuck that? He did. He did. And oh my God I did. I fucked Robert. That was not supposed to happen. After the cake when most people left and Charlie and Owen went to get high, Ken started making out with Robert in the living room. He then took him to his bedroom and fucked him.
To Ken’s left there was a sweet girl in the center seat next to her mom. Ken pegged her for an orange juice drinker. After so many years in the air he had developed a scary sixth-sense to know what most people would order. It was kind of a game that he sometimes mistook as possibly a marketable skill. When he saw her on the horizon over the water bottles his first thought was “I took your fifth grade teacher over the side of my bed about nine hours ago and fucked him up the ass. “ By day Robert taught ten year olds at Robert E. Lee Middle School. Nice. Are you really allowed to serve the public with that brain?
Ken remembered how he felt empowered by the act. How in his haze he was not a loser, an aged poof sliding into a velvet abyss, but instead a big pecs-out-to-here stud riding Robert bronco-style into the sunrise.
Ugh. Stoli, you evil wet nurse.
The floodgates in his head always seemed to burst open on a birthday and out poured all the stuff: 49, still renting, single, no savings of any kind save for some flab around his waist. His old friend Eamon liked to call him “post lanky.” I am a post lanky 49. Oh and an “orphan.” Ken would often throw that in when he needed the sympathy vote even though he supposed you couldn’t really become an orphan in adulthood, but it sounded like it would get more coins in the jar than “no parents.” And for a finale - “cancer survivor.” That always stopped ‘em cold. Leave me the hell alone; I’m a cancer survivor. He had had lymphoma when he was in his twenties, but it was all cured. Incidentally, after the all clear from Dr. Amici was right when he should have gotten his MBA. To recap: middle-aged, single, renting, post-lanky, cancer-surviving orphan.
And graying mustache. “49 with Graying Mustache Seeks…” Why didn’t he shave it? His sister was always on at him about that. She said it made him look washed out. But it was his Samson ‘stache, his Wonder Woman power cuffs. In truth it was his shoji screen or sensu hand fan used by all frightened geishas the world o’er.
Ken served a vodka and soda to the stud in the emergency row and thought maybe he might take his mustache off in Vienna to look better under a plastic bag. Everyone before he hits 35 should be able to look like this guy. Ken never went through the chiseled features muscle phase.
Moving on. Moving on. Look, don’t stare.
“Hey pal, get us a bourbon and soda and my wife will have a white wine.” Mr. Hey Pal was probably ten years younger than Ken. Married. Owned a home most likely. His parents talk about his kids to their friends on the tennis court when switching sides. More likely at a NASCAR race, Ken mused bitchily, but still.
All he needed now was to serve a beer to John Martin in Business. Remember that? “Wow, are you Kenny Marber from St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland? Good God, wow!” That was so awful. Ken’s high school arch nemesis. They were neck in neck for highest GPA, Ken had him by a point-five and was valedictorian, but handsome John with the Kennedy tooth-twinkle was class president. Of. Course. Ken won the elocution prize; John got the Christ the King Award for most all around student and he got the most beautiful cheerleader at Beaumont, Carrie McGovern. Ken was never really in the running for either of those things so he looked upon that as a wash.
Competitive much? Not much anymore.
“Sure I’ll get you a blanket just as soon as drinks service is over. Mmmm-kay? Wonderful.”
Ken thought as he got the pushy Cruella de Ville lady her sweater from the overhead bin, “If this were all a movie, where was the EXACT point, the SPECIFIC incident that one could pinpoint if one were to pull the film from the projector and circle the PRECISE frame with a waxed pencil where THE event–slash-moment that made all the difference between air-trolley pusher and let’s say fabulously successful lawyer or architect or film director, heart surgeon?” This film could have served as a handy visual aid: “Ken, whoa, right here is where you may not want to have this next drink.” Or “Here is where you might want to put the porn on pause and study for the GRE.” Or “No, take the less paying, more career-forward job. You don’t need to be making a whole $8.50 an hour right now.”
But Ken became a bank teller instead. CUT!
A 3.8 from Northwestern and now putting paper bands around stacks of singles. But it wouldn’t be forever, right? Certainly not, more years will pass and then you will become a flight attendant.
“You want the whole can? We don’t usually… Sure. Here you go, honey. You’re welcome.”
Samantha Vesper, on the other side of Ken’s trolley doing everything Ken was doing but backwards and in high heels (yuk, yuk), was a hot 27-year-old bottle blond out of Tampa who was realizing a dream to see the world while being kind of adored. It was all working for her. Almost as well as the skill she had at accessorizing with the airline-issued scarf and pin. She could practically make a bouquet of irises bloom forth out of her lapel the way she handled that faux-Hermes sheath. And tousled hair with hairpin. Yipes. If she wore black-framed cat eyeglasses she would be every straight guy in coach’s dirty librarian fantasy.
Sammy, as she liked to be called, did the eye gesture/head tilt to Ken’s three o’clock to the hottest guy on board the plane. As much as Ken agreed, he hated being treated like a “sistah” by the females on the crew. Especially since he was more like a “fatha.” Being one of the girls did not hit his fun place at all. And though he would probably like to go down on this guy, at this moment he wished the whole plane would go down instead. Hangover cured. Suicide averted.
“We haven’t had peanuts for four years.”
“It’s because some people are allergic. And even the peanut dust in the air can make people swell and choke.”
The wrinkled bulldog in the UT sweatshirt in row 25 behind piped up, “That’s a bunch of crap, frankly. The whole thing is a myth. Peanuts have been on airplanes since commercial aviation began.”
Ken hated this guy for making him get flustered and think to grab for pearls that were not around his neck. This is where he felt his mustache was blessed with secret powers to protect him from confrontation of any kind. He felt it had the power to spread out and cover his whole face like wisteria so he could just disappear. But it was really the hangover that slowed his thinking to a complete halt giving him the ability to just stare at Bulldog for an uncomfortably long time.
The women with the Amy Winehouse hair wearing the curved yellow paisley pillow blow up neck thingy right behind Bulldog saved the day. “My sister died from peanut dust inhalation.” Bulldog whimpered and apologized. He did not see Amy mouth to Ken “I’m just kidding.”
Thank you, lounge wench. Ken’s constitution could not handle this much excitement.
“Do you want the pretzels or not?”
C’mon mid-galley. I am almost there. Get me off this fucking aisle with these people.
They should tell all the new flight attendants in training that once you even think this thought you are sunk or need to be sent to the airline’s version of dry dock.
As soon as they got to the galley Sammy immediately started restocking the cart while saying to Ken, “Wasn’t that guy HOT!?”
“Which guy?” Ken replied hoping she didn’t mean grizzled peanut dust dude.
“He is just a dreamboat. My God, don’t you just love what we do?”
“I’m lovin’ it,” Ken remarked with Eeyore enthusiasm.
“Kenny, we are going to Vienna!” Sammy said as if it just appeared behind door number two.
“How many hauls have you done, Sammy?”
“Oh about twenty, but this is my first to Austria. I read up on Vienna and it is amazing. I am going as soon as I can to the Belvedere Palace. ”
Ken had underestimated Sammy.
“I want to go straight to the gift shop because I read it has the best souvenirs.”
Ken had not underestimated Sammy.
A two-day layover in Vienna. Ken had done this haul many times and kind of liked being there. There was little not to like about Vienna. It was beautiful, efficient and had good food. It also wasn’t home where one has to think about vacuuming and paying bills. Or how to discreetly recycle multiple vodka bottles. Maybe Sammy was right and they did have great job.
The hotel where the crew stayed was modest, but central and Ken always enjoyed that familiar “I know what you like and you know what I like” nod to Karl the young and severely tidy man at the front desk. It had never gone beyond that, but there is an almost Masonic nod in homodom that transcends any language or culture. Ken often wondered if without eyesight homosexuality would even exist.
It was 10am and Ken was staring into his bathroom mirror. He was in the middle of giving himself the usual “ya still got it in ya” pep talk and “who knows what will happen today” and “life is too short to have regrets.” There was the graying mustache that now looked incapable of anything. And the wrinkled skin that he never saw on himself except in the mirror. And the barrel chest. How did 28 become 49 so fast? And moreso, how did 32 become 48? He was rapidly heading towards walrushood.
Today Ken would do what he always does on these layovers: get out and walk around, look at young men, eat, read, wank, sleep. Almost the same thing he did at home. “Death in Vienna” meet “Death in Atlanta.”
Ken left the hotel and took a stroll down the Reichstrasse. He could hear Strauss waltzes being played all around him. For the tourists, sure. But it was glorious. Swoon-inducing. Anti-suicide. For in this moment as the sun hit his face and music filled his veins, he could feel the ice melting around his Grinchian heart and the hangover subsiding in his cabbage. For a brief time Ken could perceive life as happy and full of possibility. He could feel a home with someone and vacations together and retirement.
But he had felt this before. Even with someone. It was what kept the gun out of his mouth many times. But it always ended with a rug being pulled from under, Lucy yanking the football to the side. Him on his ass. Ass over tea kettle. Always. The idea of happiness was a fiction. It was fleeting. It was a hologram.
Vienna and this moment of happiness made him recall Adam. Why can a happy moment lead me to a painful thought every single time? Adam was the love of Ken’s life. They dated for a year and seventeen days. Adam asked Ken to move in. Finally the things that “EVERYBODY ELSE” had were going to be his: perceived stability, someone to go home with for the holidays, a shared bed. He would have a visual aid to demonstrate his “outness,” his “proudness” and his happiness. Adam was a successful gynecologist and Ken was a successful doctor’s wife. He felt he was saved. This relationship made up for all past mistakes. His knight in shining stirrups. And he never had to worry about Adam falling for one of his patients. But then Adam met a nurse and Ken was discharged. Why after five years did he still play out the court case of this injustice in his head? Exhibit A: He Said He Wanted To Marry Me. Exhibit B: He Asked Me To Move In With Him.
Strauss and Vienna managed to wrest him back away from this thought. The city was humming today. The sunshine illuminated the baroque architecture in the best possible way and the rows of trees lining the strasse stood like peacocks. The fountains were all working and the water spewing forth from the urns held by cherubs looked like it could wash away sins. In fact today looked like the day they would shoot the postcards for Vienna.
The elderly Austrian couples were smart in their tailored loden capes and proper hats as they strolled hand in hand next to their girthy American counterparts in horrible shorts and t-shirts with eagles holding American flags in their talons. Ghastly. “What happened to our sense of dress, of fashion?” thought Ken as he realized he was wearing saggy ass jeans and a navy polo shirt from the Macy’s men’s maternity collection. Not the worst look, but certainly not as smart as his Franz equivalent.
If I did this all over, I would live in Europe and dress well. That is what I would do.
Again with the “if I had this to do over” speech. The insidious thing about this speech is it is one Ken has recited for the past twenty-five years. At least. Twenty-five years is enough time to get five masters, three PhD’s, abs of steel and fluency in French. It is enough time to have been to India, recovered from two bad decisions, and bought a small second home in the country. Twenty-five years is enough time for any man who didn’t waste time with “if I had to do it over.”
Shut up and get some coffee, he thought. The hangover needed tending to via caffeine infusion and vampire-like avoidance to sun exposure. Simple: Café Hawelka on Dorotheergasse. This hangout of the intelligentsia was dark enough to develop film. Ken had once met a young Scottish writer there and they had sex in the alley. Ken thought it had a romantic Paris-between-the-wars feel, but it was really just sex in an alley.
Ein Kaffee, bitte. Ken rehearsed his German so he would not stumble. He hated stumbling. After gym in high school, he and humiliation were never good friends. He wanted perfection. With perfection he got paralysis. But he also lessened humiliation. Ein. Kaffe. Bitte. But what if they asked him a question after that? With milk? “Mit Milch?” he could handle, but anything else would just be like having his jock pulled up to his shoulder blades by Bobby Torres all over again. The exchange would only go well if everyone at the coffeehouse read their parts as Ken had written them. He would go in and toss up a “Guten Tag” and the woman or man would return serve with a Guten Tag. Ken would volley with an “Ein Kaffe, bitte. “ And then he could handle some form of spin like a Ja or a Kein Problem or even a Stimmt without fully understanding as it would be in the cadence of the filler between ordering and receiving that he would recognize and he could cover with a smile that was mostly “deer in headlights” in terms of not understanding, but would play like warmth and comprehension. But if they hit one that just skirted over the net like “Nice day we’re having isn’t it?” (They were Austrian, they wouldn’t say this.) or “We’re out of milk. Is black okay or do you want soy?” Ken could not dive for the shot, but only leap into the arms of the ball boy. And here we are, back at humiliation.
Maybe I will skip the coffee, Ken mused.
He knew the whole thing was ridiculous as they usually answered back to him in English immediately and his hope at being an international bon vivant on two years of German in high school and no effort after that would be dashed anyway.
This coffee dilemma fraught with fears and anxieties was the same fear other guys his age went through over having another child or climbing Half Dome he thought.
Perhaps he should skip the coffee altogether and just go straight to Freud’s house on Berggasse Strasse.
He was just at the door of Café Hawelka when he heard in a drawl that would bring the Ring Cycle to a quick and tidy finish, “Kennnnnnnny!! Weee Gates, Honig?”
“It’s Vee Gates, darlin’,” Ken mocked as Sammy and their fellow airhostess Bruno came up behind him.
“What are you two lovebirds up to?” Ken mused in that “quick think of a way to get out of here fast, stalling to think” way of speaking.
Bruno, who was from Germany but lived in Atlanta, was a young man with perfect teeth, hair, and skin. Ken wished he could suck the life force out of this guy, except for the German stoicism part. He just wanted the teeth, hair and skin part. But a sweet guy nonetheless if one could see through his stern Dieterness. Hard to pinpoint German charm, but it is there. It just had to be found and dug out like truffles.
Are you going in here to have coffee? Sammy said. No I’m going in here to chop the heads off of the patrons and piss into their necks. “Mind if we join?”
Bruno added “We’ll have coffee with you, no?” in German robotic. It was all so easily mockable, but the guy meant well and just was stiff in all the wrong places.
Café Hawelka, this haven for writers and artists, was a place Ken always felt was where one could let go of the realities of serving coffee for a living at 30,000 feet and sit and be served grandly at just above sea level. Ein Kaffe, bitte.
Upon seating, Sammy immediately ordered for the three of them directly in English, do not pass GO. Though she had a native German speaker in toe, this Mädchen from Florida just barreled on through and got a “coffee with whipped foam, light on the foam and if you have non-fat milk that would be great.” The waitress looked either stunned or just plain Austrian and nodded knowing Sammy would be getting a coffee with regular milk like everyone else.
“Kenny, hon what do you want?”
“A coffee with milk” Ken said in English to Sammy not even to the woman, feeling defeated and impotent on every level.
“He’ll have a coffee with milk” as if translating.
“And Bruno, honey, you want coffee with milk too?”
Bruno said something to the waitress in German and she half smiled and left with the orders.
All the rehearsing and an anticipation and fear and role playing Ken went through on the way up to the door of the Café Hawelka, just gone when the Tempest from Tampa came in with double shots of chutzpah, an ounce of ignorance and a foam topping of not caring and ordered for him. In English. Case closed.
Bruno and Sammy were headed to the Belvedere Castle as Sammy had said. Ken easily begged off saying he was going to the park to read. He would catch them later back at the hotel.
As they parted in front of the café, Ken knew already he would be going back to the hotel immediately. Here he was surrounded by all this beauty and all he could do was go and hide from it. He truly needed his head examined. And in the Mecca of therapy yet.
The walk back was pleasant enough, but Ken was dying to hide. He needed darkness and solitude. Flight attendant by day and stoic by night. But he knew he did not spend this time alone to celebrate God, but rather to hide from Him. This thought depressed him further and impulsively he crossed the street and went into St. Stephen’s Cathedral to light a candle for his parents as he often did on these trips.
The church glowed with gold and oddly flickering candles and smelled of old stone and incense. The temperature dropped a few degrees from the outside world. Cold enough to stay awake while praying. He didn’t participate on any public level with religion any longer, but kneeling and praying to something out there felt positive.
He hoped that God would not notice that Ken always lit a candle in front of the hottest looking saint statue in any church he visited. Yes, Virginia, some gays ARE really always thinking with their dicks. He found there was a high percentage of hot St. Matthews around the world for some reason. Wax candles were sadly no longer, so he inserted a euro and hit a switch to activate the electric candle in front of this hunky apostle. Ken knelt and got in prayer position. God, I hope Mom and Dad don’t know I picked St. Matthew for his sexy facial hair. There was always something nice about talking to his parents in a church. He felt they liked it and he sensed some sort of peace and connection. It was hard not having them around to stammer like a pre-schooler “leave me alone I am an adult” every time they called and tried to help. God, how will I ever get this guilt monkey off my back?
Ken’s head was filled with guilt, vodka residue and caffeine. A good night’s sleep would really sort things out. He was only suicidal, depressed, self-pitying and remorseful because he was tired and hungover. Sleep would restore hope. Tomorrow he would know exactly what to do. Though that would probably be to go to Alte Lampe, the Viennese gay vodka repository for the post-lanky. In other words a bear bar.
Oh hot St. Matthew please before I talk to my parents tell me if I should kill myself or go to bed.
There was a woman kneeling next to Ken. Probably around his age, but he liked to think older as she seemed to have it all going on. Lovely long honey-colored hair that seemed have been brushed a hundred times by faeries, an expensive camel coat, and a diamond wedding ring that was tasteful but could do some serious damage to ones windshield if she were provoked. She had Claddagh posts in her ears that Ken thought was odd as he had pegged her for Austrian, but maybe she had an Irish husband and he gave them to her. Mom and Dad were on hold for some reason as Ken checked this woman out like he was a police detective.
God! Please help me to have gratitude. God I am lost. I want to die. I want to kill myself. Don’t tell my parents. They would be more disappointed than they already are. God why am I still thinking about this woman next to me when I am about to speak to my dead parents and I have a semi-stiffy from the statue? And God tell me that guy is not taking her purse?
The Catherine Deneuveish woman next to him had just put her handbag on the kneeler to pray when a man gently lifted it. He stealthily removed it as if he were quietly emptying ashtrays while people mingled at a fancy party. In mid “God please stop this negative thinking” prayer/speech/rant Ken knew this guy was not her husband and as if possessed by the macho-meets-Sammy-chutzpah gods, Ken got up and walked toward this guy who noticed him immediately and picked up the pace. He started running by the nuns flocked around St. Peter and past the school children being filed into pews for the next mass and out the side door of the church into the glaring sunlight. Ken followed and gave chase feeling like he just walked out of a dark bar into the bright afternoon. Old habits.
What in hell was he doing running after a guy in a foreign country to get the purse of a woman he didn’t even know? He was not trained for this. He was not that guy. He was the other guy, the one who says, “Someone should chase after that guy.” He had no time to look around for police lest he lose sight of this man carrying a two seasons ago Hermes leather handbag with gold clasp.
“Stop that guy, he’s got a purse! “ Ken yelled in perfect English. Then Hot St. Matthew and all the angels gave him wings and he somehow flew and managed to catch up to this guy with the bag. There was an otherworldly leap that came out of the soles of Ken’s Easy Spirit flight attendant pumps and he jumped into the air despite the weight of all his extra baggage, both emotional and physical and well over the carry-on limit. Ken came down on this guy in the square and flattened him. What the hell was he going to do now? Have a fistfight? Ken was once again out of his comfort zone. Heroics were not his bag. Jeeesh.
But Hot St. Matthew infused him with speech and he stood up, taking the purse in a manly “I don’t know how to hold this thing properly” grasp and said to this guy “What the fuck do you think you’re doing taking a purse in a fucking church?! Fuck!” This is where the crowd would cheer and he would ask St. Matthew to stop the pee that was beginning to run down his leg from fear. “Hot St. Matthew please help this to be a moment for me, a moment where I help someone else and not think about my own pathetic self. But if I were to think for one moment about my own image, please keep this God-given urine stream from gushing forth and through my khakis for purse-snatcher and all of Austria to see. Please let me just be Bruce Willis for one second.” And as if in reverse “Song of Bernadette,” the impending grotto that was to spring forth down his left trouser leg ceased and he was there, triumphant. Someone had gotten the police and he was holding the bag and the bad man was on the ground being held down by angry villagers and Ken was Der Mann! Der manlichikeit, mannisch, Mann!
In the midst of all this Ken was trying to figure out how to say “I stopped a purse snatcher in the middle of Vienna and threw him to the ground and got the Hermes bag back for the lady kneeling next to me in front of Hot St. Matthew “ in German. He couldn’t figure out when he would ever need this, but it made his earlier fear of being able to say “Give me a goddam coffee with milk and make it fast, lady” in John Wayne German seem like a piece of Sachertorte.
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