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Peter Plays the Comet

Peter reckons with a lonely future at his best friend's wedding.

I had a dream once about a mother-planet and its young. Baby planets were born featureless and smooth, budding from their host like little polyps until mature enough to be severed, floating away in little harmless clusters. These planets would never be alone, even when separated from their mother. In fact, it was destiny for them to find a mate, or if they were lucky, several. The smooth baby-nodule grew burrs like a seed as it matured, ripening and preparing its skin to grasp, feeling blindly into the ether. Erin’s wedding. It was something I should’ve expected, ever since Hugo responded to our ad calling for a guitarist. Erin and Hugo got together very shortly after he joined our band, “Maybe, Perhaps.” I was usually too shy to do vocals, so Hugo quickly found himself in the center of what was previously Erin and I’s percussion-and-keys act, accompanying her voice in every song he could to impress her. I was there to watch their courtship firsthand. They’d had a few scuffles over their four years together, but overall, they were happy. So, I don’t know why I was so surprised when she told me the news of their engagement. I could see her over my shoulder in the mirror while I pushed up the knot of my tie and fussed with the sides of my hair. My suit was powder blue to match the dresses of the bridesmaids, but I still felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. Erin's girls were laughing. Nicole tuned her violin, while Kelsey sat behind her pinning up her hair. Erin's mom and sister made sure she had plenty of food and alcohol. Jenny buckled her shoes. The air was thick with aerosol and vanilla body mist.

Evelyn

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Sister Piper encounters a strange visitor.

Savior’s head is slightly dinged. There is a small indent where she had been struck once, perhaps by a falling stone as she tried to hold up the earth, or perhaps some bludgeon from a fierce assailant. The origin of this scarification that chips away at some of her paint is highly debated, though it was said that she was carried safely to her home, the Lifegiver Cavern, by none other than Saint Harris. Others proposed (and this I am quicker to believe, for why would she need assistance to be carried?) that she was called here, and descended through the flame and discord to a place she knew would be safe from harm until her resurrection. Her resting place is strong and fortified. It is unbelievable to me that it could have existed before her arrival, for the cylindrical structure carries sound so beautifully. There are platforms on each side, perfectly fitted for churchgoers to sit and hear her messages. In the middle, the earth is soft and worn; maybe it once was a river. Her weight sinks gently into it, calling back images of the times where she was verdant and fertile. Poor mother-martyr. For us, you ran yourself dry. The last vestiges of humanity bent at your gracious form, and you sustained us until we figured our own way. I heard that you glowed with the fervor of the sun. I hear that you resonated with the songs of angels. I pray that I might be able to hear that joyful sound one day. Mother Diane says that it shouldn’t be much longer. I part the hanging cloth that leads into the temple and step under the cover of solid concrete, breathing in the scent of cool soil and wet pavement. After a rain the temple becomes penetrated with its chill, and we cover Savior with a blanket to keep her warm and dry. It is only Mother Diane and I here, and she is pulling the blanket off of Savior to prepare her for worship. “Sister Piper. You’re early,” she remarks, and I warm with pride beneath my raincoat.

non-fiction

The Uncanny Nature of Asexual and Aromantic Experience

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This study will examine the ways in which the nonexistence of asexuality and aromanticism as known social categories affects individuals on the asexual and aromantic spectrum. Asexuality and aromanticism are “new” orientations, only half-emerging into public consciousness through scant depictions in media and the emergence of the forum Haven for the Human Amoeba in 2000 and the Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) in 2001. Despite being invisible, asexuality and aromanticism have been present—much like any other queer identity—throughout history. I use three literary characters from different periods and genres—Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Bobby in Stephen Sondheim’s concept musical Company, and Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It—to highlight the complexity of asexual and aromantic social experience. Having conducted a series of nine interviews and collected survey responses from eighty-six members of the University of Florida community, I compare the experiences of these literary characters with the reports of contemporary asexual and/or aromantic adults.

"The Womb of Nature and Perhaps Her Grave": The Battle Against Chaos in Paradise Lost

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The character of God has an explicit purpose throughout the plot of Paradise Lost: he will vanquish his unruly child Satan, and he will use the good of Christ and the new human race to do so. However, there is a second goal that is easy to miss amid the turmoil of good and evil, and that is the issue of Chaos. Though the good of Heaven and the evil of Hell might seem like the ultimate dichotomy, Heaven, Hell, and Earth are all made from God’s will, and all are part of the same patriarchal system that God can alter any way he wants on a whim. The only system that exists apart from God is the realm of Chaos, a realm that, since before the beginning of time, God has been slowly crushing between his creations. This is the true war— a subtle war of ideology, where the created universe is taught to value the masculine, stratified, and orderly over the feminine, egalitarian, and disorderly. All that Chaos signifies is deemed to be unwanted and unfinished when God is in the seat of ultimate fatherly power. This is something he teaches even to Adam and Eve, the humans made in his image to emulate him, and they play a similar game of taming and ordering Nature. For God to create anything, he must first cut back Chaos. In Milton’s belief, God did not create the known universe from nothing; there existed first a state of uncontrolled and unorganized matter, which he willed into having more physical and spiritual being. Night and Chaos are said to be the “Ancestors of Nature” (II, 895), with “Nature” meaning the created world. The material of Chaos is a battle of “embryon Atoms” (II, 900). It is messy, violent, and unsightly, and yet there is a seed (an embryo) of unutilized potential that God sees in it. Without the characterization of the inhabitants of Chaos, the deed would be straightforward and un-controversial; however, it is clear that God’s motivations go deeper than simple opportunity. Repeatedly it is revealed that there is something undesirable about the state of chaos, and whenever a glimmer of this disorder arises, God is swift to try and stamp it out.