Author Archives: Tate Morrissey

Chokecherry Circle: Chapter 13

Posted by under Fiction and Poetry

I expected Lily to be furious, but instead she was scared and excited. I gathered that from the way her hand trembled when she set her Martini down on the poolside table that night, after I returned from the park. She was stretched out in a lounge chair wearing only her black bikini, her pale skin seeming almost to glow in the darkness.

“The neighbors,” I said.

“Fuck the neighbors,” she replied, lighting a Marlboro. “We’re moving soon anyway, I presume. This is going to get messy.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Do you know who’s going to go?” she asked forthrightly.

“Maybe we can all stay,” I said.

She shook her head and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. “You’ve never been that strong,” she said.

“I’m stronger now.”

The look on Lily’s face was incredulous. “I don’t think so,” she said. She rolled the olive into her mouth and chewed it slowly.

“Where’s Anna?” I asked.

Lily pointed up to an upstairs window. “Watching me.”

I looked up, and there was the outline of Anna’s head, black against the brightly lit bedroom. She must have seen me looking at her, but she didn’t look away. “She’s probably wondering what you’re going to do,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Lily. “Want to swim?”

I did. It was wrong to have the scent of Johanna on me when she wasn’t there in the house. I pulled my shirt up and dropped my pants.

“Let’s live somewhere remote next time,” said Lily as she stood up. “Somewhere people won’t see us.”

“We tried that,” I said.

Lily stopped to remember, looking up at the moon. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “Maybe somewhere semi-rural,” she suggested. “A college town.”

“You’re so sure you’ll be there,” I said coldly.

Lily turned towards me, a quick look of anger flitting across her face before she smiled broadly and reached for my shorts.

Just at that moment, the back door opened and Anna came running across the lawn, completely nude. She grabbed Lily’s hand and yanked her into the pool. They surfaced together, laughing, and Anna reached around to unhook Lily’s top. I jumped in after them, and Lily yanked my shorts off.

They both knew it was one of our last nights together, and that one of them would soon be going away forever. They didn’t know which, and each was filled with a mixture of hope and dread that it might be her. That’s how it is with us. The staying is miserable, but we never want to go.

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I’m Trapped In This House

Posted by under Journal Entries

A year and a half ago, I was a poster child. A freshly-minted graduate from an elite teaching college with a 3.97 GPA and as many recommendations as I could ever have wanted. I could have gone to medical school, I could have taken a consulting job, I could have taught English in Tokyo. Why didn’t I?

I didn’t do any of those things because I had a sense that I didn’t really know myself. I’d always done the right thing, done what my parents wanted, and I’d always succeeded. Continuing along that path seemed suddenly wrong. I decided that I needed to discover myself.

Taking the Unreality House fellowship seemed so rebellious at the time—but now, looking back, I understand that my “defiance” was as much a product of my upbringing as my compliance had been. My parents are hippies. They were worried about me going off to an isolated house in rural Minnesota on a brand-new and very poorly documented fellowship, but it’s exactly what they would have done. I was getting off the grid, going to “find myself” in the wild, as though my true self was somewhere out there, detached from the self that had been living very happily in my skin for 21 years.

The first posts I wrote at Unreality House now seem incredibly naïve. “I could tell you about who I am and where I came from,” I wrote in my first post, “but I prefer to think of this as an opportunity to start with a clean slate. I’m not running away from anything, but I don’t know yet what I want to run towards.”

Reading those first posts now—mine and the others’—is like watching the first episode of a reality show, which of course it was. We weren’t selected for our writing talents, we were selected to bounce off of one another for the entertainment of the World Wide Web. In going to find “myself,” I was actually leaving myself and becoming a character, a stereotype.

If it was a reality show, I don’t think anyone anticipated how real it would get—and how quickly. When I refused to be seduced by the house’s “bad boy”—a development that would have made it all the more moving when I later fell weeping into the arms of the “good boy”—the bad boy turned on me, and so of course did the bad girl. The good boy was good, very good…but he was weak, and I think he really loved that bad girl. I could have loved Will, but I don’t think he could ever have loved me. He would have stayed with Lucy until she killed him, if someone else hadn’t killed him first.

I don’t know who killed Will. It might have been the bad boy, it might have been the wild man, it might have been himself, or it might have just been the god of bad luck. Very, very bad luck.

I was gone by then. I couldn’t have stayed. I found a place in Minneapolis, just to get back on my feet—but I never got back up. Just when I was starting to find my way, to make a plan to get my life back on track, Unreality House sucked me back in. I couldn’t say no to all that money, and the chance to mentor a boy who, I was told, was the most gifted writer the committee members had ever seen. He might be, but now he’s just another sucker.

I’m still haunted by Will, and by Daniel, and by everything about that godforsaken house in Tarrytown. I’m not ready to write about everything that happened to me last year, but none of it was good, and none of it was me. I need to get my life back—the life I had, not the life I was supposedly going to discover. I can’t do that until I leave Unreality House…but really leave it, leave it on my own terms. That’s why I’m going back. I’m going back so I can leave.

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Shower Sex

Posted by under Journal Entries

You know how some relationships are like that shower situation where you have separate controls for hot and cold and cold always has to be turned all the way up and then obviously you want to turn a little hot on to warm the water, and you just need to turn the hot a little ways on but as soon as you have it even a little ways on, you run a high risk of someone else somewhere in your building flushing the toilet and scalding you, forcing you to plaster your body against the back of the shower and then turn the hot entirely off until the water runs pure cold and then start again from scratch?

When that happens people tell you to get a new relationship, but it’s like the shower thing—replacing the shower alone probably isn’t an option, and you don’t want to leave your apartment because the location is good and all your shit is there and you like other things about your apartment and it doesn’t seem likely that if you moved, things would be any better in the new place.

So you just keep playing the hot-and-cold game, turning the hot water on as much as you dare and shampooing quickly, praying that this time, just this time, you won’t get a toilet flushed on you.

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Chokecherry Circle: Chapter 12

Posted by under Fiction and Poetry

“Come on,” said Johanna, pulling my hand. She wanted to get me out of the house, away from Lily and Anna, and she correctly guessed that I would let her take me. I rarely let anyone lead me, decide where I’ll go and when, and in particular I rarely let anyone lead me away from my house. It’s dangerous. If the wrong person saw me, or if I stayed away too long, it could be the end of my many days.

We walked down the street, saying little. The streetlamps were too bright for my taste; I preferred the lamps in Johanna’s part of town, yellow and dim instead of white and gleaming. The light made me uneasy.

There was a park behind a wrought iron gate. Johanna pushed me towards the padlock, and put her arms around me from behind. “I’ll cover you,” she said. I broke the lock, and we stole through the gate. It creaked as I closed it behind us, and I wondered whether the residents across the street—vigilant seniors, likely—had seen us pass.

Inside the park, you would have thought it was raining if you didn’t recognize the seasonal sound of dry seeds and husks raining down from the trees. The patter of husks was loudest in the center of the park, where a concrete apron surrounded a 19th-century pavilion. It was there that I lay Johanna down and pushed hard into her, praying a broken husk wouldn’t cut her and draw blood.

My days have not ended, and right now, Johanna is the only reason I don’t want them to.

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Chokecherry Circle: Chapter 11

Posted by under Fiction and Poetry

I’ve broken things so many times that I’ve forgotten what it felt like the first time. What’s it like to walk out your door to meet with your mistress for the first time? What’s it like to tell your husband you’re leaving? What’s it like to come home after committing murder, to sit in your living room and know that everything around you suddenly lies on a very thin pane of glass?

The night Johanna came back, Lily and Anna were quiet. They were both giving me space, waiting, watching. We all knew the change was coming. Things had soured. Lily and Anna were constantly fighting. Anna, once quiet but strong, had become sad and withdrawn. Lily had become dangerous. There was a man who had come to the house twice that month. She hadn’t told him anything, but the message was clear: she could. There was a lot she could do, and make things very difficult for me.

I was restless that night. I walked upstairs, wandering through the useless rooms. I heard music downstairs, Lily playing loud bubbly pop. She knew we hated that.

I found Anna lying on the big bed, watching a weather report. She looked at me, then looked back at the TV without saying anything. I could see tears welling in her eyes.

I climbed on top of Anna and took her head in my hand, grazing her smooth, pale cheek with my nose. I nuzzled her ear, then bit it lightly. She just lay limp and unmoving. I bit harder, and harder—until I broke the skin and her rusty blood seeped onto my tongue. She took a sharp breath, but otherwise continued to lay silent and still. I licked lightly at her bleeding ear until the doorbell rang.

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Chokecherry Circle: Chapter 10

Posted by under Fiction and Poetry

Johanna knew, she says, that it would be her last conversation with her grandmother. Though Johanna had only just met us, she was resolved to get out of that house, out of that life, away from that woman.

Her grandmother’s name is Glenn. A classy name for a woman who’s proudly classless, if such a thing is possible. Glenn judged her son for siring Johanna and Riley, and being sent to prison improved neither Joanna’s father nor his children in Glenn’s estimation. She didn’t care about what he’d done to that woman he nearly killed, she just cared that he got caught.

Johanna slept in that morning—or, at least, stayed in bed. She had to leave the door open for the cat to come shit in its litterbox, so there was no insulation from the noisy disaster that was her family life. Glenn might have been watching soaps, or listening to Pink Floyd, or screaming at Riley. Eventually Johanna gave up, and got up.

She found Glenn, Johanna later told me, standing in the kitchen wearing Jordache jeans and a Def Leppard shirt she’d bought for $25 at the Garment District. Glenn was smoking, and drinking a Natty Ice. It was about 11 AM, and Glenn said the house needed cleaning.

Johanna protested that she wasn’t responsible for any of the mess, and Glenn hissed something like this,

“Who are you? Who are you? I don’t know you. You live in my house. You come. You go. I don’t know where you go. I don’t really give a shit. I do what I have to do, and I let you live here. It’s less trouble than kicking you out. But I don’t know you. And here you are, standing here in your panties, standing here in front of me, in my kitchen. I don’t really think you want anything from me except to be left alone and given a roof, maybe given some food, but I want something from you—now that you’re here, now that you’re awake, now that you’re standing between me and the rest of my house. I think you’re going to be very difficult for someone, someday, but right now, for me, you’re easy. I can ignore you—except for when you’re standing in my goddamned kitchen, full of my food and wearing my face and my tits and not doing a fucking thing for anyone except taking up space. So I don’t goddamn care if you made this mess or if I made it or if God just dropped it all here just to fuck with us. I’m going to ask you to clean it up, and you’re going to do it, because you want to stay easy. You might not think that’s what you want, but I know it is. So wake the fuck up and clean this shithole now.”

Joanna turned around and walked back to her room. Ignoring her grandmother’s cries, she pulled on her pants, grabbed her backpack, and crawled out the window.

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Who’s Who at Unreality House

Posted by under Journal Entries

It occurs to me that if this year isn’t going to be completely bewildering to anyone who’s actually reading this blog, I’d better bring you up to date on who’s who and what’s going on here.

I’m Tate. I’m 22 and I live in Minneapolis. I was one of the original four fellowship recipients who moved into Unreality House back in November when we had an actual house, in Tarrytown. I moved out in January because I was miserable there, and since then, the house administration has been supporting me here while I tutor Flynn (see below). I’ve signed on to stay with the project for another year, getting my life figured out while I support Flynn—whatever that means. I’ll be writing here, but also on my Tumblr and my neglected Twitter.

Will was another of the original four. He died in February, the victim of a tragic accidental drug overdose. He left the completed manuscript of the novella Fallen, which is still being published here in installments. I miss him so much.

Lucy was one of the original four, but she was never particularly thrilled about being at Unreality House. She ended up dating (more or less) Will until he died. When the house closed on May 31, she headed back home to Ohio. I think the plan is for this blog to keep publishing her ongoing story New Year’s Week, if she wants to keep writing it.

Tanner was the last of the original four. He’s been under investigation by the Kandiyohi County sheriff’s office since Will’s death, and was finally advised not to leave the county. He tried to anyway, late Thursday night, and was put under arrest. Apparently—I’m getting this from Lucy—the police discovered that despite Tanner’s repeated denials, the drugs that killed Will did come from Tanner. That’s all I know right now. I really don’t want to think about it.

Flynn is, right now, the only writer besides me who’s on an Unreality House fellowship. He’s a 17-year-old boy living with foster parents in South Minneapolis. I’ll tell you more about that later—or maybe he will.

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Missing Someone Is

Posted by under Journal Entries

a little pilot light slowly burning the back of your throat.

always feeling like you’ve just eaten something that might possibly make you throw up in two hours.

wearing wet socks.

walking around with that feeling you have immediately after you trip on the sidewalk and you don’t know whether anyone saw.

a slow-motion paper cut.

using your phone when there’s a very light rain coming down and you’re just trying to do your business but the screen keeps misting up and you wonder whether your phone is going to break because of it.

carrying around a backpack containing exactly one heavy book.

that three-beer moment of confused panic between the pleasant crisp of a buzz and the thick blanket of drunkenness.

a pencil sharpener that breaks the lead once every three or four times you use it.

always feeling a little bit like a ghost.

I Had Sex Last Night, and I Don’t Remember It

Posted by under Journal Entries

This morning I woke up in a strange bed, and I was naked. There was a naked man in bed with me. When I turned over, he smiled and said good morning.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“This is my apartment,” he said.

“Oh,” I replied. My head raced to do the math…I went to that bar, I danced with a bunch of guys…I remembered this one, but I forgot what his name was. I recognized him as a special ed aide who used to work at the school where I tutor. That must be why I trusted him. Also, he was cute. And I was really drunk.

“Did we…?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Okay.”

He looked concerned. “You…don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “No. Sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We were both drunk, but I didn’t know you were…blackout?”

“It’s okay,” I said, and pulled a sheet around me as I got out to look for my clothes. I found them in the kitchen. I didn’t remember anything about his apartment at all.

He offered to drive me home, but I said no thanks and took the bus. I was too weirded out by the whole situation, and a belatedly defensive part of my brain screamed, “Don’t let him know where you live!”

I didn’t even think to ask whether we use a condom. I think we did. I hope we did. He seems like an okay guy…but I’d better get checked out. You have to wait six months for a reliable HIV test. I don’t even know.

Legally I know it’s rape if one party is too drunk to consent…but how could he have known? People always tell me I’m so composed when I’m drunk, they can’t even tell until I run into a door or something. Something like a penis.

Is this okay? What should I do? It’s probably okay. It was stupid of me to get so drunk. It was stupid of me, however drunkenly, to go home with him. But I know why I probably did. It’s been lonely, living alone. Yoga can only do so much to soothe your soul. You need cuddles, and more.

I didn’t even get his number. Should I go back and see him? Would he even answer the door, after the way I acted freaked out by him and stumbled out? Should I be freaked out by him? Was that creepy of him? Am I pregnant with his child?

I don’t even know. I’m going back to bed to have a really loud motherfucking cry.

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On Horcrux Breakups

Posted by under Journal Entries

When I read the Harry Potter books, I found the horcrux chase annoying, because it sent the plot off the rails. From a plot standpoint, it’s clearly busy work manufactured to keep Harry, Ron, and Herminone running around for a couple of books while the rest of the plot churns. But the real appeal of J.K. Rowling’s alternate universe is not its convoluted plot, it’s the ways that the books’ events and themes resonate with actual lives in this universe—and the idea of a horcrux is something I’ve found myself coming back to and thinking a lot about lately.

In the world of Harry Potter, a horcrux is formed when a wizard commits a murder and, in the process, shears off a piece of his own soul to install in a physical object of special significance. The concept resonates because people who have experienced actual trauma know that feeling: like a part of you has been sunken forever into a thing, a place, or even a person. That part of you is gone, but also somehow still connected.

I think of the ways that vets talk about war: you sense that a part of them will always be there in the Mekong Delta, or the Afghan steppes. Or people who have experienced a terrible accident—a sight or a sound can send them instantly back. I have my own history of trauma that I’ve made peace with.

Breakups can form horcruxes too. Not every breakup—but some people connect with you in such a way that you give them a part of you that you’ll never get back. Years can pass, you can move on and find new happiness, and you can make peace with that broken relationship in the way that people make peace with any loss. But when you’ve loved deeply and been deeply hurt, there’s a shard of your soul that remains…not necessarily with the person who remains, your ex, but with the person your ex was when you were in love, with what it was that you shared.

J.K. Rowling isn’t the only writer who gets this—so does Neil LaBute. In his play Some Girl(s), the character “Guy” confronts four women whom he’s horcruxed, and all of them explain to him, in different ways, what they’ve experienced. “When you do what you do,” one ex tells him, “people get hurt. Injured. A bit of them, some piece…it dies. They lose something that will never come back. Not ever.”

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