Public & Private
Featuring stories by Rosalind Stopps, Katherine Carlson, Michael Spring, Brindley Hallam Dennis, and Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons ; with performances from actors Ailsa Prideaux-Mooney, Heather Lee Rogers, Daniel Lugo, Nilla Watkins and E.J An. Hosted by Andrew Lloyd-Jones and Elizabeth Murray at KGB Bar on 11th July 2012.
Baby Pictures
by Katherine Carlson
We are looking at pictures of my cousin’s new baby. My cousin is 19. I am 32. My cousin is 8 months pregnant with her second child. I’m on my period. Everyone agrees that yes, it would have been better if Carly had finished college before having two babies, but my goodness, Damien is gorgeous. In every picture he’s grinning, exposing a row of short white teeth. At eleven months he already has a head full of brown curls that would resist being flattened by a wool hat. They’re so wondrous I imagine he could frolic all day in a pit of plastic balls and not one spark of static electricity would attach to them.
Rat Run
by Brindley Hallam Dennis
Her car was already there, pulled into the lay-by, facing the oncoming traffic. He pulled in in front of it, nosing his headlights to hers, and switched off the engine. She was indistinct but recognisable despite the reflections in the two windscreens, and for a moment they sat staring at each other across the curved metal of the bonnets, each wondering if the other would get out of their car first. She flashed the headlights, a pale lightning seen obliquely, and he opened his door and slid out of the driver's seat and walked forward to her passenger door. She looked up at him through the glass and gently patted the empty seat next to her. He looked both ways, as if were about to cross a busy road, and got into the car beside her.
Hundreds of Tiny People
by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons
You once spent the night in David Hasselhoff’s apartment. This is not an achievement, not something to put on your résumé or even as a fun fact in your online dating profile. Not an ice breaker type of story, it’s the tale you keep in your back pocket saving it for party lulls or for when you are feeling insecure about your lack of tangible assets. The story, like the girl you were then, is full of promise and from a far more precious time. Set in New York City, the last holiday season before September 11th, the story has all the mystique of a “Knight Rider” Hasselhoff minus the harsh reality of the Hoff’s drunken YouTube videos, or getting replaced on “America’s Got Talent.”
Ten Thousand Feet
by Michael Spring
Of course the sculpture was built from real toes.
Everyone who was involved in the commissioning of the work had known that. There would hardly have been anything special about it if it was just a pile of replicas. They would all be the same and the idea was to celebrate the diversity of mankind, not to show how much one toe could be like another.
Spooning in Alaska
by Rosalind Stopps
It was public knowledge that Martha coped really well when her husband of thirty years left her for an older, fatter model named Gloria. Everyone told her so.