Whereupon because I’ve always wanted to start a story with the word whereupon will arrive the story: let’s say it’s about a man and a woman and the man likes to sing, is compelled to sing because hearing his voice echoing in the world tells him he’s alive, little ditties of off-key affirmation resounding in this frightening silence, but he has a terrible voice and the woman doesn’t have a musical bone in her body yet is not immune, exactly, to his unmelodious crooning, she’s just more tolerant of it than most, tolerance—not acceptance, I contend, which is a harmful myth, a goalpost galloping off into the receding distance—tolerance, we all know, is the backbone of a liberal, pluralistic society and the backbone of a good, liberal, pluralistic relationship, and both of them, their little tolerant society of two, are in their basement bathroom which is all misty because he’s just showered and toweled off and called her down to shave his neck, “tighten it up a little,” and she’s lathering it up though she hates the smell of his Gilette shaving cream, a rank perfume of marketed masculinity, and he’s singing “fly me to the moon” and shaking his butt trying to be cute but she hates the Rat Pack the most out of his usual catalogue of inharmonious tunes because it reminds her of her grandmother’s dementia and halitosis spittle kisses and now she’s dragging his small chrome safety razor, a holdover from his late aughts hipster phase, and it’s picking up hairs which are congealing along it with the shaving cream, little black and gray wires swallowed by its bladed mouth, and he’s singing about his heart being full and about longing and adoration and then their eyes meet in the half-foggy mirror and he’s not smiling and she’s not smiling and there’s this moment of unsmiling recognition, heart to heart, mind to mind, hate to hate, a split second of genuine closeness, closer than they’ve ever been, whereupon she presses the razor extra hard, cutting his flesh, nicking it, watching the blood redden the frothy cream, whereupon he starts singing Sinatra again, more loudly and, if it’s possible, even more shrilly than before, whereupon I end this story because we all know how this ends and because I’ve always wanted to end a story with whereupon.
Mini-interview with Jon Doughboy
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
JD: When I was a kid, I heard my sister laughing in her bedroom and thought she was hanging out with friends but she was just reading Catch-22 alone and laughing out loud. Full on cracking up. I couldn’t get the joke because I hadn’t read the book and was too young to understand it but that seemed magical to me. This teenage girl connecting with words written before she was born about a war she didn’t know much about and just laughing to herself.
HFR: What are you reading?
JD: Aside from lots of lit mags, I read Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary recently which was incredible. Great middle-aged desperation. I was on a Domenico Starnone kick too and I’m looking forward to the House on Via Gemito. I heard the good folks at Backlisted talking about Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black and thought it was amazing. Made me want to see a psychic. I’m also excited for the new Fosse, for Vi Khi Nao’s book on suicide, Amy Arnold’s Lori & Joe, plus I’m curious to see the zines forthcoming from Bruiser.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Whereupon”?
JD: Sometimes I just get a word stuck in my head which leads to a story. Whereupon, thereupon, hereupon, Grey Poupon—and we’re off!
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
JD: Most days I wake up early and write a story or prose poem with my morning coffee. I’ve got loads of other unpublished things, novels, stories, essays, and will probably keep writing more. It’s a compulsion. But I’m in it more for the process than the product and just having a good time seeing where it goes.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
JD: I’m too full of self-doubt to be fanatical about anything but I read Anastasia Berg’s essay in The Point about the aesthetic turn and I’m here for it. I’m also a fan of the Extremely Long Paragraph as profiled in Thalia Williamson’s essay in the LARB and I’m heartened to see it getting some love.
Jon Doughboy is a lowly clerk at Bartleby & Co. Prefer not to with him @doughboywrites.
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Heavy Feather Review 