1. CONTENTS
OBSERVED 3
A NOTE FROM GORGON'S BLUFF LTD 10
DISCOURSE S OF A MIDDLE MANAGER 22
TRUE THINGS I SHOULDN’T HAVE SAID ANY WAY 44
THE CYNIC’S NOTEBOOK 75
AUTHORS ­94
S T O R I E S
M A R K W I S N I E W S K I 15 STRIPPED
J O E P O N E P I N T O 25 PLUNGE ­
K I I K A . K . 33 SOAPBERRY WASP,
THUNDERCLOUD PLUMS
W I L L I N S T E N Z 36 NOVEMBER-NOVEMBER MARRIAGE
D O U G L A S W . M I L L I K E N 39 POP TIMISTIC
J U D E P O L O T A N 47 DOG PEOPLE
W I L L M A Y E R 65 A HELIUM AFFAIR
M I K E A L L I Z I 67 SET TING RIGHT
S A T I M E L E N D E Z 71 L A FEITA
T R A C Y E L I N 76 WAYNE’S SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW­
M A R Y E L L E N W O E F L E 78 MEMOIR OF A SOCK PUPPET
L I B B Y C U D M O R E 81 HOW TO MURDER YOUR FRIENDS
E L L E N L A R S O N 85 FORGET ME NOT­

2. S T O N E S L I D E | 1 51 4 | S T O N E S L I D E
STRIPPED
B Y M A R K W I S N I E W S K I
Sometimes I think everyone knows.
Sometimes I think my parents have been cheating on each other
throughout my whole life and everyone’s known except me.
For most of my life, all I had was suspicion. But then I came home one
afternoon and checked our answering machine, and it was blinking so I
pushed what I thought was PLAY, but the machine was brand new and I’d
pushed the wrong button—or my dad had when he’d been in our house
having sex with the only girl I’ve ever been in love with.
Whose name by the way was Kat. Anyway, recorded maybe an hour
earlier and now being replayed for my ears only was a conversation be-
tween her and my dad, and it obviously wasn’t a phone call but instead
an in-person conversation because you could hear our first floor toilet
flushing in the background, with its desperate sucking sound at the end.
After that sound you could hear Kat, apparently leaving the bathroom,
saying “Do I need to leave?” to my dad, then my dad pausing by clearing
his throat.
It occurred to me just after I heard this recording the first time, mo-
ments before I saved it on my cell and deleted it from the answering ma-
chine, that my dad, in his post-sex-with-Kat daze, had been checking
messages as Kat “freshened up” or whatever adults call it, and in doing so
he’d accidentally pushed the message-to-self button.
And it occurs to me now that my whole life has been like this. I mean:
odd. I mean accidents caused by my absent-minded father, or maybe it’s
pure self-absorption on his part. There are also plenty of angry things
blurted by my rarely home mother, and it also occurs to me now that if she,
my mom, weren’t gone from our house so often, she’d blurt more angry
things than she does.
Mostly it now occurs to me that, since my dad is such an obvious jack-
ass, I’ve been going through a kind of adjustment period in which I’m be-
coming an adult with little or no association with him or my mom or the
only woman I’ve ever been in love with, not to mention this adjustment
period has lasted long enough that I’ve needed—as my school’s counseling
center’s Prepare for Trauma booklet calls it—“support” from a guy named
Craig-Jug.
Craig-Jug is called Craig-Jug because he juggles and his first name is
Craig. He also has this godfather who plays hoops for A&M, and Craig-

3. S T O N E S L I D E | 4 54 4 | S T O N E S L I D E
True Things
I Shouldn’t Have Said Anyway
KID: When are we going
to be at Grandma’s? I
want to get out.
MOM: It’ll just be a
couple more minutes.
ME: If we survive. There
are more than 30,000
traffic fatalities a year
in this country.
KID: Mommy, when I
grow up will I be pretty
like you?
WIFE: Of course,
sweetie. But
remember it’s what’s
inside that counts.
ME: Although studies
show that attractive
people make more
money and are
happier.
WIFE: Will you ever leave
me?
ME: Never! I mean, not
unless I get one of
those brain tumors
that makes you do
crazy stuff. Like
the guy who became
an arsonist.
BOSS: How did my talk
today go over?
ME: About as well as
usual.
BOSS: Thank you.
ME: That wasn’t a
compliment.
KID: I’m so sad. Tracey
didn’t invite me to her
party. I can’t go on.
WIFE: I know it feels
bad. When you get
older, sweetie, you’ll
see that these things
pass. You’ll feel better.
ME: Or you’ll get
depressed like Daddy
and just not care
about anything.
KID: Butt cake, butt
cake, Gramma made a
butt cake!
WIFE: Sweetie. You know
it’s called a bundt
cake.
ME: Her nomenclature’s
more accurate.
KID: I’m scared. I think
there’s a monster in
my room.
WIFE: Oh, sweetie. You
know it’s just your
imagination. You can
go back to sleep.
ME: That’s right. There
are no monsters.
When people use
the word monster for
murderers, rapists,
people who steal or
break into your house,
or just people who
really hurt someone
else, it’s just a
metaphor.
COWORKER: Good
morning.
ME: Hi. How was your
weekend?
COWORKER: Same old.
But any weekend’s
good. How about you?
ME: Yeah, the usual.
Though a funny thing
happened last night.
COWORKER: Yeah, what?
ME: I had this really long,
intense sexual dream
about you.
JAMES BANNERMAN I am a letter-carrier at the
Western District-Office. On the morning of 7th December, I
was sorting newspapers and packets; the prisoner was sort-
ing at the same table. I saw him pick up some newspapers
and likewise a packet; after sorting the newspapers, when
he came to the packet, instead of throwing it off into the box
where it should have been thrown, he held it in his hand,
balanced it, and shook it, and took particular notice of the
address. I could see the address while it was in his hand—it
was “Mr. Davis, 55 Wardour-street.” Later I looked into the
Wardour-street box and missed the packet. I told Mr. Toll.
I was present when Mr. Toll made inquiry of the prisoner.
He asked him if he knew anything about a missing packet,
and he said, “No, nothing at all.” Mr. Toll then said the bet-
ter way would be for him to empty his pockets, and on that
the prisoner immediately did empty his pockets, and he ex-
claimed, “Why, there is something here. For the life of me, I
can’t tell how it got there.”
* Adapted from the trial of George Valentine Gray for mail theft,
December 17, 1860, ref. # t18601217-92. No part of this statement has
been endorsed or approved by Gorgons Bluff Ltd.
SUCCUMBING*

4. S T O N E S L I D E | 7 97 8 | S T O N E S L I D E
his entire adult life and spent his nights
writing his own essays. When I got old
enough, I sat with him, and we both wrote
under the same lamp. He was the rare par-
ent who celebrated a child’s acceptance
into a poetry MFA program.
I knew where to find the books he
loved in his study because I’d seen him
go to them for inspiration, direction, and
solace. I read through Coleridge and Word-
sworth and Byron. I read him Browning
and the essays of Carlyle. And I could see
from a relaxation in
the muscles around
his eyes that he was
gazing into the dis-
tance—past this fi-
nal, dim room to an
eternal landscape.
I was nervous
in my first days at
Splendid, like a virgin walking through
the parlor of a brothel. There were five of
us writers at Splendid, working in a corner
of a recently converted warehouse space
downtown. Sal did all the IT work, set-
ting us up with various accounts, access to
proxy servers, IP addresses, etc., so that we
could focus on our writing.
Sal always told us to take our time, to
look for inspiration, to care about what we
wrote. In some ways, he was more encour-
aging than any of my writing teachers.
And his nod of pleasure at a finely wrought
review was its own reward.
He started me on the easiest re-
views—restaurants. Anything that you’ve
experienced yourself and that lots of other
people have also experienced is easier to
write about movingly. And that was our
goal: to move people. I extolled pizza and
touted falafel. The only problem was that
sometimes I would work so hard at imag-
ining the crisp surprise of a bite of pizza
that I became hungry myself.
MEMOIR
OF A SOCK
PUPPET
B Y M A R Y E L L E N W O E F L E *
Many people have asked me if I would one day write an exposé of my
time as a sock puppet. They imagine a story of craven deceit, of principles
and deeply held beliefs pried out of my soul by the crowbar dollar. I tell
them that those years were actually the most creatively fulfilling of my
life.
Six years ago, I was hired by Splendid Response Inc., a company that
produced positive online reviews and other chatter for its clients. We were
sock puppets. Splendid was run by Sal, a former bookstore owner and un-
published poet, who wore a gray polo shirt every day of the year. He be-
lieved the most effective reviews would be those that had true artistry in
them—that a dash of artistic genius makes the most baldly disingenuous
statement compelling. So, he hired out of the best MFA programs. He saw
himself as a force for good, giving work to writers and artists; he applied
for several grants from the city and from art organizations on that prem-
ise. He also did pro bono work writing blog and newspaper comments in
support of various nonprofits.
I can’t think of that time without also thinking of my father. He was in
the late stages of a battle with cancer. A tumor had appeared in his abdom-
inal cavity some years before. They operated. They did chemo. We watched,
we held him, we read to him. And it seemed to have worked. For years he
lived well, went back to work, and there was no sign of the cancer. But then
it came back, like a Mongol horde offended by any resistance, and swept
through his body, conquering and ravishing whole systems of life as it trav-
eled. His world shut down until it was reduced to a single bed in a room in
hospice around the time I started at Splendid.
I also think of my father because, while I spent most evenings reading
to him, I never quite told him what I did. I told him it was a copywriting
job.
He’d always been proud of my writing. He’d taught high school English
Sal moved me up to electronics, and I
focused on the tactile description of the
products. I wrote paeans to the click of a
button and the slide of a knob. I loved the
slight odor of new plastic, and the hum of
working capacitors.
Love was the key. With practice, I
could put myself in an imaginative state
in which anything was possible (Keats’
“negative capability”), and I could steer
my affections, and longings, and desires
toward the appropriate object. And it was
not false. I truly felt
the love, and the love
showed in my writ-
ing.
Sal eventually
moved me up to his
hardest client—a
manufacturer of ob-
scure instruments
for scientists and collectors. And this is
where I did my greatest work, I believe. I
saved some examples. Here’s one:
I have had two moments in which I
knew with utter certainty that my life
had changed for the better. The first
was when my now-husband bent down
to one knee, extended a ring to me, and
asked if I would marry him. The second
was when I first held a pair of 12 centi-
meter micro dissection forceps by Gor-
gons Bluff in my hand. The package had
arrived via FedEx a few moments be-
fore. I had naturally taken it down to my
entomological studio and unwrapped
it as quickly as possible. The bare steel
pincers lying on my table looked little
different from others I have owned. But
oh! the feeling when I grasped them—
lighter, nimbler, more precise. A perfect
responsiveness in the hand. These are
the forceps heroes would use to dissect
the insects of Elysium.
I was nervous in my first
days at Splendid, like a
virgin walking through the
parlor of a brothel.