NEW PAPERS 1
Reid Williams (contributor: ‘August Poem’)
Gabrielle Sicam (contributor: ‘He Oils The Cogs’)
Henry Woodland (contributor: ‘New Norwood Scale’)
August Lamm (contributor: ‘Word Count’)Lawrence was messaging me again. “Come to Italy,” he said.
“I can’t,” I typed. “I’m celibate.”
“We don’t have to sleep together,” he replied.
“What’s your word count today?”
Lawrence was writing a book. There was a big advance, and all he had to show for it was an introduction and a bunch of browser tabs. “I’m in the research phase,” he kept saying. I knew all about the research phase. I had spent my 20s there.
We met at a party in London. He asked me out. Then I quit my job, broke my lease, left the country, and moved into my sister’s attic. It was a systematic dismantling of my adult life, like a film rewinding. There was only static now, the thrill of imminent coalescence. It was a second childhood, one in which I was a prodigy. Possessed of preternatural wisdom, because I was 30 years old. Sure, I had missed a lot of chances, but that didn’t matter anymore. The starting blocks of life had moved to meet me where I stood.
“Let’s go to Florence,” Lawrence wrote. “I’ll do research there.”
“We’ll go when you hit 10k words,” I replied.
We were never going to Italy, I knew, and not because of his writer’s block. We were never going because we’d only met once, at a party. And because this was a game, a game that would cease to be fun the moment it ceased to be a game.
Also I didn’t have the money. I was taking time off—from work, alcohol, sex. I was saying no to life. Life was saying nothing in reply. Life was quiet for once. I wanted it to last forever. The quiet, not the life.
“Deal,” Lawrence wrote. “Italy at 10k. Then what do I get when I finish the whole manuscript?”
“I’ll sleep with you,” I wrote. I closed my laptop and went on a walk.
When I got home, I saw Lawrence had texted.
“Ok but what if we subdivided the reward?” he said. “Spread it out over time. Like I get a handjob every chapter, or a kiss every paragraph, or you hold my hand after every sentence? Instead of one big fuck at the end of the manuscript.”
I didn’t know what a big fuck was, or whether I was capable of one.
“Which would you choose?” I said. “The lump sum or the annuity? Obviously you can’t have both.”
“Easy choice,” Lawrence wrote. “A thousand kisses over sex.”
Easy, I thought. I looked up flights, just to see.
That night, Lawrence sent me his word count. I rewarded him with a nude I’d taken earlier: my body stretched out in a shaft of sunlight. I was at the peak of my powers. There was a copy of Ulysses open on the bed beside me, the Gabler edition. Sun draped across my legs like a blanket, folded over my thighs.
I enjoyed the challenge of producing a compelling nude every day. I had to modulate the pose and props and lighting and background to distinguish them from each other. The project had made me more comfortable in my body than ever before. This was the only work I ever wanted to do. Women’s work. Homework.
I scrolled through the folder of nudes whenever I needed a mood boost. I liked watching my body move from photo to photo, a sort of stop-motion writhing. This was good writhing, though. Joyful writhing. My body moving the way bodies move when they have nothing better to do, when no one’s asked anything of them. When I scrolled through the photos, it was hard to fathom that this body of mine was celibate, that no one had touched it in months. Was it illegal to possess a body like that and not give it away? But in a sense, I was giving it away. In a sense, it wasn’t mine at all. It belonged to Lawrence.
“What’s your word count?” I asked the next evening.
“I’m taking the day off,” Lawrence said.
“Cool,” I typed, thankful he couldn’t see my face.
A few minutes later, Lawrence texted again: “What if I don’t even want to write this book? What if I don’t want to write anything ever again?”
“Wouldn’t you have to pay the advance back?” I replied. I sat down. I was freaking out a bit. What would happen if he stopped? Simply stopped? I hadn’t accounted for the possibility, and all of a sudden it was clear to me: our tether was too fragile, a rope of only one strand. This was all we had.
“Fair point,” Lawrence typed back. “It was a lot of money.”
“Sounds like you should keep writing.” I was past subtlety.
“I just had this sudden realization,” Lawrence wrote. “That all my ambition stems from insecurity and unhappiness.”
“That’s what ambition is.”
“I think if I were happier, then I wouldn’t need to write anymore. I’d be like a rabbit, just fucking and eating and not thinking. Come to think of it, what has thinking ever done for me?”
The game was ending. Lawrence was waking up in the worst possible way. I closed my laptop to make it stop.
--
Years later, we’re still paying back the advance. The publisher has mercifully allowed us to pay in instalments: we only have to send a few hundred pounds every month. But even this is difficult on a single salary. My salary. I work hard. When it becomes too much, I remind myself that Lawrence is a good boy. Steady and vital, his skin warm against mine. He naps while I’m at the office, storing up his energy for my return. When I arrive home from work, he removes my clothes and carries me to the bath. He pours cupfuls of warm water down my scalp. I work hard. I wonder if my body still resembles the one in the photo: wreathed in books, blanketed in sun. Lawrence licks the skin behind my ears. I don’t know why he does this. I don’t know if he’s cleaning or caressing me. Maybe he just likes the taste.
I’m no longer celibate. He no longer writes. He no longer reads. He doesn’t even talk. When we fuck, he breathes in and out through his nose. He looks at me with idle curiosity, like I’m a strange leaf. Sometimes I feel like a strange leaf, spotted with fungus, diseased and crispy, hanging weakly from a thin brown stem, threatening to fall off my branch. Lawrence is smooth and wetly veined. I know he will last through the winter, even though most leaves don’t do that. I work hard. I don’t even know what my job is. I work hard. I go to the office every morning and sit at a big table with colleagues. I take notes. I work hard. I go to my desk and send things to my colleagues and they send things back. I know my work is important because when I do it badly, I feel bad. I know my work is important because when I do it well, I feel okay. I know my work is important because once a month I am paid for it, and I buy nice food for Lawrence. I know my work is important because of Lawrence, because of his idleness, his tenderness, the way he watches me when I cry. I know my work is important because I know my work is important because I know my work is important because my work is the thing keeping me from falling off the branch, and because it is the thing that is making me fall.
Gabrielle Sicam (contributor: ‘He Oils The Cogs’)
Henry Woodland (contributor: ‘New Norwood Scale’)
August Lamm (contributor: ‘Word Count’)Lawrence was messaging me again. “Come to Italy,” he said.
“I can’t,” I typed. “I’m celibate.”
“We don’t have to sleep together,” he replied.
“What’s your word count today?”
Lawrence was writing a book. There was a big advance, and all he had to show for it was an introduction and a bunch of browser tabs. “I’m in the research phase,” he kept saying. I knew all about the research phase. I had spent my 20s there.
We met at a party in London. He asked me out. Then I quit my job, broke my lease, left the country, and moved into my sister’s attic. It was a systematic dismantling of my adult life, like a film rewinding. There was only static now, the thrill of imminent coalescence. It was a second childhood, one in which I was a prodigy. Possessed of preternatural wisdom, because I was 30 years old. Sure, I had missed a lot of chances, but that didn’t matter anymore. The starting blocks of life had moved to meet me where I stood.
“Let’s go to Florence,” Lawrence wrote. “I’ll do research there.”
“We’ll go when you hit 10k words,” I replied.
We were never going to Italy, I knew, and not because of his writer’s block. We were never going because we’d only met once, at a party. And because this was a game, a game that would cease to be fun the moment it ceased to be a game.
Also I didn’t have the money. I was taking time off—from work, alcohol, sex. I was saying no to life. Life was saying nothing in reply. Life was quiet for once. I wanted it to last forever. The quiet, not the life.
“Deal,” Lawrence wrote. “Italy at 10k. Then what do I get when I finish the whole manuscript?”
“I’ll sleep with you,” I wrote. I closed my laptop and went on a walk.
When I got home, I saw Lawrence had texted.
“Ok but what if we subdivided the reward?” he said. “Spread it out over time. Like I get a handjob every chapter, or a kiss every paragraph, or you hold my hand after every sentence? Instead of one big fuck at the end of the manuscript.”
I didn’t know what a big fuck was, or whether I was capable of one.
“Which would you choose?” I said. “The lump sum or the annuity? Obviously you can’t have both.”
“Easy choice,” Lawrence wrote. “A thousand kisses over sex.”
Easy, I thought. I looked up flights, just to see.
That night, Lawrence sent me his word count. I rewarded him with a nude I’d taken earlier: my body stretched out in a shaft of sunlight. I was at the peak of my powers. There was a copy of Ulysses open on the bed beside me, the Gabler edition. Sun draped across my legs like a blanket, folded over my thighs.
I enjoyed the challenge of producing a compelling nude every day. I had to modulate the pose and props and lighting and background to distinguish them from each other. The project had made me more comfortable in my body than ever before. This was the only work I ever wanted to do. Women’s work. Homework.
I scrolled through the folder of nudes whenever I needed a mood boost. I liked watching my body move from photo to photo, a sort of stop-motion writhing. This was good writhing, though. Joyful writhing. My body moving the way bodies move when they have nothing better to do, when no one’s asked anything of them. When I scrolled through the photos, it was hard to fathom that this body of mine was celibate, that no one had touched it in months. Was it illegal to possess a body like that and not give it away? But in a sense, I was giving it away. In a sense, it wasn’t mine at all. It belonged to Lawrence.
“What’s your word count?” I asked the next evening.
“I’m taking the day off,” Lawrence said.
“Cool,” I typed, thankful he couldn’t see my face.
A few minutes later, Lawrence texted again: “What if I don’t even want to write this book? What if I don’t want to write anything ever again?”
“Wouldn’t you have to pay the advance back?” I replied. I sat down. I was freaking out a bit. What would happen if he stopped? Simply stopped? I hadn’t accounted for the possibility, and all of a sudden it was clear to me: our tether was too fragile, a rope of only one strand. This was all we had.
“Fair point,” Lawrence typed back. “It was a lot of money.”
“Sounds like you should keep writing.” I was past subtlety.
“I just had this sudden realization,” Lawrence wrote. “That all my ambition stems from insecurity and unhappiness.”
“That’s what ambition is.”
“I think if I were happier, then I wouldn’t need to write anymore. I’d be like a rabbit, just fucking and eating and not thinking. Come to think of it, what has thinking ever done for me?”
The game was ending. Lawrence was waking up in the worst possible way. I closed my laptop to make it stop.
--
Years later, we’re still paying back the advance. The publisher has mercifully allowed us to pay in instalments: we only have to send a few hundred pounds every month. But even this is difficult on a single salary. My salary. I work hard. When it becomes too much, I remind myself that Lawrence is a good boy. Steady and vital, his skin warm against mine. He naps while I’m at the office, storing up his energy for my return. When I arrive home from work, he removes my clothes and carries me to the bath. He pours cupfuls of warm water down my scalp. I work hard. I wonder if my body still resembles the one in the photo: wreathed in books, blanketed in sun. Lawrence licks the skin behind my ears. I don’t know why he does this. I don’t know if he’s cleaning or caressing me. Maybe he just likes the taste.
I’m no longer celibate. He no longer writes. He no longer reads. He doesn’t even talk. When we fuck, he breathes in and out through his nose. He looks at me with idle curiosity, like I’m a strange leaf. Sometimes I feel like a strange leaf, spotted with fungus, diseased and crispy, hanging weakly from a thin brown stem, threatening to fall off my branch. Lawrence is smooth and wetly veined. I know he will last through the winter, even though most leaves don’t do that. I work hard. I don’t even know what my job is. I work hard. I go to the office every morning and sit at a big table with colleagues. I take notes. I work hard. I go to my desk and send things to my colleagues and they send things back. I know my work is important because when I do it badly, I feel bad. I know my work is important because when I do it well, I feel okay. I know my work is important because once a month I am paid for it, and I buy nice food for Lawrence. I know my work is important because of Lawrence, because of his idleness, his tenderness, the way he watches me when I cry. I know my work is important because I know my work is important because I know my work is important because my work is the thing keeping me from falling off the branch, and because it is the thing that is making me fall.
Colton Karpman (Founding Editor: ‘Editor’s Letter’)
Dilara Koz (Art Director)
Em Bauer (Illustrator)
Harry Lowther (Prose Editor)
Isaac Zamet (Poetry Editor)
Dilara Koz (Art Director)
Em Bauer (Illustrator)
Harry Lowther (Prose Editor)
Isaac Zamet (Poetry Editor)