The following stories by Stephen Elliot were originally published in Quarterly West¹, but were pulled from publication following the author’s inclusion on the now infamous Shitty Media Men list.² Misery Tourism is republishing them as part of a series of unpublished (and otherwise censored) works, and, also, because they’re excellent.

Night At The Oscars

I changed the sheets and threw the whites in the laundry. Then I watered the plants and vacuumed behind the cushions and under the couch. I opened the windows, tossed the trash, set the chairs, wiped down the toilet and the tub. At noon I met the new tenant and gave him the keys. Then I took pictures of the apartment and left.

Dale Anne said she would be watching the Oscars with Johnny and I was welcome to come by. “Did you hear about Sherman Alexie?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. He had told women he was interested in their poetry, tricking them into having sex with him.
“The guy that wrote The Maze Runner issued an apology yesterday,” Dale Anne said. “He got dropped by his agent and publisher. He said he’s going into counseling but nobody falls for that anymore. The guy that wrote 13 Reasons Why got dropped by his agent too after denying everything.”
“So it’s the same, whether you apologize or deny the charges?”
“13 Reasons Why you’ll never work again,” she replied. “I can’t wait to hear them all called out from the red carpet.”
“Do you believe anyone is innocent?” I asked.
“Do you? Time’s up motherfucker.”

I met Jesus at the pink restaurant on Sunset and Parkland. The place was full of addicts. There was even a spare room in back with a separate entrance which resulted in a 50 cent surcharge on everything.
I told Jesus I was worried about money, my prospects seemed to be dimming.
“You have to let go of your pride,” he said. “I’m 50 years old and I moved back in with my parents and went back to school. I’m studying to be a hospice nurse.”
“So you just gave up your apartment?”
“You have to take any opportunity to make money,” he said. “I lived in that apartment for 12 years.”
I wondered if I could be a mortgage broker, or a computer programmer. Jesus mentioned moving furniture.
“Have you ever waited tables?” he asked.
“For a long time,” I replied.

I was in college then, waiting tables. And after college when I was living in the squat with Louie and Kelly one glorious summer, working night and weekend shifts at The Heartland Cafe. I kept a freezer full of pot and acid and I painted the sink black. I drew outlines around the pans in thick marker and painted the water heater pale pastels. Nobody had a box spring or a dresser but we all had bicycles. And we all waited tables and we’d all end up in the same place eventually.
That’s when I met Claire, the woman I was supposed to marry.
It was so hot that summer and I remember bicycling back and forth along the lake path and diving from the slab like a seal. I saw various groups of people in the parks near the water and noticed how they were to each other, how they walked together, even adults playing organized team sports. I met Claire’s roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend. At night I’d either work in the restaurant or come home to Louie and Kelly’s friends. I can’t say it was any different for anyone else I just know how it was for me. And then Claire went off to Europe and I moved out and I woke a few months later in a hospital covered in strange burns and delirious.
I was still in the hospital when I saw Claire a few years later. I mean, I wasn’t actually in the hospital anymore but in practical terms nothing had changed. She had gone to law school, like a butterfly molting from a frying pan. And in a moment of clarity that quickly passed and was forgotten I realized Claire would never take me back. Louie moved to Australia, and Kelly was cashiering at a casino in Carson City.

Jesus told me to take any job that was available. “Just keep showing up and everything will work out,” He said. “I’ve been showing up for almost 30 years.”
He asked if I’d ever had the guava cheese pie here; it was supposed to be good.

Coffee

I asked Dale Anne if she would come over to the house after the meeting. That’s how we ended up on the couch drinking tea at 8am. She thought I wanted to interview her but mostly I was afraid of spending too much time alone.
“What do you think of this place?” I asked.
“You sleep on the sofa?” she asked, noticing the wool blanket.
Dale Anne said she’d always been weird. She’d felt weird all of her life but she also always knew she was cool. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been depressed.
I mentioned my first overdose and how I couldn’t move properly for 8 days. She said that happened to her too. She was shooting up with her mom in a Seattle suburb.
“We were fighting and I made her buy a bunch of speedballs from a rancher I suspected of being a white supremacist. There were drugs all over the house when my mom discovered me dying on the bathroom floor. She called the paramedics and stuck ice cubes in my ass. When the police arrived they arrested both of us immediately but I got to go to the hospital and then rehab. My mom went straight to jail. We both got a felony conviction.”
I told her I’d always been depressed. Starting with when I split my wrist open 32 years ago. I still have the scars and I don’t scar easily.
“It came back following that overdose,” I said. “And I checked myself into the hospital after midnight because I knew I was going to die. I was sad a lot after that but it was 15 years until I started crying again for no reason.”
“Sorry to be a downer,” I said.
“No, it’s cool,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing.”

On the porch Dale Anne said she’d just taken up smoking. She told me about the time she won an Emmy. She showed me pictures from The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She was wearing a cheetah skirt, hair dyed pink.
“The Costume Designer was supposed to speak first but she paused,” Dale Anne said. “So I grabbed the microphone and gave a ten second speech. I never worked in television again.”
I told her Timothee Chalamet played a version of me in a movie once. I told her how happy I was when I was writing. I wished I could do it all the time but it’s like having an orgasm, at least for a guy.
“It spurts out and that’s it. If I’m lucky I can be creative again in the evening.”
“We should write a screenplay,” Dale Anne said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But in the movie version things don’t work out for everyone.”

1. We reached out to the editor of Quarterly West via email to give them an opportunity to comment on their decision to unpublish the stories, but did not receive a response.
2. Elliot denies the allegations made against him, and has since sued the creator of the list. However, the purpose of this series is not to litigate the truth or falsehood of any accusations, but instead to highlight the censored works themselves, which we believe hold value that transcends any personal controversies.