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Overview
In the title novella, Cotman imagines a group of near-immortals living in Pittsburgh in an uneasy truce with Lord Decay. Their truce is threatened when one of them takes pity on a young woman who knows their secret. In “Among the Zoologists,” a game writer on their way to a convention falls in with a group of rogue Darwinists whose baggage contains a great mystery. A volleyball tournament devolves into nightmare and chaos in “Mine.” In Cotman’s hands, the conventions of genres from fairytales to Victorian literature to epic fantasy and horror give shape to marvelously new stories.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781618731722 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Small Beer Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2020 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 430,989 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
An excerpt from the story “Seven Watsons” from Dance on Saturday by Elwin Cotman If I had the time, I’d tell all kinds a stories bout Pittsburgh Job Corps. But I only got time for one, so it’s got to be the Watsons. The rest I’ll get to later. One night in September, I was chilling in the dorm with the buls. Loominati was skinny, Lindsey was pudgy, I was and will be fat. Three hundred pounds since I was little. The buls used to say I looked like a black version of a sitcom dad, especially on nights like that when I was in jeans shorts, a tank, and them reindeer slippers I got for Christmas. Loom lay in his top bunk, shirtless in scrub pants, knitting needles flashing as he worked on a black-and-red blanket. Years in Job Corps and ain’t a single RA knew he kept them needles, else they’d take them as contraband. Me and Lindsey lounged in bean bag chairs playing Madden on an old tube TV. We had to pause when the RA came in, big orange-haired whitebul called Ortilani, who says we got a new intake. Loom vanished them needles under his pillow. “I did the last intake,” Lindsey told Ortilani. Real rap, I kept my head down when RAs came calling. Loom said he’d do it. The bul slipped on his flip flops, scrub top, and red hoodie and shuffled to work. Meantime, I was losing 22 to 7. “Defense, my nigga!” Lindsey yelled. “Where your fucking D at?” Nigga could talk mad shit when he was winning. Between the three of us, we had over four years in that building: Lindsey a year and seven months; Loom a year and five; I was coming on a year and eight. Two a them months I’d been a section leader, after Lindsey put in a good word for me. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t the best. During details I let the other guys round up the buls while I joked around. Being section leader meant I got an extra thirty-five each payday, and the RAs treated us, too, took us to Dave & Busters once a month. We got the biggest room to ourselves: three bunk beds against the outside wall, two wooden desks with cushioned chairs, and six metal lockers painted teal. Three of them beds was for C-Prep buls who rotated out soon as they got they own room. Lindsey ran a store out a there: candy bars, ramen, ‘Ports, whatever you need. Loom returned dragging an adorable little red suitcase by the handle, and behind him came a short bul, five-three at most. He still had that Greyhound stink on him, dressed in a rumpled gray hoodie and jeans puddling round his ankles. Like all the new buls, he tried to hide how scared he was with a mean mug. I shook his hand. “Flexo,” I said. “Chris,” he grunted. Lindsey flashed two fingers at him. “Whaddup, Chris. Name’s Lindsey.” “Ain’t that a girl’s name?” Chris asked, amused. Lindsey rolled his eyes. Loom introduced Chris to the fourth roommate, a big barley-haired whitebul on a top bunk who never bothered nobody. Mostly played puzzle games with the phone up close to his eyes. Chris took the locker nearest the window, had so much trouble with his combo he needed Loom’s help. “Rule number three of Job Corps,” Loom told him, “lock up your shit. Niggas here is grimy. You ain’t gotta worry bout the dudes in this room . . .” “Cause we have jobs,” Lindsey said. “But some of these niggas you gotta watch out for.” “They will literally steal your dirtyass underwear,” I said from experience. Real rap, the bul ain’t have much to steal. He unpacked three shirts, one Sixers jersey, two jeans, five pair a boxers wadded in a ball, three pair a socks, and a pair a knockoff Jays that smelled moldy up close. He emptied his Job Corps “ditty bag,” a purple drawstring pouch like Crown Royal came in: a blue toothbrush in the package, two bar a Dove soap, a stick a dry deodorant that would crumble like a soup cracker soon as it touched his pit, a comb made for white hair, nail clippers, terrycloth towel and washcloth, a stubby pencil and notepad. He dumped it all on the floor. This got a teeth-sucking sound from Lindsey, who preferred tidiness. “Second rule,” Loom told him as they put his stuff away, “do your details. Ain’t nobody tryin’a live in no funkyass dorm, so when you get one, do that shit. No questions asked.” Loom went over the routine. Make your bed before you leave. Breakfast. Classes. Lunch. Sign in soon as you get on the floor, else you get marked AWOL. Fix discrepancies. Free time. Dinner. Evening details. Loom wanted to make sure he got the last point cause he stared the bul down like a cobra. “And rule number one of Job Corps . . .” “Don’t mess with the Job Corps girls,” I said. “One: drama.” “Two: STDs.” “Three: they fucking crazy.” The bul chuckled like we was joking. Loom got a look a pity on his long, bored face. I figured Chris’d learn soon enough. Sometimes failure be the best teacher. He got settled in the bunk on top Lindsey, and Loom went back to knitting. ‘Cept for me and Linds talking shit, things went quiet till lights out. I thanked God for another day, put on a sleep mask, and lay my head down. Ain’t two minutes go by fore I hear Lindsey roll off the mattress and land heavy on the floor. He groped round the desk, flicked on a lamp, fumbled his glasses on his face, and knocked on the bul’s bed three times. “Chris, you sleep?” “I’m trying,” Chris groaned, head under his pillow. Lindsey pointed to the bootleg Jays by the bedpost. “You need to do something bout them shoes. They funky.” They was woke so I had to wake. Chris sat up, looking put-upon. “Says you.” “Don’t you smell that, Flex?” Lindsey asked me. “I wasn’t gonna say nothing,” I said. “Ain’t no drama with Flexo.” “Well, I ain’t chill like him,” Lindsey told Chris. “If I got something to say about you, I’m gonna say it to you. You need to put them funky shoes in a bag.” “You can’t tell me what to do just cause you a section leader.” “Hold up. Slow your roll. Calm down. You living with people now.” “Nigga, I got six brothers!” “Call me ‘nigga’ again.” Lindsey sounded real dark, just then. Loom leaned out from the bed on top mine. “Fuck all y’all,” he said diplomatically. “Go. To. Fucking. Sleep.” “I can give you a bag,” I offered too late cause they was in each other’s face, Fuck you bitchass nigga, I ain’t taking shit from no little niggas, I oughta steal you nigga. Repping they cities—I’m from West Philly, Nigga I’m from Cleveland—like every hood ain’t the same as every other. It got so heated the bul lifts his shirt to show a scar, like, Yeah I been shot nigga, and Lindsey says he don’t give a shit. I stepped in. Being wide as I is, I get between two buls, they gots to separate. “Fine!” Chris yelled. “I came here to get my GED, not fight with niggas over some fucking shoes.” He went to his locker and had such a time opening the lock he cussed at the door. Finally he snatched out some Axe spray, and not only did he douse his shoes, he doused everybody’s shoes. Instantly my eyes turned to balls a stinging wasps. Mucus scratched my throat like steel wool and my nose filled up with boogers so fast it was like I’d inhaled snail shells. Lindsey cussed as he tried to open a window. But none of us got it bad as the whitebul: sleep one minute, bolt upright the next, hand on his chest, wheezing. Loom grabbed him under the arms and helped him out the room. That deodorant got the whole hall fumigated. Niggas was coming out in they boxers, yelling, “What’s that smell?” Ortilani had to stay an hour after his shift ended, first to move Chris and the whitebul to new rooms, then open windows in every room to get the rosy stench out. Then he got the lowdown from Linds. Had to give it to him, the bul knew how to talk to authority, that white way a talking. He had Ortilani ready to term the bul right there. “Tell me exactly what he said to you,” Ortilani instructed. “I need to know if somebody’s being a threat on my dorm.” “I don’t want any drama,” Lindsey told him. “But Troy has asthma. He could have gotten real sick. I’m not playing this game.” “You lying!” Chris yelled from an open door. “You started all that shit!” From outside the RA office you could see down both halls. Look down Summit, you see Chris yelling. Down Phoenix I could see a six-foot gaybul woke from the commotion, voguing in silhouette, dabbing his invisible brush on an invisible compact. Ortilani ordered Chris back in the room with his cop voice—rumor had it he caught bounties on the side. Lindsey asked if he could please go out for a smoke, and Ortilani said yes, so I threw on my coat and followed downstairs. Outside the featureless center walls, the night was warm and breezy and starry. Rats darted cross the concrete and an ever-expanding tribe a wild turkeys was warbling in the woods we called Camp Green. Caterpillar-chewed yellow leaves lay raked in piles at the edges a the enclosure. Wasn’t nothing in the yard but sheds, a rec center, an assembly hall, and the portables where we took class. Directly under the dorm windows was piled plastic cups, plates, and soiled underwear tossed by the nastybuls. All round the center ran a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, with one gate and a booth where a rent-a-cop sat watching sitcoms on a little TV. Through the fence you could just make out Shuman Detention Center. I sat on a brick flowerbed with no flowers, just dirt, while Lindsey paced and spit smoke. “I don’t take disrespect from nobody. How is this little nigga gonna rep West Philly? Tell me, if Philly niggas is so hard, how come they let the white folks throw ‘em out? Huh? Ain’t no niggas in West Philly no more. Little punk bitch don’t wanna see the Cleveland in me.” Talking came hard, what with my lips all dried up like two pieces a pork rind. “It ain’t nothing,” I said. “He just a yungbul.” Lindsey smirked. “You know Ortilani’s getting drunk tonight.” “That whitebul getting wasted.” Sometimes you had to lozenge it like that. Be like, The nigga ain’t worth your time, cause none a that fighting did no good. I would hate to see somebody get termed over dumb shit.
Table of Contents
Dance on Saturday Seven Watsons Mine The Son’s War Among the Zoologists The Piper’s Christmas GiftInterviews
My stories are centered in blackness. All the protagonists, and even the antagonists, are navigating the difficulty of existing in a world where blackness is oppressed and reviled. Even the secondary world story is afrocentric. There are not many fantasy pieces that center on tenderness between black men. It’s something I see more explored in poetry than fiction. Though the Oscar-winning film Moonlight centers these ideas, I still don’t see them in a lot of mainstream movies. I think “Seven Watsons,” which is about love between heterosexual black men, will open peoples’ eyes.
I want to change the perspective that black homosocial spaces are negative by writing stories about the joy of blackness. This means showing expressions of love, whether it be familial or fraternal or romantic. In our society, black men and women are marked for death from the moment they are born. Thus, my work celebrates black survival.