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Overview
"[A] wry and unnerving story of bad love gone rotten. [Mohr] has a generous understanding of his characters, whom he describes with an intelligence and sensitivity that pulls you in. This is no small achievement."
• The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
“Similar to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment : the most crucial action serves as a portal to and wellspring for the various psychologies of its characters. But Mohr's storytelling is so absorbing that Termite Parade does not read like an analytical rumination; if he is examining the very nature of these characters under a microscope, he at least lets the specimens speak for themselves.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
" Termite Parade is a sucker punch to literary complacency, without a hint of authorial self-absorption. Mohr is a post-millennial Bukowski with a dash of Hubert Selby, Jr. thrown in for good measure, and with only two published novels under his belt, he is rapidly becoming one of my favorite American novelists."
• Powell's Review-A-Day
Termite Parade is the follow-up to Joshua Mohr's San Francisco Chronicle bestselling first novel - and one of O, The Oprah Magazine's '10 Terrific Reads of 2009' - Some Things That Meant the World to Me.
Termite Parade tells the story of Mired, the self-described "bastard daughter of a menage a trois between Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sylvia Plath, and Eeyore." Mired catalogs her "museum of emotional failures," the latest entry to which is her boyfriend Derek, an auto mechanic (whose body may or may not be infested with termites), who loses his cool carrying her up the stairs to their apartment.
As Derek's termites wreak havoc on his nervous system, Mired pieces together the puzzle, each character revealing aspects of their savage natures, culminating in a climax of pure animal chaos.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780982015162 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Two Dollar Radio |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2010 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
JOSHUA MOHR is the author of the novels Some Things that Meant the World to Me , which was one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009, and the newly released Termite Parade , which was an Editor's Choice selection of The New York Times Book Review. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as 7×7, the Bay Guardian, Zyzzyva, The Rumpus, Other Voices, the Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast and Pleiades, among many others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches fiction writing. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net.
Read an Excerpt
TERMITE PARADE
a novelBy JOSHUA MOHR
TWO DOLLAR RADIO
Copyright © 2010 Joshua MohrAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9820151-6-2
Chapter One
MEET MIREDThere were days I felt like the bastard daughter of a ménage a trois between Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sylvia Plath, and Eeyore.
Days pungent with disappointment.
Days soiled and hoarding blame.
Allow me to offer some evidence: about 5 a.m. on the morning after my last birthday, I was on my knees in front of the toilet, leaning over it and looking down at the water, waiting to throw up again. I stared at my reflection and could see myself so clearly. My life in the toilet. I was right where I belonged.
MEET DEREK
I tried to make another whiskey on the rocks but there weren't any ice cubes left in the lousy freezer. Not that there's much of anything left except all my impossible, obscene questions: what's the difference between lying to yourself and being redeemed, what if they're identical, like me and my twin brother, Frank, what if they look exactly alike but are completely different monsters?
But here was one I could answer because while there weren't any ice cubes, there was a sack of frozen peas. So do I make a "whiskey on the peas"? Had I turned into that kind of person?
After the riot that had happened between Mired and me, the answer was easy, tearing open the bag and clutching a handful of green ice.
MIRED TELLS THE FIRST BIT OF THE ROMP
"There's nothing to worry about, Mired," the dentist said to me.
"I'm sure there's not," I said, or at least I did my best to say: I spoke with a lisp since knocking out my front teeth. Since I'd felt the maelstrom of humiliation, ruining not only my mouth, but breaking my wrist, stitches on my forehead, bruises all over my face, aching muscles in my back. "But I'd rather not remember anything. That's all."
"You'll be fine," he said, a tall man, with tall man's hands, not thick but stretched and lean, the kind with sparkling manicures you see in magazine ads. "Novocain will be enough." He smiled.
"I'd be more comfortable knocked out."
"We don't do that anymore. Not for this procedure."
"Can you make an exception?"
"No, but I can promise to be careful and gentle." He smiled again.
I didn't believe him. His words sounded too savvy, too adept coming from his mouth. He'd said them to a hundred skittish women. And, like me, those hundred skittish women knew he was lying but agreed anyway, because that was what we did: we swallowed every lie every man everywhere heaved in our ears.
* * *
For four hours my mouth was pried open. A pollution drifting out of it as the dentist drilled my broken teeth to thin posts. These posts would anchor the temporary dental bridge. The dental bridge would be three shiny white teeth, so shiny and white that no one would be able to tell they were fake, he'd promised me. But before the shiny and white fake ones could be mounted in my mouth, the dentist had to do this: had to whittle my teeth into thin mounting posts.
The smell of hot, burning teeth was like microwaved tinfoil, but worse because I was the microwaved tinfoil. Worse still because this whole thing was my fault; I'd microwaved myself, getting drunk and acting like an imbecile and falling down the stairs. A grown woman falling down the stairs.
Every now and again, the drill shot a shard of tooth from my mouth, a few hitting me in the face, or landing on my bib, or flying onto the carpet.
"Would you like to rinse?" the dentist said.
I nodded. I took a sip of water and sloshed it around, some spilling from my numb lips. When I spat into the sink, slivers of my gums lodged in the drain and looked like the shavings from a pencil's eraser. Seeing my own gums clot there made it feel like everything was falling to pieces, like life was infinitely more complicated today from yesterday from the day before, and it didn't seem as though there was any chance things would ever be simple again, ever new, ever thrilling. It seemed as though the sheen of everything tarnished with time. Even my own sheen, as I dribbled dignity from my mouth in a river of drool and blood, slipping down the drain with my gum-shavings.
I wasn't aware that I shook my head until the dentist said, "Are you okay?"
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
"Of course."
I walked down the hallway, tried to open the bathroom door, but it was locked. Only had to stand there for a few seconds before Derek came out.
"This is horrid," I said.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"It hurts."
"Ask him to numb you more."
"I deserve it."
"What?"
I hugged him. I hugged him because I needed him to know that I was sorry, that I knew I was wrong and hoped he'd give me the chance to make things up to him. I needed him to know that I finally accepted my role in our problems. For months, I'd privately blamed every one of our swollen woes on Derek, his drinking, his ambivalence, his temper and wandering eye. But I couldn't continue to propel blame on him, not after making a lovely fool out of myself at Shawna's house, in front of all those people, and tumbling down our stairs.
"I hope you can forgive me," I said to Derek.
"There's nothing to forgive."
"We can get through this."
"Let's talk about it later."
"I love you."
"I love you, too," he said and walked back to the waiting room.
I went into the bathroom and shut the door. I still wore the dental bib, which had wild red splatters all over the front of it. With my fingers, I pushed my upper lip up. One of my teeth had been shaped into a thin post. I touched it and didn't feel a thing. I pushed my tongue against it. Nothing felt real. I put my hands over my face. I'd done this to myself. Got jealous and lost control. No one to blame but me.
What did Derek mean when he said, "Let's talk about it later"? What was "it"? Since when did he want to talk about anything?
Bleary eyed, I staggered back to the dental chair.
"All better?" the dentist said.
"Better than what?" I lisped, drooling from the Novocain.
* * *
After it was all over, I walked into the waiting room and Derek wasn't there. I said to the receptionist, "Did my boyfriend run an errand?"
Her eyes were light brown, almost amber, and like amber, they looked old, lifeless, cemented. "I don't know," she said and asked me how I'd like to pay.
I handed her a credit card and hoped it worked. "When did he leave?"
"A couple hours ago."
"Hours?"
She swiped my card. It was taking a long time to process.
"Did he say anything to you before he left?" I said. Did he happen to tell you what he wanted to talk with me about later?
Her amber eyes were fixed on the credit card machine. I was convinced that she was about to tell me my card was declined, and assumed that Derek wanting to talk later meant he'd soon be telling me our life was declined. Everything, everyone had reached their limits with me.
But it must have gone through, because she handed me the receipt and a pen.
At least I hadn't broken the wrist I wrote with. "Are you sure he didn't say anything?"
She looked at my fake teeth, then my eyes, then my fake teeth. "No, he simply walked out the door."
She made it sound like the easiest action in the world, walking out on me.
DEREK CATCHES US UP ON WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ...
I was just getting home from another lousy day at work, lousy month at work, getting home to my girlfriend who was an eight on the lousy-scale herself. The whole apartment stunk like burning brakes so I asked, "What's that smell?" while waving my hand in front of my nose, and Mired said, "Don't worry, dinner's almost ready." She said, "I had a great day, thanks for checking." She said, "Things need to change, Derek. They really do."
Let's up her status to a nine on the lousy-scale.
I thought Mired had murdered another of her dad's Filipino recipes, but she kept calling this dish "chicken parmesan." Problem was I'd seen plenty of chicken parmesan in my day, so I knew that the chicken wasn't supposed to be pounded flat as a tortilla or cooked so long that it took nine back-and-forths with a knife to get through the skinny bastard, and between you and me, I've never known chicken to smell like burning brakes. Mired must have noticed me scowling at the food because she said, "You can cook dinner anytime you want."
"It doesn't taste that bad."
"Such a ladies' man," she said.
Better bump her up to a 9.5.
After we chewed our burned-brakes chicken, we were off to a Bon Voyage! party for our friend, Shawna, who was moving to Cleveland to take a new job. It might not be totally true to say that Shawna was our friend. Shawna was my friend. We'd worked together, years ago, at an auto parts store and had dated for a few months. Mired was a jealous person in the first place, and she was of the opinion that Shawna still had a crush on me, though I kept trying to tell her that there was nothing going on between us.
The mood Mired was in during our burned-brakes dinner was enough for me to know she didn't want to say Bon Voyage! to anyone, let alone a woman she thought had a thing for me. She'd rather white knuckle through the party than sit home and wonder what styles of no-good me and Shawna were test-driving.
We arrived at the Bon Voyage!, and immediately Mired started drinking vodka tonics. Really drinking. Rock star drinking. Her piss-poor mood had gotten pisser and poorer right when we walked in because Shawna pronounced Mired's name wrong, calling her Meer-red.
"It's pronounced like the verb," Mired said to her. "You know: mired in depression, mired in immense mental anguish, mired in a diabolical vortex of low self-esteem."
"Got it," Shawna said.
"That's what you said last time," Mired said, batting her eyes like a sly homecoming queen.
While the other twenty guests and I were in the living room, talking about Shawna, and Cleveland, and all the opportunities that awaited her there, Mired sat alone in the kitchen, though we could all see her down the hallway from where we'd planted. Every once in a while she'd yell, "I'm sure going to miss you, Shawna," and she'd laugh real hard and these twenty other guests with their forty wide eyes just stared at her, pretending to be deaf, and I'd deflect by droning on about Cleveland being the best city splattered on our continent.
You see, all these surprised eyes weren't just learning that Mired drank too much and had a sailor's mouth and didn't like Shawna. No, they soaked up the fact that there was barely trust between Mired and me, and the trust we did have was heavy and rundown, a burden we lugged behind us like concrete shadows.
After an hour or so, and probably seven drinks, Mired blurted, "Derek, maybe as a going away gift you should have sex with Shawna."
Forty humungous eyes and twenty tongue-tied guests. Shawna looked at me. I was supposed to do something, this was clearly supposed to be handled by me, but I didn't know what to say, so I tried to change the subject, asking, "Does anyone know the average rainfall in Cleveland?" but no one was listening, all looking toward the kitchen at Mired. Shawna had this seething look on her face and she said, "Do you have something to say to me?" and Mired said, "Why do you ask?" and Shawna said, "Are you insulting me in my own house?" and Mired said, "Absolutely not," and Shawna said, "Because you can leave right now," and Mired said, "I'll be over here minding my manners," and we all went back to talking, Shawna throwing an occasional stink-eye at Mired.
Guests reluctantly nibbled on chips and slurped the bottoms of their empty cocktails, chewing ice cubes, everyone too uneasy to replenish supplies because that meant a trip into the kitchen, near Mired's mean mouth. I knew her well enough to assume that things would diffuse if the other stunned guests and I ignored her outbursts, and it worked for a while.
But then Mired slurred, "Shawna, are you sure you wouldn't like to give Derek a blowjob for old time's sake?"
Twenty other guests and forty scathing eyes, their naked disgust, all staring at Mired as she embarrassed herself, embarrassed us, me. Guilty by association. Their awed eyes ricocheted from Mired to Shawna to me and back around, a vicious carousel, all these gazes grazing each of us. There was no way I could talk Mired down from the heights of her lousiest conspiracy, the lousiest one of all because this time there were all these eyewitnesses, instead of just the two of us, berating each other.
"We'll all watch," Mired said, aiming another homecoming smile toward Shawna. "Make a big batch of popcorn."
"Out!" Shawna said, "out, out, out of my house!" and she hopped up and ran toward the kitchen, but some of the guests got in her way. Shawna turned to me and said, "Get her out of here," and I said, "Fine, fine," and Mired said to her, "Who do you think you are?" and I didn't even get a chance to say Bon Voyage! Instead, I helped Mired stagger to the door and stagger down the stairs, almost falling twice, and I put her in the passenger seat and drove us home, punching our address into my GPS and paying sharp attention to the speed limit because of the whiskey I'd had.
The whole ride she kept saying, "Drop me off and go give it to her."
"Shut up."
"At least let her jerk you off."
"Shut up."
"You treat me like a dog."
This was so god damn frustrating because there wasn't anything going on between Shawna and me, and I was tired of walking on eggshells. I didn't need to. Shouldn't eggshell-walking be reserved for people who were actually trying to hide something? I mean, all I wanted to do was go say Bon Voyage! to an old friend and now I had to listen to all this.
Our conversation vanished as Mired passed out right in the middle of our latest screaming match. I sat at a red light and thought about her earplugs. Mired wore them to sleep. She was the lightest sleeper I'd ever met. Even the refrigerator's compressor clicking on could wake her up. I remember thinking to myself right then that I wished I'd had my own pair of earplugs while we were at Shawna's: I could have sat there and I'd have had no idea what Mired was saying. I was thinking about how beautiful it would be to block out all those ugly words, and the light turned green but I stayed right there, couldn't bring myself to drive home yet. The light turned red again, which made me happy and I sat there feeling happy, but with an idling dread because I knew the light would eventually change, and this time there was a car behind me. I didn't want to get home, or wake her up, not without my own pair of earplugs.
I pulled up to our lousy apartment building, and Mired was out cold. I shook her, said, "Get up," but she didn't move or say anything. The key was still in the ignition so I turned the car on and found a radio station playing Lynyrd Skynyrd because Mired hated that hillbilly shit. I made the music blare and gave her a few shakes, but she didn't move so I shut the car off and went to her side, opened her door and said, "Let's go." She finally answered me by saying, "I can't," and I said, "Can you walk on your own?" but since her eyes had shut again and her head swiveled every direction like a broken compass, I knew she couldn't. I threw her arm around my shoulder and guided her. We only took two steps before her legs went boneless, flaccid, falling, but I was able to catch her, swooping her up in my arms, the way a groom carries a bride on their wedding night. We lived on the second story, and I started struggling up the stairs, and she said, "Admit you want to have sex with her," and I didn't say anything, didn't need to renovate her accusations. Concentrating on climbing those steps. If we were going to keep fighting, I didn't want to say anything until we'd barricaded ourselves in our apartment. So I tried to ignore her, tried pretending that I wore earplugs or that my ears were locked like safes and her words didn't know the combinations, but it didn't work. I had no guard from anything that came out of her mouth. Mired said, "Go back and screw her," and I tried to cinch my ears closed. I said, "Shut up," and she said, "I can't believe the way you treat me," and I said, "That makes two of us," and she said, "I deserve more than you," and I couldn't believe what I was hearing, couldn't fathom how she figured she deserved more. It didn't make any sense, since I was the one trying to do the right thing, trying to help my drunken girlfriend get up the stairs while she berated me for something that wasn't even true.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from TERMITE PARADE by JOSHUA MOHR Copyright © 2010 by Joshua Mohr. Excerpted by permission.
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