The section nobody asked for and everybody was missing

Words.

Comics, monologues, memories and professional guides nobody requested. No brief, client or responsible adult here. Just things that had to get out of me and acquire an address on the internet.

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ISSUE 01
Comic · 1 min

Kindergarten Party

I wandered into a situation and came out with a comic. Childhood trauma deserves decent resolution too.

Daniel T., the kindergarten heartthrob, apparently has a death wish.

Kindergarten Party comic
ISSUE 02
Guide · 3 min

A Guide for the Writer with a Deadline Breathing Down Her Neck

  1. Open a Word document and type the headline in a very large font.
  2. Delete it and snort with contempt.
Continue reading, meaning deteriorating
  1. Stare at the screen for several minutes and contemplate death.
  2. Make an elaborate healthy salad and eat it with excessive moral superiority.
  3. Open the children's snack cupboard and eat everything.
  4. Make sure to include the inferior wafers brought to kindergarten by last year's Friday mother.
  5. Last year.
  6. Develop heartburn.
  7. Ignore the anxious editor on the phone.
  8. And by email.
  9. And on WhatsApp.
  10. Excellent time to update your Facebook profile picture.
  11. Open the photo album on your mobile device.
  12. Scroll past hundreds of photos of the children, recipes you never made, novelty filters sent by your partner and several thousand photographs of table legs taken by your youngest daughter.
  13. Stop at one in which you look crisp, beautiful and considerably thinner than you are in reality.
  14. Brighten, blur, shrink and filter with conviction.
  15. Open Facebook.
  16. Discover that your ex has had a baby with his new girlfriend, after years of explaining to you that he never wanted children, which also led to your breakup.
  17. Curse him internally and press Like.
  18. You are an amazing person.
  19. Publish the new picture.
  20. Regret it due to insufficient likes and restore the old one.
  21. Stop at a heartbreaking post by strangers raising money to save their terminally ill child.
  22. React, sob, gasp, count your blessings and donate 250 shekels.
  23. You are an amazing person.
  24. Close Facebook.
  25. Open ASOS.
  26. React, sob, gasp, count your blessings and donate 250 shekels.
ISSUE 03
Monologue · 4 min

A Short Story About a Pointless Date from the Past

Introduction: I do not care how handsome, funny and devastating he is. There is no way I am sleeping with him before the fourth date. I need to take myself more seriously. I want love. L-O-V-E.

  1. He rings the intercom. Since when do I have an intercom?
Read the rest of the bad decisions
  1. What a relief. He is ugly.
  2. Why did we arrange to meet at my place? Rookie mistake. Next time: neutral ground.
  3. He has not even arrived and he is already in the bathroom.
  4. There will be no next time.
  5. Ten minutes. So it is not a pee.
  6. He comes out without washing his hands. Ugly and revolting. A complete service package.
  7. He sits beside me, checks his phone, asks about my day and makes no effort to hear the answer.
  8. I was fired and my period is late.
  9. He surveys my ugly apartment and asks why the shelf is on the floor.
  10. I suggest he drill into the wall and hang it.
  11. He cannot use a drill.
  12. Promising.
  13. He receives a text while I search for a polite way to remove him from my home.
  14. No polite way appears. On a scale of one to ten, the thought of sleeping with him is an eight.
  15. Still eight.
  16. He picks up a Home Depot leaflet and asks whether I am sure I like men.
  17. Hilarious. I have a fake laugh with his name on it.
  18. He moves closer and touches my hair. It is not entirely awful.
  19. With different clothes, a different haircut and a different personality, he might be acceptable.
  20. His underwear has made a number of choices.
  21. George Michael drifts in from the neighbours. He closes his eyes and surrenders to the music.
  22. I rule out a serious relationship and consider leaving the country under a new identity.
  23. We sleep together.
  24. It is much worse than expected. I take comfort in not shaving my legs for it.
  25. He showers and uses my face towel as a bath mat.
  26. Do you wipe your feet on a face towel at your mother's house too?
  27. I begin drafting an obituary.
  28. "So... we will talk, yeah? That was... great."
  29. "Yes. Really... nice."
  30. Resolute, I log into the dating site to close my account.
  31. For just 20 more shekels a month, I can extend my subscription for a whole year.
  32. I will deduct it from the next supermarket shop. Excellent time for a diet.
  33. After a week of silence I begin to miss him and text, "What's up?"
  34. He does not answer. I have been neutered. I want to die.
ISSUE 04
Memoir · 6 min

On First Love and the Loss of Human Dignity

His name was Ido Barkai and he was the coolest, most celestial creature in eleventh grade. About 1.82 metres of perfection, by an informed estimate. Do not ask me about his other qualities; I doubt I noticed. I was in love, and that was sufficient. I stared at him when I could and fantasised when I could not.

There he sat on a lawn decorated with chewing-gum wrappers, in a cut-off Led Zeppelin shirt, holding a battered classical guitar and looking like a hologram of every adolescent fantasy I had ever filed.

Continue the embarrassment

I was in ninth grade and had no chance with him. None. After a year of secret, unrequited love, however, I developed an inexplicable determination to obtain Ido Barkai by any means necessary.

The objective: Ido Barkai. The strategy: total derangement. The inspiration: Fatal Attraction.

First I disposed of minor obstacles such as poise, personality and human dignity. Then I forced an awkward friendship with his cousin Carmel, a girl with whom I shared little beyond one letter in our names. The end justified the means. Or something.

Through energetic pretending, I learned the profile of Ido's dream girl: gorgeous, clever, dark, funny and a guitarist. Three out of five was not bad. I only had to become gorgeous and learn guitar. He was essentially mine.

Within two months I lost fifteen kilos on a highly effective diet called starvation. My wardrobe became black and tight, my eyeliner became a public works project, and I avoided smiling so as to preserve an air of darkness. This was easy because I was usually dizzy and hungry.

Guitar proved less cooperative. I learned one chord, borrowed my brother's guitar case and spent school breaks looking convincingly musical. Ten percent of the time I played A minor. Ninety percent of the time I tuned the guitar and aimed meaningful glances at Ido.

Then one day he sat beside me and said, "I do not think we have met. I am Ido." Internally I fainted. Externally I maintained the composure appropriate to the dark, brooding and underfed person I had become.

"I'm Lia."
"Nice name. Do you play a lot?"
"All the time."
"Are you good?"
"Guitar is my life."
"We should jam sometime. You look like fire."

The plan was working. A week later I joined the Memorial Day ceremony for the opportunity to stare at him during rehearsals. Small talk happened. Glances were exchanged. He even kissed me.

Then, four days before the ceremony, he broke his hand in a scooter accident. He walked into rehearsal in a cast, handed me his guitar and told everyone I could replace him because I was brilliant.

I am not one of those people who flourish under pressure. My mouth went dry. I asked for sheet music. He produced a perfectly organised folder of every song and every note. Everyone waited to hear the guitar prodigy who was, in fact, me.

I announced that I needed the bathroom, ran away in terror and never came back. They used a backing track.