Alex Tretbar

Invitation to a Ceremony

I’m opening a ribbon shop. Enclosed you will find your invitation to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Enclosed is a sharp pair of scissors. You won’t be alone: brigands and dignitaries alike will be in attendance, and an encrypted Zoom link has been distributed to the incarcerated and/or incorporeal. I was actually wondering if you’d like to say a few words. No, not at the ceremony—I mean right now, about anything. I’m not talking about ribbons anymore. I’m never just talking about what I’m talking about, which makes it kind of hard to be my friend, or even just talk to me at the watercooler or graveside or anywhere. If you look into my eyes I’ll probably just compare your face to the rainforest exhibit I got lost in as a boy. Will you say a few words? I’m thinking about closing the ribbon shop. I’m thinking about taking out a loan that will bankrupt me.

Living Alone and the Art of Preventative Maintenance

I check the box that says “Remember me.” It freaks me out: the maintenance man loses his phone in my apartment while painting my walls without my permission, calls me days later from an anonymous number. Temperate now, I converse with my desire in hushed tones, as though to a mouse before it meets the snake. Click. Please hold while we access that information. No, I haven’t seen his phone, haven’t heard it cry. At least the child’s sketch of Arthur Read on my living room wall is gone now, swimming in silver. Tired of being remembered, I delete my cookies. But it’s unbearable: a child once played in this room. You may experience a moment of silence. I’m at the window, brewing coffee and watching the maintenance man snake an uncoiled coat hanger into the truck he's locked himself outside of. Squatting on the roof of the cab, he offers an archetypal ass crack to the sky, emblem of stoop and labor. In the breath before my cell phone rings and one of my ten remaining friends says Hey, I experience a moment of silence. “Remember me?” the moment asks. Silence is a question. I answer it by drawing Arthur Rimbaud on my wall.

Birthday Party

I wore black jeans and a red flannel to the Great Gatsby-themed birthday party. I think the birthday girl was in love with a shadow that resembled me. She was at the turntable, sipping a gin rickey in her white flapper dress. I took her cloche and turned it inside out, placed it on my head and changed the record. Eva Taylor (“I have tried in vain / Nevermore to call your name.”) was supplanted by Tom Tom Club (“Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail? / I’m gonna have some fun!”). The party was beginning to feel more like American Psycho. Someone named Julian caressed my lapel, and the birthday girl used a faux flamingo feather to dust the dandruff from my quadruple-breasted Hermès jacket. I went to the kitchen for some water but there wasn’t any—just blue agave and Alicia Keys singing about falling, some high schoolers crowded around a cute little television on the counter, and a plane crashing into the North Tower.