JL and Molly Andrea-Ryan get existential as they discuss the idea of writing to find meaning. They chat about their oddly similar post-university experiences of dealing with burnout whilst working retail and the terror of attaching your name to creative non-fiction.
Molly also reads an excerpt from her story, Idle Hands.
Listen to the episode here.
From inside the dim recesses of his bedroom, the yellow light of the laptop screen soaking his skin in a sickly glow, he purchased the parts.
They arrived sporadically over a raw-bone winter. Limb by limb. Feature by feature. Ordered via the Dark Web. His hands itched as each delivery piled on his doorstep. Stomach quivered as he sliced open the boxes with the jag of a serrated kitchen knife.
Her skin was crystalline, stomach slim, hips like blown glass. Blueprints pertaining to a pristinely crafted perfection. The only blemish: crimson lips that came as adornments. He’d selected nude on the website. Allowances could be made. A first-time hiccup. The parts had taken a month to arrive and her assembly, carried out in the icy bowels of the basement, was well underway.
On Thursday night the head chef’s girlfriend comes into the restaurant to have a meal. She’s got a wheely suitcase with her – come straight from the Eurostar, apparently; they all know she’s studying at the Sorbonne. The head chef hurriedly combs his hair back from his forehead, wipes greasy hands down his apron.
Do me a favour, he says. Don’t tell Millie what I’m like when I’m here. All the… you know.
She narrows her eyes but nods her assent, folds her arms. Sure, she says.
Still, a woman wades at the shore of a man’s sea.
When we speak it is too loud, as if we don’t know how.
Quiet’s value imprinted itself when we watched our mothers.
We say yes without listening to the question, without needing
to know what the question is.