the minnesota review n.s. 58-60 (2003)

Aimee LaBrie

How to Survive in a Big City Rather than Returning to Your Hometown Where You Keep Running into Old High School Acquaintances at Target

Wear a monocle. Become a mime who makes balloon poodles on Michigan Avenue or else ride a unicycle. Don funky, tortoise shell glasses, leather pants, a rat or boa constrictor on your shoulder, or chaps and a cowboy hat. Smoke a cherry wood pipe or a hookah. Keep your hair pinned up with sharpened number two pencils and make bracelets out of paper clips.

Walk your cat on leash. Pinch your nipples on the 22 northbound bus. Stand on Broadway and Clark waving a piece of cardboard taped to a yard stick with "Jesus Kills" scrawled in black magic marker on one side and "Repent" on the other. Beg for small vials of Coco Chanel from the brittle-masked, smock-wearing woman behind the counter of Marshall Fields. Scan the Thursday Reader personals for your soul-mate ("single, attractive, fiction reading, Annie Hall-watching, thirty-year old, non-substance abuser/post adolescent narcissist/serial killer artist with fulfilling but well-paying career, straight feminist man with a witty sense of humor, better than average-sized penis, and well-trained golden retriever. No freaks need apply"). Practice laughing with sincerity, learn to read Tarot cards, watch Pink Floyd's The Wall, Bad Lieutenant, and Apocalypse Now in case anyone should ask your opinion. Pick up lost hair bands on the sidewalk. Waste hours biting off your split-ends. Try to catch your reflection in the mirror to see how you appear to strangers. Read Starving for Attention for tips on cultivating an eating disorder.

Join the O'Hare Airport Krishna's. Drive a cab. Sign up for a night class in astronomy at Northwestern. Seduce your married teacher. Volunteer for Hospice. Take up a cause. Develop a plan. Shoot up. Catch a fatal disease.

Heavy prescription drugs. Partial lobotomy. Virginia Woolfe, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath.

Resignation.

Aimee LaBrie teaches writing courses in English at Penn State University. Her fiction appears in Quarter After Eight, Sudden Stories, Beloit Fiction, Pleiades, Permafrost, among other journals.