Bianca cannot get married until Kate gets married. Kate is not a happy camper, primarily due to activities like cooking over fires and not taking showers. Their father loves camping more than even arbitrary and dramatically pregnant rules. Let’s camp this weekend, their father says, I feel I need it. The girls feel they do not need it. But they are oddly compelled to obey their father’s wishes.

Lionkiller is at home with this environment. He views Kate as the quarry. He thinks, she is only a shrew. How many lions does he have to his name? He has not kept the numbers well, but the skins certainly dominate his apartment. Can’t open a cupboard without starting an avalanche of the damn things. He wears the headdress pretty regular, and he’s one of the few who put up with lionskin briefs. Sweaty in the summer.

Out there somewhere in the tall grasses of the suburbs lurks a lion, tawnier than most. He blends with the grasses.

Lionkiller’s friend Cass sees Bianca. Cass cannot stop talking about Bianca to Lionkiller. In astronomical terms he is over the moon for her. He thinks this, but never says it. No one can deny that it is a cliché, and Cass eschews these. Lionkiller wishes that Cass would stop. Bianca remains unobtainable for Cass, who attempts to smother himself in Lionkillers lionskins. Lionkiller saves him and agrees that he needs help. He will free Bianca by conquest of Kate. She is a shrew.

He finds out about the family spending several days in the godforsaken wilderness. He presents himself as a guide. He wears his headdress which offends Kate. She does not believe in the wholesale slaughter of lions. Lionkiller suppresses his amazement. Cass comes along as a spiritual guide. His careful avoidance of cliché impresses the hell out of Bianca. She makes eyes at me, Cass observes, but is careful not to say this out loud.

Around the campfire on the first night, watching the fire, drinking sixty-four ounce sodas with shots of vodka, they listen to Cass describe the spirit world. He describes gods as thoughtful executives dressed in Edwardian garb, perhaps in the style of Oscar Wilde. Kate clenches fists. Superstition, she says and jumps to her feet. She snatches a burning coal out of the fire and juggles it calmly before pitching it at Cass. It catches him squarely below the left eye and burns a black mark there that looks not unlike the grease football players apply at game time. This cruelty disturbs Lionkiller. Kate expounds the virtues of atheism. Or, she says, as we prefer, humanism. She goes on for two and a half hours, disturbing Lionkiller further.

In the night the lion lurks, not making himself known. He feels great concern for Lionkiller’s prowess, and his own extra tawniness which he suspects is a tawniness too far.

Lionkiller makes attempts to woo Kate. He dances his groin-oriented “Rejoice, Lion, for Death is Swift.” He delivers a complete narration of the film Never Cry Wolf. He kills a doe elk in front of her to show his power, but spares the doe’s faun to show his magnanimity. These efforts prove unsuccessful, in the sense that she does not fall in love with him. But in the sense that Kate’s father is impressed and suggests that they get married anyway, the efforts, it has to be said, achieve some level of success.

Bianca watches Lionkiller’s performance as well. Her eyes and heart swell with admiration. Unlike her sister, she values such virility. Much to my chagrin, whispers Cass to himself. But, Kate is spoken for, and now is his chance with Bianca. Cass makes an effort to woo her. He performs a dance which he calls “Rolling Up My Pants” In which he mimes the careful rolling of his pant cuffs, the up and down motion of his rump keeping the beat. He improvises a story using the word mammary as a starting point. He smashes a hamster with his fist. The exploits further encourage Bianca’s eye to wander. Such is life, says Cass out loud while buying Arbor Mist Peaches and Cream Wine in a convenience store. He cuts off communication with the whole crew.

Lionkiller and Kate arrive home for the first time after their honeymoon. Kate is mostly fed up with Lionkiller, after an incident on the beach of their coastal Icelandic resort wherein Lionkiller personally dismembered 41 sea-lions while shouting out vows of devotion. Lionkiller sings loudly as he goes around turning on the lights in the house. Kate looks around the kitchen and then decides to put away the many bottles of duty-free rum they’ve brought home. She opens a cupboard and disappears beneath the skins. Lionkiller comes to her rescue. He pulls her from the pile, but does not hold her to him. He stares suspiciously at a skin that appears tawnier than the others. The lion realizes he is discovered and attacks. Lionkiller wrenches off the lion’s tail with a motion like cracking a whip. The lion flees.

He writes a memoir of his troubles which proves popular. He later meets Bianca in a hotel bar during his book tour. They fall into a smooth and flirtatious conversation. They laugh when they realize their connection through Lionkiller. It turns out that Cass is also in town, also on tour, in support of an album. He sees Bianca and moves to her side. Imagine seeing you here, he says, feeling comfortable with the banality of the statement. Bianca makes perfunctory conversation, tells him about Lionkiller and Kate, and then ends the conversation abruptly, preferring to speak further with the lion. Within two weeks the lion proposes marriage.

I do not understand, says Cass to the bartender, why anyone in their right mind would get married nowadays.

Cass McCombs – “Lionkiller Got Married” mp3

- Flann O’Rion writes from his home in Eugene, Oregon and feels that far too little is made of Arbor Mist Wine products.

- Nate Stevenson has Drawn many Songs. See them here.

Alma became fidgety as we tried to learn the step. The foxtrot is perhaps the most basic dance step available to the non-dancer. I did not know anything about dancing, but I did know that the foxtrot was composed of steps that move in a rhythm of “slow, slow, quick, quick”, something I learned from “Happy New Year, Charlie Brown.” Charlie Brown lugs “War and Peace” around and ends up at a dance class. The sequence features the worst song in a Charlie Brown special. My memory of this song gave me, I felt, an edge over Alma. “Slow, slow, quick, quick” was an old friend of mine, a proverb of my youth.

“It’s just ‘slow, slow, quick, quick,’” I said, a redness creeping into my voice. I did not mention that I had learned this from a song in a Charlie Brown special.

“Okay,” she said, sitting on the couch and twisting one leg fully around the other, a sign of stress in our culture.

“Let’s try it again.”

We really had no business trying to learn in Alma’s apartment. We’d moved the couch back, and swung the coffee table around to reveal a patch of red carpet just large enough for us to drown in.

I fitted my hand to her waist and locked my other hand with hers. It was only recently that I’d been able to touch her like this without feeling a strong thrill. In this instant though, I felt the absence of a thrill. In our current phase of argument, I actually felt annoyed that the strictures of dancing required me to touch her in this semi-intimate fashion. The step should have known I was angry.

Trying to describe exactly how the dance was going wrong is probably impossible. Dancing is synchronized motion, and the second of the “quicks” was synchronized in the same way that two people falling down the stairs together may be said to be synchronized. After three attempts and three failures, I decided whose fault it was.

“You are not listening to me,” I said.

“You’re not explaining what the problem is,” she returned with force.

“I can’t explain it because you’re not listening. I’m at a loss for how I can possibly explain this to you.”

If there is any doubt, let the reader understand that it is very likely that I was not explaining the problem correctly. Also, let the reader understand that while there’s an outside chance that my returned complaint might have had some ground, reiterating it the way that I did here is now a widely acknowledged argument cheat in our household. Now, whenever I hear myself using this tactic, I shake my head and Alma’s jaw drops under the weight of incredulity. I still attempt to defer resolution in favor of empty conflict. However, we hadn’t learned to parse the grammar of these arguments yet. Alma’s eyes flashed, and I fell into another trope of this stage of our relationship.

I sat down on the couch, fuming, and became unresponsive. I can’t explain the intention, probably because I had no intention. I think the impulse is to just wait out the anger, but sitting silently in the middle of a conflict and trying to understand why you’re angry has only ever helped me focus on the anger and stress of the situation, with the effect that the anger roils like a hotel hot tub.

I don’t know how long this went on. It becomes a state of meditative reverie, in the way that swallowing hot coals can be meditative. The main thought circling my mind was, “We’re screwed. We’re not even married and we’re fighting about the foxtrot.”

Eventually, Alma got up and began putting the room back together. The coffee table back, the books on the coffee table, the easy chair pulled from her bedroom. The couch remained the only item out of place, shoved against the desk next to the window. I sat there, so absorbed in my thoughts that I wasn’t thinking anymore.

“Can you get up?” Alma asked. She looked at me with an expression that said she didn’t care. The expression did not say “forgiven” or “forgotten.” It said that I was wasting her time and that she did not care that I was upset. I felt myself tempted to say something to re-ignite the argument. Instead, I stood and did not let her move the couch. That expression of apathy, and her refusal to mirror my turmoil, defused my anger. I saw her instantly as an individual outside of myself, with concerns that were not mine and which I did not understand. I found this moving. I took hold of her and we danced the step that most people dance at a wedding, which is no particular step at all. We danced around the coffee table. We moved like sea-lions in an aquarium, more graceful than I would have expected.

T. Rex – “Cosmic Dancer” mp3

- Sven Gull drops science like this on a regular basis over at his blog home atswimsevenswans, and lives with his wife, Alma, outside of Philadelphia, PA where he’s currently searching for funding to create and market an unabridged audiobook version of Finnegan’s Wake.

- Nate Stevenson has Drawn many Songs, which you may view here.

Click the image for best quality. Click here for more Drawn Songs. Read on for the song.

Caribou – Irene mp3

Another great one from Nate. Find more Drawn Songs here. Song after the jurmp.

Click image, and then enlarge for best quality.

Blur – Tender mp3

Click image for best quality.

Radiohead – Videotape mp3

More Drawn Songs here.

More after the jump . . .

Neko Case – People Got A Lotta Nerve mp3

Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You mp3

Click images for best quality.

Other Drawn Songs here.

Click image for best quality. MP3 for the song after the jump. See other Drawn Songs here.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero mp3

M. Ward, “Jailbird” mp3

If you’re interested in purchasing the original (ink on illustration board) or a copy, contact Nate: nflagg.s@gmail.com

MP3 for the song after the jump.
sigur ros – Fljotavik mp3

This being the first in the series, we’re still working some things out. The first image here maintains the composition pretty well, but plays loose with the sharpness. If you want a sharper image follow the ‘read more’ link. You can click both of the images to view them larger.

Also, the name of the song? If you haven’t guessed it, read on:

‘My Girls’ by Animal Collective

Nate Stevenson lives, draws, and paints in Moscow, and works all over the Inland Norfwest. He will never die.

Posted by: Josh