Sour Winery is Vinegar Press’ monthly newsletter, featuring staff picks, fiction and nonfiction columns, and blog pieces by guest writers. Each month, you receive an acidic report curated by Miel, staff writer and newsletter editor. We hope it intrigues, suffocates, pleases, burns you. We hope you feel the tartness.
We’re back with a sweet-yet-spicy number, tailored for this ideal time of fall!
Through the grapevine
EIC foreword, by Cathrina Jakeman
Dear Vinegar Fiends and Friends,
Vinegar Press is officially online! Our new website is live, and with it, ordering for our debut chapbook titles is now available. Go to vinegarpress.org to check it out. You can browse our catalog, learn more about each author, and grab copies of the chapbooks that started it all.
Our first issue of Vinegar Press will still release on October 31st, just in time for something haunted, a little holy, and very human.
Thank you for being part of this messy, miraculous beginning.
Here’s to the writers, the readers, and the vinegar in our veins.
Vinegarish taste
Staff picks.
October’s taste test: while we are all contenders for the Number One Vinegar Fan title, we do not particularly want to smell acetic. What are the Vinegars’ signature scents? Niche perfume, baked goods, the smell of the ocean… we share our favorite aromas with our fiends and friends.
Cathrina: I love the smell of amber in the fall and palo santo on rainy days!
Miel: clementine peels, cardamom and loose leaf black tea for this time of the year
Sind: mine would be hot chocolate and new books
Allister: your resident biblically-inclined staff writer has been loving the spicy-yet-fresh scent of this Lucifer-inspired apple mocktail, Paradise Lost. (In the same vein, her chapbook, Lucifer’s Icing, is available for preorder on vinegarpress.org and will be out on October 31st!) Here’s the recipe (lucky for us!):
Paradise Lost
Theme: Temptation, fall from grace, and indulgence — layered flavors, a seductive appearance, and a name that whispers of Eden and exile.
Ingredients:
2 oz cloudy apple juice (unfiltered — deep, earthy flavor)
1 oz pomegranate juice (for color and complexity — the “forbidden fruit” vibe)
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice (for balance and brightness)
1/2 oz cinnamon syrup (adds warmth and temptation)
2 dashes aromatic bitters (non-alcoholic if needed — optional, but adds depth)
Ginger beer or sparkling apple cider (to top, adds effervescence and bite)
Ice (large cube or sphere for drama)
Garnish:
Thin apple slice (fan shape or dehydrated)
Star anise or cinnamon stick
Optional: rim glass with a black sugar and cinnamon mix for extra flair
Glassware:
Serve in a rocks glass.
Instructions:
Prepare the Glass: (Optional) Rim with a mix of black sugar and cinnamon.
Shake: In a shaker, add apple juice, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, and cinnamon syrup. Add bitters if using. Shake with ice.
Strain: Pour over a large ice cube in your chosen glass.
Top: Gently top with ginger beer or sparkling apple cider.
Garnish: Fan the apple slice on the rim, float a star anise, or add a cinnamon stick.
Flavor Profile: Tart and crisp from apple and lemon; sweet heat from cinnamon and pomegranate; effervescent and aromatic finish; deep, rich color — like temptation in a glass.
[Psst: we are in desperate need of staff! Wanna be a staff writer or marketing/social media rep? Know someone who does? Go to @vinegarpress on Instagram and fill out the linked staff form!]
Slightly nauseating
Fiction, by Miel. A peek into a life, each month. Bitter, floral, spicy, animalistic. Might make you gag.
I possess little information about Leslie Gardner. His - I assume he is male, but I don’t know for sure - first and last name, address, and the university where he’s doing his MFA. We started corresponding about six months ago, a little while after I dropped out of medical school. I received his first letter at my mother’s house, upstate; in it, he informed me that he had seen some pictures from my hand model days, had found my contact information, and wanted to know more about me.
The reason why I didn’t hesitate to reply is that Leslie is a poet. Creepy stalkers who printed pictures of my hands were nothing new, but his essence transpired through the page. He wrote things like I want most desperately to desecrate you, Marguerite, ma fleur, to pluck you off, chew your petals, bite off your nubs, finish on your thorns. I feel your ennui through the idleness of your hands; I will free you from your budding unrest. How could I resist? Reading him felt physical, like an exceedingly gentle kiss, despite his boldness. I sensed his fragility, his sensible genius. I always signed best wishes, your undeserving friend, and I meant it; his intelligence surpassed mine by lightyears and it was starting to do something to me. I sniffed at the letters in an attempt to detect his scent, looked all over for an ink smudge that would conceal his fingerprint. My reaction was bordering on the pathological. I was bored out of my mind when I wasn’t reading him, writing to him, thinking about him. Maybe I was in love. Maybe I was going through an episode. Those distinctions can only be figured out down the line.
I dropped out halfway through my third year of medical school. My mother was appalled that I had chosen to sully my beauty with a career as dirty as medicine. She always said that I looked just like Carla Bruni if she were a blonde. My mother loves Carla Bruni; I’ve had Quelqu’un m’a dit memorized since I was five years old, in approximative French. I would perform it to guests before dinnertime, who in turn complimented my mother on my precocious musical genius. Another good daughter box, ticked. When I got into a mid-tier medical program, exhausted after my MCAT, no reasonable dosage of uppers proving effective anymore, she tried to shoo me into the arts. Her hollowed-out daughter with such an angelic voice, an even more angelic appearance. She was convinced that I’d be a singer. Had I still been on uppers, I probably would’ve caved.
My mother named me Reine-Marguerite after her favorite flower; she loves everything better in French. She insists on pronouncing my name with crisp, unrolled R’s. It mostly sounds like regurgitation. Throughout my life, the highest compliment was to be compared to her idol; imagine her outrage when her very own Carla Bruni decided to live within the bloody, the ill, the foul. She couldn’t stomach the idea of my silky hair, symmetrical face and delicate constitution wasted on a lifetime of waddling in bodily fluids. I guess it makes sense. I do come from a line of women who die with untarnished hands, with fingers as smooth as a porcelain doll’s. Leave it to the fishwives to drain pus, tear open uteruses, pull out slimy babies, live in the smelly chaos of birth and death; the such.
I stopped attending classes and rotations a bit before Christmas break, moved back upstate. My mother got Dr. Polshansky, our family doctor - pushing ninety, almost legally blind - to write a letter to the dean explaining that I could not handle the mental toll of feeling so much death around me, that it had pushed me into the pits of an unclear but paralyzing mental condition. Further analysis and fresh air were recommended. The dean knew of my psychiatric and financial background, agreed that it was not a suitable path for the feeble-hearted while pocketing a donor’s check; permission to take a break without losing credit was granted. I was relieved; being sober in the hospital was more than I could bear. The fact that I made it through three years now seemed inconceivable to me. Maybe I wouldn’t have needed substances had I been a more sociable person, had I had someone to talk to about my day or paint my nails with, who’s to say. Even though I no longer had to withstand the hospital, I got Dr. Polshansky to prescribe me a non-negligible dosage of GHB for my quote unquote narcolepsy. Depressants were my last resort.
I spent the last few months lounging around the house, taking drawn-out, lukewarm baths and writing to Leslie. I stole my mother’s zolpidem and slept for most of the day; it was milder than my own prescription, which I kept for special occasions. Waking up felt like emerging from a comatose state. I rarely went outside, talked to no one, except my mother at dinnertime and Leslie. Then, the ultimate letter came. Leslie was invited to a book launch party in the city, some genius from his university published an essay collection, and he invited me to be his plus one. Leslie, Leslie! Yes, I needed to see him. I needed him to know. I had never felt that need during the long months of our epistolary bliss, but it suddenly seemed like the most natural next step. Never in my life had I spent so long thinking of what to do with my look. I had never had to worry about looking ugly before, but I was terrified of Leslie’s judgement. I ultimately decided to French girl it: a plain little black dress, no makeup except a nude lip. I left my hair down. Simple, chic, a touch shy. Just like Carla Bruni. This is bound to work.
The chauffeur dropped me at the address on Leslie’s letters. He lived in a greyish six-story building. The elevator smelled like a Chinese restaurant. I couldn’t wait to see him, explore his lair. I uncapped a vial, took a small sip, just for the buzz; everything is romantic on GHB. The place screamed starving artist and it made me salivate, almost. Of course, Leslie’s genius could only be achieved through misery. I understand him so well. I reached the last floor and saw a man from behind, locking his door. He had the frail demeanor, the halo of an angel. I knew it was him.
*
Leslie and I are in a back alley. I’m shivering. He’s doubled over in pain. He curses for a minute before he starts throwing up. He refuses to go to the hospital, asks me to unlock his phone and call Dick instead, to tell him to prepare the table, that we’ll be there in ten minutes.
I do.
He tells me to take his car keys, drive him to Dick’s. I can’t object. I’m so, so sleepy. GHB always makes me sleepy after a while.
“I’ve only driven like, twice, you know. And I don’t have my licence on me,” I slur.
Calmly: “I’ll sew your diaphanous hands to the steering wheel if I must, ma fleur.”
*
I knew what was happening when I saw Dick operate in his barely sanitized basement. Orchidectomy. Due to testicular torsion, I deducted. If the blood flow stops reaching one of the testicles and it necroses, it needs to be removed or else it starts infecting the rest of the cells. I remembered being deeply bothered by the fact that balls always got oddly beautiful names. “Jewels”, “orchids”. Nothing about them evokes the image of a flower in me. I was repulsed by these thoughts, by the whole ordeal. I couldn’t stand the sight of Leslie, chemically asleep on a desolate table, prone to germs, sepsis, to death. I dazedly remembered why I couldn’t stand staying in the hospital: witnessing people’s vulnerability makes me sick. It makes me absolutely hate them. I fell asleep on Dick’s couch.
I woke up an hour later. Dick was nowhere in sight. Leslie was still under anesthesia, thank God. I rummaged through the fridge in the basement, hoping to find some sedatives, midazolam, maybe, to no avail. Whatever. I took the car back to Leslie’s place, stalling a dozen times, not knowing how to park; I just left the vehicle in front of the building. I was disappointed. By Leslie, his weakness, the crassness of that bootleg surgeon. His prose meant nothing now. I resented him for ruining the pureness of the last months. I doubt I’ll ever be that blindly happy again.
His apartment keys were in the armrest console. I went inside, got my first look at the place. It meant nothing now. A neat little studio, quite boring, if not a little coquettish, for a man - half a man, now, that is. A king-size mattress, straight to the floor, took up most of the space; there was a tiny little kitchen and a tinier little bathroom, and a big desk in front of the mattress. There, in the center, was a desktop computer with a flash drive jammed into the central unit. No password; who doesn’t lock their computer? A few folders: Camellia, Dahlia, Heather, Iris, Ivy, Jasmine, Magnolia, Reine-Marguerite, Violet, Willow. Each folder contained pictures of pale, slender hands, most from jewelry commercials, some less professional. Some of which are mine. I click on my favorite - a picture of me holding a Better Homes and Gardens magazine that covers my face, zoomed in on an emerald-cut diamond on my left ring finger. A picture that inspires hope for all women, young and grown; that was the angle of the commercial. I wonder if anyone fell for it. I really do have beautiful hands.
The remaining surface of the desk table was covered in envelopes, with stamps from all around the country. Underneath the stamp, invariably, a skinny, curvy, girly handwriting, more or less like mine. Inside the envelopes, invariably, Leslie’s grand professions of love and ma fleur’s and intellectual musings - copy pasted, copy pasted, copy pasted. Each letter was a carbon copy of the other, with a Dearest ____ scribbled at the top. A children’s premade postcard. It was laughable. I couldn’t stop laughing.
It was about to be seven a.m; the blue hour, my favorite. It always feels serene. It feels like a cocktail of benzodiazepines. A surgical nap. Euthanasia. Or some other, very comforting thing. I took all of the letters and shoved them in a big trash bag I found underneath the kitchen sink and carried it over the strap of my dress. Carla Bruni, the trashman. I pocketed the car keys, took a sip of my vial, I would need it for the road. Everything is romantic on GHB.
Oxymel
[Oxymel: honey mead made with wine vinegar. Vinegar’s overarching tone with Miel’s personal touch.]
Nonfiction, by Miel. THIS IS NOT AN OBJECTIVE COLUMN. Miel writes out loud.
October’s aftertaste: Nina Bouraoui’s Satisfaction. A character study of the protagonist, Mme Akli.
(Disclaimer: having read the original version of the book (in French), all quotations are my own translation, and are therefore not exact quotes from the translated version of the book.)
Mme Akli’s audience is her diary. A wife and a mother first, a Frenchwoman in freshly independent Algeria second, she goes widely unseen. Alger, the city which is simultaneously “the tomb of [her] youth” and “[her] love”, is the theater of her quiet, lonely life, where she nurtures a comfortable wistfulness in which to raise her ten-year-old son, Erwan.
Mme Akli quickly puts down the variables (or rather, the constants) in a brutal, raw manner in her diary. Within the first pages, we meet the important elements to her story. Erwan: “Erwan, my love”, “Erwan, the Beloved”, “my wonderful son”. She expresses complete devotion to him, reaching the point of jealousy. Brahim, her Algerian husband, quiet, soft, opposed to the dominance of other men; the gentleness that used to reassure her is now a flaw (“I love Brahim but I do not love him like I did on the first day”). The household, the eternally repeating tasks. She cares deeply for her family, takes care of her house as a result; she fulfills her role to a T, though with no real passion (“butcher shop, bakery, the automaton, not in love, but domestic”). Mme Akli cooks with love, respects ingredients as nature’s gifts to her, “pampers” them. Household tasks become a form of escapism (“my days are destined to taking care of plants, cooking meals, household chores - scrubbing consists in driving out my shadows.”). Her image of femininity doesn’t exceed the confines of her house, she does not find herself attractive (“I can write that I do not attract myself”; “I perceive the possibility of my femininity”).
Nature is one of her biggest forms of escapism. She tends her garden religiously (“I don’t believe in God but [...] I pray against evil. My prayers are destined to a superior force which would be the garden’s nature”), finds solace in the fact that death is intrinsically linked to nature (“the garden is a greenhouse that could swallow us and devour our flesh”; “everything goes back to the sea [...] our bodies one day if the driver intends to kill us”; “I let [the wisteria] gnaw at the paint, devastate the plaster, the sap is queen.”). Despite her depiction of nature as an incommensurable force, Mme Akli does not seem afraid of it, simply surrendering to this fact, even expressing awe: “I am in love with my garden”; “nature is gentle, measured, tailor-made for me”. Perhaps what Brahim lacks in assertiveness, in his role of protection, she makes up for with nature: “nature is my fortress.”
She also makes up for with her fantasies, involving violent lovers (“[I am] the lover of invented lovers”). Her relationship to masculinity is intimately linked to her relationship to her own desire. Mme Akli is a foreigner, “roumia”, worse, a “second-generation colon. Here, [she] will not be loved.” “The men of the street force me to be discreet.” “The weight of the Algerian land on the shoulders of French women, a tunnel with no exit in which we exist, running, struggling. Men don’t experience obscenity, hands stuck to dresses [...] Masculine beasts, zoo city, cage homes, feminine preys: we are all Thomson gazelles hunted by the predator, the hunter.” The experience of the French woman in newly independent Algeria is veiled with a second layer of danger: “Walking in Algiers comes down to engaging oneself towards men’s desire, to provoking it”; “Algiers, manly capital”. She opposes it to the region of Timimoune, one of her many escape fantasies: “ultimate shelter of which I dream because of [...] its opposition to the city of Algiers. Men there are erased, ghostly, women are the masters of their existence which they share between each other.” Mme Akli denotes the interesting complexity of being rationally aware of the danger of men and simultaneously using it as an escapist fantasy: “I will evoke my solitary drunkenness, will make myself look like a drifting woman who should be punished in order to pull herself together”; “the dock workers escape from my imaginary paintings [...] their bodies glisten with sweat and are black from pollution. My double identity: the woman and the anti-woman who looks for trouble, asks for it, the one who needs violence to feel her blood pounding. I disgust myself [...] I would offer myself up right now, to the first comer, I am a damned soul. I live nothing, I fantasize about everything”; “[my desire] could be directed towards anybody because of how much I need to get rid of it”; “shameful of not liking [Brahim’s] gentleness and secretly preferring violence”...
The feeling of shame is otherwise omnipresent throughout Mme Akli’s diaries; it’s one of her most fundamental cracks, appearing in the first pages and explaining the fullness of her feeling: “I am ashamed of writing this, which justifies the existence of this notebook. Shame has a place here, which it shall never leave.” It appears again on many occasions: “I am afraid of making Erwan ashamed”; “I blame myself for not being like I was before, but before what?”; “my culpability despite my fidelity”... Mme Akli’s shame is imprecise, diffuse, omnipresent. She is ashamed of not loving Brahim as much as she should, of her body which she doesn’t find attractive, of her half-and-half identity, not quite French and not quite Algerian and a traitor in both spaces. She is not guilty of any concrete misdemeanor but feels shameful of most everything. In her own words: “my fears come from a fault that I will commit, chastising myself one step ahead - an unknown force bewitches me. Women stay guilty.” The feeling of shame is exacerbated by the appearance of a key character in Mme Akli’s life: Catherine Bousba.
Catherine Bousba is Mme Akli’s polar opposite. She represents liberty, femininity, confidence, France in a nutshell, what Mme Akli could have been, or rather, what she wants to believe that she could have been. Catherine is Bruce’s mother; the latter is an important figure in both Erwan’s and Mme Akli’s lives. But we’ll come back to Bruce later. Catherine inspires conflicting feelings in Mme Akli: she is seductive, confident, and manipulative, which attracts the protagonist and subsequently leaves her feeling disgusted with herself. She oscillates between admiration and contempt, with a constant background of self-deprecation and refusal to accept her desire. The respective mother-child duos stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Bruce-Catherine duo is, in many ways, the triggering element of the plot. “I am jealous of Bruce, of what she is, of her strength, I am jealous of her mother who birthed her and is educating her this way, free in her wildness. Who is this woman? [...] I envy Bruce’s mother. I am ashamed of writing this sentence.”; “I wonder what kind of mother grants such trust to her child or what kind of mother abandons her child to this extent, letting her harmful nature grow, overrun [...] Bruce would be [...] a kind of rapture, wasted, diverted. She doesn’t move me, she scares me. Bruce ruined the promise of her charm.” As Catherine and Mme Akli grow closer and start to hang out, a clear dissonance settles: Mme Akli’s awkwardness and Catherine’s cold nature clash, making their scenes together tense, uncomfortable moments, full of resentment on Mme Akli’s part and disdain on Catherine’s. However, each one quietly admires the other. Mme Akli’s first female relationship speaks to the complexity of their respective characters.
Bruce is what introduces Catherine to Mme Akli. She is Erwan’s first friend, a girl from his class who presents as a boy and makes people call her by the name of her idol, Bruce Lee. She immediately entrances Erwan and terrifies Mme Akli, even before we learn that Bruce is a girl (“he will hurt Erwan, I will have to protect him”). Bruce is a magnetic presence that directly signaled danger to Mme Akli. She says of Erwan that he is “contaminated by my melancholy”, “will bend to [Bruce’s power], worse, will lose himself in Bruce’s character”; “Erwan stays frozen - I imagine Bruce chanting satanic psalms, playing an instrument, cobra charmer, hypnotizing my son”; “the new equation - Bruce, the strength, Erwan, the fragility - ejects me from the story”. Mme Akli needs to be a part of Erwan’s life, tries as much as possible to hold on to him; she is aware that she smothers him but cannot seem to stop herself: “my fear of losing Erwan brings me to tragedy, our link is also a matter of life and death, which is unhealthy, I am aware” ; “I am frozen, idiotic, intimidated by Erwan, he spent a day without me, he didn’t miss me”; “I feel like a ‘woman’ to go pick up my son. While writing these words, I am aware of their ambiguity. I do not feel carnal desire for Erwan, but an abnormal jealousy for those who will steal his heart from me”. The feeling of shame remains, she is terrified of making him feel embarrassed by his mother: “My womb stays hooked to Erwan, not the other way around. I must be sick, demented, I am ashamed of writing this”; “I have already expressed this, I’m scared of embarrassing him. I must seduce him to seduce others.” Bruce poses a real threat, the threat of losing her son, a “matter of life and death”. Mme Akli writes about Bruce like she would write about an unpredictable animal: “unstable beauty that isn’t real beauty, rather an animalistic charm”; “Bruce haunts me”; “Bruce leaves an emptiness already that I fill by replaying the scene”; “I describe [Bruce] that I name with contempt (my jealousy) “the entity”, as if not being a “real” girl nor a “real” boy is a flaw and announces the failure of their relationship; I’m ashamed of my statement, Brahim is indifferent, my words don’t exist”. Mme Akli needs to feel threatened, and Bruce is the perfect vessel: “Bruce is in front of me, ready to slap me (my madness). I transfer my violence on this child, obsessed with the fear of losing my son”; “Erwan probably thinks that Bruce will save him from me”; “[...] peaceful shelter that Bruce will come mess up, pillage like she will pillage the reserve of love and tenderness that I put together for my son”; “I can’t stand anything, not me in front of the school, nor my son inside in the company of the Other”; “not seeing Bruce doesn’t induce regret, but rather hatred, she imposes her absence on me, remains invisible, as if I did not deserve her.” She goes from self-deprecating to giving her insecurities a new face, believing that others feel the same way about her - that she is useless, disposable (“I could disappear, take the highway towards the desert, towards Nigeria - who thinks of me in this instant? No one”) yet at the same time that she is so fundamentally rotten that she deserves punishment (“I feel watched, spied on, imagining that a signal has been given out to the men of Algiers, ordering them to leave the harbor’s neighborhood and go up towards Hydra to come and get me, beat me, kidnap me”; she mentions a movie in which “a Christ lookalike, being whipped by women and deriving pleasure from the pain, hero in which I see myself.”)
Bruce is the hypermasculine, Catherine the hyperfeminine; they lock Mme Akli between their two extremes, while both being more comfortable in their relation to men than Mme Akli: Catherine seduces and uses them, Bruce impersonates and dominates them. The only relative comfort Mme Akli feels towards her body and her relationships is when she is tipsy; alcohol has a big place in her days. “I could lose myself in sleep, with barbiturates, alcohol, even if I’m not suicidal, knowing how to dose my needs, never exceeding the first circle of drunkenness, the one that pulls on a string, undoes the yarn ball of anxiety. [...] I master the art of not sinking”; “I need a glass of wine to annihilate the girl-boy that I just met”; “open a wine bottle, one glass is enough to calm me down, one dose, one sting of sugar, of cotton”; “wine is a landscape, it colonizes me, brings me to the margin of happiness”. The more we evolve throughout the diary, especially after the appearance of the Bruce-Catherine catalyst, the more we notice Mme Akli’s dependency. “I am drunk on wine and desire, I have neither the youth nor the beauty of Bruce and I am not the wife that my husband expects.”
Mme Akli chose the wrong life (“my tomorrows are naked”); she says so herself, unabashedly, in the first few pages of her diary. Does her disappointment stem from following her husband to an unknown land? From giving herself entirely to the wellbeing of her family? None of these options seem completely right. The subtlety and complexity in Satisfaction make these questions hard to answer. “In my imagination, I am without Erwan. I extract him from my madness and remain a good mother.” This quote is a rare instance of Mme Akli fantasizing about escaping while outwardly admitting she would leave her son. As obsessive as her bond with her son is, this confession is surprising: is Erwan a factor of her lethargy, of her frozenness in her role? Is her excessive love for him a cage, just like she is a cage to him? She expresses a similar wish of detachment in another instance: “I must grow up, my son is more mature than I am: he made himself a friend while I talk to my plants, to the fish I’m about to gut before I cook them, to my pies [...]”. As for the land, Mme Akli stays deeply infatuated with Algeria, despite the dangers of post-independence violent movements, the militia, the wiretapped landlines, the house searches. She talks about “Algiers, the sad”, describing the beauty of the city that seems to mirror her own melancholy. The political unrest is only one of the many factors of tension in the book, albeit one of the few exogenous ones; it ties her own agitation to the contextual one, which is a reason between many that this book is crafted brilliantly. Throughout the story, the reader feels a constant yet subtle nagging that an ominous event is at bay: “if an accident happened [...] we live in this eventuality”; “someday, something will happen”; “again, I know: something will befall”; “I have a bad feeling, something is going to happen, I don’t know if it will come from the outside or if I will invent it.” The interesting distinction lies exactly in this point: will the breaking point be an external factor, or one of Mme Akli’s own cracks resurfacing? Despite the unrest, she expresses not being able to leave, never thinking of going back to France. “I am condemned to stay or I condemn myself to stay”; “We would be the first victims [of the revolution], Brahim and I, me, the stranger, Brahim, the traitor. We would have to leave. I have neither the courage nor the strength. My body belongs to the land of Algerian flowers.” Although, when another Frenchwoman married to a violent Algerian man was looking for a passport for her daughter to go back to France, Mme Akli confesses that if Erwan had been a girl, she would have given away his passport: “by giving my child’s identity to another, I would have had the illusion of escaping, of saving us.”
What does this say about the protagonist? That she tramples on the same spot, wallowing? Well, yes. Despite being able to chalk up a lot of her indecisiveness to circumstances, I believe that Mme Akli is fundamentally frozen. She has, at least through the vast majority of the novel, a debilitating incapacity to make a decision. She believes herself stuck while admitting that she has a part of responsibility for never taking herself to her fullest potential. This character flaw is the central point of the book, which makes the conclusion of the novel a lot more cathartic than it may seem.
You see, the irony in Satisfaction is that it’s a book in which tension never resolves, never screams, never unleashes. There is no satisfaction, and perhaps that is the point. It consists of waiting, enduring, staying quiet; it’s a constant undercurrent of irritation. The last two chapters go very fast, very quietly. Mme Akli, Brahim, Catherine, her husband, and the two kids go to the beach. A young Algerian boy drowns. Brahim, unable to swim, can’t join Catherine’s husband to try and save him. He spits out, “one less Arab.” From this point onward, Mme Akli doesn’t write much, doesn’t tend her garden. Bruce’s family no longer associates with hers. “I hate Brahim. I hate myself for still loving him, from pity [...]. I can no longer stay, I can’t leave.”
An end-of-year party at Erwan’s school. Mme Akli goes without Brahim, notices that Catherine is ignoring her, “I want to kiss her, get closer to her. She steps back, avoids me.” “The music: I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION. [...] Algeria, our starry Eldorado. I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.” Mme Akli leaves the party, goes upstairs, sees Catherine in a remote classroom, sleeping with a man who isn’t her husband.
The very end of the book, the very last page, is the quiet break: the first time that Mme Akli acts. The first time the story will change because of her participation. Bruce asks where her mother is. Mme Akli replies, “she’s upstairs.” Bruce walks up, opens the door to the classroom; the book ends. Mme Akli is finally enacting change, is finally a character who moves the plot of the story; and though the reader doesn’t stick around long enough to witness the bomb detonating, we understand well enough how we got here.
Pickled notes
Blog posts by guest writers. This month, two talented writers steal the spotlight: John Sweet with “in the empire, late” and tommy wyatt blake with “WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED A THREE-DAY AFFAIR.”
in the empire, late
clean white walls in an empty house like
maybe manson was never born, but there’s always
gonna be someone waiting to spell out your
name in blood, and the kids all gotta
grow up sometime
can’t listen to the ramones yr whole life,
can’t go around quoting vega like the fucker had
any actual insight, but rocket usa, right?
fucking ghost rider
and maybe you get tired of having your
ass kicked in the parking lot after school,
and maybe you stab someone,
just the one time,
just to explain your position, and he doesn’t
have to be such a pussy about it, but
of course he is
’69 to ’78 to ’86, just endless stretches of
highway taking us from one
dying factory town to the next
half-empty houses with dull yellow walls and
the back yards all littered with dog shit,
the bedroom carpets all reeking of pot, and
then the kid next door burns his
parents garage down
fingerfucks his younger sister down in
the basement, or maybe
this is just what he tells you
says bowie is where it’s at, wants to
play you DJ, wants to play you station to station,
says he won’t tell anyone if you let him
suck you off, and at what point
does the story end?
a straight line
filled with jagged angles, okay?
a laugh track for any
number of minor tragedies
your grandfather’s suicide,
your cousin’s abortion,
and the closer you get to the truth,
the fewer people want to be your friend
once the first village of women and
children has been burned to the ground,
everything else is a walk in the park
you make this shit happen,
and you’re the one
who will be remembered
About: John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism which, as luck would have it, has all the best bands. His published collections include NO ONE STARVES IN A NATION OF CORPSES (2020 Analog Submission Press) and THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY THIS IS GOING TO END (Cyberwit, 2023).
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WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED A THREE-DAY AFFAIR
(found poetry from abusers’ messages)
Can I ask you a question? Can you accept
my whole day is ruined, and I might just die?
Romance is damaged if you still choose to stay.
You need to leave me. I just want to sleep
and avoid my problems. Like, I could kill you
right now. Come on, tell me
to break you. Like, I almost want to say
I loved you. I force you to be ashamed,
and please? Don’t tell anyone. I’m laying
in bed, spending your money on some videos.
You know what I just remembered? You think
I’m a bad person. Tell me exactly when
I’ve acted that way.
Bye!
About: tommy wyatt blake is a multi-nominated Pushcart and Best of the Net poet. he’s the author of many books, such as For Your Entertainment! (Troublemaker Firestarter), Mutually Assured Destruction (Ethel Zine), CRASH (Vinegar Press), Trick Mirror or Your Computer Screen (fifth wheel press). their work often navigates topics such as trauma, queerness, popular culture, time, and disability. he is currently synthesizing digital archives, space voids, and confines of the body.
Thank you for tuning in to Sour Winery!
With vinegar and love,
Vinegar Press