My new short story ALTAR OF ADOLESCENCE is now available on Projecttile Literary Magazine.
Originally published on Projecttile Lit:
http://projecttile.tumblr.com/post/59627080938/the-altar-of-adolescence-a-teenage-dream-by
I. When I speak to my adolescent self, it goes a little something like this…
I am a teenager and I worship false idols.
I fell in love with Katy Perry as soon as she told me I made her “feel like she was living a teenage dream” because of “the way I turn her on.”
I eat cotton candy and whipped cream and rainbow-colored sprinkles because they’re sweet and I like the sugar rush.
I walk on a cloud of naïveté.
I stop at the convenience store to read Seventeen, Teen Beat, J-14, M,Popstar!, Twist and Teen Vogue.
I dream about Justin Bieber leaving Selena Gomez for me, and I pray the baby isn’t his.
II. Greetings My Love, You’re In Candyland
I find myself in Candyland, where I finally meet Katy Perry. She approaches me wearing a dress made entirely of pink cotton candy. Her mouth is permanently stuck in an “O.” She says nothing, only hums at a pitch that gets higher and higher until it turns into a deafening scream. I cover my ears and scream. There is a peppermint candy cane hanging from her right ear. A scoop of strawberry ice cream melts on top of her pink hair. She bends over, drips ice cream onto my left shoe, and then scurries away into the candycane forest. She climbs a Twizzler rope. (I see her snow white ass pop out from underneath her effervescent dress. I guess the cotton candy isn’t sticky enough.) At the top, she exits onto a blue cotton-candy cloud whose texture is much thicker than her pink cotton-candy dress. She lies down, removes her candy, and poses like Manet’s Olympia. Then she looks down at me, rainbow sprinkles in her eyes. I shoot whipped cream straight up into the blue sky.
III. COTTON CANDY GALORE
Katy Perry won’t come down from her cloud, so I leave to get some cotton candy ice cream. It’s summer in Candyland, and melted ice cream sticks to the soles of my bare feet. The gingerbread houses smell burnt instead of sweet. I arrive at the ice cream store, which is named COTTON CANDY GALORE. I stick out my tongue to catch some melting vanilla ice cream, which drips from the store’s sign. Workers come out and constantly replenish the always-melting ice cream, but they are never fast enough. The heat hovers hard.
I decide to try the cotton-candy ice cream flavor. I enter the store and get in line behind three chatty toddlers holding matching M&M’s bags. Their mother smacks them, trying to keep them quiet. A gummy bear soldier runs through the store, shouting at everyone to silence immediately because Snoop Dogg, the king of Candyland, will soon be arriving.
Outside, a black-and-white striped puppy with paws too big for its body laps up the melted vanilla ice cream from the dripping sign. The melted ice cream pools in puddles, flows into the chocolate sewers and empties into streams that drain the candy terrain, joining melted-ice-cream rivers that flow into the Slurpee Sea.
I space out for a moment and picture a woman, sitting in cotton candy, nude, looking out into the horizon. Her right thigh slips off the cotton candy cloud, which expands as it floats across the sky. She almost falls off of it, but before she slips it expands. Is Katy falling from the sky?
I’m next in line. The blonde cashier boy smiles at me. He wears a cotton candy ice cream hat that keeps melting. The flavor I want is sold out.
IV. The Forbidden Beach
In “Candyland,” there’s a beach that everyone talks about but few have the guts to visit. I hear the gummy bear soldiers whisper about it on the streets. It’s where the paleteria guys hang out, pushing their carts across the boardwalk. Legend has it that if you go to the beach you’ll eat a Superman ice cream bar, and if you do that you’ll be banished to Princess Fairy’s “Never Land.” I decide to check it out. After all, this is my teenage dream.
A barbed wire fence surrounds the glistening Forbidden Beach, which is filled with several dozen blonde-haired blue-eyed men and women. They seem to be in a trance, relaxing on the beach. Simultaneously, they all take licks from their Superman ice cream bars. Every hour, on the hour, they stand up and run into the red Slurpee sugar water waves. For 15 minutes they swim. Then they exit the water, coupling up and licking each others’ bodies until the sugar has all been consumed. After that, they lie back down and begin the Superman ice cream bar licking all over again. I watch the cycle twice before deciding to venture onto Forbidden Beach. Surely, I am immune. My hair is black and my eyes are green; I am far from the Aryan ideal that they embody.
As soon as I slip through the barbed wire, three paleteria truck guys bike up to me.
“Hello! Hola! Can I get you a Superman ice cream bar?” they ask me at the same time. One of them jingles his bell by swishing the ice cream cart back and forth on the sugar-coated boardwalk. The other two stand in silence on black licorice grass.
“Can I get a strawberry shortcake bar from you?” I say to paleteria man number two. He looks down at his cart.
“Sorry lady I no have,” he says, annoyed.
“I can’t get a strawberry shortcake bar?” I inquire.
Paleteria man number two starts ringing his bell. “We must go. You must leave. If you don’t want Superman you no stay here!” he shouts at me, angrily this time. I must not feel all-powerful enough to enter the Superman state. Moments later all three of them turn around and speed away. It must be time for me to go, too. I slip back through the hole in the barbed-licorice-whip fence, and race back toward COTTON CANDY GALORE.
V. Bubble Gum Nightmare
The ice cream store is gone. The gummy bear soldiers have disappeared. I look up at the sky and see Katy in her blue cotton candy cloud. She sees me looking and squirts whipped cream back at me. It lands on my left eye. The sugar burns hard. I can’t keep looking up so I run down the gingerbread street until I find the convenience store. Somehow it is dingy and without sugar coating.
I walk in and smack into the wall of Hubba Bubba pink bubblegum cartridges. They say “Awesome Original” in yellow bubble letters. They call it tape, actually, which is why it feels like I’m eating something fake and sticky when I rip open a cartridge and shove two feet of it into my mouth. My mouth turns pink and I fall to the floor, unconscious.
VI. Why Does Kurt Cobain Sing To Me?
Am I having a dream within my teenage dream?
Kurt Cobain and I are on stage together, holding hands and gazing into each others’ eyes. He starts singing to me.
“Load up on guns and bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word,” he sings, passionately.
“Wait, stop. I don’t want you to sing this freakin’ cliché teenager song. Don’t you have anything else to sing to me?” I ask, frustrated.
“Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello” he sings.
“No, stop! I don’t…” I start to say, but he drowns out my shouts with his song. I resolve to listen.
“With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an albino
A mosquito, my libido
Yeah, hey, yay
I’m worse at what I do best
And for this gift I feel blessed
Our little group has always been
And always will until the end
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello
With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an albino
A mosquito, my libido
Yeah, hey, yay
And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, it’s hard to find
Oh well, whatever, nevermind
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello
With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an albino
A mosquito, my libido
Yeah, hey, yay
A denial, a denial
A denial, a denial
A denial, a denial
A denial, a denial
A denial”
The song is over but Kurt’s mouth keeps moving. His hands feel cold in mine but his grip is so strong that I can’t break away. The song starts over. I wake up, screaming.
VII. Teenage Tabloid Magazines
“Candyland” sucks, and I want out.
But when I wake up on the sticky caramel-covered floor of the convenience store, I look up and see them: Endless copies of Seventeen magazine, covering the adjacent wall.
The tired Indian guy behind the desk looks at me. He sports a shirt covered in black licorice stripes.
“You gonna get up and buy some magazines? If not, you leave now,” he says. I comply and stand up, though it’s a difficult task and now my back is covered in caramel and my head is full of Kurt’s creepy teen spirit.
I walk toward the magazines. I see Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, the bubblegum pink hearts with cut-outs of 17-year-old Scotty The Hottie’s face inside them and a blonde who calls herself Scotty’s “perfect girl.” She smooches his freshly-shaved cheek. Scotty and Justin and Selena’s smiles are sweet and teasingly sexy, I think—if you think teenagers are sexy.
My hand shakes as I pick up the magazine. I feel dirty, like I’m looking at Hustler or Playboy. I rip out the centerfolds of Justin and Selena and shove them in my sticky back pocket. The cashier doesn’t notice. I slip out the door and back onto the gingerbread-covered street.
VIII. I Read The News Today, Oh Boy
As I wander down the gingerbread-covered street, I run into a Wall Street Journal newsstand. I pay the two peppermint candy quarters and open the creaky door. Confectionary sugar from the box poofs up into the hot, sticky air. I grab a copy of the paper and turn to walk down the street.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Selena Gomez made her first investment in a tech start-up called Postcards on the Run, an iPhone app that transforms your photos into real paper postcards. She handed over $750,000.
Here in Candyland, Selena is Katy Perry’s runner up. She isn’t old enough to be queen, but she can sure be the princess. She’s already the star of the Disney Channel series “Wizards of Waverly Place,” a show about Candyland.
She tells the Wall Street Journal that she invested in Postcards on the Run because she misses Justin and she wanted to make sure they had more ways to communicate than just texting. That’s when she started taking pictures using her iPhone camera and mailing them to him using Postcards on the Run.
It made her feel a lot closer to Justin. Well, until she found out about the terrible rumor. Justin may have impregnated a girl backstage after one of his concerts. His agents made him take a paternity test to find out if he was the man of that boy and the boy of that man. Then he went on Letterman, a show that’s not on in “Candyland” proper, and talked about how he would never cheat on Selena. (I’m thinking his agent gave him that line.)
That same night Selena sent Justin a Postcard on the Run that said “I love you forever and will you stay with me?” I’m not sure if he received it.
IX. BIEBER HAS BEEN STABBED!
Just as I finish reading the Wall Street Journal article, a giant sign lights up in Candy Times Square: “ATTENTION CANDYLAND! JUSTIN BIEBER HAS BEEN STABBED!” I whip out my iPhone and Google it. It just can’t be true.
Naturally, I find an article on The Naked Security blog that reveals the truth: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/12/08/justin-bieber-stabbed-facebook-scam/.
The Naked Security Blog has reported that Facebook scammers are claiming that dreamboat teen heartthrob Justin Bieber has been stabbed outside of an LA nightclub. The scammers are trying to trick fans into clicking on a link that says it will give them money. This is what shows up:
Other versions of the story claim Bieber was stabbed outside of a New York City nightclub.
No such stabbing has taken place, Internet authorities say.
Unfortunately young Facebook users are easily fooled. If they do end up clicking on the link, they are sent to a YouTube page that supposedly has a video of the stabbing. Users are asked to first share the link before they’re able to watch the video, which further spreads the scam across Facebook.
When the young fans try to start watching the video, they are instead prompted to fill out a survey. This is how the scammers win: They make $3 each time a fan completes the survey.
If you were fooled by the survey, report the spam link to the Facebook authorities as soon as possible. Then post something on your Facebook wall to let the scammers know that this sort of behavior won’t be tolerated on Facebook.
I post it to my wall, with a tagline:
I’m Candyland Tribune reporter Alicia K on the Internet scene. I’ll report back later with any new information.
X. Guess What? Teens Aren’t The Rampant Sexting Maniacs We Thought (NPR)
Glad you got that info about Justin. In case you were wondering, we teenagers aren’t the rampantly sexting maniacal freaks that you thought we were. No way. In fact, it’s the other way around: You adults are the sickos texting crude sexual lines and photos at us. I find this article after I finish reporting on the Justin Bieber fake stabbing story. Oh, and in case you were wondering, in the time between finding that story and this one, I started my own blog, amassed 200 Twitter followers, and am now a trusted source in the “Candyland” blogosphere. Anyway, here’s a summary of the story:
Headline: Only 1% of Teenagers in Candyland Sext Inappropriate Imagery
Source: Alicia Perry’s Candyland News Blog
Only one percent of teens have created and sexted explicit images, according to a new survey of 1500 teenagers. It might not be a great survey of the population, but it’s a new statistic that proves we teenagers aren’t creeps.
This comes at a critical time for Katy Perry and the residents of Candyland, who sell cheaply wrapped, hypersexualized, sugar-coated rainbow dreams and shoot whip cream at viewers for a living.
Additionally, only 2.5% of teens say they’ve appeared in or created nude or almost-nudie photos or videos. Meanwhile, 7% of teenagers say they have received sexually explicit images, but those were from people or persons they were in romantic relationships with.
“Only a low percentage of young children are appear in or creating images that could be considered illegal,” wrote researchers in the journal Pediatrics. “Moreover, few of these images are being forwarded or posted.”
King Snoop Dogg has changed the rating of Candyland from “X” to “PG-13,” chastising the public for putting so much pressure on Katy to perform.
“Listen up y’all, this whip cream pleasure ain’t supposed to hurt no one. But it’s just that sex sells, ya know what I’s sayin’?”
Story partially via NPR [http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/05/143142420/teens-arent-the-rampant-sexting-maniacs-we-thought] with contributions from the Candyland News Blog [http://www.tumblr.com/blog/aliciaperryscandyland/].
XI. In Which Katy Perry Finds God, then Leaves Me and “Candyland” for Good (Rolling Stone)
After I publish that article about sexting, I look up to the candy clouds, only to find Katy Perry Googling herself. (I knew she was Googling herself, because her Google searches kept popping up on the Candy Times Square sign.) I see her log on to Facebook and stop to gaze at a certain celebrity boy-girl named Justin. Snoop Dogg walks in and says, “Hey baby, are you two friends or something?” He seems a bit jealous. Then she cocks her head, licks her lips and looks straight into her webcam.
“Oh yeah, like a Facebook friend? Like someone whose wall you look at from time to time but never fuck? Yeah, that’s my relationship to Justin.”
She turns to look at her computer and Googles the following: “Katy Perry Sex God Rolling Stone.” She finds the Rolling Stone 2010 cover story about her. I grabbed it for you just in case you weren’t sure how to find it:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sex-god-katy-perry-rolling-stones-2010-cover-story-20110607
Katy grins from ear to ear. She turns to Snoop, who seems confused about all this Googling, and says: “Yes, I said I kissed a girl. But I didn’t say I kissed a girl while fucking a crucifix.”
Snoop gasps. He seems taken aback by Katy’s sudden aggressive nature, and slinks away into the blue cotton candy cloud. Katy is in a huff, and so decides to start talking about her religious past—she was a Christian rockstar before transforming into her current pop star status.
“Listen up, I have a tattoo of JESUS on my wrist just like my daddy,” she tells the web cam. “God is still a really big part of my life, but the details are told in the Bible—and that’s still fuzzy to me. And I want to throw up when I say that. But that’s the truth.”
I am the only one standing in Candy Times Square right now. The gummy bear soldiers must be on break. Snoop is ignoring Katy still after her little outburst.
She sighs again, licks some whipped cream from the tip of the cotton candy cloud, and starts talking at the camera again.
“I look up into the sky and I’m just mindfucked—all those stars and planets, the never-endingness of the universe. I just can’t believe that we’re the only polluting population. Every time I look up, I know that I’m nothing and there’s something way beyond me.”
I breathe in the sweet sugar-y air and find myself drifting off into a quiet land of pink roses, light blue flowers and golden stars. Before I close my eyes, I see Katy waving goodbye to me.
XII. Stop Dreamin’ About Candyland, This is Real Life Girl!
I wake up all wet and sticky.
I think I see cane sugar dripping from the ceiling, but it might just be a leak I’ve been too lazy to fix. I get up to use the washroom. When I turn on the faucet, for a split second I really do see red Slurpee syrup instead of water. When I walk back into my bubblegum pink-colored room, I notice that the walls are covered with posters of Justin, Selena, Katy, Kurt, Snoop Dogg and the gummy bear army. Did I hang those? I walk toward the saintly image of Justin and start peeling off a baby blue tape in one of the corners. I grow impatient and rip the poster off the wall. That’s when I discover the two-foot by three-foot hole; it looks like someone with a basketball-sized fist made it.
I poke my head inside. All I see are candy cane shadows.
