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A review by sausome
A Different Bed Every Time by Jac Jemc
4.0
Ranging from a single page, to several pages, the 42 stories that fill the pages of this collection are strange and poetic. Some of the stories were more prose poems than stories, but the collection is so packed and varied that one moves right into the next. It is clear that Jac Jemc is wordsmith of the highest order, whether or not I understand every word. I came to this collection after reading “The Grip of It” and needing more. I have “My Only Wife” to read next. Fair warning: if you seek a story that is traditional in its beginning, middle, and end, this collection is not going to be the one for you.
From “The Dark Spot” - “I had tried to turn the weekend into a science, to make it into a game I could learn the rules for, to escape the cliche of it being difficult to be home for the holidays. If you asked me who I loved most in the world, the people I would list were under that roof, but spending four days with their adult selves, with the spouses they’d chose and the children they’d wrought and the opinions they’d formed where curiosity once lived, was more than I could manage.
Alone in the furnace room, I thought of a person trying to remember a phone number while someone else shouted random numbers in their ear. I thought if trying to sync three clocks perfectly with only two hands. I thought of impossible pulses.
There are times I know I’m a part of something, even when I’m not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough.”
From “Somebody Else’s” - “I refused to admit my behavior was not normal. The outside world and I were like cracked magnets. We had been one and the same, but we’d broken apart and could now do nothing but resist. Every time I thought about leaving my home, I wondered what could be waiting for me out there and never came up with an attractive enough answer. It wasn’t even fear. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
From “The Tackiness of Souls” - “Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.”
From “The Things Which Blind Us” - “I hated when they made me wear the bear suit in public and hated it more for how comfortable it was when I was alone. A conundrum. ... At that point, I’d been confused for days, like trying to see through dense foliage. I hoped it was just the mescaline wearing off. When that effect faded, suddenly, random birds began falling from the sky every few minutes, and when I looked for them near the ground, they were nowhere.”
The last “story” was like a fun love poem, called “Let Me Be Your Tugboat King” - it opens with, “Listen, I’m ready for you to come right over here, darling, and dance with me. We’re pulling in the weight of what we’re waiting for. Dance it down for me. Let me see your sequins shimmer and shake.”
From “The Dark Spot” - “I had tried to turn the weekend into a science, to make it into a game I could learn the rules for, to escape the cliche of it being difficult to be home for the holidays. If you asked me who I loved most in the world, the people I would list were under that roof, but spending four days with their adult selves, with the spouses they’d chose and the children they’d wrought and the opinions they’d formed where curiosity once lived, was more than I could manage.
Alone in the furnace room, I thought of a person trying to remember a phone number while someone else shouted random numbers in their ear. I thought if trying to sync three clocks perfectly with only two hands. I thought of impossible pulses.
There are times I know I’m a part of something, even when I’m not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough.”
From “Somebody Else’s” - “I refused to admit my behavior was not normal. The outside world and I were like cracked magnets. We had been one and the same, but we’d broken apart and could now do nothing but resist. Every time I thought about leaving my home, I wondered what could be waiting for me out there and never came up with an attractive enough answer. It wasn’t even fear. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
From “The Tackiness of Souls” - “Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.”
From “The Things Which Blind Us” - “I hated when they made me wear the bear suit in public and hated it more for how comfortable it was when I was alone. A conundrum. ... At that point, I’d been confused for days, like trying to see through dense foliage. I hoped it was just the mescaline wearing off. When that effect faded, suddenly, random birds began falling from the sky every few minutes, and when I looked for them near the ground, they were nowhere.”
The last “story” was like a fun love poem, called “Let Me Be Your Tugboat King” - it opens with, “Listen, I’m ready for you to come right over here, darling, and dance with me. We’re pulling in the weight of what we’re waiting for. Dance it down for me. Let me see your sequins shimmer and shake.”