A powerful blend of science fiction, absurdism and alternative-historical realism that aims to destabilise the heteronormative world and expose its underlying rot
Inspired by Simone Weil’s concept of ‘decreation’ – and drawing on Batak and Christian cultural elements – Happy Stories, Mostly is a short story collection where author Norman Erikson Pasaribu puts queer characters in situations and plots conventionally filled by hetero characters.
In one story, a staff member is introduced to their new workplace – a department of Heaven devoted to archiving unanswered prayers. In another, a woman’s attempt to holiday in Vietnam after her gay son dies by suicide turns into a nightmarish failed escape. And in a speculative-historical third story, a young man finds himself haunted by the tale of a giant living in colonial-era Sumatra.
The book is published in the UK by Tilted Axis Press.
“With the rain, the river rises and rises, bringing brown water to our front door: the dry, yellow dust on the car browning in the damp; the blue welcome mat creeping out through the narrow garage, then the rusty green gate, able to return home only if we recall it should be there, only if we recall it exists; and the mayflies hovering over the surface of the water. From this black window do we eyeball it all. Then, faintly, the terrified yowl of a cat from who knows where. Then the widow who lives at the intersection, in a blue rain jacket, wading through the water, following its flow. We know the sun is watching us watching everything, with its eye bigger than this blue eye, this orb on which we all stand. But then, a tug at your T-shirt. A tiny hand and a summons to come down to breakfast. Someone is waiting for you below, they say. Someone who has been searching for you for a long time. An okay, and I’ll be down soon. Then a head peering in—your cue to get up from your seat and leave the movie theater, down the sloping path, like when you have to pee … But how swiftly it all flew by and is now no more,” they say, face shrouded by the blackout, opening the door to let in an end.
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Even worse than experiencing genuine misfortune, to my mind, was telling someone about it and being considered a liar; for isn’t the denial that a massacre happened even more tragic than the massacre itself?
The first time I took a short story writing class, I was asked to tell the saddest true story that I’d ever heard. And so, I told the group how I had once been turned down for a job as a kindergarten teacher after being asked to tell the saddest of the sad true stories I’d heard, whereupon I’d responded with the story of Alarm Man. I’d heard about him from my late mother —she and Alarm Man came from the same town. I told the recruiter for the kindergarten job how Alarm Man, who couldn’t wake up without an alarm clock, had forgotten to set his alarm the night before his first date with my mother’s friend, whom he’d spent seven years loving desperately from afar. Alarm Man didn’t wake up that day, and my mother’s friend waited at the theme park ticket booth until sundown. My mother’s friend assumed it was all a big prank and ended up dating some other guy. Fifty years passed and Alarm Man slept on until, one day, for no clear reason, he was startled from sleep. He found his bed blanketed in hair, the roots of which he traced all the way back to his own head. He cut the hairs, and as his reflection revealed itself, he received another shock: he was now old and frail. He realized what had happened and remained at the mirror, weeping without end. Then he remembered the date with his beloved. Frantically, he dried his eyes, showered, dressed neatly, and left for the theme park. He got lost along the way, of course. Only hours later, and after stopping several people to ask for directions, did he find the place. It was now a shopping mall. He began crying again, on the roadside this time, filled with sorrow and regret. Once again, he thought of my mother’s friend and immediately set off to find out where his beloved lived––though of course, his beloved was in fact someone else’s beloved by now. Apparently, my mother’s friend had moved away and so Alarm Man went to my mother instead. Alarm Man began to tell her everything, broke down crying in the middle, continued his story, and eventually asked for my mother’s friend’s address. My mother told him the facts as they stood: her friend had died two years ago from prostate cancer.
Alarm Man wept once more, this time on the divan in our sitting room. He felt he had nothing to live for anymore. “Then he said he was hungry, and after eating an enormous amount, he went home and was never seen again,” I told the recruiter, bringing my story to a close. The recruiter frowned and asked whether it was a true story, and I nodded, and he asked how Alarm Man could have possibly survived without eating or drinking anything for fifty years, and I replied that I, too, wasn’t sure about the scientific explanation behind it, but that was what had happened. The recruiter then asked about Alarm Man’s origin story and the time before Alarm Man had been called Alarm Man, and I answered truthfully that my mother had never told me anything about that. There was a long silence. “He couldn’t have survived,” the recruiter said, before informing me that I hadn’t got the position. I cried all the way home because I had really needed that job to pay for my mother’s medical treatment. Only when my mother died a month later, along with the full story of Alarm Man—I’d never felt it was the right time to ask her about it—did I realize that my rejection from the job had actually given me a story that was even sadder. Even worse than experiencing genuine misfortune, to my mind, was telling someone about it and being considered a liar; for isn’t the denial that a massacre happened even more tragic than the massacre itself? And I thought to myself: If I’d told the recruiter about how I’d been turned down for a job as a kindergarten teacher because my story about Alarm Man had been thought not only untrue, but utter nonsense as well, why then, I’d have gotten the job because at least one layer of the story would have made sense—that I’d been turned down for a job as a kindergarten teacher.
But how could I have told it? After all, during the interview, I hadn’t been rejected yet. And I also thought to myself: If the tale of me telling the story of Alarm Man and being thought a liar was sadder than the story of Alarm Man itself, wouldn’t the tale of me being thought a liar after telling a story of me telling the story of Alarm Man and being thought a liar be even sadder still? I felt that such a story would prove useful someday—a bottomless pit of sorrowbricks for me to mine, to build my Babel Tower of misery. Maybe one day I could tell the story to someone who could fall asleep only if they heard a sad tale. With my story’s help, they’d be able to slumber in peace for a very long time. Forever perhaps. And so, from that point on, in order to make the story even sadder, I decided to start taking writing classes—where questions like “What is the worst thing you’ve ever experienced?” and “What is your darkest secret?” are routinely trotted out to be answered by people, a portion of whom are sure from the start that it is they who have the most miserable experience, the strangest secret, the wildest imagination, to the point that, from the start, they won’t take much interest in the story I’ll tell them, much less in me.
Norman Erikson Pasaribu
