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The points first appeared to May on New Year’s Eve, just as the ball was about to drop. She was smoking on the roof of a dilapidated bra factory-turned-performance space. Downstairs, her boyfriend Matt was pushing both Garage Band and eardrums to their absolute limit, on a stage made of plywood and old milk crates.
Inside, the concrete floor was coated in a grimy film of spilled beer and melting slush. It was unseasonably warm for January. Even as someone who recycled and toted her iced coffee around in repurposed pickle jars, the clods of mud and wet grass that squelched between the treads of her combat boots felt like an undeniable indicator of climate death. May couldn’t stand the sound of promises and proclamations, she seemed to be the only person who thought that it was cruel to ask for space to grow in a wilting world. She couldn’t breathe. So she did what anyone would do when trying to escape an awkward social situation, and went out for a smoke.
May hoped for a moment of peace, to let the chill hold her. Instead, she sat mute, staring down three phosphorescent green orbs, shiny and ornate as Christmas ornaments. The Points formed a perfect triangle in an otherwise dark sky, just as the opening chords of “Auld Lang Syne'' swelled up from below her. The sickly green glow that they emitted ruled out a star. Unlike a plane, they stood still. Instead, the sky seemed to move around them, lurching like heatwaves off of a parking lot to account for their presence.
Once she finished her cigarette, May climbed back downstairs and gave Matt a tongue-less New Year’s kiss. She didn’t even bother to tell him, or anyone else at the party about what she had seen.
She would have forgotten about it entirely, but the following Monday, they appeared again. This time, as she was walking back to her car after a closing shift. It was close to midnight, and she had parked on a dimly lit side street. She hated the walk to her car, stomach acid and fear bubbling in her gut. She kept her keys clenched between the webs of her fingers, but she loosened her grip when she realized that the path to her car was lit by a familiar sickly green glow. There were The Points, piercing the dense fog of the night sky, beaming down upon her beat-up Toyota Corolla like a favor.
It felt wrong to call them aliens; what a harsh word for something that seemed so reassuring. May wasn’t even sure if she believed in aliens. If she had to place herself within a larger belief system, May would say that she believed in karaoke.
Karaoke night at Tin Can never faulted her for her lack of ambition. In fact, the people who tried their hardest at karaoke were often the worst performers. There were people who saw karaoke for what it was, an exercise in release, a chance to inhabit a living organism of a room. And there were people who saw karaoke as a game that had to be won.
Picture a Disney adult or someone who still believed in the ethos of community theater. It was like you could see them trying too hard. The clawing desperation of their ambition caused their vocal cords to strain against the soft flesh of their necks. A sheen of sweat gathered on their eyebrows as they screeched towards a high note and missed, with the grace of a bird slamming itself into a glass door.
It was always the former valedictorians or current finance bros who deigned to believe that they could hold the attention of a crowded bar for the entirety of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and their failure was always so spectacular that it was beautiful. Sometimes, May wanted to know if they treasured their failure. People stopped expecting things from May a long time ago, and this genuine lack of expectation granted indescribable freedom.
When she followed them, the microphone always felt warm in her hand, greased by sweat, panic, and raw terror. This seemed to confirm that rather than a competition, karaoke was the great equalizer. To actively try at karaoke was to supplicate oneself at the patent leather heel of humiliation incarnate. It was best to follow the rhythms of one's body and breath, adding pauses or the coy flick of a wrist whenever she felt moved to do so.
May stopped inviting Matt to karaoke when he made fun of the regulars one too many times. His mild success as a DJ generated a mind-blowingly disproportionate amount of hubris. He saw himself as the superior artist, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him that wasn’t true.
When a middle-aged woman with cherry cola red hair and viscous press-on nails took to the stage to croon Sheryl Crowe with a smoker’s rasp imbued with a disproportionate tenderness towards an overwhelmingly cruel world, Matt did not see a saint among mortals. He sneered that she “didn’t have the range,” as if he knew anything about how every day is a winding road!
Now, she readied for karaoke alone. She brushed her hair, put on a loose tank top and jeans, and smeared some eyeliner along the top of her eyelids. She drank a warm beer as she gathered her hair into a high ponytail. Once again, she noticed a peculiar glow leaking through her bathroom window. There they were, The Points, bobbing lazily above the abandoned field by her apartment complex.
As she drove, the points remained beckoning from her rearview mirror. She tried to prepare for the night by taking a few deep breaths, reminding herself that it was supposed to be fun, but the knot in her gut remained.
When May was a kid, she used to think that the moon followed her home on road trips. She wondered if this was a similar phenomenon, or if she should get her eyes checked. She parked behind Tin Can and locked her car. The points settled above her car, waiting, but for what? Why her?
At the bar, May scrawled her name across the karaoke sign-up sheet and ordered a whiskey ginger ale. That night, she watched an exhausted elderly man wearing a denim work shirt belt out Sinatra better than most Vegas impersonators. A wasted gaggle of bachelorettes slurred their way through “Say My Name,” before dissolving into giggles before the first chorus.
She went outside for a cigarette, and there were The Points, hovering lovingly above the neon sign shaped like a beer bottle that marked Tin Can’s presence.
“What do you want from me?” She whispered. The points did not relent or acknowledge her presence. They simply hovered, verdant and unblinking, like an extra-terrestrial ATM. She started to think that if they were coming for her, it wouldn’t be so bad. She’d already given up almond milk and fast fashion, the abandoning the earth didn’t seem like that much of a stretch. She could bear her martyrdom with the grace of Joan of Arc, and feed her body to their flame. When she worked as a barista, a regular told her that the name for the color of the universe was “cosmic latte.”
Were The Points trying to learn about humankind or something? Was that their New Year's Resolution? May decided she would offer them karaoke as her emblem of the best and worst of what humanity had to offer.
From inside she heard the Emcee holler: “Up next, May!”
When May returned inside, she coiled the thick, black snake of the microphone cord around her waist. The opening chords of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” trailed out of the speakers. The lilting notes of the harpsichord failed to tether her to the ground, like a balloon slipping out of a child’s sticky grasp.
May breathed in deeply, and let her voice rise and fall as she begged for someone to recognize her as real, and take her home.
~Rosie Accola
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Installation View
Installation ViewZachary Hutchinson, Baths, Mary, 2022, Digital illustration, 2 x 3’
Installation View
Zachary Hutchinson, Sunny Parking Lot, 2022, Digital illustration, 12 x 12’’
Installation View
Lydia Kuzak, Fertility, 2022, Charcoal on paper, 13 x 11’’, and Ringing bells is eternity, 2022, Charcoal on paper, 14 x 11’’
Installation View
Sabrina Kissack, Three men experiencing love, 2023, Mixed media, 8 x 8’’ and Piggy, 2022, Mixed media, 8 x 8’’
Jackson Margolis, Hospital Mischief, 2019, Graphite and chalk pastel on paper, 22 x 30’’
Jackson Margolis, Hospital Mischief, 2019, Graphite and chalk pastel on paper, 22 x 30’’
Jackson Margolis, On the Shelf, 2019, Acrylic on mat board
Sabrina Kissack, Twin girls, 2023, Mixed media, 8 x 8’’, Woke up laughing, 2022, Mixed media, 8 x 8’’ and Greeters of the labyrinth, 2023, Mixed media, 2023
Lydia Kuzak, 2022, Maid-wolf, Acrylic and charcoal on paper, 12 x 12’’
Jackson Margolis, On the Shelf, 2019, Acrylic on mat board, 32 x 40’’
Lydia Kuzak, Maid-wolf, 2022, Acrylic and charcoal on paper
Sabrina Kissack, Twin girls, 2023, Mixed media, 8 x 8’’
Zachary Hutchinson
Sabrina Kissack
Lydia Kuzak
Jackson Margolis
Flowers by Ivy Mace Firtell
Exhibition text by Rosie Accola
Photography by Sage M. Elder