Michelle Dussault
What do you write?
I write long form fiction. This semester, to better fit into Stonecoast’s MFA structure, I am writing short stories. To write my first short story I found myself relying on personal history and memory. This process of excavating stories from memories feels very different from my novel writing process, which stems from engaging in make believe and feels like watching a movie. My current piece ventures into the terrain of speculative non-fiction.
Is there an author or artist who has most profoundly influenced your work?
Salman Rushdie has been a long time hero.
Why did you choose Stonecoast for your MFA?
They offer a dialogue workshop with professional actors. I hoped to experience a dramatized version of my fiction.
What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?
My favorite Stonecoast memory happened on the last night of my first semester. I found myself sitting at a bus stop in the rain talking with another Stonecoast student.
What do you hope to accomplish in the future?
I hope to revise and publish my novel, “The Oracle Hour.”
If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?
When I read “Blue Ruin” I thought there was no need for me to keep writing because Hari Kunzru had written the book I didn’t know I wanted to write. It opens with shame, defeat, and failure, that manages to rise to artistic success and recognition, without any actual change in circumstances.
TERROR & BEAUTY : RETROGRADE
Start with a bus. The yellow school bus has a driver and a bus lady and one girl. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. There are rows and rows of empty seats but the girl is sitting up front not far from the bus lady. Every bus had a lady in those days. Every day the bus picks up us two girls and takes us to school.
Actually, the bus is not going anywhere. It’s engine is long dead. Fading in a cosmic lot between memory and fiction, its golden hue has bleached to white. Instead this story will start in a church. A muted yellow church on a dirt road in Vermont, the church of abundant light and sound. Its back wall is cobalt blue and features an obscure saint in stained glass. He’s riding a horse like a knight from the Tarot. Or maybe holding a sword.
I hop out of the shimmering rabbit hole with fresh news about Saint Martin. He has both a horse and a sword and also a cloak he cut in half to clothe a naked beggar who may or may not have been Jesus. He built churches over pagan sites and raised three people from the dead. I like to think of the church of abundant light and sound as a pagan site where the dead can rise. It’s next door to a post office and a grange hall on the hillside along a deceptive river known for winding this way then that so it’s hard to track which direction it’s going, except at sunset when the western sky sets the shallows ablaze in neon orange and rose where the river twists northward. Let’s get back to the pagan church.
Six of the nine women had arrived and were in quiet conversation, chopping kale and ginger. Ethereal music played wistfully from strategically placed speakers. I was in the kitchen area plopping tea candles into punch glasses. The church had two sets of double doors. Each led to a vestibule. The second set creaked when they swung open. A wisp of night air followed Emily into the second vestibule. She put her basket of flutes and rattles down on a bench and pulled off her boots. “We’re waiting for Rachel, Reese and Carla.” She tossed her hat on a shelf and hung her coat.
“Of course the three Geminis.” I was anxious to get started. Council meetings tended to roll late. “Gemini time,” I huffed.
We’d been gathering for ten years to explore the healing potential of psychedelics, the plants and molecules we referred to as “medicine,” but despite my best efforts we always got started late. I strolled around placing the unlit candles on coffee tables and windowsills. I lined the route to the bathroom, which was built over a former christian confessional site. The remodeled church had an open concept. Radiant floor heating warmed the patchwork of carpets where pews would have been. Rugs and furniture divided the area, with couches on one side and a long table on the other. Tall windows lined the north and south walls and you already know about Saint Martin, sword majestically drawn to cut his cloak for a beggar, on the back wall in stained glass.
I arranged candles around the raised pulpit area of the back sanctuary, including two below my painting, a large canvas featuring a girl balanced on a partially submerged tire in an ambiguous watery space. Emily picked up the head of the long dining table. “Help me move this.” It took four of us to lean it on its side and push it against the wall.
The first Gemini arrived. Carla emptied her coop bags onto the kitchen island. Nut butter, fresh bread, smoked trout, organic produce and citrus. Carla always brought enough for all, not just her share. She kissed my cheeks. I hovered around her feigning helpfulness. My real motive was to get the party started. No matter how late I stay up I can’t sleep in. I wake with the early birds.
The process of shaving crystals into dust and funneling it into gel tabs takes way too long. Somehow we never factor the time it takes to measure the medicine. We should learn but we never do. Back then, Councils were two nights long. We started with a heart medicine ceremony on the first night and concluded with spirit medicine on the second night. Carla carefully…slowly… shaved the purple crystal into dust. Ignoring my hurry up energy she gave me small tasks.
“Cut the wax paper into squares,” she said, without looking up. Carla carried the medicine and made it available without personal profit.
“Let’s just make nine 75’s and boosters,” I suggested hoping to bypass a long conversation about dosage.
Emily was at the other end of the kitchen island chopping a cantaloupe. “75?" She piped in. “You mean 90?”
“I don’t trust heart medicine. Less is more” I said pulling scissors from a drawer. Kendra was arranging brass singing bowls in the center of the room. She sauntered over. “I agree. It tightens my jaw.” She held her chin and moved it side to side like it was already happening. Emily said, “Maybe we need to do more,” and the debate I hoped to prevent ensued. Reese waltzed into the church, looking like she rolled off of a western movie screen, like she was born wearing a cowboy hat. It didn’t sit on top of her head like a fashion statement, it belonged there. She was striking.
The first time I met her—this sentence was going to say one thing, but now that it’s started it is veering towards some entirely different truth—Reese was asking questions like, for instance, she asked, “Doesn’t MDMA poke tiny holes in your brain?”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Rachel had rushed in to defend the medicine.
“I don’t want tiny holes in my brain,” I said.
A discussion followed suit. Someone consulted the shimmer for data points. Lee provided data points from Burning Man and San Francisco, several decades worth of data points, that MDMA did not prick your brain with tiny holes. She was living proof.
What I wanted to say—what I started to say was—the first time I met Reese she was on my lap. The Council didn’t have a name yet, that first time we gathered, but Reese was there and I was there and Carla too. All of the named characters were. We were nine women with sage and drums and drugs. Reese had taken turns on each woman’s lap and issued a proclamation about each of us. I do not remember what she said about me, never mind anyone else, only that some of us liked what she had to say about them and some didn’t. Before her actions, while blissed out on MDMA, became a controversy it was a moment in spacetime that I can actually remember, which considering my brain, is miraculous. With Saint Martin shining over us from his high horse on the stained glass, I told Reese, “Your beauty comes with a responsibility.”
At the mention of beauty the school bus comes careening into view. It doesn’t fit but I’m desperate to keep it. See, if this story had stayed with the bus it wouldn’t have a river snaking through it. It would have a salt lake or an ocean. Maybe a broken drawbridge in a tidal bay, rusted and forever pointing skyward over brackish water, but not a river. However, now that a saint from Gaul has taken on such prominence perhaps we can count on there being people raised from the dead. There are definitely three dead people but it’s unlikely all will show. Maybe the school bus is a vehicle for transitioning memories. Let’s get back to that first Council meeting.
Neither of us are particularly affectionate but Reese was on my lap. It was early summer. Most of us were meeting for the first time. We were spread out in a wide candle lit circle. The windows were cracked open and night breezes wove through the Palo Santo and cannabis smoke.
Reese replied, “I am accepting my beauty through my mother.” She might of teared up. “My mother is so beautiful.”
MDMA makes it easier to talk about difficult things. Like losing a loved one to suicide. She was a suicide survivor. As a teen her cousin who lived with her family, and was more of a brother, shot himself in an upstairs closet. That’s why she’s afraid of ghosts. She grew up in Oklahoma but lived in Manhattan. I loved her from the moment she accepted my decree that beauty came with responsibility, and I especially appreciated that when everyone else contributed food like kale or lentils, she brought peanut butter cups, which I remember as rice crispy treats. About ten years have passed since our first Council meeting. We’ve been our own guinea pigs ever since, running an ongoing experiment on psychedelic healing.
“Who wants 90?” Carla put a slip of wax paper on the scale.
Everyone gathered around the kitchen island.
“How many are you doing?” Rachel’s eyes darted to Reese.
“Ninety to start.”
Carla used a tiny spoon to weigh dust on squares of wax paper. I funneled the MDMA into gel capsules. Three of us wanted 75’s and the rest were good with 90’s and we supplied unlimited boosters of 50 and 25.
As of now, all of the Geminis in this story have been named. Carla, Reese and Rachel. Virgo and Gemini are ruled by the same planet, Mercury. I’m one of the five women ruled by Mercury, the quick thinking messenger of the Gods. But I’m a Jesse James Virgo, meaning I have a messy room. Of the nine women three had children. All sons. One had died young. At this point in the story, only three of the four suicide survivors have been named.
When I say Mercury, you say…?
Retrograde.
DIFFERENT STATES
The morning after the heart medicine ceremony we lounged around in different states of fasting. Some of us drank coffee. Some snuck in orange slices. Some took in only hot lemon water. If I saw someone take a nibble out of something I took a nibble out of it too. Fasting makes me nervous. My mind goes to some apocalyptic place where there are no more groceries, the stores are looted and empty, there’s nothing left to eat except what canned goods you managed to hoard.
At midday we gathered for an integration and took turns putting what we learned into words. Emily opened the circle with, “It’s not wisdom unless it’s shared.” Rachel sounded the crystal singing bowl. It took hours to drop our wisdom into words. Reese said something about finitude and the finite reality of life. Carla asked if we thought the future would always be there.
Would the future always be there? The question still reverberates through my mind. Reese suggested that rather than time not existing, or existing only as the eternal now, maybe time actually exists outside the present moment. I pictured a place outside of time where the past and the future lived with the dead. In the afternoon some of us bundled up and walked to the river. Wind howled across its frozen surface. Beneath the ice floes sticking out at jagged angles, the river flowed fast like time. Above the cold sky invited snow.
We had all day but we didn’t get around to measuring spirit medicine till way past sunset. I went around the church replacing and lighting candles. We had to wait for Rachel. She left to do an errand or make an important call. I huffed, “Gemini time.”
Reese asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Geminis think they can fit a week into an hour.”
The hinge doors swung open. Rachel entered. “What’s up with the school bus?” I rushed to the window. That’s weird. I thought I cut the school bus from this story. A yellow school bus was parked across the street in front of the cemetery.
Nora, who was always stealing away to grade papers, came down from the upstairs loft. With her black hoodie pulled over her head she looked more like a wily teen than a journalism professor. “That’s weird, Meesh. Weren’t you talking about a school bus last night?”
“Yeah. When I was a scruffy ragamuffin there were only two of us who rode the bus to school. It seemed magical. I was extremely shy and withdrawn. The bus ride was like a protective bubble through spacetime.”
“Got it, Rachel said, “There’s a protective bubble parked across from the grange.” Snow dusted the top of the bus. Its interior was dimly illuminated by a dome light. “It’s empty,” I said.
“Can we get started? I’m not sure I want to do this tonight,” Rachel said.
“What?” I turned from the window. “We’ve been waiting for you and now your not sure if you want to stay.”
Carla said, “I have Psilocybe azurescens. They are very potent. Two grams is a high dose.” I replaced a couple candles in the bathroom, one on the sink and another on the window sill. The bus wasn’t visible from bathroom window. I joined Carla in the kitchen area.
She cut the shrink wrapped package with a sharp knife. She held up an azurecens to show off its blue hue. “They’re foraged not grown.”
She placed a mix of caps and stems onto the scale. I jotted down what everyone wanted and ushered the portions into small ceramic mugs. Emily heated water. Rachel’s anxious chatter flitted in from the other end of the church. There were nine women so they can’t all get a name. Some added finishing touches to the soups or cut fruit. We were hungry and the temptation to forego the medicine and go straight to eating was strong.
After much deliberation, Rachel decided to stay. It was after eight when we gathered in a circle and tossed our intentions into the center of the pagan church.
Emily looked around and said, “Nine. Nine is a magic number in the Bahai faith.” She was about to call in the directions when Reese cut her off, suggesting we try a somatic process instead.
The air tightened around my throat. I clicked a lighter and held the flame to a stick of Palo Santo. My body reacts to conflict sometimes before it arises. There’s been tension between Emily and Reese since that first time we gathered a decade ago.
Reese suggested we invoke the East by feeling the left side of our bodies. “Now, feel the energy of your bottom half.”
We sensed into the south then called in the west by feeling our right sides. We called in the sky and earth, sensing the area above and below us. Then we focused on the still-point within. My body relaxed. Silence engulfed our circle in the center of the church.
Dreams and altered states are always in the present tense. Energy shoots up my central channel then rains down around me in a toroidal fountain. For a while the energy plunges down my center, going down the up. I walk alone through the valley of death. My body shivers. The center of my being quakes. Go deeper. I lie on my back and death creeps up my spine one vertebrae at a time. Spinning with color, semi-mechanical, semi-organic entities whizz through my being. I tell my dizzy still point within, “They are here to fix you.” They’re going too fast. At the center of my being is a wobbling, quaking jelly of fear.
Emily strums her charango. Her lullaby warms my shivering body. We tighten the circle. Nine points of a star sit cross-legged in the center of the church. A half moon shines through the skylight. Saint Martin watches as Reese hands me a pipe. Cannabis is jet fuel. Rachel suggests we raise our hands, palm to palm without touching. This is my coven. The portal opens. The ceiling disappears. The floor raises. The present moment is a flume ride. Emily opens her throat and a melody pours out. We call and respond with tones, generating wordless sounds until we are all riding one song.
Carla is sitting across from me with a smile on her face. Her eyes are closed and her torso sways forward and back. She goes, “I’m in a timeless place but also noticing time. It’s such a trip.” Reese goes, “Let’s pray for those in the liminal realm undergoing surgery.”
Rachel laughs. Laughter is contagious. We laugh for everyone in the liminal realm undergoing surgery. When Lee says something in the future tense Reese goes, “It’s not over.” Her tone jumps from sharp to admonishing. “I’m still in it now. Everyone stay in it, do not jump out to the next.”
Tension tightens in around me, the somatic experience of the fountain becoming a hose and circling around my throat. Density thickens. I lie down and cover my head with my blanket. Rachel playfully beats on her metal tongue drum carving out rooms and caverns with her song. Carla shakes a rattle. Emily sings. I float on her melody till it is time to eat.
OPEN PORTAL
Dawn arrived. The arms of Morpheus folded around the cozy church but I didn’t sleep. I waited for the others to wake up so I could use the coffee grinder. The Sunday integration circle started in a sleepless languid state after feasting on nut butter on toast then sautéed kale and eggs sprinkled with roasted pumpkin seeds. Then someone spoke out of turn. Then there were no more turns and anyone who spoke was out of turn. Some of the women were silent and Kendra cried, but she always does. It’s how she’s wired.
Here’s the skinny: Rachel was upset by what Reese did the night before last. She’d been nursing a grudge and borderline annoying ever since. This gave Emily an outlet for her grudge. It was her church and her invitation but Reese cut off her invocation off with a somatic process for calling in the directions, which only hours before everyone had agreed was a powerful way to enter the medicine without words or music, sensation being the wave that carried us all through the portal from the mundane into the cosmic.
Carla moved towards the bathroom. She paused at the window. “It’s snowing.” “Is that bus still there?” I hurried over. It was.
Rachel consulted her phone and said a storm was coming. A couple people said they had to get going since they had a three-hour drive. There was a sudden burst of energy, blankets being folded, lids screwed on jars, food wrapped or covered, clothes packed and mattresses stacked.
“I’m going out to check on the bus.” I put my boots on in the vestibule between the hinge doors the main entrance where the refrigerator hummed.
Outside a white sun burned a cold hole in the heavy sky. Soft snow blew across the road. A few inches had accumulated on the bus. I crossed the street. The door was open. I stepped in. Rows of tall green seats with hard backs greeted me with their rubbery pleather scent. I pictured Shirley smiling at me. I imagined her side of the memory. Seeing me for the first time, I must have looked like a responsibility. My grade-school protector was the daughter of a single immigrant mother. I must have looked like a burden. The girl in outdated hand-me-downs, with the largest rat’s nest of a snarl in her hair, plopped down right beside the most beautiful girl, even though there was a whole bus full of empty seats. Shirley’s beauty would have afforded her the possibility of fitting in, but neither of the only two girls on that bus fit with the ones at school. So the unkept one followed the beautiful one around. She was my compass providing directions away from the cold sharp edges of school. She was the sunset blazing the spot on the river where it pointed northward. She must have smiled when I stepped on that yellow bus.
There was no way to shut the door from the outside so I left it open. Beauty opens doors. The responsibility of the beautiful is to hold them open for the rest of us.
Carla was packing her sleeping bag and sheep skin into the back of her car. I crossed diagonally towards her. “You’re leaving?”
We met in the middle of the road. “I want to get home before the storm. Rachel already left. We never closed that circle. It’s no good to leave the portal open.”
“We’re getting lazy,” I said.
“I burned some sage.”
“I’ll pray while I vacuum.”
We stood listening to the hushed quiet. A wave rustled the tree tops making the distant wind visible. A gust touched down, surrounding me and Carla in a whirl of fluffy snow. She brushed my cheek with her lips. Cheek kisses make me think of Carla. And the first sip of water in the morning. Her eyes could flash with a sudden burst of anger. She often snuck away without saying good bye. She would suddenly be gone but the last time, when she left this world for the next, she said goodbye. Her goodbye was filled with gratitude. The last words she spoke on this earth were thank you.