Seth Gall
He’s of indeterminate age, but has seen Neil Diamond perform live as many times as years he has lived. He wears glasses. Contacts hurt his eyes. He wears sunblock SPF 45 in summer and has three pairs of earmuffs, for winter. He is trying to stop hiring hookers. But Nilla Wafers and TimTams are too poor a substitute. He’s repulsed by pussy in theory, but needs to put his dick somewhere, sometimes.
His father was a piano tuner who died when he was six. He has perfect pitch. He can sing but never dances. His high school sweetheart married a jock from a different high school and they both died of AIDS in the early nineties. Rooiboos tea is his beverage of choice. Drink of choice is a Tom Collins. He can’t stock alcohol in his (rented) home, because it might become a problem. His obsession with weather forecasts and Karen Carpenter influence his work.
His favorite television show, after the news, is “The Cosby Show.” He’d like his life to look like the lives there. But it looks more like a PSA about Asperger’s, although he has never been officially diagnosed. One year, he wore a bow tie to see if it worked. Results were inconclusive. He has a room set aside strictly for his synthesizers and electric pianos – and a glockenspiel he doesn’t use. It was his father’s.
He has no real opinion about the food at Applebee’s, Olive Garden, or Outback Steakhouse, but goes to these venues hoping to hear his work piped in above the salad bar. He could swear he’s heard it a handful of times, but can’t be sure, because his genre is so all-inclusive. He can become anyone. If he wants. He’d rather not but it’s not his choice.
It’s amazing to this man that however harsh the winter, however the wind and rain wail, however withering the summer, the music he’s created identifies the scenario. He becomes uncomfortable when he realizes that the end of the world could occur and his music would be its soundtrack. That’s how much it matters. The pressure, he says, is like a G-Major chord crushing his G-minor brain. Then he winces because, you know, it’s personal.
Seth Gall has had work published in China, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Word Riot, SmokeLong Quarterly, A-Minor Magazine, and Staccato Fiction. New work is forthcoming in Metazen. He is S.H. Gall in decomP Magazine, Nanoism, issues one and 27 of SmokeLong Quarterly, amphibi.us, Five Star Literary Stories, and Fictionaut.
