Aaron Teel, Shampoo Horns, Rose Metal Press, 2012.
A grieving widow spied sleeping through the busted out window of a dilapidated trailer, a severed nipple, an illicit raid on a roadside fireworks stand: a boy named Cherry Tree, with a penchant for tight red underwear and old towels worn as capes, encounters these and other mysteries one heat-struck summer in 1989 when his world is expanded by an abusive older brother and an elusive Mexican girl. Shampoo Horns is a meditation on boyhood, brotherhood, and the fragmented process of coming of age.
Excerpt
“Teel’s writing surprises throughout: ‘Tater Tot, my one and only friend, blew by me on his bike and squeezed its horrible horn, a sound like a braying donkey swallowing a kazoo.’ The collection flies by toward its foreshadowed final scene. At the end of his passage about the explosions like bottle rockets, Kerouac writes that ‘in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”’ So it is with Shampoo Horns,a fearless, fabulous flash across the stars.” —Randall Brown
"Rose Metal Press makes a wonderful chapbook. Shampoo Horns, for example. It feels like hair, if the hair was made of Pop-Tarts or red sun and waterfalls of beer. It was printed on a Vandercook letterpress, with care. It smells like dandelion broth. The entire book-making process is fascinating and you can see it here:
This book has 19 short stories, linked. This would be a good book to examine while considering the nuances/decisions/contemplations of a linked collection. You could ask the author, “What kind of things did you think about when ordering the collection?” You could get Winesburg, Ohio and stack it upright on the dirty kitchen floor and then take three paces and place Shampoo Horns on the disgusting floor (pasta sauce and dream stains, etc.) and then you could fill in the space between the two with other linked books, like stack them into bones or whatnot, and you would have yourself a self-education session. (If you aren’t going to autodidact, you are doomed.)
This book contains red plastic cups, you know the cups, so simple yet they connote so much (even their name–solo). I bet you’ve held a red, plastic cup. Cradled it. Sucked from. There are also “pink flamingos with missing heads” and “stray huskies” and a “overgrown toddler without a shirt” and a “trash bag flapping” and “bologna sandwiches” and “MTV” and “wood panel walls” and a mobile home full of angels and “Texas drawl” and “shit-filled Underoos” and a dildo in a swimming pool and “RV’s” and “a busted La-Z-Boy” and a “greasy ball cap” and a “plastic vodka bottle” and a lot of other THINGS. Agglomeration. Interesting method of delivering the world from a child/boy’s POV. Most don’t do it well. But Teel does, by creating a tornado-like effect of THINGS spinning by, the narrator watching the world blur. Puzzlement and understanding are the milieu of a boy, an aging boy. Your parents are no longer some minor gods. Pain enters life (this world can hurt). And, of course, sex—this strange, persistent force—is in the air. Possibly this is a trailer park Bildungsroman.
The trailer park is a character, but Teel doesn’t take the easy way. There’s no obvious jokes, no lampooning. This is where the character lives, a trailer park by a factory. (His dad calls the factory and its smoke, “The cloud factory.”) It’s omnipresent, the materials, the essence of such a place. It’s necessary to this narrative, but nothing is forced. (I could go into a discussion of K-Mart Realism now, but I’m not going to. You do it.)
Structurally, Teel is once again keen. A tornado is coming (and remember, this is a trailer park). Throughout the collection, the tornado is hinted at, remembered, haunted over, used for tension and for a focal point. It works as metaphor, too. We fear tornadoes for the same reason we fear debilitating illness–a lack of control. A tornado is senseless, careless–it drops in, destroys, lifts away. Certain lives just wait for the day, and they know it’s coming.
The siren, when it starts, scares me more than the weather. I think that it must be Gabriel blowing his horn, and I know that I know that I know I’ll be left behind. Without rinsing or drying off I put on my Underoos and tie a towel around my neck, then run outside. The whole street is standing in the rain, staring at the sky.
Necks go stiff from looking up. Nerves are shot. Beers are opened. Neighbors who never speak stand together in each other’s lots, drinking and praying.
And later:
Trailers are piled atop one another, upside down and inside out, crushed like tin cans, pulled apart like accordions.
Other convergence points are the narrator (Cherry Tree is his name [or Cherry, or CT]), also a nipple is cut off (!), and then–as I’ve noted–the trailer park itself focuses the events.
Teel has many strengths, but mostly I respect his economy. Scenes are crisply rendered, the fat is cut away, the images are centered, and Teel shows an excellent instinct for clarity. (See the tornado aftermath description above.) And here is an introduction to Tater Tot’s (one of Cherry’s friends) Mom:
Something was on the floor in front of the stereo, and I moved closer, fearing it was him, but it was his mother laid out amid a pile of Elvis and Beach Boys records. It was Hell-hot and the air was thick with smoke. Cigarettes were piled in ashtrays and stuffed into empty cans. Tater’s mother lay noiselessly breathing at the foot of the record player, clutching a plastic vodka bottle to her chest. I pried it from her fingers and sniffed it. It smelled of hospital corridors and clean, sharp knives.
There are 19 stories here (this is Rose Metal’s largest chapbook) and with Teel’s technique of imagery compression, we get a lot. You are visiting childhood, but also a demographic (beheaded yard flamingos, people in bathrobes all day, etc), and a unique character with lively voice and acute perception. It’s this merging that makes literature. This is what good writing can do, in whatever genre or length—deliver lives to our life, deliver weight. Flash fiction can stand alone, but I really enjoy reading linked flashes, weight leading onto weight, again, the accumulation. Teel stacks words, images, events together, and, in the end, we get to visit a singular world." - Sean Lovelace
"Aaron Teel’s new chapbook, Shampoo Horns, winner of the Sixth Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest, contains a version of a powerful essay published many years back in Brevity, “The Widow”s Trailer.” Teel changed that essay some, along with other early work based in memoir, to fit into a fictional narrative, and he published the chapbook as fiction. Teel is one helluva writer; the book is startling, vivid, sharp as a chicken’s teeth, and the prose is on fire. Thinking that Teel’s decision to move to the fictional frame was an interesting jumping off point for discussion of genre, Brevity editor Dinty W. Moore asked to interview Teel and explore his decision.
MOORE: I’m curious why you now call the essay, included in the chapbook, fiction, and what you’ve changed now that it has been re-categorized?
TEEL: Thanks Dinty, I’m really grateful to you for publishing that piece. It was the second one I’d written from this collection, after ‘Tater’s Nipple.’ The responses I got from those two pieces were sort of the impetus for the rest. I was reading a lot of Nabokov at the time, and I had this idea that I wanted to write my own kind of Nabokovian memoir inspired by the early chapters of Speak, Memory. But instead of being about a kid surrounded by servants and a comfortable aristocratic life in the Russian countryside, it’d be about a kid growing up in a trailer park, in Texas– but still with the lush sensory detail, word play, and fragmented, self-contained stories that added up to a larger narrative. After about five or six pieces were written, I kind of hit a wall with it and lost the inspiration. I put it away for about a year. When I came back to it, I had the idea that it needed a traumatic central and symbolic event that everything else could spin around. A tornado just made the most sense. I also changed the names of the characters to put a layer of distance on them, and that was really freeing. Wherever that nebulous line between fiction and creative nonfiction lies, I was pretty sure I had crossed it at that point, so the whole thing had to be called fiction. I was never interested in writing ‘essays’ or using any kind of journalistic approach. It was more about mining my own experience for inspiration. I struggled with that for a while, but I think now that I probably stayed truer to my Nabokovian ideal than I would have otherwise, unless you believe he literally lost a butterfly when he was a kid that he found forty years later, halfway around the world.
MOORE: Your decision to add the tornado as a central event is a beautiful illustration of how sticking to the nonfiction account of life can reveal one truth and how moving the story into the fictional realm can reveal a different truth, neither being better nor worse than the other. What did bringing in the tornado allow you to see about your childhood story that you might not have seen had you not made that choice?
TEEL: I agree with you completely about fiction and non-fiction revealing different but equally valid truths.
The tornado was more of an organizing device than anything else, and a convenient metaphor for adolescence, the sense of having your life dictated by forces beyond your control. It also fit nicely into the trailer park motif. I liked the idea of playing with some of the clichéd trailer park associations, but presenting them in a way I hadn’t seen before.
MOORE: And if you had stuck to the truth – the truth of your memory, at least – how do you think the book would have resolved itself differently?
TEEL: I don’t know if it allowed me to see anything I hadn’t seen about my own childhood experience as much as it provided an objectified symbol for some of the emotions I wanted to convey and allowed me to do it succinctly. I’m not sure how the book would have resolved without that frame either, which is probably why I put it away for so long before coming back to it as fiction." - Interview by Dinty W. Moore
"A collection of flash fiction stories, Aaron Teel's Shampoo Horns is the winner of the 6th annual Rose Metal Press Chapbook Contest. Its brightness left me seeing spots for days.
Balancing the tightrope of adolescence means navigating life’s cringe-worthy marvels and experiencing the paradoxical notions of pleasure and pain. In Shampoo Horns, Teel paints the emotionally charged story of Cherry, a trailer park dwelling 12-year-old boy clad in superhero gear, as his small world is shaken in every sense by a troubled half-brother, a Mexican angel, and a Texas twister.
Teel’s lightly autobiographical stories employ thematic explosions that melt together to create a psychologically poignant account of a pretty normal kid’s barefoot adventures. The stories share some of the between-childhood-and-adulthood purgatory of Stand By Me and the absurdities of Winesburg, Ohio, yet Shampoo Horns has its own distinct style. As Cherry begins to see how love, sex, and money shape lives, he stands shakily on the edge of perceiving all kinds of relationships for the first time. He is innocent enough to fall prey to his brother’s bullying yet Cherry seems to possess a subtle strength that guides him through adult scenarios relatively unscathed. In a short time, the intricate story arc employs brilliant color and sensory descriptions resulting in comical depictions of uncomfortable scenes such as peeping a naked sleeping widow and vomiting hot stolen beer.
Sometimes grotesque (one kid loses a nipple at the hand of his best friend), this one-sitting read explores elements of voyeurism, friendship, and faith by weaving the nuances of young boys in the throes of boredom and curiosity. Bodily fluids make frequent appearances but the sweet awkwardness of Cherry’s newfound puppy love with Lupe steadies the pace. The moments of depression invoked by the stories’ heavy realities (poverty, substance abuse) are relieved, if only temporarily, through Teel’s expert craftsmanship and imagery. This short work embodies the beauty of creative storytelling that bleeds honesty but sparks imaginative conclusions.
Austin Chronicle: I'm curious if any of the material is autobiographical. How much of you is written into the character of Cherry Tree?
Aaron Teel: There are definitely autobiographical elements. I was a tall, awkward, redheaded kid who lived in a trailer park in Texas and wore Superman Underoos, and I have an older half-brother from California who sometimes lived with us and wasn’t always very nice. The relationship between the two brothers is based largely on our real dynamic.
I started out trying to write a Nabokovian memoir in the vein of the childhood sections of Speak, Memory, but I discovered pretty quickly that I'm not really interested in writing about myself in a strict memoir setting. So the book as a whole is undeniably fiction, but the primary characters are based on real people, and real dynamics from my childhood, and some of the stories are essentially true.
Austin Chronicle: You utilize all five senses in your descriptions and integrate color and smell frequently. Has that always been predominant in your writing?
Aaron Teel: This goes back to the Nabakovian synesthesia thing. That was something I wanted to play with in particular for this piece. For me, childhood is the time when we’re most in tune with our sensory experience of the world. The limitations of Cherry’s experience only enhance his sense of wonder. Everything he comes in contact with has more weight because he’s so isolated.
Beyond that, I just find rich sensory detail to be a hallmark of good writing. Flash fiction particularly should be sense driven. If the goal is to capture a moment or an image, and make it real for the reader, then there’s really no other way to do it.
Austin Chronicle: To me, the nipple clipping in "Tater's Nipple" was powerful not only for the vivid, grotesque imagery, but for the emotional aspects of each character's role in the scene. What was your inspiration behind it?
Aaron Teel: Unfortunately, that’s one of the pieces based on a real event. I won't go into too much detail other than to say that it’s something that’s stuck with me over the years, for obvious reasons.
I’m glad that the emotional resonance comes through, though. That was actually the first piece I wrote from the collection. It was published individually and the response I got from it sort of encouraged me to write the rest.
Austin Chronicle: Despite his depiction as a hellion with questionable morals, Clay seemed, in the end, a lost boy in desperate need of tough love. Did you hope your readers would finish Shampoo Horns holding out for Clay's redemptive qualities?
Aaron Teel: Definitely. He’s a sixteen-year old kid, uprooted and shuffled around. He’s angry, and bored, and acting out, but he’s also possessed of a terrible charisma that Cherry is drawn to. Cherry is clearly ambiguous about him, so it stands to reason that the reader will be too.
Austin Chronicle: I found the difference in Cherry, Tater, and Clay's relationships with their fathers interesting. Were you consciously trying to create contrasting portraits of the father/son bond, or did that sort of emerge as you were writing the individual stories?
Aaron Teel: The idea was to focus on the kids, and to allow all of the adults in their lives to be sort of mysterious and unknowable, which is the way I felt as a kid. Fathers are the most unknowable of all. They’re masculinity personified. Huge, mythic beings to be loathed and worshipped in equal measure.
Austin Chronicle: The way the plot unfolded was striking, especially given the length. Did you write it in pieces and weave together later or is this a plotted story you had in mind?
Aaron Teel: The individual pieces were rearranged a hundred different ways over the course of writing and editing the chapbook. The idea was for each piece to work both individually and as part of a larger narrative. The arc, such as it is, is kind of a smoke and mirrors illusion sustained by the arrangement of the pieces. That was done very deliberately.
Austin Chronicle: Is the chapbook of flash fiction your preferred format?
Aaron Teel: I think I’m well suited to it. It lines up with the way I work and my sensibilities, but I don’t want to be tied to any particular form. I like to think genre and form distinctions are meaningless, but of course they’re not.
Austin Chronicle: I have an almost 3 year old boy who prefers the uniform of Cherry (Superman underoos and a cape) to any other clothing option. But Cherry is 12. Talk to me about what that uniform means to you, and how Cherry's relationship to the uniform evolves in the book.
Aaron Teel: Yeah, I wore the cape and Underoos too, and I was a few years younger than Cherry when I did it. I was attracted to the idea of making Cherry a little older because it’s bizarre. He’s just old enough for it to be really awkward that he’s wandering around in his underwear. It also ties in to the notion that he’s this incredibly sheltered kid on the precipice of puberty that hasn’t grown up at all. He lives happily in his little Eden until Clay and Lupe come in and complicate everything.
As Cherry starts having these new experiences, he tries to leave the cape and Underoos behind, but when he’s upset or in distress he goes back to them, drawing back into his shell, where he’s comfortable and in control.
The cape is a really loaded symbol for me. Putting it on as a kid brought instant power and confidence. I jumped off the top of a set of bleachers once, at a volleyball game, using a white locker room towel for a cape, and I remember the utter shock of hitting the floor. I really thought I could fly.
Austin Chronicle: Cherry seems to have a quiet reverence for the women in his small world. Was this an attempt to balance the boyish nature of Shampoo Horns or was it more of a natural inclusion in a boy's coming of age story?
Aaron Teel: I think all little boys are in awe of women. We never really grow out of that.
Austin Chronicle: What's next?
Aaron Teel: We’re having the official release party this Saturday at Domy Books. I’ll be reading along with the always brilliant Mary Miller. John Wesley Coleman and Diamond Age are playing as well. I’m also working on another set of linked flash pieces about a two sets of twins. A few of those have been published already. You can read them at www.aaron-teel.com, under the Stories tab." - Interview by Jessi Cape
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