#and only through that speaker. and only when they're there. because book Alex is even less aware of his bisexuality.

[ctbooks]

Boyz to Men: The Rumpus Interviews Alex Kazemi

by Miah Jeffra

Alex Kazemi’s novel New Millennium Boyz (Permuted Press, 2023) is a divisive book. It may piss you off, may offend you, may have you nodding your head to its reality-TV reality, a hazily self-reflexive gesture of the early millennium’s particular brand of pop culture consciousness. Heavily dialogical and uniquely sparse in reflective voice—despite being written from teen Brad Sela’s perspective—the novel reads more like a screenplay stitched together by saturated scenes of suburban banality and angst, largely concerning Brad’s troubling friendship with goth-kid Lusif and emo-stoner Shane. There is so much violent, racist and sexist overtone to the three teens’ interactions that it feels like we’re watching a mashup of The Doom Generation and Beavis and Butthead. Think Brett Easton Ellis. Think Larry Clark. Think deeply unsettling, especially as readers influenced and informed by the last two decades forced to look back. 

Born, raised and currently living in the Vancouver area, Kazemi began working in the fashion and music industry at 15, and emerged as a pop culture journalist, working for Dazed, King Kong and Prim, among others. His early experience inhabiting this—as Kazemi calls—“post-empire world” clearly influences the novel, flooded with sharp critiques and observations of Y2K music, from Blink 182 to Fiona Apple, backdropped by the popularization of the internet and reality-TV. 

New Millennium Boyz serves to indict our recent past as a caustic soup of creative expression, cynicism and techno-reality, a Baudrillard-ian horror film where the characters won’t stop watching themselves, and through gritted teeth simultaneously implore the reader, have we changed all that much? Using our current techno-reality, Kazemi and I chatted over Zoom to explore this question.

* * *

The Rumpus: We obviously see your knowledge of music and culture and fashion all over this book. Why did you decide that you needed to write this story as a novel?

Alex Kazemi: When I was 18, I started writing notes. I uploaded the first 50 pages onto Tumblr and a lot of teenagers really resonated with it. I got a lot of messages and, as viral as things could go in 2013, it did. It wasn't initially concerning style or aesthetic or anything. I was only taking from what I knew back then. As I grew up, however, the meanings of those initial pages changed. I lost a certain innocence.

As the world became crazier, as my 20s became more turbulent, there were more intense emotions that I wanted to explore. I had to grow, practice, change, and evolve. This book is so different from the original Tumblr manuscript, but the reason it was a novel was because that's just what felt right.

Rumpus: In several moments in the novel, the dialogue runs together so much that you don't even know who's speaking. The characters blur. Why?

Kazemi: I remember working with my editor on the locker room scene where the boys are talking about girls and porn. I was like, “I have to include speaker indicators.” They're like, “No, because all the boys are just the same in the scene. They're all amorphous, facets of the extreme teen-boy experience.” I think that in that era—maybe every era—there were so many mixed messages of what it means to be a boy, what masculinity meant, the violence of it, that’s not explored much in art.

Rumpus: Why do you have it set right at the dawn of the millennium?

Kazemi: I was perplexed and fascinated by our culture becoming so obsessed with Y2K. I wanted to unmask the corporate, buzz-feed-type nostalgia for that era and create more of a gritty, voyeuristic version of teen-hood. What if we take the voice from American Pie and explore the darker aspects of that world? I wanted to show that these themes that we're dealing with currently in our culture, of hyper reality and the Internet age, emerged back then. 

Rumpus: You're very interested in the consumerism that is bound in this hypermediated society. Do you feel like we were worse off 20 years ago than we are now?

Kazemi: I often think about this. We look at Gen Z, who are so openly queer, openly celebrating their POC-ness, anything that makes them different. And then we rewind twenty years ago and it looks like we are now better off. How have we been able to make that progress if we didn't have social media, if technology didn't accelerate in the way it did? I don't know the answer to that. But it's often something I think about. I think maybe in certain ways we were more intelligent about our moderation around screen time. You open a magazine, and eventually it ends, right? An Instagram feed doesn't end. A TikTok feed doesn't end.

Rumpus: Do you feel like that is one of the functions of all the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the characters in your novel, for us to look back twenty years ago and see how far we've come?

Kazemi: I particularly made the characters like that to show what the culture amongst white men was encouraging at the time. It’s definitely not a celebration of it, but more so holding up a mirror to how those issues were presented in that time period. Twenty years later we're supposed to look at it and be like, “Holy fuck, this is how people talked. This was normal. Why was it like that? And why did we allow it to be like that? And why did we associate it with creative freedom?” 

Rumpus: So, you’re suggesting media of the time was packaged in this effort to celebrate creative freedom, when in fact, it seemed to indulge in aspects of our own culture’s hatred?

Kazemi: If kids are listening to Adam Carolla on Love Line and he says something objectionable, they don’t have the clear ability to critique it like we do now. They were inside of it. They were participating in the culture. For us to say that our media doesn't encourage certain impulses in us is just absurd. Of course, we can't control who is consuming the media. I'm not saying violent movies creates school shooters, but I'm saying there are unwell people who are not equipped to handle this content, and it can unfold into madness.

Rumpus: One of those examples would be the protagonist, Brad? 

Kazemi: Brad is in this masochistic male friendship [with Lusif], yet he also fears losing him. A level of trauma bonding.

Rumpus: Do you think that is born of some desperate need for young males to share intimacy, that they would let someone like Lusif abuse them, because at least they were experiencing an intimacy with another male, without reproach, that isn't fostered in our culture?

Kazemi: Absolutely. I think that these young men who, for instance, pledge a frat are really looking for a shared intimacy amongst other men. They're desperate for communication and physical intimacy that feels safe for them and their sexuality. Brad was so intimacy-starved that he would let someone bad like Lusif into his life. I think boys in our culture are in that state of starvation a lot, and that's pretty scary to think of what they're capable of doing in that malnourished state. I was trying to display the way teenage boys have to manage being a good boy to their family while behind the scenes they have all these unresolved feelings around sex and violence and drugs. They're this weird, netherworld creature that's not a boy, not a man, managing this middle-space. They are processing a lot of unresolved sexual energy. It's something that is provoking a very extreme reaction in readers, which is so weird to me because I never predicted that. I definitely have a better understanding of the prose that most people like, and I don't think I went the traditional route.

Rumpus: You averted the traditional route by being so heavily dialogical without much access to Brad’s interiority?

Kazemi: That's interesting because a lot of people say that's a lot of telling. But it's fucked up because in my head, I was like, “Oh, I'm showing their reality. I'm almost creating reality TV, setting it up with minimum imagery, and then getting to watch the conversation.”

Rumpus: Maybe these critics are summoning classic tropes of storytelling when reviewing this book. I think what you said resonates with me. The book mirrors the reality television narrative. Minimal situation and lots of dialogue and reaction.

Kazemi: There are these moments of suburban romanticism in our culture, of hanging out in the 7-Eleven parking lot, smoking—American rites of passages that would resonate with the typical Total Request Live watcher. I definitely did try to create those tiny moments of suburban claustrophobia. The book resembles a three- to four-hour nineties teen movie. It's like an extended cut. I'm shocked that I did it and also that I was so insistent with my publisher to stay true to my vision. Obviously, it's not something I want to do again, this type of style, but it is a bit jarring.

Rumpus: You say you're probably not going to write a novel like this again. Do you have another project on the horizon?

Kazemi: I definitely have ideas, but much like the Madonna school, I'm all about reinvention, thinking of different ways to tell stories. I want to stay in the novel medium and I want to write more books, but I have to figure out what comfort zone I’m going to push against next. ________________________________________ Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac and the novel American Gospel. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches creative writing and decolonial studies at Sonoma State University.

[therumpus]

Boyz to Men: The Rumpus Interviews Alex Kazemi

by Miah Jeffra

Alex Kazemi’s novel New Millennium Boyz (Permuted Press, 2023) is a divisive book. It may piss you off, may offend you, may have you nodding your head to its reality-TV reality, a hazily self-reflexive gesture of the early millennium’s particular brand of pop culture consciousness. Heavily dialogical and uniquely sparse in reflective voice—despite being written from teen Brad Sela’s perspective—the novel reads more like a screenplay stitched together by saturated scenes of suburban banality and angst, largely concerning Brad’s troubling friendship with goth-kid Lusif and emo-stoner Shane. There is so much violent, racist and sexist overtone to the three teens’ interactions that it feels like we’re watching a mashup of The Doom Generation and Beavis and Butthead. Think Brett Easton Ellis. Think Larry Clark. Think deeply unsettling, especially as readers influenced and informed by the last two decades forced to look back. 

Born, raised and currently living in the Vancouver area, Kazemi began working in the fashion and music industry at 15, and emerged as a pop culture journalist, working for Dazed, King Kong and Prim, among others. His early experience inhabiting this—as Kazemi calls—“post-empire world” clearly influences the novel, flooded with sharp critiques and observations of Y2K music, from Blink 182 to Fiona Apple, backdropped by the popularization of the internet and reality-TV. 

New Millennium Boyz serves to indict our recent past as a caustic soup of creative expression, cynicism and techno-reality, a Baudrillard-ian horror film where the characters won’t stop watching themselves, and through gritted teeth simultaneously implore the reader, have we changed all that much? Using our current techno-reality, Kazemi and I chatted over Zoom to explore this question.

* * *

The Rumpus: We obviously see your knowledge of music and culture and fashion all over this book. Why did you decide that you needed to write this story as a novel?

Alex Kazemi: When I was 18, I started writing notes. I uploaded the first 50 pages onto Tumblr and a lot of teenagers really resonated with it. I got a lot of messages and, as viral as things could go in 2013, it did. It wasn't initially concerning style or aesthetic or anything. I was only taking from what I knew back then. As I grew up, however, the meanings of those initial pages changed. I lost a certain innocence.

As the world became crazier, as my 20s became more turbulent, there were more intense emotions that I wanted to explore. I had to grow, practice, change, and evolve. This book is so different from the original Tumblr manuscript, but the reason it was a novel was because that's just what felt right.

Rumpus: In several moments in the novel, the dialogue runs together so much that you don't even know who's speaking. The characters blur. Why?

Kazemi: I remember working with my editor on the locker room scene where the boys are talking about girls and porn. I was like, “I have to include speaker indicators.” They're like, “No, because all the boys are just the same in the scene. They're all amorphous, facets of the extreme teen-boy experience.” I think that in that era—maybe every era—there were so many mixed messages of what it means to be a boy, what masculinity meant, the violence of it, that’s not explored much in art.

Rumpus: Why do you have it set right at the dawn of the millennium?

Kazemi: I was perplexed and fascinated by our culture becoming so obsessed with Y2K. I wanted to unmask the corporate, buzz-feed-type nostalgia for that era and create more of a gritty, voyeuristic version of teen-hood. What if we take the voice from American Pie and explore the darker aspects of that world? I wanted to show that these themes that we're dealing with currently in our culture, of hyper reality and the Internet age, emerged back then. 

Rumpus: You're very interested in the consumerism that is bound in this hypermediated society. Do you feel like we were worse off 20 years ago than we are now?

Kazemi: I often think about this. We look at Gen Z, who are so openly queer, openly celebrating their POC-ness, anything that makes them different. And then we rewind twenty years ago and it looks like we are now better off. How have we been able to make that progress if we didn't have social media, if technology didn't accelerate in the way it did? I don't know the answer to that. But it's often something I think about. I think maybe in certain ways we were more intelligent about our moderation around screen time. You open a magazine, and eventually it ends, right? An Instagram feed doesn't end. A TikTok feed doesn't end.

Rumpus: Do you feel like that is one of the functions of all the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the characters in your novel, for us to look back twenty years ago and see how far we've come?

Kazemi: I particularly made the characters like that to show what the culture amongst white men was encouraging at the time. It’s definitely not a celebration of it, but more so holding up a mirror to how those issues were presented in that time period. Twenty years later we're supposed to look at it and be like, “Holy fuck, this is how people talked. This was normal. Why was it like that? And why did we allow it to be like that? And why did we associate it with creative freedom?” 

Rumpus: So, you’re suggesting media of the time was packaged in this effort to celebrate creative freedom, when in fact, it seemed to indulge in aspects of our own culture’s hatred?

Kazemi: If kids are listening to Adam Carolla on Love Line and he says something objectionable, they don’t have the clear ability to critique it like we do now. They were inside of it. They were participating in the culture. For us to say that our media doesn't encourage certain impulses in us is just absurd. Of course, we can't control who is consuming the media. I'm not saying violent movies creates school shooters, but I'm saying there are unwell people who are not equipped to handle this content, and it can unfold into madness.

Rumpus: One of those examples would be the protagonist, Brad? 

Kazemi: Brad is in this masochistic male friendship [with Lusif], yet he also fears losing him. A level of trauma bonding.

Rumpus: Do you think that is born of some desperate need for young males to share intimacy, that they would let someone like Lusif abuse them, because at least they were experiencing an intimacy with another male, without reproach, that isn't fostered in our culture?

Kazemi: Absolutely. I think that these young men who, for instance, pledge a frat are really looking for a shared intimacy amongst other men. They're desperate for communication and physical intimacy that feels safe for them and their sexuality. Brad was so intimacy-starved that he would let someone bad like Lusif into his life. I think boys in our culture are in that state of starvation a lot, and that's pretty scary to think of what they're capable of doing in that malnourished state. I was trying to display the way teenage boys have to manage being a good boy to their family while behind the scenes they have all these unresolved feelings around sex and violence and drugs. They're this weird, netherworld creature that's not a boy, not a man, managing this middle-space. They are processing a lot of unresolved sexual energy. It's something that is provoking a very extreme reaction in readers, which is so weird to me because I never predicted that. I definitely have a better understanding of the prose that most people like, and I don't think I went the traditional route.

Rumpus: You averted the traditional route by being so heavily dialogical without much access to Brad’s interiority?

Kazemi: That's interesting because a lot of people say that's a lot of telling. But it's fucked up because in my head, I was like, “Oh, I'm showing their reality. I'm almost creating reality TV, setting it up with minimum imagery, and then getting to watch the conversation.”

Rumpus: Maybe these critics are summoning classic tropes of storytelling when reviewing this book. I think what you said resonates with me. The book mirrors the reality television narrative. Minimal situation and lots of dialogue and reaction.

Kazemi: There are these moments of suburban romanticism in our culture, of hanging out in the 7-Eleven parking lot, smoking—American rites of passages that would resonate with the typical Total Request Live watcher. I definitely did try to create those tiny moments of suburban claustrophobia. The book resembles a three- to four-hour nineties teen movie. It's like an extended cut. I'm shocked that I did it and also that I was so insistent with my publisher to stay true to my vision. Obviously, it's not something I want to do again, this type of style, but it is a bit jarring.

Rumpus: You say you're probably not going to write a novel like this again. Do you have another project on the horizon?

Kazemi: I definitely have ideas, but much like the Madonna school, I'm all about reinvention, thinking of different ways to tell stories. I want to stay in the novel medium and I want to write more books, but I have to figure out what comfort zone I’m going to push against next. ________________________________________ Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac and the novel American Gospel. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches creative writing and decolonial studies at Sonoma State University.

[gloomyhearts]

Always by your side || Luke Patterson

Chapter five ~ the Orpheum

May 1995

His guitar sitting in his lap as he wrote notes into his journal. Her journal suited the other side of the table. Luke tried to merge her words with his and chords based of his guitar.

After all these months he didn't dared to look into the green book, he didn't want to invade into her privacy.

Softly he mumbles some of the down written words. Sabrina loves this scene, seeing him in deep thoughts his carotid visible as he bit his lower lip. She would do anything to taste his lips one time, to feel him on her, everything.

Steps approaching the entry of the garage which made Luke sit straight, before the pencil hit the floor the blonde catches it this let it looks like the pen would fly. Luke's eyes widened and he rubbed them. I must be tired.

July 1995

Today's the day. Sunset curve would play in the Orpheum with hundreds of people listening and swaying to their music.

During their rehearsal Sabrina stood in the middle of the room, examining the venue, trying to imagine the crowd in there.

Luke's smooth voice echoed through the room, happiness floating her body, a smile placed on her lips.

They made it.

A young woman cleaned the only table in the room, already vibing with the band, nodding her head to the rhythm.

Her eyes wandered from Luke to Alex who seemed pleased, even alive again. He always gives 100 percent nonetheless this is far more than usual. The smile his sister loved endless was now back in its spot, finally.

Luke made his famous guitar throw around his shoulder and catches it in front of his stomach.

It always made her weak.

The last chords escaped the speaker and the employee shouted "whoo's" and "yeaah's".

The raven haired boy said his all time favourite line "Thank you, we're Sunset Curve, tell your friends."

"To bad we wasted the tightest we've played on sound check!" Bobby describes.

"Wait until tonight, man, when this place gets packed with record exces." Luke's voice full with excitement.

Alex was now standing with the boys as Reggie complimented him, "Alex, you were smoking." Well he's not wrong

"Oh no. I was just warming up. You guys were the ones on fire," he spoke.

"Could you just own your awesomeness for once?" Reggie was always the one who said what I thought.

"Huh?" Luke hushed and then Alex made his move, he'd always made when the siblings talked about one of his crushes. He bent a little bit down and smiled with a warmth nobody had ever seen before.

"All right, I was killing it" the boys erupted in chuckles.

"Okay, well, I'm thinking we fuel up before the show. I'm thinking street dogs" Luke suggests.

Oh please no, those dogs will kill you further or later.

Alex and Reggie agreed to him in seconds.

Bobby made his way over to the woman, the other followed moments after.

"Hey Bobby where you going?" One of the boys shouted after him.

Alex and Luke walked through Sabrina's body and she still felt sorrow and emptiness.

"Vegetarian, I could never hurt an animal." This was an absolute lie. He was the one who invented the band barbecue in his backyard.

"You guys are really good" the woman states. Sabrina was standing next to her, facing the boys on the opposite.

"Thank you" Luke pushed the corner of his mouth up, radiating more power than the sun.

How can he be so cute?

"I see a lot of bands. Been in a couple myself. I was really feeling it"

Who is this girl, she's smart. Sabrina thought.

"That's what we do this for. I'm Luke by the way" he switched from one food on the other looking like a shy school girl on her first day of school.

"HI I'm Reggie"

"Alex"

"Bobby" they all introduced themselves.

"Nice to meet you guys" Luke wet his finger and stick it into Bobby's ear. Sabrina giggles at the scene.

"I'm Rose"

"Oh ah." Reggie grabbed his CD and held it over to her.

"Here's our demo. And a t-shirt size beautiful." He'll never change this charmer. Alex groaned at his pick up line.

Rose holds the shirt in front of her body and says a "thanks."

"I'll make sure not to wipe the tables down with this one."

"Oh, good call. Whenever they get wet, they just fall apart in your hands." Because of his statement Sabrina slapped her forehead.

"Don't you guys have to go get the hot dogs?" Bobby broke Alex flow.

"Yeah," Luke agreed and added, "he had a hamburger for lunch." this retord made Sabrina chuckles.

With that the three boys left the others behind and made their way out. The ghost follows them short after.

"That's what I'm talking about."

"The smell of Sunset Boulevard?" Alex asks sarcastically.

"No" Luke remarks chuckling.

"It's what that girl said in there tonight. About our music, all right? It's like an energy. It connects us with people. They can feel us when we play. I want that connection with everybody." his arms resting on either side on his friends shoulders.

A moment of silence felt over the group

"Then we're gonna need more t-shirts," Reggie cuts in. The shaggy brown haired boy snickers at his silly statement.

"Let's go boys" Luke shoved them into the direction of the street. They passed a few girls which began to shriek after the teenage boys.

They arrived at a car what seemed to serve the ingredients next to its battery.

they're not gonna eat that right? The blonde girl glued to their heels.

She glanced over their shoulder as Alex placed a few pickles on his hot dog.

"Man I can't wait until we eat someplace where the condiments aren't served out of the back of an Oldsmobile." Alex explains pointing into the trunk.

He walked over to who seemed to be the owner of this beater.

"Sorry, I got some pickle juice on you battery cables," he apologized.

"No problem. It'll help with the rust." The man assumed, slapping his palm against the blonde's upper arm. The boy was speechless, frozen in tracks.

"That can't--"he stutters but decides to leave it.

"Okay what?" he whispers in defy belief while turning to his friends.

The trio enter a café down the street to scoff the hot dogs.

"This is awesome, you guys. We're playing the Orpheum!" Luke beamed with joy.

"I can't even count how many bands have played here and then ended up being huge. We're gonna be legends!" He adds.

"Eat up, boys," he held his hit dog in the air.

"Cause after tonight, everything changes" the other two clapped their dog's on his and then they all took a bite.

Alex stopped chewing and his view changed quickly, he was disgusted by the taste of the meal. Reggie on the other hand licked off his finger.

"That's a new flavor" his mouth still full of food.

"Chill man. Street dogs haven't killed us yet." Reggie knitted his brows as he shakes his head, so they went on.

Sirens erupted in the far, people shouting and rushing through the room. A scenario Sabrina knows all too well.

No this can't be true.

Sabrina paced up and down beside the couch the boys passed out, trying to grab them and shook them back to life.

They have so much ahead of them.

Please wake up. She screams.

No no no.

She kneels down next to them stopping on an equal level. Their faces inches away. She gave Luke's cheek a small kiss. His nose scrunched a bit and she felt his chest move one last time. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she let them all out.

Taking this moment in and then she's gone.