Happy Tapir: The First Apartment
Chapbook, Johnny Masiulewicz, Issue 1, 312 W Blackjack Brance Way, St Johns, FL 32259, [email protected], $3
What do you remember about your first apartment? I lived on Frank Street in Ottawa, the super lived next door and always played Alanis Morrissette, my other neighbours were musicians, and there was an abandoned building across the street that could not be torn down because it was a heritage building. It became increasingly occupied by stray cats.
Happy Tapir is just like that, detailing those memories of the author’s first place that just stuck with him for whatever reason, whether banal (beaded curtain, black and white tv, or rolling doobies on The White Album) or extreme (blind woman shrieking in the hallway, break-ins, or waking up stuck to the pillow with your own dry blood). Johnny Masiulewicz’s stories are the matter-of- fact reminiscences of the under-achieving American male that sometimes veer into Bukowski-level dirtbaggery. And while I’m not sure Johnny and I would have been friends in our college days, there was something about this mag that kept me reading straight through from beginning to end. Maybe there’s something to be said for the perspective that comes with age. These stories take place in the late 1980s. Masiulewicz honours the person he was in those days by not taking the role of the judgemental narrator. Nor does he sanitize his lower moments and, as such, he does the stories justice.
A couple of technical gripes that triggered my personal zine pet peeves included a conspicuous copyright statement, two instances of comic sans font, and flagrant use of Microsoft Word clip art. I wonder if the next issue will be his second apartment. (Chris Landry)