Ryan La Sala

How To Grow Up Gay and Outdo Your Competition: The Magic Flute

August 22, 2017May 9, 2015 by Ryan

Growing up, I was an absolute amalgam of every gay stereotype possible. If you’re a gay man, think of all the flamboyant hints that perjured you as a fairy princess before you knew better. If you are not a gay man, recall the distant memory of Rainbow Brite, and then light that on fire. That’s about as flaming as I was. Reviewing my younger self, it’s hard to believe that I didn’t have a literal Gay Agenda that told me, in graphic detail, exactly how to spite Catholicism. Mostly this meant I wore an increasing amount of scarfs, the more gossamer the better, but it also meant that I played the flute.

Kitty-Cornered

August 22, 2017April 25, 2015 by Ryan

I’ve been living in my current apartment for almost ten months, but only recently did I learn that the monstrous church kitty-corner to my front stoop is abandoned. I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: I, too, had no idea I was this interesting.

Word Counts: Yours, Theirs, and Mine

August 22, 2017April 24, 2015 by Ryan

This past weekend I was at a bar with a few folks from work and the topic of writing and fantasy novels came up. This, to me, is always a perilous moment. Compared to a lot of writers, I’m not altogether that enthusiastic with talking about my writing projects with strangers (you know, aside from having a blog that is url’d with my name, where I literally talk about my writing projects with strangers…). But someone mentioned that I was working on getting published and inevitably someone else asked: “How long is your book?”

The Most Humane Way to Murder a Mouse

August 22, 2017October 12, 2014 by Ryan

A few years ago, Katie and I went to the Topsfield Fair with our friend Nick (an event that my mother would call, “a slice of life,” a description she reserves for things like bowling leagues and other congregations of people that are rather–how do I put this without sounding derisive?–enthusiastic about specific, odd things. For the people of the Topsfield Fair (and for the duration of our time spent roaming the different pens), this specific thing happened to be: farm animals. There’s much more to be said about out time at the Topsfield Fair, but it isn’t the focus of this story–it’s actually just the lead-in for the opening scene–and so I’m going to set down this string and polish off this parenthetical tangent and maybe finish this run-on sentence).

God Don’t Like Ugly

August 22, 2017October 4, 2014 by Ryan

“What?” I say. I take my headphones off.

“Looks like barbed wire,” he says to me. I don’t know his name. I don’t know anyone’s name on the SL5 bus to Downtown Crossing. Especially not on a Tuesday morning.

He’s pointing at my ring. “Oh,” I say. “I can see that.” My ring is an oxidized ring of silver made by Elise Moran, inspired by the branch of the weeping cherry tree. “It looks like…” says the man. “It looks like…”

Mud Money Days

February 17, 2018August 10, 2014 by Ryan

Photo cred: TheJungleFever.wordpress.com

“I was a terrible child,” Jackson says to me. We’re on a beach–Singing Beach–which is a short walk from a train station called, romantically, Manchester by the Sea. “Very bossy. I used to boss everyone around. My sister was my little minion, until she figured it out and escaped.”

He goes on: “At the beach, I used to make coins out of mud and make the other kids pay with them for things, and I would charge interest since I invented the currency.”

Returning

August 22, 2017July 27, 2014 by Ryan

My life has been a lot of circles lately.

This–as in this act of typing up a post–is the most recent circle. The most recent return.

Today Jackson and I are hiding from the rain and writing. At least that’s what our headline for the day was. “JACKSON AND RYAN RETURN TO WRITING.” A more accurate headline would be: “JACKSON AND RYAN GET MANICURES AND THEN WATCH TWO EPISODES OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AND THEN LISTEN TO LANA DEL REY AND BRAINSTORM WHERE THEY WILL ORDER FOOD FROM.”

Metaphori-Weekly! – People Are Like Pencils

February 17, 2018May 27, 2014 by Ryan

People Are Like Pencils

People are like pencils; honed and whole at first, with a core of potential words hidden beneath a sheath of laminate, a hard-gloss finish in any and every color. People are like pencils; sharpened to a lethal point in a moment of whirring tumult, a point that might prick blood in the half-thought of haste, a point that cuts across yawns of ambiguous blankness in precise, stringent lines that structure and rectify, cross-out and destroy. People are like pencils; their words might be erased, but not the actual imprints they etch on the surfaces they touch; when their sentences are gone, the ghosts of their sentiments are left behind as pocks and scars and smudges and particles of dust.

Community Service

August 22, 2017May 20, 2014 by Ryan

The walls of the school enclose a large, overgrown courtyard choked with ivies and brambles. A glossy emerald carpet of pachysandra washes over the stone tiles on one end, like a receding tide, and a few students are pulling at it with rakes and sheers.

“We’re not supposed to go past this,” says one student to me as I walk over to supervise the community service. ‘Supervise’ is my assignment, but really I am just curious, and I’d sooner like to find myself sitting in the sun with my book open in my lap. The student goes on, “Because there’s poison ivy.”

“I’m immune to poison ivy,” I tell them.

Three Wonderful Conversations On Monday, May 12th

August 22, 2017May 12, 2014 by Ryan

Today I had 3 wonderful conversations with my students:

1. In lunch, I commented on a students tattoo that referenced a super hero. “I don’t even like that character,” the student admitted. “I like batman.” I asked why, and the student elaborated: “Like, Thor is a god. The Hulk is The Hulk and Spiderman has mad powers. But Batman keeps up with them and he has none of that.” I responded that Batman had a lot of money, and therefor a lot of advanced gadgetry, and the student nodded. Another student chimed in, “But he makes that money. And when he lost it, he made it back again. He’s smart!”

YOU ARE THE BEST!