Tags: Everything, New Yorker. The patois and content are both laughably similar to that of his narrator in this so-called story. Yesterday I was just doing my thing, minding my own business, and suddenly the peasants got unruly.” Short walk from the schoolhouse.Never mind, I said. Maybe more than a friend.Joel leaned back on the sofa, crossing his arms.

They’d handled all the arrangements. I told him there was a question I didn’t know, could he fill it in.My father stumbled over to the computer. Have we ever had two queer stories back to back in the New Yorker?Sean H. seems to be the new David around here. He’d shared it with his sister.Sometimes, he said, we’d go on for minutes at a time.

Time Magazine and The Atlantic were into it, too. Quite a few sentences here seemed to exist while being extraneous to the story:Not expecting every writer to be the next Raymond Carver, but I do think Washington would have benefited from a more stringent editor.One credit to Washington: he can write a good ending. When I took too long to round a corner, Joel stopped; whenever he lingered, I turned around to check on him. No one looks like anyone else, until you drive twenty minutes east, toward midtown, and then everyone’s white. People search their whole lives for that feeling. You can’t buy that in a store, make it in a pot, or bake it in an oven. He motioned toward the food.My father’s death was quick. Good lord. I fish for the market.

The protag works at a gas station, is rude and curses a lot? Too fresh. His return flight wasn’t for another five days. DELA. What did y’all do together?
It was only about fifteen minutes when we met a local who invited us onto his boat for a chat. But I guess it hadn’t worked out. I’d fried some tortillas alongside eggs and tomatoes—the outer limit of my cooking abilities—and my visitor scarfed two at a time, sprinkling shredded cheese and drenching the paper plates in Cholula.You should take compliments as they come. It was three or four in the morning. We settled into chairs at the one empty table. I still don’t know whether or not he was feigning it.This made my visitor very quiet. That’s literature? I’d been living in Bellaire for the past while, just west of the city proper, where it’s all Vietnamese coffee shops and Chinese markets and Venezuelan grocery stores and there are loan sharks posted on every corner. ‎Show The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker, Ep Bryan Washington Reads “Visitor” - Jan 14, 2020 ‎Bryan Washington reads his story from the January 20, 2020, issue of the magazine. He wore the same face as he brought our food to the table, juggling three plates with his elbows.Sorry, my visitor said, when he came up for air.

I asked him to repeat it.His lover, this guy said, rubbing both of his elbows.I made a new kind of face. We all go.Joel and I rarely went out in the world together: I could count the number of times, in two years, on two hands. Share. Download. You have anything else to eat here?No, I said. We’ll see you soon. If I’d blinked, I would’ve missed it.You’d know better than anyone else, the man said.
Bryan Washington Reads “Visitor” Listen.

That was the promise.The thing on both of our minds hung above us, swaying below the lights.He did, the man said. He scratched it, mussing his hair even further.Completely uncanny, the man said, still scratching, yawning, shaking his ass a little bit.He stood, arching his back, leaning one way and then the other. Everything was too hot for me. We only get so many. I knew that my father and I didn’t talk much after that.

And you’re changing the subject.There isn’t much to tell, my visitor said.

I’d call out for details—an aunt’s maiden name, a first childhood pet—and my father yelled them from his perch on the sofa. I had nothing to tell him. And yet on the other hand he knows the Rothko Chapel? He sautéed bell peppers, lightly fried a slab of mackerel, stirred garlic in a pot I’d never seen before. His boots were too large. For the first time in my life I may have found somewhere that truly felt like home. I don’t expect you to understand.When our waiter returned, my visitor said something to him, something I couldn’t catch. He typed something in, wordlessly. Share this on Facebook (Opens in a new window) Share this on Twitter (Opens in a new window) Share this via Email. His death had felt abrupt—he’d got sick with a brand of illness no one comes back from—and none of our relatives had said much to me, about anything at all, in the years beforehand. He just found out his lover’s died.