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What Comes After

 

She tried hard not to watch them. Tried hard not to notice the way they carried on with their constant fondling and caressing, a passionate heat always on full display. She told herself she would ignore them today, as she settled on the sofa to flip through the pages of her favorite cookbook. But her eyes kept drifting toward the louver window, her mind too curious to focus on finding a chicken casserole dish. Logic and curiosity warred within her as she tossed the book on the coffee table and wobbled across the room to catch a glimpse of them through the Venetian blinds before the sun went down.

They hung out in front of their seafoam green Buick convertible again this evening, grinding to the Motown tunes that seeped from the speakers, stealing kisses between swigs from their longneck beer bottles. Sasha propped her voluptuous body on top of the hood and pulled her loose curls into a ponytail, exposing a pink flying dragon tattoo on her cinnamon-kissed shoulder. She wrapped her long legs around Andre’s waist. He grabbed her hips and pulled her into him without missing a beat, his hands roaming over her body as if exploring her for the first time.

Valerie inched closer to the window. Her heartbeat quickened as she watched Andre’s lips graze Sasha’s collarbone until their mouths met with intensity, their tongues dancing in a wild and explosive rhythm. A song and dance she longed to remember. 

“Those two going at it again?”

Valerie jumped at the sound of Harry’s voice behind her. She usually heard the wooden floors creak underneath his flat feet, but the warning sound went unnoticed today. She turned away from the window and redirected her attention to her romantic mystery collection on top of the bookcase, pretending to wipe the wooden shelf with a dry cloth as Harry moved closer to her. 

She shrugged, her mind still fixated on the steamy scene happening right outside their front door. She couldn’t recall the last time Harry kissed her that way. 

“Looks like it. Haven’t really noticed.” She wiped the wood a little harder.

Harry peered through the blinds and frowned. “Do they ever stop to think about other people? They act like people are paying money to see a show. Some of us don’t want to see a grown couple acting like two horny teenagers. They gotta be in their mid-twenties. Old enough to know better.”

Valerie wrinkled her nose and feigned the same disgust. “Exactly. Someone should let them know,” she said, attempting to sneak another glance before Harry closed the blinds.

“He’s always groping her in public like she’s not his wife,” he rambled on. “That Andre guy really thinks he’s somebody, huh? Always walking around without a shirt on. Telling folks to call him ’Dre. Do you know he had the nerve to invite me to run with him the other day?” Harry glanced down at his linen shirt; his frown deepened at the gaping space between his buttons.

“Maybe he’s just being nice.”

“No. I used to go to school with guys like him. She better watch out. Men like that never stay close to home.”

Valerie nodded in silence and returned to dusting, waiting for Harry to get off his soapbox about the couple in 2B. She detected a tinge of jealousy in his voice underneath the aggravation, but she couldn’t blame him. They, too, had oozed with sexiness once. Full of passion. But that was before life happened. Before loss. Before the accident.

The couple’s recent arrival to their three-story apartment building intrigued and unnerved her. Their passion constantly reminded Valerie of what she had with Harry, much worse than uncomplicated or simple, terms Harry threw around with pride. They were boring. Their relationship, lifeless.

“Well, we don’t need all that to prove what we have is the real deal.”  Harry yanked the blinds closed with a forceful tug. Show over. His eyes met hers, and his mouth gave way to a smile as weary and worn as his brown work shoes. “Let’s go to bed. Watch one of those black-and-white movies you like so much.”

Valerie stopped fidgeting with the dry cloth and placed it on the desk, failing to wipe away the image of Andre’s hands fumbling over Sasha’s body. Like he knew how to handle a woman.  Like he could “lay the pipe” as Aunt Mattie would say. 

“That sounds nice,” she told Harry through a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll make us some chamomile tea.”

Harry turned off the television and made his way down the hall to the bathroom. Valerie waited until he closed the door before she gently pulled down the slats, hoping to catch one more glimpse. But the street rested in silence. A light rain had started, the drizzle misting her vision. Her eyes landed on the Buick. The green convertible looked lonely and cold in the night. No sign of Sasha and Andre in sight. Just an abandoned beer bottle collecting drops of rain.

Valerie’s morning always started the same. She woke up ahead of sunrise to brew a fresh pot of coffee before Harry headed out to teach at the community college close to home. She packed extra food and snacks in his blue lunch box on the days he worked his overnight shift at the call center up north, handling complaints about product defects and missing orders for an online toy store. He rarely complained about his long days, but she knew he hated spending his nights taking calls in a cramped cubicle at the one-story warehouse; the smell of grease and smoke lingered on his clothes when he came home.

Harry loved teaching English classes at the college, but they were barely making it on his  salary after the accident, and her disability check only covered small bills. He had recently started paying a portion of his mother’s living expenses and occasionally dropped subtle hints about moving her into their home. Valerie politely and adamantly refused. No way she wanted Irma Jeanne living in her house, invading her personal space, cooking up bland casseroles in her kitchen. She tolerated her mother-in-law in doses. Sure, they occasionally engaged in surface-level chitchat about the weather, television, or furniture during family functions, but things weren’t always amicable between them. Initially, Harry’s mother wasn’t too keen on her only son marrying a mahogany-skinned Black woman born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. Even though Irma had come to accept their relationship over time, the rawness of some wounds still stung and burned. Words were a powerful weapon, and Valerie never cared much for bigots with a sharp tongue. 

Valerie began her daily routine after Harry left. She turned the kitchen clock radio to the jazz station. Wiped down the counters. Loaded the dishwasher. Washed the pots. Prepped for supper. Refilled her coffee mug. Black, no sugar the second time. Scrambled an egg. Fried one slice of bacon. Sliced a melon. After toasting her gluten-free bread, she shuffled over to the farmhouse table in the dining room with her plate and final cup of coffee for the day⎯the third⎯always with heavy cream and sugar. 

She sat down and munched on her food, savoring the taste of her crispy bacon in silence until a loud knock at the front door brought her eating to a halt. Valerie stood slowly, steadying herself with both hands on the table as she peered into the kitchen, scanning the narrow space until she found the blue lunchbox teetering on the edge of the counter next to her cooking magazines. Harry left his lunch at home at least once a week, his forgetfulness occasionally breaking up the monotony of her day. He sped home between classes, threw his car in park with his keys still in the ignition, sprinted up to the third floor, and knocked on the door, his face flushed and red when she answered. Other wives could save their husbands the trouble and bring their lunch to them, but driving was no longer an option for her. She’d never get behind the wheel again.

“Coming,” she called out as she grabbed his lunch box and headed to open the door. The can of sugar-free pop clinked against the Mason jar salad with every step, reminding her to pack bottled water tomorrow. “You really should triple-check in the morning, so you don’t have to. . . .”

Valerie lost her train of thought when she opened the door. Her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Andre standing in front of her apartment dressed in workout gear. She closed her mouth and managed a nervous grin, trying to regain her composure as he flashed her a wide smile, revealing straight white teeth and a deep dimple etched into his right cheek.

Andre leaned against the hallway wall and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.  A bead of sweat trickled down his biceps in slow motion, residue from his morning run. He folded his long, muscular arms across his chest and peered at her from underneath his fitted hat.

“Good morning. Your name’s Valerie, right?”

She nodded, impressed that he remembered her name as she fidgeted with Harry’s lunch box to avoid making eye contact. She regretted her homely morning attire—green oversized sweatpants and a floral cotton shirt that swallowed her frame; the stitching on her yellow house shoes unraveled at the heel. At least her hair looked decent. She had removed her bonnet after her shower and swept her curls into a cute bun.

“And you’re Andre?”

“Just ’Dre,” he corrected. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered me or not. Haven’t really seen you around.”

His comment jogged her memory about their first encounter. She and Harry had just returned from grocery shopping and spotted a U-Haul double-parked in front of their apartment building along with moving boxes stacked on the curb. Sasha had emerged from the truck in a pair of overalls and a lace bra. No shirt. She gave them a friendly wave from a distance, but she had a lukewarm demeanor up close. A warm smile and cold gaze at the same time. Sasha stuffed her hands into her side pockets and greeted them in her low, sultry voice. 

“Hi. We’re your new neighbors in 2B,” she told them without mentioning her name.

After welcoming her to the neighborhood, Valerie and Harry went inside. Andre nearly toppled over her while carrying an empty box downstairs. After apologizing profusely, he extended his hand and gave them both a handshake, his grip firm.

“I’m Andre,” he said. “But you can call me ’Dre. Just moved in with my wife, Sasha.”

They made small talk about the best restaurants in Bronzeville and then parted ways. Valerie hadn’t bumped into either of them since then. She only watched them from a distance.

Andre cleared his throat and pointed his finger down toward the frayed carpet, interrupting her thoughts. “We live downstairs in 2B.”

“Yes, I remember. How do you like the neighborhood? Have you settled in yet?”

He shook his head and chuckled. “Sasha doesn’t believe in unpacking, so no telling when that will happen. She could live out of boxes for a year. Gotta love her though. Anyway. . . .” He rubbed his hands together and inched closer to her doorway. “I wanted to know if your hot water worked. We haven’t had any since last night.”

Valerie released a quiet sigh of frustration. It looked like their slumlord, Sherman, was back to his old, trifling ways. She thought things had turned around for good when he started making repairs around the building at the beginning of summer—replaced their refrigerator and dishwasher, upgraded the building’s cooling and heating system, and painted the hallway on the first floor. He promised to give all the corridors a fresh coat of paint, but the tattered and outdated wallpaper and falling paint chips throughout the rest of the building reminded tenants of his unfinished work and empty promises.   

“Our hot water works fine, but I’m not surprised. It’s happened before. Sometimes only one side of the building loses hot water. It’s usually your side.” She paused to give him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry. Sherman usually doesn’t respond quickly, but he’ll get back to you if you stay on top of him. Eventually.”

Andre groaned in irritation. “Yeah, I left dude three messages last night. I’m about ready to hunt him down in person in a second.” He gestured to his workout clothes; his clingy white shirt soaked with perspiration. “I have somewhere to be this morning, and I can’t show up in my running gear. I guess it’s a good thing Sasha left for New York yesterday, so she won’t have to deal with this.” He checked his watch and sighed. “Maybe I can catch Sherman this morning.”

“No, you probably won’t,” Valerie told him. She hated being the bearer of bad news, but it was the truth. Sherman never responded to morning calls. Hell, he barely responded to anything⎯emails, phone calls, letters. Andre would suffer without hot water alone. No one occupied the other two units on his side of the building anymore. Mrs. Jones and her horde of children had moved into their new home last month, and Rosie relocated to Atlanta for work in the spring. Rosie had lived in the apartment directly across from them, so Valerie was fully aware of the hot water issues on that side of the building. She even let Rosie use their bathroom on several occasions.

Andre lingered for a moment before he thanked her and wished her a good day. An eagerness grew in the pit of her stomach as he turned around to head back to his empty, cold-water flat, and before she could think, before she could consider her actions, Valerie stuck her head out the doorway and called his name.

“You’re more than welcome to use our bathroom.” The words tumbled out of her mouth in one quick breath. “If you’d like,” she added.

He stopped mid-step and turned back toward her, his face a mixture of surprise and relief. “Are you sure it’s cool? It won’t be a problem?”

She gave him a reassuring nod. “Not at all.”

He relaxed his shoulders, deflating the tension from his body.  The worry lines on his forehead disappeared as his handsome face broke into a wide grin—less teeth, deeper dimple.

“I owe you one, Valerie. For real. I need to grab some fresh clothes. I’ll be right back.”  

Andre tossed her a wink before he jogged toward the staircase to head downstairs. Valerie left the door slightly ajar as she returned to the kitchen to place Harry’s forgotten lunch in the refrigerator before the tuna spoiled. Her stomach growled as she caught a whiff of the chocolate cake she packed for his dessert. She turned her attention to her unfinished breakfast and contemplated taking a quick bite before Andre returned. His unexpected visit had her on edge, but she managed to scarf down a few forkfuls of cold eggs despite her jittery stomach. 

After washing down her food with a glass of water, she peeked into the guest bathroom and noted the pristine marble countertops, shower, and vinyl floor with satisfaction. Nothing out of place. A fresh lemon scent still hung in the air from the last cleaning. She wiped the streaks off the mirror and set a cream-colored towel and washcloth on the sink countertop. A new towel set just for him. 

Her phone vibrated with an incoming text from Harry, and she breathed a sigh of relief when he asked her to put his forgotten lunch away. He decided to grab lunch with his colleagues. No need for him to come home. 

The knock came sooner than she expected, but she wasn’t surprised to find Andre waiting this time. She pushed the door wide open and let him in.

                                                

While Andre showered in the guest bathroom, Valerie examined herself in the entry hallway mirror, frowning at the puffiness underneath her eyelids. The dark circles highlighted her fatigue. Harry had woken her up in the middle of the night for another three-pumps-done tryst.

Her favorite barista injected more pumps into her caramel macchiato. And the drink left her more satisfied. Valerie thought about Sasha with a twinge of jealousy and guilt as she patted down flyaway strands that escaped from her bun. She bet Andre could go all night. She bet he left Sasha satisfied and craving more every time.

Valerie shook her head to erase the image of Andre’s bronzed brown body. She had to stop wondering about him. It just wasn’t right to think about another man in that way, to imagine how he worked his large manly hands, a combination of gentle and strong.

Andre stepped into the living room dressed in business casual attire⎯slim pants, fitted shirt, coiled hair still wet from the shower. He held a damp cream-colored linen towel in the air, waiting for instructions. Her stomach tightened when she noticed the gold embroidered letters above the dobby border—H. J. T. She had purchased the monogrammed bath set for Harry’s upcoming thirty-eighth birthday. Apparently, she had grabbed the wrong towel set and accidentally placed Harry’s gift in the guest bathroom for Andre. She tossed it in the laundry basket located in the hallway closet, making a mental note to wash a small load to get rid of Andre’s scent⎯musk with notes of cedar and lavender.

Andre surveyed the room with a curious gaze. His eyes landed on the black-and-white wedding portrait mounted above the living room sofa. Valerie was seated on a park bench in her mermaid off-the-shoulder wedding gown with Harry positioned next to her. Their intertwined hands captured the tangible symbol of their commitment as husband and wife. The photographer had instructed them to gaze into each other’s eyes. To feel the fullness of the moment.

He studied the photo in admiration. “That’s a dope shot. Beautiful pic of you two.” He glanced in her direction. “How long you been married?”

“Thank you,” she whispered, somewhat embarrassed of their dramatic pose. The photo took her breath away back then, but the fairytale effect had lost its edge. They looked too unnatural. Too staged. Too poised.  “We just made twelve years.”

Andre clapped his hands and whistled. “That’s what’s up. We’re coming up on our second year. Marriage ain’t easy, so twelve years is a big deal. Congrats.” He turned away from the portrait and set his sight on her. His intense gaze made her nervous.

“Thanks,” she repeated.

“Any kids?”

She grimaced at his question, her buried pain resurrecting without her consent. Her awkward silence wasn’t unnoticed. Andre gave her an apologetic smile.

“My bad. I shouldn’t pry.”

“No, that’s okay. We don’t have any kids.” She shifted her weight to her left foot and winced. The pain in her right leg intensified whenever she broached the subject, inciting a visceral reaction within, one she couldn’t conceal. Her therapist had told her it was psychological⎯the question about children triggered distress, which manifested into physical pain⎯but Valerie questioned his logic. The pain felt real to her.

Andre’s eyes traveled down to her ankle. “You okay? Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head as she wobbled over to the couch. “It’s nothing really. I just need to sit for a moment.”

He remained silent as he watched her with concern. She appreciated that he didn’t pry. The stillness surrounding them felt refreshing. Andre was her first visitor in a while. She once entertained guests regularly. But that was before the sound of meaningless chatter suffocated her, and people filled the silence with empty words. Before they peered at her through narrowed eyes and questioned if she missed her former executive director position in fundraising. The travel, the perks, the high-paying salary. Her visitor’s list dwindled over the year, and with her family miles away in Atlanta, Valerie retreated into solitude. She canceled her visits with the Ladies of Calvary, no longer moved by their baked apple pies and generic prayers. She opted for the grocery delivery service instead of her mid-week trips to the farmer’s market with her friend, Janice. Their gossip sessions now drained her soul.

Andre pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and glanced at the wall clock above the computer desk. She wished he could stay for a little while longer and sit with her for just a few more minutes. Valerie felt an ache as she watched him gather his belongings. Something about his quietness or her loneliness, or a combination of both, provoked her to talk as he reached for his duffel bag.

“We almost had a baby once,” she blurted out, the words bursting from her mouth like a dam breaking under pressure. “A couple years ago.”

He raised his thick eyebrows, the anticipation on his face urging her to continue as he sat down in the recliner chair.

She averted her gaze and stared at the red wine stain on the carpet to collect her thoughts, to gather her words. “I was almost five-months pregnant when we took a road trip to Atlanta to visit Harry’s family for a wedding. We were both so tired on the way home. I wanted to stop at the halfway point and get back on the road in the morning, but Harry had his first big speaking engagement here for a writer’s conference. He didn’t want to risk it, so we pushed to get home. A driver in an 18-wheeler dozed off and ran into us on the way here. Totaled the car. Broke my leg. I spent months in physical therapy, but I still have this limp. It may not ever go away.”

Valerie paused and steadied her voice before she uttered the next sentence. “Lost our baby girl, too. Isabella Louise Thomas. We were going to name her after both of our grandmothers.”

Andre leaned forward, his hand resting on his chin, his eyes never leaving her face. She took a deep breath to silence the quiet sobbing in her chest as she recalled the accident. Her leg bloodied, mangled, trapped in shards of glass. Her broken bones. Her excruciating pain. Still, the physical ache paled in comparison to losing Isabella. Harry still blamed himself for blowing off her suggestion to get a hotel room instead of driving through the night. She still blamed him too, sometimes, but she faulted herself even more for ignoring her intuition. An unexplainable feeling in her gut had prompted her to suggest they find a hotel three different times throughout the night, but she eventually stopped asking to keep the peace and show her support for his upcoming opportunity. But his big moment never came. No inspirational talk onstage. No speech to stir up the crowd. Just conversations about leg fractures, permanent damage, and a baby with an absent heartbeat. 

Valerie stared down at her hands, unable to make eye contact with Andre. Even without looking at him, she felt his eyes on her. She didn’t want to look up and find pity or sadness in his reflection. She couldn’t handle that right now.   

Andre cleared his throat to get her attention. “Valerie,” he said, uttering her name with tenderness and admiration. “I’m really sorry to hear that. I don’t know you that well, but I can tell you’re a strong woman. My grandma always told us that loss hurts, but it also makes us stronger, and ultimately better, if we take the time to heal from it all. So, I appreciate you sharing.”

She raised her head and looked in his direction, her mind wondering about the losses he had endured as his eyes glazed over with a familiar sadness. One that exudes from the soul. 

“Your grandmother sounds wise.” 

The corners of his mouth lifted into a bittersweet smile. “She was the wisest person I’ve ever known.” 

The quiet returned, both of them absorbed in their own thoughts. Andre fiddled with his keychain; Valerie’s eyes settled on the stained carpet again. She had accidentally knocked her wine glass off the table the day Harry brought home the newborn satin dresses she spotted in a boutique window on the way home from her ultrasound appointment. She had jumped up and hugged him, unconcerned about the Merlot dripping onto the carpet as she buried her face in the crook of his neck and squealed with joy. 

Andre stood up and stretched, his keys dangling from his thumb. “I’d love to chop it up with you longer, but I have a meeting to get to. Thanks for looking out for me today. I appreciate it. You helped me more than you know.”

You helped me too, she thought. She hadn’t told that story to anyone in over a year. Telling it to Andre freed her in some way. Made room for some light to come in.

He saw himself out after they said their goodbyes. The door closed behind him with a soft thud. Maybe his emails to Sherman would go unanswered, and he would wake up to cold water again tomorrow. She’d cook extra food for breakfast in the morning, just in case he returned. She’d slice more melon, brew a full pot of coffee, offer him something to eat. Maybe he would say yes. Maybe he would sit with her for a little while again. 

Valerie leaned her head back on the armrest and replayed her morning with ’Dre. A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she closed her eyes; a renewed hope washed over her, gently wiping away the dust that settled long ago.  

____________________

Kendra Y. Mims-Applewhite is a writer and editor in the Chicagoland area. She graduated with a BA in Journalism from Columbia College Chicago; and she is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at her alma mater. Her work has appeared in Avalon Literary Review, Ebony, Permission to Write, SheKnows Media and healthcare publications. Kendra is currently working on her debut novel and short story collection. 

 

 

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Banana Split

We didn’t have to ask permission to sleep over at Mike’s place on Saturday nights. His dad never came home on the weekends, and his grandma had been bedridden since anyone could remember. Every weekend we watched the horror shows on cable, The Crypt Keeper cackled through the static of old speakers and Elvira’s cleavage bounced between tight black lace late into the night. 

Every so often, no matter what hour, his grandmother would call from her room and Mike would have to run to the liquor store to pick up a fresh bottle of vodka or a can of dog food for the two Maltese that rarely left her bedroom. He’d layer up with a couple sweaters and a light jacket in the winter, and we’d walk a few blocks together to Maria’s on 31ststreet.

“It’s too cold,” I told him one night as he began to put on layers. “Why do I have to come?” 

“My dad doesn’t want me leaving anyone here if I’m not around,” he said, sliding a pair of mittens over his stubby fingers. 

“It’s like a ten-minute walk,” I told him. “I won’t leave this spot,” I gripped my small fists into the floral couch cushions.

Mike thought it over as he laced up his boots, “Fine,” he said. “But don’t go snooping around. If my dad finds out I left you here alone he’ll kill me. And if my grandma calls just ignore her. I’ll deal with her when I get home.”

I crossed my heart, promising to follow the rules, and he walked out the door, down the steps into the snow and wind. I flipped through a few channels before getting up to go to the bathroom, sliding my toes over cigarette burns in the shag carpet.

“Mikey,” a faint voice called from a bedroom down the hall. Following orders, I ignored Mike’s grandmother, walking straight into the bathroom, making sure to piss directly into the bowl and wiping anything that splashed onto the floor. 

I walked back into the hallway, and she began calling again, “Mikey. Mikey.” 

“He’s not here,” I finally said. “He’ll be back in a few minutes.” 

“What?” she said, “Come here, Mikey,” and the dogs began to yip as if they were calling for help.

I walked down the hallway toward a dim light pouring from a crack in the door, the dogs and Mike’s grandmother sounding more urgent with each step. The smell of stale cigarettes and a tinge of something sour wafted down the narrow hallway. I pushed through the bedroom door, the old woman’s frame lying under thin sheets, two white dogs barking and growling, spinning in circles on the queen-size mattress. 

Her hair was thin and white, sitting in a mess on top of a frail scalp that looked like it could have been wiped away with a sponge. When I entered the room, she sighed, moved forward, and the sheet fell exposing sagging breasts and wrinkled skin. Her nipples were large and streaked blue with veins.

“Jesus,” I said and covered my eyes. It was the first pair of real-life tits I’d ever seen.

“Hand me the glass,” she said just loud enough so I could hear her over the protests of the Maltese. I took my hands from my face, walking to a table next to the bed, handing her a warm glass of orange juice that reeked of cheap vodka. 

She shushed the dogs, bringing a frail finger to her lips. They persisted, now jumping off the bed and pawing at my feet and up to my chest, long nails leaving scratches against my hips. She drank from the glass with her eyes closed, and I noticed brown liver spots trailing from her waist, up her breasts, and to her shoulders. 

She pulled hard from the cup and handed it back to me, noticing my wide eyes studying her body. I don’t know if it was because I was looking at her or if she had just noticed I wasn’t Mike, but she began to cackle, thin lips curling, exposing rotten gums lining her jaw. She tilted her head back and let out a howl.

I clasped my hands over my ears. She sounded just like The Crypt Keeper.

 

Even after we went to different high schools, Mike at the prestigious Whitney Young Magnet High and me at Tilden High on 47th Street, we kept in touch.     

I used to come and see him at Scoops, an ice cream shop covered in floor-to-ceiling sparkling white tile where he worked on weeknights. We’d get high in the back alley behind the store and then stumble in to giggle and eat ice cream in the air-conditioning. Mike would stack scoops three high on a waffle cone, and I’d bite the top scoop in one mouthful, crying in pain as the brain freeze pushed through my skull.

“Spit it out, Alex” he’d say with laughter, and I’d upchuck the mouthful into the garbage in the back of the store. 

One night, the weed was particularly potent. After we came back into the store, Mike could barely walk. He fell into a red bench at a booth.

“I want my triple cone,” I told him.

“Make whatever you want,” he said through bloodshot eyes.

I searched behind the counter, looking for the scooper.

“What’s this?” I asked him, pointing to a large metal device with three wands sticking downward from the top. 

“It’s for milkshakes.”

“You never made me a milkshake before.” 

“You never asked,” he said and plopped his head down on the table, his cheek smacking the particleboard surface.

It was about an hour before the store closed. I grabbed a metal mixing cup and started rummaging through the ice cream case. I filled the cup about three-quarters of the way with cherry, cookie dough, rocky road, and the rest with whole milk and chocolate syrup. Before I mixed it, I peeled a banana and shoved it into the cup, bits of chocolate and milk spilling over the side.

“Banana split,” I said over my shoulder with a grin, and turned the machine on full blast.

 Mike didn’t tell me the wand needed to be submerged in the cup before it was turned on, and when it entered, the concoction flew, the cup shaking in my hand, metal rattling the sides against the wand. It splattered every inch of the white tile behind the counter, the ice cream case, the remainder spilling across the floor as it fell from my hands. 

Mike bolted to the counter, “What the fuck?” he said, his eyes still bloodshot but large and frightened. He looked at me, at the mess. 

“I’ve never used one of these before,” I told him, wiping ice cream from my eyes. I was covered in the sticky, sweet-smelling liquid.

“A whole fucking banana?” Mike said, looking at bits of the mushed fruit covering the counter.

I ran my finger across my shirt, sucking the mixture from my nails.

“It’s delicious,” I told him.

He ran one of his long fingers across the counter, licking the shake from his fingertips.

“That’s really fucking good,” he said through laughter.

“Should we clean it?” 

“Fuck that,” he said, taking off his red apron and tossing it to the ground among the mess. “I’m not even on the payroll here. The owner just lets me work these night shifts because he can’t find enough help to work for minimum wage. He already paid me in cash before the shift started.” 

We just locked the door and went to a park a few blocks away to finish the weed and take turns pushing each other on the swings.

The owner must have really had a hard-on for Mike, or at least a soft spot for his grandma, because when he called Mike’s house the next day, Mike just started giving him some sob story about how his grandma had gone to the ER the night before. The next weekend we were back rolling White Owl wraps at a booth.

“I can’t believe the owner didn’t fire you,” I said, and Mike sliced a straight line down the blunt with a knife used to cut fruit toppings. He emptied the tobacco in a pile on the table.

“He grew up in the neighborhood, knows what my grandma is like. I think he went to school with my dad, too,” Mike patted the brown paper against his tongue. “I also need the job.”

“What for? It’s not like it pays well.” 

“Yeah, but I’m starting to fill out college applications and this counts as ‘life experience,’” he said, rolling the buds between his fingers and spreading it evenly inside the wrap.

“Right,” I said, blushing a bit. I’d failed all my classes the year before, and I decided not to go back to Tilden High because I’d have to repeat the eleventh grade. I hadn’t told Mike yet. 

“Are you thinking City College?” Mike asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “But I might just get a job and start making some money instead. You know, take a year off.” 

The White Owl wrap slipped from Mike’s fingers and fell to the table. 

“You suck at this,” I said, picking up the blunt and rerolling it. “All those brains and no practical skills.”

After it was rolled, I ran the outside paper across my tongue, flicked a lighter, and moved the flame across the blunt so the heat would tighten the wrap, my saliva sizzling above the flame.   

 

Not long after Mike left for college, my mother threw me out of the house when she got a new boyfriend. Daniel was Polish and lived in a bungalow in Avondale that he inherited after his parents died, before “all the fucking yuppies moved in.”

He sat at our kitchen table all day drinking and listening to Polski on a small AM radio, laughing a deep croak from thick lips when he heard bad news from Warsaw. His face was bulbous and the red flush from drinking ran from his neck to the top of his horseshoe bald spot.

“Why don’t you ever bring the girls home from your school?” he asked me one day. 

“I don’t go to school anymore,” I told him, and he shrugged and scoffed before pouring another glass.

 When the schools let out in the afternoon, before my mother came home from work, he watched out the living room windows, calling me over when groups of elementary school students passed by.

“You know that one?” he asked, pointing to a seventh-grade girl.

“She’s like twelve,” I said to him, and he scoffed and shrugged again before walking back to the table.   

When my mother came home from work, scrubs from the nursing home draped over her sagging shoulders. She made Daniel tea and sat her thin frame on his lap as he brushed his large fingers through her knotted, graying hair. They walked back to the bedroom. He smirked and raised his eyebrows as my mother led him to the bed, old wooden floorboards creaking under his girth.

Daniel was into the rough stuff.

I’d hear my mother moaning and screaming from the bedroom late into the night. With nowhere to go in the evenings since Mike left and having  dropped out of Tilden, I would turn up the television’s volume to full, drowning out the noise. I did this a few times, until Daniel started coming out in his boxers.

“Turn that shit down,” he’d say, a belt wrapped in his right hand, and I’d lower the volume. “You want your mother to enjoy herself, right?” and he walked back into the bedroom, murmuring in Polish. 

One day he said he had business in the suburbs, and he left the house early in the morning. My mother made the two of us breakfast before she went to work. 

“What’s that? Did a patient grab you, or did you fall?” I asked, pointing to bruises on her wrists and neck as she set a plate of eggs in front of me.

“It’s nothing. I fell,” and she turned back to the stove.

“Did Daniel do this?”

“Really, Alex?” she sighed. “I think it’s time for us to talk. Since you’re not in school, you really need to get a job and your own place,” she didn’t turn around from the stove. “I’ll give you until the first of the month. Then you’re on your own.” 

“That’s three days,” I said. “How am I supposed to get enough money to get my own place in three days?” 

“Alex. I don’t want to hear another word about it. We need privacy here now.” 

“Oh, I get it. Did he put you up to this?” 

“This isn’t a discussion. Three days. That’s it.” she sighed, reaching into her purse and handing me a hundred-dollar bill before walking out to catch her bus to work. 

I spent the rest of the morning stewing on it in front of the TV, thinking about how I could get rid of him and stay in the house. 

Daniel came back in the early afternoon. 

“So,” he said, hanging his jacket in the closet, “what will you be doing after the first of the month?” he chuckled, his breath smelling of lager. “You know, if you go farther south to Englewood, Chatham¾they have cheap rooms for rent. A nice white boy like you will make many friends.” he curled his lips and let out a howl. I could see gold molars lining the back of his jaw.

 Before I knew it, before I could think, I was at his throat, squeezing his fat neck with every ounce of strength I could muster.  His face turned from flush to beet red as we toppled to the floor. I straddled him, his arms flailing, not quite reaching my face, and I leaned my weight into his neck. I was going to kill him. I was going to watch the life fade from his eyes as he gasped. Within seconds, he threw a heavy fist into my stomach, knocking me back to the floor. He was strong, and surprisingly nimble for such a big man. He was to his feet in no time, raining heels and kicks to my head and body.

Once he grew tired, he walked to the kitchen table and poured a glass of vodka. I lay bloodied on the hardwood. 

“Maybe three days is too long. Maybe I tell your mother you found a place to live today,” he drank deeply from the glass. “I think that would be best for you.”

I cleaned myself up in the bathroom, washed the blood from my face and changed my clothes. I had an old backpack from school, and I filled it to the zipper and walked toward the door. It was late in the afternoon when I left, school was getting out, and Daniel was at the window, watching the girls walk by.

 

The day was warm with a cool breeze, cicadas singing in damp summer air that smelled of summer rain. A cigarette dangled between my lips. The middle bent from breaking in half in my jacket pocket, and I had fixed it together with scotch tape. I was grateful for the weather. 

I’d spent the first couple days at Corner Stone, a shelter in Uptown. The mattresses were plastic, and I woke up with large bug bites covering my inner thighs. We weren’t allowed to spend much time in the shelter. We had to be out from nine to five every day, spending our time looking for jobs or meeting with social workers.

There were two beds in every room. My roommate couldn’t have been taller than five-two. He wore a baseball hat perched on his head. He didn’t even look at me when he came in, and when he took the hat off, fluorescent light reflected from his bald spot. 

“I’m Alex,” I said, walking over to shake his hand.

“Rodney,” he said, and his fingernails scratched my palm as he gave me a limp shake. “When you get in?” 

“It’s my first night.”

“Out with the old, in with the new,” Rodney said with a smile. “That bed’s probably still warm, huh? They just hauled Kent off this morning.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Old Kent had been cheeking his methadone for a week. Took a handful last night. When I woke up this morning, he was so blue he looked like he’d been sleeping in the snow.”

“Fuck,” I said, looking at the bed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rodney said, slapping my shoulder. “I’m sure they changed the sheets.” He walked out as quickly as he came.   

I didn’t want to carry my bag around all day, so I tucked it under the bed and walked out into the neighborhood. The North Side was busy, more congested than Bridgeport. There were young white kids everywhere. I spent the entire day walking, from the lake to Loyola, through Devon and Little India, down to the rich folks in North Center and over to Lincoln Park. By the time five came around and I made it back to Corner Stone, I was exhausted. I ate dinner and went back to my room to go to bed. I pushed through the door and flopped on the mattress. I reached under the frame for my bag. My flat palm met carpet. 

When I poked my head underneath, the bag was gone. I looked in the dresser, under Rodney’s bed, all over the room. Nothing. I went to the entrance to see if the woman at reception had seen it.

“You should know better than to leave your belongings unattended,” the woman said, a gold crucifix slung around her neck. “We can call the police and make a report, but. . . .” she shrugged.

“What about Rodney? I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

 “He checked out this afternoon. Went to work in Indiana.”

I sighed, turning to walk toward the exit, fishing through my pockets. I had about fifty dollars from the hundred my mother gave me and just enough change to make a phone call. 

There were people all over the corner of Lawrence and Broadway, in and out of huge concert halls and old speakeasies turned into jazz lounges. I dialed the last number I knew for Mike at a pay phone on the corner. My heart jumped when he answered.

“Fuck, man,” he said after I told him about the last couple of days. “That’s some bad luck.”

“Yeah, I know. Any chance you have room at your place?” and he was silent for a moment. 

“I have to check with Noah, my boyfriend, you two will like each other, but I should really run it by him first. Call me back tomorrow.”

“This call is the last of my money,” I lied.

He sighed through the static of the receiver, “All right. Get a bus ticket to Iowa as soon as you can. I’ll talk to him before you get here. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”

I bought a one-way Greyhound ticket for thirty dollars that left Chicago at 11:30 p.m. I wouldn’t get to Iowa until five in the morning. I watched out of the window as the lights and buildings and cars became more and more sparse, until all I could see was the dark bulk of corn in the fields and a thousand stars twinkling down on top of the stalks.

 I thought about my father singing Hank Williams when I was a kid, before he left us for a new life in California, a fresh beer between his legs as joints cracked and his girth sunk into the leather of his chair. I thought I finally understood what the song was about, the southern drawl twanging through the speakers, Dad’s gravelly throat rumbling alongside the lyrics. I was excited and nervous, terrified and joyous, a smile etching across my face as tears streamed down my cheeks. I’m so lonesome I could cry.

When we pulled into the Iowa bus station the sun poked orange and purple from behind a shelf of gray clouds. Birds chirped on tree branches above sidewalks. There were bearded men who carried books instead of lunch pails, draped in sweaters and cardigans, no cop or firefighter uniforms. 

Mike lived just north of downtown, a brick-laid street shrouded in a thick canopy of elm and oak trees. I knocked on the door for five minutes before the deadbolt clunked, and a guy in his mid-thirties opened the door. 

“Who the fuck are you?” his voice was tight, gray hairs mixed with black in his beard. He wore black-framed glasses that were a few years out of style. 

“I’m Alex, Mike’s friend from Chicago. My bus just got in.”

“Jesus. What time is it?”

“About 5:30 a.m. Can I come in?” I said in my most empathetic tone. I presumed this was Noah, who was doing me a favor, and I wanted to stay on his good side.

He turned and thumped his bare feet across the floor to a small wooden table in the kitchen, pouring a glass of vodka and drinking it before heading back to bed.

I grabbed a pack of cigarettes and the bottle off the table, moved an ashtray and some Proust and Petrarch books, which I knew had to be Mike’s class reading. I sat on the stained beige carpet in the living room, leaning against the cement wall, dust particles floating through sunlight pushing between venetian blinds. Birds chirped in the tree outside. It was familiar: the apartment, Noah, even though it was a couple hundred miles away from Chicago and we had just met. And I knew, for a little while at least, I was home.

I woke up to something scratching across my cheek. When I opened my eyes, Mike was dangling a shoelace above me, grinning gap teeth under bright blue eyes and curly hair. We both laughed and he crouched down and hugged me. 

“Looks like you made yourself at home,” he said, walking toward the kitchen. 

At first, I thought he meant finishing the bottle of vodka and smoking the half pack of cigarettes I’d taken from the table the night before, but when I looked down I noticed the crotch of my jeans was soaked and the couch cushion was damp. 

“Shit,” I said, “I’m so sorry, man.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not the first piss that couch has seen,” he called from the kitchen.

“What time is it?” I called back.

“Almost one. Time to get out and seize the day!” he said, coming back into the living room holding two mugs of coffee. “I have to go to class soon, if you want to walk with me and see the town a little. You’re a long way from Bridgeport.”

I sipped the coffee and got up to head to the bathroom. I let the water wash over me in the shower, helping myself to some shampoo and soap, scrubbing the irritated skin of my inner thighs.  I didn’t have another pair of pants, or any other clothes, so I rummaged through the closet in the bathroom, found a bottle of Febreze and sunk five shots into the denim. 

Mike was right, we were a long way from Bridgeport. The town was full of kids in their early twenties. Tall, short, fat, skinny, backpacks hugging their shoulders and books clenched to their sides. 

“Jesus,” I muttered, turning my head to a group of blond girls strolling by, their perfectly manicured teeth shining in the sun. 

“Don’t get too excited,” Mike said with a chuckle. “You’re going to have to get at least one new change of clothes before even thinking about it. And maybe some actual cologne. You went pretty heavy on the Febreze.”

“Better than piss, I guess.” 

We walked to a building on campus where Mike said he had class.

“What time do you get out? I’ll come back and meet you.”

“I’m out at five, but why don’t you head to the Wood, have a couple drinks and I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m broke, man. I’ll just walk around or something.”

“Noah’s the bartender. He’s off at three and I’ll just meet both of you there. I think he’ll be okay giving you a couple on the house.”

The Wood wasn’t so much forest themed as decorated with taxidermy animals. The centerpiece was a stuffed brown bear standing on its hind legs, greeting the patrons as they pushed through the metal door. At two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, the clientele was nothing but career drinkers. I sat at the bar next to a guy with his arm in a sling. 

Noah set a whiskey in front of me, “I’ll put it on your tab,” he said with a smile. “You already owe me a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes.” 

After a couple hours and four whiskeys, Noah finally came out from behind the bar.

“Coffee,” was all he said, and we walked back into the sun. 

We walked a couple blocks to a ’50s themed diner, where all the waitresses wore short skirts with poodles embroidered in the fabric and sweat poured from pointy, paper hats atop greasy short order cooks.

Noah ordered two coffees, and we sat at a counter in front of a large window. After a couple of drinks from the mug, Noah pulled a pint of whiskey from his pocket and filled both cups.

“That’s a famous bookstore,” he said, slipping the whiskey back into his jacket and motioning toward a blank faced storefront across the street. “It’s Mike’s favorite place. We’ll watch for him. He comes every day after class.” 

 We sat in silence, sun shining through green leaves and thick branches, the young and normal and privileged strolling by without a care in their beautiful heads.

 

It was a beautiful few months. Mike majored in English, but he couldn’t afford to buy all the books for class, and if they were particularly esoteric, the library didn’t carry them either. Mike got into a habit of requesting class material from the blank-faced bookstore near campus, and when they came in, he would ask to browse the pages before his purchase. We sat in the café upstairs, sipping tea and black coffee, and he skimmed weeks of his class readings in advance while I flipped through National Geographic. When he was finished, he returned the book to the cashier, telling them it wasn’t what he asked for, and he’d request the assigned reading due in a few weeks. 

After dark, when Noah was tending the bar at the Wood, we’d drink cheap vodka and cans of beer. Mike would turn up the radio to full blast, and we’d dance in the living room late into the night, until the downstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling.

On Sundays, the Wood was closed. I’d cook frozen pizzas or pour a jar of cheap tomato sauce on top of overcooked noodles, or brown fatty ground beef in a pan for chili. The three of us would stuff ourselves and watch old sci-fi or horror movies. After dinner, Noah would drive us out into the country in the middle of the night, and we perched on the hood of his old Dodge Neon, smoking cigarettes and staring up at the sky.  

“I never knew how many stars there were,” I’d say, a Camel hanging from my lips.

“There’s another one,” Noah said, pointing to the endless map of satellites and comets. And Mike would drape his arms around both of our shoulders.

We’d stop by the liquor store on the way home from stargazing. Noah always wanted to drink light beer and Jägermeister; and we’d take shots that tasted like black licorice and molasses, washing it down with the watery, low carb lager. Sometimes, after the two staggered back to the bedroom, Mike would come out and lay with me on the couch, letting me place my head on his chest while we slept.

Mike came home from class one night without any beer or liquor.

“Did you stop by the Wood?” I asked, flipping through channels, assuming he had a few drinks before coming home. 

“I got a call from my dad today.” 

I shut off the TV. Neither of us had spoken about our families since I came into town.

“He got a job in New York; some construction work at a university in Rochester or Albany or some other place upstate. He wants me back home to take care of my grandma while he’s away.” 

“How long?” I asked.

“Six months, at least,” he sat down on the couch, long legs spread out in front of him. “What am I supposed to do? Leave Noah, drop out of school, or let her die?”

“Maybe if you told him you won’t come, he’ll stay in Chicago.”

“He already has the ticket to New York,” Mike leaned forward, placing his head in his hands. “He’s leaving in a few days.”

“Let’s sleep on it,” I said. “Maybe we can think of something in the morning.”

By the time Mike woke up the next morning, I already had coffee made. I was wearing a T-shirt from the Wood and an old pair of Mike’s jeans.

“I’d say my bags are packed, but I don’t have any,” I said. 

“What?” Mike sat down at the kitchen table, and I set a steaming mug in front of him.  

“I’ll go,” I said, taking a seat. “I’ll go back to Chicago and take care of your grandma while your dad’s away.”

Mike squinted, “I don’t know.”

“She’s so old she’s just going to think I’m you anyway.” 

Mike sighed, “Even if you do. You know my dad isn’t the most reliable person. If he doesn’t need to come back to Chicago, he won’t.” 

I shrugged, “What am I doing here I can’t do back in the city?”

We walked around campus, had a few farewell drinks at the Wood. Mike borrowed Noah’s car for the trip. We hit Interstate 80 in the early evening, windows down, warm air blowing across our faces, sun setting on the horizon, trees so tall I thought they’d tear a hole in the sky. 

 

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Anthony is a MFA Candidate in Fiction. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Arkansan Review, The Magnolia Review and elsewhere.  

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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage

 

By Karina Corona

Haruki Murakami is a man of incredible talent. With 19 titles and translated into 50 languages, this Japanese writer is considered by some to be one of the leaders in postmodern literature. 

As a twenty-something college student living in a major U.S. city, I already know what you’re thinking dear reader. You’re thinking, “Murakami? Is this another review on Norwegian Wood?” To this, I have the following to say: um, Norwegian Wood is a wonderful book that deals with the many dimensions of personal trauma and recovery and no, this review is actually on Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  

Right from the first line, Murakami captures the reader and pulls them into the story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a 36-year-old railroad engineer living in Tokyo. Following a traumatic event that took place during his sophomore year in college, Tsukuru is left emotionally crippled and exiled from the only friends he’s ever known. With nothing but the thought of dying keeping him company, Tsukuru almost reaches the point of no return before deciding to revisit his past and get an answer to the question which left him restless for nearly 16 years: Why? 

The wonder of Murakami’s writing is in the detail of his characters. For example, Tsukuru translates to “to make or build” and his surname, Tazaki, contains no color or symbol which sets him apart from the group of friends he is later exiled from as all of their sur names contain sort of relation to a specific color—a detail that is unrelated to his exile, yet meaningful nonetheless. In addition to the classic Murakami style, there is a mysterious character involved and a plot twist even sharper than his character development. 

While some may argue that each Murakami novel is alike, I will argue that that very thing is the beauty behind his writing. To take a story and mold it in a way that is consistent and universal but still keep true to the individuality of the story and its characters is what keeps me and the millions of other Murakami readers coming back for more.   

November 28, 2016

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Blogger, Essayist, Realist!

 

Interview by Jennifer Bostrom

Almost four years ago, Samantha Irby came to my class and we talked about vibrators. No, it wasn’t a sex ed class, Irby was visiting to enlighten prospective writers, myself included, on the pros and cons of publishing her first book, Meaty (2013), with an indie-publisher. Those familiar with the essayist and blogger’s work might think: “Yeah, totally. Why wouldn’t you talk about vibrators?” but those unfamiliar might wonder: “WTF? What do vibrators and publishing books have to do with one another?” The answer is quite simply: very little (unless maybe you’re trying to lesson the sting of editorial rejection with some Irby-approved “me time”).

Bitches Gotta Eat (henceforth reffered to as BGE) is part recipe blog (not really, but with a name like “Bitches Gotta Eat” Irby does throw in the occasional recipe post), part “Dear Diary,” and part self-deprecatingly candid posts about Irby’s battle with Crohn’s disease—including the “hotsex doctor” she sees for it. BGE’s popularity, as well as Irby’s candor and personality, lead her to pen Meaty. Every bit as funny, real, and grounded as the author, Meaty is a collection of essays that bring BGE‘s flavor for 251 pages. Currently, Irby works full time and is writing a second book, but gave me the opportunity to distract her for a bit.

Jennifer Bostrom: How did BGE get its start?

Samantha Irby: I first started a blog on Myspace (omg does anyone even still know what that is) to impress this kid I wanted to be my boyfriend. The relationship went to shit and so did that blog, but a bunch of people reached out to me asking me to continue writing. Eventually, at the urging of my friend Laura, over cheeseburgers and beers, I decided to start BGE.

JB: Your first BGE post was June 2, 2009 and it reads “welcome to the raddest spot on the interwebs.” What is the raddest thing about BGE?

SI: Every answer that comes to mind makes me feel like an asshole, so I will just say “it’s funny.”

JB: You’re approaching the seventh anniversary of BGE (congratulations); it’s not uncommon that once bloggers have been published—or if they have a full time job—for blogs to lose momentum. How do you consistently bring a fresh perspective to posts, even when you revisit topics like writing or dating?

SI: I can’t believe it’s been seven years already, omg. Wellllllllllllllllll, I’m not sure that “consistently” is a word I can confidently use, since over the last handful of months I’ve only posted a handful of times. I am forever evolving, and s–t is always happening to me in new ways. And the zeitgeist is forever changing, too. So I feel like as long as my cultural references stay au courant, then I’m all good.

JB: BGE has always been written in lowercase font, boldface, and neon colors interspersed for emphasis. How did this style develop? If you could, would you publish your books the same way? 

SI: I’ve always written in lowercase, just as a personal style thing. The multicolored text serves two purposes. 1) Since I tend to write long-form prose, it helps to break it all up a little bit, and 2) it serves my massive ego to highlight lines I am particularly proud of. I have been discouraged from using lowercase in my books, and I’m cool with it. It distinguishes the books from the blog to have them formatted differently but—and this is the more important thing to me—the text won’t be a distraction to people who are unfamiliar with my writing. Since it really is my personal preference, and not some stylistic or political statement, I don’t want every review to focus on why I don’t capitalize my Is. I don’t want anything to get in the way of the work.

JB: When you write things like “Compliments are the currency of womanhood,” it makes me want to quote you (and if I had a better memory I would). How would you describe your voice?

SI: Salty and with a strong undercurrent of wit, multiple hatreds, and crushing anxiety.

JB: On BGE you’ve written about outlining your new book. What is your typical process for writing? How, if at all, has your process changed since writing Meaty? Does anything differ when you write for your books vs. blog posts? 

SI: Writing my blog is a lot easier for me. Usually something dumb happens and then I’m like OH MY FUCKING GOD I GOTTA WRITE ABOUT THIS RN (RN= right now, for those not versed in social media shorthand) and then I huddle over my desk and bang it out and get the instant gratification of seeing it go live and getting reactions to it. The book is hard because I sit alone writing in a vacuum and have to wait months and months before anyone lays eyes on it, which means I have months and months to pick it apart and doubt whether or not it’s good. Having a lot of time is almost tougher than trying to write it in a few months, because I’m a master procrastinator who is terrific at making excuses. If this damn thing ever gets done, it’ll be a miracle.

I try to write an outline for every piece, and I never start writing a thing until I know how I’m going to end it. Even if I know exactly what an essay is going to be about, I don’t feel comfortable unless I know how it’s going to wrap up. Sometimes I’ll write the last couple paragraphs before I start the first. It’s that serious.

JB: Where do you write—home, coffee shops? What music is in your Spotify “writing playlist” right now? 

SI: I try to write at home because I hate people and noise and sunshine and looking at things—plus I don’t have to put on shoes or a bra—but writing at home is hard because there’s a TV and a bed. It’s an actual nightmare. I wrote most of the new book at other people’s houses, which is the best of both worlds: I don’t have to worry about leaving my laptop if I have to pee, but also there’s the public shame of someone catching me doing internet crossword puzzles while pretending to be writing.

I make a killer fucking playlist, and I keep adding songs to the one I made to help me get through working on this book. It’s got 100+ songs on it, and I would never bore you with all of them so here is a sampling:

“Your Love is Killing Me” – Sharon Van Etten

“Weekend” – Mac Miller feat. Miguel

“Refuse” – Kevin Garrett

“Caretaker” – D.R.A.M. feat. SZA

“2000 Seasons” Talib Kweli

“No Role Modelz” – J. Cole

“Coming Down” – Dum Dum Girls

“You Took Your Time” – Mount Kimbie

“Mad Lucas” – The Breeders

“Etc” – Francis and the Lights

“Forgive Me for Giving Up” – Hundred Waters

I’m also really into Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album and looped recordings of thunderstorms.

JB: I know when it came to writing Meaty, you’ve said that it was an opportunity that presented itself. What opportunity lead to the decision to write another book?

SI: This is going to sound like bullshit for real, but it really was another opportunity that presented itself. I didn’t have an agent for Meaty—the publishers were friends of mine. After it came out, I got an email from my current agent asking if I had one. I told him no, we talked on the phone, then BOOM he became my rep. He told me to put a few new pieces together and I did, he sent them out, and a few months later, I signed a deal. Even though it happened to me, writing it out feels like a fever dream. Crazy.

JB: Had that initial opportunity not presented itself, do you think you would’ve still written a book? 

SI: NEVER EVER FUCKING EVER. Finding an agent and pitching a book are difficult things to do even if you’re incredibly motivated—and I’m just not. I have a job, being active on Twitter stresses me out. I have no desire to do more than randomly post shit to make people laugh whenever the mood strikes me. I was perfectly happy just toiling away in my little corner of the internet, and my plan was to do that until life got boring or people stopped reading blogs—which is probably now, but I’m too old to have caught onto that yet.

JB: What has been the hardest thing about writing your latest book? 

SI: Figuring out what is interesting enough to go in it.

JB: Meaty was marketed almost entirely through social media. Are you going to use the same approach with your new book?

SI: Meaty came out on a small local press [Curbside Splendor] and big budget ad campaigns were totally out of the question. This new one is coming out on Vintage, a subsidiary of Knopf, and there are editors and marketing people and digital strategists and all sorts of other big time shit. I will be in charge of nothing, and that’s totally cool. 

JB: I read in your interview with Chicago Now that Meaty took four months to write, all while watching twerking videos on Youtube and Grey’s Anatomy. What are your vices with this new book?

SI: Makeup tutorials, holy shit. I could sit for hours watching Jaclyn Hill and Jeffree Star apply eyeshadows and highlighter. IT’S MESMERIZING.

JB: What are the top 3 ways you procrastinate? What are the top 3 ways you push through procrastination?

SI: 1) HBO

2) Napping

3) Carbohydrates

1) Threats

2) Disappointed emails from my agent

3) Daydreaming about all the dumb shit I can waste money on when the book starts selling

JB: Like you, I attended Nichols Middle School and Evanston Township High School, take my pets to Bramer Animal Hospital (where Irby maintains a full-time job), and eat at Lady Gregory’s and the Cozy Noodle on Davis—basically, I think I may be geographically stalking you (sorry!)—but you and I have very different writing style. What would you attribute your style to?

SI: Omg, I am now wracked with anxiety that I might have been inexplicably rude to you at my job. (Just FYI, reader, Sam has never been rude to me at her job.) People always tell me that my voice is very distinctive, but I don’t know what to attribute it to. It’s just the voice I hear in my head, stream of consciousness rambling run-on sentences, sprayed on paper. I really do just write things to make myself laugh, and when it makes other people laugh, too, that’s butter on the toast.

JB: I remember when you came to my class you championed LELOs (ahem, vibrators). You’re candid with every topic you write and talk about. As a writer, I often stray from uncomfortable topics, whether it’s from a place of my own self-censorship or an external factor. Do you struggle with any censorship? How do you think you grew to be so comfortable with candor? 

SI: I suppose it’s been easy because I’ve had very few negative consequences? Lately, I have been trying not to swear so bleeping much, but other than that I don’t really censor myself. There are topics I avoid—politics, religion, etcetra—because 1) they aren’t that funny and 2) I don’t feel learned enough to write about them and sound like I know what I’m talking about, and others I shy away from because no one should ever be totallytransparent. (Also: Go get a LELO if you haven’t yet—they’re magical.)

JB: In Meaty, we learn that your parents died when you were very young. My condolences. Did that loss contribute to introspection and lead to becoming a writer?

SI: I’m not sure that I ever wanted to become a writer. In high school, I wrote a lot of fiction based on fantasies of the lives I would’ve created for myself if life was something I could be in charge of rather than a game of cosmic roulette. Those stories were an escape from the horrors of my real life. I don’t know that writing is something I would’ve pursued if I had people around telling me how disappointed they were in my decision to put my life out in public. I never got to know my parents well enough to know how they’d respond to my work. I hope this doesn’t sound callous, it’s definitely an advantage to not have them around.

JB: How much of your free time is dedicated to writing?

SI: I usually write my blog on my lunch breaks at work. I have never wanted it to feel like a chore, so I don’t write it on the weekends or my days off. When I have book stuff to work on, I try to write whenever I’m not working, but that usually ends up being 70% Hulu and 30% staring at my Macbook waiting for the words to present themselves to my fingers. But I don’t really like writing in a vacuum, so even on the days I dedicate to writing, I try to break it up a little bit: stretch my legs, watch some trashy TV, whatever I can do to give my brain a little breather.

JB: The first paragraph of Meaty has the line “I have a ‘job’ and not a ‘career.’” Has a job working in an animal hospital hindered or helped you as a writer? Would you consider writing your career? 

SI: I’m not sure if anything other than the flexibility and lack of any sort of punitive moral code of conduct has helped my writing, but I guess those are pretty important things. It’s pretty amazing not to have to worry about being fired for something I’ve written on the internet. I’m not really sure I want writing to be my career, because what if the ideas stop? What if I stop being as interesting, or as funny? I’m not sure I would enjoy writing as much if my livelihood depended on it.

JB: Lastly, what advice would you give to aspiring essayists?

SI: Get a job. It doesn’t have to be a career, but you definitely need a regular paycheck for things like food and cocktails and lightning fast internet or whatever. Not having the pressure of hustling for money, or writing shit I don’t care about just to collect a check for it, has been incredibly freeing. I’m free to write about my butthole and falling asleep in nightclubs because, even if no one wants to pay to read about it, because walking dogs or selling doughnuts has already covered my rent.

To read more of Irby’s words, go to Bitches Gotta Eat or find Meaty online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Jennifer Bostrom is a BA Honors Fiction Graduate from Columbia College Chicago, Academic Excellence scholarship recipient (2013-2016), Production Editor of CCC’s award-winning Hair Trigger anthology, and intern for HYPERtext Magazine. Jennifer’s fiction can be found at The Copperfield Review and Habitat Magazine or on her website jcbostrom.com. 

October 10, 2016

Tags: Interview, Meaty, Jennifer Bostrom, Samantha Irby, Writing, Blog, Essays

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I Feel Poopy

 

His full head of hair smelled like the farm. Pig shit and corn feed. I didn’t mind moving my nose and hands through it, taking it in. I was lying on my back. He was biting my neck and making me wet. Anytime he bit too hard, I pulled his hair, and he’d say, “I know, I know.” I knew he didn’t, though. Everyone in town bitched at me whenever I had a hickey. Then when he had a hickey, I was still the one bitched at. So I always reminded him, “Not too hard.”

He slid my shirt and unhooked bra up my chest. His mouth traced kisses down to my boobs. His warm lips contrasted with my cold skin from the blasting air conditioner. He mumbled something against my nipple about beauty and being all his. I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was trying to figure out how to tell him I really had to take a dump.

I forced myself to hold it in and save it for later, because this was sort of a big deal. I finally liked Elie enough to want to be in the back seat of his car. We’d been friends since we were in pre-K. But it’d taken the last three years of middle school, and hundreds of deep conversations about our exes, our parents, and how bored we were with our little, old town, to make me want to have sex with him. So, yeah, I guess pretty important, but fuck, I had to shit.

I tried not to think about it. I closed my eyes and thought about Elie’s smelly hair, his soft lips, and his hardworking hands. Then my stomach made a growling noise. My eyes snapped open and I froze, thinking he heard it, but he didn’t notice. He was too into it, into me, with his eyes closed, taking savoring breaths against my boobs and stomach. I stared down at his widow’s peak. The night was actually feeling perfect. We had the right parking spot at the west exit of town. At the side of the road, a cluster of trees consumed us. We could fool around as long as we wanted. But anytime I started to lose myself in the mood, there’d be another growling noise. I kept tightening my ass cheeks, thinking it was all going to flow out.

When he unbuttoned my jeans, I thought what if I were to shit myself right there on the back seat? How solid would it be, if solid at all? Then I started thinking about women giving birth in backseats, and I chuckled at the thought of my turd baby. He thought I was giggling with ecstasy and bit my nipple too hard.

I pulled his hair just as hard. “Ow! I’d look damn weird with one nipple.”

“Sorry.” He started licking.

I sighed. “Can we stop?”

He looked up at me with panic and wrinkled eyebrows. I felt his hand clutch the seat next to my hip.

“What? Why? You don’t like this? I won’t bite anymore. I promise. I’m sorry.”

“No, I like it. You’re cool. I just don’t feel good.”

He moved off of me, and we sat up. I buttoned my jeans.

He looked down, slowly running a hand through his hair. “Are you mad we’re doing this in my car?”

I really couldn’t care less where we fucked. “No, I just gotta use the toilet.”

“Oh, um . . .” He looked around his car.

“I’m not using a cup.”

He slumped in his seat. “Dores, we’ll lose the mood and my hard on.”

“I feel poopy.”

“No, don’t feel poopy. It just feels like you’re forcing me to stop peeing.”

“No, I mean I feel poopy like I have to take a massive shit.”

 “Can you hold it?”

“Can you remove stains? Because I’m sure having you pound my pussy is going to make my butthole hard to control.”

He tilted his head and considered it. Then he gave me nod and got out of the car without a word. I watched his silhouette walk around to the driver’s seat before I crawled over to the passenger side from the back, being as small as I was. I smiled because I wasn’t going to shit my pants, and pretty soon we’d be back to getting it on. The headlights lit up the trees hiding the car from the road, and the dashboard lit his round brown face. He was bummed, his shoulders sagging and eyes avoiding me. I’m sure they were empty, and he was deep into a loop, telling himself he sucked, that I didn’t actually need to use the bathroom, and I didn’t want to have sex with him because he smelled.

“Cheer up, and maybe I’ll give you head.”

And just like that, he grinned. He tried pulling the car out onto the street, but it wouldn’t move. All we could hear was the motor roaring the more he accelerated, and the tires blowing wet mush from underneath. He floored it a bit more, and nothing. He stared at the stirring wheel for a second, silently tapping it with his thumb. Then he cleared his throat to fill the silence before finally looking at me with a tiny smile that begged me not to get pissed.

I sighed. “Ah, fuck me.”

He spoke under his breath. “Well, I wanted to.”

I rolled my eyes. It’d been raining for days. Soft dirt should’ve been obvious, but all we’d been thinking about was fucking. My stomach growled again, making me want to punch it. Elie turned off the headlights. We grabbed flashlights from the glove compartment and got out of the car. I immediately wish we hadn’t. The humidity made my skin sticky, and my hair puffed up despite it already being a curly mess.

We moved to the front of the car, bouncing our flashlight beams along the dirt. The front tire on my side was sunk in. He put his flashlight on the ground, facing the tire. It made the light streak stretch. He started shoveling the mud with his hands.

I liked those big hands a lot more than he knew. I stared at them a lot working at the farm. There was something so sexy about big rough hands holding and drying tiny piglets covered in blood and vagina mucus with a towel. Ugh, fuck yes. I avoided telling him things like that, though, because he’d end up asking me to tell him more and I’d feel weird.

I just wanted to tell him to forget about being stuck in the mud and fuck me on the hood of his car, but my stomach growls turned to brutal knots. I turned my flashlight off and placed it on the roof of the vehicle. I gripped my stomach to fight the stabbing ache and tightened my butt cheeks the hardest I could. I hurried off with teeny steps towards the back of the car, taking deep breaths and focusing entirely on my body. I told myself no one could command my butthole to deliver but ME. But then it felt like my butthole was trying to prove me otherwise. So I tried thinking about anything else.

I stood there as stiff as a stick, and ended up thinking about all the times I didn’t appreciate toilets, but then how toilets are whatever, and I should be able to shit in the woods without feeling embarrassed. My dad would think this isn’t lady-like and bring up other stuff like displaying my self-respect and self-worth. But I don’t think that matters when you really gotta go, and I seriously couldn’t hold it.

I took advantage of the dark, pulled down my jeans, formed the perfect squat, and pushed like I never had before. It squirted out like a broken faucet, the soggy lumps slapping the ground. Then stupid mosquitos bit my butt, and I smacked my own ass cheeks to kill them off. The smell of meat left out in the sun hovered around me. It was a long and sweaty job, but it felt incredible until I thought about wild animals or a serial killer attacking me in my vulnerable state and dying. I’d be in the newspaper. I’d make the front page because it’d be so fucking tragic.

Then Elie came over to where I was squatting. The glow of his flashlight hopped across the ground toward me until it reached and lit up my face. I squinted my eyes and gripped my bare knees. I never meant to be found in such an unattractive position: my digested enchiladas stinking it up, jeans around my ankles, my ass sticking out, my hair all over the damn place and clinging to my sweaty face.

I yelled at him, “GO AWAY. GO AWAY. GO AWAY.”

The flashlight fell out of Elie’s hand. The light rolled and disappeared into a bush. I accidentally farted between every word, and I tried yelling louder to hide how wet it all sounded. I nearly fell over. Elie backed away with bulging eyes from the trauma, but then his face relaxed. He tried holding back a small grin. He yanked the flashlight from within the bush before dashing back to the front of the car.

The knots in my stomach remained tight, and I moaned. I felt stupid because I knew exactly why I was shitting so severely. I had chewed a bunch of seeds that looked like nuts. I was only supposed to take one nut every night to help me lose weight. I’m not too sure though, because the label on the package was in a different language. When I was looking at them, my dad walked in on me, and I had to lie and say it was trail mix. He didn’t want me buying products from sketchy websites. So I ate all the seeds to hide them. I prayed I wouldn’t lose my butt. It was the only thing I had going for me. I guess the price was shitting my guts out in front of Elie.

I finished pooping and squatted for a while longer. I didn’t think about what I was going to wipe myself with. I patted the ground around me. I felt mucky mud, leaves, rocks, and twigs poke my fingers. I wondered if a snake would slither along and bite my butt cheek.

Elie came over to me again but slowly. He was on guard with one hand up, pitching something between his fingers, and the flashlight in the other. The beam pointed at the ground. I turned my butt away from him. He stiffened up at my sudden movement.

Before I could swear at him, he quickly handed me one tissue with a pinch of his fingers. “It’s all I could find.”

I said thanks, and he went away again. The tissue was thick. Using as much of the surface without getting any poop on my hands was tough, but I made it work. I pulled up my jeans and shoveled some mud with my hands to cover my poop. I went over to the front of the car, got onto my knees, and helped Elie shovel around the tire some more. The slush mixed with gravel made the shoveling hurt. We kept scratching ourselves with rocks, and as soon as the wet mud smeared over our skin, it dried. We didn’t say anything to each other. Elie looked too serious with his eyes stuck on the task and lips tight. I wondered how disgusted he was by me.

“I dunno what your momma told you but girls poop, too.”

He stopped shoveling and looked at me. “What?”

“You’re grossed out. You’re quiet.”

He shook his head, relaxing his lips and grinning. “No, it’s not that. I just wanted this to be special, us making love for the first time.”

I never really knew what to say to stuff like that. So I let it get quiet. We shoveled another while longer before he went back in the car to try driving out again. It still wouldn’t move. He went over to his trunk to see if there was anything else we could use and I heard the splat when he stepped in my poop. I faced-palmed.

I pretended to not know. “Is everything okay?”

He gave me a cheerful, “Mhm.”

He was honestly a nice guy. I went to the back of the car. He had a hand on the trunk to balance himself while he tried to use a stick to scrap the poop off his shoe. I felt so pathetic.

“I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t be. Just tell me if you still like me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “But that’s my shit on your shoe.”

Elie stopped scrapping and straightened up. He stood a foot taller than me. His eyes beamed. “I don’t care. You’re still perfect.”

Eh, I didn’t know what to say to that either, and silence is weird, so I asked, “You still wanna do it?”

He grinned, shyly looking down at the ground. “How’s your stomach?”

I shrugged and gave him thumbs up. “Ready to go. Did you bring condoms?”

He tossed the stick aside. “I brought two kinds.”

 

We found water bottles in his trunk and rinsed our hands. After scratching the crust off our skin, I went for Elie’s cheeks and brought his face a foot lower so I could reach. I stumbled backward, kissing him the whole way back into the car. Escaping from the heat and back into the air-conditioned car was a blessing, but we couldn’t avoid the damn sludge. Our heavy shoes were heavy and caked with mud.

“We’re gonna fuck up your carpet.”

“No, don’t worry. You’re more important.”

I almost said something dumb like, “Thanks dude,” before telling myself to leave the lovey-dovey stuff to him. He was good at it. I would’ve never known a good shit would make me want him so much. I could finally focus on getting dick.

We kicked off our shoes and let them fall onto the floor. I lay back onto my rainbow polka dot blanket. He moved on top of me and kissed my neck, harder this time. I closed my eyes and felt his hands move under my shirt to touch my stomach. I hate getting my belly rubbed, but those big hands could touch me wherever, whenever. His kissing slowed though, and I thought maybe the smell of shit was still lingering and killing the mood.

 But instead, he asked, “Did you ever think we’d end up together?”

I didn’t hesitate. “No.”

He moved his lips to my cheek. “How come?”

I opened my eyes and narrowed them at the roof of the car for a second. I knew he was trying to get me to pour my heart out, with those yummy lips of his, and make me get all silly. I wasn’t going to let him trick me, though.

“I dunno.”

“Come on, tell me.” He moved back down to my neck and bit me just right.

The biting made me close my eyes again and run my hand through his hair instead of pulling it.

I still wasn’t giving in though. “I dunno.”

He was all about talking, especially about feelings. He wanted to know what I was thinking. I knew he really wanted to know when he moved his hand into my jeans.

 He whispered, “Come on, Dores. Tell me.”

Oh damn. Those hands. Maybe Elie liked me talking feelings as much as I loved his hands. That made sense. I bit my lip to keep from moaning, because then he’d know he was doing it right, and I was close to talking.

“Dores.”

Hell no.

“Dores.”

 Nope.

“Dores.”

Fuck.

“Tell me.”

He was making my toes curl. Dammit. “You were too quiet.”

“And?”

 Breathe. “I thought things would be boring.”

“And?”

I squeezed the seat by my hip. “You’re not boring.”

“Really?”

Fuck, those hands. I’m not kidding. Those damn hands. “Yes. I like you. I like you–a lot. You don’t mind us eating off each other’s plate when we go out to eat. You never tell me to stop talking or to shave my legs. You’re a sweet guy with really really nice hands.”

God, what a mess. He was breathing hard against my neck, as hard as me, and I wasn’t even touching him back. I reached down to unbutton his jeans so we could just get to it. But when I opened my eyes, I noticed the roof was lit up. Someone’s headlights were facing our car.

“STOP.”

He froze. “What? I hurt you? I’m so sorry.”

He pulled his fingers out of me and wiped them on his jeans.

I whispered, “Somebody’s out there.”

I pictured the damn sheriff walking up, taking one look at me before saying he was going to call my dad to come whoop my ass and take me to church. He’d said that the last time he caught Elie and me making out at the shelter at Voss Park in the middle of the night.

Elie popped his head up to see who it was. Their headlights lit his face, and his mouth dropped. He came back down, hurrying like he was now the one that had to poop. He buttoned my jeans, fixed my shirt, and gave me my shoes, all in a beat like he had a plan. I know he didn’t though, because he kept glancing around the car like he lost his balls.

I slid down onto the floor and hid behind the driver’s seat while slipping my shoes on. “What? Who is it? The po-po?”

“No. It’s my dad.”

He stuffed the bag of condoms under the passenger seat. The crinkling of the bag clashed with our panicky breathing. His dad, Lonnie, was going to snarl at the sight of me just like he did at work, at the gas station, the post office, and everywhere else in town. He didn’t want me with Elie because Elie could do better. I was too frank and loud and short and fat for Lonnie’s liking. He reminded me every time he saw me.

“He hates me.”

“I know.”

We stared at each other for a split second before we heard a car door slam, pushing me to speak.

“You just gotta go out there and tell him you’re by yourself. I’ll hide here.”

I grabbed the blanket and threw it over my head.

He pulled the blanket back to get me to look at him. “I’m here alone doing what?”

“Doing drugs.”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, dude. Drugs. Go, he’ll forgive you for doing meth, but not for wanting to fuck me.”

I covered my head again, and he didn’t say anything else because he knew I was right. I heard the car door open and shut. I pulled the blanket off and watched him walk toward the headlights like he was about to die. He tried to catch his breath. I thought about our plan again and faced-palmed. His dad wasn’t going to believe the drug thing. It was ass talk. Elie wasn’t the type.

I peeked from behind the driver’s seat. Elie jogged over to his dad’s black truck parked a few yards away. It stood between the trees, at the entrance of our spot to get back onto the road. Lonnie meant to trap us not knowing how trapped we already were. His truck towered behind him, making him look even shorter. The headlights still managed to shadow him like a god. Elie tried rambling to keep him there. Lonnie had his arms crossed and kept narrowing his eyes at him, staring at the mud smeared at the knees of his jeans. He made Elie look dumb and small with that stance and his intimidating goatee. It was all too familiar. It was the only way Lonnie talked to him. Now that puberty had added a few pounds and made Elie a whole foot taller, he could snap Lonnie in half, like the twig he was. But it hadn’t changed anything. Elie was still small inside, so Lonnie always won.

It made me sure that Lonnie was going to walk to the car no matter what. So I grabbed the condoms from under the seat and wrapped my blanket around my head and shoulders. I watched them a second longer as Lonnie walked toward the car, but Elie pulled him back by the arm. I cringed because I knew Lonnie didn’t like being touched. He turned away from my direction to face Elie and swear up at the poor kid. Elie leaned back as Lonnie ran his mouth. I opened the door, crawled out on to the ground and into the damn humidity again. I pushed the door closed, leaning against it with my shoulder to let it silently click shut instead of slam.

I crawled away from the car on my hands and knees, my palm crushing the box of condoms. Lonnie and Elie’s arguing hung behind me.

“I’m sorry. You’re just not listening. I said I was going to get . . . high.”

Lonnie mocked him with a laugh. “You’re too pussy. You’d think you were dying. But I’d rather you do drugs than that fat bitch!”

I could hear Elie was shaky, but still trying to keep his voice firm, “Dores. It’s Dores!”

I stopped crawling and let go of the box of condoms. I’d never heard him yell before. There was a struggle, shoes scrubbing gravel, a thud, and a drop to the ground. My hands scanned for a glass bottle or a branch in case Lonnie decided to hit him more than once, which he never did because Elie never fought back.

“So then you were with her?”

“No,” he groaned through his teeth. “I was going to get high.”

He wasn’t actually lying because he’d get high on my pussy for sure. I grabbed the box of condoms again and crawled into the bushes. Branches scratched my face and leaves found their way into my mouth.

 

It started raining before I reached the railroad tracks. The rain dripped down my face, and I kept wiping it away although I knew it’d keep dripping. The blanket over my head and shoulders got heavy and seeped water on my clothes. My skin felt saggy, and so did my soul because, well, damn, I was really looking forward to getting dick, but Elie just ended up getting hit. But small town living is ridiculous. Make out point was probably the same point it’d been back in the ’70s. No wonder Lonnie had found us.

A car pulled up next to me, and the window rolled down. I kept staring straight because if it were someone nosy, my dad would find out I was out and at about three in the morning before I even made it home.

“You okay, kid? You need me to call somebody?”

I recognized him based on the sound of his muffler. It was the mail guy. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Dores?”

“Yes, Mr. Pederson. Please carry on.”

“Does your dad know you’re out here?”

“Yes, sir. He sent me to get milk.”

“Elie’s looking for you.”

I stopped and spun my head in his direction. “He’s actually looking for me?”

I thought his dad would send him straight home. Mr. Pedersen gracefully stepped on the break, and his scruffy, chubby face grinned. It teased me. He knew all too well that only Elie’s name could break my guard in any situation. He also knew I would never admit to something like that.

I turned away, dropped the emotion, and started walking again. “Not that he would be. It’s whatever.”

“Get in the car, Dores. He’s stationed at the park. He said he was looking for his dog, but I know Vicky ran it over a year ago.”

I gasped. “You didn’t remind him, right? Or I’ll have to sit through another three seasons of Gilmore Girls to get him to stop crying.”  

“Of course I didn’t. Get in.”

I sighed and walked around the front of the car. The headlights blinded me for a second before I got into the passenger’s side. I quickly got a whiff of the peppermint air freshener he used to hide his pot smoking. He headed east of town.

 He rolled up his window. “I got a hoodie here somewhere.”

He kept a hand on the wheel and the other dove into the darkness of the back seat and came back with an XXL gray hoodie. The print on the front was Threshing Bee 1972. I had five similar hoodies at home that Elie had bought me every summer for the past five years. I think tractor parades are boring, but he took me for the homemade ice cream. It was guaranteed to give you an orgasm.

I set the wet blanket and plastic bag at my feet.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Gum.”

He glared at me. The light from his dashboard and stereo made the shadows of his face look more skeptical. “Elie’s out looking for you at three in the morning, and you’re carrying a bag of gum?”

“Yeah, it’s what the kids are into.”

I didn’t notice him reach for the bag while I pulled the hoodie over my head. He was staring at the crushed box of condoms the second the hoodie was past my face. He was wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry. I thought you meant drugs.”

He put the bag back. He looked awkward for invading my privacy. He rubbed his chin, stuck his eyes to the road, and didn’t say anything else.

I tried lightening the mood. “Sex is so much fun.”

He shook his head, too familiar with how I talked, and chuckled, “Well, good thing you have a big o’ box of condoms. Looks like you got enough for weeks.”

I grinned. “Nope, days.”

We made it to the park, and before I got out of the car he said, “You and Elie. You sure about that? He seems too timid. You’re too . . . I don’t know.”

Mr. Pedersen had known both of us since we were third graders when he volunteered as a para at our school. He’d witnessed me fighting off sixth graders during recess. I’d force Elie to back me up, and he would because he liked me.

“I’ll decide that, Mr. Pedersen. You just worry about your rattling muffler. It sounds awful. Call my pops, and we’ll get it switched out for you.”

 

Elie spoke the instant I got in the car, “I’m so so sorry.”

As I shut the car door, I noticed Elie looked even muddier than before. It was all over his shirt and the crotch of his jeans. His lip was cut and a little swollen, too.

“I should be the one sorry. It looks like your dad used you to wipe his ass.”

He glanced down at his clothes and awkwardly brushed off a few dried chunks with his fingers. “No, it’s whatever.”

He pulled away from the park and headed south of town to drop me off at home. He was too quiet again. He was often quiet, but there were two kinds. He was either enjoying the silence or overthinking. I could tell he was overthinking because he had both hands on the steering wheel and his jaw was tense. He kept opening his mouth and moving his jaw to relax it, but it wasn’t helping.

“What did your dad say?”

“Nothing. I just can’t use the car anymore. But it’s whatever. I’ll use the gas money to buy us slushies, pizza rolls, or something.”

I wanted to ask about his lip, but I knew that was one thing he wouldn’t spill. All these years and he’d only shared a few words on it. “He just wants me to behave.” I grabbed one of his hands from the steering wheel and held it in my lap. Elie had recently gotten his license. There wasn’t going to be any more night cruising around town while blasting his hip-hop or my punk rock, make out sessions, or driving out of town to be bored somewhere out in the country where the sunset felt like ours.

“You should’ve just headed straight home to keep your dad from getting more pissed. I would’ve gotten home fine.”

Elie shook his head. “I wanted to say sorry.”

Sorry for having to hide me. Sorry for the times he didn’t stand up to his dad. Sorry that his dad forced him to leave me out in the country the other night we got caught. I had to walk three or four miles by myself until my dad found me. Elie had gone to my house to tell him where we had been and to apologize, as many times my dad would listen. We didn’t talk for weeks while Lonnie kept him sheltered off, and I didn’t make an effort to be around him. I’d catch him looking at me during class, and he’d sneak baked goods into my locker with notes. He’d explain how much he was sorry and how wrong his dad was for thinking Elie could do better than me.

 “You would’ve never left me behind.”

We didn’t say anything else until we got to my house. I kissed him hard and heavy. He reached for the shifter to pull away.

He joked, “Let’s just run away. I have plenty of gas and food money to last us weeks.”

I pulled his hand back to me to stop him. We’d already tried to run away once before in elementary, and we got lost in the cornfields and shared a Snickers bar.

“Maybe some other time. I want to go appreciate my toilet.”

He grinned and nodded. I kissed him one more time and got out, holding my heavy wet blanket. He waited for me to reach the front steps before driving away. He turned right at the stop sign and headed north of town. That’s when Lonnie pulled up in front of my house and rolled down his window.

He called out, “How stupid are you?”

I should’ve gone inside, but I couldn’t help myself against a confrontation. Lonnie was always on my ass about the same old thing: don’t fuck my son. But I was looking forward to doing lots of fucking, and he knew he couldn’t stop me. Lonnie still spent too much time trying to find ways to mess with me, like telling my boss I purposely spilled coffee on him, or ruin my rep by telling other parents I sold pot to their kids. Thankfully no one ever believed him, mostly because everyone knew he was an asshole. I never bothered discussing any of it with my dad. He knew, and he always tried fixing it by confronting Lonnie. I just didn’t think it was worth his time. I didn’t want him to worry, especially since sometimes I was the one feeding the fire. It was too funny to me how much a grown ass man could get upset at a sixteen-year-old.

I left my blanket on the porch floor, went down the steps, and got a little closer to Lonnie’s truck. I didn’t say anything, looking down and focusing on the squishy sound of my wet shoes. His voice was a lot deeper than you’d expect from a short dude with a lanky body.

“What do you do to him? It can’t be your looks.”

I shrugged. “I guess he just wants my pussy.”

He laughed. “But you’re disgusting.”

I mocked his laugh, mimicking his small face, and raising my voice to a higher pitch instead of lowering it, “HA HA HA.”

“Why are you so annoying?”

“Why does your goatee look like pubes?”

For a second, the only noise was the rain hitting the concrete like pebbles. I appreciated the hoodie. I would’ve been cold.

“Don’t make me mad.”

I looked at him then, and sharpened my voice. “Or what?”

Threats are weak. I challenged Lonnie’s gaze; the dashboard light reflecting off his crinkled eyebrows and dark face didn’t scare me one bit. I waited for a response until he turned away.

He merely said, “Fuck off.”

“Fuck off?” I went up to his truck and reached for the door handle. He stiffened up and locked the doors before I could get it open. “Or what? Huh? You bony dipshit. What the fuck you going to do?”

I knew I was too loud, but I couldn’t help it. If I were taller, I would’ve climbed through the window.

“Classy, you fat whore.”

He started driving away. I grabbed a piece of cement from our cracked street curb.

I swung my arm back, and my dad came out the front door yelling, “Dolores! Don’t!”

I caught my breath and let my hand drop to my side. I kept squeezing the piece of cement. Lonnie’s truck took a harsh turn at the stop sign as he sped off. His tires screeched. My dad walked down the steps and toward me with his shoulders broad, neck tense, and eyes glancing in the direction Lonnie had gone. He was still wearing the jeans, white t-shirt, and boots he took to work.

“Hijo de su puta madre. What did he say now?”

I dropped the cement on to the ground, sighed, and shook my head. “Nothing. He’s just ugly. Ugly voice. Ugly heart. Plain UGLY.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“Nothing,” I repeated. “It’s whatever. Don’t waste your time.”

He loosened his shoulders and ran his hand through his hair to cool down. “Then you were with Elie? Do you know it’s three in the morning?”

I tried holding back from grinning, but broke. My dad shook his head and pointed at the house. I knew he was going to ground me and give me the sex talk again. I didn’t mind. They were nice talks. I swiftly headed towards the house and up the steps. I started planning for the next time I’d see Elie. Pooping before leaving the house was at the top of the list.

_________________________
Arely Anaya graduated with a fiction major and a minor in writing for television. She’s been published in Hair Trigger 40.  She is a staff writer for the St. James, Minnesota Plaindealer. When she isn’t writing, she’s raising piglets. 

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I Promise This Is Not About Sex

 

Anna Nicole Smith is like a mother to me. Tall, buxom-blonde Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. The one who died of a drug overdose or whatever in Hollywood, Florida. Who knew there’s a Hollywood in Florida? Not me. Anna Nicole is like a mother to me because she looks so much like my own mother, and she was all I had while visiting my father’s house during the holidays.

I got into my dad’s porn stash. Big deal. I was seven years old, but he still didn’t exactly go out of his way to hide it. I found Anna Nicole Smith: Exposed right next to my copy of Finding Nemo in our movie cabinet. One movie is about a lost clownfish, and the other is about a naked woman having sex in some mansion with a pond out front. I watched the DVD while my father was away, working for some airline company he’d get laid off from a couple of months later. I’d cozy up on the couch with my stuffed bunny, affectionately named Moo (exactly, just like a cow noise), and watch Anna Nicole have sex with her chef, housekeeper, publicist, and whoever else happened to poke their head into her room. Her platinum blonde hair was just like my mom’s, and so was her picturesque, pin-up body most men buy vodka tonics for at bars. She was beautiful like my mom, and I watched her porno often. Moo and I did.

Watching Anna Nicole’s sex tape wasn’t sexual to me. It was a reminder that I wasn’t alone at my dad’s house—that some entity that looked like my mom was there to keep me company, along with the random girl Anna Nicole had sex with in the fourth or fifth scene of the film. It felt like she was babysitting me, or like I was back home at my mom’s place. Because I’ve always loved my mom more than my dad, I never wanted to go to his house. It never felt like I was totally wanted there, or that he even knew what to do with a daughter. I was a specimen for all he was concerned—he’d keep me in a plastic cup, poke holes in it, and slide McDonald’s and a sugary drink into the opening at least once a day.

My dad stopped calling me when I was twelve; I remember this because it was around when Michael Jackson died. Twelve was also the age the court decided I was no longer legally obligated to visit him anymore. After that, it was always just my mom and I. We’re very close because of it. I am twenty-one now and I think about my dad often, or, the idea of him. It’s hard to differentiate the two sometimes.

I have what most people would refer to as daddy issues. It’s not a medical term, but I think it should be.

 

Everybody writes about their dad, because nobody likes their dad. You’re in the minority if you do. I actually can’t stand people who talk about how much they love their dad. I find them annoying—and if that’s you, you’re annoying. Maybe you can go tell your dad about it.

Here’s what I know about my father: his name is Clifford, like the big, red dog. Cliff, for short, because it obviously made people think of the big, red dog. I don’t see how that could be a bad thing, though. He was a wrestling hotshot in college—supposed to make it big or something, but who knows, because all old people say stuff like that in order to feel less like losers in their old age. When I last left Cliff, he was living in his mother’s basement and selling gently-used hardware from the garage on Craigslist. He considered this to be his career. It was the fourth or fifth “career” of his. I don’t know where his downfall was, nor does my mother, who was never married to him in the first place. I guess we’ll never know because he and I don’t talk. I’m sure if I asked my mother, her answer would be along the lines of “wasted potential” or something. She claims all her exes had “wasted potential.” Whatever that means.

Most of us have daddy issues, but my issue is that I can’t find my dad. I actually can’t locate the motherfucker. Believe me, I’ve tried looking. I’ve looked right up at lots of forty-plus-year-old men who could have been the same age as my dad, but even all their cash and the unlimited mixed drinks they’d get me at hotel bars couldn’t suffice for my real, biological father. I don’t know where he is and sometimes I’d like to. Maybe it’s because I’m nosy, or maybe it’s because dads are something all of my friends have, like the latest iPhone model or denim jackets. I don’t miss him or anything—my dad was a piece of shit, one of those guys who skipped out on child support and kept pornos next to his kid’s copy of Finding Nemo. He wasn’t a good person. I don’t think he ever wanted a daughter, and sometimes I’m not even sure he remembers my name, or that I exist. But I miss something, and I can’t figure out what that something is. I know he has something to do with it, though.

There’s a void, and my dad is responsible for it. It’s deep and dark and it makes me feel empty sometimes. I have trouble with men, and I don’t think I would if my dad were still in my life. That’s what my harem of BlueCross BlueShield therapists have said. I think my dad is the reason I “date” older men. And when I say “date,” I mean have sex for money. It’s an issue of semantics, I guess. I have sex for money with older men. But it is kinda like dating, except you don’t get to see their rooms or meet their parents or anything. You just go to nice hotels and earn like, three-hundred dollars (It’s always difficult to put a price point on sex. I charge three-hundred dollars because that’s how much I think I’m worth. My mom always told me I was worth millions, but I quickly figured out that’s an unreasonable amount to charge.). These men provide for me much like a father would. They give me money so I can take care of myself, and buy like, nail polish and those little, plush keychains you see in displays when you’re checking out at a store. I tell myself they provide for me, at least. They’re around the same age I imagine my own father to be. I’m not a shrink, but I think there’s gotta be some kind of connection there.

Don’t tell my mom any of this. She would fucking kill me.

These men are desperate. They are socially inept. And they’re not always rich. Some save up a paycheck to get their dick wet, while it may not even dent another’s bank account. A few have been married, a few have wanted a girlfriend, and a few have been uncircumcised. You have to watch out for the uncircumcised ones.

I am seemingly the worst escort they could ever pay for. If it weren’t for my tight pussy, youth, and long, blonde wig, they would hate me. (The wig is more for me than them. I hide beneath it like a turtle in her shell. And I slap my clients’ hands when they try to pull on it). I don’t listen when these men speak. I don’t make noises when they fuck, asides from an occasional yawn. And I don’t kiss them goodbye. But I’m successful; I have regulars. I am overpaid for mediocre blowjobs with teeth and half-arched doggystyle. My clients find me endearing. They mistake my silence for shyness and my laziness for inexperience. I’m a cute college girl, and they’re ugly old men who wear dress shoes with jeans and offer me hard candies from their pockets.

Sometimes, when I’m with my clients, I fantasize about my dad’s reemergence. Like, he might rise from the ocean waves and chant my name, or break through my bedroom window with a superhero cape on and take me to some remote island with fairies and mermaids and shit. I may not remember what he looks like, but I’ll know it’s him. I think I’m looking for my dad to save me. Because I’ve convinced myself that this whole escorting thing is his fault, and I need him to come stop it. My dad is a changed man in this fantasy. He’d tell me how disappointed he is in me for sucking old-man dick for money, and then I’d remind him I was only doing it because of my deep abandonment issues or whatever. He would understand, and I would feel nice, having my father be disappointed in me, because I’ve always wanted something like that. He’d tell me I wouldn’t have to escort anymore, and then we’d go to Disney World, because I always used to beg him to take me there. My dad has yet to appear in my window, but I keep hoping he’s been trying to yell at me from the ocean. Since I live in Chicago, I wouldn’t be able to hear it, so I always ask my friend in Florida if he’s seen or heard anything unusual in the water. So far, it’s been a no.

 

I tried to find my father in a forty-eight-year-old man named Richard. He preferred to go by Dick because he thought Richard sounded too stuffy, too formal. He is the only man I’ve ever “dated” who had children. One had autism, and the other just resented him. Probably because he was throwing money at twenty-one-year-old, blonde chicks like me.

I thought Dick was going to be the one. Not my soulmate—but like, my dad. He was the closest thing to what I wanted out of a father, therefore, he was the man who would take care of me and keep me safe and tucked under his wing, like I was a baby bird or a precious jewel. I even considered taking my wig off for him, but we never got around to that. Dick asked if he could be my last client; he wanted me to stop escorting. He wanted exclusivity. I was ready to give it to him, because he sounded disappointed in me when he told me I deserved better than what my other clients were giving me. It was a lecture; I loved that. I loved his disappointment. I rolled around in it like it was mud and dirtied myself up. Please, I mentally begged, let me know how I can disappoint you further.

Even though Dick called me his girlfriend, he still paid me. He’d leave money in my purse. He’d sneak it in as not to make a big deal about it—“it” being paying me for sex, I guess—I’d find it while in my cab the next morning. I never understood why he wouldn’t just hand it to me, or why he was still paying me if I was his girlfriend. But I would dismiss this thought quickly. I’d tell myself he was just taking care of me, like a father would. Sometimes he’d leave me real fancy chocolate too, or leftover bottles of alcohol from one of the few bars he owned (it depended on how big my purse was that day), or sleeping pills. He knew I had trouble falling asleep. It was thoughtful. A guy, especially my own father, had never thought to do little things like that for me.

Dick did lots of little things. He held my hand in large crowds at nightclubs, because he knew lots of people made me nervous. He’d walk me to the bathroom at restaurants because I asked him to. He’d whistle me cabs and make me text him whenever I got home, you know, just to make sure I was safe. These are things I imagine dads do. Maybe not going to nightclubs with their daughters, but everything else.

I brought up the age gap with Dick a lot. I joked about it; sometimes I joke when I’m uncomfortable. There’s always going to be something inherently uncomfortable about trying to relate to someone twenty-seven years your senior. He didn’t think it was funny when I called him old, or told him that he couldn’t keep up with me during sex when he’d roll onto his side and pant. I thought it was kinda funny. But he got really offended by it, so I stopped.

Dick never stopped talking about his children. He would send me pictures of them and tell me about the vacations we’d all take together. He’d tell me about his son’s autism, and that his daughter recently threatened to slit her wrists at the tip-top of his ex’s Malibu mansion. He said she was going through a phase and asked if I could talk to her. Dick had a lot of cash from working in medical technology. Dick also had a lot of baggage. I never questioned why his children didn’t live with him.

“But I don’t expect you to be a mother or anything,” he’d remind me in between sips of a chocolate martini at some bar in River North. I would always be near blackout, per usual when I’m not paying for my own drinks. I’d tell him I didn’t care and I just wanted to get to know him. I’d usually have to repeat that sentence a couple of times because I would be slurring so bad, slouched over my drink, face nearing the rim of my beer can. This was the usual during an outing with Dick; getting drunk and listening to one another try to form sentences was how we got to know each other. I always wondered what we must have looked like to other people.

After a night out, we’d go back to his high-rise apartment and drink more. Dick always had a stocked fridge with all the nice alcohol they keep locked up at stores. I usually vomited in his bathroom and then stripped naked, in that order, leaving my clothes strewn along his linoleum tile, his toilet filled with my puke, unflushed. Dick never saw it because of his cleaning lady, or maybe he was just too much of a gentleman to ask me to start flushing my own vomit. I’d then stumble out naked like nothing had happened, and he would chuckle as if thinking, Oh, what am I going to do with her? I’m not sure if he actually thought that, but that’s what his laugh sounded like. I’d fall onto Dick, who would be sitting on his couch, and he’d finger me or something. We’d be so wasted that it’d be a wonder if he even found the right hole. We’d have lackluster sex on his couch; Dick didn’t want to get any sweat or cum on his bedsheets. Then, I’d look out at the city lights around us from the large window of his living room, and I’d contemplate vomiting again. That was how Dick and I spent our evenings. My clothes would always be folded for me the next morning and a cab would be waiting.

No matter how much glitter I caked onto my cheeks, or how long my Walgreens, false lashes were, I was still my mother’s child. I’d wind up in situations that were seemingly too big for me, and I’d blame it all on anything but myself. It was never my fault. Just like my mom, who claims that, in the prime of her alcoholism, the Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote a song about her. It’s called “Scar Tissue,”—you might’ve heard it. My mom says she’s the young, Kentucky girl in a push-up bra. And if you pry too much on this subject, she’ll just say she doesn’t remember the details. “It was the Jameson,” she’ll remark.

“And it’s the daddy issues.” That’s what I’ll remark. It’s how I wish my problems away. I blame it all on my dad. That’s how I think I’ve ended up in these situations.

“Will you take me to Disney World one day?” I was sitting on Dick’s lap on his bed, a glass of vodka in one hand and my other gripping his shoulder to stay upright. He squeezed my side and told me yes. At that point in the evening, he might as well have had a funnel shoved down my throat, pouring bottles of Absolut down the tube as if I needed it to stay alive.

And that’s not untrue, or anything. I did need it. I needed that Absolut in order to be there. I needed it so that I wouldn’t be thinking. I didn’t want to think about sitting on Dick’s lap and feeling his boner pushing onto my inner thigh. I could tell he wanted to mention that he took his kids to Disney World once, but I was done talking about the kids. Let’s talk about me, I thought.

“You know, I know a lot about Disney World. I could tell you about all the rides. I’m the best person to go with,” I told him. And I meant that. He wouldn’t regret taking me to Disney World. I’d always wanted my own dad to take me to Disney World. And in my drunken stupor, I chose a guy who prefers to go by the name Dick to replace him. He was going to take me instead.

The more I got to know Dick, the more I disliked him. Isn’t that true for anyone, though? I thought Dick was pathetic. I could see why he couldn’t attract someone his own age. I think it was because he thought he was my age. The father persona began to crumble.

He was annoying. Dick liked to talk about himself a lot. I told him I was a writer, and then he made me read his poems about the moonlight and grass and the noises owls make. He had so many fucking poems, and I couldn’t understand why, because they weren’t any good. He bought me clothes I didn’t like and that didn’t fit, and old lady perfume. He’d buy me the perfume my mom wears: Chanel No. 5 (I regifted it to her for Mother’s Day.). He kissed me too much. He was too comfortable touching my face; he’d cup my cheek in public and tell me he loved me over a plate of tacos from a place off of Diversey—another rich people place, with small-ass, rich people tacos. Perhaps if the tacos were bigger, or perhaps if he ever ordered me something more than an appetizer, I’d say I loved him, too. His breath always smelled like gin and tonic. He walked funny, probably because he was always buzzed, or because he had an abnormally large dick for a guy in medical technology. He took conference calls at dinner. He was too into real estate.

And he had two children. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t overlook that detail. How could he focus all his attention on taking care of me with them around?

So I ended it with Dick. I obviously never made it to Disney World on his dime, so I decided to peddle my wares elsewhere. By wares, I mean body; I started escorting again. You could really argue I never stopped since Dick paid me. But it was pretty easy to slide back into things, because most of my clients had never stopped contacting me. My phone was filled with unknown numbers and unsolicited dick pics—every girl’s fantasy. It was time to find a new suitor to take me to Disney World. Suitor? I think I mean father. I keep getting the two mixed up.

“I’m gonna go down to the bar,” Danny, one of my regulars, called from the other side of the hotel room. I was completely naked, my left arm handcuffed to the nightstand with cheap, plastic cuffs, straining my neck upward toward the plastic straw of my Cosmopolitan sitting on the surface above me. I leaned my body onto the side of the bed.

“Okay,” I said.

“I might be gone for a while.” The tone of his voice was high and playful, like he just knocked over someone in a wheelchair and ran away or something. Danny peaked at me from behind the room’s front door as he exited. I could see exactly what he wanted in his face—his raised eyebrows and his half-smile. He wanted to provoke me. He wanted me to plead with him and to acknowledge the handcuffs cutting into the skin of my wrist. Please! Hurry back soon! I’m just dying here, handcuffed to this nightstand. I need to be fucked! That’s what I imagined he wanted me to say. He thought he was being kinky. I could never tell with these types of clients if they were genuinely turned on by this kind of thing, or if they were trying to prove their masculinity. I guess it was flattering that they wanted to impress me. With Danny, I could only manage another, “Okay,” before leaning upward for a sip of my Cosmo. I was tired, and these handcuffs were too tight. I did ask him to bring me another drink, though.

Everyone wants the satisfaction of knowing why I do the things I do, and I can’t give it to them. I don’t know why my dad is involved in this, but I know he is. I can feel it. It’s a lost kind of feeling, drifting in and out of this world of store-brand lubricants and hairy, grey chests. I am aimless. My life is filled with cheap condoms and insecure old men and Hilton hotels, and I couldn’t be unhappier. I’m not finding what I’m looking for. I don’t want my mother’s disappointment; I’m used to that. I want my father’s. Something new. The smell of my perfume is constantly stuck in the crooks of my nostrils, a cheap kind of vanilla mixed with roses or something from the clearance section of Victoria’s Secret, my synthetic wig’s hair caught between the tight straps of my bra. I pick the hairs off and I go to school the next morning. And then repeat. I can’t get out of this loop. I’m trying to figure out why.

It’s not about the money. If anything, I consider that to be damage. The sex is just a hobby, like a workout or a killer scrapbook collection, if it happens to be any good; it never is. I think I just want someone to take care of me. I want someone to want me. It’s nice to have men pay to be with you because it means they want you. There’s affirmation in it, getting handed three hundred dollars. It makes me feel prized and valued. I can never understand why the one man I’ve always wanted to want me, never wanted me. Sometimes I try to play back in my head what I might’ve done to push my dad away. Maybe he knew I watched that Anna Nicole DVD and he resented me for borrowing one of his personal items, like when kids don’t want to share their toys. Maybe he didn’t want me during the holidays. Maybe I was preventing him from doing other exciting stuff with Craigslist or his wrestling career. Maybe he just didn’t like me. I’ve had people tell me they didn’t like me before. If that’s the issue with my dad, I might be able to understand it.

Maybe I took up too much space. Maybe I breathed too much air. Or maybe I reminded him too much of my mother. I don’t really know what happened between them, but I can infer it wasn’t good, because they’re not together or anything. Maybe it was unrequited—because he was jerking off to a porno with a woman who looked a lot like her.

Danny was at the bar, and I was still naked and handcuffed to the nightstand. I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t bring myself to have an existential crisis about it and leave. It’s not like I had the keys for the plastic handcuffs. I didn’t care enough, anyways. Like my unkempt bush, which was resting in between my pasty thighs on the scratchy, hotel carpet beneath me, I didn’t care enough. My pubes stuck out in every direction. Danny had said he liked it. Of course he did; it probably reminded him of the women he used to jerk off to in the seventies. But a bush on me means I’m depressed. And I am depressed. I’m depressed and tired, and I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Because it’s not just sex. It’s never just sex. It’s sex with weird men who can’t name a single song from the past twenty years, or who want to tie you to things, or talk about their children. Maybe both at the same time.

I actually got infected from a guy named Greg. He didn’t clean his foreskin well enough. I should have known better when I saw the thick, off-white goo surrounding the head of his cock. I’ve heard that’s called smegma. I was too startled at the fact that I could barely even see his cock, hidden beneath a flap of fleshy skin, to pay attention to that. Admittedly, it was the first uncircumcised dick I’d ever seen in-person. So, I excused my negligence. Greg wouldn’t foot my doctor’s bills, and I ended up telling my mom I must have gotten infected from a toilet seat at school, because that’s easier to explain than what I’m actually doing. She took care of it and told me to be more careful. If only she knew. We’re close, but I don’t think there’s any easy way to tell your mother that you’re having sex for money. If there is, please let me know.

And besides, this is my dad’s issue—not hers.

One Cosmo down and one wrist handcuffed above me, I thought about Danny. He didn’t strike me as the Disney World type. I’d had sex with him before, and I knew exactly what type he was. He thinks foreplay is me sucking his dick, as if that does a whole lot for me, and he tries to spank me during sex, but ends up missing my ass and instead hits my lower back. It’s because Danny is one of those guys who can’t receive pleasure and do something else at the same time. He grabs me real hard and it hurts, like an Indian burn, or when your cat scratches you. He throws me on the bed beneath him and makes growling noises; I think he’s trying to be dominant. He cums quickly. It feels like only a few thrusts, and he doesn’t want it in my pussy. Danny wants it in my mouth, like I’m swallowing his “essence” or something romantic like that. Then he rolls over and falls asleep. He always pays for an entire night, so I just turn on the TV and watch Dr. Phil or whatever else is on and listen to him snore. Again, it doesn’t scream Disney World to me. Danny isn’t nurturing, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to hold my hand.

I looked toward the wide window of the hotel room, and still, no dad.

 

I dream about Anna Nicole a lot. She holds me in most of them. We lay together and her face sprinkles glitter down on me, little flecks from the apples of her cheeks. I feel like a princess as I rest my face on her massive, silicone breasts. They’re the size of bowling balls and as soft as a bed of kittens, whatever that feels like. But it must be the dream—I’ve been told implants are hard, not soft. She scratches my forearm with her red, acrylic nails and tells me everything is going to be okay. I love Anna Nicole like I love my mom. I wonder what it would feel like to love my dad like that.

I’ve never thought to ask Anna Nicole what my dad is up to, but I should. I have a message I need her to give him, because she can do that now that she’s dead, you know, from Heaven or whatever. Or maybe through the screen of his TV, if he’s even watching Anna Nicole Smith: Exposed, still, with the surge of Internet porn and all. I’d have her tell him this: I think I need you. I say I think because I really don’t know. I don’t know if I need my dad or not. I don’t know why I’m so fixated on him, and I don’t know if he’s really responsible for all the things I’ve gotten myself into. I feel anger for not having normal relationships with men. I feel anger that sex has become some kind of quest to locate someone—anyone—that can take care of me and want me. But there’s something hopeful about searching for my dad in all of this. It gives everything meaning. It gives me hope that this will all stop someday, and I need that. I need that in order to keep going.

I don’t have my dad’s phone number, I don’t have my dad’s address, and I don’t even know his middle name or what his favorite color is. I’ve tried finding him online, and I couldn’t. I could hire one of those private detectives . . . but who has the money for that sort of thing?

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Diana developed her “Laundry Series” during her time in Italy.

 

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Paradise, Nowhere

 

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The Hundred Dollar Bill

 

The roar of the city’s traffic had died down and it was a quarter to midnight. The man had been walking around the dimly lit streets, looking for a new and warm place to sleep. Besides a few couples walking by, smiling and laughing with expensive cologne and red lipstick in thick coats with leather gloves, most of the people were already inside, away from the cold weather with hot food. 

High above the man, through a curtained apartment window across the street, a woman’s silhouette appeared. She was feeding soup to a baby. The shape of her hand carefully dipped her utensil into the bowl laying on a high chair for another spoonful. Before the woman blew on it and raised it to the baby’s lips, the man imagined being there, up close, feeling the steam rise from the hot liquid. For a moment, he closed his eyes and tried to relive the soothing feeling of his father’s special papaya soup flowing down his throat and warming his chest. He then swallowed his own saliva, hoping it’d substitute the hollowness in his empty stomach. 

The man continued to walk down the lonely sidewalk, when a drizzle of rain touched his cheek. Tiny beads of water dribbled on the edges of his thick beard, and right before he was going to give it a quick brush with his hand, a pink and orange poster caught his eye. To his right stood a brightly lit donut shop. “FREE COFFEE. ANY SIZE. TODAY ONLY. SPECIAL PROMOTION,” it read. He entered through a revolving door, stepped into the shop, and grabbed all of his cotton-covered fingers at once, pulling off his tattered gloves, then his hat. The anticipated swirled scents of hot beverages, freshly baked pastries and sweet frosting advertised on the various posters around him were only replaced with a reality of scanty donut pans and a washed down aroma of lukewarm coffee. 

Other than himself, a middle-aged woman sitting on a two-seater table nearby, and a cashier who seemed young enough to be his son, yet old enough to buy his own alcohol, were the only people inside. The sounds of a digital sword slash followed by bubbly point gains filled the silence as the man heard an electronic game being played. He looked toward the cashier and saw his elbows propped up on the counter as he held his phone with his eyes concentrated on the screen. The pinned nametag on his turquoise apron read, “Kyle.” Instead of a pair of eyes, the man spoke to the top of a youthful head of chestnut-brown hair.

“I’m here for the free coffee,” the man said hopefully, pointing his thumb behind his shoulder toward the promotional sign at the front window.

Raising his head after pausing the game, the cashier looked up and immediately covered his nose with the back of his hand. He took a step away from behind the counter. The man strongly smelled of sweat and onions. The man himself knew this, but didn’t realize how potent it had become. 

The cashier saw the multiple loose threads on the edge of the man’s beanie and discreetly scanned down to his waist, looking at the rest of his worn out clothes. “What’d you say?”

“The free coffee,” the man replied.

“Oh, that was for yesterday. It is now. . .12:01 a.m.,” the cashier responded, checking the watch on his wrist. “Actually, now that you mention it,” he said, making his way out from behind the counter toward the front window. “I forgot to take that thing down.” He peeled the tape from the day-old poster, rolled it up and walked back to the counter to place it in the cabinet below the register. He concluded their conversation with a “Sorry, have a good night, sir,” and went back to playing the game on his phone. 

The woman sitting nearby, wrapped in a silk, emerald scarf, carefully observed the man with the corner of her eye as she took a sip behind a cup of coffee. Just before the man was about to leave, the woman got up from her seat. Hasty clacks on the vinyl floor made their way closer toward him. She lightly bumped the large tear on the elbow of his jacket, and a crisp hundred-dollar bill floated down to the man’s shoes. 

The woman rushed out of the shop without zipping up her coat, letting the end of her vivid green scarf flutter, and her scent to linger on, longer than her brief exit. She smelled the way his grandmother did when she was still alive, like shriveled rose petals and a hint of woodiness. He questioned whether or not it was the same perfume his grandmother used to wear or if it was just a duplicate of a similar smell. He was sure the perfume had been discontinued the year she died, because since then, he never saw another magazine ad or TV commercial revamping the line like the companies usually did. The woman could not have been a young ghost of his grandmother because the most money she would ever give her grandson was ten dollars and she certainly would not have left one hundred dollars slip out of her sight.

Outside, shrouds of fog had now crept into the half-empty streets and hazy glows of green stoplights struggled to make their way through the gray thickness. From inside of the donut shop, he listened to the muffled crashing of water pouring onto the sidewalks and squinted toward the front window to observe the droplets of water sticking onto the other side. He grabbed the paper bill from the floor, crumpled it into his jacket pocket and hurried into the revolving door to look for the woman.

The metal handle gave his hands a cold shock, allowing him to remember he had taken his gloves and hat off earlier. He put them back on and as he spun through, the fog seeped into the gaps until he was no longer able to see any of the buildings from earlier except for the warm breath marks made on the glass square in front of him. The smooth swiping of the door’s rubber edges down below began to lag, spinning slower than usual. His effort to push the handle harder only made him feel weaker, delaying his intention to make it outside.

When he finally spun himself out, his first step away from under the shop’s front roof brought him into a cold sauna. His nose immediately turned red and the apples of his cheeks burned from the icy splashes of rain as he began to cross the street, leaving almost no dry remnants of clothing. He followed the faded splotches of streetlights, loosely scattered through the dampened, powdery night air. Out of pure estimation, he quickly turned to his right, hoping the woman had gone the same way. 

What felt like continuous loops around a few blocks gave the man very little sense of time, and his effort in filling the air with “hello’s” and “excuse me’s” gave him no response back. In the distance the man saw the shape of a figure waving its arm as if it were trying to greet him, but when he got closer, it had only dissolved back into wisps of gray clouds. 

The hole from the elbow of his jacket widened into a crooked smile the faster he walked and the sole of his left boot had already opened up, flapping like a wet tongue. With both feet drenched, an even greater rush of water poured into the torn boot. It gave thick, soggy footprints on the cushioned interior with each step he took. His persistent calls after her died down when both the clicking of the woman’s heels and her smell had returned. He found himself looking down in front of him at a pair of feet, quickly walking in black heels. 

They started running as he got closer from behind so he began to run, too, trying to catch up, keeping his sight on them. The thick fog floated generously around the woman, almost covering her entire body. It left only a faded sight of her ankles and below. She wore no stockings. The man caught glimpses of blue and green veins bulging like fragile tree branches from the skin of her pale feet. They were even lightly sprinkled with tiny bruises, and pink blistered lines from her shoe’s tight imprints as they continued to run in the hazy night air. The paper bill was now soaked and the man didn’t know the crumpled paper had found its way to stretch part of itself outward, toward the edge of his jacket pocket, nearly falling out. 

He reached his arm out in front of him, hoping it’d find its way into tapping on the woman’s shoulder, but there was no solid form he was able to touch. Waving his arm from left to right, the same gloomy air remained vacant in front of him, yet the feet were still there, still running. He lowered himself to grab her ankles, and reached for his pocket, ready to give the woman her money back, but once he stuck his hand in his jacket and leaned in closer toward her, just like the hundred dollar bill, her feet were gone.

__________________________________________________

Janae Iloreta is a Hawai’i native and graduating senior at Columbia College Chicago pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. “The Hundred Dollar Bill” is her first published piece of fiction. She will also have forthcoming work published at 101 Words.

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Heaven

12/6.

The neighbors stomp. Every night they stomp; unceasing, unyielding, a constant drumbeat inside my head, but Hammie says I was asleep so when her black-soled shoe came through the ceiling. I didn’t wake up, but she peeked her head through the hole—I see her with the light shining about her and the splintered wood panels like rays of sunshine around her neck—and, later, she told me she said, “o, hi!” anyway with that voice now that I can hear whispering through my ears like honey-butter melted, dripping through my fingertips because, yes, o, yes, she didn’t want to be rude, she said. How could someone possibly be so rude?

They haven’t fixed the hole (of course, of course). “Because,” Hammie says, she knows—and I say, “I know,” she knows—that I am “completely alone and have never not been.” So, “harm is none and done, my dear,” she tells me, and a star-studded rug is placed over the gash above my bed so when their parties go on late into the night-times, it shines like phosphorescent butterflies, and I fall asleep with white stars dancing behind my eyelids because I am alone and have never not been.

 

12/7.

The rug is red and white and blue, but it is not a flag. The stars are white on a backdrop of blue with a band of red around the outside. It looks quilted.

In the day, the rug is dark and the splintered wood around the hole shines like streaks of sunlight coming through gray storm clouds. At night, I can see shadows moving above it as it glows, covering the light for a moment—just for a moment—before blazing bright again as the sun. I can hear nothing, smell nothing, but I know Hammie smells of maple and vanilla like the scent of sleep when awakening, and I like to think that, in the late morning, I can smell her dozing and dreaming.

But I am lying here now, and I smell nothing. It has become night as though by the snap of fingers. The moon is shining through the windows white and blue, streaming across the wood floor because I haven’t yet bought drapes. I can hear Hammie laughing upstairs, and I’m trying desperately not to fall asleep.

12/9.

Still, I haven’t met Bobby, but Hammie tells me of him every day, lying on her stomach on my hardwood floor (because she damns the couch, she told me once) with her golden curls floating around her cheeks and her glittering red-polished fingernails tucked underneath her chin. She’ll lie there and say, “Oh, you’ll love him, darling—just wait until you see him.” (Told me she was that particular type of person that’d rather lie on the floor and “damn every couch and chair between heaven and hell” so long as someone else was lying down beside her. [I thought Bobby must do that, that their apartment was bathed in sunshine, not a piece of furniture in sight.] I said, “Yes, that is a very particular type of person.” [And the first time I’d met her even, she hadn’t sat on my sofa—hadn’t sat down at all, hovered like a hummingbird in the air. “I’m Hannah,” she said, “But they call me Hammie, they do.”

It was just a week into my knowing her, my mattress still bare on the floor, that she rolled all the way down the apartment steps like a log to my door—I heard the steady thump . . . thump . . . thump . . .that drumbeat inside my head—and, invited in, she sat on the brown floorboards, damned my bed, the desk chair, the sofa puking out its fluffy entrails. She sat there crisscross-applesauce, asked me to join her on the floor, my apartment door creaking in with cool October air. But I didn’t. I don’t.]) And I’ll tell her, lying on my bed, “I’m sure he’s wonderful. I’d die to see him actually.” (Because I know if I ever touch the floor by her, I will crumble and melt, I’ll just die: fall apart [and sometimes I’ll just lie down alone on the floorboards and think, Damn the couch, damn the chair.over and over and over, seeing her sitting there away from me, damn the couch, damn the chair.the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen].)

Hammie talks of him fondly. The very first day I met her, she spoke of Bobby so affectionately, standing in my doorway on my threshold with cherry pie encrusted with sugar, talked like I should already know him—this grand creature just upstairs. She said something terribly ramble-y like, kept pawing curlicue strands of hair out of her eyes. She seemed to throw his name in whenever she had the chance as though he were famous. (Carlos said it was because she wanted me to know she was off limits. Annamarie exclaimed she was ten years older: Oh! the nerve!) But I came to picture Bobby this big burly, unruly fellow—this tall, wide, giant; dark haired and hirsute, so very butch and manly, wild in plaid and army greens (so that I’d never dream of little Hammie in any form or capacity), despite the flowery description his girl seemed to give.

I still haven’t met him yet. But when I woke up today, now just three mornings after Hammie’s foot came through the ceiling, I went out to fetch the mail and discovered three pieces of yellow, blue-lined paper all in a row taped to the chocolate colored wood of my door in as straight of a line as I have ever seen. The writing upon it was so sweet and curly I thought it must be Hammie apologizing for her foot broken through the veil of heaven since she’d never really said she was all that sorry. But after grabbing the mail downstairs (which, to my disappointment, was only a bill and a coupon for a department store), I didn’t read the letters—still haven’t done it. I glanced over them quickly enough just to see if Hammie spelled her name with a heart over the ‘i’ before I hurried back inside, but instead I saw printed there,

Deepest & Sincerest of Apologies,

                                                 Bobby M. Chester, Apt. 3N with the silver dragon door-knocker.

with no heart in sight.

 

12/11.

They played “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons” eight times last night.

 I can’t complain.

Hammie kept laughing and I could hear the soft tiptoeing of her feet as she swayed back and forth in Bobby’s big hairy arms above me. I could see them floating around the room in my head, waltzing like angels bowling around that hole in the floor. I saw Bobby tower over her petite frame—pictured her this tiny, white butterfly in the calloused palm of his calloused hand, dancing with his thumb as he spun so lightly around the room, despite his immensity as delicate as a chocolate rose. I thought of Hammie as a butterfly flitting around my throat, butterfly kisses on my eyelids. “Damn the couch, damn the chair.” She landed on my mouth, flew away. I dreamt I danced with her until my ankles bled—until the balls of my feet were raw, until my neck began to crack, until my knees gave way, until my fingers became a part of her waist, until we melted, and Hammie said, “Damn the couch, damn the chair.” and Bobby flew around us, an orange butterfly with a big man’s big head until the breeze his wings created blew us away.

 

12/12.

“I’d complain,” Gayle said, for when Annamarie came, her mother did, too, and her husband waited in their Morris Miner smoking chocolate cigars, claiming, when his wife came back down, that the smell of smoke was only from a passing car. (And three blocks down—I didn’t yet know—Carlos was waiting for Anna [his “girl,” so often he would boast], drinking coffee in the nearby department store.)

“Isn’t there a board? Or a super?” Gayle said, “I’d write a note. I’d complain. You could slip it under their door or put it on their car.” She shook her head disapprovingly, her hair pulled back into a tight, low cinnamon roll bun, not a hair falling out of place. “It isn’t right. Isn’t it sorude?”

And I said, “Well, maybe I will complain,” but Annamarie knew I wasn’t going to—that I couldn’t—and she stared up at the rug peeking through the ceiling, splinters around the edges, the stars so dark and so dull.

Gayle left.

We watched out the window, the bare tree branches obscuring her head. She waved a white-gloved hand, we could see her breath. She got into the car and they drove off. And then Annamarie said something about dancing— “Or a movie, maybe?” I told her I’d make some tea, we could go walk a bit, how was school? How was work? How was Carlos? (I always forget how much I love her until I’m with her again.) She said something about the tea being rather good, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t, and when I dumped mine down the sink, she laughed, gulping hers—scorching hot—down. (I imagined her throat cherry red and blistered like ornaments on a Christmas tree.) She asked me about the writing: how was class? How was school?

I said I hadn’t anything to tell her. “My life is boring. Seriously.” And then she said something about us going to the department store.

 

12/13.

She’s staring up at the ceiling with her head thrown back, kind of tilted to one side, resting on her shoulder just so, leaning on her right arm so that she is stacked up like fruit at the grocer’s. Her slim fingers tap the floorboards and she rubs her temple with her other hand, her palm against her chin, her middle and forefinger moving in slow, violent, little circles, her skin twisting like a ripple by her eyes.

 “Got a headache?”

 “No.”

Her hair is shining in the sun, tinted like copper.

 “Want some water?”

 “No.” She looks like a cat cleaning her fur, bathing in the sunshine. “That’s alright.” She closes her eyes, opens them. She doesn’t look at me. She’s humming Vera Lynn, I think. “I’m fine.” She wears a white shirtdress with three big, brown buttons down the middle and puffy shoulders, her collar pressed down flat against her chest. Her stockings have a run in them, up the calf, exposing that white skin there beneath like milk glass. The sun streaming through the windows looks warm and orangey against her skin, like the tint of summer polaroid pictures lingering around her frame.

Suddenly, she flicks her head back to look at the rug coming through the ceiling and says that Bobby won’t let her wear her character shoes in the apartment anymore. “He thinks I’m going to make holes all over the floor,” she tells me, “And that then we’re going to fall down into your room.” She laughs, “I said you wouldn’t mind. Of course, you wouldn’t, would you?” She lets her head fall from her shoulder to look at me, her smile upside down, her curls gliding over her shoulders, swaying at her cheeks. “What are you writing now?” she asks.

 “A to-do list,” I lie. The sun has gone away from the window. All at once, I feel guilty.

“Ah.” She watches me. I see goosebumps rise upon her arms. She nods and smiles at something far off and away. “Coffee?” Hammie says, getting up from the floor.

 

12/16.

dAmn the COuc H, daMN tHE ChaIr. DaMn tHe c Ouch, DAMn THe cHair. Damn thE CoUCh, Da M NthE CHAiR. dA m n T hE  c o u c h , damn tHe c H A I R . CHAiR T H E damn, cOUcH T H E Damn. couch the DAMNeD, chair the sav ed . CoucH the man- chaIr, mon chéri. Mi aMOUr, m on aMI, the f l o o r. DAMn THe COUCH, DaMN the fLOo r . DA MN the Cha Ir, thE cOuCH, thE wawlLS. dam the floor damn the floor damNthe floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the floor the flor

 

12/18.

She called me, the warm bustle of something around her, and said, “There’s a party on Sunday. I know I haven’t been around much. The sun’s too hot here, I can’t wait for the cold. 3N, door with the silver dragon knocker—you know the place. You’ll come by, won’t you? I’m sure all my plants have died, but stop by, won’t you? Lots of writing material, parties—you’re always writing, you’ll need new material soon. Never see you without that silly pencil behind your ear or that ugly notebook under your arm, I don’t know how you do it. So, stop by, okay? I’ll have Mikey make a pineapple upside down cake and we’ll play games”—A bang-bang against the phone-box—“o, I’ve got to go now, alright? Someone else waiting for the telephone. Okay. I’ll see you Sunday. Okay. Good-bye.” She hung up the receiver without letting me say a parting word.

 

12/22.

11steps to the table from my bed.

15steps to the sink from my bed.

13steps to the door from the sink.

24steps to Hammie’s door from mine.

72hours since I last saw her.

26 steps back to my door from Hammie’s.

19curses in a minute from behind Guy’s door.

7seconds for Straight Rob to lock his door.

3 steps back to the bed from my door.

26seconds without breathing.

47hours until the party.

50days since I moved in.

 

12/24.

I hovered like some lost dog beside her. I wanted every minute with her—to soak up every single moment with her, every breath and every fragmented sentence. I wanted her to stand close to me—so close to me—to say she loved me,yes, she loved me, and I’d tell her I knew because of the way she spoke, the way her eyes looked, the way she sat on the floor and stared up at the hole she’d punctured through the veil like it was the greatest thing she could ever do for me.

But she bought chocolate milk instead: vanilla extract, sugar cubes, purple carrots, broccoli, pineapple in a can (“For the cake, darling,” she said), shampoo in a bag, hot sauce, soy sauce and dough in a cardboard tube, piled up in her red plastic basket so full she leant to one side and wouldn’t let me help her. I wanted to help her.

We went for hot cocoa afterward. She asked for sugar cubes and we waited for them to dissolve as we stood at the window bar in the coffeehouse with her grocery bags sprawled out around our feet. Snow was falling outside, lying softly on the ground like powdered sugar on bushes and trees. I watched the steam from her drink float up toward her face in beautiful white swirls, kissing her cheeks. I wanted to say something because it felt as if something had to be said, but Hammie looked at me out of the corner of her eye—smiled as if to say “Aren’t you lovely, aren’t you justlovely?” and we sipped our hot chocolate in silence because I was afraid what words might escape me if I were to let the simplest one free.

 

12/25.

I thought Sunday would be a good time to tell her that I feel—in the marrow of my bones, I fear—that she’s going to be the only decent thing I ever write about; that I’m never going to get her voice out of my head, that I’m going to drown here thinking, Damn the couch, damn the chair,over and over and over in this silly little apartment, lying on the floor until I rot away. I thought Sunday would be a good day to run and fall to her: to collapse at her feet, to hold her hands, to kiss her face, to say, “Hammie, I love you, I love you—you are the most important thing to me.”

But I didn’t. I didn’t go.

I left.

 I wandered to the grocery store a few blocks away. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go—to be. I trekked through the snow in slippers that now I see are faded and blue, and then I stood in the canned-goods aisle and stared at the pineapples on the shelf under the florescent lights as the people moved around me, the Christmas tunes played and children laughed, and I thought, Damn the couch, damn the floor,over and over and over. I saw Hammie sitting there at my feet on the white tiles, looking up at me with her big black eyes like a doe. I thought, Damn the couch, damn the floor.My arms were cold and they were useless, entirely useless, hanging loose at my sides—suddenly I knew with every certainty that my fear was true: I would never craft a thing better than her, I could never capture her, I could never be anything more than her, and then this pimple-faced boy came up to me, squeaking, “Please, man, you’ve got to leave. We’re closing now.” so I bought a can of pineapples because I felt bad and a can opener, too, and I stumbled out and left as the lights flicked off behind me.

     I shuffled back home and alone, and all I wanted was to cry, to grieve and fall apart and let the ground swallow me. I wanted not to exist. I wanted finally to be stopped, to be silenced so  I stuffed tasteless rings of pineapple into my cheeks to muzzle my tears and wept quietly—like a child (so grown and the loss of all our innocence)—stumbling back to my apartment, her: home. I wanted to let it all fall away from me, but all I could think of was her—her—and everything I could never allow myself to tell her, everything I could never allow myself to be because of her.It began to snow, and I held my eyes open wide so the cold could sting them and blur the red headlights, thinking, Damn the couch, goddamn the floor, over and over and over.

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Katie Johnston is a creative writing undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago. She has been an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review, a production editor for Hair Trigger Magazine, and her essay “The Barriers Faced by Female Writers” was published on the Fountainhead Presswebsite and won the Excellence Award at the Student Writers’ Showcase.