Everything Was Fine Until Whatever (4 page)

I have started a band and my gimmick is I only write songs about the neighbor’s dog and pretend to be displacing my emotions.

 

Once I overheard my mom telling my aunt that I was a mistake and I revealed myself from the Lego castle I was crouched behind and told her what I’d heard and she said, “What do you want, I’m only five or six years older than you.”

I will listen to hours and hours of insignificant rambling if you want, but I won’t stop rubbing my mustache until you tell me how you feel about me and my mustache.

I have collection agencies fighting for my attention. Where is my minivan? I just found rockstar parking. Please call Geico and tell them I’ve found someone else. Tell the paparazzi I am in parking section G4 and that I’m picking my camel toe.

I could be charming and sociable if I wanted but then I wouldn’t be mysterious anymore and anyway I’m too busy with my band.

I’ve been asked to write inspirational slash instrumental music for a colon hydrotherapy clinic and I will be getting paid in paper pillowcases and paper bed sheets.

Is Everyone Ready to See My Muscles?

 

Sometimes when I think I’m in love I think, “Wait, no I’m not.”

It seems that I have gotten carried away with my own ridiculous projections of who the person is. No one can fulfill my projections. That’s just science.

Anyways, people only love each other so they can complain about each other.

I asked my mom straight up, “What is it exactly that you like about my paternal uncle, who you have been dating for five years, since around the time I first met my dad and he introduced us to his brother, my uncle, your boyfriend?”

I’m a strong and independent woman, not a dyke.

I’m confused about my sexuality, not my sexual orientation.

As in,
is this my labia minora? It seems big.

Or
should I be running out of lube this quickly?

My left arm is asleep but I am moving forward with this poem anyway.

Can I carry your children for money?

Would you like to harvest my eggs for money?

Or do you need a babysitter?

everyone told me i looked different today. my mom said this is because maybe i’m ovulating.

she said maybe i’m either happy or ovulating.

The moral of the story is, do you think I’m fat?

 

I want to know everything you know about me, what does it mean that I talk the way I talk, does that affect you, I’m serious, I’m honest, I’m
that
selfish, I’m really curious about this.

You always tell me who I am, I like that, it makes me like you, I want to be more like what I seem like to you, I like that version of me, it makes me be able to stand you.

Let’s talk about my feelings and then your feelings about me.

I used to like small glass figurines, I collected them, it got a little out of control, I ran out of places to display them, does that give you any insight here?

I want to own you and take you far away where we can embarrass each other in public, I like you, you are impossible, you are insane, this is crazy, be my husband, I want anything, we will die before anyone realizes we’re joking, did I just say ‘we’ I meant ‘me me me.’

I’m busy tonight, how about tomorrow, I only really like you for your body anyway, it is so fucked up, hilarious, I want you under my covers with me far away thinking about you, I love you, let’s talk to each other using only allegories, let’s shake hands, please shake my hand, let’s be married and hate each other, let’s move away just to make our friends sad. I want us to be sad forever together and be miserably celibate out of an inability to speak to each other in ways that don’t turn us both off.

I want to text message my mom something cute like
I met a boy
, which is why I’m wearing makeup today.

 

I am feeling like myself, which feels like I can say anything I want. It feels like I’m not even watching myself on a television screen just above your head. And I’m talking in a way that sounds like I think no one else is around to hear me.

Watch this. I can make fun of myself in a way that makes you feel bad about yourself and I can do this and make you think I’m insecure at the same time and you will think it’s totally charming.

Let me guess. You want to get a drink with me sometime. Just kidding. I don’t have a boyfriend. I just wanted to see if you’d believe me.

If I rest the weight of my upper body on this rail you will think I am either sick of talking to you or trying to show you my boobs. And that is exactly the kind of tension we need to move this relationship forward.

By
move this relationship forward
I mean
give me your phone number and I will probably not call you.

By
probably
I mean
drunkenly
.

And by
phone number
I mean
expensive jewelry
.

I don’t think you’d like me on many other days. I know I am sarcastic and accommodating, but I am also small and quiet and won’t like you very much or very often.

I’m not mad. I just can’t find my cell phone to pretend I have a call.

I bought some pills, morning after pills, to plant in my purse so that one day they might spill out and someone might see them and believe, however briefly, that I was having sex or even had a boyfriend.

What Are You Wearing!

 

There were three boys: Damien, Nick, and Raphael.

Tanya said, “Let me see here.” And then, “Who has the nicest hair?”

Raphael raised a hand. It was clear that he did have the nicest hair.

Tanya said, “Who is the most attractive in general?”

Raphael said, “Me, again.”

No one considered disputing this, either.

Nick said, “Ask something about being funny.”

Damien said, “Or about emotional availability.”

Tanya said, “Are any of you single?”

Raphael said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Nick said, “I’m only one person, yes.”

Damien said, “Could you repeat that?”

Tanya said, “Um.” And then, “Yeah.”

When she was fourteen, Tanya cut her hair into a boy’s bob, and her grandma stopped loving her until it grew past her ears. They called her into the principal’s office the day it happened, to tell her that her grandma could finally love her again, and that she could go home early. On the way home she saw a mountain lion sleeping with dried weeds tangled in his whiskers.

Tanya turned around and said, “What color are my eyes?”

Damien said, “Green.”

Raphael said, “Grey.”

Nick said, “What difference does it make?”

Fable

 

Maya was a startlingly beautiful girl, and for this reason had trouble making female friends. Often, out of desperation, Maya phoned her mother, Catherine, to gush about her current love interests.

“Just make sure you get tested regularly,” Catherine would say, for though she was deeply disturbed by her daughter’s sexual candidness, she understood the root of Maya’s social inadequacies, and wanted her to feel as normal as possible.

Angela was one of those girls who knew the shoe size of every guy on the lacrosse team, including Coach Feseden, who wore embarrassingly unfashionable Keds and purposely ordered the cheerleader’s skirts one size too small. Angela teased and manipulated Maya with hyper girl talk between classes.

“Coach Feseden is sooo cute, don’t you think, Maya?”

Maya, wanting terribly to be invited to Angela’s Sweet Sixteen party, agreed, and soon developed a crush on Coach Feseden.

For a long time, no one knew where Coach Feseden took Maya. Catherine went on prime-time television begging America for help in finding her. After a few months, everyone assumed he had left the country and that there was nothing they could do. Catherine suffered and, being the only active psychiatrist in the Tristate area, refused her services to everyone, even the psychologically neediest.

People self-medicated. They lost their jobs. Suicide rates skyrocketed. Organic products were rotting on the shelves because everyone was too depressed to care about their health anymore. They begged Catherine to analyze their psyches, to prescribe just one little teeny insignificant bottle of Seroquel®, but she wouldn’t.

“If I must suffer then everyone must suffer,” she said, and made funny faces at a nearby baby.

Deer Grazing

 

You’re standing in front of a painting of two deer grazing. You’re at home. This painting belongs to you. You see yourself in the deer. You see yourself as one of two. You notice that one of the deer seems to be trying to impress the other deer by grazing in a very sexual manner. You think that this must be the deer that represents your boyfriend; he would totally try to have sex during a meal. “Hahaha,” you think to yourself. The other deer isn’t eating, her chin is just resting on the ground. You would think she was eating unless you looked really carefully, like you are now. And actually, you realize, upon noticing how wide and vacant her eyes are, how shiny and glazed they are; she’s stuffed. A hidden pin holds up her tail. Her fur has clearly been airbrushed, the natural color long faded away. She’s been dead for a long time and no one seems to notice. You remember you need to buy makeup.

Please consider this a cry for help.

Your Only Memory of Him

 

Your shirt was off and he was smelling the area between your breasts. As he moves his head, the area gets larger and larger until your breasts are at least a mile away from each other and he has fallen asleep between them.

At least no one thinks I’m having fun.

I will wrangle your turd for two small payments of $59.99

and and I will throw in two free lemon zesters.

Things I Know About Men

Nobody teaches men ‘the sooner the better’ in terms of when to ask you to take off your top. Everybody thinks they’ll just learn that on their own, I guess. Men also drive cars sometimes.

Things I Know About Egg Donation

Parents, when given the option, choose egg donors with long legs and big tits.

Things I Know About Alcohol

Alcohol is a tool of self-discovery. Drink four shots to see into the future. Drink five shots to heighten your sense of gravity. Drink six shots to double your chances of conception. Drink seven shots to undo the past. Drink eight shots to develop healthy sleep patterns.

Things I Know About Condoms

What do you do with a box of 50,000 condoms? Put the box by your bed and when people come over and look inquisitively into the box, make an exhausted, dreamy expression.