Everything Was Fine Until Whatever (5 page)

Held Together Wrists

 

He came over and we studied my water purifier together.

“It looks like it needs a new filter,” he said.

“But I love this filter,” I said. “Sometimes I think it’s the only thing in my life that’s consistent.”

We drank water and I tried to think of a way to make him hold my wrists together without asking him to do it. Usually, if he was around, especially if I was fully awake, I was trying to make him hold my wrists together without telling him to do it. It hadn’t ever worked. It’s just that it wouldn’t’ve been special if I had to tell him to do it.

“Why don’t you ever use my name in the stories you write about me?” he said.

“I use your name all the time,” I said, “I’m using it right now.”

For twenty dollars, I could buy a new filter. But for forty dollars, I could buy a whole new water purifying system and turn the whole world upside down.

“What do you think of that?” I said.

“I don’t know if a new water purifying system will change your life that dramatically.”

“It’s not important that there’s drama,” I said, crying, having poked myself in the eye while gesturing for dramatic effect.

We didn’t used to fight like this. Or try to change each other’s minds. I didn’t used to write stories about small things without trying to make them seem significant. But we were in a national economic crisis and things had changed, yes.

I, for one, had changed.

“I wish I was rich,” I said, “Or in love. Rich or in love.”

“I hope you’re not trying to start a conversation about the economic crisis,” he said. I saw him looking at my wrists and got a hopeful feeling. There was something beautiful about him that I couldn’t quite put to words. Something about the crevices in his face made me believe I could be a good stage-makeup artist.

“I will buy you this filter,” he said, “If you’ll pretend we don’t know each other at the cash register.”

I’m writing about love because no one else ever has and because I’m wearing jeans that make my butt look good.

 

I have this friend who has this boyfriend who isn’t really a boyfriend but he emotionally abuses her, I heard. He figures out what she’s insecure about and then gives her really transparent compliments that make her feel bad about her personality. She tries to pretend her feelings are hurt. I used to think the adjective a person uses the most often is the word that most accurately describes what kind of person they are. But this friend never uses the word ‘submissive.’

They have a date one night, and my friend finally gets up the courage to tell him how much she loves him, but before she can say anything he goes, “Have you ever been in love?”

And she says, “No, I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. No.”

And he’s like, “I have. It’s really great. You should be in love. Only not with me. You shouldn’t fall in love with me. I have a lot of very lovable friends I could introduce you to, though.”

And she goes, “It’s okay,”

And he says, “Being in love is really great, I think. You should be in love. You should try it.”

And she says, “I don’t think we should talk about love.”

And he says, “Why? It doesn’t matter. I was in love with this girl and we dated for three years but it was on and off so it was funner that way.”

And she’s like, “Cool.”

And he says, “That was pretty condescending.”

And she says, “How old are you?”

And he says, “Twenty-one.”

And she says, “I’m twenty-two.”

Even an idiot could wake up in the morning and eat his groceries and earn money and figure out what was wrong with his life and still have time to be a normal, excitable, somewhat apprehensive boyfriend.

But this idiot isn’t a boyfriend.

A boyfriend would want to spend the night.

After the date my friend called me sounding bored and exhausted.

“Today I had a date and my date fell asleep during the date,” she said.

“Is that what the entire date consisted of?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “but that’s the only part worth talking about.”

Aftermath of the 90’s

 

You send him a text message explaining why you are sending him a text message. “Yr famous,” it says, “want 2 hang out?” He texts you back hours later while you are stealing fountain soda from a Burger King, “Ya OK. Want 2 steal salads from Sizzler or something l8r?” This sophisticated choice in restaurant makes you worry about your class differences, but you meet him at Sizzler and hope there isn’t a theft protection device on the salad bar. You share a plate of pickled beets and chicken wings on the curb three blocks away and have a conversation about music that you only barely have a grasp on. He tries to convince you that something something contemporary alternative something easily applies to rock theory, something something something. You hold firm ground against this concept, and he affectionately calls you old fashioned. You kiss with greasy chicken wing lips and hold hands back to your bicycles, where you exchange chicken salts once more and ride off separately, not looking back.

Telescope

 

My dad bought a telescope as a prelude to the sex talk he would give me the next month.

“This is Saturn,” he said. “And here is a small star.”

He said I could point the telescope at whatever star I wanted. I said he could go ahead, and that I didn’t care very much what we looked at.

“Me and your mother used to go to the park at night and look at the sky together.”

“Look, that star looks kind of bluish.” I tried to point the telescope in the direction of the bluish star, but aiming a telescope is pretty hard.

“Should we stay out here much longer?” I asked. I wanted dinner.

My dad looked at me in a way I understood to be meaningful. He was forcing a moment. But I knew that, as an eleven-year-old girl, I was not responsible to figure out what the subtext was. I suppose my dad was always trying to tell me how sad he was inside.

“It’s just that I’m hungry,” I said.

My diary used to be filled with positive body image affirmations, but now it is filled with anxiety about debt and weekly observations of this weird mole I have.

WTF QT Sup

 

He spelled his own name incorrectly, P-o-l, and said, “That’s the way I pronounce it.” It didn’t match his identification card, I told him, and his paperwork was probably going to get lost.

“My paperwork,” he said, “is inconsequential. I’m here to get my nipples pierced.” His attitude earned him some deliberately lost paperwork. I called him up to the counter to give him some new questionnaires to fill out. And a dried out pen.

“I see my forms right there under that Chinese take out box,” he said. I told him that this was a common occurrence, that we can’t always keep track of paperwork that is filled out inaccurately, and to try not to take it personally. Sometimes these things just get lost in the system. We’d be with him as soon as he turned in the new completed forms.

When he took his seat, I looked over his original paperwork. Pol Few, 32 years old, male. He even sounded hot on paper.

The chief body piercer, Stan, came to the front desk and asked if there were any appointments, and I said no, not at the moment. I said if he wanted to, he could go grab lunch or run an errand while things were slow.

I watched Pol scribble on his questionnaire, trying to get his pen to work. He had the body type I’m usually attracted to, not fat or muscular, but round, and taut.

Pol came up to the desk and handed me his new paperwork. He asked me when he could expect to be seen and I explained that the chief body piercer had an emergency to attend to, but should be back shortly. I asked that he please bear with us so that we may pierce his nipples with the care and efficiency we are reputed for.

Pol flipped through a tattoo design magazine. I stared at his reflection on my computer screen, imagining my body parts in his. Lips in nostrils, feet between buttocks, neck between thighs, slippery mouth in crook of neck.

My biggest problem was that I could make mistakes over and over for years and still not ever figure out what I’ve figured out. My other biggest problem was that I hadn’t been naked with a man in over ten months. A lot can happen in ten months. New underwear had been bought, gotten old, and been thrown away during that time. The exact length of my pubic hair began to seem trivial. My friends suddenly felt they had the right to be surprised and upset if I didn’t return their phone calls within eight hours. My mom asked me if I was a lesbian. My condoms expired. I started watching David Letterman every night and then had to watch it just to get to sleep. I finally found a florist I liked and she died. I read the Diary of Anne Frank and got upset. I completely forgot about my phone bill for five months and then remembered and paid it and didn’t feel different in any way about anything.

The Protagonist

 

Recently, I saw a movie about a protagonist and her love interest who is perfect for her in every way, but who she is destined never to meet. Viewers go back and forth between the protagonist’s painfully lonely life and her love interest’s equally depressing and pointless existence. In one scene, we see a close-up of the protagonist as she moves her lips around for an extended amount of time, as if searching the alphabet for a letter that feels like it will begin the sentence she wants to say but doesn’t quite have the words for.

Then she says, “Pepperoni,” and someone hands her a slice of pizza.

The general sense I got from the movie is that life is futile.

About halfway through the movie, the love interest is completely dropped from the film with no explanation.

The protagonist ends up with someone who thinks she’s really hot.

TIRED OF WASTING MONEY BY EATING HEALTH FOODS? THAT'S A PROBLEM

TOO MANY BILLS? SUICIDE!

HAVING A TOUGH TIME FINDING A DATE? WE CARE!

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? EMAIL MY COUSIN HELENA - WE HAVE SIMILAR BONE STRUCTURE!

DEPRESSED AND/OR UGLY? WE DON'T KNOW!

EDIBLE UNDIES STUCK IN HAIR DRYER? YOU MUST HAVE A COOL LIFE!

TROUBLE GRASPING INFINITY? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY!

COLLEGE GRADUATE? JOIN THE MILLIONS JUST LIKE YOU!

SUICIDAL? SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU - I'M GOING DOWN A WATER SLIDE!

IDENTITY CRISIS? WHAT'S UP!

DRUNK? DO SOME TEXT MESSAGING

DREAMT OF LITTLE ALIENS RUMMAGING THROUGH YOUR TRASH WHILE YOUR SISTER MORPHED INTO A SNAIL CREATURE? THAT'S SO INTERESTING - CAN YOU TELL ME THAT STORY AGAIN?

Manipulation, Energy Drinks, and Time Travel

 

Seriously, I will become a TV executive just for you. I’ll buy up all the television stations and make sure my executives only hire program managers who only hire casting directors that only cast moderately attractive girls. We’ll make the moderately attractive girls famous, me and my crew. You’ll never see a girl on TV prettier than me.

I’ll buy chocolate covered cherries and drop them into your mouth from skyscrapers as you unknowingly walk by. I’ll put my name on them somehow, so you know they’re from me. I’ll teach you Braille. Tongue Braille.

I’ll be yours forever. I won’t even look at other guys. I won’t answer their phone calls even if they’re business related. I won’t manipulate them. Unless you want me to. I can treat guys badly for your entertainment. I will lead them on for months, answering their text messages using an increasingly sexy vocabulary. I will call them ‘Beast’ in private and then, at a time you determine is right, I will humiliate them irrevocably. I will laugh at their serious comment about how they feel about me, mispronounce their name, and then the people from
What Not To Wear
will come in and ask if they want to be on
What Not To Wear
. I will coordinate it so that the people from
What Not To Wear
come in at the right time. I’ll record the event with my personal video camera so the video editors from
What Not To Wear
will have more humiliating footage to choose from.

I can manipulate guys more subtly, if you’re not into reality TV and everything. I can say like, “Eee-yeahhh,” after they say something, like people do. I can be condescending. I can breathe in deeply and raise my eyebrows while they talk to me.

I’ll cancel Netflix, I don’t know why, but I swear to god I’ll do it.