“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.
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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.
Problems
Among other things, Jessica knew the names of all her friends by heart. She knew when to use nicknames and when not to. She knew how important the difference was.
Whenever she had a kitten she ignored it. She didn’t want to get too attached to its cute kitten form. By the time it became a cat she had completely abandoned the idea of ever being close to it.
Jessica let her friends know things about her personal life. She told people when she felt drunk, for instance, if there were people around and it was appropriate to say such a thing.
She wanted to write an email to someone she once knew. She wanted the email to say just his name, and nothing else. She thought she would become very emotional if she ever received an email from him with just her name in it. It seemed so powerful.
She just wanted him to know she still thought about him and thought about his name.
There were things she had said to him that she had never said to anyone else. There was a time she let him express how strongly he felt for her over the phone while she remained silent. He had never done that before.
“I have a boyfriend,” she said finally.
“You didn’t tell me,” he said.
And she called him again a few months later, but it wasn’t the same.