I never imagined any man would ask to marry me. I wanted to try it on: a grown-up’s life of grocery lists, laundry, and arguments about who was supposed to buy new lightbulbs. Peter was a badge I wore that said to the outside world, “How crazy can I be if this normal person has decided to spend the rest of his life with me?”
On Valentine’s Day I sat across from Peter in a restaurant on the Upper East Side. Candlelight flickered, my man wore a tie, and I felt empty. At some point you realize you aren’t waiting anymore for your life to start. Your life’s happening right now, and it’s pretty dull.
I ground my hips on the throw pillow, imagining that it was Ogden fucking me.
Ogden understood me. Ogden pulled away when I tried to hold on. He said, “You’re weird, aren’t you?” He barely touched me, and I wanted more.
Being on all fours. Ogden’s hand pulling my hair. Going in and out of me. I lost the thread, replaying the same image over in my mind. It was like listening to a song on repeat. After a while, you can’t hear it. I contemplated going into the bedroom and getting it on with Peter.
Peter would not be psyched about being woken up. Peter would say, “Do you realize I have gotten five hours of sleep in the last two days?”
A woman masturbating in the living room while her husband slept in the bedroom. Sad. It was a waste of ready-to-go pussy.
I picked up John Updike’s The Collected Stories off the floor and read by the nightmarish light of the muted television. I skimmed some and then put the book back down. Sorry, John; it’s not happening today, buddy. A life spent alone, in a room. Before I’d married Peter, I wrote. I used to think I had something very important to say to the world. People write to be remembered forever, but when you’re dead, how can you care? So what’s the point?
My mother was dying of MS. People actually did get sick out of nowhere and suffered for no reason. My mother suffered alone in rooms. My father died of a heart attack five years ago. It was a shock. I hadn’t realized he’d had a heart.
Having MS means having lesions on your brain and spine, which means your entire body is fucked-up. Only one of her eyes worked. She had periods of general wellness and then periods of sickness they called “flare-ups.” In the beginning, I didn’t understand the seriousness of her illness. I would see her walking with a cane, and then a few months later, she would be walking normally. What happens is, every time you go through a flare-up, not everything gets better when you get better. So her leg that was useless for a month would work again once the flare-up subsided, but she would walk with a limp forever. It is like walking down a street and every so often someone beats the shit out of you. You mostly heal, but some injuries just don’t, and then you go out and walk some more, and someone comes by and beats the shit out of you again.
I subsisted on tea, single servings of Greek yogurt, cigarettes, bottles of cold Starbucks coffee, and sometimes an ice cream bar.
This was how I made tea: I held the pot under the faucet and filled it with water. Sometimes I would scrub a smudge to see if it was dirty or just a worn part of the pot. A roach could have crawled around in there, shitting, or two roaches could have fucked in the twelve hours since I had washed it. When I boiled the water, the germs would boil out.
I dated this guy named Caleb in college who spat in his food while he was making it. When I asked him why, he said, “I dunno, the germs boil out.”
Caleb never wanted to do it. We would be making out, and then he would get up and put on Leonard Cohen, and then he’d get back into bed but turn around, so his head was hanging off the edge. He’d sing softly along with the music. I would be lying there, wide-awake in the dark, with his feet next to my face. Sometimes I was pretty sure Caleb had been my soul mate.
Caleb told me he used to eat his boogers. He told me that one time, while he was driving, he picked a really big one and actually cursed when it fell off his finger.
I sprinkled fennel seeds and cardamom into the pot and dropped in a cinnamon stick. I stared out the window at the stray cats. I smoked a cigarette. I poured almond milk into the pot, turned off the heat after it boiled for a few seconds, and then poured the tea in a mug. Then I squeezed the honey in. I licked it off my fingers and poured more on my fingers and licked it off my fingers and poured more on my fingers and licked it off my fingers.
Tucked away on the second shelf of my bookcase in The Eden Express was the last bag for a real emergency. Careful. Remember the time you ripped it wide open and it went everywhere? Poured out the powder on the cover of the book, a few bigger chips, like paint. Used my debit card to cut it. I imagined Bobby Flay: What you want to do is get the heroin as finely minced as possible. That will make it nice and even, and easier to snort. Rolled dollar bill. Rachael Ray: You want to be able to see through the bill without any folds in the way. And you don’t have to use a dollar bill. That’s what my husband likes, so that’s what we use at my house. Some people like straws because of germs. One time, I couldn’t find anything, and so I tore a page out of a book! Whatever works for you!
Heroin had brands. They worked like any other brand to signal quality and consistency.
Elizabeth said something about it being mixed with fentanyl. Whatever that was. I should have Googled it probably.
A sitcom was on where there’s a fat guy and a frowning wife with a bin of laundry seemingly attached to her waist. Cute child actors who will grow up to become criminals. The women were always dramatic and mad and the men were always trying to understand. Was that what men wanted? To fuck a skinny version of their mothers? They sometimes let the single aunt have a personality, but having a personality meant no man would want you. After the wife left the kitchen, the husband stole a cookie. She shouted from the living room for him to put the cookie back. In twenty years, this will still not be funny.
I didn’t know what to do when men gave me flowers. I would always think, Great, now I will have to watch these things die.
Sometimes I tried on this fake woman persona, and I knew Peter liked it because he got to try on his version of a male persona. I put my hair up and talked in a high-pitched voice and moved my hands around, all animated, like Elizabeth. I talked about how I wanted to get my nails done. Sometimes I would put lotion on my hands. I acted stupid so he could feel smart.
Sometimes I was in love with who I was when I was with him.
If I didn’t try to act feminine, I felt like a dude.
A few more lines. You shouldn’t do too much because then you will have to do more to get the same effect, but then again this was the last of it, so you may as well get blasted.
Nothing was on television.
Raymour & Flanigan. I could hear the catchy jingle just seeing those words on the TV. Then some middle-aged man looking out a window. A commercial for DeVry University. Can you imagine your life being so shitty you’d call up DeVry University to get a degree in computer animation?
Drip down the throat. Warmth spreading out, like pee on a blanket. Music from the speaker plugged into the laptop.