I gave the stick figure a hand and put a gun in it.
“Maya,” Michelle said. “So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they’re sending someone to take over the textbook department.” Michelle was the general manager. She grinned as she clapped her hands silently. I smiled back. She went on, “They’re going to expand this whole section. The counter will come out to here.” I didn’t look up to see where she was indicating because I didn’t give a shit.
“You must be happy you don’t have to deal with textbooks anymore,” I said, slurping melted ice.
“I’ve worked my ass off at this store, and now all the burden and hassle of textbooks will be off my shoulders. I can finally make the store what I always wanted it to be. We can have readings!” she said, beaming and exposing her yellowed, plaque-laden front teeth. Michelle in her fuzzy sweaters, with her cozy beer gut and her slowly rotting teeth.
“Wow,” I said, trying to sound like I cared. My high was wearing off. My nose was a faucet that wouldn’t stop. I wiped snot on my sleeve.
“Listen, I have to go meet John for dinner,” Michelle said.
“Someplace fancy?” I asked. I wondered if it was obvious how much I didn’t care.
“We’re celebrating. He got a promotion.”
“What does he do, again?”
“He does the same thing as Pete does on Mad Men,” she said, sounding as if she had used that line several times before.
Michelle had graduated from NYU, majoring in English, and she would work at this shitty job until she started having babies with her fat husband, and no one would wonder why she looked like shit.
When you’re a fat girl and you make an effort with your clothes and hair, it’s like, “Why bother, you’re still fat.” Like you’re saying to the world you’re content with being fat. But if you just throw on sweatpants, you are this fat girl walking around in sweatpants. Have some self-respect. You can’t win.
After Michelle left, my withdrawal got worse. I was left alone in textbooks. I called up to Mark at the register.
“I have to take a huge dump.”
“Okay, why are you announcing that to the store?” There was laughter. I heard someone clap.
“What?”
“Take your finger off the intercom button.”
I took my finger off it. “I thought it was a one, not an I.”
“I is for intercom. How long have you worked here?”
“I was born in fiction and raised in science fiction.”
“I’ll be down in a second to cover for you.”
Afterwards I stood frozen in front of the toilet, trying to figure out what to do. The toilet had problems flushing toilet tissue, and I had taken the biggest dump I had ever seen. I was simultaneously embarrassed it came out of me and fascinated by how weird my body could be. If only I could cut it up into pieces to make it easier for the toilet to, like, digest it. I looked around the toilet for something I could MacGyver together. There was a generic air freshener that made the shit smell worse by layering a waft of mint on top, sort of like how it’s somehow dirtier to wear crotchless panties than to just be naked. I took the toilet brush and stabbed the shit. I ended up getting shit all over the brush and splashing some of the shitty water onto my sleeve. I was scared that if I kept at it I would end up with shit water on my face and spend the rest of my life scrubbing my face off. I put the shitty brush behind the toilet. No one would know it was me. People see shit, and they think of dudes.
“Don’t tell anyone about the intercom,” I said.
“I wouldn’t, Maya. C’mon,” Mark said. Mark was rail thin. He was Chinese American. Generations of his family had lived in California. There was a hint of surfer dude accent in his voice. He was so small. Whenever I imagined myself doing him, I thought of a fat brown cow sitting on a beautiful little dove.
“I don’t feel well.” My neck was sweating.
“If you want to go in half an hour, I don’t mind closing without you.”
“Mark, you’re too good to me.”
“I’m too nice. That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s your clothes. Oh, and your personality and face.”
“Right. I forgot about those things.”
“Actually, you have a nice face.”
Awkward silence.
“Thanks, Maya.”
“I mean, not for me, but for, like, the world or whatever.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He smiled. He was so sweet. I was a tease.
Mark went back upstairs, and I was alone. No one came downstairs after about seven or so. Only nonfiction and plays were downstairs. I picked up Fun Home, this graphic novel I was reading, but my eyes kept tearing up.
My head was buzzing, and I felt dizzy. I thought of fucking Ogden to distract myself.
I thought of how I was going to say, “Yeah, fuck me, Daddy,” as he pounded me from behind.
I thought of how when he fucked me missionary, he pulled down the cups of my bra so my tits spilled out.
For an old dude, Ogden had a nice body. He was thin but muscular. He had a few white hairs on his chest and belly. He was tall. When he was fucking me on the edge of the bed, I liked putting my hand out and feeling his stomach. I liked how it was hard and fuzzy, and how there was no fat there. You couldn’t tell he was old till you scanned back up and looked at his face. Or his ass. He had an old, droopy, sad ass. Most men have sad asses, but Peter didn’t. Peter had a robust, taut booty that stuck out. I didn’t understand why women liked men’s butts, like how they showed women checking them out in movies.
One time Ogden fingered my ass as he fucked my mouth. I was on all fours on the bed, and he was standing. I pulled back too far, and his cock fell out of my mouth. “C’mon,” he said, and put his cock back into my mouth. I liked feeling like a thing.
I liked feeling like nothing.
There was more nothing in a woman. There was the asshole, pussy, and mouth. But you could also store a baby in the belly and two jugs of milk fit perfectly in each tit.
Imagine the voice-over in a car commercial, and the image of a woman’s naked body on a shiny black surface, the camera slowly panning up. The female body, luxurious and roomy, can accommodate three cocks and three babies at full capacity. One baby sucking on each nipple and one sleeping comfortably inside [show ultrasound of zygote in women’s belly] while there is one cock in the pussy, one in the ass, and one sliding in and out of the mouth.
I imagined being tied to a bed and different men coming in and fucking me.
I was pouring sweat. I was horny and felt gross. The slicks of sweat gathered underneath my tits. My high school best friend, Molly, used to say belly buttons smelled like hot dogs. I wanted to take a long shower, brush my teeth, buy a cardigan, and be a normal human fucking being.
I thought about a man pushing my head down so my forehead pressed against the counter as he fucked me from behind.
I went on Facebook and found this guy, Ian, I knew from high school. He used be hot and wore T-shirts of cool bands you were embarrassed to say you’d never heard of. He had gotten fat, and his status updates were about the food he cooked. “Made vegetable fajitas with peppers, tomatoes, onions from the farmer’s market, avocados, and Mexican cheese, wrapped in a homemade tortilla.” And then there was a picture of what looked like sad brown food covered in a fat scoop of sour cream on a terra-cotta plate. Why did seventeen people like this? Why did some girl named Terry need the recipe to make it for “her hubby”?