The word “hubby” made me cringe.
Molly was on Gchat.
Maya: what’s with Ian’s posts every day about what he eats?
Molly: jesus, I know. he’s always making quinoa and then covering it in a tub of cheese
Maya: he’s getting fatter and fatter
Molly: yeah, he’s probably eating a box of donuts right now covered with a box of donuts
Maya: remember when I stole his sock for you? you were obsessed
Molly: gawd, I hate time. he used to be so fucking hot and now he’s like the worst bitch ever. remember his hair?
Maya: how’s nathan?
8:35 PM
Molly: I’m in post sex cloud of clouds
Maya: you’re still hooking up with him?
8:36 PM
Molly: i couldn’t walk straight when i left his house today. he found a way to bang straight into my g-spot for like a thousand years. i went cross-eyed. this would be the highlight of any fat mom’s life.
8:38 PM
that’s probably TMI. sorry.
Maya: no it’s awesome
8:39 PM
Molly: yeah. it kind of freaks me out that we aren’t done figuring out what to do with each other’s bodies yet. i predict at least another year until this shit wears off.
8:40 PM
i’m sorry. it’s boring.
8:42 PM
Maya: i’m supposed to see ogden tomorrow
Molly:!!!
Maya: it’s so over
Molly: why do you think that?
Maya: he’s making me feel like shit all the time. i feel like he hates me. he really likes anal. do you think that means he’s like 2 steps closer to gay on the kinsey scale or a misogynist?
Molly: misogynist. Oh god. did I tell you I think nathan does that thing where he hangs himself when he jerks off?
8:44 PM
Maya: like David carradine?
8:45 PM
Molly: there’s a rope in his bathroom but i’m scared to ask cuz i don’t wanna embarrass him. yesterday was nathan’s birthday. he’s 39. i’m in love with his forearms. hopeless case over here! good lord that was intense today. what’s a girl to do? just float around on it when it exists, i guess.
8:52 PM
i need to smoke hash and watch tv now.
8:53 PM
maybe i’m a nympho. do you think there are other women out there who would make such a big deal out of fucking?
8:55 PM
Maya: yeah, fucking is universally and historically something people make a big deal out of. love, fucking, and art. do you still ever paint? i still have that one you gave me for my birthday somewhere. it was really good.
8:56 PM
Molly: boo. i was never talented. i didn’t care so i was like free or whatever. having a kid has made me boring and fat and i can’t even enjoy this nathan thing cuz i don’t know how to be the kind of person who doesn’t care if it goes away or not. i’m in an old lady panic about it.
8:58 PM
the sex got better last month. by a mile. he used to be really selfish and weird in bed, which i just happen to think is hot. but now, i’m having like blackout fireworks stuff
Maya: i’m so jealous. last time ogden didn’t even want to
9:01 PM
Molly: the same thing happened with me and nathan where we didn’t fuck for a while and i thought maybe that was the end, so i asked him over e-mail “do you think we are winding down?” and he just said “i’ll wind you down.”
oh don’t be jealous
i have a kid so i have to feel like i’m doing something wrong all the time. at least your life is still your own to fuck up.
When I got out of the store, the cool air felt good on my hot skin. My hoodie was getting wet. I smelled rank. I broke into a run. Passed the couples, dodged umbrellas. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
Fall off the Earth. Get high and think about how you should stop getting high.
My life was my own to fuck up. At least in America where you know you’re free.
When I was kid, I was always on airplanes. I was an army brat, so we moved a lot. I would imagine how if the plane crashed others would be saved before me. I imagined the frustration rising up in me. Wanting to shout, “Do you have any idea who I am?” There would be no way to tell them I was special. That I knew somehow I was destined for greatness. I thought it would be a misunderstanding if I died.
But then you grow up, and all the extras are real people. Like when you look down from a bridge and have to wrap your mind around how in each little toy car is a real person with a whole life. There are smart people everywhere. There are idiots everywhere. There is no order to it. There is no reason you’re not dying in a cancer ward and some little kid is.
Ran up Elizabeth’s stoop. I could hear the rats rustling just out of my peripheral vision. After I buzzed Elizabeth, I turned back and made myself stare at the rats bursting out of the garbage. Some were going into the hole in the garbage bag while other rats were running out, their skin touching as they passed one another. It made me jumpy, like one was about to run up my leg. Rats had teeth.
Molly once told me that her friend had a male rat, and when it went down her arm, she could feel the rat’s balls on her skin.
All Elizabeth’s furniture had been found on the street or looked as though it had. The sofa had a maroon velvet sheet with black roses on it that was always sliding off. There was a sticker on the mirror of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom that read, “Fuck You! I’m Batman.” Noah, her ex, had his paintings hung up on the wall because he didn’t have the money to put them in storage. Or so he claimed. She had dumped him nearly two years ago. There was something sinister about the way he left his stuff around. It was probably some kind of male territory type thing, like, “My shit is here so this bitch is still mine.”
Noah’s paintings were creepy. They looked like what would happen if Norman Rockwell were possessed by Charles Manson. They featured adolescent boys wearing white briefs and disturbing white masks with horns or snouts. A lot of the scenes were in nature. There was one of a little girl stabbing a giant fuzzy panda, and blood poured out of the wound and spattered her long dress.
You live in New York, and you’re so cool. You have an apartment in the East Village, and you call yourself an artist. But after a while, you forget what it was you were so excited about. There is nothing here for you. You feel like a sucker every day paying fourteen bucks for a pack of smokes. You take stock of your resources, and you don’t have anything. You call yourself an artist, but you work fifty million hours a week just to sleep in a room where only a bed fits. You go to bars where you can’t sit down or hear anyone talk. You’re a hipster in New York City. There are a million of you, and it doesn’t matter that you believe you’re talented, because no one cares and you’re only getting older. The thing you didn’t realize when you were fourteen and thought Kurt Cobain was God was that not every weirdo with an ironic tee from Urban Outfitters makes it. There are a lot of people in their sixties, toothless, broken, and poor, who have stories of almost making it. At what point do people hear “loser” when you say “artist”?