MADDIE: Okay. Um. Did you have any other questions to ask, so we can keep pretending this is an interview?
NITA: I wasn’t pretending! This is an actual thing. You’re just . . .
MADDIE: Just what?
NITA: An outlier.
MADDIE: [Snorts.] Right. Thanks. Just what I always wanted to be.
NITA: I did have one other question. But I don’t know—
MADDIE: You can ask.
NITA: Well. I . . . So. I’m still curious? About the scars on your back?
MADDIE: Oh.
NITA: What are they from?
MADDIE: A car accident.
NITA: Really? They look like scratches. Like—
[Chair scraping.]
NITA: Wait, Maddie—
[Thumping, footsteps. A door opening, and the sound of traffic.]
NITA: Maddie, please, I’m—
MADDIE: Turn it off.
NITA: What?
MADDIE: The recording. Turn it off!
NITA: All right, see, I’m turning it—
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
NITA: Okay, it’s . . . 1:13 in the morning, September 29th—no it’s the 30th now. Maddie just left, she said she had work in the morning so she couldn’t stay. Um. I kinda wish she had, but I’m—it’s probably more than I deserve, that she stayed this long and this late. That she didn’t just tell me to fuck off when we were at the café.
We talked for a long time. She told me a little bit about the car accident, and . . . One of her friends was in the car with her and . . . Maddie didn’t just, like, come out and say it, but reading between the lines, uh, this other girl didn’t make it out. I shouldn’t have been such a nosy shit, but I—
This project, like so much in my head, sounded like it would be really cool. My ethnography, LOL. You can’t see it, but I just did really big air quotes. Why not interview the people that I fuck and then edit it all together and find some deep and underlying truth about the nature of, whatever, queer millennial sexual practices? I figured I’d end up on This American Life and then get, like, a genius grant or something eventually. The first few interviews were cool, because, like, yay, getting laid in the name of art. But this thing with Maddie is . . .
We’ve got a date for Friday, and I’m, like, scared shitless and also hella excited. I like Maddie a lot. A lot a lot. I’m leaving the recorder at home. Wish me luck that I don’t fuck things up more than I already have.
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
[7 seconds of breathing.]
MADDIE: You’re asleep right now. Which is good, because, like, I don’t know how to tell you that I don’t really want to be part of your project. The ethnography of the people you sleep with. I just . . . I’ve been having a good time with you, and I want to keep having a good time with you. Being an outlier was all right, but I think I wanna . . .
[Soft snore. Rustling cloth.]
MADDIE: [Whispering.] Maybe it’s not something I should say out loud yet. It scares me how much I’ve already let you in. But I really like you. I wanted you to have a record of me saying that, just in case I . . .
[4 seconds of soft breath.]
MADDIE: It’s probably too soon to be worried about that.
[Rustling cloth. Nita stirs. The sound of skin touching skin; comfort.]
MADDIE: I don’t want to be just an outlier, okay? Let me be something more. For as long as I can.
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
VOICE: November. Sixteenth. Two thousand thirteen. Voicemail from phone number seven seven three—
[Garbled.]
MADDIE: Hey, it’s Maddie. I have a favor to ask you, and it’s a pain in the ass, and I wouldn’t be asking you if you weren’t my last hope, but . . . Anyway. I’m flying home for Thanksgiving and my ride just bailed on me. Do you think you could take me to O’Hare? Sorry, I know it’s a pain in the ass to go to O’Hare, and my flight is at the ass crack of dawn and traffic will probably be terrible. I will repay you with, like, massive amounts of your booze of choice. You can ask me prying and personal questions and record them for the thing. Are you still doing the thing? You haven’t mentioned it in a while. Anyway. Let me know. About the ride, not the thing. Okay. Bye.
VOICE: End of message.
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
VOICE: November. Twenty-second. Two thousand thirteen. Voicemail from phone number seven seven three —
[Garbled.]
MADDIE: Hey, it’s me. Sorry, I know it’s late, just wanted to let you know I got in okay—
FEMALE VOICE: Who are you calling? Is it that girl you were telling me about?
MADDIE: [Muffled.] Mom, shut up. [Clear.] Anyway, it’s all good here. Thanks again for dropping me off at the airport.
FEMALE VOICE: Invite her too. Have her come with you when it’s time.
MADDIE: Mom, stop.
FEMALE VOICE: [Close to microphone.] Come for Christmas!
VOICE: End of message.
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
NITA: Dear ethnography diary, or whatever this is now. Am I a terrible person? All signs currently point to yes.
I have, at this point, moved beyond Facebook-stalking my outlier—listen, that was her joke at first, not mine, and I think there’s a three-month minimum before you can actually call someone your girlfriend. Point is, I’ve moved past casually Facebook-stalking Maddie and into deep Facebook stalking.
I wanted to look at pictures of Maddie as a kid. I just did, okay, I stand by that, I stand by my own weirdness, because, yeah, when I say it like that, it makes me sound like a weirdo. But hopefully a romantic weirdo. Anyway. So I dug through Maddie’s Facebook looking for pictures and couldn’t find any picture of her pre-2009. Nothing. And, like, I don’t know, maybe she was an ugly teenager or something or wanted to do an online makeover. But there’s not even pictures that her friends had posted.
And, like, because I was bored on the Internet, and because I’m a jerk, I went and searched for [garbled], her hometown, and I couldn’t even find it. And that’s where it stops being sort of jerky and starts being kind of stalkery, because then I actually went to the library and looked in an atlas and still couldn’t find it. Nothing.
[13 seconds of ambient silence. A siren passes nearby. It fades into the soft noise of birdsong, barely audible.]
NITA: I don’t know why, but this feels like . . . a red flag? Yeah. And if it was anybody else, I’d probably ghost. Block her number, stop answering her texts. I should have renamed my project: autoethnography of a ghost. Wait, no. A ghoster? I dunno. But, like, I’ve ghosted everyone that came before Maddie, and usually for similar stupid-ass reasons. Except for my high school girlfriend, because you can’t really ghost someone that you had four classes with, although trust me, I tried.
[12 seconds of ambient silence. Nita sighs. Her breath has weight.]
NITA: This is the most masturbatory thing I’ve ever done as an artist. Except for that time I pretended to masturbate onstage. Ugh. Nita out.
[End of recorded material.]
[Beginning of recorded material.]
[Garbled.]
MADDIE: —boutique hotel, and I swear to God, they, like, origami the pillowcases and towels.