Mavis’s face was like Munch’s Scream painting, all horrified wide eyes and open mouth, as I turned toward her with my dead father’s charred bones and fingernails splattered across my face and crackling between my teeth. It was like coming home from a day at the beach, except replace “sand” with “gritty Sam Irby penis and entrails” lining my nostrils and in between my toes.
“FUCK!!!” I shouted, tasting burned human flesh on my tongue as I shook eyeballs and elbows off my dress. What hadn’t ended up in my face hole was floating like a large clump of dust slowly down the Cumberland River. Is that really all there is? I’ve had more pomp and circumstance while taking out the fucking recycling. Horrified, I stood frozen at the edge of the water.
—
As we climbed back up the hill, past those children whose lives I would be living if happiness weren’t a goddamned lie, I could feel bits and particles squelching between my toes; I made a mental note that this would be the last day of my life that I was going to ever wear motherfucking flip-flops. Mavis drove to Bolton’s Spicy Chicken & Fish so we could get a couple of pieces to take back to the hotel, and I stood outside the car in the parking lot bent over a trash can shaking out my hair and digging little black specks out of my ears while she flirted with the old dude frying up her catfish inside the restaurant. I tossed the gold funeral-home can in a dumpster and said one last thank-you to my father for blessing me with short, fat fingers that couldn’t get as deep into my ear canals as I needed them to go. When we got back to the hotel, I contemplated plucking out each of my eyelashes one by one, shaving my entire body (eyebrows included), then hosing it down with bleach, but SVU was on, plus we had just gotten some ribs, so instead I took a Klonopin and brushed my teeth in the hot shower, wondering which of my dad’s parts I was watching ride a frothy cloud of extra-strength dandruff shampoo down the drain. Roll credits, sad trombone.
I’m in Love and It’s Boring
I found the apartment in the rental listings of the Chicago Reader. The ad was for a “spacious, airy, unbelievably huge!” one-bedroom not far from the one my roommate and I were currently arguing about dirty dishes in. “$600 a month! No credit check! No deposit! Move in today!!!” I called the number and was bounced between receptionists before finally getting one who could help. We scheduled a viewing for later that day, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an apartment that really was massive, not the shoe box I’d been expecting, with large windows that flooded the space with light and gleaming hardwood floors. I knew I wanted it the minute I crossed the threshold, but I went through the motions of peeking into the closet and checking the water pressure in the shower so the landlord could rest assured that I was a Serious Person. I offered him the first two months’ rent in cash on the spot, and he handed me a basic lease to sign and said I could move in whenever I wanted. After I closed the door behind him, I sat on the closed toilet and texted my boyfriend: “Dude, I found us the perfect place.”
When I was in love with Zachary Jones, I knew it, because my stomach used to hurt whenever I thought about his face, and I would drag myself barefoot around that apartment we were supposed to be sharing, drinking cold vodka in my pajamas while listening to “Wake Up Alone” by Amy Winehouse and waiting for him to text me. I knew it was love, because I was twenty-six and had crashed my 1987 Honda Accord in the parking lot outside of Pizzeria Aroma when, over the cell phone I shouldn’t have been talking on while driving, he said “I love you” and sounded like he meant it. I knew it was love, because he gave me a mix CD three weeks after he ghosted on my birthday party. The party was also supposed to be a “this is my actual boyfriend, not just some imaginary guy I’ve been talking your ear off about” party, so I sat there pink-cheeked and burning with shame while everyone asked where he was, again.
—
It was always my young dream to fall in love with a DJ. I was a very earnest clubgoer, and when I wasn’t shuffling around the dance floors at Slick’s and Sinibar and Betty’s Blue Star, I was studying records at Gramaphone. I fantasized about hauling bags of house records to my car from the Darkroom at 2:00 a.m., my clothes damp with sweat, sticky with spilled drinks and reeking of cigarette smoke. I daydreamed about late nights fighting through crowds to fetch bottles of water from the bar for the faceless imaginary boyfriend hunched over the tables, oversize headphones bobbing as he nodded to the beat. I barely slept, toiling all day at my various jobs before racing home to slam a quick dinner and draw on some eyeliner before leaving right back out to go to the club.
I met Zac at an MF Doom show at Sonotheque, a place I loved so much I cried when it closed. I was actually there with another dude, this younger kid, Jason, who I was trying to figure out whether or not I had feelings for, and Zac stood watching us huddled together shouting unintelligibly into each other’s ears. When I realized this giant human nursing the same beer for forty-five minutes was staring at me, I figured it was because I was wearing gym shoes in a disco and tried to hide my feet behind my bag. For two hours, he watched me over the heads of tiny backpackers furiously composing battle raps in their heads until the show ended and the lights went up and everyone scattered like roaches to the darkest corners of the room. Zac had disappeared (had I dreamed him?), so I hovered awkwardly near the bar waiting for my friends to pee and close their tabs and tried to shake off that shy, embarrassed feeling you get when you think someone likes you but you figure out they were really interested in your friend or some shit.