A March of Marys, day seven

The things I feel the most I remember sharply, but still like a dream. A small pond to dip my feet and go back.

It is Day 7 of A March of Marys. Have you been keeping up with my serialization of this novel? What do you think?

Today’s post is a continuation from yesterday. If you missed it, you can read it here.

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*

My mom said ‘go to the doctor, you’ve been sick for too long.’ 

Going to the doctor, my primary care physician on my parents’ healthcare plan, and getting antibiotics for walking pneumonia. Three months of coughing and feeling tired. I thought maybe it’s because I’m always doing something. I got used to it. You can get used to anything if you don’t care about anything. It’s easy to act like everything is fine when you’re used to acting like everything is fine.

I take the pills and tell Joan she should also go to the clinic. I tell her I had walking pneumonia. I say it and think of a dancing kangaroo. ‘Waltzing pneumonia, waltzing pneumonia’ I say in a singsong to Joan and we both laugh.

I messaged the boy and said, we should hang out. He said, yeah you should come to this party, my friend’s band is playing. I said, sure, but what are you doing right now.

If Joan didn’t feel up for whatever party I was trying to make happen I could usually find someone else to accompany me. Christina or someone. 

I have never been a fan of showing up at parties alone. Especially parties where I’m not sure if anyone I’m close with will be attending.

Ever since I went to that Tarantino movie theme party I have always brought a friend with me. That weird Tarantino theme party. The party just for the sake of having a party where no one was in a costume which was fine by me because I had come directly from work and was wearing a white button down shirt and black pants thinking I could get away with saying I was Mia Wallace before the accidental overdose even though I really wanted to go all the way with some fake blood running down my chin and chest. The boy who invited me was ignoring me when he wasn’t trying to pawn me off to his awkward housemate even though he had spent the last three hours of my work shift texting me asking if I was still coming and how long would it take for me to get there on my bike. I ended up drinking too much gin from a coffee mug his girl housemate poured for me. She said ‘drink this it’s smooth.’ Then I blacked out and hid underneath his bed and jumped out and yelled at him for being a fuckhead before clumsily unlocking my bike from the parking meter across the street and riding home, miraculously avoiding getting killed in traffic, talking to myself the whole time, chastising and lecturing myself on putting myself in stupid situations. 

Ever since that Tarantino theme party I always bring someone with me if I don’t think I know anyone else there even if I know I will end up ditching them or they will end up ditching me midway through the party to makeout with someone.

*

I go to wawa in preparation of meeting this boy and buy a box of marlboro reds, like dad, and a 24 ounce fountain soda. I walk to West Philly where he lives, opening the pack striking a match and lighting one. It is hot outside, muggy. A typical city summer day. It will probably rain later but right now the air is visible and smothering. I inhale and get slightly light headed but savor the unease, then cross the street into the shade. 

This why we take drugs, I think. We take drugs and get high so we can feel uncomfortable for a while. We feel uncomfortable in our skin so we come out of it, go some place else, and come back, slightly changed. For the same reason children eat sour candies. They eat warheads and cry babies so they can feel disoriented, enjoying the disorientation and slowly building tolerance. We are all trying to alter our usual experience. However slightly. As much as we can. In whatever way we can.

I see him at the park and walk up to him. We count sidewalk cracks as we walk through the sycamore trees. ‘I love these trees,’ I say. 

They are my favorite trees. The bark is always peeling in patches and it looks like scabs in browns and greens. ‘I always recognize them,’ I say.

He just smirks.

'That guy’s dog looks kind of like him. His t-shirt even matches the leash.'

'Philly hippies.'

'I bet he uses that crystal deodorant.' 

'Dude, people are always buying that where I work. It’s the people who don’t shower. Ringing them up is just like…' I make a face and hold my breath.

'It doesn’t work.'

'It totally doesn’t.'

*

We walk back to his house, a dilapidated mansion he is sharing with another person or maybe a couple of people but no one else is at the house right now. There might be a dog.

It’s a free standing building with an empty lot next door. He shows me around the house. 

'Be careful of this step. If you walk on it you might fall through.' 

I grab my hip and squeeze it.

'This room is going to be a recording studio. But not for a while.'

I think of the raps I recorded with Ezra in his bathroom and say, 'that’s cool,' and he kind of rolls his eyes at me, but also kind of smiles.

We walk back downstairs and walk outside to stand in the empty lot. 

'There was a house here at one point,' he says, waving an arm at nothing, but I imagine a beautiful Victorian home in its heyday standing on top of where he is standing. I briefly fantasize about a house rising out of the earth in the empty lot and swallowing him up as it emerges in all its grandeur while I admire the bay windows.

He pulls out a cigarette. I do too. He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me, like am I just trying to impress him. 

I wonder if I’ll go back to the size I used to be. I smoke and I’m not sure if I’m inhaling correctly.

*

There’s plenty of sunlight inside. Even with the loose boards and exposed drywall and little hazards where you walk it is warm and romantic and it is new and exciting as it always is at first. 

He takes me upstairs to his room with a bed on the floor and some drawings hanging on the walls, loose sketches of statues, a pastel of a female nude with no face. Not much furniture. A bunch of milkcrates full of vinyl records and nothing else. Another pair of dirty tennis shoes. He pulls me to the floor and gets on top of me and we kiss and he lifts to pull my shirt up and I’m self conscious and turning away but he keeps kissing me and biting and grabbing me and pulling down my pencil skirt and groping every roll of skin and looking at me like a buttered roll.

He bites my lips and bites and bites and is rolling me around and repositioning me between the bed and the floor and I feel every scrape and every gnash and my mind feels completely clear. Eviscerated. 

*

The things I feel the most I remember sharply, but still like a dream. A small pond to dip my feet and go back. Cold and silent and still. Like I let everything go. Like I felt like I was just being really cute and only that mattered. 

It’s all symbolic. 

If I think about something too much it becomes meaningless and I don’t care about it. Something I have trouble explaining to myself is something I can pamper. A secret with myself. There was a witness but it hardly matters. 

Am I feeling anything now. I am not thinking about much just concentrating on my breath. Watching his eyes drill and gloss over and thinking this is really happening but it is so strange. It is manufactured. Predetermined. This is not validation of anything other than showing up and being made of flesh. I am earthly. I am made of earth and dirt and worms and shells and can rise be swallowed up engulf be trampled on. 

I can feel pressure and something holding me down but carried with no other significance. It is a reminder. It is a flaw. I feel like I really want to transcend. Move beyond. I’m sick of feeling contained, preserved. Like those people on the kids horror show who dressed like they were still in the 1960s and their house looked like the 1960s and they had tupperware parties and slept in tupperware at night to stay fresh.

That’s not what I want. I am writhing forever.

*

I occasionally look at the clock. More time passing than I can account for. My body is sore all over. Like a gift. I touch a bruise and feel that familiar guilt. I shift my weight and correct my breathing. I try to save it and relish it. The fresh guilt. The twinge. Like takeout. Like a morsel tinfoil wrapped in the fridge.

I move from under his arm and get dressed.

I watch his face to see if he will open his eyes and he doesn’t but I know he is awake.

I kiss his forehead and walk out, stubbing my toe on an uneven floorboard.

Feeling dizzy and stumbling and feeling real but also like a ghost. I am making excuses for myself walking through this neighborhood and looking through windows and letting pixels of staccato sunlight through tree branches wash me. I am watching my own movie.

I get home and look in the mirror, bare my teeth and open my eyes wide. I bathe standing up, using a washcloth to lather and rinse my arms and then my feet. Walking out of the bathroom, I bump into Joan. We look at each other and converse with eyebrows and glistening eyes. I don’t even have to say anything but I do so I can hear it.

‘I think I just got hate fucked,’ I say.

Joan says, ‘Be careful.’

I say, ‘I am being careful.’

Joan makes fish lips and says, ‘okay,’ and we drop it and I know that I’m not but I’m not sure what else I can do.