Today is day 16 of A March of Marys, a literary experience where I share a sequential chunk of American Mary, my first novel, right here online every day throughout the month of March.
Yes, today is actually the 21st and I haven’t been keeping up with posting every day but I’m doing better than I thought I would. Usually when I give myself challenges like this I give up after a week because it’s hard for me to stick to things, or (more accurately) remember to stick to things.
Rereading this chapter breaks my heart all over again. Do you have someone like this? Maybe I didn’t illustrate it fully, there’s a lot more I can say about this person, but I don’t know if I want to say it all. I want to keep some of it just for me.
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‘Are you ready for me to crash your life.’ I blinked at the text message on my screen and spent two minutes gliding through emoticon choices for a reply. I texted back a ghost.
**
You wash dishes to pay your rent and call me at 4 am after finishing your shift and say I sound cute when I’m sleepy. You don't live near me. And we used to write letters to each other but now we’re just friends on myspace. And you comment a lot on this girl’s profile whose default photo is an overexposed shot of her sitting on a tire swing and wearing a neck brace. So fucking carefree.
**
I saw you a few summers ago. We planned it. I bought a Greyhound ticket, sat upright for 16 hours with headphones on and journal out, unsuccessfully tried to make myself pass out to songs about unknown lovers across the sea and other unbalanced manic pixie fantasies, music I loved because I didn’t understand how the other side actually feels.
I arrived cranky and caffeinated and rinsed my face with sink water in the bus station bathroom, only slightly making out my reflection in the sheet of grimy chrome mounted onto cinderblock. My eyebrows raised and lowered as I tried to see my face in the reflection. A smudged out version of myself.
You picked me up. Skated over to the bench where I was waiting and texting my parents to let them know I arrived safely, texting Joan to let her know I arrived safely and had no idea what I was doing here. Am I really doing this.
You smiled at me. A goofy grin with cheeks like the creepy cherubs you see in Cambridge churches, sleepy morning hair covered with a backwards cap. ‘You think that guy is cute,’ Joan asked me once. ‘Yikes.’
We walked together in silence to the light rail train to get to the house where you were living. We occasionally looked at each other and you quietly pointed out decrepit landmarks. All I could do was nod. Despite all the words written between us I didn’t know what to say. How to start. I didn’t know anything about you. It felt better existing together in the ether. I think I realized but forgot again.
We walked up the driveway to your house. You showed me your room. Showed me the photograph of the tomatoes all splitting and red floating in my parents’ kitchen sink, the tomatoes my dad grew, the photo my dad took. ‘Look,’ you said and pointed at it. I sent it with a mixtape I made for you. A real cassette mixtape I spent a weekend working on. Dubbing and redubbing to make my playlist fit perfectly on each side.
You made me one in exchange. You told me you burned a cd from a playlist on itunes and used that to make the cassette. I wish you hadn’t told me that.
I jumped on your bed butt first and heard a cracking sound. ‘Did you just break the boxspring,’ you said.
**
I was just like I refuse to put in work. So I didn't. And it didn't even matter. Because if it's going to happen it doesn't matter ever. It'll just happen. Because they wanted it to happen. And I just let it happen. And if it was bad it wasn't my fault ever. Even if I didn't want to put in work. If I didn't care I didn't. And sometimes it worked anyway. And sometimes it didn't but it wasn't my fault. Because I was there to let it happen. I was like you can put in the work if you want to. I'm here. What else do I need to do.
It should be enough. I'm already existing. I mean, right. I am existing. Isn't this proving that.
**
You stood in my kitchen and told me you used to work in a factory that assembled vacuum cleaners. I wrapped the cords around the cord holder on the back of the vacuum. You pointed at the vacuum cleaner.
‘I think I used to make a part in this one.’ I asked which part. You said you didn't remember.
**
Some people are like I want to be normal. Like they want normal things. And that's perfectly normal. Some people are like I want to be good. And that's totally fine. Everybody wants to be fine. Everyone wants to feel good. Like that's normal.
What is normal. Is functioning normal. Is it a state of mind. I guess I associate it with people who have families of their own and own homes and have successful careers in finance or whatever. Like they seem like the kind of people we look up to in television commercials. Like they represent the standard. Like it’s what we're told to look up to. Like it’s this unachievable goal. Like it just seems pointless to care. I guess I have no idea.
**
You leaned against my counter, eating a bowl of cereal. I was lying in bed and my eyes were closed. I wasn't sleeping. I opened my eyes. I peeked over at you and I could see you staring directly at me but in a kind of laconic way. And our eyes met squarely and your glazey look cracked when you saw me. I stared at your face and you straightened up, closed your milk mouth. Such a dopey face. Doughy cheeks like those plump octogenarian cherubs. Youth and death combined cheating time. And you said, ‘I thought you were asleep.’
**
I was smoking a spliff in bed watching early Eminem rap battles from back when he still used to start with laughing ‘hahahahahahahaha’ and you came inside from putting your bags in your trunk. You sat down next to me on the bed and took your shoes off to get under the covers. I said, ‘your feet smell’ and made a face. ‘How bad,’ you said. ‘Pretty bad,’ I said. You laughed and I stood up to lead you into the bathroom.
‘Sit down here,’ I pointed at the toilet.
‘This is weird,’ you said, sitting down.
I rinsed out the bucket I use when I’m washing the tile floors and filled it with warm water.
I knelt down beside him. I put my hands in the bucket and rubbed a bar of moisturizing soap between them.
‘Dip a foot in,’ I said.
You put a foot in the bucket and I rubbed your foot with my hands using fingers getting suds in between toes, scrubbing the worn bottoms, smoothing down the rough hairs above your ankles. I watched the water turn grey.
‘This is actually pretty relaxing,’ you said.
My hair kept falling forward and I used elbows to brush it aside and out of the bucket water. I looked up at you and you were looking out the window at something beyond the neighbor’s fence.
You switched feet and I wiped the clean one dry with paper towels.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ I said and I don’t think you heard me.
**
You said you wanted to take me out one night. You were like, ‘I wanna wine and dine my lady.’
I had a bad day at work. My hair was greasy and I rushed getting ready in the morning and didn’t like my outfit. I got home and took a shower. I said, ‘are you taking me out to make me feel better,’ and you said, ‘I was asking if the shower was making you feel better.’
I got dressed up. I put on a dress. You watched me. Then you put on a sweater over your collared shirt. You almost wore khakis but put the jeans back on because it looked too ‘churchy.’ I said they were more preppy than churchy. I put on maryjane heels. We looked like we were going to church. 'Are you ready to go to church,' I said.
Then you helped me remove lint from my sweater in the places I couldn’t reach. I was doing it myself but you walked over and said, ‘let me help you.’ I watched you in the mirror and you said, ‘gotta get the lint off grandma’s sweater before we go to church.’ I pulled away and said, ‘why am I grandma.’
So we got in your car and went to a joint and ate spaghetti and meatballs and drank sugary cocktails and smiled across the table. The waiter asked if we wanted our leftover spaghettis boxed together or separately. We got them boxed separately.
Then we went home and took off our church clothes and we rolled around listening to a Blink 182 live concert and when the song about I guess this is growing up came on you got really excited and grabbed onto me with more force and I thought I guess this is our song because we had sung it walking down the street with my cousin after I did a poetry performance, the time you decided you wanted to drive across the country to see me again.
**
I changed my sheets but they look the same.
I washed you out of my sheets. I washed you out of my clothes. I washed you out of my underwear. I vacuumed you out of my carpet but my room still looks the same.
And I remember how you looked with no shirt on, all hairy standing against the sink and eating leftovers. And your sleepy head in my bed on the pillow you brought, not the pillow I bought for you. I told you I bought a pillow for you and you said it was ‘the cutest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’
It must be easy for you, because you’re not here. You don’t have to look at all the empty spaces.
**
I’m trying to be rational. I’m trying to talk about my feelings without talking about my feelings. I can articulate it. I just don’t want to. I can articulate it to myself but if I said it out loud to you it would be more soft spots to stick fingers in. I said that it felt like we were having secret conversations because you would show me things or do weird little things and we never talked while they were happening or even really acknowledged they were happening except for smiling and touching the other’s hand. I said that it felt like we were having secret conversations and you were like, ‘yeah I could tell that you thought we were having secret conversations and I think they happened for you more than they did for me.’
I told my dad and my dad was like, ‘what a cowardly shit. If he was feeling that way then he should have gotten himself a room at the YMCA.’
Playing accidentally right into the sad girl trope all my life, but I’m actually more numb than sad.
Make a poem so I can take it out of me.
I want this day to be over so I can go home and cry and not talk to you about my problems.
**
My requirements are basic. Like basically I just want to function. I just want to function and feel like I can exist. I want to feel like I exist. I don't want to have to question it. Sometimes I don't feel like I can function. Like I don’t know how some people do it. Like I am moving my limbs and looking at things and having thoughts and taking care of responsibilities like showering and going to work and being polite to people on public transit but it is not even about that and it is so much different from what I’m supposed to be doing. And it makes me feel like I do not exist.
My friends are like, ‘you're fine, like you're okay, you're doing good, like you're doing more than you think you are.’ And maybe some of them see that and believe that but I don't really see how they see it and I feel like a sham and it's trying. It is trying and tiring enough to prove to myself that I am a person. It is an entirely different task to convince others.
Missed the last post? Read it here.