Being In Debt and Still Ordering Takeout
Little pieces from an incredibly slow period of time.
To walk through Athens feels like a drunken hand-hold. There is someone else there, equally unbalanced and seeing double, but there is always someone there to make you feel warm again. There will always be a small cat crossing the road, the distant sounds of sirens, and ashed cigarettes on top of a trash can. Athens may never change in my lifetime, for better or for worse. To me, it falls flat in its own unique way; too hip to be tranquil and too tranquil to be hip. Never truly one or the other, always hard to meet someone unlike anyone you’ve ever met before or do something that feels refreshing and outside of the box. There will always be someone doing a performance art piece on Appalachia or a nursing student getting walked home by her girlfriends after getting too drunk on a Tuesday. Some things will never change, and maybe Athens will be one of them.
It makes me angry, at times, that there is always someone there. There is always someone there who wants, needs, and begs for more. Like a sick dog, you can’t help but feed it. Soon it is on your doorstep every morning, wagging its tail, waiting for one last meal.
I fantasize about reading a book to you. Maybe an essay from some obtuse nihilist author, or maybe a monolouge from whatever classic I picked up for 50 cents at the used book store. I imagine this fantasy version of you, propping your head up next to me to watch my chest rise and fall as I speak. Your smile reaches your eyes. You say something nice to me when I finish and tell me your thoughts on my selection. In reality, I think you would not understand anything I attempted to read to you and complain that you can’t pay attention. You would also find the interaction uncomfortable and act like it never happened.
This may be the first and only time I will ever admit it, I am a doormat. Yes, please, take my money, you need it more than me. Of course, I’ll stay with you longer, I don’t mind that my legs ache. No, I don’t care that you’ve gone home with someone else, it’s not like I have any right to say something about it. I replay the scene in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women where Amy tells Laurie that he’s, “being mean” for suddenly showing affection after Amy has been second in Laurie’s mind her entire life. It replays over and over in my head until the scene morphs into me sitting on his couch, telling him he's being mean for being rude to my friends that he doesn’t take the time to get to know. Sadly, I don’t think we will work out like Laurie and Amy do, our story will be much more tragic for me and insignificant to him.
I am turning into the type of person I hate when I write about him. I want to grab myself by the shoulders and say, “Accept the things you cannot change. Go to church and be normal. Find the type of magical love he talks about elsewhere because clearly, he cannot satisfy you. You both need to get jobs. He doesn’t even think the things you like are cool or think you are cool. Also, you need to get a job to save for a downpayment in May”. But, sadly, I am stubborn and none of what I just said will sink in. I know that I am starting to become a pining loser with no prospects and no future, which is something I never intended to be.
Jackson and I sit at the bar, drinking 7 and 7s and griping about the state of our lives. We complain about all the people we know and how weird everyone is all the time. When did it become normal for people to have such inflated egos and lack awareness? We ramble on about our sex lives (or lack thereof) and I bang my fist on the bar once or twice. Eventually, a guy stumbles in and parks next to Jackson. He is wearing sunglasses indoors, has an unkempt beard, and his body moves as if Kramer was off the fent pack. Of course, after he takes two sips of his whiskey coke he requests the bartender to play the entirety of a Grateful Dead record. Their music all sounds the same, so sadly, I cannot specify the album. It seems like no one is getting a kick out of this guy like I am. Maybe, it’s much more common for Deadheads to harass you here in Athens than in DC. They’ve built up a tolerance.
I remember smoking my first cigarette, a camel crush my high school boyfriend would steal from the 7-11 he worked at. I remember that he ashed it out the window poorly and somehow managed to flick it to the backseat, burning a hole in the fabric. I liked that he smelled like cigarettes now, it felt fitting to get into some trouble with a guy that smelled like cheap tobacco and expensive cologne. I remember feeling guilty during that car ride, for some reason or another. I am sure he yelled at me before we left the house, and now I was trying to silently plead for forgiveness by being polite and smoking with him.
A couple of months before, we had spent Halloween getting cross-faded in an abandoned house where I watched him make out with my best friend in the upstairs bedroom. It was okay because we were in an open relationship, I guess. I was pretty hung up about it but I pretended it didn’t bother me. We punched holes in the old drywall, shared bottles of wine from Wawa, and threw rusty tools from the garage through the windows. He got too drunk and got upset with me that I didn’t want to fuck him. That happened much too often.
The house hosted a dinner party about a week ago. As I was taking out the last of the food from the oven, Jackson showed up. We stood in the kitchen for a while, quietly discussing the day as he poured me a glass of wine from our cheap selection. I don’t know how to tell him I’m not sure what I’d do without him.
“If you show me one more guy with long hair and a mustache I think I am going to have to kill you.” he jests.
“I’m sorry, they’re just attractive. I don’t know, just find me a different guy you know if you hate them all so much.”
“What guys do I know? Think of all the people I know right now-”
“I know, I know.” We both go quiet. We don’t know many people, or maybe just don’t take the time to like many people. I fiddle with the stem of my glass, thinking about the last times I tried to be nice to anyone we knew. Always a failure, always something that could have been prevented. “Maybe I just need to jerk off or something, I don’t know.” He recoils in disgust at the visual. I hold out my glass for him to pour me another.
Later in the week, we go out for drinks early on a weekday night. I’m on my period, something that should be irrelevant but my recent hormone troubles make it hard for me to socialize like a normal person. I have a hot flash, and Jackson presses his cold beer onto my forehead. I pick fights with him all night over nothing, he fights back. We often joke that someone will think we’re having a domestic.
“Who are you texting?” Will, our friend, asks.
“None of your business. Shut the fuck up.” I respond, biting my nails as I read the string of messages I am getting from an old friend. Or, maybe she’s an old lover. I’m not sure if it really matters at this point. I slip out of the booth quickly, coming back defeated when she didn’t pick up the phone.
“Is this that one girl? From Virginia? What’s her name,” Jackson butchers the pronunciation and I roll my eyes.
“Who is this again?” Will asks as he taps his beer against my phone to get my attention. I have had this conversation with him before, I don’t respond to avoid us snapping back and forth at each other. “Oh, I remember now, okay. So I can’t text my ex but you can text yours?” Jackson and I still, and avoid eye contact with him. “What? What did I say?” I leave the booth again, not wanting to get angry over something insignificant again.
I tend to go through life with an informal list of sage advice to give to my younger sisters as they grow up. One of the recent thoughts I’ve written down is that if you know a man really likes you, but will never love you, is if he talks to you like he talks to a dog. This is a tried and true method to live by. A man will call you ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart’, pet your hair, and hold your face right behind your ears. Being doted upon feels lovely, so you will never think anything of it until they suddenly break up with you; it’s not you, it’s me.
Half-asleep at four a.m. on Wednesday. I sent a text along the lines of, ‘The world is so big, our problems are so small, forgiveness is a virtue, etc’. This is not some grand revelation, but it is certainly something I dwell on. I think of a girl who feels like my long-lost twin. We’re the same on paper; the same desires, the same loves, and the same passions. I used to think about it with jealousy, why can’t I have grown up like that? Why does she have more friends than I do? Why does she have the money to go without working but I don’t? I consider asking her to go get coffee with me sometime, but I’m not sure how beneficial that would be for either of us. Maybe it would, I think our flaws reflect each other. Hope and adoration for the world devolve into naivety; realism and blunt honesty devolve into hedonistic failure. In a perfect world, I think we’d make good friends, but maybe that’s just not how it's meant to be.
I spent the better part of a week strung up with a boy. It was a perfect scene; I was naked and wrapped up in his comforter, cross-legged in his loft while he made tea.
“Is ginger okay?” He calls down from below.
“Whatever you have is alright with me.” I respond.”
“I am used to much pickier people. Are you sure you don’t want anything else?”
“No, that’s fine with me,” I call out. “I’m not a picky person.”
His cabin smells like wood smoke and mildew. The night before I fell asleep curled up in his arms, a little tipsy from earlier, while the rain pattered on the tin roof. He smokes a dab and exhales out the front door. I insist this is unnecessary, but he doesn’t mind taking the extra step. As he falls back in his chair, too high too fast, and out of breath, my eyes fall on the Alcoholics Anonymous book on his shelf. I worry that I won’t want to go to a meeting, in case he might be there. Or maybe the handful of other addicts that float around me will be there. He puts his hand on my knee to bring me out of my thoughts.
“You’re pretty, I’m glad you stayed the night.” He says, breathlessly. I smile and turn my head away, uncomfortable with his honesty. I am enamored. Of course, the following morning I woke up to texts saying he didn’t want to see me anymore for various reasons. I am half-asleep and despondent, I respond with a series of pathetic texts that will never see the light of day. He does not take the bait and stands his ground. Neither of us wins in this situation, he still lives alone in the woods with no one to care for him and I remain unemployed and needy.
I am sitting in front of my new (found on the side of the road) desk and my new (also found on the side of the road) chair. I have spent most of the month never leaving my house, sitting on the couch watching movies with my roommates. When I’m not doing that I am sleeping or masturbating. I haven’t found much else to do. I tried to get a jump start on my next phase in life last night, filling out FAFSA and booking meetings. I cried to my roommates about how I needed more money, I needed to do something, and I needed to start anew.
you have such an intimacy to your writing in the way that you describe the senses of every interaction or thoughtful moment, i felt as though i could taste/feel/smell each of them. what a bittersweet joy to read this-- thank you
you are just so talented i could read your thoughts all day ♡