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eightysixed · 3 years

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the widow

May

All it took was one bad joke.

Emma envied guys. She wished she was a guy. She didn’t know how her life could’ve diverged differently to what it is now, from what it could have been, but she wished it. They had the world at their feet and they didn’t know it. Pangs of inexplicable jealousy rushed through her, along with helplessness. It was just one guy from the next that she relied on, first Ben, then Tyson, now Gerry. When would she ever learn how to rely on herself? Just to feel safe by herself? It was fucked. All of it was fucked.

Uncharacteristic to her usual spirals though, she took up residence back on the couch, flopping squished between everyone else who had closed the gap since she had gotten up and left. “Can someone roll me a joint?” she said, eyes on all the weed paraphernalia scattered about the table. The reactions of surprise rolled through them like a wave, famously aware Emma doesn’t smoke, but somehow, she revelled in that, felt powerful. She wasn’t going to get paranoid, she was going to smoke and have a good time like everybody else here was. She was safe. With her friends.

Mikey took up her offer, busied himself rolling up her joint. “Thanks,” she said, smiling his way. He smiled back. They talked about Elon Musk’s latest insane idea.

She didn’t want the whole thing to herself of course, so she put the joint in rotation. But even two, three hits were enough for her to feel something registering. Something in the pit of her gut. That was the good stuff, she told herself. It was working, in the good kind of way. She was good. It was all good.

And then by god something changed in the room. The air smelled different.

Tyson made a joke, harmless, dumb. Everybody laughed. Herself included.

She wasn’t sure how Boulder got mixed into it all, but suddenly it did. Suddenly she wasn’t here, but there. And that was enough.

Enough to have her stomach twisting into knots.

The room was spinning. The room had a name and that name was chaos. She didn’t want to be here. Couldn’t be here.

She excused herself in a manner she hoped was calm and casual enough to warrant a mere trip to the bathroom and nothing more, even though she heard someone’s “You okay?” call after her even as she left. Made her way upstairs. Threw up in the porcelain.

The music from downstairs was loud, but she ran a tap just in case, right before she hurled the Hot Cheeto contents of her stomach in case anybody might hear. Wouldn’t wanna alarm them too much.

Still couldn’t handle her weed. That was disappointing. Annoying. Irritating. Now she felt like adding to her high, enhancing it. But she didn’t have any pills. She was sure if she asked around a room full of these guys, someone would have something. But would they give it to her? Then they would know. Then her jig would be up.

There was a bang on the bathroom door. Somebody had come to get her? A touching thought. Maybe more than she even deserved.

“Yo, somebody in here?” Dom’s voice called, a little too loud.

She waited a moment. Maybe he’d go away. He’d hear the change in her voice if she spoke. “Yeah Dom, it’s me! Just a minute!”

“Oh, aight.” His footsteps went back down.

Maybe not.

The anxiety that had hit her like an Amtrak now gave way to anger. So much anger, at herself. Fuck this shitty brain and this shitty body and everything they’d made her become. She wanted to take a Jack Nicholson sized axe to the stupid notion of what she had become, angry because she wasn’t a guy. Would all of this have happened to her had she been a guy? Probably not. But she was a girl, always weaker, less than, incapable, incompetent. All those teen years spent feeling so tough amounting to absolutely nothing in the face of her adult self that had crumbled to a whittled, hollowed out shell.

Elizabeth Wurtzel, eat your depressed heart out.

Maybe if she wrote a memoir, that’d free up all her demons. Maybe, maybe.

She laughed, out loud. That was a laughable notion right there. The girl who held all her demons so close to her chest, the last shit she wanted was anybody reading them, in eBook format on some Kindle Fire.

No, fuck a memoir. She’d code a virus to infect the world, WsOD everyone’s systems. No more shiny gadgets for you, sorry. No more online distractions. You’re left with yourselves, everyone. To suffer like I suffer.

She stared into the toilet bowl. It stared back. She hurled some more from the nasty smell drifting up. She flushed. She ran the tap and tried to make her mascara not look so fucked.

On any other evening, this would be just any other evening. Especially with him. But he wasn’t here and this wasn’t any other evening.

He wasn’t here and she was sad and having some kind of reaction to this weed, clearly. Or maybe it was just the trigger. Or both. She’d never know.

///////////

Hoops and Everything

September

She was fucked. Fucked in the head. She knew that much.

There was a guy. His name was … Mark? Yeah, his name was Mark.

Mark was violent, but not to her. That was a good sign, right?

Mark shoved a guy who got too close to her at the Combichrist show, and she decided on him then.

Maybe she couldn’t have him, but she could have the next best thing, right?

Tomo or no Tomo, she was going to be a whole person again. Yeah, this was great. Everything was great.

Mark loved her and fucked her and she fucked him right back and everything was grand and wonderful because they had each other.

Okay maybe he gave her a little too much grief on her gender confused best friend one week out of the blue. But that just meant he cared, right? It was kind of hot to see him angry.

“Babe, he’s barely into girls. I think, I don’t know. We’ve been friends for six years. It’s nothing. He’s like my brother.”

It took a lot of convincing but she did it. And then they fucked again.

That was love, right?

Ben called one morning. She hadn’t spoken to him on the phone in so long she’d almost forgotten what his voice sounded like. And then she heard it and remembered that warm feeling of Santa Rosa summers together that put a smile on the rest of her day.

It would probably be bad news if Mark found out about Ben. Or Ben about Mark. She couldn’t sum up in ten quick words or less who Ben was to her. What he meant to her. And vice versa, she wasn’t sure Ben would take to Mark very well. She’d barely just told him about Gerry. Ben seemed to have liked Gerry, said something about meeting him one of these days.

Emma still loved Gerry. But not like that. Not like she loved Mark. She loved Mark, right? She did. She was sure of it.

Except Mark wasn’t him, and would never be him, and fuck this stupid world for putting people in your path at the wrong time and the wrong place.

Didn’t matter that Mark wasn’t as funny, as smart, as skilled at something in this world and with a glint in his eye that spoke of world domination.

Would she ever feel how she felt on top of that ferris wheel when Tomo told her that she was the whole entire world?

Probably not. Probably never.

But hey, here was Mark coming through to pick her up as they were closing shift, and they were gonna go see a movie and maybe he’d bitch about it being dumb, but then they’d go home and fuck and he’d tell her she was hot and everything was fine with the world. Yeah, Mark was good. Mark would do.

#emma #self para #self para: emma #vomit tw #this is a dumpster fire but i've had it in the backburner for so long again now here it is

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