6/28/25
On the walk to the bar I almost died, I said as I sat down at the stool next to Claire. She asked how. Couldn’t tell her exactly. But there was a thought, then a foot stepping off the curb into the street, then a horn sounding and shaking headlights. It was one of the times where my body wasn’t with me. Like when those two guys in my college dorm had started to threaten each other’s sternums with pointer fingers. It took me five whole minutes to realize I wasn’t watching them anymore but actually five floors down in the lobby on my way out the front door. My legs move for and make their own dime. This night on the way to meet Claire they walked toward the street the second I thought I might die. Which has been happening a lot. Each day at least once I get the idea I’m going to die. Or should. Or want to but can’t. Comes up from the throat like nausea and wells up in my eyes. My mind goes dumb to let my body finish off the job. Already one foot in the casket and then usually a loud sound or concern of a stranger snaps me back. Back to where I am which had been the mall last week where I was walking on the second level when I wondered if anyone ever jumps off. Jumps off and spills brain matter on the tiles. If the sound of a body banging the ground made it hard for a Santa to hear a child’s Christmas list. By the time I came to I was staring down at the floor with both sets of knuckles white from holding on to the railing. A woman walked up to ask if I was okay and when I nodded, I could tell she didn’t believe me. Instead of returning the blue sweater my uncle gave me for Christmas I stumbled out to my car.
Claire wanted to know other times I thought I might die. Told her about the Shampoo bottle the other day. When I reached for it and thought about beating my face in with the bottom.
“It would be hard to die by blunt force.”
Not the point but I didn’t know the point well enough to tell her she got it wrong. The point was my body was beginning to comply with my thoughts, dying if I wanted to. Which Claire tried to say was normal, blackouts can be normal. With anemia she said. Or with other health conditions I don’t have.
“Thoughts are normal. But I’m not only having thoughts. I’m thinking thoughts like ‘I wonder what it would feel like to die from malaria’ then walk around the backyard at sundown in a shirt without sleeves and shorts.”
She doesn’t say anything else. We look at each for a few minutes.
6/22/25
I’ve always thought I could be a lesbian. There were some up the street from the house I grew up in and I would walk past their yard whenever I got a chance. I’m not sure what I wanted to see exactly, probably just them. Them making dinner in the window above the kitchen sink, them taking in groceries, them getting Advil from the medicine cabinet. I never met the lesbians, my mom did once said their names were Nancy and Mel. My dad said Mel was the butch and Nancy the woman. He might’ve said real woman but that could just be my memory playing tricks. Which it does a lot. There weren’t any other lesbians I met until college where I lived on the all girls floor of my dorm hall. Her name was Maggie, she did shrooms on Wednesdays, took pictures on a film camera then posted them to an Instagram account dedicated to her photography, and had a masc girlfriend named Sadie. All three of those things meant I was obsessed with her. And the weird kind of obsession where I learned her schedule and tried to be on the stairs the same time as her or in the communal showers when she was. I’m not sure what I wanted to see, probably just her. Her washing her hands. Her hair tie imprinted on her wrist.
When I was twenty one years old I met another lesbian, well I’ll say now she wasn’t a lesbian at the time but upon reflection she and i both were. Is that a dumb sentence? I’m not writing as good as I hoped. Her name was Lo. A coworker. We’d hit the same vapes on break and left lipstick stains on each other’s coffee cups. At the time I thought we wanted to share the taste in our mouths like little kids on a playground who pass strep throat back and forth. Now I think we wanted to taste each other. Is that too obvious? Let me try again. I think we knew each other would taste good, knew women would taste good. And in lieu of eating pussy we sucked on the same cough drops. Hers were always grape flavored which made our tongues the same shade of purple.
6/3/25
My brother, now twenty one, hasn’t spoken in seventeen years. Not since we spun around on the coffee table wearing my mom’s sunglasses singing a Ray Charles song. Not since spending days with games of Superman and Tinkerbell. Diapers, sippy cups, footie pajamas. All that. The last time I heard him speak he was asking me to stop. Speaking that is. In the bath one night. He put his index fingers in his ears and asked if for once I could be quiet. The next day he was rushed to the emergency room and electrodes were stuck around his skull and a doctor came out with news I didn’t hear but knew was bad based on my dad’s bottom lip quivering. Disabled, sudden, permanent, rare, genetic. All the words I could make out from the chair I hadn’t stood from in over a day.
I didn’t know then I would come to fantasize about cutting off my dad’s bottom lip. Which tripled in size anytime he saw a son throwing a ball or a boy at a urinal. I needed out with that weak lip, the one he hasn’t kissed my cheek with since that day at the hospital. Either pulled with pliers or shucked or cut. Or pulled by my bare hands.
The hospital became a couple-times-a-week occurrence and so did my brother destroying the tendons in my mom’s shoulder by scratching her with his nails. She’d wear a sling for the next two years.
5/21/25
We met at a dive bar, local saloon, and were introduced by the bar keep, a mutual friend, who was surprised we hadn’t met yet. Being the two biggest shooters this side of the Mississippi and all, his only single friends. At a table we put our whiskeys and pistols in between us, piss colored beers and cellphones, keeping our hands close to the trigger just in case. A feller came through the back door, a kid in from the smoking patio walked into the bathroom to hurl, both of us kept an eye on him. He kept close eye on a missy he thought might be in trouble leaned over the bar, a girl closing out her tab had an ass he couldn’t look away from.
I love these stories - palpable.
Beautiful read, brilliant in a way that stings.