It is the thick sludge of myself drowning me from the inside. I smell me as I die. It is the slow decay or the fast heartbeat that says stop! What is the point? It's the idea I had but did nothing about. It's that orgasm that was on its way but then someone burped and farted, and we laughed ourselves limp.
It's a brother's mocking voice from childhood as if it was now. Or a friend who promised to show up but made a believable excuse that I somehow later found out was a total lie. It's all the resentments I prefer to real life. It's me saying something mean to my own face in the mirror, my lips, a knife: stupid, old, coward, bitch, idiot, wannabe.
It's FOMO that changes its mind every thirty seconds doom scrolling what to be jealous about. Retirement in Portugal? A mainstage TED talk? Fantastic plastic surgery? Freedom from what others think? A seven-figure newsletter business based on creativity and self-expression?
No.
A flat stomach. Perfect eyebrows. A farm upstate. A castle to renovate somewhere in Europe. Sitting in a coffee shop in Paris having deep thoughts that an editor in New York is waiting for so that Reese Witherspoon can find my book and champion it into a miniseries.
Nap?
Sometimes, I eat chocolate in the morning. Sometimes, I pretend I've only had one glass of wine when I've actually had two but poured the second one as a topper for the first. Sometimes, I smell my own armpit and I actually like the smell better than after the shower. Sometimes, I say awful things about people based on characteristics they have no control over. Sometimes, I say awful things about people I actually love. Sometimes, I want to write a cruel, hilarious truth but I don't because I am really in it for rewards not consequences and I am too chicken-livered to suffer for my art.
I am a coward When it comes to peoples' opinions of me. Suffering for my art would mean that people can have their opinions. They can say awful things about me even though they might even love me. But I will take those things as gospel because they are about me and therefore wounding. Whereas when I'm saying things about others, I know it's stupid and meaningless—and why is it so wrong to be funny?
Funny ha-ha? Or funny peculiar?
I think I'm both. I want to be funny ha-ha, but my husband and son laugh at different things than I do. I laugh at Midnight Run, Lethal Weapon, Poor Things, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman. I sit like an Easter Island head contemplating an unwelcome and disturbing visitor when I watch Monty Python. I just don't get it. I am made of stone and can't fathom the mystery of its impact on people. I know they're funny ha-ha. As for peculiar?
I moved to a town where people wear teal, coral and pink. Where they do Weight Watchers because they can substitute Doritos for food. It is a town I can afford that affords me a ten-mile, uninterrupted beach walk on the Long Island Sound and a seven-minute drive to New Haven, which is not New York, but which has some wonderful secrets it shares with me.
I still wear black. I look a little too much like Neo in The Matrix or Cher on a runway in the 80's, sometimes, but you know I'm not off the rails, over the top, under the bus. It's appropriate, just not for a town where people think it's great to leave a Christmas decoration out all the way into March of a drunken, ceramic elf, ass-to-heaven, face down on the cement stairs leading up to their house.
Merry Christmas, weirdos. I love you and it's okay you are weird, but I get to be weird in my way too, and in New York we appreciate and ignore that about each other. We get to be weird in our own anonymous way.
Anonymous.
Pretend you don't notice I'm a midget, I'm a celebrity, I'm naked but for a plastic, leopard loincloth In Central Park, I'm walking my pet tarantula, I'm walking my twelve-foot boombox by the reservoir at full volume, pulling it along on a Radio Flyer cart, I'm walking backwards and leading a puppet dance partner in a mystery tango. Don't notice. Don't comment. Let's keep it anonymous, okay? Like good neighbors do.
But up here?
Some lady in the hair salon said to me, "I know who you are. I've seen you walk. You walk everywhere. I followed you once in my car. [WTF?] Yes, I just love your costumes. All your black outfits. I watch you from my window now when you walk to the Green. I wish I was skinny."
Was this a compliment?
Anyway, I should be writing. I should be getting clients. I should be doing taxes. I should be perfect. I should get Invisalign. I should make my husband's follow up doctor's appointment. I should do Rocket Money and find and eliminate all the subscriptions I don't know I have.
Nap?
Oh, shit. It's only 9:40 am.
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Ron Lach
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