November 7th, 2021
Note: This is the second draft of a piece for a writing class. Revisions are still being made and this is only a specific version of the piece.
I am waiting in line outside for a Marcos grilled cheese. The slight breeze sticks the sweaty tendrils of hair to the back of my neck. The air is a sticky combination of beer, barf, and that distinct sour bar smell. I know come winter I will miss the misery of being too hot and complain instead about my teeth knocking against one another in an effort to stay warm.
A man taps me on the shoulder.
“I love you,” he says, 5’5, finance business bro, glasses and hair so oily I could have fried my own grilled cheese in it. My face contorts into a grimace, a furrow between my eyebrows, nose scrunched in displeasure, mouth pursed into a thin line like it’s being pulled taught like string.
“Ok, thanks,” is how I respond, given that I only had three seconds to find something clever to say. I start to think that maybe this is how I would respond in reality. Maybe this is how it’s going to go down when someone actually loves me.
He gives me a look. But why would I love a random stranger?
“I have male-related trauma.”
“Well, I guess that’s understandable. I have female-related trauma.” He laughs and I laugh uncomfortably along with him.
He’s drunk so I wave it off. But my palms begin to sweat profusely, mind spinning like the tilt-a-whirl at the fair, and I cannot help but start to think.
I start to think about how, at the time, the leaves were wet and dirt brown on the ground, not green like normal, and didn’t crunch the way they were supposed to like a bad omen and how I thought this person was my friend, and how hard it is to say “no,” and how nobody ever gets punished when they should, and nobody ever gets justice when they should.
And then it’s all too late and there’s nothing left but to try to live with another weight added to the pile.
And how it’s never a strange person in an alleyway.
And the pain and grief that poisons your entire soul, how people call you a liar and dismiss it.
And how nobody asks if you’re okay and you just want someone to ask if you’re okay.
I turn around. He’s gone. His buddy is gone too. Like they were never there, to begin with.
“He just wanted to get into our pants,” my girlfriend says.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
We finally grab our grilled cheeses’ and I reminisce about what could have been different.
Another night. Another headache. Another grilled cheese. I have to pay a ten-dollar cover to get into the bar and do not see anyone worth talking to. A waste of what little summer tip money I have left.
A man taps me on the shoulder. I finish a sip of my Amoretto Sour, now all ice—watered-down sloshing around unpleasantly in my stomach– and wait for him to get on with what he wants to say.
He looks like a potato with sprouted mold on the top his face is greasier than the average person’s and when he takes a sip of beer, he doesn’t wipe the foam off right away. He asks for my Snapchat without bothering with a conversation and as he says this, he and his buddy start jostling each other.
“No.” He walks away looking angry. I said no and felt okay with it. I went out alone to Brothers Bar and Grill, as I do every single Thursday, and felt okay with it. But somehow saying no leaves me with a sticky feeling in my stomach like after eating an ice cream bar and having nowhere to wash your hands.
Everyone tells me I look like I have my life put together. Maybe it’s my green iPad, and green Polaroid, and green converse, and green nails that are three weeks past their prime, and green gym bag and green leggings. I think it is just a façade. A coping mechanism. If I have my life together then nobody can get through to me.
I feel like a creature when nothing in my outfit matches, when the men making snake noises at the gym decide they want to stare and gawk a little longer because I stumbled on my squat foot placement. I feel at least for a moment invincible in my greenness. Maybe invisible which would be preferable. The best characters are the green ones, the best fictional housing placements are green. Green is associated with nature. Nature is healing. I plaster my mask of happiness in a feeble attempt to heal.
Green plants grow. Green plants die. Green plants taste good. Green plants don’t lie. Green plants swirl as green dresses twirl. I always try to push my greenness aside.
There was a time, much like this, when everything was going well until it wasn’t. I had friends that I, mind you, paid for, and they believed I had my shit together. They never seemed to acknowledge that I wanted to become a lawyer, that I wanted to do important things just like their boring business majoring asses. They told me I was just an English major and wouldn’t amount to anything.
Alas, as a word of advice, maybe this is why you do not pay for your friends.
But at first it was different. We went to the apple orchard together and took pictures with my green Polaroid camera. We squeezed into our respective dorm rooms and ate disgustingly green mint chocolate milkshakes and gossiped into the late hours of the night.
When everything came crumbling like a kid pushing down a brick wall, the friends I paid for told me that what happened was not a big deal.
“Go to the hospital,” said the first girl, who I only spoke to sometimes. But she did not go with me. Because I was in disbelief. Because I am afraid of doctors. So, I did not go.
“Go take plan B,” a girl with a weasel voice and a foundation line told me, her bug eyes sliding up and down. The sentiment was unappreciated and her advice like the friendship she provided was a steaming pile of shit. Two months later, it is as if we were never friends at all and I never speak to her again.
When I go to the gym, I see him everywhere. I feel like a bird jerking out of my own skin every time a man with dark hair dares to look over at me.
When I go to the bar, I see him everywhere. My roommate left for one second to get another drink, but the room is spinning fast than the disco ball above us, and I am stumbling but not drunk enough to justify it.
When I tell my friend from film class, she makes me promise with my pinky squeezed around hers to go tell someone. But I don’t tell anyone.
When it’s too late and a friend that I paid for says that he did the same to someone else; all I wish is that I told someone.
And now, I simply wish that these strange reckonings didn’t make my head spin so badly.
BLOG IT BABY 