Jillian Read online

  She knew all of her habits were painfully interesting.

  It would be difficult to talk to anyone but Randy until the fourth beer, but if it had to happen, she could always smoke a cigarette and drink a little bit faster.

  “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t give a fuck,” was one of Megan’s mantras. She finished her first party beer and started the second. She looked around at all the people in the living room. She didn’t see Will. She kind of liked Will. She thought, “I don’t give a fuck,” while moving her head and shoulders back and forth a little.

  She hadn’t meant to move, but quickly reminded herself that she didn’t give a fuck either way.

  “What are you laughing at?” asked a guy who hit on her sometimes, for some reason.

  “Myself, because I am an idiot.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, can I have a cigarette?” he asked.

  “Of course, why not, right?” she said.

  “So, what’s up?”

  “Uh, nothing really at all.”

  “Oh, yeah? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, I work at a gastroenterologists’ office as a medical records technician, which means I look at saltine-sized photos of diseased anuses and colons all day. And I don’t really have that much free time, but the free time I do have I spend trying to get drunk enough to forget my miseries,” said Megan, holding her beer can up to the guy for a cheers.

  He looked at her sideways, then gave her the cheers.

  “Well, at least it’s a funny job. Is it interesting? Are you into computers?” He was a smooth young man.

  “No, I’m not really that into computers. And, also, our computers are always broken, so if I were into them, this job would be even more frustrating.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, how did you get the job? Are you interested in medicine?”

  “Oh, god no, not at all. I’m kind of a hypochondriac. If I see a malady, I absorb it. So I don’t think I’d ever want to,” she searched for the words, “advance in this field.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Megan shifted. “I got this job through my primary doctor. I came in to see him about migraines and minor panic attacks, and he told me that occupation was good medicine and that the doctor down the hall was hiring. I hadn’t had a job in ten months and I was living off my parents. It was making me cry every day.”

  “Oh.”

  Megan opened her third beer and flipped open the top of her box of cigarettes. She rolled the cigarette around between her fingers before lighting it. She thought it might be soothing. A girl walked up to them and punched Megan’s new boyfriend in the arm.

  “Hey, James, what’s up, man?” said the girl.

  She seemed like a happy young person. They ought to just, you know, go to the other side of the living room together, this girl and James.

  “Oh, I got you one of those roadkill pelts I was telling you about,” said the new girl. “They’re actually a lot more beautiful and a lot less gross than I thought they’d be.”

  Oh my god, everyone in this world is just way too interested in things, thought Megan.

  “Hey, do you want to sit here?” Megan asked.

  “You don’t mind?”

  The girl asked this as if Megan had just done her a great kindness.

  “Oh, um, no. Not at all. Just let me get my bag,” said Megan.

  “Hey, Megan, do you know Sarah?” asked James.

  “No, I don’t think we’ve met,” said Megan, holding out her hand.

  Sarah shook it.

  “I’ve seen you a lot, though,” said Sarah.

  “Yeah, well, that’s natural,” said Megan. “Bye, guys.”

  A tiny-feeling hand pinched Megan’s elbow.

  It was Amanda!

  “Hey, Megan,” said Amanda.

  “Hey, you want to go outside with me?” Megan asked. “I was just going to smoke.”

  “Oh, I think you can smoke inside,” said Amanda.

  “Yeah,” said Megan. “I know. But I want to go outside.”

  “Oh, um,” said Amanda. She looked around and then said, “Okay, sure.”

  “Ppphhhbbbffff,” said Megan, leaning against the back porch railing. “What the fuck.”

  “What?” said Amanda.

  “Eh, nothing. I feel weird today.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” asked Megan.

  “Oh, I mean, it’s sympathy, not an apology.”

  “I know,” said Megan, lighting a cigarette.

  She offered one to Amanda, who waved her hand “No” at it.

  “If I don’t quit smoking, I’m going to kill myself,” said Megan.

  “Are they starting to take their toll?”

  “No, I mean I’m going to deliberately commit suicide if I can’t do something as simple as not slowly poisoning myself.”

  “Eh, you’re young. The right time to quit will present itself,” said Amanda.

  “Do you really believe that? Do you really think there’ll be some day when I feel capable enough to resist the nicotine addiction? And be able to unburden myself of the glamorous and romantic associations I have with smoking? You really think that’s going to happen?”

  “Well, yeah. All things we do but don’t completely like are phases. Sometimes they’re long-standing phases, but, I mean, they’re phases. I remember wetting the bed until first grade and just really wondering when it would stop, and feeling the same way you do when my parents told me I’d grow out of it. I really thought it would never stop.”

  “What, are you a serial killer or something?”

  “No. What kind of a thing is that to say?”

  “Serial killers wet the bed, that’s all.”

  “Lots of people wet the bed until they’re seven. Six and seven, that’s still a baby, I think. I’m just trying to relate our experiences.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  They listened to the sound of other people’s chatter. The porch was half full with people.

  “I wet the bed, too,” said Megan. “Until first grade. It’s no big deal.”

  “I know it’s no big deal, that’s why I used it as an example.”

  “But it’s different, because it’s not like I learned how to wet the bed and then got addicted to it even though it was starting to kill me. It’s not like bed-wetting was all the rage but the pee was, like, transdermally poisoning me.”

  “I guess that’s one difference. Still, you should give it a few more years before committing suicide. Things might change.”

  “Yeah, I guess I was just being kind of dramatic,” said Megan.

  “Oh really?” said Amanda.

  Megan sighed and opened another beer.

  They hung out and drank, and at some point someone started smoking weed out there on the porch. Megan was drunk enough to think she wanted some. She eyed the people who were smoking. They all looked like they were pretty close friends and like they were having a real conversation. They were laughing and saying “Nuh-uh” and stuff like that.

  “I want to smoke some of that weed,” said Megan.

  “Then ask for some.”

  Megan winced. “You do it?”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Hey,” she said to the group in general. “Can we trade you guys beer or smokes for a few hits of that?”

  “Whatever, just have some,” said one of the guys.

  “Cool,” said Amanda.

  “Thanks,” said Megan.

  The pipe had a bug-eyed glass crocodile on it. Megan drunkenly identified with it for its mute and endless proximity to all this social fun. She felt like a warty little toad or a troll or a guy who was so visibly lonely that everyone thought he might start beating off or crying just for the feeling of connection he wo
uld get from all that wild, concentrated attention. She raised the pipe, tried to look the croc in the eyes, took a massive undergrad hit, and then re-inhaled it through her nose. A “French” inhale. She raised her eyebrows in gratitude in the general direction of the pot smokers.

  Amanda took a small sip off the pipe and passed it back and, in a surprisingly genuine tone, said, “Thanks.”

  “I feel like a fucking freak,” said Megan.

  “Well, you’re not a freak,” said Amanda.

  “Oh, god, yes I am.”

  “No you’re not.”

  As the weed worked its way through Megan’s system, she became more and more pantheistic. She became a living symbol for her emotions and, in response to the honor, her emotions began to swell. As they swelled, she felt simultaneously less stable and more happy, but happy in an awful way, since her happiness had something vaguely to do with death and complacency. No, not complacency. Acceptance, maybe? No, complacency.

  She looked at all the people on the porch and only sort of heard Amanda say, “You’re just a normal person who hates her job, but you’ve got a lot of nice things going for you. You’re in a stable relationship, for one thing, which is something I wouldn’t mind having. You know, I have pains in my life, too, but I manage. You manage, too. You’re not a freak, and you don’t turn people off except when you pout all the time, which you’re doing now, but, geez, you’re fine, all right? Stop being so overly self-involved. You have support from family and friends and everything is generally okay. Okay?” Which was a funny backdrop to the exalted feeling she was having of being one with the moment, being one with the porch in its misery, reveling in and revering this capsule of synthesized misery.

  “I’m not trying to kiss your ass or anything, I’m trying to get you to snap out of it, because it’s not a great way to relate to people. You’re not a freak. Are you even listening to anything I’m saying? You’re not even looking at me and I’m trying to help you.”

  I guess she gets pissed when she’s high, thought Megan.

  “The thing I have going for me,” said Megan, “is that I don’t even have to be here if I don’t want to be.” When she said “here” she pointed her finger down at the porch and held her hand in that position for a little too long, and she and Amanda made eye contact, which Amanda thought was aggravating, but which Megan thought was intense and transcendent.

  “You’re not even listening at all,” said Amanda.

  “Oh, I hear you, but I don’t agree with you that having a boyfriend and having a mom and dad are, like, some kind of prime jewels in life. Because I know what my prime jewels are,” why was she saying that—prime jewels? “and they are the moments in which all of those things—those baser things—melt into the background and I can feel like I know something that other people don’t know and I can go other places if I need to and explore other feelings of meaning and stuff.”

  Megan kept talking. The way she thought she sounded was not the way she really sounded. Amanda stopped listening, because she could feel herself becoming offended in an impassioned way. The way Amanda saw it—kind of her one strong philosophy in life—was that it was impossible to “explore the complications of human feeling,” as Megan was calling it, while you felt miserable. Those explorations were best left for times of reflection, when your judgment was not confused by the horrible lens of self-hatred. She knew this was not an original idea, but it didn’t need to be. The way she understood Megan was that Megan’s preoccupation was with these “baser” things—having stability, having a decent job, having health, having a group of people to support her. Amanda based this understanding on Megan’s monomaniacal preoccupation with “that asshole and her stupid fucking job,” “that asshole and his successful project,” “those assholes and their stupid clique,” “those fuckers and their homemade Tupperwares of kale.” If you see something you’re envious of—really genuinely envious of, not just that you admire—the only escape hatch from that feeling is to insult the object, to tart it up like an idiot, and then parade it around as something ridiculous, but that was a hatch that just led to a deeper and more confusing layer of self-doubt and self-dislike. It was obvious and sad to Amanda, but not sad enough. Megan wasn’t paying her to listen to this. Amanda’s week had been hard, too, and she was just trying to relax with some friends, but since she was the only one who seemed to have any tolerance for Megan, Megan clung to her. And she knew that Megan thought insulting things about her, too, and that was the thing that fired her up.

  “People think happiness is some kind of sign of complexity, but it’s not,” said Megan.

  “Oh, do they?” said Amanda. “I always thought people mistook brooding as a sign of complexity.”

  Megan gave her an I Dare You look.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” said Amanda.

  Megan continued the look.

  “Let me call your bluff and say this,” said Amanda. “There’s no one on this planet, not even my mother, who I like enough to stand around and soak up this selfish, whiny-baby bullshit from. A week? Okay, everyone has their weeks, but honestly I don’t even remember why we’re friends. This is miserable. I don’t know what I’m doing out here with you. There are people here who I don’t even know who I’d rather talk to than you right now. You seem to think you’re doing me a favor by hanging out with me. I find that laughable. I’d rather hang out with that guy,” she pointed to a white-faced, slump-eyed guy in a beanie, “who looks like he might barf in my face, than hang out with you for another second. I don’t know how much more clear I can be. I was just trying to give you a pep talk and you started shitting all over me. You are unbelievably draining, you self-serving, shallow, talentless waste of time.”

  Megan’s I Dare You face had become stuck, but not without absorbing some of the psychotic torture that was going on behind it. It was a damn silly position to be in, trying to hold the bluff when it had already been called.

  “I’m going to go inside now,” said Amanda.

  The potheads weren’t eavesdropping as covertly as they might have liked. Amanda left.

  “I think I’m going to go into the yard,” said Megan, to no one. “Good evening,” she said to the pale-faced guy in the beanie.

  Her legs felt crazy and her hands were clammy.

  “This is awful,” she said. She said it in a kind of hollow, matter-of-fact way.

  It was difficult to walk down the stairs. Her purse of beer was tipping her to the side.

  “This is terrible.”

  She crawled under the porch and sat by the air conditioner and looked out into the yard. She could hear the people on the porch talking, not about her, just talking about whatever they wanted to. They weren’t really that interested.

  Spring nights were so fucking nice.

  That elevated feeling she’d had earlier while she was shit talking all of human behavior came back, and as it came back she started laughing a horrified laugh, because that swelling feeling was exactly the same feeling she always had before she started sobbing. She hadn’t recognized it ten minutes ago, but that was why the feeling had been so familiar. Not because her consciousness was tapping into the ineffable, but because she was about to cry and had cried before. She sat there with her eyes wide and her mouth open, laughing noiselessly. Then she started crying, which only made her laugh more.

  Her body felt like nothing, not dense like it usually did.

  I could stay here like this forever, she thought. This is infinity’s moment.

  “Ha ha ha, uugh.”

  Infinity’s moment sounded like the jargon of a pedophile, and the phrase repulsed Megan, but she couldn’t stop thinking it. “Would you like to go to the Movie Star Room, Tracy?” Like “infinity’s moment” would be what the pedophile called his orgasm.

  Several feet above and behind Megan, Amanda walked up to Randy.

  “Can I talk to
you?” she said.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “I’m really sorry, I feel like kind of an asshole.”

  “What’s up?” said Randy.

  “Megan and I got into a fight, and I think I might have really hurt her feelings. I feel like an asshole.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, but I don’t really want to . . . I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t really think I can talk to her right now, but I think she might be under the porch crying. I’m sorry, I know this is shitty.”

  “Uh, really, Amanda, this isn’t your fault. She’s been kind of nasty lately. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, she’s not your responsibility.”

  Randy wince-smiled.

  Back under the porch, Megan was grinning and crying. Oh my god, someone’s coming down here, she thought. But this is infinity’s moment, don’t they know that? Ha ha ha, go away, go away, go away. Don’t you know this is a special moment and that I can’t talk right now, not even to tell you to go away, so just go away, go away?

  She looks scary, thought Randy. Why is she smiling like that?

  If I don’t look at them? She stared ahead. Please go away, you know I don’t really like social situations, ha ha ha. You know I don’t do well in social situations, ha ha ha.

  She’s just really drunk.

  Oh, it’s Randy, my poor little Randy!

  Randy scooted down next to her and said, “Hey, baby. Amanda told me you two got in a fight.”

  “Uuuoooohhhhh,” said Megan. “Uuuuuhoohh.”

  He covered her with his torso and put his arms around her.

  “My poor mama hen, my poor Randy.”

  “What?” said Randy. “I can’t hear you.”

  “My poor mama hen.”

  “I can’t—”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  God, what a relief to just be able to cry like a normal person, without smiling. What a fucking relief.

  “Honey, what’s going on with you?”