Forgot Your Name

When I was younger I worked with a boy who wasn’t very nice. He was short and scruffy and good looking but mean and awkward. We had chemistry. We fought a lot but when people were around us they said it was sexy. One time when we were working together he was singing really loud. It annoyed me. I was trying to count money. It was late and I was tired and I just wanted to go home. I had been nice to people all day. I was covered in beer and booze and all kinds of sticky things. I just wanted to count my money. I wanted it to be quiet. But he kept singing. So I told him to shut up. He got mad. He called me names. He told me I was an unhappy person. He said I wanted to make other people unhappy too. He said other things I don’t remember. They made me sad. I was tired and weak and I started to cry. I don’t like to cry in front of people. I like to be strong. He made me cry in front of everyone. The next day he brought me flowers to apologize. I said I did not accept his apology but secretly I was flattered. Later, I got lonely and drunk and tried to kiss him. He said we would be together some day but not today. It wasn’t our time yet. I asked him when it would be our time. He said he didn’t know. Sometimes I think about him. Us together, fighting a lot. And it makes me happy. The only thing is, I forgot his name. 

The Boardwalk

I used to babysit my sister when I was younger. Like, real young. Since she was a baby. We are five years apart. When she got old enough her and I would venture outside during the summer. Before that we had to stay inside or people would know. That we were alone. When I was twelve or so we went to the Boardwalk. We had summer passes because our mom worked there. We didn’t see our mom everyday but we saw her sometimes on the weekends and she would buy us ice cream and croissants. That’s how I got fat I think. But she had some mothering to make up for so she bought me food. My sister got clothes. To this day I love food. And my sister has way too many clothes. I know because I did her laundry once. Our favorite ride was the pirate ship. It was like a big swing. It didn’t go upside down. Which was good because I was scared of going upside down. It was also next to the food court, which was convenient. Once we got stuck on it and made up songs. Pirate ship songs. When I got older I worked at the candy store on the Boardwalk. My boss was a creep and hit on all the young girls. But not me. My sister would go to the Boardwalk at night with her friends and drink and go on rides when they were closed. She was more adventurous than I was. I was the good girl. When she was twenty eight she had a stroke and I stayed with her in the hospital for three weeks. I dumped her poo out of the bed pan and gagged as she laughed. We made up songs about the nurses and ate Taco Bell. Looking back, it was kind of fun. 

Demon

Inside my body is a demon. The demon makes me want to drink a lot. It says…you’ll feel really good once you drink a whole bunch. It says that when I drink a whole bunch I am really smart and funny and kind of sexy. Mostly, it just makes all my anxiety go away. I like it. So I stay away from my demon. I try to control it. But usually the demon gets what it wants. And I feel good for a little bit. And then I order food. Lots of food. And I eat it all. And I wake up and I want to die. I wonder why I can’t stop myself. I wonder why I’m not like other people. I get mad about the money I spent. The money I work so hard to save. The money I could buy something nice with that goes to pizza and booze instead. I wonder what it’s like to wake up feeling good. To wake up and go to the gym. To have goals and ambition. To wake up and be loved. I fight the sadness. I fight the demon. But sometimes I get tired. And I wonder why no one else seems tired too. So I drink. And for a little while, I feel better. 

Alysia

My best friend in grade school’s name was Alysia. We met on the asphalt. No one would play with us so we decided to play with each other. On the metal dragon. It was fun to have a friend. Alysia had a mom and a dad. Her mom didn’t work which meant she made dinners for her family every night. Her mom was really fat and her dad was really skinny. I used to wonder what they looked like having sex. Alysia’s mom liked to eat baked potatoes with non-fat cheese, which I had never had before but I thought it was really cool. Alysia’s dad drove a truck so he was gone a lot. I thought truck drivers were poor but Alysia’s family owned a big house so I figured they weren’t. Sometimes when kids were mean to me at school I would go to Alysia’s house and sit with her mom. I would be all casual like “I was just in the neighborhood” but of course it was during the school day so I figure her mom must have known something was wrong. I had so many absences I almost didn’t graduate. But I’m pretty sure no one wants to hold back a kid in middle school, so I did. Once Alysia was leaving the house and her mom made her fix her socks. They weren’t rolled up neatly. Alysia always looked neat. Her hair was long and she wasn’t allowed to cut it. I think she developed an eating disorder later. In high school her mom called me a bad influence as she laughed over her dinner. It made me feel bad. Alysia and I drifted apart but I still see her on Facebook. She married well and smiles big. Her bones are still too big for her body and she still looks like she doesn’t eat. But she looks perfect and happy and I wonder if she is. And if she wanted to, if she would be allowed to cut her hair. 

Grandpa

I knew two things about my grandpa: he was part Native American and he was an alcoholic. He was also a gambler too but I think that’s part of being an alcoholic. He liked everything to excess. He had an animal’s head in his living room and I used to stare at it. I don’t remember what it was. Oh wait, it was a cheetah. Or cougar? It was a white cat and I felt so bad for it. But my grandpa was part Cherokee and he said the animal was from his mom. He was proud of being Cherokee. He said that’s why he had a flat butt and no hair. His couches were leather and when I slept on them I would wake up stuck with sweat. He had a slot machine in his living room and lots of quarters. His wife got hurt a lot. She broke her neck once. But she didn’t die. She took a lot of pills. She was my mom’s age. My mom and her used to call each other sisters. I think that’s kind of weird. I visited him at work once. He had a big office and I had to go up an elevator to get to it. Before I got to the office there was a table with a bunch of flowers on it. I could tell he was important. He introduced me to a man in the hallway and they laughed and he patted the man on the back. He used to drink scotch on ice and when my mom was with him she would do the same. He lived in Oklahoma and said it was okay to drive drunk there. He used to fall asleep on the couch with the TV on. My mom would tell me to leave him there. When his wife died he got really sad. He would call my mom crying. She would go visit him but I wasn’t allowed to. He spent a lot of time in the casinos. They knew him well and would buy his meals. He said he wanted to die and a few months later he did. 

Mean to Me

Some guy was mean to me today. I was walking my dogs and it made some guy mad. He told me to “control my dogs.” One of them was laying down. He was really angry. He had a salad in his hand and it looked like he was in a hurry to get back to work. I wondered where he worked. He seemed to be really important. I hope he worked someplace shitty where his boss is mean to him. But probably not. He probably was important. I got kind of flustered and I said that I had a right to walk my dogs wherever I wanted. He said one of them touched him. He didn’t like when dogs touched him I guess. I like when dogs touch me. But I guess that’s a personal preference. I said something else to him. I think he was surprised I talked back to him. But, I wanted to do better. I wanted to say something witty. I wanted to make fun of him and make him feel small like he did to me. I wanted to sound really smart and talk about white privilege but end by calling him a dick or something. Mix some smarts with some street. Just so he knew I had range. I could do both. But I was caught off guard. I was thinking of other things. My shoulders hurt today so I was thinking about that. I wondered if I slept wrong or I was stressed out or maybe I’m dehydrated. I thought about what I wanted to make for lunch and how I bought a bunch of fresh vegetables but all I want to eat is the frozen fish sticks. I thought about my sister and how she hates her life and what I could do to make it better. I thought about my belly and whether I look like I’ve had kids even though I haven’t. I thought about my dogs and I wondered why one of them was already laying down. Was she hot? Or sick? Or just tired? Or maybe just lazy. I wondered if there was anything good on tv I could watch while eating my lunch. I like to have things to look forward to. It makes getting through the day a lot easier. I thought about my nails and how I did a good job painting them. I wondered how long until they started chipping and whether or not I could start being the type of person who re-paints them when they look bad. Then the guy yelled at me and I got flustered. And for the rest of the walk, I thought about him. 

The Bus

When I lived in Baltimore there was a woman on the bus with her two kids. She wasn’t looking at them. One was older and one was a baby. When the baby would cry the older boy would hit the baby. That made the baby cry even more. I stared at them. I wondered why she wouldn’t hold the baby. I wondered what had happened to the older boy. If he had to watch the baby all the time. I thought about the time I threw a door knob at my sister. And how we were always alone. The woman looked at me and then told her boys not to worry about the woman staring at them. She said something mean about me like I couldn’t hear her. I got really mad. I told her I don’t like to see children being hurt. I told her that her son didn’t know how to take care of a baby. I told her that kids don’t know how to be parents. I told her to stop talking to her friend. I told her that if she didn’t want her kids she shouldn’t have had them. I screamed at her. I started shaking. People looked at me. She told me if I didn’t want to see kids get hurt I shouldn’t take the bus. I didn’t know what to say. A full minute later I said the next time I would call the police. She rolled her eyes at me and grabbed her child. She sang a song to her baby. I didn’t look at them again.