Post-NY

A Love Letter to My Sick Boyfriend, In A Post-New York World

My Darling,

I have no idea how to take care of you when you’re not feeling well, especially in Los Angeles. Driving over to your place really isn’t an option, what with the 101 freeway acting as a long, traffic-jammed barrier, separating my home from yours.

If we were still in New York, you would live in Bushwick, and I would live in Manhattan. Had you fallen ill there, I would simply have to bribe the guy working at the bodega below your apartment to run you up some Advil and Gatorade and ginger ale and saltine crackers, which would undoubtedly hit the fifteen-dollar credit card minimum. He would grumble, but it would be worth it.

Or, I could hop on Seamless and order a nearby deli to bring you some matzoh ball soup. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to order from Carnegie Deli, even though theirs is the best, because they don’t deliver below 50^th Street. Nonetheless, I would make sure it was the good kind, with no carrots, and a good ball-to-broth ratio.

But if things were really dire, I suppose I could brave the J train at rush hour, and take the 45-minute journey from my office to your building. Maybe if I transferred right at Delancey Essex, I would be able to get a seat before all of the hard-core bridge-and-tunnel-ers began their commute home. If not, I’d probably end up squished between three or five winter coats, none of which would be familiar in smell, texture, or heat. I’d manage, because I do really enjoy being with you.

Then again, that might look too desperate, too much like an act of love. After all, we’ve only been dating for three months. Hopping on either the brown or the orange lines after 7 p.m. is the kind of romance reserved for at least a ten-month commitment. Come to think of it, I might miss the yoga class I normally take in the Flatiron District, and for what? To drop off some orange juice and vitamins, only to contract whatever disease you currently have and re-distribute your germs to everyone else on the subway that evening?

So. I won’t come to your apartment, or attempt to take care of you. Because this isn’t New York. Los Feliz doesn’t have any soup that isn’t Thai curry, which, while delicious, probably won’t make you feel any less like vomiting. Taking PCH to Santa Monica and cutting up Sunset wouldn’t do either, because I might actually see my next birthday before I arrived at your doorstep. I could try to get off somewhere before the 405, but taking side streets runs the risk of me stopping at In N Out Burger for the third time today, and my Pilates instructor would be furious.

I really hope you feel better. Please know that I love you very much, and were we not in Los Angeles, I would be a much better girlfriend.

Love always.

Bored.

Boredom is a different kind of depression. It almost makes me miss the wild nights I spent getting loaded on the Lower East Side. At least back then I was trying. I used to wake up with a sore throat in the bathtub and thank whatever god I believed in that I didn’t die or lose my wallet. Now, I mostly just watch re-runs of old sitcoms and bake gluten-free muffins. I go to the gym. I clean my bedroom and take trips to the outlet mall with my mother. I sleep all day, even when the weather is nice and the beach is only ten minutes away. I apologize a lot, for taking up space. I take up space anyway. I don’t pay my credit card bills. I don’t write. I don’t do fucking anything.

Last night, I sat on the rooftop of an apartment building in Los Angeles, palm trees like Grim Reapers guarding the edges. I wasn’t the one drinking. He was. I was thinking back to the windowsill at the bar below my apartment where I tried to die all summer. Back then, my lungs were made of the La Brea Tar Pits. I didn’t eat for three whole weeks. I wore these same blue shorts that I’m wearing now, because I didn’t care about anything, except drinking whiskey.

He grabbed the bottle of wine, took three deep swigs. He fell asleep as soon as we got inside. I didn’t. I stayed awake, Googling things like:  WHEN WILL HUMANS KNOW THAT THE SUN HAS BURNED OUT? WHAT ARE SOME SIGNS THAT YOU’RE DYING?

Here’s what I learned about the sun: If the sun turned off like a light switch tonight, it would take us 8 minutes to notice. But that won’t happen. Instead, it will get too hot, slowly, over time, and the core will collapse in on itself in 7 billion years.

Here’s what I learned about dying: You will sleep all the time. You will refuse food and water. Your fingertips will be cool to the touch. You will withdraw socially, and your energy will be low. Your breathing will slow down. Your body will die from the outside in, like the sun imploding, only faster.

It took me 10 days to leave New York, but I didn’t notice I had really left for six whole weeks. I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t have anywhere to go, that I hated how hot California is in February. I stopped applying for jobs and started driving aimlessly down the 101, east on the 23, west toward PCH. A woman at Rite Aid called me a cunt. I got a kidney infection and ate popsicles on the couch for three whole days. I ate just to eat, but really, I hate the food here. All greasy avocados and huevos rancheros, some inexpensive Chinese food, a few pieces of kale.

“I think I’m dying,” I told him on the rooftop, and he put down the bottle and ran the backs of his knuckles down the side of my face.

“You’re just bored,” he told me, and I believed him.

But.

Isn’t that kind of the same thing?

Six.

The last six years have been, as the kids say, a trip.

I left California in my recently deceased grandfather’s white Ford Explorer, full of heartbreak and explosives. I picked up the fireworks in New Mexico at a little stand by the road. I got the whiskey at a drive-through liquor store in Arizona. I was just a kid. A dumb kid with too many suitcases and a brand new nose ring and Courtney Love bangs. I drove east. I didn’t think about what that meant was in store for the next half-decade.

I moved to Waco, Texas when I was 18 years old, knowing nothing about the place other than that there was a shopping center off La Salle made up of a strip club, a tattoo parlor, and a Mexican restaurant, which I quickly and affectionately nicknamed Tits, Tats, N' Tacos. By the end of it, I could have stayed in that dinky little town forever, wrapped up in the lights from the Alico building downtown and the sunrise over the Brazos. I met my best friend washing dishes at a crappy day job downtown, and we started writing. Our first drafts were covered in salsa and fueled by tequila, but still. I worked at a magazine that was helping to shape the art culture in a city full of the most talented musicians, artists, writers, poets, and creative folk I’ve ever seen. I fell in love with a boy with a double-pierced nose who loved mac and cheese and Bukowski, but hated brushing his teeth. I never slept. I stayed up all night, all day, watching X-Files and baking cupcakes and drinking tequila and dancing to Lovefool by the Cardigans all around the kitchen of Beatnix Burger Barn. I jumped over the fence at The Strokes' concert in Zilker Park in a mass riot during SXSW. I lived in my very first apartment with a roommate that I adored and her baby cat, Sheldon. That boy moved on, but I kept his old Common Grounds sweatshirt, his Han Solo pajama bottoms, the scar on my left nostril where his nose rings got tangled in mine.

I moved to Spain, and discovered that I hated tapas, but loved taking taxis to my flat in Madrid at nighttime. I studied for finals in a little boat on the lake in Retiro Park, and got stranded in El Museo del Prado because I refused to tear myself away from Hieronymus Bosh’s three-paneled painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights.  I ran away to Barcelona for the weekend, where I accidentally stole the wallet, cell phone, and jacket of a mugger on the Metro who tried to rob me. I learned how to file a police report in Spanish when my passport was stolen at the airport. “La ladróna robó mi pasaporte en el baño.” I mostly ate salt and vinegar chips, because Iberian ham is gross, and gained fifteen pounds of white wine and Spanish moonlight on a hilltop overlooking the city of Granada. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care. I was free.

I moved to London during the 2012 Olympics and the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Tate Modern. I ditched my group, and took every single excursion alone. I rode the bus to Stonehenge solo, climbed to the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral by myself. I locked myself in my bedroom with a fever and would only emerge to eat buckets full of spicy soup from Wagamamas. I visited my cousins whenever I got lonely, or popped into a pub to drink pints with the other school kids at Victoria College. I ran away to Paris and stayed on a pig farm in Normandy, filled my belly with crepes, put a lock on the Pont des Arts in honor of my grandparents. I threw the key into the river. The next day, I found out that I got the job at Letterman.

I moved to New York with two suitcases full of shoes and shirts with embellished collars. I worked at The Late Show for a while, and made the best friends I’ve ever had in my whole life. We’d stay out until morning singing bad karaoke at Bar 9, ordering watery pitchers of eleven-dollar Yeungling, cursing tourists who walked too slowly in Times Square. I got hit by a semi-truck and survived. I did my very first book reading and survived that too. I met Stephen Chbosky after a reading at the Strand, where he invited me to send him my memoir when it’s finished. I got free tequila shots at brunch from the world’s most beautiful waitress, who said she had read everything I've ever published. I found out how Hemmingway and Fitzgerald developed egos and drinking problems on the Lower East Side. I watched the sun set over Brooklyn on my best friend’s rooftop. I walked a skateboarding goat down Broadway on a hot pink leash. I took a Polaroid with Danny Bowien on my 24^th birthday. I joined the Greenpoint Writers Group and found out that hey, maybe I could do this writing thing for real. I was lucky enough to be loved by a chef and an actor, before they both broke my heart, one at Boulton and Watt on Avenue A, one outside of my apartment, exactly one year apart.  I fell into a depression and I drank myself to death, but the best part was when I rescued myself at the end of it. I danced on top of a table at Whiskey Town, signing all the words to every 90’s jam I knew with every single person in the city who loved me. I ate dollar slice for a year when I couldn’t afford anything else. I tanned in Sheep Meadow on the Fourth of July, and I got through Hurricane Sandy with nothing but a box of Lucky Charms and a bottle of rum. I scared off a crack addict with a bayonet in my first apartment in Bushwick. I ate pizza. I ate so much fucking pizza. 

How lucky am I, really, to have collected so many beautiful pieces of artwork to hang all over my walls? How lucky am I, to have fallen in love with dudes who made me laugh and cooked me food and changed me, for the better now, I hope. How lucky am I, to have made friends with the world’s best comedians, greatest artists, and most talented creators. How lucky am I, to have gathered enough stories to keep me writing for a lifetime.

I’m on my way back to Los Angeles now. I’m nervous, because I haven’t seen her in a long time. But I think everything is going to be just fine. I think I’m going to listen to the Rolling Stones and drive down Sunset Boulevard, past the Roxy and the Whiskey where I grew up seeing shows. I’m going to go rollerblading on the beach in Venice, and I’m going to run straight into the waves at free Zuma. I’m going to go to every Laker game, to every Best Coast show, to every candlelight vigil for Bradley Nowell down in Long Beach. I’m going to eat Yang Chow and Cheebo’s like they’re going out of style. I’m going to be in love with a guy that kissed me in an alleyway behind a donut store when we were sixteen, and turned out to be a pretty cool adult. I’m going to take my dog Jasmine for walks in the Santa Monica Mountains. I’m going to be with all of the friends who have stuck with me my whole life, no matter how far away I’ve lived.

There’s a song that I love, and it goes like this:

“So, nurse me like a mother / Raise me strong just like my father / Let me wander off, discover who I am. / I’ll have learned the deepest lessons, gathered up the finest blessings / Return to California once again. / I’ll come home to California once again.

TinyGods

I don’t date men who believe that they’re men. I date men who think they’re tiny gods, little superheroes, mini royalty. “I’m Iron Man,” they say. “I’m Indiana Jones; I’m the next Charles Bukowski."

I date men with heartbeats like drumbeats, men who use my vital organs like voodoo dolls. They poke me with pins and light me on fire and grow angry when I bleed on their carpet. “Silly girl,” they sneer, eyebrows raised. “Who told you that I was your home?”

I date men who say they love my writing, like my words are sexier than my ribcage. "Write about me this time,” they plead with their clothes on my floor. “Promise me you’ll never write about that other guy again.” This lasts a month, usually, sometimes, maybe, two. Then it’s, “I hate that you said that I used to do coke, I hate the way you compared me to drowning.”  I don’t know how else to ask you to behave better, how to tell you that you never really loved me at all.

I date men who ask me to be their night sky, and then get mad when I swallow them whole. If they wanted to save a girl from her sadness, they shouldn’t have tried to save me. They should’ve picked someone who isn’t comfortable in her melancholy, someone who wants to be rescued. 

“I can’t do anything right,” they scream when I’m sulking. "The ceiling’s always falling with you.” 

Where I sit, darling, there is no ceiling. Only Jupiter and her 67 moons.

I date men who say things they don’t mean like, “The first time I saw you, I felt like how Alexander Fleming must have felt when he discovered penicillin.” Things like, “I want you to meet my mother, my sister, my high school English teacher.” Things like, “I wish I had known you when we were both kids, then maybe you’d have never been lonely.”

I date men who think I’m difficult to love. I date men who ignore me until it’s convenient, usually around 5am when they can’t sleep. I date men who make me feel like Kronos, like Frankenstein’s monster, like a cannibal.  I date men who compare me to a bottle of whiskey: “You were fun last night, honey baby, but I feel like shit this morning.”

But I’m not a cannibal, you know. I’m not a monster or a people-eater or even Johnny Walker Gold. I’m made of the same stuff that the universe is made out of; atoms and molecules and moonbeams and stardust. And you? You’re not a miracle or a saint or even Mick Jagger. 

You’re just a man. Someone should have told you that by now.

Toothpaste.

This morning, I woke up thinking that I was in London for a minute. I sometimes have this flashback fever dream where I’m in a twin-sized bed in my old dorm room at Victoria college, sick with the flu and delirious, clutching a giant quart of spicy chili ramen from Wagamama’s in my greedy, mittened, fists. I dream that I’m binge watching television alone, blanketed by the haze of a hangover and 100mg of Amitryptaline. That’s the happiest I’ve ever been.

When I realize that I’m actually cocooned in three blankets, a scarf wrapped around my feet, and my down overcoat splayed haphazardly on top of the whole mess, I want to die. My heater is broken. It is winter, which means that it’s approximately 13 degrees in New York, which means that it actually feels like it’s negative 37 degrees. I spend a few minutes wondering who would find me if I froze to death in my apartment, until I settle on the answer, “Probably Netflix, after they’ve realized that I haven’t watched an episode of Law & Order SVU in a few days.” I set a timer on my phone to go off in five minutes, a little less than the amount of time I’ll need to mentally prepare myself to brush my teeth; the actual amount of time being: forever.

I squeeze a tiny, baby-sized amount of toothpaste onto the bristles of my Sonicare. My hair is already up in a bun, tied squarely on the top of my head. I brace myself against the bathroom sink, waiting. Left bottom molars first, a quick sweep across my central and lateral incisors, right back molars. Top left molars second, and then I gag. I spit out my toothpaste, suck in a few deep breaths through my mouth, gag again. I hold my nose so that I can’t taste the peppermint. I pretend it’s a mouthful of a Starbucks holiday drink instead. Nothing works. I vomit a tiny splash into the sink, rinse, and re-brush my top and bottom teeth. I spit again, try to swish some water around, and repeat. It’s like my body is actively rebelling against any action, thought, or process that might make me smile more.

I used to think it was weird, that I puked every time I brushed my teeth. I thought I was allergic to toothpaste or something. I thought maybe I had ulcers. I thought I was having prolonged morning sickness, a la Kate Middleton, due to my propensity to eat tater tots at five in the morning, or whatever. Every conversation I had with a medical professional went exactly how you would imagine:  

Me: “Ummmm…so, I’ve been doing this really weird thing lately? Like, not on purpose?  I think I might be allergic to toothpaste or something, because I throw up every time I try to brush my teeth.”

Doctor: “Here are some pamphlets with more information about eating disorders.”

The conversations I had with my mom were even worse.

Me: “So, I kind of threw up this morning while I was brushing my teeth.”

Mom: “Oh my god, you’re definitely pregnant, you’re grounded, forever.”

I eventually accepted my fate: that no one I could tell would ever think that it was anything other than bulimia, or that I was somehow permanently with-child. Those seemed like more realistic options for a girl my age, at least compared to something like being allergic to Colgate. So I stopped seeking medical advice on the subject. I puked every morning post-dental hygiene routine, and I completely stopped worrying about it. I knew what to do. Hair up, tiniest amount of toothpaste possible, breathe in and out through my mouth, vanilla-flavored mouthwash to seal the deal. On the good days, I only gagged or dry-heaved, my stomach muscles contracting while I flung cool water in my mouth to try to make it stop. I’ve been told that after awhile, human beings can adapt to almost anything.

And then, something unexpected happened. Sophomore year of college, it started happening less and less. Eventually, it stopped happening at all. I convinced myself that I had found the miracle brand of toothpaste (Crest Cavity Protection, flavored “Regular Paste”), and moved on. I gained weight. Not a lot, but enough that the girls in my sorority stopped poking my ribcage and giggling that I should eat a sandwich. I didn’t mind. I went from a size 0 to a size 4, and never looked back. I threw away all of my old dresses and pants and got new ones. I ate pizzas and Chinese takeout and cookies and macaroni and cheese. I was fine, as long as I could keep my stomach down in the morning.

It happened periodically a few times over the next few years, but never on days when I felt happy and content and loved. I lived in Texas, and then Spain, and then the UK, and finally, New York. I was away from my family for the first time on an exciting, new, adventure. I had boyfriends and friends and new coworkers. I had a job that I loved, and a writing group that I trusted. Things were mostly pretty okay.

This summer, when it came back in full-swing, I noticed that it was worse on mornings after I had stayed awake too late, fighting with my ex-boyfriend and drinking whiskey after we hung up the phone to forget about it. I’m just a lazy, stupid drunk, I thought. I should probably take care of my body better.

A few months went by, and I gradually began to spend more and more time on my own, reading books and writing essays, even though it felt like being in solitary confinement. Every millisecond that passed when I wasn’t surrounded by friends or loved ones made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. The moment I met up with a buddy for a beer, or a dude for a date, I immediately relaxed. It felt like being freezing cold, and then stepping into the nicest, warmest bubble bath in the world. It felt like I was alone on a life raft in the middle of the ocean, casting a rope out repeatedly, only feeling remotely normal when a tugboat passed by.

One night, when I was so deep into a Tumblr void that I couldn’t possibly remember whose page I had started out on, I stumbled upon Twitter comedian Rob Delaney’s feed. And it was funny. It was dark, sometimes, too, and there was a lot of stuff on there about Robin Williams’ recent death; compassionate stuff, stuff that made you think about your relationships with the people in the world around you, and I got completely sucked up in reading all of his stories. I bought his book immediately, because hey, I had a Barnes & Noble gift card and nothing to lose. It was 4am on a Tuesday. I stayed up til 7, reading it, until I came across a chapter where Delaney described what it was like to have severe, suicidal depression.

If I were a cartoon, my jaw would have hit the floor. When Rob Delaney was depressed, he threw up when he brushed his teeth, too. There was a whole fucking chapter on it, 9 beautiful, wonderful, totally gross, graphic pages about how completely and utterly not-alone I was. For a brief, magical instant, I was elated. Finally! Someone cool and talented has the same weird thing going on! Someone who is living proof that you can be both funny and witty and abnormally sad, all at the same time! And then I was immediately swept up in thinking about my own reasons for hating to brush my stupid teeth.

The first stretch of time was when I was 15, after my very first boyfriend got kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken to one of those wilderness rehab programs in Provo, Utah. I also developed severe insomnia, and completely stopped sleeping, except for twenty-minute micro-naps that my body would force upon me so that my brain wouldn’t completely shut down. I lived like Tyler Durden for almost 9 months, which feels like a lot longer than it actually is when you’re wide awake for a full 24 hours each day. I started fight clubs in every city across America, aka, I watched Bridget Jones’ Diary about 400 times and woke up in History class without remembering how I got there.

It got bad again when I was 17, involved in a super unhealthy relationship with a guy who once hit me over the head with a dissecting tool in the middle of anatomy class--one of his less-horrible offenses, actually. My response, at the time, was to stand on top of a lunch table in the cafeteria next period and scream obscenities at him. I, having a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome, and him, being a total sociopathic misogynist, went to prom together a few weeks after that. It was stupid.

And now, here it was again. Maybe it was because the guy I was seeing for a few months broke it off with me to get back together with his ex-girlfriend. Maybe it was because, at the end of August, I got full-on hit by a semi –truck that ran a red light while I was crossing the street. Maybe it was because my ex-boyfriend told me that he had started sleeping with the girl who played lead opposite of him in a summer production of Odessa by the Sea while I thought we were still dating.  Maybe it was because my dog died. Maybe it was because my grandmother had a stroke. Maybe it was because I was broke and drinking too much. Maybe it was just because I was sad.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, and had a complete physical: blood work and urine tests, an EKG, and an impressively strong blood pressure cuff that squeezed my arm until it turned purple.

“Completely healthy,” my doctor grinned, showing too many teeth. “You’re the right weight for the right height, and your blood work looks perfect. You don’t need a follow-up appointment at all.”

I shouldn’t have been, but I felt disappointed. I was secretly praying for a dark mark to appear on the corner of one of the diagnostic reports, alerting some tech in a lab somewhere to how lonely and exhausted I felt. My doctor would see the inky stain slurring my EKG results and exclaim, “Oh my! We’ve never see anyone this miserable before! Your heart must be super, totally broken. Let’s fix you right away.”

I’d be rushed off in an ambulance to a room full of puppies and all of my friends. There would be pizza and root beer floats and those Daim candies from Ikea that my grandmother used to sneak to me when I was small. Stacks of Harry Potter books and copies of Star Wars on VHS would be displayed on a giant bookshelf in the center of the room. Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard by Paul Simon would be playing on an endless, magical loop. We would roast marshmallows, and someone would have remembered to bring my Timberwolf sweatshirt, the one I stole from my friend Ulyses, who stole it from his Eagle Scout leader. We would have a big party until I stopped being sad. That’s what I wanted. That isn’t what happened.

What happened, it turned out, is that I wrote this instead. Because we all do weird, horrible shit to ourselves when we’re feeling off-kilter. Because we’re all weird, horrible, beautiful people who deserve to exist in a room full of puppies and s ’mores if that’s what we want. Because I don’t ever want anyone to feel as alone as I did for years, having this bizarre superpower that ruined my mornings and put me off breakfast. Because it turned out that it wasn’t an allergy, or a virus, or an eating disorder at all.

It turns out that all I have to do is honor the agreement that I made with myself to wake up every morning and brush my teeth, even if I’d rather be anywhere besides my freezing, cold bed. Even if I hate New York in the winter. Even if I don’t have spicy noodle soup from Wagamama’s. Even if I’m nowhere near London at all. 

Hearthrobinson.

Billy Robinson will never break your heart. He’s a sweet kid. Lanky and boyish, with light eyes and long fingers. He has the world’s smallest puppy, and his mom thinks I’m cool. His car is always a mess. He keeps his wiry Harry Potter glasses in the corner, on the dashboard. He keeps his guitar case and a week’s worth of trash in the back. He used to use his ex-girlfriend’s old Beatles mug as an ashtray in the cup holder.

“Because she sucks,” he explained, but I saw those old photos of the two of them, smiling in superhero costumes, calling each other things like, “happy,” and “family.” He’s never been able to fool me.

He picks me up at my apartment on Daughtry, and we drive out to the Waco dam at midnight. We sing songs to keep ourselves awake, and we keep an eye out for fireflies. With him, I never sleep. We stay up all night ‘til sunrise, watching our friends fall in love. We drink Shiner Bock because it’s Texas, and we drink tequila because we’re lonely. One day, he tells me he loves me, and we kiss outside the bar. I’m a vampire in my blue dress, and he’s a zombie in his button-up. He plays Everlong by the Foo Fighters on guitar and in my head, I stay here forever in this dinky little town, wrapped up in the moonlight over the Brazos and the lights from the Alico building downtown.

***

I leave town in May. He helps me pack up my car, and we say goodbye. When I get back to Los Angeles, I smoke his brand of cigarettes for weeks because I miss him. He doesn’t text me again because his phone is always dead, but that’s okay. I knew that going into it.

When I move to New York, I listen to the mix tape he made me every single time I ride the subway. White Hinterland by Icarus. Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun. Fade into You by Mazzy Star. Something in the Air by Tom Petty. No One’s Gonna Love You by Band of Horses. Young Folks by Peter Bjorn & John. I listen to it underground for months until I have to go back to Texas to graduate college.

***

We arrive at Hemmingway’s Watering Hole and the lights are out. The bar is closed. Eric knocks four times and the door swings open and everyone’s inside; Billy & Renny & Chris & Benn and everyone I love. A dozen arms grab me and pull me in close; they already have shots waiting on the bar.

“To Whitney,” they say, and we drink. Billy’s in the corner, playing Alison by Elvis Costello on guitar. He asks me to take a walk around the block, and then he asks me to marry him. I could do that, I think. I could stay here forever. I could leave my job at Letterman, and we could eat grilled cheese sandwiches and listen to music on I-35.

“Have you ever heard about what crabs do when you put them in a barrel?” he asks me. I shake my head no.

 “Individually, they could easily escape. They could squeeze their little pinchers into the sides and pull themselves out. But then, the other crabs grab onto their legs and pull them back in. The group mentality is more important than the individual's freedom.”

He pauses, takes a sip of his beer, tucks my hair behind my ears.

“Darling,” he says, “That’s what Waco is like.”

***

The next time I find myself in the South, I don’t expect to see anyone. But like magic, Chris picks me up and we drive over to Renny’s. Renny opens the door, and they’re there, somehow: Eric and Billy with Lone Stars in their hands, squeezing me into the buttons on the fronts of their shirts. We ask Billy’s little brother to take a picture of the five of us, grinning like idiots.

“Smile on three,” he says, and Billy gently moves my head so that I’m looking right at him.

1…he tilts my chin up to look at him.

2…he closes his eyes.

3…we’re both home again, his lips on my mouth, and we’re both seeing stars.

The camera goes off. Everyone says, “Ewwwwwww.”

We climb in the car to go get more beer, and we scream out the lyrics to Cannibal Queen by Miniature Tigers. We hold hands in the back seat and sing the line from I Just Do by Dear & the Headlights that we both love. We drink more tequila and put on Katy Perry. We finish our Lone Stars, and we’re all over each other on the balcony. Our friends go inside. I’m stuck to him like glue, like I never even left.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?” he asks, and I shake my head no.

We stay up all night talking. All of us. Eric tells us that his new girlfriend lives in Canada. Chris tells a story about his mom. Renny’s inside entertaining her co-workers. Billy makes us laugh with his stories from work.

“I think I’m gonna be a really great father,” he says, sober for a minute. And then Eric says something, and we’re back laughing again.

At two in the morning we run out of cigarettes, and Chris’s car gets towed from the parking lot.

“I’ll go,” I say, because I’m the least fucked up.

Eric and I get in the car and we drive. I pick up a pack of Marlboro Menthols and they only cost five dollars. I put Billy’s change in my purse.

We get back home, and Chris is beside himself. We start into the house, and he stops me before I go inside. We sit down on the stairs, and I smoke Billy’s cigarettes. Chris plays some depressing music on his iPhone and tells me that he’s broke, and he can’t pay for the tow, and that after I left to go to the store, Billy hooked up with a stranger, that he’s passed out in bed now.

I pull Chris up by his hands. I tell him that neither of us are allowed to start crying. I put on Love Fool by the Cardigans and we don’t know all the words, but we dance in the moonlight, scream the ones that we know.

When the music stops, we pick up his car and drive back to his house and I pack up my things and we head to the airport. I don’t see Billy again because he’s unconscious. I tell Renny that I’ll come visit soon.  I take pictures of Eric sleeping on the couch in Chris’s bright purple Dio shirt. I say goodbye to Texas and I drink one more Lone Star. I sleep on the plane the whole way back to New York.

***

I text Billy in the morning, “Thanks for saying goodbye.” His change is still in my wallet.

He doesn’t answer for awhile, but when he does, he says, “I really hate myself.”

I don’t need to ask why, but I do anyway. He tells me he’s sorry. He tells me he’s really dumb. He tells me that sometimes, when he reads my writing, I don’t use his name but he knows it’s about him. He says he can always tell. He says he knows for sure. I tell him it’s okay, and I mean it. I tell him I still think he’s cool.

I climb back into bed and I close my eyes and I tell myself again:

Billy Robinson will never break your heart. You’re never in town long enough to let him.

Self-ish.

When I hate my body the most, when I can’t stand the way my hips look in a tight skirt, or the way my thighs smush together when I sit at my desk, I try to take care of it. When it’s doing this thing that’s so foreign to me, ballooning and bulging and bloating, I give it as much love and attention as it can stand. I make healthy decisions. I go to yoga every day. I do sit ups and lunges and I run through the park. I eat salads—the pre-packaged, 300 calorie kind, from Trader Joe’s—and I go to bed early. I drink water before I fall asleep and when I wake up the next day. I always remember to take out my contacts and remove my make-up. I brush my hair, cut my nails, put lotion on my legs in the morning before work. I look at myself in the mirror and think, “Gross,” despite the fact that I've been exfoliating, and limiting my intake of fried foods and carbohydrates. I count steps and I count calories, trying to make them even each other out. I take the subway everywhere so that I can afford better food. I say no to that third beer, that fourth helping of nachos at the bar with my friends. I wake up with a clear head and an open heart and I hate my stupid legs, my chubby lower back, my jiggly upper arms.

But when I’m trying to remember how to love myself, that’s when I stop trying. I let myself have that third dollar slice of pizza with extra parmesan cheese. I consider it a miracle that my stomach is willing to accept food, what with pieces of my heart missing and all. I’m small, but I drink lots of whiskey. I go shot for shot with the guy next to me at the bar, with the bartender, with the girl who should have gone home hours ago. I smoke at least three cigarettes for breakfast, two for lunch, and the rest of the pack instead of dinner most days. I buy cheap food so I can afford to take taxis. I duck my head and pull down my hoodie whenever I pass my neglected yoga studio. I supplement Vicodin for Advil when my migraines won’t go away. I haven’t trimmed my nails in weeks; I keep scratching myself in my sleep. I don’t shave my legs because I just don’t care.

I’m putting all of my extra energy into remembering what kind of person I am. I’m spending all those nights alone so that I can really get to know myself again. And you can’t get to know a stranger without a drink or three to break the ice, right? You can always think more clearly when you’re punishing your lungs for reminding you to breathe. You can sleep late when you don’t care what your hair looks like, or whether your skin is smooth. You can go to bed early when you forget to make dinner. I look in the mirror, and my body looks okay, compared to my heart. At least it isn’t battered and bruised. At least it looks full, whole, and complete. I think to myself, “There are worse things in the world than that extra layer of marshmallow coating my abdomen. There are worse things than smeared mascara and a weak jawline. There are worse things than ratty hair and bad breath.”

I think to myself, “I don’t need to be pretty. I need to be okay.”