Iron had the brilliant idea to tell jokes to pass the time. All of his jokes were abstract. Sometimes they were silence accompanied by light bodily twitching. Sometimes he screamed in agony with his jaw jutting downward. Sometimes he just looked at me and told me every time I blinked. But my jokes included spoken word:

“Is there a place that exists outside of your loving embrace? I’m calling you fat.”

“Never go out with a situational comedian, they’ll make you wait nine months for the punchline. If you end up raising the thing, they’ll just claim you didn’t get it, and God forbid they feel the need to repeat themselves.”

“Baby, I think it’s time I formally meet your mother. It’s not right I only see her clad in nipple pasties and genuflect in Florentine nightclubs while unbuckling my belt with her teeth, but, of course, if you feel we’re not ready for that yet—”

But by the end of all the fresh fun of joketelling, we realized that he had forgotten to start the car, which honestly made us laugh more than anything else.

I made sure to make love to every driver we passed on the highway. Older men with furry eyebrows and thick prepuce. They swiftly left their oafish wives and docile children upon meeting my gaze. He punched my prosaic chauffeur and fingerblasted me into the fucking future. Once the kids left for clown college and my pussy fell down the stairs, Tom started asking for butt stuff and that’s when I knew we were as good as dead. I eventually got bored though and stopped looking out the window. It would be hilarious if the people in traffic were right all along and that the true meaning of life lies in getting to your destination the quickest, that would be really hilarious I think.

The theme park was flattened by a radioactive squirrel, burlesque is only something that exists in dream sequences, so we stop at the beigest motel for the night. Our room is made entirely out of dusty tweed, even the botanical arrangements and nuclear family of rats. I sit down on the closest protuberance that resembles a bed. Iron washes his hands with cucumber lotion and sticks his thumb inside me because he never really learned how to do anything.

“Have you been cheating on me?” he asks.

Mother Rat is combing her daughter’s tweed hair with a tweed comb in order to get all that tweed out. All three of us look at each other in girl code.

“No. Why?”

“Your pussy is warmer. Wetter. Tighter.”

Father Rat picks at a gray crumb while his son sniffs his butthole. Then they fist bump each other and switch.

“You’re crazy. My pussy is its normal big dry self.”

Of course, though, he’s out of the mood now, so I stick my own thumb inside my own juicy self and think about how many hijinks we’re going to get into on our road trip and then Mother Rat asks us to turn out the lights and get some shuteye and we all do as told.

The next day I fall severely ill so Iron rushes me to the closest hospital and plugs my veins into the nearest outlet. It doesn’t matter what I’m ill of, which I have to remind Iron over and over again, it’s just an important opportunity that he should not pass up. I transfuse an unattended blood bag into my breasts to be sexy but Iron is far too focused on the milk-flavored jello and television static which he mistakes for subterranean cinema. He sleeps on the green vinyl sofa while corpulent hookers dressed in nurse’s costumes take turns massaging his bunions. After Iron requests a champagne fountain and triple A batteries for the remote, I remind him we’re thirty minutes behind schedule so—we dine and dash.

I thank Iron for taking care of me once we’re back on wheels, but he gets so flustered, vomits hot tremetol in his pants, some people just can’t take a compliment, and that’s when it happens, his tiny little car breaks down… on the wrong side of the tracks. I scream with glee, mostly to attract a passing serial killer’s attention. Iron thinks I’m excited because of the railroad tracks part, as I mentioned earlier, and I have to remind him that we’re not actually at railroad tracks, we’re just in imminent danger, but he can’t see it, he’s always been a glass-half-say-when kind of guy.

Just as I suspected, a disheveled figure haunts the rearview mirror, yellow canines the size of hands, teeth not dogs, wielding a dirty corn broom, hoarding enough back hair to fix a motel room. I scream but at least try to pretend I’m scared this time.

“The Monster!”

The murky figure finds his mark and the audience sees once and for all that he’s actually a good guy, a heart surgeon, happily married, father of three boys, former recipient of a 1430 SAT score. And it wasn’t a broom, it’s a wrench, the kind for fixing things. He bends down, greases our wheels, and just like that our car springs into action while cartoon smoke billows out the tailpipe. Iron gives the good samaritan a thumbs up as we drive away and I ask nicely if he’d not flirt with the locals.

Iron tries talking about tomorrow’s weather so I jump face-first out of the moving vehicle and cheese-grate onto the hot pavement. What I do next frightens most—I kill the closest living thing I can see. A fire ant. A death is necessary when nothing else is happening, grief is technically a funhouse. Iron screams in parturient anguish. He says kind words about the departed. I stay mum out of respect. After the wake, I give Iron road head, although it shouldn’t count as praying since I wasn’t on my knees.

I swallow his boring pink cum and, like the greatest politicians do, resort to the emergency button: extract my pistol, heroin, and foot-shaped fleshlight from the glove compartment. As I chamber a round, Iron clears his throat and whispers:

“Would you mind telling me where I am? And if it’s no bother, could you tell me exactly why I’m there in the first place?”

I laugh and I assure Iron that he’s gotten much better with the joketelling, could work on the delivery, but anyhow we don’t have time for such tomfoolery now, not with our spontaneity at stake! He extends an open gelatinous palm, asking me to touch it, just once, any touch would do, and that’s when I get the sense that… Iron doesn’t really like road trips.

On the third day, I drive Iron to his mom’s house so she can take care of him. Fourth, I drive past the good samaritan, give him the smack. Fifth, give Mother Rat the gun and entertain a consensual and experimental amour with her for six weeks. No worries, I eventually find my way to the ocean. Takes a few years, but I needed those years didn’t I—glad I got them out of the way. Full and happy, I make for a poor houseguest, and the ocean starts crying upon my arrival. I feel for the ocean, I do. I pat the ocean’s back, like a fat grainy dog, and the ocean can tell what I’m thinking, and she tells me that she’s not crying, this is just what she is, can’t you see it, but, it makes far too much sense for me to understand. I still have my foot, put the vulval sole to my ear like a seashell. Everything already happened, the foot tells me, we’re just playing with our own placenta until the next tally light, until a pelican picks it up and flies away, and I don’t care at all. I can’t be a gamine since I’ve no striped shirts, too noisy to be a waif and too bored to be a siren, I haven’t the wit for shrewdom or the ass for war, least of all, the marketing for myth. The sky starts crying too, fat milky pearldrops, and I remind the girls, please girls, there’s only so much I can take, no one in the world has ever successfully looked after two children at once, besides, I’ve never wanted to be a mother, not once, not even now. They laugh and laugh and remind me hey, hey, hey, it’s okay, you can cry too if you want, but, as little girls often are, they’re just as wrong as wrong can be.

27. Sometimes life is a challenge so respiteless, may as well call it hell, but better not

28. This is my impression of a girl who isn’t aware that she exists yet: “Oh my god? Did you see what she just did? That’s so embarrassing, I would die”

29. I really do think the only solution, no compromise, the only solution is to do away with all this stuff, all this stuff we try to fit into wholeness, and then wholeness leaks hot pendent shit into everyone’s mouths, we got to do away with all of it, postmodernism, watercolor tattoos, petroleum candies, vacation itineraries, Kylie Jenner (ornate spoons can stay). Of course there was a time this shit didn’t exist and things weren’t great then either probably but isn’t there an advantage to knowing while materially lacking, or no, that’s just another toss, here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter anyway because we need our vices too much, people with their thumbs up our butts need us to need our vices too much, so the only way this would happen is an apocalypse, which will never happen because that would be too easy, too fruitful, too necessary. I think about all the times people say the world is going to end soon, I hope they don’t really believe it because if they do they’re an idiot, but perhaps they’re manifesting or talking to talk, which would be much better, the world is never going to end, men rape children and dead people and dead children, you think they’re going to let the ground head out with even an ounce of dignity? Hahahhahahahaha, a meteorite could motorboat everyone’s mother before tea and you’d still have to make your shift tomorrow dingus. all you can do is hope to be reincarnated into that meteorite

30. Would anyone like to pay for my sins? Next one on me!

31. Last night I had a dream that I met an ex-boyfriend again, I knew him but he did not know me, a bit of an amnesiac situation, I don’t know, since when do dreams provide logistics, and we of course date, I stealthily avoid making all my prior mistakes, and I get to watch him actively Not Fall In Love with me all over again, just in a different way this time, which sadly made the most sense of it all,

32. I am trying, what many are calling, “apparently, her best.”

33. was walking down the street, found an abandoned house, great bones, real nice neighborhood, but I noticed there was no rent in it, no rent at all, such a shame really other than that it was a perfect turnkey property, my husband suggested we hire a guy, but what if they put it in wrong I luckily reminded him, so now we’re living with the rats, we pay Mother Rat only nine hundred a week, total steal

34. everyone knows where my true loyalties lie. I don’t though so could you remind me

35. Here are my rules, if I ever became a person meant to inflict rules: Growing girls must spend ample time with dogs, growing boys must spend ample time with cats. Growing girls should spend at least one continuous month of their adolescence without looking in a mirror, growing boys should look in a mirror at least five times a day. Growing girls should spend at least one continuous month of their adolescence without speaking aloud, growing boys should do this for at least one year. Both growing boys and growing girls should be required to ask at least one hundred questions a day. These are meant to teach youths about sexual dynamics in ways that aren’t as obvious as holidays or uncles or Saved by the Bell.

36. Borderline is objectively a funny mental illness, because it’s the one I have.

37. Everything that could be wrong with a person is wrong in me—and they dare to call this a failure?

38. My first stay at the psych ward, my dermatologist was also there as a patient. This isn’t a joke, this is just a reminder that everyone you’ve ever known will always be there all the time. Which is fine once you realize that they have to deal with that too.

39. My boyfriend thinks Polynesia is what fuchsia is. His mom thinks more than three limes for a centerpiece is just aggressive. His dad hasn’t looked in the mirror in over four months. We’re thinking a June wedding so I suppose we’ll have to wait until next year

14. As a kid, I thought food was sweet like skirts and socks, and ever since I was seventeenish, food has become something dirty, like math and religion, although I know once I’m old like you guys, I’ll only see food as the means and output of labor, as humorless coprophagia, something in the tone of Tarr on tranquilizers, but, it’s alright, when I’m dead, I’ll think of food as pretty body-particles, like dandruff and helium and bloody good oral sex.

15. If a joke takes you longer than a breath or two to get out—ITS NOT LONGER FUNNY!!!

16. Woman sitting next to me: “…and it’s the weirdest thing, I never smoked a day in my life, I actually abhorred the stuff—“ Me, smoking reds in the waiting room while playing with the bead maze table because I have nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon: “OH? OH YOU THINK YOURE BETTER THAN ME WITH YOUR RANDOM UNDESERVED LUNG CANCER? HUH? HUH? WELL, YOU ARE! YOU JUST ARE!”

17. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by something not particularly worth mentioning. It’ll happen to you too but not for the reason you think.

18. I’m ultimately unhappy with all the words we use to talk about anything important (but I like the word important and how I choose to use it). “Meaning” ….? KILL ME! And the way we bastardize it with grandiosity. With MEANING! Why does meaning have to have all that meaning, why can’t it just be meaning? The talk about the meaning of life is so chaotically wrong and untextured, because, like, I know and you know, you wouldn’t still be alive if you didn’t, also who cares even if you didn’t know, you ask bad questions, you’re despicably bad at asking questions, you!—you should be asking questions like what am I having for dinner tonight, and what am I having for dinner tomorrow night, and what am I doing out this late, I have to get home for dinner!

19. No, because not a lot of people know this, but the larger your cross necklace, the more devout your spirit and by this logic, the larger your cock, the more respect you hold for the ephemerality of life, and, you see, this is why I cannot continue going out with you, Dudley—I mean, really, Dudley, show a little respect, why don’t you, Dudley—

20. Anything that’s ever happened to me was an accident

21. Drinking publicly with my parents is funny, after I have one drink, my dad will act like a girl-friend who secretly hates me, Yeah, you were pretty drunk, you were, we could all tell, it’s probably fine or…. yeah, no, no, I guess it’s probably fine, probably not a big deal, could just definitely tell is all, and my mom acts like a girl-friend who’s secretly in love with me, Your magnetism! I couldn’t get enough of you—no, I’m serious, look at me—I’m serious. Are you a model? You should be a model. Are you an actress? Let’s make you an actress!—and both are necessary. both are necessary

22. If I’m eating donuts, I need to have six of them in rapid succession, that’s why they make them in orders of six after all, the perfect consumption number if you dare to think about it, but I can’t say that without being called a dumb capitalist or a bullimic pythagorean, I’m not either, I’m more like Liz Lemon, I’ve never seen the show, I’m both too young and too old to watch 30 Rock, but I somehow know she loved donuts, I really like Liz because she looks and acts like every woman every good man has ever ended up with, every guy I’ve dated has wildly preferred brunettes, this is not a complaint just an observation, if I really cared I’d just stop bleeding hundreds to bleach my skull, but I don’t, I don’t care, I really don’t, I’ve got six glazed blueberry that need a licking before I can even begin to worry about that kind of stuff

23. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For At All Interesting

24. Thank you for the dinner party! The food was forgivable! The banter, highly unnatural! Thank you for this dinner party! I finally know what death sounds like when no one’s looking! If only every day could be a dinner party! Would you pass me the peas—excuse me—I mean, the gun? No worries, I’ll make everyone a plate!

25. Sometimes it feels like I’m the kind of girl who gets whacked in the head with a frying pan in the first ten minutes of a movie so the director can establish his devil may care attitude towards domestic violence and when the audience doesn’t laugh he writes in his yellow legal pad Needs more BOING sound effects and perhaps make her hair do that funny thing! next to his doodle of a bosomy woman with a foot where her head should be

26. I’m hardly the first person to be unliked. I’m hard of hearing in twelve states and counting. I’m hard on those with nothing to give, and I’m hard just thinking about you now

    ---

If you liked this, you can pay me in a myriad of ways! Let’s go through them

Paying subscriber, my book (https://www.dreamboybook.club/shop/p/victim), Venmo (https://venmo.com/u/emmanewmanholden). You could also buy my book directly from me, especially if you want a signed copy, if you live in New York City. DM me and be normal, thank you, I love you, I love you, I love you, say it back, say it back, say it back,

P.S. Come to my event tomorrow! Book release party and reading with a bunch of cool people in New York City, baby! And buy my book, here, or there, wherever— JUST BUY IT! Become a paying subscriber so I can have more time to write! Thank you! I love you! If you want any of the above, you’ll find your way to the links, it’s not like I make them hard to find. Now, let’s take a break and enjoy some nice images I made with the aid of Canva business pro:

P.P.S. Here are some movies! Here are some songs! I don’t know, I’m just in that kind of mood. A kind of halfway through the year check-in. Or perhaps my summer recommendations! Yes let’s go with that.

1. Chafed Elbows, Robert Downey Sr.

2. The Bones, Joaquin Cociña, Cristóbal León

3. Brick and Mirror, Ebrahim Golestan

4. The Idiots, Trier, the one good at making movies

5. Polyester, you already know

1. Woncha Come On Home, Joan Armatrading

2. Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder, The Mothers Of Invention

3. I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself, Elton John

4. That Summer Feeling, Jonathan Richman — a perfect song for summer, of course!

5. Anything by Exuma. To ask me to choose just one is a trick, a trap, unkind. I suppose I’ll go with The Vision.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY BOOBIES: BOOBIES.

2. My coworker who wears a backpack told me I breathe like Tony Soprano and then asked me on a date despite the linguistics, sorry, I mean the logistics, sorry, I mean the legalities. I’d happily offer to breastfeed him, but he’d just take it the wrong way. Perhaps he wouldn’t know the difference. Perhaps I wouldn’t know the touch of a gentle hand if it slapped me in the face. On the first day of my period, I always convince myself it’s a miscarriage. The ruins are so gory, the pain so disabling, the only rationale is death. But I never think it’s my death because I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl. Children make remarkable writers. We’re all children here. Children of God. And of other people too. My coworker didn’t notice the blood, he just thought I was really wet for him. I told him he had to go because I had some things to take care of. He told me he had blue balls so I told him that blue was my favorite color and then I called him an Uber. My favorite part of working in customer service is everybody’s impressive ability to find me wholly culpable for all of the world’s evils, because it’s like, hey, at least we have that in common. They never know they’re actually speaking to two people, in which case, they’ll just have to take it up with the one who has nothing to say. I’ll watch a scary movie about killer dentists and all the dead bodies will have guts made out of peanut butter and jelly. There are too many opportunities for metaphor so I choose to have nothing to say.

3. What it needs is to make as little sense as possible to have a chance at happening. Fish out the fibrous bits from the bowl before you flush. Pull up your pants and go to church because you’re a serious person. The priest puts bread on your tongue and says you act like a child. No, he says that I am a child. I ask who the mother is but he just tells me to sit down because he has other children to attend to. He’s a really great mother. The seats are gray calico and the specter next to me smells like Clorox. He kisses me on the cheek and tells me I have a beautiful mouth. Jesus looks so happy to be up there. I should know, he is my brother after all. The grocery store doesn’t need me, if people want food that bad, they’ll pick up a scanner. Although, the other day I said “Sandy Hook” when I really meant “Hurricane Sandy” and we all had a nice laugh about it. My husband will ask what’s on the kitchen counter. He will say it looks like grape jelly. He will then say But it does not taste like grape jelly. Then he’ll say Actually, it’s not too bad. They ripped my abdomen open like tissue paper. They used my more auxiliary bones as spades to find the more necessary bones. They reached their arms so far down my esophagus until we all became brothers again. My husband was right, it had been fake gold all along, who am I kidding myself. Adam says it’s okay, he says being special is for the masses and copper makes for fast cells. I kiss the purple from his lips, let our baby take the long way back—some people would do anything for a view! For me, it’s just an honor to be touched so deeply.

The homely nurses burp me awake as I thoroughly apologize for the mess—let’s attribute the indecency to a spell of jet lag—you’d cry too if you came into this world fag end up—give it to me straight and spare no detail: hot dog or hamburger?—and whaaat about that airplane food!—

I’ve gotten the gist, you may cut the hawser! I am all of twenty second old, I am no naïf—do you even know who my father is? Yes, very well, me neither. Could you fetch me a pint before I develop any kind of scruples? Please, doctor, we haven’t much time!

Well, I’ve conquered the monolith, so what else is there to be done? See the binmen sewing the spread-eagled slag back together. Such a pity—I was beginning to like that place. If they dare rearrange the curtains, I’ll simply have a fit.

He tries talking to me about the Coca-Cola labor uprisings in Guatemala, but I tell him I much prefer Pepsi in the warmer months. It goes silent so I ask if he knows the Butcher of Zacapa and he reminds me that he’s recently gone vegan. I tell him he’s right: let’s talk about nice things why don’t we?

After sex and sermon, we’ve fulfilled our requirements, so I show him to the door. We both know he knows what a door looks like. Everyone knows what a door looks like. That’s not the issue.

As all the greats before us, we take a shot at urolagnia—linguistically, at least. I describe just how badly my bladder yearns for relief, how yellow and glossy that damn toilet bowl will shine any second now, and then liken my imminent stream to a super bazooka. He jizzes on my face before I can dive into the olfactory. An ex machina waits for no one.

He tells me that schools are fundamentally bad at teaching patterns. They only teach transitory facts because this makes for dull and humble servants. He reminds me to never be a fucking humble servant, okay? I nod and I tell him I’m trying to love the me in you, but it may be buried too deep. I’ll fashion a growth in the shape of me in the meantime. See how that works out.

After talking and then talking, we’ve fulfilled most of our requirements, so I draw the shape of a door in his palm. He catches on a little too quickly for my liking.

His bush tickles my nose like the plush fur of a molding onion. He asks if I’ve heard of The Great Bovine Pestilence. I ask if that’s a new nickname for his nether region and when he doesn’t laugh I diagnose myself with foot-in-my-mouth disease. He tells me that animal abuse is no laughing matter and pushes the base of my skull until I taste hot chutney.

He tries getting me off ’cause he’s a selfish bastard. He moves through the world like a Dupuytren’s-gripped rummy attempting a Brioche stitch. He asks if I dream of a nuclear family and I tell him I resent any form of mass destruction. Besides, every animal is sad after sex, except for the one in love—they’re angry, of course! I don’t say this last sentence out loud, instead I howl in existential horror. He prides himself on his dexterity and asks same time next week? I tell him sure. Sure. Any day now.

consider becoming a paying subscriber because I need money. or pre-order my book. but do one of the two. you have to do one of the two. you have to do

It Feels So Good To Be A Victim is a collection of short stories that explore parasocial relationships, rape politics, marital ennui, mental illness, and more.

And a little bit from my author’s note:

“This book is for fangirls and fat old sex workers. This book is for grieving mothers and autistic sons. This book is for that one person who slept with everyone at the SLAA meeting. This book is for functioning alcoholics and cigarette chain-smokers and adult women with self-harm scars. This book is for the Instagram influencer as well as the man who pays the Instagram influencer for pictures of her feet. This book is for everyone who knows that a soul is not a finite destination, but keeps on looking anyway.”

It’s twenty-three stories. A good chunk, let’s be honest, most have been on Substack at one point (not anymore), but they have been heavily edited, so you’ll still really, really, really want to buy this book. There are also at least five stories that have never been seen before… Ooooh…

My absolute favorite stories are “Scout’s Blessing” and “The Extra,” and neither of them has been published on Substack, so you have to read them and tell me if you love them too.

And if you’re a recent Substack subscriber, say, the last year or so, there’s a very good chance that you haven’t read any of my short stories, so it’ll be brand new for you. Isn’t that nice?

Thank you, everybody. Specific shoutout to my paying subscribers. To give me money, therefore taking it away from yourself, is an incredibly generous thing… I’m going to tear up…. Fuck…. I love money so fucking much..….. I love you……..

And huge thank you to my publisher Jonathan Blake Fostar of Dream Boy Book Club and editor Lili Kouzehkanani. You guys are an absolute dream and made this. Thank you thank you thank you.

Soft cover. 298 pages. This ain’t your grammy’s bingo night! Is that the saying? LINK AGAIN: https://www.dreamboybook.club/shop/p/victim

Anyway, back to regularly scheduled programming—

xxx

He buys me cupcakes and shoes and rivers because he has nothing better to do and should probably just murder his body. I laugh maniacally and smush the icing into his nose and throw the Cuban heel against the current. He cries pink tears and asks me why I just did that and I tell him if he asks me that question one more goddamn time—

He knocks on the door as I’m taking a big fat shit on the toilet so I tell him I’m having sex with his brother in here. He asks if I need anything, like protection or mood lighting or snacks, and I say no thanks, MOM! He slips a note under the door with a bunch of heart-dotted i’s and I dryly wipe my ass and don’t flush.

He tries getting me off as an apology because everything has to be about him all of the time. But then it starts to feel good so I tell him if you stop, I’ll fucking kill you, I will. I’m not kidding, I’m not joking around here. He says we’re the best couple he knows. I imagine a gluttonous sturgeon feeding on the rotting leather and cum for one million years.

My parents simply got in the way when trying to make me, and honestly, much of what they did was wholly and orally unnecessary. If men believed what they told us, then Genghis Khan would be first remembered for his flowery excess of kin. The rooms grew wet and sore so I bounced out with two left feet and a handful of butterfingers. The doctors couldn’t tell if I was shit or afterbirth or what. I rested my oily palm on their collective cheek and asked for a light, old boy-o.

But, officer, she only committed the crime to ask for sweet pardon—forgiveness is ze most exotic drug! After contracting streptococcus as a child, Andy Warhol suffered from an incurable infatuation with canned soup products for the remainder of his life. Valerie Solanas was a butch lesbian. The jury will kill both close enough in time so their souls may reenact that classic love story in the afterlife. Jesus will happily reprise his role of seconda donna in pearls and clip-ons.

The pathos behind Pasolini concerns empathy for the only unmolested schoolboy in the church choir. That boy will age into holy child of Ann-Margret, curly-headed mute with abs of steel. Every auteur’s a hero until you discover their pornsearch history—and then they’re a legend! I have no more patience for dumb grief, so I tell Sally to stop the tape here. God is disappointed to learn that opera is not categorized in innings, but wants it known that he’s proud of his son nonetheless.

Q: But how do I know he’s the one?

Well, lead his tongue to your taint and say, for example, his strange and soft body does not naturally spiral like that of a high-speed mechanical corkscrew, yes, then I’m afraid you’ve got your answer, don’t you—

You’re either jettisoned like a firecracker, purely fueled by your own putrid ego beaming out your ass, or you cling to the cracks of the brick walls with the bloody nubs of your fingernails, forgetting which way is up, praying that a way out wouldn’t mind waiting just one day longer. I was a shy child and now my mother has this lock in the shape of a purple crescent hanging from her belly. It’s the kind of lock that may as well be a megalith. Mothers don’t very much like being megaliths. Funnily enough, megaliths adore the comparison.

Q: But where can it go from here?

As soon as you enter a relationship, you’re looking for a way out. There are only three options: getting married (death), dying (death), or breaking up (birth). It’ll do you some good to die before you live, just try to come out face-first.

In another plane, possibly the one I’m searching for now if I were to search for a plane, mothers black out for the entire duration of pregnancy and birth. Child-growing is so medieval, so alien, violence against a body for the sake of an invention, but also so militant, so spiritually Wall Street, wanting something and then getting it. There must be life out there that discovered a mental solvent—the first species to prioritize female pleasure AND denounce female pain. A bit of a stork-delivering-baskets situation, progressively regressing to childlike fantasy, waking up being the only necessary task, if that. An opportunity, finally, for a woman to take a look at her life and get to say Well, this makes no sense whatsoever! Of course, this could only have horrific consequences for the child and, therefore, horrific consequences for the mother, but Jesus, isn’t it nice to know there are at least people out there trying?

Q: But how will I know the limits of my love?

It seems you must betray yourself and your boundaries at least one thousand times over in order to find out. You must betray yourself so savagely that you actually find your way back to yourself, piss-stinking and teeth-cracking on all fours. At some point on the trip around the world, you’ll meet your partner, and he will kindly assure you that you’re heading the right way. You must trust him like a dog if you have any hope in seeing yourself again.

As soon as you say you want ambiguity, you ruin it. This is why women don’t express their needs directly, not out of coyness or meanness or whatever sexual box your mind can’t seem to break down. The livelihood of beauty. The preservation of the holiest nothing. If I don’t speak, if I don’t move, if I don’t think, it’s because I’m giving you the space to play. It’s called delegating.

Q: But when will I be important again?

We all know when it comes to symbolism, the greatest thing a woman can do is die: actively, always, everywhere. Couldn’t hurt to have some blood involved. Maybe splattered on a little cleavage? Men need the constant reminder of your transience for the strength needed to keep the sun spinning around the world. It’d be awfully nice if you could just lie down and take shallow breaths so your husband can play with the stars like a basketball rack and your neighbors can see a new tomorrow. Don’t worry, he’ll still fuck you when you’re dead—in fact, he’ll even prefer it. Isn’t that nice? And in the meantime, you can close your eyes and decide just how important importance is to you.

And once he was good and ready, I told him a story about love.

When the poets came to town, everyone was sorely displeased.

It was a girl and a boy and the air of space they always kept between, just in case their ideas needed the room. Spring was coming, or, more accurately, spring was patiently awaiting their arrival, thumbs twiddling, saliva oozing. The poets were heading north in search of nowhere at all. They were intent on finding the greatest nowhere there ever was. And they believed that if they kept walking in a straight line, they were bound to find what they were searching for, once they had passed it a few times first, of course.

There came a land that the poets did not recognize on their fourth or fifth round. The sign said Welcome to Mayorsville. The poets tipped their figurative hats and continued walking forward. Black buildings and beige roads. Blue trees and green lakes. Red skies and pink suns. The poets did not use these words. The poets used words like “painite” and “popliteal.” We can only hate the poets for this.

A beautiful woman passed. The girl poet asked the beautiful woman who exactly was in charge of this place. The woman was burping her newborn child close to her chest, and in between burps, she told the girl poet, she said, “Well, everyone is in charge here. Everyone is the mayor in Mayorsville.” The girl poet laughed, and so did the boy poet. To think: they laughed at the mayor! The mother rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her head and quickly added, “And before you even ask: Yes, the children, too.” The poets looked horrified, but then the small mayor puked white and green down the tall mayor’s back, and the poets admittedly felt better after that. The girl poet curtsied and the boy poet saluted, and they continued to walk forward.

The poets befriended every passerby. They asked the mayors questions like “Is there such a thing as too much love?” and “What was your first experience with death like?” It was always a nice surprise when one of the mayors actually answered, but no one in Mayorsville really cared for them or their nonsense questions. The barber didn’t like the poets, for the poets likened hair to flesh. The butcher didn’t like the poets, for the poets likened meat to flesh. The doctor didn’t like the poets, for the poets likened flesh back to words. The citizens of Mayorsville had never before been forced to think about their flesh so much. After their initial disgust, they began to wonder what else was flesh in disguise.

Weeks passed and eventually spring had sufficiently come all over the bosom of Mayorsville: birds rapping, flowers singing, bees fucking. The poets had grown nicely accustomed to Mayorsville, and the citizens had grown to tolerate the poets. The poets’ questions were somewhat interesting, yes, but, of course, they were poor and lazy and greedy for hand-outs, which proved a subtle burden on the town. But they accepted them entirely, as any good mayor would. On a hot red May election day, every citizen was called to the heart of the town to be awarded a medal and a cartoonishly large pair of scissors. Babies crying, trumpets blaring, and a big, bright yellow ribbon holding the town together like a present. It was only the most fantastic holiday of the year. The poets were confused. Unhappy. They refused the mirrors, the shears.

“But you’re citizens of Mayorsville. That makes you mayors!” screamed a fat mayor as he bit onto the gold noosed around his neck.

The poets hadn’t caught wind of the clouded threat of permanence looming over them. They were too busy taking what was given to them to ever question the consequences. They forgot that seeing others required a pair of eyes outside of their own and that standing in one place, a hopeful heart. The poets never did stomach responsibility very well.

“We cannot accept this offer,” the girl poet began.

“It is not an offer, but an inevitability! An exact truth!” screamed the beautiful mother, the one from the beginning, if you remember. Her child was standing next to her. He was now as old as the poets, clad in a suit and tie, smoking a cigar and thumbing through The Symposium. One day, he would find himself in the throes of a similar journey.

For the first time in their lives, the poets knew what they had to do. For the first time in their lives, the poets considered the happiness of people who weren’t themselves. Yes, they would miss the black buildings and the green lakes. The small mayors, the tall mayors, the surplus of flesh and new, open ears. The greatest nowhere there ever was. At the same exact time, all the mayors cut the big, bright yellow ribbon and loudly rejoiced at their equalness. Everyone was so happy to have won.

“I don’t think we’d have much to think about in a place like this,” the boy poet said.

“Thinking is for nimwits!” exclaimed a short mayor amongst the exuberant glee. After some thought, the poets nodded their heads in agreement. They bowed in respect and walked backwards into the tongue-pink sun. Summer introduced itself with a feeble handshake and the newborn poetless town was all the better for it.

Once I finished telling the story he said Are you finished telling the story and I said I think so. He wiped away his tears and snot into his beer and then drank the whole pint. I asked him What did you think. He looked at the space above my head, searching for the third hottest girl in the bar. He said I don’t know I couldn’t really hear you since everyone is still laughing. I had forgotten to tell them to stop.

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