Luster(20)

* * *



So I rinse my hand after washing it with a little Irish Spring, and I look for some toilet paper, but we are out. I look for a T-shirt to wrap my hand in, but I have no clean clothes and have been putting off doing laundry by wearing my bathing suit as underwear. So I find some raw canvas in the back of my closet, wrap it around my hand, and take my paintings out with the trash.



* * *



I stop at the corner grocery, spend $5.65 on a package of good, soft toilet paper and $3.89 on a large, store-brand carrot cake. I consider buying a box of Band-Aids, but even the generic brand costs more than I want to spend. I strip down to my bikini and stop by the laundromat, where I spend $3.25 on a standard wash and dry and make a few calls about my student loans. I portion out my last paychecks on the back of my hand with a Sharpie while the rinse cycle goes, and something about how this arithmetic sprawls down my arm makes me feel like I can make it work. When I return home, a mouse has started on my carrot cake, so I make some instant oatmeal and retreat to my room, where I listen to my roommate and her feminist boyfriend having very sweet communicative sex.



* * *



I work on my résumé, slip in a vague communications role peddling paraben-free dog shampoo, and, to show I have character, I stick to the facts regarding my month at Murray’s, where I mongered an array of soft cheese. I throw in some blatant lies and make sure any inconsistencies are small enough to explain away once I have a foot in the door and am armed with enough recon on my interviewer to either have talking points on the company culture or a five-point plan to suck dry any available reservoirs of white guilt. I interview well despite my nerves, and while I wish I could take credit for that, my ability to maintain human form and make a good impression is all about my skin. The expectations of me in these settings are frequently so low, it would be impossible not to surpass them. I send a few applications out, wrap my hand in some fresh toilet paper, and for a few hours I manage to sleep.



* * *



I have a dream about the bones in my skull liquefying, and when I wake up and see my laundry basket, something about the inevitability of dirty clothes, of the sebum and discharge, of a finite number of quarters, fills me with panic. And this is not so bad. Some nights I lie awake and the sky presents an entire anatomy that makes me feel hopeless and sometimes like a spider is crawling across my face, but tonight feels different. Tonight I am suspended in a lurid hypnagogic loop in which the ground is always rushing upward, the Japanese demon squatting on my chest lengthening to its full height, peeling back its long buttocks to reveal a fully functioning eye.



* * *



I think of my parents, not because I miss them, but because sometimes you see a black person above the age of fifty walking down the street, and you just know that they have seen some shit. You know that they are masters of the double consciousness, of the discreet management of fury under the tight surveillance and casual violence of the outside world. You know that they said thank you as they bled, and that despite the roaches and the instant oatmeal and the bruise on your face, you are still luckier than they have ever been, such that losing a bottom-tier job in publishing is not only ridiculous but offensive.



* * *



In the morning, no jobs have contacted me, but there is a text from Eric accompanied by a photo of a fully erect seraphim. He writes, take a look at that grass. the color is called verdigris and they used to make it by boiling copper in vinegar, and I don’t respond because I can’t bring myself to do anything but get up to go to the bathroom, and even that is something I have to convince myself to do, because I have not once wet myself in adulthood and I think perhaps I’m due. A couple of days after that, I put some water in a glass and drink it, and Eric sends me a picture of a chimera with a star-shaped tongue. He writes, in the tradition of grotteschi. the art of the grotesque. But how cool is this. in the beginning grotteschi just meant ornate, and I send out a few more job applications and take a shower. I start to shave my legs, but on the second leg the lights turn off and I stand there in the dark with the razor, feeling like the universe is suggesting something. Eric texts me more photos of gargoyles and vagina dentata and no jobs call back even when I revise my résumé daily and spend $28.09 at Marshalls on a pantsuit.



* * *



By the time I feel able to contribute to our conversation, it becomes obvious that it is not a conversation. It becomes obvious that he does not intend to acknowledge punching me in the face or the terrible, revelatory night I spent at his home. The texts come intermittently and without any prompting, though Eric usually sends them at around noon and midnight, which tells me that I occur to him during lunch and perhaps while he is still in bed. In between these texts, I want to ask him what he’s eating. I want to ask him why he is awake. But then I worry he’ll remember I’m on the other end and the texts will stop. This is the way it was when our relationship only existed online. We told each other things so awful that by necessity we adopted the posture of speaking in jest, though we had gone through the trouble to create a language, and the effort of this alone betrayed our seriousness. And then we met. Then I got into his car and had to recalibrate, give him eyelashes and veins under his hands and a freckle on his chin, and suddenly it seemed indecent to acknowledge any of the things we’d said. And so when he texts a photo of a satyr being skinned and says, dig the saffron and gold leaf. we use a synthetic compound to counteract the pores, I say nothing.