my passion! (ish)

The summer before college, my parents' close friend came over for dinner and told me I could start working at the grocery store down the road. They all smiled down the table at me as they placed the vocation on my plate. Before I started my parents told me to add an honorific to the friend's name so he was now Mr. Doug. He was a confusingly shaped balding blonde that was more suit than man and treated his office like a teenager's bedroom. His walls were adorned with inspirational quote posters hung intentionally askew and his desk had two as seen on TV water feature. On my first day he gave me a name tag I kept only in my pocket, a uniform vest, a cleaning rag, and stapled pages to sign. I worked with a group of old women with straight lines of lump across their chests resembling one boob. I only ever saw them eat liquid foods. The store was cold and empty most times except weekday mornings that were so busy with mothers and screams from the children they couldn’t get in daycare. Their carts overflowed with cheeses, various vegetables, bloody meat, and even more toddler legs. I thought about their husbands while they fidgeted with their wallets looking for presumably his credit card and nervously laughed at my impatience. I imagined they were over-apologetic during sex as well. The ones with shopping lists probably scheduled sex on the family calendar in between soccer practices, and the rest probably went to bed after cooking, cold and unthanked. I would get lost in my guessing games and forget to give them their receipt or ignore their gratitude. A few weeks in, Mr. Doug pulled me into his office with a whistle and reminded me of the training videos we watched about engagement. He suggested I try making jokes as he bounced back and forth in his wheely chair with his legs propped up displaying patchy leg hair tucked into slightly yellowed hanes socks. Just get one regular doll, he pleaded while he opened the door so inconveniently I had to duck beneath his arm. And don’t stare so much, I’ve gotten some complaints. He patted my head. I was only scheduled for the desolate evening shifts after that.
Most nights I wiped the stained steel register down over and over again until there was no evidence of broccoli or kids snot and I could catch a sight of myself in it. Sometimes I would go looking for stray carts outside the store and come back smelling like too much perfume. The old ladies didn’t really mind me though, after they understood I was not a mature teenager but rather a childish woman they stopped asking me questions. They were really good with the young kids because they all had them at home. I watched them give out stickers and lollipops and even occasionally hug the mothers and soothe them from the stress of having no job. Something about organic fruit must make everyone here soft. I kept the lollipops for strategy and tugged my shirt down as I realized my regular customers would come from a different demographic. I tried my luck on a man with a big face I’d seen before buying two small potatoes, one white onion, and a sprig of rosemary on a saturday at seven o’clock. Misread the recipe? I joked while pulling the cherry sucker out of my mouth. He didn’t look up from his shoes, just let some air out from his nose but it still made his forehead vein swell. He looked like Dustin Hoffman in that Watergate movie, his tie loose and sleeves rolled up, trying to make people believe working in an office was as hard as at an oil rig. I saw his college ID attached to a lanyard hanging from his pocket and figured he was some pompous student. Still a cute one. Do you need a bag for these? I breathed, holding the vegetables out as if the potatoes were my breasts. Still not looking at me he said please, and swiped a flimsy credit card. He left without his receipt and I took it home and stuck it to my wall.
The next evening we closed at six and he came in at quarter of; a problem for Joseph, the neat freak produce guy who wasn’t expecting more sneakers on his floor. I followed him with my eyes turning about the register as he went to only the aisles he needed to. One small quart of half and half, one more white onion, and two carrots. He raced over and asked, Are you open? For you, always. I got a louder release of air from him but still no laugh. I wanted the laugh for my own gratification now, not Mr. Doug’s challenge. Sorry, I know you’re closing soon, he mumbled. You’re really bad at grocery shopping, I said, keeping my eyes on him and my hands on the carrots. I got my laugh and I got him to look at me. With my questions serving as a crutch, he was able to tell me why he came here so often. Though he missed an opportunity to flirt he told me he lives just across the street in that factory turned apartment complex. How come you’ve never talked to me before, I challenged as I began bagging his assortment. You look extra bored today, he responded as he grabbed the bag from me. I was going for pensive, I batted my eyes. That I’m sure you are. I saw Joseph look over at us and noticed I was leaning very far over the counter but it was the only way to take in his smell. A little feminine. I told him I was here most evenings and I’d be waiting to see what he buys next. Don’t think about me too much, he winked. I realized I wanted more than a laugh from him now. I looked to see if any of my coworkers noticed my achievement, I was starting to understand the appeal of this regular thing.
The mid summer heat waves were coming in and because of Mr. Doug’s heavy wardrobe the store gained a cacophony of humming from the fully blasted AC and complaining customers. Still, I kept my shirts tight and small because I didn’t want to change a single thing in the recipe that secured my regular customer. The man had started offering more words and would browse aimlessly by the registers waiting for me so he wouldn’t get stuck with one of the hags. I learned he was not a student but a professor at the state college satellite campus in the history department. He was thirty four and named John after Denver. Our conversations were pretentious by nature and he started bringing me books on world wars I would lie about reading. I got used to him complimenting my brain, its capacity and its antics, and he got used to me saying I still knew nothing. I reminded him I had so much room in my head because I wanted him to know I was impressionable and begging for his large hands to dent my forehead. After some weeks of this, on a colder July night I told him I was going to study religion and he answered, I believe in you. Like a god or just that I’ll graduate? I laughed. He shifted his weight from his arm resting on the register and didn’t correct himself or flush with embarrassment, he just nodded so I took it as a prompt. Do you ever think of us together, I asked. Sometimes, and then I go to the parking lot. I knew he was lying but I pretended to suggest the idea. Will you wait for me there tonight?
He made me take off my yellow vest before I gave him a blowjob in the front seat of a voyager. The idea of an automatic sliding door with room for so many children turned me off. The fact that he drove a distance he easily could’ve walked made me take a break to study his decisions. I have a wife, he confessed like I was a priest as I studied his hands. They had been gripping my hair and neck and doing what he would consider guiding but they now laid in his lap in a lazy prayer fold that could’ve just been fists. I should’ve bit down on his dick and ran home crying, it was still out after all. Well I don’t mind. Do you ever? He interrupted. My eyes widened as he continued admitting. It doesn’t really matter anyways, she knows about you. He understood my single sentence as compliance and pulled his pants up looking only at his weathered belt. I had never been on the receiving end of a confession so I began thinking of what atonement I could assign him. His guilt was visible in each vein he flexed on the steering wheel. He caught my eyes and asked, Can I drive you home? I told him to drive me to this mansion I always wished I lived in fifteen minutes away. When I turned on the radio it was already on the jazz station. Corny. Classy, he corrected. I flipped through a few until that Police song about little girls came on and he immediately turned it down with a breath I couldn’t decipher between frustration or laughter. He almost said a few things, like if he was about to make the right turn or if I liked that John Jakes novel but the air was too thick of pine tree air fresheners and sin to get a thought out. I wouldn’t know how to answer either anyways. Do you think God can forgive one sin easier than two, or is it all the same? I asked, in an attempt to get him speaking but also to examine his conscience. I think it’s more about the sincerity when you ask not so much what, or how much you did, he leaned over and answered. He was always too impressed by his answers that I practically led him to. Are you going to repent now? I posed as he parked in my alleged culdesac and hesitated. Is this over already? Before I got out I told him not to wait for me to get to the door and asked, What did you tell your wife about me? That dinner will be late. He retorted, already looking for a smile. Seeing I wasn’t satisfied he continued as I started getting out, She knows I find you interesting and bright, more like a student not a, uh, you know. I told her the store started closing later. He was just mumbling twisted compliments and lies waiting for me to interrupt. So let me meet her, I cut in and delivered a joke too seriously. I saw him process the power transfer and the weight of refusing me dropped an answer in his hands. Yeah alright, tomorrow then. He was just happy to be saved. I smiled stiffly and stood in the driveway holding our self-assigned penance.
John came in the next day before close for ingredients and waited for me outside to run down the rules of the dinner. I was not to make any comments alluding to our dalliance or that I was anything but a prospective student. I kept my face agreeable as he explained the made-up game we would play and the expected behavior I had no contract to uphold. She opened the door at the end of the hallway and brought me into a hug, blonde, tall, and too happy. I’ve heard so much about you! I’m Jess by the way, but I’m sure John told you that. He was looking at me from the kitchen with big eyes so I smiled and pretended the name wasn’t foreign to my mouth. Their living room looked like a Marshall’s, the walls with low-brow decor art all hung perfectly straight and the couch a fuzzy circular pit. The two of them took one side of the table and I sat across from them, creating some hierarchy formation. Jess talked about her day as a yoga instructor and a mental health counselor at the progressive middle school that uses a feeling stick. I ascertained John and Jess had nothing in common except age and address. So John tells me you want to study history, she introduced. I looked back and forth between them quickly and decided on agreeing and Jess stabbed her green bean carefully. Well I’m glad he has someone that wants to hear about all that, she alone laughed. I hate her, I mouthed when she went to the bathroom. He laughed but didn’t agree. Jess began washing the dishes and humming something to herself. Nothing strange, just some pop 100 song. John kept explaining some ism to me while I played with the slice of pie she served us. It would have made no difference if I was there or not. Jess knew who her husband was and she had no problem with it.
John opened the car door to the backseat as Jess watched. She’s not stupid you know, he eyed me in the back seat. I never said she was, I contested. He was figuring out what to say, how to clarify this was an ethical affair, but I followed by asking if he loved her. I do, he confirmed. You don’t wear a ring though. He said those were just symbolic or something stupid while I imagined him in a few years, driving around her child with brown hair and brown eyes like him. Would he think of my dark features once every five times he thinks of Jess’ recessive ones? She would sit just like I am, legs dangling, watching the houses from the window of the assumptive minivan they drive listening to his rambles of lies of her father. We had sex in the backseat and I watched the gold cross chain he always had tucked away swing by my chest. See you tomorrow? he waved. Sure, I mumbled. I understood then, watching the van disappear and the jazz grow louder, this was all it would ever be. I could not save him, he would never save me. Not over Jess at least. I threw up somewhere along the walk home in front of another mansion thinking about his personal purgatory. I should want to hurt him or myself for committing a sin. I should feel bad. I shouldn’t hate Jess, I should hate myself. When I reached my actual home I scrubbed my hands with a hairbrush until some skin started to pick off. I scrubbed the blisters with soap until I couldn’t smell John’s steak-seasoned fingers. The guilt washed over my hands and stuck itself in each opened crack. In a few weeks a new layer of skin would grow over and seal it all in and I knew then I would never get this feeling out.
I called Mr. Doug in the morning to say I was sick and I had to leave for school in a few days so it’d be best to just quit then. He asked me to return my vest so I waited for the last night before I moved away to go in. He was on the phone in his usual position and waved for me to set it down and blew over a kiss. I walked over to John’s apartment complex with a cigarette and a bag of carrots Jonathan was going to compost but I asked to snack on. I debated beginning a processional down the beige hallways, knocking and seeing John one last time, giving back the books he could tell hadn’t been touched and telling Jess to leave him. Instead, I let the parking lot curb be a kneeler and the distance between their window and my body served as a confessional. Your penance seems to depend on the sins and how tired the priest is. Sometimes it feels like a punishment but I guess it’s a gift. You can do wrong over and over and not just hear you’re forgiven but actually feel it. I could close it all right now if I really felt like I was sorry. I left the carrots to rot along with a few butts and my velcro name tag riddled with lint. The curb started to look like a roadside memorial. When I started to walk away I saw a light turn on and Jess started setting up her yoga mat by the window. I figured John was making dinner or pacing in their bedroom or maybe masturbating in the bathroom. I sort of expected to have had messages to collect from him when I went back to the store. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about me at all, the semester was starting soon for him too. There will probably be another girl that’s better at hiding her guilt or her curiosity and might actually like history. I ran my fingers through my scalp and felt the cavities his fingers created. Jess found her way into warrior pose and I watched her head sit so perfectly still on her shoulders. There’s nothing that could knock her off balance, her head would not mush and form to a pathetic man’s touch. It was perfectly unblemished and uneaten. I could've craned my neck and waved but I didn’t want her last sight to be looking down on me, I know she already does.

My boyfriend likes me dirty. That is to say he once popped my pimple in my bed and smiled. He wiped the puss beneath the metal posting. That’s what it’s there for, we both thought and continued picking at one another's face. I read an article made for instagram slides the other day about how women can grow comfortable in a relationship and start to gain weight. Men can do the same but the general message was that as a couple moved closer to one another, certain boundaries were disregarded and the initial impressions stood so strongly, there was now room to act more naturally. And luckily for me, my boyfriend loves natural. He told me so when we first met last week.
The gen-ed we have together is called Gender in Film and Media and he was sitting just one head in front of me on that first day. He looked back at me when I said my favorite film was Secretary, he smirked and gave me eyes that kept mine on him the rest of class. The professor said he preferred when the students led the class and we all nodded because we were first years and found that structure more engaging than lazy. What he really meant was that once a week we would watch a movie and the other day we would talk about it while he scrolled reddit and only chimed in when my boyfriend wasn’t being the contrarian he was trained to be. My boyfriend is the TA, and they are very close because they both like subtitles and girls that like Godard. He told me all of this after class as he walked me out. I had never seen a Godard movie but I told him I admired the angst in his work as a guess. He continued talking at me until we were at what he calls the best coffee on campus. I believed him because he was holding the door open and we passed two people that had waved at him and he only nodded back in response, so he must know what is good around here. He ordered a black coffee and waited until I turned away to add sugar. The barista seemed to know him too and gave me eyes I found discouraging, I tipped her three pennies from my coat pocket. He is what they would consider arthouse. He finds it offensive that girls still shave their legs, he said while I watched his faint blonde shins swing on the tall bench he chose for us. I asked if he had made any short films before and he asked me to only talk about his art when he brought it up. I wasn’t sure at first if he liked me so I shook his hand goodbye and he called me an anomaly for it. He said he liked how easy I was to talk to and how natural I looked compared to the other girls he’s met. I questioned my differences with those girls and he said they were too polished and clean. That’s why my boyfriend is so great. When I got back to my dorm that night I wrote the word natural on one thigh and anomaly on the other in sharpie. Then I put on Contempt and threw out my razor and perfume and skipped a shower. I have told this story almost a hundred times now, to the ladies at the cafeteria, a few professors, and the girl next to me in class. It feels so good to be loved but if I wanted to keep him, I had to be dirty.
My roommate was fine with me until I got a boyfriend. We’ve been together for eight days now but it feels like something far more serious. It’s just so primal, all the pheromones and organic pure love. I stopped brushing my teeth since I read some blog post about how couples actually secretly really enjoy each other's morning breath. My roommate must have been jealous since I talked about him all the time and I know he wouldn’t like her because she’s too concerned with her looks. Though, we both were cynical, wretched, and tied so tightly to our routines. The first alarm would ring at 6:30 AM and we would shift silently amongst ourselves preparing for our judgments. She sprayed colorfully packaged liquids in her hair, on her face, in every crevice of her body and even had one for her vagina. I watched the ozone layers she created weaken as she got closer to my side. She got the bathroom first so I was able to do my sniff tests in private. I snuck a minute with the tiny mirror she had on her desk and admired the discoloration my face had in the morning light. My pores were clogged and it almost looked like I had freckles dispersed all over my face. The slobber from my sleep and my matted down hair gave my skin texture that I knew would be inspiring for my boyfriend. He talks about lighting all the time. I heard the water turn off and just for a moment I craved washing the faint sharpie and dead skin from my legs but I resisted for him. When she left the bathroom, she asked me if I had any intention of showering.
“I just think you misunderstood him, everyone wants you to shower.”
I didn’t know who everyone was, and I just told her that one day she would understand what real love feels like. I looked in the mirror and put on the same clothes I had worn all week again, the recipe to impress my boyfriend was consistency.
He must have not seen the open seat by me since he came in a few minutes late. I’m sure he was up all night replaying our evening and slept through some alarms. My fingers hesitated over my eye sockets but I chose to leave my eye boogers in place for later, a tasteful touch for his sensitive appreciation to detail. The grease of my hair had begun to seep further past the roots and worked their way into the strands by my breasts. I was actually sitting pretty isolated compared to the rest of the class but not everyone can handle sitting so close to the front I suppose. After class I told him I was ready to spend the night at his place. He must have something he had to cancel first since he kept me waiting until 10pm to say I could come over. Walking out of our dorm I told my roommate I wouldn’t be home that night and she could have an overnight guest. She nodded and made just a mumbling confirmation with her hairspray can in one hand and a hairbrush in the other. I hope one day she embraces her natural side like me.
When I got there he wouldn’t hug me but he said it was only because he thought I looked too perfect. He was tired from a long day of thinking and suggested we just head to bed. His sheets felt so great on my skin and he let me take up most of the bed even though I said I would cuddle with him. I turned and squirmed as I do when I sleep, especially because my body has been so itchy. The room smelled bad, and it was mostly because I sleep with my arms above my head but also someone must have been smoking a spliff with the windows closed and it made me restless. I twisted once more and saw my boyfriend aside me and some old camera wedged between us. I instinctively groaned and he moved the camera around my body while telling me to stay still. There were three of his roommates in the room too, all holding lights.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, worried I would ruin a shot.
Unapologetically, he answered “It’s performance art.”
Confused, I asked him who was performing. The room laughed and he said it was my feature film, I was the star.
“Tell me, when's the last time you showered?” He moved the camera closer to my black fingernails and kept his body and nose far from me. I had never seen him look at me that way. He really fell in love with me then.
“Well, not since you said you liked me dirty.”
He hit a button on the camera and put it down and asked me to repeat it once more but more seductively. Afterwards he said I did perfectly while walking me to his door. He said he would be too busy editing to let me stay the night so I walked home thinking about what I would have to do next to keep his camera on me. My roommate wouldn’t let me in so I fell asleep on the bathroom floor, using my towel as a blanket, listening to her boyfriend and her having sex on her clean, pristinely white sheets. I took my roommates eyeliner and wrote MUSE across my forehead. I’m realizing college is really all about helping each other out. I’ll tell her tomorrow that if she would just think for herself and stop wearing all that makeup she could probably get a boyfriend as great as mine.
He texted me in the morning asking if I could send him my full name for his credits. I love my boyfriend but he can be so forgetful. It just feels really great to be a muse.

Dried blood and well fed flies were sprawled on the road by the mailbox posting that had become our dog's dumping spot for his offerings. That dog had a habit of licking children's bellies and adult's shins. At first they knew to laugh it off and most of the kids liked it for a bit but they all would start to hear his laboured breath and the slobber's smell would travel and by then they were gone. It’d been this way since we found him, right before grandpa died we heard him scratching on our screen door. He didn’t budge from the casket at the funeral and we felt like we had to keep him. Grandpa would only yell come’re and go let that dog out and there was so much paperwork to do we never got around to naming it. Once the air conditioner drips set in the dog’s new habit began like some sort of mimetic desire. Laura used to try to play with the dog in front of my parents when we’d run in just to be polite but the wretched thing never liked her. It barked at squirrels, cats, foxes, and Laura most of all. It didn’t mind her mother or even her house when we’d walk by it but it hated her for certain.
She’d come running down the road, catching her breath at the Reinhart's fence that wrapped the corner onto my street and then run in the back door and dodge the dog on the way to my room. She snapped the rubberband on her wrist that was supposed to stop her from thinking about eating and I watched it turn red from the burn of the elastic slap as she continued talking about the new episode of Scrubs I had missed. Her eyes like the spiral wishing wells at the mall and her visits like yellow dandelion weeds, Laura was only so appealing for a second and then she was a vast pool of nothing that could get blown away by a child.
Sitting crossed knee to knee on the bed we gawked at our new pimples and plucked each other's eyebrows too thin. That’s when someone would get upset and start to wrestle and then the smells of her mother's powders and perfumed laundry detergent got tangled in my hair. My teeth, full of brackets, would scratch the skin beneath her tank top and she'd pull the strap back up instinctually. She lifted the rubber band once when we were braided together and I caught her eye before the release. It was like a conniption after that, she ran down the stairs and around the corner and the dog barked louder than I had ever heard and the neighbors hit the wall we shared and then she came over the next day with a haircut. She came into my room and laid on the sunny spot of the carpet and told me about the movie her mom rented last night. Our bodies permanently molded into that floor and our eyes forever fixated on the popcorn ceiling and dusty haze of the room.
We did that for the whole summer, the wrestling and the carpet spot, but by then one of the Reinhart's fence posts was perturbed into the sidewalk and my mailbox post was torn out of the dirt and filled in with cement. That damn dog was even more of a bother to everyone now because my parents ruined his collection of rot. I would be angry too but I knew to hide my treasures in more than one place. Since his spot was gone the dog started bringing the corpses into our house. One smeared across the welcome mat, one placed in the open dishwasher when my mother was turned away, one inside my dads shoe and one at the bottom of the stairs by the gate that blocked him from going up. My parents were delusional when they tried getting him into training classes but they were uncomfortable with death and how the neighborhood would talk. The trainer started coming to our house to see where he was even finding all these carcases he would drag in. The woman had some fancy collar that tracked where he would go when my parents were at work and they found out he’d been going into the woods behind the rowhomes down the block. When none of us offered to go check it out with her, she took her collar back and told us she would no longer help us if we didn’t care about the dog. My parents were satisfied with their attempt and they kept a tab open for fences on our family computer that week.
Laura never stayed for dinner and she didn’t even like being on the first floor after the dog’s anger became worse but her mother was out of town and let my parents know she was ours for the weekend. We were eating that meat that you wrap in tinfoil and the knives can never cut well. The disgusting dog came running into our house the second Laura made her way into the dining room and started that awful screaming bark he only used with her. My father tried holding it back but his slick skin escaped him and he launched at her. He grabbed her shins and she fell into the crummy carpet beneath us. She managed to pull herself into the next room and my mother had lifted a chair and pointed the legs at it to delay the dog for a moment. Laura took off running and made it halfway down the pavers before her legs, which we all noticed only then were so thin, gave out on her and the dog had caught up. She was lying there just like on the carpet, surrounded by the once acceptable yellow flower weeds that were now just puffy little pesks. The dog slowed down and our screams followed the speed as we found ourselves all kneeled around her. Ten minutes later the ambulance pulled in and it took just one man to lift her stretcher into the back. Her mother made a two hour drive into one and let us go home and find the dog.
The next week the papers ran a story about the woodsy area where a bunch of high schoolers had been killing animals and dumping them but only some names were left out, turning eighteen is a bitch. A man on a walk had smelled rotting flesh and found the stash and our dog rummaging through it. The police department had to get help from the other county to track the killings to the boys and not the blood hungry dog. After that he just scratched at the grass around the for rent sign and drooled at kids' shins that were scurrying by for the whole week before we left. We drove across six county lines and moved in with my aunt so I could at least enroll in some school that year. On the way we took the dog out to a field to let it go but it found something in the wheat right away so we just got back in the car and left it there sniffing around thinking we were at a park. We tried to keep the smell of rot away after that summer but it followed us up the daunting staircase and into the closed concept two bedroom we’d be staying in. The wooden porch outback was deteriorating from the rain but the neighbors sat rubbing their thighs against the rough grain and their stained limbs showed me they weren’t shy to their own rot either. Laura’s clothes sit in a box in the trunk along with some other stuff we don’t have enough space to hide. Most evenings the sun gets blocked by the curtains my aunt keeps drawn shut and I just watch the floating phantasms and remember conversations I had with her laying like this. The words, always irrelevant and spacey, but her eyes stay piercing through the thought as certainly so green it’s almost yellow. It was always nice to watch her shrink away.