Read by Andrea Hall
I’m not thinking about you, Ian.
I haven’t spent this sleepless night playing “How Soon Is Now” on a continuous loop and alternately missing you so much it makes my chest ache, and wanting you here so I can scream at you until my throat bleeds.
#
I check whether anyone’s gotten back to me on my manuscript. Nada.
If I get my book published, he’ll like me again. Wanna fuck me and stuff. Or at least talk to me.
I’m sitting on the couch with Greg from Tinder when my flatmate Kay staggers in. With some dude I’ve never seen before, equally pissed.
Kay drops to her knees and begins undoing the guy’s jeans.
“Oi! Kay! You can’t do that here!” I shout.
Kay looks up, looks over, and groans. Taking her man by the crotch with her right hand, Kay uses her left to open the hallway closet. Still on her knees, she shuffles into the closet, dragging him along.
Greg and I stare as Kay closes the closet door behind them. Sounds issue forth.
“I should be going,” Greg says, rising to his feet.
I follow him. “Didn’t you bring a coat?”
“Yeah but it’s …” Greg’s eyes drift to the closet, whose doors are rhythmically bulging out. “It’s ok.”
“You sure?” I ask. “It’s snowing–”
“Work the balls! Work the balls!” shouts a voice from the closet.
“It’s fine,” Greg tells me.
Greg never returned for his coat.
#
I google Ian’s name, but there’s nothing. Ian’s very careful about his online presence. His social media accounts are private, and purely for creeping on others; Ian never posts anything himself. Worries over what mom or dad might see plague his waking hours.
We don’t have people in common. No one I could ask for Ian updates, without seeming stalker-y.
#
“Children aren’t responsible for the things they say and do in their night terrors!” my sister Gina wails.
My terrifying nephew Jeremy has been evicted from another sleepover party. I don’t know why and I don’t dare ask.
I look over Gina’s shoulder and see twelve-year-old Jeremy seated at the family computer, his google search for “can you survive being skinned alive” visible on the ginormous monitor.
In the monitor’s reflection I see Jeremy seeing me seeing his search results. He locks eyes with me and grins.
“Maybe you could talk to him, Rose?” Gina pleads.
I try to suppress a shudder and fail. “I’m gonna Bartleby that, sis.”
We don’t speak for two weeks.
#
It’s 4 a.m., and I’m googling plot synopses for Rambo films. Don’t ask me how or why. This isn’t living.
Please God, please let him come back to me. I just want to be with him again. I don’t care about anything that’s happened. I love him so fucking much.
And if he’s really never coming back, please taketh away his genitals in a bicycling accident.
#
“You can’t want both those things at once,” Gina says when I tell her about my prayer.
“Of course I can.”
“If you want horrible things to happen to him, it isn’t love, Rose.”
I’m quiet for a long time. Then: “That isn’t true at all.”
#
“No shit,” I say to a stranger by the punch bowl. “You grew up German-American in New York City? That must have been rough.”
“What do you mean?” he demands.
I shrug. “All the taunting: ‘go tie your shoelaces in knot-sies, you Teutonic piece of shit!’ Etcetera. You know how children are.”
“No one says that!”
“Sure they do! I do.”
“I’m gonna find the toilet,” he mutters.
Christ, I hate parties. I go searching for Kay but she finds me first.
“This is the lamest party ever,” she says. “And I attended the Donner Party.”
(Kay is a ghost).
“Seriously? What was that like?”
“Honestly? Better food than this.”
I shudder. “California blows.”
“California blows uncircumcised D,” Kay agrees.
Our hostess overhears us. “Can you not talk like that? You never know who’s uncircumcised. Or from California.”
“Relax, smegma breath. We were just leaving,” Kay tells her.
“Thank you for a magical night,” I add.
#
I realize later that I’d seen yellow daffodils at the party. The daffodils hadn’t immediately reminded me of Ian, like they normally would.
This in no way feels like progress. It feels like something being taken from me.
#
“How was the party?” Gina asks the next day.
“Desultory, like my entire existence.”
She pats my shoulder. “It’s gonna happen for you, Rose. I promise.”
We’re interrupted by throaty cackling from the couch, where Jeremy is napping.
“There is no wrong end of an axe, fools,” mutters the still-slumbering Jeremy.
I clear my throat. “Do you see your whole sitch as #lifegoals, or something?”
Three weeks pass before Gina’s speaking to me again.
#
I match with a cop on Bumble and propose a meet-up.
I cut right to the chase. “So, could you hypothetically add a name to the sex offender registry for me?”
The cop stares. “Huh?”
“Don’t worry, it’s my ex. He’s not an actual pervert,” I assure him. “I’d give you sex and/or money.”
The cop looks nauseous.
“Even if I wanted to add someone for you, which I don’t, I have no idea how to do that.” His brow furrows. “Do you think the registry is just an excel spreadsheet? Or physical binders with handwritten lists of names?”
“There’s no call for snottiness,” I reply.
#
I’m not thinking about you, Ian.
I haven’t spent this sleepless night playing “New Dawn Fades” on a continuous loop and alternately aching to do unspeakable things to your body in a sexy-times way, and aching to do unspeakable things to your body in a Saw franchise-y way.
#
“That is an objectively hot man,” I tell Kay as we watch my favorite Jeffrey Dahmer gifs. “Considering that courtroom lighting is some of the harshest lighting–”
“Agreed,” says Kay. “Plus you know he clears six feet, judging by all these mug shots.”
“That’s the great thing about mugshots,” I say. “His height is there for all the world to see. You can’t trust a dude’s height on his driver’s licence, because it’s self-reported. Licences lie. Mug shots? Never.”
“The sex wouldn’t be great,” Kay muses. “Pussy being the one part of the human body Dahmer didn’t eat.”
A thought occurs to me. “Is all this cannibal talk triggering for you, given your Donner Party experience–”
“Nah. That’s not where I died or anything,” Kay says. “I was the first one to jump on the cannibalism train; I think that’s what saved me. We weren’t even out of regular food yet.”
Kay eats another dumpling.
“You ever find yourself in that sitch, go hard, go early.”
“I’ll try to remember,” I tell her. “Thanks.”
“I actually gained a few pounds.”
I return to pondering the appeal of tall incarcerated men.
“It’s a mixed bag, though. Pros: he’s empirically over six feet tall. Cons: most extant photos of him are mug shots.”
Kay shakes her head.
“This is why you’re alone. You demand perfection.”
#
I google Ian’s name and am momentarily excited when I find a recent review of a Thai restaurant penned by him. But on closer inspection, it proves to be a different Ian C—.
“Why do you think Ian’s so great?” Kay asks. “The sex was bad–”
“Was not.”
“Please,” says Kay. “Watching you two copulate made me yearn for Thrones’s Battle of Winterfell episode. Because at least then, I couldn’t see a goddamn thing that was happening.”
“That is rude on so many levels,” I tell her.
I check for any word on my manuscript. Nothing. How am I going to convince Ian I’m a funny, interesting person worth knowing, if I can’t get published?
#
It’s 3 a.m., and I’m googling all of Ian’s friends and family. The results tell me nothing about Ian.
I fall asleep and dream about him. It’s a very dull dream.
“Do you know the story about the lady and the tiger?” I ask.
“No,” replies dream Ian.
#
There’s a princess and her lover. They’re found out by her dad, the king. The lover’s punishment? He’ll be in an arena, the whole court watching. There are two doors. Behind one is a beautiful lady. Behind the other is a tiger. The lover must choose a door. If he picks the door with the lady, a lavish wedding takes place immediately. If he picks the tiger, well … guess.
But! The princess knows what’s behind each door, and she and her lover have a signal. When the moment arrives she will give the signal, telling her lover which door to pick.
The day comes. The lover, without an instant’s hesitation, opens the door his beloved has signaled.
But! What he doesn’t know is, the princess has been agonizing over which door to signal. For days she has gone back and forth, unable to decide which fate will be the more unbearable for her to witness.
(The reader never learns which door she signaled).
What’s brilliant about that story is, it shits on love either way. Because even if she chooses the lady, the fact she could seriously ponder the options at all …
That is an accurate representation of love.
“Which would you choose?” Kay asks.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “But whichever one I picked, I’d spend the rest of my life wishing I’d chose the other one.”
#
It happens when I’m waiting for a Tinder date at a dive bar.
“Hi, Rose.”
The blood rockets to the top of my head, then goes zooming down to my toes and back up again.
“Hi, Ian,” I reply.
You look good,” he says.
“Thanks. I got really into running after you left. I just, like, ran all the way across the country. Then I turned around and ran back home. Then I did it again. And again–”
“Is this a Forrest Gump thing?” Ian asks.
“Yeah. You’re Jenny, in this scenario. Dealt a fatal combo of God’s wrath and AIDS, on account of friendzoning Forrest and being a slut machine your whole tragic life.”
“I hate that movie.”
“Oh, it is wildly offensive.”
“Tom Hanks is mad overrated.”
“I’ve missed you so fucking much,” I sob. “Can we maybe–”
“So I’m seeing a person,” Ian says.
Nonono not that, please not that.
“Oh. Wow,” I say as I struggle to breathe, and not cry, and not puke. “Well, damn. You didn’t waste any time getting back out there–”
“It’s been over a year, Rose.”
“And how long have you been seeing her?”
He sighs. “Five or so months.”
“Ah.” I swallow with effort. “Is it serious?”
“I dunno,” Ian mumbles. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and stares at his feet. “But kind of. It just … flows better. Things are easy. We like doing the same things–”
“Yeah? She enjoys drinking beer and pushing rope?”
Ian straightens. “Good seeing you again. All the best.”
He turns and walks away.
The moment I’ve been waiting for, and that’s it. That’s all there was.
#
Later when I’m hammered, I text him: “Send me a pic of your penis plz. I could use a laugh.”
I try sending follow-up texts, but discover he’s blocked me.
I can’t go through this again. I can’t spend months or years waiting to maybe run into him, maybe when he’s feeling differently and missing me.
I know that. But I don’t know how to not do that.
It isn’t fair. I was nothing to him.
This can’t be how it ends.
#
Two days after seeing Ian, I hear from my agent. There’s a publisher for my book. And they’re already optioning the film rights.
I demand inclusion of a dedication in both the book and film:
To my muse, Ian C—, of Seneca, NY.
Now when you google Ian’s name, you get hundreds of results relating to my book-turned-film, I Squirt on Your Corpse: Day of The Bitch.
Ian C—. My muse. My inspiration.
(c) Sara Corris, 2022
Sara Corris lives in Brooklyn with a dog from London and a spouse from Buffalo. Her writing can be found online at Bending Genres, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Chamber and Funny Pearls, among others. Her life goals are to learn the chair dance from Cabaret.
Andrea Hall trained at Atlantic Theatre in New York. Theatre includes Shook (Southwark Playhouse), Ares (Vaults Festival), The Wild Duck (Almeida Theatre), The Notebook of Trigorin (Finborough Theatre), Hyacinth Blue (Clean Break) and Abena’s Stupidest Mistake (Talawa). Television include Broadchurch, Unforgotten, Trauma, Humans, Flack. Film includes The Child in Time.
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