August
I didn’t think it was possible to eat an ice pop sadly, but I do, and then I eat four more.
Pet Sitting makes me horny. Every winter, this guy I was with would pet sit for a few weeks; I can only describe those times as sex marathons. Now I blow ice cream pops, and clean the litter box, but not even twice daily like I am supposed to.
I had invited this guy to come to the Upper West Side with me, but a week ago, he screenshotted my sexy pic, in which I had managed to get both my ass and face in frame. I told him I’m never speaking to him again. It’s not the end for us, because it never is; I wish he would just reach out, or apologize, so we can get back to our usual: fucking on other people’s sheets.
It’s late August, so I sit in the garden and chain-smoke. I drink Rosie’s vodka and V8 juice. I buy a replacement bottle, but I drink that too. I drunk text different friends and former lovers at all hours, when it’s socially acceptable to be drunk and not.
Two weeks ago, I got laid off at the telemarketing job we shared, and Rosie needed someone to watch her kittens while she’s at her timeshare in St. John. Holding a cardboard box full of my stuff, I pitched I watch her cats. What the hell else am I doing?
The cats — twins Biscuit and Gravy — ignore me. On the wall paneled with mirrors, I watch Biscuit (Gravy?) prowl across the back of the couch behind me. I wish I was getting fucked facing these mirrors.
Rosie doesn’t have real candles, but plastic ones that turn on automatically at nightfall; she stopped lighting candles after a night of passion gone wrong.
I can’t imagine Rosie fucking anyone. She’s at least seventy-five and lives alone. Her king bed is pushed against the wall, and in the living room, the TV and a small desk fan point directly at the chez lounge.
One of the walls, exposed brick, is decorated with trinkets and souvenirs. It’s aesthetically pleasing, so I feel less pathetic when I waste an hour staring at it. I play Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s Cheek to Cheek, and 24 by Adele, because they’re the only CDs out of the hundred or so I recognize. I don’t even have Wifi to distract me.
“There is no password. It will come on when you walk in,” Rosie says. I don’t correct her.
I masturbate in Rosie’s bed, against her tough, flat quilt, and then I cry. I hate that empty houses make me feel like I am wasting not only my private time, but also my twenties. I wish I was comfortable in solitude, but it only makes me depressed.
I can’t bear it anymore, so I invite my sister over.
She lives in Brooklyn, and has a full-time job and a boyfriend. She gets waxes at a salon downtown.
She suggests tea, which is how she likes to unwind. I deem drinking vodka to be inappropriate around her. We watch Gone with the Wind, and I cry just like I knew I would. Old movies make me cry because they were loved by people who are dead now.
October
In October, Drunk Me does Regular Me a solid: an old flame has agreed to come from Long Island City to hang out with me. Christopher is the only person I’ve had sex with who I have no ill will towards. After hooking up a few times freshman year, he asked me out; I said no.
We meet outside Rosie’s like we’re going on a date. I smoke a cigarette quickly, before he arrives, because I don’t know if he likes smokers.
I watch a young man sweep leaves from the steps of his family’s brownstone. He’s wearing a Cornell hoodie, and he sweeps around his family’s majestic dog. I wonder what his parents do. I wonder if he has plans for Halloween. I wonder if he wants to switch lives.
Christopher arrives, carrying a massive backpack of papers in need of grading. He’s a history teacher now, which are the sexiest teachers.
“Want to eat first, or should we make love?” he asks.
Should we WHAT? I want to scream in his face.
Enough drinking alone: I host a party. The guest list is a few of my sisters’ unemployed friends, and Andie, and Jax. Andie is my most cherished friend. If I wasn’t watching the cats, I’d be sitting at the pub where she works and sleeping in her bed with her. We want to be artists, but we binge drink and read fanfiction outloud to each other. I am already tipsy when Jax arrives. It’s been a long time since I’ve drunkenly thrown myself at him, but if there is one thing I do, it is repeat mistakes.
We get drunk and high. Jax and I sit with our knees together in the courtyard, chain-smoking and ignoring everyone else.
“Annie Lennox reminds me of sex,” he says. “I want to show you Annie Lennox.”
He doesn’t show me Annie Lennox or have sex with me. I stand in the doorway as he tells me he needs to go. I’m pretty sure I cry, and he leaves, like he doesn’t give a damn. The cats bear witness to my rejection, peeking around my feet, before slinking into the bathroom to their litter box.
December
Christmas time, Rosie travels to St. John again, and I stay at home. I only go to her apartment to feed the cats.
Things are looking up for me: I’m starting a new job in midtown, and I’m dating older men who give me $75 for an Uber home, which I pocket as I board the bus.
After Christopher fucked me in Rosie’s bed, we ate at a Japanese place. Christopher thought Robert Pattinson was there, but I’m not convinced it was him. When I asked Christopher when we’d see each other again, he dodged the question. I corrected him when he was fingering me, which he did like he was digging for change between couch cushions; maybe that’s why.
Rosie must’ve known he came all over her bespoke quilt. I wonder if her neighbors ratted on me that I had a party. I probably forgot to empty the ashtray in the courtyard. I also washed her cast iron pan.
My dad drives me to the city to put food in the cats’ feeder, which I worry won’t pop open to feed them like Rosie tells me it will, but not enough to change my plans. The cats jump around the kitchenette when they see me, only because they know I will feed them. They ricochet off the counter and the stovetop.
I wake up to texts and calls from Rosie. A neighbor says the smoke alarm is going off; the fire department is coming.
“What’s going on?” she asks. I hadn’t told her I wasn’t staying at the apartment
Dad’s car races down the Palisades Parkway. I tell Rosie I’m on my way; she says smoke is coming out of the apartment.
I brainstorm where Biscuit and Gravy are probably hiding. I think of what else I will rescue – perhaps Rosie’s photo collage of her deceased mother, and unknown men wearing fezes. “They’re going to break the door down,” Rosie says in a grave, gravelly timber. I remember one time at our job a customer on the phone mistook her for a man.
We whiz – as much as incessant traffic lights allow – past the stone steps of Cornell Boy, the Starbucks I never went to to siphon Wifi. Dad lets me off where he can, double parked on 76th street, and I run, with the gait of someone trying not to look like a loser, to the apartment.
From the outside, it looks unlike a building about to combust. There is no fire department, no commotion, and no smoke.
I let myself in the front door, turning the key in the lock cautiously. The tag keychain bounces with gravity (“do not put my address on it,” Rosie had warned, like I’m an idiot).
Maybe I am an idiot, occurs to me.
Down the hall, Rosie’s door is hacked open, the lock mangled by the fire department, I guess, though it looks like the work of a Titanium dog.
I seem to have missed any hubbub. Best of all, the apartment, behind the splintered door, is pristine. The cats don’t come to greet me, but I hear their pitter patter.
The landlord farts while shaking my hand and doesn’t hide it.
“Sorry,” he says in a thick Italian accent.
I ignore his cartoonish, trumpeting fart, though holy shit am I in need of a laugh.
He turns the knobs of the stove in the kitchenette and rants:
“See, you must turn it off like this; it is very sensitive,” he says over and over. The stovetop click click clicks.
I answer Rosie’s texts as they come in, streaming green bubbles on my phone. So crazy I think the cats turned on the stove by accident; The apartment is perfect but they broke the door because the landlord didn’t show >:( .
“Why didn’t you answer?” I speak up. Calls from Rosie, the neighbor, and the fire department went unanswered by the landlord, aka the person who could’ve prevented The Shining situation with Rosie’s door.
He gesticulates; I don’t understand his densely accented English.
“It’s your responsibility to let them in,” I say. I feel more adult than I ever have, shirking responsibility in this way.
The landlord shuffles out. I know I won’t be coming back here. The cats do not appear to bid me farewell. I leave them – and the hundreds of CDs, the V8 juice, most likely an ashtray full of butts – perhaps adultish. But first, I take a selfie through the hole in the door to send to Andie. Ha ha, look what happened to me.
