How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti Page B

poet, which you are not.
    Now you want to go from me into the happy solitude of your maleness, with your need of no comfort from any woman. As you said, “I have finally learned not to need any woman.”
    Let my breasts not satisfy you then. Let my cunt bore you completely, so that even all the other cunts in the world ­can’t distract you from the boredom that comes over you when you think of mine.
    Â 

 
    ACT
    3

• chapter 1 •
    TWO SPIDERS
    M argaux appeared at my door late one morning, knocking hard. I got up, weary, and went to answer it. She said, “You ­can’t just not email me back after I sent you an email like that!”
    â€œI thought you would never want to see me again,” I told her.
    â€œJust because I was upset ­doesn’t mean it’s all over!”
    It had been several weeks since we had been in the same room together, and I ­wasn’t sure we ever would be again. She followed me inside and watched me as I dressed. I wanted to explain myself, but there was nothing I could say. I never thought that my buying the dress would upset her. Also, I knew that if I said a single word, I would burst into tears, as I always did, always had, my entire life, whenever anything difficult had to be discussed. It always was too scary; a threat I had felt since childhood that at any moment a relationship might disappear with a poof because of something little I had done or said.
    There in my crummy apartment, I felt like we ­were together after the Fall, expelled from a perfect garden. I always imagined a golden age—­a time before the Fall, between me and every other person—­before they knew my ugliness. Then I felt irrevocably uneasy once it had been revealed, when there could be no more appealing to their total trust and admiration, to that early, easy innocence.
    But with Margaux sitting in my living room, a shiver of hope danced in my heart that she might forgive me for buying the dress. Why ­else had she come? I sat across from her on the small green sofa and was quiet for a few minutes. Then I asked her, trying not to let my tears fall, what the big problem had been with me buying the same dress she had bought. She looked out the window, sighed heavily, thought for a bit, then spoke.
    â€œYou know that hotel we stayed at in Miami?”
    â€œSure.”
    She asked if I remembered how our first night there, I noticed a spider on the bathroom wall. I had forgotten, but now I vaguely recalled.
    â€œWell, you went to the bathroom, and you saw this daddy longlegs there. And I was like, Do you want me to throw it out the window? But you said, No, let’s keep it. Spiders are good . I would have thrown it out, but you said let’s not, so we agreed that we just didn’t want it to wind up in our bed. We would keep our bathroom door closed the entire time. That way, the spider would stay in the bathroom and not crawl into our bed, which would be really disgusting.
    â€œAnyway,” she went on, “pretty soon you started to like it. You developed feelings for it. Like, whenever you went to the bathroom, you would look for it, and when you spotted it you’d speak to it. Sometimes it was in the tub, sometimes it was on the ceiling, sometimes it was sitting on the shower curtain. Then, after leaving the bathroom, you would say good-­bye and close the door. You ended up becoming pretty affectionate with it.”
    â€œIt became like a pet,” I offered. “I remember that.”
    â€œNot something you could control, but something you could love. But if it had left the bathroom and invaded the bedroom, you probably ­wouldn’t have liked it so much. But keeping it in the bathroom allowed you to love it. Keeping it in there was a sign that you loved it.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œThen, on our last night there, we forgot to close the bathroom door—­we ­were so drunk—­and in the morning