be extremely irresponsible in her life from now on.
She has a journal! An honest-to-god paper notebook journal like our ancestors used to use. Fully aware that she is going to get coffee all over herself, she arranges her bike, messenger bag, coffee, and bagel in a way that lets her write in it. She ends up scalded and stuff, but whatever, she hasn’t written in this thing literally in a couple years except for the doodling she did at Kellogg’s the other night. Maria reads so much that she assumes one day she’ll have an idea and put together a Great Anti-American Novel or two, so she always carries it. Mostly it is phone numbers and addresses and doodling, though.
OCTOBER 15TH.
Piranha’s on heroin.
She can’t think of anything else to write, though, and after four and a half words her hand is starting to cramp. She can type all night, but with a pen, not so much. Maybe she should keep a haiku journal, in a non-appropriative way. It wouldn’t be appropriative to write like Hemingway.
OCTOBER 15TH, PART 2.
I am a soldier in the First World War. I don’t have very many feelings. I drink a lot and girls like me. We had a long conversation about whether she should have an abortion, but we didn’t use the word abortion. The whole thing was a dream and I am dead.
It’s the sort of dumb, self-conscious stuff she used to write when she was a kid and nothing really mattered. She used to get stoned and write about vampire dinosaurs, or write a review of a rock show for the school paper without mentioning the band’s name at all except in the headline. She’s been single for twelve hours and she’s already regressing back to sixteen.
She wonders what she’s going to do after work today. It feels exciting.
24.
She almost kills everybody getting her bike and stuff off the train in the morning rush but whatever. You can’t help but look cool carrying a bike up subway stairs, and then she’s on the street and it’s pouring. It had been gorgeous out by Piranha’s house. She doesn’t have an umbrella, but she does have a hoodie, so she pulls up her hood and says fuck it. Rain rules. She’s all ebullient, and weirdly can’t wait for her lunch break so she can write in her journal again.
There is always construction everywhere in Manhattan, which means that it’s easy to find a spot under a tarp overhang thing to chain up her bike so it doesn’t get rained on any more than it has to. She goes into work, regretting a little how wet she is, but whatever. She clocks in, finds a radiator way back in the Irish history section, and throws her hoodie over it: fire hazard schmire hazard. The Irish history section rules because almost all of the books’ spines are green and because it’s around two corners from everything else, which means the managers never really go there. Like, if they do, they will catch you trudging your way through John O’Driscol’s history of Ireland and scowling, but they almost never do. Mostly it’s just the occasional lost customer. Or Irish person.
When the air is humid from rain like this, the humidity mixes with the dust that’s literally all over everything in this store and you can barely breathe. It means you need to take a lot of breaks, leave the store a lot, you know? Maria goes on her first walk at 9:45. She’s like, maybe pizza for breakfast?
This is Manhattan and tons of pizza spots are already open. Breakfast pizza is irresponsible to her belly, and she can’t afford to get a bagel for breakfast and then also pizza plus coffee and then, later, lunch, but also, whatever.
Irresponsibility. Maria’s never been irresponsible. When she was little, she was responsible for protecting everybody else from her own shit around her gender—responsible for making sure her parents didn’t have to have a weird kid. Of course, then they had a weird, sad kid anyway, right? Whatever. That’s when responsibility at the expense of self became a habit: she did not care about school,
She has a journal! An honest-to-god paper notebook journal like our ancestors used to use. Fully aware that she is going to get coffee all over herself, she arranges her bike, messenger bag, coffee, and bagel in a way that lets her write in it. She ends up scalded and stuff, but whatever, she hasn’t written in this thing literally in a couple years except for the doodling she did at Kellogg’s the other night. Maria reads so much that she assumes one day she’ll have an idea and put together a Great Anti-American Novel or two, so she always carries it. Mostly it is phone numbers and addresses and doodling, though.
OCTOBER 15TH.
Piranha’s on heroin.
She can’t think of anything else to write, though, and after four and a half words her hand is starting to cramp. She can type all night, but with a pen, not so much. Maybe she should keep a haiku journal, in a non-appropriative way. It wouldn’t be appropriative to write like Hemingway.
OCTOBER 15TH, PART 2.
I am a soldier in the First World War. I don’t have very many feelings. I drink a lot and girls like me. We had a long conversation about whether she should have an abortion, but we didn’t use the word abortion. The whole thing was a dream and I am dead.
It’s the sort of dumb, self-conscious stuff she used to write when she was a kid and nothing really mattered. She used to get stoned and write about vampire dinosaurs, or write a review of a rock show for the school paper without mentioning the band’s name at all except in the headline. She’s been single for twelve hours and she’s already regressing back to sixteen.
She wonders what she’s going to do after work today. It feels exciting.
24.
She almost kills everybody getting her bike and stuff off the train in the morning rush but whatever. You can’t help but look cool carrying a bike up subway stairs, and then she’s on the street and it’s pouring. It had been gorgeous out by Piranha’s house. She doesn’t have an umbrella, but she does have a hoodie, so she pulls up her hood and says fuck it. Rain rules. She’s all ebullient, and weirdly can’t wait for her lunch break so she can write in her journal again.
There is always construction everywhere in Manhattan, which means that it’s easy to find a spot under a tarp overhang thing to chain up her bike so it doesn’t get rained on any more than it has to. She goes into work, regretting a little how wet she is, but whatever. She clocks in, finds a radiator way back in the Irish history section, and throws her hoodie over it: fire hazard schmire hazard. The Irish history section rules because almost all of the books’ spines are green and because it’s around two corners from everything else, which means the managers never really go there. Like, if they do, they will catch you trudging your way through John O’Driscol’s history of Ireland and scowling, but they almost never do. Mostly it’s just the occasional lost customer. Or Irish person.
When the air is humid from rain like this, the humidity mixes with the dust that’s literally all over everything in this store and you can barely breathe. It means you need to take a lot of breaks, leave the store a lot, you know? Maria goes on her first walk at 9:45. She’s like, maybe pizza for breakfast?
This is Manhattan and tons of pizza spots are already open. Breakfast pizza is irresponsible to her belly, and she can’t afford to get a bagel for breakfast and then also pizza plus coffee and then, later, lunch, but also, whatever.
Irresponsibility. Maria’s never been irresponsible. When she was little, she was responsible for protecting everybody else from her own shit around her gender—responsible for making sure her parents didn’t have to have a weird kid. Of course, then they had a weird, sad kid anyway, right? Whatever. That’s when responsibility at the expense of self became a habit: she did not care about school,
Similar Books
