Page 58 -

I
A
COUPLET
to come all this way to Baltimore but she’s not really feeling it. You take the train home alone.
III
Seven months earlier a different girl picks you up at the club in the same city because your date never shows at the station. You’ve met her exactly once, at work right when your boss was plagued by scabies, and she’s the only person you know in the city so your best friend mentions her as a reliable sleepover option when you get stood up. You’re wearing a ker- chief around your neck and skater shoes even though you don’t skate. And your favorite jacket which you lose that night. She brings you back to her place and tells you she just came from a date. You make a joke about her getting laid twice in one night with differ- ent girls and she says nothing because she knows it’ll happen. It was just supposed to be a place to sleep, that dingy room, but when you kiss on the fire escape there’s no going back. You fuck on a dirty mattress on the floor and are glad you asked her to take a shower in between lovers. Insects scuttle across the bath- room floor when you pee after sex and you resolve to never take your socks off for her again.
IV
Instagram informs you that the Volatile woman and the date who stood you up at the station are celebrat- ing their six-month anniversary today. You give your face one good long scratch and go to sleep.
Every night as you try to sleep you feel little ripples beneath your face. You imagine tiny in- sects there, in the pores of your skin, awaiting their nocturne in their larvae shells. You want to itch
the ripples but you resist. You wonder if you can
get scabies in only your face; right before you met your ex-girlfriend, your old boss used a thick cream topically to kill the little rascals eating at the cells in his forearm. Someone else, a friend, had to boil all her sheets. You picture steaming out the scabies in
a sauna, rustling their little bodies out of your skin holes and launching them into the hot air. You can’t sleep. Your face itches.
II
You’re thinking about that date you went on in Balti- more. The one right after you get out of the psych ward. The one with an older woman who’s really not that much older than you. You read to each other in the grass at the cemetery and she’s a punk singer
so she has a melodic voice as she reads you clas-
sics from the lesbian cannon. You want to read to
her too so you pluck up and take the experimental sapphic memoir out of your bag and read a favorite selection. Little bugs move alongside your leg hair in the grass. She hates it, the memoir. A cemetery cop comes and kicks you out so you decide to go for a walk and that’s when things really get bad. Describe me in one word, you say smiling. Why would you ask me that, she says frowning. You say it’s just for fun and expect her to come up with flirtatious or bold
or even just cute. She considers you for a long time and then says Volatile. You get quiet. You don’t know each other. By way of explanation she says, well didn’t you say you were institutionalized? You say do you think all people who are institutionalized are volatile? She shrugs and tells you how sweet you are
~
B
51
I
You wake up to a pigeon mating ritual. It’s all happen- ing on the ledge across from your open window. Elaborate to say the least, nearly National Geograph- ic-worthy. Is it perverse to watch? You think not. You’re stuck inside and the most action you’re getting otherwise is watching the neighbor girls paint each other’s toenails in their underwear. The male pigeon is puffing up his neck in the most grotesque way and walking on what seem like tiptoes. The female pigeon trots in front of him. You’re ready to intervene in
the power dynamic by throwing something out the window because you’re just not sure you can handle avian heterosexuality this early in the morning when you realize she’s playing along too. A well-rehearsed
l sCully