State Champ, page 3
But that was before. What makes this situation different is that I am actually, potentially, dying. Hunger strikes kill. So even though I thought all that state champ stuff was preparation for this, in fact this is something else. You have to go further in. You have to keep forgetting how to remember.
I called your journalist friend, my aunt says on the screen of my phone. He’ll call you 10 a.m. tomorrow.
* * *
Thought I was done for the day. Bored? There’s no TV or anything. On the last last day Donna turned off the internet, for some kind of security reason, like that would prevent anything, but she decided it would, she made a lot of announcements. I could use my mobile data but that adds up. I guess if I don’t make it through this, it won’t matter about my mobile data. But if I do make it, I don’t want to have a $400 bill. Seeing as I am unemployed. So I’m trying to hold out, just a little scrolling here and there, look a couple things up when I think of them. Now that I’m here at work and messed up I keep remembering things. Like, things from work, from the bottom of the laundry basket of the brain.
Without the internet do we just remember things?
Just now I was standing in front of the back supply closet deciding if I could lift one of those huge water cooler jug things (there’s still two in there and I kind of want one, I want to fill cups at the cooler, use the blue lever) and I remembered I’d done exactly this maybe four years ago. It was me and a girl who used to work here. I would say I’ve forgotten her name but did I ever know it? Something like … Priscilla. She was getting a master’s in public health. She said that a lot. Good for you. “Do you think we can carry one of these?” she was asking me as we looked at the water cooler jugs. “I doubt it,” I said, but we did try, it basically worked but Monica freaked out and started helping. Priscilla had asked me something about college or grad school. Like the internship program she was in, she thought I was in that too. “I didn’t go to college,” I said. “I started but then I got arrested and had to do jail and probation stuff for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds really hard.”
“Well,” I said, “it wasn’t unexpected because I was selling drugs and I sucked at it.”
She said something about legalizing weed. I bet she got every A.
“Absolutely,” I said, “but I’m talking about pills. I mean, I wasn’t that into pills myself, it was just a business situation. Just like, I wasn’t that into abortions, I just got a job here.”
I added: “I’m more into them now. Abortions, I mean.”
Who cares what she said, a few months later Priscilla was gone—she’d said she wanted to run her own clinic but that was before everything got overturned, everything heated up, before laws started switching up, like there could be a new law every day, you would call this huge list of patients to tell them whatever, then some new bullshit, some judge did or didn’t block something, the phones were ringing and the clock was ticking, like some supreme clock somewhere or every little clock everywhere, I was getting a feeling like everyone’s personal biological clock was in me, like that kids’ movie where a crocodile swallowed an alarm clock and he’s coming for you. Like sometimes in the middle of work I’d look up at something normal, like one of Krys’s sunset photos, the one where there’s a little bird crossing the big circle of sun, and it wouldn’t mean anything, you couldn’t trust things to just mean something normal anymore. Sitting there at the desk, everyone running around but also not doing the one thing that would matter, I don’t know how to describe it. But I think that’s why Dr. M lost her shit. And the death threats. More and more death threats. And Priscilla, I was thinking, Priscilla and all those well-meaning gals stuck in the past, it’s not like there was a place they could get away from it all, because Krys was saying even in like New York things were crazy with the overflow from everywhere else, pregnant mobs calling in, flying in … But of course you could still get away from it, if you wanted. You could tell yourself you needed a better job, just to pay off your loans and not get shot and not get too stressed out while you tried to start a family yourself, with some on-brand husband like Priscilla probably had, and you’d go help deliver babies or run a nice program in a nice hospital in the suburbs and forget your little dream of being an abortion doc at some inner-city strip-mall joint like ours. Where jailbirds like me hid your travel mug sometimes (a lot) just because we were bored and thought you were boring.
And a few months after Priscilla left, the whole jail thing came up again, now that I’m remembering the order of things. Three elders from the city’s big foundation were visiting. Donna had been drilling us for weeks. The place looked shiny, almost wet. I wasn’t involved, other than being lectured for a week beforehand about my outfit choices. I did look good that day—you look nice, Krystal said aggressively. Toward the end of my shift I was taking a dead lightbulb to the dead lightbulb place and I heard an older woman in the hallway, wearing a blue scarf, blue stone sparkling in her rich ear, say to Donna how “the foundation also appreciates how you hire staff with criminal records, which coincides with our commitment to supporting reentry and rehabilitation.” And she glanced at Monica, who was just then heading up front, through the door at the end of the hallway.
“It’s me actually,” I said, from behind them.
“Ah hello, Angela,” Donna said.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “they don’t let me near the good drugs.”
The woman shifted her little look from Monica to me and extended her hand. “So nice to meet you—”
“Turns out,” I said, “white girls can get arrested too, if they really put in the work.”
“Oh,” the woman said, “please don’t think I assumed—”
Blah blah we all knew she’d assumed. She’d met a couple staff members, one was Black, and she’d assumed. If I didn’t already know I was right, the way she’d denied it sealed the deal. She wasn’t surprised. (Though to be fair, I was arrested out in the country, more of a white scenario.) If she didn’t know what I was talking about—if she wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular, wasn’t looking particularly at anyone, was just mentioning something she’d read somewhere—she’d have looked confused when I said what I said. But no, she was smooth as hell, just extended her hand. So I knew. And Monica knew. Monica who was definitely (like I said, it’s a short hallway) in earshot and who said, when I reappeared up front, “Angela, anyone ever tell you you’re like a broken clock?”
Right before I left to get the bus—Dr. M and these scented donors were going to an important dinner—Dr. M pulled me aside as I was coming out of the bathroom, pulled me by the wrist right into exam room 3. She put her petite self in front of the closed door, like, you’re trapped in here, but this won’t take long.
She said: “The grant that foundation could give us would help hundreds of women receive the care they need. Most of these women will not look like you and will not have been born having your advantages. You think you scored a point today. But for other people this is not a game. Angela, you will shut your mouth. My impression is they would not like it if I fired you for this incident. But you should know that from this day on,” she tipped my chin up with her soft steady finger, so she could look right at me, “in my heart you are fired.”
* * *
So who’ll get the last word?
Do you think they took the grant back, after? What’ll they do with all that money, now that there’s no one to help those hundreds of women, or the hundreds after them, or after them, forever … Turns out Dr. M got fired first. Didn’t see that coming. Turns out this was just another day before the end of the world.
Day 6
Talked to you this morning.
Staying hydrated.
Day 7
The thing I fucking hate is you’ll see I didn’t write yesterday and think that’s about you.
I was hungry. I lay around and thought about food.
I keep trying to get comfy on the baby fake-leather couch in Dr. M’s office but it’s too short, so your neck hurts, and the not-leather stick-smacks to your skin.
I’m not getting any good religious feelings.
I have a headache like way deep in the middle of my shoulders. It’s in the roots of my teeth. Like a needle piercing up through the base of each tooth. Fuck.
Yesterday I was trying to remember every half-stack of Pringles I’ve ever eaten. Didn’t I, one time, balance a joint, still smoking, on the mythical curve of a Pringle?
Then I was thinking, I could get a job sorting the big crunchy nuggets out of boxes of cereal, separate them out from the flakes, make a supercereal. I don’t see the point of the flakes. I don’t see the point of that flakey ratio.
How are you, Angela? you said, which was stupid.
I’m on a hunger strike?
And by the end of the convo it still wasn’t clear if you’d help, if you’d write a story.
If we write a story people will know you’re in there, you said. The cops will come.
Publicity will protect me though.
Ange do you even read the paper I write for? Where ads for colon cleansers pop up after every sentence and every article is only like 6 sentences long? I don’t write for the New York Times.
You should, I said. I meant it nice.
Talk to my mom. She agrees with you. Actually don’t talk to my mom. She was not a fan of us dating. And she’s not an abortion person. Like MAYBE in the case of rape or incest.
Well we do those cases too, I said. We did.
* * *
I’ll see what I can do.
Hey me too, I’m seeing what I can do.
* * *
Angela are you OK?
You used the phrase cry for help like you’d just learned it.
* * *
Ever think of Rose who had some kind of costume exploding out of her bag, like puffy cheap medieval-looking, thick wad of skirts, and I never learned if she was like some for-real Shakespearean actor or a Ren Fair LARPer, she had the bag on her lap, then put it on the floor carefully, got up and crossed the waiting room to ask me, “Do you know how much longer it’ll be?”
“Sorry”—she said right away, before I’d said anything, did my face like yell at her? We were booked solid and part-time Stevie had got her days mixed up—“I don’t mean I’m like in a rush, like I can’t wait to get it out, maybe that question seems like a cry for help or something …”
“No, it’s our bad,” I said, “one of our nurses is late” (Krystal gave me a look like who was I …), “it’s totally normal that you don’t want to sit in this amazing waiting room all afternoon.” Rose actually smiled, like that was the result I wanted, I guess. “I just have to be somewhere later,” she said, and I was about to point out that she might not be in shape to get herself there but then I thought, if people want to work or play a little bleed-y and woozy, lend a little authenticity to their Medieval Times, I should judge not lest I be, etc. “Hang in there,” I said, “the night is young.”
* * *
John, now you’re like, “when we were dating”? 8 a.m. some Saturday morning there was a knock on the door of your apartment. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck”—this was all you, I was waiting to see if I cared. You were supposed to go to a family thing. A cousin’s wedding? You had to take a ferry. “We’ll miss the ferry,” your mom was saying in the kitchen. She started in on the dishes, making a show out of it. “John, you shouldn’t be living in filth. You have company,” and she nodded at me. I was standing in the bedroom doorway wearing your White Stripes T-shirt and no pants. You kept passing by me like I was in the way.
“Half of those are his roommate’s,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter whose they are,” your mom said.
I knew she was a teacher, because you’d said so and because anyone could tell. I didn’t want to move and I didn’t want to get dressed. I liked the smell of your shirt and I liked how my legs looked. I wanted to sleep in your bed when you weren’t there.
You thought I was leaving right after you but I didn’t. Not until that night. I finished washing the dishes because I thought you’d think that was funny, though later I realized it didn’t matter, your roommate messed the whole place up again before you got back. I didn’t see your mom again. You hadn’t invited me to whatever this wedding was even though we’d been fucking for months or actually, think about it now, years. I’ve never even seen a ferry. Like in real life. I mean, I understand the concept. So we were dating?
No way could I describe how long the days are in here.
No, it’s the nights.
Even though the front windows are boarded up (and those are the main windows, this place is a real cave), while it’s light out I feel like, OK, I’m on some kind of sick vacation. It’s daytime but hey I’m not working. I don’t have shit to do. I’ve been setting up the waiting room chairs and tables, walking patterns around them, lots of figure 8s. But a person needs, like, dinnertime. I’m not even that into things like that—I like to eat out of a Tupperware, leaning against the fridge, looking out my window at my neighbor’s TV, the blank backs of their heads. But without something defining that twilight moment, there’s just these empty hours, when I feel like I’ll puke, my head pounds, and every minute takes like ten minutes to pass. I hate it. Like 7 to 9. More like 6 to 10. And things are rumbling, too loud to ignore. The gut noise is disgusting. Probably the roaches are like, what is that? And I haven’t stopped shitting yet. That’s not over for me yet. It’s dramatic.
Those are the exact hours I hated dating. If anything was ever dating. 7 to 9. 6 to 10? I like happy hour. I don’t like the part that’s like, let’s make dinner, here we are cuddling on the couch. Here we are watching two episodes of the same show every night. Shows are fine, shows are great. But I don’t like fucking anyone I know I’m going to fuck. I need the suspense. I want the suspense. Suspense isn’t the word. I need to feel like, right up to the moment it’s happening, I’m not sure it’ll happen. Like, you didn’t want to want it. But then you had to admit, yeah you wanted it. I actually love texting when I don’t know if someone will text me back. Later you can see if you care, how much did you want it. I would say the day I met your mom—who apparently thought we were dating—that was the beginning of the end of us ever having been dating. If we ever were, then we weren’t. I would have gone to the wedding if you asked, but only if I didn’t expect you to ask. If I expected it, I wouldn’t have wanted it. It could have been like a fun thing. You: a person with a cousin who sends invitations in the literal mail, a person wearing a sports coat on the deck of a ferry. And me: tucking your White Stripes shirt into a skirt and having the shortest possible conversations with the fewest members of your family. Rubbing one hand against you through your slacks while we listened to seagulls or whatever. But you missed the whole point. When you got back I realized you thought I was upset like someone who wanted to be your girlfriend and didn’t get to go on a boring official trip. I was upset like someone who didn’t want to be your girlfriend but who could have been hot and rude on this boring outing, saving everyone from the whole situation, especially your dick. But no, you didn’t seem to get that this was an option. That’s kind of my option, like the whole point of me. A lot of guys get that about me, and these are dumber meaner guys. You were always treating me like I was just bad at being boring.
Like that time you fucked me in the bathroom stall and I hooked my shirt for a sec on the coat hook on the door and waved my arms around. It was funny, a joke, haha. You paused and said are you OK? You said we can go back to my place. But you were too hard to go anywhere. Am I OK? I’m fucking you in this public bathroom. I’m amazing. Are you OK? You wasted so much time apologizing totally insincerely for not being the good boyfriend you should have known I didn’t want. But think about it—that was hot. I was always waiting for you to figure this basic thing out about who I was and it was hot that you totally couldn’t. You always underestimated me but the fact that you didn’t understand that I understood that was this suspense that kept building. It kept me interested and probably interesting. He’ll figure it out, I’d think. He’ll get that the thing with the hook was just a joke. That I can jerk off while listening to him talk to his mom about his roommate’s crusty dishes.
But you never got it.
Yesterday you were like, I don’t get it, I didn’t think you even liked your boss.
Why can’t you see. Liking is easy. I don’t care about liking. It’s not enough to want something, that’s easy. You have to be scared to want it. You can’t just make dinner.
* * *
Evening again. Witching hour. I’ve been in this sleeping bag all afternoon. Exam room 2, which I think might be the worst. Shiver shiver. Really sweating it up in here. The whole sweating-while-cold thing has never made sense to me, but the proof is in because this sleeping bag reeks. Earlier I tried to hop my way to refill my water bottle. Little lemon, little salt. Honestly I thought about it for a long time before getting up. Getting up is an event. You have to kind of prop up slowly, in stages. Head rush, shivering. Big cramps.
Does anyone know when their last shit has been taken?
