lo-wrote

[lo-wrote]

In and Out Part of The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five, a semi-autobiographical series on dating in my late 20's. Contains sexual content. WC: 2k

It’s some amount of time past eleven at night, and I’m standing on a porch in a suburban cul-de-sac, the air humid and the street eerily quiet.

I knock quietly, just as he asked—his roommate is asleep, so he says, so I shouldn’t ring the bell. The house is large—like stupid large, more room than two people in this city on an average income could afford—so I can only assume there must be more than one roommate. Many things to think about—how many bedrooms are there? Is it owner-occupied, too? Do you all know each other outside of this whole roommate thing or were you thrown together, strangers in search reasonable room and board?—while I wait for him to come to the door.

I wait. And I wait. And I really, really wait, and the breeze is warm and heavy and wet, and I feel sweat start to accumulate at the base of my spine and god, is there anything sexier than waiting for a man who should be excited to see you and knew your general arrival time while sweat dribbles down your ass crack and cascades down the nape of your neck?

I finally text him and the door swings open a moment later, a flurry of hushed apologies tumbling from his lips. I accept his hug, even though it makes my shirt stick to my sweat-slicked spine, and I pull back to look at him, holding my smile carefully in place as my gaze settles on him.

He’s not quite how he looked in his photos.

In the app—the godforsaken dumpster fire of an app—he was young and slim, a lithe but athletic build, with shorn hair that still looked military-fresh. Every photo highlighted his bright smile and even brighter eyes as he hiked and fished and posed on a motorcycle. He stands before me older—at least five to ten years—stockier, his band t-shirt that probably belonged to younger him stretched over a beer gut, long hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail that accentuates a receding hairline. His eyes are still the piercing blue they were in the photos, his smile a little duller (age and circumstances come for us all) but no less warm and inviting than I’d seen just a few hours ago on my phone screen.

I have no qualms with his appearance, only that I seem to be the only person here who is required to keep my profile current—to have photos from every angle, filter-free, full-body poses included, preferably next to smaller-bodied people so everyone can get a good idea of my size—lest I be accused of catfishing. But that’s the penalty of Dating While Fat.

He quickly invites me in and ushers me down a long hallway to his bedroom. It’s sparse, harshly lit but an overhead ceiling fan with three out of four functioning lightbulbs. A mattress sits on the floor in the corner, a computer that looks like a battlestation positioned across from it, clothes strewn on the floor and the musty odor of unwashed laundry hanging in the air. I press my lips together in a tight smile and resist the urge to sigh. I’m lonely, and I’m in need of dick, but god, is it really worth it?

I try to sexily sit down on the bed and end up half-falling to the floor, landing cross-legged on the mattress. He asks if I’m hungry. Before I can answer, he says he hadn’t eaten since lunch, and asks if I’d like to grab something to eat…you know, so he has the energy for—and friends, I shit you not—this man will not say fucking, will not say sex, and instead waggles his eyebrows to imply the impending sexual intercourse that I’m now not really sure I even want to have.

But I’m a good little hook-up and I smile and said I could eat (but not too much of course—I’m one of the good fatties, tee-hee!). We head out to his car (he’ll drive, of course—and sure, why wouldn’t I get in a car with a stranger I’m meeting for the first time? That’s never ended poorly for anybody ever), and I try to guess what he drives. Ex-military, early thirties, likely a Charger or a Challenger. That’s what every military guy in this city drives, dropping all his money on something that goes vroom-vroom rumble-rumble, just to make himself a nice, easy target for speeding tickets. An lo and behold, it’s a Dodge Charger. Score one for me, guess I’ve earned that Xanax and shot of Fireball I’ll have before bed tonight!

We’re in the suburbs and what feels like the outskirts of humanity, and drive forever or twenty minutes to a burger place. I ask for fries and a diet soda (see, I can totally eat—but not too much!), while this man—this man who is supposed to be putting his penis in me right about now—orders a couple burgers, loaded fries, a milkshake, and a soda. With every “uhhh, can I get a” that comes out of his mouth, I mentally add more time to how long he’ll probably need to kick back and relax and digest before we get to actually, really and truly, finally fucking.

I wonder if he’s lonely, if he’s looking for a more girlfriend-like experience, some companionship late at night when the thoughts creep in and solace no longer feels tenable. See, I understand the nature of hook-ups—get in, get out, see ya never. I keep granola bars and water bottles in my car to choke down after work so I can boost my energy beforehand, since nothing quite cuts through the air like the sound of a growling stomach while you’re on your knees sucking dick. I wear clothes that are easy to take off and put on. I’m showered, lotioned, shaved, and perfumed. I know what’s expected of me and I try so very hard to hold up my end of the bargain.

And yet.

These men.

They answer their doors unkempt, unshowered. Dirty clothes everywhere, bedrooms smelling like old shoes and dried jizz and empty beer bottles. Sheets that haven’t been changed since the last presidential administration, if there are even sheets on the bed at all. And there I am, fresh-faced and seething in horror as I take my clothes off, reinforcing their behavior and giving them pussy anyway, because by god I am horny and desperate to be disappointed.

We get back and sit in his room to eat—not even a paper plate or napkin to be found, just eating out of the bag with my hands and trying not to wipe them on my jeans (yes, I wiped them on his sheets when he wasn’t looking and I will bet you anything in this world he never noticed), balancing my soda in my lap because he doesn’t have a nightstand or table other than his desk, which he’s already commandeered. He puts on some show for us to watch, one I’ve never seen but know of in passing, and I smile and nod along as he explains the plot to me, all three seasons’ worth.

And after what feels like hours, so long that surely it must be daylight by now, he asks if I’d like to fuck, as he’s licking burger grease from his fingers and slurping down the last of his soda. And no, actually, I kinda don’t. I’m tired after working all day. My stomach is unhappy with eating French fries at fuck-all at night. I had to sit and listen to another person’s mouth noises for like an hour.

But I say yes, of course, I can’t wait to finally fuck. Because I’ve already spent this much time here, why would I leave now? And I’m still into it just enough that it’s fine. It’s fine. And also because there’s always the possibility that saying no, no matter how polite and well-intentioned, will get me assaulted or murdered.

You know. The usual things.

I wish the sex made it worth the evening thus far. But of course, it doesn’t. It all feels rote, like every guy read the same hook-up manual and are just following instructions like they’re assembling an IKEA desk. I blow him briefly, he fingers me even more briefly and I give a few breathy moans of approval before he slips on a condom and provides me with the most mediocre sex one could possibly ask for. After a while, he asks if he can put it in my ass and when I tell you the bar is so low, I almost thank him for having the good manners to actually ask before just doing it anyway. I say yes because hell, it’s something I enjoy, and maybe it’ll liven things up a bit.

And then, he tries to go in dry—well, mostly dry, just with whatever of my own lubricant is clinging to the condom. I stop him, turning around to smile politely (but sexily!), and suggest perhaps that’s not a good idea.

“Pal, you’re going to do some damage like that. I need to be able to walk to my car and survive my half-hour commute home,” I want to say.

“Gosh, I’m so sorry to be annoying, but do you think you could use a little lube, please?” I actually say.

He gallantly offers to spit in his hand, and I politely, respectfully, decline his offer, my heart racing with having to offer any sort of rejection. He looks sad now. Disappointed. A man who is trying his best to survive the great tragedy that has befallen him. He moves from behind me and sits down on the bed, stripping off the condom and muttering something about how he’s had a long day and maybe we should just call it a night.

Ah, and there it is. The temper tantrum. I won’t play the game the way he wants to play it, so I can just take my ball and go home. I think they expect that it will make me change my tune, to beg for their half-assed thrusting and the two minutes of oral they’re willing to provide and the utter lack of interest in doing anything to even make me feel remotely valued as an actual living, breathing human person. And it worked for a time, when I was so very desperate for validation in the form of dick that I’d fall all over myself to apologize and put on the best show of my life, just so they’d stop pouting and put their hands on me in a way that made me feel just a little less dead inside.

But the act grew old, quickly. It filled the empty pit inside me for only so long before I felt it deepen, felt the chasm widen and the darkness envelop me more and more as my disdain for myself grew.

And so I stand at the edge of the pit and stare into it for a moment before I step back. I say I totally understand, I’ve had a long day myself and perhaps we can do it again some time (we won’t, I hurt his ego and I will never, ever hear from him again, I am very aware of this). And soon, I’m in my car again, driving in the dark on winding backroads, listening to today’s top hits occasionally interrupted by the shrill voice of my GPS as it tries to guide me safely home.

It’s some amount of time past two in the morning, and now I’m hungry again. I wonder if that burger place is still open.

[lo-wrote]

The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five Part of The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five, a semi-autobiographical series on dating in my late 20's. WC: 2k

“Wait, so how old are you again?”

He asks me this as he shoves another piece of sushi roll in his gaping maw, a chunk of rice falling onto the table.

“I’m twenty-eight,” I smile, carefully dipping my gyoza into a puddle of soy sauce, pausing before I take a bite because I suspect another question or comment will come.

“Ah, right right—you’re on the wrong side of twenty-five.” He lets out a guffaw at this and seems to expect me to do the same.

“You’ll be there soon enough, dipshit,” I want to say to the twenty-four year old that sits before me. Instead, I say nothing. I hum and offer him a tight-lipped smile in return and sip my water. He doesn’t seem to notice my disdain for that comment, as he takes a long sip of his beer.

He seemed nice enough in his profile, if not a little bland. He was blond and blue-eyed and had the sort of face that looked like a hundred other decent-looking faces. At this point, I was mostly speedrunning dating, trying to catch up after spending my late teens and early twenties shackled to the same, shitty person, so I wasn’t necessarily being particularly discriminatory at times. Sure, I swiped right or hit match or whatever the fuck I did on five different apps to say “Hey, we should meet and/or fuck,” and most of the time I was selective, narrowing my choices down to my ideal, since I could finally have the chance to meet and/or fuck exactly my type if I really tried hard enough and believed in myself and the power of mutual attraction.

But sometimes, I wasn’t picky. Sometimes I just wanted to go on a date, and have lunch with someone or walk around a mall with someone. Sometimes I just wanted a warm, breathing body to stand next to and order a cup of coffee. It’s like interviewing for a job you aren’t really that interested in just to get interview experience—if it works out and you get hired, that’s pretty great, but if you don’t, it wasn’t the point anyway.

When I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Mister Tall, Blonde, and Acceptably Attractive, he was already waiting outside the restaurant, hands in pockets, looking a mix of nervous and bored. He rushed to hug me as I barely popped up onto the sidewalk, and I immediately froze—I’m not hug-averse, but you have to approach me gently, carefully, like trying to walk up to a wild bird to take its photo, lest I fly away in an anxious huff. Unfortunately, I cannot fly away with the grip this man has on me, so I give a few weak pats to his back to signal it’s time to let go.

We sit down and he says this is one of his favorite spots, he just doesn’t get to it often. He suggests a couple of starters, recommends a few rolls that he particularly likes. He’s talked from the second we broke that god-awful hug and hasn’t stopped yet; I haven’t even really offered my opinion or said, well, much of anything.

The server comes and asks if she can get us some drinks. He orders two beers and rattles off the food order as she scrambles for a pad of paper in her back pocket, then thanks her and returns to telling me about himself—where he works (a bakery), how many siblings he has (three), and how long he’s been on the dating apps (a few months, just to try something new, you know?).

“Did you order a beer for me, or...?” I interrupt.

“Well, yeah, duh,” he says, like I’m a silly little dumb-dumb baby brain. “Beer and sushi are, like, the best.”

I furrow my brow. This is the opportunity to recognize that you were very forward and maybe should have asked, bud. “Oh, but I didn’t want beer.”

“Why not?”

Because I don’t like drinking on first dates if I can avoid it. Because it’s the middle of the day and I have things to do. Because I don’t fucking like beer, why can’t anybody get this through their heads that it’s not a universal thing to like beer?

“I would just prefer tea is all.”

“Well it’s fine, I’ll drink it,” he adds without missing a beat, and carries on talking about the car he’s working on rebuilding. I never do get to order that tea.

And so this is how lunch goes. He talks about himself, I occasionally add a few anecdotes of my own when he’s busy chewing, and that’s when he reminds me that I’m over twenty-five and basically a withered old crone who should probably wander off into the swamps and never be seen again by the eyes of man. I just want to leave, but it doesn’t feel egregious enough to make it a problem.

Does it?

In the grand scheme of dating fails, it’s certainly not the worst that could happen. He’s not downright cruel, just clueless and self-centered, as most of us are in our early twenties. With a few reminders and gentle prods and nudges, I’m sure he could change his behavior and maybe—maybe—think about what he says before he blurts it out. But that’s not something I’d like to take on at this stage of my life. I’m done, for the moment, trying to educate men on how to act on dates, done putting up guard rails to guide them into more acceptable behavior.

I’m not a mother, I’m not a teacher, I’m not a life coach. I’m looking for a turn-key ready man, not a fixer-upper. (I say this now, of course, without the foresight that I will eventually find myself a man who was basically an opossum eating out of a dumpster, and I will clean him up and socialize him and keep him forever.)

This man that sits before me, tipsy and unaware, eventually asks for the check and some boxes for the leftovers. I’m still hungry, having barely touched my rolls while he somehow managed to wolf his down, chug his beers (yes, both beers! This man is going to drive himself home and he drank both beers like it’s nothing! It’s noon on a Tuesday!), and maintain a conversation with himself.

The check comes and as I reach for my bag (I’m inclined to split this meal lest this man think I owe him even so much as a goodbye kiss), and he quickly tosses his debit card onto the black plastic tray. He banks with a local credit union—that’s at least one positive he has going for him.

“Are you sure?” I ask, fingers still gripping my wallet.

“Of course,” he grins, looking at me with what I think he thinks is swagger. “I wouldn’t let a pretty lady buy her own lunch.”

A pretty lady that you implied is old and decrepit. How sweet.

He snatches the takeout boxes and starts adding his leftovers into them, then grabs my plate and scrapes my barely-eaten roll into the box along with his.

My mouth opens and closes. “Oh, I wasn’t done—”

“Well, I mean, I paid for it, I’m taking it home.” His tone is firm in a way I don’t dare disagree with, a tone he hasn’t taken this entire time but that I do not like the sound of.

I nod and smile, just as I have been for the last hour. “Of course, makes sense.”

As we walk outside and I fight the urge to sprint to my car without saying another word, he grabs my hand and pulls me in the direction of a Japanese supermarket that’s just across the parking lot. He needs to look for something for his roommate while he’s here, he says.

I do not care.

I do not care that he’s trying to extend the date, I do not care that he seems to be having a good time. I want to go home. And yet, of course, I tag along, compelled by decades of having “go along to get along” drilled into my skull, and he explains a video game to me.

After, he walks me back to my car and tells me he had an amazing time and wraps me in another unwelcome hug. I stiffen again and this time I don’t bother patting him on the back; I simply stand there and wait for it to end. It’s perhaps rude, but he seems to be oblivious to it, at least.

I sit in my car and watch him drive off and leave a voicemail for my therapist that I need to bump up our session to this week.

The next day, ol’ Two Beers Sushi-Taker texts me.

He texts me at seven in the morning like an absolute maniac, then a couple more times for good measure; it means that he didn’t at all pay attention to the little bit of personal lore I dropped in that I work a non-standard schedule and would likely be sleeping. Also, I am as eager as they come when it comes to wanting the attention and approval of the opposite sex but come on man, show some restraint.

I’m waiting for the inevitable “thanks but no thanks” text that I’m accustomed to, but I make an audible groan when I see an emoji-punctuated message about what a great time he had, and he thought we really hit it off, and he wants to know if I’m free tomorrow night to go see a movie.

I toss my phone on the bed like it’s suddenly made of ants. I’ve been on—well, an amount of dates, and of all the people, this is the one who wants to see me again? I take a moment to compose myself, and text him back. I tell him I had a nice time, but I just didn’t feel a connection, and wish him all the best in his future dating endeavors. That should do it—it’s short, it’s sweet, it’s non-specific.

Within minutes, I’m hit with a flurry of confused responses.

Why? (Because you laid claim to my food by virtue of your chivalry. Because you called me old. Because you didn’t seem to get any hints that I was dropping, nor pay any mind to my body language or tone.)

Are you sure? (Never have I been more sure of anything.)

But I thought we really hit it off. (Were you on the same date that I was, my guy?)

You really seem like my type. (Sure I do, quiet and compliant and unwilling to call you on your bullshit because it’s only a first date.)

Do you want to give it a day and think it over? (My brother in Christ, you have got to move on.)

Maybe I should have been nice and went on another date. And then another. And then another, until I’m being so nice and accommodating that we get married and have some kids and I spend the rest of my life being nice and worrying so much about the way he feels that I reach the wrong side of seventy-five and realize I don’t even know who I am anymore, other than someone who can’t say no to save her life and erases all the pertinent parts of herself to make someone else feel comfortable and happy and fulfilled.

I take a breath, then two, then three, and respond that I’m sure, that I appreciate the offer but I don’t see this working out, and block him a few seconds after hitting send. I feel bad for a moment. Perhaps he has also been ghosted repeatedly like I have. Perhaps this is the most recent in a string of rejections. Perhaps he’s just bad at being sociable and this was truly the best he could do. Regardless, I do not owe him anything, but I still somehow feel like shit for the rest of the day.

I hope he finds happiness. I really do. And I hope the next girl insists on finishing her own fucking food.

[lo-wrote]

Something for Your Mind Original fiction Note: This was originally background work for a story I had planned, but I reworked it into a piece of standalone short fiction. Edited for spelling/grammar/etc. but largely unchanged from when I wrote it ~3 years ago. Contains discussion of parental death, sleeping pill use.

She begged for dreamless sleep every night as she climbed into bed, pulling the sheets tightly around her. And most nights, after enough pills, she could achieve it.

But when the headaches from night after night of chemicals buzzing in her skull became too much, she was left to fend for herself in her dreams, victim to the bright swaths of color that painted her past. The flashes of brilliant light, the booms that made the ground crumble beneath the pink sneakers she wore that day—the ones her mother bought for her just the week before, with the orange laces she had begged for when she saw them in the shop window—and the alarms that rang and pierced her eardrums, making hot rivulets of blood trickle down the sides of her neck.

Suddenly, blurred movement, motions she couldn’t quite follow, as she was grabbed by from behind and hauled away from the building that disintegrated before her, her mother still trapped inside as she screamed until her lungs burned and her throat seized and her eyes ached from the streams of tears that streamed down her face.

Then blackness.

It was usually then that she’d awaken in her bed, soaking in a puddle of perspiration, panting and heaving, her mouth dry and her lips cracking at the corners as she tried to push away the thoughts that had forced her awake. Tonight was one of those nights when the headaches had become too much to bear and she forced herself to take a break—it had become increasingly difficult to even stand up, much less make any rational and timely decisions, which was a not-insignificant part of hurtling through space in a metal junk-heap the way she did.

When it got to the point that her hold on reality felt tenuous and she was near-convinced that her skull was going to split in two and her brains would spill out onto the floor, that is when she would lay off the pills for a while and suffer through a few nights being tortured by a couple decades of bad memories just to relieve the throbbing behind her eyes for a little while. She caught her breath and rolled over, fumbling for her glasses on the table next to her as her hands trembled, her fingers gripping the lenses and leaving smudged prints on the plastic that she hastily tried to wipe away with the hem of her tank top.

She laid down, flat on her back, and stared at the ceiling, the room dimly lit by the green glow of the clock on the nightstand. She laid one hand gently on her chest, feeling her heart race under her trembling palm, as she inhaled deeply through her nose, holding each breath to a count of ten, then exhaled through her mouth to the same count. On her next inhale, she tried to think of anything but the bright orange pain that forced her awake.

One…

She remembered the kitchen above the shop. It had a yellow tiled floor and the ugliest teal wallpaper she had ever seen.

Two…

Her mother swore up and down she was going to replace that wallpaper—that they’d go to the store and buy paint and do it together one weekend—but time slipped away and that peeling wallpaper, in all its gaudy glory, never came down.

Three…

She ran ahead of her mother up the narrow staircase to the apartment, giddy to have the responsibility of unlocking the door and being the first one inside. It felt like she won something just to be allowed to hold the shiny gold key, and she gripped it so tightly the tips of her fingers turned white.

Four…

Her mother seemed like the strongest woman in the world when she carried groceries up the stairs, always bragging that she never needed help, and she would never dare make more than one trip—she could get it all, she would boast, and tell her darling child that one day she would be strong enough to carry just as many bags of groceries, and maybe even more, all on her own, too.

Five…

While her mother put the groceries away, she rifled through the cupboards, tasked with finding the big soup pot, the one that she used to climb into as a toddler as she played hide-and-seek with her cousins. She dragged it out ceremoniously, knowing the bounty that awaited her whenever her mother asked her to retrieve it.

Six…

She sat on the counter, swinging her legs and crunching happily on a carrot, nibbling it down to the tickly green tops, as she watched her mother swiftly chop a mound of vibrant vegetables and plop them in the pot, hearing them clunk against the metal. Her mother hummed softly while she worked.

Seven…

No matter where she wandered off to in their home, the scent of the slow-cooking broth followed her from room to room. It felt like a lifetime until she heard a shout from the kitchen that dinner was finally ready, and she eagerly dropped her book and raced into the other room.

Eight…

She held her bowl aloft as high as she could, her mother gently reminding her to clutch it carefully, the bowl would get very hot, and not to spill or she’d hurt herself. She nodded fervently, concerned that perhaps her soup privileges would be revoked if she let so much as a droplet hit the floor.

Nine…

She cautiously placed the bowl on the table and climbed onto the chair, waiting for her mother to join her, and stared greedily at the basket in the middle of the table, full of warm rolls that were ready to be ripped apart and dunked into the broth.

Ten…

She smiled as her mother hugged her from behind and planted a gentle kiss on the crown of her head. She whined and begged her mother to sit down—the soup smelled so good, she was so hungry and couldn’t wait another moment to eat.

As she exhaled calmly, she could swear she smelled the garlicky broth and hear her mother’s voice calling her to come to dinner. As she opened her eyes to make sure she was still in her room, a small robot padded in, pausing just inside the doorway to press the light switch on the wall above it.

“I heard you making noise,” it asked softly. “Is everything okay?”

She sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, squinting at the sudden harsh overhead light, and looked over at the machine that stared at her from across the room. “Actually, can you get some clean sheets for me? And turn on the shower?”

“Ah. Another bad dream?”

She glanced down at the floor, once more thinking of soup and feeling the ghost of her mother’s kiss graze the top of her head. “Always.”

“What temperature would you like the water?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I dunno. Hot enough to melt my flesh so all I got left is just the bones?”

“You know I cannot do that,” the robot chided.

“And you know I’m just kidding.”

“Of course I do, I am not ignorant,” it responded, sounding something adjacent to offended. “But I will continue to remind you that I will not injure you, or allow you to do something to injure yourself.”

She smiled. “I know you will, buddy. You’re very good to me.”

“You built me, why would I not be?” it called from the hallway as it scooted off to the bathroom to turn on the faucet.

She laid back down, the sheets clammy and clinging to her bare arms. She knew the nightmares came in bursts, and if she stayed up just a little bit longer, she may get a lucky roll of the dice and have less eventful sleep by the time she tried to rest again, and perhaps even be granted a pleasant dream. She often clenched her fists and gritted her teeth as she fell asleep, desperately trying to force her brain to show her a glimpse of her mother again—all she needed was to witness a flash of her smile, or to see the sun shining on her chestnut hair, or to hear her raspy laugh again, just one more time, even though she always knew that one more time was still never enough.

She wondered how many one more times she had left of the fading vision of her mother, when she heard the shower come to life and her tin companion cursed and grumbled.

“Hey,” she yelled, a grin slowly stretching across her lips, “did you get wet?”

“That is none of your concern, I am fine,” it responded.

“Okay, but did you—”

“Yes. And I did not care for it.”

“Who would let that happen? Who would build a robot that dislikes water so much?” she teased as she walked towards the door.

“I wonder,” it groused at it waddled back into Pepper’s room, a few errant water droplets running down the curves of its rounded face. “Who would build me and have the opportunity to make me into a perfect assistant or an expert pilot or an ideal killing machine and instead make me into...this.”

She smiled, leaning down to kiss the automaton on the top of its smooth head. “I made you exactly the type of person I wanted to have around.”

“I am not a person,” it responded flatly. “We have talked about this at length.”

“You’re self-aware, and that almost makes you a person, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but I am still not a person.”

She frowned, flashing a pout at the petulant robot before her. “That makes me sad when you say that, though. You’re as much a person as anyone else.”

“Yes, well, I am still different from other beings.” Seeing the momentary hurt wash over her face, it continued, “but I am a person to you, and that is enough. Now go shower, I will take care of the sheets.”

“Are you sure?” she asked guiltily.

“Yes, you should try to sleep again soon,” it responded, setting an armful of linens at the foot of the bed. “We will be arriving at the depot in approximately ten hours, so you should be rested, and I should power down for a little myself.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll listen to you,” she said as she walked past it, patting it on the head as she left the room. “Just this once though.”

“I will take my wins where I can get them,” it yelled back, tossing a pile of damp sheets into the hall after her.

She leaned against the shower wall and closed her eyes, letting the steam envelop her and the water crash over her body, hoping that the biting heat would distract her long enough to let the remaining scenes from her nightmare evaporate, until it was all a distant memory again, cloaked in the fog of time.

[lo-wrote]

Warm Beer and Old Sushi Part of The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five, a semi-autobiographical series on dating in my late 20's. Contains sexual content. WC: 1.6k

I hate beer.

I don’t know why I keep agreeing to first date at bars when I have such strong feelings about beer. Probably because this is a city that loves its beer, like loves its fucking beer, like can’t throw a pebble without hitting a guy with a shaved head wearing cargo shorts and flip-flops who’s just amped to play cornhole kind of loves its fucking beer. I’ve heard lectures and diatribes and TED Talks worth of information about beer, and the importance of using the right hops, and the unique flavor profile of this particular IPA, and the myriad of reasons why this brewery or that are actually sellouts and got too big to truly feel indie anymore.

It’s the curse of working non-standard hours, the only things open by the time I get off work are Denny’s and bars and breweries and supermarkets.

Maybe I should start asking to meet at the grocery store. We walk around, we pick out a few things. I learn about your aversion to coconut, you tease me about my love for condensed canned soup (yes, the noodles are gummy and yes it has my whole day’s worth of sodium but it tastes like nostalgia, like laying on the couch with the flu and drinking warm ginger ale—wait, you didn’t do that? well let me tell you...). We spend an eternity, or maybe just half an hour, getting to know each other in the liminal space of the deli section, the fluorescent lights humming us a love song. We coyly hold hands in front of the hothouse tomatoes, scandalize the cantaloupes with a chaste kiss.

But here I am instead, perched on a bar stool in a way that will absolutely wreck my already weak lower back, sipping at a beer that tastes only moderately like warm piss-water. The guy in front of me, the one whose profile regrettably said Just a Jim looking for my Pam!, is talking about the beer he ordered. Telling me about the local brewery that makes it, how it’s their special edition just for the fall, how it doesn’t quite compare to this other IPA he had but it’s good enough, y’know?

He never asks me if I like beer.

We exchange a few pleasantries once he exhausts himself talking about pale ales, catch up on our days, subtly look each other over again and again to see how we measure up to our profiles (it’s 1:1 match, ladies and gentleman!). He seems to have worn himself out already on conversation, like a puppy let loose to run around the backyard before it collapses in a sleepy heap, and the deadly first-date lull sets in. The killer of vibes has already come for us, and we’ve been here no more than fifteen minutes.

I, for one, am a dismal conversationalist when getting to know someone. I listen better than I talk, the only subject matter I can conjure in situations like these being work anecdotes that require more set-up than I’m willing to commit to, or useless facts that I’ve learned from years of playing Trivial Pursuit and reading too much Wikipedia.

My mind is like a steel trap for things that will only come in handy if I’m ever in a life-or-death game of Jeopardy. Did you know that the artificial banana flavoring used in most modern products doesn’t taste like banana because it was created off the flavor profile of a banana that went extinct? My dates don’t know. But they don’t care. They never care about the banana-pocolypse.

As the lull becomes more painful to bear and I contemplate sliding off my barstool and curling up on the floor, he fiddles with the cardboard coaster and says, “You know, sometimes when I come to bars, I look around and try to identify if anyone was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.”

“What an absolutely unhinged thing to say to another human being that you just met,” I want to say.

“Really? How would one do that?” I actually say because fuck, it’s not like I have anything more interesting to add. Maybe if I let him ramble about this for a bit, I’ll think of something witty and charming to say and redirect the conversation. (Hint: I don’t.)

We leave after a little while, roam the city blocks looking for anything else open, preferably anything that doesn’t require us to talk. He kisses me suddenly as we stand in front of the monkey bars in a well-lit playground, and I return the kiss. He smells like warm beer. I hate it even more on his lips than I do from a pint glass.

We end up attempting sex in the back of his car, hidden away on some dark residential street, parked in front of a perfectly nice bungalow, the flicker of a malfunctioning streetlight occasionally illuminating our sins. I’m wearing too many layers to make this easy; I was expecting to be only looked at from a reasonable distance, not that I’d end up trying to straddle his lap in the back of his Honda Civic. I struggle with my boots, then my bike shorts, then my tights, yanking up my tank top that’s tucked into my smoothing underwear. The mood feels deflated by the time I swing my leg over his lap, my thighs already shaking as they press against his slim hips and he fondles a handful of push-up bra.

We try, and we get sweaty and frustrated, and we mostly fail at trying to achieve penetration. I feel to blame, with my labyrinth of compression garments pooled on the floor, the hasty removal of each item sapping the sexiness from the moment bit by bit. I feel to blame because of my wide thighs and my big stomach that seemed to get in the way. I feel to blame because I feel like I engulf his skinny body.

He chalks it up to that damned autumnal IPA and a small space and perhaps too much eagerness, but the look on his face doesn’t match the kindness of the words that fill the car. I pull down my dress and shove all my bits and bobs of undergarments into my purse and stumble out of his car onto the sidewalk. He says goodnight and he’ll text me tomorrow, and I walk back to my car alone, in an unfamiliar part of the city. Even if he’d offered to walk or drive me back, I would have said no; I need to exist in this shame for a little while.

I walk in the dark for blocks in the wrong direction before I realize it.

He does text me the next day, shockingly. It’s a long, rambling message, telling me he had a lovely time but he just doesn’t think he’s in the right place for a relationship. You see, his friends just got into a minor fender bender in a car that he had rented for them, and the stress of dealing with the insurance and the repair shop and god knows what else is just so overwhelming, you know? There’s just no way he could even think about a relationship, and couldn’t possibly devote attention to me in the way I deserved. I’m certain there was more, but I stopped reading after the third multi-paragraph message.

Maybe this story was true, in part or in totality. Maybe he just couldn’t think of a better way to turn me down and decided to turn it into a creative writing project. Maybe he uses this line on everyone he turns down, like some sort of weird chain letter that gets passed on.

I’d have rather he just ghosted me.

At least I know how to deal with ghosting now. After enough times of radio silence after what I thought was a successful first, third, or fifth date, I learned it was sometimes for the best to just never hear from someone again. Sure, I would wonder what it was that made them crinkle their nose and think, “Nah” the next day. Did the size of my body, accurately represented in multiple pictures in my app profiles, still manage to offend them? Did I not laugh just the right way at a joke that, in retrospect, was kind of insensitive? Did my obvious ambivalence for lukewarm beer shake them deep down to their core, make them question their whole being?

I stand in the middle of my bedroom, shower-fresh and already wanting the day to be over, and tell him it’s fine, and I had a nice time, and I wish him all the best with the chaos he purports to be embroiled in, and then I promptly block his number and get ready for work, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do.

I stop at the grocery store on my way to work, wandering the aisles and wondering if he’d have still written the most convoluted farewell message if we’d just had that first date right here, found ourselves enchanted with each other in front of the pre-made rotisserie chickens. I stare at the day-old discount sushi rolls and want to cry for some reason, but no tears ever come, not when the butcher lurks just behind the counter, watching, judging, hovering in case I need a pound of raw shrimp.

Maybe one day I’ll find a man who will walk hand-in-clammy-hand with me down the dairy aisle and we’ll marvel at the variety of flavors of yogurt they have nowadays. Today, I buy a California roll that smells like spoiled tuna to eat in my car alone and hope I don’t get food poisoning.

[lo-wrote]

Lo // 30’s // she/her

Welcome to my writing blog! This space is to post my original fiction and semi-autobiographical writing.

Some housekeeping regarding my writing:

I will include trigger warnings for major topics (ex. death, SA, etc.) and a general “adult content” warning on pieces that contain sexual content or adult themes, but I will not be including hyper specific tags as I do on my fanfiction. Think of it like going to the bookstore or library and taking home a random book—you might get a general idea of themes or topics that may not be to your tastes, but you generally won’t have an AO3-like tag wall at the start of the book.

My semi-autobiographical/autobiographical writing is reflective of my specific life experience as a fat, late-diagnosed neurodivergent, cis white woman. If that’s not a perspective you want to read about or feel you can’t relate to or be entertained by, I understand!

Do not repost, modify, or claim my work as your own, and do not post my work on any other platform. Do not recommend my work on any platform outside of AO3 and Tumblr (including TikTok).

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