#or roll my eyes or want to leave the conversation STAT. like my flight instinct takes over.

[non-un-topo]

Have to thank my partner for realizing before I did that talking about kids with people makes me extremely dysphoric --- whereas I thought I just had a problem and hated children or something lol

[zizeschmizes]

that familiar feeling. | solo

WHO: lauren zizes (& the zizes bro squad)

WHAT: a post-thanksgiving dinner hangout, with bonus chaotic sibling energy.

WHEN: 11/28; evening

WHERE: zizes home; new orleans, la.

The last guest was long gone, and the cleanup had been, as always, a family effort. Everyone doing their part to return the house back to some kind of order. Everyone had a job, and Lauren, stickler for organization that she was, had been tasked with putting away the leftovers in a reasonable and tidy manner. 

It was a wonder there was any food left; her mother, as per usual had gone overboard. But it was for good reason. As tradition, their dinner usually included some of her brothers' teammates, the guys unable to travel home for the holiday, for whatever reason. There were five of them this year, nice guys who complimented the cooking and talked football with her father and charmed her mother and younger brothers. At least they'd been expected, their places planned for at the dinner table.

If anything she was the anomaly. The interloper, the surprise guest showing up unexpectedly. After landing at the airport, she'd taken a Lyft home, laughing at the look of surprise on her father's face when he opened the front door. She hadn't discussed her plans with anyone; staying at Ginsburg had been the idea...until the drama, most of it not hers, but the small part that was, it was enough to convince her that a break was necessary. Feeling tired, overworked, and wanting to be in a setting that felt familiar seemed too good to pass up. 

The food was packed up, the kitchen was clean, the guests were gone, her parents had retired to bed, and Lauren could finally change into comfy clothes and settle in a favorite spot. In the den, on the massive sectional, sandwiched between two of her favorite people. Her younger brothers had been especially excited to see her, nearly tackling her in a combo hug, towering over her in a way that made her chest ache because she missed them so much. They stuck close to her, surprising considering the last thing most 15 year old boys wanted was to be babied by their big sister, but here they were. João, taller than she'd remembered, sprawled on the sofa, body taking up a good amount of room while his head rested on Lauren's lap. 

He kept dozing off, unfocused on the show they were supposed to be watching, his content state heightened by Lauren's fingers combing through his dark brown curls. Matheus, however, was the total opposite of his twin, squished beside Lauren and talking animatedly about the show, which had been his pick and Lauren had to admit she was more focused on his commentary than the actual plot. Matty had a way of making everything feel more elaborate, injecting a streak of dramatic flair typical in the Zizes household. Lauren missed it. The noise and nonsense she'd grown so familiar with, different from the college atmosphere that had been her reality for the past few months. 

Their chatter was interrupted by Gabe, yanking the remote from Matty's grasp and tumbling over the back of the couch, nearly landing on top of the younger boy who luckily had the good sense to roll out of the way, landing on the floor between the coffee table and the couch. 

"Seriously?" Lauren glanced over at Gabe, who managed to balance a large bowl in the middle of his chaotic entrance, never spilling a chip as he stuck his landing. 

"What? He moved. That Zizes instinct comin' through." Matty seemed no worse for wear, making a comfortable spot on the floor and accepting the bowl of Doritos when Gabe passed it down, his gaze never leaving the television screen. 

Lauren rolled her eyes. "Y'all are ridiculous. You could’ve broken his damn neck.” Her grumble was cut short when, out of nowhere, a hand came whizzing by. João, reaching overhead, past Lauren to grab a handful of chips, shoveling them in his mouth with a loud crunching noise. “Dammit, Jojo! You almost hit me.” 

His ‘sorry’ was muffled by chewing and Lauren scowled waiting a beat before bopping him on the forehead. 

“Next time just ask for the bowl, dummy. How are y’all still eatin’ after all that food?” 

Gabe shrugged and sank lower in his seat, enough to prop his sock covered feet on the coffee table. “I’m a growing boy. I ain’t wanna dig around in all those bowls. You got the fridge locked up. Chips was easier.” He offered her the bowl as a peace offering and despite her glare, it didn’t stop her from swiping a few. Dark eyes, much like her own glanced at the screen and he frowned. “What the hell are y’all watching?” 

“Matty picked. I think it’s some Star Wars thing?” 

There came a huff from the floor, and Matheus lifted his head from her knee. “It’s ‘The Mandalorian’, Lo. I said that twenty minutes ago.” 

“Okay, so I was right. It was a Star Wars thing.” 

Gabe snorted beside her. “Turn it off, I haven’t watched the first ep yet, I don’t wanna be spoiled.” 

Lauren reached for a few more chips, grabbing a handful and pointing with her pinky at Gabe’s lap. “You have the remote, genius. Just switch it to something everybody wants to watch. Don’t put on those NatGeo docs, bout to put everybody to sleep.” 

Matty laughed. “Jojo’s already asleep.” 

“No I’m not!” came the sleep-filled reply from her sweatpants-covered lap and Lauren looked down at her little brother, who was busy wiping crumbs from his face. “Lo, you’re getting Dorito dust on me.” 

“Yeah well that’s what you get for almost smackin’ me, we’re even.” She rubbed her fingers together, laughing at his grumbling because despite it, she knew he wasn’t moving. “Where’s Nono?” she asked Gabe, who was still busy browsing through Netflix and vetoing Matty’s suggestions. 

“Think he’s still talking to Zara on the phone. Makin’ plans to link up after practice.” Gabe tossed the remote to Matty, and turned his full attention on Lauren. “You stayin’ for the game on Saturday? Watch us bust some Aggie ass?”

Lauren nibbled at her bottom lip. She'd forgotten about the possibility of a football game. Already figuring it would be a reality for winter break, in her haste to get away from Ginsburg for the holiday, it had slipped her mind. 

"My flight back to school is Saturday," she replied, unsure if she was relieved or annoyed. At herself. More than likely at the situation. Dinner had been spent literally surrounded by football, her brother teammates piled into the large dining room they only ever used for holidays and big parties. And at first, Lauren had completely disappeared amongst the talk of plays and stats and names, occasionally cracking a smile at a stray joke, her grin growing when her eyes happened to catch her father's. Her parents seemed happy to see her. Her father clutched her tightly and kissed her forehead, the warmth behind it making her feel most at home. 

And she supposed her mother, with her busy to-do list that involved ordering the rest of them around with chopping and shopping and cleaning and organizing didn't have much time for her usual spiel. Again, the surprise drop in was good for something. She'd managed a quick kiss to her daughter's cheek and promptly sent her on an errand. Lauren figured come Christmastime, she wouldn't be so lucky. 

For his part, Gabe took the news of her departure easily. Then again, that was his way. Of all her brothers, the two were more alike, in looks and temperament. Where Antonio was the quiet, responsible type, Gabe was loud, the center of attention and quick with a joke. The two of them bumped heads, but never really outright clashed, trading snarky comments back and forth until a peace offering (usually food) was suggested. 

“There’s always games,” he replied easily. “You’ll catch another one.” They turned their attention back to the television, where Matty had found something else to watch (Black Panther) and managed to snatch the bowl of chips from his older brother, setting it beside him so he could share with his twin. 

“Thanks, for not giving me shit about it.” 

Gabe shook his head. “It’s just football, Lozinha. I realize sayin’ that’s a cardinal sin ‘round here. But you haven’t been into this shit since we were in high school. It’s cool. Although…” he turned to his sister, big grin on his handsome face and Lauren knew it was bound to be something that would no doubt annoy her. “If you did show up, I know of at least three dudes who’d be pretty hype about that.” 

She made a face. “Please don’t push me off on your football pals, it’s so weird. Not to mention unnecessary.” 

“You say ‘unnecessary’, I say Cameron was staring hard and it wasn’t the turkey he was eyeballin’.” 

Lauren rolled her eyes, her annoyance only rising at Gabe’s loud laughter, but smiled when the twins both shushed him. She had noticed Cameron, catching her eyes whenever she looked up and making sure they were seated beside each other at dinner. 

He was sweet enough, a junior linebacker studying sports medicine with dreams of being a physical therapist, and he listened attentively while she talked about Ginsburg and her major. Their conversation had been pleasant, but it was a typical dinner talk: polite and surface-level and though she enjoyed it, hadn’t thought much more about it, especially when she had other matters to attend to, mainly cleaning. A total gentleman, he bid her goodnight and leaned in for a hug, a one-armed gesture that ended with a gentle squeeze of her hip, which...okay that might’ve been forward...but she didn’t dwell on it, simply brushing it off as friendly.

“Yeah, that’s not happening. He’s nice but he lives here. I’m at Ginsburg. Plus I’m not really looking for that right now.” 

“Uh-huh…” Gabe trailed off, studying his sister’s profile. “Soooo, is that ‘cause you already have something? And when are you gonna let me talk to your crew? Do they know you’ve got a hot single brother? Like come on, what good is having a sister if I can’t hit on your fine ass friends?”

“That is a lot of stupid happening in one sentence,” she replied, laughing. “I’m not letting my friends anywhere near you. Besides, you already got a school-full of folks you can charm, get outta my friends list.” 

“Jeez, be selfish. But you could be keeping me from the love of my life. I hope you’re happy.” 

“My one mission’s to make your ass miserable so yep, I’m pretty content right now.” 

Gabe snorted. “It’s possible you came back a bigger pain in the ass.”

“It’s a required Gins elective. Bad Bitch 101.” Lauren flipped her hair, laughing when João grumbled about being jostled. She ruffled his hair, letting her fingers linger to card gently through his curls. 

“Are you two done?” Matheus grumbled from below. “We’re tryin’ to watch something here.” 

“Yeah whatever,” Gabe said, leaning forward to bop his younger brother on the shoulder. “You’ve seen this like a million times. Gimme the chips and put on something we all wanna watch.” 

“I don’t mind watching it,” came a voice from behind and Lauren looked up to see Antonio entering the den, tumbling over the back of the sectional much like Gabe did, settling beside his brother, and throwing an arm over the back of the couch. 

“Are y’all incapable of sitting on the couch like regular folk? I mean, damn.” Her question was met by a chorus of boos and Gabe, having recovered the chip bowl threw a Dorito at her, which she promptly caught in her mouth. 

“Nice. Learned that from one of those Ginsburg’s electives?” 

Lauren shook her head. “Nah, just that Zizes instinct comin’ through.” Grinning, she leaned her head on Gabe’s shoulder, finally focusing on the Wakandian action on-screen as her brothers passed the bowl between them, feeling completely at ease in the familiarity of it all. She really missed this.

[mittel-schmerz-blog]

rad \m/

“We’ve determined that, really, the best way to move forward is--”

And the droning.

I look down at my shoes under the table: chunky black heels with a sharp toe perfect for scratching the blisters on my ankles. I track the hem of my dress, making sure it’s laying flat. I glance down at my left wrist, the slim watch, turning it slightly so that its curved, thin-glassed face is centered there.

I rapidly uncap and recap my pen, listening to the men in front of me bloviate on the same middling ideas they’ve been having for thirty years.

“So, essentially--”

And more droning.

Clucking my tongue reflexively, I roll my eyes around the room and count no fewer than six exasperated expressions. I’m not alone when I look at my watch again. The ever-presenting men at the front of the room proceed undaunted.

They don't realize it, but they’re hopelessly unpersuasive. Meetings like this, thick with silent disdain and discord, make me anxious.

I am powerfully compelled to fixate on details and allow myself to do so frequently. Constantly, really. Because I essentially exist in minutiae, the negligible negativities in everyday interactions hit hard.

I cannot handle the corner-lip-dip of disagreement. I know that a twitch does not indicate the first sign of a looming hatred; a face just drops when it disagrees. Intellectually, I understand this. And still, everyone in this room is frowning and I am feeling a simmering discomfort.

Basically: while I wish this boredom were benign, it is also accompanied by an indistinct sense of mortal dread.  

When I sense dissent, I change course quickly. Everyone is on board with my ideas by the end of a meeting. I am damn good; I can’t bear not to be.

But I cannot change the course of someone else’s presentation. I can fidget and I can imagine how they’re going to get torn apart in fourteen minutes during the debrief.

The five Mikes and I are convening at 3:30 PM sharp to rehash this abortion.

The smug superiority I’m feeling over the impotence of these men is one of the meaner strategies I use to cope with the aforementioned angst. I am the cat who ate the canary. But still, the fidgeting.

“Well...”

Mike #4, Punctual Mike, is interrupting the rant.

Even as I sit here in a fog of “strategies” and self-satisfaction, I am aware that the energy in the room is shifting. The five Mikes, the two Daves, and the three Bobs have all arrived, late, at my level of restlessness.

I will need to play good cop in short order. We need to communicate a firm no that feels like a soft yes. I’m the best at redirection, so this task usually falls to me. But today I’m feeling itchy.

The watch fiddling, the skirt twisting, the ankle scratching, the pen capping and uncapping. Click click click.

Silence.

I always worry that the constant motion is distracting but no one ever seems to notice it. At least, they’ve never said anything about it.

“Nat? What do you think?”

...

I look down at my toes, wiggling along with the commercial jingle playing softly on the radio in the other room and remember where I am. I try to process what I just, theoretically, heard him say. Because I didn’t really hear him, though, I decide to hedge my bets.

I say, “What are you trying to say, exactly?”

He looks at me and I realize that that thing is happening where he is an exceptional human being and I am being remarkably unexceptional by comparison.

He is always doing right things like: insisting we practice something called “Radical Mutual Affirmation” in addition to attending weekly boxing classes. Lou is an ex-yogi engaged in a lifelong search for something more primal. I am less than convinced of the value of literally fighting one another as a communication strategy.

He thinks it will help me learn to let things go. I think he’s just trying to tire me out.

I am always doing wrong things like: not being fully present in my day-to-day life and then instinctively defending myself against attacks that haven’t been made against me.

And the arguing.

He often wonders aloud, “I don’t know how you manage to make every molehill into a mountain and every mountain into Everest.” Even after knowing me for so long, he does not know that my capacity for fretting is infinite. I will never evolve so much that I forget the simple truth that there is always more to consider.

“I was saying, Natalie, that even though I don’t understand it, I kind of admire the way you care so much about everything; you are so deeply sensitive and thoughtful,” he repeats.

This time there’s definitely an edge to his voice that implies that I am being deeply sensitive and thoughtful at the worst possible moment. I cannot help but tune out when he tells me, again, that I’m perfect and should expend less energy on unproductive things like “self deprecating flights of fancy”. He would prefer it if, instead, I opted for fifteen minutes on the speed bag he installed in my bathroom for me last week.

Just because it’s in my house doesn’t mean I’m going to use it-- I don’t understand why he wouldn’t just buy me a stress ball. You can’t leave a conversation to “punch something in the other room real quick.”

So now I’m debating whether I should acknowledge that I wasn’t listening to him because I’m still reeling from a particularly heinous meeting or if it would be less destructive to tell him that I just misheard him and apologize. He did sort of mumble.

Especially when we are capital-T-Talking, I am supposed to be outside of my own head, but for me that is sometimes quite a captial-T-Tall order. If I tell him that I was, once again, somewhere else, it might just be the last thing I say to him. He thinks he is emotionally intelligent and he is, but not really.   

He’s understanding, but not enlightened. He’ll be angry if I tell him the truth.

“Sorry, I misheard you. I’m… I’m, glad you see it that way.”

He looks at me like he does sometimes and it makes me feel good even though I am not being honest.

The clock on the wall in the kitchen ticks on, finally.

...

“Well, I should probably go,” he says, pushing himself off of my lap.

I look at this person that I like so much and think he doesn’t know me at all. To be fair, maybe I don’t know him either. Maybe it’s the RMA, but I feel like all we do is talk at each other. Still, every once in awhile he says something I don’t expect and I feel like we really get each other.

But the relationship, on the whole, feels sparse and underdeveloped. All he wants me to be is my best self. And it feels like a churning, low-grade disapproval.

He says things like, “Natalie. You’re perfect. And you shouldn’t need me to tell you that the woman who called to conduct the survey on Cable Service Provider Satisfaction isn’t angry with you for hanging up on her. You’re brilliant.” But it always rings a little hollow.

I want him to find me fascinating but I think I just confuse him. We have all these fizzing, crackling conversations about the athlete-cum-intellectual-cum-fashion icon. But while he remembers Russell Westbrook as a frenetic basketball player with a fierce smirk; he thinks that I’m overstating it just a bit when I say that I remember him as a “revolutionary athletic genius”.

He remembers more stats than I do but he doesn’t care as much.

I don’t think he likes me as much as he likes trying to figure me out. Whatever the reason, for the last seven months we’ve been dating and even though it’s been highly unusual it’s been exhilarating.

But now, tonight, he’s quiet. Now, he is looking through me as I ask him, again, if he can’t stay.

I am desperate for him not to leave, to stay here talking to me for hours even if he’s just being nice to me as a matter of daily practice. I feel a creeping unease in the impending emptiness of the house.

The moment he leaves I will turn on talk radio.

“No.”

Turning around to face me, he looks at me as if I’m modestly amusing.

I say, tentatively, “It was great to see you today. I missed you.”

“Yeah, it was. We should watch the Grizz play on Wednesday.”

Sometimes when we watch basketball together he laughs and laughs and sometimes he gets quiet because I get too sucked in. But he always humors me as I parse every foul for subtext.

Sometimes I think I could stay with him forever, punching my way to a new me.

“Yeah! They’re playing the Bulls right?” I ask, adjusting my dress.

“Yeah.”

When Wednesday comes, he will not remember having asked me; he just needs something to say that will let him walk out my door. I imagine when he leaves he will feel an as yet inexplicable sense of relief. He is learning to be sensitive but is naturally impatient.

I get up from the couch to walk him out. Stretching, I glance at the digital clock on my cable box and wonder what will be on NPR at 9:58 PM.

As we’re walking out of the living room and towards the foyer, I feel my bare feet swish across the carpet.

Straddling the doorway, he says, “Just FYI, your skirt is caught in your underwear.” And laughs.