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by Megan Boyle

  6:27PM: ‘good library’ closed, moved to table in ‘institutional-looking distinctive-smelling library’ across the street. think i’ve smelled this on airplanes. smells like an old friend. forget why i ate adderall.

  6:28–9:10PM: answered ask.fm question about college. responded to one email. seems ‘crazy’ of me to have done this, especially because there are still errors/unclear things in the answer to my question, but i like feeling so obsessed with writing that i can’t tell time has passed. texted with mira, in all caps, about where to meet. texts took on a christmas motif near the end.

  9:11pm: pooped in library. Ate 1mg Xanax. Walking to parking garage to get car, then pick up Mira and Sam Cooke at dumpling place. Man stared and whistled as he passed. Want to start whistling and whispering ‘sexy’ to men. What would they do.

  9:12–11:59PM: on the phone, mira said she and sam had finished eating and i should call when close. they’d get in the car so i wouldn’t have to find parking. moved stuff to the back seat, still full of things from philadelphia apartment. seat was still very close to dashboard. drove maybe 20 blocks south to the dumpling place. called mira twice but no answer. left a voicemail saying ‘poo poo dumpling.’ circled block and parked outside dumpling place. made a ‘lobotomy/tongue-sticking-out’ face at a person obstructed by a sign, who i thought was sam. texted mira that i was outside. saw sam and mira sitting inside.

  sam maneuvered around garbage bags i didn’t realize i had parked near, then opened passenger-side door. i drove in reverse, at first to move away from the garbage bags/make entering car easier, but kept doing it to be funny. the door made a scraping noise against the curb and everyone said ‘shit’ and ‘oh my god’ excited things and i stopped the car. mira sat on sam’s lap, think a pulling motion was involved in getting her into the car, multiple door-shutting attempts. i started driving before door was closed and it scraped against the curb. mira said ‘no, you have to, ahhh [something about the curb].’ then the curb thing was over and i felt something shift. i said ‘hi sam hi mira’ and they said ‘hi.’ they talked about the new places their bodies were being forcibly positioned, sounding more like they were making amused observations than complaints.

  i said ‘so you guys just want to drive around all night, right, and not go anywhere, just be in the car?’ think mira said ‘yeah let’s just drive like this all night’ and sam made a noise. then it was quiet. seemed clear that my joke would not lead to a ‘where are we going/what are we doing’ conversation. in my memory mira was laughing the most but all of us were kind of, at the cramped situation. it was quiet for a moment then sam said ‘how are you megan’ in a robot voice and i said ‘i am fine sam how are you’ and he said ‘i am fine’ and i said ‘how are you mira’ and she said ‘i am fine.’ i think it was the robot voice this whole time. i said ‘what are we doing, where am i driving us, does anyone know?’ mira and sam said distracted ‘i don’t know’ things, sam was trying to push mira out the window (had been doing this since getting into the car, i think). mira said something about how we should be careful of cops, laughing. i said ‘for real though, where am i driving us?’ someone suggested mira’s apartment and i asked the address and mira said it, then something happened and i was distracted, asked her to say it again. she said ‘brooklyn, en-why’ at the end. she was in a position where she could only face the passenger-side window. seemed extremely uncomfortable. i felt ‘rusty,’ conversationally, like i could feel my voice having an uncontrollable quality of ‘has not talked to friends in a long time,’ sounding extra-aware of words and less expressive.

  mira said something about having a big empty box in her room. seemed hard for her to say it, via sam trying to push her out the window. felt like i wasn’t understanding something about the box. i said ‘you have a box?’ sam said ‘your box.’ mira said ‘yeah, i have a big empty box, it’s in my room.’ sam said something i didn’t understand and mira responded kind of quietly and fast, about their positions in the car, i think. i said ‘so what’s this i hear about a box?’ mira said something involving comparing her position in the car to the size of the box. a little later she said ‘this is like when i was in child’s pose, at [name of coffee shop], when i was doing child’s pose.’ sam made a noise like he understood, then something about yoga in a coffee shop. i said ‘you were doing child’s pose? in a…coffee shop?’ mira said ‘yeah when i was at [name of coffee shop] i wanted to just be really, really small, really small, so i went into child’s pose.’ could tell she was smiling. i said ‘sometimes it’s nice to feel small.’ she said ‘yeah it feels good to feel small, i like feeling small a lot.’

  a lot of things were being half-seriously said about the lack of space in the front seat and resulting uncomfortable position for mira and sam. sam seemed focused on pushing mira out the window. the ‘no seatbelt’ alert beeped. i said ‘you guys are going to get ejected now.’ stopped at a traffic light. sam held mira’s shoe out the window and mira said ‘my shoe!’ inched my car over to the accordian-style bus next to us and said ‘here, you guys can just take the bus, i’ll pull up close so you can get on.’ sam continued to push mira out the window. mira said ‘no he’s doing the egg thing!’ i said ‘is he trying to have sex with you?’ sam said ‘i’m already doing it’ and mira said ‘no, the egg thing, oh no,’ laughing a lot. i said ‘oh is it the [made a fist and trickled fingers down her back, a thing my mom used to do to me when i was little and say ‘oops, here comes the egg,’ which i had forgotten i’d shown mira and sam] thing?’ mira said ‘yes, the egg thing, oh no!’

  seemed hard to concentrate on gps during car ride. i kept missing things and recalibrating. conflicting desires to talk and to pay attention to gps. i asked how the dumpling place was. mira said ‘i got this thing, it was just like, pork. pork in a pancake.’ sounded like she was grinning big. i said ‘a…pancake?’ she said ‘yeah it was like this sesame…pancake thing.’ i said ‘i can smell the dumplings on you’ and snickered. some time passed. sam said ‘oh, that’s the IKEA ferry.’ i remembered in maybe february, driving mira to her apartment and talking about how we should get drunk on the IKEA ferry. excitedly said ‘let’s go drink on it now, is it open?’ people said things about it not being open, probably.

  i said ‘this was my sadistic plan all along, to get you both in my car, so i can make you sit uncomfortably forever.’ mira something about veal, how i was trying to use veal methods on her, to tenderize her. i said ‘yeah like, atrophy…i’m doing a compression…something, to you.’ mira said she was going to get thrown out of the window and die, laughing kind of. sam said he wouldn’t die. i said he would die worse, because his weight would propel mira out the window and he would be behind her, in a worse position. then it seemed agreed-upon, how it would happen, people stopped saying things about it. i said ‘live bad, die worse.’ sam said ‘we should all get that tattooed on us.’ i said ‘we should get it on…as a knuckle tattoo.’ mira laughed and said ‘that definitely would not fit on knuckles, [more words i can’t remember, suggesting how to fit ‘live bad die worse’ on all knuckles].’ i said ‘we should just get it on one finger,’ then a little later, turning onto a highway thing, ‘you guys know how they can write your name on a grain of rice? we should get it that size.’ sam said ‘they always want to make them bigger.’ i turned sharply, a driving/car thing took attention away, mira gasped i think. then i was on a highway thing. i said ‘they always want to make them bigger?’ sam said ‘yeah, like, whenever i’ve gotten tattoos, they’re always wanting to convince me to get them bigger, like convince me to have them do it bigger.’ i remembered that being true for me also. i said ‘oh yeah, so they can get more…space on you…’ sam said ‘more money’ i said ‘to leave more space on you, for their legacy.’

  sam spit out the window maybe three times. think mira said something about it the first time, there was a conversation about not knowing how to spit properly the second time, and the third time i said ‘get the fuck out of my car right now, you ar
e disgusting’ in a ‘stereotypically easily offended bitch’ voice.

  sam said ‘chinese citibank.’ i saw the sign he was talking about and said ‘how do you know that’s in chinese?’ sam said ‘what else could it be?’ i said ‘japanese, korean, vietnamese, any of those [squinty-eyed racist face].’ they laughed. i said ‘they don’t even know what they’re writing, it’s just…nobody knows, they’re fooling us.’ mira said ‘are we in chinatown?’

  traffic slowed on brooklyn bridge. i said ‘i asked everyone to go slow, just for you guys.’ sam pushed mira’s head into the window and she said something like ‘what are you putting me, how am i going to do this,’ laughing. i said ‘you just have to do it, now is the time to make your brother proud (mira’s brother is a contortionist).’ mira said ‘yes, sam is my brother.’ after a moment i said ‘are you guys on poppers?’ mira said ‘yes, we’ve become poppers addicts since we saw you last.’ sam said ‘that’s why i’m trying to push you out the window’ (i think). i said ‘that’s the thing, that’s why, this whole time…you guys didn’t come out of the dumpling place right away because you were talking about whether you’d tell me you were addicted to poppers or not. sam didn’t want you to tell me, that’s why he wants to push you out the window, that’s why…’ mira said ‘we just didn’t want you to know because we want all the poppers for ourselves, where are my poppers?’ pictured a bottle of poppers as she was saying this, felt distracted by image of being instructed to close an opened poppers bottle.

  we talked about mira’s moma reading on the 20th. mira said it took all four readers a collective ten minutes to read, but it was supposed to last an hour. she said tao had attempted to read his entire poetry book, reading the words very fast, but it was hard to hear and after a few minutes he said ‘i can’t do this anymore.’ some time after this i remember looking at the blue and white lights of a tall building in the distance and regretting saying ‘they took my picture holding an american flag today, at the interview’ before we were on the brooklyn bridge. i said ‘what if this entire time i was just talking to you guys incessantly about my interview today, like, incessantly describing, non-stop.’ mira said ‘oh my god.’

  i pointed to a billboard that said ‘march to help babies.’ sam and mira said things about how mira was a baby who needed help. sam said ‘bam’ about a sign mira couldn’t see and fake-chided her for not being able to see ‘the bam.’ at some point someone said ‘smartdog.’ there was a vaguely-worded billboard about cell phones or networking or a business…something. we started saying things like ‘rethink dog: smartdog’ and ‘man’s best friend, nation’s best coverage: smartdog’ and ‘jumpstart your start-up with smartdog.’ wish i could remember more of the smartdog things. that became a thing, seemed to overtake conversation, we were laughing a lot, saying ‘smartdog.’ at some point it seemed agreed upon that no one knew what ‘smartdog’ was, exactly.

  arrived at the other side of the bridge and cars moved faster. mira said ‘home stretch, home land’ or something. sam said ‘bam, you’re missing the bam again’ as we passed the ‘bam’ building. mira said ‘oh no, i can’t see the bam.’ i said ‘what should we do now?’ sam suggested smoking crack in a staples parking lot and for a while we talked excitedly about how good that would be. drove past a pathmark grocery store. mira suggested the pathmark parking lot for crack. sam said it wasn’t as depressing or funny as staples, and it didn’t have a parking lot. i pointed to a gated area under a bridge and said ‘there would be good.’ someone said it would be humorlessly depressing to do it there, because people already probably do it there. sam said ‘this is actually all really depressing, this idea.’ i said ‘i was just thinking about writing like, ‘the bleakest places i’ve done crack,’ and us doing that, but that actually seems bad.’ we talked about how it’s off-putting when people write journalistic things like ‘guess i’ll try to be homeless hehe,’ which seem exploitative of ‘real pain.’

  as i parked mira said ‘we have to blow up the air mattress thing with our mouths. there’s like, a device, but we couldn’t get it to work. we did it all with our mouths before and it worked, though.’ the walk from car to mira’s apartment was mostly ‘smartdog,’ a little about her roommates. mira said ‘we could get beer, i only have like, one twenty-four ounce can.’

  followed mira up the stairs to her apartment. felt sam do something to my bookbag and collapsed, pretending like whatever he had done had killed me. mira said ‘oh no, you’re dead.’ they tried to pick me up a few times, each time joke felt less funny. stood.

  something seemed different or less exciting when we put our bookbags and jackets down in mira’s room but i didn’t think anyone would say anything. mira and sam said ‘shit’ and ‘oh no’ and ‘now it’s bad’ and ‘oh no it feels bad.’ i said ‘now what are we going to do?’ sam meekly said ‘smartdog.’ mira said ‘smartdog…’ i said ‘smartdog is all we have.’ felt like we were silently chuckling. i said ‘i really love what you’ve done with the place, mira’ using a poorly executed joke voice. she said ‘yeah, i haven’t changed anything like, at all, since you’ve been here.’ i said ‘oh, there’s your empty box you were talking about, we could tear up mira’s box.’ mira walked to another room and sam and i broke the box into flat pieces of cardboard and put them under mira’s bed. there were little styrofoam thingies everywhere. i held up a white convex piece of styrofoam and said ‘rice bowl?’ sam made the styrofoam thingies ‘snow.’ mira re-entered and said ‘the box is gone.’ sam said ‘the box was for the lamp?’ mira turned the floor lamp on, said ‘yeah,’ turned off florescent overhead lighting. i said ‘that’s so much better.’ she said ‘yeah, it’s really so much better,’ and something about brad listi seeing a picture of her room and either suggesting she buy a less depressing light or he ordered this one for her.

  removed shoes. sat on mira’s bed with sitcom-like synchronicity, as if directed to sit ‘not exactly at the same time,’ which is what we would’ve done. mira and sam looked at their phones. thought ‘if i get my phone from my purse they’ll know that’s why i moved.’ i said ‘i have molly, xanax, adderall, does anyone want any of that?’ there was an interesting silence. mira said ‘i’ll take a xanax,’ sam said ‘me too.’ distributed xanax. there was another interesting silence. someone said ‘how much is this?’ i said ‘one milligram.’ sam said ‘let’s drink your beer.’ mira stood and walked to the kitchen. i said ‘we’ll have eight-ounce servings. it’s like we’re drinking craft beer.’ sam said ‘is that how they do it?’ i said ‘i think so, small glasses.’ mira re-entered with the beer and she and sam passed it between them to swallow the xanax. it was passed to me. mira said ‘are you chewing the xanax?’ i said ‘yeah…i like to…chew it’ and grinned and stopped chewing and sipped the beer. mira said ‘isn’t it bitter? do you like it?’ i looked at her and sam, both looking at me. i said ‘i like it, to do it. i like to do it.’ we were sitting in a line on the bed, mira in the corner, mostly facing sam and me, then sam facing the wall, then me facing the wall but turned a little to sam and mira. i said ‘how many fonts do you guys think are on this can?’ they guessed five or six, then someone took the can and counted eleven. sam said ‘someone searching ‘how many fonts are on this can’ in google.’ i said ‘help, how many fonts’ in a stunted lummox voice.

  somehow we all ended up googling ‘tap out’ and showing each other pictures of boxing shorts. there was some debate about if boxer shorts were boxing shorts. i said ‘i like the really tight ones, search ‘ufc shorts” and showed them pictures of tight ones. we pointed out ones we liked. i said ‘do you guys know ‘no fear?” someone said ‘is that the thing with the guy with the white head?’ i said ‘i don’t think so’ and showed them ‘no fear’ pictures. they didn’t know. sam said ‘it’s like an aggressive white head’ and mira said ‘yeah, the white head guy.’ i said ‘like, calv—’ too quietly to hear, i think. i said ‘i want to get a tattoo of, like you know how there’s those stickers on cars wher
e calvin is peeing on ‘ford?” someone said something funny about the pictures of shorts being endless. someone said ‘we should all buy these and wear them around.’ i excitedly said ‘yeah i want to do that,’ knowing we probably wouldn’t do it. someone said ‘are we really doing this, we’re on our phones searching for pictures of tight shorts’ and i chuckled a little, still looking at ‘no fear’ pictures.

  mira said ‘i tweeted ‘any parties’ but no one’s said anything yet.’ i said ‘should i tweet that…‘any parties’…’ seemed like we were all looking at our phones again. mira said ‘isn’t ‘smartdog’ like, an actual kind of vegetarian hotdog?’ i said ‘yeah, yeah. tofu dogs.’ sam said ‘rethink dog.’ forget how this turned into a thing where we were all excitedly saying ‘smartdog’ slogans again. someone said ‘it all comes back to ‘smartdog.’ i said ‘we’ve devolved into ‘smartdog’-only,’ grinning. mira said ‘no one’s responding to my ‘any parties.” i searched ‘smartdog’ on my phone and the first result was for a website called ‘oracle support & upgrades | smartdog services.’ i said ‘oh my god’ and mira said ‘are you looking up ‘smartdog’ too?’

  read this aloud, from the oracle services website:

  ‘SmartDog Services is the leading provider of Oracle EBS and Core Technology consulting services and recognized as The Oracle Customer’s Best Friend. An Oracle Platinum Partner, four-time SMB TOLA Partner of the Year, and Oracle Titan Award Winner, our consultants are US-based, full-time employees and offer an average of more than ten years of Oracle experience.’