by Cazzie David
I looked forward to Saturdays because I got to spend them with Rachel and didn’t have to do drugs or fake doing drugs. Our friendship was better than ever now that we saw each other only once a week. I had only good things to say about her. I did, however, have a whole lot of things to say about my new friends, who I now saw every day of the week. But talking about them wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the shit-talking conversations Rachel and I used to have. Shit-talking, like improv or tennis, is most gratifying when you have someone to bounce things off of. Someone who can contribute because they understand the circumstances too. There were also no reasons I could think of as to why we weren’t all hanging out, so one Friday after school, I introduced Rachel to my new friends.
It wasn’t long before Rachel was invited to every drug-infested kickback Megan held. It was unsaid, but it was clear that Megan was the leader of the group, presumably because she had done the most drugs and given the most blowjobs. Also because her house had no rules. My parents would never have thought it was possible for any of this to be going on in a home that seemingly had “supervision,” and I often felt bad for how easy it was to say, “I’m going over to Megan’s!” and have them think, What’s the worst that can happen? Her mother is home! The truth is, any parent should be suspicious of whoever’s house their kids are spending the most time at. The only reason they’re spending their time there is because it’s the house with the most leniency. No one has come over to my house since my eleventh-birthday sleepover, when my mom made my nanny sit on the top of the stairs at “bedtime” and shush us whenever one of us tried to talk to the others.
Rachel and I mutually hated sleeping over at Megan’s, but we dealt with it because we couldn’t roll into either of our houses at two in the morning. Well, it’s possible Rachel’s mom might have allowed it, but there was an image of an austere mother that needed to be upheld. Megan’s house was always a mess from all the partying. Cigarette butts overflowed from antique ashtrays and floated in cups of wine from the night or week before, creating a repulsive liquid-ash concoction. Rachel and I would sleep with our sweaters spread out over the pillowcases since drunk friends of friends were always spending the night and it was impossible to know when the last time the sheets were washed because everything smelled the same, whether it was clean or dirty. You know those people with a particular scent that makes everything they own and wear smell exactly like them? Their house, their car, their clothes, even their dog? Megan was one of those people. You could find a shirt of hers in your closet after ten years and it would smell just as potent as if she had worn it that day. I know this because I found a shirt of hers in my closet after ten years and it smelled so potent. I don’t even understand how it’s physiologically possible to have such a strong scent. Is it some kind of genetic survival tactic? So your family will be able to smell their way back to you during the apocalypse?
By far the most fun part of every weekend was driving home with Rachel from Megan’s on Saturday or Sunday morning and talking shit about all of the ridiculous things our now-shared friends had done or said the night before. It was out of love! Talking shit about your friends is out of love! Well, sometimes it’s out of hate, but a lot of the time it’s out of love. And I really did love my friends. With them, I felt like I finally belonged, and whether or not they truly understood my hatred for everything, I felt appreciated for it.
I never thought there would be any downsides to having such a close group of friends or to introducing my best friend to my new friends and having them become close too. I definitely couldn’t have predicted that the one time Rachel went over to Megan’s in the middle of summer when I was away but everyone else was there, they would all disclose everything I had ever said about each one of them, like some kind of destructive sharing circle. It was enough for them to decide right then and there that the only thing I actually ever brought to the friend group was, well, shit.
One by one, each of my best friends, including Rachel, texted me a paragraph saying they no longer wanted to be my friend and that I was a bad person. Even two of the girls that I never talked shit about since they rarely did anything annoying ended up siding with Rachel and Megan because they were impressionable—which I guess was something I could finally shit on them for. Honestly, the least you can do is bring enough to the table to actively annoy people.
All that time, I thought I was having honest, engaging conversations with my friends. If your friend does something irritating—like copying things someone else says and then passing them off as their own or vehemently denying getting lip injections (“I wouldn’t lie to you. I’d tell you anything. I have three vibrators and I like anal. I did not get lip injections”) as if she thinks you don’t have eyes and don’t know what she looked like before and what she looks like now—wouldn’t it be unnatural not to discuss it?
I didn’t know if I was a bad person or a bad friend. The only thing I knew for sure was that the only thing that makes you a worse person or friend than shit-talking your friends is repeating a shit-talk your friend said. It was fine that none of them wanted to be my friend anymore for talking shit; I didn’t want to be friends with anyone who was capable of repeating a shit-talk! It’s the ultimate form of betrayal and hypocrisy. They were talking shit to me too! And now they’re shit-talking the person they thought was wrong for shit-talking. Not to mention they’re hurting the feelings of the person they are sharing it with. There’s a reason it was said behind that person’s back!
After a very lonely summer, my dad told me if I wanted to make or keep any friends in college, I’d have to stop talking shit. Cold turkey. I really didn’t want to lose any more friends because losing friends really sucks, maybe even more than not divulging the hate in my heart. So I put my desires aside and decided to get sober from shit-talking. I would enter college a new girl—a “nice” girl! The kind of girl you could say good things about posthumously.
Unsurprisingly, trying to make friends without being able to talk shit about people was quite difficult for me. I had nothing to talk about with anyone. Well, there were some things, but the conversations would end quickly and were noticeably tedious for both parties. Sure, I could be described as nice, but I was boring! It was not a good start for my college career.
One month sober from shit-talking and with zero new connections, I luckily found myself invited to a pregame on my dorm floor. There were about six people, only one of whom I kind of knew, all sitting on the floor drinking out of Solo cups and talking about their relationship issues. After a few minutes, I realized that talking about situationships is something you can always talk to people about, which was a relief because it has a similar rapport to shit-talk. The hookup-talk officially turned to shit-talk though after the pregaming host brought up the new girl her ex was now hooking up with and pulled up the girl’s Instagram account for everyone to dissect. Her phone went around the group, and after a few comments like “I don’t know why but I don’t like her face,” “You’re so much prettier,” and “She’s nothing special,” it was passed to me. In keeping with my sobriety, I said, “She’s cute.”
Not that it was hard to keep my mouth shut. That was under no circumstances the kind of shit-talk I enjoy. That’s mean shit-talk. Not amusing observational shit-talk. There’s a huge difference. I hate when people say mean things. Still, I didn’t think anything could be worse than the consequences of talking shit until I experienced the consequences of not talking shit. It turns out refusing to say someone is ugly is the rudest thing you can do to a person, and honestly, I can understand. I would have probably been annoyed with me too, and once everyone left, I would have talked shit about me for not getting it.
I thought about my former friends and what they would have done once the phone was passed to them. Megan would have made a horrendous comment about this person being far too underweight. Rachel would have pushed through her fake lisp to mutter something about how hard she was trying to look like a French-cinema fanatic. There was no wa
y any of them were refraining from all forms of shit-talking, and yet I was left with a new unmanageable fear of doing the one thing that calmed my misanthropic flare-ups.
After this incident, I went back to the shit-talk life. Listen, if people didn’t do and say incomprehensible things, I wouldn’t need to talk shit about them!! Also, I was lucky enough to realize that the key to maintaining friendships isn’t not talking shit (although that is a crucial component) but having a mutual understanding of each other’s needs. Whether your friend just needs you to go there with her and say, “Your ex’s new girlfriend sucks” or “It’s fine you bled in my bed,” when you truly understand your friend, and they understand you, you can’t even think of shit to say about them because you’re so grateful to be understood. The thing is, if you want to have friends who understand you, and you’re someone who is nearly impossible to understand, you might only have one friend. But personally, I’d rather have one friend who understands me than six who would repeat a fucking shit-talk.
* * *
My Parasite
Of my many irrational and rational fears, throwing up has always been my greatest one. Nothing can prepare you for your first puke. No one tells you what it is or that it’s going to happen uncontrollably every so often. Even if someone did try to warn you, there’s really no way to accurately describe the sensation. The closest I could come up with is that it feels like Satan entering your body to check in if you’re still alive. The first time I consciously experienced it, I sobbed hysterically and asked one thousand questions as I spewed vomit all over my parents’ bed and then toilet.
“MOM! WHAT IS THIS?! WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!”
“It’s just a part of life, sweetie, you get sick sometimes. It’s your body rejecting something.”
“This is a part of life!? Then I don’t want to be alive. I’d rather die!”
“Don’t say that, sweetie.”
Throws up. “Dad! What do I DO?!”
“There’s nothing you can do, honey, you just have to let it pass.”
“Dad! I hate this so much, I don’t want to do it anymore!”
“I know, honey.”
“I REALLY HATE IT, MOM! When will it be over?!”
“I think soon. Maybe soon.”
“Swear on your lives I won’t throw up again!”
“We can’t do that. I’m sorry.”
“Will you give me a thousand dollars if I throw up again?”
“We don’t know if you’re going to—”
“DAD, YOU DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE TO GIVE ME A THOUSAND DOLLARS! JUST SAY IT SO I THINK I’M NOT GOING TO!”
“Okay! We’ll give you a thousand dollars if you throw up again.”
Usually with bad things in life, you can at least say, “It was a good experience,” once you’ve recovered from the trauma. No one ever says “It was a good experience” if the time they’re describing was pleasant, only when it was treacherous and awful and tested their physical and mental capabilities. My dad says the army was a good experience; people have said climbing a mountain and almost dying was a good experience. Oftentimes, when something is not good-experience-level bad but still really bad, you can laugh at it in retrospect. Like the time I was trapped on a plane for seventeen hours just to be deplaned still in Los Angeles. That was funny! Kind of. But throwing up is so unpleasant, it’s not funny at all. The only thing I learn from it time and time again is that I’m a gigantic baby.
Throwing up is physically the most unpleasant thing that can happen to you (besides all of the other things you’re now trying to come up with in your head to top it). Everything about it feels unnatural and demonic. I have avoided it at all costs throughout my entire life, as if it’s my personal religion. I’ve never had more than four alcoholic drinks in one night. Once, I was so anxious about my stomach that I went six days in a row eating only unbuttered toast, but then my mom told me that eating only toast could also make me sick, just in a more long-term way. I’ve smoked weed every night since I was sixteen for the sole purpose of preventing nausea—I don’t like being high, I just like that it makes me not nauseous. I’ve said many times in my life that I’d rather die than throw up. After the fact, I’m glad I don’t actually get to choose.
My nausea from fear of nausea haunts me the most around dinnertime, every dinnertime since I choked, which I don’t think is a coincidence. And every time I’ve vomited has given me a type of PTSD. Once I woke up in the middle of the night and threw up, and now any time I wake up in the middle of the night, even ten years later, my first thought is that it’s because my body needs to throw up. I’ll be up until dawn reasoning with the version of myself that thinks I’m going to throw up because I woke up.
People can wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all, it doesn’t necessarily mean that.
But it’s probably because you need to throw up.
No, maybe I woke up because I heard a noise in my sleep and I just don’t remember.
Or maybe you have to throw up.
My subconscious could have thought I needed to pee, and it was just wrong.
Stop kidding yourself. You feel nauseous, I know you do. Just admit it. You’re nauseous and you need to throw up.
There’s no way for me to know if I’m sick or just anxious about being sick. My mind and body are constantly arguing for the truth. My mind is so strong that if I buy into the fact that it’s sickness and not anxiety for even a moment, there’s no stopping the vomit from coming. It’s like your brain taking any other cue: Stand up. Sit down. Throw up.
The mental concentration it takes to move my mind away from the prospect of vomit is like Siddhartha trying to reach enlightenment in a strip club. If I’m in the midst of the mental struggle that is being nauseous, anything can send me over the edge: commercials, a particular person’s face, any smell that isn’t mint. A few months ago, I was nauseous and my friend put on How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. I didn’t know what would make me more nauseous, sitting there watching The Grinch as my nausea consumed me or explaining to her that we couldn’t watch The Grinch because I was nauseous and seeing one more minute of green Jim Carrey would have an irreversible damaging effect on my well-being. All I could get out without accidentally cueing my brain that it needed to throw up was “Can’t. Watch. Grinch.”
Most people don’t understand the danger of speaking when a nearby sensitive person who is afraid of nausea is nauseous. When I was in the seventh grade, my class went on a camping trip to Catalina. The waves on the boat ride were so rough, fifteen kids were heaving over the side, hurling into the sea. Hearing and seeing vomit is much worse than watching The Grinch, but still, I stayed focused. Suddenly, a woman who worked on the ship approached me.
“Here, you look pale,” she said concernedly, as she handed me a brown bag. I immediately threw up into it.
“I’M NATURALLY PALE!” I screamed back at her as I puked. I’ll never forgive her.
There’s only one way for me to find out if my brain has manifested the nausea, as opposed to my body, and that’s to take a Xanax. Because my Xanax is exclusively reserved for the days I’m feeling nauseous, I end up taking it semiregularly. Yet I’ve only thrown up once while on Xanax—a good indicator of how often I’m subliminally convincing myself I’m nauseous.
Throwing up that one Xanax was a terrifying experience, as it confirmed the fact that I was actually sick. My then-boyfriend sat on the bathroom floor and held a cold, wet towel to my forehead as I periodically heaved into the toilet. My college boyfriend was very obviously out of my league. He had piercing blue eyes and dark hair like Danny Phantom, who was, weirdly, the first “person” I ever had a crush on. It was clear I was lucky to be with him from the attention he got from our female classmates, and so I did everything I could to keep him interested. Profusely vomiting in front of him was obviously not the move. But how I behaved during the heaving intermissions was worse.
“WILL YOU GIVE ME A THOUSAND DOLLARS IF I T
HROW UP AGAIN?!”
“Cazzie, what? I don’t even have fifty dollars in my bank account,” he said, confused, furthering my discomfort. It’s hard to believe he stuck with me after that night, and all the nights thereafter.
The virus, or “little bug,” as my mom called it to make me less scared, mentally stuck with me for weeks. I became a hermit, afraid to go outside and catch something. I’d panic and pace the length of my apartment, not allowing anyone to speak freely, living my life in a haze of weed and Xanax. I’d smoke a joint to prevent nausea and then take a Xanax to calm myself down from the panic attack the weed gave me. Every time I went to class, I’d leave convinced that I had contracted a stomach bug. My nausea and anxiety seemed like they would be forever interlocked in a toxic relationship.
My mother pleaded with me to go see a doctor despite my reminding her that nausea was just my personal symptom of being alive. But she insisted, as she’s a big believer in second opinions, especially when the first opinion is mine.
After one appointment with a doctor who my mother bragged was “once the Clintons’ doctor!” and a few test results later, I got diagnosed . . . with a parasite.
I didn’t really know what a parasite was, but I was sure there was no name that could sound scarier. When he first told me, I was in denial. “Doctor, that’s impossible. I live in a bubble.”
He then informed me that the most common way to get a parasite was from not washing your hands after you go to the bathroom. I obviously didn’t remember a time I hadn’t washed my hands after going to the bathroom. That’s disgusting. I promise I hadn’t done that. But . . . I guess I must have?