A Selfie as Big as the Ritz

by Lara Williams

  “Your pal Stephen once asked me out,” Aahna said. “As a joke.”

  “Did he?” Oliver replied.

  “Yes. And before I could answer he said, ‘I just remembered I’m gay.’ I wasn’t even going to say yes.”

  “Sure you weren’t.”

  “Funny thing is—now he is. Now he is gay.”

  “Funny old world, huh?”

  “I ran into him in Liverpool. He called his boyfriend ‘little earwig.’ You can precede almost anything with little and make it sound affectionate. Little scarab. Little human centipede.”

  “Little chum.”

  “Good one.”

  They sat down for dinner. As Aahna surveyed the table she realized, not with horror, or happiness, more with a sort of unbiased anthropological curiosity, that the evening was a date.

  It was a strange date for people who didn’t date. A date learned from movies, moist with cliché, sloppy with pre-packaged cannelloni. She prodded them with her spoon; sad, wet tubes oozing green goo, blanketed by a sickly tomato sauce. Dessert was scooped out of plastic cups with what looked like a half-peeled reduced sticker clinging to their side. But the carefully arranged napkins and recently hoovered carpet told her the evening was not without thought, without occasion, at least not to him and she felt a pang of—was it tenderness? she supposed, a certain winning over, staring at his badly ironed shirt, a crisp, pink shirt, he clearly thought himself rather radical, rather on-the-nose in, though if pushed, would doubtlessly decree the shirt salmon, a salmon shirt; the color of flesh, of muscle, of the outdoors.

  The famed cat, the performer, the warm-up act, was sleeping in the kitchen, making an appearance as Aahna polished off her fourth glass of wine.

  “I hear he dances,” she said, scratching the top of his head.

  “Oh yes,” replied Oliver, turning up the music, kneeling on the floor, holding his paws and waltzing him across the living room floor.

  “He’s called Kitty,” he said, setting the cat on her knee.

  Aahna stroked the soft velvet beneath his chin as he jutted forward his jaw; where did cats learn to be so forward?—to the right a bit, there, yes, harder. He had black patches across his eyes, and dipped black socks, but was otherwise white all over.

  “He looks more like a little panda than a cat,” she said, lifting him up.

  “Oh Kitty,” she leered, his body contorting in a stiff C. A rigid crescent moon.

  “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty! We all want more than our god given bodies!”

  She placed him back down on the floor, feeling a strange generosity, a peculiar magnanimity and when her taxi arrived and Oliver walked her to the door, pressing his mouth slightly to the side of hers, she leaned in, and in the spirit of giving and gravity, reciprocated, whispering for him to send the taxi away.

  * * *

  Aahna woke to the dry expanse of an empty bed. She stared at the ceiling, the grooved pattern of the tiling as comforting and uncannily familiar as the tinkering downstairs. The strange and disorienting joy of being the second person awake. She stretched out, making lazy snow angels in the sheets, luridly monopolizing the bed. Pulling the full weight of the duvet across her. Being alone was its most glorious when there was someone else around.

  She rolled onto her stomach and considered brushing her teeth. Her eyeliner stained the pillowcase and her hair was dry as a sponge. It had been a while since she’d idled about a kitchen in an oversized t-shirt languidly eating toast.

  She collected her various items of clothing dotted around the room, found her underwear folded neatly on the dresser. Her head hurt. She felt hungry and morose; a little bit sick.

  In the kitchen Oliver was cooking. He poured her a fresh cup of coffee. He kissed her forehead and remarked she was “a vision.” She was inclined to agree.

  In the cold light of day she wandered around downstairs. It was such a clean house. No dust on the sides. No hair on the carpet. How did one maintain it? What even was the point? She lingered in the hallway sipping her coffee. On the bookshelf she noticed a book of facts. She picked it up and flicked through the pages.

  Thread count is a myth.

  Cows have accents.

  Alazia is the fear that you are no longer able to change.

  She dropped it to the floor. She felt dizzy. Lightheaded. Warm. The room began suddenly to spin. She felt her way to the front door. Went outside for some fresh air.

  Outside, she sat in the grass. The tightly cropped lawn all dewy from the morning. Its soft solidity felt certain and assured. Her bottom felt wet and muddy. This, she thought. There is only this.

  She had wanted sand but she had gotten soil. It had its benefits, sure. You put something in the earth and out comes something else. How can you wrangle with the oblivion of a lazy ocean, with the saltwater crack of the wind. No wonder farmers were so arrogant. Cats so forthright.

  She half stood-up, resting on the backs of her heels. She thought about going back in but a stoic disinclination to move, to go anywhere, rendered her incapable. The air was cool. The road wasn’t too busy. Oliver was calling her name.

  She looked out onto the horizon, breathing steadily; breathing from her stomach, from her groin. The dense theatrics of the skyline. The woozy promise of the road. It seemed she could be wherever. An e caught between two extremes.

  What do you long for?

  She didn’t know what she wanted and she never had; her wants extended everywhere, inside and out, up and down; an undulating blob of non-specific desire.

  What the hell did she want? What did anyone?

  “Aahna!”

  Breakfast was ready and the carpet was clean. There were worse things in this world. She sighed the long sigh of a life of never quite being enough.

  “Aahna,” Oliver yelled. “Are you coming back inside?”

  She got on her feet.

  She was.

  Sundaes at the Tipping Yard

  Begin a Creative Writing MA punctuating a long, lazy summer. You’ve quit your job, your flat, your boyfriend. Your life feels like a pot left too long on the hob; the lid removed revealing the calcified remains of before. Chew the end of a pencil’s gummy eraser. Twirl hair around your finger. You are grace under fire. You are one of the gals from Grease.

  But the MA is the thing. You have trundled toward it for a long while now and here it is; lolling and mewing in your lap. Do it right. Buy subject dividers from Amazon. There will be books and workshops and debates on the demise of the publishing industry in the wake of digitalization. Wear a leather satchel and paint your nails. Make caustic notes in your Moleskine. Tell them you like Nabokov. Look at your reading list and buy only the women.

  In preparation you start writing. You start really writing. At night you throw up; throwing up your guts, your thoughts, your darkest and most shameful feelings, arranging them on the page in a way you find pleasing. You also throw up because you have an eating disorder. It comes and goes. It hitches to what it can. Knock back 20 milligrams of diazepam with a tepid glass of white wine. It is in these moments and these moments alone you feel like a writer.

  You meet your classmates; they are bankers, lawyers, caretakers; they work for restaurants, call centers, nautical engineering firms. No one owns a Kindle but everyone has a Mac. There is a lot of knitwear. You are all very concerned about the demise of the publishing industry in the wake of digitalization. Sit at the back of the room. When asked what you think, reply: “I’m sorry, what?” After class everyone will cycle home.

  You need somewhere new to live. Somewhere cheaper. Somewhere that is not your friend Margot’s cat hair–covered couch. You view a loft conversion in town; five minutes to the cinema, ten minutes to everything else. There is a large sombrero on the living room floor. The live-in landlord, Chuck, puts it on and points at his head. “I think this,” he says, “tells you everything you need to know about me.” He shows you the room. “Most weekends,” he tells you, “I have twenty or so mates around and we stay up party
ing for days. Is this going to be a problem?” This is going to be a problem. This is objectively going to be a problem. “This is not going to be a problem,” you say. You take the room.

  You have your first story to workshop. It is a story about rape. Reading it, you are distracted. You would like to watch The Simpsons. You would like to bake rosemary and sea salt bread. You think maybe you could learn Dreamweaver off YouTube. You were supposed to be more engaged. “Nothing,” you recall telling your ex-boyfriend, stamping your stiletto, spoiled as spoiled Veruca Salt, blue on blueberry pie, “nothing is more important than this.” You sigh and turn the page. You sign in to Twitter.

  The leaves turn and suddenly it is autumn. Dense and operatic; the most eloquent of seasons. It is a time for women. It is a time for melancholy. It is a time for knocking back 20 milligrams of diazepam with a tepid glass of white wine. Wear ankle boots to the park. A pea coat and a plum colored beret. Notice the air. Spend time thinking about air. Eat only tomato soup for a week.

  Your mind keeps turning to your ex; your old brown shoe. One night you accidentally like one of his girlfriend’s photographs on Instagram. You send him an email telling him you have not lost your mind though quite evidently you have. He does not reply. There are no accidents, rattles through your brain. There are no accidents. Did Freud say that? Or Cher?

  Chuck is bored, sleepy. Hanging around the kitchen and making oven food. Talking about his old roommate, Mindy. He wants to have a beer. He always wants to have a beer. You sit opposite each other and try to think of things to talk about. He tells you he loves films. He’s gaga for them. He is a bona fide film buff. “What’s your favorite film?” you ask, disinterestedly. He stares out of the window for a long while. “I’d have to say,” he replies, “Finding Nemo.”

  In class you discuss the story. The one about rape. “Rape is about power,” you take turns saying, sagely. After class you go for drinks and the story writer tells you she is an alcoholic. You tell her your father left when you were five. “Oh, that’s awful,” she replies. “It wasn’t so bad,” you say. “He came straight back. He’d just gone to the store.”

  At night you wander the flat; roaming from room to room like a listless specter. You check the doors are locked. You eat cereal feverishly over the sink. Chuck keeps checking up on you. The cord of his dressing gown hanging limp from his waist like a sad umbilical cord.

  Your tutor tells you there are choices to be made; and are there ever! Choose a wild boy who will rip out your heart or a nice boy of whom you will grow tired. It hardly matters. It all ends with the same miserable solitude. But he means more to do with your essay; have you picked a question yet?

  Chuck has made tacos. He would like you to have a taco night. “Mindy loved tacos,” he says, piling on guacamole. “And musicals!” He watches you tap at your laptop taco in hand. “You know,” he says. “You can’t teach writing.” You pretend not to hear. After you’re done eating you disappear to the bathroom for an hour.

  You begin meeting boys off the internet. One who is writing a graphic novel. Another who works at a record store. Another doing a postdoctoral on neoliberalism in the early episodes of Seinfeld. They all labor how much they do not want to have a relationship with you and none of them listen to anything you have to say. “You might as well leave,” you say, watching them put on their clothes. “You might as well leave before I throw up.”

  You need a job. Your money is running out and your cereal is running low. You send out your CV to offices, bars, to telesales call centers on the outskirts of town. You get an interview as a product review writer. The call comes after class while you lie outside thinking about the uncanny. “I wasn’t expecting this,” you say, though, perhaps you were? Buy a smart skirt. Wear it once on your first day, spill tomato soup over it and so, never again. There are no accidents, sings Cher.

  You write some short fiction for workshop. It is about a girl who quits her job, her boyfriend, her flat and does a Creative Writing MA. It is the first time you have read in front of your class. A bit like losing your virginity you feel more or less the same, but you would like to have a bath. “How about,” your tutor suggests, “you write a story that’s not about your ex-boyfriend?” You go home and write a story you are sure is not about your ex-boyfriend, one about a mermaid living in Queens; a mermaid who quits her job, her boyfriend, her flat and starts a Creative Writing MA. “You can’t make these things up!” you scribble in the margins. You literally cannot make these things up.

  You bite your lip one night eating tacos. You study its surface. Its bulbous, fleshy tumor. Chuck offers you a margarita. You sip it, peeling back your mouth to stop it from hurting. Chuck lifts up your drink and places it on a coaster. “Sometimes,” he says, “I wonder if you were born in a barn.”

  In class you have discussions, you ask important questions. Are you showing or telling? Have you overqualified this verb? Can you form a meaningful relationship online? Has anyone ever met a psychopath? There are so many dead girls. Everyone supposes everything is a metaphor for sperm. Think: you are honing your skills. Think: Sundaes At The Tipping Yard is a pretty good name for a bestseller.

  You meet another boy off the internet. You both like books so you sleep with him. In the morning he says that you look like a deer. Somewhere, in the thickets, something is shifting.

  Chuck has taken to perching on your bed drinking coffee in the mornings. “Mindy was supposed to come round tonight,” he says. “But now she can’t make it.” He lies down; splayed at your ankles like Christ. It occurs to you that Chuck is in love with Mindy. That his heart is breaking, slowly. You pat his shoulder. “There there,” you say. “There there, mate.”

  You catch up with your friend Elle after work. She is a nurse at a cancer hospital. You tell her you’ve had a terrible day. That you spilled milk everywhere and then your boss was unpleasant. She tells you she’s had a terrible day. That a patient died and now she’s worried she’s going to be sued. You order cocktails and get very drunk. She tells you in hospitals they call the mortuary “the Rose Garden.” Think: that is so sad. Think: you could use that in a story. Your lip remains half-eaten, swollen.

  You write your essay. You write your essay on the story about rape. You re-read it carefully. Re-reading it many times. Rape, you think. Is about power.

  This new boy wants you to do magic mushrooms while bowling. You get three strikes giggling wildly. You order chips but can’t eat a thing. Walking home he tells you the names of all the trees. You press your face into his shoulder and it smells of salt. You hold hands all the way to your door.

  You present your last piece at workshop. Your class like it. You have an improved sense of character, a fresh and economic voice. It is not about your ex-boyfriend. Though none of this matters as Raymond Carver has already written this particular story, it’s in his collection Will You Please Be Quiet Please which, you don’t say, you have not read.

  Bummer.

  Your first term is over and you didn’t do so bad. You would like to celebrate. You have a new flat, a new job, a new boyfriend. You are doing a Creative Writing MA. You book a table for two. You say it is your treat.

  You order the tasting menu. Celeriac and kale salad. Gnocchi and beer-battered halloumi. Gin and tonic sponge cake. It costs you a fortune. You toast. You toast to your new job. To your MA. To your boyfriend. Your dreamy new boyfriend! You finish your drink in one. “Babe,” he says. “I think we need to agree on a vocabulary.”

  You come home crying. Chuck is watching television with an empty bottle of wine.

  “I got dumped,” you say.

  “Mindy’s engaged,” he replies.

  You sit and notice the air.

  “It’s an education,” you tell him, apropos of nothing. “It’s all an education.”

  You lie facing Chuck on the opposite settee. You think about how things become faint. That one day you will squint back upon a time when the selfie stick was considered absurd. Writing cannot be tau
ght. Rape is about power. Sundaes At The Tipping Yard is a pretty good name for a bestseller. Tongue the bitten part of your lip. It is flat and smooth. It is still sore.

  Are you showing or telling? It is hard to say. There are things to be learned and there are things to be felt and occasionally the two overlap; and that’s where the trouble begins.

  “Education?” Chuck says, drunk and bloated, beached on the sofa. “More like, edu—lame!—tion.”

  Badabing!

  Is he right?

  It is likely, you suppose, staring at the star shaped capillaries expanding around his eyes. It is quite likely he is not wrong.

  Safe Spaces

  I have started meditating. I go to classes twice a week. I remove my shoes and ball up my socks. I tuck them into the soles before slipping them within the wire lockers available for our convenience. I smile at the other meditators but I do not make chit-chat. That is not why we’re here. The cushions and stools are stacked at the right corner of the room. I sit at the left corner of the room. On my first session I sat on the stool with my legs wedged either side of it and the stool was too short to fully support my weight so I more or less squatted my legs holding my weight for the first fifteen minutes of breathing exercises shaking and burning and hurting a lot. I bit my lip to distract myself from the pain. When the instructor asked if there were any questions I replied yes what’s everyone doing later just so I would have the chance to sort of moan and he said he meant more to do with meditation but since I asked he was going for a drink and we were all welcome to join him. He placed his hand on my back to show me how to breathe correctly. The tip of his fingernail sliding beneath the top of my underwear just the tip pulling back the stringy white elastic pressed against the braille of my skin. A perfect white arc of fingernail.

  I have started taking baths. Baths I have realized are for when you do not have anyone to hold. I remove my clothes in the bedroom and walk naked down the hall into the bathroom. It’s not that I like or feel comfortable with my body it’s just that it’s there it is something that I’m dealing with. I sink into the bathwater my breasts bob in the bubbles ridiculous round things really carrying them about with you like a gaudy tea tray jelly in the trunk. The shower head hangs over me like a flat round disk like something you’d see on a spaceship on television. I think about switching it on flipping back the tap with my toes letting the water run over me like rainfall but then he rings and I answer and he says he’s coming in an hour if I’m free which he knows right well I will be. I get out of the bath and walk through to the living room my steps heavy and graceless feeling a little drunk bath drunk not alcohol drunk. I don’t drink anymore not after last time with the vodka and the Bat Mitzvah and that little girl crying saying she’s been sick she’s been sick everywhere she’s been sick in the punch and me having to leave without giving her my present. He arrives an hour later and I am still wrapped in my bath towel and he says this is good this is how you should always dress untucking the top corner and I spin around unwrapping myself like a dancer and we make love on the sofa and he strokes my hair for five or ten minutes.