Hi, welcome. You’ve arrived here, hopefully, because you enjoy/care-about/support literature. It’s been a while since I’ve shared new work/been vulnerable in this way. I hope you enjoy. This story is called “Scrubbing”.
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Little known fact about me, I’m actually a scuba diver. Been doing it all my life and more. I was scuba-ing in the womb. We all do it. It’s why we start out with webbed hands. We have instincts to swim. We’re mostly frogs when you break it down. And one time I did while interning at a lab in college, feeding frog DNA into a crisper machine for some study about something involving frogs. The study was shut down because the head scientist was a pervert or lack of funding. Anyway I stopped working there and gave up dreaming altogether really.
After my former lover left me I started obsessing over my apartment. Every Tuesday I come home from the gym and bleach the kitchen floor and scrub into the grout with a coarse brush. I put a towel under my knees and scrub until my pores become tiny pools. Then I shower. I usually inspect myself in the mirror because post gym and floor scrubbing is when my body looks its best. I have this poop-masking toilet spray that I spray in the bathroom and around my living room/dining room/library/game room. I eat beignets that I buy from the fancy coffee shop down the street. A girl with a lip ring sells them to me. I eat four or five and sometimes I stick my finger down my throat. Then I scrub the toilet bowl.
At 4pm I go to work at a warehouse for a big company you’ve definitely heard of. My supervisor’s name is Jeff and my coworkers are Lotti and Worm and Joy, and that’s probably all you’ll ever need to know about them. I clock in, stick ear buds deep into my ears until I can’t hear anything else and turn my at-work-and-chill playlist all the way up. I transform a stack of cardboard into a mountain of boxes. I do it over and over again. I like repetitive tasks.
On my break I drink a Red Bull and flip through a cross fit magazine someone left in the break room. Inside are toned bodies of men and women. Naked except for the nude parts, athletic. I land on a page of a woman squatting a healthy but still impressive amount of weight. I wow at the space between her upper thigh and lower thigh, like two sides of coin. What’s it like to be a powerful woman? The alarm on my phone goes off and I go back to cardboard mountain.
When I get off work I stop at the Mexican deli for a salad. I tell the girl at the register I want it to-go. The salad is tomato slices on a bed of iceberg lettuce. I think of my ranch dressing packets at home in the fridge. I get them from the dollar slice place downtown but the slices are actually two dollars. I stop at the liquor store for a bottle of white wine. I’m a regular at all these places but I don’t like chitchat. I spend my night drinking the wine and watching garbage television on my screen. This is something my former lover and I used to enjoy, but now it’s just me. I do wonder what they are doing now. I wonder if they miss me. I wonder if I’d miss me if I were them. I hope so. I don’t eat the salad.
My former lover was a sex fiend and I’m a compulsive liar. We got along great until her brother died. She took this personally. She cried in the tub and ate nothing but trash and was generally unconcealable. She took it much harder than I could have imagined because she’d hardly ever mentioned him in the 8 months we were together having body wasting sex in her uptown apartment. We’d said we loved each other but this was a lie. When Michael died it seemed we’d reached some sort of milestone. I know it sounds fucked up but death can keep people together.
I spent a lot of my time underwater or at the kitchen sink crying, chopping vegetables, and humming Good Charlotte. She spent most of the time with her family she never talked about. I was sad that she was sad. I searched my phone’s internet for one-act plays on consoling a lover. I shaved my head and was asked not to come to the funeral. I’ve hated vegetables ever since.
Thursday I go for a run. It’s something I do when I’m feeling guilty about something. This time that something is the beef and cheese burrito from the Mexican deli. At 2pm the burrito is still heavy in my GI as I amble through the park. I’m normally not athletic in my movements on land. If you saw me running you would confirm. But it’s the only way to arouse my digestive system. I pause before the first of 4 tunnels on my route and do some jumping jacks. I tense my abdominals so I don’t feel my skin wiggle. I run through a section of scorched black land with a sign staked in the middle that reads Restoration in Progress. Everyone I pass looks heartbroken.
Little known fact about me: I’m a people pleaser to a fault, just not to myself. I abstain from even the smallest pleasures, withhold them like an act of endurance. Like I’m actually bettering myself. The glob of food in me is like a mouse squeezing itself through an extraordinarily small hole in a baseboard. In this case, the baseboard is my butthole.
I exit my second tunnel on my route when someone jumps in front of me. At first it’s just a big shape of orange and brown: a man in a big t-shirt. I freeze. Is this a stick up? He’s more boy than man, with fucked up teeth that make his speech indecipherable.
“…”
“Huh?”
He sort of jabs his foot at me. I’ve never been robbed before and this seems like a bad way for someone to try and do it. He has gangly arms and legs, like he’s in the middle of a growth spurt. But he has gray speckled hair and an old face. His orange jersey has the number double zero. Some sports team I don’t know about. He picks up a shoe box from the ground.
He makes a grand reveal of the inside which is about 100 keys. Brass, silver-coater, saw-toothed. He presses the box upon me.
“No thanks,” I mumble.
He shakes his head sternly, and points to the keys. Obviously I don’t understand. Something is off here. When does the mugging happen? I eye one of those old fashioned skeleton keys. Where did he get these?
“S-sorry,” I stutter. “I don’t want any keys.”
He shakes his head again and shakes the box at me with more urgency. There’s a direness in his face, a narrowing of eyes that says: “Well, are you going to do the thing I am desperately asking of you?” I look around for help, even eye contact from a random stranger. Nothing. This world is always letting me down.
I notice the shoe box is for Reebok shoes but I can’t tell if the shoes he’s wearing are actually Reebok. Maybe Reebok is just bad at branding their footwear.
“I don’t know what you want.” I speak firmly and loudly. This is me dredging up confidence.
He steps toward me again–face pointed, eyes narrowed. I do a sort of side shuffle. We ping pong fear back and forth until he suddenly drops his box of keys.
The keys collide on the pavement and a few ting on the blacktop. He absolutely loses his cool, if you could call it that. He grunts and yells and I still can’t understand him. Is this an episode? Is this being mentally unwell?
My heart is actually pounding in my chest, like I actually feel something. And then I turn and try to resume my jog, but the pounding of my heart and pain in my gut is too strong and I end up walking home the long way. The whole encounter has me on edge in a way I haven’t been since my former lover left me.
When my former lover broke it off it was through a typed note, all one paragraph taking up the whole page and part of the back. I still have it. I wasn’t what she was looking for. I wasn’t taking care of myself, building her trust, making moves on a five year plan. It all read like someone who had suddenly found God and was rushing to make up lost time. It made zero mention of her brother dying. She said she was moving to Baltimore or Belair or Bozeman—somewhere with a “B”. She said not to go looking for her. I took it personally.
Friday I tell Kyra I need to do something drastic. Kyra is my only friend. Everyone else I know are people I use in one way or another. They use me too. We all have an unspoken agreement to use one another. On the phone I stress the word “drastic”. I want to be transformed, rattled awake. Kyra is calming like morphine, “I have just the thing for you. I’ll be right over.”
Two hours later Kyra shows up at my door with a grocery bag of three boxes of 40 volume platinum dye, two Red Bulls, and white wine.
“This will take all night,” Kyra says kicking off her shoes. “I’m sleeping over.” Kyra is rail thin with pail skin and straight brown hair. She usually wears cheap strawberry lip gloss and applies too much eye cream that makes her look bug like. She always smells like cigarettes. She sleeps over a lot but we don’t do anything besides sleep. One time we made out. I don’t do enough to show my appreciation for her consistency in being who she is. It’s something to marvel at, like drivetrains and accountants. I’m always trying to change. I can’t accept myself for who I am which is something I’m trying to be better at. Kyra is the only person in this world I respect anymore. But she snores.
I set up a chair in the bathroom and she pokes neck and arm holes into a black garbage bag. She rips open the box of dye. Platinum blond.
“Ready?” She says more like a challenge than a question.
I nod.
“You have to say it. I just read this article about overcoming your past life. You have to announce everything you do in order to break the cycle of your past.” In the mirror she stares at me with her big eyes, waiting, serious.
“I’m ready to break the cycle of my past self.”
Kyra squeezes the dye into various regions of my head and hums a “A whole new world” from the Little Mermaid. I close my eyes and wish for my new life but all I can think of is the guy in the park. His rattling box of keys. His urgent problem and need for a resolution. Where I could possible fit in that puzzle. The novelty of feeling needed. I don’t tell Kyra any of this. She wouldn’t understand it. Plus, I want to have a secret over her. There’s a lot of power in keeping a secret from someone. I’ll tell her when I’m beautiful. Everything will be better when I’m standing at the doorstep of beautiful.
In the morning she’s gone before I wake up. My place smells like her, plastic strawberries and cigarettes. I look at my new self in the mirror, I look different but I don’t feel changed. Oh well. I spend the next two hours meticulously scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors. I spray the poop-masking spray in every corner of my apartment and under my bed. It’s while doing this that I find the pamphlet. It's for this thing that meets across town called Trust Group™.
She’s always doing this. Always leaving pamphlets. They’re for support groups and rehab clinics her parents send her to. For eating disorders, drug addiction, to be happier, etc. It’s all crap. There’s nothing wrong with me. She never goes to all the meetings, never stays as long as she’s supposed to. Actually I can’t remember a single time that she’s finished anything in her life. She’ll call me on a random number, which is how I know it’s her, and say things like “I miss you…you’d love it here…Evian water every day…Warm bath towels...They took my phone.” I picked her up from the last one. She literally climbed over a cement wall and then into my waiting car.
I turn the pamphlet over. It reads “In facing ourselves we are one step closer to facing the world.”
I text her. I’m not going.
She replies immediately. Do you like your hair?
I don’t feel any different.
Give it some time.
I want the world.
Give it some time.
I put on my best outfit, the outfit that makes me feel most like myself: Jncos and a tight black shirt that sticks to my upper body. This is me I think as I walk into the fancy coffeeshop and order four beignets. The girl with the lip ring takes my order. Was that a second glance, a slight stare? Yes, I think she’s noticed me. She slides the paper bag of beignets across the counter and turns away from me. Not even a “here you go” not even a “have a good day” not even a “thank you for being you.” She’s so jealous. I get the same treatment at work but nobody ever notices me there anyway. At the Mexican deli the girl who takes my salad order says “You’ve changed your hair.” I almost can’t help myself from saying “no shit,” but instead I politely nod and maintain my resting bitch face. Inside I’m smiling.
I go to the bar where my ex-lover and I met. It’s called Deadbolt. It has a black ceiling, red walls, and pool table in the back with a black curtain along the wall. Fake candles dress all the high tops. I’m here to exercise some demons. To right a wrong. The place is empty but for the bartender who is slouched over his phone and two people playing pool.
I get a glass of red wine because I want to feel sophisticated, and take up a seat at a high top by the pool table. The two people playing are very attractive: a man with long brown hair in a leather jacket and a woman with short, stylish red hair and high cheeks. I almost can’t handle it, seeing people this goodlooking in real life and not on my phone screen. I’m unsure of what to do with my hands, these suddenly foreign paws. I drink my wine quickly. They’re also good at pool. They don’t seem to notice me at all.
The man moves like he’s gliding through water, like everything he touches is weightless. The pool cue floats in his perfect hands. He has a sharp, but still, somehow, boyish face. Someone this attractive must be a musician. And she must be in the band, I decide. I continue on like this, making up their lives in my mind, their chill dog and killer apartment, while gulping my wine like a wino, like a house wife. And then someone else arrives, shaking a box of keys, and ruins all my fun.
He ignores the bartender and walks right up to me. Tonight he’s wearing a mechanic’s shirt with the name "Lenny" embroidered on the chest. He shakes his box excitedly.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I say, wishing desperately for him to go away.
He points at my hair, surprised.
“I’m a different person now.
The attractive couple stops their pool game and stares at us. I feel embarrassed, these cool people looking at me. I twirl my empty wine glance nervously. I want more than anything to be anywhere but here.
“Hey, why can’t you leave me alone?”
Then a new look takes up Lenny’s face, a mixture of hurt and dejection.
“Don’t be mean,” a voice says, and at first I don’t realize belongs to the red headed woman. She’s practically standing in the middle of us now, pool cue weapon-like in her clenched hands. “Lenny’s had a hard life, be nice to him. He’s not bothering anyone.”
“I don’t know what he wants from me,” I plead. “He keeps following me around.”
“He just wants to show you his keys,” she says, annoyed. “Just let him show you his keys. He wants to be your friend.”
I don’t need any friends. I just want to be told I’m beautiful. The woman continues to stare expectedly. My heart is pounding in my chest. I want nothing more than for her to love me, to console me in her arms, hold me like a baby. Feeling cornered like an animal, I keep twirling the wine glass, carving it in to the scrubby table top. Then it happens, I lose all control of the glass and it flings off the table and shatters on the floor.
I can’t even muster words.
From far away voices say “I think you should leave” and “asshole.”
Unaware of how I’m doing it, my body carries me out of the bar. Outside I gasp for breath. I pull out my phone to text Kyra but my hand is shaking too much. Lenny joins me outside, the absolute last person I want to see. I turn my back away from him. I’ll just get on my bike and leave. It takes me a moment to realize that my bike is gone. Stolen.
I collapse to the ground. I’ll just stay here a while I figure. Than powerful arms lift me to my feet. Lenny urges me to walk with him. I wriggle free.
“Leave me alone!” I blurt out at him.
And it works, he starts walking away, but this wasn’t what I wanted I realize. I actually don’t want to be alone. Street lights beaming down on me, dark sky like a curtain, these buildings like cruel faces. I feel lost in my own body, unsafe.
“Fuck,” I yell. “Don’t leave me.”
I race after Lenny. “What is with the keys? Just tell me.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Did you see a bike here earlier? How did you know I was going to be here tonight?”
He holds out a key and puts it in my hand. Brass, probably for a door. Any door. Whatever. Okay. Nothing makes sense.
“What do you want? What do you want me to do?”
He beckons for me to follow, and starts heading down the street. There’s seems like nothing else to do but follow him. So I do, even though it’s completely ridiculous. Very quickly we’re in a neighborhood I’ve never been to, down fence-lined streets, through empty lots, up alleyways. After an hour I’m unsure if were still in the city. “Where are we going?” I ask again, setting down the box and shaking out my arms. He puts a finger to his lips, quieting me, listening to the sounds of the listless urban decay, trying to interpret something in the slight breeze. He smiles, says nothing, turns, and then were off again.
I look at my phone, it’s a lot later than I thought. I have an unread text by Kyra asking about the meeting. I don’t have it in me to lie to her and I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Lenny communicates beyond words. He leads and I follow.
We arrive suddenly in something of a neighborhood of old, wasted mansions. Towering three story homes with overgrown city yards.
Lenny stops in front of an old Victorian with boarded up windows. The yard is overgrown and intruding upon the waist-high metal fence that borders the property. I couldn’t find a house number. He climbs over it was surprising agility, crosses the yard, and ambles up the wooden wrap around porch to the front door. I followed less gracefully.
He holds out his hand for the key. I give it to him and he sticks it in the lock. With some effort it turns. Of course he opens it but a part of me is still surprised when he pushes the door. I look around, feeling an unease I can’t place—something beyond the obvious absurdity of this situation. It creaks on rusted hinges, revealing a dim interior that smells of damp wood and something faintly sweet, like honey left too long in the sun.
"Is this your house?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
His eyes say yes. He gestures for me to step inside. I hesitate, but my curiosity wins out. The air inside feels different, cooler, like the house is alive and breathing slowly. The foyer is bare, save for a dusty chandelier overhead and a staircase that seems to stretch endlessly upward. The wallpaper is peeling, revealing layers of paint in forgotten colors. Lenny closes the door behind us, the sound echoing. He plops down and pulls the dirtiest rug I’ve ever seen over to him. He curls up on it like cat. Content. Happy? It’s hard to tell but I do feel something beating there between us: a feeling foreign at first be then familiar, warm. A tingle.
“Are you—are you going to stay here?” But of course this is a stupid question. He’s already stretching his arms and yawning animatedly. And where do I fit into all this? I make my way down a narrow hallway to one of the other empty rooms and then another. Every room is barren and caked with a layer of dusty. Not haunting, just lonely. Against my better judgement I opened the closet beneath the stairs in search of a blanket or even a towel. Nothing. Does he really live here? Does anyone? I’m scared by the idea of going upstairs but at the same time I feel strangely comforted here. I guess it’s because Lenny is. Does that make sense?
I find some old drapes in the upstairs closet. By the time I make it back downstairs he’s already asleep under a patchwork quilt. I lay the drapes on the floor and sit down. My mind drifts to the people at the bar but they seem from another lifetime. Am I stupid for coming here? I open my phone and use the camera as a mirror to look at myself. It’s too dark to see anything but there are my eyes and the lines of my nose and mouth. My hair could be any color in this light.
It’s a while before I fall asleep but I do for a few hours.
There’s five missed calls from Kyra on my phone. It’s not even 5am but the sky outside is deep purple like a bruise. A faint bit of sun is cutting acutely across the floor. I Lenny there sleeping and silently step outside. In the backyard, the sun is rising over a garden. Here the world feels sharper, the colors too vivid, the sounds too clear. There’s a path carved through the garden, winding toward a horizon that glows gold and blue, as if the sky itself is dissolving into water.