• It’s one, one, one, all over again, all over the walls the color they named “Ice Cream.” The clock beats out a steady, maddening rhythm. The pipes moan like a lost dog, like something dead. I can still smell the paint.

    Somewhere, something moves, and I can’t tell if I’m seeing it from the corner of my eye or the corner of my mind, but I know it’s there.

    It’s how I know, even though I don’t know, but I think I know because I read about it once, and I knew someone who knew someone who knew this guy who saw it, and he knows. He swears it was real. Amo, amas, amat. I love, you love, he loves.

    Yo me confundo, tú te confundes, usted se confunde. I confuse, you confuse, he, she, or it confuses.

    I watch.


    Twang.

    Something metallic snaps, and I twitch. I hear the thud. The Harmony Stella, the ancient one tainted with stale smoke and druggie haze, has tipped over once again. I know the hard black case will be dented to hell if I don’t move the guitar away from my bed. I move too much. I think of magnolias. I wake up with the name on my lips. Stella.

    “You can’t name your bass ‘Nigel,’” he said.

    “All instruments have female names,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

    All women are used.

    All women want to be used.

    Play me. Play me. Play me.

    Musical sexism at its absolute finest.


    I’m sitting on the bed and looking at the wall. There are too many posters and not enough padding. I know this because I always hit my head, snag the pillowcase on the nail that’s sticking out. I scraped my arm on it the other day; see?

    Eighty miles. I drove along canyon-esque rock walls in the bright, depressing sunshine to meet you, and then I pounced. Your stepmom laughed. You were standing in the August heat at ten in the morning, a pair of nylon shorts hanging from your skinny hips, boyish and pale. It was the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen, how you were waiting at the open front door when I pulled up, trying to look casual but looking like you’d posed and waited for hours. Maybe you had.

    You got me away from the disaster I was making out of my life, the endless parade of guy after guy after guy. I knew that if this messed up, I wouldn’t be able to count on one hand anymore.

    I crack a knuckle and smile.

    I’ve got to go home soon. I’ve got to drive two hours south, away from you, and I hate it.

    You turn your head and smile.

    Marry me.

    I will.


    It’s June. I don’t know you. We’re in the park, on a bridge. She went to get a blanket. I sent her partly because it’s freezing, and partly because I’m curious. I think you know what it’s about. And once the fabric’s gone (and really, I’m surprised you even wear boxers, considering I’m the twentieth), I’m pretty goddamn disappointed. You’re a foot taller than I am, but you’d never know it from where I’m at right now.

    I see the light from her cell phone bobbing along, see the edges of the plaid skirt, my skirt, the one that’s much too small for her, swaying in the night wind. It exposes her cottage-cheese thighs and fat, sagging belly with its road map of stretch marks. I wonder if she knows.

    I jolt back from you. You think it’s because I’m shy and call me cute.

    It’s not.


    She gave you diseases, and I think it’s absolutely hilarious. You tell me this when you call me up, asking for a pre-work hookup. You offer me money for it. I need the money, but I won’t sink that low. Not yet.

    If you were right here, I’d laugh in your face.


    I hate them. From the bankrupt man-whore to the guy with the stud in his tongue to the twenty-six year old virgin, I hate you all. And most of all, I especially hate how he’s always the one to pass judgment, to call me a whore, to try to have break-up sex that he thinks would make up for all the crying times.

    It wouldn’t. I practically shove you out the door and watch you drive away, secretly hoping that your crappy little car will do a Hindenburg and save me the trouble of asking a god that doesn’t exist for your death. My salvation.


    “All instruments have female names,” he said.

    I looked him in the eye. “Go to hell. It’s my four hundred that went into that thing; I’m going to name it whatever the hell I want.”

    And he finally shut his mouth.