The woman let go of my hand.
And then the store was just the store again.
The moment was just a moment.
And as the woman was walking out of the store, I felt she was already forgetting me.
And by the time she was out onto the street, I felt she had already forgotten me.
Time was moving forward again, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I could only move forward with the time.
That was all anyone could do.
I always stopped laughing when the video took a turn.
When I felt there was something wrong with laughing.
When I felt there was something wrong with me.
Like I was the only one getting off on ugly.
Like I was the only one with a wretched feeling in my gut.
If I were a guy, I would call this story Ugly People Fucking.
And it would be hilarious.
But if I were a girl, I would call it Universal.
And it would be something else.
It would be a dark basement.
It would be old carpet and closed drapes.
It would be the drinks we were not supposed to be drinking.
It would be my father opening the basement door.
And our faces glowing in the light-blue light.
And my father saying something awful.
My father turning off the TV.
My father taking the video upstairs.
It would be me and my brother’s friend sneaking off.
It would be climbing the rungs to the tree house.
It would be a dark space that made ugly seem lovely.
It would be the night my brother caught me and his friend in the tree house.
And that was ugly too, my brother standing below the tree as we climbed down.
And it was just too ugly, my brother standing there, waiting there, screaming at me to stop.
There was a time my parents had friends.
They came over for drinks on weekend nights.
They wore low-cut shirts and too-tight pants.
The whole house smelled like smoke and cologne.
My brother and I were sent to bed.
And my mother pretended to be a wife.
And my father pretended to be a man.
I followed the woman up several streets.
This sounds worse, I know, than it was.
I was never going to hurt her.
It was never anything like that.
I don’t know exactly what I wanted.
Just the carton of milk, I suppose.
Just to kick the carton of milk out from the grasp of her terrible hand.
I always stopped laughing when the camera moved in on the girl.
Because it moved up close on her face.
And her lipstick was not where it should have been.
And one eye looked larger than the other.
And she looked right into the camera.
My brother and his friends said awful things.
But she kind of looked like someone I knew.
Just someone, and I couldn’t laugh.
He was done, and so we were done.
Then he was looking at me like, You really should leave.
But I didn’t leave, because I didn’t know how.
I was the worst at getting out of things.
He was looking at me like, You really can’t stay.
His face looked awful in the light.
His body was just too soft.
He looked at me like, There’s the door.
And I stood and walked across the room.
There was his girlfriend’s lipstick.
And her shirt across the back of the chair.
I could tell I would really love that shirt.
I thought about taking that shirt.
Not because it was hers.
But because it should have been mine.
But I didn’t take the shirt.
I just said something he didn’t like.
Then I said something else he didn’t like.
I was surprised that he looked surprised.
And it would have been awful, in another context, what I said.
Like if I said it on the street.
Or to your face.
But in this context it was kind.
Earlier, he had pulled the kit out from beneath his bed.
The tools were heavier than you would think.
And I listened to his heart, and I listened to my own.
And I looked into his ears, and I looked into his eyes.
And what I saw in his eyes was not what I expected to see.
I had only expected the color of his eyes, up close.
But when I looked through the tool I screamed.
All I can say is it was terrifying what I saw.
It was lightning across a sky.
It was all of the stars exploding.
It was the biggest fucking mess.
Just imagine the biggest mess you can.
Just imagine the bloom just after blooming.
And yet I looked into his eyes again.
And I looked again into his ears.
And I listened again to his wretched heart.
And I knew there was only so much I could know about others.
And there was only so much others could know about me.
There was nothing religious, I knew then.
There was only this desperate performance.
On the way to his place, we had walked through a park.
We saw a pond in the park I had never, before that, seen.
There was a glow on the pond that I thought, in the moment, was beautiful.
But perhaps I was too drunk to even know what beautiful was.
Or perhaps I was too drunk to know anything but.
I could have followed the woman all the way to her house.
I could have followed her all the way inside.
I could have thrown her down to the floor.
But then who would save her from all of the men.
We sat in the basement in the dark.
My father had taken the video.
We could hear him moving around upstairs.
We didn’t know what was going to happen.
We didn’t know what would happen to us.
Then my father came back to the basement.
He said, Let’s go.
There was a carnival in town.
So he took us to the carnival.
He bought each of us a roll of tickets.
We ate fried things.
We played games.
My father sat reading on a bench.
He looked so strange, sitting outside.
His shirt looked wrong against the sky.
My brother went into the haunted house.
I went on a ride with my brother’s friend.
We were locked in this cage together.
He said, Hold on.
Or I said, Hold on.
And the ride started up.
And as we made our way upward, it seemed we were going too high.
And as we went even higher, my brother’s friend reached for my hand.
I don’t know why it was I screamed.
It’s not like he even heard me.
I mean everyone was screaming.
We were suddenly spinning way too fast.
I barely knew my hand from his.
But it was surefire, my technique.
You want me to say soft hands.
You want me to say warm mouth.
You want me to say things into your hair.
You want me to say you’re not a mess.
You want me to say that I’m the mess.
You want me to say you’re not to blame.
You want me to say there is a God.
You want me to say he’s watching you.
You want me to say he will save your soul.
But what if I say you have no soul.
What if I say there is no soul.
What if I say there is only this.
And what if I’m right.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Randall Mann, Chris Kamrath, John Edgar Wideman, Noy Holland, Lynne Layton, Ben Lempert, Gary Clark, John D’Agata, Matt McGowan, Carey Shea, Calvin Parker, Harold Meltzer, Matt Van Brink, Kelley Reese, Patti Horvath, Carole Cebalo, Vincent Guerra, Sebastian Currier, James Hannaham, Evan Wiig, Eileen Fung, D. A. Powell, and Ryan Van Meter.