One of a Kind Player

I figured I was a lesbian in the seventh grade. I had a girlfriend and she introduced me to the pseudo-lesbian duo t.A.T.u which was only to be played softly in her room so as not to alert her mother of our homosexuality. She bought me a heart-shaped cookie from the cafeteria on Valentine’s Day. We smoked weed in the stairwell of the parking garage behind a mall in Connecticut. A man named Henry gave it to us. He tried to make out with me but I hadn’t gotten my period or developed breasts and I had braces. So he moved on to my girlfriend, who had breasts and smoked cigarettes and had a navel piercing and even had a pregnancy scare. I sat at the bottom of the concrete stairs and stared at the wall while they kissed. It was the first time I had ever kissed a boy. 

I laid in her lap in the backseat of her mother’s car while we drove back to her house, trying to pretend I was asleep instead of high and horrified and homosexual. 

When we finally got to her bed, she tucked me in and put on dubstep – maybe Sierra Leone by Mt Eden – letting it act as a babysitter while she left for a few moments to fetch me a bag of cookies. I didn’t realize cookies could taste that good. I figured she must have been some kind of weed genius.

When we woke up, I did the mortifying ritual that would occur every other time I woke up in her bed: sheepishly kissing her on the cheek, turning bright red, and hunching down to lace up my converse, which was difficult to do with shaking hands, and seemed to take me about an hour. She stood there, better than me, waiting for me to finish and run down her stairs and out her door and through the snow and into my mother’s car. 

A few months later, I went to the mall in Connecticut with my older sister. Henry was there and I tried to avoid eye contact, but he saw me anyway. “We should blaze sometime,” he said, and I nodded. My sister asked me what the hell “we should blaze” meant. She asked me if I was doing drugs. I said no. She texted my mother. My mother texted me. I spent the rest of my trip to the mall convincing my family that “blaze” is slang for “hanging out.” 

—

Whenever I’ve had more than one beer, I start asking men their ethnicities and exact addresses. I insist on running at full speed no matter where I am headed. I insist on eating one thousand meals. I feel like a retarded robot designed to say and do the exact wrong things.

The first time I did heroin, I shouted, “I thought heroin was brown!” and everyone shushed me because I was making it really obvious that we were all doing heroin.

The first time I ever went to that cult-owned restaurant in California, I shouted, “Ohhh, is this that restaurant owned by the cult?” and everyone shushed me because I was being disrespectful to the cult. 

When I was a teenager, I was at a party using a microphone to do karaoke renditions of Radiohead’s Creep and to play some game with my friends where we all answered a series of “deep” questions. It was my turn to answer the question about whether I had a hunch about how I was going to die one day. I took the microphone and talked about how I would probably overdose, and before I could be thoroughly shushed, the microphone was ripped from my grip so quickly that it slammed back into my face and chipped my front tooth. I stepped outside and spat the tooth chunk into my hand. I had to go to the dentist and get it filled in. I lied to my mother about how it happened, saying I accidentally “knocked a beer bottle into my mouth.” 

—

On Twitter, people are saying the full moon looks beautiful. I take a Klonopin. I walk around to look for the full moon but I can’t find it. 

On Instagram, people are saying there’s an enormous burger sculpture on the street. I take a Klonopin. I walk around to look for the enormous burger but the burger is gone. 

Since I’m already outside, I decide to pick up more Klonopin and Adderall at CVS. And since it’s so rare for an agoraphobic to do things because they’re “already outside,” I’d like to brag about all the other things I do: After I pick up my medicine, I buy lunch at the Japanese market. Then I eat it at the park. Then I go to the thrift store. Then I walk home. Then I walk to the bodega. Then I walk to the bar to see Tanner and Day and Holly and Latina Cass and Matt (gay) and Levi and VG and Gab and Kayla and Mike Crumplar. Then I walk to the taco truck that Levi tells me to go to. 

The taco truck has a long line and I start to walk away. A man urges me to stay, telling me that these are the best tacos in the world. I oblige. I ask him for his address. It turns out we are neighbors. I purchase the taco and run home at full speed. I eat the taco. It is, in fact, the best taco in the world.

I call Sean, bragging to him that I’ve walked 11,127 steps in a day.

“That’s normal,” he says. “What, how much do you normally walk?”

“I walked 23 steps on Tuesday,” I say, and he laughs, and he asks me how I am not either obese or dead.

I am not obese or dead. Life feels amazing. I am drinking less and sleeping less. People are upset with me and I don’t mind. I feel free and alive and I cannot stop listening to the album Think Differently. by Callahan & Witscher. It makes me feel inspired and it reminds me of My Bloody Valentine and CFCF and King Missile and Pavement and Life Without Buildings and Young Thug and LEN and Boards of Canada and Air and Beck. I look forward to Armen getting back from Boston. Boston, as a concept, is funny to me. Baseball, as a concept, is beautiful to me. Shohei Ohtani became the first baseball player in the history of the whole world to get 50 home runs and 50 steals in a season. ONE OF A KIND PLAYER!!! the announcer shouts after he does it, and the crowd cheers, and his teammates cheer, and I cheer, and I feel like a one of a kind player too.