Intermission I -- Waternova

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Totally wishing I could hangout with anyone as cool as the Pizza Boyz right now, I stand up on my ten tippy-toes and turn off my flatscreen friend with a sigh and a really long kiss goodnight. Then I flop down on my twin-sized cot and slowly, slowly sit back against the peeling strips of yellow wallpaper. All my twentysomething mistakes reflected across the glossy tiles under my cuter than cute feet . . . Sighing, crying, sighing I cross my superlong legs and wait for Them to bring me my dinner. I wait and try my very best not to scream while this fun-hating cramp finishes breaking my delicate fingers into a celibate claw, a maiden’s meat hook which like totally makes me grimace and hiss and glance over at my ink-black window. On the other side of which I just know all those twentysomething boys are probably definitely maybe swaggering about . . . The city boys, the country boys. The exotic trailer trash boys and the ambitious ghetto boys. The always-high suburbia boys . . . Because I can like actually smell and see and hear and feel them all out there, down below. All those twentysomething boys trying their very best to thread their adorable little ships through this pornographic labyrinth. Like a fleet of horny hot air balloons. Like a sex-starved armada of multiracial blimps and Nordic Zeppelins. Because it seriously does feel like there’s a 24-hour stream of tantric transmissions being beamed up to me by all those—but then I just scream and shut my doll eyes when one of Them suddenly comes a-creeping into my room and lays a lukewarm tray on my extra-small lap without even knocking or asking or apologizing or nothing! I just scream and stare into my own personal darkness—on principle!—until the disrespectful bastard leaves . . . 

All by myself again, I brush back my bangs and gag as I shove the first sporkful of gray matter through my lips. Because as usual the food’s like way beyond disgusting and seriously gross. Like some sort of squishy space food. I shove another sporkful of rancid gravy through my lips, wincing as the creamy chalk superglues itself to my teeth . . . Ugh, like where do They even get this liquefied mush? Not at a deli, that’s for sure. There definitely must be a cast iron cauldron in here. A bubbling vat of black paint. With two or three weird witches laughing and laughing, stirring and stirring. Juicy boils on their juicy faces. Single hairs on pointy chins. Toil and trouble and a hundred blended babies just for me! AH! . . . I pinch my button nose and swallow sporkful after sporkful. There’s seriously no need to chew. It slides right on down. Like maggot noodle soup. Like cheese fondue cancer . . . 

Even though all I wanna do after dinner is sleep and dream, They sit me back down in the softer than soft chair with another round of condescending injections—the needledicks stabbing me in the shoulder and flooding me with alien amino acids. Sealing off my neurotransmitters. Hollowing out my really thin veins. They smile a sterile smile and say it’s for my own good. That this is all for my own good. But They also whisper, with worried frowns and crinkled brows, that I definitely do need to hurry up because I’m definitely not making enough progress and They’ll definitely have to increase my dosage if I don’t show clear-cut signs of immediate improvement. Of quantifiable growth. I nod and try my very best not to scream. They nod and leave. They leave with a full rack of redblack vials . . . A full rack of me . . . 

Quietly leaning over my desk again, breathing deep, twitching, a sparkle of florescent saliva at the corner of my adorable little mouth, half of me is like really calm and feeling just whatever about this whole dosage thing. Like no big deal. But the other half of me is really scared because I definitely don’t think I could take that. Definitely not. And especially not when there was another angry squid of hair in the communal shower this morning—the vicious swirls wrapping themselves around my ankles, shearing off my skin and grating my really thin hope away. Because I just can’t help feeling like I’m literally disappearing down the drain, one shivering shower at a time. Just shedding away and shedding away and would you look at all those horribly horrible split ends . . . 

I strain my neck and lean as far forward as I possibly can, the spiral-bound notebook waiting for me, teasing me. I lean all the way over the plastic desk and put my supercute button nose up to the insect screen and sniff. I sniff the night in. I bite down on the electric colors that free-flow through the mosquito net—the party-red, the shameful yellowgreenblack—absorbing them all into my naked nuclei. Because it’s up to me, I tell myself, wiggling my nose and licking the wire mesh clean. Because all I have to do is show signs of improvement. Like real progress or whatever. So come on, Zoe—just improve. Just get with the evolutionary program and be a better human being already. Just transcend . . . I sit back down and squeeze my # 2 pencil. I scratch a graphite scream down the middle of the page. Because I mean is that really too much to ask or what? I slash at the blank lines, at the claustrophobic margins. And like why can’t you just pretend? I slash and slash and slash and why can’t you just fucking do it!

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