Will you loan me your own lone moan,
for mine was snipped short from the start?
The right thing isn’t always right.
Too long I’ve tried to be good, and
it isn’t good. Weeks chasing dopamine,
and I don’t want to be chemically castrated.
Emotionally, inevitably, there’s a drop.
Drip-drop down, down, down—downtown.
I need you. Need to live vicariously
in you for a while. Hold me safe,
secure, until the light beacons at the end
and I can begin on my own again?
I never had skin tags before. But now I have one too prominent to ignore, and two smaller friends beginning to form on my neck. Google tells me it’s likely due to friction—clothing and jewelry rubbing against the skin. I look at my jewelry box and closet with horror and suspicion. Or maybe it’s aging. Or genetics.
I am older. I remember my mother having a few around her neck—one of those things I egotistically assumed would never happen to me. Like dry skin on the bottoms of your feet. Or flabby arms.
But alas, like everything else I believed about my future as a child, I was wrong. Now there is a skin tag big enough to freeze off. I have the kit. I’ve read the instructions. I just haven’t yet. But it does need to go, even if its two little friends will grow and replace it in no time.
It’s like how, for years—years on years on years, folded on top of more years—I haven’t really been plagued with many new thoughts. Sure, I’ve had new issues. Grappled with feelings. Made goals. Worked. Succeeded. Failed. All that. But thoughts? Recurring new thoughts that linger, rubbing, pressing into my brain? No. Not in years.
Yes, I’ve had those tired, old thoughts that pop into my head. The negative ones programmed in childhood, surfacing at the worst moments. That I’m unlovable. That I ruin everything. But these aren’t new thoughts. They fade into the noise of my brain and my life—like crumbs on the counter, brushed into the trash. Until panic strikes and another preprogrammed thought appears.
But now this is a new thought. I wake at 3 a.m. with a new thought, a new fear, rubbing on my brain—the kind of friction that could cause a mental skin tag in just a week.
Silly. I want to tell myself this is silly. Childish—to care about something like this. To cry about something so stupid at 3 a.m., quietly, of course, in bed. It’s probably the same thing men during the Depression thought about steaks. Or women in WWII missing silk stockings—after so long, unsure if they’d ever have them again. For some of them, it probably was never again. But most lived to see steak and stockings again and those thoughts ended. I might live that long too. I have faith I could be one of the lucky few.
If it even is lucky. WWII alleviated the Depression. The Atomic Bomb ended WWII. We humans often trade one pain for another. A new problem hidden in solution-wrapping paper, soon discarded, leaving only what’s inside. Then I rationalize: if I had some passionate tryst, what new struggles would it unlock? Like Pandora’s box, some things are best left unknown. Perhaps I am lucky to be without. Perhaps people in the past told themselves that too.
I chuckle through my tears as I hold a pillow tighter to my chest. Imagine my ego, my conceit, to compare a tongue uncaressed to starvation and war. Perhaps women drawing lines on their legs laughed too. Perhaps they reminded themselves that others had endured far worse than bare legs and no steak.
Are we only human? Wanting what we don’t have, then reminding ourselves of what we do. Leaning on progress like a crutch. I have it better than anyone in the past; therefore, it must be enough. I am wrong to want more. Always more. More. More. But isn’t the wanting of more how we progress?
A skin tag just mean I am older, wiser, connected to my mother. My neck is bathed in a wealth of 24k gold and Bandolino shirts. Isn't desire beyond my sufficiency just indulgent?
Behind all my rationalization: Still, this new thought—my new thought—unwanted, unnerving, unwelcome—enters my mind:
I’m unsure how to address it other than to wait for the mental skin tag to grow large enough to freeze off. Wait for another to grow in its place. Maybe, with time, it won’t be so prominent. Maybe it will become like crumbs on the counter—a thought easily discarded. Not a thought like a favorite necklace or shirt, rubbing a skin tag on to my neck.
When you finally reach out to me, I won't know how to respond. Whatever safe, palatable, plain, polite response I offer up… know what I meant to say was:
For years, I have needed you to see me as a calm, cool, mature, stable force. A beacon that can lead you. Provide you the assurance, security, and reliability you lack in your life. Be steadfast for you. Be, for you, what I am not. Not really. Not right now. Not in my real life, where I am told what to do, what to be, in small, safe boxes made of concrete.
But perhaps more than that, when the façade cracks, the mask slips, and you finally respond to a peek at the real me, I might realize I need you to see me as I really am: messy, disgusting, gross, sloppy, sick, chaotic. I want you to see the want that lingers under the things I've done and said—my wants greater than my needs.
Wants that scare me. Bruise my ego, strike fear in my heart, threaten my very being. Wants that paint me as degenerate, despicable, monstrous, horrific. My want of you. Want of so much.
I want you to spit in my mouth and claim me.
Take you to the restaurant you've only driven past. Order for you because I don't want your head distracted with even one decision. No concerns about what is too expensive to order—just thoughts of me and what I choose for you. Clean the plate like a good girl because I paid for each bite.
During a trip to the bathroom, slip your panties off and into my pocket for a keepsake. My darling, you can't comprehend how I will treasure this gift. I pat-pat my pocket.
Don't be scared off by what I want. Want it too.
I want you. I want to possess you. Be possessed by you.
There's a freckle on your shoulder I want to name Steve. Long, winding conversations with Steve. All-night convos. My best friend Steve. See him? Right there on your shoulder?
Constellations, cosmos, written and stippled on your skin. Too many unnamed, unknown, unloved freckles and moles. Nebulas to navigate. Star charts to map. New territories to discover. Own. I wish to name and know them all.
My ear pressed to your chest, listening for a heartbeat, making sure you are still alive, real, here, with me. What would I do if it wasn't beating? Wasn't real?
I want you to touch yourself when you think of me. Even if I am not me—just a disembodied voice from your phone or words spreading black on a white screen. Just like that, honey. So good. Just for me—however you might take me.
I want to feed you chocolates. Open your mouth. You are my little baby now. I feed you. Wipe your mouth. So sweet. So good. So precious.
Just when I think I want too much from you—more than you can give—just when I am scared you will run—you'll cry out, “More! More! Take more! I can give more!”
When you are frustrated with me, I will crawl on hands and knees, massage and kiss your toes, playfully hold your foot to my ear like a phone, and ask, “Is Caroline still grounded, or can she come out and play?” And know you will laugh. Hold my cheek. Say all is forgiven, my love. Will your forgiveness really be easy? Just like that?
I want to go to clubs, watch you dance and grind on men, turn them on until they think you'll go home with them, then return to me, patient at a table against the wall. I want you to always return to me, sweetheart. Will you?
Please, tell me all the things you need and want from me. Those deep, dark desires you've never said aloud. Speak clearly. Use your big girl words in your big girl voice as you tell me what to do and say for you. It's all for you. You know I won't shy away. I will do anything. Just ask.
And me.
Be as intense as me. Enjoy this.Melt into me and let me melt into you.Will you like me when I feel pathetic and lost and need guidance?Will you guide me gently with your palms?And will you like when I am confident and strong, when I pull you to my attention?All of it. Will you want all of me?I want you to:Like me. Crave me. Want me. Need me. Savor me. Appreciate me.So you see, I need a lot. But I want even more than I can write—too much. I want too much from you. Don't I, sweet girl? I know it.
So I won't say any of this. Instead, I'll pop out a nice, polite response when you finally reach out and give a stupid fucking thumbs-up emoji… what else could I even say?
I could never say what I really think.
Lately, I have spent too much time thinking about paying women for intimacy.
Like I could, unironically, join an incel group.
Like I may actually be the only female victim of the male loneliness epidemic.
Like this is a slippery slope you couldn't see coming.
Only two or three years ago, I fantasized about what felt like a reasonable, attainable future.
At first, it was women I knew. I imagined that after years of easy acquaintance, we might awaken to sweet, passionate, romantic feelings. But always there was the creeping fear—because I know this path. It only leads to losing a friend and never gaining a lover.
Eventually, my thoughts smoldered down to something smaller: the idea that maybe, someday, in some far-off future, I might find a woman, a stranger, who liked me as much as I liked her.
That it would click—comfortably. Easily.
But that feels increasingly unlikely. How many rejections would I face until that mythic, unicorn woman appeared?
And now I find myself turning over thoughts of how to simply hire someone.
God, it would make everything so much easier!
Like hiring a masseuse, or a personal trainer, or a private chef.
The cleanness of the transaction. I’m so fucked in the head.
The waitress always takes your order. The maid always cleans your kitchen.
Easy. Comfortable. It clicks. That’s what I want.
It’s professional. It’s simple.
After all, haven’t I always preferred the easy, simple way—something that stays neatly within professional boundaries? Predictable professionalism.
Yes, a best friend will defend you. But a lawyer will also fight your case as long as the retainer is paid.
Probably even better than a friend would. Without hesitation.
With no chance of a “no.”
No no's. A world without no's. I've longed for that for a long time.
I’m slipping into logic—such logical logic that it’s frightening.
Ideas like paying someone to never say no.
Logic like fearing rejection so much that I might ignore a no.
It's terri-fucking-fying to sympathize with men this much.
But also, take a few moments, think about how much it would take per hour, for you to let me hold you.
Brush your hair. Maybe make out. Sleep next to me in bed. How much per "I love you," slipping out of your mouth? I'm just taking estimates right now.
No pressure.
How much would it cost for you to not say no to this?
Just something to think about.
“So… um… I’m sorry. This is my first time doing anything like this. What do I do?”
John expected to feel pathetic. He expected the woman—who looked far more average than he had imagined an escort would—to meet him with pity. Instead, she seemed genuinely understanding, even compassionate. She spoke the way a kindergarten teacher does when helping a child clean up: calm, patient, reassuring. It didn’t feel like he was paying her, or like she did this regularly—though both were true.
She glanced around the hotel room, then took his hand. “We can just sit on the couch for a bit. Talk. Figure out what you’d like.”
“Okay.” The word sounded foreign coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d said anything at all.
On the couch, she easily—comfortably—kept holding his hand, stroking his knee with the other.
“It’s normal to feel nervous your first time, John.”
“Look, I… uh… I’ve had sex before. But…” He shifted slightly away from her and stared at the carpet, which seemed overly bright for a hotel room—orange with navy blue waves in some vintage 1960s throwback pattern. “I don’t want sex. If that’s, like, a thing you do.”
She gently guided his chin until he was looking at her again.
“What do you want, then, John?”
She keeps using my name. Was that protocol? Probably taught on day one of Escort 101: make it personal. Jesus. A john named John. Fucking cliché.
For months—no, years—he had needed this. He had explored every possible way to get it and failed. He couldn’t handle another rejection. His lungs would burst if he heard “no” one more time. His eyes would shrivel if he had to watch this through another brightly lit screen again. He needed the closest thing to the real deal he could get. Paying for it was the only way.
Some men go golfing. Some men go on cruises. Some men get massages. I am going to pay a woman to pretend to love me for a few hours. It is no different, he told himself.
“Aren’t these lights really bright?” was all he managed.
“We can dim them. Or turn them off. Would you feel more comfortable in the dark?”
“Um…”
What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck do I want?
“Maybe not dark. Just not so bright.”
“Jasmine”—almost certainly not her real name—turned on a small, round, orb-shaped lamp on the bedside table, then crossed the room to switch off the overhead light. “Is that better?”
It was. Not just better—almost romantic.
She returned to the loveseat, sat on her knees, and began lightly rubbing his shoulders. “Is this okay?”
He closed his eyes.
I have to tell her what I want. I have to be bold for once in my life. I am here. I have already paid. What am I waiting for—her to read my mind like some psychic succubus?
“I just want to lie in the bed and have you hold me.”
“Held like a child or a lover?”
His chest tightened. His voice cracked, his eyes welled.
Fuck. I need to get a grip.
“Like a childhood friend.”
“Slumber party vibes?" Her face seemed to light up with genuine excitement. "We can do that.”
Smiling, she moved to the bed, and lay on her side, patting the comforter—another aggressively vintage hotel choice, trying a little too hard to feel nostalgic for what John imagined was a hipster clientele, not a sad, lonely, middle-aged man. Not for men like him.
He paused, took slow, intentional breaths, hands braced on his knees.
Get up, John. Do what you came here to do.
Somehow he willed his body to stand and walk to the bed.
He lay down with his back to her. She wrapped one arm around his waist and smoothed his hair with the other. Her breath was warm and controlled against his neck. His shoulders loosened as her smaller frame spooned him from behind. The sheets smelled faintly of bleach—hotel-clean—but underneath it all was the soft scent of oranges. The combination was deeply comforting.
He couldn’t tell if ten minutes passed or an hour. Her steady strokes, the weight of her arm, the warmth and sound of her breathing behind him blurred time completely.
“It’s okay to cry,” she said softly. “Let it out, John.”
He became aware that his face—and the pillow beneath it—were soaked. He didn’t know when he’d started crying. She didn’t make a big deal of it. She only held him tighter, wiped his tears, stroked his cheek, murmured "It's okay" a few more times.
He had known, deep down, that this, the crying, would happen. But now that it was happening, he wanted to hear her voice again. Hear her say his name in meaningless sentences—empty pleasantries, conversations that went nowhere and meant nothing. Conversations with no pressure, where he didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing.
“Is your perfume citrus?”
Jesus, John. Her job was probably a parade of confidence and heat, of practiced desire and performance. Any other guy would have her gargling spunk in her mouth before swallowing with a wink. But I am crying and asking what perfume she is wearing. Pathetic.
“I’m actually not wearing any,” she said. “A lot of guys don’t like it. You know…” She hesitated, like she was about to reveal something too personal.
“What?”
She sighed, smiling into his shoulder. “A lot of guys don’t like to go back to their wives with perfume on them.”
Of course. She didn’t want to ruin the illusion—that this wasn’t just a job. But this was just a job for her. Most guys, most clients, had someone waiting for them at home. John hadn't considered this because he was going home to nothing.
“Oh. That makes sense, Jasmine." He paused before added the pseudonym as an after thought.
At least the brief conversation distracted him long enough for the tears to stop.
“It does smell kind of… fruity in here, though, right?”
What the fuck, man.
She hugged him tightly, then sat up. “I can’t get anything past you, John!” With a sweet pat on his arm, she added, “I have a couple oranges in my bag. Let me peel one for us.”
“Okay.”
Of course my escort experience has turned into snack time. Something she will laugh about later. $400 to peel an orange! Easy money!
He rolled over to watch her pull an orange from her tote bag. With her polished thumbnail, she peeled it in one long spiral and dropped the rind into the trash. The bright, sharp scent filled the room. John scooted to the edge of the bed, feet planted on the carpet, which now seemed almost pleasant.
Jasmine—still probably not her real name—sat beside him, hip to hip, elbow to elbow. Her bare feet dangled above the floor. He hadn’t noticed when she’d taken off her shoes, but it felt like permission to kick off his own. She handed him a segment. He ate it as she took one for herself. Back and forth, they finished the orange in silence.
The sweetness felt hopeful. When was the last time he’d eaten an orange like this? Not since childhood, probably.
“John…” She paused, touched his hand with her sticky fingers. “I’m really enjoying being with you. This is nice. A nice change for me.”
Maybe she said that to everyone. Still, he nodded. It felt true.
“Do you… usually feed clients an orange?”
She smiled. “Are you asking if you’re special?”
“No—no, no, no—”
“Well,” she said gently, “you’re different. This is different.”
Was this real or an act? John didn’t know and didn’t care anymore.
She lay back down and patted the space beside her. This time, he faced her. They stared at each other, his hands clutching hers against his chest, like she might float away if he didn’t keep her tethered.
Some men went golfing. Some men went on cruises. Some men got massages. He paid a woman to love him for a few hours.
It was no different.
It was money well spent.
He would do it again.
She doesn’t know what’s sadder: that her life is so painfully lonely, or that she knows it could be better and is unwilling to change. There’s a mountain on the other side. It isn’t insurmountable—it’s just not worth it. Would be at least a year till the dust settled. Maybe longer. Not worth the price. The effort. The time. The destruction. Not for her, when she made all the choices to be here and everyone else would pay for her to get out.
She has grown to hate marriage more than anything else in this world. She’s been married fifteen years to two men, so at this point she knows a little something about marriage—at least about hers. It is the closest thing she knows to a vampire draining the blood from your body until you die, then letting you come to. What’s worse is that you welcome it. You still worry if he’s happy, if he has enough, if dinner is right. Whatever you want, dear. Even as it drains you of your life force, exploiting every drop of love and compassion you carry, you only think of ways to give more.
Everything marriage claims to provide, it failed to provide for her. She was lonelier in marriage. She had less help and less support. Less touch, less compassion, less love. Even boyfriends—much as she loathed them—were willing to hold her, pat her head, hug her, kiss her… even if it was just in hopes of nutting. It was a means to an end for them, but the end was a worthwhile price for her to get the means.
Making out for an hour could do more for her than 6 months of therapy and 50 mg of whatever the doctor would prescribe. But it was a moot point when it wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen even if she begged.
Something about being legally and financially bound to her makes her repulsive. Why did they even propose to begin with? She fucking hates them for ever asking. She hates herself more for saying yes, for believing they would make good on the bullshit promises that babbled out of their lying mouths. That she had ever hoped she would somehow make this work.
It feels like divorce should be the answer, but then it feels like admitting she wasted a decade in this marriage. And she put in those ten years because she knew he was old and would die. He is still old. He will still die. And, selfishly, she wants to be legally bound to him when it happens, because she doesn’t want to struggle financially ever again. Not like before him. Surely she could pack her stupid need and want for passion and romance into a steel, soundproof box for a few more years—if only to be financially stable enough not to worry about money.
It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs twisted through a funhouse mirror. You have to fulfill the base needs first: the security of food, water, shelter, warmth—not just yesterday and today, but for a lifetime. Never holding your breath with worry as you swipe a debit card. Buying the five-dollar bread you like. Never waiting for payday. Never living in constant struggle. Not like her mother.
Yes, even Maslow says to take care of physiological needs before stupid fucking love-and-belonging needs. She tells herself she’s making the right choice.
It just hurts like a motherfucker right now.
Perhaps she just needs to take a warm bath.
Take a pill—something to smooth the edges, to correct what life itself won’t.
Drink a tea.
Read her horoscope.
It’s just the planets aligning weirdly, amplifying the depression today. Next week will be better. It’s written in the stars.
It's just one bad day.
It’s okay to wake up angry and hate what you loved just yesterday. Write about it and then move on.
“We can simplify life from this moment forth. There is only one path to walk, one decision to make in every instance, and all our burdens will be lifted, all our anxieties released. We can decide to act in good faith. We can be silent for a moment with ourselves and let our inner guide direct our behavior, our words, our thoughts.”
I am exactly one day older than Hilary Duff, whose new album came out today. It’s a little easier to be successful when your parents start your career before you even hit puberty. She has also been married twice. We are both remarried divorcees. Celebrities—they’re just like us! I suppose we can’t be successful at everything, even with a team of publicists and a stylist whose job is to make everything you do look intentional.Yesterday at work, during a phone call, I apologized for how long a task was taking. It wasn’t my delay. It was approvals. Endless, ceremonial approvals. I’ve worked for over a decade in universities—a Kafkaesque hellscape—and I have never seen more bureaucratic red tape, slower queues, or more ornamental back-and-forth than here.The accented woman’s voice on the line said, calmly, “I’m not surprised. You’ll have to manage your expectations. It’s very slow here. It won’t be like any other place you’ve worked before.”She said it the way my doctor suggests watching what I eat. Ma’am, I assure you, I see everything I eat. I have working eyes.Manage my expectations. I’ve heard that before—usually right before something deeply disappointing happens. I’m not sure how to manage my expectations any more than I already do. I expect nothing. I expect never to get what I want. I expect just barely enough to survive. I expect the future to be no better than today, but with more emails.I hold on to facts like there are women out there being beaten to death and at least that’s not me. Small facts. Administrative facts. Proof of life in the absence of hope. I cling to them like a string tied to a helium balloon. I cling to them with the belief that if I grip tightly enough, double knot, they won’t slip away. I am white-knuckled.But maybe they’re right. Maybe I expect too much out of life. Maybe my expectations are wildly unrealistic—like hoping a committee will reach a decision before my uterus shrivels up and I am too old to achieve an orgasm.Apparently, I thrive in this environment. I spent years constructing routines, structure, guidelines, boundaries. I don’t regret it. I needed the bumpers. Without them, I bowled gutter ball after gutter ball. Chaos makes me dizzy and sick. When my grip loosens even a little, I spiral.But now my comfort zone has tightened into a straitjacket. There is no room to move forward, backward, left, or right. Fill out a form about it. Don’t worry—you’ll receive an automated email once it finishes review:“Someday, you could be loved in a way you’ve never been loved before. But it’s a process. Please manage your expectations and have good faith it might happen before you die."
You can’t remove it all in one night, tempting as that may be. There is no dramatic escape montage. No backpack, no train hopping, no jaunty folk song. Change happens centimeter by centimeter, hour by hour. The next right thing is baby steps—each one documented and filed.Running away with a little hobo sack tied to the end of a pole is a child’s dream. A cartoon solution. There’s no running away from yourself. Anywhere I’d go, I’d already be there—building another prison I’d learn to hate in a few years, complete with color-coded calendars, strong opinions about fonts, and aggressively important Post-it notes.Ultimately, it’s not my expectations that betray me, but the patterns I’ve repeated my whole life: the hope that some singular, external thing might arrive and fix everything at once. When really, it’s a slow, internal, multi-step process. Like waiting on twenty approvers so one small task can move forward. I apologize for the delay. Please bear with me another moment.Even Hilary Duff sings sad fucking songs and gets divorced.There’s no easy way out. No escaping humanity. Just micro-adjustments. Acting in good faith toward something better—whatever better turns out to be. Probably managed expectations. Possibly even less. Ideally, silence.Be buried with an epitaph like, Beloved Wife.Though Hilary Duff and I both know that would only apply to the second marriage.
Today, 2/17/2026, marks the start of a Fire Horse Year. I only know this because for the past three months, every phone call with my white-bread friend has included some variation of, “Did you know we are entering a Fire Horse year?” Then, about two weeks ago, social media decided I needed a full-on Fire Horse brainwashing. Honestly, aside from knowing I was born in a Rabbit year and that my mom might be a Rat, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the Chinese lunar calendar that I didn’t read on a red-ink-on-white-paper Chinese buffet placemat. Why so many buffets use the same placemat is clearly some sociological phenomenon—probably a combination of “culturally relevant” and “cheap enough to order in bulk.”
And yet, here we are. A new moon in Aquarius. Lunar new year ushering in a Fire Horse Year. An eclipse. Astrologically, shouldn’t today be… fireworks? Maybe a parade? A small miracle? Nope. Beginnings usually look like making soup, going to work, folding laundry, washing your face, then reading before bed. Beginnings look like absolutely nothing dramatic at all. At least that's what my day looks like today.
Do you ever hear voices in your head? I do. Not the creepy ones from psychological thriller movies—just the ones that read your thoughts aloud like a tiny audiobook narrator. Today, as I read a short story I wrote, the voice said, “I could be a writer.” For about three seconds, I thought, “Wow, that’s a bold claim for February 17th.” Then I laughed. Of course I could be a writer—I literally just read something I wrote. I’m already a writer.
Beginnings sneak up on you like that. Like a friend clinging to the lunar new year to drag herself out of depression. Like the infinite parade of social media prophets insisting that today—this exact calendar day—everything will be different. But really… we already had it in us. Fire Horse Year or no Fire Horse Year. Beginnings aren’t beginnings. They’re just the same old soup, reheated, with a side of cosmic sweet and sour sauce.
Within thirty minutes of talking to Jaymie, I knew more about her than she knew about herself. I had met many women like her over the years, most often in a bar just like this one—ground floor of a mid-level hotel, the kind where men wore button-up shirts and chinos but no one wore a suit. Jaymie described herself and her life in terms of absence: what she hadn’t had, hadn’t experienced, hadn’t done. She had never been outside this city, never had a passport, never held a job other than secretary at her father’s car dealership, never married.
I had slept with many women like that, and it was comforting to know I could give them an exciting night—something they could keep, revisit, turn over in their minds for years. For me, it was routine: meet someone attractive in a city I was visiting for work. For them, it was once in a lifetime.
Her wide, curious eyes moved over my face, then dropped to my drink.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A martini. Haven’t you had one?”
She shook her head, smiling. “No.”
Of course not. When would she have? While stapling sales reports for her father? Drinking with the same friends she’d had since high school, all of them circling the same few zip codes? I doubted she’d ever seen a palm tree in person. Probably never been on a plane. I wondered if she could even drive—certainly not a stick shift. She wouldn’t know what to do with my Porsche back home, parked beside my wife’s practical SUV, the one used to shuttle kids from soccer to ballet to school and back again.
There was something irresistible about that kind of woman—sheltered, impressed by the smallest details, eager to be shown things. She didn’t have to be beautiful. What mattered was she wouldn’t question me. I could tell her anything. I could say martinis originated in Rome, subsidized by the Vatican in the seventeenth century, and she would believe it. She might repeat it someday, recounting the most exciting night of her life: meeting a man in a hotel bar and ending up in his penthouse suite. She would carry the lie without ever suspecting it was one.
“Do you know how martinis were invented?” I asked.
Her face lit up. “No. How?”
_____________________________________________________
Jessica waited until the man beside her fell asleep. What had he said his name was? Jason? Jeremy? It didn’t matter. It probably wasn’t real. Jaymie wasn’t her name, after all.
Once he started snoring, she slipped out of bed and gathered her clothes. She glanced around the room and smiled. He was so full of shit—from calling this deluxe room a penthouse to fabricating the history of martinis. He truly seemed to believe she’d never had one before. They were in Milwaukee, not some isolated farming commune.
She had certainly preferred other cities, but this year’s International Research Psychology Conference was held here. At least it wasn’t snowing.
She’d attended just enough sessions to be seen, to shake hands, to ensure her colleagues knew she’d shown up—without getting trapped in Dr. Molorov’s presentation on adolescent vaping typologies or the panel on alcohol and intimate partner violence. The abstracts alone were exhausting. Years of funding, decades of expertise, all circling truths anyone with eyes already knew.
Conferences looked good on her CV, but they had little to do with the bulk of her work: teaching six sections of Psych 101. Freshmen who didn’t want to be there and business majors who thought one psychology class would turn them into master manipulators. No, Jeremy—it just meant you might vaguely remember that someone once trained pigeons to play ping pong. Oh. That was his name. Jeremy.
As the elevator descended, she felt a flicker of satisfaction. The sex hadn’t been good, but that wasn’t the point. What she enjoyed was the ease of it—how readily he accepted the version of her he wanted. The act always revealed the same thing: how many men assumed women were sheltered, waiting to be instructed. With a little more time, she probably could have convinced him she couldn’t drive, boil an egg, or open a PDF. He wanted to believe her lies.
Back in her own room, she showered and dressed. She took the wedding ring from her purse and slid it back onto her finger. She should text her husband.
Long day at the conference, babe. Lots of networking. Think I found a potential collaborator for my next project. Love you. Headed to bed.
He replied immediately: a thumbs-up, a heart.
She lay down, already dreading the flight home, but ready to be back home in Miami. Before sleeping, she answered a few emails—most earned a copied response directing students to the syllabus. In the morning, she would present her own research, which, if she were honest, mattered no more than most of what surrounded it. Years of studies, grants, students cycled through the lab, all to move understanding forward by the smallest degree.
She turned off the light.
Tomorrow, she would stand, unsure, at a podium, but speak with authority.
Tonight, she had played dumb—and it had worked exactly as expected.
"We can trust our inner yearnings, the ones we may have stifled in times past. We can realize our hearts' pure desires if we seek guidance."
You know how they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions? I think it’s safe to say that every relationship I’ve ever had started with a good intention. Once, I even told a therapist about my most shameful hookup, and he simply replied, “It just sounds like the actions of a kind-hearted person.” How did I then hand over my $20 co-pay for that? It was never about the one-night-stand's feelings, but my own? You know—the shame I led the conversation with? Perhaps it was my fault for confiding in a man three times my age with those kinds of emotions. I thought his PhD in psychology would outweigh his gender and age.
And he wasn’t wrong. Not really. Yeah. At the time, that sexual encounter was charitable. It’s what I thought going into it and what I thought coming out of it. It’s even what I told my friends. That was something—something I held on to.
When exactly did my feet get planted on the road to hell?
Probably too young. In second grade, I wrote “housewife” on one of those little About Me worksheets under the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? As the only child of a single mother, my understanding of a housewife came from watching Married With Children unsupervised—no adult to say, This show is a little too mature for you. Peggy Bundy was a housewife who didn’t cook, clean, or even like or respect her husband. I could do that for the rest of my life. It seemed far more reasonable than my mother working full-time, going to school full-time, and peppering the few moments in between with standing in a food bank line.
Even then, I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to be the first in my class to have one, despite being far too awkward—and poor—to afford that kind of attention for a few more years. It was work to craft and carve myself into shapes and personalities that boys found desirable. But even then, it wasn’t enough to keep them. More work was always required to be a woman men wanted to keep.
In hindsight, it’s a tragedy that every man who ever said he loved me never actually had the chance to love me. They only ever knew a version of me I made palatable enough for him. Of course you love this me—I made her just for you. Like a bespoke suit, she always fit. They never saw the messy tailoring or the scraps of cloth left behind. You know—those pesky, stupid little pieces of me they wouldn’t like anyway. The pieces they didn’t need. Didn’t want. Could be discarded.
And what can I even say now? That I’m reformed? Absolutely not. Perhaps I am, at present, at my worst: a necktie that can fit comfortably around any man’s neck. Even Windsor-knotted for the last decade, ready to pull loose and unrestricted at any moment—for a husband I cannot explain.
My twenty-year high school reunion is this year, and even if I were in the same state—or wanted to see any of those people again—I wouldn’t go. My husband would want to come too. I don’t want those two worlds to collide: my husband and the people who remember an eighteen-year-old me. I couldn’t bear him asking, “What? Are you ashamed of me?”
The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. I don’t know how to explain a man twice my age and twice my weight to a couple hundred people who are essentially strangers, whose last memory of me is a bright, happy, promising girl. But, it’s okay, though. I hadn’t wanted to go anyway. Anyone from high school I want to see, I still talk to. My marriage makes sense to the people around me—the ones who’ve been watching my journey down and find the outcome rational. And it's been easy for new people to take it at face value having never known any other version of me.
Before you feel too sorry for me, I should confess: this path is exactly where I want to be. For now. That’s why I’m furiously plotting, writing, organizing my thoughts in orbits around how to make this relationship last until he dies—whenever that is. It could be tomorrow. It could be twenty years from now. If I wanted out, I’d be gone. I know all the off-ramps. I’ve used them before. But sometimes the easiest, safest, most comfortable course is straight ahead—navigating by muscle memory alone.
There used to be a lingering thought of what might have been—what could have been—if earlier in my life I had worried more about simply being myself, and less about becoming what a man needed or wanted at any given time. Maybe there could have been someone I fit beside as-is, off the rack, without a single tuck, trim, or hem altered.
But that thought has been replaced with a quieter comfort: that after the funeral, after a respectable period of grieving, I might return to all the pieces I discarded in service of another’s whims and wishes. I could patch them together, become as complete an outfit as I can—holes worn in my socks from the miles I trekked—and be wanted just like that. As I was, as I am, and as I will be. A patchwork of my good and even my self-serving intentions.
“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
—Octavia E. Butler
I don’t lack punishment; I lack discipline. I have probably been punished for every choice and action I’ve ever made in my life—even the good and right ones. What I lack is the kind of discipline jocks talk about: the ability to set a goal and train the body and mind toward it, to orient oneself steadily in a single direction.
My accomplishments so far feel like waking up, hungover, inexplicably at graduation, having learned nothing, yet still having a diploma slid into my hand after a hearty handshake with a dean whose name I don’t know, the stamp from last night’s bar still wet on my wrist. True story.
I’ve been like this since I was a child. No rules. No boundaries. No organization. No structure. Never had a curfew or a chore. Parents like moody roommates that pay more than half the bills. So perhaps it’s unbelievable, even to myself, when I say that I am trying.
That’s the crux of my problem: how to convert a wayward child, bouncing from distraction to distraction, into a grown woman built on a foundational ethos of study. How to do something I don’t want to do in the moment—even temporarily—in service of something greater.
What would I even want at the end of all this, if not the easiest, closest thing, as I have always pursued? What is it like to be running toward something instead of away from something? And there are other questions I don’t need to answer yet—but will, eventually. I'm all questions and no answers right now.
But, just give me time. Baby, I’ll be your stalwart girl. Just give me time. I will figure it out. I don’t know discipline yet, but I know I can’t mess this up anymore.
Next time you see me, don’t be surprised by how different I seem. By the end of the month, I’ll bear stretch marks from all this spiritual growth. My aperture is widening, letting in more light, like a pupil learning the dark—pulling shapes from shadow.
Don’t feel too bad if you don’t recognize me. These days, I scarcely recognize myself. I reread my journal—not so old—and meet a self from not long ago. I blush, uneasy in the presence of this stranger’s thoughts. Who is this? Not me. Not anymore.
She was forlorn, studying all the ways she might fold herself into the corners of your life. Hansel and Gretel, following a scatter of crumbs—proof that something had passed this way, that it might pass again. Each small fact about you became a tool: how could she shape herself to slip a little closer, inch by inch, into your orbit? The sweet delusion that she might someday become something you would want. Somewhere in that careful craft, she vanished.
Her thoughts and actions bent toward becoming someone you’d choose. It never—not once—occurred to her that she might already be whole, intact, meant for someone she hadn’t yet met.
I couldn’t read much more about this former self—an apparition lingering at the grave’s edge, dead but not yet gone. Gathering the artifacts of who I was before I met you, the image shifted. The foreground sharpened; the background softened into blur. With the aperture adjusted, a figure emerged—steady, undeniable. I had always been here. I had only forgotten how to bring myself into focus.
“We have seen too much defeatism, too much pessimism, too much of a negative approach. The answer is simple: if you want something very badly, you can achieve it. It may take patience, very hard work, a real struggle, and a long time; but it can be done. That much faith is a prerequisite of any undertaking.”—Margo Jones
faith /fāTH/ noun
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
On the phone, my friend said, “I’m just disappointed that I got so hopeful.”
At the time, I couldn’t quite relate. I have been disappointed in myself plenty—regretful, resentful, angry, almost always turned inward. But I had never felt disappointment over being hopeful. Hope, to me, had always felt like a virtue, or at least a harmless survival instinct. Something necessary to wake up tomorrow.
Her comment stayed with me for the rest of the day and sent me into a quiet meditation on hope itself—specifically, on how much I enjoy being hopeful, and how much I value being seen that way. A few years ago, in a moment of questionable judgment, I recorded myself reading aloud from my journals and sent the audio to a girl I barely knew. I remember apologizing, worried that I sounded too negative. She told me I didn’t sound negative at all. I sounded hopeful. She said it felt like, at my core, I was hopeful in every situation.
Hearing this gave me a deep, private satisfaction. I continued to repeat it to myself often: At my core, I am hopeful in every situation.
Even in situations where no rational person would have held out hope, I did. I clung to it stubbornly, convinced that optimism itself was a kind of moral strength.
Lately, though, I have begun to feel disappointed in hope itself. I’m not sure if this is what my friend meant that Friday afternoon, but hope now feels insufficient—too soft, too passive. It waits. It wishes. It leaves room. Hope holds space for a “no” it pretends not to secretly expect.
I have hoped for many things, and some of them came to pass. But lately, hope has also left me feeling stuck, like struggling in quicksand: the harder I hope, the deeper I sink. It feels as though hope has worn out its welcome, and I need to transform it into something more substantial——something with weight and consequence. Like water turned into wine. Like cream skimmed from milk, churned into butter, and spread thickly on bread.
Something with weight and consequence. Something that acts rather than waits. Something like faith.
I am not religious, but religion speaks often of faith, and faith seems to be hope sharpened into a blade. Fortified hope. Hope without contingency. Belief without hesitation. An insistence rather than a wish. Certainty. In this sense, faith becomes almost coercive toward reality itself. Make-it-so manifestation.
Consider the difference in language. You tell someone you are going to do something, and they respond, “I hope you do.” Now imagine they say instead, “I have faith you will.” The first allows for failure; the second pushes it away.
Hope, it seems, carries a quiet admission of doubt. We hope for the best, but somewhere beneath that hope is the suspicion that the best may not arrive. Faith, by contrast, insists on assured belief even in the absence of evidence.
I don’t want to doubt. Even if belief makes me foolish. Regardless of if the thing I put my faith in never comes to pass. I want to believe fully, with the conviction of the most faithful pilgrim—certain, unwavering, and unashamed—and to live as though that belief requires something of me in return.
As the Bible says, "Faith without works is dead" sounds an awful lot like "Faith without work is just hope."
I accept the worst
and still expect the best.
But the lukewarm
I will spit from my mouth—
not one tepid second
as I take the future by the throat
and let it choke on my refusal.
The future will come.
But my patience is not ash;
I will not swallow it quietly.
I will not bow to delay again.
What I was warned of has learned my name.
I press myself into what will be
and force it to answer.
Let what comes next be clean and unbroken.
I will not soften—I have carried fire in my bones
longer than most widows know how to mourn.
“You have the best smile."
John stared at the draft message on Instagram. Was it creepy? Over forty-five years, he had learned that the line between an earnest compliment and creepy was thin enough to disappear entirely. He closed the app. Maybe he shouldn’t send it.
From the hallway came his mother’s cough, then the slow drag of her slipper toward the bathroom. John slid the phone under his blanket, muting the glow. He didn’t need her catching him up late again, “on that damn phone.” As much as he hated her, he loved her. She kept him out of trouble. Her hovering was the only thing that had.
In his teens and twenties, he’d lived on his own and couldn’t stay out of jail. Every choice seemed to tilt the wrong way. His mother liked to say, “If it was a fifty-fifty shot, you’d get it fucking wrong.” When she got sick and he moved into the spare bedroom, her routines took over where the courts had left off. He stayed sober. He kept a job. He stayed out.
Now every day followed the same order: wake up, shower and shave, dress himself and her, medication, breakfast, a part-time shift, lunch, AA, medication, bathing her, TV. He could tell you what they watched on any given night. Tuesday meant NOVA. Tonight’s episode was about wild tigers once kept in captivity, now living in a sanctuary.
He could still hear the narrator: Used to his nine-foot-by-nine-foot cage, Sasha continues to pace in a small circle despite the acres now available to him. It may take years for him to adjust to taking up more space.
The toilet flushed. His mother shuffled back to her room. John looked around his bedroom. About the same size, he thought. Did it matter whether the tiger ever crossed the acreage? Eventually there was always another fence.
He pulled the phone back out.
He had tried everything—time limits, deleting the app, deactivating his account. He always came back. Through the small screen, he could slip into other lives.
For a few seconds he was in Greece, eating dinner with Lana. Then a beach, a blonde in a bikini smiling at the sun. A poll appeared: Red or pink this week? He tapped red. She wanted his opinion on her manicure this week.
A video followed—five women dancing in a bar. The tag said Toledo. Two hundred and fifty miles away. Close enough to imagine, far enough to stay put. He watched it again, then once more, studying their faces.
They wanted to be seen. They posted the selfies, the dinners, the locations. They could block anyone. They could make their accounts private. They didn’t. He followed, liked, moved on.
It felt like being a kid at the zoo. In real life, you never stumbled into elephants or tigers. You followed the paths, stopped at the glass, read the plaques. Largest land animal. Found across three continents. Species that would never share a habitat, gathered into one enclosure.
The women had bios instead of plaques. This one swam. This one was a Scorpio. This one lived in LA. This one was a boy mom. The algorithm guided him from one window to the next. He tapped the little red heart.
Then his finger stopped.
He zoomed in. A photo from his favorite account—a girl he’d gone to high school with. He hadn’t seen her in person in decades.
Just fingertips. Hers pressed lightly to someone else’s. Pad to pad, forming a small peak.
John set the phone down and pressed his own index fingers together, harder than he meant to, trying to imagine the pressure. He had never been touched like that. Not even close.
The caption read: Soft launch 😉
His heart thudded. He scrolled the comments, then closed the app and called his sponsor without checking the time.
“Hello?” A pause. “John?”
“I—I just needed to talk.”
Silence, then a sigh. “Okay. Talk.”
“I’m lonely.”
Another pause. “You want to drink?”
“No. I just—want something. I don’t know. I’m sorry I called. I know I’m not supposed to—It's not an emergency."
“Come to the nooner tomorrow,” his sponsor said. “We’ll get lunch.”
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll see you.”
“Love you, man. Don’t be stupid.”
“Love you too.”
John hung up and wiped his eyes. This was stupid.
From down the hall, his mother barked, “Who are you talking to? It’s three in the fucking morning!”
His stomach tightened, the same old childhood fear. “Work,” he called back. “Covering a shift.”
He reopened Instagram.
The draft message was still there.
You have the best smile.
He deleted it and typed instead:
I want a picture of your tits.
If he was going to be a creep regardless, he might as well be honest. He’d wanted to see them since Geometry. Just a soft launch. Not hard. Not yet.
He expected to be blocked.
The reply came immediately.
$100. Venmo or PayPal.
Maybe money was the key. Even the zoo let you pet the giraffes for a little extra.
Afterward, he slept soundly.
In the morning, he would be good again. He would take care of his mom, go to work, go to the meeting, eat lunch, and return to his room.
