It Is Summer

It is summer. You and your friend Adrian are high on mushrooms on the shore of the lake. You don’t remember who drove you here or when they are coming to pick you up. It has been three years since you last did mushrooms, with your ex who broke your heart. You like how the mushrooms make objects look more significant. They make grass look shimmery and edible. They make the goose poop on the dock look devastating, tragic. They make the diving board look insurmountably long, slick with lake scum and fundamentally unconquerable.

You are a college graduate with nothing. You have things, as in items, and you know people, as in flesh, but you have nothing as in no thing as in nothing.

It is summer, the same day, later. The mushrooms are wearing off. You are eating a plate of dairy free mozzarella sticks with Adrian, who is telling you about his friend’s neu metal band, but what are the sticks made of if they are not cheese? Why are they chalky? What gross misconstruction of the spirit of cheese is this? What gross misconstruction of friendship? You do not care about Adrian’s friend’s neu metal band. Adrian does not care about you. You are here anyway, hanging out, because anyone can be made to be cared about. Even if it takes forever and you have to eat a lot of chalk.

Adrian has wine with the chalky mozzarella sticks. You drive him home, get Little Caesar’s and an eighth, and hotbox the everloving hell out of the car. You have been high all day. Coming down means falling. Falling means getting hurt.

It is summer. You and your friend Adrian are at a party. You are both there together trying to meet people who aren’t each other. You are wearing a button-up with stripes. Adrian is wearing a similar button-up with stripes. He says he doesn’t have a type. You say you don’t have a type either. Adrian spots a guy with a beard. You spot a beautiful girl who looks like what you might have looked like if nothing ever went wrong. Beard and Beautiful do not spot either of you back. You drink Trulys until your head hurts, and then you smoke two cigarettes extremely quickly and throw up in the backyard. Adrian sobers up and drives you both home. Parties are never like TV and they always seem to leave you with incrementally more hatred in your heart than you had when you arrived.

You don’t “feel good” in any of your clothes. Are you actually supposed to?

It is summer, the same month. Buying groceries is painful. Scrolling on Instagram is painful. Taking a shower is painful. Everything that you are expected to do every day hurts in a deeply frustrating and unshakeable way. Adrian has a new boyfriend who actually likes him. They might break up soon, but they will have accomplished an arc together, however short. You have accomplished no arcs recently. You could not identify a beginning or a middle or an end if you tried. Isn’t that totally abysmal, considering how much you love a good story? Isn’t that scary, how it all scoots away from you as you reach for it?

You are a college graduate with a whole lot of things. No thing, sure, but incorporeally, your shit is everywhere. Shouldn’t you have given this all away years ago?

It is summer. You haven’t seen Adrian in forever, so you meet at the cafe and sip on burnt-tasting drip while he tells you all about the neu metal boyfriend, who is the neu metal friend from before, which you would have figured out long ago if you had been paying more attention. You’re happy for him in a very shallow, temperate way, but it is of more concern to you that you’ve just paid another four dollars for something that didn’t make you happy or full, but just tasted bitter and made you empty, empty, empty.

You are trying so hard to reach for things. It feels like poltergeists are pushing it all out of your reach, onto the floor, just out of sight.

It is summer, later, near the end. Adrian doesn't come around anymore. It made sense to hang around each other when you were the same type of lonely, but you are no longer the same type of lonely. One day you looked at him and realized that he would never feel easy. Could something please just be easy?

You are a college graduate with nothing (for now).

Nothing (bitter) as in no thing (empty) as in nothing.