Do manic girls dream of pixies?
Claudia Elena Rodriguez
Thursday
I’m on a thirty minute hold. I’m on a repetitive loop of elevator music and proclamations of apologies. We’re sorry to keep you waiting. Me too. I’m a fly trapped in ember. I’m awake during surgery. I’m watching as things happen to me. Or someone like me. It’s never me. It’s always someone else.
I hit a new rock bottom again last night. This time it was finishing a Stoli bottle with lemon La Croix while re-watching Girls season five. Lena Dunham would probably take it as a compliment, I hope. I think I mean it as one, but I can’t be sure.
I went to the Glendale Library on Central today. It was Friday afternoon, 4 PM. If I still had my job, I wouldn’t be here. There were more people than I expected. They, like me, felt trapped in amber. Trapped in the Glendale library, where they’ll stay forever in my mind like The Shining ghosts.
There was a man there, a California white man, over 50, with salt and pepper in his hair. He was playing a game of Chess against the computer, a prehistoric Dell desktop from 2012. He was focused, with nowhere else to go but a Knight to D5.
Friday
Dinner with Nico at Din Tai Fung. “I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” he said. I could hear the familiar exasperated care in his voice as the soup dumplings cooled. The steam fogged up his glasses. He couldn’t see me clearly.
“If I’m not going to be hard on myself now, when exactly am I supposed to start?” I responded.
No answer. Instead, he reached for a dumpling. I reached for the sake.
Nico walks me home. I don’t go inside. I want to smoke a cigarette. Nico doesn’t wait for me. He heads home. I think he’s growing tired of me, which breaks my heart because he is my closest friend. I seem to have a pattern of growing close to men who fetishize my insanity until it becomes too honest for them, too real. A manic pixie dream girl without the dreams of floating pixie dust. Just the mania.
I don’t blame him. I’m tired of me, too. But I can’t leave. So instead I just finish my cigarette.
Saturday
This morning I was masturbating and came so hard I made myself squirt. It was the first time I’d ever done it. I was so proud of myself for becoming such an independent woman.
I was thinking about cheating on my ex-boyfriend with another ex-boyfriend. I went over to his house while my boyfriend of the moment was with his Brazilian family in the Everglades. We drank peanut butter stouts on the porch in my futile attempt at fidelity. Then, he asked to bring me inside and show me something.
He led me down the hall to the second bedroom. The entire time we’d been dating, the room was filled with unpacked boxes from his divorce. It’d been like that for months. He was too depressed to do anything about it. I tried to help him as best as an eighteen year old girl could help a thirty three year old man she thinks she loves. Usually with my body. Usually that was enough for him. It was never enough for me.
It was empty. I was so proud I could cry. Before I could open my mouth for air, he laid out the pitch he had rehearsed, the real reason he brought me here. I wouldn’t need to pay rent, I could move in if I wanted to or have a set of keys and use the office and spend the night as I pleased, or I could move in and he could take care of me, of us. I didn’t have to be a hostess anymore. I could just write all day and be his all night.
I don’t remember what I said to him. By then, even at eighteen, I’d mastered the ancient art of the non-answer. I don’t remember what he said to lure me into his bedroom. All it could’ve taken was a joint. I remember looking through the haze of the smoke-filled room and seeing his handgun was still on the nightstand next to his bed. I should have been so disappointed. One of the main reasons we broke up was because of that gun. I didn’t want him to have it next to the bed while I slept. He would insist it was for protection but I knew he was full of shit. He was depressed and he didn’t want to feel safe. He wanted to feel as dangerously close to the edge as he could get.
He kissed me and asked me to go down on me, another bargaining chip. I said yes, took a sip of warm peanut butter stout and put it down next to the handgun. I stared at it. I was distracted, thinking about all the times we had fought over that gun. I didn’t want to sleep next to it. I was scared he’d go insane and shoot me. Especially once I started sleeping with you, and especially the night he found out. I slept on the couch that night starting at the bedroom door, wondering if I’d be a victim of a crime of passion. I asked him if it was loaded. He said yeah. I asked him to hold it to my head. He said sure.
I came then but it was better this morning.
My intentions were never pure. It’s always a means to an end. But what end? Not sure. I always get what I deserve.
Claudia Elena Rodriguez is a writer and filmmaker from Miami. She sold her soul to the devil to live in Los Angeles and produce reality television shows. She runs a trashy blog called Wild Things.