• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 348 0

pulled this off? But then I realized just how little Dexy and I see of each other. I took all her phone calls, e-mails, and text messages as truth—even the most outlandish bits—because how could anyone actually concoct such a vivid imaginary world? I rarely saw her in person, and when I did, it was usually for a few hours at a time, during which it would be possible for a woman with Dexy’s flair for dramaturgy to convincingly play an alternate version of herself. Hell, I’m not even all that good of an actress, and I was able to pull off my Jenn-with-Two-N’s ruse with Dude.

But it wasn’t just Dexy. She was just the most glaring example of a deeper problem: I was totally disconnected from all of the most important people in my life. And it’s not just about callousness or a lack of empathy that you’ve been warning me about. It’s simpler, and sadder: I just don’t pay enough attention. Even when I’m with my friends and family, I don’t listen hard enough for the words that aren’t being said. I’m elsewhere.

I realized that I could make a big deal out of this, or not.

I chose not to.

I just turned up the next song, one about not wanting to talk about love, not even sweet, true love, but especially not about broken romances, or plans and promises made that will never be realized. All she wants to do is go where the action is. All she wants to do is live.

“I love the nightlife,” Dexy warbled. “I got to boogie on the disco round, oh yea!”

Since Dexy has to spend every day dressed like me, she’s decided that I need to dress like her, at least for tonight. Thus, the polyester bamboo-print kimono dress and suede to-the-knee boots.

Dexy says she is just about done styling my hair—sectioning off my locks, wrapping them around huge, old-fashioned pink foam rollers, and then doubling the size of the hole in the ozone by shellacking the whole bumpy helmet with highly chlorofluorocarbonated hair spray, transforming it from a sad bun into a preposterously complicated seventies half-up, half-down bouffant-flip show ponytail that took about an hour from start to completion, which is how I’ve had time to write all this down.

But now she’s done. I’m all dressed up to go out and have the type of New York City night that I can only enjoy if you’re not there with me.

sixty-three

I should have left the Care. Okay? party with Dexy, but she had to make curfew (“Curfew, J! I have a two A.M. curfew! I haven’t had a two A.M. curfew since I was fifteen!”) and left me behind, and I stayed and did shots with a drag queen named after the colors of the rainbow. When I’m with Dexy, I don’t get drunk because someone has to be incontrol. But what is control, anyway? None of us has any control overanything, it’s all the illusion of control. An annoying celebutard(redundant) sang “Control” by Janet Jackson tonight and sucked hard. She wasn’t good enough to be good and wasn’t bad enough to be good, either. The worst kind of karaoke singer. Dexy is so bad that she’s awesome—which is why I brought her with me even though her behavior scares me. Her stage-humping version of “Like a Virgin” (like being the operative word there) brought down the house, as I knew it would. Then she went back to Bosom Buddieshotel, and I got drunk. Dexy is socrazy that she makes me feel so together even when I am drooling drunk, which I am. Just in case you thought I was trying to hide it from you. I AM DRUNK. I actually drooled on this page, which is why the ink is smeary, though drool isn’t really accurate, it’s more like the spits, the nasty spits before you—

I just threw up.

I’m not going to lie to you. You want all the truth, right? I just threw up because I drank too many shots of tequila after Dexy left because I didn’t have to be the responsible one anymore, plus you weren’t there, either, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about getting drunk in front of you. I want the freedom to drink too much and throw up. I want the freedom to be a hypocrite. I want the freedom to live in a city you hate and get a stupid job you think is beneath me. I want the freedom to make mistakes