Alone with Other People

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Alone with Other People Page 5

by Gabby Bess


  “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met,” Jeanne said.

  “Hi.” Kenneth smiled again and then pointed to his nametag, “I’m Kenneth.”

  Jeanne smiled back and pointed to the area where her nametag was supposed to be. “I don’t have my nametag on but I’m Jeanne.”

  Kenneth and Jeanne had learned of each other’s existence. As when two strangers meet, their smiles were polite and their tone of voice mimicked an abstract idea of who they wanted to present themselves to be. And as when two strangers meet, Jeanne had never seen Ken- neth again after that encounter. Most interactions with people follow a similar social script: An initial meeting, with not enough time to be able to discern whether or not it was nice to have met, reciting the syllables that have been arbitrarily assigned to their identity and the two parties continue on existing until otherwise instructed.

  Jeanne wondered about Kenneth’s age. He was smallish, with round wire rimmed glasses. His hair was gray but his smile and facial com- position appeared childlike. Jeanne wanted him to change her life.

  She wanted him to teach her to be good and kind. She imagined her- self sitting next to him on the tiled floor as they patiently stacked shampoos together. She would learn about his mother. His mother would learn about her. She would be invited over for dinner where she would laugh and be good and kind. But, as she imagined this sequence of events, Jeanne was already waving goodbye to Kenneth, starting to walk away.

  “Hey, wait,” Kenneth said to the back of Jeanne’s head. Jeanne turned toward him.

  “Hmm, wait, don’t tell me,” Kenneth said, pretending to think really hard. “Jeanne. Your name is Jeanne.” Kenneth started to laugh and Jeanne smiled. Jeanne went on her 15-minute break and Kenneth continued to exist somewhere else.

  In the break room Jeanne strategically chose the most isolated table in the far corner. She sat at the table alone, eating a Clif Bar until Ani- ta walked in. Anita was small in both stature and weight but she was very loud. Jeanne tried to avoid interacting with Anita but she was friendly when it was required of her. Out of all the empty tables in the break room, Anita sat directly next to Jeanne. Anita made a big deal of settling herself into her chair and looked around the room wildly. Her big eyes looked like they were trying to launch themselves out of her small body.

  Anita’s eyes tracked the room and Jeanne’s followed. In the corner opposite of Jeanne and Anita sat Zack and Dante. Besides that and the ambient noise of the vending machines, the breakroom was oth- erwise vacant. The four of them sat, two to a corner, like a school of wayward twenty-something-year-old orphans, wearing matching uniforms and weary facial expressions.

  Dante and Zack were in the middle of a conversation about “Dante’s girl” who, to Dante’s surprise, was pregnant. Before Anita had walked in Jeanne had been listening to Dante repeatedly say, “I need to get a better fucking job, man.” At this Zack would nod sympathetically and launch into a speech about how he was joining the Reserve.

  At the first hint of a silence, Anita gestured at Zack on the opposite end of the room and said, “Where were you during 9/11?”

  Zack paused and everyone in the breakroom watched his facial expression change as he realized that the question was directed toward him. “I was in the 5th grade,” he said through a mouthful of chips.

  “Oh so you were in school,” Anita said. “Where were you during 911?” Anita said to Jeanne with her eyes hanging dangerously outside of her head.

  “I wasn’t in school because I was asleep. I lived in Hawaii. The time difference...” Jeanne spoke in a deliberate mumble while trying to maintain eye contact with her Clif bar.

  “I was on my way to the airport,” Anita announced proudly. In the same breath, Anita asked, “Where we’re you during the earthquake?”

  “I was in my room,” Jeanne said. She remembered the earthquake. It was so small that she mistook it for construction work. In the days following the earthquake the first question anyone asked anyone was, “Did you feel the earthquake?” with their eyes big and danger- ous like Anita’s.

  “Where were you Zack?” “When?”

  “During the earthquake.” “Which earthquake?” “The earthquake.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I was in the mall. I was in forever 21,” Anita said confidently.

  “Okay, I have a question,” Zack said. “What is your biggest fear, if you had to pick a fear?”

  “Launched into the sun,” Dante interjected loudly and immediately. “Why would you be afraid of that? That’s impossible,” Jeanne said.

  “Exactly. That’s why I would pick that fear. Because it would never happen.”

  “No, I meant like, what do you actually fear,” Zack said. “Like, out of all the things you fear what would you say that you fear the most?”

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Dante said, “I don’t know. Money. Not being ready to have a kid. Working here for the rest of my life.”

  “Balloons,” Anita answered. “When I was in girl scouts, I was prob- ably 6 or 7 years old, we had a party for being the troupe in our area that sold the most cookies. At the party there were balloons every- where and I grabbed one. Just as my hands touched the balloon it popped right in front of my face.”

  Zack laughed. “Can you believe that she’s afraid of balloons?” he said, turning toward Jeanne.

  “Yeah, she just said it, why wouldn’t I believe that?” “Okay, what do you fear the most?”

  “Feeling alone and alienated for my entire life.”

  After work Jeanne drove around to no place in particular while listening to the radio. The radio DJ started talking about a person that took a picture of a man who was dying on the side of the road and then tweeted the picture instead of helping him. The radio DJ said, “There are more important things than twitter” but Jeanne felt doubtful.

  Jeanne continued driving while the sun stood brightly, obscuring her vision. Jeanne made a motion to pull down the sun-visor but she had broken it off of her car months ago. Feeling defeated and lonely Jeanne stopped driving and pulled over on the side of the road. She opened up Twitter on her iPhone and tweeted several tweets in suc- cession. She felt depressed. Jeanne didn’t know what to do besides tweet when she felt depressed.

  “I most closely resemble a cloud in the shape of a depressed hu- man being”

  “I want ‘insignificant but noticeable’ on my gravestone maybe”

  “Everything feels extremely terrible and dramatic and normal”

  “I feel like I could describe this feeling inside of me for ~20 - ~300 more tweets depending on some factors”

  “I feel like I invent horrible situations and emotions in my head so convincingly that I give up on everything before anything even happens”

  “Feeling depressed because 6 people unfollowed me and also be- cause I am alive and I am me”

  Jeanne sensed herself becoming more depressed after tweeting. She felt lonely after all of her thoughts had left her and were now staring at her on the Internet. Jeanne sometimes felt fearful of posting her thoughts on twitter. After posting a thought to twitter she sometimes thought, “No, I should have saved that.” Jeanne felt unsure as to why she would need to save her thoughts. Maybe she needed to somehow save up all of her thoughts, like carnival tickets, and she would be able to one day trade them in for one big, good thing. She could pos- sibly trade them in for a giant stuffed animal with a disproportion- ately large head that is not a trademarked character but very similar looking to a trademarked character.

  She thought that if she ever wrote a novel it would be made up of every thought that she has ever had. She would title it “One Big Good Thing” even if it were small and bad.

  Jeanne continued to drive until she reached a small state park. She parked her car and walked over to a bench parallel to the lake. Jeanne stared out at the lake and thought about carving all of her ex-lovers names onto the large stones that sat in the grass and spending her entire life waiting for them to
be eroded by the wind and the rain.

  In the park there were also children dropping medium sized rocks with both hands into a stream. They fell heavily into the water and sunk down with the sound of small giggles. The children shouted something to their mothers. Something like, “Look mom we’re skip- ping rocks!” The mothers didn’t look but they shouted something back like, “Wow good job honey!” The “wow” was drawn out long and slow, more pronounced than any of the other words in the sentence. The children seemed pleased with this response and continued to laugh and throw stones into the river.

  A woman sat on a bench across from Jeanne for an extended period of time, folding leaves in her hands like a nervous tick. The woman looked up from her hands and laughed. She looked back down at her hands and looked sad again.

  Jeanne felt the urge to ask the woman why she looked down at the leaves and felt sad. Maybe, Jeanne speculated, she felt sad for the leaves that were in pieces all around her. Maybe the woman felt sad for herself because she was sitting on a bench alone and feeling ner- vous. Perhaps the woman felt guilty because she was laughing while killing something. Jeanne watched the woman as she looked up at middle space and alternated her expression from smiling to sad.

  Jeanne thought about wanting to kiss the woman’s face when it looked sad. Jeanne wanted to catch her mouth right in the in-be- tween before she smiled. Jeanne wanted the kiss to be sad and slow but hopeful as children laughed and threw rocks with her ex-lovers names into the river.

  Jeanne sat on the bench in the park and did nothing. She could feel her heart beating inside of her left shoulder blade. Jeanne wanted to throw rocks into the river like a child and kiss. Jeanne thought, “Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss,” but she continued to sit. She didn’t throw rocks. She didn’t kiss anyone.

  A THING TO DO IS SIT AROUND AND THINK ABOUT THINGS

  I perceive myself to be 15% furniture at this point. One day I will turn into a nightstand

  or something non-essential like that.

  I just sat in this spot,

  I picked a good spot for sitting on the floor, watching The Learning Channel

  and this show was on—

  it was about an obese man who used a Wetvac to perform liposuction on himself.

  I spent the day thinking about gentle foods, like honey dew.

  I WILL WRITE A NATURE POEM ABOUT FEELING GRATEFUL FOR MY MOUTH

  I will write a nature poem

  about eating corn on the cob and half an oxy and feeling grateful for my mouth

  next to a river

  next to a heron

  next to a parking lot

  It will be about the stagnant canal filled with maggots There are no fish

  Only maggots

  They are still alive like we are alive

  Wriggling on top of each other

  like tiny desperate humans

  pushing out the empty space

  to feel close to something.

  These maggots are becoming something else on their way to death

  And it will be about the lone heron on a rock watching over the other rocks

  It will be about fishing with a 20-foot length of string

  and the catch and release of an empty line

  This is the laughter:

  I am not in control of anything

  It might be important to feel close to this

  To be able to imagine the construct of a building

  without being able to look at one for reference

  It might be important to stand next to a river

  and then drive home to write a poem about it on your MacBook

  It might be important to feel drawn to escape but pulled back into comfort.

  At the first mosquito bite I’m thinking, FUCK NATURE

  I am standing next to a Korean couple.

  They are watching the same thing that I am watching (The River

  The Lone Heron

  The Maggots

  An Immigrant Family Fishing With A Length of String) but perceiving it differently

  and in a different language

  let’s ruin shit

  IF INSTEAD OF ASKING ME TO INSTALL UPDATES AND RESTART MY COMPUTER I WAS ASKED IF I WANTED TO DIE INSTANTANEOUSLY I WOULD PROBABLY CLICK YES INSTEAD OF NOT NOW

  When I am sad, I masturbate.

  It feels pathetic for about 10 minutes and OK for about 30 seconds.

  Not because of the sensations

  but because my hand is in my pants and I am pretending

  it’s your hand (even though you are right-handed and I use my left) and you see, still confusing your hand for mine is an embarrassing thing to do,

  even in the dark

  Then there is the guilt of wanting you

  but only reaching an orgasm when I watch the tiny, naked people on my laptop

  Then there is just the volume. The awful volume of forced guttural noises

  and happiness even on the lowest volume setting

  But I need the noises to make it feel real, or perhaps, transparently fake

  I feel like I’m developing (if not already developed) a crippling porn addiction.

  No, no it all feels good, I now remember (having done it just before editing this poem)

  I enjoy the whole orchestra of it: The guilt of missing you

  with the nice feeling between my legs with the orb of light and high- pitched noises emanating from my laptop

  This is how I have sex now. I feel very advanced. In the future, machines will replace humans that I’ve loved and most other things. I have preemptively prepared to live without you–for when you can no longer accidentally return to my bed.

  In the two years that you’ve been gone I have become an extremely advanced human/MacBook/xvideos.com hybrid. This will prove to be an advantage, in the future.

  GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY: WEBMD FIBROMYALGIA, WEBMD LUMPS IN THROAT, WEBMD THROAT CANCER, HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE THROAT CANCER, LIKE, FOR REAL?

  It was 7:40 am when I sat down to write this poem. The time is now 7:41 and I have two lines written regarding the belligerent nature of time. Four

  lines in and I still have not given consent to all this forward motion. Everything can kill me.

  The abstract concept of time can kill me. Cancer will definitely kill me.

  I have a non-specific fear of cancer.

  I think, for the average person,

  the odds are in favor of not getting cancer.

  I am an average person. I will be

  okay. And if it is true that laptops somehow increase your chances of getting cancer, I don’t care.

  I will just increase my non-specific fear of cancer appropriately.

  I am convinced that I suffer

  from a mild form of what I have named heart appendicitis, causing my heart to feel vaguely discomforted for the entire length of the average lifespan of an American woman.

  In old age, when my heart explodes, I will smile

  and say, “Finally.” Whatever

  is going to kill me will kill me

  and it will be mine.

  I have never died, an image

  of teeth biting

  into something cold and softr />
  is something that can make me feel

  uncomfortable, but what I lack

  in experience I can make up for

  in superficiality. And of course,

  the downfall of the modern woman

  will be loving parents.

  it’s your party and i’ll cry and i’ll ruin it

  TRAVEL SOUTH

  The window to my bedroom

  muffles louder things

  that are happening just on the other side.

  Though I know that we are just animal machines that will one day leave

  a final task uncompleted,

  I want to gather a crowd of strangers to smash and break objects with their hands.

  Through this experience the strangers will create a shared memory and when everything is broken they can turn to one another and say, “Remember when things were whole?”

  After I incite the crowd of strangers into smashing and breaking objects with their hands I want to encourage them to just hug and feel calm.

  I want to feel soft next to a body that feels soft A body that breathes like I breathe:

  In and out

  I remember when we used to lay on your bed, stacked lovers,

  and breathe into each other’s mouths as practice

  for when we would inevitably have to live and survive underwater together

  When I get like this,

  bathed in the nostalgia of events obfuscated by time, I could probably walk around my neighborhood

  and remember small things about you for

  upwards of 6 hours

  Now, I appreciate the emotions

  that you have toward me

  (Of goodwill and continued interest in how I spend my days) but I wish it could be love

  I want to make it love: A concrete feeling

  of laying side by side,

  not touching

  but knowing that you are there as I am alone, as we are

  being pushed apart

 

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