Postcard 8

I’m not having sex again until I lose twenty pounds or have the body of Emily Ratajkowski. (The former is doable; the latter, impossible). These are B’s thoughts as she watches the Video of the Summer while mindlessly shoveling baby carrots into her mouth. This thought, or some iteration of it, is humming all over Manhattan, and even into the surrounding boroughs, despite their resounding preference for “thick” chicks. Women in button-up blouses, collars resolute,  some draped in pearls, all stare, mouth agape, while the most perfect breasts, torso, ass, legs and pussy every created wriggle blithely on their computer screens. Happy hour is immediately cancelled so determined power women can squeeze in another pilates session. Every man wants to be with her, so every woman must become her: the body that launched a thousand “I look like shit” s.

B does not do pilates because she is not a Real Housewife of Who Gives A Fuck. But she has started walking home from work: 51^st and Madison, all the way to Brooklyn. It keeps her from eating too much, exhausts her body so she can forego the sleeping pills and, above all, offers space: air-gulping, limb-swinging space- the only luxury in New York that is free.  

Most people have a reason to come home. Children to feed, dogs to walk, hobbies, errands. B is no longer one of these people. Nothing waits for her across the bridge; her time is entirely her own.

Sometimes she calls ex-boyfriends: the MBA who moved to Denver, the college basketball player, wreathed in tattoos. Sometimes she calls her ex-husband turned best friend, who might have tried harder if she looked like Emily Ratajkowski. Then again, probably not. But mostly, she gets lost, in Drake, Kanye and Kendrick, and wonders how she ever got anywhere without them to dampen the echoes of her own thoughts.

  

 “A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. That beak which grips her, she becomes.” 

B’s Brooklyn pilgrimage is a parade of monsters. They hover above her, slither at her feet, and nestle in her shadow.  It’s better that way. She would rather walk them home, and kiss them goodnight, than wake to talons groping her in the dark.  Not all will leave her at the door, however; some live within her still.

 At twenty-seven years old, she has finally learned to be alone with her monsters. A life completely built around being in love with love, she has just now come to accept that she may live the rest of her life without it. Not everyone is meant to have someone.

The Williamsburg Bridge is a welcome sight.

Wish You Were Here, 

B