disappearing debutantes    /     Meg Pokrass & Aimee Parkison

  

 

It’s hard, and a bit tiring, having an all-night expedition taking place in one’s vagina.

 

What did I know? I was just a girl in trouble.

 

That year I’d become pretty, and a few boys at school called me “A la Mode,” as if I brought my own vanilla ice cream with me, as if I were an act worth paying for.

 

At the park where your ex meets you, he confesses he and the new girl, an underwear model, are finally having sex and doing it doggie style. You remain calm, detached, wondering, “And what’s that like, David?”

 

My husband can see everything I lost inside of me. He’s down there like a miner, searching for parts that he’s sure are missing. The reason my vagina glows, the reason I’m luminous, is I swallowed mercury as a child.

 

His kisses last long enough for you to realize foreplay can be returned like the six-piece screwdriver set he bought you for your birthday. It can be reversed and backfire like a rubber band stretched too tight.

 

I shuddered, wondering if more suffering could make everything right.

 

His teeth looked like condemned buildings in his beautiful mouth.

 

After that much pain, terror is bliss.

 

“It’s like buying a bag of 99-cent tacos and realizing you paid too much."

 

And sometimes we would talk about how different he and I were. How he loved me like the coffee at the bottom of the pot. “Bitter but strong.”

 

You’re sweating beer when you realize what’s about to happen is as private as your power bill and as romantic as scarfing down food on rotting picnic tables near public restrooms.

 

Becoming another woman is not the same as stealing her identity. It starts by seeing yourself in her until the two of you become one. It’s like love: you feel yourself disappearing into her if you’re doing it right.

 

My apartment is decorated with prints by Patrick Nagel. If you know me well enough, you get the irony. If you don’t know me well enough, get the hell out of my apartment.

 

Why bother with jewelry when you can wear snakes?

 

I look at you and wonder when was it, exactly, you stopped breathing?

 

Would anybody ever love me the way the letter-writer loved the dead girl?

 

“The same old feelings,” you say, “they keep coming back to bite our asses.”

 

There are many ways to change your face without surgery.

 

My dark-haired lover explained marriage was like an animal. “There’s a smell when it dies.”

 

When our house burnt down with Mom inside it, I grew up learning to trust ruin. 

 

That was our way, always dancing with death.

 

If you are reading this, it’s never too late to love me.

 

 

WHERE TO BUY THIS BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Debutantes-Meg-Pokrass/dp/1944853871?fbclid=IwAR1XOTPsN53xZfMICn3u_GqQwZjA1JVoUMQ0vm7awPuE5KLXmcmAct3hvAc