Jacqueline’s gone to sort out her bleeding. I stay in bed and text my last girlfriend that I’m over her. I don’t miss you, I say, I never missed you. Even when we used to get high and steal Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies from the bodega and taste the chocolate in each other’s mouths. That means nothing to me. Even when I met your mom and she made us loco moto and I choked on the overcooked rice and she slapped my back and told me I’d live to be an old man. I smoked and got high too much to ever think I’d make it that old. My ex knew that. Maybe why she ghosted me. Then changed her number. But I got the new one from Sam, and I’m ready to fuck with my ex. Reverse psychology, a teacher used to say. He was fired for stealing student phones, and I don’t remember much else about his lectures. But he was a good guy, funny, quoted SNL. So I text my ex an ancient Dana Carvey quote, or part of it. It barely matters. She doesn’t know who Dana Carvey is anyway. Nor does Jacqueline. Not a fan of comedy or any show I’ve made her watch. She’s in school to become a nurse. A lab tech, if she fails. But she doesn’t do a lot for me. She gets me off, but she’s mechanical. Her eyes glaze over like she doesn’t want to be there. And I just don’t love this girl. I text my ex this. Tell her my heart has an opening. She’ll love that. She has an MFA in poetry. She writes her little sonnets and haikus into her Notes app and brags to her friends about magazines publishing her bad ex-boyfriend poems. Not about you, she once told me, smiling. I didn’t care. I was a bad boyfriend. I slept around, though she never found out. And I spent my Pell Grants on weed, cocaine on the weekends. All through college, I existed on ramen and store-boiled eggs and late-night bags of kettle corn. My ex and I didn’t eat together very often. I ask her now if she’s hungry, wants to get some dinner. I have nothing going on. Nothing important. I have some weed, a couple Oxy. Anything else she wants. But she doesn’t respond. So I text that I was joking. To forget it. Just delete my string of messages. I have a new girl now, anyway. But if she wants to hang later, I’m free. I hear a flush and switch off my phone and slip it beneath my pillow. If Jacqueline’s clean, maybe we’ll do it again. Maybe she’ll just sort me out. Or if she wants to smoke another spliff, we’ll do that. Order some Mexican. Some iced coffee. Some Pinkberry. Watch Love Island and The Bachelor. Talk a little. Think about what we’ll do for the rest of the night.
Christopher Linforth is the author of The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022).
Image: holistictrick.com
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