I Blew Out the Birthday Candles

Art by Ana Prundaru

by Madison Ellingsworth

 

I wear a baggy shirt and baggy jeans to Sophie’s housewarming party because that’s what I saw all the attractive Korean and Japanese tourists wearing while working at Gilbert’s Chowder House this week, and now that I’m off the clock I can wear whatever clothes I want, which really means I can look bad in different clothes from the black leggings and black v-neck top I wore working at Gilbert’s, which now stink like scallops.

Everybody at the party is wearing trendy corset tops and Adam Sandler shorts and tennis skirts, smoking herbal cigarettes out the bay window in Sophie’s living room, and hanging out with a Mr. Potato Head, who is sitting on the window ledge with his rear opened up, getting used like an ashtray, and I overhear one of the herbal smokers talking about a trip she’s taking in a month, so I ask her where she’s going.

She says Prague like Frog but rolls the R around in her mouth, and I laugh and say That’s Cool, and she asks me Why’d You Laugh? and I don’t tell her it’s because I think people who roll Rs are pretentious, and that people who travel are even worse, I just say I Love Prague, like a black-text, red-heart, white-t-shirt, and the girl frowns because she thinks I’m slow, all because I promised Christie I wouldn’t be an asshole at another one of her coworker’s parties.

I tell the girl I’m Gonna Go Get A Drink but really I go find Sophie’s bedroom because I want to look through her tchotchkes, and when I pass by her hallway mirror I give myself a once-over, and am devastated but not surprised to find I look nothing like the attractive Korean and Japanese tourists who eat at Gilbert’s Chowder House.

An hour ago, in our apartment, Christie told me I’m a Malicious Asshole who wants to get her Kicked Out or Beat Up or Canceled for having brought me, and she didn’t understand me when I said I Just Get So Bored, because I couldn’t add that drinking straight liquor and cervezas in her coworkers identical living rooms—all with their yellowish/grayish/brownish couches and their flat screen televisions and their framed watercolor paintings of plants and mushrooms—is so dull that I think it’d be better for everybody, not just for me, if I gave everybody something to talk about, even if that thing has to be that I told Christie’s coworker I Think Xe/Xem Pronouns Are Silly and asked them Is It Really So Bad If I Like Annie Hall?

In Sophie’s bedroom there are floating shelves lining the walls, and a king-sized four-poster bed sits in the middle of the room, with a bluebird duvet so fluffed and charming, just begging me to lie on it, but first I look through all of Sophie’s treasures shelf by shelf until I discover one I really like: a ceramic plover with precariously balanced wires for feet, which I take a selfie with, just to remember.

I don’t even know if the tourists who ate at Gilbert’s were Korean or Japanese, but they opened parasols as they walked under the yawning halves of the clam sculpture that hangs outside the Chowder House, and there wasn’t a hint of body fat on any of them, since they probably eat chowder once a year at most, instead of twice a day like me, and maybe I just want to be offensive in my mind because I look like six hundred pounds of American mistakes wearing the clothes they looked so attractive in, and I stand alone even at Sophie’s party, since everyone else is dressed like sexy Adam Sandler.

As I drag Sophie’s bluebird duvet back I smooth its cotton sweetness and pull my baggy jeans down—because I can never sleep with jeans on—and feel like Winnie the Pooh wearing just my big shirt, granny panties, and thick socks, curled up in fetal position in Sophie’s bed, with her ceramic plover placed on the pillow beside my head, and its black glass eyes beading into mine.

It would be great if I could actually fall asleep, but I’m too wired hearing the Christie who lives in my head say that I’ll have to go back to therapy in order to convince real life Christie not to move out, since my Gilbert’s tip money sure won’t cover the rent, once somebody (probably Miss Prague-Bound) peeks in and sees me relaxing, relieved thinking that I had left early, but wanting to double check.

Maybe the Christie who lives in my head is right, but I don’t think any of us really want me back in therapy, not even the smokers who will come gasping and furrowing to Sophie’s bedroom door once they hear Miss Prague-Bound squeak, because when the therapist inevitably tells me that I need to stay home on the weekends and stop projecting my insecurities onto others, maybe I’ll listen this time, and then what will Christie’s coworkers talk about in their identical living rooms, with their bridge piercings and their micro bangs; with their liberal arts degrees in their back pockets; with The Love Witch muted on their flat screens; with four bowls of takis on their coffee tables?

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